We must introduce the government circuit house in Kolkata that was often a "second home" for Antara when she studied and grew up in that city.
It was part of her gratitude, no matter the ideology, the belief system of its staff and employees, Antara wouldn't have survived Brabourne Hostel if she had not got the occasional respite when her father came to visit, or when he came to collect her for the vacations.
The employees had once been proud of Antara, "Well, we kind of raised her, didn't we?" Recently, that narrative had changed, it had seemed to western officials that the government circuit house employees had been threatening Ajit, in clever ways.
The government circuit house in Kolkata would be a recurring motif if Antara kept writing her blog. If you were allotted one of the rooms towards the back of the building, the glass windows covered the entire length of the wall, providing a broad view of the neighbourhood.
Thus, how the increasing clout of the Washington State-based tech family was affecting German intelligence would have been known to Ajit.
There were posh apartment buildings nearby, Marwari or Sindhi families. As soon as it was evening, they parted their heavy curtains, entire families sitting down on their plush sofas to watch television, for the next several hours. Thus, by the mid-1990s, Ajit knew it was all headed towards Ukraine and a SOFR-dominated global economy, he was not taken by surprise by rise in wealth and prosperity, as Antara's relatives had assumed.
There was an attic at the top of the building, adjoining an apartment, an individual ironed clothes in that attic, beginning around 4 pm, continuing till way past midnight.
"What was it, did the family have a laundry business?" Ajit would say, standing at the circuit house glass window and staring at the attic. "Else who'd have so many clothes?"
"And yet it was just one person, did his arms not fall off, ironing daily for 10 hours, year after year?" Antara had said.
Did the above establish where Ajit was wrong? That he didn't connect the windows, its impact on German intelligence to the exceptional amount of outfits being pressured, probably for the purposes of Chetla alone, and no one else?
There was a high school for boys in that neighbourhood, it changed its name from 'Hindi' to 'Birla' in the early 1990s. Ajit had studied under the Bihar Board of Secondary Education, his matriculation certificate was written in Hindi, if 'Hindi' changed to 'Birla', it was self-explanatory.
What Washington DC wanted us to believe about Ajit's weakness was actually a crisis around a tremendous number of intelligence outfits being diverted for a certain use.
ii. Was there a possibility of Antara not having her narrative but being more forthcoming of the upheavals the world was going through in the 1990s? Antara was shy and introverted. The parent she was fond of, Ajit, was neither articulate nor forceful. If there was a retort from Anjali, he usually nodded and withdrew. Antara's sibling's higher education had been attacked in a complicated way, she didn't like discussions of the crisis in college-level education in Kolkata.
Thus, while it was true that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council/NAAC was established in 1994, that Antara's entire stint at Brabourne was about "NAAC aschhe, NAAC aschhe"/'NAAC team was coming for college inspection', that how the college was nationally ranked would determine its funding status with the Indian Govt, Antara didn't associate it with any Washington State-based tech family or Chetla.
Brabourne was somewhat old-world back then, students cleaned their classrooms for NAAC, the working staff cleaned the corridors and the premises, computer facilities were still primitive with a single 'computer lab', Brabourne didn't organise campus placement fairs. As Antara's stint at Brabourne was ending, the NAAC assessment was published, Brabourne scored low on tech and campus recruitment/career options.
"This was not fair," Antara had thought to herself. "Brabourne was being compared to St Stephen's College in New Delhi, where the Doon School-Scindia School Gwalior sorts studied, they were from INC families, they'd either become diplomats or Union ministers. Brabourne had students from the Sunderbans, from the steel towns of India, the Northeast, all females, many without privileges."
NAAC was apparently based in Bengaluru, so the tech family of Washington State in the United States had reordered the higher education scene. Did NAAC imply knack? Antara had a knack for writing, editing, reporting.
What an approach, study junior college Brabourne for a couple of years, then use American tech to push the college towards irrelevance and challenges, on the way, embrace the INC culture of New Delhi!
The need to denigrate an educational institution of which you had been a part for a couple of years could be explained if Brabourne had attacked Chetla, and the latter had responded with the might of the United States.
However, Brabourne hadn't attacked Chetla, which meant the banking families of Great Britain, which had betted on her, had asked her to report on how educational institutions in Kolkata were reacting to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Did they show willingness to share Cold War details with western financiers? Did they develop a distaste for the Chinese Communist Party's grip on Kolkata?
Accordingly, the tech family of Washington State would show complete disregard of the United States' history with Israel, the tech tycoons would turn Israel into the most highly valued US ally, American Jews living in America's coastal cities apparently dictating Israeli demands to Washington DC, the latter accepting these demands without feeling affronted.
It was about an entire generation growing up with a false geostrategic doctrine, even its clever ones like Antara accepted it without question, it never occurred to her that if she had performed exceedingly well in International Relations while at ACJ, why were the foreign embassies in New Delhi, including Israel's, only interested in knowing her spouse?
