Kolkata Korner

A Ban Most Unfair
The monsoons are here in full force and just when we should be feasting onour favourite fish, the hilsa, disaster has come by. Bangladesh has banned theexport of the (oh so delectable!) hilsa caught from Padma river. This variety ofhilsa is, by far, the best and fills the yawning gap in supply of local hilsa inthe Bengal market. But with this ban, the prices of not only the common andnot-so-tasty hilsa from the Hooghly shot up, there’s a severe shortage of thefish in the market. And that’s nothing short of a catastrophe; its also veryunfair to us Bengalis who wait for the entire year to feast on this fish. Theban is also patently unfair: Bangladesh says the high demand for Padma’s hilsain West Bengal had put the fish out of reach for most in that country. Hence, itbanned exports to make it affordable to the common man in Bangladesh. This isnot a fair trade practice and India should make it very clear to Bangladesh thatif it wants the trade imbalance with India to be corrected, it had better liftthe ban. The best Alfonso mangoes of India are priced out of the reach of thecommon man here since they’re so much in demand in other countries. Does thatmean India would ban exports of this variety of mangoes? It is not that thecommon man in Bangladesh cannot do without hilsa from Padma; there are, I’msure, hilsa from other rivers in that country that the common people there canhave. And if not hilsa, there are many other fish available. Dhaka should betold that if it doesn’t resume exports of the premium hilsa, then it should beprepared to face import bans of other items it's so keen to export to India.After all, Bangladesh cannot have its hilsa and eat it too!

Saint So & So
A number of private schools have mushroomed in and around Kolkata over thepast one and half decade or so, mainly to cash in on the growing demand forEnglish education that just wasn’t available in government schools, thanks tothe Left’s earlier, ill-advised decision to ban English. Most of these privateschools have taken on Christian names and mindlessly affixed a ‘Saint’ totheir nomenclatures. That’s because they’ve wanted -- and quite oftensucceeded -- to pass themselves off as missionary schools. Over the past fewmonths, the association of Christian missionary and Anglo-Indian schools havecompiled a list of genuine missionary schools and submitted it to thegovernment. The government has promised to ensure that aid flows only to thosewhose names are on this list. As for the others who are nothing but impostersand, mostly, just commercial ventures, the government should order them to dropthe Saint-so-and-so names so that gullible folks are not misled. The names thatthese schools gave themselves were quite often hilarious. For, no such Christiansaints have ever existed. Heard of a St. Jones ever? A school in Salt Lake callsitself St Jones School. Another is named St. Gobain (yes, believe it or not)and, wait, here’s another in Burdwan that calls itself St. Merry. Another inSiliguri goes by the name of St Tony. What next? How about a St. Bush or, betterstill, a St. Buddha School to impart dubious education to the gullible kids ofignoramus parents?

The Bengal Tiger
There’s this CPI(M) leader in the Sunderbans who has consciously, overmany years, cultivated this image of being a tough and brutal man who brooks noopposition. That will till last week. Today, Subal Mali, the six foot,well-built secretary of the CPI(M)’s branch committee at Hingalgunj (inSunderbans) is a meek, subdued and humbled man. Because, last weekend, atiger--and the royal Bengal tiger, no less--crossed his path. Mali, whilereturning home after dusk from a party meeting, suddenly came face to face withthe seven-feet-long beast. And he fainted! The loud thud that emanated once hefell to the ground confused the tiger, who walked away. Mali regainedconsciousness an hour later and started groaning, when he was discovered lyingin a pitiable heap by the roadside. The ‘ferocious’ Marxist hasn’t beenable to hide his face in shame after that. And leaders and activists ofOpposition parties haven’t lost this opportunity of rubbing salt into Mali’swounded pride and ego. For all that roar, they are saying, Mali turned out to beworse than a lamb. A lamb would have bleated and tried to flee if confronted bya tiger or other beast. Mali didn’t have the guts to even shout, he justfainted! The Marxist cannot even derive consolation from the fact that histormentor has been captured; forest officials, knowing that a tiger would returnto a prey that it hasn’t touched, laid a trap for the animal. And the tigerreturned to the spot (where Mali fainted and fell) early next morning and walkedinto the trap. Last heard, Mali’s comrades are contending that they aren’tas faint-hearted. But they’re all carrying torches and sticks these days. Justin case.

