Welcome to Dumka

Dumka is surrounded by hills on four and naxalites on three sides.The one rather less exciting direction is from where you enter the town.Some ambitious town planner, a decade ago, had decided that Dumka would have its own Big Ben. So an apology of a tower with a big clock was built to greet all who. The clock however never ran on time.For ten years this tower that aspired to be the poor man's Qutub Minar hosted a clock (or are there four facing each direction?)that the poor man called "pagal ghadi"..i prefer to translate it not as "the mad clock" but as "the mad times".at five in the morning it would announce the midnight and the broad-daylight could be late evening by its logic.the town also couldnt console itself that the clock is meant for the indian trains since it is not connected with the railways network.
Change came to the sleepy town ten years after the installation of the big ben.It hit the national headlines for a brief moment when we heard that "singur" is being repeated in 'Kathikund' a small block in Dumka district.(Kathikund may be translated as the "lake of trees").Land was being acquired for developmentfollowed by tribal uprising,lathicharge, arson and a police firing.One bus was burnt/lit and two young boys were shot.One tribal boy,in the orientalist fashion a friend told me,was shot in the head when he sat down to duck the bullets!!The police only fires at the ground!!U stoop to get shot...
Media created and recreated this Singur trope and politicians exploited it.In the coming Vidhan sabha elections many of these agitators became political leaders,some fought elections, all lost.Land was peacefully transferred and the dream-hungry town began seeing real mercedes cars,flashy dresses, english speaking bosses and swarms of engineers.how many parents had lived under the fetish of engineer sons!at last they could see how do they look like:men in uniform...and yes that reduced the glamour of the bureaucrat and added to the stain on the perceived soiled kurta of the politician.Soon they hoped they will have air-conditioned shopping malls.After the Naxals,the employable youth had other set of recruiters:the Jindals. Modernity,though late,had arrived.Or had it?
The mercedes people had come and were greeted by the same clock i told u about in the beginning.They were smart people and were driven by values of punctuality and clock time.They had immediately bought ten pencil batteries for fifty rupees,less thah half of what the Mnrega worker earns in a day.They waited for the right time to run the clock.Post-election the mad time was sane again and along with the tower and right clocks were huge corporate posters to welcome you.They say times maintained by Jindals.People read:times maintained by Jindal.Welcome to Dumka.