Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 8: Kolkata . . . Oh Calcutta! Part 3 ... A Story of a Lady and 3 Idiots!

The Imperial Calcutta:  The Legacy of the British

2012:   A recent status update by a lady on my Facebook friend list caught my attention. As she and her husband got into a taxi in Kolkata they found a Nokia Lumia  cell phone lying on the passenger seat. She tried checking the last call made on it to try find out the owner’s details. The cell phone battery had run down and the phone was shut. She initially handed it to the cab driver to take care of it. Then realising the driver may or may not be responsible and the phone owner may lose it for ever, She took back the phone. Next day as she could not get the phone battery charged as it needed a special charger, She took the initiative to walk down to a Nokia dealer and get the battery charged. Then calling on the last number recorded in the phone she actually got in touch with the owner’s mother in Bangalore! Her South Indian son was in Kolkata on some training. The lady finally got the details of the phone owner and handed over the phone to him. Hats off to the magnificent initiative and social responsibility shown by the Kolkata lady. And the lady flushed with the act’s blessing shared her story on Facebook.

The incident happening a week or so before August 24, Kolkata's Birthday, will trigger among the Kolkata readers of this blog a rerun of oft-repeated updates in Facebook of   " . . .  while other metros may have money or power or both, Kolkata has a SOUL  . . . " ( I think a quote by Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times).  But the above story of the lady is not about Kolkata’s soul; it’s about the lady's education, care and Soul. It is incidental that she is from Kolkata. She would have done the same even if she came from any other part of the country or the world. Kolkatans, in general may not have done so just like a general  Mumbaikar or a Delhite may not have . The lady’s act is not a usual behavior of a Urban person too preoccupied living one’s life and its demands. Though not all finders may be dishonest enough to keep the costly phone for self, many would feel they have done their duty by handing over the phone to the cabbie. Any fool who disturbs their urban routine and puts them into a civic responsibility situation, especially with such a costly item, deserves to lose the item! The lady’s act therefore is a rare gesture in today’s world and deserves an applause by us. And emulation.

Such acts may be rare but bring a blessing to the receiver which has no monetary compensation but may be worth a life-long remembrance. I personally have been receipt of two extraordinary such receipts of help, beyond the call of duty, which I will recount below. In return I then resolved to help in a difficult situation whenever I will come across others needing help. And I HAVE . . . at the risk of once or twice almost becoming a victim to the infamous Bengal’s mob violence. But I had to CONTINUE the chain of such acts as a THANK-YOU to my saviours. Many of us receive some disgusting chain mail shit on social networks involving religious salvation or success if we pass on the chain messages, while it should be this social chain of care, intervention and follow-up which is more required to be involved with and encouraged. I believe the above lady’s act is a Karmic continuation of such a magic chain!

If ever Calcutta had some soul, and it did have it I admit, Kolkata has lost most of it if we go by the recent happenings there. And if I am able to notice it it’s because I left Calcutta in 1982 and returned to Kolkata in 1997 after a long stay out and the change and deterioration in the soul was very clearly visible. (as it is visible for Bombay now. What that is another story!)

But first a digression to making a self-defence. Recently after a couple of blog articles of my life in Kolkata and about Bengal in general, a student of mine during a online chat congratulated me on my articles and went on to say something to the effect that  “these people should be exposed". . . Catching his trend I had to remind him that I was writing about Bengal and Kolkata as a insider and not a outsider;  Bengalis or Kolkatans meant people who stay there and not necessarily whose mother tongue is Bengali. And this includes him and me too. But the cut-short conversation did momentarily made me squirm if I will be seen as a outsider making such racist comments or worse a deserter who was now getting  even. But the fact that my largest number of students (and the erstwhile big fan following) have been Bengalis; and even today, after my retirement, they are the largest number on my Facebook friend list gives me the confidence that MOST will not see me as a bigot but a insider critic, who had a caustic tongue as a mentor &  guide and now is a caustic ejaculator. And his mother tongue being Punjabi is a biological event if not a accident. As a person born, "bread and buttered “ in Calcutta and worked for the last 15 years in Kolkata, I was more a Bengali than most Bengalis. I have played serious football at the level of college, university, and organisation, that too as a " officer" ; loved more Bengali women than a Punjabi or a Tamilian or a Marwari ; possessed more of a intelligent and creative brain than just being a ‘Punju’ brawn. Credentials established, I now can continue with my version of remembering Calcutta, now Kolkata, on its birthday.

