How could I have been so silly, my cousin's husband bemoaned. His 15-year-old car needed a fitness certificate so as to continue to pollute the atmosphere. He was not regretting seeking to use his ancient car after a sudden change of heart on the consequences of emitting loads of poisonous fumes. What bugged him was he had carelessly sought and taken a date for the test at the transport authorities' office in the heart of south Kolkata which coincided with the holding of a mega rally by the ruling party that would bring normal city life to a standstill. Even if he managed to take his car for the checking, would the staff be there despite the traffic dislocation?
Cities with the memory of a lived past take things that come their way in their own way. This showed up when the rally at Esplanade, literally in the heart of Kolkata, took life in the city to a different plane.
For a couple of days before the event, the papers carried stories on the preparation for the rally and detailed accounts of the roads along which several processions would move to converge at the rally spot. The sense was - you need better sense than to traverse any of those roads between late morning and late afternoon unless you wish to join a particular procession by default.
Most fascinating was a report on how a meal was being prepared at the city's largest stadium at Salt Lake for the thousands who would come in for the rally. Sorry, the menu would not have fish, leitmotif of local cuisine, but substitute egg curry. The real fun was in the factoid that over 100,000 eggs had been boiled and a small army of helpers, who could well have made up two football teams that regularly compete on the adjoining turf, were shelling them.
Come the rally day, an urgent early morning call to the wife brought the sense of the moment right within our home. The young manager confessed he had goofed up - scheduled a meeting late afternoon at their Park Circus office from whence would emerge one of the processions for the rally. This had the young team calling to find out how they would get to office by cutting across a procession or two. So would "Didi," their consultant, agree to have the meeting tomorrow? Of course she did but this had me wondering how a big rally day was halfway between a bandh (another Kolkata special) and a regular day in terms of life getting onto a different mode.
The rally went off on schedule and by early evening the city's streets returned to normal. Except that they didn't, if you remembered it to be a working day when home-bound traffic would clog important streets till well into the evening. I took my car out at 8 pm and found parts of the Eastern Bypass, the only important road which we were told would be left open to through traffic, look like Sunday evening. Obviously many had not taken their cars out in the morning itself.
The papers the next morning dutifully played up what the Supreme Leader, flanked by her nephew, the Supreme Leader in Waiting, had to say. The political substance of her speech dutifully touched upon the issues of the day. But those who know what to look for gave the headlines a goby and first looked at the picture (yes, a decent crowd) and went down the story for the all-important fact, the size of the gathering, to conclude that yes, 700,000 was okay.
The city has changed with a change of government but in its core it has not. Politics, qua politics, driven by ideological disputation that can take up any amount of time, giving the well-read a chance to show off their knowledge, has declined. But the accoutrements of politics have not. To make a political point you need more than speeches. You need bandhs and rallies - the measuring rods being, how complete is the bandh and how big is the rally.
If the city has not changed at the grassroots in its basics, it has not also done so at higher levels. The bench and bar alike of Calcutta High Court have turned down the proposal to rename it Kolkata High Court, in keeping with the grassroots politics-driven change in the city's name by the earlier regime, which continued to fight colonialism long after the colonies were gone.
The gentlemen (there are also a few women now) who argue their cases in English and get their orders in the same language and happily wear their ancient uniform of black gowns and other funny little things know their history and don't deny it. Not only is it the first high court to be set up in the country by the British, the jurisprudence followed is quintessentially so.
This is a part of the colonial legacy, the rule of law as handed down from the Romans to the British to us, which we have happily adopted, explained a legal knowledgeable. Hence, we don't want to change the name to deny the origins. After all, the city as we know it today was built by the British. Cheers to that, I can hear them say at the Calcutta (yes, not Kolkata) Club.
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