It’s been over a decade since the people of an apparently forbidden terrain woke up and broke out of an administrative machinery that had once spawned many a dreams for them.
Eighty years ago, when the storm struck the stifling autocracy of the tsar and brought the advent of a new age with the promise of food for every stomach and hope for every heart, a gasping nation breathed afresh.
But, did their dreams come true? Did it help the cash-strapped republic in fighting with an inflating vacuum of wealth?
Perhaps no. And, that’s why when the frenzied mob pulled down the towering symbols of communism and uprooted the theory that they had been living with looked so horrid. It had triggered a racing pulse among statesmen across the world — no matter Left, Right or Centre.
The people’s rage had questioned the very integrity of a system. It had shaken the foundation of an administration that was perceived to be the way out of a life crammed in the fascist rule.
In 1917, Russia had perceived communism as a relief from the feudalistic and monarchical misery. In 2006, nearly 80 years after the Bolsheviks shook the world, Nepal displayed the rerun of a similar wakening.
It’s the people of this small nation, too insignificant and obscure being sandwiched among two superpowers — India and China — and tucked away in the lap of the Himalayas, who suddenly burst out in anger sending a jolt to the world’s impression of the country.
Nepal is not just the haven of junkies and a small Las Vegas away from the hustle and bustle of America. It treasures people who can raise their voice and shed their blood in support of democracy and tear apart the all powerful king.
But, for Nepal — transition from a democracy overthrown by the king and then again back to the people’s mandate — what lies in store?
Revolutions get crushed and enemies change.
How is it to be shifted from a king to a band of rebels whose cousins in India are hated for their bloody vendetta and visionless violence? What good holds the Maoists-led seven-party alliance for their people?
Even before the scars of the war against the king dried up, Nepal’s rebel leader, in tow with an Indian Leftist, couldn’t hide his hunger for the top seat.
The country is soon to face its people’s mandate. No one can say what the elections has in store for the community but a fear is evident — people are scared to realise that they have been duped twice.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Rendezvous with a maths peddler
One Saturday, after a half-day office (then I used to scribble for an advertising group), enjoying liberty, I planned to go hunting half-priced books on Free School Street. It is the stretch in Calcutta where the wise usually hang around collecting reagents for complex reactions of intellectuality that the trite like me can hardly comprehend.
On the usual route to the destination, I came across this piece of writing. “Put up any problem of mathematics and obtain quick solution,” read the piece of paper stuck on a board behind the man sitting bang-opposite St Xavier’s College on Park Street.
The board attracted cursory once-overs, curious glances, and even quizzical frowns. But passers-by did one thing in a body: they moved on without missing a single step.
An unknown nosiness stalled me to read the script subsequent to the headline. To my surprise, I discovered a price chart, offering rates charged for solving individual mathematical solutions for standards ranging between Class VII and post-graduation.
I was interrupted in the middle of trying to fathom the subject. “Sir, may I introduce myself to you?” — the humble appeal caught my attention. Parash Nath Sharma introduced himself as a post-graduate in mathematics from Patna University and he was ready to solve riddles of mathematics and statistics of any standard.
With an ambition to develop his career in academics, Sharma left his scope to join the ancestral livelihood through agriculture. “I wanted to be a teacher but there was no job for me in Bihar,” Sharma lamented. “Calcutta is a big city and am sure there are better chances here,” buoyancy reflected in his bucolic English.
To make his living, Sharma adopted this method, following some of his native folks’ advice. His atypical way of income fetched his some yields. “Two gentlemen have asked me to give tuition to their children,” the maths peddler said.
The episode was certainly one of the weird ones that I had ever encountered. Lost in thoughts of the meeting, I headed for a nearby refectory. Busy on a contemplative cuppa, I recollected the optimism that was vivid in his eyes.
I traversed down Park Street several times after that but I never met Sharma again. And, I could not ask him the complex equation of life to be simple yet happy.
