The Morning Walk Ambush

The Morning Walk Ambush — 

I discovered yesterday that one should never underestimate a morning walk around a Kolkata lake. You may think you are going out merely to improve your circulation, enjoy the fresh air and perhaps compensate for yesterday’s lunch. In reality, you may be walking straight into a political ambush.

For some time I had been getting the distinct vibration that, after the BJP came to power, the CPM was quietly preparing itself for the opposition slot. I certainly did not expect any sensible person to openly support the TMC, particularly when financial irregularities and alleged scams seem to be getting exposed with such depressing regularity.

Of course, I don't come across many vocal CPM supporters during my morning walks. The CPM's 34-year record is still fresh in the memory of most walkers, whose average age is comfortably above sixty. These people have had the unique opportunity of tasting both CPM and TMC rule in Bengal. So, judging from the general body language around the lake, I had assumed that the BJP had acquired a fairly comfortable fan club.

Yesterday I discovered how dangerously wrong an assumption can be.

My ambusher was Mr X, a retired IAS officer, known to me through my brother-in-law. He is related through his wife to the owner of a popular Bengali newspaper which, during the glorious days of Trinamool rule, appeared to be particularly enthusiastic in singing the praises of the government.

Now, I don't know whether Mr X himself ever enjoyed any of the largesse of the TMC era through this family connection. I have absolutely no evidence to make such an accusation.

But the thought did cross my mind.

Especially because, with the change of political dispensation, government advertising is no longer flowing in the same old direction, while the newspaper establishment has apparently been facing some rather uncomfortable questions about its office building.

When politics changes, the newspaper's editorial temperature can sometimes change too. And when the advertising tap changes direction, one can understand why some people may develop a sudden interest in the politics of the new government.

But let me not speculate. I am only an innocent morning walker.

And innocent morning walkers should know when to keep their mouths shut.

Mr X approached me with the expression of a retired bureaucrat who had absolutely nothing political on his mind.

That should have been my first warning.

He wanted to revive a discussion I had previously had with his wife at a social gathering. She had been vigorously criticising the government over what she felt was the shrinking of the Mughal chapter in the NEP.

My brother-in-law and I had argued that ancient Indian history itself had never received the importance it deserved in our school education. Otherwise, we would probably have known much more about Aryabhatta, Varahamihira and Maitreyi. Even the Gupta Empire, whose influence extended over a substantial part of the subcontinent and beyond, was hardly served to us on a silver platter in our textbooks.

His wife, however, was in no mood to surrender the battlefield. In her usual loud and energetic style, she continued criticising the government.

I then mischievously shifted the battlefield from history to language.

I asked how, in Bengal, our perfectly respectable Ramdhanu had somehow become Rangdhanu. And blue, which we had happily called Neel all our lives, somehow acquired the more exotic Asmani.

She seemed perfectly comfortable with these linguistic innovations.

I began wondering whether history, language and politics had all become members of the same extended family.

Yesterday, Mr X came ambled towards me.

I wished him good morning and, before he could launch his missile, asked a completely harmless question:

"By the way, did you enjoy the leftover food your wife carried home that day? You weren't there."

He said he didn't eat much.

Then came the first shot.

With a faintly cynical smile, he said:

"I learnt many new things."

Ah!

So the retired IAS officer had not forgotten our little history seminar.

I immediately understood that this was not a statement. It was a file noting.

I could almost visualise the bureaucratic format:

> Subject: Views expressed by S.N. Roy during informal interaction.

> Submitted for kind perusal and necessary action.

I decided that the safest course was to change the subject.

I asked him whether he would be in Kolkata during Puja.

That, too, turned out to be a trap.

He smiled mischievously and said:

"You are missing the new style Durga Puja."

I knew exactly where this was heading. There has been considerable discussion about changes in Durga Puja practices, including some of the practices traditionally associated with Mamata Banerjee personally.

I decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

I replied:

"Good. At least there won't be DJ music."

A tactical retreat.

But Mr X wasn't ready to let me escape. He clearly wanted me to continue.

I looked at my watch.

"I'm in a hurry. I've got to go to the office."

The office, incidentally, was entirely imaginary.

But at my age, one can invoke the office just as easily as one invokes a doctor when trying to escape from an unwanted dinner.

And so I escaped.

The encounter taught me an important lesson.

Never judge a man by his innocent face.

A man's face may say:

"Good morning. Lovely weather today."

His mind may be saying:

"Now let us examine your views on Mughal history, NEP, Bengali vocabulary, Durga Puja, government advertising and the political future of Bengal."

And Bengal is particularly dangerous territory.

Here politics is not merely discussed. It is absorbed through the skin.

You can begin a conversation about tea and, within five minutes, find yourself debating Mamata Banerjee, Modi, the CPM, Mughal history, government advertising and the Gupta Empire.

So I have now prepared my own Morning Walk Conversational SOP:

Weather — Safe.

Walking speed — Safe.

Knee pain — Very safe.

Golf — Mostly safe.

Food — Proceed with caution.

History — Dangerous.

Bengali vocabulary — Explosively dangerous.

Politics — Strictly prohibited.

And retired IAS officers?

Extreme caution.

After all, during his service he must have been an expert in putting up notes to his superiors that were so beautifully ambiguous that everybody could interpret them differently—and yet nobody could accuse him of having said anything definite.

Yesterday's conversation was exactly like that.

I went for a morning walk.

I came back with a lesson in bureaucratic survival.

And next time I see Mr X approaching me with that innocent smile, I shall immediately look at my watch and say:

"Sorry, I have an urgent meeting with my knees."