Ain't looking back in anger

I work through long periods of silence, when the noise outside looks like some silent farcical mime

I don’t work actually, but let my haphazard thoughts rummage through my mind

I waste the precious moments of my life – many, many years went by like this – in the trivial, trying to keep my bastardly egotism alive

I want to believe, but nothing comes my way; probably I’m not a believer                                                                             
                                                                                                                           
I had read and dreamt about the magic mountains when I was a child, sitting in the low plains (by the bookshelf) and hoping to go there some day

What do you lose? What is there to lose? What is there to lose anyway?

The Paradox of Development

Human poverty is more than income poverty; it is the denial of choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life – UNDP


West Bengal, a relatively poorer state in India, is also a hotbed for political conflicts, often resulting in violence and institutionalised suppression. Among the poorest and most suppressed people of West Bengal – or any part of India for that matter – are the adivasis, indigenous tribes living for centuries at the bottom of the Indian caste system pyramid. The adivasis are often (as and whenever required) shamelessly exploited by local politicians, government officials, and unscrupulous industrialists.

One such exploitative nexus, recently brought to public attention by NGOs and the alternative media (and now even highlighted by mainstream media), is about rampant operation of illegal stone crushers across the adivasi villages of Birbhum, in west Bengal. Villages like ‘Mohammed bazaar’ and ‘Patharchala’ would never have existed in anybody’s mental map – beyond contributing to the national census once in every ten years – but for their rocky terrain, a valuable source of stone and stone-chips used for construction activities.

Fuelled by the construction boom in the cities, stone prices – and the greed of the unscrupulous industrialists ready to make a quick buck – have gone through the roof. They see these adivasi villages as a potential goldmine. However, it is not easy to get license for operating stone crushers (crushers are used for making stone-chips from the rocks blasted from quarries). Firstly, adivasi land, as per law, cannot be sold to non-adivasis. Secondly, it is strictly not permitted to build stone crushers in the vicinity of villages, due to health and safety reasons. In reality however, such legal restrictions mean only one thing: uncontrolled opening up of illegal stone crushers, often in full knowledge – and in some cases, even tacit complicity – of the local politician and the government officials. Currently, only about one-fourth of the stone crushers operating in the region are licensed.

The results of such uncontrolled growth in stone crushing activities, as can be expected, have been tragic. The crushers have been largely been built on land taken away from the adivasis by force – hence depriving them of their livelihood. The stone dust from the crushers have not only destroyed the productivity of the land and contaminated the water bodies in the vicinity, but also polluted the air to an extent that it has resulted in sharp increase of diseases like tuberculosis and silicosis (source: Anandabazar Patrika, 16 October, 2010 issue). The blasting of rocks in the quarries by explosives have resulted in stones flying into the nearby villages (often the quarries being set up at less than 50 metre from the villages), injuring and killing people, making holes in the roofs and falling into their huts , and cracking the walls (due to vibration of the explosions).

The adivasis, most of whom are extremely poor, do not have the means to fight such institutionalised atrocities. With the loss of their agricultural land and supporting ecosystem, and no other means to earn their livelihood, most of them are now struggling for sheer survival. Earlier this year in April, when some of them tried to raise their voices (in villages like Chanda and Sagarbandh), they were suppressed by armed mercenaries hired by the owners of these crushers – resulting in burning of 42 houses and killing of 4 people.

Some of the NGOs (including one backed by the internationally reputed author Mahashweta Devi) are trying to organise and educate the adivasis against such exploitation. Recently, even the chief minister of the state, Mr. Buddhadev Bhattacharya, has acknowledged the problem and promised that no crushers will be allowed to be built within hundred metres of a locality. The situation at ground, however, has not changed much. While some of the crushers have stopped operation temporarily, most of them admit that there are many ways to bypass the law.

In a country where industrialists and second-generation politicians are increasingly seen as role models – and are expected to steer the country to the next level of development, such harsh realities – practiced regularly throughout the underbelly of rural India, but rarely highlighted – raises serious questions about India’s development paradigm, especially on issues of sustainability and inclusiveness. Even internationally, as India is trying to project an image of an emerging economic and political power, such violation of basic human dignity may prove counter-productive in the long run. Yet, it is only the tip of a corruption chain whose roots go very deep.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media in India is largely apathetic towards these critical issues. While people continue to be suppressed in villages and unabashed exploitation of nature and indigenous people continue, the national newspapers and television channels are getting filled up more and more with images of celebrities opening the next designer store.

