[Reader-list] THE CALCUTTA SUMMER AND CALCUTTA

[broadcaster at syhlleti.org]

THE CALCUTTA SUMMER AND CALCUTTA



The first summer of Calcutta for a Non-Resdient like me has been a great
lession in understanding suffering. The humid and hunting heat of Bengal
troubled Babar who despised its rains and dampness, English Colonists who
made lime their primary consumption and some as we know from some
wordsmiths of Bengal – loved something very Non-English and very desi -
panta bhat as we all know. English Ladies had a tougher time and suffered
from a veritable irritation. In their moments of folly and despairing heat,
they might have thought that the Natives are responsible for the climate
and the wrath that was to be directed against Apollo was directed against
the Natives. The employees of Company and later, the noble and less-noble
functionaries of the Empire – all suffered the heat, long before the place
became a Revolutionary hot-bed. My bed, here seems like a mild furnace. The
night, an oscillation in the self-generated fluid of perspiration. The
sleep – half, plenty, heavy and high but without gratification. Like the
very city which excites but gratifies not.


Very few cities in the world can claim to be such lucky in earning
International fame in so quick a time. Within three hundred years, this
place in Eastern India rose to great fame, it has seen the vissictudes of
its Fortune and in the last Episode, a study on Fortune itself. In the city
of vanishing wealth, the political leaders experimented with great zeal on
crushing any unequal distribution of wealth. The city was ruled by Babus
just after its inception. Babus, in todays terminology can be said to be
Sparkling Consumerists . They consumed with a wonderful apetite things
intellectual, sensual, political, moral, erotic and vulgar. The fertile and
rich outskirts of Bengal were squeezed to enrich the Capital at Calcutta –
came foodgrains, flowers and beauties. Babus reclined in their mansions,
drank whisky and desi, flew kites, had cockfight, sang and danced and
finally when the Great Sweepstick of history threw them to some Recycle
Bin, they vanished. Their legacy remained. When the new ideas swept Bengal,
this land was bereft of economic wealth, its craft and art almost destroyed
and the default opportunity of becoming the Capital of a growing Empire was
fast vanishing in real sense. The Economy was changing. India, itself was
becoming a political power, instead of an Economic Colony of British on
which Calcutta owes its birth, its rise and prominence and International
Fame. While Political India was entangled in the local three body problem
of China-Pakistan-Bangladesh, Bengal, always fascinated by novelty rather
than of inner value embraced Communism. For last two hundred years, Bengal
was a tropical conduit through which European Thoughts travelled, with
necessary and inevitable distortion and dispersion. It was a kind of a
logical conslusion of the Mind of a Bengali Bhadralok who finds greater
pain in not being a Bhadra than Daridra. The lack of shrewdness of a
Bengali Bhadralok’s mind was evident when it went against its entire
historical whole and embraced something very incongruous to its cultural
destiny. Communism in Bengal as a political idea highlighted that becaon
light in understanding the cultural essence of Bengal – a passionate urge
of not to be left behind in the realm of culture, to embrace the dominant
culture of the time, to be always searching for New Culture, New Ideas. The
noble manisfestation of this essence came in the personages whom Bengalis
love to decorate with the epithet of Viswapathik and the worst ones, as
Tagore has once remarked – ".. From their speech, it was evident that they
were smearing ink onto the face of English Culture and whitelime onto the
face of Bengali Community." This Cultural aspect finds its echo in a
character of Ms. Arundhati Roy, Mr. Chacko - an Oxford Scholar, a Marxist,
presently a pickle manufacturer. The Author has captured by a single line
the entire essence of Mr. Chacko, quite known to a Bengali – "He had a
Marxist Mind and a Feudal Libido."


Bengal had a tryst with its True Destiny and it chose Life instead of a
Mummified Immortality when it came to Babu Rammohan Roy writing that
historical letter for English Education. Bengal was always a Cultural
Wanderer, always in the lookout for a dominant Culture of the day. This had
a high survival value as we know. But in embracing the Mummified Communism
with the "feudal intellectual Libido", three far reaching effects happened
in the Cultural Life of Bengal – a) The true aristocracy was either
crushed, suppressed or left for imaginary homelands b) The remnants of the
decadent Babus became apologetic and shifted to the compass of power. c) A
great chance of coming in contact with the dominant TransAtlantic Culture
of United Sates was either hated, or neglected or forgotten. Post Cold-war
made the world order very different. Historically, Bengal was a rare piece
of land in the entire Orient to cross-examine its European part with that
Transatlantic metamorphosis but the Leadership did not have the potency of
seeing that Vision. Bengal missed this great historical opportunity, a
great Cultural Cross Examination of hitherto unknown scope in global order
was missed. Why ? Because, only true aristicrats of a society could
envision, rest operate. Bengal had struck a historical short-cut in
Cultural Space and the lack of shrewdness of Benagli Bhadralok do not see a
quick recapitualtion. And as a logical conclusion, in the Geopolitics of
India, Bengal remained as a land of Strategic Imporatnce only. It could not
lead because its Leaders were asked to forget what was Leadership. Because,
historically, Leadership is always Aristocratic, not by birth but that
essence of which Edmund Burke says – "..This is true and noble Aristocracy.
Without this there is nothing great and there is no Nation."


But I am not qualified to say anything on this great city to which my
residency period is only two months.. But I find that what is Paris for
Frenchman, so is Calcutta for a Bengali. It is the nervecenter of Bengali
Cultural Space and hence, its decadence affects the Greater Bengal that is
a Global Community. This city, whose hospitality and International
Concessions have become Urban Legends but alas, the city is fast undergoing
a de-urbanaisation phase. Its Politics have no cultural flesh and blood,
its citizens have forgotten things aristocratic, it is the city of Cost-
Cutting. In its commerial vein does not throb the swell of wealth, its
streets do not offer that maddening air of urban excitement but boring and
shabby processions. But I cannot lose hope. Calcutta cannot sleep in this
dirt for long. In spite of all political mummies which are lying heavily on
its shoulder, a flash of true and noble aristocracy will make it see its
real situation. The city which has seen giants walking on its streets, on
whose tradeposts have come Greeks, Aryans, Persians, Arabs, Mogols,
English, Frecnh, Dutch, Portugese cannot lie permanently in a cocoon of
self-made isolation.


The magic of Calcutta lies elsewhere. I wish what my young son will find a
Calcutta very different from what his father had found and he will thank
his father for working for the Change.


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Contributor wordsmith has been a resident of Calcutta and is a Network
Manager by profession.
(wordsmith is PRITAM BHATTACHARJEE)

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