[Reader-list] second installment: GROUND ZERO

[sovan tarafder]

Dear all,

This is my 2nd installment. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks



Sovan Tarafder

 

Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / ...Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" /  Let us go and make our visit.



T.S.ELIOT



Just a few days back, I was watching Ritwik Ghatak's SUBARNAREKHA - third time in my life so far but first in big screen - and suddenly the film seemed to be prophetic, as far as the present city culture in Kolkata is concerned. I'm referring to the scene in which Haraprasad informs Eshwar about the new entertainments in city. Haraprasad loves to enjoy what Kolkata has to offer - right from the horse races to cocktail evenings with voluptuous beauties - yet there is unmistakably a sense of distance of abhorrence, which he maintains all through. Even while instigating Eshwar to join the flow of entertainment there, he mentions it as 'bibhatsa majaa', or macabre pleasure. 



Obviously, Ritwik had his logic. The horse-race, the party overflowing with gorgeously dressed gals and lots of booze, the flesh and the flesh trade - all these things bespeak of a fall from an imagined grace, a grace that was widely expected to arrive in the wake of newly gained independence. What came into being, obviously, came as a shock to Ritwik Ghatak, who proverbially carried the pain of partition till his last breath. This is an issue apart, yet what makes SUBARNAREKHA significant is the fact that this film portrays a certain type of urban entertainment that began to flourish at a critical juncture in the history of the city of the then Calcutta. Now, after more than four decades since SUBARNAREKHA, Kolkata is engaging herself with another phase of change. Again the stream of urban entertainment seems to take a new shape.



The change is visible in the urban atmosphere. As usual, media has been following the metamorphosis closely. I will cite two brief portions from two pieces of journalistic prose that appeared recently in the Anniversary special number of the Hindustan Times in Kolkata (Feb 21, 2005). 



The editorial piece 'It's celebration time' announces that the change has set in : 

'The winds of change blowing across Bengal are there for everyone to see. Kolkata is no longer a metropolis afflicted with an age-old disease- a new youthful vigor has been injected into its veins. Swanky shopping malls and discotheques have given the city a new, modern face
Urban development, neglected for decades, is also taking roots. New colonies are coming up in and around Kolkata to deal the growing pressure of population growth. And flyovers and wider roads have made traffic flow all that much smoother. The city has also reaped the benefits of the boom in the service sector and suddenly, the middle class seems flush with money.' (Bagchi 2005: 4) 



And just turning the page over, the next piece clearly grabs the contours of this change, hailing the sheer youthfulness that has of late engulfed the urbanscape: 

"The young have over taken our city. Promotions, publicity, malls, movies, music, mobiles, cars, clothes, advertising: everything is calculated to attract the youth
 Over the past five years or so, Kolkata has turned into a city of the young, a city for the young. Their vibrancy, their keenness and their energy have breathed vitality into our genteel, once-staid city." (Bhattacharya 2005: 7) 



As is clear from these writings, the people of Kolkata are fortunate to witness a wave of being modern, sweeping across the city. Following the argument of Arjun Appadurai on European modernity, one can also say that '(w)hat is new about modernity (or about the idea that its newness is a new kind of newness)' follows from the duality that this modernity 'both declares and desires universal applicability for itself.' (Appadurai 1997:1) 



Bhattacharya has stated - we have noted already - that the city's present is predicated on the city's future. The city, as if, is trying to have her tomorrow situated in her today. The movement is futuristic, set in developmentalist and as Bhattacharya says, consumerist mode. No wonder, then, that a city based developer will proudly announce, 'Nowadays we are not selling apartments. We are selling way of life.' (Ray 2005:13) 



Only one needs to afford this way of life. I spend, therefore I am in this big league. And if I can not dish out money, still I can afford to dream to jump onto that bandwagon, one-day or other. One recent reportage on the current real estate scenario states that '(t)he promoters are confident that demand is keeping pace with the supply. And they are confident that people will want to live in these complexes.' (Ray 2005:13) People do. They do so because the discourse generated in the urban atmosphere everywhere is pinned on the all important issue of development, the latter being hailed as a journey towards light. 



So this is an enLightenment project, unfolding itself all over the city. The project is rooted into, and paradoxically gives birth to the project of modernisation, which again overlaps with the project of development. This dyad of being modern and being developed is what spells out the project of neo-enLightenment in the present cityscape of Kolkata. Again, as Appadurai argues, "Whatever else the project of the Enlightenment may have created, it aspired to create persons who would, after the fact, have wished to become modern." (Appadurai, 1997: 1)



In Kolkata, too, the present waves of development that, as the columnists opine, enLighten and enliven the city, have engineered a desire (or are widely considered to have engineered a desire) to move upwards, to become modern. Significantly, being upwardly mobile and being modern have appeared to be the same now. Only who can spend can become modern. Become in sync with time. As Raymond Williams has shown, the word modernisation has been "normally used to indicate something unquestionably favorable or desirable" (Williams 1983: 208-09).



But the time sometimes, seems out of joint, especially in this time of development. Just besides the gleaming face of the modernised city, a question slowly, yet constantly looms large: what about that portion of the cityscape which Ashis Nandy calls the 'unintended city'?

In SUBARNAREKHA, Haraprasad laments over the generations that have not seen the agonies of partition, of riot, of famine. In the early hours of the twenty first century, the much-adored youth of the city is such a generation without memory. 

It seems that the so-called youthful space has no history. This is ground zero. The construction on that site has just begun.

 

Reference:

Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, OUP, Delhi (1997)

Bagchi, Rajiv: 'It's celebration time', Hindustan Times Anniversary special (2005)

Bhattacharya, Soumya: 'Tomorrow's People', Hindustan Times Anniversary special (2005)

Ray, Paula: 'Towers of Promise', The Telegraph Sunday magazine Graphiti (13.01.2005)

Williams, Raymond: 'Keywords:A Vocabulary of Culture and Society', OUP, New York (1983)

I am also immensely indebted to Satish Deshpande's fascinating book Contemporary India: A sociological View ,Penguin (2003)



 

 


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