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.

Fighters and their fables

Anjali didn't like any of the systems prevalent for division of estates among princes in German noble families.

There was either primogeniture and appanage, where the younger sons were provided some designated property, so that they felt a stake in their family name.

There was secundogeniture, which provided the younger sons with a dependent estate and thereby established a cadet branch of the family, it had more prestige and material benefits than appanage.

"So much division and subdivision within families, it led to decline in quality," she'd say.

It implied that Anjali thought the royals in the Indian subcontinent managed things better. There were feuds and intrigues and rivalries, but there was also a sense of contributing to an Indian national identity, giving up their personal considerations for a larger national cause.

Hence, Anjali was no Prussian.

ii. Why would Murad and Papiya, of the Indian subcontinental diaspora, get so interested in German feudal politics of 300 years ago? A fire truck was parked across the road from where Antara lived, through much of the evening, and fire trucks were parked around Antara only when a neighbouring country's diaspora gathered under Murad. 

Apart from who would trip over monetary policy and who wouldn't, there was simply no scope for anyone to understand what was going on. Antara dealt with FAA blackmails and a bit of Boeing, air-crashes got her bogged down with a century's worth of aviation history. 

What was bothering the neighbouring country's diaspora? Your favourites were 'outflanked' in 2006 by Antara, she preferred not to harass them. It implied Antara was a better person, not a weaker one. 

iii. Of course, it was possible that the neighbouring country's diaspora didn't want Antara to continue writing on the American Revolutionary War or even the Battle of Long Island. George Washington's retreat was not the point, it was the presence of the Hessian soldier, lent as auxiliaries to the British Army through many wars, including the American Revolutionary War. 

The Hessian soldiers came from areas around Frankfurt, they'd know quite a bit of the origin of the Rothschild family. They'd discuss such things with the British soldiers, how many Houses were around where they came from, if they were all German, how each House felt about the Tagores.

iv. Hessian soldiers had apparently been a topic for Grigori Zinoviev as well, when he had been providing inputs to the German space travel enthusiasts, in the late 1920s. The latter had asked Zinoviev why Tripura kept a permanent contingent in Washington DC and Zinoviev had replied, "Tripura can never trust the Hessian soldiers, their informants and agent networks in the United States, given they fought in the American Revolutionary War."

June 12, 2025.  

Battle Games

It was beginning to seem that these write-ups, accounts, blogposts would not end anytime soon. Antara's life had become so restricted for over a decade that she had genuinely hoped that the blogposts would cause some kind of a global stir, bringing some changes in her life for the better.

Instead, certain groups chose to flaunt their clout, their high levels of infiltration into sensitive workplaces and rest assured, Antara was not about to get any reprieve. (That ought not to apply to her medication, given she had established that she was being illegally pursued and persecuted, but we'd discuss that later.)

It seemed that large groups of financiers wanted the write-ups and blogposts to continue as well. It bode ill for the global (or any other) economy if there were too many rags-to-riches narratives coming out of Asansol, Durgapur, Kolkata and similar places. The element of mystery created instabilities, it made people withdraw finances, raise interest rates for lending. 

As Antara had suggested in her June 10 blogpost on Hackney Jews, write something about yourself. It was not that easy, all of you know each other, had remained connected even if you grew up in different cities and towns, and could therefore invade Washington DC as a group. 

(Antara recently found out that the connections were through dance schools, music academies, and auditions for television programmes in Kolkata. We had been misled into thinking that The Statesman Voices Coordinators was the only interest group we were looking at. 

Imagine what would happen if similar networking existed in the United States, suddenly all piano academies and ballet schools would be marching down DC, demanding an end to the Poland-Ukraine connections and the legit lease.)

Back in Kolkata of the late 1980s, the television studio was located in a neighbourhood called Golf Green, and those who auditioned there, including half of Antara's school and much of West Bengal, believed that as soon as the golf-loving Trump would take the White House, Jesus Green/British defence firms would start their work against Poland and Ukraine and the legit lease. 

Celebrated ACJ students wrote investigative stories on golf courses, to remind the British of the cushy jobs and assignments that were due to them in Washington DC.

Who created such hopes, dreams and aspirations? Why did parents, taking their children for an audition to a Kolkata studio, think about Ukraine and Poland at all? These countries were never mentioned in Kolkata's newspapers or magazines. 

What would happen to the rest of us? What would happen to Antara? That was no dance form telecast on Bengali television channels, it was merely stomping one's feet or doing turns. For that, there was a British defence firm assignment in Washington DC the moment Donald Trump became US President?

