One of the anecdotes Antara often recounted about her father was how he had dropped out of school after his mother (Pratibha) passed away in 1946.
Ajit would leave home in the morning but he never turned up at school, his cousins (AT's sons) went to a different school and didn't know about Ajit's whereabouts. Ajit played around by himself, he had the tiffin money BT gave him so he was never hungry. He came home around the time school ended, no one knew he hadn't been to school at all.
Apparently, the school relocated to a different neighbourhood in the midst of it, Ajit didn't know about it, he was walking past when one of the schoolteachers noticed him from the classroom window, he instructed the boys, "Some of you go and grab Ajit, there he was, he hasn't been coming to school since his mother passed away."
"To that schoolmaster, I owed everything in my life," Ajit would later say. "Else, I'd become a vagabond, a wastrel."
Anjali often didn't believe these anecdotes but they meant everything to Antara, it was always difficult if one's mother suddenly passed away.
What Ajit didn't know was "playing truant" was an important topic of discussion at Asansol AG Church, the teachers spent considerable time explaining the concept, teaching the students that Americans referred to truancy as "playing hooky", even though hardly anyone "played hooky" at Asansol AG Church, it was a girls' school, where would they go?
Thus, there was a Washington DC crisis around 1946-47, important both to Ajit and Asansol AG Church but not to Anjali. Ajit felt the "balance of power" had shifted in DC after the atoms bombs were dropped on Japanese cities, and that politics of atomic weaponry, even within the Truman administration, allowed Ajit to grow up educated, go to Kolkata, make Pratibha's case ('Austrian neutrality', FACSIMILE blogpost, Dec 11, 2025).
If the crisis was around 1946-47, why did Kolkata create such excitement about Burgess-Maclean, whose purported visit was not till the early 1950s?
ii. Let's assume the balance of power shifted after the use of atomic weapons against Japan in WWII. Who'd be powerful enough to advise, even insist, against Harry Truman's protestations?
Everyone would say it was financiers and bankers but Asansol AG Church didn't even have a bookstore on its premises, you couldn't urgently buy one if you forgot to bring the textbook, you'd have to suffer the punishment, stand outside the classroom for 40 minutes, the duration of the class, such that the student felt humiliated. It never happened to Antara, though she packed her schoolbag in the morning. Her esteemed former classmates packed their schoolbags the previous evening, with either or both parents' assisting.
"Don't pack your schoolbag the previous evening, you'd get fever," Anjali would say, the implications were self-explanatory, it always held true. Thus, Asansol AG Church might have believed that there were no financiers within Washington DC, everyone had to bring their own.
Ajit's version was even better. It was the 1990s, Antara was going home from Brabourne (Kolkata) for the vacations, accompanied by her father, the taxi had stopped at the traffic intersection. A young man came up and stood next to the front passenger's seat, where Ajit was seated, and said, "I have to buy books for my studies, please donate."
"I've been there, where you were, you can study without buying books," Ajit had replied. So the balance of power that might have shifted after the atom bombs were dropped didn't involve financiers, or so Ajit had understood.
This was not a mystery novel. The balance of power within Washington DC shifted to Hollywood, we've been watching a particularly long movie, for almost a century. Many of the Israeli leaders and military generals were close to Hollywood, it helped them manage their interests within Washington DC.
When European bankers (not Italy) were familiar with the stances of Israeli leaders towards the legit lease, Europe fared well in global affairs. When Israel threw up unfamiliar govts, then European bankers seemed inadequate, they would be challenged.
Since there was no 'European military' per se except Eurocorps, meant to be at the service of the EU and NATO, European bankers didn't have anyone to approach with their problems either. Even Eurocorps was under Spain's command, how would one ever escape Cooch Behar?
iii. One would have to assume that the balance of power shifted within Washington DC because of the Nazi Holocaust, that the demand was that the legit lease should dissociate itself from the Nazi Holocaust narrative. There'd be US Govt institutions researching the Nazi Holocaust, 'disinterested' parties like the Prussians would demand relevant documents, photographs, other archival material, there'd be no US foreign intelligence involved, that women worldwide took a deep interest in WWII should not be forgotten.
The Nazi Holocaust-related books and publications from the 1960s onward met the above criteria, why did such publications significantly decline after 2006? Who lost interest, Hollywood or the Prussians or both? If so, what had changed between 2003 and 2006?
There would be several incidents that provided us a better understanding of the years between 2003 and 2006. In 2004, Antara had been teaching as a guest lecturer at a college in Purulia, at minimal pay. That college had organised an international seminar-conference on the Renaissance, delegates included academics from US universities (Caucasian men) and an elderly female academic from Lodz, Poland.
