REAL-LIFE THRILLER

You may lose interest in Gobindapur Rail Colony saga because it's not going the way you thought. But that's how things work in real life.

As the general election is due early next year, the govt does not dare to evict the 30,000-strong population by force. Instead it decides to play humanitarian by giving them land for building their home. It would be kind of lease though, not ownership, and we don't really know if there is any other rider associated with this charity. It's good anyway.

The High Court also seems lenient. It does not mind that the colony folks have not given any written undertaking, as it ordered, within the given time and actually flouted its order. It now asks the colony people to give it in writing that they agree to the govt's rehabilitation proposal.

So the mood is that of a truce. Bad end for a thriller. But then it was a real-life one, and I can't twist it to my imagination.

REAL-LIFE THRILLER..

The thriller gets a twist, a bad twist indeed. Just when you're expecting mayhem and gore, the state government dangles a 10-acre plot of land near Nonadanga in South 24-parganas that it has identified for the rehabilitation of the squatters.

Not finalised yet, but in a day or two, the administration is going to say like "Over there now, folks. Leave immediately."

The squatters would be provided land for free, but they have to build their houses all by themselves.

Not too bad by govt's track record of dealing with such "disposable population". The minister says that he wants it to be bloodless eviction.

Well done and said, but can you call it rehabilitation?

And what would this eviction be like in real-time?

Forget that these people - as many as 30,000 - lived in this colony for five decades, no less, and would now have to move over to, and settle in a quite unknown land, far away from their places of livelihood.

REAL-LIFE THRILLER..cont

The deadline, Nov 30, is approaching fast, but there is no glimmer of hope for the squatters of Gobindapur Rail Colony.

The state government has not yet been able to find out the land for rehabilitation. One wonders if it's really serious about the rehab. Or is it buying time to distract the squatters before it orders its police to swoop on the colony?

A 30,000 people in a 50-year old settlement now lives with sense of foreboding 24x7. Imagine!

JUDICIARY AND THE POOR

Prasanta Bhushan ,the eminent lawyer and public intellectual, has this to say in an interview published in the Tehelka weekly dated 26/11/05.

"The judiciary is responsive to the middle and upper classes.. There has been a change since the PILs in the late 70s and early 80s when justice Krishna Iyer, Bhagwati, Chinappa Reddy wre there. The wheel has turned a great deal since. Now we don't find great responses especially in the higher courts, for the causes of the poor.

"Take for instance the removal of jhuggies. the court removed jhuggies in Delhi. When we petitioned that most of the land where the poor live will not be needed for any public purpose in the future and according to government's own policy, these colonies should not be regularised and civic amenities like water, sanitation, should be provided, the court didn't respond. That's how it's."

REAL-LIFE THRILLER ..cont

Keep your light on at the entrance of your house.

Don't sleep at night.

These are announcenents over the microphone that you hear at different points of the Gobindapur Rail Colony all through the day. Pointer to the fact that the squatters have no faith in the government's promise, and they in fact fear that the police might crack down on them any time now.

REAL-LIFE THRILLER ..Cont

Day 7. The deadline for giving written undertakings expired today. Surprisingly, the police did not get a single undertaking from the squatters during the seven-day period the High Court graced to the Gobindapur Rail Colony people.

Which means the squatters defied the court.

Which means the squatters are uniquely united in thier resolve.

But what next?

Would the state machinery be rolling now on the ground that the squatters did not comply with the High Court order?

There is confusion as well as apprehension.

Now it boils down to people versus powers-that-be.

Face to face. Eye to eye.

A historical moment.

Please wait to see what happens next.

REAL-LIFE THRILLER..cont

Day 6. A bit of anti-climax. The state seems to give in, and agrees to rehabilitate the squatters.

The Indian Express reports: For the squatters at the Gobindapur railway colony near Rabindra Sarovar, the State Government held out a ray of hope today. With 30,000-odd people facing eviction by the end of this month, the State Government has now statred looking for alternative land for their relocation.

This is in sharp contrast to its earlier stand that the State Government cannot provide for the rehabilitation of the squatters.

_________________________



Why is the volte-face? Ashok Bhattacharya, state minister for urban development, says that it's on humanitarian grounds that "we are arranging for their rehabilitation." Ha Ha.

The fact is that the state goes to general election next year, and considers it a bit risky to evict a population forcibly with any repressive measure. Though the leftists today no longer care about this poor mass, they're not too sure that the eviction would not reflect in the election result.

But could there be any design in this volte-face? Is the government playing any tricks with the squatters? A TV news-item says that the squatters are not really amused by the minister's announcement. They view it with suspicion, and demands the promises to be given to them in writing.

Anyway, the suspense still remains.

