Collecting people. Since 1979

Image Link: https://www.facebook.com/pg/merideewaar/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2312613798959117&__tn__=-UC-R

I was once accused, rather pointedly, by a very dear friend of *Collecting People*. It stung for a while and then the truth of it stayed undeniable and indelible in my mind. For at this very instant, that knowledge, that I have, with me, today, a list of people with secret superpowers... diplomats and doctors, spies and spirits, filmmakers and freedom fighters, pundits and poets, rugby coaches and rock stars... that insane list that includes you dear reader in all likelihood ...that just takes this feeling of having done that one thing right, to a whole new level.

Perhaps some of you reading this would agree, that having this connection, this bond of super glue with people from everywhere, this glue that gives its very lease of life to friendly giants like Facebook and #Twitter, just that teeny-tiny blip of a word in your everyday life, can make you so frikkin’ all-powerful. It places you on a unique, unilateral, user-friendly path of deciding whether, this morning, when you wake up, you will or you won't, bring joy or wreak havoc in the lives around you, simply by harnessing the power of these exceptionally beloved and endowed with goodwill *collection of people*.

People. No. Not that abysmal word surely. We are talking of friends. Of You, sitting on my wall, my collected gilded list of cherished people. 

But let's not forget just why and what precisely did this damsel, in no distress whatsoever, and French no less, meant, when she indicted me of harboring said fascination of building a seemingly harmless collection, of People.

I have been, from the very start, an urchin. Not a care for fine talk, cloth nor culture. Girls and boys in all such categories found in me a kindred spirit. I did not deny the many wonders as much as the coloured pieces of broken but beautiful glass they brought to me in this rapport building exercise. My friendships saw me run wild through strange buildings, lives, kitchens and their households, learning from intuitive but determined steps of this impossible journey.

School was special. Middle class values, middle class aspirations and middle class friendships. Rich dividends of the *mutual fund* kind. The best investment plan there is in the market, I assure you. And, we shared our treasures over books and punishments, sports and tiffin boxes, periods and periodic tables. We grew up, wiser to each other and sharper to each other's needs. Here I met the most formidable and persistent woman of the whole bunch. And she remains, much married in a far away land, tall, omnipresent, ensuring I stand my ground and stick to my path.

 Meanwhile. My list grew, one name at a time, one phone call, one letter (yes letter - not email, we didn't have all the fancy E- stuff back then) and I kept getting stronger, fiercer, ebullient in my endeavor to have what people only build legends of. People.

 
Time passed, schools became colleges, Colleges turned into Universities and friends became lovers.

These men and women, their building pillars of trust and my myriad dreams built from those pillars, helped me grow into this strange mustang-like element. Feeding off of their adolescent energy, pheromone driven lust for life and sharing with them, this never ending mad hunt for the *new*.


These partnerships also let me feast on my growing fascination with the world at large and how it is usually divided between people with friends and people without. This theory, as you will conjecture, still holds, right down in the very strategic universe of Geopolitics. And let me add, to no less degree of seriousness, extremely packed Stadiums and rock concerts, where only a true friend will share his (rarely her) seat with you. Because it is Strings and you have been in love with Bilal Maqsood since eve took the fall from grace.

Now, one must note, every single heart break shouldn't and didn't bring with, in its wake, a passing of a friendship. That stuff, Important. Still is. For my heart still breaks. Frequently. But Friends, they stay.





I believe you meet the most curious people at work. These are charming, simple, complicated, regular, extraordinary folk with brilliant minds, banal stories and basic routines that usually mirror yours. And yet, they wield the mighty sword of making you feel wanted or not. They do very little, to be fair, in isolation. Unless they are as drunk as you are. It is in these rare moments, of spirit glossed bravado, do you see their raw superpowers - unleashed onto the muggle world. But usually, it stays concealed, cloaked, for the greater good of the magical world…right until that moment when you look sad. For a rather undebatable stretch of time. They then, get down on their knees, or whichever posture is likely to be held longer, given its linen they are wearing… and they listen to you. For hours, days, weeks. They call you. They spend time with you in the smelly cafeteria and they slowly put you back one tiny piece at a time, until you are ready to go back to battle.