Antara was not assigned any duties, she didn't play any part in the organisation of the seminar-conference because she didn't have a desktop computer at home, wasn't that a PC and therefore the Canadian grocery chain? So Austrian intelligence had been outdated ('Austrian neutrality', FACSIMILE blogpost, December 11, 2025), Antara's relevance to the RMS Titanic narrative and staying in Delhi was useful in the mid or late 1990s.
Once Chetla had descended on the US from 2003 onwards, Antara was not even essential for the Punjabi discourse on the RMS Titanic.
What a pity, a sharp intellect, an informed person like Antara, always beaten by NS Road and Chetla. If any investigation was required, NS Road and Chetla were always ahead of Antara.
The three-day seminar-conference at the college in Purulia ended with the performance of the 'Chhau' dance, a tribal dance form, for the international delegates. It was a winter's evening, there were bonfires on the college lawns, "where were you running off, stay back for the 'Chhau' dance," her senior colleagues called out to her (one of them was called Hazra).
Antara was in formal attire, wearing a saree was compulsory for the college lecturers, she also had a severe earache, she could barely stand on her feet. She came back home to her parents, took to bed, her parents took turns, sitting by the bedside and providing 'warm compress' to her ears, as Antara cried in agony through the evening.
"Dancing the 'Chhau' dance for the foreigners, eh, from the US and Poland," Ajit and Anjali had said, "what it did to our girl (Antara)."
Thus, AT's family could be CPM or TMC, it didn't protect them from Hollywood, the latter would send its representatives to Purulia, to see AT dance, as usual Antara would pay the price. (AT's family danced through the last decade, the decade of the torture-surveillance, in case it was not clear.)
Oh, AT was essential for Delhi, its media and publishing honchos liked the concept of European royals but not the individuals who were European royals. "If we understood how they created European royals, we could use Caucasians from the US and Canada. Delhi could have its own western royal lines, there wouldn't be any culture clash whatsoever."
If AT's family was pressured, the Swiss bankers would share information, for it seemed that certain changes had been introduced into European royal lines after WWII, there was stress on university education and ordinary jobs, why were they trying to enmesh with the ordinary people, the bankers would have to provide that information.
iv. The European bankers (not Italy) had always known of the damage that would be caused by the social implication of Paytm, allowing ease of payment across genders.
"The discussions would focus on who had better clothes, whose upkeep was consistent or stylish, it would be forgotten that the New Deal was essentially exclusionist, households across the US coming up with their own little arrangements against BT-Pratibha while those not part of it travelled the railroads, as hobos.
Antara had done her share of extensive railway travel, she should have been part of the hobo world and their descendants (doing quite well) but she married into a railroad family, a second round of 'railroad exclusion' was imposed on her."
When travelling by overnight trains, Antara always took the middle berth and once settled in for the night, she let her arm dangle, so that her father could see it from the lower berth. Ajit should have reached out to that lonely hand, isolated by Austrian neutrality, excluded first by the New Deal and then by railroad in-laws.
Oh Ajit, why would you err so grievously with what was your own child?
Ajit would cite the usual excuses, how would he allow Antara to connect the Pacific bases to say, any dastardly attack against the US? Antara could provide the excuse, "I've always loathed Pearl Harbour-Hickam, every time I read any journalism on it or watched a movie, all I saw was, 'Come and live in tropical areas, you could wear cotton frocks all the time', what a strange idea to have such massive installations in tropical climes."
Would it have helped Antara, if she had made it known to Delhi media how she felt about Pearl Harbour-Hickam?
v. Antara should know that foreign students gathered at universities of western countries only for information against Austria.
If Austria was celebrated, respected, talked of highly even within a few universities, the option left to British aristocrats and German Nazis to provide their arguments, foreign student enrolment would drastically reduce. A certain kind of political thinking had vitiated their minds, these students were not interested in higher learning.
It would make one think that if Ajit ignored Antara from 1984-85 onwards (after the 1983 Ronald Reagan-Bruno Kriesky meeting), if the other girls in the household got prominence, then those girls would be comfortable with Nazi Holocaust publications and get busy connecting Pacific bases to any dastardly attack against the US.
Ajit had trusted these girls, their assignment was now official.
Yes, we were aware that Ajit had made these decisions when the Soviet Union was still around, they were apparently no longer applicable.
But the Chetla arrangement of 1983-84? Between Ronald Reagan and Bruno Kriesky? That was eternal, unconnected to the Cold War or the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Or that was how Hollywood thought.
December 14, 2025.
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