Antara, when you were working as a journalist, when you had all relevant documents including a passport, when you earned a salary, when you had banking facilities, why did these foreign embassies invite all journalists of New Delhi to their events, except you?
Antara, who had witnessed the last week of Ajit's working life, the day he retired, that night when the phone didn't stop ringing (CLASS ACT blogpost, 'AT&T, Kurdistan, Cooch Behar', Nov 22, 2025),
"Were they not getting tired of constant dialling?" Antara had asked.
"You didn't realise they were calling from different places?" Ajit had replied.
iv. As some of you might know, Antara had suffered a setback. Some of her former ACJ and JLF acquaintances, those furiously opposed to her, had been nominated as Austrian contacts for her, Antara was debarred from any direct contact with any Austrian, it was her punishment for discussing the 'Malayali football boom' in the Persian Gulf region over the last decade.
It followed that those who made such decisions were aware of the political certainties of the day, what were the benefits of the Los Alamos Project as interpreted by the Tagores and Asansol AG Church.
That political certainty stated that "those of European royal background, with currencies in their name, projected a respectability that immigrants to the US would never have. It was never about Roswell or the balloons, but that after decades of Tripura and north Kolkata rule in Washington DC, naval intelligence had reached a crisis that would always work in favour of the NRIs."
What Indian Communists didn't consider was that a crisis in naval intelligence, if acknowledged by Obama-Biden-Clinton-Trump officials, was the formal beginning of Nazi Holocaust research.
December 20, 2025
****
v. "Everyone was going to Vellore nowadays, for medical treatment," Anjali would often say in the 1990s. That was a problem with her, it was never clear what she meant, did she want to come under the patronage of the Vellore hospitals, or would her Prussian understanding of the United States, while distinct from the legit lease one, not be able to tolerate how Vellore regarded the US?
For example, Vellore obviously knew that after the Nazi Holocaust, contact-corroboration would take a while, it wanted that waiting time to be sombre, a resentful attitude towards the Russian victims of Stalinist purges, with hardly any discussion of the Obamas.
"That's the problem with Communists," Anjali would say, "it always started with a list of dos and don'ts, you can't eat this, you cannot do that, followed by a lecture about life." If she meant Life magazine and the British, she might have indicated the narrative of Lightoller, who had taught him to lecture so well aboard the RMS Titanic? Did it explain why European dictators later could speak with such vehement passion?
Thus, waiting for contact-corroboration followed some of the Vellore norms, it was marked by instability episodes, since Antara didn't like the western countries (under NRI influence), she wasn't particularly grim. Antara's allusions work was indicating that Vellore had wanted relatives and friends to keep turning up, to bother her about contact-corroboration, where reality diverged.
Certain individuals had considered ostracisation a better alternative, "what if snacks were offered to the relatives, if the evening passed in enjoyment, as if Antara was leading a successful life?"
vi. The British had little to fear when it came to Ukraine.
The government circuit house in Kolkata had a dosa (south Indian cuisine) shop close by. It was called 'Sharma's', a single masala dosa cost Rs 18, but you had to stand and eat, what both Ajit and Antara disliked, it seemed like an insult. "It was meant for the office people," the Sharma who owned the shop had said.
Two masala dosas from 'Sharma's', at Rs 36, usually sufficed for Ajit and Antara, in case the dining facilities at the circuit house were not available.
On one particular occasion, even 'Sharma's' was closed, Antara got worried about where they'd get dinner in Kolkata. "I'd go up to Gowardhan's (another vegetarian restaurant)," Ajit had said, "I'd get the masala dosas from there, you don't have to step outside, you stay indoors."
Antara sat alone at the circuit house room, she knew Gowardhan masala dosas cost Rs 33 per dosa, she disliked the high cost. The thought of her father, walking alone, quite the distance, along a shady dark lane in the evening, tormented her. Ajit came back after almost an hour, they sat down to dinner, he was unusually quiet, his head bent low over his food till the first drop of blood landed from his chin on the dosa.
"What happened?" Antara had screamed.
"Nothing, it was dark, I fell down on my face, my chin hit the concrete."
Ajit never spoke up, he just didn't know how to, Antara had arranged for some first-aid.
Did that solve the Ukraine imbroglio for the British, who had alerted law enforcement for the 1957 Apalachin meeting? It seemed to have been the Nazis, the Vellore sorts had scored a considerable victory, they had bargained their way into the Ukraine-Treasury politics, "When Ukraine was out of the Soviet Union as an independent country, those like ACJ would have a considerable say in Ukraine-related matters."
