Wise and (thereby) defeated

There was Aam Aadmi Party extravaganza all over Delhi. Antara was asked to focus on it rather than on her former school. Was it possible to separate the two?

The Aam Aadmi Party celebrations were apparently about forcing the Federal Bureau to move 12,000 to 15,000 officers out of Washington DC. When it was first proposed, Antara had written several emails on the topic. It was a different dispensation, a different administration. Given that an NRI headed the Federal Bureau, wouldn't he take those very decisions that have never been taken in the history of the United States? What could Antara possibly add to it?

Washington DC was not "heavy in crime", so went the NRI guy's logic. It could mean different things to different people. Antara might think the Prussian fraudulent lease was enough reason to allocate sufficient number of Federal Bureau officers for the DC area. 

Why was it so? For the last decade (since 2015), AAP had been using an anthem about sharpening one's instruments, it was called 'kainchi chhuriya tez kara lo', referring to kitchen tools. It played every morning wherever Antara stayed, without fail, sometimes on a loop, sometimes for a few minutes and then the autorickshaw playing it would go away. 

In fact, the 'kainchi chhuriya' song was the reason Antara had tried immigrating, for the first time in her life, in Nov 2017. 

It didn't work out, Antara got her narrative instead later in 2018.

ii. As far as Antara's research had yielded, AAP's confidence was always based on NS Road and the Prussian fraudulent lease. In fact, one of the explanations of the Iranian missile attacks on Tel Aviv on June 19 was a request, "No matter what she was writing in her blog, do not follow up on it, she was coming too close, there could be no investigation".

Which was fine, the crimes committed against Antara couldn't take place without the complicity of the entire Middle East, Shias and Sunnis and Israeli Jews. They had forgotten the Tagores, they had thought Antara was the enemy. We can see the consequences of such muddle-headed thinking.

AAP relied on the Prussians' biggest intelligence shop in DC, which was from Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Sheffield was known for its metal instruments, hence AAP's anthem about 'kainchi chhuriya'. 

By itself, it wasn't a big deal, why couldn't DC shut down an intelligence shop from Sheffield? As it happened, the particular Sheffield company was suspected to be a side-business, a 'front' for President Ulysses S Grant, right from the 1870s. Whatever be the truth, Sheffield stayed relevant in DC, and AAP thought great opportunities lay ahead, things that no one had heard of.

Sometimes, it was wise to hold on to things that one had found out.

iii. Another request was to discuss the Close Female Relative. She had studied in Asansol AG Church for six years, through the 1980s, some of it coinciding with Antara studying there. For all six years, she was in the 'B' section, hence the impression in the West that the Agency declined irreversibly through those years.

Apparently, there was no way Close Female Relative could study at Section 'A'. See how difficult it was to discuss such a topic? Yet Iran's overzealousness, its urgency to do the right thing for the Class of 1995, brought it about.

Asansol AG made sure that Section B always had a different set of class teachers, there was hardly any swapping through those years, such that the teachers who taught Close Female Relative were unknown to Antara. So no discussion of Antara's future at home, all decisions left to herself, as we had found out from earlier blogposts.

Treated differently at home, treated differently at school.

At school, Close Female Relative would be part of the huddle that decided gifts and shopping and subscriptions, she was entrusted with funds, she was chosen a prefect, she was Captain of a House, she led the parade holding the school banner, she participated in fire-drills wearing real firemen's uniform.

Antara was the reject, the weird one, "can't even walk properly", teachers would giggle at each other, "why was your face like that, have you stolen some cows?" Ajit would say at the end of the school day, when he went to fetch her from school. The full cattle-car treatment.

As of now, the NRIs were incredibly powerful, no interest group had ever been so dominant in human history, without much to show for it. 

What would happen after that, when people started wondering why Antara was neither desired at home nor at school (nor within the marriage, as it turned out)? 

Indians had smart answers, "Have you wondered if you were the problem?" but those answers were used in the 1930s, why there were six million Jews less in the world. 

What if Antara's parents were sued? Not because of Close Female Relative, Antara loved her a lot, but for failing to report that the class teacher of 5B was called Mrs Banwar/BanWar and the class teacher of 10B was called Mrs Mannan/Man-None.

