Shattered Lands: book review

Sam Dalrymple, following in his famous father William's footsteps, shows great promise with his first book of becoming another erudite yet highly readable historian. He is apparently a very proud young man too: though he has thanked his dad and mum for their valuable and constant support, not once have they been mentioned by name anywhere in the book or even in the blurbs! And he too believes that weaving together archival research with private correspondence and interviews with old people who can narrate gripping stories from personal experience makes the best kind of book when you are writing recent history.

Shattered Lands, a story of how, with the rather hasty dissolution of the vast British Empire through the middle of the 20th century, the Raj era 'India' underwent five partitions (yes, five, starting with the separation of Burma in 1937, then the Arab Protectorates governed from Bombay, then the Great Partition of 1947, followed by the messy integration of 550-odd princely states, mostly with India and a few with Pakistan, and finally, the breakup of Pakistan leading to the blood-soaked birth of Bangladesh in 1971) is truly a monumental and admirable work. I cannot do justice to it in a short review, so, as I wrote at the end of my little essay on William D's 2016 book Nine Lives, I shall instead urge the reader to read it. This essay, rather, would pick up for comment only a few things that particularly stirred my interest.

To start with, I had heard quite a bit about the great post-partition exodus from Burma (which the writer calls the Long March) from my own elders, so reading that part was like re-living history, though I did not know that the Burma chapter, too, was so violent and complicated - that, for one thing, the Rohingya problem is certainly not a recent phenomenon as so many of us used to imagine. And frankly, I didn't know that, had the dice rolled otherwise, countries like Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE would have been part of India still, making us one of the biggest oil producing nations in the world (no harm in fantasizing)! As for the princely states' story, sad and tumultuous as it was, can it be lumped together with the 'partition' narratives? The author evidently feels some sympathy for the princes who gradually lost everything, including all that was rich and good about their olde-worlde culture, especially seeing that some of them had actually helped in diverse small ways to hasten the departure of the British and joined the newly independent countries with remarkable alacrity (barring a few like Junagadh, Travancore, Kashmir and Hyderabad) - but in my opinion they had lived an archaic and hugely parasitic lifestyle for too long, and they should feel lucky they were not treated like the old aristocracy in Russia and China. Many of their descendants seem to have done very well for themselves in business, politics, and the world of the arts and letters; few are begging for alms on railway platforms.

As for the last two partitions, a very great deal has been said and written about them since the day I read Freedom at Midnight, so it is to the writer's credit that I still found it engrossing: it will certainly be of great educational value to any reader below 40 who does not have a degree in south Asian history. What can I say of any moment? I was moved, yet again, to visualize all the loss and suffering and shame and grief and destitution and death brought wantonly upon so many tens of millions of people who had no hand in shaping their destinies - actually beggars the imagination - who were mere pawns on a chessboard, being shifted around by tired, greedy, venal, vengeful politicians and bureaucrats in a hurry, who revelled in playing God. And so much, sadly, depended on mere accident and whimsy (like Mountbatten's inexplicable haste to transfer power, and his later lament that had he known Jinnah would be dead within the year, he would have never gone ahead with the partition plan). 

All this happened because of the haphazard and rapid dissolution of the British Empire. I recently heard Jeffrey Sachs making the off the cuff remark somewhere that almost all the lingering problems around the world created over the last 300 years can be traced back to the interference of the British. But, given how fractious and complex and violent  an admixture of races, languages, religions, castes, communities and kingdoms this enormous territory from Aden to Singapore was, perhaps it was only the relatively even-handed rod and whip and love of order imposed by the British that briefly held it together in a kind of grudging peace - though that idea has been endlessly mocked and reviled for more than a century now? Maybe if the British had only been a little more farsighted, a little less bullheaded, a little more committed to the welfare of their subjects and slow but continuous devolution of power, an incredible amount of human suffering could have been avoided? (by the way, I stand corrected on one crucial matter: there were great famines in south Asia even after independence, the responsibility for which, unlike in 1943, simply cannot be laid at the door of the Raj). Maybe that is what the Moderates in the early Indian Congress had wanted all along, and precisely for this reason, besides the fear that the newly freed lands would quickly revert to the chaotic late-medieval darkness they had just begun to emerge from? This paragraph, by the way, is purely my personal reflection, not something hinted (except maybe subliminally) at by Dalrymple himself.

Given the still very strong Anglo-American hegemony on scholarship, coupled with the ignorance and/or unconcern of the subcontinent's post independence rulers, too little is known across the world, even by educated people, about the titanic upheavals and traumas repeatedly suffered by the two-fifths of the human population that inhabits this part of the globe, whose after effects still continue to confuse and vitiate our contemporary political reality powerfully. As I read about the man whose citizenship was forcibly changed three times, dark forebodings about our present government's maniacal urge to get rid of all 'infiltrators' kept troubling my mind. Let me mention just one more thing about which I had heard but little in all these years: that the Bangladesh war was not just over language just as it was not over religion; that modern Bangladesh has insisted on officially forgetting and suppressing the fact that several non-Bengali languages still somehow survive in that country (Rakhine and  Kokborok and Chakma and even Chatgaiyya, which is not considered Bengali!), and that, contrary to popular mythology, the Mukti Bahini guerrillas did not exactly cover themselves with glory during the war of liberation - the horrible atrocities committed by the Pakistani army and their Razakars upon non-combatants were only much bigger in scale, that's all. No wonder so much long-simmering anger against the beneficiaries of the liberation has been coming to the surface in recent times... last but not the least, I found it most pitiable to read that so many people, arbitrarily separated by new and sudden borders, have found themselves to be permanently stateless, not just poor labourers, petty shopkeepers and marginal farmers but here and there a minor royal as well.

Having heaped so much praise, I hope I have earned the right to do a little bit of nitpicking. Too much sympathy has been shown for the likes of Jinnah and Patel, I think, given that they eventually acted so undemocratically, arbitrarily, covertly and violently, against so many of their supposedly 'own' people. And why should it be insinuated that the facts that actually very few British Indian soldiers joined the Azad Hind Fauz and that some of them turned renegades and criminals in later years show up Subhas Bose's inspirational power and leadership quality in a poor light? Wasn't he all along fighting almost impossible odds? And then there are howlers and typos scattered across 430-plus pages which could have easily been corrected with a little more careful editing. A man called Halvidar (not Havildar) Singh? The state of Dungarpur spelt Durgarpur? A temple in south India whose accumulated wealth, estimated at $22 billion, is thousands of times richer than the Vatican?! How do you describe a spring morning in the Kashmir Valley when the Pakistani irregulars were about to attack unless you were there yourself, or you cite some reliable source? How is a British Intelligence file 'secret' if you have been given access to it in order to write a book for public consumption? How do you make a statement like 'Indian intelligence had been working with East Bengali nationalists for a decade at this point' (29 April 1971, when the Indian Army was given direct orders to help the Mukti Bahini) - page 379 - without quoting an authentic official statement? And lastly, I wouldn't be as shocked as the partition researcher who, while talking to a teenaged cold drink seller in Dhaka, realized that he knew nothing about the partition(s) or even the Mukti Juddho and found it odd that an Indian could speak in Bengali: I guess you can find millions of young Indians, too, who know nothing about our history from, say, 1905 to 1971, and so will happily believe whatever poisonous garbage they are fed by the current rulers. As the wag said, 'The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history', and that 'history is only a fable that is generally agreed upon'. Also, alas, I can bet my shirt that such people would never read a book like this anyway.

This little bit of criticism is not meant to deride or devalue Dalrymple's work, only to suggest how it could be improved, and thereby made more reliable and valuable. I wish the author every success with his future endeavours, and shall look forward to reading his next book.

Many thanks, Rajdeep and Aveek, for urging me to read this book.

P.S.: A very angrily critical review can be found here.

[Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, by Sam Dalrymple, Harper Collins 2025]

Book Fair

I was in Kolkata for three days, and visited the Book Fair after ages. Well, close to two decades, I should think. It was a leisurely jaunt on a balmy winter weekday afternoon.

I had worked as a volunteer at the stall of a little magazine called Proma (headed by the engineer-poet Surojit Ghosh, who was an insider in the city's literary/intellectual circle in the '80s) from 1980 (the fourth fair: this year it was the 49th, and Surojit-da is long dead!) to 1987. Then there was a big gap, and I visited again with wife and daughter after it had been shifted to the Milon Mela grounds next to Science City. By that time, it seemed to me, it had morphed into a food fair more than a Book Fair, though the Publishers' and Booksellers' Guild happily released figures about soaring sales year on year. And it had become too noisy, crowded and dusty. So I stopped going. In any case, I was busy making a living, and where books were concerned, I was spoilt for choice, what with so many old boys and girls constantly supplying me with reading material, my daughter foremost among them, besides Amazon. I had lost the taste, apparently, just as it had happened with going to the cinema. This year, I went because Pupu and Swarnava cajoled me along.

