various rambling thoughts

Kolkata is always a fascinating case.

The muse of poets, revolutionaries and poverty tourists, Kolkata has always been a place where the old French adage of - "The more things change, the more they remain the same" seemed like a way of life.

A world-record breaking 30 year long democratic communist rule, Kolkata always seemed tantalizingly and uneasily poised between a illustrious past and a struggling present.

Kolkata always seemed like a place which was filled to the brim with the past with little space for the future. It was also a place of dreamers and poets, a place where going to the theatre still ranked in the top 5 options of how to spend the evening. It was also a place where the whole state went for a siesta between 2-4 pm, always making me wonder whether Bengalis had been secretly colonized by the Spanish conquistadors!!!

But to me, Kolkata has always been defined by polarities. The people and the capital and the state always seemed to choose one of two teams in, well...everything. Football - East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, Fish - Ilish and Rohu, Actors - Uttam Kumar and Soumitro Chattopadhyay, Sportsman - Sourav Ganguly and rest of the cricketers. Politics? - The Communists and well, anti-communists

For almost to decades, the Anti-communist crown has been worn by the street fighting, usually incoherent Mamta Banerjee. To her has flocked the Bengali herd, looking for succor after their romantic tryst with communist utopia soured after 30 long years. It has been a change for the state that can be compared to suffering a hemorrhage - like breaking off a 30 year old marriage. Its ramifications will be felt for a long time.

Some of that ramification is already being felt....

Kolkata was defined by two more things - the city with a heart and a city steeped in communist signages and ideology

It was a city with a heart - it stopped for the fallen pedestrian and it was a city where women could more or less feel safe walking down the street. I remember Kolkata in 2006, when I lived in the city for a year, pandal hopping during the puja late into the night. I did not hear of one single case of eve teasing or molestation...
It was also probably the only city in the country where famous international communist leaders found a prominent space in the park statues and the street names, long after they had been erased in their own countries - Lenin for example

But what the Bengalis and the rest of the country is seeing in wonder is something that seems to disprove their favourite French adage.

First the Communists proclaim Jesus as the original revolutionary!!! Atheists to Jesus proclaimers within a year. I mean, we all know that the communists in Bengal liked to live in the past, most particularly in the vicinity of late 1800s but to take a two millennium leap to find a source of inspiration is a feat that has led to many a mouth remaining agape!!! Next they might call Lenin a counter-revolutionary and rename Lenin Sarani as Jesus Sarani!!!

And then the image of Kolkata as the one with the heart and the one safe for women shattered with the gangrape of a woman in a moving car (and you thought they only happened in Delhi!!). As if that was not enough, worse was yet to come -

First the police to whom the woman turned to for help mocked her and one officer actually propositioned to her.

Second the woman Chief Minister said that it was all a frame-up to malign her government and led her party to attack the victim's character in public. She even makes the Police Commissioner say so...Then Damayanti Sen, inspite of all the pressures solves the case thus disproving Mamta Banerjee and is hailed as a tigress by the media

Thirdly and perhaps worst of all, the CM calls Damayanti Sen and gives her a semi-public dressing down for not going by her diktat.

Seemed more like Bihar of old than Kolkata of any age...

The Trinamool had promised "Poriborton" or change when they swept into power.

And "Poriborton" there has been!!

Communists are becoming strange animals and vigorously making Marx turn in his grave.

A woman CM is showing us the ugly scarred face of a city that everyone thought to be wrinkled but hiding a smile...

I guess it all depends on how much change the average Bengali can live with....but guess right now its a choice between a revolutionary Jesuist party and a rabble-rousing Mamta whose only plan is to do everything heinously wrong