REAL-LIFE THRILLER..cont

Day 5. The squatters of Gobindapur Rail Colony, according to a Times Of India report, have set up "suicide squad" to confront the eviction army. The squad comprises of die-hard, women veterans who have seen and experienced many eviction battles before.

The report also reveals the plan of defence chalked out by the squatters' action committee.

There would be three rings of resistance on the day of eviction. The suicide brigade will form the first ring. Elderly male members and children would get together to set up the second ring. And the third ring would comprise of able-bodied members who would fight the real battle.

_________________________________________________________________--

If you look hard at the plan, it is found wanting. First, the suicide sqad here seems to be an indigenous kind,and can't be likened to a terrorists' outfit in terms of either ruthlessness or sophistication. I have doubt if it can thwart or push back the state forces any way.

Secondly, have the squatters any sophisticated weapons to fight back the state forces?

Of course, it would be an uneven battle, and the result can be foretold. The thing to watch is how the state handles the resistance, the extent of loss and damage of human lives and property, and its repercussion on public life and polity of a so-called democratic country.

Comment on this post..

REAL-LIFE THRILLER/3

Day 4: Protest rally - some 1000 people (mostly children) took part. When intercepted by the police, they sat on the road for sometime and then dispersed.

The protest was free of any violent streak. But the mood at the squatters' colony was of resolute defiance. Not a single person registered with the police, showing his willingness to leave the colony on his own.

Meanwhile, representatives of Kolkata police, Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Eastern Railway, CESC and Railway go into a huddle to thrash out details of the eviction drive.

---------------------

According to an estimate, the amount of land needed to rehabilitate the 30,000 squatters is only ten acres. While the state government is at the moment busy finding out 500-plus acres of land for the Indonesia-based Salim group of industries, it does not care a bit to offer as little as ten acres for its own people. What a shift in attitude of our Marxist rulers!

MRINAL BOSE

REAL-LIFE THRILLER (2)

The squatters of Gobindapur Rail Colony stayed mute for one day, perhaps absorbing the shock of the High Court order, and deciding the next course of action.

On day 3, they started dharna in nine places along the tracks between Tollygung and Dhakuria flyover by erecting makeshift stages. They demanded rehabilitation before eviction. They urged the state government to provide them land for a considered price.

"The Central government has several schemes under which residences could be constucted for us. We have urged the state government to provide us land and we would pay the amount for the land within a period of five years, but it has fallen on deaf ears. However, we will fight till the end."
MRINAL BOSE

A Real-life Thriller

Gobindapur Rail Colony, with its 30,000 population and its ongoing dynamics, could - should - have been a good theme for a novel. If you don't want to write it as a literary fiction (It's not cool in today's market), you can write a thriller out of it.

The colony is dangerously stretched along a rail line. And the people have been living here for about five decades. If you ever board a south suburban train from Sealdah, you cannot miss them doing their daily chores - washing, cooking, eating, shitting, pissing - in the ghastly environs by the railway tracts. Because of the speed of the train, it's not possible to scan the whole scenario, still you feel like puking from your seat. But they look kind of settled in their own ways.

Now they face eviction, thanks to a Kolkata High Court order. They have only two weeks to leave with their belongings. Or their shanties will be demolished by the state machinery.

What's wrong with them? They're polluting the Rabindra Sarobar lake, and its surroundings, according to a PIL lodged with the High Court quite a while ago. The High Court has since then been directing the government to remove the population elsewhere. It being a sensitive issue, the Government was sitting on orders issued at different times. But the High Court now comes up with the final order for the squatters: leave or take the heat.

The order sets off the tension necessary for the thriller. Five top police officers, all ACPs, have now parked themselves in the colony to convince the sqatters to leave the place without any fuss. They're actually registering the names of those willing to leave on their own. Interstingly, not a single man comes up to them for registration. Instead, they're all united, firm in their determination to stick in here come what may, and ready to fight the state with the ordinary weapons they have in their posession. (A TV channel shows the womenfolk of the colony armed with bati, da, khunti, and vowing to fight to the last drop of their blood.)

So, there would be battle and bloodbath. Don't try to read any sub-text here. That would spoil the fun and excitement out of it. Enjoy! I'll be reporting on the run-up to the day of demolition on a regular basis. But are you interested?
MRINAL BOSE

HARRY POTTER BUSTS

I read today that 2.5 millon Harry Potter books are biting dust in bookshops and warehouses across US.

Is not that strange, given the stupendous hype that went with the publication of each Harry Potter book?

But I'm personally delighted. I have never been able to accept an insignificant author taking centrestage.

In fact, some four months back, I wrote an article attacking the Harry Potter mania in my column at

ViewsUnplugged

Mrinal Bose

WHY IS ARUNDHATI ROY DIFFERENT?