When Antara's peers were dancing/stomping or singing 'vocals' in 1990-91, Antara was actually trying to learn/understand the global discourse on defence and warfare. There was no applause for her, that Antara was committed to the mainstream news while her batchmates were chasing conspiracy theories?

An Indian editor had once told Antara, "All the news was in the first two paragraphs, the rest of the story was repeat and expansion of the same". It implied all blackmails were from the two World Wars, everything since 1945 repeated and expanded on the same.

If the above had been true, Antara's peer generation wouldn't have been taught that the Battle of Long Island (1776) in the American Revolutionary War was their make-or-break moment, when George Washington had been 'outflanked' and made to retreat to Manhattan. If you had been 'outflanked', your right to declare independence (earlier on July 4) was gone. 

That same strategy was apparently being applied to Antara (with backing from Kolkata 'officials'.)

Antara didn't know about George Washington but had she been 'outflanked'? Let's go back to 2006, Antara was married and working as a news bureau reporter in Kolkata and lived with her spouse at a rented apartment. Most of her NRI friends were still in India, either not married, working low jobs or not working at all. They were waiting for the two breakthrough events of 2007: the Wolfowitz-Dershowitz lease and Putin at the Munich Security Conference. Then their lives would change.

What if Antara had declared in 2006 that both Asansol AG Church and Brabourne had been 'outflanked' by her, that they should be brought to the station and asked how the Taliban rose, 1992 onwards, once the Golf Green auditions had stopped?

June 11, 2025.

Must be a House without a view

The competition across the channel was led by a familiar face. Oh, the smugness, the attitude, the cranked-up torture through the day. Terror in Europe, the upturned, proud faces of the Delhi guys and gals.

Who was the familiar person, this specialist on metal? How would you know, did she introduce herself? Did she have a social media account, an Insta presence, that you'd know that she was comfortable with scrutiny? So more shadowy and dubious figures, hence Delhi was comfortable, the entire Delhi-NCR area could spin it any way they wanted. 

Let's say your name was Goring. Have you always been called Goring? What were you called five centuries back? Did you always live in Europe? Which parts of Europe have you lived in? What was your traditional livelihood? Some of us would keep explaining our backgrounds, over and over again, and then get punished by Mumbai tycoons for discussing the narrative. The rest could just spread rumours and influence the torture on Antara?

Write something, for heaven's sake. Such familiarity with Jews, Orthodox Jews at that, sending them over to Britain since the 18th century, settling them at Hackney, what a wonderful narrative. Yet didn't stand up to the Fuhrer and share his glorious (former) friendship with the Hasidim, it could have saved the lives of those six million that had not managed to immigrate to Hackney, London.

We get it, the officials were too confident of your Hasidim narrative to bother your privacy. You didn't need the principal, that was for those pursuing the nefarious way of becoming wealthy. You were fond of the interest, the 'sood' as they called it in Hindi. 

What were they called, Manu-bhaiya, so that's Manu-da of Bengal politics, SS Ray of the so-called Naxal troubles. Another 'sood' was Kuku-bhaiya, so the unhinged German intelligence. 

Oh, wait, wasn't Manu and unhinged German intelligence the topic of the last decade?

So more of the same thing, nothing to offer on Jews or Hasidim or the metal, delaying tactics.

What did you say? The Hackney Jews had a huge House they lent to the British royals? Why didn't the British royals have a House of their own, they've been around forever? It was a structure, a House, you couldn't lose it over a gambling debt. 

You have to clear up the confusion you have started, British knighthood types and top US intelligence officials were rushing to Bengaluru to ascertain if there was a way of avoiding Poland and Ukraine for the legit lease. 

Antara lived dangerously: those on the surveillance had already been accused of wilful complicity in her slow demise, of knowing and abetting a crime, of not following up on a single threat emanating from Asansol, Durgapur and Kolkata, aimed at Antara. 

So the British royals were sustaining their House on the American colonies, lost them in the 1770-80s, and borrowed a House from the Orthodox Jews? 

That meant your narrative was neither about the lease nor about currency. 

What went on in Bengaluru?

June 10, 2025.

That's the competition, across the channel

Everyone was waiting for the Sandhurst fraudulent lease. Antara had been alerted to it, the joint NATO military operations created a 'Band of Brothers' atmosphere. 

Antara didn't realise living within a shared space was the same as attacking the financial system of your country. She had lived in hostels and as paying guests for a decade, she never wanted to harm the central bank of her country. She didn't even know what others thought about it, except you didn't leave money lying around because the 'porter' would get it, in case someone paid your bus fare, it had to be immediately repaid, down to the last paise, being stingy was the fashion, extravagance looked down upon.