As every Bengali knows, the fairgrounds have shifted again, to Salt Lake this time. The visit brought back many memories, a sense of loss and a deepening of the feeling that our times are gone. The fair is much bigger now, much tidier in a way, with all kinds of stalls selling things which have little to do with books, from the National Jute Board to people who want to talk to farmers about fertilizers to a welter of recently born private universities. I visited the Proma stall, which was a tiny ghost of its former self, and the only gentleman running the show was at sea when I tried talking to him about days past and people whom I had worked with (wow, I silently reflected, the 'hot babes' I had worked alongside would be past sixty now!). I had promised myself to visit the Guruchandali stall, and had a nice chat with the founder/owner Saikat Banerjee. I was tickled to find that the Bangla Poksho stall, whose helmsmen were loudly berating the BJP government's anti-Bengali agenda, was located right next to the BJP's own stall - which was deserted! Do listen to these people on YouTube, those of my readers whose Bengali blood has still not been too polluted by influences from the cow belt. I liked the beautiful display of heritage publications set up by the state government, with Parvathi baul playing softly in the background. And I deliberately gave the big stalls like Family Book Shop, Ananda and Dey's a miss, because they were claustrophobically crowded, and could only offer books I can easily find elsewhere and more cheaply. P and S bought a small mountain of books anyway. Snacking at Saha Confectionery was fun, because their banner said 'Boi kinley kshidey paye' (buying books is hungry work)! Smoking on the fairgrounds is strictly prohibited, which I suppose is a good thing (though they could have put up a few few paid smokers' corners), and the enormous police presence made me wonder: were they expecting a large scale terrorist attack or a riot?

Riding an Uber cab home, I knew I was feeling tired and a little lost. I have never been able to like Calcutta, and now it has left me behind. Much more wealthy since the days of my youth, of course, maybe a little cleaner and greener too, but certainly not my city any more, in any sense, if it ever was. That is probably why I zoom into my daughter's house, laze and luxuriate for a few days, and then zoom back home, despite so many people telling me to visit them when I am in town. If Pupu had not been living there, I cannot think of a single reason why I should ever want to visit again. And that applies to New York as well... but it was good to see that in this city of festivals, the Book Fair has struck deep roots as another one of them. May it grow and prosper.

Manusher Ghorbari

My latest trip was to a place I had only seen advertised. It is a large farmhouse cum homestay facility close to Labhpur in Birbhum, little more than a two-hour drive. It is called Manusher Ghorbari (after the novel by Atin Bandyopadhyay), owned and run by Sri Aniket Chattopadhyay, filmmaker, news editor of Kolkata TV and YouTuber (his popular channel is named Banglabazar) along with his wife Sahana and a team of dedicated young locals eager to please. It was a most pleasant two-night stay.

As all readers of my little travelogues know, I love wandering, but long vacations to faraway places take a heavy toll on the pocket, as well on my time and dwindling reserves of energy, so I can do them only twice a year, or maybe three at most. And yet I find it painful to stay home for too long at a stretch. So I keep searching for pretty, quiet and not-yet-so-hot idylls nearby. A decade ago you found them only in the hills; now, homestays are coming up all over south Bengal. Just the right sort of thing for people who want short breathers amidst silence, pure air, vast open spaces and greenery.

We took one mud house and one regular room, because I wanted to get a taste of both. Only young Aveek the soon to be doctor accompanied us; everyone else in my gang of favourites being currently very busy. Arriving at the property just after 11 a.m., we had a sumptuous Bengali lunch on traditional kansa (bell metal) utensils, mostly made out of things grown on site. Then, the huge lakeside garden beckoning, we dozed for a while in the mellow sunshine before turning in for a late siesta. The evening passed in leisurely fashion, with hearty adda and a bit of music, followed by a heavy dinner: if the hosts can be faulted on anything at all, it is that they insist we gorge ourselves (or maybe that is what the typical guest expects). But as they promised, the water drawn from an underground aquifer is really so good (no longer a common thing anywhere in India) that we were hungry for breakfast. 

On Tuesday morning we got off to a somewhat early start, visiting, in turn, the ancestral house of, and the museum dedicated to Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, the greatest writer (besides artist, social worker, philanthrope and sometime MLC) that Birbhum has produced, at least since Chandidas. Then off to the sickle-shaped bend in the river Kopai just before it meets the Bakreshwar, made famous by the novel Hansulibanker Upokotha. That was a bit of a let down, really, but the locals said that plans are afoot to make the surroundings more well-tended and scenic. Finally, a visit to the Neel Kuthi, basically some forlorn brick ruins standing derelict amidst dense jungle: it was the jungle which enchanted me, with Ray's music playing inside my mind: e je bonyo, e oronyo... I shall never grow tired of forests, rivers and mountains. Back for bath and lunch, which was good again, though pulao is not my favourite rice dish, and the previous day's delicious routine was happily repeated until dinner. A good night's sleep, waking up lateish, a filling breakfast of hot paranthas, fried aubergine (oh come on, begoon bhaja) and nolen gurer rosogolla, and we drove off to reach Durgapur just after twelve. As always, the two days, like all joyous times, had passed in a flash. I think everybody, ma included, enjoyed it thoroughly.

If you ask for the USP of this homestay/resort, my answer will be that though both Mr. and Mrs. Chatterjee are busy working people, and we stayed with them during working days, they not only made it a point to give us company during every meal (it would have started becoming embarrassing if I had stayed for another day) but we quickly developed enough rapport to engage in serious conversation covering a wide range of subjects - which is saying a lot, given that I am at heart a very private person who avoids talk with strangers unless invited. I was also glad to know that it is pet friendly, and that they do not welcome visitors who want to play earsplitting music on 'DJ boxes'. I hope this kind of publicity won't make it too crowded and raucous for peaceloving folks like me. Visit on weekdays: you are almost sure to get a booking even if you call just two days in advance, unless it is holiday time. You can contact Mr. Chatterjee directly. His phone number is 94349 48504.

I am almost done travelling this season: one more trip perhaps, and I shall sit back and brace myself for summer.

For some photos, click here.

Jolly LLB 3

I just watched a new Akshay Kumar movie on Netflix: Jolly LLB 3. I have grown to like this fellow, for all his slapstick and earthiness and splayed-tooth laugh - there is a kind of decency, sincerity and social urgency about many of the roles he has played that appeal strongly to something in me. I have enjoyed movies like Airlift, Toilet: ek premkatha, and OMG. Better in many simple but touching ways than much of the pretentious trash we see on screen these days. 

The storyline, though, is what really had me glued. It is about how filthy rich land sharks are gobbling up large pieces of our rural hinterland at throwaway prices, and that too with money borrowed from public sector banks (certainly not their own mehnat ki kamai, as the lawyer demonstrated in court), then 'developing' these places at enormous profit to build an airport here, a golf course there, a mine elsewhere and a luxury housing estate somewhere else. Very often they abuse the 'system' in every way they can on their way to piling up their ever-bulging fortunes, from co-opting public servants to bribing and threatening and occasionally even killing off those who stand in the way, be they journalists or the police, judges, recalcitrant villagers or NGOs helping them. And always, their slogan is that someone must 'sacrifice' a little so that the country can 'progress', as long as the sacrificers are the poorest and most vulnerable. Indeed, such is the logic of capitalism that they have the most hotshot lawyers and journos and even the occasional lawmaker to argue plausibly and strenuously on their behalf, for very hefty fees, of course: there is an 'eminent professional economist' on their payroll in this movie who has done very nicely for himself by selling 'expert advice' to his clients.

The movie was made in feel-good style, so the bullet-hit district magistrate arrives on a stretcher to give damning testimony in court, the lawyer duo plead earnestly, cleverly and convincingly, the ageing and trouble-avoiding judge, goaded beyond endurance by the tycoon's offensive arrogance (can you actually call a judge a clown and and idiot to his face in open court in India, however rich and powerful you are?), gives a stern and just verdict, the project is abandoned, the determined old woman who had stubbornly fought for her rights is shown respect and compensated to some extent, and the villagers celebrate with Holi colours, so all is hunky dory.

The good thing about the movie is that such a story can still be told in India, where it comes so close to reality in criticizing the kind of shameless and rapacious crony capitalism that has now taken root. And, well, Netflix has not (yet) been ordered to take it down. This is the kind of movie that can open many eyes, especially in a country where so many of us prefer to stay blind for as long as we can (indeed, so many of us have been conditioned to admire and salivatingly fawn upon such robber barons as great 'success stories' to be hero worshipped). The sad part of reality is two-fold. One, a mere district judge's verdict can easily be overturned in a higher court if you have the right kind of money and connections - that is how our 'democracy' functions. Two, most people are so trivially affected by such stories that the effect does not last beyond a few days or weeks, so there is little hope that, regardless of the good intentions of the storytellers (I deeply admire their idealistic perseverance), it will create the kind of lasting public awareness, caution and outrage which can permanently put shackles on the kind of vastly powerful predators who today absolutely dominate our society. Haven't such stories been told before? Remember Rang de Basanti and 3 Idiots?

