The menacing U-shaped peg is smeared with a fresh coat of vermillion. It is the most sacred spot for devotees entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Bikrampur Kali temple on the outskirts of Arambag in West Bengal’s Hooghly district. Every Tuesday and Saturday is fixed for the ritual sacrifice of goats offered to Kali in Bikrampur village.
Devotees who wish to offer a goat as sacrifice to the fearsome goddess, her outstretched tongue dripping blood – symbolically represented by a coat of vermillion – carry the animal from Arambag town and faraway villages of Hooghly. But on April 19, the purohit, dressed in blazing red kurta and dhoti, had ordained that the stars were not sufficiently aligned to offer a sacrifice to Kali.
So devotees came in a trickle and we were spared the grisly occasion when conch shells would be blown in accompaniment of ululation by the women as the kharga (sacrificial sword) came down on the bleating goat’s neck made soft by liberal application of ghee.
But the absence of revelry associated with animal sacrifice aside, Hooghly is preparing for the playing out of intense electoral rivalry – when the district goes to the polls on April 30 – chiefly between the Trinamool Congress and the CPI (M)-Congress jot (alliance).
Tough Contest for the Trinamool
All along the 80-km stretch from Bhadreshwar to Arambag, CPI (M) and TMC festoons and flags, stuck in every standing structure, flutter in the moist, morning breeze. There are more mobile towers in Hooghly than there are brick kiln and rice mill chimneys. Arambag is also the birthplace of the countrywide chain of Arambagh Chicken.
Sitting on a large concrete structure under the massive banyan tree in front of the Bikrampur Kali temple, Sital Pal, a devotee, is about to leave when he turns back to answer a question he was not expecting. How will it be on April 30? Taken aback a little, he asks, what?
“Oh, the election,” Pal replied as his eyes lit up. He sat down on the concrete structure, folded up his legs and thought hard before saying: “The contest will be tough this time,” Pal, who manufactures small earthen pots for mishti doi (sweet curd) in Bagda village under Mahapur panchayat, said.
“People in the villages are fed up with bike-riding TMC workers throwing their weight around and extorting money,” Pal said. “At least the CPI (M) cadres did not resort to such means even when the party was in its death throes,” he added.
Echoes of Narada
Soon a brand new red SUV drew up before the temple. The lady walked in to offer puja to the goddess. Her husband, Shyamal Bhadra, found refuge under the banyan. Flashing a toothy smile, but spewing venom, Bhadra said: “That woman has created the conditions for her partymen to make money. We have watched the Narada tapes. Now, where will she hide her face?” Clearly, Bikrampur in Hooghly is not as unaware as the backwaters of Nanur in distant Birbhum.
Bhadra, who runs an electrical goods store in Arambag town, is unsparing of the CPI (M) too. “The last few years of the CPI (M)-ruled Left Front government were terrible. The unremitting excesses committed towards the end of the Marxists’ rule is still fresh in our minds. But the TMC has surpassed the CPI (M) when it comes to extortions,” Bhadra said, his toothy smile still hanging on his lips. And Bhadra asked: “Does Didi consider herself to be another Leonardo da Vinci?”
Dada Seems Better than Didi
As Bhadra’s controlled diatribe continued, a portly, demure lady in a red saree, her coconut oil-greased hair tied in a tiny bun behind her neck, walked up to the concrete structure. Chhaya Karmakar’s opening lines were surprising: “Dada [CPI(M)’s Surya Kanta Mishra] seems better than Didi.”
Chhaya debi doesn’t quite conceal her preference, for, she got the job of an Asha (state government-run rural healthcare system) employee just before the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya-led Left Front regime was ousted in 2011.
“A few women in the village (Bairakanpur) I hail from are government employees, even if they draw a measly salary of Rs 3,000 per month. But it is sufficiently empowering,” Chhaya debi said, adding that a few others are engaged with the local unit of the Integrated Child Development Scheme.
‘Poribartan’ is Evident in Jangipara
Down a non-existent state highway and abandoned government offices, is Jangipara where Arambag’s hostility towards Mamata is replaced by affection and respect for “her good work” in the form of a freshly laid road, expansion of the local state-run hospital and array of new shops around the local market.
“Look around. Jangipara is not what it was when the CPI (M) ruled Bengal,” beamed Ashit Dey who runs a store selling chips, soft drinks and cigarettes. The roads in Jangipara, Dey said, are now motorable, though he admits the market toilet stinks to high heavens.
But in Jangipara too doubts have cropped up about the TMC’s governance and allegations of corruption. At the local hospital, awash in white-and-blue, Raju Bagh is happy because he has just learned from the sonography test on his pregnant wife that the couple would be blessed with a second son. And yet, Bagh, a fisherman, said he “will have to give it a good thought over who to vote for” before cycling away home.
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