Who'd say the hostel was in India, so much of it after the 9/11 attacks. Maybe they were all pretending. But careful around Porter, don't owe obligations to the Bidens, UPI was not clearly understood.

The Treasury having turned out to be a laggard because it hated Poland, Indian royals and Sandhurst, old comrades all, would make their way to the Treasury. The US officials were delaying their summer vacations for it.

ii. If Sandhurst and Indian royals went for the Treasury to file their own lease, they'd be using British women to do their currency-related research and intelligence work. Oh, now the fangs and talons were showing, what the last decade had been about. The British women were the cleverest in the world, with their knitted sweaters and casual hair-do, and they've been affronted. Coolly, that affront had been passed to the NRIs, who were earning their loyalty points by destroying Antara.

Let's compare and contrast:

a. Ability to sit for long hours, a sedentary work profile, focussing on the minutiae of challenging work:

That was Antara's life since 2013, so 12 years now, either sculpting sentences for her short stories or researching on artillery. She was also a hostage, hence she had an extremely acute Vitamin D deficiency, diagnosed last month, something that might end up taking her life.

b. Ability to withstand high pressure from Moscow:

Antara handled Moscow alone. Her parents, sibling and spouse didn't share her concern, nor did they feel threatened by Vladimir Putin, nor did they have Holocaust worries. The same was true of the country she lived in, Putin was its friend. 

If you withstood and battled and often prevailed against Putin on your own, since Munich 2007, it did imply Antara was a force equal to or sometimes greater than Moscow.

c. Infinite patience to weld and join small financial instruments:

When Antara saw small instruments, forget it, there was no need for profanity. Let's just put it this way. She had infinite patience on her own terms, not that of women from other countries or Indian cities.

d. Elaborate cover/visor/mask/Musk for metal-related work:

Antara had been under hostile surveillance forever, she had no privacy. What did the visor protect against, that sharp, blue oxyacetylene torch? Wasn't that another way of saying Agency? Hmmph, the Agency was allowing Sandhurst to go ahead and punishing Poland. 

e. The ability to do repetitive things:

That was also called Communist 'brainwashing', so no, Antara got creative, even with her metal-work, she liked and solved challenges, not what the Treasury and Sandhurst were looking for. 

A lease for the indulged Global Communist. Only for the upper-strata? 

British defence firms supplying lucrative employment and a few lackeys, and that would be passing for 'national clout'?

Why worry and torture others, British women, you lived in such a perfect world?

June 10, 2025.

Next round was to Merzie

How many kinds of British intelligence existed in the world?

In the 1980s, the Balkans got to decide on the number.

If it noticed a group moving towards the lease or the currency or the Treasury, it would call out, "That's no British group".

For the above, the Balkans spent the next decade in violent civil war, living amidst NATO bombing. That was the 1990s, first Bosnia, then Kosovo. 

No one spoke up for the Balkans, why it was being punished. For in Paris, the intellectuals knew who the Balkans had identified as fraud British intelligence, and that information had come from within the Pentagon. The 1990s turned out to be a brilliant decade, no one would forget those glory days of the US economy.

The lease family was apparently to blame for that glory ending with the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Hence the US agencies agreed to sit and watch Antara being degraded, humiliated and tortured for a decade by the Indians. "Raising two girls on so little, obviously both would hanker to marry just about anyone," Delhi officials had declared to their US counterparts.

Even in 2025, it was the official Indian line about Antara's torture and unemployment: "Should have just thrown some money at her face, none of this would have happened."

ii. Antara was not as disconsolate about her marriage as Indian officials were making it out to be. No one from her household leant on the White House in DC for obvious support. 

It meant when Austria formally protested to the White House in DC that Chancellor Merz was the real AfD and the party called AfD was controlling the Merz Govt, when Austria accused the Bidens of planning such a political disaster, Antara's household could sit at the sidelines and watch the entire show, neither with Germany nor with Austria nor with the White House nor with the Bidens.

iii. Why was the above so important? Because the next round of puzzle-solving would not lead to any UPI or online shopping. The next round of puzzle-solving was about that blind alley at Rashmela in Purulia, the one that led to the house where Antara's paternal grandparents had once stayed, the alleyway that Antara's parents feared to enter.

The next round was pure gamble, you might win some, you may lose all. 

The next round was desperate US intelligence officials seeking out disenchanted European royals with tons of gossip.