P.S.: Surprising and most ticklish irony - the movie has been financed by Star Studios, a subsidiary of Jio Star, and everybody knows who is the head honcho of Jio. He financed the film?! Why on earth?

Not a happy ending

We are having an unusually cold winter this time round after several years. Last night, the weather app said the celsius had sunk to 8 degrees, but it felt definitely colder. Anyway, I love the winter less than before, because my bones ache, and the horrible pollution keeps giving me coughs and colds. 

So, alas, I am writing the last post of the year on a rather bitter note, especially because, though by nature strongly against extreme views of any kind, I am getting politically angry against the ruling dispensation after a long, long time. Maybe I shall grow vocal in the coming year.

Let there be a just peace on earth, and may God deliver His judgment on those who believe, and tell others to believe, in hating other human beings on the basis of race, religion, language, colour, gender, nationality and so on. That breed is proliferating everywhere, and all history stands testimony that it bodes ill for all of us, except perhaps the very rich and the very powerful. As the poet asked, tumi ki taader kshoma koriyachho, tumi ki besechho bhalo (have you forgiven them and loved them)?

One good thing I just did and which makes me happy is putting in this link to the blog of a dear young man, Aditya Mishra, friend of Swarnava, and one of those increasingly few who have things to write about and can write.

Bye bye to 2025

It is 24th December. Just a week left of the year. Time again to look back... and ahead. This has been on the whole a good year for me: sort of quiet, no big bad news, travelling around quite a bit, welcoming a newborn into my extended family of old boys, watching my daughter become a well-rounded working cum family woman, blessed with the companionship of old favourites who have stayed by my side for years, slowly learning to relax in the sunset of my life. This has also been my storytelling year. I have been posting a story a week on YouTube (now linked to my Instagram and Facebook accounts) since April, and I shall continue for at least a full year: that will be a repertoire worth leaving behind. Also, within a few months this blog will be twenty years old, and I am proud, because I know for a fact that few people in this age stick to writing as a non-commercial activity for that long; indeed, most bloggers give up after a year, because they have nothing more to say. Other than teaching for a living and bringing up my daughter, this has been the longest single project of my life. Someday, Pupu says, parts of this blog can be culled to make a traditional book. It has truly been a labour of love.

2026 is going to be a busy and difficult year for lots of people. There will be the Assembly polls in West Bengal, with the BJP getting more and more desperate to throw out the current regime. Globally, the AI bubble is likely to burst, sending shockwaves through stock markets all over the world, and the climate crisis is going to grow steadily worse, along with the worldwide reaction against immigrants - Americans against Indians as much as Indians against 'Bangladeshis' (I am not going into the right and wrong of it here, but I have been predicting this for three decades and more). So also technology mania and the onward march of elected autocracies wedded to the most short-sighted kinds of populism (the Roman emperors kept the masses happy with bread and circuses - just read plentiful junk food, non-stop festivals and social media feeds: no substantial difference). Low level white collar jobs will continue to become ever scarcer, more ill paid and less secure. Economic inequality of the worst kind will keep becoming ever more acute. Language will continue to be debased until people are hardly able to figure out what others are saying, creating problems everywhere from workplace to family place and funplace. Nutcases of all sorts, from vegans to those who insist on unisex toilets, will become ever more strident. But also, countless people will go on quietly doing useful things they do because they love doing them, from nursing patients to teaching kids to gardening and making music, and all kinds of pushback against nutters will also build up steam. If my health and finances permit, it will be an interesting scenario to sit back and watch from the sidelines, sometimes to laugh at and sometimes to grimace over. It has been a fairly tough life, and if God gives me a fairly comfortable retirement for a few years (not too many, please!) I shall be quite content.

Thinking about all the old boys and girls who have taken a lot of my time, attention and love and at some point vanished completely from my life with not so much as a by your leave, I was suddenly reminded of something that an economics professor remarked in class while talking about Nehruvian socialism: 'He loved humanity but hated people'. Supposing that were true, at my time of life I see nothing wrong or cynical about that attitude; rather, I deeply understand. If you know enough of the best things in human beings, you cannot help loving humanity, but individual people are most usually so flawed (to put it very nicely) that, even if you don't hate them, you cannot bring yourself to love them: unless you are the kind of divine fool who would forgive even those who crucify you.

I have become fascinated with a website titled History.com - visit it and you will find out why, in case you have any interest in the past. Also, a most interesting fledgling venture that an old boy has been talking about and is involved with: see the website truecompanion.co (not dot com). Right now, I am almost through a six part web series titled Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on trial on Netflix. And over the next three days I am going to have my fill of feel-good Christmas movies. Merry Christmas, all: God give you peace, rest and warmth.

Madhupur

Those who have been listening to the stories on my YouTube channel (just write Suvro Chatterjee or Goppoguchchho) will have noticed that I read out excerpts from a new book titled Memories of Madhupur not long ago. Now I have driven before through Madhupur, now in Jharkhand, about a four-hour drive from Durgapur, but never stayed. I have heard lots of stories from family elders about the days when the moneyed Calcutta elite invariably had little palaces or large bungalows there, and went over frequently for a health cure: the doctors highly recommended the 'change' from city life, because the weather was cool and balmy for most part of the year, there were vast open spaces and greenery all around, so virtually no pollution, the mineral charged water was supposed to be very good for health, and local labour was cheap, obedient, dutiful and generally harmless. With the great socio-economic and political changes post independence, most of this old Bengali elite lost their stranglehold and many even their properties, though some held on doggedly. Lately some have renovated their old villas and turned them into resorts - weekend getaways - for the newly moneyed middle class tourists from the cities. One of those caught my attention.

On the way I stopped at Karmatanr, where one of my most revered heroes of yesteryear, Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, spent many of his last years, still teaching, still treating with cheap homeopathy the poorest of the poor, the local Santhals, the sort of people for whom he had cared most and done most all his life (gnyaner sagar, doyar sagar, birchuramoni Bidyasagar). The railway station has been renamed after him, and his walled compound with some trees he planted with his own hands still remain: one or two rooms, including his bedroom, have been lovingly restored, but most of the houses are going to seed and the site is located beside an obscure, dingy, narrow alley with open drains, and sandwiched between ugly, jerry-built, newly constructed houses and shops of insignificant and uncaring locals simply making do. A very sad contrast with the ways the houses, memorials and museums dedicated to Tagore and Vivekananda have been restored or preserved. Shameful and pitiable. I got a book about the great man's life there, and learnt that a small trust is still protecting the place from dissolution and decay, but there was no way I could connect with the trust, the writer or the publisher, no phone number, email, postal address, nothing, to ask if I could help, in whatever little way I can afford. I wish the two state governments involved would get into the act with gusto and do something before it is too late.

Arriving at the resort (Sett Heritage Guest House) at just after 12 immediately lifted my spirits. The property was not too big,  but beautifully preserved, everything from rooms to the Victorian era babuder boithokkhana, complete with old paintings tastefully placed on the walls, old books inviting the connoisseur on the shelves, period furniture of cane and wood, ceiling fans of century old design, even switches from a bygone era and canopied four-poster bedsteads, low doors and curtained French windows, albeit grilled, because sneak thieves have been a problem for ages. I like this kind of holiday stay far more than any chrome and steel and wood-laminated five star hotel tower frequented by the crass newly rich any day. We got the lawnside room, which was the best, because it was isolated from the main building and so very quiet, with a little private garden in front and the kitchen right across, so that you didn't even have to holler for tea, coffee and snacks, and you could lunch and dine right there in the mellow sunshine or under a canopy at night. The staff was  promptness, courtesy and helpfulness personified. In India you cannot get closer to heaven, just sun bathe, listen to soft music, read, chat (my mother and driver/friend had gone along), eat (very nice, homely, filling food) and sleep.

But there was a bonus waiting still for me. The proprietor, Mr. Anjan Sett, 75, from Kolkata (Theatre Road) and his wife came over and struck up a warm and friendly conversation right away. Within minutes we had discovered common acquaintances from the days of yore. He begged me to browse through his collection of books and take away whatever, as many as I pleased - 'I can't cope with the dreary task of preserving them any more, and finding true bookworms to share with is such a rare pleasure!' So courteous,  so humble, so self-effacing: talk about the civilizing effects of old money! My mother shared many of her childhood experiences, and he drank it all up, because they were, after all, contemporaries who have lived through a nearly forgotten, far more cultured age. We were earnestly invited to visit their much bigger property a furlong away.

