Costs and benefits (7): What we were left with

One might wonder that despite such a rigorous instruction from an early age (CLASS ACT), raised on Rabindranath and Ray and Bengali advanced cultural performances, why did Antara not become the leading intellectual stalwart of her generation? Why did that honour go to the Bengali developmental economists?

Antara had made her mistake in 1984 itself, "There's Class 12, then there's Class 13?" she had asked her mother. 

It indicated the hope that once you were through several years of Ukraine's war with Russia, the former's punishment for supplying intelligence to Bengal from 1900-1912, advanced US defence establishments, those that specialised in north Kolkata, would take over, to tackle those Bengali men that had planned the Russia-Ukraine War.

"There's no Class 13," Antara's mother had replied, indicating no advanced US defence establishment to deal with north Kolkata's or even the Bengali diaspora's aggression. We were all on our own, why it seemed the Pentagon was enjoying its vacation.

As the Indian citizenry would have figured out by now, their democratic clout was so reduced by the incessant threats of instability that even if they wanted to remind the Great Political Leader of the events of 1985, they would not merely run into the Big Yellow Umbrella but worse, they would find that they got both Frank Wisner and Arnold Kanter, the two US State Department officials, wrong. 

Kanter, for example, came from a family that had opposed the legit lease and Indian history right from the 1790s. You might feel betrayed, you might despair thinking of the popularity of the 2014 mandate but Wisner-Kanter were telling us that 2014 was a historic 'turning' point, but it was the powerful elite that determined which way India turned.

Not bad, most Indians (non-NRIs) were experts on the intricacies of the US State Dept. You've seen them on the road, trying to earn a daily living, only thinking/discussing the US State Dept.

There were certain obvious precautions to be taken. Fellow-feeling, softer emotions towards Europe existed in the Indian provinces, the further they were from Delhi. In Delhi, the powers-that-be would not even hear Europe mentioned, unless it was to spread Vladimir Putin's war westward. 

So why provoke the powers-that-be, one saw what their fury looked like. Antara neither needed reminders of Sophie Chotek or the end Chotek met, she had received the message loud and clear over the last decade.

That left Antara's biggest problem, Provost Americana in Rome. It seemed that much of the medieval malpractices of selling 'indulgences' have been revived (you commit a sin, pay something to the Church, and was forgiven) so Antara would find better options in the Protestant or Calvinist Churches.

That's it, as of now.

May 13, 2025.