During the phase of first lockdown for Covid19, fanboys / fangirls of the Bengal CM had gone into a frenzy when pictures emerged of her drawing white circles with red chalk outside vegetable markets. Those pictures were enough to send unreasoning Bengalis scared of a probable change of government in West Bengal in future, into a hyperbole of how Bengal will never get another "leader" who can remain so "connected" to masses. Soon there surfaced more WhatsApp messages with pictures of the minister standing on terraces embracing the virus, and residents of Bengal sleeping in peace. Well, we all know what conspired thereafter, including the ridiculousness of hiding actual figures and burning dead bodies secretively without informing family members.
Cut to Cyclone Amphan. She appeared on television last night to talk about the devastating effects of the cyclone in Bengal, and those same people are in a frenzy again to let the world know that they will never witness quite another "leader" like her. In all honesty, I watched her too, and did feel bad seeing her transform from a school headmaster threatening everyone of low grades in the forthcoming exams, to a timid newly-appointed teacher in an elementary school. It did hit me then as to how she must be feeling, for her to behave like that and say "Shob Dhongsho Hoye Gechhe" which meant, everything is ruined. The stormy night barely passed and there's a barrage of posts on Facebook with pictures like the one here, and messages on WhatsApp, saying things like how Bengal is all alone in this fight, that no news channels have covered the cyclone showing their indifference to Bengal, that people have done politics with her and given her no support, and whole lot of imaginary accusations. It made me check if these were true, but I found enough coverage of the cyclone on all news channels and platforms, including tweets from important government officials on the disaster. I also found out that the Home Minister of Government of India had assured both her and the Odisha CM of full support in dealing with the aftermath of the calamity, and as per the Chief of NDRF, a total of 41 NDRF teams including reserves are deployed in the two Amphan-affected states, all of which have been reviewed in a high-level meeting by the Prime Minister on Monday to take stock of the situation and review preparedness as well as briefings on evacuation plans. What else were these fanboys / fangirls expecting to be done? That all important Ministers of the Government of India along with news reporters of all channels (except Calcutta News which has been banned by the leader herself) to form a human chain along the coastline of Bengal and stop the cyclone? Is this natural or paid foolishness to expect such things?
The next thing I'm expecting to see in a week or two is, posts and news of how the Centre has extended extra help to Odisha which is why they've come back to normalcy faster than West Bengal. These people will conveniently forget that Odisha as a state is an expert in dealing with such calamities and has extra capacity in disaster resiliency and crisis response for natural or man-made disasters, and hence, they will manage to come out sooner from the aftermath of Cyclone Amphan. That is their calibre, under the able governance of Naveen Patnaik, who is undoubtedly one of India's best Chief Ministers, who in spite of belonging to the Opposition, is not at loggerheads with the Centre for anything and everything. No one has ever asked West Bengal to not be like that. But the fact is, we are. We were like that during Communist rule, and we continue to maintain that legacy.
P.S. - Marking myself safe from the cyclone that lashed out last night, but can't be sure that I will be safe from the fanboys / fangirls I've referred to in this post. And apart from the huge losses to humans because of this Cyclone, my heart goes out to the uncountable birds who would've died last night or lost their homes, never to be considered in the death toll.
Text and photo courtesy: Manjira Bagchi
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* Amhan
* cyclone
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