Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Millions are spent on slum development - putting in water, electricity,
et cetera - but then there's no plan for the continued upkeep. It all
deteriorates again in a matter of years. I can't imagine what it will be
like, even in a few years. The population is staggering already. Refugees
from Bangladesh are still coming across. No one supports Indira Gandhi's
'emergency,' or the reasons for installing it, but there were lots of good
things achieved by it. The country was more efficient, trees were planted,
slums cleared, public works projects begun. I don't, however, support
that dreadful forced family planning. But you don't help people by just
giving them money.'
'Would you support another 'emergency'?'
'Calcutta
is
an emergency but, no, I don't support that approach.
Something like it should be considered on a local level, however. The
Bengalis - those armchair Marxists - just want to
talk
about it, though,
or write poems about it.
Doing
something would require agreement,
and they can never
agree
on anything. To that extent, I blame them for
the conditions they have to live in.'
The talk turned to the social ills currently besetting Britain. The home
of the Raj was decaying faster than the capital of its Indian empire.
He laughed. 'We forget it's not just India that's in a mess. I never
thought I'd see the Western world in such a state. But there are still good
people everywhere. People who
try
- and
that's
what really counts, no?'
When breakfast was over, I wandered alone around the resonantly
empty Tollygunge clubhouse, staring up at and being stared back at by
portraits of past presidents. Shafts of dusty sunlight illuminated the dark
polished wood surfaces. Club staff busied themselves with the morning's
tasks, most of them patently happy to exist in this oasis of order and
calm. They knew the alternative better than most.
Saying farewell to the Sinhas was hard. I had to admire the way they
coped with the collapse of their fortunes, though. In Calcutta, materialism
doesn't mean what it does elsewhere: it often means just having a roof
and food. They had that, and more, and were content. It was not physical
comforts they felt a lack of.
A few months after I left India a cable arrived at my home from Lady
Sinha saying Sanna had died. In her own way, Kali Ma had saved
him.
