Never again. As I wrestle my way through the umpteenth “Puja sale”, barking at fellow shoppers and terrorising already harried shop assistants, I furiously mutter to myself, “Never again, you fool. But you never learn, do you?”

True, I never learn. Every year, I do this to myself — allowing the mad cheer of the festive season to shove my extreme abhorrence of crowded, noisy, sweaty places to the background. And so I find myself stuck at the back of impossibly long pre-Puja shopping queues to buy exceptionally ordinary clothes, shoes and other such undoubtedly life-saving items for near and dear ones, and then, once Puja actually arrives, allow them to chivvy me to one nightmarish pandal after another, all for the sake of pleasure.

I beg forgiveness for injecting this misanthropic rant into what has long been this city’s most important social event, but I really feel incapable of participating in this seasonal madness any longer. Even as I write this, though, I sheepishly recall that I am done with this year’s shopping, acquired a considerable credit card bill, and will probably spend at least one full night tramping from pandal to pointless pandal, grumpily trying to spoil other people’s fun.

Why? Why don’t I simply leave town during Those Five Days (which now threaten to spill into Seven)? Well, not for lack of trying, certainly. I have, on bended knee, implored my friends and family to accompany me on magical mystery mini-breaks during this sacred period, to be met with point blank refusals every time. The fault, undoubtedly, is mine, for not picking my friends and family with greater care.

Therefore, unless I go off on my own, which increasingly seems a very attractive proposition, I’m stuck in the city.

Again, why? Why do I dislike Durga Puja so heartily? Well, that’s the point — I don’t. Not Puja per se. But I really don’t see the point in it any longer. Not that it ever was a religious festival. Right from the time the first sharadiya puja was organised by Raja Nabakrishna Deb of Sovabazar in Kolkata, in 1757, Durga Puja has always been more about showing off than anything else, a time-tested question of ‘is his bigger than mine’? I say ‘his’, with reason. But for a very few exceptions, men have always been at the helm of every known puja committee.

It’s just that today, the competitiveness has reached such fierce proportions that it has become ridiculous. For instance, take this business of sharad samman, or awards for various pujas. I have personally counted 37 awards that are given out to various ‘deserving’ pujas, for best idol, best lighting, best-looking lion, best costumes, best dhaaki, best priest, best fire security, best-looking puja committee… I mean, what the heck? Okay, I made some of these up, but you get the picture.

Naturally, such insane one-upmanship has led to truly monster displays of devotion, with similarly monster budgets that could easily run a state the size of Goa, for example. Just that the more the devotion, the bigger the size of the idol. And the bigger the crowd. And the bigger the crowd, the more the public money pumped into controlling it. Just think of the super efficient traffic management during Puja. Ever wondered why we don’t see the same efficiency at other times of the year? I bet you have. And all this for five days of… what, exactly?

My question is: would people have any less fun if a certain pandal did not look like the Red Fort or the Meenakshi Temple or an igloo? Would Puja become not worth celebrating if we spent a mere Rs 5 lakh instead of 50? What have we gained by blowing a spiritual event so out of proportion that we are conditioning ourselves to believe that any Ashtami evening not spent hopping frenetically from one pandal to another, ticking each one off on a list, is an evening wasted? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not turning all moralistic here and suggesting the puja committees donate to charity instead of burning the money. I just hate being manipulated by other people’s designs.

I know what I really can do, though. Because I can’t beat ’em, I join ’em. Here’s the deal: I launch a small puja of my own, like a start-up, you see, theme it on the earth’s vanishing glaciers (how can that not sell?) and get it sponsored, but I don’t stop there. I get associate sponsors for the arati, dhunuchi naach, sindur khela, and bhaashan. I sell outdoor rights to an event management company (in the footsteps of Badamtala Ashar Sangha), and telecast rights to a channel (a la Maddox Square). In three years, when I have made enough from the start-up, I merge with Badamtala and give it controlling stake.

If you know of a better business plan, tell me about it.

