Kolkata's hidden phobias, and Islamophobia

My profession, if I may be allowed to call this waywardness by that term, is supposed to take me to many places. But quite ironically I don't frequent places where I can collect 'news bites/ bytes' befitting the section I've been put into. Nevertheless, I've been quite lucky to squirm into places, and annoyingly so for many people, where I gathered certain experiences which have not been that much 'sweetening' to my already dysfunctional brain.
It is a widely known fact that Bengalis, and for that matter 'Bongs' who live in and around Kolkata, have a highly conceited notion about their culture, and 'sub-ethnicity'- for I dare not to use the macro term. A high-nosed approach towards migrants, especially those who have come from erstwhile East Bengal, is commonplace here. (And I would just like to assert here that the carefree way of putting this with the omnipresent 'here' is symbolic of the inherent and inherited acceptance of this prejudice.)
But for the present Bengali generation a prejudice, and quite ironically so, though this too is an inherited phenomenon going back to just one cohort, is palpable. It's an uncalled for pugnacity towards those who don't speak the Bengali tongue. In this group one can comfortably include the rest of India, and particularly those communities who have made an immense impact on the business here. The barb of this 'gentle hate', springing out of a 'merely naturalised difference of culture', is directed at the Marwaris, Gujratis, Biharis, and Sikhs. But while these communities are still under the 'graceful canopy' of Hinduism (this may be an aberration but I have this feeling that the Sikh community is quite comfortably thought of as very close to the Hindus) the Muslims, who have in patches become successful in certain types of business have been the worst victims possible.
Muslims in Kolkata are huge in number, and some areas do really abound in them where they outnumber the Hindus: Park Circus, Rajabajar, Chadni Chowk, Patuli and Khidderpore are a few I am aware of. And in these areas one gets a blatant view of the urban poverty: where hungry children by the embankments of high drains collect plastic waste, and chase crows and famished dogs to procure the skin of a dead animal. Now when a majority of a minority community live in these circumstances one is bound to ask where lies the reason to hate these destitutes.
One very popular, and obviously very very controversial, view which describes the political status of these people is that they are Bangladeshi refugees who have been brought in by various political factions for their own purposes. (So be it, if allegations are true.) And so why not hate them as they are not Indians?
But this very simplistic jingoism is not the reason why these homeless are hated. They are Muslims and hence not essentially the people of the land. And that's what a taxi-driver expressed. Now this was a rather odd experience for me. One day I took a taxi which had to take the Number 4 bridge over the Park Circus station- a thickly populated and a Muslim dominated area. It was a sultry Kolkata noon and a well-known RJ was at his hilarious best when the car radio went off and I heard Anuradha Paudwal singing a Ram bhajan. When the car had traversed a fair distance the bhajan also stopped. In a light mood I asked the cab-driver what the matter was and he expressed quite boisterously that he is a Hindu and feels rather 'circumcised' when he travels through such areas, and so he always plays a bhajan in order to remain 'chaste'. Now this came from a person who, to be very un-Marxist, does not have enough education to understand the sensitivity of his comments, and the foolishness too.
But my next experience left me pretty baffled as it came of a shocking confession from my room mate. Now this young man is an MBA and he works for more than just a well known corporate firm. One day we were just chatting our precious time away when he told me that he doesn't frequent the 'hotel' which I very conveniently do. The reason: the eatery is owned by a Muslim and it's a 'Halal' shop, and the Muslim owner will take every opportunity of feeding the Hindus with beef and convert them into Islam. Even if not with beef, that fellow may put in a cow's blood in the curry !
Though it is a very common belief among Hindus that eating beef would rob them of their religion, this fear in an educated Indian of the 21st century is something more serious. He fears that a Muslim will secretly feed himself the ominous pie and he would cease to lead a dignified life. (An honest confession here. I don't take beef because I do have a aversion to it which may be influenced by my Hindu consciousness. And also because I don't take red meat, for that matter I never take mutton.)
A third experience was in the local train while returning home. There was a group of young Muslims seated together and as you know the local train was crowded 'cattle class'. But there was, and surprisingly so, a seat vacant where the fore-mentioned group was sitting. I obviously pounced upon this opportunity! Then it took quite a while for me to realise why the seat was vacant. All the people who were standing on the foot-board would rather suffer than sit where the bearded 'Mollas' were. I don't know how the people with whom I sat through out the journey felt, for there were hardly any visible expressions, but the experience left me thoughtful, and so have the others.
I don't want to end this blog, if you have been patient enough to peruse through this waffle, by lecturing upon national integration or religious harmony, for there are no such possibilities in the case of the Indian union. Secularism has never been a part of the peoples lives, though we tend to behave likewise. But for our generation the challenge lies somewhere else, and it would be just foolish of us to bother ourselves with such 'nothings'. So why don't we live life in a professional manner and leave all these behind?

