Those were the turbulent times. Soviet Union, which was thought to be epitomising an alternative to capitalism was crumbling. Mikhail Gorbachev, who many think brought in a sense of freedom in the country, was held captive, as a maverick in Boris Yeltsin rose to assume power. The iron curtain disappeared and the fragility of the Soviet land was exposed to a wider world.
Academic discourses were galore; explaining the possible reasons behind the demise of what was a dreamland to many. Dr Suman K Mukherjee, who taught us Economics at the St Xavier's College, in Kolkata, had a very simple explanation to the stream of events that overtook the whole world. "Capitalism survives as it is the natural extension of human behaviour", said Dr Mukherjee in a prophetic way during one of his lectures.
This statement was probably the most effective lesson I had on economics and whenever I think about the happenings around me, I keep that in mind. Capitalism, despite all its odds, has survived. It has adapted itself with the changing time and capital still continues to be the dominant determinant of global production and profitability.
If capitalism is the natural extension of human behaviour so are greed and a desire to accumulate wealth. Wealth accumulation can take place in various ways and for different reasons but the ultimate objective is profit, to ensure comfortable and better lives for those who matter - it could be self or near and dear ones - whatever form they might envisage.
Any discussion or discourse on the crisis of capitalism or any societal problem often points a finger towards greed, as if it was the root cause. I think it is over simplifying the complexities that modern life holds. Greed and favouritism are nothing new in the historical genealogy of society.
The desire to see her son Bharata on the throne of Ayodhya prompted Kaikeyi to blackmail Dasaratha and send Rama to the forest for 14 years.
It was the greed for power which prompted Duryodhana to play all the tricks in the world to keep the Pandavas away from the throne. There are many such examples all around the world to show that greed is very instinctive to most human being. Hermits are those who are not prone to such innate behaviour.
To blame an instinctive human behaviour for the plight of humanity is nothing short of escapism and would hinder any analysis of the problem in its right earnest.
Imagine a time bereft of greed. This would have meant the collapse of capitalism. People would have been without any entrepreneurial zeal and the world wouldn't have seen many of the scientific inventions and discoveries, which changed our lives. Greed may be associated with a negative connotation in the moral sphere but from an economic perspective it is the driving force behind any aspiration for a better life.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
Monday
Saturday
Light still not in sight
There is a nip in the London air and with it an increased sense of gloom. The unemployment figure in the United Kingdom is now 2.62 million and over one million youth (16-24 years) are out of job. Despite the personal tragedy of the jobless people, politicking continues. David Cameron and his team blame the Eurozone crisis for the plight in Britain, while Labour leader Ed Miliband terms the path followed by the government as flawed. Whatever the reason, there is no denying that millions of Britons are facing a tough time and the policymakers have no clue to get over the crisis.
When I first arrived in Britain over 12 years ago, those were the bright days of neoliberalism. The Thatcher days of high inflation and unemployment were gone. The benefits of free trade and globalisation were reaching fruition. Britain was getting things cheap from all around the world. Walking along any London street you would bump into an Indian techie, who was in town to meet the ever increasing technological demand of London, the financial capital of the world.
Under the eyes of New Labour, the business districts of London thrived but the signs of decadence in the manufacturing heartland of Britain were overlooked. As factories closed one after another in the Midlands, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown carried out road shows in The City, encouraging speculation. Risk averse were considered to be outdated and trade was the mantra as manufacturing was left with the dusty world of the developing countries.
There was a sense of global merrymaking then. Indian software companies rejoiced as their business increased manifold, the manufacturers of garments in countries like Bangladesh plunged into new ventures as Primark provided cheap shirts in British high streets, The values of western modernity were muted for profits as the garment worker in a dingy room in Bangladesh sweated all day in exploitation to deliver the fruits of neoliberalism.
We were all happy then. Money was in the air. The parents and relations of people working abroad were exposed to foreign trips, western lifestyle and gadgets. Foreign cosmetics and gifts were presented to friends and relations at a much cheaper price than what was available back home. That was the day when capitalism was blooming at its best. It was spring time of financialisation. Much of the world overlooked manufacturing with the hope that financialisation would take care of all the global demands. Urbanisation was the order of the day, as if we can do without villages.
