A war comes to an end

 Antara had no idea that Indians felt so strongly about Coca Cola.

There were storms everywhere!

Antara never had soft drinks in her childhood.

"Why must you always be weird," Anjali would tell her, "Look at the rest of them gulping down their Gold Spots and Limcas."

There were two, maybe three occasions when a soft drink (in a glass bottle) was bought for Antara, with a plastic straw pipe to drink with. In all instances, Antara had a sip, then went looking for Anjali to return it to her.

Thus, Antara had no fascination for soft drinks till 2021, once the pandemic was over. 

Could you relate to such a person?

Then the tales about who was Asa Griggs and whether his son travelled to China as a magician and whether there were 'magic tricks' performed at home and who reshaped 'candles' to forge a new identity and whether Supriya Paul stared at a 'candle' through a thunderstorm were irrelevant.

Antara didn't need soft drinks, she wouldn't discuss them.

As with soft drinks, people in India believed that western militaries preferred coeducational institutions to share Bureau information.

Antara studied at a school that had boys in the primary classes. Except one or two of them, she barely spoke with the others, they were so rough and rowdy. 

When Antara opted for Brabourne for undergraduate studies (despite the option of studying at co-ed colleges in Kolkata and Purulia), the Purulia townspeople had been surprised, they had told the sibling, "She prefers women's colleges?"

Antara never understood people who were filled with wrong information, presumptions, did they not know Antara at all?

In 1995, during Brabourne Junior College, the college was hosting its annual fest, it was probably called 'Kaleidoscope' for shattered glass, 'kaleidoscope' was probably the sibling's favourite scientific instrument as well. 

Antara was entering the college on fest day, when she saw the western part of the campus filled with young men, she was by herself, they seemed aggressive and turned to look at her.

Antara had fled towards the opposite side, surely it implied that if you studied at a co-ed college, all you'd get were agents of the German U-Boats who destroyed Britain's trading ships in the Western Approaches during the World Wars.

There were no all-women universities, Antara had thought to herself.

Was it a good thing, what happened at Jadavpur University, between 2000 and 2002, remembered only for the 9/11 attacks?

Who was to say U-Boat agents against Western Approaches were not at Jadavpur? 

Did we know if the 9/11 attacks were also against Britain or not?

Of course, given the somewhat dubious quality prevalent in the Indian newsrooms, Antara didn't realise that western 'economists' had introduced the 'sizar' system within the newsrooms.

Antara was treated well within the Kolkata reporting office because of the political ideology of the bosses. On the day she had joined, the office manager had shown her to the workstation and told her, "pens, notepads, staplers etc" were being sent her way. 

By the time Antara entered a New Delhi newsroom, she was immediately demoted several ranks, given she had studied journalism with a fee waiver. She was supposed to serve her colleagues, fetch their food and drinks and printouts. How was Antara 'sizar' compared to them, neither had they attended ACJ nor any other journalism school? 

"What you have studied, your work experience, what stories you have done, nothing mattered in this newsroom...", Antara was told.

So it was a 'sizar' newsroom. It had only waited for Antara. When Antara resigned in 2010, its purpose was over. 

Maybe Asa Griggs Candler could see us through such a bizarre crisis?

No?

Countries that stayed away from WWII, fought their own Civil War and tired themselves out, stayed huddled with a former Kaiser and an abdicated monarch would come to the rescue?

Former Kaiser+abdicated monarch+country where they threw chicken bones on the floor=/equals famous soft drink.

It didn't sound impressive, you know, one could survive without soft drinks and abdicated monarchs.

No, of course you were not done.

You were a railway company, then you were that railway company hidden in Myanmar, then you were in Washington DC trying to ruin all other railroad interests in the world.

There you were, swollen with sleep, climbing down from the upper berth, "They were announcing another train, what if it hit us from behind?"

Do not worry. The train behind you wouldn't hit you at all. 

From 2021 onwards, it took a while to catch up with the monstrosity of what Antara had lived through, the 1980s, the 1990s, the noughts.

