Bata is not Indian, then how did it become ‘desi’?

 Bata Shoe Organisation recently appointed an Indian as Global Chief Officer for the first time. Surprising, since Bata set up its first Indian production unit, in 1932, at a small village named Konnar near Kolkata.

Bata Shoe Organisation, in its history of 126 years, has appointed an Indian to become the Global Chief Officer. Sandeep Kataria (49), an IIT Delhi and XLRI, Jamshedpur alumnus will now take charge of the company. This news, though well-received, left many across the country with the realisation that Bata is not an Indian company.

So, here’s a little history lesson about this shoe brand.

Footwear from canvas

Bata is a family-owned business, founded in 1984, in Czechoslovakia. It was started by a man named Tomas Bata along with his siblings. To overcome his financial difficulties, Tomas decided to sew shoes from canvas instead of leather. The simple, lightweight and affordable footwear became a hit among the locals and the company began to grow.

Bata’s iconic tennis shoes.

By 1912, Bata had introduced a mechanised shoe production method, hired more than 600 workers at their factory, and employed hundreds from neighbouring villages to work out of their homes.

Following the outbreak of World War 1, the economy went into a slump, demand was at an all-time low and production had to be cut down. Tomas responded to this crisis by cutting down the price of his shoes by half. This dramatic move drove bigger sales and even allowed them to expand to other countries. In 1924, the company had 112 branches across the world and, finally, in the 1930s they set up a production unit in Kolkata, India.

Setting up of Batanagar

According to an article by Forbes, in the 1930s the Indian shoe market was dominated by Japanese imports. But, when Bata set up its production unit, in 1932, at a small village named Konnar, near Kolkata, things turned around. Within two years, the demand for Bata shoes was so high that the production site had to be doubled in size, and the region became a township, which came to be known as Batanagar.

By 1939, the company was selling 3,500 pairs of shoes every week and had nearly 4,000 employees.

Recently, in an interview with The Print, Bata India’s brand strategist — Harish Bijoor, had stated that the company designs shoes that are suitable for the Indian feet and climate conditions, which is what makes them popular.

It was in this factory that the iconic, tennis shoes were first designed and manufactured. The shoe was a very simple design made of white canvas. In an interview with Urban Eye, Charles Pignal, the fourth-generation owner of the company said that shoe’s design was manufactured even in Europe, and many customers were unaware of its Indian origin. He says, “It is always a great story to tell.”

Becoming a home brand for Indians

Those who grew up in India in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s would have worn these at one point or another because tennis shoes were also school shoes.

Bata’s advertisement from 1963.

In the 1980s, when Bata faced stiff competition from competitors like Khadims and Paragon it kept itself at the top of the market by going on an advertisement spree. Apart from highlighting their utility, durability, and affordability, the company also introduced catchy taglines.

Their first-ever tagline was — “Beware of tetanus, even a small injury could be dangerous – so wear a shoe”, to raise awareness among the Indian subcontinent, which was earlier not accustomed to wearing shoes altogether. Another well-known tagline is “First to Bata, Then to School”.

According to Harish Bijoor, another reason for Indians to love this brand is that the name has only four letters and two syllables. 

He said, “Bata’s small name worked in the favor of the Indian brand and helped the company shed its international image.”

Today, India is the second-largest producer and consumer of shoes in the world and Bata, headquartered in Switzerland, remains one of the leading brands to offer comfortable yet stylish footwear at affordable prices.

(Source: TBI)

A tale of two cities: What made Calcutta’s sex workers escape to a French colony in 19th century

A British law meant to protect its soldiers from venereal diseases inadvertently changed the landscape of Chandannagar for a while.

In the town of Chandannagar, famed for its colonial French architecture and inventive LED arrangements, lies Laxmiganj Bazar, a 500-metre stretch on the Grand Trunk Road with nothing to set it apart. The bazar has some small or mid-sized stores, a few residential buildings and a shopping complex, but nothing that bears a sign of its vivid past, when it sheltered sex workers being persecuted by a cruel British law in Bengal.

Calcutta sex workers escape to Chandannagar in the dead of the night in 1868. | Sambaran Das for Bodmaish Jobdo (2017).

Time has not been kind to Chandannagar’s heritage. Most of its French architecture has been razed for real estate, save for the road across the famed Chandannagar Strand, the promenade built along the Ganga in 1921. “The Chandannagar administration, since the time of the Communists, has suffered from a lack of understanding of both history and the need to preserve heritage,” said Bhabani Chandra Das, 85, a statistician and long-time resident. “Today, nobody under 35 probably knows what Laxmiganj Bazar was. The story of this town starts and stops at Strand, unfortunately.”

Chandannagar was established as a French settlement in the late 17th century. For the next hundred years or so, the French and the British kept fighting over it, alternately winning control. But through it all, sex trade in Chandannagar survived and the town gained a sizable population of sex workers.

A great influx to Laxmiganj Bazar came later. In 1868, the British enacted the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, or Act 14, which required all sex workers to register with the government and undergo tests for venereal diseases. The law had hoped to keep British soldiers from sex workers. But it did so by unleashing a wave of oppression on the sex workers, causing their exodus to Chandannagar.

Numerous farces were published in pamphlets to critique the Contagious Diseases Act or CDA (called Chouddo Ain, meaning Act 14, by the Bengalis). Among them was Bodmaish Jabdo (Evil Vanquished), writer Prankrishna Dutta’s tragic account of sex workers’ lives in 19th century Bengal.

The Laxmiganj Bazar. Photo: Devarsi Ghosh.

“Act 14 was a case of bad implementation of a thoughtless law, causing torture, end of livelihoods, and eventual displacement of the weakest sections of the society at the time, something that keeps happening to this day,” said researcher Surojit Sen. A longtime Chandannagar resident, Sen and illustrator Sambaran Das published a commentary on Bodmaish Jabdo in 2017.

Crisis of ‘Chouddo Ain’

According to historian Sumanta Banerjee’s Dangerous Outcast: The Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Bengal, commercial sex work flourished in Calcutta and its outskirts in the 1800s. This was markedly different from the work of tawaifs in pre-colonial India, who would receive royal patronage, be engaged in the arts, and take part in social and cultural festivities.

Under the British rule, courtesans and concubines began to fade out, making way for the commercial sex worker, whose occupation was solely to provide pleasures of the flesh, Banerjee wrote. As he pointed out, only the most “rootless and displaced women” across the state would travel to Calcutta and its nearby urban pockets to join the profession.

British attitudes towards sex workers stood in sharp contrast to the inclusive manner in they which were acknowledged earlier in society. On the one hand, pricked by “Victorian morality”, the government attached a stigma to the profession and codified it as crime. But on the other, it turned sex work into an organised business for the sake of its soldiers – which is where the Contagious Diseases Act comes in.

Under the East India Company, British soldiers could not be stopped from visiting public brothels, many of whom got infected with venereal diseases. This caused loss of man hours and added to the healthcare burden of the administration. The British state tried to put a stop to to this after taking over the Indian administration from the Company. In 1864, it introduced the Cantonment Act, ordering the creation of official brothels within “regimental bazars” in a bid to control the spread of venereal diseases.

The policy failed spectacularly. The troops frequently travelled out of cantonments or escaped their barracks to have sex elsewhere, continuing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, Banerjee wrote. So, on April 1, 1869, the British introduced the Contagious Diseases Act in India, near-replicating a law passed in the United Kingdom in 1864.

A British soldier escapes Kolkata's Fort William after dark to visit the brothels. Illustration: Sambaran Das for Bodmaish Jobdo (2017).

The Contagious Diseases Act made it compulsory for sex workers in India to get registered with the government and undergo a checkup for venereal diseases. If found infected, the sex workers had to be quarantined and treated until they were fit to return to work.

Calcutta’s sex workers were stridently critical of the law for the humiliating manner in which they – and sometimes even other women – would be rounded up and registered, Banerjee wrote. If they refused to register – or were deemed unregistered prostitutes under the law – they were thrown into prisons. The sex workers also reasoned that the law was bad for business since it kept them in hospitals for long periods.

The sex workers with financial means bribed their way out, but the policeman on the street, under pressure to show results, ended up oppressing poor women. This led to an exodus of Calcutta’s sex workers. According to a government memo of 1887, quoted by Banerjee in his book, “more than half the native public women had left the city and sojourned in the suburbs and further away”.

Tale of two cities

The Laxmiganj Bazar red-light district was older than the brothels of Calcutta. According to Chandannagar historian Biswanath Bandyopadhyay, it came into being “because...of travelling businessmen who would come here in the late 1700s”, but it “flourished because of the” Contagious Diseases Act.

A handbill issued by the Ladies’ National Association prior to a by-election in the historic English town of Pontefract in 1872. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Scores of sex workers escaping Calcutta took refuge in Laxmiganj Bazar. 

“With the huge influx of prostitutes, the French government began taxing them, and the market became their official working space,” Bandyopadhyay continued. Some centuries later, “the Left Front government drove them out in the 1980s to help promoters create real estate. The prostitutes escaped to nearby towns of Chinsura and Kalna.”

Growing numbers drove down the prices of the sex workers in the 19th century. As Prankrishna Dutta’s contemporary Aghor Chandra Ghosh wrote in the farce Panchali Kamalkali (The Poem of the Lotus Bud), “Aat poisar mojur jara khejur chatay thakey/khatpolonkey khasha bichanaye succhey lakhey lakhey” (Labourers worth eight paisa who would earlier sleep on coarse mats made of palm leaves now got a chance to be comfortable on lavish beds of the best prostitutes).

Meanwhile, in Calcutta and the rest of British Bengal, the tyranny of the Contagious Diseases Act continued. “At least 12 women” were jailed every day for failing to comply with the rules, Banerjee wrote, while in prisons and hospitals, police discriminated between Indian prostitutes and those of European and Eurasian descent.

This turned bhadralok sentiment in favour of the sex workers. Where earlier, Calcutta’s middle class supported the law – they thought it would “vanquish” the “evil” of prostitution (hence the title of Dutta’s farce) – they now realised that it had become a tool to oppress the disenfranchised. They wanted it repealed.

There was a similar movement afoot in the United Kingdom. Women’s groups – including Josephine Butler-led Ladies’ National Association – found the regular examinations of women under the British law degrading. They demanded that it be repealed and got their victory in April 1886.

Ladies’ National Association next turned its attention to the Indian Contagious Diseases Act. The bhadralok politicians lent unflinching support, and the British army in India noticed that the tides were changing. Besides, only a few arrests had ever turned into convictions, and few sex workers actually got treated at hospitals. With a large part of the workforce somehow escaping the law, the government realised that the presence of venereal diseases had increased among the British troops.

The British army finally caved in. In September 1888, after more than 20 years, the Contagious Diseases Act was revoked in India.

Prejudices persist

Over the next century, prostitution dwindled in Chandannagar, owing to the rise of “educated middle class with moral values instilled by the Communists,” said Bandyopadhyay. Meanwhile, with the British gone, Calcutta regained its sex trade industry in the form of Sonagachi, said to be Asia’s largest red-light district.

“The business that all of Sonagachi brings, because of not just the sex trade, but the adjoining restaurants, bars and shops is unimaginable,” Sen said. “Of course, it is allowed to exist.”

Do the problems that came to light because of the 1868 law – be it sexually-transmitted diseases among sex workers or government oppression – still exist in 2019? Yes and no, said Bharati Dey, mentor at the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a collective of over 65,000 sex workers in West Bengal.

Formed in 1995, the organisation works as an advocacy group for sex workers, making their working conditions safe. In association with the National AIDS Control Organisation, the committee runs 49 clinics for routine health checkups of sex workers. “The organisation has empowered sex workers and given them the power to say no to a customer who does not want to wear a condom,” Dey said. According to a 2018 study by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 1.6% of female Indian sex workers were HIV-positive or had AIDS in 2017, and 91% of sex workers used condoms in 2018.

Operating from North Kolkata’s Sonagachi, the organisation protects and stands up for sex workers against legal and extra-legal oppression, as documented in Shohini Ghosh’s 2008 documentary Tales of the Night Fairies. Not everything is rosy, of course.

“Why should sex workers register themselves in any government list?” Dey said. “Even today, often the police or the government approaches us with such requests. All sex workers have their identity proofs required to live as Indian citizens, so why can’t they go by their business independently?”

While Kolkata’s sex workers have organised themselves as a force, they have often faced societal prejudice and harassment. Locals protested against their requests to celebrate Durga Puja in Sonagachi in the early 2010s. The matter went to the Calcutta High Court. The sex workers won the case and have been celebrating Durga Puja since 2013, Dey said.

“There are so many issues that we are still fighting for,” Dey continued. “We want the removal of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and the even more dangerous anti-trafficking bill. Our rights are not recognised as we are still not covered under labour laws. The profession is yet to be made legal. There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.”

(Source: Scroll)

Woman Qazi conducts marriage: A victory in women reclaiming spaces taken up by men

Although in Islam there is nothing that stops a woman from solemnising a nikah, the practice has been mostly limited to the male domain for centuries.

Amidst news of what women can and cannot do, and diktats on their right to religious freedom with regard to traditions and culture, a Muslim couple got their nikah solemnised by a woman Qazi earlier this month. This marks another victory in women reclaiming spaces that have just been taken up by men, irrespective of what religion has to say about it.

Maya and Shamaun, a couple based in Mumbai, got their nikah solemnised by Qazi Hakima Khatoon in Kolkata on January 5. A communications consultant by profession, Maya tells me that when a few years ago she read an article stating that a woman can also be a Qazi and solemnise a nikah, something that she was not aware of like most others because it is not common practice, she and Shamaun decided that their Qazi will be a woman.

All pictures courtesy: Maya and Shamaun

Although in Islam there is nothing that stops a woman from solemnising a nikah, the practice is so uncommon that even locating a woman Qazi can be an impossible task. There have been earlier instances where a couple has asked a woman to carry out the nikah, but these instances are so rare and a woman Qazi so difficult to find that most nikahs, if not all, are conducted by men in Muslim families in India. Maya and her fiancé came across the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan’s (BMMA) website and saw that the movement had trained women Qazis in Quranic and constitutional rights. They got in touch with BMMA in 2017. When asked why they chose a woman to conduct the ceremony, the couple said ‘why not’.

Maya and Shamaun’s nikah marks a new beginning for women’s rights – an ordinary Muslim woman activist, who has, after undertaking a rigorous course on rights of women in the Quran and the Constitution, been invited by a regular couple to solemnise their wedding. A practice which has been mostly limited to the male domain for centuries. “It feels nice to give another woman a platform like this, which ideally should be easily available to her anyway. It has been empowering for her and me, both,” Maya tells me.

Qazi Hakima says she cannot explain in words what it has meant for her to be approached and to be able to successfully solemnise the nikah for the couple. She is also aware that as part of her duties as a Qazi she is responsible, under the training that she has taken, to ensure that there is proof of residence and age, and an affidavit from the groom stating that he is not previously married (the marriage is not polygamous). She has to make the couple go through the Nikahnama, fix the mehr (dower) amount and ensure that it is given at the time of the nikah, has to counsel the couple and ensure that the marriage is being carried out with their full consent. BMMA has trained 16 women Qazis in Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Odisha.

Maya, who is half-Bengali and half-British, has a degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Owing to her belonging to a liberal household, both her family as well as her in-laws were very happy with the decision of the couple. Until the wedding happened and people started reaching out to them, they did not see their decision to choose a woman to solemnise their wedding as ‘a big deal’.

“The biggest challenge,” says Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of the BMMA, “is to get couples to come forward. We need more Mayas and Shamauns – the new age, modern, liberal Muslim men and women.”

Muslim women have long been denied rights which the Quran has guaranteed to them, because of the patriarchal norms set by society at large to keep them confined and subjugated. This is changing today when the ordinary Muslim woman is questioning the status quo and is not ready to accept customs and traditions being forced on her in the name of religion. Whether it is re-entering Haji Ali and demanding that religious spaces be easily available to all women, or fighting to ban instant triple talaq, Muslim women are the frontline warriors fighting their own battles.

Qazi Hakima and her like need to be supported so that more couples come forward to get their nikahs solemnised by them – where the mehr will not be a mere eyewash and never be asked to be forgiven, the couple will be made aware of their rights and responsibilities, underage marriages will not be solemnised, and the bride will get all her due rights as per the Quran.

(Source: TNM) 

One man’s long, lonely mission to convince Kolkata that the Sun revolves around the Earth

Since 1979, KC Paul has been tirelessly, single-mindedly debunking scientific notions by painting graffiti and distributing pamphlets.

It all began one evening in 1962. The Sino-Indian war was almost at an end. Kartik Chandra Paul, a trainee with the Indian Army, was sitting under the open skies in Fatehgarh, Uttar Pradesh. Suddenly his attention was drawn skywards, to Venus, the evening star, and the North Star, or the Alpha Ursae Minoris, glowing steadily.

Over the weeks that followed, Paul, a class eight dropout, noticed the positions of these two celestial bodies did not change. His interest in astronomy was piqued. He turned to the works of astronomers Ptolemy, Copernicus and Galileo, reading them voraciously and evolving his understanding of how the solar system works. By 1974, he had reached an inflexible conviction – it is the Sun that revolves around the Earth, not the Earth around the Sun.

KC Paul | Devarsi Ghosh

For more than four decades since, Paul has been tirelessly trying to make the world believe that the geocentric cosmic model is correct as opposed to the heliocentric model scientifically held to be true. Since he was let go from the army in 1979 on grounds of eccentric behaviour, Paul has been drawing attention to his astronomical theories on the streets of Kolkata and Howrah by selling and distributing pamphlets, self-published thin booklets in English and Bengali, and making graffiti on the city’s walls, lamp posts, fire hydrants and electric boxes. His efforts – deluded or otherwise – haven’t gone unnoticed. Newspapers have profiled him, documentaries have been made on him. And next year, a film inspired by his life, featuring an A-list cast, is set to hit theatres.

