Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai (Green shoots in undies?)

For people of my age, the pink chaddi campaign seemed no less than a revolution. Girls coming out to hit back at the cultural vigilantes in the most profane of ways. It was, it seemed, a new beginning for this country's youth- even though few among them seem to support it, coming up with such a novel and ingenious method up of protests. Until I read Githa Hariharan's article in the morning today, this was how I felt about this sacrilegous campaign. But it seems women in this country have always been far ahead of their menfolk insofaras modernity is concerned. Women learnt pulling down chaddis (read the article) to protest against reactionary culturalists long back. In India, revolutions have always been flowering in chaddis!

The Great Leap Backward

Could he or couldn't he? The Telegraph tells us that people in the Left Front are busy with historical what-if analyses. I was too small to know this Great Helmsman's name, forget his politics, when I was in Calcutta. And by the time I was old enough to understand and be interested in these things I left for Pilani. And for the next six years knew nothing about the developments in the political landscape of Bengal. When I came back in 2006 to study at Presidency, I did hear my friends in SFI talking about him with great respect and admiration that Mamata could never have pulled off a moral victory, of sorts in Singur had he been alive. That he was also responsible for the rot that Bengal is today was news to me.
And India is an amazing country: where else do you think Amartya Sen's advice in policy affairs would be rejected so casually, even if he hadn't won a Nobel then? Today he gives lectures in seminars organised by the very same state government.

Scientific Communism

This happened in a People's state. Though there's no evidence that the Proletarian state was in anyway involved in such a stupidity, what is clear is that it doesn't feel it has got anything to do with it. That such an incident could materialise despite the dictatorship of the Proletariat can only mean that either it has failed to raise the consciousness of its masses or an embourgeoisement of the classes has taken place while the party was inebriated with Bengal Premium Lager.

Why are things the way they are?

Hanna Schmitz prefers being read to a sentence for imprisonment for life than letting people discover that she can't read. Its strange how sometimes some of our emotions overpower us in bizarre ways-should I call it irrational, but what would a 'rational person' mean then: homo economicus? Her feeling of shame is so strong that she can accept being branded a Nazi, but not uneducated.

I remember reading Kafka's Trial which portrays a man who thinks that he has done no wrong but still on being charged is filled with guilt and tries everything that can be done to clear himself of the allegations that have been wrongly made about him, only to die without ever knowing what it was that he was charged of and by whom. Though, this angle was opened to me only when I was reading Basu's Prelude to Political Economy. Another similarity is the way Hanna conflates legality and morality that Michael's professor discusses in one of the seminars at the law school. Hanna doesn't understand how she could have done anything wrong when all she had done was stick to the law of the land; Josef K gets so worked up on being charged and his righteous indignation at being alleged of something that smears his otherwise record of obedience only reminds us how people in their lives confuse 'legal' with 'moral', and its not just because "before the law sits a gatekeeper": the individual has an inner feeling of guilt , too, that makes it even easier for the law to overpower her sense of rebellion and revolt.

Flagged

Early morning on a holiday at 09:50 I come to Cyber Cup hoping its open, and yes, it is. But before I enter Patuatola lane, where this cafe is located, I cannot stop myself from calling them names (of course, its all to myself; I don't shout: ARE YOU CRAZY?) who had hoisted all those red, etc flags over shops, people's homes, on the electric poles and anywhere they felt like. There's a CPM party office at the mouth of this lane but the flags are of all hues: and some say there's no democracy in Bengal,huh! All parties are free here to use my home, your home, my shop, your shop, my walls, your walls as their own for they are the People's representatives, real representatives.
I enter the cafe. Babai Da has just taken bath and is opening the attendance register for today's entries. I ask him, "Jhanda gulo nije lagiyecho na keo lagiye chole galo?". He doesn't understand what I'm talking about. I tell him to go out and look at the flags he apparently seems to endorse; he sees a TMC and a Congress flag on his gate and shop-window. He doesn't know who did this or when. There's a large CPM drape hanging at the other mouth of this lane. And all buildings in this lane can proudly claim to have at least one flag.

What is it with me early in the morning? As if I don't know this or they don't know this that I'm writing about. These are quotidian matters. Will I stop killing time like this on my blog?