Why shouldn't Antara have the right to reject ACJ as an intermediary to Austria? If you knew US history, why would you pretend weakness?
vii. Had Antara's relatives followed the Vellore diktats and bothered her about contact-corroboration, then all of the above would have been discussed at length. It was not important whether every relative knew every anecdote before moving away for ostracisation, but whether they were willing to learn after Antara left HT.
Being older than Antara, they'd have realised that the Nazi alert about the 1957 Apalachin meeting might affect how and why newspapers published instability reports. 'Gowardhan' suggested Dairy Farmers of America, they would have understood that more than Antara quitting HT in 2012, it was important for her spouse to have changed his workplace. (The spouse had gone berserk in 2012, he had desperately tried, he didn't receive any response from other media offices in New Delhi, such was the year 2012.)
Not any of the above would have led to any setback for Antara's relatives. The stances on the legit lease had been determined in the 1950s, as soon as J Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance had been withdrawn.
"All Prussians would always support Antara. Ajit and BT would always support Batanagar/Pal family. The Treasury could not be the sole responsibility of Austria and Ukraine, it was everyone's burden."
viii. The British faced the following problems 2012 onwards.
Indian Communists challenged and denigrated Lenin.
They would not allow discussions of the Dairy Farmers of America, given the newspaper content on instability that had been published.
And a certain individual within HT, representing the global navies, was certain that the Nazis who raised the alert about the 1957 Apalachin meeting ran a school in Purulia, "it had American sponsors, Italian investors, Ajit-Anjali didn't even know that the school was run by those who had wrecked the 1957 Apalachin meeting."
At that meeting, they were neither discussing Lenin nor weapons nor the RMS Titanic. Indians had shown interest in studying engineering in the US, they had said it was important for legit lease purposes, that had been the topic. "But Indian involvement in the legit lease was already represented by Batanagar, what further need could bring them to the US? Were they trying to disprove it was a Jewish lease?"
December 21, 2025
****
ix. Antara did not discuss her work often enough, for obvious reasons. It was always managed under pressure, how the NRIs and their tycoon backers across the world would react, she worked in a legitimate but surreptitious way.
Right now, as 2025 was ending, it would be enough to know that there were endless promising trails, allusions/blogposts that might have secured Antara from threats, research that had to be abandoned. One of these was about the Bocage, after the Allied soldiers had broken through the Normandy beachheads in 1944, a crucial and strenuous battle had surrounded them, what was known as the Bloody Bocage.
"You thought they'd let you research the Bloody Bocage?" Antara had been told.
Antara hadn't realised it was a move against the Treasury, given the Nazi Holocaust was underway even as the soldiers were landing in Normandy. The Treasury's soldiers, the Treasury's victims. Antara didn't understand that it was about the eventual Ukraine ceasefire talks, where Bloody Bocage would be used, it was Bengal that would pay the price.
Antara had been warned, almost two decades ago, when she was a reporter in Kolkata. Her assignments included checking up on Jadavpur University, if it was doing advanced research that could be featured in a newspaper. "You live right next door to the university, why can't you drop in on your way to work or when going back home?" Antara did as told, Jadavpur University yielded many published stories for her.
On one of those days, Antara had an appointment in one of the engineering departments. It was an evening appointment, after which Antara would go home. Taken aback as she was shown the way, Antara entered the building, its corridors and rooms overflowing with indoor plants, ferns, so overgrown that it was like walking in a forest in the evening. (Antara neither had the Bocage in mind nor had she heard of Vernal/Fern, the circus artist who knew how to manage the White House, who was also acquainted with the von Richthofens.)
Summon up courage. Go to the room designated for the appointment. Sit down on the chair. Opposite the desk, where the engineering professor should have sat, there were two legs visible, coming up from beneath. Antara peered to the other side. The middle-aged Bengali gentleman was doing yoga, his head was on the floor, legs raised straight, he was also reading a book in that upturned position, unperturbed.
Antara wouldn't complain if the Treasury prevailed in the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire but whose Treasury was prevailing? If you inflicted endless Nazi Holocaust blackmails against the Treasury but didn't allow Nazi Holocaust to be researched or discussed, the Treasury belonged to the INC?
It was turning out to be quite the situation, where the Nazi genocide against the Jews was returning profits, while the vulnerability of the Jews was increasing.
Australian Hanukkah massacre, Treasury releasing investment options for unborn children, Ukraine ceasefire, all within a couple of weeks, how many of us read it together? It was civilised discourse?
Back in that engineering department, Antara's interviewee had sat up. "Where you were sitting now, on that very chair, New York Times's Barry Bearak had sat and interviewed me, day after day."
Antara considered whether to shift to the next chair, then decided to keep sitting where Barry Bearak had sat.
"He wrote the story, NYT published it, it was 13 pages long."
