Houses of Dispute; Ukraine's war leadership and Gurkhas; what 'baigs' wanted

That Washington DC institutions often had Houses propping them up had become clear to Ajit-Anjali during their north Bengal stint.

"There were roadside stalls and kiosks. selling cooked meals etc, the shop was the 'front', a door at the back of the shop led to living quarters, where the shopkeeper usually lived, sometimes with spouse and children," Anjali would say.

Because of the proximity of the civilian airport, butchers were not allowed, since the way meat was culled and sold in India, it would attract scavenger birds, these disrupted flights during take-off and landing.

The stress of US defence firms on Washington DC had also become evident.

"The locals in these north Bengal towns were sturdy, quite westernised. During road repair, men and women worked together, laying/levelling the tar, both gender wore denim pants and jackets, it didn't seem like India."

With a certain level of awareness, one ought to have realised that if US defence firms were 'shaping' the allusions work, then it would be tough for Antara to grow up in a western country, she'd have to stay in India to be closer to reality.

While the fruit orchard was at the back of the north Bengal house, the front was a flower garden, a gravel path neatly dividing it into two halves.

It was a lush garden, roses and seasonal flowers aplenty, but its top drawing was the 'Night Queen', which bloomed occasionally, probably once a month. 

The 'Night Queen' was large and white, it bloomed towards midnight, Ajit-Anjali apparently waited with the girls, staying up to see it bloom at that unearthly hour. 

It withered in a day or two, its majesty was of the night.

"We want to take it to south Bengal, when we got transferred out of the north Bengal town," Ajit had said.

"It wouldn't bloom, it wasn't for your climes," the gardener had replied.

****

By the mid-1990s, Antara came across the consequences of what Ajit-Anjali had found out in north Bengal of the late 1970s.

For reasons not known to her, it became her burden, her parents and sibling either disliked discussing the Brabourne Junior College dorm or they had processed north Bengal in their own terms, for themselves, and left Antara out of it.

Brabourne Junior College dorm had two rows of beds on either side of the aisle, it was a cavernous hall, it accommodated around 22-25 girls at any given time.

Across the aisle from Antara was a Nepali girl from Darjeeling, her father was a West Bengal govt officer, they used the same govt circuit house in Kolkata that Ajit did.

Darjeeling's best friend shared the bed next to her, another Nepali girl but from Kathmandu, initially mistaken to be a royal till she explained that her father owned a candy/confectionery factory. 

She brought and shared candies from home, the ones made in their factory, she also kept loads of dried noodles, of various kinds, in a duffel bag, where Antara discovered Wai-Wai for the first time, what they snacked on. 

Both the Nepali girls had trouble eating Brabourne's Bengali meals, so they snacked quite a lot.

Another pair of girls that spoke in Nepali with Darjeeling-Kathmandu were two sisters, not twins but studying in the same class. They came from Siliguri, both had cleared their ICSE exam from the Matigara school that the sibling had attended in her childhood. 

Thus, the presence of four Nepali or Nepali-speaking girls in Brabourne's Junior College dorm, all studying the Arts, didn't create the frenzy in Antara's parents that it should have.

Why had they come down to the plains, who had sent them, why take so much trouble for a Brabourne Junior College course, only to return, they were so loathe to stay in Kolkata?

It was a mystery that would never be solved.

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Thus, individuals seemed focused on topics of relevance, of imminent importance, they didn't care whether Antara spoke with an Anglicised accent or if she looked down upon the Bengali dialect of Purulia.

At Brabourne Junior College, English texts studied and discussed spoke of dialects as "provincial mud worn on the boots", would you want to carry the mud of your province/hometown all over the world?

Or would you rather discuss what was important about Asansol or Purulia, what gave those towns character, what an outsider wouldn't understand during a weekend getaway?

In all the women Antara met in her life, from all over India, she never noticed any awareness or consciousness of their own accent/dialect or an attempt to correct Antara's.

It was true that Antara was distant, they were not afraid of physical contact, Kashmiri girls held Antara's hand as they chatted, Jamshedpur girls held her by the ears and shook her head from side to side. The Midnapore girls would stand by her bedside merely to see her wake up, "There, there, Antara-di was waking up, a plate of roshogolla."