"The days of boom and the bust are over", remarked an arrogant Gordon Brown as if a new form of capitalism had unfolded. But the good days were soon to be over.
The global economy could still survive the bust of the dotcom bubble but the sub-prime mortgage was too big a burden for the American banks. The instrument which was used to justify the validity of neoliberalism, to show that even the Spanish Americans and Afro Caribbean, who are at the lower strata of the economic ladder in the US, had a stake in the system, collapsed like a pack of cards. Financial waste, as bad assets were termed, spread like wild fire and the mighty western world stood powerless.
We are yet to get over the crisis. Look at what is happening in Spain, Greece, Italy and the worst of all in Britain. People have been jobless for years; fresh graduates are languishing out of jobs after spending a fortune in higher education. The social fabric is cracking leading to economic consequences like the riots witnessed during the summer. Yet there is no solution in sight.
John Maynard Keynes provided the solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Could he provide an answer to the economic mess this time round and still be alive in the long run? Peter Clarke claims "Yes" but there are doubts about the Keynsian prescription of spending out of the crisis. Merely creating effective demand is not good enough. The cheap Chinese products are there to capitalise. China already pays for the huge budget deficits in the US and now there is call for them to bail out the crisis ridden Europe. Adam Smith has finally settled in Beijing but only after watching his economic doctrine of laissez faire crumble back home.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
When I first arrived in Britain over 12 years ago, those were the bright days of neoliberalism. The Thatcher days of high inflation and unemployment were gone. The benefits of free trade and globalisation were reaching fruition. Britain was getting things cheap from all around the world. Walking along any London street you would bump into an Indian techie, who was in town to meet the ever increasing technological demand of London, the financial capital of the world.
Under the eyes of New Labour, the business districts of London thrived but the signs of decadence in the manufacturing heartland of Britain were overlooked. As factories closed one after another in the Midlands, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown carried out road shows in The City, encouraging speculation. Risk averse were considered to be outdated and trade was the mantra as manufacturing was left with the dusty world of the developing countries.
There was a sense of global merrymaking then. Indian software companies rejoiced as their business increased manifold, the manufacturers of garments in countries like Bangladesh plunged into new ventures as Primark provided cheap shirts in British high streets, The values of western modernity were muted for profits as the garment worker in a dingy room in Bangladesh sweated all day in exploitation to deliver the fruits of neoliberalism.
We were all happy then. Money was in the air. The parents and relations of people working abroad were exposed to foreign trips, western lifestyle and gadgets. Foreign cosmetics and gifts were presented to friends and relations at a much cheaper price than what was available back home. That was the day when capitalism was blooming at its best. It was spring time of financialisation. Much of the world overlooked manufacturing with the hope that financialisation would take care of all the global demands. Urbanisation was the order of the day, as if we can do without villages.
"The days of boom and the bust are over", remarked an arrogant Gordon Brown as if a new form of capitalism had unfolded. But the good days were soon to be over.
The global economy could still survive the bust of the dotcom bubble but the sub-prime mortgage was too big a burden for the American banks. The instrument which was used to justify the validity of neoliberalism, to show that even the Spanish Americans and Afro Caribbean, who are at the lower strata of the economic ladder in the US, had a stake in the system, collapsed like a pack of cards. Financial waste, as bad assets were termed, spread like wild fire and the mighty western world stood powerless.
We are yet to get over the crisis. Look at what is happening in Spain, Greece, Italy and the worst of all in Britain. People have been jobless for years; fresh graduates are languishing out of jobs after spending a fortune in higher education. The social fabric is cracking leading to economic consequences like the riots witnessed during the summer. Yet there is no solution in sight.
