An Urgent (Renewed) Call to Occupy Wall Street

Re-posted on May Day, 2012. Watch NY1 TV report on today’s OWS rally at Union Square.

Apologies. This blog is not the place where I post hardcore political stuff.

However, given the urgent nature of it, I’m taking the liberty to digress from the “personal” and “apolitical” focus of my blog, to invite you to be a part of this critically important conversation — both here in the U.S. and worldwide.

I shall try to analyze some relevant social and economic scenarios that might prove useful in this conversation.

I hope you take a couple of minutes to go through this note, and think about it.

IF you find it useful, please share it.

Thank you.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

____________________

AN URGENT CALL to Occupy Wall Street Protesters

By

Partha Banerjee

_________________________________________________________________

First, this. You might find it very relevant to the discussion below. Let me know if you need clarification. I’d be happy to speak or write more. Thank you for taking the time to go over this paper and workshop I presented last June in Granada, Spain.

Peer-reviewed paper on political alliance building at  

http://ijh.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.26/prod.2020

The Second Circle

Second Circle – Middle Majority of the Working People: A Simple Spin Wheel Model to Build Alliance and Power across the Soft “Left and Right”

By:

Dr. Partha Banerjee

Working people who consider themselves moderate “left” or ‘right” have more overlaps than differences. Below are a few examples – the moderate working people feel similarly and strongly about the following:

1. Economic disparity and frustrations on social mobility: living wages, unpredictable workplace, loss of health care, education costs for children, loss of home and savings, and consequent psychological trauma and depression are major issues.

2. Feeling of being left out: not being a part of the election-time promises to be included in democratic processes.

3. Discontent on lack of peace, right, justice and human dignity issues: state repression, global warfare and poverty issues hit the average home.

4. Helplessness on destruction of the earth and environment: the BP disaster, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan and Iraq wars are examples.

5. Fast-worsening stability and security situation for the children: terrorism and violence are all-time high.

Can the poor, working man and woman strengthen themselves to a position of power? Can we empower the Middle Majority – which I call the Second Circle – driven by coalition building across the working class, political education, and will power, in a non-violent way? What are the obstacles?

I propose a simple “spin wheel” model to create cooperation and collaboration across the moderate left and right working class spectrum, eventually empowering the Second Circle middle majority, and through the process, disempowering the iron-walled elite center and separatist and violent far right and far left. I believe that with evolving action plans (including but not limited to elections), moderate working people will win and assume power.

The artificial left-right divide is deliberately created by the forces in power aided by corporate media; it’s been detrimental for the working class people and families. It’s time we go beyond the archaic box and come together.

_________________________________________________________________

Then, the main discussion on Occupy Wall Street.

I’m writing my two little cents with hope that somebody at the OWS camp will notice it. The developments since November 15, when Bloomberg and NYPD violated the democratic rights of us the ordinary people to protest peacefully, have been greatly troubling. It is obvious — to me and a number of my friends who worked with me over the years as a grassroots political activist and peace and justice advocate – that with overt and covert support from the political establishment and corporate media, Wall Street crooks and their cronies are now preparing for major onslaughts on the movement. It is also quite likely that there will be violence traps to exploit.

And even though there was no violence from the OWS protesters’ side, there was violence from the suppressors’ side. Yet, media has largely overlooked it. That’s not surprising either. (However, today, May Day 2012, a local popular media report from New York City has covered some of the police action — as narrated by a little girl. Watch report at
http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/160369/may-day-protesters-join-for-large-union-square-rally
.)

Next time, the “radical” protesters might be taken in prison, and strip searched — courtesy U.S. Supreme Court’s newest ruling earlier this week (April 2012).

Maybe, none of the above will happen; without a serious leadership with pragmatic goals and achievable benchmarks, the movement might fizzle. There are already unfortunate signs of it. Street protests have become increasingly unsustainable. (But the May Day rallies across the U.S. today showed that the movement is still strong and perhaps coming back in full force. That is very reassuring.)

Upon this backdrop, this is my brief thought. This is what I urge you to do.

For heaven’s sake, find political support from the pro-people sections of Democratic and other political parties (Kucinich, Feingold, Sanders, Waxman, Levine…you know who I’m talking about; definitely not the Schumer or Clinton Democrats). More importantly, find support from parallel peace and justice groups. Find support from the labor movement.

Without that support, even sane Americans (and onlookers worldwide) will slowly get tired of the prolonged protests “without a clear goal” (I know you have solid demands), and both corporate America and elite-centrist Reps and Dems with their military and police and media will crush you.

Find that critical political support and find a clear time line to achieve certain goals. Have meetings. Talk about it. Call us.

Ideally, OWS with help from all rights, justice and peace groups (and special support from labor) should have their own candidates for the upcoming elections; however, I don’t believe it is anymore possible in 2012. It needs focused energy to achieve election goals; I am yet to see the movement contemplating that goal.

Some of us believe that Obama-Biden Democrats will eventually call. They’ll never call. Most of them do not want to lose their campaign contribution money anyways. Obama is one of them. It’s up to the protesters to show that they have political pragmatism and acumen; they need to show to the world that they know how to find political support from sane, influential people from all walks of life. The documentary Inside Job (Sony, 2010, directed by Charles Ferguson) has interviewed some of these people. Talk to them. Make up a winning strategy.

The other side is WAY too powerful. Plus they have New York Times and CNN, PBS, etc. on their side. (I’m not even talking about Fox or the Murdoch media empire and far right wing nuts like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.)

During a Facebook conversation, one committed OWS friend said this in response to the above: “Trying to work within this corrupted, benighted system is a losing proposition. The protesters are righteous and an important part of this process. Screw both parties. Time to change it all.”

I told her that it’s not so easy (i.e., to “screw both parties” and work without them). I did not hear from her ever again.

This is the real "Change We Can Believe In."

I’m trying to articulate my bullet-points here very briefly; if you want, you can circulate them among the OWS leaders, and let me know if they need me in any future conversations.

(1)  Obama was elected with bankers’ money. He never did and never will come out strongly against the crooks who stole the U.S. economy. His so-called Wall Street reform has been laughably inadequate. (However, Republicans, Wall Street and their media will use that reform ploy in 2012 as if enough has been done already to reform Wall Street and therefore, now it is old news — to divert peoples’ attention from that subject, moving their spotlight to the so-called tax and deficit questions. They and their corporate media alike will again conveniently not analyze Reaganomics and the deficits ballooned during Bush. See illustration below.)

See for yourself: Bush-era Reaganomics tax cuts for the rich created huge deficit.

(2) Democratic Party establishment is no different than the Republican Party establishment when it comes to their campaign contribution money and allegiance; in fact, I always say that right wing is easier to read because they have no pretense. (Yet, it is true that 2012 is already seeing signs that billionaires and big corporations are heavily contributing to Republicans, especially through their PAC’s.)

(3) The financial sector, after Reagan, got the maximum boost and the stock market bubble happened during Bill Clinton. Remember Clinton had Greenspan as the Federal Reserve chairman, in spite of Greenspan’s well-known connections with Charles Keating of the S&L Scandal. Clinton also recruited Rubin and Summers — the two biggest names behind deregulation of derivatives and illegal-made-legal Wall Street mergers.

(4) The biggest crooks completely deregulated and destroyed the economy with blessings from Clinton, W. Bush and now Obama; nothing changed (Greenspan has Ayn Rand ideological agenda; Summers has Harvard and Columbia Business School support. All of them made millions in these eras).

(5) Neither Republicans nor Democrats jailed a single individual crook such as Paulson or Fuld even though all their wrongdoings are established and beyond belief. (Senator Carl Levine of Michigan, a few-and-far-between Democrat, grilled Goldman Sachs operatives; Waxman grilled Fuld of Lehman Brothers who made a personal income of half a billion dollars off the now-bankrupt company. The hearings are available online. There are more such public exposés. Paulson would be a test case to expose now.)

(6) We are working under this system; therefore, there is NO reason to believe mainstream Democrats would come out to support OWS. Levine and Waxman hearings, although strong and commendable, failed to jail either the GS operatives or Fuld. Note the notable absence of the two big NY senators Hillary and Schumer from these events; I have not heard a single word of support for OWS from them.

(7) As I said before, and as I emphasized in my paper cited above, work with labor unions, peace and justice groups, and civil and immigrant rights groups. This is the time to mend fences and build broad-based alliance of moderate working people and families — both from the so-called left and right (read my new paper for this model).

(8) Therefore, find other politicians who either lost elections in 2010 because of their pro-people positions or are traditionally known for their pro-people politics — there are many both at the national and state levels. Spitzer is one of them (he was set up because he worked against these Wall Street crooks); then there are cleaner images within and outside the Democratic Party.