My relationship with “people”, has seen you pick fights for me, flex your imperceptible bulge of a muscle and even bend (not over) for me. You let me know that it is ok to be abjectly unable to be anything more than I could. You just strolled along, shrugged and walked a little walk with me, through the dirt-road of my head, filling it with your incessant and interesting chatter, your collectibles, your craft and your wondrous imagination of what could be…leading me gently on into your world, where fishes fly and turtles live on trees. Or were you talking about the latest on the Jimmy Choo collection? Frankly, it’s all the same.

 And then you meet your other half. A friend unique enough to marry and I did. And even after you handle legal paperwork between the two of you, after a decade of playing smarty pants dance, life pulling you in opposite directions, he hangs around, with a bottle of stinging brown iodine, band aid and sterile cotton balls, still on alert mode (that’s default with the man I think 😕) for every time you look set on getting hurt, when you are likely to trip over your own silly mistakes… he emerges, tincture in hand smiling ... at your imagined pain for the iodine, like a friend.

 

Thing is, you all stuck around. You all lingered and sang and danced me through the hardest moments, life had in store for me. And this one goes out to all of you, for your time and you know who you are.

It is precisely a few hours from now, when this spinning third rock from the sun will finish its’ 40th tango in my lifetime. Feels rather grand and old at the same time. Diverse reference sets now refer to me as “hey, how’s it going” while some, definitely shorter people, stick to “hello aunty”.

But, here I stand, 40, single, measurably fit, relatively pretty, unquestioningly divorced, systemically employed, play acting mom to my boy, lost in thought and translation.

This page is my ode to all you enchanting men and women who have gone to great lengths to allow me to remain this creature of my own imagination. I, thanks to all of you, now firmly believe that I live inside a movie, you are all my costars and this, these words on my wall, is my background score. For it is here that I will live once more, and I invite you, in all humility, to read and share, write with me of times spent, sing of places visited, roads taken and not, images blurred of people met and unmet, movies watched and forgotten, books stolen and re-read and encounters that are indeed of the strangest kind.

Allow me to share with you, reader mine, my *big small universe* and within it my magic box of make believe stories...because that is what it is and all that you will make of it.

I remain, until the end,

A Friend.

*TINDERELLA*

You know, there was this one day, after my recent divorce when I sat back on my futon-esque chair, poured myself a mug of unpretentious coffee, lit up a milds and congratulated myself on being free to... er... you know, do what you do when you can do what you think you can do because you should do it anyway because you are after all, single once more. 

I smiled a Cheshire cat like smile to myself, imagining the slim washboard ab old me, now at the prime age of 39, not yet 40, mind you... being desperately hunted, by the most desirable of the male species, across my list of possibles and probables. The smile was resplendent.

That, my friend, was 6 months ago.

Cut to last evening. Same chair, same mug, same cigarette in hand and this evolutionary enterprise has faltered desperately. And not for the lack of options.

Now don’t get me wrong. The world of Tinder is beautiful. It allows you to look pretty, in 12 different ways, drop a witty punchline, swipe your likes, even specify your height, if you are so inclined to mention whether you need wear heels on dates and precisely how high those heels need be.

I skipped that part meticulously of course. For the rest, I solemnly did the needful. After a rigorously spent week whining about a ridiculous oestrogen build up and how uncompensated single life can be. A Friend, a true friend, simply downloaded the bloody app and added the first 3 images he had of me onto the page and Lo! I was available to the world of free men again. Easy-Peasy.

