Saga of the Bue and White hawai chappals............ We all know that Momota didi loves the colour of her BATA hawai chappal..... blue and white. We also got to know that she has a pathological distaste for anything red too. When poriborton happened in West Bengal, Red was banished, bashed, purged, etc etc whether it was a walking red or an inanimate red. So out went Red carpets, red shamiyanas, red sarees, etc etc. So pathological a hatred that there seemed at one stage that the traditional Shada Saree Laal par and Sankha and Pala (traditional Bengalee white saree with red border, and the ubiquitous white sea shell and coral bangles) will be banished. Mercifully those have stayed. The city police was quick to catch on to the blue n white, all police stations got painted blue and white, police cars and even plastic cone road dividers changed clours to blue and white. Even the Ochterlony monument that was erected in 1828 in memory of Major-general Sir David Ochterlony, commander of the British East India Company, In August 1969, it was rededicated to the memory of the martyrs of the Indian freedom movement and hence renamed the Shahid Minar, was white topped Red, now has changed colours to White topped Blue. The latest is an announcement made yesterday, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) today decided to waive a year’s property taxes for residential buildings painted in blue and white, probably making Lionel Messi and Mamata Banerjee happy but not those doing the math and visualising the skyline. Mayor Sovan Chatterjee said the decision was taken to bring “uniformity in the colour of buildings in Calcutta” but added that it would not be binding on house owners. “It will make Calcutta beautiful. Usually, tax incentives are given to promote practices amenable to the environment or safety. Tax breaks to propagate arbitrary personal preferences are not common. Soon after coming to power, Mamata had made known her fascination for blue and white. “Jaipur is called Pink City and from there I got the idea of having a uniform colour for our Calcutta…. I couldn’t choose red, nor could I opt for green. I chose blue and white,” she had said. Madam CM, Jaipur got its Pink when its eccentric Maharaja wanted to impress the Queen and Empress of the British empire Queen Victoria, when she visited Jaipur on a tour in 1876. The British maintained Calcutta buildings white and/or Red, perhaps they understood the local tradition of Shada Saree Laal par and the Shankha and pala of the Bengalee lass. Veteran artist K.G. Subramanyan says: “If you rebuilt the city and some areas were painted uniformly, it would give it an aesthetic neighbourhood feeling. But face paint cannot make an ugly person beautiful. If they want uniformity, white would be the best choice.…. Blue and white is not the best choice. It is ridiculous.” I agree Mr K.G. Subramanyan........... but you cant do much about the sycophants can you??
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 09:50:48 +0000
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