(9) Work with Volcker and others who do not like the way Glass-Stegall was repealed by Rubin, Summers and Paulson. Work with Elizabeth Warren, et al. too. Warren must win.

(10) Find international support especially from Europe — a whole bunch of leaders — market capitalists — know how to run a capitalist economy without crooks. Iceland has already fixed its colossal problems that precipitated exactly the U.S. way just before October 2008. (Watch the documentary Inside Job: it begins with the Iceland episode.)

(11) Challenge Obama on these economic and political platforms, and also the major Democratic candidates running in 2012. Find shadow candidates who can put pressure on them whether or not they actually run.

(12) Find friends in corporate media who can put out the OWS platform. It does not matter if for various reasons, the street rallies dwindle; people will come back in various ways to rally across the U.S. and beyond if there is a serious action plan based on pragmatic politics.

I do hope the OWS leaders have time to read my two cents.

BTW, it’s much better to have known evils in political power than hypocrites. The peace and justice movement both in the U.S. and worldwide got stronger during Dubya. Egypt and the entire Middle Eastern revolution keep happening because of that solidarity, not because of Obama’s Cairo speech.

NOTE: If you’re more interested to know about my grassroots, empirical model on political alliance building that invites and includes the sane and moderate working people and families from both the so-called left and right – to disempower the elite center and marginalize the extreme right and left – read my new paper Second Circle: Middle Majority of the Working People (International Journal of the Humanities, October 2010). I’m including the link to the abstract here. I’ve already put the text of the abstract above.

Again, the link is at
http://ijh.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.26/prod.2020
.

Thank you and in solidarity,

Partha Banerjee

(Note: I work with labor unions professionally. However, I wrote the above in my personal capacity.)

Email: banerjee2000@hotmail.com

Blog: http://onefinalblog.wordpress.com

###

One of my recent talks in New Delhi, India

Solidarity: Wall Street, War Front

Solidarity: Wall Street, War Front

Do you see any solidarity across the globe? Do you see any reasons for solidarity across the globe? Do you see any hope for solidarity across the globe?

Can my poems help find it? Can your poems touch my poems? Can they meet and talk?

___________

(1)

Iraq

(Acknowledgement: Sourav Datta, Durgapur, West Bengal, India)

 

A Collateral Damage

 

My home was in Iraq, did you know?

There, by the Baghdad factories

Ma, Dad and with a little sis

We had fun – laughs, songs and stories

 

First time they bombed our block

We shivered with radio round-the-clock

Dad’s bus got hit ‘n exploded

Sis cried out, “Mother, he’s dead!”

 

My dear father’s grave, yes I kissed

Whispered in fear — eerie, awful

“Dear Dad, you come out now you can

Gone are those violencing beasts.”

 

***

Again they now hit back my land

Hoping to shove democracy down

Experts on oil addiction

This time more pain, starvation

 

***

 

Firm resolve, no fear of death

They’ll defeat Babylon empire?

I’ve joined forces millions

How dare that Dubya Dumb and Blair?

 

***

 

I’m too a son of a great nation

Daddy’s on the Iraq battlefield

Peter, Becca, little Sam and I

We got it in our hearts ‘n eyes

 

I screamed, “Dad, leave Iraq at once

If you kill but one-o their childs

Consider you killed one us yours

You now no mo’ one-o our heroes.”

 

____________

 

(2)

Bangladesh Border, 1971

Bangladesh Border, 1971

 

those small men and those small women

with small, tiny hopes and smaller desires

all their lives they weep in vain

and none cares ’bout their futility tears

 

…tears shed away slowly, lowly

like late-night dew drops, slowly, lowly

 

d’you ever listen to their subdued cry

o’er late-night wind the cries quiver

d’you hear them, tell me, why

d’you ever hear them, tell me, ever?

 

____________

(3)

Occupy Wall Street

(November 15, 2011)

We Are the 99 Percent.

 

They’re gone now

But they shall be back.

 

This is the last battle.

 

They know.

 

Even New York Times

Can’t stop them.

 

###

 

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

The Death Bomb Now Exploded

–Tick Tock…Strike Two–

Yama Strikes Again!

I hope you did not un-like what I had to say yesterday about my distant-uncle Death. I mean, I know you could not particularly like it. But could you really un-like it?

Read the previous episode if you haven’t. My infamous Lord Yama Uncle decided that it was time to show us how long he could stick around with us…uninvited, unwelcome, dis-un-disliked.

