Kolkata

Are old structures really everywhere as bad as one imagines in the “modern” western world? Jürgen Gerrmann asks himself this after a visit to a small village in West Bengal.

So what is he actually? This man in his old grey trousers and a sweater that is definitely not from Hugo Boss in Metzingen, wearing a blue, white and grey striped scarf and sitting before me in an office where the plaster is crumbling from the walls, while to his left is a safe that looks to me as if it could already have been there during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Is he a member of the Indian landed gentry? One of the large-scale farmers? Something like the Prussian Junkers of Bismarck’s era with their manors, who were much hated by the common people in the days of the German Empire? A kind of landlord as in British colonial times, which were by no means happy times for the Indians.

Well, it’s not so easy to say what Ashish Ghosh actually is. And perhaps it’s not so important. If someone eludes the German pigeonholing system, that is not necessarily negative. On the contrary, it offers a fairly good protection against prejudices.

What is certain is that Ghosh’s great-grandfather built Karanjali market 150 years ago. Since the British left India, at the latest, not much has changed there. The colours are faded or tarnished in places; little importance is attached here to exteriors - with houses as with people. To European eyes there is much here that looks dingy or grubby, but to Indian eyes this is all quite normal.

People flock here - and even though there are only about 20 houses clustered around Ashish’s estate, located just under a kilometre away and surrounded by a number of small ponds (in the past, these were not separated but were connected to provide protection like the moat of a medieval fortress), yet the 60 stalls on the National Highway 117, threading its way 113 kilometres from Haora to Bakkhali in the south of West Bengal, are of great significance.

Neighbouring villages are also supplied from here, says Ghosh: Kataberia, Damodarpur, Moleygram, Padmapukur, Tele, Meyanapur, Shyamnagri and Tengrachar. For your information: “eight villages” in India comprise a total of 75,000 inhabitants. So things get pretty busy when the customers flock to the market that is basically a little village in itself. Cars and buses on the NH 117 struggle to get through, and anyone wanting to go to Ashish Gosh’s house needs good nerves. You move forward at a snail’s pace and have to take care not to scrape one of the motorbikes or one of the bicycle-drawn carts on whose square loading surfaces goods or even people are being transported.

The day on the NH 117 begins in the morning at 3.30 – with the big fish market. Until 7.00, along the highway, a huge auction takes place here in which both the people who fish in the Hugli, a distributary of the Ganges, as well as those who try their luck in the sea at the Gulf of Bengal, hope to get the best prices. After this the buyers swarm away in all directions – even to the markets of Calcutta.

When the fisherman have left, then the other stalls open: the greengrocers and the vendors of devotional objects, the street kitchens and oil mills, the tailors and carpenters, the bicycle workshops and copy shops, the scrap dealers, the blacksmiths and jewellery stalls, the chick breeders and clothes stalls, the rice dealers and medicine vendors, the hairdressers and grain threshers and so on and so forth.

And every Tuesday and every Saturday this hustle and bustle becomes even more colourful: then the farmers also flock to Karanjali to sell their own products in the square around the temple of the goddess Kali. The dealers use this onrush to make special offers, and it is well-known in the region that on Tuesdays and Saturdays one can pick up the best bargains.

There are, by the way, two shifts at the market: at 13.30 the dealers take a break for lunch. Two hours later they open up again – with renewed energy. Then they have to carry on until 9 in the evening.

But in comparison to many others who have no work, they are still quite well off. “Education” is thus the keyword for Ashish Gosh. This is why he now locks up his office to walk a kilometre with the visitor from Germany to the Karanjali Balika Vidyalaya – the school that means so much to him.

Here Basav Bhattacharya has already set up his laptop and beamer. Together with four passengers (including myself), he has transported them from Calcutta, a bumpy journey in his little Maruti. For the little village school does not have this kind of equipment. Basav is a freelance reporter for the Times of India, consultant in a PR agency for enterprises, has worked for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and has already launched several social projects.

In the bare room that still has no windows (and it doesn’t really become clear whether it ever will have any) 380 girls, from grades 5 to 7, are sitting, quite peacefully, on the floor. They are seated on sheets of canvas of the kind normally used on building sites.

Problems with discipline? Never! The children are fascinated as Basav shows them the most diverse birds. They are evidently enjoying the change from their everyday routine and take part enthusiastically, answering in chorus. “Heh” does not, of course, mean, as it does in Swabian, that they haven’t understood something – it is simply the Bengali word for “Yes”.

The “manik” seems to be a favourite – when they see the picture of the hoopoe, they start cheering. There is also much excitement about the “tia”, the parrot, and the “kaththokra”, the woodpecker. And with the onomatopoeic “ghughu” the bird is immediately recognised – a pigeon, of course.

No doubt about it: learning is great fun for these children. After 45 minutes the girls (the boys are taught separately) then file back to their classrooms, their hands placed neatly on the shoulders of the girl in front.

Rakhi Bhattacharya, the head teacher, can hardly believe that in Germany only about 30 children are taught at the same time. She asks Basav three times to confirm this number. She has between 95 and 100 pupils in her classes.