Kartik Chandra Paul's booklet. Photo: Devarsi Ghosh.

Paul’s graffiti, usually created with white paint on a black background, include his distinctive drawings of the Earth rotating on its axis as the sun revolves around it. His handwriting (precise, neat) and the language (a mix of Bengali, Hindi and English) are unmistakable. There are bold proclamations like “The Sun goes around the Earth once in a year, hence seasons change” and “This new theory is a challenge for all scientists all over the world”. There is also the angst-filled question: “Are journalists and scientists blind?” He extrapolates on his theories beyond the polemics when he finds a wall that is large enough.

Some of the graffiti from the 2000s feature his recent corollaries. Prominent among them is his belief that there is no life on Mars because Mars is a planet, unlike the Earth, which he says is a “dead star”. “Planets should revolve,” said Paul, sitting on a makeshift bed in his Howrah home one afternoon. “[The] Earth is stationary. It was once a star which burned out and now lava flows underground. Only those celestial bodies who share this quality can have life. Mars is not one.”

After a pause, Paul seals his argument: “Prove me wrong if you can.”

At least two generations growing up in Kolkata and its adjoining areas, from the 1980s till the 2000s, have been mystified by his striking graffiti. Paul was also a regular fixture at the annual Kolkata Book Fair, until this year, when he was pushed out by the police after being accused of spreading anti-science messages. Now 75, he operates from the 12-foot-by-3-foot veranda in the ground floor of his two-storey home.

“People found Copernicus and Galileo incorrect and ridiculed them,” said Paul. “When people cannot prove you wrong, they [get] scared and choose to make fun of you.”

His booklets contain clippings of newspaper articles on him, illegible sketches depicting his new cosmic theory, and copies of three letters that he received from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which refuted his claims. One booklet features a cartoon of an agitated old man holding a staff. This, Paul says, is from an old story written about him. He also has snippets of a newspaper article on him headlined “Kolkata’s Copernicus” pasted on his walls. Paul has added an anti before Copernicus with a black marker. When asked why, Paul says it is for factual accuracy as he is disproving Copernicus.

Paul’s detractors – and he has many – describe him as a “lunatic” who is “anti-science”. But Paul is nonchalant about the insults he has had to live with. “I have been beaten, pushed around, laughed at,” he said. “When you don’t have the ability to talk science, what [else] can you do?”

Iconoclastic Bengali author Nabarun Bhattacharya once likened Paul to one of his fictional creations, the “fyataru” – the street-dwelling subaltern peoples of Kolkata who can fly at will and cause mayhem, rebelling against the city’s symbols of capital and its ideas of tradition and civility. But the fictional character that Paul most resembles is Bhattacharya’s eponymous hero of the novel Harbart. Harbart Sarkar is ridiculed for his lifestyle, and his belief in his power to communicate with the dead. Ironically, through his very public death, Sarkar ends up connecting a contemporary Kolkata, detached from its past, to the ghosts of the bloody 1970s.

Paul’s resolute belief in his theories, despite the odds stacked against him, says writer Indrajit Hazra, mirrors Kolkata’s stubbornness to stay rooted in a glorious past that is now long gone. “KC Paul’s story is joined at the hip with that of the city, which still believes in its utterly special, if no longer central, position in the country it is a part of,” Hazra wrote in his book, Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of Kolkata.

Meghnad Bhattacharya in 'Sun Goes Around The Earth'. Photo courtesy: AVA Productions.

But for director Arijit Biswas and his co-writer Paramita Munshi, Paul’s 40-year crusade is a compelling story of grit and tenacity that has made its way into their film, Sun Goes Around The Earth. In the film, a Paul-like character TC Paul, played by Bengali theatre actor Meghnad Bhattacharya, goes around writing his theories on Kolkata’s walls with a brush and a can of paint.

“Here is a man who stood at one place all throughout his life and fought for his beliefs with zero resources,” said Munshi. “Staying in a shanty for years on the streets and living on Rs 20 a day just for your beliefs needs another kind of concentration.” Munshi refers to the time in the 2010s when Paul had left his home in Howrah to live on the road in Kolkata’s Rashbehari area for two and a half years after a feud with his family.

“If you taught me during my childhood that rosogolla is pantua and pantua is rosogolla, I will grow up believing it,” said Paul. “But once I have learned that rosogolla is rosogolla and pantua is pantua, I can never go back to being wrong, right?”

This black-and-white understanding of the universe has helped Paul survive countless run-ins with authorities, scientific guardians in the city and the casual heckler. Anything that remotely meddles with his cosmic model is gobbledygook to him. In a 17-minute documentary created by CockCrow Films, Paul, when confronted by a young man, tells him that concepts like black hole, dark matter or quantum physics are “fiction”, and therefore, it is pointless to argue about them.

But what lies at the root of Paul’s dogged conviction and his single-minded defiance of the established understanding of the universe?

Paul’s uncomfortable relationship with authority and traditional protocols goes back to his days in the army. First, he got a “red entry” against his name in 1974, when he published his theories in an edition of Amar Ujala and accidentally exposed the location of his battalion. The second time he angered his seniors was when he defied orders and wore a monkey cap to fight the cold in a high-altitude location. The final nail in the coffin was when, as a quartermaster, he was ordered to send 12 of his men to another point in Ladakh to unload trucks but he sent only four. “Who would unload my trucks then?” is his contention.

After his army stint, Paul returned home and took up a job at the West Bengal State Electricity Service. On off-days, holidays, or on his way to office, he would sell his booklets and pamphlets. After retiring in 2005, Paul used a chunk of his Rs 5 lakh pension to publicise his cosmic model. Bolstering his spirits was the support of places like the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which is committed to studying the universe with a Vedic geocentric model, interest shown by like-minded researchers and civilians, and the letters he received from several universities and organisations such as NASA that often politely debunked his concepts.

Photocopy of first letter received from NASA in 1975, available in Kartik Chandra Paul's booklet. Photo: Devarsi Ghosh.