Asansol AG wanted to ban wars and then have scripted conflicts at designated No Man's Land? Why did Antara's parents hold back that information?

June 19, 2025.

How to talk shop in Washington DC?

Asansol AG Church and ACJ had apparently agreed that they had broken up Antara's marriage, assisted by Donald Trump and JD Vance coming to power in Jan 2025. It was hearsay but it seemed somewhat characteristic of them.

"These were powerful entities, and using the Russia-Ukraine War, the KGB had put in place an impenetrable barrier between Washington DC and Antara. That way, no one cared about her health or finances, it was not surprising that she'd collapse and the Indians and NRIs emerge triumphant."

Why could Putin not manage an "impenetrable barrier" from Moscow? Why did he need the services of thousands of middle-aged men and women in or from India? Was wasteful use of resources a Kremlin trait? Must be a lingering after-effect of the Cold War, when bread and other grocery supplies were plentiful across Moscow. Or not.

ii. Let's find out if such Moscow practices were implemented within Asansol AG Church. 

One had to pay subscriptions, several times a year, in order to buy a gift for the class teacher. Usually, these school events were called 'Teachers' Day' or 'Children's Day', to mark the birth anniversary of some national politician. (Always a politician, but it was such an annoyance if the blog dealt with political matters. When was it all right to be political and when did it become irritating?)

These subscriptions were not collected by the school. Officially, the school was not aware of any such practice. There would be a huddle of girls at one corner of the classroom, the funds/budget decided, individual contributions calculated by dividing the decided budget by the number of students in the class. Then began the announcements.

"We have decided to show our love and respect for the teacher by buying her a gift and a floral bouquet," any one of the familiar names would start. 

Who were 'we'? That huddle at the corner?

"You could also buy personal gifts if you wanted to, we wouldn't prevent it."

For what reason? Certain students would immediately buy personal gifts as well, apart from the subscription one, what happened to those (like Antara) who didn't buy personal gifts? Was teaching at a school a profession/career like any other or was it some kind of self-sacrifice?

"Don't worry, we would be showing you the gift but it would already be wrapped up so we would hold it up high, in front of the class, we cannot pass it around."

Phew, pay good money to show love and respect, then see a wrapped object with something indeterminate inside, from a distance, with no right to touch it.

"Of course, the floral bouquet would be visible, that everyone could enjoy."

(Self-explanatory.)

"For food, we were thinking about pastries and bakery products..."

(Remember, the lengths to which the Indian authorities had gone to disrupt Antara's food supply over the last decade, what kind of an abysmal diet makes one so unwell? These individuals from the school were an intrinsic part of that authority.)

"Now B, you stay near the market, you get the floral bouquet, MNOPQ, the five of you go shopping and pick up the gift, latest by so-and-so day."

Were you serious? That was an "impenetrable KGB barrier" between Antara in Delhi and Washington DC? What on earth did Antara undergo in that school? How much did her parents know? 

What did the above refer to? How would Antara ever know the implications of the above if DC and London remained against her Nazi Holocaust research?

June 18, 2025.

True minds

The western world has agreed to sacrifice the lease in order to thwart Antara.

That was the decision at the G7 summit, a hasty meeting of minds, no disagreement, most dignitaries left much before the summit was scheduled to be over.

From what one heard, AAP and Kejriwal didn't even manage to come up in the discussions, lest particular Indian royal families get identified with the AAP obsession. 

(India was a multi-party democracy since the 1950s, most Indian royals have contested and won elections for the INC or BJP, what did those political parties lack that AAP was offering, so not something you could solve at G7 if you had to exit in a dramatic fashion.)

ii. Most employers of Antara's peers were apparently confident that they could maintain the status-quo in the employment sector for another five years. No one kept the Buckingham Palace in mind, which meant unemployment was the problem, not lack of wealth. Had the Windsors been employed at corporate offices, their needs would have been taken into consideration. 

If the Palace could not identify which family member had cast racial slurs at Meghan and why, it would remain a human rights violation. Antara's lease proposal, which focused on human rights, could then look deeper into the racial tensions within the Palace. G7 was an Indian royals' club, but it had its chance, and did not care for the Palace. 