What an outrageous trap, a set-up, there were aunts visiting, asking after the family deity/Narayan Shila aka Damodar Chandra, you'd try to solve it in terms of Infosys or some celebrity. 

Would you realise that the aunts and Anjali were discussing a rock band, called 'Sly and the Family Stone'? It was apparently the 'deity', a group of rock musicians familiar with Franco's Spain?

What did those like 'Sly and the Family Stone' apparently believe? It was vicious abuse of the Austrian Habsburgs, that Austria was merely a part of the Ottoman Empire, you had to create the pressure before Austrians admitted to their Islamic cuisine and culture, no amount of pressure was enough when it came to the Austrians, that Austrians had emigrated from Sudan in Africa.

Then why get so furious and stormy, if every one of us was from Sudan?

You didn't even know what was so-and-so party?

For that party, personal computers had to be introduced, the extremely high cost of infotech borne by corporations across the world. Else, centralised computers could have managed these tasks, how exactly do we use the personal processor provided to us? We didn't, hence.

All of you had vaults at top banks to store your RMS Titanic information?

If you had stopped shuddering, the Mykolaiv family was not that different from the Asansol one. 

The Mykolaiv family's narratives about itself were elaborate and untrue.

May 13, 2026.

****

Because of Belarus

Where was Antara disliked by a greater number of people, in Asansol or Purulia?

Right now, Purulia was apparently winning when it came to its dislike for Antara.

"It was nothing but penance for how Purulia had behaved when it came to the Sapphire matter and Coca Cola. Back in the late 1990s, Purulia was offering huge discounts on Coca Cola bottles, Ajit kept having these for weeks when he went for his evening walks, he ended up with an upset stomach. Anjali might have suspected that Ajit became careful about Turkish-Sudan following the incident."

Ajit was frequently harassed within Purulia in those years he spent there after his retirement. He used to dye his hair, when the gloss went away after a few days, it turned reddish, young boys would run after his scooter, "Look at his hair, either his head was on fire or he has put red mahdi on it." (Mahdists was also a Turkish-Sudan reference, this was around 2003-04.)

It shouldn't mean Antara would have to pay the price for such information. She researched on her own, if it yielded Turkish-Sudan information, she used it, she didn't use the information from Purulia that Ajit had with him.

And why did Purulia want to know whether Antara was aware if the Vanderbilts financed the Adolf Hitler Schulen (Adolf Hitler Schools) in Nazi Germany? The Vanderbilt side had blocked Antara's email id. In any case, Antara couldn't ask them whether they paid illicit donations to the Nazis or not. 

There was an interesting comic story from Bengal, a man had been punished by the local king, he had been asked to spend the night atop a tall metal pole, called 'shool' in Bengali. He somehow survived the night, only to find out it was unacceptable as punishment, he had cheated, there was a small fire burning at the base of the pole, it kept him warm through the winter's night, provided hope and optimism. So there'd be a repeat of the punishment. 

Maybe the Vanderbilt sum (if true) was negligible, why depend on them for your economic recovery?

The former POTUSes were apparently seeking the protection of their favourite Chicago law firms when it came to what they had done to Britain. The way to deal with the situation was to use the British intelligence side of it, thereby avoiding the Chicago legal community. 

How would you accuse the Chicago law firms? 

That they provided full legal coverage to men and women of Antara's generation that wanted to visit American cities? That it had been suggested around 1988 by one of Antara's classmates, who had bought a Miner's Safety Lamp to class? Later, they had read poems about 'gallants'? We had to accept the fact that the former POTUSes had made extraordinary legal arrangements for Indian men and women in the US, surely there was a requirement for such legal coverage?

A 'sizar' was an undergraduate at Irish or British educational institutions who either paid lower fees or got assistance for meals and lodging. Around 1993, when Antara was in Class 9, a senior girl (Class 10) had come up to her and asked, "Have a (pair of) scissors?" 

"I've got Julius Caesar," Antara had said, pointing at what she was reading. They had both laughed, and the girl went away. 

Antara didn't get lodging or meals assistance at ACJ but she got fees waiver, so "go get a 'sizar' and see what kind of Communism erupted across the world" was advice that had come from within Asansol AG Church.

