Arindam Mukherjee's Blog
November 13, 2013
Of outsourcing, scams etc.
NOTE: I can’t be held responsible for what I write. Everything is somebody else’s fault ;-)
Back in the sixties some foreign language trained Americans could swallow their accent and manage to speak without spitting on your face. With difficulty. The successful ones would then get inside the erstwhile Soviet Union and spend time and tax-money to fathom how a decrepit nation like that could harbour global ambitions. They took more than forty years but did not understand shit about it anyway. This act of controlled spitting on the streets of Moscow as they wondered about stuffs that their brains were clearly unequipped to handle – they called the Cold War. I mean, Russia is cold, and Americans love war. So.
Anyway, this racket survived till the USSR collapsed; and the Yankee-spies-on-speech-and-diet went back to gorge on triple cheese burgers and cola quickly afterwards.
Soon enough the White House found two new bogeymen. Islam and China. But neither the Chinese nor Asian Muslims looked like East Europeans. How to play spy games? How to infiltrate undetected? Seriously, I can’t look like a French or an Italian and pretend to be a Chinese, can I? Mr. Bean can. I can not. So how could I fool someone’s wife in the dark if I didn’t remotely look like that someone?
The scam was simple. Find out a chum that looked like the particular wife’s husband. At least in the dark. Then give him some money, some shady pep talks and he would gun for it like the roadrunner. Yea yea, that makes me a voyeur and all, but whatthehell.
That’s outsourcing. And though Iran has caught a few agents already – never mind that.
Used to be a time when America physically fought wars. Second World War, Vietnam, Korea etc – they were there on the ground. Second World War was more of a Boy Scout drill for them – minimal involvement, distant, and not a territorial threat. You could fly there, bomb them and hit on that cute French bargirl in the evening. No one followed you back. The Germans were too busy or stretched too thin. Fun days.
Vietnam put a semi-stop to that. The world’s hugest, most expensive, most gadget savvy military went to a land they never knew existed, and were massacred by barefooted farmers armed with pre-historic rifles. 60,000 dead Americans, before the warrior boys came home.
They could have learnt some lessons there, but I guess they didn’t. So after a while they invaded Afghanistan.
There they faced bearded Pashtuns with a penchant for juvenile boys. As young American soldiers kept dying in the Hindu Kush region and as the sadomasochistic White House kept hollering about the importance of patriotism and ‘free world’ – the parents said hell with it, get our kids back home.
Now, killing people across both sides has always been a lucrative racket. But a young Yankee couldn’t be at two places simultaneously, could he? At home barbequing in his backyard with friends over a beer, and manning an outpost in Kabul, waiting to blow up anytime? I think it’s kind of tough; the White House thought that too. (I know, great men think alike.)
Well, so how to fight a war when I am not my people and my people are not me? I want my family to beat some monkey up you know, but the members won’t, because the monkey is actually a gorilla, they know that and they also realize that they'd need stretchers halfway through.
Same scam. I would find some street muscles; some outsiders, maybe some gorilla even, who knows. To fight in Libya in 2011 (NATO), and Syria in 2012/13 (Libyan mercenaries, al Qaeda); maybe Pakistan sometime soon (Baluchis, or Indians maybe?), also possibly Iran, in 2014/15 (no idea who, but find I will). I will give them enough money to go do drugs or whatever. If they get ambitious, maybe I will give them some country… damn! don’t nitpick now.
Winning is passé. Because I say so (what did you read? That I am incapable? I dare you!). Destabilizing will do just fine. So I will crank up the defence budget to deal in weapon systems that are mostly redundant in New Age Warfare (keep this a secret, will you). If my countrymen don’t rally behind, I am going to get me some rag-heads to infiltrate territories or fight wars. Outsource.
Need a market – gotta sell those junk hardware.
Back in the sixties some foreign language trained Americans could swallow their accent and manage to speak without spitting on your face. With difficulty. The successful ones would then get inside the erstwhile Soviet Union and spend time and tax-money to fathom how a decrepit nation like that could harbour global ambitions. They took more than forty years but did not understand shit about it anyway. This act of controlled spitting on the streets of Moscow as they wondered about stuffs that their brains were clearly unequipped to handle – they called the Cold War. I mean, Russia is cold, and Americans love war. So.