From left: Parambrata Chatterjee, Rituparno Ghosh, Swastika Mukherjee and Indraneel Sengupta at the Brake Fail premiere

Brake Fail
Cast: Anu Kapoor, Saswata Chatterjee, Santu Mukherjee, Parambrata, Swastika
Direction: Kaushik Ganguly
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The famed Bengali sense of humour and wit used to be an intrinsic part of films made during the so called golden age of Bengali cinema, the 1960s and ’70s. As film directors mysteriously lost their knack for finding comedy in everyday situations in the subsequent decades, the fun all but disappeared from our cinema.

Kaushik Ganguly, thank you for bringing it back with a film in which PG Wodehouse effortlessly meets Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay meets Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

If we ignore some of the weaker performances — but more on those later — Brake Fail is a nonsensical and fun-filled joyride that ought to draw family audiences in hordes. The direction is neat and light (note Ganguly’s deft handling of issues like communalism), the dialogues crisp and genuinely funny (Ganguly again), the editing and camera work competent (Mainak Bhaumik and Rakesh Kumar Singh). Granted, the look is not as glossy as that of some recent Tollywood productions, but if content is king, a few more films like Brake Fail will set Tollywood’s much hyped revival firmly on its way.

Essentially based on (deliberately) mistaken identities, the plot of Brake Fail relies mostly on situational comedy, with hilarious one-liners helping things along. Village boy Sidhu (Param) and village girl Hena (Swastika) meet and fall in love, but must endure several trials and tribulations — aided and hindered in equal measure by a golden-hearted garage boss (Kapoor) and his crazy assistants (Saswata et al) — before they can be united.

Thrown into the mad mix are well etched peripheral characters reminiscent of the kind we find in Shirshendu’s stories for children — principal among them Lorryda and Lorry boudi — played to perfection by Paran Bandopadhyay and Tanima Sen.

In terms of performance, the film belongs to Kapoor, Saswata, and, in the second half, Santu Mukherjee, brilliantly supported by Lama and Taranga. Param and Swastika are not challenged much, so it would not be fair to judge their relatively lukewarm performances.

Finally, a word about the music. Neel Dutt is in great form as usual, but the songs do slow the film down. Perhaps we could listen to them on the album only?

Er...let's just forget the flags now, shall we?

The dust is slowly settling over the Indian Election Circus 2009, and the shock and awe at the Congress’ (oh all right, UPAs’) sweeping victory is no longer as intense. For the people of West Bengal, though, it’s proving hard to shake off the ‘we have entered a new dawn’ feeling. ‘Green revolution’ has become quite a catch phrase, and amidst conflicting reports of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee offering to step down and of the Trinamul Congress (TMC) and Congress deciding to bring a no confidence motion against the Left Front government, everybody’s acting as though these are the Assembly, rather than Parliament, elections which the Left Front has lost.

And you can’t blame them.

I belong to a generation of Bengalis who have never seen the Left Front — CPI(M), CPI, RSP, Forward Bloc — lose an election, at whatever level. As a youngster who was born and brought up outside Bengal, it always seemed to me incredible that a single political alliance could inspire such unswerving loyalty. It was only as I grew up — and grew more politically conscious — that I realised what inspired that loyalty, primarily in rural Bengal. Stories about Left intimidation of voters and electoral fraud became so widespread that they became impossible to brush aside as isolated incidents. It was clear that here was a government which, as soon as it came to power, spent the next five years plotting how to recapture power at the next elections. Every administrative organ was pressed into the Left Front’s service, so that the police, for instance, became just another extension of the party in power, and party leaders acted as though the judiciary belonged to them, too.

What was initially an expression of spontaneous support — in the era of such leaders as Pramod Dasgupta, EMS Namboodiripad and Harekrishna Konar — became a support born out of fear and then inertia. It didn’t help either that West Bengal had no viable Opposition, because the once mighty Congress had gradually worn down to a rump, and the Trinamul Congress was seen as an unstable gathering of very unlikely individuals at the mercy of the fiery but whimsical Mamata Banerjee, whose only ideology seemed to be to oppose the Left.

Systematically, the Left Front built a party machinery any corporate entity would be proud of. Particularly in Bengal’s villages, which were its strongholds since the land reforms of the 1970s, the red bastion was virtually impregnable.

This time, it was in Bengal’s villages that the red downfall was staged.

