Tomake marbe je araale barche shey … Ebar era gelo (Your terminator is growing under cover … now these people are gone). Karim Mollah, a small time tailor craned his head out of his small window to watch the overflowing humanity and unmindfully uttered these “unlikely” words. Unlikely because you would not usually hear a Muslim man quoting lines from Mahabharata — presaging Lord Krishna’s arrival to eliminate Kansha the cruel king.
No living person in Bolpur remembers when for the last time such a large sea of humanity marched down the one-mile connecter between Dak Bungalow Crossing and Bolpur Circle.
True, seldom has Bolpur seen a crowd explode like the one it did on Sunday when Union Home Minister Amit Shah led a huge road show calling for a second Parivartan (political change) in Bengal.
“This large crowd will herald the Parivartan… Parivartan to stop infiltration, to finish tolabazi (extortion) and end political violence so that we can transform Didi’s Bengal into Sonar Bangla as envisaged by the likes of Subhas Babu (Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose).”
The Mamata Banerjee Government epitomised “politicisation of administration, criminalisation of politics and institutionalisation of corruption”, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday told reporters launching a blistering attack on the Bengal ruling party Trinamool Congress.
Calling for a change of power the Home Minister singled out the Trinamool Congress’ bid to focus on its achievements saying despite tall claims Bengal had remained a laggard in every field and it was only Prime Minister Narendra Modi who could restore the State to its former glory. He also said a son of soil will be BJP’ Bengal CM candidate.
Though at a little distance district Trinamool Congress president Anubrata Mondal making a desperate attempt to squeeze out some attention from Shah’s rally — with a counter street march not even one-tenth in size of the first one — dismissed the saffron procession as one “filled with people ferried in from outside,” the chock-a-block balconies and brimming terraces said it all.
Monday, 21 December 2020 | Saugar Sengupta | Bolpur/Burdwan
