Calcutta Corner

The Old Fashioned Way
While I was working with The Telegraph in Calcutta, I had done a feature story on how detective agents were being employed by politicians, companies, parents and spouses to spy on the activities respectively of rival politicians, employees, children, husbands and wives.

I managed to convince the director of one such detective agency to take me along on an ‘espionage mission’ — as they grandly referred to these spying assignments. Shrouded in secrecy as the missions were, I got the distinct sense that the agency thought it was doing the nearly unthinkable by granting me access and that this was an enormous favour. After the interview the director smiled sheepishly and said, “Today I’m helping you…one day maybe you can help me.” I wasn’t sure what to make of it but I thought I should nip in the bud any ideas he might be nurturing of me ever doing him any favour in return. “Ha. Ha. That’s funny.” I said, laughing it off as though it was a big joke.

Obviously that was lost on him, because some days later he called me. He asked me if I could help him. He said his agency had been requested by the husband of a famous Bengali actress to spy on her, because he suspected her of infidelity. The detective wanted to speak to her to get out the finer details but didn’t know how to approach her. He asked if I would interview the actress for our newspaper and try to ferret out the facts and pass on the information to the agency. He explained to me that the agency had various ways of getting information for their clients, including, according to him, many journalists who had helped him in the past by finding and sharing inside information on particular people. In return, the journalists get access to a rich source of information which detective agencies necessarily are, given their resources for covertly tracking a wide range of people and activities. I was appalled and at a loss for words for a time. Then I found myself giving him a didactic lecture about journalistic ethics. In the end, I told him that I couldn’t and — more importantly — wouldn’t do what he asked.

I was thick-skinned enough to have the gall to call him up later to ask for a quote while doing a follow-up on my detective story — half expecting him to slam the phone down on me. I was pleasantly surprised to find a gentle and polite voice on the other end. Not only did he give me the quote — on condition of anonymity of course — but after the interview he told me that his respect for the profession of journalism had gone up a few notches after my refusal to help him. I wonder why the journalists who were supposedly stringing Niira Radia along couldn’t just tell her ”Sorry, Niira, can’t talk to anybody for you…but can we still have the facts please?”

No Quid Pro Quo
The deafening silence of journalists after the Niira Radia tapes exposed the involvement of their own clan has given way to a burst of angry responses from the community which prides itself on being the conscience-keeping fourth estate. Bengal’s Channel 10 hosted a panel discussion recently on the topic. Among those to have openly criticized the role played by journalists was Suman Chattopadhyay, editor of the Bengali daily Ekdin. Speaking to Outlook he said, “It’s almost certain that the motive of the journalists was neither money nor spectrum allotment. It wasn’t about corruption. No quid pro quo here. But neither do I buy the story that they were stringing the source along. Journalists, especially those who acquire a kind of celebrity status start suffering from what I can only term a psychic disorder where they start believing that they are larger than life and they start behaving like movers and shakers. It’s a huge ego massage when a lobbyist with connections in high places calls you up and asks you to speak to the most powerful politicians in the country in order to influence something as important as cabinet formation. It’s hard to resist the temptation and admit that it’s beyond the scope of one’s role as a journalist. And as far as stringing a source along is concerned…it’s extremely unethical and amoral to lie to the source and promise them something that you have no intentions of keeping. It’s against the tenets of journalism.”

Those Bengali Men
I nearly got lynched by my Bengali women friends for not giving a fitting reply to our eminent columnist Anvar Alikhan’s “10 reasons why you shouldn’t marry a Bengali woman.” So when he did it again a second time around, in the span of less than a year, I decided — if only for my own safety — that enough is enough. I invited some of my women friends — both Bengali and not-so-Bengali — to do the talking. As I wait for their replies here are a few of my own humble offerings based on my personal experiences on 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Marry a Bengali Man:

Half of them think they are Che Guevara. The other half know that they are.
In case you don’t believe it, they have Che Guevara T-shirts to prove it.
They have the hygiene of Che Guevara, when he was living in the jungles. They have to be told by their wives to go and have a bath. And then they crib about Bengali women being too domineering. So now when you see an item like “Bengali women nag” in columns called “10 reasons why you shouldn’t marry a Bengali woman” you will know why!
If they are not Che Guevara they must be either Ritwik Ghatak or Satyajit Ray. Preferably both.
They make films to try to prove it.
The Bengali man is the quintessential tragic hero. His motto is: “Amakey keo bujhlo na, Desh amakey chinlo na.” (I’m misunderstood. Not appreciated in my own time! )
They find it hard to tell their mothers that they’ve outgrown the multicoloured home-made sweaters that she knitted for them when they were in Class 8 and that fashion has moved on from then.
They claim they can cook. And they also set out to prove it. Only, when they are done with the kitchen…it looks like the site of a bomb blast.
Which is just as well…because all of them are wannabe rebels…what they wanna rebel against, however, is usually not very clear.
In Mr. Alikhan’s list of reasons why you shouldn’t marry a Bengali woman one item read, “She has cousins who yelled ‘Amaar bari, tomaar bari, Naxalbari, Naxalbari’ in the 1970s but now work for hedge funds in New York.” The Bengali men you shouldn’t marry are these cousins.

Those Sari Bound Books
When poet and publisher Prof. Purushottam Lal — better known as P.Lal —died last month, many wondered what will happen to his Writers Workshop. The Writers Workshop was started by Prof. Lal in 1958 to give Indian writers writing in English a chance to be published long before Indo-Anglian writing became a worldwide phenomenon. Long before anyone had ever heard of Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy.

He borrowed the garage of one of his good friends - who moved his car out and made way for the setting up of a printing press (which until very recently had been a hand-operated treadle machine). P.Lal personally read and edited each and every manuscript which he received. He also personally wrote out the titles and the chapter headings of each of the books in his own writing, using calligraphy.

The Writers Workshop books were distinct: slim, the covers bound with woven cotton saris. The first Writers Workshop book I have memories of is a book of poems by Bishnu Dey which the poet had gifted to my father. It used to be neatly tucked away in one of our bookshelves. Being an obsessive compulsive since a young age, I used to like to take out the books and dust them. In fact I had done most of my reading while dusting books. I used to be quite fascinated by the binding of this particular book, which looked like a neatly folded royal blue sari with a golden border.

The next recollection I have of Writers Workshop books is during the first year of college when two of my classmates Indrajit Hazra —who has since become a well-known author and journalist — and — Arnab Guha brought the collections of their own freshly published poems to class, perhaps in the vain hope that some of us will buy copies. Instead, most of us borrowed and never returned copies of these books and later made them sign the books as though they were gifts.

I just spoke to Prof. Lal’s family and I’m happy to hear that Writers Workshop will still continue. His son, Ananda Lal, who is a Professor of English at Calcutta’s Jadavpur University will go through and edit the manuscripts. His daughter, P.Lal’s granddaughter, Shuktara Lal will take care of the administrative side.

What, No Monkey Cap?
It’s still rather warm in Calcutta. Nevertheless an acquaintance turned up at a gathering wearing woolens, complete with a jacket, cap, socks and the customary home-made “muffler”. When everyone looked at him quizzically, he explained, simply, that it was December.