The warning signs were there for everyone to see in last year’s Panchayat elections, when the Left Front’s fiefdom of Nandigram slipped out of its grasp after a series of brutal encounters that only proved how completely the state government had come to rely on force to suppress any signs of opposition. And then, of course, there was Singur and the Tata Nano saga, which showed how completely the state government had lost touch with its principal support base.

The wonder of it all is that nobody saw this collapse coming, not the Left Front and its much vaunted party machinery, and certainly not the Opposition. It was such a silent revolution, and so many voters feigned support for the Left while voting Trinamul, that even seasoned political observers have been taken by surprise.

Well, the Left has just about a year to get its act together before the Assembly elections of 2011, and unlike on many previous occasions, Mamata Banerjee may not let opportunity slip through her grasp this time. So much so, that there are reports that she may refuse a Central ministry because she wants to concentrate on the state, though she did well as Railway Minister of the NDA regime. And there are indications that she may call for an early Assembly election, though she may not be able to pull it off.

Whatever happens, no one will now say that West Bengal lacks a viable Opposition party. Whether Mamata didi can cash in on the mood is entirely up to her.

Objects of his ire... Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat (from left) with Ramachandran Pillai

“Apart from bringing a dead man back to life, I can do anything.” Thus spake the man whom Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury undoubtedly love to hate, particularly now that he has directly challenged their position as ‘mass’ leaders. In typical style, which the people of West Bengal have come to instantly recognise — and sometimes derive huge amusement from — he has asked why CPI(M) Politburo members should not contest elections. Obviously, the question is not as straightforward as it seems. Nothing about Subhas Chakraborty ever is.

Don't you love the headgear? Subhas in the man in black, incidentally

For a member of arguably one of India’s most dictatorial political parties, Chakraborty shows surprisingly little hesitation in repeatedly stepping out of his crease and hitting the party line for a six, to use a cricketing analogy. Call him the CPI(M)’s enfant terrible, or call him simply a maverick, he’s a constant source of embarrassment for his party, and a huge deal of entertainment for us, who enjoy watching party leaders squirm as they try to clamber their way out of the holes that their temperamental colleague digs for them.

And the fun lies in the fact that they seem to be able to do nothing about it. I quote here a fairly typical passage that describes Chakraborty’s relationship with his party: “West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has distanced himself from his cabinet colleague and senior CPI(M) leader Subhas Chakraborty, who is facing a police investigation for alleged public outburst against election officials. Meanwhile, the opposition Congress today demanded that CPI(M) should drop Chakraborty as candidate for the forthcoming assembly election.”

That news item is dated 2006, but if you were to replace a few phrases here and there, may just as well have been datelined 2001 (when he described his fellow CPI(M) leaders as a “herd of cattle”) or 2009. And yet, nothing changes. Forget dropping Chakraborty as an election candidate, as the Congress demanded in 2006, the state leaders don’t even dare censure him as he goes on his merry way.

So what makes him such a big deal?

Well, ‘mass base’ is a phrase you will often hear associated with Chakraborty. And it explains much of his influence, though not all of it. Contrary to his rough and ready image in the corridors of power, he is known — always has been — as something of a do gooder in his Assembly constituency of Belgachhia East. Some years ago, I remember meeting Masudur Rahman Baidya, the orthopaedically handicapped swimmer who has conquered the English Channel and Straits of Gibraltar, and who was then aiming to cross all the world’s 12 major channels. Running from pillar to post to secure funds, the double amputee below the knee recalled how ‘Subhas da’ had promised all possible help in his endeavours, and how grateful he was for the gesture.

He has for many years been one of the biggest fundraisers for his party in the state, and there are wild rumours about the fleets of private buses that he reportedly owns. These buses are avidly commercial vehicles, and Chakraborty in his position as state transport minister really has no business running them if he indeed does so, but then, he has never been too fussed about minor matters such as ethics and morality.

Chakraborty’s third pillar of strength is his steadfast devotion to CPI(M) patriarch Jyoti Basu, and the bond between the two has stood the test of time and the ebb and flow of political turmoil. Time and again, Chakraborty has found shelter beneath Basu’s hitherto braod wings after yet another misdemeanour. As recently as last year, when still an influential figure within the party, and immediately after the CPI(M)’s party congress in Coimbatore, Basu had demanded that Chakraborty be included in the CPI-M Politburo as well as state party secretariat. His demand was in direct defiance of the stand taken by Karat, the party’s general secretary, and the latter remained unimpressed, to nobody’s surprise.

