1. Antara didn't show any interest in any research activity while at Jadavpur University. There were several reasons for it: that she was pursuing a postgrad /Masters degree was like a revolution at home, one was supposed to somehow get a BA/BSc and start looking for a job.
Antara's parents never asked her about further research interest, not even about an MPhil, forget pursuing a PhD.
Antara's sibling taught at a school in Purulia, where most of her colleagues were women from Kolkata. "Your younger sister was pursuing her postgrad? That's it, now she'd get a guy, get married, you'd be forgotten," these Kolkata women advised Antara's sibling.
Thus, Antara pursued her postgrad/Masters like inside Mt Vesuvius, her audacity to attend university was the point, not whether she wanted to do her PhD.
(Antara married five years after her elder sibling was married so her sibling had neither lost out nor been ignored.)
2. Antara didn't feel despondent that she was not pursuing research at Jadavpur. The professors took no interest in students, they had already decided who they'd like, and students were picked up at random, who became the research favourites of those professors.
Usually, around six or seven were chosen for higher studies, either in Kolkata or Delhi or abroad, the rest tried to complete their MA degrees and get a job.
Antara was not among the chosen few. By itself, it wouldn't have led to harsh words between her and the future spouse except that the latter gloated excessively and too often. Also, when the future spouse went for higher research-related networking, the rest of the JU batchmates huddled together and kept giving Antara the odd look, which became scary and insulting.
Obviously, if the future spouse chose to research on American Jews and New York City, Antara, denied her narrative, would not get any respect.
That was how 2001 was spent, January to December, the 9/11 attacks took place that year.
3. Thus, around 2021-22, when Antara found out she could research the Nazi Holocaust, she felt somewhat pleased. She had never felt like researching poets or travel-writers or Japanese topics, like her peers did, the Nazi Holocaust offered possibilities of doing something meaningful. She was in her 40s, everyone from her generation and younger had got their PhDs, even the spouse's colleagues were getting their PhDs over the last few years.
Antara's research would not need any academic funding, any fellowship, any travel, so there was no reason the Indian middle-class would be affected or the hostage situation disturbed. She'd study and research on her own, at home.
4. It was strange, then, that the US Department of Defense, was apparently petitioned by middle-class Indians and NRIs to stop Antara's Nazi Holocaust research at any cost. Such was the excessive pressure applied on the DoD by Indians that corrective action had to be undertaken, including
i. Exclusive Pentagon zones available for use only by Indians and NRIs, where the legit lease, Poland and Ukraine would have no access.
ii. It would be based on the fact that the Pentagon was debarred from using much of the US intelligence/G2 work on the Pacific Theatre. "Only the British could use the Pacific Theatre intelligence, that way the British would be able to control the Nazi Holocaust discourse and help the Indians."
iii. In return, the British would be told why Anne Frank, Margot Frank etc were shifted from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in Oct 1944.
June 11, 2025.
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