Antara remembered the smell from walking down that alleyway, sticky molasses being churned with tobacco to create a paste, used both as an addictive and to clean the teeth. "If you kept it smeared on your teeth, it killed the appetite as well," local women said, especially those low on finances.

Down that alleyway was the house where a small boy (not Antara's paternal grandfather) once had a sordid encounter with the Grand Mufti al-Husseini and his family.

June 8, 2025.

The global bankers of Asansol

The lack of a cafeteria at Asansol AG Church continued to puzzle Antara. There were employers in Indian offices who either offered free lunches or even a one-rupee-lunch. Of course, some also struggled to keep their coffee machine clean but that's another story.

There were multinationals in Kolkata known for their lavish lunches, Mumbai firms reputed for their wide array of breakfast options. You didn't even have to be highly educated, the Kolkata firms admitted anyone with a college degree, found them a job description just to hold them back, kept them employed and well-fed.

Antara was an Indian citizen.

Asansol AG Church went the entire way, it chose choristers among students, got western set designs and costume manufacturers for the concerts and dramatic production, typical of the theatre and garment scene as one would find in England. Then why did the girls eat paratha and pickle from their plastic lunch boxes? After hobnobbing with British bankers and financial analysts in London, were the Asansol AG girls supposed to come and dine in the Indian part of town, at some restaurant from the Indian subcontinent?

You'd say that Asansol AG Church would have a tough time keeping Antara out of the cafeteria. It was a school, not a government, it couldn't control four or five shops and keep them emptied out or closed to starve Antara. 

Even Asansol AG Church could find a reason to prohibit Antara's entry into the school cafeteria, it did keep her out of the school drills and the annual parades and debar her from further quizzes and ignore when she auditioned for the concert and refused to consider her when school prefects were chosen in 1993. 

Not a stranger to bigotry then, our Asansol AG Church.

During their stint at Asansol AG Church, Antara's sibling's batch went for an educational tour of Reckitt, the one which made the bleaching agent called 'Robin Blue'. Back then, it was apparently the only Reckitt factory in India which made 'Robin Blue', so quite a big deal. 

Oh, wait, now we were making a connection. Antara would go with Robin Cook, former British politician, died in the Scottish Highlands of a sudden heart attack while out hiking, had collapsed and fallen off a 'ridge'. Get it, the 'ridge'? 

Robin Cook died a couple of weeks after Antara joined ACJ, so the only connection between Asansol AG Church and ACJ as of now was Robin Cook. 

It should keep Pune-Nagpur and ACJ off Antara's back for a while. Antara was an Indian citizen, no matter what the INC had thought or done about it.

ii. Over the last decade, Antara had been furiously discouraged from any research on Reckitt Benckiser and she had obeyed the embargo. 

In 2025, was her life in danger or was it not, the way her medication was being prevented from working? 

Should her extensive currency-related information fail/be destroyed because of the tupenny worth of dubious information on currencies collected by some aged Indian female politician? 

Did the British politician Robin Cook know that Antara's Asansol AG Class of 1995 was never chosen for an educational tour? You should have seen Asansol's suburbs back in those days, bustling with factories, from glass-making to paper mills, from silicate factories to various kinds of metal-refining. Nothing was worthy of a visit or was it considered too close to the 9/11 attacks?

Some guy called Khilnani apparently managed the Class of 1995 back in those days. Maybe he made these peremptory decisions, else Antara, deemed not fit for writing or editing by Delhi, could have at least had a metal and welding workshop. 

But Khilnani and NATO honcho were close friends and given they were important without any reason, they might try to land Antara in trouble.

June 7, 2025.

Not peacenik, Austria never had a childhood

The lease family, in all likelihood, was not aware of the elite neighbourhoods of London. 

Not so among Communist Indians with aspirations, they probably got their intelligence support from privileged areas of London.

But places like Belgravia or Chelsea or Kensington, these were merely names to Antara. Neither had she travelled abroad and come across such places nor did those names ever come up at home.

Antara's childhood encyclopedia, however, had a photo of Peter Pan's statue, probably at the Kew Gardens in London. Fascinated by the photo, Antara had borrowed an abridged copy of JM Barrie's 'Peter Pan' from her school library. 

(JM Barrie's elder brother David had died in an ice-skating accident just before his fourteenth birthday, sometime in 1867. The reference had come up during the recent plane crash on the Potomac River in Washington DC, in January 2025, which killed a contingent of young figure-skaters.)

Antara used to read aloud from the 'Peter Pan' she had brought from the school to her parents. No one had a choice if Antara wanted to read out something, it was the only time she could prevail at home over the others. As it turned out, Antara's parents loved the story of Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. 