However, from all indications, Basu will be increasingly unable to protect his protege, who has now truly hit Karat where it hurts by implying that he does not have the mass base to win an election, and that his student leader experience is pretty much zilch in the rough and tumble of national politics. The irony is, much of the CPI(M)’s power at the Centre derives from the 40-odd Lok Sabha seats that it holds in West Bengal, and more impartial observers than Chakraborty have felt that neither Karat nor Yechury have treated the state with the ‘respect’ that they ought to.

The question now is, what will happen next? By all accounts, the CPI(M) and its Left Front allies will suffer sizeable losses in the just-concluded Lok abha elections in West Bengal, which means the Left leaders will see their strongest negotiating tool weakened at the national level. And with Basu fading out of the picture, Karat & Co will no longer see the need to pussyfoot around Chakraborty. Inevitably, the state leadership has carefully distanced itself from some of Chakraborty’s potentially explosive remarks. About the others, it has remained meaningfully silent.

Has Subhas da finally bitten off more than he can chew? All those of us who have watched him take on one opponent after another — from journalists to Maoists — hurling insults in his trademark East Bengal accent, would lament a reduction in his powers. Love him or hate him, and most of us frankly see little to praise in him, we have been hugely entertained by him. And we have admired his ability to throw a spanner in the works with unfailing regularity. We grinned with delight when he organised the scandalously plebeian Hope 86, laughed when he unabashedly — and untruthfully — took all credit for bringing Diego Maradona to Kolkata recently, and hooted when he defiantly offered puja at Tarapith, which no true Communist would even consider. He single-handedly took on Kolkata’s powerful hawkers and triumphed over them with Operation Sunshine, and openly opposed the subsequently discredited Prasun Mukherjee, erstwhile police commissioner of Kolkata and the government’s ‘unofficial’ candidate for the post of president of the Cricket Association of Bengal.

All of us would love to see this battle run its course — the Page 3 Communist who spends his holidays in Scotland versus the man of the masses. The suave former student leader versus the sweaty, bizarrely dressed street fighter. Perhaps it ain’t all over yet.

Starting point

Ah, Slumdog Millionaire. How many of you had heard of Freida Pinto before that? I certainly hadn’t, and now I can’t go two steps without bumping into she of the toothy smile. One day, she’s on the cover of Vogue. Another day, I catch her snuggling up to Slumdog co-star Dev Patel in Israel, and on a third, I have to read about how she may be the next Bond girl after already having bagged a Woody Allen project.

Granted, she isn’t really hot property in India yet. I mean, producers and directors aren’t exactly queuing up at her doorstep with film offers, and the endorsements circuit has been curiously indifferent to her global renown. I can’t remember a single Indian ad that she has featured in, can you?

Why is this? Are we so jealous of her fame and fortune that we can’t look beyond them? “What has she done to deserve this?” is a cry I often hear among friends. “She had only a 10-minute role in the film. And look at how opportunistic she is, dumping her fianceé for that Dev Patel.”

The fianceé in question, Rohan Antao, lost no time in tomtomming his misery to the world, the loser. And though there were reports of friends ganging up on Freida for the way in which she treated Antao, it appears not to have affected her global triumphal march at all.

How? That is also a question I often hear. How is this ordinary looking girl and decidedly ordinary actress the toast of international moviegoers? How does Vogue name her as the world’s best dressed woman? Why do Indian designers moan when she avoids wearing their creations to the numerous red carpets she is seen on?

Well, given the entourage of international stylists and designers working on her round the clock, Freida is no longer ordinary looking, though there is a decided element of ‘accidental sexiness’ about her. Now if only I could pinpoint the reason why my friends still find her unworthy of all the attention she’s getting… and why I can’t shake off the sneaking suspicion that she’s one very, very, lucky lady.