Anyway, this racket survived till the USSR collapsed; and the Yankee-spies-on-speech-and-diet went back to gorge on triple cheese burgers and cola quickly afterwards.
Soon enough the White House found two new bogeymen. Islam and China. But neither the Chinese nor Asian Muslims looked like East Europeans. How to play spy games? How to infiltrate undetected? Seriously, I can’t look like a French or an Italian and pretend to be a Chinese, can I? Mr. Bean can. I can not. So how could I fool someone’s wife in the dark if I didn’t remotely look like that someone?
The scam was simple. Find out a chum that looked like the particular wife’s husband. At least in the dark. Then give him some money, some shady pep talks and he would gun for it like the roadrunner. Yea yea, that makes me a voyeur and all, but whatthehell.
That’s outsourcing. And though Iran has caught a few agents already – never mind that.
Used to be a time when America physically fought wars. Second World War, Vietnam, Korea etc – they were there on the ground. Second World War was more of a Boy Scout drill for them – minimal involvement, distant, and not a territorial threat. You could fly there, bomb them and hit on that cute French bargirl in the evening. No one followed you back. The Germans were too busy or stretched too thin. Fun days.
Vietnam put a semi-stop to that. The world’s hugest, most expensive, most gadget savvy military went to a land they never knew existed, and were massacred by barefooted farmers armed with pre-historic rifles. 60,000 dead Americans, before the warrior boys came home.
They could have learnt some lessons there, but I guess they didn’t. So after a while they invaded Afghanistan.
There they faced bearded Pashtuns with a penchant for juvenile boys. As young American soldiers kept dying in the Hindu Kush region and as the sadomasochistic White House kept hollering about the importance of patriotism and ‘free world’ – the parents said hell with it, get our kids back home.
Now, killing people across both sides has always been a lucrative racket. But a young Yankee couldn’t be at two places simultaneously, could he? At home barbequing in his backyard with friends over a beer, and manning an outpost in Kabul, waiting to blow up anytime? I think it’s kind of tough; the White House thought that too. (I know, great men think alike.)
Well, so how to fight a war when I am not my people and my people are not me? I want my family to beat some monkey up you know, but the members won’t, because the monkey is actually a gorilla, they know that and they also realize that they'd need stretchers halfway through.
Same scam. I would find some street muscles; some outsiders, maybe some gorilla even, who knows. To fight in Libya in 2011 (NATO), and Syria in 2012/13 (Libyan mercenaries, al Qaeda); maybe Pakistan sometime soon (Baluchis, or Indians maybe?), also possibly Iran, in 2014/15 (no idea who, but find I will). I will give them enough money to go do drugs or whatever. If they get ambitious, maybe I will give them some country… damn! don’t nitpick now.
Winning is passé. Because I say so (what did you read? That I am incapable? I dare you!). Destabilizing will do just fine. So I will crank up the defence budget to deal in weapon systems that are mostly redundant in New Age Warfare (keep this a secret, will you). If my countrymen don’t rally behind, I am going to get me some rag-heads to infiltrate territories or fight wars. Outsource.
Need a market – gotta sell those junk hardware.
November 4, 2013
Faking it
Mainstream media? You sure?
I mean, with characters like William Randolph Hearst of New York Journal, who used to say “You furnish the picture and I’ll furnish the war” – how serious can you be? The case stories are quite sordid too. This man’s papers, for example, widely trumpeted the sinking of the Maine as the work of the Spanish. Along with the rape of the Cubans. The US public had welcomed the beginning of the US-Spanish war.
Even during as early as 1898 these guys talked through their arse.
Media’s perception management, like Billy-on-heat, has a one-track-mind. Outright lies, suppression of facts or PR dramas… all must insinuate/ lead to/ perform/ accomplish carnal gratification. Or some form of it. That’s the business.
Billy goat is sensible; he’d stick to the carnal part of it.
Very quickly, a few larger than life events to get the point across…
The US was drawn into World War I by the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner carrying American passengers – the world knows that. What it doesn’t is that just one week before the incident, then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had written to the President of the Board of Trade that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”
American involvement in World War II.
Are you saying “Pearl Harbour, Pearl Harbour…”? Hang on. A newly-declassified memo is out, and it says that FDR was warned of an impending Japanese attack on Hawaii three whole days before the events at Pearl Harbour.
Piney walon ko piney ka bahana chahiye.