John Maynard Keynes provided the solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Could he provide an answer to the economic mess this time round and still be alive in the long run? Peter Clarke claims "Yes" but there are doubts about the Keynsian prescription of spending out of the crisis. Merely creating effective demand is not good enough. The cheap Chinese products are there to capitalise. China already pays for the huge budget deficits in the US and now there is call for them to bail out the crisis ridden Europe. Adam Smith has finally settled in Beijing but only after watching his economic doctrine of laissez faire crumble back home.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
Monday
That was more than Cricket
I gulped back emotions on my way home as I read an eveninger the day the Southwark Crown court judge pronounced his verdict against three Pakistani cricketers for spot fixing. "It's not cricket", observed the judge. Cricket has been tarnished and the supporters cheated, said an outraged world, which watched the transformation of the game, over the past decades, from being a passion to a money spinner. As the cricketing fraternity groped to come to terms with another crisis, I regaled over how the game brought me happiness and joy as I grew up at a non-descript place, far away from the facilities of a modern city.
My tryst with cricket started towards the end of 1976, when Glenn Turner’s New Zealand visited India. We were living in Sahibganj then and my uncle bought me a transistor to listen to the commentary. I do not remember how as a six-year-old, I got hooked to cricket then but can still recall the names of all the players of the Indian side. Bishen Bedi was the captain and with his battery of magical spinners, Chandrashekhar, Prasanna, Venkatraghavan, literally stripped the Kiwis off all their cricketing might. India won the series 2-0 and my liking for cricket was set rolling.
Anand Setelwad, Balu Alaganan, Rajan Bala, Sushil Doshi, Murali Manohar Manju were the commentators then and on weekends, I would sit all day next to the transistor with a scorecard – dotting every odd ball and noting every boundary, imagining as if I was seated among the players. (Pavilion and Press Box were not part of my vocabulary then.)
After the Kiwis left, Tony Greig’s England visited India to play a five test series. I do not know why the visiting side was called the MCC. Tony Greig with his flamboyance mesmerised those who were lucky to watch him play as the visitors thrashed India. The hosts only managed to win the test at Bangalore where Bedi took six wickets in the second innings. The Indian skipper was my hero then and the day India lost at the Eden Gardens I literally cried and refused my lunch, inviting ridicule from relations who would tease me, saying that as the players enjoyed in their hotels I cried at home. My liking for Bedi continued even as I grew older and despite his maverick behaviour, so as my dislike for John Lever, who became infamous for the Vaseline controversy during the same series.
Cricket was not an all year phenomenon then. Our winter vacations, after annual examinations, were packaged with no studies - either in the morning or in the evening, oranges in the bright afternoon sunshine, Joynagar-er Moa (a winter delicacy in Bengal), Barodin-er cake (Christmas cake), family picnics, circus, a trip to the zoo and of course cricket. There was no television then but transistors would provide our minds with a more intense view of what was going on and off the field. For a very long time I dreamt of becoming a commentator, often commentating of mock cricket matches and drawing wrath from the elders,
The over exposure of cricket now has dried up the tremendous appetite I had for the game. But during the school winter holidays if we would go on any trip outside Kolkata, I would make sure that a transistor was with us. Remember the series that India played in 1977-1978, when Bob Simpson made a comeback as captain after most of the world-class players joined the World Series Cricket of Kerry Packer. I remember, India losing the first two tests and then making a dramatic comeback in the next two. We were then at Puri and I would get up very early every morning (due to the time difference between Australia and India) to listen to the heroic deeds of the Indian cricketers. Bruce Yardly, Graham Yallop, Peter Toohey, Kim Hughes were some of the familiar names then in the Aussie side. Finally, India lost the final test and Australia clinched the series.
Cricket then was like a fairly tale for many of us. When India was playing Alvin Kalicharan’s West Indies at the Eden gardens, I remember a young relation of mine shouting in the middle of the night as if the visitors have lost a wicket. The game stirred your imagination to unimaginable limits. When there was any test at Kolkata, we (the children in the family) would be taken in a group a day before the start of the match to places around Grand Hotel, the only place where the cricketers were put up then, and Eden Gardens. The places then wore a festive look with decorative lights all around. Strolling past the Grand Hotel or outside the Eden Gardens we would have a surreal feeling of being in the midst of the players or watching the match from the gallery. My real life entry to the Eden Gardens happened much later and on the very first occasion I took my shoes off to rub my barefoot on the grass of the ground, which enthralled my imagination and captured my dreams for years.