Reading or listening to Arundhati Roy is always a learning experience for me. And hugely satisfying intellectually. Of course, I share her world view, but what amazes me about her is her way of thinking. She can think in a whole new way, without any allegiance to any body or thing or whatever.

The following are some quotes from an exclusive interview published in the Tehelka magazine dated 05.11.05.

** In India, we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism - it's a deadly cocktail.

** To expose things is quite different from being able to effectively resist things. I am more interested now in whether there are new stategies of resistance.

** Somebody like me runs a serious risk of thinking that I'm more important than I actually am.. whereas actually is it or is it not? It's a difficult call.

**Fame is also a gruesome kind of capitalism, you can accumulate it, bank it, live off it. But it can suffocate you, block off the blood vessels to your brain, isolate you, make you lose touch. It pushes you up to the surface and you forget how to keep your ear to the ground.

**There is the danger,especially for a writer of fiction, that you can become somebody who does what is expected of you.

**Money is like nuclear waste. What you do with it, where you dump it, what problems it creates, what it changes, these are incredibly complicated things.

** Success is so tinny and boring. Everyone is promoting themselves hard.

** Giving money away is dangerous and complicated and in some ways are against my political beliefs - I do not subscibe to the politicas of good intentions - but what do I do? Sit on it and accumulate more? ..It's a peculiar problem, this problem of excess, and it's embarassing to even talk about it in a land of so much pain and poverty.

**People, ideologues who believe in a kind of redemption, a perfect and ultimate society, are terrifying. The idea of perfection has often been a precursor to genocide.

MRINAL BOSE

"FAKE SUPERPOWER"

The media is obsessed with a fake, false India. We cater to urban audience..but to believe that urban India is disinterested in the rest of India is the easy way out. If they're disinterested, we have to force them to be interested.. one of the most important roles of the media is to monitor public ferformances, be a kind of audit. Forty per cent Indians earn less than a dollar a day. One has to constantly hammer home this point that we're a fake superpower.

This is Vinod Mehta, arguably India's best newspaper editor, who has got integrity, tastes and openness in an interview with Tehelka on completion of ten years of OUTLOOK.

The iconic editor has a reputation for fighting with proprietors and leaving publictions. He seems to be going along well with the present proprietor.
MRINAL BOSE

When you're fifty, you have certainly known the world - most of it, if not in full.

In my case, I'm more comfortable with the world at this point with my knowledge and insight into its ways that I've acquired this long. I think I can live the rest of my life in a more informed and organized way.

But the idea of death scares me. Why must a man die? Why is life so short?

Akhtaruzzaman Ilius, an outstanding Bangladeshi novelist, once told in an interview that he would like to live three hundred years to complete his literary aspirations.

He was right, and indeed gave voice to what I find myself thinking these days.

Unfortunately, he died a few years ago when he was not yet eighty.
MRINAL BOSE

RUSHDIE"S NEW TAKE ON NOVEL

As the world has gone on in the last quarter century, it has shrunk. Part of that is communication, part of that is mass migration, part of that is economic globalisation, and yes, part of that is international terrorism. For a combination of all these reasons, our societies in different parts of the world bleed into each other, sometimes literally, to a much greater degree than was ever the case. So my stories have turned into these strange stories where to understand one bit of the world, you have to understand another bit of the world. In a way, it goes against the grain of the novel. The novel has something provincial in nature. The novel wants to be put in a small town with a couple of merchants and an unfaithful wife and tell the story. But the world ain't like that. Now you must put together a story that operates in many cultures and you must put those pieces of jigsaw together.

Yes, you guess it right: it's Salman Rushdie in an interview with the Times Of India dated October 16, 2005.

What does he mean actually? He has been talking like this post-9/11 for quite a while. I can't quite grasp his message. Is it an ostentatious excuse for the kind of novels that he's writing these days?

Is Shalimar the Clown a great novel?

MRINAL BOSE

DOCTORS IN A CAR

1962. I was working as epidemic officer in the Calcutta Corporation. Salary one hundred and seventy five rupees. I supplemented this income by assisting Dr. Davis, the legendary psychiatrist. He gave me eighty rupees. I had my own practice in the evening, but on most days I had no patient. Five members to feed with two hundred fifty five rupees!

The young doctor in the rear seat, a bit tipsy, was babbling with a colleague, equally tipsy, and did not so long care to note that an elderly physician, in his end-sixties, was talking loquaciously about a time long buried in history. He was seated in the front seat next to another elderly colleague.

What was your fees around that time?

