Time was when the sari meant marriage - perhaps to the girl of your dreams, or the chhoto bou's sister your mother found suitable enough to bring to the bari. Today, the sari represents nothing more than a symbol of disillusionment. It is spoken of derisively because it stands for an authoritarian but helpless state leadership that has done nothing to stem the tide of migration of young people to Delhi and Mumbai. The government's poriborton has proved illusory. "Dada, it was the worst of times earlier," poses a scholar, "but it is worse now." One thing about Bengali intellectuals - they don't pander to their soul with less than the finest scotch.
The gari, of course, is everywhere. Despite the gloom of Kolkata's roads choked with its ubiquitous yellow -topped Ambassadors, aspirations have brought a range of India's automotive power to Bengal's doorstep. But wealth sits uneasily on the Kolkatan's shoulders weary with carrying the cerebral burden of society. She practices hedonism like a penance, unlike her sisters from the other metros who flaunt their memberships to the luxury club. The bhadralok Bengali is torn between showing off more than her father's Oxford connections but unable to come to terms with spending a fortune on labels. It is this cusp that makes her snap. "It doesn't suit you," a bindi-sporting, chain-smoking mahila puts down a bright young thing basking in the glow of a Fendi bag. It is a thoughtless attack, but the young generation is no longer meek. "It's real," she snipes back, "unlike your fake hypocrisy." Later, she shares with me that her antagonist is a closet brand junkie who airs her bags and shoes when abroad, but styles her crushed cotton look for the bonhomie it builds within a charmed Kolkata circle. I suppose happy Indian shoppers are all alike, but unhappy Kolkatan shoppers are unhappy in their own way.
Nothing, though, fires the Bengali appetite - more even than argumentative discussion - than food. Amid conversations that keep returning to the survival of Bengal, groaning tables greet diners laden with ranna. Great quantities of prawns, fish - from the Hooghly or the Padma, who but the Bengali cares? - mutton and chicken, family recipes for dal and strange shrubs and leaves that taste heavenly, gut-fattening desserts, academic stimulation meets gastric submission in a quiet resolution of differences. You'd think that mangsho jhol would be a panacea for sleep, but a friend who knows I'm in town insists I should visit him instead of returning to my hotel. "It's midnight," I remind him. "That's okay," he says, after confirming with his wife that the victuals to entertain a guest are in supply, "we can have rum and butter-toast."