Within days of me joining the Financial Express, India was playing West Indies in the day and night final of the Wills World Series in Kolkata. My friend Ritwik Mukherjee had managed a ticket for me and I silently disappeared in the afternoon to watch the match. India finally won and the next day my Resident Editor Buroshiva Dasgupta called me up to express his disappointment at the sudden disappearance but spared me as India had clinched the tournament.
Cricket has been a long time love for me, a companion at times and a fantasy till I got busy with other things in life. As I read through the pages of the tabloid my mind was filled not with anguish for the disrepute the Pakistani trio brought to the game but with some sweet memories which made my life more joyous than one would have expected.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
My tryst with cricket started towards the end of 1976, when Glenn Turner’s New Zealand visited India. We were living in Sahibganj then and my uncle bought me a transistor to listen to the commentary. I do not remember how as a six-year-old, I got hooked to cricket then but can still recall the names of all the players of the Indian side. Bishen Bedi was the captain and with his battery of magical spinners, Chandrashekhar, Prasanna, Venkatraghavan, literally stripped the Kiwis off all their cricketing might. India won the series 2-0 and my liking for cricket was set rolling.
Anand Setelwad, Balu Alaganan, Rajan Bala, Sushil Doshi, Murali Manohar Manju were the commentators then and on weekends, I would sit all day next to the transistor with a scorecard – dotting every odd ball and noting every boundary, imagining as if I was seated among the players. (Pavilion and Press Box were not part of my vocabulary then.)
After the Kiwis left, Tony Greig’s England visited India to play a five test series. I do not know why the visiting side was called the MCC. Tony Greig with his flamboyance mesmerised those who were lucky to watch him play as the visitors thrashed India. The hosts only managed to win the test at Bangalore where Bedi took six wickets in the second innings. The Indian skipper was my hero then and the day India lost at the Eden Gardens I literally cried and refused my lunch, inviting ridicule from relations who would tease me, saying that as the players enjoyed in their hotels I cried at home. My liking for Bedi continued even as I grew older and despite his maverick behaviour, so as my dislike for John Lever, who became infamous for the Vaseline controversy during the same series.
Cricket was not an all year phenomenon then. Our winter vacations, after annual examinations, were packaged with no studies - either in the morning or in the evening, oranges in the bright afternoon sunshine, Joynagar-er Moa (a winter delicacy in Bengal), Barodin-er cake (Christmas cake), family picnics, circus, a trip to the zoo and of course cricket. There was no television then but transistors would provide our minds with a more intense view of what was going on and off the field. For a very long time I dreamt of becoming a commentator, often commentating of mock cricket matches and drawing wrath from the elders,
The over exposure of cricket now has dried up the tremendous appetite I had for the game. But during the school winter holidays if we would go on any trip outside Kolkata, I would make sure that a transistor was with us. Remember the series that India played in 1977-1978, when Bob Simpson made a comeback as captain after most of the world-class players joined the World Series Cricket of Kerry Packer. I remember, India losing the first two tests and then making a dramatic comeback in the next two. We were then at Puri and I would get up very early every morning (due to the time difference between Australia and India) to listen to the heroic deeds of the Indian cricketers. Bruce Yardly, Graham Yallop, Peter Toohey, Kim Hughes were some of the familiar names then in the Aussie side. Finally, India lost the final test and Australia clinched the series.
