My Blah

When I’d started writing this series, I hadn’t imagined that I’d be at Part VI by the time I actually came to the part that seems  to symbolize the title. To be honest, “Road out of Tehatta” doesn’t really mean the highway that leads to  Krishnanagar. It means a lot more than that, as would be obvious from the previous parts. And this part is by no means the last. Yet I’m writing this, so it must have something to do with the title right. Right. A lot with the title.

You see, Mersault takes the bus back to Algiers with a sense of having to get back to work. The bus I took back home, on the other hand, was one that took me away from work. It took me away from the free life of hardship and glory to the comfortable one that I had been used to for all my life. It also took me away  from the simplicity of life in Tehatta – where everything existed in a binary of survival and work – to the far more complex existence that was, and is, Kolkata. The city, or the megapolis as I call it, included my research, my social life (including my girlfriend) and a good amount of other things that I didn’t have to worry about in Tehatta. I was moving towards a complicated comfort.

Not that I regretted any of it. Moving towards home is a theme that has been romanticized by many poets, not least by one of my favourites, Amy MacDonald in her “Road to Home”. Timeless classics like Caledonia speak of coming home from faraway places, a feeling not very different from what I felt while heading back towards the city.

In fact, in a way I felt I was moving back up the ladder of civilization. Before you begin thinking that I’m disparaging Tehatta for being uncivilized, I’m not. I’m simply  saying that life there is not so complicated. In my scheme of things, my college would be located in a village, amid lush green fields and little else. Then I would come to Tehatta proper, a town that had the ambitions to become something much greater. Then came Krishnanagar, and other cities like Ranaghat and Barasat, which were cities or polis. They were large bustling beasts, but none could compare with the highly complex queen, Kolkata. Kolkata, no matter where you lived in West Bengal, was the core of everything, the megapolis.

Most people living in the megapolis harbor a singular dichotomy between the city and the village. This is why they try to take kash-flowers and place them in fancy earthen pots in the middle of a bustling city. Sure, the same is done in villages. But in villages, such flowers can be found in the vicinity. They don’t have to be artificially implanted in a setting that long forgot what nature truly looks like. Again, they head into the villages for picnics during winters. Here they post lovely stories about the heritage of Bengal, her unique culture and the way centuries have passed with little change. Oblivious to how governments, policies and even seasonal changes constantly keep village folk on the edge of their beds (and beds they are, not charpoys), these city folks speak of the timelessness of the villages, harbouring all that is good in society, against the corrupting influences of the city.

Such people are whimsical idiots. But once I was one such idiot, believing that the village was just a polar opposite. I have never been particularly interested in villages for their timelessness, to be honest, but I was still part of the mold. And I remained part of the mold as long as the journeys I took involved air-conditioned coaches with pre-fab meals and desperate attempts to connect to the internet so I could reach facebook or whatever the fuck I wanted to access.

These journeys to and from Tehatta however, were different. For one, I wasn’t simply travelling between two well-known destinations. Rather, I was moving from a small place, to a bigger one, to a still bigger one. So I had to understand each place and make it serve my ends. This was especially important because time was vital.  People heading to the villages can stop and admire the fields all around them if there is a jam on the highway. I found little to admire in lush green fields, and anyhow seen too many such fields to be particularly impressed by them during jams. More to the point, I probably had the next day, and the one after that, already planned out and a delay meant I would be reaching the city late. If I did so, I’d end up on a different train, and everything else would be delayed.

This was so especially because the journey from was somewhat different from the journey to. For one, I usually returned with some of my colleagues. These colleagues weren’t fixed, since they also went to different places at different times, and would join me according to their itinerary. What I actually got was a revolving cast of people, each with their own preferences and ideas about how the hidden forces behind the transportation system worked. At first, I saw them as beacons of knowledge in a vast desert of danger – danger to timings and physical energy reserves that is.

As time went on though, I soon realized that some folks’ conception of time was a bit too rigid for me. I needed some amount of comfort. This was the reason why I had chosen to stay in Tehatta for part of the week. So hanging onto overhead rods in a bus chock full of folks, or getting knocked about by vendors and passengers on a busy train while holding onto the clothes-holder shaped overhead supports, was just not my cup of tea. Naturally, the details of the journey back evolved along with my ideas (and those of my co-travellers).

Initially, I used to book the hazarduari back to Kolkata, ensuring that I reached the station by 7pm, when it arrived. I intended to take a quick rest at my camp before heading out to catch an evening bus. Things quickly backfired though, and I  found myself rushing to Howlia to get a bus that would take me to the station in time. And I barely made it in the end.

Thereafter, I junked the idea of taking a quick rest and instead decided to head back home just after finishing college. Initially, this meant catching the Bama-Khyapa, or one of a number of special buses that had a reputation for getting you to Krishnanagar fast. Almost all of these were of the Karimpur variant, and depending on the time, you had to catch the bus, irrespective of the crowding involved. On  some days, such crowding was excessive and it was a mighty pain to dance to the bus’s tune in a cramped setting.

In fact, the very first time I headed back from Tehatta, I learned what crowding can do to you. I had to submit my salary documents to Krishnanagar in order to initiate my salary payments, and had been allowed to leave the college somewhat early by the OIC. I took a toto to the bus stand (PWD it was I think) and caught a bus to Krishnanagar. Back then I used to carry two bags – my old backpack and a bag in which I carried clothing  and other necessities of survival. On this occasion, the bus was super-crowded, with the conductor assuring me that a seat would be found for me sometime, at some stop. Being rather credulous, I boarded and managed to place the backpack in the overhead holder. But there was no place to keep my clothes bag. For one whole hour, I was forced to hold onto the bag as it slid under me, surviving curses from my hand and anyone who wished to move up or down the aisle.