Nevertheless, this is a happy development for Ashish and Batav. The introduction of compulsory education (only just over two years ago for the whole of India) is for them a milestone in the struggle against poverty: “This has changed our society more quickly than expected.”

Yet this is by no means the end of their endeavours. Ashish Ghosh (supported by Basav) still has great aims in the little village of Karanjali. He is by no means indifferent to the poor. For generations his family have been members of the Congress Party. He still feels committed to its 126-year-old tradition, even though it has had to lower its sights in West Bengal during recent decades.

At the beginning of 1943, a famine with a death toll of five million caused voters to turn to the Communists, who, later, also promoted intensively the settlement of poor people from East Bengal (the independent Bangladesh). This evidently served their own consolidation of power: from 1977 to 2011, without interruption, the Chief Minister was a member of the Communist Party - until Mamata Banerjee from the “Grass Roots Congress” rang in the changing of the guard.

Ashish Ghosh does not look back with regret to the days when his family lived in greater splendour – with all its external trappings. “One has to come to terms with the changed social situation.” But he would still like the spirit of his father to live on in the village. “I live here, so I help the people,” he says to the guest from Germany. Quite unpretentiously, more as a side remark.

After all, he gets something back. “People help me too. Either with their work or with the connections they have, and which I can then use for others.” Basav believes that in Ashish Ghosh the ancient Indian principle of the “Headman” lives on. “The ‘chieftain’ looks after the others – and the others look after him.” At least 75,000 people live in the region. “And Mister Ghosh knows most of them.” Yes, in conversation with the guest from Germany the man from the city always refers to him as ‘Mister Ghosh’. Never by his first name. This, too, is a sign of reverence.

As is the fact that the young men on their bikes never overtake him as he strolls through the market street. They dismount and push their bikes slowly behind him until he pauses somewhere or turns a corner. And the local people do not even call him by his family name but address the 63-year-old as “Babu”. Basav cannot really find a word to translate this, he says it means “a highly respected person”. Later I read that this word is derived from the Hindi expression for “prince”.

Before talking about their troubles, they take off their shoes

In any case, Babu Ghosh is highly regarded in and around Karanjali. He is invited to many weddings and other festivities. And many people come to his office, often recommended by others who are well-known to Ashish. They wait outside in front of the open door until it is their turn – and take off their shoes before entering the little room to talk about their troubles. And then Babu Ghosh helps them deal with problems with the authorities or sees to it that social welfare recipients get their electricity free of charge. And, often enough, he comes to the rescue of those who are in dire straits.

Many people in and around Karanjali are plagued by poverty. If someone in the family falls ill, then things become very difficult. Medicine is often very expensive. Then the man sitting in front of the ancient safe lends them money. Without any financial self-interest. For Ghosh demands no interest whatsoever. And this is really remarkable in a country where one is charged 36 percent a year for a private loan and where eleven percent for a mortgage is regarded as a good deal. “Babu” knows who he is dealing with. “I have a good eye for who pays back and who doesn’t.” And if he sees that it’s just not possible, then he can also simply let things be. The really poor people, by the way, are the most conscientious, Ashish tells me.

Yet his social commitment is not only reflected in rupees. Four years ago he was deeply concerned by the fact that so many young people were jobless. So he made a room available to some of them, free of charge, and also gave the cooperative its start-up capital: seven, eight men, about 30 years of age, sit there on the floor and embroider a sari that is spanned over a wooden frame. Five and a half metres in length and 1.30 metres in width is the material on which thousands of glass crystals are draped in painstaking precision work. Some of the patterns originate from the era of Alexander the Great. The young people take 400 hours to complete one such garment. In Calcutta they can sell it for 2,000 rupees. This means 8 cents per man and hour. A pittance by German standards. In Kalanjari this is a silver lining on the horizon.

Now Ghosh and Basav are also planning a sewing school in which young girls and women are to acquire skills that will make them independent. It is to be started very soon.

However, both of them are extremely worried about the inadequacy (or non-existence) of health care. For 75,000 people there are five to six “doctors”, but they are not qualified. “These quack doctors often give wrong diagnoses and still take a lot of money,” says Basav. Therefore he and Ghosh now want to establish a medical care centre – starting with a mother-child project in which a doctor from Calcutta comes by once a week or at least offers a consultation via webcam.

“Dignity has nothing to do with ostentation,” I think to myself in the night as we travel back to Babu’s house, and I look at the man beside me. It needs no palaces, but can live in houses where one room after the other is crumbling under the weight of 250 years. It needs no limousines, a rusty bicycle serves the purpose. And it manages without a swimming pool or a swanky bathroom, a bucket of water is enough – and a small pitcher to pour the water. It doesn’t have to dine at festive tables with golden forks and silver spoons, sitting on the floor and eating with fingers is quite good enough.

Dignity has, above all else, to do with having a heart for other people. This I have learned during these two days in this village. And for this reason it is quite unimportant to me how one classifies Ashish Ghosh. For me he is quite simply – the good man of Karanjali.