The All Bengali Crime Detectives

by Suparna Chatterjee

Five o'clock sharp was five fifteen on a good day. No such thing as 'sharp' when it came to time. One felt more at ease to fix the time with an – ish suffix.

'I'll see you tomorrow five-ish.' Simple and easy. No obligation on either party to arrive on time. If one met a friend on the way, and inquired after his health, and the health of his family – immediate and distant, and cursed the current rate of inflation as was evidenced by the rising cost of brinjals, and thereby arrived at the previous appointment a good half hour later, no feelings were hurt.

What was it that made people fight, she wondered. Ideologies, land, power? How could any of these be more important than a human life? Ideology, now that could change any day, couldn't it?

When it came to ideologies, she thought, it was just a matter of time, before you found something else more appealing, more interesting.

Land, it seemed, was one thing worth killing for. A small piece of earth, mingled with dust and sweat. How much of land did one need really? Yet historically, didn't all wars start because of land? Kings would invade other kingdoms to acquire more land, which would ultimately give them more power. More power to do what? Wouldn't they be doing pretty much the same things as before? Eating, drinking, watching dancing girls, flying pigeons or kites? What did they want really? More pigeons?

Trade and commerce was an important factor, of course. Reigning over a larger territory gave the kings more power to control trade, which ultimately brought more to their coffers. War in modern times too, was motivated by the same principles, sighed Chhaya Guha Roy. Did a government really care about the well-being of the common man in an alien nation, and strive to free its people from their oppressors? Only if getting involved served an economic purpose. These people who could not tolerate another with different beliefs, or who fought with each other on various pretexts, what were they looking for really? Happiness, thought Chhaya Guha Roy. Wasn't that ironic? Somewhere in their minds, is a belief that acquiring this and achieving that will bring them happiness. Wasn't that the driving force behind every action? For some, happiness meant climbing the highest peak or ...

Once, while in college, Chhaya Guha Roy had been writing an interpretation of a Jibananda Das poem, and it had struck her that the words khushi (happy) and sukhi (contented), had almost the same letterings in Bengali and had very similar meanings. Yet, happiness, she thought, was eternally tied to various blobs of events that occurred from time to time in one's life. Events, the details of which had faded, only the memory that it had been a good, happy time, had remained. The time when I had won the music contest, I was happy. The time I had got a new dress, I was happy. The day I became a mother, I was happy. But, contentment was beyond happiness, she had thought, a state of being that was beyond a mere 'feeling'. A state, when one felt that everything was just right, everything was perfect, and absolutely nothing needed to be changed. She recounted how many contented people she knew, and was disturbed to find that the answer was none. Didn't one always hear people crib about their jobs, or their relationships, or the inflation rate, or some sickness or the other? It was one of those human weaknesses, she had decided. No matter what you had, you always wanted more or at least s...

'Now, on 23 June 1757, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula was defeated at the hands of Robert Clive in the Battle of Plassey. Even though this was in fact an important victory for the East India Company, Nabakrishna Deb and his counterpart, Krishnachandra Roy of Nadia, interpreted this as a victory of Hindus over Muslims. Robert Clive, being the shrewd statesman that he was, actually supported this idea, and believe it or not, it was Clive who suggested to Nabakrishna Deb that this victory be celebrated by performing a Hindu Puja. Can you imagine?! Clive was a Christian and strongly opposed idol worship, but simply for the sake of politics, he encouraged Nabakrishna Deb to organize a Durga Pujo. 'Earlier Durga Pujo used to be celebrated in parts of Bengal only during the spring time, and the Nabapatrika Pujo in autumn. Now, Nabakrishna decided to shift the timing of the Durga Pujo, and celebrated it in the autumn month. So the first autumnal Durga Pujo actually took place in the year 1757, as a victory celebration of the Battle of Plassey. The Nabaptrika Pujo and the Durga Pujo got intermingled with one another. In the following years, he encouraged more and more zamindars to do the same. When the 'babus' of Bengal saw that this Pujo had the blessings of the East India Company, they fell over each other to please the sahibs, inviting them over, feeding them beef and foreign liquor, even arranging for baiji's to come from all over the country to entertain them. I would say, in that respe...

'Moshai, I have always wondered,' said Bibhuti Bose, 'how come of all the gods and goddesses in India, it is Ma Durga that we worship with such devotion in Bengal? I mean Lord Rama was from the North, and he went to Lanka from the South, crossing the Indian Ocean. Where does Bengal come into the picture?' 'Bibhuti babu, you have raised an interesting point,' said Debdas Guha Roy. 'Durga Pujo in Bengal has nothing much, or very little, to do with Lord Rama. You see, agriculture and farming have always been the main occupations of rural Bengal. And in the olden days it was the womenfolk who used to take care of much of the farming. Their position in society was higher than that of men. Hence one sees a predominance of goddesses rather than gods in Bengal – Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati. . . . 'Now the main enemy of the farmers in those days was the wild buffalo. Hence an idol was created depicting a female goddess capturing and taming a wild buffalo. She was called Mahishmordini, killer of buffalo. Later when society became dominated by men, the buffalo was replaced by a half-man and half-bull image, depicting the thwarting of both by a woman.' 'Debdas babu, are you saying that all the mythological stories we have heard since childhood are false?' 'Moshai, a mythological story is just that . . . a story. When one goes into the history of how certain cultures and traditions came into being, one can understand many of the practices. If you go to the Indian Museum you will see an o...