Through several clever means, it had been conveyed to Antara, say during the first decade of the 21st century, what her behaviour ought to be like once she became a political hostage or when her civil and political liberties were curtailed by holding back Aadhaar.
Antara didn't pay attention, she didn't understand the seriousness of her hostage situation, given she had not been told about the 1957 lease in favour of NS Road till July 2025.
How would she know what Gamal Abdel Nasser intended?
As per (possibly) Nasser and those who planned her hostage situation, Antara, if she was allowed to go out,
a. Would have to constantly criticise the Americans, the US Govt and the US military,
b. Or she would have to visit shopping malls, to show that she, too, wanted to immigrate to the United States like the NRIs.
As everyone knew, Antara didn't want to immigrate to the US unless she had official work in Washington DC. She didn't like going so far away from what was known to her, where people spoke her language.
Worse, in the many hours that Antara spent with Ajit, walking about in the streets of Kolkata or strolling around in Asansol, Ajit had always said, "I'm ready or Aam ready?"
Thus, going to a shopping mall, except on rare occasions, was problematic, because obviously Antara didn't support AAP, the way AAP was defined as of now.
ii. On July 14, 2025, Antara and her spouse went to Kolkata, they booked a taxi since both were unwell and didn't feel like taking the crowded suburban trains.
Their first stop was the Judges' Court at Alipur, where they needed some govt notary documents, which were sold from a kiosk.
The area was teeming with lawyers, male and female, and policemen.
Antara was made to understand, "At what point in the 9/11 attacks investigation would there be a discussion of the relation between the legit lease and Raja Rammohan Roy (founder of the Brahmo Samaj), shouldn't it solve the mystery around what happened at HT and the Military Sealift episode?"
(Raja Rammohan Roy passed away in 1833, in Bristol, England.)
iii. From the Alipur Judges' Court, Antara and her spouse went to College Street. This was a highly risky decision taken by Antara, for over the last year, she had been constantly reminded, "what about the stalls and kiosks in north Kolkata that sold wedding cards?"
Antara had seen them as a student, around 1999 or 2000, they stretched for a kilometre at least, hundreds of shops selling identical Bengali-style wedding cards, next to each other.
"How do they manage to get business?" Antara had thought to herself.
How would business survive if the currencies were forever waiting for contact-corroboration?
What made her decide to go to College Street? Well, they were taking a taxi, which meant not taking their usual route, getting off at Central (Metro station) and walking through the campus of Calcutta Medical College.
"If we avoid Calcutta Medical College premises, I'd avoid both the Vienna General Hospital blackmails (Agency) and Ronald Ross/malaria (School of Tropical Medicine, which was close by)," Antara had considered.
At the College Street bookshops, she got a few bargain buys.
iv. Antara and her spouse also visited a prominent bookstore, Antara went there driven mostly by fear.
She knew that East Bengal/East Pakistan/Purbo Bongo's narrative was absent from her life, she got nothing from her in-laws' side that was helpful in understanding what was now Bangladesh.
Her memory of her mother, Anjali's smugness about Bengali writer Manik Bandhopadhyay (from East Bengal) meant Austrians had much to learn, there was research that had been neglected, and when the 1957 lease in favour of NS Road and Gamal Abdel Nasser reared their head in the Middle East, Antara ought to have something to go with.
She bought a few books on filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, which dealt with the Partition.
v. They had a snack at College Street, later lunched at central Kolkata and came back home.
The taxi driver charged the full fare, "No one asked you to come back early".
Antara and her spouse had seen the dark rain clouds on the Kolkata skyscape, and it was all right if the entire trip was not the full fare's worth.
July 14, 2025.
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