Calcutta's Two Icons together:  Amitabh Bachchan padded up for a charity match at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, India circa 1980

Following is the chronological narration of some Magic events in my life as a part of the larger Karmic continuation of  a Magic chain mentioned earlier.

1.     1979-80:    A Help I could be.            @ Calcutta
 I had returned home (Calcutta) on a college vacation and went to the College Street to browse and buy some books. (The obsessive love for books I picked up in my life is another proof of my being a Calcuttan!)  As I reached the spot bang opposite the famous Presidency College, I noticed a crowd near a book stall on the opposite side of the street where mostly school books and test guides are available. Curious like any Calcuttan, I came closer to the group to see a young boy being beaten up by a man , a stall owner,  on account of stealing a book from the stall. The man was mouthing the choicest expletives and landing blows on the hapless boy. It seemed a injustice that the boy should be so mercilessly beaten up for stealing a exam guidebook costing hardly Rs 10 or so. The boy appeared belonging to a ‘good family’. Confused and pained on the aggressiveness of the shop keeper bordering on violence, I was about to move away when the boy’s wails for help and his innocence stopped me.

In schooldays, I was a shy person and restricted by my mother from mixing with others and mostly my playing network was with myself or my two sisters. It was only now staying away from my dreaded mother (who I rebelled against finally in class 12) in the freedom of a residential hostel of a engineering college, I had started learning to open up a bit and also see on close quarters the topsyturvy life of students when they all get freedom from their parents once they arrive enmass to a residential campus. And the resultant madness, defiance and manipulation of authority in those 4 years. Especially in a college like ours with a reputation! But one good spin off of it was that made me lose fear of a mob or crowd collecting as it was a routine scene in the campus. THAT gave me the strength to do what I did next seeing the boy screaming for help.

My intuition was telling me that something was not right in the whole thing. I pushed my way into the crowd of inert onlookers, which is a regular happening in Kolkata, and asked the shop keeper to stop beating the boy and tell us what the issue was about. And then the true story came out as the pause in beating help the boy to move away towards us. He had a argument with the man on the price of the book and not getting the discount he wanted he tried to move ahead. The man insisted that the boy had wasted his time and MUST now buy the book. On refusal the boy was assaulted and as the inert crowd collected he lied that the boy was a thief and the bloody idiotic crowd stood watching. As simple as that.

By now all of us had moved to the other side of the street right in front of the Presidency College gate. Suddenly as if the spell was broken, the crowd moved forward chasing the shopkeeper down the Hindu College lane and a few of us consoling and tending to the poor boy. A couple of old fogeys who earlier were mute spectators and now leaders thanked me for taking the lead in helping the boy. It was first time in life I had been accused of being a leader. I felt embarrassed and shaking hands with the boy I slipped away as the remaining crowd was still busy chasing the shopkeeper down the lane baying for his blood!

As I walked back home I felt elated having trusted my intuition and saved the boy from being lynched not only by the shopkeeper but by the bored crowd who would have just gone along with the lies had I not intervened in time and broken the spell. But as a resident of Calcutta where I had always said in its support that Calcutta people come to one’s help on the streets if required unlike the impersonal Bombay, I was now as a growing young adult confused.  Do the Calcuttans really come to help the right people in need or do they just need some excitement and a vent to their tensions and can be manipulated by somebody if one wants to. Recent events in my personal  life, entwining different generations and times, have convinced me that more likely it is the second reason more than the first. People just want some excitement or some gossip or some scandal about others to spice-up their boring routine life. Truth be damned. It’s so boring and painful trying to understand the truth. What if the boy had been harmed. And he was a Bengali!

Ek tha Royal Bengal Tiger: Famous Man-Eater Tiger at Calcutta - Killed 200 men, women and children before capture - India 1903

2.   1988-89:    Allah -o- Akbar aka  A  faceless ‘Sunny Deol of Damini’ in My Life after a intervention of mine goes horribly wrong.              @ Calcutta

 I was back in Kolkata briefly after working in Bombay and had joined a seemingly creative job here. My cousin had a 1-room flat vacant at Saltlake in a colony bang opposite the Stadium where the Hyatt Hotel stands. Saltlake was just coming up and by 6 pm streets would get deserted and hardly any shops open in the area; a torture for a single man who always eats out. So I would finish my dinner in Kolkata and then catch a bus to Saltlake. There were hardly any buses plying to Saltlake those days and the bus number S23 was the savior for people travelling after 8pm though a long wait was inevitable. And I was waiting for it at the Exide Crossing where now there is a ‘Haldiram’ eatery. Then it was a semi-deserted bus stop after 8 pm. 4 – 5 people were waiting including me and a mother- daughter duo ahead of me.