Randhir Kapoor, was it? Smart guy I tell you. He knew it.
Vietnam. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and American kids – total 3,56,00,00 dead, because of an incident that occurred only in the imagination of the Johnson administration and the pages of the American media.
That of a North-Vietnamese attack on a US Destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In 1991, the world was introduced to the heart wrenching story of Nayirah, a Kuwaiti girl who testified about the atrocities committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
Who was this poor little devastated girl? She was an amateur actor – the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. This movie was directed-produced by Hill & Knowltown – an American PR firm. Following which there was Operation Desert-Storm, directed-produced by White House.
Hill & Knowltown and White House - back to back. Reminds me of Dabangg and Ready.
Few months ago, the BBC featured a massive flag waving crowd of what they said was a celebratory gathering in Tripoli, Libya. Turned out to be some Indian rally with people waving tricolours. The BBC mumbled something. After they were caught.
(Check out the details at Youtube; type “Libya/Incredible media lies”)
You know the recent stories of course. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda hiding in Afghanistan, Libya’s oppressive and ‘evil’ dictator; and now Iran’s Nuclear Weapons…
Back in our schooldays when some friend would fib, one of us listeners would invariably gesticulate, insinuating a motion of wrapping up.
We just understood.
************
Okay… till about a few years ago, these mainstream hotshots had the regal audacity to look down and pooh-pooh the web. ‘The net? Huh… 3D you know – disorganized, defocused and divided. Upstarts rambling – don’t bother!’
Today they are wondering why they are losing circulation.
Classifieds gone; all up on the web. Retailers gone to the web too – we shop online. Pen friends, editorial letter writers, voluntary contributors, freelance scribes, all gone to the social sites and online publishers. No control over the means of distribution. Earlier you had one paper – now you can access any paper around the globe.
No revenue; naturally no profit either.
On the other hand – morally weak in the spirit. What reporters know, they do not write; what they write, they do not believe. If they try to be candid, the political/business leaders demand their honest-arse for breakfast. Too close to being part of the political parties, too steeped in the artificial impartiality of the newsroom and, invariably too bloody afraid of each other**. And in their dynamics, they keep creating squalid news. Like “Saddam’s WMD”, “Pakistan fighting terror” or “China provoking India”.
And look at the web! Limitless well-argued sites espousing or denouncing every imaginable point of view. Numerous well-researched sites by people who know their fields and are not afraid to talk about them. Want socialist views? Check out Counterpunch. Libertarian by nature? Type mises.org. Want to sample some delightful precision reporting? Asia Times Online. Want news that “you won’t find in CNN”? Try Information Clearing House. Want to know about the world’s wasted wealth and ways to strive for a better future? Go to The Institute for Economic Democracy.
Goddamn encyclopaedias – each one of them! In their topics, archives, research data, intellect pool… you name it. While all along, the mainstream feeds you stuffs that are composed with the assumptive sanguinity that all their gemstones will be sampled by brains with an average IQ less than 50. Tadpoles? Probably.
So for someone like me, ever keen for global news, where do I stand on days I don’t have an access to the net? (Yeah yeah, I am old fashioned. Big deal) I stand on a philosophical threshold.
Let’s catch hold of the fattest pig in the muck – the Sunday Newspaper that comes to my house. Weighs about a kilo. Has given me a rare insight on how to reduce weight.
Here’s how:
Throw out the advert flyers – don’t need another Big Bazaar Furniture Discount News. Throw out the classified – most of the guys/girls anyway don’t get their dream partners; besides, I am married. Then the magazine – unless you fancy knowing what Deepika Padukone fantasizes when she’s stuck in Bombay traffic jams. Out go the Metro pages – Calcutta’s “Lonnndonnn” Diary of potholed roads and malfunctioning airport trolleys. Sports Pages – Team India belly dancing in Australia. Then the main supplement – the one that keeps the star-sign gazers informed on impending romance/escapades with the office boss, while it tracks those local celebrities who got their elbows waxed the previous week.
What am I left with? Annawati and Maya Hazare. And Lady Gaga’s torn fishnet stocking. My Sunday dose of global wisdom --- lean mean and muscles, baby.
And yet they wonder why.
Seriously guys… humour the mainstream media. Some solace to the dying.
N.B.
