www.kalimpong.info

This interview of Dr. HB Chettri by Prabin Moktan was published in the May 2011 issue of “Talk Sikkim”. Below are some excerpts. The entire interview (.pdf) can be found at this link

Media secretary, spokesman and most likely the new GJMM MLA from Kalimpong, Dr. Harka Bahadur Chettri is the intellectual face of the GL2 movement. Prabin Moktan, fellow alumnus of FLATFILE, the literary journal from Kalimpong, met up with Dr. Chettri and spoke to him on a variety of issues

Media secretary, spokesman and most likely the new GJMM MLA from Kalimpong, Dr. Harka Bahadur Chettri is the intellectual face of the GL2 movement. Prabin Moktan, fellow alumnus of FLATFILE, the literary journal from Kalimpong, met up with Dr. Chettri and spoke to him on a variety of issues:

Keeping political rhetoric aside, do you think there is any merit or honesty in Ghising’s pronouncements that GL is not possible given the current reality of the Indian body politic and that the hills are better off with the sixth schedule status, which at least has a constitutional guarantee? How is the alternative that your party envisages more viable, better?

Well so far Ghising is concerned I should not be so rude on him, but judging by his track record he is better explained or better described as a political joker and nothing above that. The Sixth Schedule chapter was closed immediately after the 13th Lok Sabha was dissolved. In the third tripartite GK Pillai the present home secretary categorically said that the issue of the Sixth Schedule is shelved. That was the statement of the
Government of India, he had the mandate of the GOI. Now Sixth Schedule is meant for a specific region for a specific category of people. It has never traveled this side of the Brahmaputra. In our case it was like giving unequal treatment to equal kind of people. There are other anomalies there. I am not going into those details. But so far as the question of constitutional guarantee is concerned, it is just to mislead the layman. Even the interim which was a temporary setup had legislative power and until and unless you have constitutional guarantee where do you derive your legislative power from? So compared to the 45 departments in the 6th schedule, the interim had 84 departments with power to create jobs , with power to appoint, which was not there in the 6th schedule. And the most dangerous thing in the Sixth Schedule was the leader would have been chosen either by succession or by nomination. There was no question of you know, democratically electing the leader. So how can a civilized society accept that kind of formulation where your democratic right goes for a six?

Do you think the demand for GL has a sell-by date? Or will it forever remain an emotional issue that political parties will cash in? Between identity and livelihood which do you think will the people ultimately choose, especially in case of prolonged attrition?

I agree with you. And what is identity after all? How does this question arise…you know…why people support the cause of identity? There are a number of factors which contribute towards creating an identity. What Morcha is trying to do is, during the 11th round of talks we tried to include everything that a State controls in the interim. We tried to snap every tie that this region had with the State. The only contact was the governor. Otherwise the financial freedom, the administrative powers, the legislative power, everything, lock stock and barrel we managed to get. And remember that this was only the interim…our aim was. ..that when we settle for the final thing it should be one step above what was agreed in the interim. Also the home minister, minister of state for home, our MP himself, they were unanimous in the idea that the Union Government must contemplate on a Union Territory status for the hills. So to begin with this interim thing was not a bad thing after all. The Morcha’s effort was to create a boundary separate from Bengal and in a sense a boundary creates identity. Regarding this boundary, we have made the GOI agree to send a joint verification team to verify Gorkha majority areas in the Terai and Doars. There is a precedent for that – 95 Bodo majority villages in Assam have been included in the Bodo Territorial Council. Even Mamta Banerjee recently in an interview talked about Greater Darjeeling to include Doars and Terai. The sixth schedule that Ghising is harping on would have put a seal on the boundary issue and Siliguri and Doars would have been excluded. We are forcing a rethink on the territory and that I think is a victory of the Morcha.

kalimpong calling: A SEASON FOR SCAMS

Inimitable Kalimpong writer Mr. Prabin Moktan has a take on Kalimpong’s history of susceptibility to hucksters and scammers.

Kalimpong has long been the happy hunting ground of fraudsters hoping to make a quick buck. These mainly prey on two typically middle class vulnerabilities- greed and ignorance. A scam that is relatively fresh in memory is what local hacks call the Subham scam. A company suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and promised to make available all manner of goods- from electronics to clothing- at half of the Siliguri price. A few brave folks with excess liquidity tested the waters and to their surprise found that the promises were being kept. A 10K TV was actually being sold for 5K. And no these weren’t stolen goods. They came with bills and warranties. The news spread like wildfire and before long the store was packed with ‘customers’ booking their goodies against an ‘ advance payment’. Naysayers who questioned the credibility of that business model and tried to warn those whom they wished well were dismissed as being unduly alarmists – after all wasn’t the proof of the pudding in its eating?

Then one fine day the good people of Kalimpong woke up to find that Subham had vanished into thin air along with crores of advance payments.

Read the entire article here.

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www.kalimpong.info

… the Kalimpong Calling blog has one of its quarterly updates.

