The Great Indian Agony

What, indeed, is the great agony of the Indian middle class? A Western traveler, who had recently come wandering through Calcutta, posed this question to me. A young artist from the city had introduced me to the gentleman—a Finn by origin. It was the first day of the monsoon, the afternoon sky drowning under relentless rain, and knee-deep water had gathered at the crossing of Exide. I wondered what the plight must be at Panchanantala or Sukea Street. We stood at Nandan, conversing about art and literature, when suddenly he asked: “In your view, what is the great middle-class Indian agony? What do you think of it?”
 
The question pierced me with that peculiar mixture of embarrassment and melancholy so typical of the Indian heart. It seemed, in that instant, that in our national life nothing worthy of pride remains—only suffering remains to be discussed with the foreigner. Not joy, not cultural refinement, not history, not our aristocracy, not our artistic sensibility—no, he wished to hear of our agony. How many more years must we narrate the tale of our torment with somber faces? Satyajit Ray, Bibhutibhushan, Sarat Chandra—they had already told the world of countless sorrows in eloquent voices. And we, too, it seems, are doomed to continue the recital through age after age.
 
The traveler had taken a room at the Grand Hotel. He must have seen the glittering showrooms of New Market. Surely he had noticed the endless rows of advertisements for computer education pasted along the streets. On his way from Dharmatala to Exide, he had ridden the Metro—India’s subtlest stroke of modernity. At Nandan, he had seen Truffaut’s films, at the Academy of Fine Arts the paintings of Wasim Kapoor. The cultural ambience of Bengal had charmed him, the French cinema crowd at Nandan had amazed him. He found the enthusiasm of Calcutta’s people to be of a rare kind. And yet, after all this, why did he wish to know of the “great Indian agony”? Not our culture, not our commerce, not our literature or cinema, not even our intellectuals—no, it was our suffering that caught his curiosity. Why is it that most foreigners, upon coming to India, think first of Indian suffering? Is this not the residue of colonial hangover, something they themselves cannot yet shed?
 
There is in Indian life a strange transparency. Its stains, its poverty, its scars—everything is laid bare upon its surface. Nothing is hidden, nothing seeks concealment. However patriotic an Indian may feel in his heart, his bodily presence betrays his torment. The West, on the contrary, rarely reveals its darkness upon the surface; it is neatly wrapped in the glittering foil of wealth. Spend four months there, and you may never glimpse its inner shadows. The beggars, the hungry, the dispossessed—you must descend into the subway tunnels or creep under the bridges to find them. But here, in India, destitution and despair stand naked at the gates of five-star hotels. Step into Dumdum airport, and already one can sense the anguish of Bengal. And how many travelers will brush aside this surface of darkness to glimpse the luminous heart beneath? To the Western gaze, such vision is almost impossible.
 
Yet one must answer the question hurled at us. To be compelled to confess, “I hate this Oriental city-life,” would be a victory for the West. Still, truth must be spoken. To me, Calcutta has never seemed like the monotonous metropolitan cities of the West. Our streets indeed teem with beggars—this is undeniable. But unlike Western cities, we have fewer of those walking the streets with deranged minds. Of course, such comparisons are unworthy. Poverty, monotony, distortion—these are the common shadows of all city-life. Alongside luxury thrives want, beside beauty lies ugliness—this is universal knowledge.
 
But whenever the theme of Calcutta’s great agony rises, my mind instantly returns to one image: the bus journey. Truly, this is a torment without parallel. How many pages have been written on the transport systems of Hong Kong or Shanghai? How many comedies spun on the local trains of Bombay? Indeed, in the East we have a strange capacity: to laugh at what pains us most. Just as there are stories of grandfathers who, at their deathbed, would tell their sons: “Since you all are here, who is minding the shop?” Only in our land is such humor possible in the face of suffering.
 
One of my own relatives, long plagued with kidney trouble, was under regular dialysis. In his final hours, lying at home in failing health, his family gathered with water to ease his thirst. He, a great lover of cigarettes, asked them instead: “Can I not have one last smoke?” Such is our disposition—we trip on potholes, twist our ankles, yet burst into laughter at once. We have inherited this instinct: to turn agony into the food of laughter. Sanjib Chattopadhyay once wrote—it is our ancient habit to transmute torment into jest.
 
But let me speak of the bus journey: an ordeal of one hour, sometimes an hour and a half, during office rush. Its suffering surpasses both physical pain and mental anguish alike. Twice every day, the working man undergoes this torment. And each time, with a smile, he embraces it. Each time he descends from the bus, he forgets it again. Perhaps it is only this strange forgetfulness that has saved us from staging another freedom struggle!
 
