For a few Jalebis more…
By Boorback | October 2nd, 2009 | Category: UncategorizedI was in Shajadpur, a sleepy hamlet in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district about a fortnight ago. Work over, as the dusk settled in, I wanted to settle down for a relaxing cuppa at the local tea-stall. I called my chauffeur-guide Nurul over to join me but I sensed an unfamiliar edginess, a sense of discomfiture in him – it was clear that he was not at all keen to have his tea at that moment.
“Its getting dark… let’s get out of this place…we can have our tea in the dhaba on our way back.”
I’ve known Nurul for more than five years – he has driven me to all corners of the district – and one of the things we have shared is our love for a cup of tea. Together, we have perhaps drunk all types of the beverage available at tea stalls in Murshidabad and at all hours of day and even night! So this came as a big surprise indeed! But his manner told me that I better follow his counsel. I boarded the car, very curious…
“Hey! What’s up”?
“Dangerous place this… People are all loco here…”
“Everybody has a screw loose these days!”
“No, no, these people are really mad, they are killers!”
“Killers? Professional ones?”
“No. Killers by nature… a petty issue like the price of a jalebi can lead to random killings in these parts…”
“How?”
“About a week back three persons were lynched. It all started when the mithaiwallah increased the price of jalebis by twenty-five paisa!”
“But that’s absurd.”
“Please, believe me! The increase in price led to a tiff between the mithaiwallah and leader of the local rowdies. It seemed the mithaiwallah had insulted the rowdy by calling him the son of a pig! To avenge his late father’s reputation, the rowdy and his gang attacked the mithaiwallah’s family later that night. The rowdies beat the poor man, his brother and his young nephew to a pulp.”
“Hmm… But that doesn’t make all the people of Shajadpur crazy killers?!”
“Who knows? A month back two persons were killed here over because someone’s cow had gobbled his neighbour’s papaya saplings… …Around March this year a lady stabbed her husband’s mistress!”
We reach our dhaba and disembark. As I take my first sips of the hot and refreshing liquid, I notice the photograph of a bloody corpse accompanied by screaming headlines - Maoists slay a primary school teacher in front of his pupils- in the newspaper being scanned by a person sitting in front of me…
The great Spanish humanist philosopher Josĕ Ortega y Gasset once lamented, “Today violence is the rhetoric of the period…”
Like many of your experiences around West Bengal, this is depressing and scary. If this is the most ‘cultured’ state in India, where are we headed?
“What a vast difference there is between the barbarism that precedes culture and the barbarism that follows it.” - Friedrich Hebbel
I will be visiting more often as you have done a good job, keep going..
@The Third Man: Yes it is depressing. I think the violence / intolerance is also a reflection of the moral, political and cultural down-gradation that WB has gone in the recent years. The state government and the administration too has nurtured an ‘undemocratic’ ethos which is perhaps forcing the people towards violent forms of protest which are self-defeating in the long run…
@TK Pandey: Thanks!
Such sickeningly, frighteningly violent times… is it about money, is it about power, or is humankind beyond comprehension? Always looking for an excuse to break out into violence… especially these days?… or was it always thus?
@Irene: I think it is a combination of all and much more… sadly violence has always been a part of human existence…also I think it is sign of ‘under-development’
You have rightly commented………. violence has always been a part of human existence.
We see it all around us 24 x 7 in various forms.
What worries me is the fate of jalebis, that is, if you keep making pulp out of jalebiwalas.
‘Maoists kill jalebiwalas’, would also be an apt headline…
Yeah, seems like a page out of Orwell! WB has become the ultimate absurd state! I am sure the increasing poverty(created by the ever-growing kurta pockets of the WB politicians) has made it all come to this. Thanks to people like you for giving us a taste of such WB jalebis. However, I do think Violence is a human construct and has less to do with our essences…..
@ Basu: Yes! Without jalebis the world would surely be a less wonderful place. Of course those with diabetes may have other opinions
@ Ram: How true! In fact Maoists kill jalebiwalas, landless labourers, dhobis, lowly police constables, small time merchants… all except those who are in power and whom they profess to be their prime targets…
@dee bis: Thanks for dropping in. Absurd but frighteningly so. Violence could be a human construct but its been practised for so long that it has perhaps become a part of the genetic code of homo sapiens.
“Violence could be a human construct but its been practised for so long that it has perhaps become a part of the genetic code of homo sapiens” second you on that. That’s true of almost all the fault lines: race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on from which violence stems…these fault lines collapse the linearity of history into one tight circle and has invaded our minds too almost trying to imprint its code on our DNA…sadly! Keep writing and engaging us “virtually” with the reality of lives lived……
@dee bis: agree with you totally on the fault lines … sadly they seem to get deeper every day… thanks.