The above was one way of disrupting the western world-Global South bonhomie. 

iii. Another would be to check if JK Galbraith was working for NATO, preparing the ground in New Delhi from 1961 to 1963, to make sure certain NATO agents could enter India by the mid-1960s. That was Antara's guaranteed assignment, it had clearance, she wouldn't have to check how Indian tycoons felt about it. 

New Delhi at the peak of the Cold War, LBJ days, the US space exploration programme not yet with Indian tycoons. 

By that time, the western world-Global South bonhomie would be considering couples' counselling.

iv. The third would be Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing. 

One might hear they were not even having the same meals, the western world and the Global South.

If all of the above research took one year, it would cover a fifth of the lease work, given Antara had requested five years. 

Antara missed her parents, never mind how they were criticised on a daily basis, they'd have been so happy that Antara had come that far.

"And your mother didn't eat a thing through the day," Ajit would keep saying, the day Antara had won the Maggi Quiz Contest in 1990.

June 17, 2025.

Why a goodly apple?

A situation where Antara could ask Asansol AG Church to surrender or concede defeat didn't exist at the present moment. It was unlikely to arise anytime soon. 

The challenge had been to understand what these former AG students were up to, without accessing their online profiles (mostly their digital presence was negligible, someone saw to it) or being friends with them on social media. 

Hence, the difficulty level of the challenge was extremely high. It had also been more than three decades since she saw any of them. 

If Antara prevailed and 'understood' what Asansol AG was about, if all its intrigues were known to her down to the last detail (but not to westerners, so she didn't use anyone else's work), then Antara had won the challenge. But have you heard of anyone having the decency to end the animosity?

So 'understanding' Asansol AG was never the point, destroying Antara's career had always been the target. 

ii. You might say that Asansol AG was not well-trained as combatants, just as Anjali had not been. They understood setbacks, made temporary adjustments in their lives till the British and the Russians launched another vicious attack against north America, for that's what the War had become, it was not quite a war over cultural values, given how much Indians liked visiting pubs or dancing at discos. 

(Disco nights were common even in Indian villages and urban slums, some psychedelic lighting and loud music.)

In the classroom back at Asansol AG, Antara could have stood up and requested the teacher, "Could we go a little faster, surely they've printed an entire book so that we read most of it." But she didn't, she read the rest of the poems and prose on her own, knowing it was futile or worse, it would attract the rage of the school principal. 

Antara didn't ask for replacement lessons when the rest of her classmates went for song/dance rehearsals at the end of the school day (what Antara auditioned for but was always rejected.) Wasn't she paying the same school fees as the rest, at a private school? Why offer less services/opportunities to her? They were called 'zero' classes, it might imply that the US State Department encouraged such pursuit of Indian folk music and dances. Did the US State Department also mention that Antara should be deprived of the folk tradition of India?

iii. Almost every morning, from 1990 to 1995, when Antara's class attended the senior school assembly, the Head Girl and Assistant Head Girl (both Class 10 students) would give elaborate lectures to students about good conduct and discipline. Now hold on to those seats, as far as Antara had heard, one of these eloped right after high school, another got familiar with gangsters, some turned out to be right-wing fascists, some merely wives with kids.

The teachers never considered, "Why have such strict rules? Antara there, she reads a lot, writes well, why not let her give an honorary lecture, what she considered was discipline and good conduct?"

Ah, now we were coming closer to the problem, Antara didn't have political backing within India, hence no rights as a citizen. She had no Indian royal backing, why was she given a blog in India? 

So the problem was feudalism, the problem was BJP-CPM, the problem was what Indian media had discussed for decades, for some reason, it was being called 'Asansol AG Church'.

iv. Where were these blogs headed? Nowhere, for the above examples vividly show that the discussions about Asansol AG Church should have taken place in 1990-91, around 35 years ago, it would have spared us Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin. 

No one was forcing anyone to read the blogs but Antara had seen so much thought-control in the Communist milieu of Bengal, she was finally writing what she had always felt. 

"What do you think of the CPM rule in Bengal?" one of the ACJ faculty had asked Antara during the entrance interview. 

The ACJ interview was in 2005, the CPM had come to power in 1977. 

"What's to think, it's not that I have known any other," Antara had replied. The interview hall, where Antara faced around 15 panelists, editors and bankers, had gone quiet.

