Requiem for Bejoygarh

For the past several years I have kept this piece of paper, though I don't know why. This crumpled, yellowing piece of paper, which flew into my life on a strange evening. For some reason, I remember every detail of that evening very clearly. It was late April, the season of nor'westers, and those who have seen a nor'wester storm in Calcutta will know how calm and beautiful it gets just before the storm. That evening the sky was darkening at a rapid pace. There was a strange coolness in the air. All the trees stood still, waiting for the storm to come and make them go wild. I walked out of my house to quickly grab some phuchkas, yet another Calcutta speciality, a savoury snack made from flour, and gulped down with a spicy mix of mashed potato and tamarind juice.

The phuchka seller has a stand just across the road from my house. I reached him and ordered my phuchkas. A gust of wind announced the storm, and nearly blew the first phuchka out of my hand. The seller rushed to pack up and run for shelter, and I suddenly felt my face getting covered with something. As I took it away from my face, I saw a piece of paper, the kind used by the phuchka seller to wrap his wares. I was about to crumple it up and throw it away, when something caught my eye. The Nation of Bejoygarh, it read. By now, the storm had grown stronger; it had started drizzling and the trees were beginning to sway. The seller had run away without waiting for my money for that one phuchka, which in any case had also gotten blown away. I put the paper in my pocket and ran back home.

I settled into my bed, switched on the reading lamp, and took the paper back out of my pocket. And this is what I read:

The nation
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a story. This is history. This is the history of a nation gobbled up by the city of Calcutta. Calcutta is now Kolkata. The government thinks this is a soft Bengali name. But I will tell you a very hard history. I do not write this in Bengali. Because Bengalis are parochial. I have given lectures to many in many places about my nation, which is now no more. But everyone calls me crazy or mad. Yes, I am mad. I am mad with sorrow. I am mad with history. I am mad with anger.

I am writing the history of my nation, Bejoygarh. It is a nation that developed in a colony established by my forefathers and my foremothers. I will write one hundred editions of this history with my own hand, and then spread them around. I am sure that one day at least one of them will reach a sensitive soul, one who will understand this history. He or she will then need to ensure that this gets published, for the edification of posterity.

Let me start by asking a question: What defines a nation? And let me give the answer: Bejoygarh had it all. We had a boundary. To the west was Arabinda Nagar, to the south Pallisree, to the east Bidyasagar Colony – these were all colonies like us, but they were not us. We had our own territory and our own community. It was not imagined like some new thinkers seem to think. In fact, I am nobody, but I would still like to make this point. These big nations are a conspiracy of the big states. In our Nation of Bejoygarh, everyone knew every other member of the community. And that is how nations should be. Who needs a big state? Who needs a big nation? Nobody. Only people who make bombs, and those who want to wield power with police and soldiers. My own history will prove that to you. And I shall be coming to that very soon.

In our nation we also had wars with other nations. But all of them were on the football ground. Do not come to tell me that football patriotism began with the televising of World Cups. Nor should it be traced to Brazil alone. I still clearly remember the patriotic passion that each match between the Bejoygarh Cultural Association and Pallisree Nabarun would generate. We, the nationals of Bejoygarh, would cheer our team, and the nationals of Pallisree would cheer theirs. This is how we defined national supremacy. Not by bombing Iraq or occupying Czech territory.

Our land also had a walled border. It was the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. As a child, I heard it was the second largest golf ground in the whole of Asia. I do not know where the largest was. We were aware of the overpowering existence of our all-powerful neighbour, Calcutta, to our south. Just like Latin American countries know of the USA. The Golf Club formed a no-man's land between the mammoth city and our nation. This was also the club that practiced apartheid. We, the natives, were not allowed entry into the grounds. So, we, the natives, got our own golf irons made by the local ironsmith, and played in the Bejoygarh maidan with the old, used golf balls that often flew into our territory from beyond the walls.

Yes. We had our own economy. We had cobblers, ironsmiths and sweets-makers that made lovely meringues from sugarcane juice.

Just beyond our southern border lay Jadavpur. A big market around the railway and bus stations, which was also our entry point to Calcutta. It is true that we did not need passports to travel to Calcutta, but doing so was clearly travelling away from our land. We would say, "Papa has gone to Calcutta." The modes of transport were also different. Calcutta had trams, double- and single-decker buses, local trains, taxis, private cars, hand-drawn rickshaws, a few motorbikes and scooters. Until the early 1990s, the only public transport in Bejoygarh was cycle-rickshaws, and the only private transport was bicycles.

Calcutta also had electricity. We had our kerosene-lit hurricane lamps. But we also had our tube wells, and vaccination against cholera and measles. We had our own school, and even a college and a maternity centre.

