by Debraj Bhattacharya
It was the year
during which Princess Diana died, the debut novel of a certain Arundhati Roy
won the Booker prize, Titanic broke
box office records, Mother Teresa passed away and Mamata Banerjee broke away
from Congress to form Trinamool Congress. It
was a time when Skype and smart phones were yet to invented, cousins in
different continents did not discuss recipe for dinner for hours on the tab,
Facebook wasn't invented, digital camera was yet to become irritatingly ubiquitous
and the word 'selfie ' was yet to be introduced. Email had just about begun to
replace letters but there were still plenty of people who preferred pen and
paper. An ancient world in some ways. It
was a time when going abroad was still somewhat special in middle class India.
Distance between places still had some meaning. Middle class Indians were yet
to live in two different worlds - real and virtual - simultaneously. The year was 1997. Not too far back and yet in
some ways the world was very different.
In the month of September of that year one more
middle class Bengali bhadralok youth went to England to do a PhD. I was riding
my luck after quite unexpectedly receiving a letter saying that I have been
selected for a scholarship to go study at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, in London. It was a moment of joy although there was nothing terribly
special about a student of Presidency College, Calcutta going abroad to study.
Nothing exceptional but something that happened at a point in time when I was
trying to escape from a broken relationship and a bizzare problem with some of
my former teachers which I would not like to discuss. That’s not the point of
this essay anyway.
It was of course the first time I was going to
England. However there was an England in my mind from childhood which was
largely fictional. Having grown up in a bilingual tradition, English literature
was always an important part of our consciousness. From Enid Blyton to Charles
Dickens to Arthur Conan Doyle to PG Wodehouse to more recent authors like
Martin Amiss and television serials like the Sherlock Holmes of Jeremy Brett
and Yes Minister – there was always a hyperreal England. There was also the
historical narrative of colonialism which portrayed the British as the villain
because of whom India became poor and third worldish. Thus landing in London
could never really be a simple experience of visiting another country. It was
inevitably a complex negotiation between the imagined England of the discursive
domain and the physical experience of observing the place in front of my eyes.
As the British Airways flight touched down at
Healthrow and I took a bus towards King’s Cross, the dawn was breaking. My mind
was somewhat automatically beginning to note the differences with Kolkata. The
bus was luxurious by our standards and fairly empty. I was somewhat relieved to
see that the roads are quite narrow and not dissimilar to that of Kolkata except
they were a lot cleaner. The vehicles and the people moved in a disciplined and
organized manner, following the rules of the land. The buildings looked similar
to the buildings of colonial Calcutta, but less dilapidated. After a while I
got down at King’s Cross, which looked to me like (or perhaps I was trying to
imagine it as) Gariahat crossing of Kolkata, slightly cleaner, slightly less
populated. From King’s Cross I walked up towards the Dinwiddy House hostel of
SOAS, which looked impressive from outside but ultimately I found myself inside
a matchbox with a toilet for which I was supposed to pay more than fifty per
cent of my monthly scholarship. There was one window which opened towards a
dull road and grey walls. Seven such matchboxes had a kitchen and dining
facility where one could cook, eat and chat. Unlike the usual practice in
India, men and women lived side by side and shared the same kitchen. Few days later I stood in a que and got myself
enrolled as a student.
From Dinwiddy House to SOAS at Russel Square,
it was a longish walk I quite enjoyed taking in the morning. I came out and
usually bought a packet of cigarette from a corner shop run by a Gujrati and
started to walk. The upper class usually was not visible on the street, the
middle class office goers usually wore black and walked at a fast pace
purposefully. Women, I noticed, walked faster than men. Their body language
tended to give a “no-nonsense please” vibe. The salaried middle classing
walking towards the tube or rail station were invariably grim looking from
Monday to Friday. The exception to this pattern were the homeless, a number of
whom occupied the footpath of King’s Cross. They were usually more animated and
seemed to be enjoying life in spite of their harsh living conditions. It was
quite common for them to ask for a cigarette. I could never refuse although
cigarette in London was expensive. Yet, how could I, being a Bengali bhadralok,
refuse to give a cigarette? One day a woman who looked like the homeless variety
stopped me asked for a couple of pounds. “What do you want it for?” I asked
her. “I have to buy my drink.” I smiled and asked – “Why don’t you quit
drinking?” She said with a smile, “But I love to drink.” It was such a candid
answer that I could not help but give her a couple of pounds.
After crossing King’s Cross I used to move left
towards Judd Street which led to Russel Square and finally the rather
unimpressive building of SOAS. Judd Street had a small book shop called Judd
Two Books which caused a significant drain of wealth from my limited reserve.
The shop had an amazing collection of second hand books and was owned by a
knowledgeable gentleman who could always suggest books for me. But he was a pucca salesman who was able to
understand my bhadralok vulnerability for books. There were other such book
stores – Skoob Books near BBC office and another one near Kings Cross which
specialized in Left books. There was also (most probably) Saturday sale at
University. Many of the second hand books were available for a reasonable rate
although they looked as good as new. Hanging out at these shops and buying
books was part of negotiating the loneliness of living alone in country where
the sun could rarely be seen. Within a month of arrival I could start feeling
the London grey weather. Remarkably enough, in this grey weather, the dominant
colour of clothes was also grey or black, which was punctured the bright red of
the buses and the telephone booths.
The telephone booths were used for two purposes, I realized. There was of course the phone and in those pre-smart phone days, it did have some utility. The other was innumerable posters of the sex industry. The messages were usually short and to the point, certain numbers given in bold which enticed the caller towards the realm of the senses. Being bhadralok middle class and a student of History, I of course stuck to reading Foucault’s History of Sexuality and condemning the bourgeois capitalist world of commercialization of the female body. There was however one incident however, a month or so after reaching London, which I could not quite understand through my bookish mind. A senior student one day came and said, “You know, there is a strip bar at King’s Cross”. He was as much a male bhadralok as I was who posed as a rebel and an intellectual. I said, “really?” I was neither too keen nor disinterested. He said, “Yes, it is sociologically quite interesting.” Sociology was of course not what he had in mind but then he was framed by his bhadralok upbringing. So a couple of days later, one evening we landed in the strip bar at King’s Cross. The entrance was that of a regular pub, where one had to buy a pint of beer and then move to the back side where the show had already started. I walked in with my pint of beer and stood towards the end the crowd. There was a stage, a small make shift one, with some lighting arrangement. Couple of young white women, were slowly taking their clothes off synchronizing with the music that was played through adjoining sound system. I was watching this for the first time and therefore it was indeed somewhat shocking. But what was sociologically truly interesting was that the front few rows of the crowd were all occupied by men who in India would be called ‘senior citizen’. They also got maximum attention from the almost naked women. It was almost as if they were the group for which the young girls were stripping while the younger ones were less significant. Once the show was over, one of girls, still comfortably naked, took an empty pint and came towards the audience. The audience poured the pound coins inside the pint. She came, stood in front me and smiled. I managed to smile back, and put couple of coins inside the pint. She said “thank you” and left.
I came back wondering was she a victim or was
she enjoying her moment of stardom? It was time however to get on with the
research on my chosen topic and therefore this brief encounter faded away into
the backyards of my memory. It was only years later that I understood that
there was not much difference between me and her as I also needed to “sell”
myself to the capitalist market.
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