Such experiences were repeated later as well.  As I learned though, asking people where they would disembark and keeping your bag as light as possible were among the few things you could do to make your life a little easier. Also, you could try and catch buses that would not coincide with the school closing periods. That could be earlier than the school timings or later, depending on how much  work you had on that particular day. Much much later, I also learned that you could catch the Palashipara buses from Jitpur more itself, and get a much better chance of landing a seat just after embarking. Eventually, I settled for the Chandana, a yellow and green beauty that allowed me to avoid the school rush and also ensure that I reached in time for the train.

Coming to the train, I realized that getting the Hazarduari after catching a train with my  colleagues meant waiting at the station for anywhere between 1 and half to 2 hours. This was clearly not an optimal way of doing things. To push things up from the sub-optimal, I began catching local trains. They were marginally cheaper (a lot cheaper in fact, but at those prices, everything does seem marginal). Trouble was, you could catch a train at 4:26pm and then one at 6:32pm.  Between them was the Lalgola Passenger, which was a royal pain to be in. For one, the train pulled in chock full of people who stayed on and made you navigate the aisles with the expertise of a gymnast. Getting a seat on the Lalgola was akin to winning a state lottery, and naturally, people like me were seldom even on the drawing list.

As time went on, I also realized that the 4:26 had the same problems.  For one, it attracted horribly large crowds, and getting on them was a veritable battle of champions. People who wished to climb up had to stand on either side like gladiators entering the ring, as those already on the train got down. Then there would be the stragglers, who (barring children and women) would be dragged down and tossed away. Now the real battle began. The most athletic pranced into the coach and rushed to catch the best seats (and reserve as many as possible). Next came the second rung – people like me who were young, could do a fair bit of wrestling but didn’t have the skill needed to be at the top. We pushed in after them and rushed to take the middle seats. The remainder – the old, the infirm and anyone who had chosen to stand anywhere except the exact place where the coach doors stopped – had to clamber in at the end and get the “fourth seat”, ie the one where half your ass is on the seat and the rest is dangling dangerously off the edge.

The 4:26 was the clearest example of this. On days when the masters of the race were in the hunt and were on my side, I would get a rather decent seat. On days when they weren’t and I had made it to the station well in time, I would get a decent seat. On days when neither checked out, I would be sitting on the fourth, wondering when one person would leave and I would get to move up. Not that that always checked out. You see, Indian trains don’t have a charter of manners. So, people getting on after you would “reserve” seats one through three and when one got off, you still remained on the fourth. I’ve done my fair bit of fighting to civilize these idiots, but in a country where you get to ride a train legally by paying just 43% of your actual fare (as declared by the railways themselves), how much change can you expect?

Anyhow I realized that even with all these problems, the 6:32 was a far better option. On more than one occasion I could get a window seat even without being a pro local train boarder. Even when I did not, the cooler climes of the evening and the generally more laid-back attitude of fellow travelers made it a far more pleasant journey. This was, in terms of trains, the ideal to be aimed for.

If that failed, there was the 7:22pm train. This was an even less crowded train,  since there was wide consensus that people with families should not get home later than 9 in the night. On  this train, fighting for window seats was far less, and unless you wanted to actually get hold of the window seat in the direction of the train, you wouldn’t have to fight at all. People lazed around and looked detached from the goings on around them, as if resigned to the berating their wives would inevitably give them for getting home late. Or maybe they didn’t have wives, and instead were casually wondering if they had enough stocks of alcohol in order to imagine the company they might have had if they had checked all the social boxes up to that point of their lives. Or they were like me, who were wondering whether the train would move fast enough for me to get to the metro station in time for the 9:55 metro out of Dum Dum.

Now there is a huge debate over whether it is ideal to return home by train or bus. There were no train lines running to Tehatta, and one bus at least was part of the entire journey of each one of us. But beyond Krishnanagar, the debate intensified. I had found that catching a bus allowed you to relax and enjoy a far more airy journey, even if it didn’t save a lot of time. On the other hand, the proponents of buses constantly complained that buses were riskier, wasted more time and were less comfortable compared to trains. Their arguments regarding time I accept, but the rest ?

I mean, compared to the hard-plastic seats of the trains, you’d be far better off even on the narrow seats of the average long-distance bus. And if you were lucky to catch a government bus, you’d have a large single seat to share with your co-passengers. Unless you were traveling with someone the girth of me (no comments please), you’d have plenty of space even if you were travelling on the middle seat. Also, the buses had seats all facing in the direction of the bus, and on average, the windows were larger than those on the trains. So it was a far more comfortable journey in terms of ambient temperature, even if you spent a substantial part standing.

How did I realize all this ? Courtesy of another subset of my colleagues. These were the people who lived closer to Tehatta than I did, and found it more convenient to travel by bus than train because trains would usually force them to catch another toto or bus to reach home. Over time, I realized that once you got a seat on the bus, there would be –

a.       No one standing in front of you

b.       No one asking you to give more space

c.       A window near you, even if you weren’t on the window seat

d.       Emptier aisles due to longer distances between stops

e.       Lesser babies (I have a personal dislike of screaming babies on public transport).

