Any discussion of Pentagon moles, involving JD Salinger, would run into the combined bureaucracy of the United Kingdom and India.
This was because most of the blackmails against the Austrian Habsburgs were likely handled by British and Indian bureaucrats. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed long ago, there was no one left to defend it or argue on its behalf. All Austrians were either Communists or Tagore-loyalists, usually both, they wouldn't care to solve any attack on the Habsburgs.
Yet the Habsburg blackmails apparently continued to be a lucrative trade in government circles. What were these government officials after, surely not the United States Govt, which had become vehemently anti-Austrian 1918 onwards? What was this manic energy to pursue a long-lost empire, buried in history, where was that energy coming from?
For any attack on the Austrian Habsburgs, Supriya Paul usually took the blame. It was probably not her fault, she happened to belong to a district called Barishal (now in Bangladesh). Barishal was apparently known for exceptional antagonism towards the Austrian Habsburgs, why the British preferred to recruit officers to the Imperial Civil Service from Barishal if they wanted Bengali bureaucrats.
In her marriage, Antara had frequently been told that Barishal had more ICS officers than any other district in Bengal.
It might imply that when the British set up what was known in the present day as MI6 (1909), if MI6 was allegedly a Tagore shop right from the start, it was because of Barishal.
Those that were hoping that the clout of the Pauls and the Bhattacharyas of Batanagar would diminish in New Delhi and London, well, it ain't going to happen anytime soon.
ii. We were now in a position to conclude that BT allowed his son to marry into NS Road because of what the US Govt might have learnt from informants like Joseph Bonanno. There might have been measures put in place to prevent a complete takeover of the US Govt by Kolkata or prevent an annihilation of Austria. Was BT altogether fearless? Unlikely, but he must have been aware of intelligence failures on the Bengali side as well.
One of the more famous non-bureaucrat personalities from Barishal was actor Utpal Dutt. He had founded the Brecht Society in Kolkata, in 1948 (inspired by Bertolt Brecht), its members included the likes of Satyajit Ray. Utpal Dutt had gone to school at St Edmund's Shillong, surely he knew the Tagores as well, whose favourite haunt was Shillong. Utpal Dutt was also a Xaverian, he had studied at St Xavier's College in Kolkata.
One of the easier ways of isolating BT through the Nazi Holocaust would have been to take NS Road into the Bengali Communist fold. It was the classic British policy of 'divide and rule', why would they let BT and NS Road remain allies of each other? It might have been achieved through the founding of the IPTA or Indian People's Theatre Association in 1943, the way Anjali spoke of the IPTA in admiring terms, it was quite likely that NS Road was included in it.
By the time Bimal was attending college in Kolkata in the late 1940s, he could have become a part of Utpal Dutt's Brecht Society as well. Thus, Bimal, Anjali and their close relations (which obviously didn't include Antara) would have the backing of the pillars of Kolkata society, from Rabindranath Tagore to Satyajit Ray to Utpal Dutt etc.
Antara would be left to herself.
Antara didn't want to use harsh language in her blog but could the Pauls and the Bhattacharyas of Batanagar make themselves scarce from her life? The discussion of JD Salinger and the Pentagon moles would be a difficult one, and she didn't want Batanagar mentioned every few blogposts.
iii. A clarification was needed at such a point. The frenzied admiration that Anjali had for Bengali movies (from Tollygunje) or Ajit had for Hindi movies (Kapoors of Bollywood) was not shared by Antara. She didn't care for the plotlines of Indian movies, she found them interminable and boring, their action lacked logic and intensity, the emotions seemed fake.
When the rest of her family (parents, sibling) watched Indian movies on television, Antara would always move away, somehow excuse herself. "She's not like us," her parents would discuss under their breath. "Watch a little bit, please, just a few minutes?" her mother would plead with her.
Ajit-Anjali's favourite Utpal Dutt movie was 'Bhuvan Shome', made in 1969, the year they got married. It was not the purpose of the blog to analyse if the movie was meant to be an answer to BT and the US Govt on Joseph Bonanno. Online information states that it was a movie about an Indian Railway bureaucrat who loses his strictness after a hunting expedition in Gujarat. The female lead (Gauri) was played by an actress called Suhasini Mulay. Not a day passed by in Anjali's life when she didn't mention Suhasini Mulay.
Antara didn't remember much of her ACJ days. There might have been a faculty staff called Suhasini D, and if ACJ was convinced that like the movie 'Bhuvan Shome', the Morgans and other railroad tycoons would become pliant and forgiving over time, then ACJ, as well as British and Indian bureaucrats, were welcome to claim Ajit-Anjali as their own.
Antara's journey would remain her own.
August 28, 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment