Noem, Bondi, US Govt's stature

 i. Chetla had apparently indicated that the body politic of the United States was too large for her. 

(Agency officials, take note, where was she headed, which body politic was smaller than the US but still in the western hemisphere?)

Contrary to rumours, she didn't say it was the golfing circuit or the PGA tours that were coming in her way. Apparently, she couldn't infiltrate the taverns around the Washington DC workplaces, where men gathered to discuss the Obamas. 

She was quite certain that these men kept discussing ways to honour the legit lease, how to bring the country/US out of the CPUSA grip, what to do in MAGA small towns where the people understood MAGA was also CPUSA but where Heydrich's supposed foreign intelligence affinities had never impacted. 

You know, the Heydrich kind of foreign intelligence that was difficult to take but would not deny the Nazi Holocaust, which would hold a meeting and publish a few pages of a memorandum to show that a genocide had once taken place in the Third Reich.

First, to golf. 

Antara watched the PGA tours on television when she was in school (Asansol), though she didn't understand what was going on. She also read the golfing reports published in sports magazines like 'Sportstar'. 

In fact, the first thing to know about the sibling was that she'd always go to the market (Asansol) to buy a copy of 'Sportstar' (published from Chennai), even 'Sportsworld' (published from Kolkata). 

That was the sibling's defining trait through the 1990s, without widely reading on sports, the sibling was nothing.

At Kasturi and Sons, they provided free copies of all the publications to the journalists/staffers. 

When Antara reached her reporting workplace in Kolkata in the afternoon, in those years 2006-07, she found the day's newspapers (including the business paper), a copy of 'Sportstar', a copy of 'Frontline' magazine, all neatly piled on her desk, she'd remember her sibling, "Want to go to Asansol market, we'd take the bus, buy a copy of 'Sportstar' or even 'Sportsworld', we won't go to NS Road, come back in a jiffy?"

These anecdotes would have to be your anecdotes, Chetla, Antara was donating them to you, the excitement of opening the sports magazines, the full centre-spread that had the sports celebrity poster, putting it up somewhere, "if it was someone good".

Later, an English Honours classmate at Brabourne had said, "Bompoi (her younger brother's nickname) understands golf, could you believe it, he was always watching golf on television, Ma and I couldn't understand it at all."

Antara didn't understand the implications, was it about gender, those watching golf were men? "Someone might have found out that Antara was uncomfortable with the WPGA, her anxiety that these women were making a mistake, even if unwittingly." Antara didn't reply to her classmate.

And the drinks next to the workplace? If only you knew Delhi, for Buy One Get One, they gave out Long Island Iced Tea (and that was vodka, tequila and rum)!!

Antara had gone out after-work with her HT colleagues (the younger lot), "Were we sure we could reach home," they kept saying, "first let's put Antara on an autorickshaw, at least she needed to reach home even if we didn't." Having bundled Antara to an autorickshaw, they'd stagger to the nearest Metro station.

--

Antara was not aware that the Chinese considered themselves 'upper-strata'. You might wonder how would Antara figure these things out, she had never been allowed to be a part of official circles?

At the Kolkata workplace, Antara was told that it took five years of journalism to get press accreditation, what allowed you to get close to government officials. 

"What nonsense," another colleague had said, "your 'dada' (referring to the departmental head in the Kolkata office) headed the panel that provided press accreditation from the West Bengal Govt, we didn't have any other staff reporter but you, if he wanted official events covered/reported on, he could easily provide the accreditation."

Antara didn't take up the matter with the departmental head. She referred to him by his first name, as he had asked, he was neither 'dada' nor 'Sir' nor 'Mr Something'. There were just the two of them in the reporting bureau, it was a one-to-one relationship, Antara didn't want to jeopardise matters by bringing in the politics of the Press Information Bureau.

However, Antara had asked a Bengali news channel reporter whether she had received her accreditation, to which that reporter had replied, "We were provided accreditation soon after joining, how else would we cover govt events, your boss (at work) was the one who gave these out, he didn't provide it to you?"

Thus, it was not possible for someone like Antara to get close to govt circles or officials without a defined stance or understanding of Ukraine, and Antara's parents hadn't told her the narrative, hence whatever Kasturi and Sons had done for Antara's professional career was wasted by the apathy and inaction of her parents. 

 However, Antara did report from Kolkata when it was still under Communist rule and had the Chinese Communists had upper-strata access, it would have been evident from the society around her, the events she attended, the news generated (which seemed obsessed with the Vietnam War and therefore land-based agitation) or even the people, who often voted Communist.

The people of Kolkata were the strangest, so fearful, so prone to anxiety, "Why were you asking these questions, where in Kolkata was your office based, where was its headquarters, would you publish what I was saying, no I don't want a copy of your newspaper even if you quoted me, why did you want to know my name-surname instead of writing 'sources say' as they did in the Bengali press?"

Not very 'Chinese-in-the-upper-strata' behaviour, was it?