Exceptions existed, and more than once I had to take a bus at 6 in the evening, hanging onto the second step and waiting desperately for Phulia to arrive so I could get some space to stand. Then again, there were days when parents encouraged kids to puke so they could have seats. Urggghh!

But within six months of joining Tehatta, I had moved from the Hazarduari to local trains and then to buses. Starting out with some variant of the Gouranga from Pantha Tirtha, I would reach Kolkata within 4 hours. Combined with the one-hour bus ride to Krishnanagar (Pantha Tirtha lies on Krishnanagar’s stretch of the National Highway), this made for a full five hours of travel. Could I save half to one hour using the train? Yes, but why should I ? I’d rather prefer to come home at 9 than at 8:30, because, you know, I don’t have a wife yet.

Eventually, things got into a rhythm. I learned that there was one special bus that ran from Mayapur to Kolkata, carrying all sorts of devout and almost bald people. This bus stopped at Pantha Tirtha but you really had to run in order to catch it. And catch it we did, including the times when you had to throw the cash into the toto driver’s hand and run to the bus before it left.

And then there was of course, the legendary direct bus. I’d been told that such a bus existed, but I hadn’t believed such rumours. Until I saw it myself. A CTC bus (now CSTC), this ran from Karimpur to Kolkata, with a half hour stop at Pantha Tirtha. Once you caught it and got a seat (usually not before Krishnanagar), a Rs. 100 ticket would get you directly to Baguiati. In other words, the multi-stage five hour journey was melded into a single one, and you didn’t have to worry about getting seats again and again. Also, since each change of vehicle introduced another element of delay and uncertainty, this bus was the most direct and time-saving solution I could find, even though it didn’t save a lot of time over the trains on the days when the trains ran on time.

But this essay isn’t simply a long story about how I got from one vehicle to another. That would be immensely boring, and also would tell only half the story. Hence, I would leave out the running over the tracks to catch the train or toto, the endless waiting when trains came late and the smart tricks I learned for getting seats on trains and buses (beyond the ones I’ve mentioned). Instead, let’s talk of what the journey meant to me.

For one thing, it meant going home. The journey was long, and thinking about going home all this time could be a bit of a bore. So, I had to think of other things, and not ones that I would do when I actually got home. Instead, I would look at the rapidly darkening horizon and the houses beside the highway (or the tracks). What did I think?

I wondered what those people were up to. Most of them would have smaller worlds, ones which did not include much beyond their own homes. I had learned that the farther you went from cities, the more the people became localized, rooted to their homes and localities in ways that would be unimaginable to city folk. In cities, you are constantly on the move. I myself have lived in half a dozen cities, and more houses than I can bother to count. But these people have lived in the same region for generations. Women would marry and move to the husband’s house, and then that would become their permanent place of residence. Women worked much less than men, so these places would grow on them till they became the homes with which they identified themselves. Men on the other hand, would work some distance away from their homes. On rare occasions, these would be large cities like Kolkata, but would more often be the surrounding areas. There they would have networks of relatives and friends who would be interested in specific things. Discussions would revolve around the local, with some amounts of the national and even the international thrown in. But their worlds would be small, tidy and with a finite set of concerns.

Then there were the people idling during the beautiful red evenings. I had been one of them myself during my younger days. I wasn’t usually idling so much as playing something. As the sun’s warmth reduced, we would descend on the grounds and play cricket, badminton and whatnot. We would play and chat and laugh as the evening moved from the light yellow to the inkish black, before heading in and doing such boring things as homework. And think of how we would play again, in school the next day and in the evening, at home.

Maybe the people I saw had such thoughts. I knew for a fact that people in the villages had a far greater love of sports. This was necessary for basic survival, and also because a lot of the jobs they sought – police, ITBP, etc – required a high level of physical fitness. Sometimes I wished I could join them. Surely they would play better than me, and would have some choice slang for my lack of skill. But that would still make my happy, for I would be going back to my days in school.

I also saw people sitting and chatting on rooftops. Sometimes they would be drinking tea, sometimes playing badminton. They were usually girls, but I saw a fair number of boys too. I knew that these people had probably woken up from a refreshing sleep, and were planning on spending a lazy evening before heading in and preparing for the next day. They had their own worlds, and in their worlds, work and play were all close at hand. They were inextricable parts of daily life, not sacrificed to one another on the altars of unemployment or workaholism. Maybe it was not so rosy after all. But when the sun’s fading glow takes you back decades, things do appear rosy from a CTC bus’s window.

Did I feel sorry for myself? I wouldn’t use the word sorry, for it would mean that I wasn’t happy where I was. Yes, I did yearn for the simpler life, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t want to be where I actually was. For I was going home after having worked, worked honestly and well. I don’t know about other people who work, but for me, going home after work is extremely satisfying. It seems to give me a sense of pride and a right to sit on the seat I am on at the moment. I know that even if I didn’t do anything, I could still take the ride if I paid. But I was going back after doing what society expected me to do. I could hold my head high and relax, and know that I was a contributing member of society.

Beyond that, there was also the feeling summarized by Robert Frost in his poem. Yes, I was going home, but it wasn’t exactly round the bend. Instead, there were miles to go, both literally and figuratively. I would pass across various areas – villages, towns, cities – on my way and maybe I’d get down and change my vehicle along the way. I would interact, very briefly and only in passing – but I would interact all the same and when I did, that would also be part of the overall journey. I was doing what had to be done, and whatever the problems and impediments, I would get home after doing my work. Many would baulk at the prospect, but not me. What I was doing was glorious.