In Ma’s painful cancer death at the age of forty-two, he saw there was a gold mine to mine in this poor, God-forsaken, North Calcutta mezzanine household. He grinned, and he grimaced, and he growled.

And then he howled.

That evening, Ma came out of her home one last time. I didn’t cry, and I’m positive father didn’t either; but everybody else did. Poorna, my sister (whose Tagore songs you’ve perhaps heard here on my blog), wept hard, and Sova, my aunt, cried out loud. Kakima, our next-door neighbor, wept too. All our previous domestic maids over the years, who came to see Ma one last time, inconsolably sobbed. Slowly, with extreme care, we carried Ma and put her on the flower-adorned cot sitting on the earthen alley. “Bolo Hari, Hari Bol,” they all chanted out Lord Vishnu’s name in a familiar way, one I had heard numerous times in Calcutta ever since I remembered. Four of us hoisted the four corners of the cot up on our shoulders now cushioned with a cotton towel. In a few moments, all the male members of the family and friends, in the midst of the loud and subdued cries, set out on the final procession on foot to the Ganges, about five miles away to the West side of the city.

I believe about a hundred people came along with us.

Hindu Crematorium, before the Electric Pyre Era

But Subrato, my best friend didn’t show; he’d later said he didn’t because he couldn’t take it; my mother’s death was too much pain for him to bear. He came from a solvent family with both parents working and a reasonably affluent lifestyle. He was a very bright student, yet a very weak man – so much so that many years later, when his father suddenly died, he couldn’t take it either, and in a matter of days, during the obligatory bereavement period, he walked out of his house in his mourning garb leaving a mother, a sister, a wife and two young sons behind, and stood on the tracks of a speeding commuter train. He was killed instantly.

Somebody emailed us here in New York about his violent death. Not an agreeable way to deal with the sudden death of your best friend.

But much before that, in quick succession of Ma’s death, came small and big bolts from the blue. Uncle Yama had warned me long ago that I was going to see him frequently once I grew up. Now I knew I had grown up.

Just the next Sunday, about the same time in the evening, Jethu, father’s oldest brother who lived only walks away, died of a prolonged oral cancer. A chain smoker, he had been suffering for nearly two years, and got the disease way before Ma fell sick; in fact, it was Ma who first told me that Jethu got cancer. This is a man who lived with us for years before finding his own apartment, played the flute sitting on our narrow veranda in the evening, and took him out on leisurely spring-night tram rides. He bought me my first (and last) pair of cricket gloves.

In less than a year, my oldest maternal uncle Bishwanath died of a stroke; he couldn’t handle the enormous financial mess he got himself in by playing the Indian stock market, got bankrupt, and left four small children and a widow behind. I went to see him in his final hours at the Calcutta Medical College emergency. I remember he lay on a narrow bed in a very small room, eyes closed, and his upper body was all hooked up with pipes, monitors and tubes; his mouth was wide open, and he was fiercely and noisily gasping for breath like a big fish out of water. I saw his chest pumping like a balloon inhaling and exhaling air; I knew just by looking at his terrible suffering that he was not going to make it. This is an uncle who was a soft-nature man, a singer. He was a champion carrom player too. What niyati Lord Yama had set aside for him!

Two years later, when the men were not home, my middle maternal uncle Madhu’s wife Amita – a schizophrenic woman who angrily refused any basic medical help – screamed about her poverty and distress, poured kerosene on her body, and lighted herself up. Then, she ran fiercely up and down the narrow, dark, dingy alley next to their bedroom, shrieked violently in extreme fear and pain, tried to tear off her burning sari and blouse, and my poor grandmother and Sova ran back and forth to rescue her and away, and cried out and begged to everyone for help. In half hour, in front of practically all the helplessly onlooking residents of their neighborhood who did all they could to save her including a last-ditch attempt to blanket out the fire, a charcoal-black Amita got a heart attack, and dropped dead.

Madhu and Amita had been married for only two years, and she left a six-month old child behind. Sova now became the mother of that child.

And then the final blow came five years after Ma’s death, just two weeks before I was scheduled to take my TOEFL to come to study in the U.S., when on a Friday Christmas-eve night, Buddha, an Indira Gandhi Congress rising star, was found in his State Electricity Board office room in Central Calcutta, shot in the head to death.

The gun was never found. The assassins were never found either. In India, law enforcement and administration do not work for you unless you can force or bribe them. We could not force or bribe them: we were too poor and powerless to do it.