“The roots of his decades-long occupation of the city’s walls lie in the discipline and focus that he gets from his military background,” observed Munshi. In November, when Paul met journalists at a press conference after the premiere of Sun Goes Around The Earth at the Kolkata International Film Festival, all he spoke about was his cosmic model, completely disregarding the fanfare around him. “You start a conversation with him and even if you steer it away in one direction, he will bring it back to his theories,” said Biswas.

Paul’s obsession has, however, cast a shadow over his family, especially his wife, 62-year-old Sapna Paul. Paul scoffs, when a request is made to speak to his wife and daughter-in-law. “They don’t know anything. Ask me your questions.”

A sudden phone conversation between Paul and filmmaker Saumya Sengupta, whose Paul-focused documentary The Geocentric Man has earned the ire of the censor board, provides a window of opportunity to speak to his wife in another room.

Kartik Chandra Paul at the Kolkata Book Fair. Photo credit: Amitabha Gupta/Wikimedia Commons [CC Attribution 4.0 International license].

“Only I know how I have lived with this man,” bemoaned Sapna Paul. She complains about Paul’s poor financial management, his occasional disappearances from home when his four children were young, leaving her to take care of them and his gambling addiction. Has she seen the new film about her husband, whose houseful premiere made news at the festival? “No,” she said. “He never tells me anything.”

But his wife and his neighbours agree about Paul’s amiable and polite manner outside of home. While walking towards his home, Paul had greeted practically every acquaintance on the road with a smile. “His is a very nice family that keeps to themselves,” said Shekhar Das, a cycle-repair shop owner in the neighbourhood. “As for what he preaches, we are too uneducated to challenge him and the educated cannot keep up with him.”

(Source: Scroll)

In this Calcutta Cafe, HIV positive adults deliver a strongish brew

Calcutta’s Cafe Positive operates out of a garage and is owned and managed by a group of young adults who are HIV posi­tive.

In a rain-splattered afternoon in Calcutta, three women, childhood friends now in their late forties, dec­ide to meet for coffee. “But instead of the cafes where we usually catch up, we decided to drop in at this new joint everyone is talking about,” says Chandrima Chanda, a teacher, who tra­velled nearly 40 km from the north of the city to get to leafy and busy Jodhpur Park in south Calcutta, where on July 15 a new coffee shop unveiled its very special charms to the public.

Called Cafe Positive, the joint operates out of a garage, concaving its way into a 10-ft by 12-ft space in the wall. But the word ‘positive’ here takes on much more meaning than casual optimism. The new cafe is owned and managed by a group of young adults who are HIV posi­tive. Diag­nosed when they were children, they grew up in a shelter for the HIV-infected. Some were abandoned by families; others were orphaned and rendered homeless.

The brain behind the initiative is Kallol Ghosh, founder of OFFER (Organisation of Friends for Energies and Resources), a non-profit NGO which runs the shelter for the HIV positive children, called  Ananda Ghar. It was started in 2000, 14 years after Ghosh founded OFFER. “We had ope­ned homes for orp­hans and homeless children, as well as one for those suffering from mental disabilities,” Ghosh says. “During our work we stumbled upon many HIV positive children. Mostly, they were born with it, having contracted it from either or both parents. Often they were the chil­dren of sex workers or beggars and were also orph­aned and homeless. They would land up in a children’s home or be left to fend for the­mselves on the streets. We realised HIV positive children needed special att­ent­ion, including medical care, like access to the drug Anti-retroviral, wit­­hout which their chances of survival would be slim.”

Among the first batch at Ananda Ghar was a brother-sister duo whose mother had committed suicide after neighbours ostracised her in the village. “She was a milkmaid. After her husband left her, she was bringing up her children by supplying milk to households,” says an OFFER member, recounting the tragedy that forced the boy and girl—the oldest not even eight—to end up in a shelter. If it took a long time for the traumatised chi­ldren to exorcise past memory, Ana­NDA Ghar wanted to ensure that their present—the dire fact that they were HIV-infected—would not tarnish their future.

Situated in the suburbs, where lush greenery crouches over abundant water bodies, the shelter has largely protected the children from the social stigma that hounds HIV positive people. “Here, they are not just surrounded by others like them, but they are taught not to be ashamed of their disease,” Ghosh says emphatically. “We keep telling them the only illness that they have is a weak immune system.” When a young girl at the home says, “I was brought to the home because I was diagnosed with AIDS,” she is promptly corre­cted by an OFFER offic­­ial, his tone hardening in a mild reprimand. “Never say that again,” he says. “There is a difference bet­­ween having AIDS and being HIV posi­­tive.”

The 75 children are sent to four different gov­­­­ernment schools, where they can choose from a wide range of extra-­curricular activities, including dance, music, art and sports.

However, the most important part, says Ghosh, is to make them feel loved. Exp­laining the need to instil “a sense of sec­urity” in the children, Ghosh reco­unts the story of a girl who was brought to the home when she was eight, after being abandoned by a well-to-do Calc­utta couple who had adopted her without the knowledge that she was HIV positive. “Eventually, they left the little girl on the streets.” After living a life of affluence for three-and-a-half years, she was in utter shock. For the first six months in Ananda Ghar, she didn’t utter a single word, says Ghosh. “It took tender, loving care for her to open up. Her first words to me were, ‘Uncle, you will not chuck me out on the road, will you?’” says an emotional Ghosh.

During Outlook’s visit to the home, the newest entrant, a three-year-old girl, is picked up and hugged by a warden as she looks around with lost, dazed eyes. Aba­ndoned by her family for being HIV positive, the child, say the older girls, cried ceaselessly at first, but has now settled in.

“We all cry at first because we miss our families,” says an older girl, who was eight when her HIV positive mother deposited her for ‘safe-kee­p­ing’. She is lucky; unlike many of the abandoned or orp­haned, her mother and grandmother regularly visit her. “But this shelter became our home and the girls, boys and staff our family. We love it here.” A boy who had arrived at Ananda Ghar also aged eight, and who is also a Cafe Positive emplo­yee like her, tea­­singly calls out, “You didn’t cry at all”. “Of course I did,” she retorts. “I wept sile­ntly.” She is comfortable at the cafe, too. “Initially, I was unsure, but now I like the interactions with customers.”

