See-saw, hurry up and down (20)

 "You can forget your lease," Antara was often told nowadays. You might wonder, how often? Every few weeks over the last year or so, at least since the Israel-Hamas War began in Oct 2023. Such statements were not 'madness', there was considerable method, probably coming from the London-based PR firm.   

Antara was under a torture-surveillance for a decade now, she got scared when she heard such things. Remember, no individual or institution had made the slightest effort to provide any relief to her, unlikely they ever would. Growing up, her pair of spectacles was sacrosanct at her home, probably her parents had not understood that Antara contracted myopia in the mid-1980s because the lease was about to be lost to Japan, that it was a joke from the London-based PR firm and its worthies.

"Never seen a small girl like her," Antara's mother would say in later decades. "Not once did she break a pair of spectacles, never did she lose them, nor did we have to worry. Washed them regularly, took good care." Thus, when Antara's spectacles repeatedly came under attack in the present day (she couldn't find them, she accidentally sat on them so that she might get injured as part of the 'surveillance' fun), it was bound to be a bother. If the lease had been lost to Japan in the 1980s, if most politicians in Delhi (except a few INC sorts not liked by Prominent Personality) would be beneficiaries, why have so much mirth at the expense of Antara's spectacles?

Where was the lease headed from Japan? To Prominent Personality's household? In the course of her allusions work, this was what Antara had come across. "The Bengalis of Kolkata hankered after the lease only as a fashion statement, they had little courage to manage the lease. In April 1912, a few hours before the RMS Titanic sank, DC had offered the lease to a Bengali family of Kolkata, the Bengalis had immediately returned it. In subsequent decades, Kolkata families went around looking for someone who could teach them central banking operations, not 'how to be a clerk at a central bank' but how to be its owner. They were still looking, which meant Bank of England had not provided any help to the Bengalis."

Thus, the lease was in Japan because Bengalis of Kolkata were still trying to learn what it took to manage a central bank. Antara was being given a scare over her pair of spectacles because the Bengalis were trying to learn such things. The world was waiting as well. 

March 29, 2025.