Antara had no idea that Indians felt so strongly about Coca Cola.
There were storms everywhere!
Antara never had soft drinks in her childhood.
"Why must you always be weird," Anjali would tell her, "Look at the rest of them gulping down their Gold Spots and Limcas."
There were two, maybe three occasions when a soft drink (in a glass bottle) was bought for Antara, with a plastic straw pipe to drink with. In all instances, Antara had a sip, then went looking for Anjali to return it to her.
Thus, Antara had no fascination for soft drinks till 2021, once the pandemic was over.
Could you relate to such a person?
Then the tales about who was Asa Griggs and whether his son travelled to China as a magician and whether there were 'magic tricks' performed at home and who reshaped 'candles' to forge a new identity and whether Supriya Paul stared at a 'candle' through a thunderstorm were irrelevant.
Antara didn't need soft drinks, she wouldn't discuss them.
As with soft drinks, people in India believed that western militaries preferred coeducational institutions to share Bureau information.
Antara studied at a school that had boys in the primary classes. Except one or two of them, she barely spoke with the others, they were so rough and rowdy.
When Antara opted for Brabourne for undergraduate studies (despite the option of studying at co-ed colleges in Kolkata and Purulia), the Purulia townspeople had been surprised, they had told the sibling, "She prefers women's colleges?"
Antara never understood people who were filled with wrong information, presumptions, did they not know Antara at all?
In 1995, during Brabourne Junior College, the college was hosting its annual fest, it was probably called 'Kaleidoscope' for shattered glass, 'kaleidoscope' was probably the sibling's favourite scientific instrument as well.
Antara was entering the college on fest day, when she saw the western part of the campus filled with young men, she was by herself, they seemed aggressive and turned to look at her.
Antara had fled towards the opposite side, surely it implied that if you studied at a co-ed college, all you'd get were agents of the German U-Boats who destroyed Britain's trading ships in the Western Approaches during the World Wars.
There were no all-women universities, Antara had thought to herself.
Was it a good thing, what happened at Jadavpur University, between 2000 and 2002, remembered only for the 9/11 attacks?
Who was to say U-Boat agents against Western Approaches were not at Jadavpur?
Did we know if the 9/11 attacks were also against Britain or not?
Of course, given the somewhat dubious quality prevalent in the Indian newsrooms, Antara didn't realise that western 'economists' had introduced the 'sizar' system within the newsrooms.
Antara was treated well within the Kolkata reporting office because of the political ideology of the bosses. On the day she had joined, the office manager had shown her to the workstation and told her, "pens, notepads, staplers etc" were being sent her way.
By the time Antara entered a New Delhi newsroom, she was immediately demoted several ranks, given she had studied journalism with a fee waiver. She was supposed to serve her colleagues, fetch their food and drinks and printouts. How was Antara 'sizar' compared to them, neither had they attended ACJ nor any other journalism school?
"What you have studied, your work experience, what stories you have done, nothing mattered in this newsroom...", Antara was told.
So it was a 'sizar' newsroom. It had only waited for Antara. When Antara resigned in 2010, its purpose was over.
Maybe Asa Griggs Candler could see us through such a bizarre crisis?
No?
Countries that stayed away from WWII, fought their own Civil War and tired themselves out, stayed huddled with a former Kaiser and an abdicated monarch would come to the rescue?
Former Kaiser+abdicated monarch+country where they threw chicken bones on the floor=/equals famous soft drink.
It didn't sound impressive, you know, one could survive without soft drinks and abdicated monarchs.
No, of course you were not done.
You were a railway company, then you were that railway company hidden in Myanmar, then you were in Washington DC trying to ruin all other railroad interests in the world.
There you were, swollen with sleep, climbing down from the upper berth, "They were announcing another train, what if it hit us from behind?"
Do not worry. The train behind you wouldn't hit you at all.
From 2021 onwards, it took a while to catch up with the monstrosity of what Antara had lived through, the 1980s, the 1990s, the noughts.
What an outrageous trap, a set-up, there were aunts visiting, asking after the family deity/Narayan Shila aka Damodar Chandra, you'd try to solve it in terms of Infosys or some celebrity.
Would you realise that the aunts and Anjali were discussing a rock band, called 'Sly and the Family Stone'? It was apparently the 'deity', a group of rock musicians familiar with Franco's Spain?
What did those like 'Sly and the Family Stone' apparently believe? It was vicious abuse of the Austrian Habsburgs, that Austria was merely a part of the Ottoman Empire, you had to create the pressure before Austrians admitted to their Islamic cuisine and culture, no amount of pressure was enough when it came to the Austrians, that Austrians had emigrated from Sudan in Africa.
Then why get so furious and stormy, if every one of us was from Sudan?
You didn't even know what was so-and-so party?
For that party, personal computers had to be introduced, the extremely high cost of infotech borne by corporations across the world. Else, centralised computers could have managed these tasks, how exactly do we use the personal processor provided to us? We didn't, hence.
All of you had vaults at top banks to store your RMS Titanic information?
If you had stopped shuddering, the Mykolaiv family was not that different from the Asansol one.
The Mykolaiv family's narratives about itself were elaborate and untrue.
May 13, 2026.
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