No, that cannot be so, Antara had thought, you had probably taken printouts from the web. Online stories have no restrictions, you could write as much as you wanted to, the scroll bar at the side got shorter, those not comfortable with online introduced 'pages'/next page.
The Carnegies and the Rockefellers might have provided inputs to the lease, but we lived in a digitised age, there were no limits to how much could be written, in how many ways the Carnegies or the Rockefellers could be understood or criticised, their business tactics discussed. If scroll reduced, that was not our problem.
Welcome to the Digital Age. Bengal shouldn't pay.
December 30, 2025.
****
x. Would Antara trust Kolkata, it provided the occasional help, without any guarantee whether it was meant as help or entrapment?
Antara had never been accepted by any other city, the question was irrelevant, with which city would Kolkata be compared? Kolkata was traditional, as of now, when it came to currencies, probably why it felt less scary.
Everyone spoke Bengali in Kolkata, which was assuring, Antara had been told that westerners wanted to learn Bengali and speak it well, because Antara never managed to immigrate.
At least Kolkata had the decency to recreate the frenzy around Madonna Ciccone's controversial tell-all book, when it was published in October 1992. With its explicit content, Madonna Ciccone's book was the cover story of many Bengali magazines/publications, these magazines were purchased by Antara's parents, prohibited for Antara, which meant furtive and quick reading when the parents were not around.
That was Anjali's advice anyway before any school-level quiz contest, "If it was western music, just say Madonna Ciccone."
Indian sentiments had been considered before extracting from Madonna Ciccone's book but what was obvious from the published material was that the former Nazis of Germany were supposed to manage the transition from the Russia-Ukraine War fervour towards the Romanian hostel blackmail, the latter would be dominating global discourse soon enough.
Davos might set the agenda, Antara recently got involved in an animated discussion, "If the Swiss couldn't influence policy-making, what was the purpose of Davos?" Apparently, they 'waited', Davos was the gathering place of 'waiters'.
Frivolity aside, Madonna Ciccone's tell-all book and Princess Diana's BBC Panorama interview were standout incidents from Antara's early adolescence because of coverage by Kolkata media. If someone grew up in Kolkata (or Bengal small towns like Antara) but didn't feel the pulverising impact of these two events, well, Antara didn't know how to respond to that.
When Antara first met the Alamo Girl and the Monsoon Girl in the late 1990s, she had suffered a psychological setback. "Oh, these were Bengali girls who could speak Bengali but didn't know Bengal. They grew up in Jamshedpur and Bokaro respectively, both towns in Jharkhand, they read Hindi through their school years, they were not familiar with the media products from Kolkata, what Antara had voraciously consumed till the mid-1990s."
Antara would have to find a different way of understanding them, they didn't share Antara's upbringing. Both disliked Kolkata and its cultural values, Antara kept quiet, she was not in the conversion business.
All of us assessed our immediate environment in our own ways, that was the definition of freedom.
If Antara didn't defend Kolkata with the Alamo Girl and the Monsoon Girl, it followed that she wouldn't bring up Junior College Brabourne either.
All allusions on Junior College Brabourne over the past several years had been incorrect, except one, "What was Chinsurah doing there? Had she come to supervise? Was she supposed to keep others informed? Was she meant to detect Imperial Russian influence on the 25-30 girls who stayed in that dorm, all aged around 16 years?"
(The allusion ended with 'What was Chinsurah doing there?', Antara put together the rest, from her work on other topics.)
Antara was repeatedly asked when Junior College Brabourne would come up for discussion on the blog.
Never.
What if the Communists planned large-scale 'immersion' of Agency idols, the Donovans and Wisners and Lansdales?
Okay, so this was how the world worked, stay unemployed, don't ever meet your close relations, but accept responsibility if the developmental studies-sorts were feeling fidgety around Agency honchos of the past.
Antara didn't want to write an 'Open Letter' to the Alamo Girl and the Monsoon Girl, as instructed, yet
Dear Alamo Girl and Monsoon Girl,
In August-September 1995, at Junior College Brabourne dorm, a group of mid-teen girls faced a challenge that separated them from the rest of humanity. They were never able to connect to anything, anyone after that. Their lives took on a vastly different significance, it was top-grade classified secret, what happened there could not be shared with you by Antara. It was about wars, only wars.
Yours, Antara
December 31, 2025.
****
xi. Antara never had to study hard to do well in her exams. Her parents never engaged any private tutor for her either, except for Mathematics in classes 9 &10 and Economics in junior college, the former for exhaustive practice, the latter to complete the Economics syllabus.
Anjali had two approaches to Antara's education. "Read loudly so that no matter where I was, in the kitchen or doing other household chores, I could hear you. Remember, you were not an MA student that you'd have to read silently."
The Pologround Housing flat was compact but small, making oneself heard was not a problem, Antara shouted out her lessons through school.
