Admittedly blog-naive, I was always shirking away from this method of self-expression until one day my desire to publish my ramblings got overwhelming. All this while, some of my friends were blogging away to glory. Well, I always had creative blocks and to make it sound classy, I would say I believe in publishing quality. However, I found it quite amusing that this phenomenon of blogging seems to have caught on quite hugely with people back home while I was busy poking electrolyte filled needles into brain tissues. Corporators, scribes and scribes, students, mommas...everyone seems to be 'into' it totally. High ranking executives being nostalgic about their childhood days, qualified moms talking about all kinds of stuff. It feels good to see a healthy analysis of all topics going on. For people like me who have been living and studying outside my country for some time now, it makes me feel good about my country and its issues, the daily life, the diversity of the country. My foray into blogging happened at a time when my home state is going through an upheaval...that of a grave kind.
For the uninitiated, the hamlets of West Bengal are going through a forced wave of industrialization (or neo-liberalization). Mark my use of the word 'forced', for the poor land tillers are fighting tooth and nail against it. Once again the state is witnessing the turbulent times much like the 70s, the time of which we only heard and idolized during our undergraduate days. The pseudo-communists of West Bengal, the so called champions of a classless society, are unleashing a feral fury on those innocents opposing the government taking away their only source of income. The message being, "Comply or face the wrath!". Those aware should not be amused by the terror tactics or the state sponsored terror being unleashed in communist governed West Bengal. The earlier generation remains aware of the cold horror created by the Congress government and to a large extent that by the CPIM to reign in the unruly yet brilliant students of the late 60s and early 70s in the streets of Beleghata and elsewhere. But the propensity of the Indian educated and well to do mass to tolerate the insensitivity of the Indian politicians towards the people and their inhuman acts is what deeply troubles me to this day. The corporate world sits silent, the cricketers go about their financial chores (clearly proper cricket is not what I mean), and reports of "Om Shanti Om" hog the headlines of newspapers when people are being coldly slaughtered in many parts of the country. Is this the awakening that we are celebrating? Is this the new India that people are jubilant about? Or is it just the new salary records by the IIT or IIM graduates that make people go to their bed feeling happy?
Kolkata (or happily Calcutta to me) has long lost the distinction of being a state of morally conscious people and intelligentsia. The so called left-intellectuals have long since sold their souls to the people in power. No longer do state atrocities bother the poets, the scientists, the film fraternity or the likes.And how can the state be wrong when the grandson of the rebellious Sukanta is the custodian of the state and its people. So what if a certain Sunil Ganguly says on his website that his blood still boils when he thinks of those who led to the partition of the country, those for who he lost his house. But times, my friends, are a changing. Anger is now easily controllable with blood pressure pills. His greying hair now tells him siding with the powers-that-are is far more wise than letting his blood boil on seeing atrocities committed on the 'sarbohara'. Not all people are equally wise though! Hence, you find people like Aparna Sen, Rituparno ghosh, Parambrata Chatterjee, Kabir Suman (formerly Suman Chattopadhyay), Medha Patkar etc and none less than Mahasweta Devi fighting against the fascist CPIM and hence being branded state-traitors. Not to forget, the ever conscious students of Presidency College and Jadavpur University sacrificing their career goals to get into the struggle. As much as them, I do not see the middle class joining this struggle. These so successful executives, these so comfortable moms never raise their voices because in the end it does not affect them. My blood boils when I see the inaction on their part. And for once I would not take pills to control this anger. Maybe I am not wordly-wise enough, for tears still troop out of my eyes every time I read "Hajar churashir ma" or when I think of Tapasi Malik.
The real mark of barbarism lies
In this silence of heads without torso
Calcutta, meanwhile, dances dirty,
Celebrates three hundred years or so.
Your enjoyment puts me to shame
A shame that is too, too dogged
Martyrs' pulpit inside my body
Martyrs' pulpit within my head.
There's blood in your new apartments
In water faucets, at dusk and dawn,
It's the blood of raped women that flows,
Blood telling tales of the land goes on.
- Kabir Suman (Suman Chatterjee)