Now when you turn 40, and you turn to the internet to provide you with bed time stories, chances of them turning into the Grimms Fairy tale turn significantly higher. I don’t know how many of you have or ever needed to explore the site but it is a fairly rational, algorithm based app, selecting the kind of men/women you swipe right and adding them seamlessly to your collection of six pack wonders. But then, tech challenged as I am, I managed quite the opposite with disarming effect, swiping right with exceptional ease, and summarily landed with, much to my dismay, a collection of eligibles, who ranged from unhappy married men, unreal 20 somethings with 12 pack abs and 50 year old desperados. And that was just day 1.

But never for a minute think, that the bespectacled IT Guy who designed this ingenious programme doesn't know what mushrooms you smoke. He knows your buttons and he keeps pushing them, that freak on a leash. He insists on sending you these profiles, which by the time you figure out which side you need to swipe, leaves you staring at all prototypes created for the next sequel of *Thor: are you efffing kidding me?!!*

For those of us who arrive on this haloed portal for a gentle stroll in the park, beware, this place is not for the feeble hearted. So, giddyup for the almost instant download of:

''sssssssssssssssssuppp hotnessssss''.

''Yo sssssssexyyyy''.

“hello babeeeeeeeesss”.

Let me emphasise, it takes you approximately 40 good seconds to come to terms with the extra S's in there and then comes the part where you process why these unusual suspects think you are a hot piglet. But you carry on, determined, armed with a 15 year hiatus from such endearments. You blunder on with a feeble hello, telling yourself silently that this is how it goes, and a “good ol’hello'' looks something like this now.

My son would know more about these excessive S’s, I am sure of it. Must be some kind of mating code or something. Maybe I should have asked him. But that conversation …let’s just say is, unthinkable at this point. He is 11.

Your fingers tremble at the thought of what might follow next. For instance, this manchild has more muscles on his back than you have eggs in your fridge and considering your love for the protein, that's one too many. But you plod on. Slowly, very slowly, you make your way to the humble and rather rude-on-mornings-mirror, lift your faded T shirt to expose a very peaceful and content looking midriff. It speaks of great battles, scarred by knives in the field of delivery and deliverance repeatedly. Unimpressed you, this time not very slowly, make your way back to your keypad and delete the profile of the *Excessive sssssssss* men.

You chuckle to yourself, smug at your shrewd understanding of how close you were to being conned and congratulate yourself on this first round victory of defeating the *get hooked by the crooked* system from within.

You make yourself a fresh cup of coffee and leave the blasted machine and its machinations to defraud you for another day. You indulge in some spot jogging, telling yourself it has nothing to do with the musculature of the last man that flashed on your shameless screen.

Regardless. The next morning is ruthless! Your jawline can't be found, but hell, the incessant pings find their way to you. You turn to the blighted screen, and there they sit, your jolly bundles of joyless jesters. Shrieking a frenzied, ‘you have 34 tinder notifications, you are doing great, play it cool, you could find yourself someone you really like today’. Honestly??!! They even know you need to play it cool? How do you do that? One could hide, you know, and never respond, now that seems logical. Yes that must be what they meant.

You let the day slide.

You go online the next morning, it’s a bright sunny day, you feel the liquid courage of coffee coursing through your veins and this time you know you can nail these voices down to a whimper. You login and this time its 72 versions of your worst nightmare, blinking, waiting, alive, like a Venus flytrap on your screen. You look at your Gym mat staring at you in defiance and silent deliberation.

Breathe... That was important. These impossible looking people *super liked* you. See? Slow… deep breaths now. Pause, breathe again, do the bloody anulom vilom wumann! Calm the hell down. Now gently swipe right. See? Easy wasn’t it? Relax. You can do this. Go, er Left. Dang it!

Now you are just cheating the system. A part of you looks ashamed and the other part tells you, it is time to do what needs to be done. It was time to rewind to when this herd had existed on your planet, roaming free like the wild creatures they were, well within the sights and talons of creatures like you, soaring the skies of youth, like birds of prey.