When I told the foreign gentleman about the agony of bus travel, he was not satisfied. He could not comprehend. “But riding is always a pleasure for me,” he said. “The longer the road, the greater the joy. How can it turn to agony?” Thus I had to narrate to him the daily epic of a Calcutta bus ride—like a folk tale told with relish.
 
Many may argue that amid life’s myriad noble agonies, it is crude to highlight such a petty torment. To them I offer statistics. First: in India, a man dies in a road accident every five minutes. Second: a regular office-goer from South Calcutta to Dalhousie spends no less than three hours each day in bus journeys. This is no trifling number; nearly half the city’s population commutes daily by bus or train. And the suburban train journeys of the south are ten times more harrowing than bus rides. Thus, on average, eight percent of a worker’s life is consumed by the torment of travel. Eight percent of one’s lifetime devoured by pain—this is no child’s play.
 
Picture it: standing on one leg, the body bent like a bow, clutching a handle if one is fortunate, enduring pressure on every limb, drenched in sweat, an ironed office shirt soaked through, polished shoes crushed under alien weights, wallet clutched desperately from pickpockets. This great passage could well be compared to Yudhishthira’s mythical march through the ages.
 
A private bus built for thirty-six seats bears two hundred to two hundred and fifty passengers, pressed together in merciless heat, each man clinging to his job by the punctuality of this daily battle. Muscles torn by the pressure behind, skulls colliding as sudden brakes throw bodies in heaps. The road, cratered with potholes, makes the bus bounce like a ping-pong ball. Add to this the ceaseless jams, the long minutes of dangling in mid-air, the owners’ hunger for profit, the mad races between buses of the same route, reckless speeding and sudden delays. Women shriek obscenities, sweat-soaked armpits assault noses, someone sneezes full into your face, another sprays mouth freshener into the air, umbrellas pull handbags, chaos multiplies. In such monstrous conditions any sane man might fall ill—yet we adapt with ease.
 
I have seen an old man collapse of a stroke inside a bus; he was carried off, and the bus moved on without pause. I have seen a dangling child fall from the gate, yet the bus did not halt. Our haste is so desperate that humanity itself never has the time to catch up with us.
 
No one protests. No one suggests reform. No promises, no proposals. Not even in election campaigns is this agony mentioned. Year by year fuel prices rise, fares increase, yet passenger safety is ignored. Once, if you paid more for a minibus, you were assured a seat. That privilege vanished long ago. Now tall men in minibuses must stoop until their necks and backs merge in torment. Even spondylitis, the curse of many Indians, owes its origin to these daily journeys. State-run buses, charging almost double, were meant to prohibit standing passengers—yet even they hang with bodies like bats on wires. Special e-buses are launched with fanfare, but their fares remain beyond the reach of common folk. Cows, goats, sheep are transported with more care than our commuters. Only the dangling chickens tied to a bicycle handle can rival our plight.
 
For myself, I must confess: of all physical agonies I have suffered in life, the greatest is the agony of bus travel. Its unbearable intensity is known to every urban soul. Old men, when asked to attend a morning errand, reply: “Not in office time, my son—I shall come in the afternoon.” Strange, that we do not even complain. Stranger still, that the moment we step off the bus, we forget the ordeal altogether.
 
When I told the gentleman it takes forty minutes during office rush to go from Dharmatala to Exide, he refused to believe. I explained: “All this time you must stand, bent like a bow, one leg balanced amid hundreds of others, never knowing your center of gravity.” He stared at me suspiciously—as though hearing of a new species of agony. I offered: “Would you like to taste it yourself?” Boldly he agreed. We went to the bus stand. But seeing the steps already jammed with feet, he stepped back. For to enter, one needs the force of a Roman soldier with his shield pressing against the enemy’s charge. My foreign guest admitted defeat.
 
And yet, Calcutta holds within it an unused treasure—the waterways. Once the city was laced with canals, the Adi Ganga itself reduced to a trickle. In the late colonial years, there was talk of turning Calcutta into a Venice, of using its waterways for transport. That dream never materialized. Today, the canals choke with refuse. Had our administrators possessed the slightest practical wisdom, the city’s transport might have been transformed into something graceful. Instead, crores are spent on bridges and subways, half-planned, adding to misery rather than easing it. The government shows no concern. The people too have become indifferent. No public opinion, no movement. Let things be, they say—as though this sublime Indian agony is destined to remain forever, welded into our existence.
 
Thus have we absorbed agony into our social being, with an Indian kind of stoic tolerance. The darkness of our outward life has only grown denser for it.