Calcutta Corner

Cracks in the Alliance
Cracks are already beginning to show in the Congress-Trinamool Congress (TMC) alliance in West Bengal. Earlier this month Mamata Banerjee was furious when Congress councillors of the freshly elected Siliguri Municipality took the help of their CPIM counterparts to keep the TMC from grabbing the Mayor’s seat. And this after contesting the elections together against the Left and wresting it from the Communist party after 28 years. After election results were declared and just before the Mayoral vote, the Congress reportedly circulated a written appeal asking for votes for its candidate Gangotri Dutta. The Left, ever eager to effect a split in the alliance, complied. So the 15 Congress votes and the 17 Left votes went to the Congress candidate leaving TMC’s Mayoral candidate Gautam Deb with only its own 14 votes and that of the one TMC-backed independent candidate’s votes. 

But the winning pre-poll tie-up, which brought the Communists to their knees in the 2009 Parliamentary Elections, was showing signs of strain even earlier. In August an ugly spat broke out between the two parties over seat-sharing. Both parties had announced that they wanted to field their own candidates to contest the assembly by-polls taking place in the Sealdah and Boubazaar constituencies. But that would split the votes, allowing the Left to make a clean sweep. Initially members of the state Congress argued that it is their party and not TMC which should field candidates from these two seats because it was Congress that held the two seats before the sitting MLAs – Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Somen Mitra – vacated them to run for parliament.

TMC, on the other hand, had argued that the vacancy was created when these two Congress candidates defected to the TMC side and contested the parliamentary elections on TMC tickets. Banerjee’s logic was that as individuals the two former MLAs had considerable clout in these areas, and, since they now belonged to TMC, they brought over the support of their voters to TMC. For a couple of indecisive days neither party was willing to give in and each named two candidates who would contest the two seats. Finally the ‘one and one’ solution was floated and the All India Congress Committee Chairman Keshav Rao announced that each party would take one constituency. But an adamant Banerjee said nothing doing. She wanted both seats. Then Congress President Sonia Gandhi intervened by holding a meeting with Banerjee and conceded. After all, no one wanted the union railway minister to walk out with her 19 MPS. 

Who is Big Brother?
But while the Congress High Command in Delhi may be trying to play it safe by a balanced give-and-take with Mamata Banerjee, the state unit of the Congress is clearly disgruntled with the way that TMC is conducting itself. “We will adhere to the decision of the High Command,” Subrata Mukherjee, Working President of the Pradesh Congress Committee told Outlook. “Still, it must be remembered that the Congress party is a potential force in the state and has an identity of its own.” He pointed out that the Sealdah and Boubazaar seats had been held by Congress for over 40 years. West Bengal Congress Legislative Party leader Manas Bhuniya also expressed his disappointment that Congress could not contest the two assembly seats. Speaking to Outlook, he said, “We respect the decision of the High Command. There is the issue of the 20 MPs. Also it is important to come to a compromise to ensure that the anti-Left votes are not split. But the way that TMC refused to give up even one seat is an indication that they have defied the basic principal of the alliance. They have destroyed the very spirit of the alliance.”

Many see the stunt pulled by the Congress councillors in Siliguri as a sort of revenge. The question that keeps coming up is: Is there a threat to the survival of the Congress-TMC alliance (read, the UPA government)? Mamata Banerjee has reiterated time and again that the question of pulling down the government is not on the table. She avers that the alliance is intact. She insists that the differences that have been surfacing are minor and can be and have been ironed out. TMC’s Partha Chatterjee, leader of the opposition in Bengal, told Outlook that “these issues do crop up but they get settled. But one thing is for sure, In Delhi, the Congress is Big Brother. In Bengal, Trinamool Congress is Big Brother.”