When stopped living for a minute

An over-crowded train halted to pass the VIP bogey;

Salty passengers quarreling for a few inches of space.

Well someone's there smoking again and a filthy fellow passing air,

Oh a few lecture on the national policy and spit on the footboard

Say if you can beat this, I'll offer you my time!

So here wheezes past the AC car: red, silver and

great golden lights,

A speed which even the deaf dogs would fear!

And the poor are again left watching those

who loot them passing.

In the soot of the uncleaned scullery someone's mother waits;

Hungry she is, but the railwayman wouldn't know that.

He has sold her long before.

So if heaven lay in that mother's heart god surely is a lie.

And amongst the rambling of a drunken husband time

sips in suffocation:

A child in the crowded compartment watching the rich

parade fast.

Outside the tired night howls of defloration as virgins are made and kept.

A cunning fox gouges at the jack-fruit, smelling the flesh by,

And calls amidst the canopy of a town declare

the hookers out on business.

But the train has started moving again, and so

life does a motion,

And women have salsa at town, just a stone bowl of emotion.

Somebody plays an old song and the wheels rattle in no rhythm,

And if you can beat this I'll bet you my time: for I'm an unheard poet out of business, yet again!

'When was the last time you smiled?' asks the child being sung to sleep.

Her mother lies to her of unknown shores to her alive keep,

Her feeble chords and harsh chores telling a tale of truth

Which the child dozing forgets at the sight of a candy.

The seller has a family to feed, the mother needs

a penny to save.

She lies, so the seller's son would have a smaller bite yet again.

Here in this familiarly unknown crowd the poor are the sellers

And poorer are the buyers.

Oh tell me who will gain and who lose?

If you can answer this I'll worship you though I'm an atheist!

Forging another return, yet again

It’s been a long time since I last posted anything. A time which has made me pretty overladen- in all collateral dimensions possible: physical, financial, social, emotional, philosophical, intellectual, and most importantly ideological. Perhaps this new shift had its origins in June when I was called for interviews at two reputed universities, and subsequently I miserably turned out to an absolute no one. In fact I have now learnt to accept this as a natural corollary to my inaptitude. That experience and the inevitable knowledge that I have to spend at least one year at home ‘preparing’ for the forthcoming exams had enough of latex to bring in a momentaneous slump as I was taken aback at most trivial of occurrences - be it the technical glitches of my service proprietor, or the spicy side of an oily curry. So much was this consternation that I was deemed to declare myself unfit for a proper and disciplined way of life.

Then came the August in its flourishing supply of good luck, at least momentarily- for I got a small job, an odd one to be honest, at a newspaper. Though I was foolish enough to think myself capable enough to carry on the job in style I proved to be otherwise, justifiably though. All the flagrant ideas that I had, which I vowed to put to use, before joining seemed to evaporate at an embarrassing rate, and once again I was the banker with a debit card but no cash balance! So frustration haunted me agian as I let myself slump into a mire of hopelessness, pondering over all wrong decisions I had taken so far.

Besieged in this curfew of my thoughts I squandered away my precious time watching documentaries and trying to inspire myself from the biographies of greats- never quite realizing that the great had their own great ways and I am no great at all. Self conjured lectures followed, unconditionally transferred over the phone to my soul-mate, who was magnanimous to listen to all crap, and never get upset even though I barked like a mad, but overfed, bull dog.

And so I kept on sneaking for opportunities, not professional or monetary ones, but those which would propel me out of the slump. This included taking a claustrophobic bus ride through the busy and crowded streets of Burrabazar on the eve of the Lakshmi Puja to get the essence of a Calcutta infested mainly by outsiders- generally known to the civilized Bengali as ‘meros’ and ‘biharis’- a move which I justified as a giant step to understand the term ‘culture’ in all its eclectic possibilities and tendencies. Battling asthma, which I had inherited long back but only realized as late as this year, I sniffed around high drains, forbidden streets- not quite doing anything though, coffee houses, shopping centres, just to energise myself and free my intellect of that never ebbing tide of cabin fever. From the posh to the filthy, I treaded all. From the famous and the rich to the game keeper out of his job- I met and talked to all. From software engineers to BPO out-sourcing fellows I lived with all, and still I was inundated in that one endemic- confusion, nurtured by an ideological despair. From Lennon to Knopfler, from Beatles to Bob Dylan- I listened to all to cajole myself out of the slump and attain a much sought after sublimity, with no success obviously.

