An Intimate History of Bengal
BOOK IX
[There are plenty of workers here but so less thinkers]
[Notes from
wordsmith: Due to some happy connections, we have gathered some
interesting insight into the inner workings of the professional class of Contemporary
Bengal and this BOOK IX is dedicated to the discussions, formal and informal
among a large cross section of the class. Even though the class we are talking
about operated in time span of 1970-2000 and concentrated mainly in Calcutta
and hinterland, using the tool of intimate extrapolation backward and
forward, we may be able to get a more broader and wider picture. ]
The languid landscape and climate of Bengal has a fatal
effect in its inhabitants and since climate and landscape have more longevity
than the most powerful empire or idealistic regime, geography is destiny, in a
broader sense. The powerful influence of climate and geography on history and
destiny of Bengal was a recurring theme in the thoughts of Swami Vivekananda
and Nirad C Chaudhri. In Continent of Circe, Nirad undertook a giant
leap and went for a grand generalization in case of Indian subcontinent on the
same theme. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, our dear novelist was also attracted to
this idea and this Deputy Magistrate of British gharana was one of the
sons of the land whose true genius his unfortunate countrymen are most likely
to overlook.
For her children, Bengal is a true femme fatale`
- her fertile land, her waterways and weather
makes it a comfortable place for biological living. And this
sense of being in comfort sometimes comes in front of greatness. The fanatic
desire of a professional of Bengal to work and stay at Calcutta, if possible,
draws its source to that sense of comfort. Food, water, a favorable climate
without the extreme of heat and cold biologists tell us that this makes life
thrive. Bengal has it all the land is bountiful, marine life in her waterways
made Bengalis identification of fish as some vegetable product as my old friend
Panicker used to tell ganga-pushpam [Flower of Ganges]. All tropical
fruits grow here with abundance of vegetables. Milk products are abundant. The
combination of all these intrinsic advantages made life-sustenance comfortable
and not a life of struggle as in other parts. Compare a farmer of Bengal and
that of in Maratha Country in any historical age and you will find out why
Marathas could unite into a powerful strike force and Bengalis never did. The
aggregate effect of this gave rise to a thinking class in Bengal who had one of
the most treasured resources in their lives leisure. If leveraged properly,
intelligently and in a civilized way, the leisure gives rise to Greece of
Pericles and in its worst the same period of our examination in the
Civilization of Bengal.
Office to an average Bengali is not
a destination but something like a family-member. I was told that this
is an Indian trait but generalization is dangerous. But the IT-boom and studies
on transnational workforce give statistics that Indians spend more time in
offices in comparison. In Bengal (as well as in India), vehicles have names
like Raju, Raja, Rani written in front or back and thus making it as a
family member. So, office is also a family member and is called by the name
office. The moment professional life is intimately related with family
in sub-conscious, there comes high intimacy followed by high apathy. I reproduce the reminisces of a young
engineer who joined an office (a Central Government Office) in Calcutta
somewhere in 1990s and have been there for a decade:
[I joined as a young engineer
and immediately a forty-plus senior came and patted on my shoulder and said Dont
worry, if you have any problem, please tell me. Within a day or two, another one asked me Did that
fellow tell you something. Dont trust him. Wait; wait, you will see for
yourself. Koto Kichui to dekhlam (sigh). Slowly, I figured out that there
are lots of groups and inter-personal equations which are having very little or
no relation with professional life.
Later, I found a child-like behaviour and hide-and-seek among these
adult men whose fights and reconciliation seem to be some kind of a play
without much significance. I identified broadly five classes of people there
the workers, the non-workers, the schemers, the innocent and the dadas.
The word dada was a suffix which can denote anything from respect to
threat and has high context related semantic. Soon, I found out that I need to
enroll in one of the invisible rolls of one of the dadas. The enrolled
members were occasionally deployed as agents or espionage agents by respective
dadas and as I was young, none trusted me until my allegiance was confirmed.
The
day started with a loud hullah and a ritual of tea drinking. Then others
retired to respective sections but sometimes dadas chose to stay in the
canteen and used to discuss on equal terms with canteen boys, occasionally
about the misdeeds of other dadas. While I approached for assistance, I
was always given a very compassionate hearing and was told Dont worry
yaar. You will soon learn everything.
Lunch
was eagerly waited and equally relished. The sitting arrangements made it clear
about dada-hierarchy and allegiance-matrix.