All of this begs the question though – did I like the prospect of making the journey ? Considering it from the Kolkata at-home perspective, probably not. There were too many variables on that journey, and even one of them could serious fuck up the whole journey. What had been anticipated as a comfortable reminiscence of existence would turn into a desperate shoving game for an hour or more. What had been anticipated as a journey to an evening cup of tea would become one to a very late dinner. Above all, what had been anticipated as a relaxing journey may well turn into an exhausting one, both mentally and physically.

Yet all considered, I didn’t regret the journey while on the journey. You could say I didn’t have a choice, but I have seen enough people bitching about the journey they make to know that a lot of people would very much prefer if they didn’t have to travel to work at all. For me, travelling to work has always been part of the work itself. Tehatta was no exception, and while I’m happy that the journey is behind me, I can also say that all that time travelling taught me a lot about life – and reminiscing about life – that I would otherwise have learned.

We love comforting narratives that instill in us a sense of schadenfreude, especially the type that tell us that we are doing better than the ones we don’t like. Maybe not a whole lot better, and maybe the guys we dislike are still way ahead of us. But we still tend to take pleasure in thinking they aren’t doing that great right now, and we are.

This is the familiar narrative that the China-India economic competition has fallen into. Time was when we used to look the other way when questions of Chinese economic growth came up. Both the countries were growing, but one was growing steadily and had a head start. You’d say that was India based on history, but it was really China. In fact, ever since the reforms that occurred roughly around the time of Tiananmen Square, their economy has been growing rapidly.

Gone were the days of Mao, when the peasant was all that was there to China. Within decades, this peasant utopia had transformed itself into the manufacturing hub of the world. Countries,  ranging from the US to even India, outsourced their production to China. Initially it was just the small and simple stuff – nuts and bolts if you like – that came from China. The Chinese picked up the tab themselves, eventually manufacturing such stuff themselves and pushing it into other emerging markets like India, Indonesia, Vietnam and others.

Those were the days when you would disparage Chinese goods for their poor quality and still lower pricing. But India is famous for lapping up anything that is cheap, regardless of what it may do for competitors’ pockets or their own health. So we lapped up all the Chinese “branded” – fake branded that is – flashlights, toys, plastic equipment and so on. These were things India could easily make, but we simply preferred to import from China, often through dubious routes through Nepal and the North-East.

Over time, the orders from international buyers grew, including the humble ordinary Indian, and China could afford to upgrade its know-how. It began making motherboards, chipsets, sophisticated electronics and so on. For Western countries, initially. Then, as would be inevitable, it began making these on its own. Manufacturers like Foxconn, which produced goods for Motorola and Samsung, began to produce goods for Chinese startups like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and so on. I’m naming only smartphone companies here because they seem to be the most glamorous, but this know-how has spread to virtually every part of the manufacturing sphere.

Over time, this ensured that China was able to generate a steady income and produce more and more jobs for its humungous population. Along with its one-child policy, this ensured that support for the Communist regime survived, along with hundreds of people who lived on meagre wages. Sweatshops became a special feature, though even here change was apparent. Wages rose, the state gradually began regulating the market. Despite the significant leeway that the Chinese government still provided (including subsidies), these ensured that living standards rose and prosperity grew.

It also meant production costs went up. China was faced with the problem of ensuring that the market continued to expand at the same click while wages and prices rose. This was inevitable, since every developing country in the world has gone through this phase. For some, like Germany, this process meant imperial expansion leading to the First World War. For others, like the US, this meant indirectly colonizing an entire hemisphere and ensuring that any government remotely freedom-loving was crushed and replaced by a pliant military junta.

But China did not have such possibilities. For one, whereas Germany and the US had risen to power at a time when the world itself was undergoing the Industrial Revolution, China had come to the market at a time when these countries were already way ahead. In a way, the countries of the West offloaded their problems to China, and China was eager to lap it all up. Now China was faced with the same problems, and it had no one to offload them to. Or so it seems.

You see, we haven’t talked of India yet. What did India do? India followed a socialist model that had the unique capacity of ensuring a basic standard of living for everyone while putting the onus of ensuring this on the state instead of the market. The state would provide all the subsidies and rations needed for the poor to survive, while sustaining the complex and difficult economy that ensured these very people didn’t get the jobs that would make them self-reliant. You could argue that self-reliant people aren’t always well-fed, or happy, or in any way at an optimal level of existence. But they don’t depend on the state for everything, especially when the state itself is capricious and corrupt.

In structural terms, India followed what is called an Import Substitution Model. It meant that India would ensure it produced as much of everything as possible and so remove the colonial dependence on foreign imports. This was something it shared with China. Neither country had been especially favourably treated by the West, and even though India didn’t have a Communist government, it still had to go through the nightmare of the PL-480 scheme. So India sought to produce everything, with mixed results. In case of agriculture, the Green Revolution ensured – and still ensures – such economically unviable schemes as the Mid-day Meal and rice at Rs.2/kg. Food security became a reality, even if the mix of nutrients wasn’t always optimal.

But when it came to manufacturing, there was no industrial revolution. India focused on big industry, and state industry, and the two became one. So large steel plants, coal factories, dams and suchlike began to dot the Indian landscape, creating jobs for thousands but also  ensuring that vital manufacturing sectors like consumer goods, remained untapped.