So next morning we went, and saw a palace. They occupy the much smaller wing, which they have transformed into another guest house ('You can come over right now if you wish!'). I suggested they hand over the palace itself to some giant corporate chain like the Taj or ITC, which they will transform into a haven for the dirty rich in no time at all. But of course, the olde-worlde charm will be lost forever, because their clients will come only to make raucous noise, lech after each other's wives, and drink themselves silly... Then we did a little bit of local sightseeing, taking in the tiny Bakulia Falls (must be a spectacle at the height of the monsoons), the bahanno bigha neighbourhood of humbler Bengalis who settled down generations ago, the Kapil Math (I thought the ancient sage's den was on Sagar Island, but okay, maybe he spent some time here), and enjoyed the aarati and vandana at the Vivekananda Math. Next morning, we set off after a leisurely breakfast and were back in good time for a regular lunch. A most satisfactory getaway, and a very good use of the Monday and Tuesday break I have now assigned to myself every week. If you have enjoyed reading this, let me know.

For photos, click here.

Saibal Biswas

I mentioned Saibal in my January 2025 post titled Kanha, Paradise. I am proud to call Saibal my friend. That is not an expression I use lightly.

When he first came to see me, more than two decades ago (I am ashamed I cannot remember the exact year), he came as the representative of a multinational bank, on a business tour aimed at finding new customers upcountry. He was introduced by his junior, Sayan, who was a good friend of a then-beloved ex student, and had grown close to me. I was attracted by Saibal's manner of starting the conversation - so warm, so amiable, yet so professional. I was listening so closely to him, and he was behaving so much like a regular person, that it took me some time to notice that his right hand was missing. No one discussed or even mentioned the fact, and of course I am too reserved a person to put such questions to an almost-stranger.

Gradually our friendship deepened. There came a time when he came over again, to announce that he had quit his bank job and started up an investment company of his own, specializing in mutual funds (this was a time when MFs had just begun to catch the public attention), and I became, I think, one of his early clients. I remember him asking me 'Suvroda, do you want to get rich quick?' I was a little taken aback, then said smilingly that I had no such dream. He said, 'Good, then you will be the kind of customer I am looking for. If you can invest slowly but regularly, I promise to give you a good nest egg to retire comfortably on in two decades' time, give or take a few years'. And he seems to have kept his promise. Besides my own sustained hard work and saving habit, it is thanks to Saibal alone, outside my family that is, that I am today as safe financially as any middle class man in India can be.

His company has grown apace, just as have my savings. Last I checked, they have 7000 plus clients and are managing assets close to a thousand crore rupees (may that grow to 5000 in my lifetime!). Two decades are a long time, and lots of things, good and bad, happen to everybody within that kind of time span. I have been no exception. I have needed substantial sums of money urgently at least three times, and I have got literally perfect within-the-day service every time. Saibal's good friend and colleague Samrat has become the kind of 'relationship manager' that you can usually only dream of in this day and age. I only wonder how they can instantly and so satisfactorily respond to a relatively small-time client like me day in, day out, for years and years without fail. Talk about responsibility, efficiency and commitment...

Over the years, I got to know more and more about Saibal, in little bits and pieces at a time, and the more I learnt, the stronger my admiration for him became. He had had a decent urban educated middle class upbringing, albeit with the usual difficulties and disappointments. Then disaster struck. Shortly after he had settled down in that bank job and started courting a colleague, there was a freak road accident while he was travelling with some friends to a picnic spot in a bus, and his right hand was nearly severed. It was a miracle that he survived the journey back to a hospital in the city. The hand was amputated. 

There followed trauma, shock, deep, prolonged depression and disorientation. Then there came climbing back the long road to recovery and reconstruction of life. As he himself says, he had to re-learn everything from scratch, everything from how to write with his left hand to tying his shoelaces with a single hand. He freely acknowledges that for all his zest for life, his strength of mind, his fixity of purpose, that rehabilitation would have been very difficult if not impossible without the steadfast, patient, uncomplaining, deeply empathetic support of his gem of a wife (my pronaam, Kulbeer ma'am) and a few true friends and supportive, enthusiastic colleagues. Then came the worst part of the story: his job turned sour, not only because of the demands of profit-hungry, customer-indifferent bosses but because too many decision makers were hesitant about entrusting a 'handicapped' man with the kind of bigger responsibilities that he craved and knew he could handle. So, approaching his mid-thirties, he crossed the second giant challenge of his life: to quit his salaried job and plunge into the maelstrom of the business world. His team worked long and hard, intelligently and determinedly. The rest is history.

Now at long last Saibal has told his own story in a little book titled Hand of God: one hand, infinite dreams. For anyone teenaged or older, it is truly inspirational without the slightest exaggeration. As Saibal says (read the book), he has now made all the money he really needed, his son is doing very well and is the pride and joy of his life, he knows peace and rest. And yet, he is still crazy about wildlife and travelling and football, and is still running his business hands-on, though for him now money making is most firmly secondary to the satisfaction that comes from knowing that he has earned the trust of so many customers, and he is, as we speak, being of enormous help to many of them in their hour of need, whether they need money or sympathy or expert advice. He also has some ambition to join politics, because he believes we need activists in the ring, so to speak, who want to work hard in order to make life in India much more congenial for people with disabilities than he has found it to be for most of his working life. I wish him Godspeed, and though my remaining aims in life are far more private and humble, so that I could never be someone like him, I have no hesitation is declaring that he ranks very high among my living heroes. Thank you for having become so much more than my money manager, Saibal.

P.S.: Saibal also speaks on TV (I last heard him on CNBC) and writes financial advisory columns for newspapers like ABP. He has always been telling me 'Dada, it is not how much you invest but how long and how regularly you do so that matters more, so tell your grown up students to start young; put them in touch with me'. You can contact him at his company website.

A big landmark reached

Last weekend of November approaching. As in every year for almost a quarter century, I am closing off the outgoing batches of students. Today was the last time I took two successive classes: for the next four months I shall no longer have to do an afternoon class, so I can sleep or sometimes watch movies every day, and go travelling much oftener, because from next week, I shall have two successive days off every week: something deliciously anticipated for a very, very long time, because I have never had a single day off every week for as long as I can remember! This was the last time I did four simultaneous class 10 batches. The number of batches has been halved. I shall now well and truly be at least half-retired. Oh my goodness; now that I am finally high and dry, I cannot imagine how I stuck to this work routine for so long. And I am infinitely thankful to a very high power that gave me the health, the energy, the determination and the opportunity to do it. It has been hard, but I shall be most dishonest if I did not admit that there have been many compensations - being my own master, teaching my own style, fixing my own holidays, working from home since long before WFH became a thing.

Tanmoy in faraway New Zealand, ICSE 1994 batch, one of the very few old boys who have  kept continuously in touch, will be happy to know that I have been playing his 'Suvro-da' podcast on YouTube to all the outgoing batches, just to tell them, 'This is how some students still remember me', and wondering aloud how many of them will do the same, if any. Of course, by the time they are Tanmoy's age, I shall have been long gone. I am already telling my currently-juniormost (class 8) batch that theirs might just be the very last batch that I teach. Let us see.

No man can see very far into the future, not his own, not his family's, not his country's, not the world's. At 16, I had wondered in writing what things might look like at the turn of the century, when I would be 37 (year 2000 CE); twenty five years have passed after that landmark, and I am still carrying on. My oldest student is 63; the first one who came to study with me here in Durgapur will be 54 this year. One of the greatest sources of pride for me is that I can vibe so easily and well with teenagers still: one student, now 52, whose daughter never wants to miss one of my classes, recently asked me 'How do you do it?' But yes, for numerous reasons, many of which I have written about before, I am getting a trifle tired and bored and less hopeful for them, so it is indeed high time that I slowed down and reduced the workload with the aim of going entirely post-economic within a few more years, God willing. Then I can sit back and watch the fun of a new generation being 'educated' by AI! And maybe turning most of my attention to raising my own grandchildren in the time that is left to me.

Those who have just left, click this link to find out what I wrote to the students who left in 2009: imagine - they are 31/32 years old now!

It goes without saying that any ex student, however young or old, who happens to read this post and feels nostalgic, is most welcome to write down his or her own thoughts as a comment on this.

A lament for English... going, going, gone

As I have said here and aloud to many face to face, the English language has been one of the deepest and most abiding loves of my life.

I started early, and read widely and well. There was a time when, partly for professional reasons and partly out of just the hunger for learning and fascination with history and literature, I read as far back as King Alfred's Domesday Book and the great legend of Beowulf (late first millennium CE - they had to be read from heavily annotated texts, and read like a foreign language, so different was English then), proceeded through Chaucer, when English was becoming faintly recognisable, then Shakespeare and the King James Bible, when it was becoming 'modern' as scholars call it, through the days of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Shaw, Wells, Chesterton right into the middle of the 20th century, when absolutely first rate writers became so numerous and wrote magnificently in so many different genres from adventure thrillers and mystery stories to psychological studies and grand fantasy that merely making a list of all of them that I can remember having read and been deeply influenced by would be an exhausting business, and there would be no point to it anyway. So that is how I came to learn English, the English that I love, admire, respect, and have spent a lifetime teaching thousands at high school level and college, some of them quite extraordinarily gifted minds, while ceaselessly polishing up my own grasp of it. And that English, to my great chagrin and despair, is being rapidly debauched, mutilated and impoverished at a breathtaking pace of late, right in front of my eyes. This post is to express my resultant helpless anguish.