What was that thing about 'you were not an MA student'? "I'd have to keep reading loudly till my postgrad, then what would that woman (Anjali) say?"
Did it mean Antara was not a student of Massachusetts, hence 'loud reading' was essential for her? One would have to leave it at that.
Antara's school (Asansol AG Church) was off on weekends, Antara never had to study on Friday evenings. That was Anjali's second approach, "You do enough, there was no need to diligently sit down on Friday evenings, with your textbooks."
Anjali and Ajit interfered in Antara's lessons only if there was a conceptual problem, something that needed further explanation than what was taught by schoolteachers. Hence Antara enjoyed the vast syllabi of different subjects, it was a learning experience, with some exams thrown in.
On occasions when Antara didn't top class or didn't score the highest in certain subjects, her parents never scolded her.
Antara was thus not prepared for Junior College Brabourne, the time spent at the Junior College dorm for the first six months. Half the girls would be up at 5 am, there was no natural light that entered the dorm, electric lightbulbs (without shades) were turned on.
What were they doing, all sitting up on their beds and intently looking at their textbooks?
They were studying, someone had explained to Antara.
For what, do we have a test, classes have barely started, Antara had asked.
Whatever had been taught, they were studying that.
Antara decided that she had a personality, she would not be swayed by the herd, till by 6 am everyone was up, given tea and breakfast were served at 6.30 am.
How would it look if the entire dorm was abuzz with activity while Antara lay sleeping/pretending to sleep because it was not yet 6 am?
At college, Antara found out that the weekly tests for junior college would start soon enough, one test every Monday, the schedule would be posted on the bulletin board. "I'd use that as an excuse, say that I was not a habitual early riser but the weekly tests have forced me to get up with the others," Antara had thought. It turned out to be successful, Antara joined the 'early risers' in the dorm.
The term 'Auckland' apparently derived from 'a land where oak trees were grown'. One of the students at the Brabourne Junior College dorm was from Oak Grove, Mussoorie, some posh boarding school.
"She didn't belong here, she did her schooling from a posh boarding school, her parents were bureaucrats in New Delhi, they sent her to Brabourne to be close to her grandparents," Chinsurah had told Antara.
'Then why was she at Brabourne Hostel, why did she not stay at her grandparents' place in Kolkata," Antara had replied.
"She'd go away, she hated every moment of being at Brabourne," Chinsurah had said. (Chinsurah and Oak Grove had their beds next to each other, at the far end of the dorm.)
Within a few days, Oak Grove returned to Delhi, leaving a lifelong challenge, "when the Aucklands departed under 9/11 pressure, what was left of your lives, your existence?"
There were all kinds of waking up in life, all kinds of reality that emerged when the night's darkness had receded.
"When my mother (Pratibha) passed away, they woke me up and told me, but didn't take me for the cremation, it was probably quite late in the evening," Ajit had told Antara. 'Next morning, when I woke up, I had forgotten she was no longer around, I went looking, 'Ma, Ma, where were you?' AT's family reminded me that she had died."
Recently, Antara was reminded of that anecdote, "it would hold true of BT as well".
Apparently, BT had forgotten it all, till he was a young boy and given his narrative, and told that everything was lost for BT, everyone gone forever, WWI had probably started.
January 1, 2026.
****
xii. That Antara would mainly be used as a bulwark to hold down her generation, that she was not meant to represent her country or any organisation, that she'd never be a national asset in India, not something Indians had to acknowledge or take pride in, had been decided by the early-1980s.
It had apparently formed a substantial part of the Reagan-Kriesky discussions of 1983, "Indians would need an alternative once the Aucklands departed under 9/11 pressure, something less fuddy-duddy than the British but don't inform Britain, London was quite an attractive destination for immigration from Asia."
Reagan had asked for further details, to which Kriesky had supposedly replied, "Well, as Indians get higher profiles, the WWII conferences, especially the Cairo and Tehran conferences of 1943, would keep coming up in discussions. Both sides (Indians and those discussing with them) would be aware that these Allied conferences were shaped by suggestions from the Third Reich. The Egyptians had also kept the Third Reich informed about the outcomes. How would the Egyptians maintain their status as a major North African power if FDR's and Churchill's stature as visionary statesmen came tumbling down?"
(Antara had always thought that MENA needed greater focus, it reminded Egypt where it belonged on the global map. Even when employed, Antara was always excluded from the Delhi newsrooms' frequent and serious meetings, Indian journalists crowding around in the conference rooms, sombre faces and chewing their nails, while the likes of Antara looked on from outside. Had she known her narrative, she could have put up a notice at her workstation, 'It was only MENA, get a grip on yourself'.)