On the usual route to the destination, I came across this piece of writing. “Put up any problem of mathematics and obtain quick solution,” read the piece of paper stuck on a board behind the man sitting bang-opposite St Xavier’s College on Park Street.
The board attracted cursory once-overs, curious glances, and even quizzical frowns. But passers-by did one thing in a body: they moved on without missing a single step.
An unknown nosiness stalled me to read the script subsequent to the headline. To my surprise, I discovered a price chart, offering rates charged for solving individual mathematical solutions for standards ranging between Class VII and post-graduation.
I was interrupted in the middle of trying to fathom the subject. “Sir, may I introduce myself to you?” — the humble appeal caught my attention. Parash Nath Sharma introduced himself as a post-graduate in mathematics from Patna University and he was ready to solve riddles of mathematics and statistics of any standard.
With an ambition to develop his career in academics, Sharma left his scope to join the ancestral livelihood through agriculture. “I wanted to be a teacher but there was no job for me in Bihar,” Sharma lamented. “Calcutta is a big city and am sure there are better chances here,” buoyancy reflected in his bucolic English.
To make his living, Sharma adopted this method, following some of his native folks’ advice. His atypical way of income fetched his some yields. “Two gentlemen have asked me to give tuition to their children,” the maths peddler said.
The episode was certainly one of the weird ones that I had ever encountered. Lost in thoughts of the meeting, I headed for a nearby refectory. Busy on a contemplative cuppa, I recollected the optimism that was vivid in his eyes.
I traversed down Park Street several times after that but I never met Sharma again. And, I could not ask him the complex equation of life to be simple yet happy.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The clock's ticking, dude
It’s the bloody clock ticking shamelessly for the last 30 years without a pause. Unending and undefined but it flaunts a direction not to let me forget that I’m getting old and days on this often-loved-but-more-often-hated earth inch to an end.
End. It comes when it’s all over. Lots done but lots more undone. Yet, it’s over. Like the butt-end of a burnt out cigarette, the dreams — most of them strangled and a few humble ones that managed to give a slip to inevitable abortion alive — are all set to be stubbed. A few teardrops, some moments of recollections and then, it’s all over.
Am I a cynic? I would say it’s better than feigning to be a pragmatist.
We’re all dead, scared to face the truth and fight the adverse. But the pseudo-pragmatism gets stripped when India talks of man-on-the-moon. Everyday, on my way to the newspaper that pays me to work on thousands of words on the blockbuster great Indian aspirations, I meet an old man — probably older than my father. With his arms stretched, he cries: “I’m hungry… give me something so that I could eat.”
I’m sure many of us meet such undesired and useless creatures (no longer human beings, perhaps) on our way to office or home.
The clock ticks on. But nothing changes. Only promises get stacked up.
Where do I see the light? Where can I get a fresh breath? How can I start believing that with its over-a-billion-strong battalion, India would someday rule the world? Because I can’t forget that behind all that chemistry that goes on in the US Congress with the powerful Indian lobby, there stands a poor man with his arms stretched and crying “I’m hungry….”
He, too, has a clock. It, too, will come to an end someday. But I’m sure before that someone else will come up to continue the cry.
It’s all silly, Billy. Care a damn for all this shit and pull up your socks, dude. After all, you gotta look positive.
End. It comes when it’s all over. Lots done but lots more undone. Yet, it’s over. Like the butt-end of a burnt out cigarette, the dreams — most of them strangled and a few humble ones that managed to give a slip to inevitable abortion alive — are all set to be stubbed. A few teardrops, some moments of recollections and then, it’s all over.
Am I a cynic? I would say it’s better than feigning to be a pragmatist.
We’re all dead, scared to face the truth and fight the adverse. But the pseudo-pragmatism gets stripped when India talks of man-on-the-moon. Everyday, on my way to the newspaper that pays me to work on thousands of words on the blockbuster great Indian aspirations, I meet an old man — probably older than my father. With his arms stretched, he cries: “I’m hungry… give me something so that I could eat.”
I’m sure many of us meet such undesired and useless creatures (no longer human beings, perhaps) on our way to office or home.