All of us would wonder that what began so well--Purulia's understanding of the dangers of Turkish-Sudan or an Asansol AG girl's suggestion to use a 'sizar'--seemed to have led nowhere, except uncontrolled frenzy. 

Apparently, it was because no one really understood Anjali, how she had been mentored and from where, what happened if you were born five months before the July 20 1944 Adolf Hitler assassination plot, and if the consequences were a spate of 'suicides' of the conspirators, what did it imply for the so-called 'upper-strata' of the US Navy?

Did it make those 'conspirators' supporters of the Allies? Were they good people? Should we take their 'opposition' to Hitler for granted? Why didn't they oppose Hitler in March 1942, when most of European Jewry were still around?

You want to rush to HT and ACJ for help? Did you have any idea how much they feared Antara because of July 20 1944 and its consequences?

"Hmm, Sethi has joined, just a year senior to us at ACJ, earning Rs 80,000 per month at HT" was one of the first things Antara heard from a former ACJ batchmate when she joined HT.

Sethi, his 80,000 and dense, dark stormy skies was all there was to it, what further help could HT provide?

In constantly accessing HT and ACJ for information against Antara, you destroyed the networks, in Asansol and Purulia and elsewhere, what helped people lead their lives, undisturbed by Communism.

You called CPM Communist, you called TMC even more Communist than CPM, you don't even know how to describe the BJP. If you didn't know what you wanted, who could help you?

How did Antara manage hundreds of desks, in India? It was about paying attention to the economy and polity of the 1980s and 1990s, so one could understand which one was the illicit economy. Of course, even illicit economy Antara had to understand, so it was about finding what one needed to learn.

Because of Belarus, Antara stayed away from social media since 2015, which considerably helped.

You were NOT going to use Spain and Fleece for the land corridor. BJP or INC or other political formations was not an excuse.

May 12, 2026

****

The reality was often about the stars

Antara's journey to New Delhi was a complicated one.

Most of her relatives were trusted by the British or so it seemed in the present day.

During weekends, Anjali would give her raw vegetables to eat, as a snack between breakfast and lunch, while Antara was studying or completing her weekend homework.

Typically, it consisted of a tomato, some sliced carrots and green peas.

The green peas apparently referred to an English astronomer, called George Airy, he was quite the favourite in the schools of West Bengal, 'Kasam yaari ki/Airy ki' meant "I promise/swear by George Airy".

George Airy was born in 1801. While at school, he had invented the 'peashooter', a tube for releasing projectiles like dried peas. It would seem Anjali was asking, "So what was the purpose of the prolonged stay in Asansol, surely not for pea-shooting?"

Almost by chance, though Antara never played with glass marbles, a couple of these ended up with her. Antara preserved these, she couldn't remember who had given these glass marbles to her, she took them out and admired them but you couldn't play with glass marbles by yourself.

Ajit had apparently been a champion marbles player in his childhood but he wouldn't agree to play with Antara.

By the time Antara was working as a news reporter in the BBD Bagh area of Kolkata, she'd occasionally have the lime soda, on warm days, from a kiosk next to her workplace.

She had jumped when she heard a familiar voice one day, "What were you doing, all of Dalhousie drank out of that glass?" 

Antara had turned to find her spouse headed to his workplace, he had shouted out at her, suggesting a paper cup rather than the tall glasses of lime soda.

We knew that silica and lime soda (in solid granules) were used to lend colour to glass marbles, thus she couldn't be based in Kolkata's BBD Bagh area, where everyone had already had their fun and entertainment with glass marbles. 

Hence, Antara came to New Delhi, Anjali and her spouse used to talk to each other a lot in those days, probably some unfinished agenda of astronomer George Airy.

Anjali's motives were not difficult to find. 

In Asansol, the railways meant little except as a source of information, the railway station apparently divided the town along religious lines but it actually helped hide the fact that Asansol was close to the Bangladeshis, that Asansol frequently used their help.

At home, Anjali showed a lack of tolerance for Bangladeshis, calling them 'Germans', Antara imbibed it and shared it with her then bf, later spouse. 