To me, Buddha was more like a big brother than an uncle, just like Sova was always more like a big sister than an aunt; when I was very young, I saw Buddha playing alley marble, street football and strike-day cricket; and I saw Sova playing jump rope, hide and seek and rhyme games with her teen friends. I accompanied them to their simple, frugal but fun winter picnics – on rooftops and at school compounds. I saw Buddha’s ambitious ascent, slowly assuming leadership in his friends’ circle and then in politics. I went to hear his speeches at political rallies; I went to hear him recite Tagore and Sukanto poetry at cultural events. And I unknowingly emulated him in my own political and cultural performances. I helped him write New Year greetings cards he’d send out to numerous friends and followers. I followed him on, and I followed him often.

Buddha’s death was a huge blow to us – our entire family. Even the entire neighborhood of that long, narrow alley behind the vegetable and fish market was completely shocked and frozen. The final ray of hope for my poor grandmother was gone.

It was as if as soon as Ma left, the force of love that held the family together melted away, and everything fell apart. And my grandmother had to go through it all, one tragedy at a time.

Before my grandma died, she had lost five children.

###

Enough for now. (By the way, this is all from my memoir I’m slowly putting together. Any takers? Let me know.)

You might ask, why in the world am I writing about it, especially when it is so personal and so painful? Am I trying to self-inflict pain into those covered-over wounds?

No. Seriously. I’m not trying to draw your sympathy and consolation — believe me. It’s been quite a while. I’m out of it…you know…sorta. You feel bad? Thank you. I appreciate. But that’s about it.

I’m telling you these stories because this is the India that you probably do not know or hear about, especially in today’s media glitz and superpower blitz. I know for sure many of you did not hear these stories from someone like me who actually lived them.

Lord Uncle Yama has been playing his cunning death games on us — the poor and the vulnerable in that little corner of the world — for eternity.

I feel I’m still a small pawn in his game.

(come back for more, if you still not completely un-like it.)

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

The Empty Mezzanine in North Calcutta

Death…the Tick Tock Time Bomb

Yama, God of Death

–Tick Tock…Strike One–

I have seen death too many times in my life. He’s been with me all along.

Honestly. Really. Nothin’ to brag about. But it’s true.

I know Lord Yama, the god of death, all too well. I can’t say I like him a lot. But because I’ve accepted the fact that I can never get rid of him, I have resigned to un-dislike him. Or, is it dis-unlike him?

Anyways.

You see, it’s not easy to explain. This guy is like the distant uncle from the village who’d show up at least once a year, totally uninvited, and wouldn’t mind our very obvious unwelcoming gestures…until he decided to travel somewhere else, to be someone else’s guest. Some years, he’d show up even more than once a year. Gosh…really annoying!

What can I say: he’s always been quite whimsical.

When I was a child, I didn’t know him all that well. Growing up, I heard strange tales about him…where he lives…what he does…where he goes…how he makes a living, and all. I never paid close attention to those tales. I never believed I had to. I was least bothered.

Slowly but surely though, his presence became matter of factly. Then, one day, he volunteered to introduce himself. I saw his face up close when I was only in sixth grade. He said to me, “Hello kid…I am your Lord Yama Uncle.” He said, “Pleased to meet you.”

I was speechless.

He said to me, “You don’t look very happy meeting me, do you, kid? That’s okay. I’m leaving you now for a while. But you’ll see me again, don’t worry. I’ll be back.” And just before he left, he grinned, uncannily, and said, “You’ll see me over and over again. You better know me well, kid. Or, you’re gonna be miserable.”

He was right. A few years went by.

When I just got into our M.Sc. program at the University of Calcutta, Uncle Yama for some reason decided he’d now be our guest for a quite a while. Maybe, he didn’t have no other place to visit. Maybe, his village had a drought and he must eat and sleep at somebody else’s house. Maybe, he realized he didn’t see us for a long while and started missing us too much. So, one early summer evening, around seven thirty, he showed up and knocked at our mezzanine apartment door.

In fact, he banged hard. He wouldn’t wait no more.

Ma was dying of cancer. Uncle Yama took her first…and left…

He left…but only for a short while. In Ma’s death, he’d struck a gold mine. He saw with his unearthly, uncanny eyes (see his profile photo above) that this was a place where he could come back now…quite often…over and over again…uninvited…and these people wouldn’t say no to him…couldn’t say no to him.

He knew we were too good and too powerless to dis-un-dislike him.

[...]

(to be continued. please come back.)