                                                                                                                                                                                   - Siddhartha Banerjee

A prayer for Swapneel and his brothers – Part II

Swapneel is growing up – day-by-day, hour-by-hour – like a bundle of pure energy. The earliest riser among us, his voice – full of strange melody and chaos – wakes us up every morning. His never-ending questions, his tremendous effort to climb the stairs or push my laptop bag around the room, his eyes and face always bursting with curiosity and enthusiasm, reminds me every day how our learning curve starts stagnating as we ‘grow up’. The incredible speed at which he is learning and picking up things everyday – from replicating complex sentences to doing acrobatic jings – leave me with awe and admiration.

As parents, we could only hope he continues to bloom in his own way and in his own pace, guided by nature and instincts, and not particularly moulded by our thoughts, norms, or ways of life. Though I’m not a believer in any way, yet, seeing him grow up day-by-day almost like a flower, I sometimes feel like bowing down before God –whosoever he or she may be – in gratitude; my mind filled with those beautiful words of Rabindranath Tagore: ‘Every child brings with him the message that God is not yet tired of man’.

Sometimes I also think about the world in which he is growing up: what kind of a world will it be? Though our generation were probably luckier than many previous ones (destroyed by war, poverty, conflicts of identity), there is absolutely no guarantee that we are moving towards a better world. Yet, no matter what awaits Swapneel and his generation, I believe they would have the strength and the conviction to shape it the way they want it to be.

Rediscovering Ritwik - A personal tribute

Ritwik Ghatak, one of the most talented and visionary directors to have come out of world cinema, is being slowly rediscovered by film lovers all over the world. Personally, his movies had always left me deeply moved - and here's my small tribute to the master:

http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2010/05/03/cinema.htm

The fact that this was published by the biggest National Daily in Bangladesh keeps my hopes alive that culture can overcome barriers which politics has created, that what is common in us is more powerful than divides us...

Halfway through the track

I often think about many of my friends for whom life has been mostly a positive affirmation – fame, position, stature, natural ease, ambition, everything juxtaposing (as if by a stroke of luck) in just the right proportion. I see them making their way through life without the least bit of visible effort, basking – though a bit narcissistically – in their self-glory. I look at my own life in comparison – grumpily stuttering my way through all the wrong roads, often not knowing where to go, often wandering off in totally undesirable and solitary bylanes.

During many of these unproductive wanderings, I often remember those apocalyptical words of Thomas Mann, which, over the years, has continued to live with me and haunt me: ‘… for knowledge Phaedrus, has neither dignity nor rigour: it is all insight and understanding and tolerance, uncontrolled and formless; it sympathizes with the abyss, it is the abyss.’

As one of my friends has often put forward this question (rather rhetorically, and not without intending to produce a dramatic affect): ‘If we are like this, there has to be a purpose; why are we the way we are?’ I must admit that I don’t have a straight answer to this one. One of the negative effects, I guess, of too much introspection (and aimless wandering) is to see the elusive promise of redemption fall apart. As Camus puts it so matter-of-factly in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, the promise of a mythical paradisiacal homeland is not something many of us can fall back on.

Yet, for most of my friends who move through their lives effortlessly, shinning through their successes and always keen on ensuring all the right moves and gestures, there seems to be no such need for a redemptive promise or a mythical homeland. They belong to this world, to this time. This is their homeland. Their self-glory is sufficient a reason for them to exist and to exist happily. And no matter how much I sneer at the shallow foundations and self deceiving nature of their pride and self-glory, the fact remains that they savour and live their lives in a manner that I’d never be able to; though this doesn’t mean that people like us are essentially depressive by nature. It only highlights the fact that for most of them, life is to be lived: straight, healthy, and without the unessential complications; while for others like me, it continues to be a haunting, dazzling puzzle to be unravelled – one day at a time.

- Written on 11 May, 2010

Another Moment in Time

The grey-haired man lingers on - with his guitar, his cigarettes, and his girlfriend. He doesn’t even bother to take position. Men and women let time pass in café chairs with their beer - or cerveza, as they like to call it here. The Carlos Franco murals look on indifferently from the walls. The slowness of the place, the sunshine, the absolute lack of hurry kind of gets into everyone.

After a while, the girlfriend takes the centrestage - kissing first the guitar and then the man. The old man sitting right across the table lights a cigar with a sigh, and continues to scribble in his notebook – God knows what. A sparrow comes from nowhere and sits on my glass of Mahou, the local beer which fortunately, doesn’t taste too bad. I look at the sparrow and feel - quite naively - that it’s an important moment. I try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind though.