The young doctor asked him curiously. And he felt very smart after asking the question. Actually, he had drunk two pergs of Vodka just a while ago in the doctors' meet (they call it continuing medical education)at Park hotel. And it had begun to kick, in a very unpleasant way.

There was not really any fee at that time. We gave them salicylate mixtures, you know, and sulpha drugs. Only occasionally some patients offered fees..Two rupees!

What's your current fee?

Just one hundred. And two hundred fifty for home visit. But I have a separate rule for my slum patients. I take from them whatever they can afford. Ten, twenty, thirty whatever..

That's the rule of the game. the young doctor commented. Actually, he was having a heavy, vertiginous head right now. Oh, vodka! he actually didn't want to take it, but some colleagues, then those pharmaceutical guys prodded him so much ..

I've a feeling for these poor slum patients. They were the first to come to my clinic for treatment. The sophisticated patients came much later when I'm already a name in the locality. I'm grateful to my slum patients, they gave me the first recognition.

The young doctor liked the tone of his senior colleague. He tried to have a full view of him, but could only see him partially. The baldness of his head, however, loomed so clear in the street light. He seemed to have a solid body. What exactly would he look like?

I need to go to a toilet, said the doctor before the young one. My bladder is full.

I also need to. The vodka, you know.

But I took whisky. Only two pegs. Do you see any abnormality in me?

Yes, you have got a flushed face, and your speech is slurred.

What the hell. But tell me is there any point in coming in here if you don't drink?

Right you're.

But I've got a nasty wife. She will make a hell of it if she can smell it.

Suddenly, the young doctor shouted, stop the car. We need to piss.
He felt smart one again uttering this.

But there's no toilet here. There's one at the VIP road crossing.

But they made the driver stop the car. They got out of theit seats, and stood unzipping before a deserted suburbian landscape still preserving some nature.

When they returned to their seats, the elderly doctor was still talking.

Think of those times. We had only penicillin to treat. And we prescribed it for every ailment. Then came tetracycline. I was personally thrilled. But when amoxycillin came up, I hand kind of feeling that I could cure anything and anybody. But it didn't take a long time for disillusionment to set in. Do any of you write amoxycillin these days?

Nobody replied. The young doctor tried to say something, but he was now thinking if he could get out of the car when it would stop before his apartment. His wife had repeatedly advised him not to take drinks. But he knew he would not heed her advice. What's so wrong about it if he gets a little drunk on such occasions? He wanted to liberate himself of drudgery of dailiness.

Please, stop here. The old doctor now said to the driver. I would get down here.

They all saw him now. Average height. Solid built. And a kind of simplicity sitting on his face.

Did he drink in the party?

Could one talk like this in a normal state of mind?

MRINAL BOSE

KHONJ KHABAR

A ransacked house, its huge solid gate broken, members in shock, things scattered all over.

Handiwork of a criminal-turned-promoter. He reacts this way when the owner of the house refuses to sell the old house.

The police registers a FIR, but tampers it. It calls in the criminal concerned, but the criminal threatens the house-owner in the very presence of the police. And he's let off after an hour.

The family cowers in anticipation of further backlash.

Enters the Khonj Khabarteam at this point, and camps near the house. It's past midnight, and the posh area seems to be in deep slumber, forget its empathy for the targeted famliy.

The investigation team interviews the landlord, talks to its members, and records its experiences in police station. Then it catches the promoter who's passing by it on a motorbike. The viewers get an intrepid reporter firing off questions, and putting the criminal in a tight spot.

The reporter now enters the police station, and asks the officer why the crimal has been late off. The officer fumbles.

The next thing is to ask the top honchos of the party by which the crimainal swears.

And finally, a message from the anchor, Dibyajyoti Bose,(incidentally, the propietor of the hugely popular TV show on AKASH a Bengali channel.

And what's the message?

Something along this line: get united to fight this criminal. He may not be at your door at the moment, but mind that you're equally vulnerable as the current victim. You'll always find us stand by you.

MRINAL BOSE







Enters Khonj Khabar

His novels pour by in a sparkling, voracious onrush, each wave topped with foam, each paragraph luxurious and delicious, but the net effect is perilously close to stultification.

John Updike reviews Salman Rushdie's just published novel in New Yorker

Shalimer the clown

Our lives are going to be greatly downscaled and are going to be profoundly local and the larger things in our lives are going to fade away.

Author and journalist James Howard Kunstler speaks out in a thought-provoking interview.

James Howard Kunstler

FICTION IS DEAD?

So says V.S.Naipaul. Somehow I've missed the news. I learn it from a Jug Surya article in TOI. (TOI is these days through content change - from the trivial to the serious).

Naipaul says that readers no longer want to read made-up stories about made-up people. What they want are true stories about the real people involved - suicide bombers, inflammatory mullahs, or the political patrons of terror.