"They didn't tell her that Asansol was close to Bangladeshis, Antara was not an important member of her family, I don't have to take this marriage seriously," the spouse might have thought to himself.

(Asansol had a neighbourhood called 'Railpar' or Railways Bank so its attitude towards railroads was quite forthright.)

Where did people get the courage for such forthright behaviour? 

Let's say that those who could possibly have protected Antara (from within Europe) had become known to the railways by the 1960s, the information went from Washington DC to San Francisco, where the Italian Navy agents cleared the information, then it went straight to Nepal, from there the plains of northern India, where Antara had relatives, many working in the railways.  

Thus, Antara was vulnerable to the hostile aspirations of Washington DC from before she was born, people were aggressive accordingly.

However, the above didn't explain the origin of several females who had positioned themselves as Antara's adversaries. Around 200 years ago, they had apparently witnessed European ferocity while based in Turkish Sudan. Could Europeans show such ferocity again?

The answer was 'no', Antara would advise against it, if some of the Turkish-Sudanese had also been recruited as US officials or were high office-holders, they might not like European ferocity. 

Thus, technological and computer-related developments helped Antara survive and grow up during the 1980s and 1990s. 

"Less use of Treasury instruments meant less relevance for Egypt and Sudan, there were no 19th century blackmails against the computers industry."

Going to Vietnam. Taking a cruise-ship ride. Someone locking the boy inside the bathroom. Crying and begging for help from the partying passengers. 

It summed up the situation, controlled by imposter bankers, on a US Navy ride, with Vietnam War blackmails, AAP all around.

Who was crying and begging for help?

Theresa? Boris? Liz? Rishi? Keir? Did they not like Astronomer Airy?

May 11, 2026.

****

If we went to China for the Great Game, where would the Berlusconi side go?

Antara's first stint in journalism, the Kolkata reporting office, was located at the Central Business District of the city.

Before India's independence, it was referred to as 'Dalhousie', probably after Lord Dalhousie.  

After independence from British rule, colonial legacies were mostly discarded, names of neighbourhoods and streets/roads were often changed.

What was Dalhousie became known after three Bengali revolutionaries, they had once fought against British officials within the Secretariat located in that area, called Writers' Building.

These Bengali revolutionaries were called Benoy-Badal-Dinesh, hence the business district came to be known after them, called BBD Bagh.

The stances of Benoy-Badal-Dinesh on the legit lease was never discussed. 

Of course, if you were an NRI and close to Indian royals' interest groups, you might have access to what Benoy-Badal-Dinesh actually wanted of the British officials.

Antara remembered visiting Kolkata in December 1987, waiting with her mother and sibling outside the Writers' Building as Ajit got accommodation reserved, till she felt tired and Anjali propped her up on the railing on the pavement. 

"Look, there's the statue of Benoy-Badal-Dinesh, look at all those trees next to it, batabi-lebu (a kind of citrus fruit), useful for Durga Pujo." It was warm for a winter's day, earlier at Howrah Station, Antara had got rid of the black leggings she wore beneath her frock, "No, my legs wouldn't be cold," she had told Anjali.

Later, when she was a news reporter, working at the BBD Bagh area of Kolkata, she found that except those employed at Dalhousie's offices, no other Kolkatan ever willingly visited the BBD Bagh area. 

The newsrooms and reporting offices didn't close during Durga Pujo and that was when BBD Bagh turned into a delightful place, the Durga Pujos of 2006 and 2007. Other offices would be shut, there was not a hint of Durga Pujo in the BBD Bagh area, the few buses running would be almost empty, the business district, largely shuttered, but to oneself. 

If Antara had the Central Business District to herself (though shuttered), why couldn't the allusions bring it back to life?

Why did the British Govt's high officials have to enact pandemic violations, in that ultimate show of loyalty to Beijing, and then disappear into the night?

The reason was known to most of the blog readers. 

During their hiding days in Amsterdam, Anne Frank had to betray most of the intelligence services used by railroad companies in her diary entries. It was the reason her diary was found intact, confiscated, published, why Anne Frank was remembered at all, so that those Communists who wanted these allusions solved, from any part of the world, could easily access her diary. 