You do a new reality check. You defy the mirror. It’s all good. You are terrific in your last of the 30s. Couldn’t be better. You did not photoshop anything. Plus, they haven’t even met you yet, and that should cover all the bases. Once they see your radiant spirit and its beautiful soul that should seal the deal. I mean that’s what they are really here for right, the inner beauty? So. Growing confident with the solidity of that notion, you proceed to read the texts that sit on your wall.

‘hey gorgeous’.

See? not that bad eh? You can handle it. Gorgeous is good, gorgeous is great. You are gorgeous. You move on emboldened, to the next.

‘Ýou are so pretty, your lips, your smile, the eyes ... oh my goodness. So you are single?’ Hmmm. Right.

‘You are having husband?’ Well, the thought of picking out tiny chunks of my Ex from the gaps in my teeth was interesting but a tad acidic. No. Not having husband today.

This place was a disaster. No. I was a disaster in this place. This inner beauty thing wasn’t going to cut it. So what was? What makes this forum so excruciatingly tantalizing and yet so forbidden for folks like us? Us, bumbling idiots from the 70’s? Stuck in our paper letters and our telephone landlines and our state televised programmed minds that fed our childhood and youth. Why was this garden of Eden so available and yet so unattainable for us platinum card holders?

For me the daunting task was looking beyond the brute honesty of what such forums stood for. The honesty that every person at some point needs someone who desires them in some format. Desire not love. These platforms aren’t looking for love. Some find that too. Most don’t and for those most, this live streaming of desire tagged surreptitiously as *super likes* usually manages to satisfy a deep and urgent need to feel young and wanted.

I managed to wade my way past these potholes and emerge victorious with a very sober list of friends, good looking and not so much, interesting, curious, undeniably lost like me, hunting for that elusive thing we can’t pronounce and inevitably succumbing to the simple idea that not everyone is looking for one night stands. Some are. Which isn't a bad thing at all.

Conversations flow here too, like steady streams and people emerge from shells of faux coolness to be themselves, childlike in their innocence and desperation to please. Eager young men and women, who have had many or no suitors, ample and ambiguous chances at love and love-making and some with very very hot bodies which we shall discuss in another discourse most certainly in the following weeks at length.

Truth is, there is some one for everyone here. You find a measure of intimacy, privacy and eventually a transition to a WhatsApp or an Instagram where you end up sharing more than just a coffee or a bed. These portals have become the new source of finding happiness. It has its own bizarre logic.

But it comes with a very simple disclaimer that it’s only for those who are not in the game to judge the notion of wanting to be wanted.

I, Tinderella do solemnly swear that I am happy that I entered this swarm of lost souls, and have found many curious lives that intersected mine with their own triumphs and losses. At 40 I found a deep respect for their stories, their hopes, their urges, so naked, so honest, so uninhibited by my perception of what ought be and what is.

And it is what it is. It isn’t poetry but it’s not clichéd in some steroid induced debauched idea of rampant sex appeals and little else.

It is a social experiment of mammoth proportions and I am fascinated by it. It helped me realize many things about what I truly desire in my weakest and strongest moments. For me it has been a journey in Affirmation. And I found mine on Tinder.

The Violin Player, a film by Bauddhayan Mukherji

... Sometimes it hurts. It hurts beyond measure. Beyond belief. It hurts enough that you realise that you are alive. That life has finally claimed you for itself. You are deep in its clutches and there is no escape. No window, no crack in the wall, no trapdoors leading into the soul of a John Malkovich and his rich life, no. nothing. Only  the now. The unending, dark, dank, empty now.

 These 70 minutes crafted by #BauddhayanMukherji are for those of us who are trapped in the now. It is for us to comprehend the lack of levity that life allows us, to cope with the copious amounts of crap that time throws at us and to smile through it all as if in deliverance, a smile that only the strumming of a forgotten stradivarius can bring to a tired face. 