However, till recently, Antara didn't have a good idea of what they thought of Captain Hook, the archenemy of Peter Pan.

ii. It would seem that the US Navy ought to have been the archenemy of Antara's parents, given the landmass around Cape Cod was shaped like a 'hook', the site close to many shipwrecks and disappearances including USS Thresher. 'Hook' had become interesting in a different way in early 1988, when Antara and her sibling had been afflicted with an outbreak of chicken pox.

The moment the two sisters were unwell, Anjali had sent the domestic maid on leave, out of courtesy. "It was a contagious disease, why should she catch it from our girls?"

However, in a sudden change of tone, Ajit suddenly withdrew from the household. He didn't ask after Antara or her sibling, their fever was furious, it didn't subside for almost ten days, their skin covered in rashes and boils. 

Ajit would come back from work in the evening, glance at the two sick girls, not even enter their room or ask how they were doing, no longer use the clothes rack or the almirah/cupboard but chose a 'hook' in another room to hang his clothes. 

Anjali raged and ranted at his behaviour, called him names, an ingrate, but Ajit remained indifferent. "I've seen such things before," he'd sometimes say, in a callous tone. 

Physicians had to visit at home, Antara and her sister were too unwell to go to a clinic. The rest of the time, Anjali cooked and cleaned by herself, swept and mopped the house. By the time she was done, it would be around 5 pm, when she sat down to lunch by herself. "I'd remember these days, these lunches," she'd say out loud. 

iii. Till date, Antara hadn't managed to figure out what Ajit feared in the US Navy, was it the Gates' family's influence or was it the Today Group. But in the late 1980s, one could identify them, call them out, stay apart from their Captain Hook assertions. From the mid-1990s, such things were no longer possible, because the survival capacities of the legit lease had been drastically curtailed. 

Ajit lived another 15 years after 1995, he couldn't rectify what had been done from within the US Navy, which meant Antara's experience would take a terrifying turn, which Ajit's never did. 

Antara had never made any mistakes, she was not responsible for this situation.

June 6, 2025. 

Defence is the best offence

Those trying to make a career out of Ajit's belief system need a bit of forewarning. 

Antara was safe, she was friends with her father but didn't altogether trust him. As everyone saw, he failed to keep his daughters' safety within the scheme of things, both his girls. A mathematical mind pretending to be insipid and indifferent, that was Ajit. 

Antara turned out to be correct, look at the lurch she was left in.

The increasing incidence of Indians hosing down their scooters was apparently because Harris, probably Obama as well, had released large amounts of information on Ajit. That was bound to become some ridiculous misadventure. Some British firm that manufactured Vickers Wellington, Spitfires, Hawker Hurricanes? Aircraft manufacturing that started out from Jesus Green in Cambridge?

Did anyone know what 'Jesus Green' was called in the Asansol-Burnpur area of Bengal? It was an annual Kali Pujo/Goddess Kali worship venue, popularly called 'Jishur Kali' or Jesus Ink/Inc/Incorporated. Antara grew up visiting it through her childhood, 'Jishur Kali' or Jesus Inc. It was a known den of rotten Agency.

The last time Antara met her mother before the latter passed away, it was in 2009, they had visited the 'Jishur Kali'/Jesus Green area. "They sell jalebis by the kilos, not by numbers", Anjali had said. Antara and her mother had stopped by the roadside vendor and bought half a kilo of jalebis and gone home. 

Think of jalebis, syrupy and twisted, so were these so-called British defence firms. 

ii. These Spitfires, Hawker Hurricanes, Vickers Wellington apparently had two garages, the second one was called the 'Airport Garage'. 

'I cannot tolerate garage food," Ajit would say while in Kolkata, referring to the roadside shacks that sold Bengali meals, rice and a curry.

"Why not go to a proper restaurant, have noodles or maybe a dosa for a change," Antara's sibling would say. "Why this bizarre obsession with rice?"

No, Ajit wouldn't do that, he wanted to check the quantity of rice these shacks were serving on their stainless steel plates. Who would have known that defence firms thrived under the patronage of the Federal Bureau?

"Who could eat so much, what an excessive quantity of rice, you can't even see the steel plate anymore," Ajit would exclaim once he had been served at one of those shacks in Kolkata.

iii. A new kind of STEM insult was in town, if the spouse had access to STEM research facilities. 

Antara had heard such defence research stories all her life, it bored her father as well, only the Smileys of British intelligence never seemed to tire of it.

