What makes a neighbourhood posh?

There were three lease groups, as of now, in India:

i. Ajit, and those Bengali men who sincerely wanted the Nazi Holocaust researched,

ii. NS Road and the 1957 lease, which didn't want the Nazi Holocaust researched any further,

iii. Antara, whose lease proposal was hers alone, who wouldn't admit another Indian or citizen of any other nationality into it. Antara had full freedom for Nazi Holocaust research, whatever she wanted, far more than Ajit. However, she'd have to battle the CPUSA to get there.

To begin with, Antara's knowledge of Kolkata was coming in the way. What did a 'posh Kolkata neighbourhood' imply? 

Decades ago, Antara had been provided a hint, she had been sent on an assignment, as a reporter in Kolkata, to report on a Mango Exhibition at the Horticultural Gardens in Alipur. (Alipur was a posh neighborhood.)

The above would suggest a straightforward explanation. 'Posh neighbourhoods' collected various ideological groups, who had innovative ways of approaching authoritarianism. 

Antara's report had not been published, she was a national news reporter, and various trays of mango variants, displayed under tents set up in an open area, was not really national news. Local reporters, who collected city news, would have made a killing, it was information relevant to Bengali interest groups. 

It was also the last day, even the last hour of the Mango Exhibition. The mangoes were being packed away in crates even as Antara looked around, so authoritarianism was a last-ditch measure.

ii. Antara had to constantly justify her existence. The world had neither been free nor equal since 1957, maybe everybody had to explain why they were entitled to live at a certain area. 

In such a case, how did 'posh neighbourhoods' come up, what made them posh, why did they get to gather and collect authoritarian ideas and unpractised ideologies from across the world?

Was it dependent on the JP Morgan Group, say if JP Morgan Chase disintegrated, then such neighbourhoods might find it difficult to exist, for it would mean that the 'Morgan brand' would be impossible to control from Kolkata?

Again, the blogpost was not a vendetta against Wool or Chetla, for Antara had no idea where they lived. As had been made clear to Antara, when it came to US officials and Chetla, it had been a long journey, such connections were difficult to sever, it was like growing up together, over three decades, both of them foraying into global nuclear politics, making endless mistakes, ending up seriously damaged, then hushing up that damage.

As Chetla and the US officials had blundered around, the Treasury had shrunk in volumes transacted. And yet the Treasury was their insurance, what kept them alive.

If Nagpur insisted on shutting down the Treasury, how would Chetla and the US intelligence community survive, there might be public discussions of who had assisted the Iranians with Bushehr, Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan. 

Is that what Nagpur wanted, no Treasury and an analysis of the global nuclear regime of the last 30 years?

iii. Thus, one of the reasons for the mass exodus of Bengali men and women from Kolkata to the US was the anxiety around JP Morgan. 

Not that any Morgan loyalist was coming to hurt them--they were all friends with Chetla--but what if the Bengali honchos and Communists lost control of the Morgan brand identity?

After 1918, the United States Govt had solved the problem by demonising Austria and the lease family, a useful idea suggested by certain Indians based in San Francisco, "The Austrians and lease family have fallen, if you demonised them, then immigration from Europe would decline and Asia could take its place."

It was the United States of the present day, Americans crowding around Asian food outlets, thinking the 9/11 attacks came from old-world Europe. What a healthy way to survive!

iv. If the Panic of 1873 could be used by the US Govt to denigrate Austria and the lease family 1918 onwards, could Hiroshima-Nagasaki be used against J Robert Oppenheimer to create American antipathy towards a Jewish lease as well as Israel?

Had Oppenheimer not been clever, there would be no gathering of scientific minds. 

If there was no gathering of scientific minds, there would be no atom bomb. 

Thereafter, choose a lease from an uneducated family like NS Road, its lack of sophistication would keep the US safe.

If the Americans accepted a non-Jewish lease simply due to their fear of higher education, then Alipur and Kolkata could control the Morgan brand identity for a while. 

July 3, 2025.