In Delhi, when Antara's journalism career was being carefully taken down the Hill, Antara had downloaded the PIB accreditation form, it was dozens of pages long, "This wasn't for me, this was for someone else", Antara had thought to herself. She was an expert with forms and paperwork, official paperwork didn't look that way, despite completing the requisite five years in journalism.

Of course, as everyone would point out, one didn't expect high moral conduct among officials of the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, the Iran-related developments might be connected to Antara's Kolkata visit, or even Delhi, it was not connected to the litfest that had concluded a few weeks before the bombings started against Iran, or the British Zionists that tended to assemble there. 

However, despite the adversarial stance that existed between the British Zionists and Antara, their intrigues around the Nazi Holocaust meant they wouldn't be able to avoid Antara's household, either the spouse or more likely her, for Anjali had cut off ties with the AT Das family in 1999, a year before the spouse became part of Antara's life, which meant the spouse had no idea how the Eva-Gretl influence worked itself out within India. 

Under such tremendous stress and strain, did the US officials venture towards the Iran talks, recently concluded in Islamabad, Pakistan. 

 April 11-12, 2026.

****

Who considered it showtime?

i. What's with all the scare tactics, because a journalism school was called J-School?

Apparently, creating a scare in the West was halfway to the Treasury.

ii. And what was the desired course of action?

Both the Treasury and the Fed should be on high alert, especially against Israeli business journalists. 

In an unrelated incident, 'marker pens' have never worked for Antara, they dried up the moment she bought them. If it implied a dislike or distrust of 'marker pens' in western institutions, it ought to be easier for the Treasury and the Fed to determine the 'correctness' of business reports coming from the Middle East.

iii. Having discussed that, was it true that those that created the scare wanted elaborate discussions of the Katyn intelligence?

Katyn intelligence, well, it ended up in Northern Ireland to stay secure, didn't it? Have we heard of Global South personalities who were fond of Northern Ireland?

However, it was possible that those who inhabited the lower-strata of the US Navy's so-called Mykolaiv House, which included almost everyone Antara had ever known, wanted to find out if they could use their own WWII information to combat Katyn intelligence. 

That was different from financial intelligence on the Katyn massacre, which was probably not with Northern Ireland, that information might take considerable time, given it would involve discussions about Tripura. 

iv. What were we witnessing, some other kind of British intelligence, not even Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Team? Something working only on the Ukraine War and how Hollywood could intervene?

Well, yes, if the NRIs wanted to return to India, they'd want to remain fashionable as well, Paris was under stress so why not Hollywood?

Antara had earlier written about the American Association of Cinematographers but that didn't look right any longer, when it discussed Ukraine it implied the Federal Reserve, especially the stint of William P.G. Harding. 

As you knew, the 9/11 attacks took place when Antara stayed at a Kolkata Paying Guest/PG, otherwise the American Association of Cinematographers was popular in India. 

v. What happened at the Paying Guest (July 2000-April 2002), Antara?

To use a well-known movie quote,

"And now you know there were a group of girls at the Paying Guest called Jack Dawson, and they saved Antara's life, in every way a person's life could be saved. Antara didn't have photos of them, they existed only in her memory."

April 9, 2026.

There were Lewinskis in Poland!!

The pressure didn't relent from Asansol schools. Never mind all that.

i. Who sent NS Road?

Krupp probably. He had realised that western civilisation wouldn't remain scattered and disunited, he probably suspected the Lewinskis of Poland for coming up with the idea of western unity and decided on a disinformation campaign in Asia.

ii. How many branches of NS Road were there in the world, in Britain, in Argentina?

Depended on how scared Krupp was, Antara hadn't worked on these topics, except on the Roberts branch, which was called 'lobat' in Antara's childhood (NS Road term for gur/jaggery).

iii. Did Krupp provide details that compromised European military operations?

No, NATO just somehow became about NRI aspirations, Europeans were decidedly forgotten. It was magical like that. 

iv. No, we were asking that generations of leaders of, say a Mediterranean-adjacent country in the Middle East but newly-formed, would they have been mentored by NS Road based on Krupp's information?

Why not? The NS Road residence was apparently "crawling with boys" through the 1950s.

v. Was that a yes or a no?

Did your hometown have BB College? Antara's did.

vi. You never hurt or insulted these wives, yet they turned your hometown against you? You haven't entered Asansol in 11 years, haven't entered your parents' apartment in 15 years...

Wives? Whose wives were you talking about? Gladstone and Salisbury came down from Britain, sipping Cosmopolitan, their cloaks flying against the wind, on their toboggans/sledges.  

They were from the same village, Charnock, "the best village in the world". 

How would Antara who had visited JLF only four times--2011, 2012, 2013, 2015--compete with that?

April 8, 2026.

****

When Krupps and Richthofens couldn't add up

 The 'obedient wives' from the April 5, 2026, blogpost had unleashed strong emotions, especially in Asansol.

Not just Antara's school, but other schools as well, probably most schools, there had been some urgency to keeping "obedient wives" a secret. 

"We have to show what we were, who supported us," these schools had apparently decided. 