Suddenly a white Ambassador car slowly takes a turn from the Chowringhee Road side and briefly stopped in front of us. A short man, visibly drunk, leaned out and stared at the two women. There were at least two more persons in the car along with the driver inside.  One of them, a tall burly man, seating in the front seat next to the driver. It was a very shocking sight for me having returned to Calcutta after a long time and where one didn’t expect such a blatant behaviour and that too on a main and very busy traffic crossing. And the men did not look like common criminals but more like government employee types ( Please don’t ask me for a explanation for such feelings!). The two women too appeared disturbed and moved back a bit. The Ambassador slowly meandered ahead and  STOPPED.

The short man who was leaning out of the window and the tall burly man in front got down and started moving towards us!  I was flabbergasted and had a hunch something bad was about to happen.  The two men crossed me and moved to the two women who by now were standing just 4 feet away from me. The short man whispers something to the older woman who protested and pushed the younger woman behind her. The short man did not give up. The burly man by now was standing right in front of me behind his ‘boss’  but not taking part. The older woman again protested and tried to move away. I could not believe my eyes. At Exide, near a busy traffic crossing, two men blatantly harassing  women with indecent proposals. And then anger. 10 years ago I had intervened and saved a boy. This was a worse situation. I moved ahead and tried to shoo away the sort man. He was definitely drunk and he abused me. I tried to be calm and asked him why was he disturbing the two women who don’t want to talk to him and to leave them alone.

That’s it. The next 5 seconds are a blurred memory till today. In a foggy slow motion I remember the burly guy next to me grabbing my collar with a iron hand. I was shit scared even though those days I was a well-built tall person and known, by my football and other colleagues, as a tough nut to crack. But something in that iron grip not only told me that this guy was much stronger than I but a pro!  That scared me and I regretted my intervention though it was too late. I looked around frantically hoping I will get the famous Calcutta crowd coming to help. The 2-3 other men waiting for the bus had pushed back to safer distance; the 2 women I went to save were walking fast down the street away and away! With no crowd around I noticed a lone traffic policeman atop the stand in the centre of the Exide crossing busy guiding the moving traffic. I tried to scare the burly guy by threatening to call the policeman to complain. The guy with a malicious grin tightened his grip on me and said : ”you want the policeman ...I will take you to him”. He dragged me across the busy traffic towards the busy policeman!

Picture Perfect:  Wish the Kolkata of today was as beauty full of sights!

As we reach the cop I screamed asking him to help me. The cop turned towards us, his eyes met mine and then that man’s; I thought  I saw some recognition between them, and then the cop, to my horror, turned away ignoring me. In a slow motion it struck me that I was in deep trouble. That car was most probably a cops’ car! And they were cops! But how come the cops were doing what I saw them doing? Till today I have no clear-cut answer. Only that the burly man was virtually enjoying my wide shocked looks. He slapped me across my face. My glasses went flying down the road, tears rolled automatically down my cheeks at the really heavy-handed slap and I saw 20 -30 people had by now collected at the kerb corner to WATCH! It was a reverse situation of 1979-80! I was on the wrong end and I needed a savior. In the slow-motion event of the next few seconds millions of thoughts raced in my mind. Will I survive or will he do a encounter of mine? What will my family think when they read the news of the encounter tomorrow morning? Will they know the truth or read the cops’ false implants? Will I see tomorrow sun rise? Or was this my last sun set?

The goon humiliated me further by tearing my shirt down the front till the belt. Thankfully those days I had not become a recognizable face as a future Teacher so the fear that some students might be seeing me in this state had not yet come. In desperation I started screaming just like that boy years back whose screams gave me the strength to save me. Now I hoped somebody will believe me and come forth. Nobody did as they stood and watched. Cars were whizzing past around us on the busy road.

And then magic! A emaciated-looking muslim man, in a torn shirt and a lungi, coming from the Kidderpore side of the crossing, stopped his bicycle next to me and asked me in Bengali what happened. Those words are still etched in my memory. Somebody not joining in a mob madness but stopping and actually asking what happened??!!! Same what I had done years ago as a shy undergraduate. The blessings were coming back. I screamed, and with tears streaming down, the face aching and the eyes half blind, I blurted out the summary of what had happened. The goon was still laughing and slapping me as he smirked and abused me further. The emaciated man got down from the bicycle and parked it in the centre of the road. The goon tore my shirt further, the cyclist came closer and I had this vision I was going to be lynched. I will die not in a encounter now but mob lynching. Memory came to me of the horrible mass lynching and burning of the Ananda Margi priests and nuns on the Ballygunge Bridge.

