Not so much suspenders-wearing, Cubans-smoking Michael Douglas, but more Pantaloons-clad, mishti doi-scooping Rajatava Dutta, the actor who plays the role of a US senator in the 2011 Bengali film, Paglu, and who, in one memorable scene, says [in English], ‘Okay, I’ll talk with Mr President,’ into a clunky cellular phone. But coming from ‘Tatas, Boo!’ Bengal, known more for its Big Ben aspirations than for its Big Sur wealth-creating spirit, this is, well, rich.
Roy, like Gekko, is an anti-hero, rather than an outright villain in the count-or-be-unaccounted world of finance. But unlike the man who made ‘Greed is good‘ a double-edged byword for ‘Whatever-it-takes, take’ capitalism, our real-life Roy isn’t suave in his ruthlessness, and is very unlikely to be extremely wealthy. So when on Monday, I watched the leaked video clip of him shouting his head off in an online meeting, ripping apart junior colleagues who had failed to meet their targets one by one in weaponised low-Bengali, I felt a twinge of sympathy for this corporate psychopath.
Roy is seen wagging his finger as he shouts into the camera, recreating a drill sergeant at a boot camp. At one point, he tells Biswanath De – he addresses everyone in the overfamiliar ‘tui’ (tu) – to turn on his camera and show his face on the Zoom call. ‘Thhobra dekha! ‘ he snarls, a phrase that some English TV channels beeped out thinking that the two Bengali words meant much more than, ‘Show (your) mug!’
Punctuated by machine-gunned ‘Bol!’s (Tell me!) and ‘Amaye ki bhebechhish?!’ (What do you think I am?!) in between his colleagues providing their defence cagily, Pushpal provides what, to Pushpal’s mind, Bengal’s bankers and Bengali bhadraloks need to get out of their intellectual, lotos-eating fug: being treated like human chattel. Playing whip-lashing master to these HDFC galley slaves on Zoom, Roy briefly switches to English while directing his mustard-oiled ire at John Brown – after Brown, a standard quiet kind of Bengali at least on Zoom, is cut off while trying to speak in perfectly normal Bengali.
This is no gentle takedown that, at a pinch, can be set to Rabindrasangeet. This is a new anti-‘Bengali lunch hours’ Bengali who wants his team to shout out every morning while punching into office, ‘Where the mind is with fear/ And the head is held between the legs/Where knowledge is rubbish/ Unless you can show me the money… Let my credit worth awake.’ It’s part of a growing fascination for a strong, no-holds-bor-da (elder brother), who has the right to be rude, even at the cost of humiliating others, for the ‘greater good’. Now, despite me feeling a bit sorry for Pushpal-babu, I do feel a bit nervous about having to have any further human dealings with my bank: yes, HDFC. I conduct an ovewhelming part of my money stuff online. But I do get (polite) calls from a healthy rota of ‘relationship managers’ who want me to 1) open another account, 2) put blobs of my money into various funds, 3) take loans for things I don’t know I want yet, 4) upgrade by credit card, 5) remarry, 6) rob an SBI branch and deposit the amount in a floating HDFC account… Everyone maybe publicly horrified by Roy’s Spanish Inquisition work methods. But let’s face it, ‘Do whatever it takes’ is increasingly acceptable by all stakeholders, whether in politics, finance, or even (especially?) in public ‘good’.
My HDFC branch is in Delhi. But what Bengal thinks today, India may well think tomorrow. Imagine the Jat or UPite equivalent of Pushpal the Piranha, successor to Gordon the Gecko, unleashed across bank branches across the country. So ja beta, nahi toh Pushpal Uncle aa jayega.