The schemers as mentioned earlier were always busy to be the first
informant to the boss of an achievement concerning them and a mishap concerning
others. The top-boss was a hyper-dada and since he rose through
the same dada-funnel, he understood it too well and his control over that
motley group was more through influence than authority. This influence-matrix
was quite dynamic in nature and any outsider was always a threat as he could
disturb the balance.
The
workers and non-workers have more clearly defined characteristics. They came -
worked or not, called their homes and friends and shared information,
re-charged memories and non-workers sometimes took a nap either in seats or in
some other nook and cranny. The
innocents never figured anything out and were completely discounted in the dadas
book. But they were few and sometimes they were test person (TP) for schemers.
The
discourse in the office was in general:
tri-lingual: English, Bengali and Hindi. In telephone, while it is
English, it is to be understood that the called or caller party may be a
foreign partner, if Hindi, it is within India and if Bengali it is either
local or some dada somewhere in the country updating the local brothers
of the situation. During those times, their otherwise very hard eyes used to
have a soft look, perhaps thinking about those good old days.
Computer
was a curiosity and dadas were always little uncomfortable with the gizmo. They
were more at ease with files, notebooks, faxes and notes. The youngest of
recruits was more proficient in computer than the hyper-dada. So the
top-boss used to fondly call a new engineer as computer-boy and while
asking about designation of a new engineer, the question was existential in
nature Tum cheez kya ho? Computers and other factors as told earlier
did something very strange: dadas depended heavily on young ones to use
computers, which was turning to be their major job. However, they were careful so that this handicap remains quite a
hush-hush affair and hence fortune of some young and not-so-young ones rose whereas
others stagnated.
Then
the new chairman, moody but quite a taskmaster brought about the company-wide
mailing network, which is so normal today. This system, within months brought
the paper-empire of dadas to a crisis. The classic alibis like lost
in transit, courier absent, fax not working, not in the seat, he did not tell
me, I did not know that were no longer very efficient. The young ones
instinctively smelt that power flows from the keyboard and dadas as
immersed in the chairs of the the grand cabins had very little chance to know
that Internet is already a torrent somewhere and within a year it will become a
flood which will threaten the very hallowed chair where they have been sitting
for a long time. ]*
In the excerpt above, one element is carefully omitted and that is
those officers or officials who are also party-workers. If you remember well, Office
to a Bengali is part of a family member whose name is office and it has
something to do with sitting somewhere.
Same with a party-worker. A party is a meta-political entity and
is a layered phenomenon. I remember an observation by Milan Kundera where a
party-functionary slowly undergoes an identity and functional transformation: a
teacher is not a teacher, a clerk is not a clerk, an officer is not an officer,
a farmer is not a farmer but all these functions multiplex onto party-working.
In all professional areas of
Contemporary Bengal (central or state or even private), there has been a
prioritization of identity: single
identification overwhelms all others and tries to modulate everything. This
process is not only a theoretical construct but also quite a real, palpable
thing. You can feel it once you confront it. People who are from outside could
feel its palpability more easily than the residents for whom this process is
familiar, decided and quite a normal affair.
Thou shall worship no gods but me this is
the demand of the party in functional level and the promise I will make sure that you need not worship
another one but me in more intangible scale. The demand made other loyalties
impossible and the promise brought relief from the uncertainties that tremble
in all human heart that considers possibilities. Office and party
both family members in the inner psyche now rolled into one and that made all
offices in Bengal, a double family party-office.
This
party-office culture controlled office through party and party through
office. Local Committee (the party family) influenced local policemen
(the office family) in their functional decisions and local policemen
looked after the party family. As the process matured, initial roughness among
the family was smoothened out, dissidents, who were not in agreement to the
grand unification, were either converted or branded and in the vicious family
cycle of party-office-party, feudal ostracism was perfected. Professionals
became professional in all family issues except in their functional
issues.
The
result and long-term implications of these phenomena will be told in our next
book.
* This story was told
verbatim by one of my colleagues and is a first hand impression somewhere in
1996-1997. Thanks.
In BOOK IX, we will fail to avoid the gravitation of the Calcutta Citizen - Mr. Nirad C and we will examine a cultural balance sheet from a time scale from 1924 to 2004, with a family event remembered.
In due course, we will be examining some other issues in this area of Life and Times of Contemporary Bengal.For any query, please contact wordsmith