One of my friends once asked, "Is it true that there is a Bandh in Calcutta if the tram fares go up by 10 paise?"
This is what remains of the character of the soul City of the Bengali people. And this is not all propaganda.
From what was once "the Second City of the British Empire", it has descended to a overcrowded unplanned chaos, strewn with shanties and black sludge canals, hawker encroached roads and sidewalks, shabby public vehicles, bumpy roads, ill-panned shaky humps (locally called "fly-overs"), effectively, a provincial capital of insignificant political, economic and even (ever diminishing) cultural importance.
And inhabited by mostly old and middle aged Bengalis whose children work elsewhere. Thanks to a political climate which breeds everything that I mentioned, and in addition works hard to repel the honest and hard working, the enterprising and intelligent. The stinginess has got imbibed into the culture because the City has turned into a old age home. People think twice before spending their hard saved money, in a place without ventures, opportunities and hope. Almost all business houses have left the turbulence. Post Offices dealing with deposits and monthly interest based income schemes have turned the most popular means of income.
A place where people have stopped dreaming, and having ambitions, this is a common sight: young people sitting at street corners doing nothing other than eve teasing and playing cards, day long. Some of the more enterprising believe in landing a job as the most important aim of their lives. Forget about working, they enjoy the gherao and Bandh culture. Who would like to work if it were perfectly legible to earn, whatever meagre, without working. People, in a way savor a Friday Bandh, if not a Monday one. There are no shortage of issues and there are no shortage of people to enforce the calls. Newcomers desperate to impress their political bosses ambush even ambulances and fire tenders.
There is not a single hospital of repute. And those which are there are heaps of filth, layers of protocols and infested with crooks. And of course the doctors readily see patients, but in his private chamber. At the hospital, the most brilliant suggestion would be "Referred to Vellore". Means in plain language, "please take him away, or we will not be responsible!".
Religion flows in a controlled stream. Godmen, squint or otherwise, are a little more popular, in daily terms, than Gods. It is true that fanaticism is less apparent in Bengalis than elsewhere in India. However, the religiosity is more intense than it should have been: the pragmatic young have mostly left. Religion comes with its own bonus of ills, which thanks to the steady decline in the intellectual caliber, is catching up. People are surely learning more charming stuff.
Tagore flows. Not in their hearts, but to the gutter of experimentation and misappropriation. Tagore is a lone hope, and with little of the talented intellectual left in these gutters, Bengalis love clinging to his beard. The way to demonestrate this is by arranging shoddy and makeshift evenings of Rabindra, Nazrul, Sukanta and what-not geeti. I always thought sharing Tagore with anyone else is sheer felony. Cheapness of His people caught up with Him after all.
Educational institutions and the Education system have been destroyed, with medical precision. Syllabi of the state boards have stagnated in the '60s while Dilli boards (by the way, even Bihar board) has moved on. I marvelled why they never taught us the vacuum diodes at IIT, which had a heavy boring chapter in the HS syllabus.
A Bengali, who prides his language, culture, and cuisine, Calcutta often visits my heart. I was not born there, neither brought up, nor lived there long enough. But I could realize the central stream of my Bengali being passing through the City. Bengalis cannot be without the City. My bias to look as the darker side of things may be due to the fact that I did not give the sloth enough time to set in. The insiders have no idea how far things have moved on, elsewhere. Wake up Calcutta! We yearn to see Bengalis known in Delhi as bhadroloks, and not maids or drivers or rickshaw pullers.
The ruling communists have always whined about bias from the Centre. And the immature opposition have always blamed the communists, turning off any lights that caught their eye. If there is a political conspiracy for the plight of this great City, it must have been framed by each of those shoddy, shortsighted, hopeless and unscrupulous representatives that the people have elected at every election, communist or otherwise.
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