But it was that one resilience to pen down ‘my bloody problems’ in an old diary which provided me a way out. Now I have a clear head, and I know what to do- people close to me are aware of it. Not that I am sure that I will succeed, but at least ideologically, and that is the most important, I know what I am and what I would become. I have a clearer focus if not the clearest, and I have resumed my flow to write- and that gives me immense pleasure to get back to this silly blog and share whatever I can.

As a token of this I present to you a poem which I wrote in the message box of my cell phone, in three separate message drafts, on my way back home. Though this poem needs to be edited, and which I will surely do I put this up as my friend Sayantan feels so.

I welcome myself back to this world of virtual permanence.

amidst helplessness

i am posting this with a therapeutic cause in mind.i believe that for me writing is the only and ultimate way i can solve my problems.instead of venting my shortcomings,anger,and frustration on someone i choose to articulate them here.consider these black letters the questions to my answers.

It is indeed a universally accepted idea, and obviously such an acceptance thrives from the shrewd regulation which one does to feel comfortable, that good times soon follow the bad ones. Autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, history, literature, sports and day to day events bear witness to it. ‘Hard times will pass on’ is indeed one of the most overtly used, cheaply understood, and widely acclaimed themes of our human existence, and its history.

With a proportion lesser than that of the sand particle by the shore of any sea, I am not here to refute these claims. All these should be true, and like my uncle srini I too cannot stress more than this. If not, why would all of us succumb to this delusion of things sorting amongst themselves? But the state which I am passing makes me feel, and I believe that this is true, that some things in life do not sort out; they are there not to change. No matter whatsoever happens there are a few people who, and the relationship which they inhabit in which, are so imperfectly managed that calling them an ill matched pair would be nothing but a misnomer. And when one is drawn amidst this kind of a relationship all alone, to face it every day and get depressed without any fault of his or hers is a bonus which demands an overtime of 8 hours a day!

It seems that life for me has ran amuck and instead of being blessed by what I want, not money or material things, I am always offered in bountiful things and situations which are simply not worth encountering. The facts that I have got nowhere for my higher studies, and that I am technically an unemployed person can be handled with a sensible approach. But added to these shortcomings, which indeed test me and my character, certain situations make me totally helpless. And the gross ineffectuality which I experience in these renders me frustrated. Perhaps the people who indulge in this kind of a foolish and totally dishonest relationship should realize that amidst them there is one person who is an objective observer and for whom the kind of environment they are generating can encapsulate me in a hazardous cocoon where I can suffocate to a state of perpetual depression and senselessness.

But the irony is that even though I know that such selfish people, who only flatter their false ego and lead a life plundered by dishonest compromises, will never realize what my concerns are. I will still wish they could.

a walk we had

the traffic is not so loud,

the sky is covered in cloud.

the rain is just an excuse

to make you of some use.

don’t be scared little big umbry

you won’t b seared, it’s not sunny!

can’t you ‘see’ the wind blow?

the tension is also at a low.

this i’ll always say without fail.

remember how we got back on the trail?

so come let’s make this evening too

before they come back and confine us in the zoo!

oh how is this?

the memory of a forgotten kiss!

old i am for sure

but at heart still pure.

who says i’ll walk alone tonight?

you’ll be there by my sight.

i remember those walks also

in the mud and across the snow.

creak you do as my bones

make it fast before life mourns.

on retrospection

It has been quite a long time now. Not that I was busy, I can’t be that much dishonest, but rather I was wayward: so much so that it has made me a Mr. No One for the time being.

