There were problems in being an 'experimental' person. One treated as an 'experiment', not one who was curious about scientific experiments.
"There was a particular green ointment that we used for moisturising when you were an infant, back in north Bengal," Anjali would often say. "After that, you had to be laid out in the sun. You completely lost your complexion, we were so sorry that you became unattractive in the process. We should have just stuck to the imported Italian olive oil that we used for your older sibling."
That was an experiment that didn't go well for Antara.
ii. The Class of 1995 was the first ICSE batch to take its Class 10 Board exams in a 'bifurcated' mode. Whatever you learnt in Class 9 was tested at the end of the year by your own school, whatever you learnt in Class 10 was the official Class 10 Board exams. (Before 1995, whatever you learnt in Classes 9 and 10 was tested by the Board Exam.)
"We were so sorry that the ICSE Class of 1995 was the 'experimental' batch," the school principal and teaching staff had said. In terms of academics, it had severe implications.
For example, Indian history in Class 9 was just a socio-cultural history of India, forts and palaces and mosques, and their dimensions. There were no dynasties, no battles waged in India, no dates to memorise. So the Class of 1995 (including Antara) meant nothing to the Pentagon, they would have no role to play in the Middle East. That was saved for the boys and girls of Kolkata's schools.
Worse, it would be the duty of the Class of 1995 to stay in India, to keep working on the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, to keep finding out what stakes they had in western defence firms, hence measurements or 'specifications'. That information would then be handed over to the men and women who had studied in Kolkata's schools, for their use.
What a wonderful life!
The Indian history taught in Class 10 was just the Indian Struggle for Independence, beginning with the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, so if the Class of 1995 was disobedient, if it didn't follow Kolkata's orders, there would be repercussions for India's freedom movement.
It was at such a point that the Belcourt Seminary came up ('A cry for freedom and relevance: Europe, Washington DC', August 12), it should make the Class of 1995 that stayed in India happy, those that stayed abroad were no longer part of the Class of 1995, they had other arrangements.
iii. The obvious question: did Antara use Belcourt Seminary, a supposed lease-based House, as revenge for the AI-cryptocurrency economy being promoted from within Kolkata? Did she use the 'pars pro toto' concept, use a part (like Belcourt Seminary and its deception) to indicate the entire episode of deceit and treachery that was World War I?
Antara was not yet aware of the intelligence aspect of WWI, she just knew the battle episodes and events. She was just starting off.
It was apparently Kolkata's upper-hand, why it made such a big deal out of its Durga Pujo festival (earthen idols) to indicate 'London Clay' (a geological formation). It meant Kolkata's boys and girls had been taught in their schools that they had nothing to fear about WWI intelligence, Sandhurst would know much more than the US military.
Wasn't it a good time to remind Kolkata that the Prince Consort Albert (Queen Victoria's husband) had made personal arrangements so that what was known to Sandhurst (about wars in his time or future wars like WWI) was also known to the legit lease heir?
And if Prince Consort Albert had devoted some thoughts and shown decent behaviour towards the legit lease family, why the incessant abuse and insult of Antara? Why 13 years of unemployment?
Did the Tagores have no need of the British monarchy at all?
August 13, 2025.
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