If Communists had already solved Anne Frank's diary by the 1970s-80s (why the CPM could risk coming to power in West Bengal of the late 1970s), how did Antara manage to study journalism or get employed, that too in Kolkata's BBD Bagh area?

One possibility was that the BBD Bagh area had come under the influence and control of the tech tycoons, soon after the 9/11 attacks, they had sufficient RMS Titanic information as well.

Compare the names of the San Francisco (California) neighbourhoods and the area around Antara's reporting office in the BBD Bagh area:

i.  San Francisco's Financial District. Same as in Kolkata's BBD Bagh area.

ii. San Francisco's Financial District was adjacent to Chinatown. Chinese restaurants, one after the other, where Antara's reporting office was located in Kolkata's BBD Bagh area.

iii. San Francisco's Russian Hill close by. Another prominent Bengali media empire's office, close to Antara's reporting office.

iv. All of it was 'Little Italy' in San Francisco.  There were management institutes in the BBD Bagh area, where one of the girls from Antara's Paying Guest used to study during the 9/11 attacks, a Great Game enthusiast, she laughed at Waterloo Street and thereby the Battle of Waterloo (1815), "water from the loo, hopefully not on my head?"

Sometimes, wait before planning those China vacations.

Should we discuss the upcoming China trip of Donald Trump as a hostile gesture? 

If the railroad companies had an upper-hand, would they be able to take the Berlusconi-Peshawar-Great Game side on a vacation against their wishes? 

Would the Berlusconi side agree to meet people they didn't like?

Let Antara provide an example of how these things worked with the Peshawar crowd.

Antara had gone for a reporting assignment to Netaji Bhavan on Elgin Road in Kolkata in December 2007. By the time the speeches etc were over and Antara was about to leave, Benazir Bhutto had already been killed.

Why didn't Benazir Bhutto go on a vacation or walking trip to the Wilmington, Delaware region, it would remind her of Della and 1984, so many Delaware families had worked on the atom bomb project, or had been suppliers, surely Benazir Bhutto would have found it less aggressive than Beijing?

If it was a game of whether the Communists would end Antara's blog or Antara would keep writing it, the latter would happen, Antara would prevail. 

"Too many Russians willing to talk about the Eastern Front (WWII) created Pakistan, don't harass Antara's relatives over it."

Thus, the legit lease had won, we didn't have to force the US officials to travel to Beijing, it was our turn, which destinations would the Berlusconi side want to visit?

What was left to be solved? The Iran War?

During WWII, the Allied side bombed the oil refineries and ball-bearing factories of the Nazis. It led to an interesting incident in the 1980s. During a visit to Purulia, Ajit had forgotten to switch off the ceiling fan when he was leaving, the ball-bearings heated and exploded, the oil and lubricants were all over the ceiling.

Have a chat with the Special Ops people. They ought to know how to end the Iran War.

May 8, 2026.

**** 

Who wasn't afraid of the Morgans?

Antara was afraid of the Morgans as much as anyone else.

If you remembered her anecdote about going home from the Kolkata reporting office, how she'd start walking towards the BBD Bagh bus terminus once her work got over, well, she could have gone towards the Esplanade Metro Station as well, in 2006 it was the site of a prolonged political fasting.

But the former Clearing Houses occupied the corner realty spots, Antara didn't have her narrative, the Clearing Houses and corners looked forbidding at the late evening hour, so she went towards the bus terminus instead.

Thus, writing about railroad companies was not about 'history lessons that could prove useful' but requesting that the Morgans bring Antara up at a Clearing House, probably DTCC (the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation) that cleared the US equities trade. 

Antara had also been provided an understanding of where she stood with the Morgans.

The overnight train that she used for going home (Kolkata/Howrah to Purulia), in the late 1990s, would often be delayed, it was a problem because the train was supposed to leave around 10.30 pm, delays meant it got rather late. 

Soon, even the mighty Howrah Station would be empty, only the passengers of the Purulia train waiting drowsily, most spread newspapers on the railway platform and sat on them, as did Antara and Ajit. 