The clock ticks on. But nothing changes. Only promises get stacked up.
Where do I see the light? Where can I get a fresh breath? How can I start believing that with its over-a-billion-strong battalion, India would someday rule the world? Because I can’t forget that behind all that chemistry that goes on in the US Congress with the powerful Indian lobby, there stands a poor man with his arms stretched and crying “I’m hungry….”
He, too, has a clock. It, too, will come to an end someday. But I’m sure before that someone else will come up to continue the cry.
It’s all silly, Billy. Care a damn for all this shit and pull up your socks, dude. After all, you gotta look positive.
Rediscovering Ray, humility in an auto
Culture and critiques go hand-in-hand, at least in Calcutta. This was once again drummed into my head, of all places, in an autorickshaw a few days ago.
Being born and brought up in Calcutta, I was not astonished when the driver of one such rickety vehicle told me that a TV channel would show Satyajit Ray’s celebrated movie, ‘Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen’, that evening.
But you could have knocked me down with a feather when the man, in his early 30s, followed up with a critique on Ray: “Only he could show how an entire film could be made with the actors speaking only in rhymes.”
He was talking about ‘Hirok Rajar Deshe’ – the sequel to GGBB, and chortled when he saw my stunned face. “I’ve seen all Ray films,” he said in a matter-of-fact way as he wove his auto through the maze of traffic.
I could only sit back in silence, my interest growing, as the man who had dropped out of school after sixth grade continued his critique, the topic now shifting to what made ‘Nayak’ a remarkable film. “In this movie, it’s brilliant the way Ray portrayed the dejection of a silver screen hero.”
But Ray had his chinks, the man observed. The maestro, according to him, should not have had used any background music when Soumitra Chatterjee sang ‘ami chini go chini tomare’ – a romantic Tagore song in the film ‘Charulata’. “It would have been more realistic without the music, as he did in ‘Ghare Baire’, where he opted only for vocals.”
I was travelling from Girish Park to Phoolbagan, a half-an-hour stretch that ended soon but when I offered him a cup of tea, he smiled shyly and accepted. We walked down to a nearby tea stall to continue our tête-à-tête.
The man didn’t know about Henrik Ibsen, but knew well about the background of ‘Ganashatru’ – Ray’s cinematic version of Ibsen’s novel, ‘An Enemy of the People’. “This film was adapted from a foreign novel,” he said. “Ray made it so Indian that we forget it was basically based on a story written with a foreign locale as the backdrop.”
By then it was the time to say goodbye. The auto driver was all humility. “I’m a dropout and the last person qualified to comment on a master, but I talked so much because you kept prodding me,” he said apologetically.
I watched silently as he kicked start his autorickshaw and melt away in Calcutta’s dense traffic. If anything, that conversation had left me a humbler man than I am.
Being born and brought up in Calcutta, I was not astonished when the driver of one such rickety vehicle told me that a TV channel would show Satyajit Ray’s celebrated movie, ‘Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen’, that evening.
But you could have knocked me down with a feather when the man, in his early 30s, followed up with a critique on Ray: “Only he could show how an entire film could be made with the actors speaking only in rhymes.”
He was talking about ‘Hirok Rajar Deshe’ – the sequel to GGBB, and chortled when he saw my stunned face. “I’ve seen all Ray films,” he said in a matter-of-fact way as he wove his auto through the maze of traffic.
I could only sit back in silence, my interest growing, as the man who had dropped out of school after sixth grade continued his critique, the topic now shifting to what made ‘Nayak’ a remarkable film. “In this movie, it’s brilliant the way Ray portrayed the dejection of a silver screen hero.”
But Ray had his chinks, the man observed. The maestro, according to him, should not have had used any background music when Soumitra Chatterjee sang ‘ami chini go chini tomare’ – a romantic Tagore song in the film ‘Charulata’. “It would have been more realistic without the music, as he did in ‘Ghare Baire’, where he opted only for vocals.”