Towards the end of the Reagan-Kriesky meeting, Kriesky apparently mentioned that since criticism of the SHAEF commanders, their humiliation and rejection, was part of the Asian aerospace offer (Asia's demographic advantage+ western R&D in science and tech, go figure who was providing what), how could Antara be anything except a hostage? She'd try to defend SHAEF commanders, not grind them to dust as the Asians had been taught.
It was not about WWII, it was not about military strategy, it was a group of indoctrinated men and women who had to assert, quickly at that, and derive maximum advantage out of it.
As we knew, Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, a decade after his meeting with Kriesky. It was often hinted that his wife Nancy ran regular checks to see how much he remembered. An audacious Communist proposal from Kriesky, had, therefore been known to a single individual in the West, it had also been forgotten.
That was all there was to what was now being described as the 'Western Intelligence Failure of the Millennium'.
That the 1944 Normandy landings (and probably the Bloody Bocage) were the reasons for Kriesky's proposals was made known to Antara at Brabourne Junior College dorm, in the mid-1990s.
One of the girls would often saunter down to Antara's bed (that girl's bed was exactly opposed to Oak Grove), asking, "Have you read the Bengali novel 'Ekushe Pa'?" ('Ekushe Pa' meant Turning 21, Ecouche was also a place in Normandy.)
Antara had hurriedly read 'Ekushe Pa', but she knew it was a rage in the Bengali-medium schools, it had been televised as well, those girls that were her age at Pologround Housing and went to Bengali schools worshipped 'Ekushe Pa'.
Antara didn't want to be dismissive, girls like Chinsurah and Noida wouldn't engage with Bengali-medium schools, so she had said, "I don't remember all the details but I love 'Ekushe Pa'."
"That's all right," the Brabourne dorm girl had replied, "as long as people were willing to discuss 'Ekushe Pa', that's all we needed."
She'd sit down at the foot of Antara's bed, they'd chat about 'Ekushe Pa', those Bengali girls (Manimala Girls' Asansol, you too, Antara always looked out for you), Antara didn't want to return defeated by Delhi, those Bengali girls were forcing her to stay in Delhi, "don't you come back because you were not needed there'.
Oh, Bengal!
January 2, 2025
****
xiii. With discussions in public places centred around the metal/bullion, it was time to reassess the War on Terror.
Under extreme pressure over the weekend of January 10-11, 2026, which culminated in a near-deadly accident, Antara had said, "I will tell you about the conclusion to the War on Terror investigation, I'd fill the details later. My report would say that the War on Terror lasted one year, from Oct 2001 to Sept 2002, that it ended the moment Agency was done with it. You sit and figure out how you'd describe 2003-2021, I wouldn't let you call it the War on Terror. Cultivation purposes, probably?"
To the above, Antara received a fitting response. General Dostum (of Northern Alliance) had used silk maps to demarcate targets and locations where the Taliban was hiding in Afghanistan, back in late-2001.
"That's the way they'd play if necessary," Antara thought, "Dostum would say that the gold came from ancient Cathay/China? The dinosaur population in Cathay liked the metal, was it?"
Antara should have anticipated the above. When Indian students had started rushing to the United States for higher education 2002 onwards, they had emphasised putting all their savings together (savings of relatives included), to convince US immigration that they were from financially well-off backgrounds, that they had no intention of settling down in the United States.
Antara should have understood that a unified Treasury was emerging to rival those in the West but then it wouldn't serve her well to merely publicise it.
As their postgrad course at Jadavpur University in Kolkata was coming to an end, around March or April 2002, Antara needed certain documents signed and attested by the departmental head, two other classmates had accompanied her for the same purpose, both male, one was the spouse. The departmental head was an elderly female, on the verge of retirement, she graciously signed the photocopied documents of the men, to Antara she said, "You have to show the original, else I wouldn't sign yours."
Antara raged later from the humiliation but the intended Asian aggression was becoming clear, "If the Pentagon had been threatened by General Dostum with Cathay and its mythical gold, then the combined Asian Treasury might demand that the US Govt show the original amount of gold deposited in 1790. Civilisational status would be determined accordingly, who would be the global policeman, who would be the subjugated".
(Let us all take a deep breath and remember the moment Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger apparently convinced China back into the global stage, it had been so upsetting, the absence of the Chinese all around us.)
When Asia showed such aggression on currency matters, it usually pointed to the Balkans. US officials posted there often betrayed the legit lease, denied its existence, and information extracted from the Balkans made their way to Asian governments.
One such official was Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yugoslavia from June 1977 to January 1981, covering both the Iranian US embassy hostage crisis and any possible 1980-Mykolaiv arrangement.
Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger became US Secretary of State on December 8, 1992, two days after the Babri Masjid had been pulled down in India. Eagleburger's tenure as Secretary of State lasted a little over 40 days, it brought revolutionary changes to the Class of 1995 and the way it behaved and within Antara's parents' household. Antara's surroundings, everyone she knew, changed overnight, things would never be the same again.
