My City... Used To Be
Friday evening was spent at Flury's with two old chums — The Filmmaker and The Intellectual. It was a nice evening — filled with saxophone and titbits on The Filmmaker's new scripts over nice Darjeeling. (Very filling, too, with a BIG omlett stuffed with ham and mushroom). It was adda and after a long time it felt nice. Felt like old times. Felt like the old city was still alive — like it used to be.
Right? Wrong!
A few kilometres away from Flury's, around 80,000 Calcuttans had gathered at the Eden Gardens. India was playing S Africa. It was a pretty expensive affair. Tickets for the match had exceeded a grand. (For Cal that's quite a lot — A Bryan Adams show was once cancelled as the organisers feared a low turnout.) They had come to cheer the home team or to enjoy a good game, I'd guess. But, apparently, they had a different agenda. To boo and barrack the Indian team.
Now, i have serious reservations about this whole 'Indian team' business. For me it's a pack of few good/not so good men owned by a 'company' — a very rich one — which is focussed on a single thing — PROFIT. Like other companies.
Anyways, 'Team India' has always been OWNED by the people. We get passionate, nationalistic, heck even jingoistic.
But the way 'WE' reacted this time beats me. People had actually bought tickets, sacrificed work and gathered to boo their own team. This 'people' included the ex-mayor of the city who, a daily reported, wanted India to loose, "For Saurav's sake". Wow! Not only those present in the stadium, but the whole city (and perhaps the whole state), wanted the tea to lose. Why? They wanted 'proof' that The Men In Blues will always be in the blues if The Prince don't come to their rescue. People bursted crackers. People in general. Most of these 'People' used to scorn at Muslims, and all Muslims, when a certain section at Khidderpore bursted crackers after a Pak win.
It hurt. It did. The next morning The Intellectual justified the reaction... "For years have we ben subjected to Onyay Bonchona. Now we have Jagoed. And Everybody should know that we can hit back too"... as if he was off to fight the British, or the burgeoise or whomever. "Why not? The Marathis root for Maharashtra, why not we for Bengal?" reasoned Baba. Well, I can't remember Mumbaikars praying for an Indian defeat when Sunny was out of the team. Neither can I forsee Delhiites at Ferozshah Kotla barraking because Shehwag has been kept out ofd the team. (Now, they might, and claim to follow the famous What Bengal thinks today...).
Perhaps that's why these cities will call themselves the Capital, financial capital, tech capital... Kolkatans used to refer her as the Cultural Capital.
Culture? What Culture?

Bujhe jo laltenwa

Arrah hile, Chapra hile, Baliya hile la
Bujhe jo laltenwa to pura Bihar hile la
Did it happen? Really? Lalu actually is trounced. Man, it's taking time to sink in.
At one point of time it relly had loooked like he would go on and on and... a la Jyoti. But today he's actually has lost. SEALED. That won't free the state of corruption — that must be too old, as old as Magadh, to be shooed away — or crime or any of the shit that Bihar is in. But a negation has been registered.
Bihar is still in a mess and, without being too pessimistic, it will remain in it for quite some time come. But at least it admitted the change. That's welcome. Chaila raises a toast to that.