People in Kolkata are happy. That’s what I gathered in the three weeks I spent there recently. The malls are bustling. On a Sunday evening, the tony Tollygunge Club is so crowded that it takes some time to get a table. And of course, the food stalls on the streets are doing roaring business with their mutton and egg rolls.
There is an old Bangla saying: “Baro maashe tero paarbon”—Bengalis celebrate 13 festivals in the 12 months of the year. That number has soared and the festivals have got longer. The traditional five-day Durga Puja now extends to 10 days. State government offices are shut down for these 10 days. Well-funded organizers even extend the Saraswati Puja, the festival of the goddess of learning, traditionally a sober one-day affair, to three or four days. Grand pandals are built—on themes like the Red Fort and the North Pole.
Music blares from the pandals till late at night. Since Bengalis pride themselves on their liberalism, it ranges from Rabindra Sangeet to Kishore Kumar classics to trance music. Since this year, Saraswati Puja coincided with Republic Day, thus depriving the hard-working people of the state of an annual break, the government declared January 27 as a public holiday. Why shouldn’t people be happy?
Ganesh Chaturthi, unheard of in West Bengal till a few years ago, is now a huge annual festival that brings more joy and entertainment to citizens. Lord Hanuman, who had never been in the Bengali pantheon, is now up there. There’s brisk business in Hanuman amulets and rings that promise good luck and wealth.
Entire television channels are dedicated to astrology. People call in with their problems. They are given guidance and invited to visit the jewellery shops where the astrologer sits for a detailed reading of their horoscopes and recommendations on what precious stones to buy and wear as failsafe talismans. One day, a man called in to a show I was watching and complained that the astrologer had promised his business income would rise soon, but it was now four months and he was still struggling. “Is this a T20 match?” snapped the sage. “All this takes time.”
The classified advertisement space on the second page of the largest selling Bangla newspaper, Ananda Bazar Patrika, is almost entirely devoted to astrologers and various hirsute baba-s. Most of them specifically guarantee success in love affairs and marriage, and “bashikaran”—the ability to control your lover, spouse or boss. Solutions are available for every problem. There is hope everywhere.
The unique West Bengal institution of “club” is thriving like never before. My memory of these clubs from a few decades ago is of young men hunched over a carrom board set up on a busy pavement under a light bulb powered by electricity stolen from the nearby tram line. Today these clubs are prosperous, thanks to generous grants from the government. Among other things, they get Rs 60,000 every year to organize their Durga Puja. In return, the clubs provide grassroots political services to the Trinamool Congress (the word “trinamool” literally means “grassroots”). Office-bearers of clubs which deliver good results are rewarded with motorcycles and other essentials.
Where there used to be one carrom board, forcing pedestrians to step off the pavement on to the road for only a few yards to continue their journey, now there is a long row of boards and people may have to walk a hundred yards on the road. But unlike in some other Indian cities, they may not really be risking life or limb. Traffic moves at a sedate pace, and in any case, the motorist is well aware that it’s the pedestrian who rules the roads in Kolkata and he will be beaten black and blue by the always-present crowds ever-ready to mete out justice if a car touches the body of someone walking. The underdog rules. What could be better than that?
Wherever one goes, Mamata Banerjee beams benignly down from billboards and kiosks. She reminds us of her many welfare schemes—healthcare, girl child, women’s financial security, grants for your daughter’s wedding, free bicycles. She also takes credit for Central schemes like free rations, the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana and the extension of the metro rail network. The achievements are impressive. Some estimates—probably exaggerated—claim that if a family takes advantage of all of Mamata’s schemes, no family member may really need to persevere at a full-time job. This is terrific.
As a great philosopher once said, what we should seek from life is money and a lot of leisure time to enjoy it. I can’t remember who exactly said this, but Googling this quote is too much hard work.
Of course, there are a few problems. The government’s free healthcare scheme Swasthya Saathi—Banerjee rejected the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat programme—is in a bit of trouble. Many private hospitals are refusing patients since the government has been unable to pay them hundreds of crores of rupees that are due to them.
The media is filled with stories of massive corruption scandals involving sand, coal and cattle smuggling and a jobs-for-bribes scam in recruitment of teachers for government schools. Several Trinamool leaders, including former education minister Partha Chatterjee, are currently in prison while the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigate. One of them, Anubrata Mondal, a former fish hawker, is a strongman who has ruled the Bolpur-Shantiniketan area with an iron fist for many years, including public calls to Trinamool cadre to throw bombs at policemen.
However, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who, on his visits to India, spends much of his time at his ancestral home in Shantiniketan, Mondal’s territory, has recently said that Mamata Banerjee has the capabilities to be the country’s prime minister. This has brought great cheer to Bengalis. How can the greatest living Bengali be wrong?
Every day, crowds of curious tourists and merrymakers gather outside Sen’s Shantiniketan home in the hope of catching a glimpse of the prophet. The other hot spot is nearby Apa, the house that Partha Chatterjee built for himself and his lady friend Arpita Mukherjee. Both are currently in jail. The sightseers take smiling selfies in front of the gate. It’s all great fun.
Life goes on at a comfortable pace. A visit to a bank for routine inquiries can easily last an hour or more. In saree shops, salesmen explain to you at great length why the saree that you have chosen to buy is the wrong choice and you should instead take this other lower-priced one. Customers don’t mind. No one is in much of a hurry; what exactly are you going to achieve anyway by saving half an hour? Everyone is happy to wait a bit. And everyone is ready to get into friendly conversations with strangers as they wait together. What more could one want? Kolkata is the city to retire in after you decide you have had enough of all those rat races that plague the other metropolises.
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