The decline and fall of the Bengali bhodrolok and with the Kolkata – field notes from my travel, Part 1 of a series

Mrinal-da, I am here in Calcutta/Kolkata. Planning to write a set of field notes on my trip. Quite sad to see the state of the city and people here. Beneath the glitz and flyovers and malls and everything that goes to make a modern city in India, beneath the veneer of urban facade, there is a sad state of derelict and despair.

It’s not my old Calcutta I knew.

The sophisticated city I grew up in is not anymore. That might have been Calcutta: this is Kolkata, her cheap descendant. It’s like a cheap imitation of tens of North Indian cities like Delhi and Patna and the rest of it. Tall footpaths that are not flush with the intersections with hideously painted white and blue stripes, dirty streets littered with plastic plates strewn all over after the street party is over, every street corner you hear whispers in Hindi.

Yesterday I visited a local bookstore named “Story”; an attendant, a slender young salesman was showing me framed artworks and tried to strike a conversation about how pricey the framing are in mixed Bangla and Hindi. I asked him his name, it turned out to be a Bengali name. I asked him to speak in Bengali as I would not like to converse with him in Hindi.

This morning I was in a traditional Bengali market close to my house looking for a bag of fine Darjeeling tea. I asked the tea store clerk to show or suggest some specimens of good quality Darj. He started rattling the price per kilo of tea; I was inwardly annoyed but realised this is how he may have learned over the years to speak about tea leaves in his shop: people judge quality of tea by the price tags. A very peculiar distortion of the relationship between price and quality. As far as I remember, it was never like this for quality of tea here. Sad.

These experiences prompt me to write the title here. A dirge for a city!

The decline and fall of the Bengali truly educated bhodrolok with the city of Kolkata is sad.

What has replaced them is even more pathetic.