Coming as it does from one of the great writers I admire, I was stupmed at first, but soon it dawns on me that it's an angst triggered by craps that flood the market, thanks to our publishing industry.

In a retrograde way, suicide bombers and their ilk dominate today's world. It's just natural people are interested in them. I don't see any major digression in the readers' shift of interest. As a writer it's our job to depict these creatures in their true colour and shade.

I don't think the fiction is, or will be, dead anyday. But the fiction writer needs a new focus today - specially about things he
was going to write.

MRINAL BOSE

THE DE VINCI CODE

The one thing about the book is that it's easy to read. Mary Magdalene and related stuff make it meaty, and one likes to read about the new interpretations of some works of Leornado De Vinci, the great artist. Dan Brown's take on the church also seems courageous.

But the flip side is that it is a thriller at its core, and has no serious intention of enlightening the readers. As you read through the last pages(where the banal meets the juvenile), you feel it's another sensational crap that will vanish in, say, a couple of years.

I wonder if Dan Brown could have worked it out some other way.
MRINAL BOSE

JEAN LUC GODARD

Saw Godard's BREATHLESS on computer last night. The film is about love between a crook and a failed artist. Perhaps the heroine never knew about his real self when she fell in love with the smart hero. And when she did, she had inevitably suffered the conflicts, but she was carrying his baby then. So she continued and even got to be his accomplice.

But oneday she got enough of it, and called in the cops. The cops shot him when he was on the run. "You're a scum-bag," says the dying hero to the heroine who came to look after him.

A wonderful love story told by a master film-maker. No noisy scene. Consummate dialogue. And how marvellous images!
MRINAL BOSE

41 DEGREE AND STILL RISING

An increasingly terrible heat wave grips Bengal these days. While the higher temerature hovers above 40 - it soars to anything between 46 and 50 in the districts - the lower temperature is always 2/3 celsius above normal. So you're never really free of heat even in late hours of night when the earth is supposed to be cool.

Last night I experienced two kinds of air, one scalding hot and another comfortably cool coming through the window. When the hot air hit me, I fretted in torment. But the cool air soothed my body soonafter, though just for an instant. Caught in such a weather, I slept badly.

The monsoon comes in Bengal on June 8 every year. According to weather pundits, it will be hitting late this time - by as many as ten days. If they were true(in most predictions, they prove themselves wrong), the heat wave is going to take its toll. Only yesterday, it claimed about ten lives, according to a TV channel.

Never before in my life, I've been so much bothered about the heat wave.
MRINAL BOSE

REFORM?

India is on reform path, they say. As part of its second phase, the Monmohon Singh Government recently disinvested ten per cent of BHEL, a profitable and money-making public concern.

It's difficult not to be amazed by such a venture in the name of reform, but they point out that the proceeds from this investment will be used in fields of health, education, and revival of sick public organisations.

The motive seems fine, but is suspect at the same time. First, it's impossible to track down the proceeds. Since the government is disinvesting it in the form of public shares, you never know the exact amount it gets out of the investment. Secondly, it will never tell you how it is spending the money in different fields. Besides, health and education have already been privatised in a big way, and no government these days is really keen on spending on these areas which do not bring revenues for it.

About the revival of sick public units, any kind of investment will end up benifiting some dubious industrialists for a favor of course.

So, who will be the ultimate beneficiaries? Not the masses, but the power-that-be that handles it.

Reform, under the circumstances, becomes a mockery. It will be a dirty word in a not-so-long time.
MRINAL BOSE

STRONG STORY BUT..

"I have recently managed to take a look at your manuscript The Dangling Man. I did enjoy reading it and passed it to another reader for a second opinion. Unfortunately, they were not altogether keen, and I'm afraid that on balance we are going to have to pass. It is a strong story based on a believable character, but it's not the sort of thing we are looking for at present.."

The letter is written to me by Alban Miles, an editor of Random House,UK.

MRINAL BOSE

BAUDOLINO

An Umberto Eco novel. The first few pages I had to struggle so much with, that I had doubt if I could finish it. But then I began to like Baudolino, the protagonist.

This novel is about kings, wars, civilizations, religions set in ancient world. Who cares about these things, I told myself. But Eco's style attracted me, and I found him more and more readable. I liked such phrases as "He would shit in his pants" "The heat cooked his buttock".

But I have still to figure out why Eco wrote down the novel at all. No big story. Plenty of dud philosophy. Sometimes it feels like an adventure story. But what is the insight of it all? Does it make any sense?

I'm still continuing with the novel: one chapter each day. Let us hope I would get at its worthiness after I go through it.
MRINAL BOSE

FOR GOOD JOURNALISM?