Two
Today, much is being said about the global and the local. They say that the local is getting directly linked to the global, through global media; they say the borders have vanished. I listen and I laugh. Where were these people when Valentina Tereskova, the woman astronaut from the USSR, and Yuri Gagarin came to Bejoygarh? How was the local then distant from the global if we had Hillary Vila from Ghana coming and giving lectures in our maidan? How is it then that the first film I ever saw was Nanook of the North? I think I saw it in 1964.

My god, this reminds me of the time my father organised some celebrations for Africa Day. We had called Hilary Vila, who was then a student at Calcutta University. In those days, lots of African students used to come from socialist-bloc countries to study here. Now only footballers come, I think. Anyway, the function was organised and we were all tense with excitement. I had memorised Tagore's famous poem, "Africa".

The African contingent of a few students finally arrived, and the testing of the microphone was over. We had this neighbour who had worked in Africa for a few years – the only member of our nation who had gone to that continent. My father called the neighbour onstage to narrate his experience of working in Africa. The idea was that he would say some nice things about the African people from his firsthand experience. But instead he came up on the stage and said, "The Africans are very simple people. They are naked and they eat bananas."

Just imagine! Thankfully, he spoke in Bengali, so the Ghanaians could not understand a single word. My father then translated his words as, "Our neighbour who has worked in Africa just told us that the Africans have an innate love of being close to nature, and that they prefer natural foods." We all breathed a sigh of relief and clapped.

Three
As you can clearly see, this is the history of an independent nation, which had established its own connections with the larger world. We felt close links with Vietnam. Lumumba and Castro were our heroes. We fought for refugee rehabilitation rights. But I do not remember murders or bombs in our land.

Then came the 1970s, and everything changed. Some of you may know that this was the time when the Naxalite movement gained ground in Bengal. Thousands of youths rose against the state, and they were brutally tortured and killed in their hundreds by the police and paramilitary forces, as well as by the thugs of the ruling party.

Bejoygarh did not escape this violence. A large number of young people from our land left the ruling Marxist party to join the Naxalites. Then they broke into many confusing factions. I was just a kid then, but I saw bombs and blood. I saw killings, both by the state and the political youth. The Marxists and the Naxalites killed each other. The Congress killed both. Our schools closed down. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) marched down the streets. The more entrenched Marxist party got rid of the Naxalites, and fought the forces for nearly two years. They were like local resistance groups. It was a unique refugee colony based urban guerrilla warfare.

During the days, the CRPF personnel were able to move around. But during the night, the area reverted to the control of the shadowy figures of the political cadres, armed with handmade bombs and local pipe-guns. What made the task so difficult for the state forces were the narrow and winding lanes of our area, with complex links and shortcuts that no outsider could possibly know about. The houses were mostly hutments. The area was full of ponds and marshes and abandoned barracks of the American Army, dating back to the world wars. The Marxists had hideouts that were impossible to find.

Then came 1975. Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency. But by 1977, the winds of change again began blowing. The Marxists won the state elections, and came rolling back into power in West Bengal. They are still in power today.

Four
And my nation, my land changed. Once again, here is a history that no one has chronicled. Through the 1980s, the international monetary organisations and the Indian state spent crores of rupees to build roads and culverts across our land. All narrow roads were paved. Maps were drawn, and all of the colonies could now be reached through jeeps and cars.

The most significant change was the development of a housing complex called Golf Green. A vast piece of land was taken from the Golf Club to build the housing complex and an entry road. This road now opened up Bejoygarh to the city of Calcutta like never before. There was a direct access to Anwar Shah Road. In the new millennium, a new bridge over the railway lines further shortened the distance.

Bejoygarh generally lost its identity. The new generation of residents are merely people who happen to live in a particular location. They have no time for local history or local culture. They all wear global brands, sing the popular hits from far away. Their idea of global culture is Pepsi and teleserials like American Idol. Che Guevara, for them, is nothing more than a sexy t-shirt.

I am 76 and dying. I still live at a postal address called Bejoygarh. But Bejoygarh is already dead. This kind of a name is now an embarrassment for modern, upwardly mobile families who would rather live in Apsara Heights or South City or some such place.

This is a unique kind of displacement of identity. The place is there. But the identity has been drained out. Calcutta has overrun my land. Pride in a community with faceless, polluted development, where trees have been replaced by minibuses, ponds with streams of urine, neighbours with strangers, faces with visiting cards, local tea shops with colour television sets…

I went back to the phuchka seller the next day, to look for the next page or pages. But he did not have them. So I will never know what was written after this. I am sending this in just in case it can get published, as the unknown man or woman wanted. I do not know if she or he is still living. I do not know whether, if it is printed, a copy would ever reach her or him. But…

~ Rangan Chakravarti is a film director, media producer and media consultant based in Calcutta.