Oh Calcutta! and no-frills shopping

The Calcutta Telegraph has been publishing a multi-parter series of reminiscences by Czech-born Mike Hruska (not sure if he's the same as the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" visual arts guy whom google turns up). His pieces are well-written and evocative, and of course pregnant with nostalgia for any Calcuttan worth his salt. I could identify a lot with his New Market memories, the sights of chicken, turkey and possibly other more exotic species trussed up in baskets in a giant almost Gothic cathedral-like space replete with vaulted arches and the accompanying hubbub of human activity would surely have made an impact on the mind of any kid (I could go on about the East-meets-West-thing about New Market-it's the English-planned cosmopolitan market for the erstwhile second city of the British empire and wears the look of an Oriental bazaar geared at a Western clientele, but am feeling too lazy and not pretentious enough to do so right now).

This latest piece talks about another favorite childhood destination, the Oxford Bookstore. I can't identify with this so much, for I surely can't remember a liveried and mustachiod durwan nor have ever noticed the intricate stages of libric transaction that the author so fondly dwells upon. He celebrates the "human touch" that accompanies any commercial transaction in Calcutta. I on the contrary can't help feeling that all this is just an evolved and artificial way of keeping people in a labor-surplussed country employed. Give me the mechanized, impersonal and non-fussy western mode of transaction any day! I have no economic theories to posit or sociological solutions to proffer, merely suggesting that given my reticence and preference for objectivity in all modes of action, I would love to do away with casual human contact and I think pushing buttons and getting automated responses and being scanned by photosensors and buying labelled produce mentioning statistical details is way too sexy! and practical too. I'm not sure whether it's a case of grass being greener affecting both of us or my postcolonial fascination with Western niceties, or Hruska's Orientalist condescension-ridden views or just a mere difference in personal taste that leads to this very sharp conflict of shopping propensities. Anyway I can't love the picture of Oxford bookstore that he paints here : it seems very stiff upper-lippy colonial replete with a lurid imagery of liveried durwans and khidmutgars serving the sahibs. In many ways they have tried to retain that up-marketish, old world elitist and snobby sahib-ish feel, there's no doubt about that. At the same time it's also a wonderful bookstore and part of the Calcutta's Park Street-New Market-Esplanade firanghee charm that so spellbinds Bengali youth and leads to numerous jibonmukhi songs from Anjan Dutta. No denying that. But something in me strongly prefers the mall-like casual consumerist cocoon of Crossword.