Those like Naz... referred to their bags as 'baigs', such was their accent, and when Antara laughed, she'd protest, "No, Antara, it was a 'baig', that was correct, 'baig', not 'byaag' as you all say."

July 22, 2026.

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A ride-along; Germany; cold coffee

Ajit-Anjali stayed at their north Bengal house for three years. 

For those three years, the sibling attended a private school, English medium in instruction, at nearby Matigara, in Siliguri.

During the first year, the sibling travelled to school on a school bus, Antara was not yet born. 

The school bus services were withdrawn after Antara was born, the students were left to their own devices.

Ajit and Anjali moved to public transport/buses to take the sibling to school, these were crowded but went all the way to Siliguri.

In the morning, Ajit took the sibling to school, around 7 am, in any of these buses.

In the afternoon, Anjali went to fetch her, leaving the infant Antara with a maid/governess.

Anjali was unhappy, 

"I barely knew Bina (the maid-governess), and Bina barely knew India, having recently crossed the border from Bangladesh, with her uncle. As I'd walk down the wooden stairs, your father's office downstairs would be crowded with the locals, Bengalis and Nepalis and Marwaris. I'd wonder, what life was I leading? My elder daughter was at a Siliguri school, my newborn with a stranger, your father cornered and tense."

The bus stop was right outside the front gate of the house. It was called 'Airport More', because the domestic civilian airport was close by.

"Thankfully, all buses, short and long-distances, stopped at Airport More."

As far as Antara knew, the school uniform for the sibling was white tunic/pinafore with green cardigan vest, "one needed to wear the cardigan even during the summer months, one splash of rain and it would suddenly cool down."

****

That the torture-surveillance was Christian in nature had not been obvious to Antara.

A former journalist colleague who 'ran' the torture against Antara had studied at St Stephen's College, New Delhi, there were endless masonry structures within Europe that called themselves St Stephen's (they claimed religiosity as well), but these seemed random facts.

Antara believed in Christianity for "love and forgiveness", she didn't read the gospels, she practiced what she had learnt at school, that a torturer would try to establish his Christian credentials was so mind-boggling, she didn't know how to outrage.

However, the torturer was affiliated to IC/Independents' Consolidation at Kolkata's Presidency College, and we knew "notun chhoto IC boro mojar jinish", implying Presidency College was important for the planned military redistricting of Germany, apparently proceeding at a furious pace within Kolkata.

"A combination of New Deal blackmails, British Smileys, George Sand as global arms dealer, would be enough to defeat both France and Germany."

****

Was the fracas that Kolkata and its suburbs created over Antara avoidable?

Despite obvious Russian and German influence, why should anyone be romping around on their own?

Not an attitude redolent of WTO's 'free movement of peoples and goods and services' but we knew WTO had failed.

It was an 'I see everything through an NS Road/Prussian prism' situation, why everyone got furious at NS Road, "probably their fake cult of Damodar Chandra (family deity) was under attack, why they were being so obnoxious".

We could have said Washington DC had different measures for different individuals, a measure used for Harris's province (Tamil Nadu) would not be used for Antara. That Antara would get research opportunities others didn't.

In the end, it was decided that since it was proven that the musicians of Kolkata didn't care for "cold coffee"/cold cases from Austria, that would be Antara's purpose, somewhat supported by the long-forgotten Houses of Dhaka. 

July 20, 2026.

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Whose US was it?

Antara would like to describe a recurring nightmare of the last decade, coinciding with the torture-surveillance.

How many times did Antara have that nightmare, four or five times, more than that?

In it, Antara had been avoiding classes at Brabourne, she was quite all right in terms of health but neither attended the Bengali (Language and Literature classes) nor the Mathematics classes. 

So, it seemed to be Junior College Brabourne,

"When was the last time I went to attend these classes, I couldn't even remember, I wonder what they were teaching now?" Antara was seen thinking.

Accurately enough, Antara knew that she needed 75 percent attendance (as per Brabourne rules) to write the exams. 

In reality, she always scored above 90 percent in attendance, since if she was in Kolkata and staying at the hostel, she didn't miss any classes. 

However, in the nightmare, it was dipping towards 20 percent.

As the storm clouds loomed over the Brabourne campus, as the high wind started rising among its trees, Antara could be seen walking towards the college notice board, next to the Brabourne cafetaria. She had been allowed to sit for the exams, no questions asked.