Rajdeep Sardesai, the star reporter of NDTV, a well-known Indian 24-hour news channel, has left it to get his own news channel. He says he has to do it for the sake of good journalism.

Why an explanation?

These days new TV channels are coming up almost every month. They are plain clones of the existing ones with nothing new to offer. It looks like starting a TV channel is the simplest job today, and you can do it if you have money, and a little connection.

Some time ago Rajat Sharma, a newspaper journalist-turned-TV-personality, came up with his own channel called India TV. Dull and limping ever since its inception, it is now trying to thrive on tasteless sleazy stories involving film stars and politicians.

Of course, Rajdeep is different: he is a solid and savvy reporter who can hook up audience with his sharp and bold take on any event or politician. But can he play the same role when he has to function as the owner of a channel as well?
MRINAL BOSE

BENGALI NEW YEAR

It's the first day of the new Bengali year 1412. Although few Bengalis really care about this calender - more so in these days of globalisation - they would celebrate it anyway if only as a statement of their identity on the world map.

Each and every Bengali channel - there are so many nowadays, and the list is growing each day - comes up with its fare comprising of familiar faces from the world of Bengali music, film and even literature. Not that all these programmes are good, but they are somehow watchable because of their presentation, sanctimonious though, of Bengali culture which had once upon a time a distinct quality.

Like everything, the Bengali culture is also in the process of being cannibalised by globalisation these days. Today, it's difficult to distinguish Bengalis from other communities. Bengalis are no longer proud of its rich and clourful tradition.

It's just on this day that they like to call themselves Bengali.

MRINAL BOSE

SOMNATH OR MANABI

Somnath was handsome, fair, intelligent, educated (a college teacher, no less), cultured with tastes in literature and music, and a relentless fighter for his transexual identity. But the society, Bengali society in this case, looked upon him as kind of fun, but put up with his life style in its liberal way.

But all hell broke loose when he changed to Manabi, a female, with medical help. Her college refused to allow him to teach. Logic: it recruited a male, not a female, for the post. Her landlord ordered her to vacate. Logic: she would vitiate the milieu.

But Manabi, being true to her conviction, went ahead, and now married a young man called Abhijit Pahari, and began to live like a Bengali woman. Her dresses and make-up were meticulous, and you can hardly tell she was not a natural woman.

But the saga apparently ends on a sorry note. Abhijit has fled, and she is left in the lurch.

A Bengali TV channel recently telecast the episode in two instalments. My heart goes out to this fellow, and I find myself sympathising her. But she needs to be more circumspect and practical now.

MRINAL BOSE

PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Remember Paul Wolfowitz? Former deputy defence secretary of George W. Bush? Of course, he is best known as the prime architect of Iraq invasion. Now this fellow is going to be the next president of World Bank. He's Bush's choice, and Bush can only choose according to his own tastes and sensibilities.

Wolfowitz is a hard-headed hawk who is responsible for shaping the neoconservative policy of imposing American hegemony in a unipolar world. No wonder the European Union has grudging support to this appointment.

The World Bank, already a hate figure, especially in thirld world countries, is expected to wreak a fresh bout of havoc with Wolfowitz as its chief.
MRINAL BOSE

FOR GOOD JOURNALISM'S SAKE?

Rajdeep Sardesai, the most visible of Indian TV reporters, has left Pranoy Roy's NDTV to get his own news channel. He says he has to do it for the sake of good journalism.

Why an explanation? These days, new channels are coming up almost every month and most of them are simply boring clones of the existing ones. It looks like anybody can get a TV channel if he has some money.

It has been quite a while that Rajat Sharma, a newspaper journalist-turned -TV reporter, had his own news channel called India TV. Plain, without any new or novel idea, limping ever since its very inception, it is now trying to thrive on all kinds of tasteless sleazy stories.

Of course, Rajdeep is a solid and savvy reporter who can hook up audience with his bold and open take on anything and anybody. But can he remain the same when he would also have to pursue the business side of his channel as its owner?
MRINAL BOSE

US DENIES VISA TO MODI

These days the US denies visas to Indian citizens at random, and quite arbitrarily. So when I heard the news of Narendra Modi, the Gujrat chief minister, being refused visa, I wondered if it was the extension of the same process. But Modi, his notoriety notwithstanding, is a well-known poltical persona. How could he treated on par with ordinary Indians like us? The US embassy comes forth with the reason: Modi violated religious freedom, whatever it means.

I have ambivalent reaction to this episode. First, I've a problem in accepting US's high moralistic posture. Look at its doings the world over, Iraq in particular: it has systematically demolished nations, cultures, civilizations, populations without a care for world opinion. Can it take action against Modi on atrocities it's itself accused of, on a larger scale?

