WHITE, BLUE AND BRUISED: BENGAL VOTES 2016

 

Calcutta, 18th April 2016

 
Have you ever been to a Dance bar? Yes, the ones that come with sleazy neon signs, narrow entrances and predictable police raids in the middle of the night?

Do you recall being blinded, first by the signboards outside and then by the utter darkness that greets you once you enter the haloed portals inside? You gradually get used to the rhythm of the bollywood trash playing and the heaving motions that never cease. 

That bilious sensation greets me each time I take a walk on the streets of Calcutta. I feel I have unwittingly walked into an unannounced session of unsolicited pleasure at one such bar. The stench of unchecked corruption and rough callous hands of unbridled power grab at me every single time. Only the garish gyrations of autocracy is not so overtly visible to the naked eye as it is in the bylanes of Mumbai's relatively harmless dens.

Beware Calcutta is now unrecognisable to the trained eye. 

Rest assured, for a newcomer, the ol'Calcutta charm is there in all its pin-up finery. The decrepit buildings, the kakababu and his begun-bhaja, mudi and egg fritters, the evening newsreading prolétariat and it's incessant whinings about the failed state, the ethereal Ganga and her boredom with her silt laden boundaries, the staid brown boats coated with its algae and allergies to the romancing couples inside its dingy bowels, the fragmented graffiti which has very little limerick or wit left but sits painted gaudily on walls in fresh greens and oranges and whites, declaring in not very subtle tones it's silent loyalties, the state transport buses that bulge dangerously near the doorstep as the conductor hails out *ladies, ladies coming through*, the yellow cab that looks tired fighting his way along routes with newer sharper Uber siblings, the tonga wallah puffing on a near finished stick of tobacco with stained lips, the slightly jaded and pink'd walls of Victoria sit still as she patiently stares at an ever impatient city honking past its ricketty horse lined outer walls of defence, the poor creatures braying their near starvation pangs. Well, Calcutta looks almost the same. 

Almost. 

Everyone with half a brain can tell you something is off and yes, everyone knows what that is all about. Since everyone ushered the change in, so democratically and unequivocally, admitting anything has gone south in these teeny tiny 5 years would be very unbengali indeed! So we do what the quintessential Bengali does best - look out of the proverbial window, like good, trained dogs, feeling the hot breeze of change lash at our proud faces and turn to the sea for some salt to rub on our wounds.  

The change has been anything but sudden. 5 years is a fairly long time in any country's social discourse, and for this frail city it has been a  very long time coming. But there it is. In all its white and blue splendour. Painted, re painted and lit up. Pavements crop up where streets haven't been paved. Composite steel structures stand erected, jostling for space with dimly lit ancestral properties and old banyans breathing their last. Malls overpower ponds and old delicate mansions make room for lego sets, propped up on a real estate bubble. 

It has been a city in decay for a while and yet it didn't ask for such logic defying repairs. Never before has the colour Blue so vehemently stamped *change* as it has in this city. All traces of a red communist fortress have been systematically erased, some out of fear, some disdain, some pure malice. The political eclipse of Calcutta is near complete. The common man is soaking it all in, trying to come to terms with the *poriborton*, the literal and the psychosomatic. There is a wonderful paralysis that has gripped any idea of the aesthetic and the brutal domination of the crude has begun. That hasn't been very slow in its wake.

There are no protests of course. The Party wouldn't hear of it. Who minds a cleaner Ghat or a wider sidewalk mehearties, don't be silly now.  We are all good. We are all bigger, better, brighter, see?


In my mind's eye, I can almost see the ever loving Mother smiling  beatifically down on her children of Joy as they change their colour scheme and their political palette to blue. Blue with fear, blue with disbelief. It's fiery shade has left the existential angst driven Bong's voice of dissent no louder than a whisper of disagreement at best. Gatherings of more than four are countered with lathicharge or a night out in the local prison cell. Humour that once graced the walls of this disarming halt of Charnock is reduced to a smirk and splash of tricolour.

We are all in awe actually. In shock. It is stupefying to acknowlge what she has pulled off, to be fair. She has dared the gods of politics and called their bluff and now Eden will never be the same again. Never has any city since Roman times, been claimed by its victor with such efficiency and glee. 

The elections are an ill-tempered joke, held seasonally, fashionably, regularly, to convince the arbitrary and argumentative bengali mind that all is well in the state of Denmark. 

Names that remained on the fringes, thugs if you may, stand tall and proud, thieves and body snatchers rob in broad daylight and women slink about, hiding in the darkened shadows of this once safe city. But don't worry, your sidewalks look freshly painted. Your ego needs a walk, remember? Wide blue and white, dripping with malcontent and malodour, painted for your walking pleasure.

Indeed your tax money is well spent in this state where the collective debt stands at a near apocalyptic 3 trillion, but then your fences are mended and you have trident lights to cheer you up. There is very little to be blue about, honestly. You have so much to be grateful for. Bengal is rising, for once. Rising, like a giant ogre, akin to its new social order, fearsome, bareknuckled, loud, garish, glowing in all its pretty dresses for a party that is likely to never get over...and you must obediently wait for the lights to come on, blue and white, lining your streets, your conscience and your conciousness, telling you, not very softly, that it isn't time for change. Not yet.