Time to give it all he's got

Never having been a Shah Rukh Khan fan, it would be easy for me to gloat about his currently beleaguered condition. Particularly because, like most Kolkatans, it was irritating to watch SRK ‘buy’ a team that was nominally attached to the city I live in, waltz in, and try to become a Kolkatan overnight, giving us bumpkins a taste of Bollywood glamour by bringing in his entourage and camping in the city as the Kolkata Knight Riders played in the inaugural IPL Twenty20 championship.

Well, they fell decidedly short of greatness last year. But that, we thought, would change this year, because we would learn from our mistakes. That we didn’t is well documented, so I won’t dwell on the bad times. What IPL season 2 has unfolded, however, is a fascinating study of the rise and fall of Shah Rukh Khan — IPL team owner and apparent cricket expert. And his real estate dreams seem also to be turning sour, but more on that later.

Consider what SRK and his team management did as they went about trying to right last year’s wrongs. Badshah Khan bought Bangladeshi tearaway Mashrafe Mortaza for a ridiculous $600,000 (over Rs 3 crore at the current exchange rate) after a bizarre bidding war with Kings XI Punjab, ostensibly to replace missing Pakistani speedster Umer Gul, only for Mortaza to remain bench-bound thus far. This when Ishant Sharma clearly lacks a new ball partner, and the bowling attack comprises luminaries like Ajit Agarkar, Laxmiratan Shukla, and utility bowlers like Chris Gayle. And the less said about last season’s ‘find’ Ashok Dinda the better. Another new recruit, Ajantha Mendis, who so traumatised Indian batsmen on a recent tour of Sri Lanka, has also been used sparingly, and that is a mystery still waiting to be solved.

Evidently as a marketing manoeuvre — because let’s face it, Kolkata is not the most marketing-friendly name or destination in sight — SRK dropped Kolkata from the team name (for which many of us shall always remain grateful), even as Man Friday John Buchanan announced a four-captain policy that at first seemed like rubbish, then seemed like a clever ploy to get rid of old warhorse and KKR (well, KR) captain Sourav Ganguly, and then seemed like nothing at all when it was junked and Brendon McCullum appointed captain. See, many of us honestly felt it was time for Ganguly to go gracefully, and it seemed as though an exit route had been smoothly handed to him. True to type, he didn’t take it, but chose to make his displeasure and disappointment evident to anyone who would listen.

All this was before the tournament had even begun, and we were still adjusting to the venue shift from India to South Africa. And then, on day one of IPL Season 2 came the Fake IPL Player whammy. Someone implying he was part of the KR team began dishing out all the dirt from within the camp, complete with gossip about dressing room debates and invidious infighting within the team, as well as malicious but apparently authentic gossip about a few of the other teams. Particularly striking were the blogger’s delicious nicknames for the players and coaches he wrote about, indicating both a wicked sense of humour as well as some serious axe to grind.

As theories flew thick and fast about who the ‘fake’ blogger was, a further blow to KR came in the form of Ricky Ponting’s pull out. That left two big hitters at the top (McCullum and Gayle), an earnest Brad Hodge at number three, a vengeful former skipper at number four, and confusion to follow. And when I say vengeful, I mean it. Ganguly is not the man to swallow an insult and dedicate his services to those who have delivered it. He is unique in his ability to be part of a team without really being part of it, and spread the fire of disaffection and negativity if he so desires. SRK and henchmen seriously miscalculated the impact that removing Ganguly would have, especially in such a ham-handed manner. To add to KR’s woes, Cheteshwar Pujara has been sidelined with an injury.

Amidst jokes about KR having more support staff than players (courtesy Buchanan who seems to think nothing of packing his management with ’support’ from his native state of Queensland in Australia), came the second whammy — that Shah Rukh was going to sell the team, a report that he and IPL supremo Lalit Modi have since denied, though doubts remain. As a result of the steady stream of KR losses, however, SRK is finally learning to stay out of the limelight, to not try and talk cricket at all (no matter how much he apologises later), and to scale down the smug know-all air that has infuriated many.

On top of all this are the reports that the $2.2 billion luxury apartment project associated with him in Dubai has been shelved owing to the recession. Can life get any worse? Well, going by their most recent performance, KR are trying their best to prove that it can indeed.