In the distance, what looked like an IITian living as an NJ wife, the IRIS Shahid Bagheri individual, was walking past, though she had never been a Brabourne student.

The forces of Tripura were coming closer, even if it called itself Aga something-or-the-other. 

July 3, 2026.

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Whose US was it? (Not Fortune, nor Favour, nor Bold)

The 'London Station' arrangement couldn't be revisited. It had been ascertained that certain relatives of Antara were not getting any help at all. 

However, on July 2, 2026, Antara did get some scallions which she had "not paid for", Antara had never travelled to China so what was Assam indicating?

One possibility was that the "wintry day" of 1994 (Durgapur's Kumarmangalam Park visit) had reaped great benefits for Assam. 

Antara wrote up those allusions in 2021, by 2024, "wintry day", who had faced life threat for decades, was 'outed' as both Chinese and Russian agent.

Now was that a serious breach or was it still less than the horse-with-wings violation of privacy? 

What kind of Big Data workplaces helped us understand which public personality was actually being harassed and who were merely Europeans who deserved no less?

One way to look at it was to find out if your close associates had fallen/perished in similar Big Data investigations. "Wintry Day" might say he lost several of his sort between 2002 to 2004. Fortune didn't always find favour. 

You could have read what Antara was writing. 

In her early childhood, they lived close to Nepal and "Nepal had casinos, which India didn't", as Anjali would often say. The enthusiasm you felt around the 'Kathmandu arrangement' would have been less.

But then, Morocco was fielding an 'excellent team', so there was no way you, Assam, could keep the 'London Station' out of it.

(Except the last one, all photos from online sources.)

July 2, 2026.

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Whose US was it?

 Free, at last!

July 1, 2026.

****

Whose US was it? (Strobe lights)

 "At their time of need, the 'baap' got the money he needed, as did the 'beti' when she needed it."

After the above, one should ask, why did the 'giver' always have funds to spare? 

The 'baap' was not getting his pension after almost four decades of govt service, why? 

The 'beti' was apparently bringing out the "best HT product ever", why was her salary stopped by Payroll while other employees were paid?

So we were not being allowed to argue. The 'better half' was already vlogging, because NRI wives "wanted to see Germans on a leash, dancing to their tunes".

Guess what? Today, June 30, 2026, 'baap' and 'beti' were repaying. Take London Station, it was all yours.

'Beti' would catch you up. For a while, London Station had been looking at MH-370 disappearance, you know, when the plane went off and was never seen again, March 8, 2014, on International Women's Day?

'Beti' alerted London Station about the 1994 picnic/visit to Durgapur's Kumarmangalam Park. When you refused to get off the car, didn't talk to 'baap' and his wife, they went for a walk around the spacious park, you sat in the car and had the packed luchi-aloor dum lunch that was brought from home. 

Now 'beti' sat with you and had the same lunch, 'beti' didn't go off with her parents, 'beti' missed the visit to the park. 

For you, surely you, all of 21 years of age, couldn't be left by yourself, on a wintry day, at a deserted parking lot. 

You didn't remember what others did for you. You don't know what would have happened if 'beti' had gone off with the parents and left you alone, maybe you would never get to be such an important person. 

But London Station wanted to know, if both had luchi-aloor dum, if both were meant to access DoD and financiers, why were you chosen and 'beti' forgotten? How did it help the Syrian Civil War?

Was it coincidence that there was a passenger from the Kumarmangalam family on MH-370, was it connected to the visit to Durgapur's Kumarmangalam Park in the 1990s?

Malaysia was just the starting point.

June 30, 2026.

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Whose US was it?

Given the stress levels before July 4, 2026, Antara was asked to avoid blogposts, check what privileges she had grabbed through her life and return them to those whose place she had forcibly taken till the Syrian Civil War (2012-2025) returned the 'correct balance within society'.

Antara would like to return Monalisa, Trina etc, they were her kindergarten classmates, their parents were either British-trained surgeons or taught medicine, Trina's mother headed the Anatomy department of a govt medical college. 

"It was the early 1980s, many families were on the run, unable to reside in West Bengal but with 'mushrooming' of engineering and management colleges since the British Houses were sold in the 1990s, these could no longer be Antara's friends, they had to be friends of successful people."

June 29, 2026.

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