Loitering in the Calcutta metropolis – Kalighat is a forever new city, the Bengal foundation myth is powerful and self-confident, but it breathes a particular kind of newness that is instantly tarnished and decayed each morning sunrise, and centrality of position is simultaneously surrendered .
It is another instance of the story of modernity. However, in Calcutta it belongs to its own genius of place, only emblematic in ways which can feel are familiar to us…
…so over the last 50 years the entire Bengali middleclass has become peripheral too. Well educated, artistic and previously successful, the citizens argue constantly among themselves: easy to blame their losses on the ‘paralysis’ during the more than three decades of unbroken Communist Party rule,or the long-term economic decline of traditional industries in the region.
Paribartan (tr: change) came in the 2012 elections which brought the populist Mamatee Bannerjee. She is an unmarried woman :
‘Very best sherry taste merry rest jate
Aage bhage den giya srimatur haate
Kot kot kotakot tok tok tok
Thhun thuun thuun thuun dhok dhok dhok…’
The transliterated lines come from the beginning of the Bengali poem The English New Year by Ishwan Gupta, first published in Calcutta in 1852. Not much requires further translation except the 2nd line which says that ‘the sherry is to be given to the missus before anyone else’.
Observe our daily noisy stirrings: ignorant of our losses and decline the great city continues to celebrate, and grows and grows. The population is now said to exceed 17 million and one million pour over the Hoogley Bridge every day to seek opportunities for work.
For a few there are the rewards of fabulous wealth (those who have most successfully embraced the different form of ‘New India’ liberal economics). For the rest, the population embraces the daily modernity of the street and (mostly)polite conversation under the protection of the missus of the city, who is of course also forever Kali.