Fresh from his Western junket, journalist Sujoy Dhar gets an assignment to flood-ravaged Birbhum. He went there counting his allowance, and came back guilty.
The hangover remained. The memories of New York's Times Square and London's Leicester Square, were heady — the bright lights, the funky joints, the ritzy crowds, the music. So even as the native returned to the squalor and pollution of Calcutta, the month-long experience abroad kept me in high spirits. Writing all those feel-good stories of travel, about successful desis, and the NRI fashion designer in a New York ramp show.
But reality had to strike. When the chief reporter asked me to visit the flood-ravaged Birbhum district in West Bengal for an aftermath coverage, I took it up as just another assignment, and especially counted on the travelling allowance. Little did I know that I would be returning with a permanentally guilty conscience.
I needed to see the helplessness of Sajahan and Nemai Mondol from two villages of Birbhum, to realise where I belonged and where I did not. The ravages of the floods which visit rural folk is the reality of the larger portion of Indians—not the fashion ramps and luxury cars of the topmost demographic bubble.