But care is one thing, the wherewithal to face the world outside is another. As the chil­d­­ren grew older, Ghosh worried about their leaving this cloister and being unprepared to deal with prejudices they would undoubtedly face. “We couldn’t leave them in the lurch,” Ghosh says. “We had to make them financially independent.”

While the sceptre of inadequate funds constantly stalks OFFER—it subsists on donations—Ghosh and other members decided to utilise their limited reso­u­rces to train the ten 18-year-olds. “The Japanese government had donated a bakery to a she­lter run by OFFER,” rev­eals Ghosh. It includes an oven for baking cakes and muffins, machinery for making sandwiches, the technology for brewing coffee and other beverages, including tea, cold shakes and mojitos.

“The month-long training, with a couple of weeks of int­ernships at other cafes, was provided to the boys and girls, over and above other career counselling,” says Ghosh. For many, the cafe job is an opening, a toehold in professional life. “I think I will make a good salesperson and working in Cafe Pos­itive is giving me valuable experience,” a girl says with a wide smile.

The boys and girls work in six-hour shifts and travel the 21-kilometre dista­nce from the home to the Jodhpur Park cafe by bus. “The idea is to instil confidence in them,” says Ghosh. So, not only do they travel to work on their own, they do the whole show: don apr­ons and t-shirts with the Cafe Positive logo, take orders from customers, pre­pare dishes, serve them up, keep tabs of the bills, collect cash, check accounts and manage the cafe. One of the boys speaks of how initially he was inhibited and wasn’t sure of how to speak with customers. “Not that we were not nervous, but we have been taught to pro­udly dec­lare that we have this condition and not hesitate to speak about it. When that fear is gone, it doesn’t matter what people will think,” he says.

Though getting someone to rent out a space for a cafe to be manned by people infected with HIV was, expectedly, a harrowing experience—ultimately, a gen­t­le­man cal­led Indrajyoti Dasgupta vaca­­ted his garage for the “noble venture”—the response was over­­whelming. As word spread, Cafe Positive stood out amongst the hundreds of eating out opt­ions that vie for attention in posh South Calcutta.

“Some days it’s so packed that customers wait for tables outside on the road,” gushes Ghosh. Word-of-mouth knowledge about the cafe has spread through soc­ial media. “The cafe is more than an avenue to generate inc­ome for HIV positive children,” he says. “This is the start of a movement which will not just eradicate stigma, but also bust myths about HIV, such as the grossly erroneous belief that the virus can get transmitted through food or drink. We want HIV positive people in every Bengal district to open a Cafe Positive, through which the true facts of HIV will be disseminated.”

The three childhood friends too had read about the cafe on the opinionated walls of Facebook. Says Ashmita Trivedi, a homemaker:  “I live in Jodhpur Park, which is a Bengali, upper-middle-class, conservative neighbourhood. But people seem to have the maturity to welcome the cafe.” Many more people must have felt like Ashmita. For there is always a crowd in front of Cafe Positive, painted as it is in the radiantly hopeful colours of the sun, in bright yellow and red.

(Source: Outlook)

How Calcutta kept alive a line of William Shakespeare's family

John Talbot Shakespear's tombstone lies in the South Park Street Cemetery of the city, writes Arup K Chatterjee in Daily O. Read on: 

British Bengal was the last place to find heritage English literature. William Jones — who invented philology — and the other Orientalists, induced in Oxbridge and officials of the East India Company a newfound love for Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. That benevolence went on even as Warren Hastings was pillaging Bengal, waging wars with the Marathas and Hyder Ali, or influencing the hanging of Maharajah Nandakumar of Birbhum.

In 1788, Hastings was brought to impeachment by the Whigs, led by Edmund Burke and Richard Sheridan, in nothing less than a grand social spectacle, at the Westminster Hall. The events were most notably narrated later by Thomas Babbington Macaulay, the architect of English education in India.

What was systematically untold, however, was how the bloody fortunes of the East India Company connected Hastings to Burke to Macaulay to the Shakespear family of Calcutta, who in turn became connected to the William Makepeace Thackerays, in a pedigree dating back to William Shakespeare.

The elephant hunter of Sylhet
William Makepeace Thackeray, grandfather of the more popular Victorian writer of the same name, came to India, as a collector in Sylhet. He amassed a loot by trading lime and elephants, to Chowringhee in Calcutta and Leadenhall Street in London.

A route of 7,500 miles — from Esplanade to the Strand — was littered with the spoils and artefacts of the corrupt nabobs, in the 18th century. The Regulating Act of 1773, and later the East India Company Act of 1784, were brought in to supersede the rule of the Company. Quite ineffectually, of course.

Thackeray retired, in 1776. He was so rich that the next three generations of his family would not have to work. He even managed to sue the Company, and receive £3,700 — about £.7 million today — over the death of his elephants. The damage he caused to India was perhaps overshadowed in the genealogy he let loose in the country. Not only was Calcutta the birthplace of the author, William Makepeace Thackeray, but the city also kept alive one line of the Shakespeare family.

The John of the Stepney Shakespears
In the South Park Street cemetery, Calcutta, where the likes of Jones are buried, there are two Shakespear tombs. One of them is John Talbot Shakespear’s, who was born to John and Mary Shakespear, in England, in 1783. He entered the East India Company and arrived in Calcutta during the early 1800s.

In 1803, he married Emily Amelia Thackeray, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray senior. Thackeray’s sixth son, Rev Francis Thackeray, married John Talbot Shakespear’s sister, Marianne Shakespear. Another of Thackeray’s sons, Richmond Thackeray, who came from London to become the secretary to the Board of Revenue, married Anne Becher.

In Bath, Anne had met one Lieutenant Henry Carmichael-Smyth, in 1808, where the two fell in love. Since Anne’s grandmother was opposed to the marriage, she was told that Henry had died of lingering fever. Soon after Anne’s return to India, and her marriage, she gave birth to her only son, the novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray, in 1811, at the Thackeray House, in Alipore.

Ironically, while her lover, Henry, was still alive, back in England, her husband died of lingering fever, in 1815. He was interred at the North Park Street cemetery, which later became the Assembly of God Church School.