But then I'm a bit amused too. Despite his heinous act, Modi has not yet been dumped by either the people or the history. The US's action is a step to that end, though in a farcical way.
MRINAL BOSE

PRO-ACTIVE SUPREME COURT

Indian democracy is ailing and in grave condition now. As if to save its disgraceful death, the Supreme Court, India's highest judiciary, now directs the Jharkand Governor to hold majority floor test on 11th in stead of stipulated 15th.

The Sonia Gandhi government takes exception to this order, and raises questions about the jurisdiction of the court. One is surprised by Lok Sabha speaker's criticism of the court. But this is how the powers-that-be behave when it is not co-opted by the judiciary.

The governor, however, organised the test in accordance with the court's order. But it proves to be another excercise in flouting the order in a calculated manner. The legislators, surely of the Shibu Soren camp, created ruckus every time the speaker stared on its agenda, and an adjounament followed. After three adjounments, the speaker fixed the test on the 15th in an open vindication of the governor's earlier decision.

But the scenario takes an unexpected twist in late evening. Shibu Soren submits resignation as chief minister to Governor, and his opponent is being called to prove his majority.

Of course at the behest of who else but madam Sonia. But democracy is already mauled, and this is no redemption.

Can you discern that the history is now repeating itself?
MRINAL BOSE

DEMOCRACY'S BAD DAY

An interesting thing about India is that every politician here swears by democracy, but few really practise it. The current example is the action of Syed Sibtey Razi, the governor of Jharkand, who asked Shibu Soren, an ally of the government in power to form a government ignoring the NDA alliance which had already proved his majority status. His logic: he had stability factor in his mind, not the numbers. What a way to subvert democracy!

But surely it could not be the governor's personal decision. He's a known Congressman, a long-time faithful to Gandhi family, and has been awarded the Governorship just because of his closeness to Mrs. Sinia Gandhi. Obviously, he acted as his master prompted. The idea was to instal the pro-Congress government in a hurry, and thus allow it some time to buy some independent legistators so it could prove its majority in time on the floor of the assembly.

But the action has backfired now. The Bharatiya Janata Party, in an unbelievable show, had assembled all of its 41 supporting legistators in Delhi and paraded them before the President. It asked the President to take action against the governor, and instal the deserving party in power.

You perhaps know that the President did not take any action against the erring governor and just asked him to advance the date when Shibu Soren was to prove his majority on the floor.
MRINAL BOSE

TASLIMA CAUGHT IN DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy has no sense of respect for a writer. In a strange way, it now connects Taslima Nasreen with Anup Chetia, a dreaded ULFA leader who has fled to Bangladesh, and has since been living in there.

India wants Anup back. And Bangladesh does not want Taslima, its bete-noire, to live in India. Now these two things have been linked. Deport Anup, or we would let Taslima live here, is the dangling message of the Indian government to Bangladesh.

But Anup enjoys the support of some human rights groups of Bangladesh, who fear that India would hang the political dissident in case he is deported. Interestingly, Dacca High Court also asks the Bangladesh Government why it would not give political asylum to Anup Chetia.

So it's knotty issue now. And there's little chance of Taslima getting citizenship or permanent resident permit any time soon.
MRINAL BOSE

TASLIMA SEEKS HOME

The world should be home for a post-modern writer. But not in Taslima's case. The exiled Bangladeshi writer, having lived in Europe for over a decade, is now seeking a permanent residence in Kolkata, and has recently applied for Indian citizenship.

She says that since she writes in Bengali, it would help her to live in a place where she could hear and speak the language. Bangladesh would not take her back, so Kolkata is her option.

Of course a justified ground, and it makes a lot of sense. But one reads in it a tinge of desperation as well.

Taslima, it seems, has never felt comfortable in Europe. She has failed to adapt herself to the alien milieu. Also,she has not learnt much out of it except in dresses.

She is no longer in her once-attractive shape. Much thinner, somewhat fading, she has of course left hehind her best creative years.

She's welcome to Kolkata, but being the kind of essentially a naive person, she may not find the city as suitable for her writing life.
MRINAL BOSE

KIM JONG-II

His face has always aroused me a curiosity: is it original or a caricature by some comic-book artist? Round, flabby, all Mongolian features, but with some added element that makes it somewhat unreal. There is a hint of ruthlessness if you look at it closely.

They say he's a communist dictator(a term in contradiction). But he has real balls. Consider his foreign ministry's recent statement: We have manufactured nukes to cope with Bush adminstation's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Reminds me of Cuba's Fidel Castro, another challenger to George W. Bush. But Castro is a revered figure, and has the proven ability to scare off Bush and Co.