There was a comic story in Bengali Antara had read in her childhood, about Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes, about air raid sirens and blackouts in Kolkata during WWII. Antara read it out to her father on a daily basis, it was around 1986-87. 

She'd wait for Ajit to return from work, he'd settle down with a light Bengali snack (puffed rice and cucumbers), and Antara would balance herself on the headrest of the sofa and read the story down to him, every evening. 

Ajit had to laugh along, air raid fright in Kolkata, it was one funny story. 

June 5, 2025.

Please tell us all about the currency

The time has come to shift the focus to women in Economics and Management, enough apologising for who studied STEM for what reason and who didn't. 

After the USS Maine explosion in 1898 (and the Partition of Bengal a few years later, in 1905), the western world was suddenly teeming with women studying Economics and going all the way, writing their theses on currency.

Let's say we were talking about Eleanor Lansing Dulles, not yet Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter. These Radcliffe sorts were champions against themselves, since there had never been females involved in currency matters before Eleanor Lansing Dulles gave deep thought to the French franc in the 1920s. (Sarcasm? Possible.)

ELD was an innovator, she set trends, maybe she knew Indian women, the latter were taking a lot of interest in whether the US was going to have a foreign intelligence agency and what it would make of Indian women. 

Oh, by the way, where was ELD's dissertation on the French franc? Has it been published, was it widely available? Was it taught at universities, in India and abroad? Antara herself had been trying to research the French franc for a while and the way she was attacked, with furious storms and disruption of water supply to stopping bowel movement. Where was the crisis, was ELD's work on franc/currency so great that Antara ought to get scared? It was complete by itself, Antara couldn't even add some of her wisdom to it?

Think how interesting it would be if we could have a forum dedicated to ELD's thesis on the franc. These were interesting times for the currency, so many alternatives being considered, cryptocurrency a dime a dozen, not merely bitcoin. We could discuss ELD's thoughts, see if it influenced the other Dulles family members, how else would the crisis resolve? (For decency's sake, we'd assume they were her thoughts on the French franc.)

Otherwise, the Indians would keep filing fraudulent leases for decades and Antara would watch the 'tamasha'/farce and remain unemployed?

ii. If the above was unacceptable, we were establishing new rules in 2025. Those who have secret dissertations on the currency were more powerful than those who could publicly discuss such matters and provide information on a daily basis.

If your thoughts were unknown, you were a big deal. If you publicly and coherently argued, you were weak. 

The above argument would be popular in Bangladesh, West Bengal and the 'Bartaman' newsroom. They loved the Tagores, and the Tagores provided gainful employment and lengthy careers to women who wrote on currencies. No Tagore-approved employment? No discussion on currencies please, we're Bengalis.

So now we have a better idea how the lease was being pursued. Women were employed if the Tagores wanted them employed and they were the best--in such a case, what did it matter who studied STEM and who didn't?

Sandhurst, on the other hand, provided privileged Mykolaiv Houses to those loved by the Tagores, maybe ELD. 

Wow, so Sandhurst, the military of the erstwhile British coloniser, could enter a discussion of the American currency, using nice girls like ELD? No threat to national security, since the national security apparatus of the US was also provided through Sandhurst and its Mykolaiv Houses? Who would agree in DC that the British have eaten up the United States?

It would be a kind of first, the Sandhurst fraudulent lease and when it fell apart? What if no one touched that currency? Oh yeah, the above was tried in the early 1990s, an effort to make sure Antara didn't finish high school or go up to junior college. You shouldn't Boorda a second time, should you?

June 4, 2025.

The 1987 endgame, all over again

Joe Biden might be able to take those Indian boys and girls to the US for any number of reason. Who could get you a meeting at the White House, where you could start a discussion of David KE Bruce of OSS? 

Who could remind the White House that it was the latter's privilege to have the David KE Bruce narrative, what if the narrative was also with the lease family, either as 'Bishwer Itihash'/World's History or as allusions? 

What made the White House different? Was that what you ran, what one could compete with or defeat, based on a paltry existence in India?

After the above exchange, the NRI would come out in a huff. Pulling off the altercation was Moscow's responsibility.   

ii. The above was Moscow in its 1987 mode. That year, West Bengal and Bangladesh had agreed that for material benefits and immigration, they'd refuse to remember the savagery in Europe in the 1940s. The fiasco did not elicit a whimper from the lease family, Ajit too beholden to his West Bengal govt job and Anjali, who couldn't believe that Morgans and Germans were both gone from her life. 