Why was it so crucial to distrust the 1790 deposit? One explanation might be the close cooperation between Britain and the European Continent in preserving precious metal, what Indian textbooks (describing Indian kings) referred to as "...conquered and amassed a vast fortune...".
Not unlike Venezuela.
"By the above logic, 1980 and 1983 would make perfect sense, religious scholars like Myles Coverdale helping the Europeans to protect what was precious asset," Antara had thought.
And if such was the case, why would the US Govt have to "show the original" to the Chinese Communist Party, no matter the flurry of dignitaries to Asian countries?
January 12, 2026.
****
xiv. Antara had certain freedoms which she enjoyed when no longer with her ACJ batch.
For example, she liked having as many accounts as possible with online social networking sites. However, she did so only after leaving ACJ, she didn't want to be told "So now you have a Gmail account but you wouldn't accept my invitation when I sent you a Gmail link".
It sounded like an argument between Asian and Eurasian countries about the timing of the Bolshevik Revolution, "You couldn't rebel after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, when the balance of power had been altered in East Asia."
The above seemed to assume civilisational differences and warfare, it had been part of Indian thinking from the 1890s, then there would be no problem in discussing the metal/bullion controversy in terms of Asian Treasuries.
For example, when Antara opened any one of her several social networking accounts, she'd post a photo, maybe write something and then get caught up in the drudgery of working life and forget about it. Hence multiple social networking accounts indicated 'I was there' for Antara whereas for her former batchmates, multiple accounts might imply 'I own it somehow or the other and therefore it gave me the right to do whatever I wanted'.
Antara's approach let others live, the adversaries' approach created situations that were often beyond 'recovery'.
The word 'recovery' implied forgotten passwords and the online world would have been filled with the debris of Antara's long-forsaken blogs and long-forgotten Twitter accounts except that Twitter (not yet 'X' then) prohibited Antara from accessing her account since November 2020, from the very day that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been elected to US Presidential office.
Not just the Twitter account she used but every Twitter account she had ever opened was blocked as well. Blocking her active Twitter account had been an algorithmic mistake, as was evident from Twitter's email, but what about the other accounts? It was not about keeping the online space free of hate or preying tactics, someone had compiled a list of Antara's Gmail accounts, found the corresponding Twitter account and blocked them all.
Antara had committed no offence, it was the fury of the incompetent that had suppressed her freedom.
As anyone acquainted with technology would know, the purpose of holding multiple social networking accounts was to categorise content, what was proving popular, what was avoided. In Antara's opinion, veiled political satire was a winner, which meant there was public discontent with the world since 2009 and while Incompetent Fury caused fear and concern and kept people subdued, the demand for political satire continued to flourish.
The other purpose of maintaining multiple accounts was to observe advertising content, it was wonderful to find out that while Antara was one individual (age and gender unchanged), how different were the advertisements targeted at her as she moved from one social networking site to another. Even the real estate ads changed, why would Antara buy property in southern Indian towns she had never heard of?
If we tried to derive a Treasury argument out of the above, it implied more than targeting any Host Country through an account, it was about what that country might have to offer, what it wanted to promote, how it wanted to project itself, in a way that was independent of north Kolkata's cultural values.
Antara had been duly warned as well, "The road to hell was paved with forgotten passwords of multiple social networking accounts", one of the warnings had said.
They'd attack you separately for every account you held, for it allowed a nation-State to remain true to itself, not be erased by north Kolkatan cultural dominance, along with a redefining of what the Occident ought to be.
Antara's advice to the US officials and agencies, "Those that depended on automobile-makers of Lombardy-Venetia region in Italy for their existence, whether it was ACJ or California, ignored the region's history before 1866, when Lombardy-Venetia was part of the Austrian Empire.
Backed by the Peshmergas, Incompetent Fury and others were coming at American Civil War blackmails, also from the 1860s.
Why would US officials have to cede anything at all? Surely they knew their own American Civil War."
January 13, 2026.
****
xv. "Any trying experience, what Antara underwent since September 2012, was meant to lead to the Russian narrative, what formed the base of BT's House.
There was one anxiety, if the Russians never revealed who they were (whereby the narrative would be missed) or if it would be a feint (which would endanger the former constituent states of the Soviet Union) or if we would get the actual story.
Thankfully, it turned out to be the last one.
There was no need for the Maduro abduction, the Clintons could have testified in the Epstein trial, no one was forcing the Russian narrative out of Antara, it would have started once the War on Terror had been described as a "currency war", of which only the events of 2001-2002 had been significant. The US military could have left Afghanistan by 2003.
People worldwide made the mistake of assuming that the Russian narrative would be the story of two friends, Willy (Kaiser Wilhelm II) and Nicky (Tsar Nicholas II), that it would somehow explain the deadly Aryan supremacy theories that destabilised the world and killed hundreds of millions, for which we received globalised homogeneity but lost the freedom to maintain our cultural identities.