After I take a few more sips, the guitar comes to life; the girlfriend turns out to be a dancer, giving one impromptu performance after another as the man strings on. The middle-aged man on my left, with a professional looking camera, now suddenly finds something to do. He starts to click on, making a futile attempt to capture the spontaneity of the girl as she turns round and round and round in a musical ecstasy.

My glass gets empty. I look around to ask for one more. An old lady with a drawing board comes to me and asks if I’d like to have my cartoon drawn. I smile apologetically at her, feeling, somewhat ironically, a bit cartoonish myself. I thought telling the man with the camera it’s no use mate. Instead, I look for the sparrow, now most certainly gone somewhere else.

                                                                     - Documented in Plaza Mayor, Madrid (6 February, 2010)

Oh Calcutta!

Gunter Grass, the German postwar writer, in the course of his three seperate visits, had spent a significant amount of time in Calcutta, a city with which - in his own words – he has a 'love-hate relationship’. During the few hot summer months (in mid-eighties) when he stayed in Baruipur, a distant suburb of the city, he and his wife Ute Grass used to commute every day to city by the crowded local train as ordinary citizens, something which more priviledged 'post liberalization' mortals of the city (like my erstwhile Calcutta colleagues) can’t even dream of. In fact, I used to be an object of much curiosity in office since for four years I (an overpaid Management consultant) travelled in local trains (an experience which I much enjoyed and had resulted for me in a few genuinely enduring friendship with co-commuters). While Calcutta (and the local media) rejoiced when Grass got the Nobel Prize, Grass’ own experience of the city and the attitude of her people was not so admirable. Here are just a few of his observations (though these may appear as ‘another westerner’s view of Calcutta’, I personally found much truth in it).

Grass on Calcutta and her people (several comments):

I was shocked and stupefied by the indifference of the privileged to the misery and poverty all around. I asked myself: it is their own country, their city and their people; yet how can they be so composed and leave almost everything to a few foreign charitable organizations…?

I visited the grand and palatial Victoria Memorial symbolic of British domination, and there I hoped too find a museum where India, Bengal and Calcutta would be portrayed as they exist after independence. Yet what did I discover? – A Victorian junk-room filled with colonial paintings, presents from Lady Curzon to Queen Victoria, war sketches depicting British victories… and many people, students, teachers, villagers, looking at this false, irrelevant foreign collection in that lumber-room.

It was an absurd experience for me to see how Gandhi’s birthday was celebrated, and that too by leading politicians who seemed to be determined to take India into the twenty-first century with principles (or lack of it) which stay in absolute opposition to what Gandhi willed.

Only a miniscule will live in ultramodern luxury, a new techno-feudal class, small, indifferent, and exploitative to its core.       (How true!!)

How can you call a city the cultural centre of India (a term most Calcuttan loves to use)… when more than half of the city’s population is illiterate? Isn’t it shockingly ridiculous? I also wonder how after the disastrous flood which almost swept away Midnapore, you could begin your celebration with such fanfare: Durga puja, Kali puja, and so on… Music and light while nearby villages lay submerged in water? This swift and collective amnesia I find incomprehensible…

For those already preparing a defence in their mind, Grass (who had actively helped rebuilding his own country, literally from ashes) was not alone in his criticism. Almost a century back, in 1895, Rabindranath Tagore, whom all Bengalis (including I) hold dear, had this to say about the people of the city (the occasion was a memorial meeting for Vidyasagar who himself had endlessly scorned the ‘theoretical snobs’ of the city):

…day after day we begin but never finish; we make a show but do nothing concrete; we do not believe what we set out to do; what we believe we do not carry out; we can spin out words without end, but cannot make the smallest sacrifice; we feel pleased with ourselves by exhibiting our pride; but never think it necessary to be worthy; we depend on other for everything and yet rend the skies finding fault with them. We take pride in imitating others, we feel honoured to receive their favour, yet we try to throw dust in their eyes and call it politics; and the main object of our lives is to make clever speeches that fill us with intense self admiration. Vidyasagar had infinite contempt for this weak, mean, heartless, lazy, arrogant, argumentative race of men.

While it pains me tremendously (and hits my pride equally), the fact remains that in the last thirty years or so, we, as a city, has not been able to produce anything significant - in any discipline (with the possible exception of Sourav Ganguly in cricket). We still love to pat ourselves by talking (not without pride) about the sixties when Louis Bank used to play in the Trincas. Unfortunately, that’s where our pride – and knowledge of history - ends.

I sincerely apologise if I have not mentioned Sector V*...

                                                                               * Sector V in Salt Lake is where most of the IT companies of the city are located