The degeneration is happening at many levels simultaneously. Lots of people, not just high-school goers and not just in India, cannot distinguish between its and it's any more, or there and their. They use articles and prepositions randomly, as the fancy chooses them (I have seen the same person writing different from in one place and different than or different to a few paragraphs later). Tenses have taken on a life of their own, and people drift quite unconsciously between them in the same sentence (His father was dead, who says that...), and so it is with number, so it seems quite alright to many people to write 'The mobile phone is a very useful invention, they have made life easier'. Use of capital letters has become equally meaningless and random, and sensible paragraph division a lost art, except perhaps if you are a diplomat or lawyer, when such things still matter, though I am not sure how much longer, when Presidents post crude and semi-literate stuff on twitter in the name of policy announcements. Most people cannot distinguish between shall and will any more, nor what difference there is between, say, advice and advise. 'The Americans don't know and don't care, so why should we?', seems to be the commonest defence, the next in popularity being 'We are too busy to mind such things' (though Churchill in his seventies was not, he did not have a word processor to help him write, and he was merely fighting a world war on the side, while Michelangelo long before him said 'Trifles lead to perfection, and perfection is not a trifle'). Third comes the accusation that we who still insist on such fine points are 'elitist' (as if that is a wholly bad thing, as if the same should be said about people who insist on washing their hands before and after meals) or mere martinets, even 'grammar Nazis' (if only such people knew what the ideals and methods of real Nazis were!) 

I mentioned crudeness in the last paragraph. Both literature and cinema have descended to the coarsest vulgarity as if that is now the norm, using cuss words and wanton abuse where they serve no purpose at all except to make the still-civilized reader/viewer cringe with disgust. Is it meant to reflect the current social reality in most English speaking countries? Well then, thank God I won't ever have to visit them. But why do we here in India, by some yardsticks the third largest English speaking country in the world, frantically emulate the worst that we can find in the US and UK? Even fifty years ago lots of writers wrote most engagingly, elegantly and memorably without ever having to sink to the level of the drunk in the gutter - when a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel mentions how his old nurse insists on his wearing his 'warm woollies' (meaning thick underwear), his friend, a male, clears his throat and says 'Keep it clean...we are gentlemen here'. And centuries before Wodehouse, the Church taught that using swear words was a sin against man and God. Where have all the gentlemen gone, and how, for God's sake, is that a sign of progress? Why on earth is the only kind of humour that most people now understand is locker room- and toilet humour?

I have many other kinds of complaints - after all, I have been keeping track for decades  - but for now let me touch upon just a few more: the absolutely unnecessary introduction of new 'buzz words', indicating a general amnesia that lots of fine words to express the same fact or feeling or idea already exist, the sickening overuse of a handful of currently catchy words though lots of (often better, more apposite and precise) synonyms exist, and the utterly gross and stupid alteration of the meanings of existing words (meanings which have stayed firm and stable for many generations) just because a lot of tweens and teens find them 'cool', and lots of adults, including teachers and journalists, even in their fifties and sixties, are imitating them in a pathetic attempt to stay 'cool, relevant, in touch' (with ignorant and silly babies!). So 'brain rot' suddenly became the 'word of the year', to mention just one expression that belongs to the first category; great and incredible and amazing and stunning from the second (most people these days cannot write without superlatives to express utterly common, mundane and highly forgettable experiences). But the worst of all belong to the third category. He'll likely eat, they now say; only a generation ago (and even among some literate people today), that would have been 'He is likely to eat', and what happened to probably and presumably or 'in all likelihood'? Now you always need to do something, not must do or should do, or ought to do. These days they 'revert' to you, when they mean 'reply'; to revert has always meant to return to an original position or situation. It's his call, they say: why not 'decision'? And nobody criticizes or upbraids or rebukes or takes to task anybody any more, they only 'call out' people: what do they do, I wonder, when they hear that 'the army has been called out to restore order in the streets'? We don't have chairmen or chairpersons any more, only chairs; I wonder how soon they will start saying 'The milk has delivered the milk'? They write could've and must've, though these coinages are unpronounceable, quite unlike 'I've' and 'they've', but who will drum that into pinhead philistines? I'm good, they say, when nobody asked them to give themselves a character certificate: what was wrong with I'm fine or I'm alright, I'm okay? Most people don't understand the once-crucial difference between house and home (even the banks give you home loans now, not house-building loans). Overturn has been replaced by upend, as if it has acquired a bad odour, and the police question multiple suspects these days, not many or several or a lot of (ask any math teacher what multiple really means). When profits rise, they say 'going north', while plunging or falling or plummeting profits, which is BAD, is being called going south - though I have heard that many Australians resent the connotation. 

They reference a book or article today, they don't 'refer to'. They ask you to 'grab' a deal, a coffee, an umbrella, though only a generation or two ago mothers and grandmothers taught that 'grabbing' anything is bad manners unless you are in a dire emergency; it indicates impatience, pushiness and generally poor upbringing. Nouns are being turned into verbs right and left, adjectives into nouns: eat healthy, they say, not eat healthy food, 'live young', and this is our ask (not query or question), keep track of your spends (not expenses), a five minute read, not 'it will take you five minutes to read', let me have a think (depth of idiocy!) instead of let me (just) think! 'Like' is everywhere, so He was running like there would be no tomorrow', not 'as if there would be no tomorrow'. The original use of 'like' was to compare two dissimilar things (it's called a simile, you ignoramuses), as in 'My love is like a red, red rose'. Then there are juvenile (moronic?) abbreviations, like prepping for preparing, vacay for vacation, b'day for birthday, invite for invitation. Recently I asked for a demonstration at a car showroom, and the salesboy didn't know what I was talking about: I had to explain that what I wanted was, in his pidgin, called 'demo'.

Journalists are a special class of vandals. They use 'in' words fundamentally to fit their column centimeters, did you know that? So a court 'bins' a petition, not rejects, the opposition 'flays' or 'slams' the government (how many still know what a ghastly thing 'flaying' was, and that you slam doors, not people?), a debater 'destroys' her opponent when the reporter intends to say that she merely scored a point. They write "I have been asked 'to not say' that I lied", not 'I have been asked not to say...'. they take books off of the table (what is that 'of' doing there?), and 'My mom is visiting with my grandma' (why 'with'?). And they can only write about older people and newer inventions these days: they have forgotten that words like old and new exist, and that 'less' and 'lesser' mean quite different things.

Then there is the weird caricature of the meanings of existing words. So a meeting is called 'brilliant' because nice food was served, a fine piece of engineering becomes 'insane', a gooey cake is called 'decadent', a clever idea is called 'wicked', and beautiful natural scenery is called 'sick'! How am I going to use these words in their proper, original senses and expect to be understood? There was a character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass which pompously declared 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less'. Written 150 years ago, and no longer amusing. When enough people start talking like that, the most fundamental purpose of language - to make ourselves understood (and perhaps sympathized with) - will be lost. We might as well go back to grunting, squealing, croaking and roaring like our Stone Age ancestors, after tens of thousands of years of trying to become slightly more civilized. Most thanks, I guess, to 'advanced technology', also called social media, where the blind follow the blind and the stupidest lead from the front.

Yes, I know that lots of language 'experts' are comfortable with these changes, because 'languages evolve' (evolution, if you understood it, idiots, is a process that is supposed to be so slow that it would make glaciers look like they are running!) and the vast majority of lay people are too ignorant, lazy, unfocused and indifferent about quality to care. Fine, but in today's world experts are a dime a dozen, and I don't have to identify with the great unwashed masses to prove my democratic credentials; on issues such as these, I am definitely not an egalitarian, and proud to be that way. As my best students have always known, I am neither a rigid puritan nor a dyed in the wool traditionalist, but I am a conservative, certainly, in the best sense of the word: a conservative is one who is knowledgeable enough, and caring enough, to believe that there are things so valuable that they deserve to be conserved, for the good of humankind and all future generations, as much as for my own sanity and self-respect. So I refuse to go along with every passing fad, usages which become all the rage and vanish without a trace within a decade or two. Any reader who is not absolutely illiterate and older than thirty, reflect on what has happened to the word 'awesome' which was considered an absolutely indispensable adjective just twenty years ago! Nobody says 'My son scraping through a school test was awesome' any more, but I can still use the word in the old original sense, 'Reinhold Messner performed the awesome feat of climbing Mount Everest alone and without oxygen'. Think about it.

P.S., Dec. 20:Others are worrying about it, too. Read this newspaper article before they remove it from the Net.