It sometimes becomes absolutely necessary to get personal with oneself, dig within one’s consciousness, and then ask ‘Have I been up to that level where I could have avoided what had occurred?’ Well, this is not really a question of performance index or the quotient of perfection; rather it is all about taking responsibility, realizing that in life I am accountable to at least myself, and my own conscience, if not to others. In short I can deceive the whole world, and that’s what I have been doing perhaps, but I cannot cheat myself. I am not really regretting, but I am reviewing: time and tide wait for none, this I seemed to have forgotten. My friends who have seen me at the varsity can indeed agree what kind of an arrogant buffoon I have been. The porous and parasitic armour of my false ego, which ironically has robbed me of my own vitality in the futile effort to insulate me from the anxiety of the rat race, has now rendered me unworthy of any standing. I am unemployed, jobless, and possibly frustrated; without any academic interest to pursue I have made myself a kind of an old elephant-the one that can neither be moved out nor be asked to leave. There goes a saying in Bangla that the fruit is never a burden for the tree; but add to that fruit an ego, it thinks itself to be a burden.

There are too many perhaps-s and too many also-s in life, possibly these would come to me too, benefit me too. But there is a void to be lived with, a vacuum to be respired, and a cornered ego and a punctured pride to be dealt with.

Like a needle in a trance of opposed magnetisms,
knowing not whither shall it fly.

tOO many alphabets tO speLL (spOil) a gENERAtiON.

I have always pondered over the identity, and motive, of my generation. Gen X, Gen Y, and now it's the Gen N! Too many cliches the media is using it seems. But i sincerely doubt the very genuineness and seriousness of these news paper- TV commercial- coined terms! In fact to be honest, i may sound very discouraging and 'orthodox', ours is a generation which gets carried away with every possible gust of breeze.

We think; yes we think, but on the lines which some very visible, but seemingly invisible forces want us to think. Our thinking is, and i am telling this from my personal experience notwithstanding any co-relation to popular theories, very much conditioned by the media which is around us. By media i don't only mean the TV commercials, or the ads, they are just a part of that construction which forces us to fit in the shapes it creates! The films which we watch every now and then, the kind of products we use- in fact these are inescapable, i agree- the necessities which we believe we have, never really judging their necessity, and even the Orkut and Facebook profiles we have or visit, create a pre-mediated network in which we operate. I am tempted to say that our thinking is just like the working of the Windows; while installing a program or a software we only follow the instructions, never ever trying to realise what makes the program run. In fact this is one aspect of the division of labour- we feel that it is not our job to understand the programing of the OS. Indeed it is true that given the complexities it is quite difficult, and i am not into it myself. It was just an analogy, an example to elucidate that we run like pre-programed softwares with options like RUN OK APPLY CANCEL ACCEPT DECLINE ! To draw an excellent example from The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, we are being a victim of obeah, that Caribbean custom where one's spirit is stolen. This in fact is the X, Y, N obeah! We are letting ourselves being renamed by alphabets and images which do not have any meaning once taken out of the aura of moving images, and disturbing music- all with stealthy agendas.

A leftist analysis of the glittering ads and media can very well show how our generation, by naming it GEN X Y N, is being depicted as one which yearns for interest without a bank account; one which wants a degree without hard work; one which believes in the 'inborn' genius, which it has in plenty; one which thinks that life is there in the pub, shopping malls, and one night stands. In short our generation is being made to believe that there is only one, and one one, way to success and that is THE SHORT CUT WAY! So we are no more responsible, no more committed to a cause, no more worried for a completion and perfection which is needed and which is very difficult to attain.

LO! arre yaar perfection ko improve karna kaafi mushkil hain. and we are born with it, JUST CHILL MAN! mentos hain naa? mentos khao dimaag ki batti jalao!

ARISE AWAKE AND SLEEP NO MORE. WITHIN EACH OF YOU THERE IS THE POWER TO REMOVE ALL WANTS AND ALL MISERIES! BELIEVE IN THIS AND THAT POWER WILL BE MANIFESTED! SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

nO EnD to mEmoRIEs !

All i had against Pondicherry University was personal, even now as i listen to Phil Collins and sip Three Roses i can’t but curse the people with higher degrees who are here defacing everything. But having said that i would take an opportunity, the opportunist i am, to admit that i am indebted to this place. If my UG in Calcutta taught me to ask questions, then this place, this undeserving place i sometimes opine in anger, has enabled me to answer them. I am writing this because i got a pretty emotional sms from my friend Dhivya. She has said, and quite rightly she has, that our course is going to end pretty soon and we will be missing everything which this university has given us. Pondering upon it and sitting alone in my room with the doors and windows open my mind is getting carried to the first day i entered the department.