1. Historic references taken from M Chossudovsky's website Global Research
2. ** - Excerpt from Fred Reed's Blog
I mean, with characters like William Randolph Hearst of New York Journal, who used to say “You furnish the picture and I’ll furnish the war” – how serious can you be? The case stories are quite sordid too. This man’s papers, for example, widely trumpeted the sinking of the Maine as the work of the Spanish. Along with the rape of the Cubans. The US public had welcomed the beginning of the US-Spanish war.
Even during as early as 1898 these guys talked through their arse.
Media’s perception management, like Billy-on-heat, has a one-track-mind. Outright lies, suppression of facts or PR dramas… all must insinuate/ lead to/ perform/ accomplish carnal gratification. Or some form of it. That’s the business.
Billy goat is sensible; he’d stick to the carnal part of it.
Very quickly, a few larger than life events to get the point across…
The US was drawn into World War I by the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner carrying American passengers – the world knows that. What it doesn’t is that just one week before the incident, then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had written to the President of the Board of Trade that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”
American involvement in World War II.
Are you saying “Pearl Harbour, Pearl Harbour…”? Hang on. A newly-declassified memo is out, and it says that FDR was warned of an impending Japanese attack on Hawaii three whole days before the events at Pearl Harbour.
Piney walon ko piney ka bahana chahiye.
Randhir Kapoor, was it? Smart guy I tell you. He knew it.
Vietnam. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and American kids – total 3,56,00,00 dead, because of an incident that occurred only in the imagination of the Johnson administration and the pages of the American media.
That of a North-Vietnamese attack on a US Destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In 1991, the world was introduced to the heart wrenching story of Nayirah, a Kuwaiti girl who testified about the atrocities committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
Who was this poor little devastated girl? She was an amateur actor – the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. This movie was directed-produced by Hill & Knowltown – an American PR firm. Following which there was Operation Desert-Storm, directed-produced by White House.
Hill & Knowltown and White House - back to back. Reminds me of Dabangg and Ready.
Few months ago, the BBC featured a massive flag waving crowd of what they said was a celebratory gathering in Tripoli, Libya. Turned out to be some Indian rally with people waving tricolours. The BBC mumbled something. After they were caught.
(Check out the details at Youtube; type “Libya/Incredible media lies”)
You know the recent stories of course. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda hiding in Afghanistan, Libya’s oppressive and ‘evil’ dictator; and now Iran’s Nuclear Weapons…
Back in our schooldays when some friend would fib, one of us listeners would invariably gesticulate, insinuating a motion of wrapping up.
We just understood.
************
Okay… till about a few years ago, these mainstream hotshots had the regal audacity to look down and pooh-pooh the web. ‘The net? Huh… 3D you know – disorganized, defocused and divided. Upstarts rambling – don’t bother!’
Today they are wondering why they are losing circulation.
Classifieds gone; all up on the web. Retailers gone to the web too – we shop online. Pen friends, editorial letter writers, voluntary contributors, freelance scribes, all gone to the social sites and online publishers. No control over the means of distribution. Earlier you had one paper – now you can access any paper around the globe.
No revenue; naturally no profit either.
On the other hand – morally weak in the spirit. What reporters know, they do not write; what they write, they do not believe. If they try to be candid, the political/business leaders demand their honest-arse for breakfast. Too close to being part of the political parties, too steeped in the artificial impartiality of the newsroom and, invariably too bloody afraid of each other**. And in their dynamics, they keep creating squalid news. Like “Saddam’s WMD”, “Pakistan fighting terror” or “China provoking India”.
And look at the web! Limitless well-argued sites espousing or denouncing every imaginable point of view. Numerous well-researched sites by people who know their fields and are not afraid to talk about them. Want socialist views? Check out Counterpunch. Libertarian by nature? Type mises.org. Want to sample some delightful precision reporting? Asia Times Online. Want news that “you won’t find in CNN”? Try Information Clearing House. Want to know about the world’s wasted wealth and ways to strive for a better future? Go to The Institute for Economic Democracy.
Goddamn encyclopaedias – each one of them! In their topics, archives, research data, intellect pool… you name it. While all along, the mainstream feeds you stuffs that are composed with the assumptive sanguinity that all their gemstones will be sampled by brains with an average IQ less than 50. Tadpoles? Probably.