Good prospects?

All my life I have seen and heard that India, overall, is in a bad way ('e deshtar kichhu hobe na' , this country has no future, is something I have heard as a lifelong refrain among moderately educated people in the middle class, which, some observers say, is being crushed anyway). Well, maybe that's true, but at my age I have stopped putting all the blame squarely on our politicians, regardless of their party affiliation and professed ideology. Several reasons why.

First of all, from a spiritual point of view, I am not a very deep believer in western ideas about the infinite perfectibility of man and the human condition. No matter how much 'progress' we try to bring about by political, commercial and technological means, our 'solutions' only create more and new problems, and also, there are many problems that simply do not have a cure. You have to learn how to deal with life with the least possible stress and suffering: no one can make a world that is nice for everyone. Hence all my concern with the spiritual path.

Secondly, politics has always been called merely 'the art of the possible', and there are strict limits to what is possible and achievable by politicians, even if they are very well-intentioned, public spirited, committed and energetic (which most are not!). You simply cannot improve whole societies very much against their will, at least not in the short or medium term. Besides, in broadly (loosely) democratic societies, politicians, elected by the people, must necessarily reflect the people's common tastes, habits and predilections - thus India cannot be made a quiet, peaceful, orderly, cleanliness- and hard work- and honesty loving society, because too many people would find that unbearable. 

Thirdly, from the history of the world over the last few hundred years, ever since different sorts of 'progressive' governments started coming to power, we have seen that no matter how much they try, great inequalities of income, wealth and opportunity will continue to exist in every society. When some kinds of old privileges and privileged classes are weakened or removed (such as feudal lords and priests, or business tycoons and technocrats), they are invariably replaced by new ones (like the apparatchiki and 'princelings' in officially communist countries, or the new scheduled caste- and female elites in contemporary India, who have taken full advantage of affirmative action laws and insist that their pampered progeny should go on getting the same). Some countries are more just and fair in some eras than others, of course, but it is a matter of sheer luck where and to whom one is born, and one will enjoy or suffer much accordingly for no merit or fault of one's own.

Finally, in India at least, we as a people broadly speaking do not want much change, no matter which section of society we belong to. Children become very much like their parents, and the old underprivileged, as soon as they are a little better off, start imitating their earlier 'superiors' in their likes and dislikes. So any big change is likely to be brought about only piecemeal, in firefighting fashion, provoked by extraneous shocks - such as foreign conquest or economic crisis (as the reforms of 1991 were compelled by the economic crisis that preceded them). Well, I am an Indian myself, by genes, tradition, education and experience, so I have always hated the idea of revolutions anyway, convinced that revolution devours its own children, and causes too much harm along with too little good. So I must resign myself to gradualism (slavery was abolished after thousands of years, after all, and women did finally get the vote and right to property), keep faith in democratic socialism (which is why I regard Zohran Mamdani as a true wunderkind and wish him the best of luck) and, to stop myself from becoming a tired and cynical old man like Kedar Chatujjye in Parashuram's stories, put the rest of my trust in God. There will not be much change for the better in my time, of that I am sure, and I worry that things might get worse in my children's time.

P.S., Nov. 17: Good to see that this blog is now being regularly read in all inhabited continents!

Civic sense? In India?!

In its October 27th edition, The Telegraph of Calcutta carried an editorial titled Stubborn Stain, covering the highlights of the first ever survey of civic behavioral attitudes in this country, and ranking the states according to how they fared overall. The survey was carried out by India Today. Look up this link before it vanishes. 

The subject of the survey has always been close to my heart, and I have written again and again here, much more scathingly than the editorial writer does. I have very firmly held since I just stepped out of teenage that in order to ever truly become a 'developed' nation, India should concentrate far more on educating and policing a civic-minded citizenry, and not just obsess with capital accumulation, technological advancement and administrative efficiency. Next to the monstrous burden of overpopulation, it is a pervasive lack of good manners and civic sense at every social stratum  that has been holding us back all along (we steal mugs from train washrooms and towels from posh hotels with equal insouciance, so for heaven's sake don't blame it all on 'lack of education'), and it is so hardwired into our genes (or social tradition for choice) that only the rare individual is different from the herd, and suffers tremendously in an atmosphere where virtually everybody is rude, noisy, aggressive, shameless, grasping, ostentatious about power and money, and completely uncaring about social responsibility of any kind. Most certainly the kind of 'education' we give our children does not even aim to make good citizens, regardless of which social background they come from. In fact, mummy cares only that her son may get ahead in life, and is actually delighted if the neighbour's son falls behind!

The survey is based on responses given by 9000-odd citizens from 21 states and one Union Territory. They were questioned about their attitudes to all kinds of unsocial (not to say anti-social) behaviour, from ugly gender-attitudes and public littering to open urination to flouting traffic rules, jumping queues and 'enjoying' themselves regardless of all the noise pollution they cause (I wish they had asked a question about cheating in exams). I am sure that if a hundred times more respondents had been quizzed, the findings would only have been more strongly reinforced. India is, overall, a very ill-mannered country, very difficult and even dangerous to live in: but there are wide variations among states. I am glad, and a little surprised, to see that West Bengal ranks pretty high on the list, i.e., reasonably well-behaved - as compared only to other Indians, mind you. Knowing WB as well as I do, I could only roll my eyes thinking about how bad things must be in the states which ranked lowest.

Two questions arise - two questions that every  minister, MP, MLA and city councillor should think about as much as every parent and school headmaster and examination board: a) why are good manners and civic sense important, nay essential for national progress, and b) how can we ensure that future generations will grow up much better in these respects than their parents and grandparents?

The answer to the first question is so startlingly, embarrassingly simple that most people just don't get it (though many of them have PhDs). Virtually all of us, except the most deluded and perverted, want others to treat us well, right? - keep appointments on time, check our exam answer scripts mindfully and honestly, give us just the right medical treatment without trying to fleece us, not  push us aside in queues, not make us the victims of their road rage, not insult and humiliate and hurt our womenfolk, not overburden our streets with garbage and worse, not steal whatever valuables we leave behind in a moment of forgetfulness, not disrespect our privacy and right to peace and quiet, not insult or threaten us when we have done them no harm... etc etc? Well, why on earth can't we see that if we don't give that kind of courtesy and consideration to others, we have no right to expect the same from them? And if this most important of all social lessons is not drummed early and daily into children's heads by parents and primary school teachers, how on earth can we expect them to grow up into anything better than civic nuisances and menaces, with their conception of their 'right' to ignore and offend and discomfit and hurt others increasing in proportion with the rise of their self-perceived 'importance' (I am the local dada with fifty goons under my command/ I am a doctor-IITian-IPS-MP/I am a cricket- or movie superstar/ Do you know how rich my father is? That is all the licence I need to misbehave, that is what democracy means to me).

The answer to the second question derives directly from the first. If our rulers, thought leaders and parents took the matter as seriously as it deserves, they would arrive at a consensus over two things at once: a) that 'education', from now on, must mean above and beyond everything else a training in good manners and consideration for others (and parents must be held to be just as culpable if things go wrong as everybody else in charge of youth), and b) the laws, and the way people are policed must be reasonably, democratically made, but rigidly implemented without fear or favour, with the elite (meaning everyone from prime minister to headmaster to parents at home) setting examples by humbly obeying the laws and paying the penalties for breaking them exactly like all ordinary folks (remember Rishi Sunak quietly paying a traffic fine to a humble police constable? Can we even imagine an Indian PM doing the same? I have heard that when there is a railway accident in Japan, the chairman of the railways publicly apologizes and resigns. In India, we at most suspend or dismiss a poor signalman. Maybe that's the most important reason why we have accidents so much more often than in Japan?). That is the only way a real democracy can survive and flourish. Otherwise, we shall implode sooner or later, when everybody, frustrated beyond toleration, begins to take the law into their own hands, and society dissolves rapidly into anarchy, to be followed inevitably by some sort of tyranny.

I can vouch that all my life most of my suffering, other than from illness, has come from people treating me rudely, cheating me or trying to push me aside from getting my dues. The worst consequence of this is that even the individual who is instinctively quiet, shy and gentle gets a raw deal, until he is forced to become harsh and pushy and threatening himself. That, to a large extent, is my life story. I wish it were otherwise: I was not born that way, and I am not proud that so many people have learnt to fear and avoid my tongue-lashing. A soft bodied animal has to grow a hard and prickly shell for self-preservation. 

