Feminist Rantings

I have been feeling a tad bad about dissing Bongs perhaps a bit too much recently. I have been feeling, I am perhaps not being fair (which not many Bengalis are, although that is their favourite shade of skin) since I told my Bengali neighbour to go back to Bangladesh when we had a fight over him not closing the lift door and making me climb 4 floors of stairs. On hind sight it is perhaps even ingratitude on my part as that was the only time I got to use my legs for anything other than pulling up pants in months. However, this piece is to redeem myself of the unfairness and give the Bongs what they are due, for once. My latest visit to Kolkata also gave me time and company to appreciate some of the Bongs I know and material to fill at least one page with good things about them. I will start right away: The best things I like about them is what that guy Arnab writes in his blog http://greatbong.net/ - “Bengalis, even more than macher jhol and Ganguly, love the ideal of the dispossesse...

“ Manipur, literally meaning "jewelled land", nestle deep within a lush green corner of North East India. Surrounded by blue hills with an oval valley at the centre, rich in art and tradition and surcharged with nature's pristine glory…” I look, annoyed, at the chirpy way my colleague has started the paper on Manipur. Almost like the ‘generous’ pieces the travel publications, I write for sometimes, demand out of run-down places that have been turned into tourist destinations by building concrete govt. tourism guest houses and more concrete hotels around them. It also exudes a sense of peace and calm that sometimes I have to write about the same places while being surrounded by loud Bengali tourists. To notice the blue hills, the lush greens, the rich tradition and culture of Manipur in October 2009 requires the same amount of ignorance (and the supposed bliss it brings), an extremely optimistic disposition (may be caused by pressure of pay cheque) and a...