Now Is The Time To Say: 'Oh Calcutta!'

I last visited Calcutta two months ago. Somehow — and quite suddenly — Calcutta didn’t feel Calcutta enough.

Was it because I was done with my book and was now looking at the city as a visitor rather than a curious writer? I don’t think so. If anything, I was looking at Calcutta even more closely, just to see how it has changed from the time I set out researching the book four years ago.

Central Park looked just the same. Park Street looked just the same (except for the closure of Music World). The old warehouses near the Howrah Bridge had still not collapsed. Many streets of Shobhabazar and Shyambazar still led to the 19th century. Trams still ran on the roads. The small neighbourhood sweet shops still produced the best rossogollas in the city.

What, then, felt different?

I am unable to put my finger on anything in particular, but certain things struck me more forcefully than before. They may not mean anything at all, or they could be indicating the direction in which the great city is headed.

For example, for the first time, I saw saffron overshadowing red. There were far more posters of the BJP adorning its streets than those of Trinamool and the communists put together. It felt as if Narendra Modi was also the Chief Minister of West Bengal, apart from being the Prime Minister of India.

I noticed that many Bengali households are now addicted to Hindi soaps on Colors channel.

I noticed that it is easier to get tickets for Bengali films than for Hindi films in cineplexes. English films, on the other hand, hardly run in this former capital of British India. English songs are nearly extinct.

I noticed that the FM channels played far less Bengali songs during prime time than they would until only a couple of years before. In fact, if you discounted the commercials, which are invariably in Bengali, you could be Allahabad or Bareilly.

I noticed that the most-frequently played commercial on the channels urged Calcuttans to become members of the BJP: “I am going to join the party right away, what about you?” (The only jingle that remained unchanged over the years, despite changes in regimes at the state and at the Centre, was that of Breeze leggings).

I noticed, in public places such as malls, Hindi and (and sometimes a mix of Hindi and English) being spoken more commonly than Bengali.

Communists, who ruled Bengal for nearly 35 years, are often blamed for the decline of Calcutta. But now that they have been out of power for four years, their virtues become more evident. They had kept Calcutta alive as a Bengali city — something that Calcutta soon may not be.

Under the communists, even a petty tea-seller’s opinion counted. Ideology outweighed money. And since the Bengali was never good at building wealth, it was the ideology that preserved his identity.

The Trinamool is a party with muscle, the BJP is a party of the moneyed. The typical bhadralok neither has the muscle not the money — he is the mind man, the ‘thinker’. His biggest need in life is the daily adda sessions where he can voice his views of almost every subject under the sun. But today’s Calcutta, driven by money, is too impatient for his kind.

Money dictates culture. Just look how American our lifestyles have become in just two decades. Since the Bengali does not have the money, who will preserve his culture? He will remain at the mercy of the non-Bengali industrialist, who usually obliges because he wants to give something back to the city that has earned him his millions.

But given the way things are today, it is not unimaginable that tomorrow the same industrialist, whose fortunes depend on decisions taken in Delhi, tells a visiting delegation of bhadraloks: “Look, I am ready to sponsor your Durga Puja — it is a matter of great honour — but will you please place an idol of Narendra Modi somewhere in the pandal?”

As it is, Bengali culture is on the decline, though I would like to believe it is going through a rough patch. Uttam Kumar, the Dev Anand-cum-Rajesh Khanna-cum-Amitabh Bachchan of Bengali cinema, died in 1980, but he has not been replaced so far. There is no director yet who can match the stature of Satyajit Ray. There is no writer or poet who qualifies to be in the same league as Sunil Gangopadhyay or Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. In other words, Bengal, more specifically Calcutta, has not produced a national — leave alone global — icon in a long, long time.

Having said that, I must also add that a lot of good Bengali films are being made these days — films that are immensely watchable. I can watch films like Dutta Vs Dutta and Jaatishwar (and listen to their songs) any number of times, but how many people in Calcutta have actually seen these movies and heard their songs?

Many dear friends believe that filmmaking in Calcutta is back to its glorious days because of works by directors such as Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh (who died recently), Anjan Dutt (the famous singer and the maker of quintessentially-Calcutta films including Dutta Vs Dutta), and Srijit Mukherjee (who won national awards for Jaatishwar and Chotushkone). What they forget is that great films by these directors are only watched in multiplexes by a select audience.

The darlings of the masses, in the great city of Calcutta, happen to be Dev and Jeet, who act in Bengali films where the choreography is Telugu-style, the fights are Telugu-style, the extras are actually Telugus and not Bengalis, and even the number plates of cars involved in chase sequences begin with the letters ‘AP.’ Even the songs of their movies are often bilingual — Bengali and Hindi — something I can never imagine happening in Chennai.

Chennai, where I live, is fiercely protective about its Tamil identity. It has a robust film industry which has its own equivalents of Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan and Salman Khan. In fact, the Tamil stars have a fan following that Bollywood stars can only dream of. And when Tamilians look for sponsors for cultural events, they don’t have to go to Marwaris with a begging bowl: there are enough wealthy Chettiars and Nadars to lend a helping hand.

 
There was a time when I felt incensed because FM channels in Chennai didn’t play Hindi songs (even though the city has a sizeable Hindi-speaking population). There was a time when I felt incensed because the Tamil Nadu government wanted every shop/establishment to repaint its signboard in Tamil. There was a time when I felt incensed because the state government gave incentives to students from the Tamil-medium.

Today, I salute the Tamil Nadu government for its pro-Tamil measures and wish the West Bengal government followed suit. The power of money, after all, can only be fought with the power of legislation. It is high time the rulers of Bengal recognised that, or else Calcutta, in 50 years from now, will cease to be a Bengali city.