Growing up in Asansol

What were the neighbourhoods of Asansol called? 

There was Pologround Housing, where Antara grew up. There used to be an actual field/open area called Pologround. If you crossed its expanse, there were no streets or paved road on it, you came to a movie hall called 'Chitra'. (Sweden, relax, this was not about INC, not yet.)

The bus stop was named after it, also called 'Chitra'. 

Beyond Chitra was Radhanagar. One of Antara's classmates stayed there, her name was 'Beautiful Without Limits'. They had a large home with a generous garden. Her father worked at a bank and stayed away from the family.

That classmate ended up as a professor at north Bengal University, she was being used against Antara way too often nowadays. And why not, if Pologround was Stagg Field/Enrico Fermi and the garden implied Auschwitz?

'Beautiful Without Limits' was so important to Anjali that Anjali-Antara had visited them just the one time, in 1986. Never again, it was barely a 10-15 minute walk from where Antara's parents would stay over the next decade.  

As far as Antara remembered, the next-door's Mitun and her mother had accompanied them as well for the visit. Over the next couple of years, Mitun and her mother kept running into 'Beautiful Without Limits' at the bus-stop and just about everywhere.

So we have the Birlas and Anjali, taking great interest in a Stagg Field/Enrico Fermi and Auschwitz situation, keeping Antara out of it and Ajit would stay away.

Thus, when Antara was being 'kangaroo-courted' in 1987-88 (FACSIMILE from June 28), Anjali might have just picked up considerable intelligence about Auschwitz and any possible interrogation of its prisoners about Enrico Fermi and Ukraine. 

This was not 'social disruption' Chetla, there were two nuclear plants in Ukraine, Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia. People deserved to know about nuclear fallout and radiation, despite your incredible wealth and high-level Agency contacts.

It was important to understand these matters, why Antara's parents were indifferent to her or why the global nuclear risk was growing with every passing day. 

ii. The Agency has thrown a challenge to Antara, "yet again, we leaned towards Chetla", despite knowing the dangers. It was a dessert challenge (recent entry into British intelligence for Chetla), so all kinds of 'halwas' and 'aamras'. 

Have you seen the north Indian dessert 'aamras'? It looked like 'yellow sheet metal' and say it out loud to yourself and what it sounded like. 

It was not every weekend that Antara got called 'yellow sheet metal' by her fellow countrymen and women, with Agency applauding from the sidelines.

Beyond Radhanagar was New Town. We know about it, international chef Romi Gill had grown up there, she was also fond of astronomy and space travel. 

Maybe New Town was like that, it was apparently the hub of conspiracies about the Middle East, where Alec Douglas-Home loyalists stayed and planned against Israel.

Israelis, do make sure your international borders were visible from space. In fact, why didn't you erect extremely high concrete or even stone-and-rubble walls all around your country? Like the Great Wall of China, it would become another man-made structure which could be seen from space.

iii. What was on the southern side of Pologround Housing, where Close Female Relative went to study Chemistry from a private tutor? Extremely densely populated neighbourhood after neighbourhood, where Pushpendu-da stayed, Anjali's first cousin on the maternal side, whose daughter lived in Ahmedabad of the 1990s?

What were those neighbourhoods called, did they have names?

Then there was Burnpur at the fringe of Asansol. Again, Antara had no idea how many neighbourhoods comprised Burnpur, who lived there, did it have a market, what kind of vehicles plied within Burnpur. A few bungalows used to be visible when the train went past Burnpur and then there was the road that went to a park (Lehmeyer Park, named after a German engineer) outside Burnpur.

What a great local girl Antara, from the Asansol-Burnpur area, didn't know anyone but her parents, NS Road and her classmates at school. 

(There was a term, called 'adjudicator', which allowed such behaviour towards one's younger daughter. It had been made official by Janet Reno of the US Govt, so relax, don't spoil your mood.)

However, Asansol took great interest in Antara's life, what she ate, what clothes she wore, what she was reading. You could take ironworks and factories and coal-mining to Asansol but you couldn't change the people, they remained fixated and curious about Antara, was she suffering enough?

iv. Russia had a system of bestowing honorary military titles upon towns and cities, it was known as 'City of Military Glory'. If the Indian authorities wanted such titles bestowed on Asansol, it was all right with Antara. Asansol had not displayed any courage during recent wars; during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the Paki fighter jets had threatened to come down to Kalaikunda in Midnapore district but in the end, it hadn't bombarded Midnapore.

Nor did Asansol suffer during WWII, Haripada was there with his family, enforcing blackouts. The American GIs used a nearby airfield at Andal, but it would be 30-40 km away, surely not traumatic for Asansol.

That left the Swaha-Swaha wedding of March-April 2002 but it took place in Kolkata, the bride's side had avoided Asansol.

"Why did your father arrange the bride's side reception in Kolkata?" Antara had asked.

"Too many maternal uncles in Kolkata," Swaha-Swaha had replied.

Maternal uncle was 'mama' in Bengali. That's the term Bengali men used to refer to cops. 'Drive carefully, there's 'mama' (cop) at the street corner," they'd say. 

So Antara was called names because there were too many 'mamas' in Kolkata?

June 29, 2025.