I was travelling from Girish Park to Phoolbagan, a half-an-hour stretch that ended soon but when I offered him a cup of tea, he smiled shyly and accepted. We walked down to a nearby tea stall to continue our tête-à-tête.
The man didn’t know about Henrik Ibsen, but knew well about the background of ‘Ganashatru’ – Ray’s cinematic version of Ibsen’s novel, ‘An Enemy of the People’. “This film was adapted from a foreign novel,” he said. “Ray made it so Indian that we forget it was basically based on a story written with a foreign locale as the backdrop.”
By then it was the time to say goodbye. The auto driver was all humility. “I’m a dropout and the last person qualified to comment on a master, but I talked so much because you kept prodding me,” he said apologetically.
I watched silently as he kicked start his autorickshaw and melt away in Calcutta’s dense traffic. If anything, that conversation had left me a humbler man than I am.
A street and the pot of gold
There’s a street in Calcutta with a lot of gold. It’s a track that McKenna is not known to have taken, with or without his mustang, but Bowbazar Street or BB Ganguly Street as it’s called, spawns dreams in huge quantities, just like Hollywood.
The cobbled street is home to scores of sparkling, tinted glass-chrome shops selling some of the most exquisite jewellery in town. Snaking away from the main street are narrow labyrinthine by-lanes, where master craftsmen toil away on pieces of gold, creating designs that have had reputed jewellers in as far-flung places as Surat and Delhi, luring them away with, what else, but bags of gold.
But, breathtaking designs are not the only thing that’s conjured from the yellow metal. Gold also brings in its way hope, hope of a better tomorrow, the belief that the rainbow meets the earth at BB Ganguly Street, the conviction that it’s here that the pot of gold that’s going to change their lives lies.
The pot of gold, according to this school of thought, is the daily dose of astrological prediction that jewellers put up on their shop windows. This is the road to their fortunes. Handwritten on chart paper with whatever writing tool that is available at hand (though chalk is seldom preferred), these predictions are devoured by fortune-seekers each day.
Much like the Reds in this communist state, who huddle before the Left newspaper Ganashakti pasted on boards and strung up at every bus stop, devouring each sentence on capitalist misdoings.
As I don’t need to pass by BB Ganguly Street regularly, I don’t really know if the astro buff finds solace on a regular basis in whatever he reading like the dedicated Ganashakti surfer, but I did stumble upon a man who definitely did not.
This gentleman was your typical Bengali bhadrolok, complete with white dhoti-kurta and the ubiquitous umbrella, and he looked decidedly unhappy as he peered into the predictions strung up before him. Then as he looked away, a picture of despondency, his eyes met mine. He was mumbling something. I thought I heard, “Aajo holo na.” Translated, it means “not even today.”I sometimes think of him when I pass by BB Ganguly Street. I hope he’s found his gold in his pot by now.
The cobbled street is home to scores of sparkling, tinted glass-chrome shops selling some of the most exquisite jewellery in town. Snaking away from the main street are narrow labyrinthine by-lanes, where master craftsmen toil away on pieces of gold, creating designs that have had reputed jewellers in as far-flung places as Surat and Delhi, luring them away with, what else, but bags of gold.
But, breathtaking designs are not the only thing that’s conjured from the yellow metal. Gold also brings in its way hope, hope of a better tomorrow, the belief that the rainbow meets the earth at BB Ganguly Street, the conviction that it’s here that the pot of gold that’s going to change their lives lies.
The pot of gold, according to this school of thought, is the daily dose of astrological prediction that jewellers put up on their shop windows. This is the road to their fortunes. Handwritten on chart paper with whatever writing tool that is available at hand (though chalk is seldom preferred), these predictions are devoured by fortune-seekers each day.
Much like the Reds in this communist state, who huddle before the Left newspaper Ganashakti pasted on boards and strung up at every bus stop, devouring each sentence on capitalist misdoings.
As I don’t need to pass by BB Ganguly Street regularly, I don’t really know if the astro buff finds solace on a regular basis in whatever he reading like the dedicated Ganashakti surfer, but I did stumble upon a man who definitely did not.
