ABSTRACT
Naturally, confusion of absorbing the new form of local sovereignty and transplanting the older political strategies and alliances between the civic and the political onto the new regimes cape, was heavily in the air. In the summer of 2009, something felt different about the old culture of protibaad on the walls of Kolkata, even as its avuncular participants and their rhythmic shoulder-thrusts remained familiar. In the summer of 2009, Trinamool Congress posters all over the metropolis of Kolkata spoke of kneejerk reactions – a need for fresh blood, new energies, a despondency over the impasse of the Left, and a time to change laidback attitudes of ‘people’. In the decades of political turmoil (Naxalbari and otherwise), Satra’s writings possibly did the work of restoring, for such a gentry, a sense that their hold over cultural repertoires was still secure. The pedagogic element of such research is quite evident – to tell the general public that this is ‘history’.
