Are Bengalis the custodians of angst?

MUMBAI: ‘Custodians of Angst: Do Bengalis hold the monopoly’ turned out to be the most packed session of the Lodha hall on Saturday. The audience comprised so many ‘Bongs’ and ‘Hon Bongs’ that it was easy to believe the sly query of Swapan Dasgupta as to whether angst was, in fact, the prerogative of those who had left Kolkata and gone to live elsewhere.The other panelists were Neel Mukherjee whose Booker-shortlisted ‘The Lives of Others’ exudes as much of the stuff as a Bengali home exudes the aroma of ‘maastaard’ oil.
Moderator Shovon Chowdhury, author of the wildly funny ‘The Competent Authority’, matched Swapan’s wry humour, and with the other panelists, Neel Mukherjee and Nilanjana Roy, gamely jumping into the self-deprecation, the hall had a rollicking time laughing at itself, mostly.
The targets were wide ranging. The digestion-centred hypochondria, which the panel concluded was the anatomical source of the metaphorical gripe; the romanticised notion of everything from the Naxalite movement to the long-suffering protagonist being essential to the success of any film; the exaggerated greatness of Bengali icons predominantly of the past; the decline of outside world’s agonising indifference to the intellectual, cultural and culinary superiority of what Swapan referred to as ‘the autonomous republic of Calcutta’.
At Q&A time, the audience as sportingly continued the fun spirit of the session, and at the end of it limped out— the result of so much hilarious leg-pulling.