June 16, 2025.

Insuring a goodly apple (3)

There was no clear reason why Antara was trying to develop a discourse through her blog, for what purposes. It was evident that no Indian in any part of the world cared if she was reacknowledged as a person, or if she died of lack of medication or if she never saw an active bank account again.

Such confidence among Indians was possible if every single American had pledged, possibly in writing, that there was neither a lease nor a lease family, that no family from elsewhere had ever become a hostage in India, that there had never been centuries-old Tagore intrigues against the US and that the flourishing immigration racket from the Indian subcontinent was unconnected to the above.

Thus, what Antara's blog might imply for the Americans was that they couldn't pledge or commit to anything in writing if they didn't have the required information. They possibly hadn't heard about Richard Darre-Roberts family-north Kolkata setting up base in Argentina. 

Apparently, they were shocked for the first time since 1961, when Raul Hilberg's 'The Destruction of European Jews' had been published.

As Americans showed surprise over Darre-Roberts-north Kolkata, the NRIs caught their anxiety. Within a few hours, that anxiety transmitted to New Delhi, where the local citizens started showing their concern. All women have to come together, pretend to support the lease, the Ajit anecdotes were more popular and amusing for the Americans, certain individuals never got over their teenage or youthful fascination for adventurism and surprise, and that was the quality of the research without the assistance of any intelligence outfit?

ii. Had Antara managed to visit the United States, she would, therefore, find no one that was familiar with the US before 1918. 

Strange, for if you stayed in Kolkata, like Antara did for a decade, most of the informal conversation/gossip was about Kolkata of the 19th century. For that matter, in any Indian town or city, conversation starters consisted of comparisons between what the town looked like several generations ago, how it had expanded or contracted, notable incidents from the past etc.

Either most Americans had not stayed in the US before 1918 or they didn't bring it up because it would embarrass the NRIs and other Global South immigrants. However, the lease was not meant for those who had immigrated after 1918.

Those better informed than Antara might blame the Bureau of Investigation, it had little urge to discuss America's past, before the 1960s, regarding the spatial history of a place as the task of militaries and land surveyors. 

The Bureau, for its part, would definitely blame Washington DC--any immigration based on weakening the Balkans through conflict was not conducive to discussing American history.

Antara would argue that there was no way forward if the US didn't exist before 1980 (for the CPM) and 1985 (for the BJP).

iii. Antara's urgency was increasing, for even as Indian women tried to grab Houses of privilege and wealth from Austria, she had to find the actual European Houses, located within the United States. She'd have to do it while avoiding the Bureau, given most of these Houses had faced unnatural and inexplicable attacks and couldn't afford a Bureau investigation at such a late stage.

If Antara found these Houses, the US military would require adequate notice, for these Houses represented unresolved wars, and violent tempers would have to be soothed across the world by the US State Department.

All of the above covered around two decades from the mid-1880s, once the lease family had moved to Ukraine. Imagine how present-day Americans would have felt if we had gone back to 1865. 

As any worthwhile insurance broker would say, "You cannot have securities and exchanges about everything in life, and you surely couldn't try to buy/influence financiers to protect Holocaust perps. There was a natural order of things that handpicked officials in the Treasury wouldn't be able to prevent".

June 15, 2025. 

The tale of a goodly apple (2)

Haripada dithered on democracy. We didn't know why he did so. We do know he was surrounded by men from northern and western India at all times, did they come to consult him?

These men lacked respect for Ukraine, it was intense, their sense of superiority was acute. Haripada might have realised that they neither respected the lease nor the White House in DC, the latter had allowed the lease family to settle in Ukraine.

Haripada might have considered their attitude as a contributing factor to the tumult of the 1940s.

Antara found the above situation credible, she had faced such situations in her life:

"Can you believe it, she didn't even have a purse?"

"You won't go looking like that to the English Honours Freshers' Welcome, as if you were a beggar".

"You can't go like that to the wedding, take our stuff and wear them, that's your life, 'udhaar ki zindagi'/a life lived by borrowing and debt, your underclothes were your own, right?"

