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.