More than any controversy about Antara staying by herself to avoid the Nazi Spheres of Influence functioning all around, it was necessary to remember that as per the 1983/BoE arrangement, any Nazi around her was automatically under British control.
Thus, such Nazis were neither free to start a war nor invade Poland nor partake in any genocide.
Usually, there were two groups of Nazis willing to stay under British control: the lower rank and file, who had never been fanatical about the ideology but given the Nazi taint, they were always susceptible to recruitment by the Jamshedpur honcho.
The other group was the Luftwaffe pilots, their descendants, loyalists and networks.
It was the job of British intelligence to prevent surreptitious recruitment to the Nazi cause, and more importantly, to make sure that any Nazism rising within India didn't get subsumed and protected from Washington DC as a Caucasian venture.
Thus, from 1994 onwards, if Greenwich Village in New York was used as the fictional setting of the sitcom 'Friends', it should have raised sufficient hackles within the United States. Why would you have to wait for the lease family in India to outrage, did Americans have no responsibility to fight Nazism? What kind of commitments had they made to the recently immigrated NRIs?
As it happened, Anjali exploded with Prussian outrage at the 'Friends' sitcom, she thought it was about Ukraine. Did any of us know what the Prussians knew, how to connect the rise of Nazism to Ukraine? What further alert was required?
Antara had been a newshound from her childhood, to conflate her interest in news with German intelligence and therefore with Nazism was nothing short of a crime. Everyone knew 'news' was a Navy term, not a German one.
Certain American commentators had pointed out that the 'Friends' sitcom didn't change its script or incorporate innovations to its plotline about the 9/11 attacks, though it ran for three further seasons, till 2004. It did, however, make loaded inferences in those three seasons about 'settling down' (Harry Hopkins), 'getting a house' (BT's House) and 'adopting children' (new converts to an old cause?)
The 'Friends' sitcom seemed to have lived up to its name, its complicated political drama set right within New York City.
By 2003, Americans writers and novelists had shrugged off their responsibilities, it was Joe Biden who was getting the younger generation enthused about Nazism. Biden, that familiar feature of the DC landscape, surely he'd manage the Nazi politics in a palatable/acceptable format.
(Some of these writers/novelists later met up with the HT-Beleghata honcho at successive JLFs, gathered around dinner tables wearing floral garlands, what a turn in world politics indeed!)
By 2005, when Antara was at ACJ, the Chennai bosses got one of those old anarchist warhorses from The Village Voice to teach the feature-writing module. That was it, there was no point being a World War II heir in a world so enthusiastic about reviving Nazism.
It was decided that Antara would not be told her narrative till the world had its fill of Barack Obama or unless the Communists gave her the narrative. It turned out to be the latter.
Given the ongoing politics in Washington DC, satiety with the Obamas was still some way off.
April 29, 2025.
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