Thus, stupendous wealth and garish clothes were the prerequisites to being acknowledged within society, else your political presence became negligible.

ii. The above situation made Anjali an interesting character. She could provide valued intelligence and high idealism to her younger daughter while the German defence firms and fleet service ships would provide access to privileged Houses to Antara's relatives, neighbours, classmates and the rest of the women of small-town Bengal. 

What a quandary!! Anjali knew information had no value in Indian society unless you were wealthy, so she gave the information to Antara and the wealth to Bengali women. Did Anjali dislike her younger daughter?

Anjali appeared to avoid ostentation. And yet her life's work was speaking for itself, Bengal's small towns overflowed with bakeries and patisseries, while Antara could no longer go out on her own, she prowled late in the evening with her spouse, picking up vegetables rotting from the heat of the day for their meals. 

Bengal, eat your cake, have it too, then force-stop Antara's medication and empty out every grocer and greengrocer's shelf where she lived.

iii. It was impossible for Antara to understand how Anjali actually felt about democratic governance in India. Was she one of those that felt that India's democracy shouldn't have been preceded by the Nuremberg Trials at the Palace of Justice, held from the mid-1940s? 

That people in India had not been forewarned that instigating wars was an international crime, as was a genocide against a particular group, that it would call forth an International Military Tribunal?

The above was not Antara's opinion, Anjali was not around to argue her case, but Antara's persecution went unprotested in a wealthy country like India. She'd leave it at that, she didn't know what Allied commanders thought of India. The British were frequently posted in India, surely they disliked Poland and felt closer to India. 

iv. A culture that considered the younger daughter of Ajit-Anjali as the rightful candidate to settle their scores over the Nuremberg Trials. 

A culture where every Hindu and Muslim, king and emperor and nawab, took daily recourse to the most brutal tortures of their subjects.

A culture where Indian monarchs speared 'suspected' culprits, forget trying or hanging them.

A culture where till the 19th century, Kolkata's schools had the most horrifying corporal punishments, including kneeling under the tropical sun through the day with several bricks balanced on each palm of the hand.

They were affronted by the Nuremberg Trials? They needed to be forewarned? This culture was not speaking the truth either about democracy or the Nuremberg Trials.

June 14, 2025.

The tale of a goodly apple

Those who came too late to their narrative (because of the anxieties of others, not their own fault) and yet attempted to research on the Nazi Holocaust were given nasty and repeated scares by the KSA, the German military intelligence unit that supervised Washington DC.

As it happened, the torture inflicted on Antara over the last decade was marked less by surprise but by the monotony of unceasing brutality.

Had Antara been given sudden scares by the German KSA, it was because Hessian soldiers during the American Revolutionary War had entered into an agreement with the British general William Howe, who had commanded during the Battle of Long Island in 1776. 

For every lease-signing, they had agreed to a scripted game between Hessians and the Howe family of Nottinghamshire, under William's father Emanuel Scrope Howe. 

However, things didn't go as per the script, did it, decided during the American Revolutionary War? If the last lease signing was BT's, his life remained shrouded in mystery. But say BT had to take the help of the SA/Sturmabteilung for his lease, surely it was not because they were descendants of the Hessian soldiers?

And as for Antara, she'd been unemployed for 13 years! She had no rights to buy clothes, converse with anyone, seek treatment for her illnesses, her bank account was withdrawn and citizenship papers not allowed. Did it seem like a playful and scripted run-up to any lease-signing, between a British aristocratic family and German soldiers?

ii. One of the Kapurthala royals had left home and married a Bengali woman called Priscilla Chatterjee. Their daughter was Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, India's first Health Minister, from 1947 to 1957. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur had been educated at a Dorset boarding school and then at Oxford University. One would have to check if such a half-Punjabi half-Bengali family, because of its extensive contacts in England, knew anything about the Howe family's further involvement in lease-signings.

ACJ had a batch topper called Priscilla, a few years senior to Antara. There was a Priscilla in Silicon Valley as well. It was Anjali who used to hide behind a door and surprise Antara, back in the 1980s, yelling 'howe'. 

There was a restaurant in Asansol called 'Sudhamrit'. On their first visit there, sometime in 1987, Antara had wiped off an adult's portion of noodles. "You ate it all?" her parents had been surprised. 

'Sudhamrit' should have known Antara got very hungry when she couldn't locate the lease.

June 13, 2025.