The Kalimpong Calling weblog has a fun first person writeup of the Shaheed cup football tournament finals in Kalimpong (with an interesting historical anecdote about Mela Ground).

Those familiar with Prabin Moktan and his writings will be happy to learn that he has recently started a weblog.

For those not yet familiar, please check it out and you will not be disappointed.

Looking forward to reading Mr. Moktan’s take on Kalimpong… and current events back home.

Fiction by Prabin Moktan.

The Watch
The moon loosened itself from the clouds and a soft light shone down on Min.A scar very precise and geometric ran underneath his left eye to disappear into a cross-stitch of other smaller scars that were concealed by a mop of jet-black hair.

Min and his two friends were on a mission. The three of them quiet, confident and almost feline stole into the darkness and positioned themselves below the broad leaves of the banana trees that flanked the dirt road leading to the cluster of huts. Slowly they began to work at the trunk of one of the trees, laboriously sawing away the wet tissues with a khukri. They worked quietly; the only sound was the muffled noise of the sawing and the patter of the waters of the dhara falling on the flat stones below. It wasn’t long before the upper half of the trunk was almost severed, held precariously by a few strands of stubborn fibre. They stopped and waited for the heavy drunken footfalls of Kaka to come dragging down the dark road. Presently the stooping figure of Kaka drunk as usual staggered along, swaying from one end of that narrow road to another. He had barely reached the dhara when Min and his friends let go of that unstable plant to make it fall at Kaka’s feet with a giant thud that disturbed the night and sent all the dogs of the hamlet nearby into a medley of very terrified barks. Kaka jumped out of his drunken stupor and in that sudden burst of uncoordinated, uncontrolled movement landed right into the slime pool with its cold sticky mess of soap water and mosquito larvae. Min and his friends jumped out of the darkness desperately trying to control their laughter. They pulled Kaka out of the mess and put him under the dhara to give that reluctant individual now reduced to a complaining bundle of flailing arms and gibberish, a swift and very undignified bath. They then carried that soft white naked mass of puffy flesh to his house and deposited it in his room so that he could regain both composure and dignity in the familiarity of his piss-stained double bed. (more…)

New fiction by Prabin Moktan…

AMALA AND THE WORM
Nabin Limbu lead as normal an existence as any 23 year old freelance DTP professional who dreamed of landing a government job before he crossed the age limit for such luxury. He did not smoke but occasionally hung out with his friends to binge-drink with them at the neighbourhood chaang joint run by amala, a middle-aged Tibetan hag who had come to Kalimpong during the early sixties.

This woman had one daughter who was majoring in American studies from a university in the US and a son somewhere in Dharamsala with His Holiness’s government in exile. Both were acutely embarrassed by their mother’s present vocation but they could do little to convince Tshering Nima to take up an alternative career. Her daughter a pragmatic girl who valued the entrepreneurial skills of her people suggested that she sell noodles while her son would rather have her live a quiet religious life spent counting her 108-beaded rosary. But Tshering Nima would have none of it. She had struggled all her life and she would not suffer these upstarts to tell her what to do. So she religiously got up at five every morning to visit the beef stalls to fetch her daily quota of ox-tail bones, lungs and a general assortment of other bovine appendages from which she could conjure up a tasty side dish for Nabin Limbu and company. (more…)

Another essay (#2) from Prabin Moktan’s Kpg Calling.

Our Winter of Content – Prabin Moktan
The most perfect thing about Kalimpong is its weather. This is not what you can say for Darjeeling where it becomes a kind of a necessity to invent poetic excuses for the inconsistency of the weather gods. In Kalimpong, there is perfection about the way the blue skies spread their benevolent tents above us in the winter. The dryness is almost benign. The grasses have to dry; the skin has to give away to the winter cracking that can only be cured by the perfumed antiseptic-ness of Boroline. Boroline – that white petroleum jelly so redolent of the winter memories that it makes one almost pine for those nights of deep sleep under the warm security of freshly fluffed cotton and the smell of the good liniment whose aroma symbolizes an entire season. (more…)

The first essay from Prabin Moktan’s collection, Kpg Calling. If anyone is interested in a copy of the book, please contact the author at prabinkpg @ sify.com or the administrator at admin @ kalimpong.info.

A Toast for Teesta – Prabin Moktan

Just as India, in a cartographic sense can boast of its own private ocean, Kalimpong’s pride is the Teesta. I have been fascinated by this green river ever since I can remember. Perhaps you too may have looked at it as you traveled on the road that runs parallel to its bank and wondered about the many secrets locked up in its sandy bed. The portion below the bridge may perhaps contain a wealth of coins thrown in by diverse breeds of devout individuals all with their own separate agendas for the divine to pay attention to. Perhaps one of them may belong to that over zealous coin thrower, who in the process of pursuing a blessing actually tossed herself out of the speeding jeep along with her rupee, to miraculously escape with just a minor bruising from the Gammon concrete. (more…)