It is said that if you sow the wind, you reap the storm. It is a Chinese proverb and India learnt it the hard way. Today we have a world-class heavy manufacturing industry, from cars to other equipment. These are exported the world over. So are foodgrains and meats, especially beef. But what about other goods? Consumer goods manufactured initially by small enterprises with low levels of sophistication and later followed by larger ones like the Chinese smartphone giants?

This hasn’t come to pass. We can and do manufacture the small goods – I’m talking flashlights and batteries again – but we haven’t managed to leverage the labour potential to develop sophisticated industries. Whereas China’s mix of primary and secondary sector has steadily moved towards the latter, we have had a more dubious record. Since the liberalization, we have managed to move towards the tertiary or service sector but the manufacturing sector has been neglected. IT companies have become all the rage, but the basic fundamentals of manufacturing have grown at rates that may best be described as the Hindu rate of growth.

Given this situation, our per capita income has shown improvement, but not so much on the back of manufacturing as the Chinese economy. With agriculture once again showing signs of stagnating, and the service sector capable of generating only so many jobs, there is still plenty of space that can be utilized for the manufacturing sector.

This has led to some ironical developments. About a decade back, Indian smartphone companies entered the market. The likes of Micromax set the market ablaze by cutting down on margins and of course, sourcing all their stuff from China. In case of one company – Lava – this became so obvious that tech review companies openly called the models by their own Chinese names rather than the rebranded ones Lava used. All of this made perfect sense. India did not have the ecosystem needed to make sophisticated electronics, but a market ready to consume some. Where do you go ? China of course.

But now the reverse is happening. Chinese companies, with far greater experience and patent portfolios, are moving into the Indian market. Despite the patriotic whining that we see from some quarters, it is all too obvious that the Chinese are looking for new markets given the increasing saturation of Western markets, and India provides one. They keep prices cheap, features rich and durability low. Indians lap it all up.

But there has also been a greater structural shift. Chinese companies have begun manufacturing in India, using Indian labour. This is not to say they manufacture everything. A good amount is imported, and a good amount is assembled. But still, manufacturing plants are being opened by the likes of Xiaomi and Foxconn. Beyond obvious PR value, this has an important implication – Chinese companies are doing what Indians, for all their import substitution, failed to do – utilize Indian labour in sophisticated sectors of manufacturing.

Today, this makes good economic sense for Chinese companies. Rather than import from China, they can make the phones at far lower cost in India itself and ensure a greater chunk of the still growing Indian market. This is vital to the Chinese, because as I have pointed out, they face the challenge of finding new markets at a time when their own labour’s wages and costs are going north. Made in India is becoming cheaper than Made in China.

Chinese tapping of our demographic dividend in the sector the Indian government has long championed as leading to self-sufficiency may be somewhat bemusing. But it has important lessons. For one, it is clear that structurally, the Indian and Chinese markets are at vastly different positions. The Chinese market is nearing the point where it makes the jump from developing to developed. As ambitious schemes such as the One Belt One Road scheme suggest, the Chinese today have the financial muscle and technical know-how, not to mention international clout, to push through grand schemes. This becomes important because their core sector – manufacturing – has taken them as far as it possibly can, and structural shifts are needed. These could be afforded by offloading some of the manufacturing to less developed countries – such as India – while keeping the more sophisticated and higher-paying tech jobs.

Remember Japan ? The country began modernizing in the late 19th Century and by the 1950s, had reached a similar point. Its manufacturing prowess was no longer capable of sustaining it. So it shifted to research and higher-end jobs while offloading actual manufacturing to South Korea. This fueled Korea’s growth as a manufacturing centre, eventually giving rise to such tech giants as LG and Samsung.

But the China-India story is not so simple. Remember that India already has a well-developed tech sector, and would come up with her own tech solutions. Already, there is some amount of research into manufacturing processes taking place in India, and it is bound to grow. China can never be so sure that India would stick to the lower end of the spectrum.

But such schadenfreude should still not be comforting. Inevitably, the Chinese dragon would slow down and run out of gas. Offloading and international partnerships would help it chug along for a while, but the slowdown is inevitable. When that happens, China will be faced with the prospect of moving to higher levels of manufacturing and research – including the tertiary sector – with probably lesser jobs than what manufacturing could provide. This would again create the problem of demographic dividend, one that China never managed to solve fully anyway. At such a juncture, China would begin to face the problems of developed countries – low economic growth, specialization into few fields, a weakening and increasingly outsourced manufacturing sector, growing unemployment and eventually, a large number of old people who fueled China’s growth during the boom years and would now demand sustenance in old age. If it can undergo the transition to a specialized, finance-centric and research-centric developed economy, China will thrive. If it can’t, it’ll end up in the infamous depressions that gripped the Asian tigers in the 1990s.

If this is what developed China would look like, what about India? India would get a chunk of the jobs the Chinese can no longer sustain, and probably the know-how to obtain some more jobs. Maybe it will begin exporting more goods, and get more FDI and FII. But would it be enough to push India to the position China finds itself in?

No. China grew through a painful process of learning and picking up where others left off. India will not get the same opportunities of learning and working, simply became the global economy is increasingly becoming conservative. China’s formative period didn’t include crippling recessions and protectionist policies like those of Donald Trump. Neither did they include credit crunches and downsizing of the type we see today.