So for someone like me, ever keen for global news, where do I stand on days I don’t have an access to the net? (Yeah yeah, I am old fashioned. Big deal) I stand on a philosophical threshold.
Let’s catch hold of the fattest pig in the muck – the Sunday Newspaper that comes to my house. Weighs about a kilo. Has given me a rare insight on how to reduce weight.
Here’s how:
Throw out the advert flyers – don’t need another Big Bazaar Furniture Discount News. Throw out the classified – most of the guys/girls anyway don’t get their dream partners; besides, I am married. Then the magazine – unless you fancy knowing what Deepika Padukone fantasizes when she’s stuck in Bombay traffic jams. Out go the Metro pages – Calcutta’s “Lonnndonnn” Diary of potholed roads and malfunctioning airport trolleys. Sports Pages – Team India belly dancing in Australia. Then the main supplement – the one that keeps the star-sign gazers informed on impending romance/escapades with the office boss, while it tracks those local celebrities who got their elbows waxed the previous week.
What am I left with? Annawati and Maya Hazare. And Lady Gaga’s torn fishnet stocking. My Sunday dose of global wisdom --- lean mean and muscles, baby.
And yet they wonder why.
Seriously guys… humour the mainstream media. Some solace to the dying.
N.B.
1. Historic references taken from M Chossudovsky's website Global Research
2. ** - Excerpt from Fred Reed's Blog
October 30, 2013
The Tagore Hangover
Been thinking about this for some time. Frankly, shit scared. A friend, she told me that Bengalis with cultural biceps are gonna run after me screaming ‘death to heresy!’ And I asked myself, do I want THAT to happen? But what the hell!
So, how much of Tagore do I know? Very little. Grew up in a house where mugging up the Gitanjali was considered a qualifier. You had to make your bones sailing through that book. And once qualified, my mother, sister, a few other uncles, aunts, their off-springs and sundry gallantry award winners would inspect your spoils before strapping you ready for the next war – the British Army has advanced training where they stop training you further, but try to kill you; my family had The Memorizing of The Gitobitan, not just word by word but tune by tune.
Okay, I exaggerate – but that’s close enough, trust me.
What could sure have been an interesting omelette remained the same boring bloody egg, because I gave the start-line a miss and grew up as the proverbial lotus leaf. Sure, subjected to a fat lot of singing poetry or recitation, periodically forcefully made to sit through dance drama and stuffs... even blackmailed to drum up some basic tabla to help the sisterhood sing/dance/enact whatever The Books demanded of them – but my conversion remained a pipedream; I was destined to be a Prophet-less Bong – a crime that could get one ostracized. And ostracized I was, though I can’t say that I regret that.
Now don’t get me wrong; I like the man. He was quite the genius; a visionary, an exemplary philosopher – who created a treasure-trove which enriched the lining of Bengali Literature. If there is anyone who deserves a medal and a gun-salute in this manmade hell-hole called modernity that we have to live in these days – in my list, Tagore would sure be a first row candidate, while I would possibly barr the entry of say, Mr. Gandhi at the parade ground – and that’s the amount of respect that I have for this man.
What quizzes me is Bengali’s inexhaustible Tagore obsession. Sure, there are many things that I don’t get. I am dim, not getting any younger, and Nyapal here keeps spiking my drink with poisonous mushrooms, so. So? So, thought I, what’s the big deal in letting one more slip? But then you, my friend, if you think that this badgered clutter is still worth a spring-clean, I am eager to learn from you.
The junk travels in different direction. And one travels along the inevitable lines of comparison. Vivekananda had some powerful stuff to say about spiritual, personal and social action. Clear directives on leading a healthy, responsible and accountable yet clean life – no shit. The man represented the sum total of Eastern spiritualism in a far, faraway land, hundreds of years ago, and guys there were so damn impressed by just listening to him that their descendants still talk about him even today. That’s a feat no doubt in a nation where your average incident that hits the ground head-first starts decomposing at its crown by the time the tail comes out.
Or Raja Rammohan Roy – the Renaissance Man. Overhauled the collective Bong conscience. Not a mean thing to do! Think about the average bong during those days. 400-500 years of Muslim domination, piss tired of being meted out the second-class citizen treatment, then voila! ...Brits, a new way of life, recognition and favour as the follower of a hassle-free creed among the natives; only Christ the Redeemer – no bayonets.