One of those times, Antara had bought a back issue of 'National Geographic', it was the RMS Titanic cover, she sat on the railway platform reading it, occasionally explaining the 'collision' to her father, "They're saying that had it hit headlong, then there'd be less surface area and hence less damage, why did it turn?" as Ajit listened.

Around 11.40 pm, the Jodhpur Express would leave Howrah, so the Supriya Paul team would be ahead of Antara was known from the late 1990s, there was no suddenness about it.

Around midnight, as the lights were turned off and Howrah Station was submerged in darkness, the Purulia passengers protested, "We have no train and no lights either?"

Hence a railroad-discussing blog, people have all kinds of needs.

As for the criticism of certain individuals in Class Act blogpost of May 6, 2026 ('There went the Morgans'), they've all been close to Antara, and had been identified to certain authorities as performing 'convoy escort duties' (as in the Navy during wartime), 

"Why, so that Antara didn't make any mistake, given she didn't have her narrative? Without mistakes how would she learn?"

That was from an Asansol schoolteacher. For her wise observations, she immigrated and settled in the United States. 

Antara was left by herself, to learn from her mistakes, but who would she teach, in her turn? 

Indians wouldn't learn from her and her own people were no longer around. 

Was 'without mistakes how would she learn' another kind of H1B visa?

SFTD/Story For The Day was about keeping Antara in Kolkata city, no matter what.

Antara's instructions from Chennai were to submit an occasional feature story, keep travelling across West Bengal for days, if not weeks. 

Once she had joined the reporting office in Kolkata, the local female reporters (different publications) encouraged the idea, "Go from one West Bengal town to another, those budget hotels and inns were such a thrill, do your reporting, then settle down with a beer at the hotel etc."

Antara grew up in the Bengal districts and the possibility of staying in a shabby hotel, probably close to where her parents stayed, alone and drinking, was revolting for her. 

Hence, SFTD/Story For The Day, "Well, you couldn't go anywhere, how would you submit the SFTD?" the departmental head had told her.

Once these excursions into West Bengal districts were ruled out, why had they been suggested in the first place? 

What would have yielded had Antara constantly travelled across West Bengal? 

Who'd be providing the answer, the 'Titanic' movie director or Ms Shipley and her cronies in New Zealand?

It was unlikely that Antara was afraid of the challenges coming to the lease from New Zealand.

In any online game with multiple players, Antara had two fears, "So I'd be surveilled and I didn't even know whether I was playing against machines."

For Antara, it was the Classic Lubna Scare, it came from Ukraine, why could Ukrainians freeze the Donetsk-Luhansk region to gather advanced information about assignments and allusions, thereby coming prepared?

ACJ ought to rest easy. The Classic Lubna Scare was so fierce in Antara, she didn't even consider looking for jobs, despite the financial squeeze enforced by the spouse since summer 2025.

As of now, we were not criticising Indians. 

They were thoughtful people when it came to the Kaplan education business of WaPo.

How often did Antara venture out alone? At any hour of the day, they put young boys coming from private coaching/private tutors, "Kaplan education business would get you when you were alone".

It had proved useful, so Antara was allowed to share what NS Road topics she worked on, all chosen by her, Antara feared her relatives, she never looked down upon them.

May 7, 2026.

****

There went the Morgans

The blogs could challenge the Russians because of the railroad services and information that the latter had once sourced from railroad companies.

The Russians owed many favours, no one went to Russia to settle those favours. In fact, most corporations were quite thankful for the muddled White House activities once Russia invaded Ukraine and western firms could leave Russia.

The excuse that one could use a pen to write a love note as well as a death verdict (we were discussing railway usage during the Nazi Holocaust transportation) was lost when the then friend/later bf/now spouse lent his notebook to Antara during Postgrad 1 at Jadavpur University, in 2000. 

Antara had missed a few classes and wanted to catch up, she found the last page of the notebook had a love poem, seemingly meant for her.

There went the Morgans, everyone understood.