Badshah Khan, meanwhile, is back in India, having vowed to not go back to South Africa until ‘his’ team starts winning. Which ought to keep him home bound until at least the next season, going by the look of things. In the course of a single year, he has gone from hero to virtual zero in his ‘adopted’ city, managed to make a laughing stock of himself and his team in the eyes of the world, and mysteriously come under the thrall of John Buchanan, a man who seems to confuse cricket with rocket science, and infect everyone around him with that confusion.

The IPL’s ‘most glamorous team’ is thus nothing but a collection of demoralised and ill-picked individuals playing bad cricket, served by a bad coach and hampered by an owner who clearly knows neither his cricket nor his limits. Can anyone save them? Not this time, at any rate.

Hitesh Chauhan... muzzled

When does a mode of protest cease to create shock and merely generate laughter? Or worse, indifference?

When Iraqi TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi hurled his size 10 sneakers at the deserving George W. Bush, the world reacted with shock and awe. Of course, the computer games and the jokes about journos entering press conferences in only their socks followed in short order, but the initial reaction was exactly as the Iraqis would have hoped it would be, and overnight, al-Zaidi had become a national hero.

The same fate more or less befell Jarnail Singh when he respectfully lobbed (as opposed to hurled or even threw) his battered footwear at P Chidambaram. Clearly, the idea had caught on, but the Indian political establishment was still sufficiently shocked for Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar to be withdrawn from the current Lok Sabha elections.

Meanwhile, others were at work, too. In February, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had footwear chucked at him in Cambridge, and there were even reports of shoe throwing from Sweden.

In India, though, we are overdoing it, as usual. Following in Jarnail Singh’s footsteps (pun not intended), random folks have begun hurling shoes at other random folks, with the motives not always comprehensible to any of us bystanders. From LK Advani to Naveen Jindal to, finally, Manmohan Singh, the last the recipient of footwear from Hitesh Chauhan, the unfortunate youth pictured above.

Sadly, by now, seeing as shoe throwing has become such a part of our daily lives, I don’t think anyone really cares about the reasons anymore. Indeed, the time is fast approaching when we shall sit down and compile a list of politicians who haven’t had their mandatory brush with footwear. I mean, the Gandhis, Karats, and Reddys must be feeling left out, surely?

He can... but can you?

Why do they do this all the time? I mean, look at the picture above. This is a young man called Jackky Bhagnani, son of Bollywood producer Vashu Bhagnani. If you believe what you read, Jackky weighed 130 kg and had a waistline measuring 44 inches only a couple of years ago. Having shed 60 kg, and heaven knows how many inches, he’s now ready to appear on the big screen as the latest star kid trying to become a star in his/her own right. The same applies to Adhyayan Suman, son of Shekhar Suman, who weighed in at 115 kg or something. And, of course, we all know about Sonam Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha, heavyweight ugly ducklings who have turned into impossible swans.

Only the other day, I saw a photo of the Tendulkar family — Sachin, Anjali, Sara, Arjun — at the unveiling of Tendulkar’s wax statue. Here it is:

See what I mean?

It already looks as though the kids will require the services of a fitness trainer before too long. And it seems equally certain that they will get rid of the excess flab in no time.

Well, hurrah for them. What I object to is the supposedly ‘inspirational’ articles that exhort the likes of us ordinary mortals to follow the trail blazed by the stars. ‘If they can do it, so can you’, is the chant. Excuse me, it ain’t that easy.

What is the way out for people who wake up early in the morning to cook, clean, wash, get kids ready for school, take them to school, get ready for work, go to work, spend at least eight hours at work, drag themselves home in the evening, sit down with kids’ homework, spend two hours on their laptops doing some freelancing to earn the extra rupee, and stagger off to bed at midnight?

I don’t see much room there for a fitness regimen or fancy fitness trainer, do you? And then you have to bear with simpering celebs who ascribe their stunning bodies and faces to ‘genes’ or ‘running after my kids’ or ‘drinking plenty of water’. What the hell?

From bitter experience, I know that the only way to pack the extra kilos is to put in some good, old-fashioned hours slogging your guts out. Everything else, as the soft drink commercial goes, is bakwaas. Therefore, if there’s anyone out there who can come to my aid and fashion a fitness programme for the likes of me, I’m waiting.