Result? A new age indulgence compounded with semi-Talibanistic medieval rituals in social life – pigeons, mistresses and imported liquors joined alliance with the rolling dice, wife beatings, lazy-arsed lives, and a couple of scores of rather darkish medieval chores – am sure most of you have read about them since you were kids... and wow! --- The dhoti-banyan clad dudes suddenly jigged big time.
To pull up such a rock-bottom-yet-still-digging social psyche, to inject serious amount of kinetic energy and getting most of the same bai-ji loving Babus to run helter-skelter to bring about an insane amount of social reconstruction, something that was never witnessed before in our history – frankly, I can’t even begin to imagine.
Vidyasagar -- The man who reconstructed our language, the man who reformed Bengali typography, the man who gave women a lease of life (yea, Bong men of the yore and the Talibans – not very distant cousins, I keep saying). What about him? I don’t want to bring in few personal favourites of mine – Sukanta-Satyajit, Kazi Nazrul or BC Roy – for obvious reasons. Point being, there ARE a few Bongs that could on a serious scale, threaten the Tagore Legacy.
This is where I quit the monkey business and get serious – my glass is nearly in need of a refill. So, stop me if I sound uneducated.
Bongs’ obsession with Tagore is because the average Bong is still butt lazy. He doesn’t want to think – that’s such a tough bloody thing to be doing! Besides, why trouble the brain when Tagore’s thought of nearly everything and mapped em down on bundles and rims? Need to pretend omniscience? Self righteousness? Or exhibit intellectuality? Borrow a few lines from Tagore. Piss easy.
The butt lazy Bong excels in taking the easy way out. Can you list ten performers that have spent a lifetime singing/dancing/reciting renditions of Tagore? Album after album, year on year? I bet you can. Some of you can even list twenty. Or a hundred. Ah well, don’t we have so many cultural ambassadors? Going through a tough patch? TRP hit the donkey’s rear? Cut a Tagore album – some suckers’ sure to buy.
Cut a Nazrul Album? Or a semi-classical rendition? Bugger's drunk! - Shoo! Shoo!
Well the political guys surely doesn’t want us to rework/rethink on the ideas that had the Rammohan or BC Roy effect, so at every traffic intersection they have some woman passing through mid-life crisis yelling about how she’d love to drown (thrice) in someone’s open air and stuff (tomar khola haowa-y, ami dubtey raji achhi) – but it colloids my brew bad to gauge the enstupidation that has amounted (and no, Nyapal need not add any mushroom at this point) under the pretence of ‘We Have Culture’ Syndrome. If the sum total of the culture of a clan that’s spread across two nations lies balancing on the shoulders of a solitary man – the load creaks, the man gets a damaged back... but most of all, I’d rather be somewhere safe, far away from the crash site. Bihar – here I come!
********
Okay am back after half a day, completely sober (had to throw the last of the mushrooms away. Bad for your brains, I tell you). After reading this, I can realize why people find me confounding; I won't blame you
So, how much of Tagore do I know? Very little. Grew up in a house where mugging up the Gitanjali was considered a qualifier. You had to make your bones sailing through that book. And once qualified, my mother, sister, a few other uncles, aunts, their off-springs and sundry gallantry award winners would inspect your spoils before strapping you ready for the next war – the British Army has advanced training where they stop training you further, but try to kill you; my family had The Memorizing of The Gitobitan, not just word by word but tune by tune.
Okay, I exaggerate – but that’s close enough, trust me.
What could sure have been an interesting omelette remained the same boring bloody egg, because I gave the start-line a miss and grew up as the proverbial lotus leaf. Sure, subjected to a fat lot of singing poetry or recitation, periodically forcefully made to sit through dance drama and stuffs... even blackmailed to drum up some basic tabla to help the sisterhood sing/dance/enact whatever The Books demanded of them – but my conversion remained a pipedream; I was destined to be a Prophet-less Bong – a crime that could get one ostracized. And ostracized I was, though I can’t say that I regret that.
Now don’t get me wrong; I like the man. He was quite the genius; a visionary, an exemplary philosopher – who created a treasure-trove which enriched the lining of Bengali Literature. If there is anyone who deserves a medal and a gun-salute in this manmade hell-hole called modernity that we have to live in these days – in my list, Tagore would sure be a first row candidate, while I would possibly barr the entry of say, Mr. Gandhi at the parade ground – and that’s the amount of respect that I have for this man.
