It’s easy to lampoon Calcuttans. But remember, when you are in a spot, they’ll be the ones to invade the roads in your cause

Is it because Kolkata is un-cool?

Tell you what, I think it’s because Kolkata isn’t South Mumbai, or South Delhi or Bangalore. It is not another Smalltown, USA, where everyone sips the finest red, smokes the best Cuban and titters. Been there, done that, back when South Mumbai was a fishing village and South Delhi still the villages of Siri and Hauz Khas.

Instead, it’s a place where everyone, governor to goala, comes face to face with grit. There is much to be thankful for, a literary mind to begin with, but also much to curse, thanks to the twists of history, the self-serving myopia of the Left and Bengali inertia. It’s a strange, paradoxical situation, contentment and frustration in peaceful coexistence.

Bengalis are an easy community to lampoon, fair game for satirists who can begin with the accent and end with the hypochondria. So is every other Indian community but while the Great Middle-Class Boom prompted the Punjabi and the South Indian to shed much of the superficial regional identity and merge with the crowd, the Bengali has proved less able — or willing — to let go.

So you can spot a Bong from a mile off, whether it’s the monkey-cap on the hill-station Mall, the insistence on ordering Chinese in the middle of nowhere or the complete inability — refusal? — to master Hindi. More than any other part of India, Kolkata can say ‘We are like this only’, and say it with pride.

Yet the strong sense of Bengali-ness is inclusive, welcoming, able to take in outsiders, unlike the chauvinism in other parts. The Bengali realised long ago that it would be better to have the Marwari run retail trade, the Sikhs organise transport and the Anglo-Indians look after education than to have to grapple with these headaches. They will make fun of the way a ‘Madrasi’ eats, full palms instead of finger-tips, but will defend to the death — via strike or gherao — his right to eat that way.

Maybe that’s what’s upset everyone else. Maybe those who sip their Sauvignon and chew on their cheroots can’t countenance that they can’t simply vote Kolkata out of whichever reality show they are part of.

When Kolkatans next take a break from their angst and their daily grind, they’d probably sit on their rok, sip their bhaanrer cha and laugh at just how much energy the Cal-bashers are spending in bashing Cal. To quote Clonetown, India, ‘‘Just chill’’.