Thackeray’s father’s first name, Richmond, inspired the name of the youngest of John Talbot and Emily Shakespeare, Sir Richmond Campbell Shakespeare. He rose in the British army to an agent to the Governor General of Central India, and a Companion of the Bath, by 1860. Another of John Talbot Shakespear’s sons was named William Makepeace Shakespear. He died in Lucknow in 1835, where he was buried.

John Talbot Shakespear had a thriving career, and was appointed by Richmond Makepeace Thackeray as the assistant to the collector of Birbhum. He died at sea, in 1825. His tombstone lies in the South Park Street Cemetery. While the grave of his brother-in-law is washed away by history, Shakespear’s wife and his epitaph lie side by side, as monuments to the first and the last of the Shakespears in Calcutta, who hailed from the bard’s own family.

South Park Street Cemetery

Notwithstanding the variant spelling of this line of Shakespears (without the final "e"), their link to William Shakespeare is confirmed in a forgotten Victorian discovery — George Russel-French’s Shakspeareana Genealogica (1869), and later reproduced partially in Charlotte Carmichael Stopes’ Shakspeare’s Family (1901). Russel-French claimed that this line came from the Stepney (or Shadwell) Shakespears, descended either from William Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, or uncle, Thomas.

The reconstructed pedigree was furnished to Russel-French by Lieutenant Colonel John Davenport Shakespear, a nephew of John Talbot Shakespear. Among other evidences of the connection between the Shakespeare and Shakespear families, one was “the drawing on a parchment of a coat of arms, pronounced by an eminent herald…more than 200 years old, which is precisely the same…as the coat of arms granted to the Poet’s father in 1596.”

John Davenport Shakespear was in possession of this, in the 1860s. This serendipity may result in John Talbot Shakespear’s grave in Calcutta to be taken more seriously. Else it may go in the direction of Richmond’s grave.

From Calcutta, Macaulay wanted to promote Milton, Hume and Spencer in India. One does not need to be disillusioned with Macaulay to know literature or culture hardly featured in Britain’s imperial interests. India which has otherwise been rather generous to Shakespeare, and adapted the bard in all possible forms, let the first one of his line to come here, lie in oblivion.

Time and again, historians have successfully exposed Britain’s inglorious empire. Each time they may have wilfully thwarted the nuances of the great cesspool of interests and characters that British India was. Neither Britain nor India has been very kind to their graves. And William Shakespeare an easy excuse or an overwhelming influence to remember or forget the life of an Indian Shakespear. What have we got to lose by remembering their graves?

“Be absolute for death; either death or life. Shall thereby be the sweeter,” answers Shakespeare.

Mother Teresa's savings were so huge that it could have emptied the Vatican Bank

Saint Teresa of Calcutta had so much money that she could have emptied the entire Vatican Bank.

Who doesn't know Mother Teresa, an icon of selflessness and faith? Also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, she was loved and was an inspiration to many. But, many people don't know that Mother Teresa saved up an awful amount of money.

Mother Teresa had so much money in the Vatican Bank that if she had withdrawn the money, the entire Vatican Bank would have emptied. According to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi's book, 'The Original Sin', Mother Teresa was believed to have "by far the most cashed up account."

According to La Presse reports, if Mother Teresa had closed the accounts or transferred them, the institute would have risked default. In his book, Nuzzi talks about a block of power in the Vatican.

"There is a power block in the Vatican that obstructs Pope Francis' reforming action just as it did with Benedict XVI - it existed with Marcinkus and his parallel management of the IOR and it still exists today," he wrote in his book.

The book reveals the deepest secrets of the Vatican. Nuzzi also talks about the President of the Vatican Bank, Paul Marcinkus, an American archbishop.

"Her [Mother Teresa] account in the Vatican bank is proof that these gentlemen were and still are within the Curia and they trust them. They were also trusted by Mother Teresa, who, as is told, entered the Ior by a secondary door and was welcomed by Monsignor De Bonis, Marcinkus's right arm."

(Source: India Today)

Hand-made bread at Ahmed Ali Bakery is Kolkata’s best-kept secret

Neither Flury's nor Nahoum's take a slice of this hand-made bread from Ahmed Ali's bakery in Kolkata. It's the best, writes Chandni Doulatramani in the Quint. Read on: 

While the city is still asleep, Mohammed Tafazzul and a few other breadwallahs pack the tin-boxes attached to their bicycles with fresh, warm bread, and set out to deliver it to a few households in south Kolkata.

One of the house they deliver to is ours.

Since 30 years, my mother has been using this bread to make French toasts, keema sandwiches, cheese-rolls, and our favourite Seyal bread. Sometimes, we eat it straight out of the box.

This bread is so good, it can be just eaten straight out of the box.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

The pound bread from Ahmed Ali Bakery has slowly but surely seeped into our lives as not just a food item, but a cultural experience. Although fluffy and soft, it does not crumble. One side of the loaf is left uncovered while baking, giving it its toasty flavour.

The late Ahmed Ali from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, has left behind a long, dedicated family of bakers who make, what is possibly, the best bread in town. His descendants became breadwallahs to keep Ali’s legacy alive. Besides, their ancestors had had an unsuccessful stint at being farmers.

As she chomps on her breakfast, a sizeable omelette made of two brown eggs and three slices of buttered bread, my mother wonders aloud for the millionth time, “How do they make this beauty?”

And, jokingly, I suggest that we go find out.

That morning, when Tafazzul came to our society for a second round of delivery, I asked him where their bakery is.

“Lal masjid ke paas, Beck Bagan mein,” he answers. And so my mother and I decide to visit it in the afternoon.

Beck Bagan (possibly a corrupted version of Beg Bagan), not particularly famous for bakeries, is dotted with meat shops. Apart from the superior mutton and beef, people also come here to buy vegetables and flowers. A mosque is under construction and the main street is buzzing with cars and hurrying pedestrians.

The run-down Ahmed Ali Bakery at Beck Bagan.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

In a corner of the neighbourhood, dark alleys lead to a run-down den. Inside, rugged walls, wooden tables, and a red fire-extinguisher are smothered with a layer of white flour. The scent is warm and tender.