Cricket then was like a fairly tale for many of us. When India was playing Alvin Kalicharan’s West Indies at the Eden gardens, I remember a young relation of mine shouting in the middle of the night as if the visitors have lost a wicket. The game stirred your imagination to unimaginable limits. When there was any test at Kolkata, we (the children in the family) would be taken in a group a day before the start of the match to places around Grand Hotel, the only place where the cricketers were put up then, and Eden Gardens. The places then wore a festive look with decorative lights all around. Strolling past the Grand Hotel or outside the Eden Gardens we would have a surreal feeling of being in the midst of the players or watching the match from the gallery. My real life entry to the Eden Gardens happened much later and on the very first occasion I took my shoes off to rub my barefoot on the grass of the ground, which enthralled my imagination and captured my dreams for years.
Within days of me joining the Financial Express, India was playing West Indies in the day and night final of the Wills World Series in Kolkata. My friend Ritwik Mukherjee had managed a ticket for me and I silently disappeared in the afternoon to watch the match. India finally won and the next day my Resident Editor Buroshiva Dasgupta called me up to express his disappointment at the sudden disappearance but spared me as India had clinched the tournament.
Cricket has been a long time love for me, a companion at times and a fantasy till I got busy with other things in life. As I read through the pages of the tabloid my mind was filled not with anguish for the disrepute the Pakistani trio brought to the game but with some sweet memories which made my life more joyous than one would have expected.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
Thursday
Prosperity Without Progress
Every time I visit Belgharia, I have a sense of despair. Not least because of the potholes, puddles or household rubbish dumped on the roadside, as they are all to be seen in the part of London I live in, especially in this age of austerity, but because the civic life hasn't changed in Belgharia despite signs of prosperity. The number of apartments, private cars and shops have all increased significantly even in those parts of the suburb, which once housed many refugee families like mine.
I heard from my grandmother, how difficult it was for them to have a bucketful of clean drinking water. The women folk would wait in a queue for hours in front of a dripping tap for drinking water, while the household washing were carried out by water from roadside puddles, created mostly due to lack of drainage facilities.
There was no electricity, she would tell me, and the roads were reduced to arable land, especially during the monsoon and people would have to fold their trousers up to knee height to travel to and fro from the railway station. Not of this proportion though, but even 30 years ago I had witnessed pretty bad roads and water logging near Adarsha Nagar, the vast stretch of land adjacent to what is now known as the Belgharia Expressway.
Things have apparently improved over the years. The disposable incomes of the people of Belgharia, which was once likened with Vitenam by the Communists, have increased manifold. The number of concrete houses and apartments have gone up. Belgharia has now many more shops, schools, a flyover and the number of personal vehicles has gone up substantially. The people of Belgharia are generally much better off than from my grandmother's generation.
Affluence, indeed speaks of the prosperous transformation that this place has undergone, yet every time I have visited the place over the past 12 years, I felt remorse. Despite the flyover, every year many lives are unnecessarily lost while crossing the railway lines, people are exposed to accidents near both ends of the flyover as there are no policemen to control the irresponsible traffic, water bodies are encroached by promoters and other vested interests, polluting vehicles are parked near schools and above all the people in this place are yet to acknowledge and appreciate the importance of keeping their surroundings clean.
The phenomenal changes that have been taking place all around the world, it seems, have failed to influence the place, and to me Belgharia still remains a place of the past. Whenever I mention this to my family and friends back home they blame me for being snooty, make oblique references as if I have come from a different planet, but before moving to London in 1999, I have spent most of my life in the dusty suburb. The problems that I see in Belgharia today never struck me when I lived there. I know that proximity, or the lack of it, gives a different perspective, especially when one is more exposed to the wider world.
However, I also notice a sense of resignation among the residents there today. Ask any resident of Belgharia about their travails and the average answer would be 'bole ar ki habe, kono kichhu to hoar noy' (meaning nothing will change whatsoever so what's the point of trying to address the issues or resolving them). What they forget though is that change only comes for the deserving.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
 |
| Public dumping of garbage is an essential component of the image associated with Belgharia |
There was no electricity, she would tell me, and the roads were reduced to arable land, especially during the monsoon and people would have to fold their trousers up to knee height to travel to and fro from the railway station. Not of this proportion though, but even 30 years ago I had witnessed pretty bad roads and water logging near Adarsha Nagar, the vast stretch of land adjacent to what is now known as the Belgharia Expressway.