The Russian narrative, however, would be about what circumstances created the Oleg Gordievskys of the world, what made Anjali such an indifferent mother, how indifferent mothers led to individuals like Antara with their extreme need to please everyone, for if you had understood the logic of the Nazi Holocaust decades, nay centuries, before it took place, why people had to die in cramped and closed spaces while the outdoors remained free and spacious and well-lit for people to thrive in, then you'd realise that certain groups believed our world deserved no financiers at all, not a single one, no financial transaction, no metal coins or paper currency notes, nothing of value.
Many of Antara's former classmates assumed that an emphasis on maps and charts pointed to a future military career or at least a military purpose in their lives. Had they grown up in Russia, they'd know that maps allowed the landholders to control the serfs/slaves, the military merely assisted the landholders.
They would also have known that Russians, bound by such a gruesome history, couldn't be as antithetical to Washington DC as Bengalis of Kolkata wanted them to be.
In Washington DC, Russians were the lowest, those that didn't know any manners, who were clumsy and had once contributed to BT's House, who went around looking for Nazi Holocaust information on the sly, who never shared intelligence because then it would become obvious how little the Russians knew of the world.
We have to find those that somehow survived the Nazi Holocaust, the Russians told themselves. One such myopic individual was known to Asansol and Kolkata, collecting information on which academic course would lead to a paying career, how she'd be able to quickly earn a living, moving to Delhi for higher pay, Delhi which was loyal to Moscow and known for its journalism and newsrooms.
In Delhi, Antara didn't find anyone practising journalism nor loyal to Moscow."
January 14, 2026.
****
xvi. It was not important who could solve puzzles on their own and who couldn't. If it made your editorial meetings lively, so be it. It ought to be lively, Venezuela was in the same continent as Argentina. In the latter, fugitives of a certain sort found shelter.
What should have been important?
If a certain individual was meant to be Stateless and homeless and living on the pavement and quickly perishing of cold and hunger and fatigue, where was the need to hold back everyone else around her for 15-20 years?
Antara could have remained in touch with everyone till 2019-2020, when they could have gradually retreated, leading to the Stateless-homeless status.
Antara had the details of what apparatus (all of foreign origin) held back which relative or friend. Let's say Antara was no longer around, would such a foreign apparatus, which provided daily instructions of behaviour, retreat or merely fade away?
If it had linked a close relative and a classmate since 1993 (neither had managed to visit the United States as far as Antara knew), then after 33 years (from 1993 to 2026), they'd be suddenly released from servitude? How many of us found the world to be such a friendly place?
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of geometry would know that Antara could connect to one point of the circle, like the radius, but the close relative-classmate were a team of two individuals, they could become the diameter, connecting to two points on the circle, splitting the circle in half.
Antara knew what all of you were thinking, "This conversation couldn't take place in a living room, this argument never found an audience that could be convinced about what was happening to the planned distortion of the WWII narrative?"
Let Antara describe the outcome to you. They'd listen, nod thoughtfully, with that faraway look in their eyes, and then rush out to their real support system (the wives).
There, the very mention of the word 'geometry' would cause alarm, there you couldn't say 'diameter' without vicious abuses, and then the advice, "Who talked like that, circle and diameter and radius etc? Just tell them what was going on."
Who was 'them'?
Antara's mother-in-law? Her friends? Did we know who they were? One of them had a daughter who sought a divorce apparently because she was asked to clean a bowl of small fishes. "Humiliated, she had ran out, took an autorickshaw, went to her parents' home and filed for divorce."
So we were listening to women who divorced if they were asked to do household chores.
It was pointless to criticise the Israelis for formatting the global intelligence environ or creating the global intelligence lexicon. Their existence meant following the wishes of the White House. Antara had been reading about one of those Israeli honchos, he grew up in a place called Netanya, it reminded Antara of an anecdote about her paternal grandmother that Ajit (his nickname was Nitai) had recollected.
"My mother (Pratibha) would give us sweets during Durga Pujo, these were made at home, called 'mithai', we didn't buy sweets from stores. They were big and round, filled with dry fruits. 'Here, Nitai, take two of these, give one to Puchi (Gorakhpur aunt) and you eat one for yourself'."
(It had to be Durga Pujo 1945, where were the 'mithais' for Shili and Lokkhi?)
"What I'd do was keep one in the pocket of my pant, then tell Puchi, 'Well, we have just the one 'mithai', she wouldn't give us anymore. Let us split and eat it.' Puchi believed it, the poor thing, I felt so sorry for her when I grew up."
And what did you do with the one in your pocket, Antara would ask.
"I ate it later, all by myself," Ajit would say.
January 15, 2026.