 And to soar above this filth, there must be music, there must be Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Verdi, Ravel, Strauss, Rossini....and some Tagore perhaps, to keep things closer home.

Do not for a minute mistake these 70 minutes for a film. The Violin player is not a film. It is a study of the human spirit...because never can one have said so much in so little time and in such few frames.

#RitwickChakraborty. Now, I have often foung this man lacking, too arrogant to be taken seriously, too shallow in his portrayal that he has been typecast in thus far(his director's folly no doubt). Perhaps he didn't care about these roles, simply because he was waiting to Be #the Violin Player*. Because here, he ceases to be anyone but the violin player. Every crease on his face, every molecule of sweat, ever arch of his brow, the  twitch of his sardonic lips, every single breath drawn, belongs to his character and no one else, not even to himself. He becomes despondency, hope, success, disdain, disgust and pure genius ...all of that and then some. He is music. In skin. In pain. In ebuliant child-like desire, naked, in decripit form, a low life, stuck in reality and unable to shed the banality it brings and everything that comes with it, in our tiny, tiny insignificant, inelegant lives. 

You have made us all strip down and see our own selves for who we are... our souls needed this beautiful melody to sink into, to find the abyss and then rise and rise to the crescendo that is the sheer brilliance of #Bhaskar Dutta - you, my boy are a find and may success find you soon enough. 

#AdilHussain, A man of few words. Your eyes do all your talking. Your dark frame in its luminous white, leaves the human mind exposed, in all its nudity. You are sublime in the character you have been given and you assay it with the ease of a child playing with a toy. You are such a beautiful dark soul that you pervade the essence of the pain the violonist echoes...like a silent unrelenting chant, a nebula of dark matter, uncompromising in what you seek, thick, viscous opaque and your eyes, oh your all seeing eyes, they belong to the devil in this film.

#NayaniDixit, you sweet, unassuming invisible thing you. You make me sit up and take notice of you; You insist i do and I do! In your fullsome wonderfully terrible avatar that makes me gape at the futility of my being, the crude that comes to life and the careful that comes to a halt. You are beautiful in your ugliness and grotesgue in your salvation. You were my rewind, my pause, my encore, my oh-my-god moment. So thank you.

Here, in this film, you surrender your soul to pain. Bauddhayan Mukherji makes you  submit to melancholy, to delve in modern indian surreptitious erotica, to reach out to the dark recesses of an adult mind, to the even tempered logic of mundanity, to insanity, to pure survival, to depravity and to the drummings of your heart that match the first cadence of the creation of such a masterpeice by prodigy #BhaskarDutta, as you sit gripped by the intensity of the art that beholds you. 

Do not waste your time on any review, for it shall fail to capture the beauty you are about to witness. Don't try to hold on to the wings of this butterfly, lest you cripple this ethereal being, before it takes flight in your heart.

Note: The cockroach. That's what this universe is all about, the cockroach.

Haraamkhor: Indian cinema beams out brilliance.

India: Undervaluing its geniuses

Okay, so which moron ever said #Haraamkhor was an average film?!! Oh Damn you movie critics for making a masterpeice wallow in self pity. This is seasoned film making, enacted by some of the darkest faces I have seen come alive and shine bright on any *mm* screen.
And am I blown by the performances!!!

Nawazuddin Siddiqui Nawazuddin Siddiqui - it is an honour to watch you *become* the mildlly revolting, childlike in his lust and increadulous in his love for the girl. Your *Shyam* the teacher could win an award for simply the display of *concealed rage*, if nothing else!!

#ShwetaTripathi you brilliant child of modern Indian cinema, you made *Sandhya* stand tall next to Nawaz, your giggles, your eyes full of mirth, pain, betrayal, lust, you girl can cram so much into those tiny tiny pupils full of such expression!!!