This gentleman was your typical Bengali bhadrolok, complete with white dhoti-kurta and the ubiquitous umbrella, and he looked decidedly unhappy as he peered into the predictions strung up before him. Then as he looked away, a picture of despondency, his eyes met mine. He was mumbling something. I thought I heard, “Aajo holo na.” Translated, it means “not even today.”I sometimes think of him when I pass by BB Ganguly Street. I hope he’s found his gold in his pot by now.
A true blue Calcuttan
Often I wonder what goes into the making of a true-blue Calcuttan – a species I’m convinced is not quite available in any other part of Mother Earth.
Is it the fish he consumes by the fishing net-full that sets him apart or it could be the rosogolla he swallows by the handis, I wonder. I haven’t have the remotest clue, but whatever it is, this certain something has imbued in the city dweller a quality that transcends him above the mortal – to the higher planes of a true-blue Calcuttan.
I once thumbed down a taxi and the out-of-the-way courteous cabby turned out to be an assistant librarian at a government library; he was a proxy cabby that day, filling in for a friend who was down with fever. I was never more flummoxed than that evening.
On another occasion, I saw a man tumble down from his seat in a heap on the floor of a bus when the driver applied the brakes all of a sudden; the man picked himself up, looked at me nonchalantly and deadpanned: “No ballast; I skipped breakfast.”
One evening, years ago, I had to take the local train. Torrential rains had disrupted train services for a few hours, and when the first train trundled in, passengers of three jostled their way into one. Unable to weather that insane crush of humanity, one man extricated himself by holding the handgrip above, and clambered onto the shoulders of the person next to him. He then edged door-ward and, sliding from shoulder to shoulder, and when the livid owner of a trespassed shoulder punched him, he hit back, all the while perched strategically in Siachen.
I thought I hadn’t seen anything funnier till I knocked against this elderly bhadrolok in another city bus. The bus was bumping its way over a cobble-stoned tramway when the man accidentally knocked his head on mine.
This was a calamity, as everyone knows, two heads knocking against each other results in horns coming out of the both. To avert the disaster, the man took instant remedial action: he caught hold of my head, and knocked his against mine once more.
Thanks to his quick reflexes, I haven’t grown antlers, no doubt neither has the stranger. Calcutta, you never cease to amaze me.
Is it the fish he consumes by the fishing net-full that sets him apart or it could be the rosogolla he swallows by the handis, I wonder. I haven’t have the remotest clue, but whatever it is, this certain something has imbued in the city dweller a quality that transcends him above the mortal – to the higher planes of a true-blue Calcuttan.
I once thumbed down a taxi and the out-of-the-way courteous cabby turned out to be an assistant librarian at a government library; he was a proxy cabby that day, filling in for a friend who was down with fever. I was never more flummoxed than that evening.
On another occasion, I saw a man tumble down from his seat in a heap on the floor of a bus when the driver applied the brakes all of a sudden; the man picked himself up, looked at me nonchalantly and deadpanned: “No ballast; I skipped breakfast.”
One evening, years ago, I had to take the local train. Torrential rains had disrupted train services for a few hours, and when the first train trundled in, passengers of three jostled their way into one. Unable to weather that insane crush of humanity, one man extricated himself by holding the handgrip above, and clambered onto the shoulders of the person next to him. He then edged door-ward and, sliding from shoulder to shoulder, and when the livid owner of a trespassed shoulder punched him, he hit back, all the while perched strategically in Siachen.
I thought I hadn’t seen anything funnier till I knocked against this elderly bhadrolok in another city bus. The bus was bumping its way over a cobble-stoned tramway when the man accidentally knocked his head on mine.
This was a calamity, as everyone knows, two heads knocking against each other results in horns coming out of the both. To avert the disaster, the man took instant remedial action: he caught hold of my head, and knocked his against mine once more.
Thanks to his quick reflexes, I haven’t grown antlers, no doubt neither has the stranger. Calcutta, you never cease to amaze me.
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