The van outside Baranagar police station. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha; (below) chicken in a city market

Many police stations have narrow thelas with a covering to carry corpses, whatever be the cause of death — accidents or encounters or beatings.

To people of a certain age, the very mention of Baranagar police station brings back horrific memories of the brutal suppression of the Naxalite uprising in the 1970s. The vehicle for carrying the dead stationed outside the police station is a large, brightly painted van, and on it are written the words: Baranagar thana. Harse Van.

The police are not famous for their command over words. But isn’t this taking death a little too casually?

Pet phrases

Indian panjandrums are known for their stilted style of writing notices, reports whatever. The word “gobbledygook” takes on a new meaning when it comes to the avian flu. The notice on the recent ban on the sale of poultry and products reads like a legal notice — “whereas… whereas… whereas… whereas” — it continues ad infinitum, and is so convoluted that each phrase is veiled in obscurity. Little wonder the ban ended in a fiasco, something we seem to specialise in.

Of human bondage

On Gariahat Road South, at the Dhakuria crossing, just past the Hahnemann homeopathy outlet, a blue and white sign proclaims the name boldly: The Human Element Guest House.

(Contributed by Soumitra Das and Malini Banerjee)