Let me end with a little story. I was standing in front of a bank manager as though I had nothing else to do that whole day, waiting for him to sign me off with a new cheque book (in those days you couldn't get these things done online). The fellow, well aware that a customer was standing in front of him (with a large picture of Gandhiji on the wall behind saying 'The customer is God'), was chatting away merrily on the phone about utter trifles with some family member. He didn't have the courtesy even to ask me to sit down, let alone ask me what I needed. Familiar experience for many readers, isn't it? Finally, exasperated (and since I was running out of time for doing all the other chores scheduled for that morning), I cleared my throat and said, rather loudly I'm afraid, 'Excuse me, my name is Suvro Chatterjee, known as Suvro Sir, can I...?' Believe it or not, the man jumped out of his seat, cut the phone line, ran around his table to pull out a chair for me, and bleated, 'Ehe Sir, agey bolben toh' (So sorry, why didn't you say so earlier?') and yelled to some peon to bring me tea. My job was done in five minutes. The reason for the magical transformation? He had apparently registered his son's (or daughter's) name for admission to my class the next year, but never met me in person. So that's how we decide whom to behave well with. As for whom to ignore or grind under the heel, we all know how we decide that, don't we?

As I said before, knowing India as I do, I am very cynical about whether we shall ever reach true democratic civilization. But I am sure glad that some people are at least taking the trouble to bring these issues out in the open. It's not just me any more.

What's your work/life balance?

There has been a lot of chatter lately on - where else - social media about how important the idea of work/life balance is, and how relevant it is to being 'successful' in life. GenZ appears to be particularly interested. 'There should be only four-day, thirty hour work weeks for all', some are clamouring, while others want you to work 90 hours or more. 

I found the discussion rather pointless, not because there is anything wrong with the idea itself, but the fact that most people who are offering strong opinions seem to have forgotten that this is a very, very personal thing, and there is no one-size-fits-all prescription that could work for everybody, no matter what every 'influencer' seems to think. This is not to say that I don't have a very definite opinion about it myself (and I have held firmly to it since long before the first GenZ kid was born); it only means that I should not want to impose it on anybody, just so long as they don't want to impose theirs on me.

There appears to me to be several different categories of people with definite opinions on the subject, depending on their psychological orientation and their own life experience. 

There are first, the workaholic millionaires and billionaires, who proudly ascribe all their worldly success to their working non-stop, virtually until they drop dead. I admire some of them, especially if they are doing something meaningful and still at it into their eighties and nineties (Bernie Sanders, Clint Eastwood, Sir David Attenborough), but of course I don't see eye to eye with them. Firstly, it is not true that you have to be a slogger in order to become very rich - a lot of people have done so by inheriting fortunes or winning lotteries or getting lucky at the stock market or only occasionally producing masterpieces of art and scientific inventions and so on. Secondly, most sloggers still die poor - witness all the labourers and farmers throughout history: that's a sad fact, but life gives very few people a fair deal. Thirdly, it's dangerous: I know, and have heard of, far too many people who have actually dropped dead or become invalids early in life through over-exertion. And fourthly, it all applies to only a very narrow band of (ignorant? unconscious? silly?) people who limit their whole idea of 'success' to making money, not even thinking of keeping time aside to the necessity of enjoying that money (what will I do with a vast fortune if I cannot eat and sleep and travel and rest all I want, maintain good health for a long time, have good conversations and read a lot of good books, watch a lot of excellent movies, listen to a lot of fine music, be at the side of loved ones when they need me?). I find them pitiable at best and disgusting at worst, no matter how much money they have. Besides, it's usually their wives and children who get all the fun...

Secondly, there are the rascally tycoons who want you - the miserable plodder who keeps his nose to the grind to earn at best a modest middle-class living with no long-term security - to go on working harder and harder so that you have no life left to live, and their vast piles of  filthy lucre can grow larger and larger. Without mincing words, they are vermin, true enemies of the people; keep a long list of their names for the time when the Revolution comes.

Thirdly, there are people who are caught in soul-drying, dead end, seemingly pointless jobs (usually ill-paying to boot) - I'm sure I can put thousands of jobs in that category - and find even a 9 to 5, six days a week schedule suffocating and increasingly intolerable: if they are too timid or unable to find better alternatives, I shall only sympathize with them, not advise them to work more. Those who enjoy the work they are doing will automatically work hard: you don't have to tell them; sometimes you should tell them instead to slow down and smell the flowers.

Fourthly, there are people who are inveterate shirkers, bone lazy, people who hate the very idea of having to work. Unfortunately - in this country at least - there are far too many of them, and they can only be whipped into working at all, so in this case all my sympathy is reserved for the managers who must keep slave-driving them. Their ideal work/life 'balance', after all, would be, if possible, sleep all through the day when they are not chatting or revelling or getting stone drunk, while daddy or mummy or the wife keeps slogging to put food on the table...

Even those who in their youth are working hard and doing well, materially speaking, need occasionally to hear a word of caution: don't work so hard at your job that time flies by and many of the most important responsibilities, such as raising children well and attending well to old parents, are not properly taken care of. And if you have worked hard and saved well throughout your adult life, the work/life balance should tilt further and further towards enjoying your leisure and fulfilling many of your long-held dreams - if you have anything like a decent pension, going on making more money in your old age is a sad frittering away of all the opportunities that life throws at you.

You could think of a few more types, but I think I have made my point: the same formula does not suit everybody; we are not identical and simple robots. Some readers, I can visualize, will scratch their heads and say 'I didn't think so much about it!' Exactly. That is why it is not good to dwell too long on social media 'debates': better learn to think and decide for yourself. It's your life.

The hills once again

Beginning 1971, when I was all of eight years old, I have been visiting north Bengal continually but after long intervals. This year I did it twice. I went visiting the Dooars in late February, and I have just spent a week in the hills again. 

As always, I begin to grumble three months before the pujo that I am having difficulty deciding where I should go to escape Bengal's annual madness, and which of my favourites I can take along for enjoyable company. This time round I couldn't confirm with anybody other than Arka Choudhury (who had accompanied my family on a day's road trip along with his batchmate Saikat back in 2010), and though I made all the bookings in late July to be on the safe side, the outgoing tickets on the Vande Bharat Express were put on the wait list, and I had to hold my breath till ten days before the journey to learn that they had been confirmed. Then, after sending off my mother to stay with her brother and some friends in Kolkata (more and more I hate to leave her alone for any length of time, though there are a lot of people around to keep an eye on her), I set off at dawn on Sunday the 28th September (shoshthi), and took the train from Bolpur, arriving on time at New Jalpaiguri. The station, being reconstructed, is a mess right now, and the sun was blazing. The pre-arranged driver dropped us off at the oldest homestay (large and lavish enough to be called a hotel, actually) in Teenchuley just after sunset. 

The room was big and cosy, with a sun lounge looking down on the twinkling lights of Kalimpong; the surroundings were quiet, clean and lush green, with the forest beginning within a hundred yards from the gate, the sky alternated between overcast and azure, the food was mouth watering, the service was excellent, so I would have been in seventh heaven had it not been for all the chatter from the adjoining rooms, clearly audible through the paper thin wooden walls. But there was some compensation: my next door boarder complimented me unasked about the quality of my voice that he had overheard, and, a little taken aback, I couldn't think of a better way to thank him than to send him a link to my YouTube storytelling channel via Whatsapp. The host - probably my age, but cheery and sprightly - treated us to beer and a few songs one evening, and I made friends with two young locals of my daughter's generation whose courtesy, English and general knowledge of the world won my admiration. We spent the days eating, sleeping late, chatting and wandering about the very steep roads or getting our breath back sitting on tree stumps inside the pine forest. It was as relaxing and enchanting as could be.

Around eight on Wednesday morning we drove off to Tukvar. We had to pass through teeming and hyper-congested Darjeeling on the way, and it was a nightmare: of the three-hour journey, just crossing the town took an hour and a half. All our old and classic hill stations are now bursting at the seams; I have heard it's the same in Nainital and Mussoorie and Shimla, and I had exactly the same experience at Ooty last year. Anyway, Tukvar is a steep climb down from Darjeeling, and it was beautifully unspoilt and quiet and clean again, nestled among tea gardens offering fleeting views of mighty Kanchanjungha when the clouds cleared. This time the homestay was a humble affair, but the host was most decent and friendly, and the hospitality was earnest and very good, so the two-day stay was once again very pleasant, especially every time I recalled the crowds and traffic and noise that I had escaped. On Friday we rose and left early to avoid the Darjeeling jams and drove off to Bhalukhop on the other side of Kalimpong, which I had liked very much the last time, and spent another peaceful day among the clouds, though there was a bit of unpleasantry over dinner, which I shall gloss over.

On Saturday we left early again, because it was very foggy and overcast, and drizzling all the way. The weather app predicted heavy thunderstorms. Our luck held, and we arrived early at NJP, which was already waterlogged. A plain and leisurely lunch at a streetside eatery, squelching through the mud and slush, then we were on the train. It arrived at Bolpur only a few minutes late, and Firoz brought us safely home, though ugly and cacophonous bhasaan jatras held us up on the way and even late at night. But we were very, very lucky: that same night the hills and roads we had traversed were flooded, and as everybody has heard by now, landslides have claimed many lives and injured far more. Evidently Ma Durga was looking after me, or I have accumulated a lot of good karma!