What quizzes me is Bengali’s inexhaustible Tagore obsession. Sure, there are many things that I don’t get. I am dim, not getting any younger, and Nyapal here keeps spiking my drink with poisonous mushrooms, so. So? So, thought I, what’s the big deal in letting one more slip? But then you, my friend, if you think that this badgered clutter is still worth a spring-clean, I am eager to learn from you.
The junk travels in different direction. And one travels along the inevitable lines of comparison. Vivekananda had some powerful stuff to say about spiritual, personal and social action. Clear directives on leading a healthy, responsible and accountable yet clean life – no shit. The man represented the sum total of Eastern spiritualism in a far, faraway land, hundreds of years ago, and guys there were so damn impressed by just listening to him that their descendants still talk about him even today. That’s a feat no doubt in a nation where your average incident that hits the ground head-first starts decomposing at its crown by the time the tail comes out.
Or Raja Rammohan Roy – the Renaissance Man. Overhauled the collective Bong conscience. Not a mean thing to do! Think about the average bong during those days. 400-500 years of Muslim domination, piss tired of being meted out the second-class citizen treatment, then voila! ...Brits, a new way of life, recognition and favour as the follower of a hassle-free creed among the natives; only Christ the Redeemer – no bayonets.
Result? A new age indulgence compounded with semi-Talibanistic medieval rituals in social life – pigeons, mistresses and imported liquors joined alliance with the rolling dice, wife beatings, lazy-arsed lives, and a couple of scores of rather darkish medieval chores – am sure most of you have read about them since you were kids... and wow! --- The dhoti-banyan clad dudes suddenly jigged big time.
To pull up such a rock-bottom-yet-still-digging social psyche, to inject serious amount of kinetic energy and getting most of the same bai-ji loving Babus to run helter-skelter to bring about an insane amount of social reconstruction, something that was never witnessed before in our history – frankly, I can’t even begin to imagine.
Vidyasagar -- The man who reconstructed our language, the man who reformed Bengali typography, the man who gave women a lease of life (yea, Bong men of the yore and the Talibans – not very distant cousins, I keep saying). What about him? I don’t want to bring in few personal favourites of mine – Sukanta-Satyajit, Kazi Nazrul or BC Roy – for obvious reasons. Point being, there ARE a few Bongs that could on a serious scale, threaten the Tagore Legacy.
This is where I quit the monkey business and get serious – my glass is nearly in need of a refill. So, stop me if I sound uneducated.
Bongs’ obsession with Tagore is because the average Bong is still butt lazy. He doesn’t want to think – that’s such a tough bloody thing to be doing! Besides, why trouble the brain when Tagore’s thought of nearly everything and mapped em down on bundles and rims? Need to pretend omniscience? Self righteousness? Or exhibit intellectuality? Borrow a few lines from Tagore. Piss easy.
The butt lazy Bong excels in taking the easy way out. Can you list ten performers that have spent a lifetime singing/dancing/reciting renditions of Tagore? Album after album, year on year? I bet you can. Some of you can even list twenty. Or a hundred. Ah well, don’t we have so many cultural ambassadors? Going through a tough patch? TRP hit the donkey’s rear? Cut a Tagore album – some suckers’ sure to buy.
Cut a Nazrul Album? Or a semi-classical rendition? Bugger's drunk! - Shoo! Shoo!
Well the political guys surely doesn’t want us to rework/rethink on the ideas that had the Rammohan or BC Roy effect, so at every traffic intersection they have some woman passing through mid-life crisis yelling about how she’d love to drown (thrice) in someone’s open air and stuff (tomar khola haowa-y, ami dubtey raji achhi) – but it colloids my brew bad to gauge the enstupidation that has amounted (and no, Nyapal need not add any mushroom at this point) under the pretence of ‘We Have Culture’ Syndrome. If the sum total of the culture of a clan that’s spread across two nations lies balancing on the shoulders of a solitary man – the load creaks, the man gets a damaged back... but most of all, I’d rather be somewhere safe, far away from the crash site. Bihar – here I come!
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Okay am back after half a day, completely sober (had to throw the last of the mushrooms away. Bad for your brains, I tell you). After reading this, I can realize why people find me confounding; I won't blame you