The Muslim man was very close to me now. And he did something which actually surprised and disoriented me further. With a huge swing of his thin arm he hit the rogue cop across his face and kept hitting him and again. The rogue cop was taken aback, staggered a bit, and then with a growl lunged at the emaciated muslim. I was numbed; now the encounter was assured but of two persons. Newspapers will scream, remember there was no TV media then and the Statesman still made money!, that two criminals from Kidderpore were shot dead by cops at the Exide crossing. And then my nightmare ended. Suddenly the 20-30 men watching the show woke up and raced towards the rogue cop screaming the famous or infamous words of Bengal mobs:  “…Maar Saala ke maar…. Mukh fatiye de… Ghar bhenge de…..”

As a educated Calcuttan I have hated these words; feared them not only from uneducated rickshawwallahs or political cadres but from educated elite who momentarily forget their upbringing --  in the campus when mad seniors would attack juniors who dared to oppose them; smash a poor professor’s house who gave them less marks etc. BUT right now, as I saw the rogue cop sprinting down the street towards his waiting Ambassador with scores of mad Bengalis after him with my Muslim savior leading the charge of the brigade, the words seemed to me like a azaan call from the top of a mosque or a life-saving mantra recitation. And then the hero caught the goon. Dragging him by his collar he was brought to me, trying to put back my glasses at the right spot, and he asked me to slap the rogue cop the way he had done to me. The crowd roared its approval. I almost got carried away. But the sight of my torn shirt and how I was going to ride a bus back home, if they will allow me into the bus, was troubling me. I refused to hit him. Remembering the poignant  words of the wife of a assaulted professor in the campus who did not identify a student culprit in a culprits’ ID parade but just whispered to the student to remember that her husband also has a family and children who saw their father being beaten up, I just said “... see divine justice still exists, if not the police one …”. I heard a couple of the agitated crowd members abuse me for being such a letdown after all the drama. They did not mattered. The person who mattered was standing there having landed a few extra blows on the rogue cop. The cop taking advantage of the break in action turned and ran towards his waiting car and the car sped off. I murmured some gibberish to my savior. He waved it away, picked his bicycle and pedaled down the horizon never again to meet me again. May Allah bless him.

The New Hooghly Bridge: One Architectural Beauty which is not a British Gift to Calcutta

3.   2003-04:   I am still so bad in thanking the good Samaritans.   @ Kolkata

I had returned to the now Kolkata in 1998.  Made a name for myself.  If the above incident was to happen to me now chances were one of the two things may happen. Either  I will be recognized by some students on the road who would rush to help me or that I will be recognized by some students on the road and they would slink away to gossip about of Mr. Kapoor’s criminal antecedents or character that he was seen teasing some women on the streets and the cops really hammered him!

But what a student (not even knowing me) did for me is the third and the last story of facing the blessings of the human chain I talked earlier. In 2003 having left IMS for the first time after 3 years of fame and colleagues’ games, I was forced to start a MBA Prep Classes of my own. Another proof my Bengaliness:  I was more happy teaching at a big institute than running a business of my own. But many have always thought that being a Punjabi I was a born businessman. Talk about the stereotypes!! Anyway I was lucky in the very first year of my classes in 2003. About 100 students enrolled and I was the sole trainer for all the skills: Quants, Verbal, DI, RC and GDPI. Not a bad start for a reluctant starter.

One day I had gone to Saltlake in a cab to meet somebody. Saltlake had changed majorly since 1980s. I actually got a cab ready to go to Saltlake with multiple transportation options also now available. And next morning I realized with horror that I had lost my card pouch somewhere on the way, if not pick-pocketed. The pouch had all my cards. PAN, Debit, Credit, Driving License etc. It was a major loss and a danger of misuse by the finder. I spent the next day making calls and suffering the international-level customer services of Citibank, HSBC etc as I frantically tried to get my cards blocked. But the car-driving license and the PAN card renewal were going to be a horror with I totally busy with my classes and impossible to take out time to kiss the backsides of the government employees to get them reissued. I decided to not think about it for the time being.

I would get out of the house, then in North Kolkata, and race to my South Kolkata Triangular Park Classes for the 7 am class and return home late after 10 pm most of the time. With Lizzie all alone the whole day. And the neighbours (those days they mostly were the non-Bengalis in the building) in the best traditions of the middle class busy character-assassinating a Single person and his madness, not even aware of my achievements and fame in my profession!!