I must thank young Arka for being a very good travelling companion. I only pray that his snoring problem goes away! And also many, many thanks to my old friend Subir Dubey for suggesting such lovely places to visit. I only so wish he could have come along with his magical flute and harmonica.

These breaks are vital to my well-being, but travelling during holiday times is becoming more and more irksome every year. I wonder what I am going to do as I grow older. Perhaps taking refuge in the rural homes of people who care for me, with no amenities whatsoever beyond the peace and solitude they offer, would be the best option. Meanwhile, one thing is certain - excessive 'development' is ruining this country and bringing us closer to danger and disaster. I have read about locals in old and scenic towns all over Europe beginning to protest loudly against the tourism 'invasion', and I won't be surprised if the people of the hills in India join them in the not too distant future.

For photos, click here.

Troubling ruminations

Driving recently through Kolkata, I saw a touching sign right in front of the main gate of Fort William (newly named Vijay Durg): 'Want to do something for a soldier? Be an Indian worth fighting for.' I was reminded of the truly great who have lived and died before us so that our country might be free, prosperous and glorious, and I sadly wondered how many of us today would qualify. How many of you - I am asking all except the most blindly selfish and perverted - could honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say confidently 'I am an Indian worth fighting (and dying) for'? I know I could not ask or expect any Indian to do so much for me...

Which led to another but related train of thought: why, when we even at all bother to tell our children about our great men and women, do we invariably mention only those who are all long dead: why only the Tagores, Vivekanandas, Gandhis, Bagha Jatins and the like? Haven't so many Indians devoted their lives in the post-independence era to improving the lot of their fellow countrymen in myriad important ways? Why do we (the older generations, who are supposed to 'teach' youngsters what matters and what does not) gush endlessly instead about cricketers and film stars and people who, in one way or the other, are busy making fortunes, often contributing very little, if anything at all, to national welfare and progress? Jagdeep Chhokar's recent death stirred these thoughts - and I am sure most 'educated' Indians would have to ask Google who he was and what he did. I could reel off so many such names without having to consult any notebook or encyclopedia: (ICS) Sukumar Sen, Aruna Roy, Ela Bhatt, Sunita Narain, Bindhyeshwari Pathak, Kailash Satyarthi, P. Sainath, Harsh Mander, M. C. Mehta, Subhas Dutta, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bittu Sahgal, Arunachalam Muruganantham and countless others I have read and heard about, but are not 'famous' enough to be accessed via the internet. I know for a fact that most of my readers would merely gape and secretly admit never having heard of them. If we have failed to instill some ideals, some vision in our young, if we have never told them what sort of people really deserve to be respected, why do we eternally lament that our country is going to the dogs, or boast that it is doing great only because a few people are becoming billionaires every year and we can rub our weak neighbours' noses in the dirt now and then? It is obviously because we have taught our young that there is nothing to life beyond getting a nondescript job and shopping and being idly 'entertained' and preening before friends and relatives for as long as we can! What could be more pathetic for a whole nation?

A little economic gnyaan here for those who are interested, in connection with the lately much tomtommed claim that India is now the 'fastest growing major economy', which has recently become the fourth (or fifth) largest in the world. 1) It all depends on how much you can trust the source of the figures, and the government, which provides most of the data, is not the most trustworthy source of such things! 2) There was a massive fall of GDP/national income during the COViD-induced decline, so the rebound looks much healthier than it actually is - to a large extent we are merely catching up with the pre-2020 (pre-GST, pre demonetization-) years, and it remains to be seen how long this growth spurt will continue, 3) Mere GDP figures mean very little, because a. increase of production of literally anything adds to GDP, guns, drugs, luxury resorts as much as food and schools and hospitals for the poor, b. how the GDP is shared out matters far more when it is a question of overall welfare: if a tiny minority siphons off most of the benefits of growth, as is currently the case, the average Indian remains in a bad way, even if you completely forget the poorest 300 million, c. the moment you look at per capita income instead of the total, given the gigantic population, India still remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and is likely to remain so for decades to come (so comparing our situation with Japan, population 124 million, or Germany, population 84 million, whom we have just narrowly 'beaten', makes us look very conceited as well as silly), d. on many globally respected and trusted indices, such as the UN HDI, the World Hunger Index, the Corruption index, the gender-equality index and so on, India still ranks among the lowest, as anyone can check for oneself. All this is not to deride or deny whatever India has actually achieved since independence (and that's a lot), but to insist that we should all accept we have a long way to go before we can truly become Viksit Bharat, and along the way we have to correct many defects and make a lot of course corrections if we ever want to reach that goal: merely boasting about certain things and denying certain others and trying to shut up everyone who points out what we really need to do is not the best way ahead.

A status update on my YouTube channel where I am telling a new story every week: it seems I have acquired a loyal and regular following of listeners, but the number is still very small (around 150-200, I should think), considering the number of subscribers, and the number of people who know me (just count the number of ex students along with their family members, and it will come to several tens of thousands, I should think). Maybe it's because I am not spending money on 'buying' listeners, as apparently most YouTubers do? But since I don't plan to do that, this core group of listeners, if they really want me to keep going, should work a little more to spread the word around among their own friends and relatives, especially parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. If every one of you lets ten people know, and nudge them a bit, at least two or three will start listening, and very soon that will have a cascading effect, and give me a great morale booster. Otherwise, as my daughter has said, the one solid good thing that is happening is that I am building up a repertoire of audio stories that more than one family member will keep listening to years after I am gone! But then, sooner rather than later I am going to lose steam and cry 'enough'...

One other thing, a subject I keep harping on from time to time: I miss the long and absorbing debates I used to have with a lot of people here over things that I had written. There are blogposts which garnered 60-plus comments: now I consider myself lucky if I get five or six (and often those who are keenest and have the most spare time to comment are those who hate me blindly, whatever their reasons are!) Most of my decent, informed, thoughtful readers, whether they are in their twenties or fifties, apparently no longer 'have time'. Now that is a mindless canard if ever there was one, as everyone secretly knows but is ashamed to admit. We lack time a) only for those things which we do not seriously consider to be a priority, or b) because we are perpetually distracted by trivia, whether that be attending parties or quarrelling with the spouse or scrolling endlessly through Instagram. So I am urging the best of my readers, one more time: PLEASE engage. Otherwise, I am nearing twenty years of non-stop writing here, and I might soon decide that it's time to call it a day.

Finally, for those who find this blog 'too serious', do look up my other blog. And those strange few who think I treat my ex students like toilet paper, I should beg them with folded hands to come and meet me and let me know what I ever did to make them feel so bad (because I do have a lot of beloved ex students who think quite the opposite about me), so that I can most sincerely beg forgiveness for having hurt them - provided they can convince me I hurt them absolutely without any valid reason. But to all the rest, who merely burn with helpless anger and jealousy every time they visit my blog (the root cause being, I think, that I have found the kind of freedom and peace with self-respect and financial solvency which they will never get, because they don't deserve it) my request, repeated ad nauseam, is 'Please stop reading!' I am not going to change my ways and views because of folks like you, so you are wasting your time. And calling your betters names doesn't harm them, it merely shows you up for what you are. You hide behind pseudonyms and don't dare deal with me face to face, so you belong to the trash can.

Rain, rain, go away!

This has been one of the longest rainy seasons in living memory. I wish the rains would stop now - and I didn't think I'd ever say that! The surroundings are too hot and damp, and it is affecting everything, from the musty smells all around to veggie prices on fire to people falling ill right and left with fever and allied complications. The only silver lining is the hope of a long and chilly winter. And all the terrible news about cloudbursts and flash floods and landslides from the northwest part of the country - Himachal, Uttarakhand, Punjab - make me doubly thankful that I live in a relatively much safer place. But I couldn't avoid a recent bout of fever myself, and it has left me wobbly with a hacking cough and throbbing head. It's all I can do to tell a story a week on YouTube besides the usual routine of classes and as much sleep as I can get.

Not a single thought-provoking response to my last post. Makes me wonder whether the sort of people who read my blog have lost the capacity or the desire to comment. More and more it seems a thankless chore to continue hacking away at this blog. And yet, wonder of wonders, the blog counter keeps climbing relentlessly...

I have been seeing very interesting dreams lately. I wish I could discuss them with an attentive expert. ...'and in that sleep what dreams may come' indeed.

I have been working non-stop, every single day, since I came back from my daughter's place at the start of June. I am desperate for a break, and taking the next week off. Just eat and sleep is my plan. And who knows whether the railways will confirm my ticket reservation for the North Bengal trip during the pujo week?

Here is a link to a TED talk that I have listened to very carefully: 'Is AI making us dumber?' My own belief is, of course, that the very idea of using AI in education - at least AI as it works right now - is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever come across. But then, it is designed by very dumb and very greedy people!