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.