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Rivertalk: the Way Women Touch me

Two Rivers: Bhagirathi and Jamuna

I’m going to continue talking about the women in my life.

On this post, I’m going to talk about the way women touch me…have touched me. This is the third episode: I named it Rivertalk.

If you’re interested about the first two episodes — Foretalk and Flowertalk — just click on these links. You’ll get a more comprehensive picture of my relationship with my women in my life. I hope to write a couple of more episodes in the coming days. I hope that you come back to read more. In fact, I implore that you do.

Bhagirathi, Jamuna and Saraswati are three major rivers in the Hindu holy land that descended from the Himalayas, flew through the North Indian heartland, met at a confluence called Prayag near the bustling city of Allahabad, and then flew their own separate ways all the way through Bihar, West Bengal, Bangladesh and Assam before dissolving into the Bay of Bengal. Incidentally, Saraswati is now non-existent: there are underground traces of that once-mighty river at the Lord Krishna-glorified Prayag confluence. Bhagirathi is also known as the mighty, holy river Ganga or Ganges. The Hindu pilgrimage of Varanasi or Benaras is of course famous for its temples and picturesque steps on its riverbanks.

Bhagirathi, Jamuna and Saraswati, in my present story, are three women who worked as domestic helpers at my Calcutta household for eons. In Bengal and in India, domestic helpers are often part of the family; for pittance, they work for the family almost for their entire lives, and practically consider the employer family as their own. I don’t know how they actually do it, considering they have their own families to take care of, and often those families are so poor and helpless that these women’s paltry wages are their only source of income. Often, they are refugees of war, partition and communal riots or other such disasters: in India and Bengal, we don’t have any lack of them.

Plus, they do manual labor for both families, killing themselves. Yet, they never forget to smile, never forget to greet you, and never ask for more than what they’re given. More often than not, they are grossly underpaid and grossly overworked.

Bengal and India’s urban middle-class households — all one billion of them — are run on their shoulders and by their overworked palms. Bhagirathi and Jamuna, as you can see in the picture above, are still working for my family back there in Calcutta. As you can see, Jamuna the woman doing dishes on the dingy kitchen floor now has a granddaughter who is happily accompanying her grandma to our place. There is every likelihood that in course of time, she will take her grandma’s place in our family.

They are somewhat lucky, in spite of their lifelong misfortune, that they’re working for us — an employer family with some humanity and kindness. In times of emergencies and major disasters, we try to do our best to help them. There are many other — in fact, numerous — maids who are not so lucky: poor young girls have a high risk of being sexually violated (at least constantly looked down upon as sexual objects), and young boy servants have even a greater risk of being verbally and physically abused. In the event of any possible theft in the family — small or big — the young boy servant would take the initial brutal beating, both by members of the household and also by the police. In India, it’s commonplace. Nobody even talks about it.

In case of our Bhagirathi and our Jamuna, they flow relentlessly, smoothly, and without saying a word. They wake up at the crack of dawn, walk in the dark over to our house, and start doing their chores without waiting for any instructions. Jamuna does the dishes piled up from the night before; Bhagirathi makes tea, goes to the local market to do daily groceries and pick up the rationed milk bottles. Then, she starts cooking. Jamuna meanwhile sweeps and mops the living room and bedroom floors.

They leave when they’re finished with their morning chores, return to their own families, and perhaps replicate all of the above — of course, in a scaled-down way for they simply could not afford it like we do. Then they come back again to do an afternoon and evening version of the morning routine, only to leave at eight or nine at night, after we’re finished with our dinner and ready to go to bed with our favorite novel or music. Facebook enthusiasts would lift their legs on the chair against the computer table while the boy or the maid keeps sweeping the floor underneath. The fun online discussions and chats would not disturb the worlds of either parties.

Saraswati worked with us for a few years when my mother died. It was a time when our home was more disorganized than a refugee colony. We didn’t know who’d cook, who’d clean, and whether or not there would be food on the table the way it did uninterrupted when my mother was around. It was a very difficult time — both physically and emotionally. Saraswati came to help us at that time; we also had a young boy named Kanai who was a skilled cook at the age of thirteen. He came from some drought-stricken village in south Bengal, and we became good friends. Saraswati, meanwhile, disappeared just like the once-active river. One could find her trace only deep underground — if you know how to dig deep into your memory.

Surprisingly, these domestic helpers somehow always had a lot of affection for me. For that reason only, I can never forget them. I’ll come back and talk about them a bit more. I hope you come back too.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###