That railway services had been used in the vilest way, during humanity's most wretched moment, against that we were being offered BoB/Base Office Berlin.

Antara wouldn't have gotten interested in the guy but that poem somehow changed her.

To Anjali's later inquiries, Antara had said, "I was always travelling on trains, sitting for seven-eight-nine hours on the same seat, hardly any food, that chap's family was based closer to Kolkata, in case I had to work there."

Anjali never discussed the matter further.

There were individuals like Antara, what they wouldn't do for railroad companies!

Why didn't Antara ask her parents to move to Kolkata suburbs, if the city was too expensive for a retired couple like Ajit-Anjali?

Why did she consider Ajit as "lacking the courage to assess danger levels",

Anjali as "always the rank outsider despite excellent information",

and the sibling "whose potential would never be available to me"?

The 'minders' had felt that 'set patterns' had been imposed on them by Global Communists, even when it didn't serve them. 

Antara had understood that the central problem, the White House, couldn't be reinvented, much like the proverbial wheel, no matter how Chinese-influenced it had become. 

So Antara took a chance in 2000, could anyone in the world (in the present day) say that fresh, new beginnings didn't take place in their lives in the last two decades? 

That made the likes of Antara different, their quiet ability to change everyone's lives for the better.

Antara's ability to create these changes had no effect on anyone around her.

Antara couldn't believe that her best friend in school wouldn't study Arts or Commerce, what had indicated that she was a computer whiz in a school that had no computers till the Class of 1995 completed high school?

The sibling wanted mean and conspiring small towns, then why did she create such a frantic and explosive environment at home, only to be a married wife in other small towns?

The Alamo Girl wanted an arranged marriage with a physician, then why be friends with Antara? Why scream, "Liberty, liberty" and run down the streets around Park Circus when the Monsoon Girl was away for a few days? "Wow, gulping down the fresh air", the Alamo Girl had said, because the Monsoon Girl as a hostel mate was so restrictive?

And the Paying Guest girls, over the two decades after 9/11, it didn't occur to you that you ought to have elaborate FB/social media profiles, replete with photos, so that when Antara got isolated from 2015, you could see her through? You still didn't understand what you meant to the world, just transacting through that pattern/UPI and exchanging Whatsapp messages, that's all you had ever desired?

We were criticising because the above-mentioned were successful people. 

There was no proof that any Agency favourite in the US or her career had adversely affected them. 

They were not fearful, they didn't encounter any crisis that made them reach out to Antara. 

They were different from the 'minders', who were stricken with challenges, trying to preserve the semblance of an 'order', let alone a global order.

No one liked disorder or anarchy, how would you earn a living, complete your tasks? 

They used the allusions and blogs, Antara didn't have time for writing Turkish obituaries, the sinking of the RMS Titanic created a Communism that couldn't run amok, without safeguards.

Thus, if Antara's relatives and acquaintances had not faced any severity from the Agency, they had received information regarding her from November 2012 to February 2013. 

It had implied that score-settling was to be attempted about NSDAP war criminals who were hanged at Nuremberg. 

With such an argument they agreed, which meant they either agreed that 

i. NSDAP honchos were not war criminals,

ii. or NSDAP honchos should have gotten away despite being war criminals,

iii. and a girl like Antara would be punished for an international military tribunal from the late-1940s.

This was official, the stance of Antara's relatives and acquaintances when it came to the Nuremberg Trials, it wouldn't change.

There was hardly any WWII family in the United States that didn't change its name or identity as the decades passed, such was the shame and humiliation they faced from the Communist troublemakers.

Most of them returned to the US military during the War on Terror, why didn't you figure out their WWII identities and histories instead of worrying how others spend their time?

May 6, 2026.

****

Hitch-22 won't work either, Aunt Bea

Antara had always been aware that someone or the other would gossip about her television-viewing, whether it was the War on Terror operatives or someone else, if it was true she was surveilled, or if there was another way of finding out.

The friction-laden relationship she had with her parents owed to it, "All of you had watched television, now leave the room, I would be watching TV," Antara would say, dragging her father away by the hand, pushing her mother with all her might, the sibling left anyway. 