#MohdSamaad as Mintu and #IrfanKhan as Kamal - Sandhya’s classmates play the underaged testosterrony *Sutradhars* of this wind mill blown saga, are such a rare delight. It is absolutely incongruous to put them down as just *child artists*. They make you gasp and giggle, shriek and run wild with their dirty, perverted, innocent, adorable gaffs and very vivid imagination... Watch out for the little one. He is a tour de force.

The nuanced story telling and the insane genius of Shlok Sharma's craft will leave you in deep awe and extreme sadness. Pity, these are Indian artists who have to struggle to fill Inox seats, when under the global arch of film making they are so often hailed for their blessed skills and raw talent. The infantile ease of each character, the sombre love of the police inspector, the insecure wife, the batshit crazy child who is The Shaktiman, every single thread depicts such natural shades of our life. Thanks Bodhayan Roychaudhury for insisting I watch this one alone.

This is superlative artwork and this Director, he knows his people, the glory in their small moments, their gentle hearts and their rich dark luscious souls. He knows the myriad languages India speaks. From the hollowness of committed men, the bold beautiful shamelessness of small town women, the utter glee and crushing sorrow of adolescent children...right until the last hurrah, the song #kidrejawaan which seals every single sordid end frame of Haraamkhor so seamlessly, with such dissonance, that you weep.

P.S: Can someone tap the Censor Board of India (not very gently) and tell them to quit trying to apologise for an adult subject by labling it as *Chatra Shoshan?* This is a love saga gone horribly wrong between a student and her teacher. Deal with it. No exploiting for anyone to see. So There.

The POTUS who Taught us how it's done!

Isn't it amazing how the POtUs went from being a gaunt withered white haired flagpole who could barely pull his weight in congress to being this sassy wand wielding, verrrry with it, white haired Gandalf who has all the answers to Americas problems just before the marching band strikes the last tune? 

He was black and all things puny, and polite...which meant he sucked at playing super power poker with Putin and not getting Papa Xi's overtures right. From undermining Pakistan the nuclear pal to missing India's golden 56 inch wide economic hug.

He didn't know anything this man, who belonged to too many types of people's, including being hussein somewhere too - bang in the middle of his name. I mean how messed up is that for the all whites?!!

Enter last year in office and maah goodness! The man can jive. He can sing and flirt and tease the world economy and foreign policy out of bored punk slumber. He is Beyoncé in the world of hot. He can make Iran smile and UK dance. He knows just how to beat the crap out of the bad boys stuck in the middle of nowhere... Or was it the Middle East? He knows, mah man, he knows how to woo them all.

Go vote he says, cuz Trump ain't got the groove and The Clintons are o so perfect in their white teeth ways and sanitised systems that can control America again. Yes they can. Believe me they will.
Because face it - #BarackObama just knows what America needs. And right now America needs his wife to run for the next term. She nailed it, Mrs O did.

Poor Modi needs to start from scratch with Unca Scrooge. Russia...who knows what Kremlin really thinks anymore except they have the old soviet territories they walk into with tanks and it's ok and Syria never happened. Hell man, who knows what's China up to? I mean Tibet never happened and North Korea is just playing with daddy's new toys. But hey they got to be spying on ya with their fancy tech. Fire up your firewalls peeps.

Isisisisisisisisisis sounds like a rattle snake before it strikes and the US condemns ladies and gentlemen. A few hundred civilians dead in Syria and the US condemns the attacks in France and Germany. Me too. Me too.

So yo, bro. You guys have it all figured out. No fence with the Mexicans and a brand new hug for sexy Mr Canada. All that's cool yo. But, Could you stay on your continent this decade Mr United States? Because you do leave more than just carbon footprints where you go. You leave behind too many dead and maimed and no reporters to tell the story. You go all in. And we love your drones. We do we do.

Don't whine he says. Go vote. And keep the mad hatter out of office this time will ya? Or is that too much to ask of your country Mr Obama?

Oh baby. We will miss you, yes we will. Hit it.

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.