Looking outside my window, I can see the tall building of Tata Steel. It is on the other side of a 4 line elevated highway, lined with footpath which looks pretty nice with some mosaic pattern. The stretch looks like a Hollywood set with façade buildings, looks unpopulated.
But this is not what I saw for an hour drive through Kolkata. It is my first time here, was curious about Calcutta that I read about so much. Land of Tagore, Satyajit Ray, communism and literate intelligent people. But the drive through the city seemed to me like a horror show, like those Halloween rides in theme parks where you are taken inside through tunnels and suddenly zombie dummies jerk on to your path.
Coming out of the airport, I took the pre-paid taxi – not the AC or private ones, but the one controlled by City Police. Yellow taxies here are all old ambassadors, taxi drivers in tatters. For few minutes after coming out of the airport, I was trying to connect to a conference call – it kept saying all lines are busy, it anyway never got free even after 10 tries, so I left it. City is derelict, decadent, decrepit, decaying, dilapidated – this is the city where all of those words will fit perfectly. Buildings wouldn’t have seen paint in ages and I think everyone decided that something that is broken is better left that way. Just like we as irresponsible bachelors used to live – assuming some mess made is better left untouched, as if it will go away on its own, ignoring it or assuming it is not there and carefully sidestepping it every time. Even the trees by the side of the road are dead, with no one bothering to cut it down. There are rotting buses, trucks and cars by the side of the road, the kind which is seen near traffic police stations in Kerala. Just like those abandoned towns shown in zombie movies. It was 10:30 pm, but I saw old ladies sitting with a few fruits in their baskets under street lamps. People were lying in charpais, there are charpais in wide junctions. I haven’t seen so many people living in streets in any of our cities so far, there were makeshift awnings put up, with full lives lived in the open. So many people sitting calmly in the side of the road, autorickshaws with 4 people in the driver seat, bikes carrying three people, cycle rickshaws, taxis coming head on, scream at each other and passing – tableaus passing by, which should have been from an old Hindi movie. In between I thought whether the driver is abducting me and this is not the right way.
In between I thought I saw someone washing something in water in the gutter, but then I thought I must have imagined. It had rained before, so water was pouring into the gutter from inner alley ways. In one junction, when the taxi stopped at light, I saw a family – a man was drying himself after a bath, a women with wet hair after a fresh bath, they were bathing from the milky white water that was rushing through into the gutter. A kid is washing the few vessels and a sieve. I had to voluntarily grunt to keep control, to suppress the shame and pain. Everything is in a yellow haze of 40 watt bulbs – people in sleeveless banians, laboring
inside shops which must be 100 years old, still looking exactly same way, decaying and everyone putting up with the corpse. This is how far the one of the most intelligent people of this country have come to?
It is not like I am from an affluent state, feigning shock seeing poverty in Kolkata, as some foreigners are expected to. I am from Kerala, twin brother of West Bengal – along with Tripura, states where communism is deep rooted, where being veg includes fish and football crazy people. When I started, my friends were saying, for Bengalis the onsite is now Kerala, so when I reach there they might welcome me as we welcome foreign tourists in Kerala. It is just the same in some respects – one of the biggest sources of revenue for Kerala is remittance from expatriates, we work hard but mostly outside the country. Now in turn most of the construction work and other manual labor in Kerala is done by Bengalis and Biharis.
In some of the western countries, being communist is as much a bad thing as being a Nazi. But not for us – we still eulogize strong communists who fought for the working masses, who are idealists and humanists. As someone said, if you are not a communist when you are young, there is something wrong with you and if you are a communist when you are old enough, then also something is wrong with you. Present age communists in Kerala are nowhere near the legends and it is worse in West Bengal. But is this what a long communist rule could do to a state? Like how Cuba looks in pictures. Or is it due to something else – a city being this way
for centuries, not able to change, don’t have means to change, wed to the prison built by them, adjusting to the Stockholm Syndrome. There would have been 100 pictures of Deedi throughout the way – every bus stand, every junction has her photo. There she is speechifying to her people, there she is in a muslim headscarf praying in Ramadan greeting. Does she not see how the people who idolize her as Deedi lives?
When do we grow out of the Ammas, Deedis, Mulayams, Lalus and Babas? Why don’t we get better leaders? Or maybe they are not the problem in the first place. I know the obvious answer is that all of us are lazy, interested in arm chair activism or opinionating just like I did now. May be this is how it will always be, we are great at “adjusting”..