Human Encroachers
But on a more serious note, tigers do kill and maim many in the Sunderbans everyyear. The people there are forever on their guard against tigers, especially thefisherfolk who camp in their boats at night and those who venture into the deepjungles to collect honey and firewood. After Mali’s humiliating encounter,local people have stepped up pressure on the forest department to hunt down alltigers in the Sunderbans. They’ve been holding demonstrations and have accusedthe administration of being indifferent to their sufferings. Tigers, theycontend, will keep on encroaching into human habitats and kill till they’renot rounded off and packed off to some zoological park or wildlife reserve. Butthis demand of the people of Sunderbans is totally unjustified. It is they whohave encroached into tigers’ habitat. And it is they who need to move out.Yes, they’re extremely poor people who have been driven by their excruciatingpoverty to venture into tiger territory and settle down there. But surely, thetigers aren’t at fault, so why blame the tigers? And why should tigers sufferloss of habitat because of humans? It would be better if the residents ofSunderbans--and all are illegal encroachers on forest land, anyway--arere-located to some place else. And they could also do with some family planning.

Gay City of Joy
Whatever Kolkata and its residents may be, they cannot be accused ofintolerance. A case in point is the Rainbow Pride March by the sexualminorities--lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transvestites (or the LGBTcommunity)--that has become an annual feature here. It started off in a smallway a few years ago and has now become the biggest and the oldest such publicmarch in India and, in fact, in South Asia. As in the past many years, thisyear, too, the march was organized last weekend and drew participants from otherparts of the country as well. Never have those curious onlookers who have beenlining the marchers’ route shouted obscenities, passed loud and derisiveremarks or tried in any way to disrupt it. Had this been any other city inIndia, the keepers of the people’s morals, like the wings of the Sangh parivar,would surely have denounced the event as "morally corrupt, un-Indian,anti-Hindu, Western-inspired" and much more. It has, at best, attracted someharmless mirth. Kolkata needs to maintain and uphold this spirit. I’m surethis city will not fail--the organizers of the march claimed at a mediaconference after the event that many ‘straight’ persons (meaningheterosexuals) participated in the march this year as a show of solidarity withtheir LGBT friends. That sure is a display of fine spirit and camaraderie.

Bad Manners
Now, it’s not me who’s saying this. I’m merely quoting a visitor fromEngland who stayed and worked in this city for a few months till last week. Hewrote a piece in the local newspaper he had worked for on his experiences inKolkata. Apart from a host of pleasant ones, he mentioned this shameful habitmost Kolkatans display of gawking at foreigners, especially the white-skinned.Any ‘white’ walking down any road in Kolkata would be stared at unabashedlyby practically everyone crossing him or her. This Englishman rightly said thatsuch behaviour is unbecoming of residents of a place that lays claim to being ametropolis. Gaping wide-eyed at strangers is something that’s expected ofpeople of some hamlet in, say, back of beyond Uttar Pradesh. Definitely notKolkata. Delhiites and Mumbaikars don’t do it. So why do we?

‘Curiocity’
The reason, my friends, is that we suffer from an unhealthy and unnaturalcuriosity. I see that on the buses, the trains and the metro every day. Trythis--take out your cellphone in a public area and write out a text message. I’msure you’ll find many nosy people craning their necks to see what exactly you’rekeying in. Start chatting with your companion on a public transport or place anda few others will invariably butt in. Even my stony silence and stern visagewhile traveling on public transport does little to ward off these intrepid nosyKolkatans. It seems people of this city have made it their business to know whateveryone else around them is doing. And that can be extremely irritating.