Write down the names of railway stations in your notebook? They were intelligence desks Anjali, the history of the world for several centuries, from warfare to politics to society. Given the way your sort leaves descendants, you didn't care about their well-being? Just keeping your younger daughter imprisoned in a disgusting Bollywood culture was so important to you? You have offered front-row seats to the entire world for your younger daughter's humiliation, starvation, malnutrition? 

No one would ask what you got in return?

So whenever the Austrian-ness of things reared its head, Moscow would bring up 'apathy and lack of care' for those who were not good writers. 

Oh, that was no interest group, it was merely a not-so-subtle reminder of the years 1938-45, and how the White House could have prevented things and did not. The same in 1987, every single act of aggression by the Kolkata CPM, what Antara had spent the last year writing about, could have been prevented by the White House but it wasn't. 

Every time the White House publicly agreed with the Kolkata CPM about ignoring the Nazi Holocaust and the Jews, the torture increased on Antara by leaps and bounds. 

What was left of her? Because Prussians always opposed Austrians, or because of some railroad mystery. To leave your daughter to such a ghastly fate because of some half-forgotten tales from hotels in the US and taverns of Europe.

Where was the proof, Anjali, that such animosity had existed between Prussians and Austrians? How many of those from posh hotels in the West wrote to your family at NS Road? No one? Then why were you so worshipped in India, one who didn't have any proof?

iii. Oh, don't worry, there would be glamorous intelligence desks on the Nazi Holocaust, set up by the White House. Only, it wouldn't have Antara in it. The focus would be on Holocaust photography, an easy thing to manage for those not educated, also lucrative. 

"Antara, she fought too hard for Ukraine. The Agency had made commitments to the Vatican, the latter represented Bengali economists."

Those who "fought hard" for a Jewish cause were debarred from researching the Nazi Holocaust, the biggest crime against Jews? But the British would not allow us to go further than Holocaust photography, and there we have arrived at the real problem.

iv. The individual Moscow had chosen to take angry NRIs for a discussion at the White House was a female State Dept employee, with two famous older high official brothers. People like her had terrible disregard for Poland, eastern Europe, Ukraine, the lease family etc. To individuals like her, Europe meant France for France was culturally very much like Bengal. 

France was not afraid of getting up early to start the day but like Bengal, it was scared of evenings and nighttime. "Kolkata didn't have a nightlife," its publications moaned for decades. Why not, did France and Bengal ask itself?

These American State Dept sorts usually approached Sandhurst to solve their fear, the latter offered any Mykolaiv House that was available with them for use. It could then be used for cushy NRI postings within the White House or its highly select national security apparatus. So Sandhurst responded to suffering and need? When it didn't respond, it meant its fury was difficult to control.

Antara was fit to be an Indian citizen, you may not be fit for military work. 

Antara avoided STEM at Brabourne, which was known for its arts/humanities departments. But she always followed up on STEM, she never missed any development in any scientific field. That's called 'over and above', you didn't even do your day job. 

You have sat back and watched a worldwide hawala economy calling itself 'information technology'. Your fury? Really? 

June 3, 2025.  

How the race was run

Was it some kind of a crisis question? What was Antara and her peers competing for? Antara got her 'story' long after her parents were gone, no one wanted to know her even after she learnt her narrative. 

Well played CPUSA, but where was the competition? Antara was not even part of society.

i. Let's pick the topics and sort them out. The monthly fees for Asansol AG Church school were deposited at the local branch of a nationalised bank. Since the bank kept regular hours, which coincided with school hours, it meant either of the parents would have to deposit the school fees and the get the 'fees book' stamped. 

Antara's father had great difficulty remembering which class she was in, which section, he frequently wrote it wrong, often the bank clerk corrected him, "No, Antara has now gone up to Class 6A, she was not in Class 5, she had never been in section B."

If we were in the wrong class and any genocide against our people was not being considered, we were surely not competing for banking careers and privileges.

ii. There was no cafetaria or canteen at Asansol AG Church, so no way could one have a meal or even buy a snack. Also, no arrangement for a soda fountain (introduced in India by 1991) or plastic cutlery or paper tissues. So we were not competing over etiquette either.

iii. There was a golgappa-seller and an ice-cream cart outside the school gate. Either of Antara's parents fetched her from school, and they wouldn't let her eat from these food vendors. Anjali was of the opinion that the golgappa-seller was a drug peddler, and apparently he used the water from the nearby gutters to make the golgappas.

Antara had argued, wasn't it easier for him to carry a bottle of water from home than dredge the water from the gutters? But it was an obvious scare tactic, and Anjali would reply, "You eat there once, you'd keep going back, that was his trick". 

