By Swapan Dasgupta
There were two stereotypes of Kolkata that jostled
for primacy amid the huffing and puffing over the midsummer euphoria
surrounding the victory of the Shah Rukh Khan-owned Kolkata Knight Riders in
this year’s IPL.
The first were the voices of dismay from
intellectuals and Leftists disgusted by the show of frivolity at Eden Gardens
last Tuesday. What compounded the offence in their eyes was the enthusiastic
participation of a Chief Minister in a party dominated by Bollywood and
Tollywood stars. For those appreciative of a Jyoti Basu who rationed laughter
and a Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who found inspiration in revolutionary verse and
subtitled films, a leader at one with popular culture was more than a
departure: it was heresy. By facilitating a carnival on a humid May afternoon,
Mamata Banerjee struck a devastating blow at the over-refined self-image of
Bengalis. As one angry Communist MP spluttered on TV that evening, the
celebrations had nothing to do with either cricket or Bengal.
Yet, the seemingly irrational over-exuberance also
corresponded to a parallel stereotype: that of the excitable Bengali. In the
rush to deify the effete Bong, the outsider’s perception of those who inspired
Rudyard Kipling’s ‘banderlog’ (in Jungle
Book) is often glossed over.
The cruel truth is that Bengalis have preferred collective
assertion to individualism. The first Test match in India to experience a
full-blown riot happened in Eden Gardens on New Year’s Day in 1967, and was
marked—or so legend has it—by West Indian players making a mad dash from a
tear-gas filled stadium to the Grand Hotel. In his day, Jawaharalal Nehru
called it a “city of processions” and by the time his grandson ruled the roost,
it was dying from enforced holidays, when traffic stopped and street cricket
took over.
It is tempting to relate last week’s spectacle of a
lakh of people gyrating to the rhythm of rock groups Bhoomi and Chandrabindu
and celebrating KKR’s success to the Bengali penchant for hujuk—an evocative term that signifies infectious craziness. In the
past, Kolkata has gone berserk over Pele, Nelson Mandela and—for those with
longer memories—Nikita Krushchev and Fidel Castro. Was the spontaneous frenzy
over Shah Rukh and his team in keeping with a tradition of excitability?
The answer is self-evident. From the five days of
worship and gluttony during Durga Puja to Shah Rukh’s number with Juhi Chawla, Kolkata
has loved street parties and carnivals. Why, even the annual Book Fair sees
more food consumed than books sold. There is an inverse correlation between
economic activity and collective frenzy, and Kolkata is living proof of that. Why
then the feigned outrage over Mamata’s party for Shah Rukh?
The answer, it would seem, can be located in
Kolkata’s institutionalised schizophrenia. Like Ireland, middle-class Kolkata
is blessed with a diaspora larger than the resident population. The exiles, who
look back wistfully at the city they grudgingly abandoned, have nurtured an image
of a Kolkata that corresponds to their own self-image: gentle, cultured,
idealistic, romantic and blessed with an innate sense of decency. It is not
that such a Kolkata has ceased to exist, but that this constitutes a fragment
of the many enclaves that make up the city.
In a wonderful novel Calcutta Exile set in the 1950s, Bunny Suraiya narrated the
touching story of the intersection between the Anglo-Indian community of Ripon
Street and the upper-class Bengali of Ballygunge. It was set in a city that was
marked for its creativity, commerce and the good life. That Kolkata disappeared
with the advent of the Reds. In its place are multiple ghettos of despondency,
each bound by the feeling of having been left behind. For today’s Ryan family,
the grand-daughters are in Melbourne and the Mookerjee heir is comfortably
placed in a Manhattan job. An unchanging Kolkata is just a memory they want to
cling on to.
Sunday Times of India, June 3, 2012
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