I wonder if Kim Jong-II has as much guts and intellect to fight the superpower.
MRINAL BOSE

LAST DAYS OF MONARCHY?

In a fashion typical of a monarch, King Gyanendra has taken full charge of Nepal. With censorship on media, shut telephones, and jammed internet lines, he has already had done his initial dispensation of authoritarianism. Now it's time for the crackdown on the dissidents and the opposition.

There comes a report of the Royal Nepal Army having used chopper fire from the air on student protesters in the tourist town of Pokhra.The students were from Prithvi Narayan College who assembled in the campus to protest the Feb 1 proclamation by the king. Exact casulties is not known. The army has picked up between 200 and 250 students from the college hostel, and have taken them to the barracks.

In the days to come, Nepal will see more of such atrocities and mayhem. There might be more bloodshed than we can think of. The Maoists are a formidable force in Nepal, and they will of course take this opportunity of consolidating their strength, and attacking the monarchy with new vigour.

Is this the beginning of the end of Nepal monarchy?
MRINAL BOSE

GUNTER GRASS

"On the one hand, there is a landing on the moon and on the other, we haven't been able to feed all the people on the earth." This is Gunter Grass, the Nobel laureate writer, speaking in a recent discussion held in Kolkata organised by Max Muller Bhaban and the the Telegraph.

I've been a Grass fan ever since I read his Tin Drum. Oscar was such a loveable character, and he captivated me completely. But what was strange for me, I never felt inclined to read any of his other works. Somehow I knew Tin Drum is his best work, and he would never ever able to write anything better than this.

But I've kept following Grass through his other activities. Grass is an activist writer, and incredibly vocal against any kind of injustice anywhere is the world. He calls George W. Bush a war-criminal, and calls for resistance to single-power domination to gain an equal footing in negotiation.

But he's not a leftist either. " The leftists are taking us nowhere, but we need them because they talk about poverty," he said in an interview recently.

Gunter Grass is now in Kolkata, the city to which he has been mentally attached for a long time.
MRINAL BOSE

THE TOWN BY THE SEA

This's the title of a wonderful essay on post-Tsunami human condition in Andaman and Nicobar by Amitav Ghosh published in Tehelka weekly dated January 22.

Ghosh tells us about three ravaged souls: Obed Tera, a naik in the 10th Madras Regiment of the Indian army, who has not only lost his house, but also his uniform, his ration card, his service card, and is now not in a position to report to his job; Paramjeet Kaur, a Sikh woman, who has got her house and possession, the result of thirty years of hard work, washed away in an instant, and now wants to go back to her ancestral home in Punjab; and an unnamed director of the island's Malaria Research Centre, who gets his wife and daughter killed by the wave while he was away, and now searches them frantically among the debris.

Ghosh writes,"Listening to their stories it is easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: here, in this far-flung chain of islands, tens of thousands of settlers were able to make their way out of poverty, into the ranks of country's expanding middle class. But on the morning of December 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle class is to be kept afloat on a life-raft of paper:identity cards,cheque books,certificates of life insurance and receipts of fixed deposit. It was the particular nature of the disaster that it targeted not just the physical being of the victims but also the proof of the survivors' identities."

A great piece of writing. The narrative of the director who in the end chooses to pick up some laboratory slides as the only memento of his past is really touching, and beats fiction.
MRINAL BOSE

VULTURES

They are human vultures, if you allow me to say so. And in Tsunami-ravaged parts of India they're on the prowl for feasting on orphaned children and widowed women, according to a news report published in the STATESMAN of Kolkata.

Natural calamities always are windfall to some. The Tsunami would help many people, especially those in the administration involved in relief and rehabilation programme, to siphon off money from the somewhat unaccounted fund and make them rich. The politicians of different hues will try to get an extra mileage out of their so-called "service". These are given, and you have nothing much to say about these things.

But the middle men preying on the hapless women and children, at this time of devastation and death, are a new phenomenon. Why would the sex industry would let go of this opportunity, one may argue. How could the paedophiles resist such a bounty?

The bottomline: the civilization sinks to a new low, hang your head in shame.
MRINAL BOSE

TSUNAMI, 2004

The Tsunami seems to have a predilection for Asia. Consider the earlier tsunamis that happened. They hit Papua New Guinea(1998), Indonesia(1992)and Japan(1993).

The december 26 Tsunami is perhaps the worst of all, in terms of magnitude and effect, killing about two lakhs Asians across a vast strech of South Asia.

Though I'm not a direct victim of this calamity, it had an overwhelming impact on me, and I found myself wailing for the hapless masses who were caught in it.

Read my column in viewunplugged.com at

http://www.viewsunplugged.com/VU/20050106/mrinalBose_tsunami.shtml

MRINAL BOSE