"I didn't watch when you were watching."

"We didn't prevent you from watching with us," Anjali would say, "What if we were a larger family, where everyone crowded around a single TV set? You can't watch television unless you had the entire living room to yourself."

Then the instructions started, how many feet apart Antara would have to sit, given her myopia, "Ideally, you should sit close to the wall at the back of the room" etc.

Antara sat as close to the television set as possible, right next to it, and watched her favourites, including,

i. The Sunday afternoon news bulletin for the hearing impaired, she picked up some sign language, not enough to converse with others as a lot of Indians knew how to do,

ii. She also watched the National Award-winning movies in regional languages, with subtitles of course, why her oeuvre of movies watched was dominated by south Indian movies.

iii. In sports, she loved figure-skating, gymnastics and equestrian sports, knowing she wouldn't have to try any of these, they were not available in India.

It was the late 1980s, Antara had got into the tendency to cover her nose with the palm of her right hand when she watched TV. Sometimes, if the sibling wandered into the room, she ridiculed Antara, "Why did you sit with your nose covered by your hand, who sat like that?"

Thus, before you gossiped about how Antara watched the 'Castles of Europe' on television but not the 'Palaces of Europe', before you tried to manage Golden Fleece accordingly, you should have understood 'Castles of Europe' was interesting because of the stonemasonry, not for military reasons.

You should have understood that it was pre-cable television in India which was the deal, Antara lost interest when dozens of channels were introduced from the early 1990s, with shallow programming executives.

Everyone could read their Ukraine inferences from the above. It was quite clear that Antara's allusions were not meant to flow towards a British audience but then it was not sourced from the Washington DC honchos either.

It was a mistake that the French made, in the years before Antara's allusions work started, forcefully preventing the Agency from going ahead with the Brussels plan of 2017-2018. 

The French found the Aswan Dam relocation to be of great relevance, thinking that the Washington DC honchos who provided the allusions on Ukraine had been moved away, hence 'allusions work' would get done but there would be no one to receive it or react to it. 

It was a grave misunderstanding of Antara's allusions work, its source, its destination, and therefore its relevance.

The source ought to have been obvious. It would be the steamship companies, the mighty ones crossing oceans, the smaller ones plying between American towns and cities. Who else could possibly know about the legit lease, Poland and Ukraine?

The French would argue that they didn't mean great harm. In the era of Large Language Models, no one had expected Antara's kind of allusions, what found favour only in the towns and districts of West Bengal, hence the electoral results apparently decided by Silicon Valley.

"It didn't matter if TMC lost or won or BJP made inroads, but that West Bengal was not a tech-savvy, AI-friendly place."

Of course, the steamship and mail-ship allusions were not with Silicon Valley, the latter had never asked for them, hence the process to formally separate the legit lease from KGB/Moscow had started, no one had to take the initiative, Silicon Valley did the needful with the West Bengal elections. 

When we mention the legit lease, it implied the Treasury, the latter was devious, with its endless intrigues and conspiracies, till WWI started, then the Treasury became a muted figure.

The strangest thing was how Antara's fate turned out to be not that different from the Four Card Players.

The latter were politicians, artists, businessmen, interested in foreign intelligence rather than in the military, but who were provided a series of sordid and unconnected anecdotes about the lease family in Ukraine, and asked to devise military solutions to it.

It was somewhat like providing 'Chetla as a Navy puzzle' to be solved by Antara, without informing her what was done to the lease between 1981 and 1999.

The Four Card Players had realised that they were being taken down for a reason.

Antara knew that reason, it was the inability to accept others, why she stayed by herself and remained afloat.

2008: Heard Antara was on the night-shift schedule and wanted to rub your day-shift, high-paying accounting job on her face? What if we started discussing what 'global accounting' was about?

2012-13-14: Wanted to go on all-female trips to defeat Antara at 'cool'? 

Antara and her spouse took the aisle berths in airconditioned coaches on overnight trains, so that the two of them could play '20 questions' till late into the night, as the other passengers slept, the train racing through India, swathed under the moonlight.  

May 5, 2026.

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