A fair and handsome (self proclaimed) Bengali boy, in blue wrangler and black DJ n C, with hair spiked up in a mow hawk, sporting brown shoes and a sling bag from Ruggers, walks slowly up the stair case. He sees two girls: one in a green salwar suit with brown stripes, the other in a brownishly blue salwar suit and boring specs- Anju and Samhati. Entering the class room the boy is perplexed to find people who look so different. He scans the class and sits at the back. This was to be his place throughout the course! He gets nudged by a fellow Bengali whom he has earlier suspected of being a thief. This ‘thief’ was to become one of his closest mates in the campus, and his gadget guru, and ghatak too! Arijit, later Arijith! The thief opines that the class is full of ‘yea s’. A surreptitious Bengali term which can mean anything derogatory. Quite condescendingly he nods an assent. He looks puzzled to find a short man, with his face ‘over-powdered’ and badly in need of Fair and Handsome, enter the class. A joker, may be the clerk. He thinks. NN. Nalla Natarajan- the HOD. ‘This class(aa) is yea myini Yindia!’ and a lot! All to come in the following semesters. Crapanan! The hour does not turn sour as he lets the class off within half an hour such that they can explore the campus. Pshew! Exclaims the boy. What a place! Yuck! As the folks gather around the desks a guy busies himself in collecting phone numbers from the girls: Jubin. Bloody flirt thinks the superior fellow! (Me) This flirt was to be the most innocent person he would ever see in the campus. A good person who would waste money in writing Public Exams! As the class moves out he goes and asks the only fair complexioned girl ‘Bengali?’ Oeendrila. The first girl to whom he gives a lift. (That very day.) The day ends as he smokes a cigarette in desperation, a habit which was to be discontinued later.

This was just the beginning. The days which followed brought me close to many and also took me far from them. The place to which i was biased was to tell me that i am a racist! Here i was to learn how to apologise and say sorry. Here i was to find the love of my life. Here i was to realise how difficult it is to accept the fact that other cultures exist. Here i was to get a feel of what India is. And many more.

Indeed we people from the other part of the nation, North as it is called here, have many false reasons to dislike this place; but this university campus to me has started to mean a lot. I can now say that i have friends, and in every honest implications of the word, who speak Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu, Oriya, Marathi and English. In fact this not so urban place has taught me to be cosmopolitan. Indeed i have my own reservations regarding my taste for food, music, and films, and buses; but nevertheless to acknowledge that there are other ways to say ‘hello’ is not worthless at all!

I AM HERE TOO... too Mean!?

Indeed it is now very common: people are writing blogs. In the words of the media, popular media to be precise, it is here that people blog out their 'personal space'. I am also a construction of this media, as all of us are in some way or the other. So why not blog my personal space out? in fact I have always wanted to be a writer, a poet living in poverty: very much like the Oscar Wildes and Keats, to give examples which are common; canonically common- once again to be precise! Precision. A devil damn word it is. (i don't always prefer using god damn!) Indeed it is very difficult to be precise, to say what you want to mean, and to mean what you want to mean. Yes the double emphasis. It is very naive of us when we say that we mean this or 'so you mean this!?' We can never mean anything because there is no meaning without being precise, and vice versa. Yes if you are thinking I have read Derrida then you are not totally wrong. But i will take it a bit forward. Precision comes only when we are aware, when we are conscious rather, what do we want to mean. When we understand what is the argument we want to put forward, and what is the objective behind putting forward this argument- this is what I mean when I say we must be conscious of what we want to mean! It is because of this ignorance that we tend to use too many words, and especially too many dots these days. In fact i get flustered when i read the messages which drop in my inbox everyday. I will give you one example: 'hey... bonjour... gotta know that you were in town last night... ' Now my simple and humble question is this. Does not my friend know that the three dots (...) make a punctuation mark, especially when the sense is left incomplete, and that too in literature? In fact using these three dots is technically called ellipsis. Just as you have the ! and ? marks. Now what does one claim when these are used? Is s/he trying to subvert the common and simple grammar of a language and trying to purport a post post-modern version of grammar? or is it some kind of an alankaram? Whatever may be the case it is surely a popular innovation, but ironically it's a one which makes our work more complicated and subverts the whole notion of innovation. A post modern innovation may be, if i can call it innovation at all. So long for now, i will get back with ideas and opinions later. As of now good bye . . . oops! i'm a construction too!