So we will have to chart a different path to becoming a developed economy. We will have to find jobs for the secondary sector while ensuring that the primary sector gradually becomes leaner but also more productive. We will have to ensure that we get the know-how while developing our own capabilities. These capabilities include simpler laws, easier access to credit, greater infrastructure and so on. This would fuel both FDI and also domestic growth, which today can often be interconnected. Finally, we will have to give up the dream of a tertiary-sector driven economy and understand that this sector can at best be the handmaiden, not the queen. It will grow, but it too will have to become more focused upon developing the other two sectors than outsourcing to US companies.

If we can do all this, we can also reach the position China finds itself in today. Is it a happy destination? No destination in economics is happy, and in that sense, seeing a developed economy as a happy one is utopian. However, if we can get where China is today, we can at least have greater GDP, better per capita income, more access to basic services and healthcare and a society less dependent on the caprices of the state. The demographic problem will still not be solved, but we would have utilized a significant chunk of the dividend that exists today. At that juncture, maybe we would be able to solve the problems China faces today in our own way, in a different global economic scenario. Or we may not, and would sink into depression and eventual economic contraction.

But we have to get to where China is first. And for that, we have many miles to go.

Now that I’ve harangued about my personal life and its comforts and discomforts, let me talk about the professional part of my existence. This was the part for which I was paid by the government (literally) and was also the part which allowed me to live my life with dignity. The dignity of a teacher in a remote town of West Bengal.

As the regular reader of my blog (a fictional character I’m sure) would surely know, this wasn’t my first job as a teacher, but it was my first job as an Assistant Professor. In other words, this was my first permanent job with the full pay. Other than that, my duties were pretty much expected to be the same. After all, I’d already been a fruitful member of staff of Bhawanipur Educational Society College (BESC) for over half a year. How hard could Tehatta be ?

Pretty hard. At least that was my impression initially. Unlike the rather well-equipped college that I’d left, Tehatta literally had empty halls and emptier staff rolls. The college, from what I gleaned initially, had about half a dozen academic staff and about half that number of non-academic staff. This included the guards who doubled up as Group-C staff, Group-D staff who also doubled up as Group C staff, and a couple of group B staffers approaching superannuation.

The department itself had only one teacher apart from me, and thankfully, he took his job seriously. As such, the department was rather well run when I arrived, and with just one academic batch to teach, the course was also chugging along. As it turned out though, my department was somewhat lucky in having a teacher who had some experience. Others were completely staffed by new folks, many of whom joined within days or weeks of my joining. By late January our teaching strength had grown to about 10, two in each department, plus the Officer-in-Charge.

It is not my intention to detail all the classes I took or all the academic or non academic responsibilities I undertook. That would be the domain of a service book or a CAS report, neither of which should find a place on a personal blog like this one. What I’ll instead talk about is the very experience of working in a place unlike any I’d worked in before.

How was it unique ? I’ve already noted the staff crunch. Another problem was the location of the college. We proudly declared that the college was nestled “in the lap of nature, beside the beautiful river Jalangi” and forgot to mention that it was on the outskirts of even Tehatta in a place called Khaspur. Even the regulars of Tehatta didn’t wish to go there, and we were regularly charged extra by the e-rickshaws (or totos or tuktukis). We also didn’t mention that the college had practically nothing except grain and jute fields all around and barring a single tea shack ( which grew to two tea shacks by the time I left) there was little by way of refreshment. The college building itself was also modest – a two storey building that boasted of fresh paint and empty halls. Another building – the canteen and Students’ Room complex – would not become functional until the very last days of my stay in Tehatta.

Now to be fair, it had been worse. Among the first to join the college was the Officer in Charge or OIC, and he fondly recalled the days when he had to sit on the stairs of the latter building because the former was still under construction. I’d heard from my Head of Department how totos flatly refused to go to the college in the initial days, forcing teachers to undertake long negotiations. Food was in eternal short supply and initially, many had to skirt the river bank in order to go to the haat bazaar proper and get a meal.

But the most difficult – and urgent – task was handling the department. Despite the yeoman duty my HOD had undertaken prior to my arrival, there simply wasn’t enough in the department to run one. For one, there were no books available, and none would become available until some months later. Once they did, they could not be given out because the accession numbers had to be added first and no one amongst us knew how to add them. Needless to say, we didn’t have a librarian at hand to do the work.

But this problem was somewhat mitigated by the enthusiasm of the students. In Bhawanipur, I’d met students who had been all too seeped in the capitalist culture and considered education another marketable commodity in which their parents were investing. It would be far fetched to argue that the students of Tehatta were the  polar opposite, treating education as some sort of sacred duty. No, they also sought jobs, and education for them was also a means of getting them. Why else would subjects with less employability – like political science – get less applications while history was flooded with them ?

But there was one crucial difference. Students who came to study at the college came from backgrounds more diverse than can be listed here. However, many of them undertook substantial trouble just to turn up and study. They had to schedule their work (and almost all of them worked) to ensure that they had enough time to attend college (and tuitions, argh!) In some cases, they also had to cycle substantial distances before they could turn up to attend college. Last but not least, college for them wasn’t about freedom and enjoyment, but getting a degree which would get them somewhere in life. They took college more seriously than did the spoilt brats of BESC.

Teaching them therefore was somewhat easier. There were more inquisitive glances and less indiscipline than in BESC,  and this made life easier. I was teaching in Bengali for the first time in my life, and mistakes were inevitable. A time came when the students were correcting my language and I was appreciating it and improving myself. Note however that such correction was always in a respectful manner.

