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.