Kolkata Diaries – Part 1
Roadside ablutions !
During the latter half of November, I had the chance to take a good look at Kolkata while on a brief sojourn. I had imagined that my fifteen day holiday would be a long lazy one, but as always it turned out to be shorter than expected. There is just something about holidays which makes me want a “bonus day” on the last day of the holiday !
The occasion was my son’s “anna-prashan” which roughly translates to a ceremony to mark the first consumption of rice by a new born. The theory is that up until that day the baby is supposed to be only fed the liquids. During the ceremony the usual rigamrole ensues, whereby a suitable learned looking “pandit” doles out passages from a dog-eared tome. The sound of the sanskrit language exerts a strange allure on the masses – although almost 90% percent in recent times neither know or understand it.
So there I was in Kolkata for a few days contemplating my holiday routine and trying to figure out a comfortable way to pass the time. The weather was just right and the scenery around my dad’s pad is pretty green – with a lake thrown in for good measure. In this scenic setting I started wondering about Kolkata and what defines this city. The most compelling reason for this activity of mine was one word – pollution !
Ah yes the pollution ! My reveries in Kolkata were totally annihilated whenever I tried to venture out on the city roads. The noxious fumes were so disgusting that by the end of the third outing I had almost decided that the next trip would be the one to the airport when I am flying out. The air there is more than polluted – it was poisonous. A deadly gas which would have been a favorite with the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
I realized that there were a multitude of reasons working in tandom to achieve this abominal end result. The most important, I felt, was the fact that the people of Kolkata seem to accept anything from mother nature and nothing from upper management ! Since the polluted air was more mother nature than upper management – its was totally acceptable. However stringent laws to control pollution seemed to be more of an upper-management dicktat – so it met with heavy resistance whenever any attempt at its implementation were made.
The auto-rikshaws as usual were the greatest offenders. They use something called “kata tel” or “modified petrol”. The modification in this case was the dilution of the petrol with kerosene. This causes a decrease in running costs (because of the subsidized nature of kerosene in India) and a ten fold increase in air pollution from the exhaust. To give an idea of the situation – everytime I followed such an auto-rikshaw (in my car) I felt like someone had stuck an exhaust pipe up my nose.
Get a wiff !
The auto-rickshaws are followed by the buses in the polluting top three. The third spot is of course held by the archaic and totally ramshackle set of Taxis ! The age old diesel buses and taxis have engines which are probably older than the oldest driver. They should have all been scrapped by now – except that in Kolkata “poor people” can get away with anything ! Since the poor bus-wallas and auto-rickshaw-wallas are amongst the “poor people” there illegal actions are pardonable.
Which brings me to the second reason for this end result. Vote bank politics. Kolkata has been ruled for a long time now by the CPIM – a communist party which has managed to hold the reins for nearly forty years ! Communism has always been a favorite concept with the enlightened bengali “bhadrolok”, read – gentleman. However in forty years of power, the CPIM party has managed to make a mockery of the concept – and use it to squeeze the last drops of life from this ailing old city.
In their diary of forty years the CPIM have prominently etched a number of amazing achievements. One of the more famous ones is the exit of the Tatas from Singur. The Indian dream car – called the nano was supposed to have been launched from Bengal. But in the end the cheap politcs and the Kolkata mentality for limiting progress – prevailed ! The sterling project was reduced to a political farce. Many loud slogans and party meetings later – the Tatas got completely frustrated and left the place, swearing never to come back with another project. In fact in a recent conference the chairman of the Tata & Sons group, was reported to have remarked that it was all for the best – as he was almost a hundred percent sure that they (political parties) would not have allowed them to function with any efficiency even if they had managed to create the factory !
Kolkata inspite of all its past history of high education and learned achievemnt, has managed to become an immense slum of sorts. Everywhere you look you can find a ton of rotting garbage and plastic bags. The roads are some of the worst in India (even within the heart of the city). The air is polluted and the population is predominantly old – as the young have left for greener pastures. It was really sad to see the city on its knees gasping in suffocation. It will not be long before the situation goes beyond control and the only option left will be to leave the place to rot in isolation. Maybe they will create barricades around the city – to prevent the filth and the shit from spilling over to the relatively cleaner rural suburbs !
