The Zeitgeist of Calcutta Has Changed

Calcutta has changed its smell.

Not only the physical smell, though that too has performed many experiments on the human nose: drain water after rain, hot oil, incense, petrol, damp walls, cheap perfume, old paper, new paint, old lies. I mean the moral smell, the thing one notices without being able to photograph it. The sense that something has shifted in the way people display themselves, excuse themselves, and arrange their private convenience under public words.

The old city was not pure. That story is lazy. People lied earlier too. People cheated. People posed. Respectability had hidden rooms. The difference is embarrassment. Earlier, wrongdoing at least understood the need for a shawl. Now it often arrives with lighting, caption, and audience.

This is not the usual complaint that everything was better before. Before had its own absurdities: load-shedding, nosy neighbors, slow phones, bad roads, and a whole culture of small controls dressed up as concern. The old para could suffocate a person with attention. But it had memory. If someone was ill, ten people knew, five interfered, three helped, and two spread inaccurate information. It was irritating. It was also human.

Now we have privacy.

We also have abandonment with better wallpaper.

Public virtue has become louder than private decency. A man can speak of values in the morning, underpay a worker in the afternoon, forward poison by evening, and sleep with the satisfaction of having participated in civilization. Visible religiosity has become especially theatrical. Private faith may be sincere. I have no interest in mocking it. But the public version often arrives as microphone, banner, light, gate, committee, and competition. The same lane that cannot keep a footpath clear can produce a temporary monument large enough to intimidate the sky.

Devotion has learned event management.

Night adds another layer. Park Street sells laughter. Shobhabazar keeps old sadness folded in its cupboards. Tea stalls glow. Bars glow. Phones glow. People move through light looking for importance, forgetting, touch, admiration, escape, or only somewhere to sit where the ceiling is higher than their worries. None of this is new in essence. Cities have always had secret rooms. Desire is older than signage.

What feels newer is the mixture of secrecy and display.

Everything wants an audience now. Grief wants an audience. Devotion wants an audience. Charity wants an audience. Food wants an audience. Even loneliness sometimes appears to be posing for a camera before it has finished hurting.

Social media has made this worse by giving every feeling a stage before it has earned language. A public loss becomes a post. A ritual becomes a reel. A city lane becomes content. Someone photographs poverty and calls it authenticity. Someone photographs generosity and calls it awareness. Someone photographs himself being moved by the city and forgets that the city was not waiting to serve as his background.

This is not only a rich person’s disease. The performance habit travels across class because the phone is democratic in distribution and ruthless in appetite. Everyone is invited to become a small broadcaster. Everyone is encouraged to edit the self before living it.

Meanwhile the ordinary city grows sharper. Smile outside, calculation inside. Friendship becomes networking with softer clothes. Help becomes leverage. Culture becomes a stick. Politics becomes access. Access becomes morality. The common phrase is “managing,” which can mean resilience, corruption, adjustment, negotiation, or a quiet surrender disguised as practicality.

The old bhadralok ideal had many faults. It was pompous, class-bound, often timid, and too fond of mistaking pronunciation for refinement. But at least it pretended that education should improve conduct. Today education often improves only the grammar of selfishness. The knife now speaks better English. That is not progress. It is a cutlery upgrade.

Still, the city is not finished. That would be too dramatic, and Calcutta, even at its worst, dislikes neat endings.

Goodness remains, but it speaks softly. A tea seller lets someone pay tomorrow and does not announce it. A neighbor sends food without turning it into a campaign. A stranger helps someone cross a road where traffic has lost its moral center. A nurse speaks gently to a frightened patient. A bookshop owner remembers what you bought years ago, which is touching and financially dangerous.

The trouble is that decency does not hire lights. Vulgarity does.

Maybe this is the real change. Not that bad people have arrived. They were always here, often well dressed. The change is that loudness has defeated restraint. Display has defeated depth. Cleverness has defeated character. Public posture has defeated private conduct. The city has not become worse in one thunderclap. It has shifted by installment: one small lie, one unpaid kindness, one worker dismissed, one friend used, one poor person ignored, one loud prayer covering one private rot.

Morning still comes. The kettle boils. Someone argues about football. Someone complains about the price of vegetables. Someone says, “Be human,” as if that were still a viable profession.

That is the question.

Why remain human when the market rewards the opposite?

I do not have a grand answer. Grand answers usually require a stage and bad sound. I have only a small one, the size of a clay cup.

Remain human because otherwise the city wins in the worst way. Not by defeating you. By recruiting you.