A few days later after the cards loss it was a Sunday and the rare one where I was free. I wanted to get up late and spend the remaining time caring for Lizzie. At 5 am my 4^th Floor flat’s bell rang. It was still dark. I thought I was dreaming when the bell rang again! Cursing the disturbance early morning, I flung the door open with Lizzie barking madly too. There stood a smart formally-dressed young man at the door. The first thought was that I was getting so successful in my classes that a enquiry was landing up at my residence at  5 am for joining!! So though very sleepy and irritated and progressively embarrassed realizing I was almost naked, I blinked and said yes? The young man asked if I was Mr. Rajan Kapoor? Bloody Idiot … seeking a famed guru and asking him his name? I nodded wearily as I tried to look around for a towel to wrap around. He fished out something and asked if it was mine. My Card Pouch!! I snatched it from him and checked inside. All the cards were there. And then I remembered him and forgot my towel. “Where did you get it” I asked. It turned out that he entered the cab after I left it at Saltlake and found it lying on the seat having dropped from my pocket. Opening and seeing the contents, as a educated person he realized the importance of them to the owner. So he decided to take responsibility and hand it personally to me. Those days the cell phones had not yet come in or were a very expensive service and not very common. The land lines were the mode of communication. He saw my residence address on the driving license. He even came over to my building  in some week day to hand it over to me personally and did not find me there. The typical middle class Saas-Bahu combos who normally haunt the Indian homes in the day time, on his ringing the neighbouhood homes bells, said something to the effect that  “Woh toh thoda paagal insaan hain; kab jata hain or kab aata hain kuch nahi fixed!! “. They didn’t bother to help him and he did not bothered to leave the pouch with them!

Imagine ‘respectable’ neighbours, who possibly lecture their children about Izzat, Morals and Responsibilities, busy gossiping about me with a Stranger and the Stranger showing incredible responsibility and civic commitment by refusing to hand over the critical documents to somebody else. He was not obliged to come all the way from his Saltlake residence even once to find me and give me personally the cards. But he did and then realizing that I am not available in the day decided to come again at 5 am so that he WOULD find  me at home as he had no idea where I worked!!!!!

Magic was happening once again. Nature how many miracles YOU have given me in this turbulent life of mine and I am busy finding faults with life. By then my sleep had vanished, my shame acute standing there almost naked, and a strong affection to hug this young professional. I could not express properly the last time with that emaciated uneducated Muslim Saviour of mine; and now a upper middle class Saltlake young man was doing it. I weakly murmured  –  “I don’t know how I will be able to thank you enough ever for the extra-ordinary care, responsibility and maturity you have displayed for a stranger …. God bless you….. errr please come in  …. ( shit !I don’t have any thing at home to treat him!)…errr...”. He saved me my blushes and confusion by saying that he had to leave as he has a flight to catch to New Delhi. He was a first-year MBA student at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM). I was amazed he came over to take care of a stranger’s cards at 5 am so that he could  find me personally even when he to catch  a flight in the next few hours. I have not seen such professional training or Personal Upbringing in most Gangs of wASSiimpurs or XL-sized hot bags. I let go of my coyness and hugged my saviour even though I am sure he now believed my neighbours’ gossip that I was a “thoda paagal...”. Or more!!!

I have never met him again ever. But I did write a email to the LBSIM Director narrating the act of the first year student of his and that the student LIVED the principles of Lal Bahadur Shastri the best.

 Epilogue:  I have over the years both as a Trainer, a Mentor  AND as a person tried to go out of the way to help people as much as I could beyond the call of duty and earning money was never a primary motivation for me. This way over the years I have hoped to payback and propagate the magic of Strangers in my life who came from the various strata of society, both educated and uneducated.  It didn’t stop their magic on me. Some students, and  many of my office associates, used me many times to misuse my care even telling me sob stories to fleece me emotionally and financially. They have thought they were smart. I let them be because that was the only blessing they had in their life. Every time I got angry at the misuse I remembered my life’s lessons. The best friends of mine were Strangers who chose to remain so. The Magic of Strangeness. Readers enjoy your life, make love, make careers, make families: BUT do not HURT Strangers. If you don’t like them ignore them. BUT don’t  JOIN IN / BELIEVE the vested interests in harming  a person whom you have no idea of …. or even if you do!!! 

I WISH THIS SMALL BUT A POWERFUL CHAIN OF STRANGENESS  CONTINUES. NAY SPREADS. KOLKATA WILL GET ITS SOUL BACK.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Calcutta - My Twin mother city along with Mumbai.

© Rajan Kapoor 2012