Red Alert: Marx, Mao, Lenin And Stalin Set To Die A Second Death In SUCI Homes

This home defies easy explanations and inside her lives a parallel society filled with meaning. This is a commune바카라�called a 바카라�centre바카라� by the comrades, a 바카라�mess바카라� by its neighbours, and founded on the communist-socialist ideology that swept through West Bengal and shaped its history for decades. This home in Hatibagan uses history as a mirror to show how things were then. This is also a vanishing vestige of collective living that dotted a leftist Bengal바카라�until Mamata Banerjee, supermarkets and IT parks happened.

Time seems to have stood still here, or even moved backwards. Yet, dot at 5pm, Chaya Mukherjee, the 82-year-old central committee member and national president of SUCI바카라�s women바카라�s wing, takes her seat for tea and an evening 바카라�tiffin바카라� of piping hot vegetable pakoras and puffed moori rice. The meal (like all meals) is shared and this time over a weekend powwow with the 11 members of the commune. 바카라�Our centres are based on the Marxist idea of community, where no material possession is personal. Living tog­ether with people from diverse social and religious backgrounds and building affectionate relationships is the idea. I have been living in a commune for 50 years since I joined the SUCI student wing,바카라� says Mukherjee, fondly called Boroma, or elder mother, by her adopted, ext­ended family of 11 that includes four couples and a three-year-old child. The only contradiction to the communist self-abnegation is an air-conditioner that keeps Calcutta바카라�s sultry heat away.

It바카라�s a throwback to the Mao era, when, six decades ago, the communist leader launched the first communes in the Chinese backcountry with the Great Leap Forward, an effort to spur the economy that instead caused a famine that killed 30 million people. In Bengal and elsewhere in India, communes were established because of a pressing political need바카라�to shelter underground comrades and those who have reli­nquished everything personal, including families, for communism. Later, these became an integral part of communist parties. These were everywhere바카라�in hundreds, spread over the vast land바카라�and hosted legends such as Jyoti Basu, E.M.S. Namboodiripad. M. Basavapunniah, Muzzafar Ahmad, Promode Dasgupta et al. But only a handful of these homes survives today. Over the years, as the political scene changed with the Left Front in power, many returned home while some comrades and apparatchiks chose to remain바카라�give up worldly pleasures and work for the party.

Among the survivors are the SUCI바카라�s three in Calcutta, with the oldest in Tala, which opened in 1948 after the party바카라�s inception. 바카라�Sibdas Ghosh spent his life in the Tala centre. It is a commune바카라�better than living a narrow personal life in a household. Life in the commune is more enriching,바카라� says Amitava Chatterjee, state secretariat and central committee member of SUCI, a fringe party members doggedly commited to their cause. Fifty years ago, these were everywhere, in every town and village, but now they are just a few in the district headquarters, and like the one hidden in a bylane of north Calcutta, informs Sujata Banerjee, daughter of former Left Front minister Subodh Banerjee, who lived and died in the Hatibagan commune that was founded in 1968.

These communes stand on the intersection of a way of life from a bygone era and a generational divide shaped by a growing market economy. So what is the hook that still persuades people to such 바카라�collective living바카라�? The ans­wer perhaps lies in the home where Chaya Mukherjee is the materfamilias. She shares eight bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen and a 바카라�meeting/sitting바카라� room that often becomes the guestroom for comrades visiting from the countryside. Her family comprises Sapna Dasgupta, 65, Bina Samanta, 68, Shipra Halder, a 28-year-old member of the All India Democratic Students바카라� Organisation (student wing of the SUCI) and an MSc in physics, her husband Suphal Kayal, 33, Atanu Nayiya, a 40-year-old farmer from a little-known village in Purulia, Moumita Saha, a 28-year-old physical science teacher at the centuries-old Scottish Church Collegiate School, Imtiaz Alam, 45, his wife Chirtita Banerjee, 32, and their daughter Rifah Tasnia, 3, and 50-year-old Srirupa Banerjee.

바카라�In our communes, we do not allow comrades to have individual possessions. Commune members donate all their earnings to the party. Unlike the CPM and CPI communes, SUCI encourages couples and their children to live in its communes. But we do not encourage mothers to shower special attention on their children,바카라� says the matriarch. Agrees Amitava Chatterjee, who has converted his private home into a commune at Baranagar on the northern fringes of Calcutta. 바카라�We run the communes by collections, taking private tuitions and from donations of party and party members.바카라� The CPM also ran such communes but for members of the party, the luxuries of life which comes after being in power for 34 years were too much of a temptation. The communes were later shut down.   

The commune may have its flaws, but the people living there genuinely believe in its aims. Life is alt­ernately good-humoured and haunting바카라�almost hermitic. Life has been undisrupted despite cataclysmic occurrences. The benefits clearly outweigh the drawbacks. 바카라�The typical family atmosphere makes the commune a unique concept of a collective living,바카라� say Alam as 65-year-old Sapna Das­gupta discusses the no-frills dinner menu with Moumita Saha. Preparing meals, running errands and doing routine chores are collective responsibility as the commune has no duty roster. 바카라�We know every member바카라�s taste. But we prepare the food acc­ording to the ration we have,바카라� Dasgupta says. Peering out of stacks of books, documents and rec­ords in a small library, Sujit Bhatashali, 76, who edits the SUCI mouthpiece Ganadabi, throws more light on the one subject that triggers friendly banters and light-hearted guffaws in the commune. 바카라�The meals were mostly vegetarian, with an occasional serving of fish.바카라�

The food, however frugal it has been, tells the state of the 바카라�mess바카라�바카라�the community kitchen, the common home. As it lives surrounded by modern trappings, this keeper of an age-old philosophy바카라�simple living and high thinking바카라�struggles with the harsh reality that it will become distant memories in a not-so-distant future.

By Probir Pramanik in Calcutta