Didi? Dada? Dadu? Dida?
Whatever problems the TMC might have with the Congress, their pet hate remains the CPI(M). And the feeling, apparently, is mutual. Which is okay for them, but the average Calcutta denizen would really appreciate it if the politicos could keep their squabbles out of the way of our daily lives. Every time a TMC or CPI(M) member feels disparaged by the other camp, they feel the need to retaliate by imposing some major public nuisance on the rest of us. Sample what happened on Diwali Eve: TMC MLAs, led by opposition leader Partha Chatterjee stormed into the secretariat building and squatted in front of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s office demanding his arrest. They claimed that after the CPIM’s defeat in the parliamentary elections, the party supporters had unleashed a reign of terror on the opposition (a reference to the violence that has erupted all over Bengal in which many political activists from each party have been killed). The latest provocation, according to the TMC, was the arrest of several of their party workers in Hooghly at the behest of former CPI(M) MP, Anil Basu. This (the secretariat siege) was around 1:30 in the afternoon. At 4:30 pm, they were still there. They could not be persuaded to discuss the matter in the chamber of the Chief Secretary (or to leave). Subsequently, they were arrested and forcefully removed. 

The CM later told reporters that he had ordered the removal because he could not allow the corridors of the secretariat to be turned into a ‘circus ring’. Police explained that the MLAs were arrested under 151 of the Cr.Pc. They had been charged with violating prohibitory orders in place around the CM’s office and in the corridor outside, both protected areas. Though they were released shortly after being brought before a magistrate on the same evening, mayhem had spread throughout the city of Calcutta like wildfire with TMC supporters putting up road blocks at strategic locations in protest against the arrests. 

Even on ‘normal’ days commuting to and from work is a nightmare in Calcutta, with a sea of cars, buses, taxis, autos, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, street hawkers, all jostling for space on the city’s congested roads. On top of that, traffic is regularly crippled by countless processions ranging from political rallies to parades and religious festivities. If a car breaks down, traffic gets thrown out of gear for hours. So imagine the kind of chaos that ensues when suddenly main traffic arteries and intersections get barricaded indefinitely. 

On the eve of Diwali , tens of thousands of people were stranded on the streets of Calcutta. Those out shopping for Diwali gifts. Those going home after a tiring day’s work. Those going to and from the airport (I was stuck at the airport for two hours waiting to be picked up). Even hospital bound ambulances couldn’t get through. (An ambulance carrying a woman named Rupali Ghosh who had suffered a heart attack that was being rushed from Howrah to a Calcutta hospital was stuck at Howrah Bridge and reportedly not allowed to pass). An exasperated taxi-driver summed up the mood of the city that evening with this question: “Why us, Didi? What have we done? We have only voted for you. Is this how you pay us back?” Seriously, can’t all the acrimony be contained within the Assembly chambers? Does it really have to spill out on to the streets and make life unbearable for the rest of us? Is this too much to ask? Is anyone listening? Didi? Dada? Dadu? Dida? Anyone?

Jai Ma Kali
Kali Puja marks the official end of the festive season, which began exactly a month ago on the day of the new moon. The immersion processions to the Ganga and other bodies of water, usually in the darkness of night, are something to witness. Larger than life and blacker than death, the idols of the Goddess Kali, formidable in her posture of ‘tandav nritya’ or ‘dance of destruction’…moves swiftly through the streets of Calcutta, mounted high on trucks and other vehicles. Her ‘kharga’ or sword – which is held up by one of her four arms – flashes against the sky. But if the Calcutta immersion processions leave you awe-struck, Kali Puja immersion processions in a little town called Shantipur in West Bengal’s Nadia district will leave you spell bound. On the night of the immersion, large groups of men speed down the streets to the river (Ganga), brandishing lit torches…a tradition believed to have been around for a few hundred years, from a time when the area was under the control of notorious dacoits who had worshipped the Goddess with extravagance.

In Black & White

Flipping through the black and white pages of a new coffee table book on Calcutta’s heritage buildings and crumbling ruins was a bit like taking a walk down a misty memory lane and then suddenly stepping straight into a shrouded side street and getting lost. Getting lost in a maze of secret passages in ancient fortresses. Lost in the haunted corridors of abandoned administrative buildings. Lost climbing up twisted wrought-iron staircases in old colonial mansions that catch the scary sunlight light streaming in through large forgotten windows. And lost in the stories and the histories that bring these images alive. White and Black: A Journey to the Centre of Imperial Calcutta, published by Niyogi Books, released last week, is a book of bold black and white photographs of the city’s ruins in which photographer Christopher Taylor captures the present as though it were the past. It is also a book of bold black and white prose in which Soumitra Das uses the printed word to transform Calcutta’s familiar streets and buildings into spaces of history. Of poetry. Of mystery.