Again, the students had little to do in college other than to attend classes. Hence, only those who genuinely wished to attend classes came to college. This meant that the more unruly elements dropped out gradually and simply stopped coming. Despite our attempts to ensure attendance, there was little we could do to stop them, and this ensured that the class gradually came to be composed of more and more diligent students.

In all, I got to teach only two batches, one for one and a half years and the other for a year. Yet within that time, I tried and understood what their needs were, often through inputs by the students themselves. Demands for everything, from additional classes to even tests, were frequent. Whereas in city colleges the students shied away from the idea of a test, here I was actually asked to take tests and announce results early. This I did, and the response was something anyone, even a university teacher, would probably appreciate.

But it was not just the students who shaped my life at Tehatta Government College, though they proved to be the majoritarian influence. The other part of my life involved my colleagues. In BESC I’d found good people, but people who had become used to getting things done through staff and various committees. This allowed them to delegate work and somewhat inhibited their ability to learn the nitty gritty of running a college.

Tehatta however, had no staff to speak of and the committees were basically me and my colleagues. Inevitably, we had to cooperate and learn from whatever sources we could use. In doing so, we found out more about the way a college works than perhaps many learn in their entire careers. For instance, we learned how to fill out stock books and go through the complexities of admission. We learned how to create contingency lists and put up tender notices.

Most importantly however, we learned how to cooperate with each other. This is something some people never learn, doing what little they are asked to do and expecting the rest to adjust. If this was the attitude of even one person in Tehatta, the college would have been in the doldrums. However, we somehow, found it in us to work with each other and give 110% each time, reaching out over our own metaphorical cubicles without bumping anybody. Meetings were cordial, short and fruitful. Every moment spent in the committees ensured that we learned more and got to know each other better, thus becoming better colleagues and more efficient educational administrators.

But life went beyond committees too. There were the informal spaces within the formal space of the staff room, and here too, Tehatta shone. Most of us were young, and those who were not weren’t particularly averse to joining us youthful folks. From our relationships to the stupidities of our student days, we managed to discuss everything without ever feeling self-conscious or embarrassed. We could talk about each other’s shortcomings in front of each other, and no one would be offended. We could even have little wrestling matches when we felt like it, with (thankfully) no damage to college property.

Outside the staff room, we managed to mingle and play (literally) in the field. More than one winter afternoon was spent playing badminton or fooling around with a football. It helped that we had amongst us star players who could teach us a thing or two while thoroughly enjoying themselves.

The greatest banter was of course reserved for the convivial parties we had at night. You see, it was (and is) mandatory for government employees to attend college on a bandh day. So whenever a bandh was declared, we had to arrive the day earlier, or stay on an extra day (if the bandh day was our P-day). This inevitably meant that the night before the bandh day was one when many of us stayed in Tehatta, including those who normally did not. Since the vast majority of the teachers were male and young, it made sense to gather at one’s place and have a common meal.

While we could easily have arranged for someone to cook our food or even brought food from outside, here again we chose to cook ourselves. Apart from the small financial gain we had in cooking our own food, we also got the benefit of having food cooked by our colleague-chefs. We had so many of them (I wasn’t one of them unfortunately, though I aspired to be one), that each gathering had a different primary cook and a different primary dish. True that this dish was some variant of chicken curry, but it tasted different each time, and that was part of the fun.

Of course, when we speak of our colleagues and friends, there are things that cannot be put into writing, lest they become controversial. Tehatta was no different, though I can say that most controversies were resolved with remarkable amity, allowing us to continue working with each other the way we had before.

So, in hindsight, I can say that Tehatta taught me more than I could have hoped for. It wasn’t the cakewalk that some had predicted based on the small number of students, but it was also not the hell that many cityfolk had thought a mofussil college would be. One reason for this was of course, the fact that the students proved to be more sincere and hardworking than any I’ve seen  in the city. Another reason was the excellent set of teachers who managed to sink differences and work together in a way that helped all without burdening anyone. In doing so, the students and teachers taught me more than what I would have learned had I directly jumped from BESC to another city college, or even an established college in a remote region.

These lessons shall remain, even as the students and staff move on, and Tehatta itself moves farther and farther away from what I knew it to be. It would not be hyperbole to say that of the three places where I’ve taught till date, Tehatta Government College taught me more than any other, and for this, and for the great times I had with students and my colleagues, I shall always be thankful.

Au revoir!

(I’d have loved to add photos of the staff and students. However, while I realize that they share the same sentiments towards me as I do towards them, it is never wise to put up pictures of people without their permission. Also, the photos on this blog are downloadable and I wouldn’t want their photos to be misused just because of my sentimentality. Hence, where photos were the most called for, there will just be blocks and blocks of text.)

Once I’d “settled into” my guest room, it was time to eat. Remember the part of the dream where I would smoke and drink ? It also included buying packaged food and heating/cooking it at home. As evening grew into night, this part bit the dust.

I’d been acquainted with a restaurant about a mile away from where I lived. Around 8:30pm in the evening, I headed out, locking up the room carefully. The cooperative was deserted by this time, giving me the eerie feeling of being literally in a ghost town. The road leading to the restaurant (really the ghat, but I learnt that later) was also semi-deserted and many shops were shutting down. Coming from a city that doesn’t sleep at least till midnight, this was both a surprise and a worry.

Now let me get some things about Tehatta restaurants – and “mofussil” restaurants in general – out of the way. One, they call themselves hotels. Places with the critical component of real hotels – staying rooms – call themselves lodges and guest houses. The twain generally do not meet (I can recall only one example of a hotel providing living quarters – the one at Pantha Tirtha in Krishnanagar).

