Several girls, all Antara's batchmates, they stayed together at Brabourne Junior College dorm, in the 1990s, had admitted to trying infant food, alongside their daily meals.
It had surprised Antara, she didn't remember the taste of the ready infant food mixes available in the market.
"Oh, it was very tasty" and then they went on to describe how they sourced it, from their younger siblings, nephews or nieces, so many of them were having 'Cerelac' while enrolled at Junior College for Arts or Sciences.
At home, Antara asked Anjali if it was something she'd heard of. "What kind of talk was that, it was not meant for grown humans, in any case, you and your sibling grew up on 'Lactogen', 'Cerelac' had not been introduced in the market."
Antara began to research, she noticed a variety of 'Cerelac' packets at NS Road, her nieces were quite young, she asked the NS Road wives, they tended to prefer 'apple flavour' but when Antara noted down the names of the other 'Cerelac' flavours at the chemists', she found the recipes were getting complicated, there were 'apples with bananas and some oats powder'.
Yet NS Road was correct, most of the customers asked for 'apple', till Antara had to intervene, "Don't the salty ones sell at all?"
"It was weird," she was told, "why introduce salt at such a young age?"
Thus, beyond Brabourne Junior College dorm, there seemed to be lurking an unknown group that knew about 'apples' and 'saltair'. Could it be the beginning of solving the mystery around Antara's childhood?
Why had you assumed it would be about who had mentored Antara? The names of the mentors had been circulated in 2021.
What else was needed, lies, deceit, spinmeistering?
From the BTV sorts?
The ones who decided the admission procedure for Brabourne Junior College, "best of five", then everyone would assume European backing. There were no Europeans in the list that was circulated.
Even the list of adversaries was known within Brabourne Junior College dorm.
A statistician, a physicist with an institute named after him in India, a huge group of unnamed Soviets.
However, that Europeans were to be somehow pointed out and accused was clear within Brabourne Junior College dorm.
A wealthy student from a neighbouring SAARC country used toilet rolls. A feisty girl--her dorm bed was one apart from Antara--had screamed, "Did you see that Antara? Did you? What was the Bengali term for a toilet roll? It didn't exist, we have to invent it, let's call it 'hagoj'."
It often got tense inside the Brabourne Junior College dorm, like that.
You shouldn't worry about railroad interests within Brabourne Junior College dorm. There was stratification, those who used Howrah Station as well as its faster, expensive trains were the elite.
However, there were others who needed flights, the ones from the Sunderbans needed boats for reaching home.
Just conversation starters, if you knew that the guy who managed the motor-boats in the Sunderbans was called the 'sareng', they accepted the likes of Antara, Treasury didn't become an intimidating factor.
But it was a secluded zone, you were right about it, somewhat like a cruise ship, and given U-Boat agents, German but not U-Boat agents and Turkish-Sudan were making plans for the future, one cruise ship could not be a threat, it was an exaggeration.
Then leave apart those from Turkish-Sudan, why did you take the other dorm girls to the US?
"I woke up daily at 4.30 am, I turned on my light, the one above my bed, it was the only light in the dorm, the rest of you were sleeping, I ended up identifying that one Agency honcho could cause another Holocaust."
Should Antara believe the above?
Or should Antara tell her,
"No, you've got it wrong, it was a World Cup cricket match between India and Sri Lanka, from 1996, India was losing to Sri Lanka, the Kolkata crowd went berserk that it was a 'got-up game', Brabourne (watching the TV in the hostel dining room) was overjoyed that Kolkata had protested, but at college the next day, north Kolkata showed its displeasure at Kolkata, 'That's no way to behave, merely because you were losing, where was the sporting spirit?'"
You wanted to discuss the 'sport' with Antara?
Antara had wanted to research the Nazi Holocaust, in different ways, we all wanted the exact same thing?
Thus, Antara was never a factor in any of the above. Kolkata protested a got-up game, India lost and all her Brabourne batchmates were chosen for US assignments.
Something else was showing within that extra ballroom in the premises.
No, we were not discussing operatives of elite Washington DC establishments.
More Mumbai Chowpatty.
And Mumbai socialites.
Yes!! Monaco!!!
Monaco-r mojadar bhelki!!
'An entertaining miracle from Monaco', the torture-surveillance being the entertainment.
Noida was upset that despite her performing stretches on the dorm bed at Brabourne Junior College, where were the joint exercises, oh, where were they?
Antara could add, "Was Monaco-ji preventing them?"
May 14, 2026.
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