A narrative, interrupted?

The arguments for Global South narrative plotlines in Hollywood didn't go down well with Bengali NRIs. 

After a couple of decades of traversing the ranks of the Nazi gauleiters and their lackeys, Putin had probably booked a few slots for what the Soviets suffered during WWII.

The Global South, suddenly, in its midst?

Antara would suggest her own topic: there was only one gainer, one family that benefitted from WWII. It was the family of BT Das. How they thrived when WWII was ongoing, after it ended, decades after the War was forgotten. 

But then it seemed a fit topic for forgetting, not the "movies they won't make of me when I'm dead", as the song went.

Antara would let you on to a secret: everyone was waiting to find out how she'd manage to drag in the Morgans into the dire situation that was developing in the Indian subcontinent. Maybe she'd approach the DC 'minders' and mentors about a 'weak person's quota' with the Treasury to interfere in military matters. Even if she was not eligible for military intelligence, she might be able to mention the phrase 'legit lease' a couple of times.

Yes, that was how Antara was brought up. A trip to her late grandparents' house in Purulia in the 1980s, parents tense like they were going to a funeral. Get off at Purulia railway station, two cycle-rickshaws hired for the four of them. 

The rickshaws came with luggage racks built at the back and soon enough, "Why did they always lag behind, the rickshaw that your father and sister were on, it's a straight road, do they lose their way?"

That's Antara's mother telling her, given the rickshaw they were on was far ahead. "The bags and suitcases must have fallen off the back" was as much Antara could manage for her reply. And sure enough, an irate father and furious sister appeared on the horizon, "the bags fell off, we had to wait till the rickshaw-puller secured it with ropes, it took a while".

Such people ask for a 'weak person's account' with the Treasury, just to be able to utter the phrase "legit lease".

And then you neared the house where once Antara's grandparents had lived through a World War and a genocide, "one never knew what to expect, who knows what one will see inside" and that's Antara's mother again, who feared nothing in her life except things hiding under the bed.

(She checked under the bed every night, even when arthritic. Who can it possibly be, Antara's sister would ask her mother.)

And with rickshaw-pullers paid off (only one took the money, they always shared it among themselves later, for some reason), the four of them, Ajit, Anjali and their two daughters, frozen in fear, looking down a narrow, blind alley, crisscrossed by open drains, and Antara's mother saying, "We go in first, let your father stand guard at the entrance, if we need to retreat".

What an Indian story! Filled with jars of pickles, and mango and guava trees, and doting grandparents during summer vacations.

Antara was one quintessential Indian.

May 10, 2025.