The rally in Kolkata

I was back at home from work on Friday evening, and sitting in front of the TV, when a colleague called to say she still hadn’t got home because… some people had shot arrows at the bus in which she was travelling, and that had caused a tyre to burst. All this on Mayo Road, geographically the centre of Kolkata, and within virtual shouting distance of both Writers’ Buildings (the city’s administrative headquarters) and Lalbazar (the police headquarters).

Naturally, I reacted with complete disbelief. Arrows? Tribal activists? Shooting with lethal intent in the heart of the city?

Well, yes, she said, describing how she and fellow passengers had ducked to avoid further arrows, and how there seemed to be very few policemen around.

When it finally registered, there was a sense of inevitability about it. At last, trouble in Lalgarh had come home to roost, and we could no longer pretend that tribal militant activism in West Bengal was limited only to some vague corner of Midnapore and had no direct bearing on our lives.

Years of administrative neglect and exploitation have piled up to bring the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) out on to the streets, and they are in no mood to back down this time. Curiously enough, most of us identify with them, because anyone who has been to rural areas of West Bengal will testify to the complete lack of government involvement in the lives of the people, and the iron hand with which the ruling Left Front coalition seeks to rule their daily activities.

All that is changing, and in years to come, Lalgarh could well become a model for other disaffected regions. The area’s residents have declared a boycott of the elections scheduled to be held here in a week, banned the entry of policemen of any description, and, with a series of carefully coordinated shows of strength led by Chhatradhar Mahato (of whom we are likely to hear a lot more), demonstrated how thoroughly they can bring an inept and hitherto indifferent state machinery to its knees.

Well, indifference is no longer an option. Every single Kolkatan I have spoken to, including those who suffered the PCPA roadblock on Friday, seem to be endorsing the ’serve them right’ line of thought. For many, the people of Lalgarh have done what we in the city have been unable to do, and they have finally spoken to the Left Front in the language that it understands.

Yes, we all know that the language of violence takes on a life of its own after a point, and if the situation in Lalgarh is not brought under control soon, it could well spiral into a bloodbath, but if that is the only threat that seems to get our leaders to listen, so be it.

For far too long, West Bengal has been steadily pushed along the road to ruin by a party that claims ideological high ground for all its acitvities. It villages and cities have rotted away, its brightest workforce migrated to other cities and countries to shine there. Other than Kolkata, we have no major city to speak of, and the one-time capital of British India, rather than the cosmopolitan cultural hub that it used to be three decades ago, is striving to be a poor copy of Delhi and Mumbai, and failing miserably.

Whichever way you look at it — industry, healthcare, agriculture, education, employment — West Bengal is likely to be found at the bottom of the list, and the constant attempt to inject the CPI(M)’s cadres into every walk of life has finally become too much to tolerate. Therefore, the people of Lalgarh, for instance, now look to the Maoists, not the state, for help, in times of crisis.

Therefore, no matter how great our fear of violence, our desire for change is likely to overshadow it. In the coming months, don’t be surprised if a hundred Lalgarhs spring up across our unfortunate state.

Swinging as only he can -- Chris Gayle of Kolkata Knight Riders

Having despairingly watched cricket die a slow death on pancake-flat Indian — make that subcontinental — pitches, and the odds increasingly stacked against hapless bowlers, it is inexpressibly refreshing to see the latter get some of their own back in the Twenty20 format, of all things.

The primary reason has to be the location shift to South Africa, where the pitches will thankfully provide real cricket rather than ‘baseball on Valium’, as Robin Williams once famously put it. And contrary to popular belief, people don’t come to cricket grounds only to watch fours and sixes rain down. The savagery may seem exciting initially, but the bloodlust dies down after a while and the parade of boundaries merely seems boring.

And so, as this edition of the IPL increasingly shows signs of being a bowlers’ tournament, we are faced with the mouth-watering prospects of Anil Kumble and Shane Warne luring batsmen down the pitches to their doom, of a Kamran Khan or Ishant Sharma making batsmen hop around (no harm in hoping), and a Chris Gayle keeping them so completely quiet that it takes them five overs to hit boundary. What more can we ask for in this age of three-hour cricket?