Secondly, they serve a set meal, with additions based on your choices. Think of it as a Zinger Meal, in which you can throw in additional items with a markup each time. Here, however, the basic meal consisted of daal (with the consistency of swamp water), spicy veg curry and an assortment of fries (potato fries, kochu fries, corolla fries, etc etc.). You could even get some chutnee on occasion. The additions included fish, eggs, chicken (on occasion) and double helpings of the non-veg parts. Base price Rs. 45. With Egg – Rs 55, With Fish – Rs. 60, with chicken Rs. 70. With mutton (rarely) Rs. 100.

In those early days I didn’t have the confidence of dealing with spicy non-veg dishes,  and stuck to the basic veg menu. Out of pity perhaps, I was given some additional fries every time. And for some reason (hopefully not pity), they always referred to me as “Sir”. This, as you’d have guessed, was also not among the Dickensian touches I’d have liked to my fantasy.

The remainder of the day – or night – passed uneventfully. Getting up the next day, I made a shopping list of things I’d need. It was winter, and one of the first things I’d need would be a heater. Also, the bucket. Extension cords, some snacks and real estate renting research. For all this, I’d need money.

One good thing about Tehatta was the large amount of financial institutions it had. There was the State Bank, Allahabad Bank, Canara Bank and United Bank of India. Then there were the ATMs – three of SBI, one of the other banks (except UBI). Now my salary from BESC had been credited to Uco Bank, so it really didn’t matter which ATM I used. After a heart-stopping moment when the Diebold (yep, that’s the name) machine simply stopped making any noise while coughing up my money, I had the cash to get the necessities.

I got hold all the things, except the bucket. While shopping for key rings (an added item), I was helpfully told about the possibility of a house being available for rent. After lunch, the shopkeeper and I set off to see the place that would eventually become my “camp” for most of my time in Tehatta. That done, I went back, rested, then set out and “booked” the bucket on my way to the hotel. On  the way back, I picked up my first steel bucket and clanged it back to the guest house. I fancied myself a lone silhouette on a dark road, walking home wearily, bucket in hand. It’d have been unconventional, no ?

The next day, I went to the college again. The OIC had turned up, as had the half a dozen teachers who had joined before me. Two were quite senior, the others roundabout my age,  and with as much experience as me. The staff room, even with the teachers in it, was rather empty. I’d come from a staff room where taking any chair from its place elicited loud complaints from the person who sat there, and his/her entire clique. Here, you could simply sit in any chair and not be disturbed at all. Even better, the chairs were the padded swivelling type that are usually reserved for dignitaries and corporate officials.

Beyond submitting my joining papers, I had little else to do, so I decided to head back to Kolkata as soon as the situation allowed. For one, I was running out of clean clothes. For another, I was already yearning for the comfort of my bed, the convenience of having things handed to you instead of going out and buying them, and above all, the familiarity of the city. I wanted more adventure, just not now.

The details of the journey will be covered in a piece dedicated to the journeys. For now, let me just add that I submitted my salary papers on the way  at Krishnanagar and then took the train home. My first tryst with Tehatta was over.

Over the next couple of weeks, I got to know the students better, met my HOD and chatted over a variety of things, and finally, finalized the house. Amidst it all, I got a call from my ex-girlfriend informing me that the MPhil form-fillup deadline was approaching, and I should move fast. You’d think I’d rush to complete the formalities, when actually, I’d decided that MPhil could wait. I probably wouldn’t be able to complete my MPhil staying in Tehatta. And even if I did, I wouldn’t do a good job.

Two hours of consultation with my parents later, it was time for a mea culpa on my part. I called the official who dealt with these things, learnt that the deadline was nearly over, and then called my caretaker. He politely told me that he would be up, and even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have any problems leaving.

Hectic packing and little sleep later, I was off at seven to a place called Howlia More. Before you point it you, I’d tell you that I’ve already exhausted the wordplay associated with the name. I could say, for instance, that the wind was howling as I headed into Howlia on the morning of 15th December 2015. I could also say that my soul was howling at the thought of navigating my way back from Tehatta to Kolkata for only the second time, and in a way that would allow me to reach before the university closed for the day.

Fancy language and self-doubt in tow, I found a bus and headed towards Krishnanagar. With the wind really howling now (the conductor insisted on keeping at least one window open), we whizzed past the countryside and reached Krishnanagar. Turns out, there was a Sealdah local due in just a while, and even more fortunately, the crowd wasn’t exactly WWE grade. I reached Kolkata around 1, and three hours of cross-Kolkata rushing about later, had submitted the form.

Yet this wasn’t the last screw up of the year. On the last day – 21st of December – we had the annual sports day. Given that I had just joined and had no role, all I had to do was turn up for the day and watch. Sadly, due to a particularly bad train journey, my feet refused to cooperate. The result was more tense moments, followed by a whole week in bed with Amazon providing me the books I needed to pass the MPhil coursework exam. Staying under blankets for a whole week while studying and sipping unhealthy amounts of coffee is a good thing. In excess quantity really.

I won’t go into the other anxieties related to getting my salary started, getting through coursework exams with the college session in full flow and the other issues that plagued my early months. After all, I’ve titled this piece “Meanings” and not “Anxieties of a New Job”. Instead, I’d go into the remaining one year of Tehatta with a more “general” approach than a narrative one, hoping – as ever – that I piss off as few people as possible.