Things have apparently improved over the years. The disposable incomes of the people of Belgharia, which was once likened with Vitenam by the Communists, have increased manifold. The number of concrete houses and apartments have gone up. Belgharia has now many more shops, schools, a flyover and the number of personal vehicles has gone up substantially. The people of Belgharia are generally much better off than from my grandmother's generation.
Affluence, indeed speaks of the prosperous transformation that this place has undergone, yet every time I have visited the place over the past 12 years, I felt remorse. Despite the flyover, every year many lives are unnecessarily lost while crossing the railway lines, people are exposed to accidents near both ends of the flyover as there are no policemen to control the irresponsible traffic, water bodies are encroached by promoters and other vested interests, polluting vehicles are parked near schools and above all the people in this place are yet to acknowledge and appreciate the importance of keeping their surroundings clean.
 |
| Organisations which claim to be doing public good are stealthily encroaching communal water-bodies in Jatin Das Nagar |
However, I also notice a sense of resignation among the residents there today. Ask any resident of Belgharia about their travails and the average answer would be 'bole ar ki habe, kono kichhu to hoar noy' (meaning nothing will change whatsoever so what's the point of trying to address the issues or resolving them). What they forget though is that change only comes for the deserving.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
Tuesday
Remembering Arindam Sen
It was the second half of 1987 and we had a new Economics teacher in class XII. Room number 6, just beside the college office in St Xavier's College had by then descended into total chaos. Suddenly a well built man rushed out of the staff room and as he entered the classroom, the cacophony literally changed to pin drop silence.
That was my first encounter with Arindam Sen, who had a tremendous dislike for students coming from posh, upmarket schools. Sen, as he was known among the Economics Honours students, used to teach us Mathematical Economics. His trademark was a cotton side bag, which hardly matched with the sophistication of the college, and would draw curves with their axes in thin air.
Sen, was hardly bothered if anyone attended his class or not and would circulate a sheet of paper for the students in the room to write down their roll numbers for attendance. Taking advantage of his two hour classes we would often slip into the noon or matinee shows at cinema halls in central Kolkata. Our friend Soumyananda Dinda, whom Sen liked for his humble background, low profile and sincerity, was entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring our requisite attendance as we enjoyed outside. Only once as a fellow student was trying to skip his class, Sen retorted that he was 'physically, mentally and intellectually more able than all of us". If someone ever tried to act smart, Sen's treatment would be to ask him questions ranging from Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' to what not.
From the looks, however, he seemed a very idealistic person. Mostly sporting a set of crumpled Punjabi-Pajama (Kurta-Pyjama), he would often push his dense hair from over his broad forehead while delving with the mathematical expression of complicated economic theories, without any concern as to whether they made any sense to a majority of the students in the class.
Often the very moment becomes more important than what was fundamental, and it was so true with Sen. Rather than trying to relate to what he was trying to explain, we would either bunk his classes or would scribble on paper, pretending as if we were listening to his lectures with apt attention.
From disinterest grew indifference and gradually Sen turned out to be an enigma for many of us. It was so intense that a joke was doing the rounds when we were in college and it related Sen with the celebrated economist Paul Samuleson. The joke went like this: once Samuelson landed at the Kolkata Airport and someone present to receive him whispered in his ear that Arindam Sen taught Economics in a city college. Hearing Sen's name, Samuelson got so puzzled, fearing that Sen's mathematical analysis of Economics would be totally incomprehensible to him, that he took the next flight to the United States.
This may just have been a joke but the enigma surrounding Sen continued within me even after I left college. So when I heard from the famous Bengali singer Srikanto Acharya (who incidentally is a Xaverian but from the Political Science Department) a couple of months ago that Sen passed away, the first thing that crossed my mind was the enigma that surrounded him. Despite not relating to his lectures, I always wondered what his position would have been on some of the complex issues relating to economic theory or if he had some published work, which would give us some idea about his thinking on controversial topics.