Why so competitive? This was Antara's own blog. If you were highly connected, why didn't you have amazing blogs of your own?

Asansol was close to a Canadian politician whose middle name was Pierre Yves Elliot. Asansol had a hairdresser called 'Eves'. There you go.

Pierre Yves Elliot's ancestor immigrated from France, when Etienne, an 18-year-old, had reached Canada. The year was 1659. He arrived with good tidings, "whatever the French Police was about to tell the Austrians, why a lease was needed, was false. The Austrians would receive wrong intelligence and proceed on the basis of it."

By the time the Austrians got the intelligence from the French Police, they realised it was false. "What were we to do?" they asked each other through the 18th century, right before American independence.

"We have such excellent financial instruments, let us proceed with whatever we had planned. We'd gradually introduce these financial instruments into the foreign intelligence of the United States. Later, the US would have immigrants, they'd get close to the foreign intelligence. One of these immigrants would be its top favourite, residing in the US. She'd explain what these financial instruments were to everyone else, they were so much better than UPI or Paytm."

April 7, 2026.

And all the boards/boats did shrink...from the Great Egyptian Game!!

Now there was a ceasefire proposal from Egypt, Turkey etc. 

What was one supposed to do with the space-time branch of British intelligence?

i. First, we'd provide a name to the space-time branch of British intelligence, call it Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Team (1992-94), proceed beyond MI5-MI6-Wool's Agency etc. 

That way, we could talk of HT/European Union without bringing in the Comment editor.

ii. Antara left HT because close relatives doubted her connection to WWI since the 1990s, they merely reminded in 2012 that they doubted it. 

The White House of the 1990s was encouraging, "we still didn't know what the US intelligence community thought of Golden Fleece and its politics."

iii. A word on the torture: Antara was not allowed to drink any water from 2018 to 2021, for three years. She had made the mistake of cleaning a plastic water bottle at home, in 2018, it had become grimy, and the surveillance had shrieked, "The feeding bottle...the madaa...the mother, the mother..."

Antara drank tea, other beverages for three years, but not water, not a drop of water, till she moved to another residential block. She was made to suffer if she tried to drink water, on the sly.

Good thinking, relatives, on WWI!

iv. It was possible that the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Team of British intelligence had extended the Graur Episode blackmail.

"No one knew in Washington DC that Brother 4 of the AT family was with Gurusaday, that one connection NS Road had been unable to make. 

Not just any faction, but the Battle of Midway faction of the Gurusaday family, that way the US Navy wouldn't be able to leave the Middle East, not till its vessels were compromised, with hostile sailors."

iv. What was the purpose of Egypt etc working so hard on a peace proposal?

Apparently, Washington DC wanted the "US intelligence community humiliated, till it got rid of the WWI loyalty. What did it matter who fought WWI and who lost? As far as the Global South was concerned, it was about Palestine, so it was about the Great Game."

Why didn't specialised personnel understand the Palestine aspect when posted in Afghanistan?

April 6, 2026. 

Forget NATO, Numbers was a fishy affair, surely not an IPO

 

1. Once upon a time, in 1990, Antara of Class 6A had won the Maggi Inter-School Quiz Contest. Around 40-50 top schools in the industrial region of western West Bengal had participated, Antara's team were the champions. Lunch was provided to the participants by the poolside, but not to the parents accompanying the students. 

Ajit remained aghast all his life, "Your mother starved through the day."

"Yes, but we were champions, it was me, all my teammates said it was only because of me that we became champions," Antara had protested.

"Your mother starved," Ajit kept saying, "No poolside lunch for her." Till the last day of his life, that's all he said, "your mother starved".

2. Then Numbers became a pool, "not a single individual could be out of it, we'd show what Maggi Quizzes were all about."

3. When it came to poolside rankings, 'obedient wives' were among the top four. 

Above, Antara at JLF 2015, as an 'obedient wife'.

4. Those workplaces that didn't work through Communist excesses were going at the third spot in the poolside rankings, known in the Posta-Burrabazar area as the 'fools'.

Above, Antara in 2013, the 'phools' all lit up.

5. "What on earth was 1980-Mykolaiv" was at the second spot in poolside rankings. 

Eh, 1980-Mykolaiv was probably about those who fought the Boer War and WWI and didn't invest in the space-based IPOs. 

Above, Antara at a WWI memorial in New Delhi, 2012. 

6. Surface-to-Air was apparently getting the top slot for poolside rankings, because of conflicts everywhere.

Advice for event organisers, "always keep extra packets of food for those accompanying, chaperones, gatecrashers, lest a horrifying genocide against European Jewry become a vaudeville sport".

April 5, 2026. 

Dooba dooba rehta hoon...bewafaa na ja...

 

JLF was not the only place in India that hosted hordes of Caucasians. Agra (northern India) was another, this was the second vacation after quitting HT, still 2012.

One of the allusions had said, "The problem of France was its empty throne", why Antara got isolated.

This was from that 2012 Goa vacation, the world did seem pleasant after some sweet port.

April 4, 2026.