The harsh bright dazzle from white tubelights has replaced the dim glow of lanterns from the 1950s.

Above the bakery is where some of the 35 workers, aged anywhere between mid-20s to the early-60s, stay, while the rest live in the neighbouring slum. The machaan cannot accommodate all at once, and so they take turns. While one batch gets ready for bed, the other wakes up to work. There are at least 12 people always toiling. Ahmed Ali Bakery is open and functional 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

A worker at the bakery smiles as he starts his chores.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

All self-sufficient, the breadwallahs or karigars (artisans/craftsmen), don’t depend on each other – everyone is an expert at every item and they treat each other as equals.

It’s 4 pm, and they are waking up from their siesta and sipping on cha. In Kolkata, nothing great ever happens without an afternoon nap and a good cup of tea.

Inside, an enormous oven, as big as a closet, is built into a wall. Mohammed Ali Hussain, the oldest and most experienced of the artisans, handles it. At 60, he is determined to keep the quality intact and take forward the legacy of the man who created this delicacy.

Mohammed Ali Hussain gets the fire burning.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

There isn’t enough room for my mother and me, so we squeeze into a small corner and watch. Ali Hussain shoves large logs of wood into the oven and lights them up. Meanwhile, the others prepare the dough that will eventually be doused with asli ghee and delivered to homes.

The low-key, no-frills establishment prides itself on not being mainstream. Few know about the breadwallahs and they are happy to be on the periphery. Word of mouth, in the form of customer recommendations to friends and family, is the only advertisement they depend on.
The story of the bakery is as simple as its appearance.

Tired of the pittance he was making through farming, Ahmed Ali decided to learn baking from his cousin in Ranchi and moved to Kolkata. Since there weren’t too many bakeries in the neighbourhood, he decided to start one.

“The recipe is the same and there is no change in the flavour,” Mohammed Khurshid, the 35-year-old grandson of Ahmed Ali, tells me. “We have only experimented to make the bread last longer.”

I spot a packet of branded multigrain bread – a “sample from customers” the artisans have to taste and imitate with their hands.

My mother tells them packaged bread tastes raw, like paper, and sticks to the roof of her mouth. “Aadat ho gayi hai aapke bread ki,” she tells them as she looks on enthusiastically.

Workers mix a combination of flour, salt, water, yeast, sugar and oil in this tub.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

Nearly 160 kg of flour is tipped into an enormous aluminium bowl that looks more like a bathtub. Proportionate amounts of salt, water, yeast, sugar, oil, and calcium propionate are added. After mixing lightly, the ingredients are swept aside, leaving a cavity of water in the centre. This water, which contains small quantities of all the ingredients, is set aside for tomorrow’s bread, much like the way a small amount of curd is kept aside to make more curd. Ali Hussain tells me it’s what gives the bread its flavour.

But another worker, whom everyone fondly calls Gabbar, tells me it’s the magic in their hands. “This isn’t Britannia where everything is made with machines. We do everything with the strength of our fingers, hands, and arms. From blending to the final slicing, this is our craft.”

I look around and there isn’t a single mechanical instrument in sight.

Four men surround the bathtub and sink their hands into the soft, loose mixture. They stir and pound it with their arms, now elbow-deep in the tub, until it acquires the consistency of quicksand.

As I take pictures, they get conscious and ask me how they look while working. “Bahut behtar, janaab (very good, sir),” I tell them, and they smile. Ali Hussain walks over to take a look at himself on my phone and says, “Arre, hum toh Modi lag rahe hain (Oh! I look like (Prime Minister) Modi)!” Everyone bursts into fits of laughter and ‘Modi saab’ becomes Ali Hussain’s name for the day.

The well kneaded dough.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

After two hours of pounding and kneading, the off-white dough is spread on huge wooden tables, looking and feeling like a large mound of chewing gum because of the yeast. It’s so soft that it keeps sagging – like the loose skin on my grandmother’s arm. The workers have to constantly cut the drooping chunks before they fall to the floor and put them back on the table.

Pound bread, sandwich bread, garlic bread, brown bread, burger buns, pizza base, and soup sticks are all made from the same dough, proportionately cut and weighed. For the bread, smooth round balls are moulded into cylindrical forms to fit aluminium trays. They are then set aside for the dough to rise.

At 9 pm, Ali Hussain puts out the fire in the oven and clears the ashes with an iron rod. The bread bakes for 35 minutes using the residual heat, after Ali Hussain meticulously places each tray inside with a wooden spatula.

The bakery, redolent with the smell of comfort, is now full of fluffy pound bread. The loaves are taken out of their moulds and drenched in ghee, ready for delivery.

The bakery smells of freshly baked fluffy pound bread.

(Photo: Chandni Doulatramani)

The establishment doesn’t serve more than 400 households, nor does it sell goods commercially. Breads are priced between Rs 20 and Rs 35 per loaf.

While mainstream bakeries such as Flury’s and Nahoum’s have enriched the patisserie experience for Kolkattans, Ahmed Ali Bakery is perhaps Kolkata’s best-kept secret.

It isn’t just the quality, it is also about the process of receiving precisely sliced homemade loaf every morning, right at your doorstep. It is one of the many traditions that places the city in history and gives Kolkata its cultural, nostalgic charm.

The number of orders hardly ever fluctuates. There are barely any new customers and the old ones are faithful. An order has to be placed a day in advance, as only fresh bread is delivered, leaving no scope for extra orders.

The karigars proudly tell me that not a morsel is wasted in the process. And the crumbs that are invariably left behind are packed in large jute sacks and used as fodder.

It’s nearly midnight by the time they conclude their stories. Gabbar graciously serves me my seventeenth, and last, cup of tea before saying goodbye. In the machaan, sleepy heads are getting ready, and those below are calling it a day.

With strong memories of the tender aroma of pound loaves, at night I lie on my bed, which feels a lot like the soft creamy batter I have seen and touched all day.

I wake up when I hear the doorbell in the morning. Tafazzul is excited to see me, and his bread… it has never tasted better.