One thing is for sure, he was a very determined person and I have a personal story to complement that. I used to take private tuition in Mathematics from Dr Shankar Prasad Bhattacharya, who used to live on the same road as Sen at Sinthee in north Kolkata. When Sen was adapting himself to the mathematical treatment of Economics, he would often seek help from Dr Bhattacharya. In Dr Bhattacharya's own words, Sen wouldn't bother about the time of the day, be it morning or evening, and would rush to him (Dr Bhattacharya) whenever he was faced with any mathematical problem. Dr Bhattacharya himself told me that it was very unusual for a man of Sen's stature and age and only speaks of his determination and dedication for the subject.
Sen still remains an enigmatic person for me and I would like to untangle the intellectual puzzle in him by searching for his works which would give me some idea about his original thinking.
All comments are personal.
That was my first encounter with Arindam Sen, who had a tremendous dislike for students coming from posh, upmarket schools. Sen, as he was known among the Economics Honours students, used to teach us Mathematical Economics. His trademark was a cotton side bag, which hardly matched with the sophistication of the college, and would draw curves with their axes in thin air.
Sen, was hardly bothered if anyone attended his class or not and would circulate a sheet of paper for the students in the room to write down their roll numbers for attendance. Taking advantage of his two hour classes we would often slip into the noon or matinee shows at cinema halls in central Kolkata. Our friend Soumyananda Dinda, whom Sen liked for his humble background, low profile and sincerity, was entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring our requisite attendance as we enjoyed outside. Only once as a fellow student was trying to skip his class, Sen retorted that he was 'physically, mentally and intellectually more able than all of us". If someone ever tried to act smart, Sen's treatment would be to ask him questions ranging from Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' to what not.
From the looks, however, he seemed a very idealistic person. Mostly sporting a set of crumpled Punjabi-Pajama (Kurta-Pyjama), he would often push his dense hair from over his broad forehead while delving with the mathematical expression of complicated economic theories, without any concern as to whether they made any sense to a majority of the students in the class.
Often the very moment becomes more important than what was fundamental, and it was so true with Sen. Rather than trying to relate to what he was trying to explain, we would either bunk his classes or would scribble on paper, pretending as if we were listening to his lectures with apt attention.
From disinterest grew indifference and gradually Sen turned out to be an enigma for many of us. It was so intense that a joke was doing the rounds when we were in college and it related Sen with the celebrated economist Paul Samuleson. The joke went like this: once Samuelson landed at the Kolkata Airport and someone present to receive him whispered in his ear that Arindam Sen taught Economics in a city college. Hearing Sen's name, Samuelson got so puzzled, fearing that Sen's mathematical analysis of Economics would be totally incomprehensible to him, that he took the next flight to the United States.
This may just have been a joke but the enigma surrounding Sen continued within me even after I left college. So when I heard from the famous Bengali singer Srikanto Acharya (who incidentally is a Xaverian but from the Political Science Department) a couple of months ago that Sen passed away, the first thing that crossed my mind was the enigma that surrounded him. Despite not relating to his lectures, I always wondered what his position would have been on some of the complex issues relating to economic theory or if he had some published work, which would give us some idea about his thinking on controversial topics.
One thing is for sure, he was a very determined person and I have a personal story to complement that. I used to take private tuition in Mathematics from Dr Shankar Prasad Bhattacharya, who used to live on the same road as Sen at Sinthee in north Kolkata. When Sen was adapting himself to the mathematical treatment of Economics, he would often seek help from Dr Bhattacharya. In Dr Bhattacharya's own words, Sen wouldn't bother about the time of the day, be it morning or evening, and would rush to him (Dr Bhattacharya) whenever he was faced with any mathematical problem. Dr Bhattacharya himself told me that it was very unusual for a man of Sen's stature and age and only speaks of his determination and dedication for the subject.
Sen still remains an enigmatic person for me and I would like to untangle the intellectual puzzle in him by searching for his works which would give me some idea about his original thinking.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
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