But the protests hit another peak this Sunday, on the eve of the gruesome anniversary of the junior doctor’s death. All night, Kolkata’s streets teemed with people of all ages who turned the surface of the black-tarred roads into canvasses on which they painted brilliant white slogans calling for justice and sketches representing Abhaya — portraits that looked like Goddess Durga. Celebrity singers and bathroom singers took to handheld mikes and sang their hearts out.Foremost among the many anthems this fight for justice has thrown up over the last month is Aar Kobe? by Arijit Singh, which raises the question How much longer? When?Injustice is piling up into a mountainA burden of unbearable wrongsWe are silent, preoccupied with our lives, while, unnoticed, they pile up.Our backs against the wallAccepting it as fate, clinging to a glimmer of hope. Yet it hurts, living in fearFeeling helpless and immobilizedWhen? But when?When will the voice rise in strengthWhen will the mind be liberatedWhen will the heart find its cry When will the head be held high? When? But when?There is more, capturing the pain of injustice, the shroud of silence in the response and the need for change in that four-letter word.But, going by the response of the chief minister, you may be forgiven for thinking she thinks it is nothing but a lot of self-indulgent nonsense, best wound up sooner rather than later. The chief minister is, of course, also the chief administrator in charge of the greater good of the people of the state and she has every reason to seek a return to work by the junior doctors and normalcy in health services. Her government has quoted media reports and said 23 people have died in the last one month due to the cease-work protest. No specifics were shared of the people who lost their lives. But, even one death is a death too many. No question.Will her exhortation to the doctors to end the protests and to Kolkata to return to ‘utsav’ then work? At the time of going to press, the response from the junior doctors to the Supreme Court’s orders to end their month-long cease-work protest is awaited. It is hard to believe that they will now give up on justice for Abhaya, don their white coats to return and, in a month from now, join the rest of Kolkata in the revelry that traditionally welcomes Goddess Durga on her four-day visit to earth.Will Jawhar Sircar be celebrating the Pujas with friends and family? This former bureaucrat who joined the Trinamool Congress three years ago and went straight to Rajya Sabha has announced his resignation from the post and will be in Delhi to submit documents to Parliament. He has also said he is resigning from politics. In his letter to the chief minister, he says, “I have not seen such angst and total no-confidence against the government… Please do something to save the state.”Back in 2021, the poll consultancy company, IPAC, had coined a slogan that went a long way to ensure Mamata Banerjee’s thumping victory in the Assembly elections. It was ‘Bangla nijermaye kay chaye’ — Bengal wants its own daughter. That slogan could now come back to haunt the chief minister.
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