Most of the students who rode the school buses from far-flung areas ate that food, after school hours. Being wealthy and becoming US citizens didn't change who you used to be. Nor were we competing over support systems.

iv. Antara studied at Asansol AG Church for more than a decade. 

On one occasion, Anjali had allowed her to have the golgappa, "obviously, you'd be sick, have it on Friday, get well over the weekend." By Friday evening, Antara was down with fever, by the next morning, the physician had diagnosed paratyphoid. She missed school for a week. 

A few years ago, when Antara had read the biography about the strange life and death of Heinrich Himmler, she found out that he had once contracted paratyphoid. 

Thank goodness Antara didn't have golgappas ever again, it was one thing to be AAP's victim, quite another to be associated with Himmler. Anjali's scaremongering had worked, so no question of competition there.

v.  Because they came from faraway, colliery school buses often stopped at Asansol market. Students, sometimes teachers, often picked up their groceries, bought clothes or other necessities, did their shopping on their way back from school. 

It was not unusual that say, the school had given over at 3 pm, Antara had reached home soon enough, had gone with her mother to Asansol market around 6 pm, and would come across AG schoolgirls and even her classmates, roaming around, still in their school uniform. 

For some reason, NS Road felt it should not be allowed, "Why in their school uniform? They could keep a change of clothes etc." Most Asansol schools didn't allow evening shopping in school uniform, so who was surprised that gradually, Asansol AG was becoming altogether different, attacking Antara because she was isolated, while they had active military support on Operation Market Garden? 

Antara cannot possibly compete over military/WWII blackmails.

vi. What Antara was offering was a fair and somewhat blinkered view of a certain way of life. She was a quiet, shy sort. The colliery buses had boys and girls travelling from four or five English-medium schools based in Asansol. Romantic affairs on the school buses were rampant, Antara shunned such details, hence the distorted reality. 

Imagine end of school, some (possibly Himmler) golgappa, the occasional shopping at Asansol market, being driven to the boys' schools to pick up the boys, then a couple of hours ride home, as evening drew near, without any parents' or teachers' scrutiny. Surely it was fun growing up that way, what's the rage about?

June 2, 2025. 

Stopped short of false claims

The average guy or girl might want to know, what were we reeling from?

How was it relevant to the blogs you were writing?

Well, Antara was trying to put together the narrative of what led up to World War II, and it had not been a pretty experience till now, she could assure everyone of that.

Why not, you'd ask? Was it because of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the atom bombs dropped on Japan? Antara didn't know enough about the Japanese surrender to answer that question.

But it was clear that David KE Bruce (OSS) blackmail had been a surprise, it had been pulled too close to the end of WWII. It made the D-Day landings, and the subsequent fighting at Normandy and the Bocage just one more episode in the World War, not the definitive one. 

All wars end someday, what was the meaning of that act of triumphalism where the basic strategy was to hurl endless men into incessant gunfire?

ii. There was good reason why Antara had brought up the Shabbos Goy and the two teachers (World Bank-normalista) he had possibly recruited around 1993. 

Both the teachers supposedly enacted the David KE Bruce (OSS) blackmail, it was impossible for Antara to understand the implications, given David KE Bruce was not a known or familiar topic.

For example, at the end of every term exam in school, 'normalista' would be the last to hand over the corrected answer-scripts before the report cards were finalised. She would be a sight, hair dishevelled, clutching dozens of answer-scripts to her chest, some checked, others not, telling the students, "I'd make it, don't worry". Well, what choice did you have, which schoolteacher got away without turning in the corrected answer-scripts?

Unless someone passed away while in office, 'in harness' as they called it, as had happened with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his corrected or uncorrected work would no longer be available. FDR might have felt that a lot of Communist US officials were passing through his office and while some were obviously on the Stalin/Soviet mode, there were others who were not.

It made the relation between the White House and the legit lease a disturbing one, for BT might have provided all the support to the White House but the other side was failing him, and not always deliberately.

At the least, the White House ought to have informed BT about what kind of Communists were coming for his son, the young Ajit. It would have made the legit lease less precarious, as then, so now.

Now imagine David KE Bruce of OSS discussing the various kinds of Communist US officials, no matter where (and if) he was questioned. 

"Forget OSS', his interrogators would say, "there's only one intelligence problem in the world, World War III, everything about it was known, it would be fought without the lease". 

(In case WWIII was the War on Terror 2001-2021, it was also fought without Antara knowing the 'narrative'.)

"Now", they'd tell David KE Bruce, "why don't you discuss all the officials you've seen pass through the White House in DC".

June 1, 2025.