Humor - The Revenge of Pheluda

A few weeks ago, I had posted a blog called “May God Bless Pheluda” (for those who have not read it, please go to my blog-spot and check out “Humor – May God Bless Pheluda”). Pheluda of course, is the fictional name of the middle-aged Bengali gentleman from Kolkata I had bumped into during my last trekking trip to Uttaranchal.

The blog was meant to (gently) poke fun at middle-class Kolkata Bengalis who travel all over India on vacation during the Durga Puja break in October. Come Durga Puja time, and the shawls, mufflers, monkey caps/ski-masks and bedrolls suddenly make an appearance. Never mind that temperatures in most of India in October are still relatively balmy. Pheluda is prepared for the worst as far as the weather is concerned. He has read about global warming but is still not convinced that its adverse effects have reached the hills of Uttaranchal and Darjeeling.

I love Pheluda and his breed, I really do – as I mentioned in that blog. And I am part-Bengali myself, though I was born and brought up in Mumbai, that most cosmopolitan of all Indian cities. So in case anyone feels that I have slighted Pheluda in any way whatsoever, let me say that he is doing well, very well – thank you very much. And he does not care what people like you or me think.

As a dedicated Marxist-Leninist, his mind is at rest because he knows that he has backed the right political horse, so to speak. Though he was one of the many angry young leftist ideologues who stormed the barricades in the 1960s and early 1970s, he is disturbed by the violent Naxalite movements in large swathes of North and Eastern India. Why can’t those fellows follow enlightened Bengal, he asks, and just vote the people with the right political beliefs into power? Why the violence and the endless class struggle?

He strongly supports Buddhadeb Bhattarcharya, the current Chief Minister of communist led West Bengal. “Clean man”, he says to all who will listen. “Not a whiff of scandal or corruption has ever touched Budoda”. This is true. He knows that the future of Bengal is in capable hands, with Budoda in charge.

However, even a committed Marxist-Leninist like Pheluda has his doubts about the world and his place in it, just like the rest of us. He is not sure about Budoda’s new industrial policy for Bengal. After spending decades on agrarian land reform, is Budoda doing the right thing by inviting the hated class enemy – the petty bourgeoisie, Indian and western capitalists, to set up manufacturing units – in places like Nandigram? And what will happen to the landless laborers that supported the Communist Party in the first place? Whatever happened to the slogan “Death to the capitalists and all their running dogs?” Pheluda loved that slogan back in the 1960s.

Pheluda does not have the answers to these vexing questions. But he does know that something needs to be done. His brother now lives in the US, where he is a respected astrophysicist and academic at a very well reputed American university. He loves his brother dearly and paid for part of his education in the US. He is very happy for his brother though sadly, he feels that he has been seduced and corrupted by the capitalist way of life. His brother sends pictures of his large house with its two car garage in an affluent, leafy American suburb and also of vacations in Europe. On their bi-annual visits to India, his brother’s children speak in a strange accent and Pheluda cannot understand them when they speak to him in English – a language he knows well.

His sister’s sons have moved out of Kolkata and live and work in call centers and information technology parks in Mumbai and Bangalore. Pheluda knows that Bengal needs jobs and employment. He is just not sure that inviting capitalists is the best way to do that.

On the domestic front, there are difficult issues to deal with as well. His daughter who has recently graduated from college wears tight, revealing clothes and watches too much MTV. Pheluda also suspects her of having a tempestuous romantic relationship with that young Marwari fellow who lives across the road, the one whose father Pheluda suspects of hoarding “black” money. Of course, Pheluda has no proof of this, and has not brought it up with her. She never discusses her life with him and never listens to him. She is just like her mother. He hopes that he has given her a proper Bengali upbringing, but he still worries sometimes. I need to get her married soon, he reminds himself, to a nice Bengali boy.

His son has a pony-tail and spends his spare time listening to strange music – he calls it “rap” and “trance”. These words have different connotations for Pheluda. A “trance” was something one went into when one smoked too much of that hashish that his old dealer used to sell outside Howrah station. Of course, Pheluda has not told his family of his somewhat checkered youth. No need for them to know – though he has fond memories of that potent hashish. Besides, what does “trance” have to do with music?

When he asks his son about what he calls “gangsta rap”, the boy replies that this is the way that the oppressed boyz in the ‘hood choose to express themselves. What boys and what is ‘hood? And if these boys are indeed oppressed and poor, how come they are driving around in expensive Mercedes Benz cars in those MTV music videos, with attractive, scantily clad girls writhing in their laps? By the way, Pheluda is a fair-minded man and will be the first to admit that some of these women in the videos are indeed nice to look at. And what do the mean streets of East Los Angeles have to do with his nice, peaceful “paraa” in Kolkata? More questions that Pheluda does not have an answer to.

His children no longer get their clothes stitched from the friendly “paraa” tailor, an old man Pheluda has known since his own youth. Instead, they go to one of the opulent malls that have recently sprung up in Kolkata, and buy brands with strange (and sometimes obscene) names such as Mango and FCUK (Pheluda has banned the wearing of any clothes with the logo “FCUK” in his home). He is a fair-minded man, but one has to draw the line somewhere.

Yes indeed, the world is changing, but Pheluda is a philosophical man. He has done the best for his family for the thirty years that he has worked. He has saved enough for his son’s education and his daughter’s marriage. None of his family members share his belief in Communism as a force of salvation. This disappoints Pheluda, but in the end, he loves them and wants all of them to be happy – even if that means his daughter marrying that Marwari fellow who lives across the road.