komolika affair

The Komolika Affair



The scandal from Calcutta to have hit the headlines recently or to put is as the Americans say ‘the shit has hit the fan’ is the much talked about Komolika affair.

Komolika Banerjee is an up and coming Bengali T.V actress in her mid twenties. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English from Calcutta University to boot. Her father was a retired Professor in one of the colleges in Calcutta, now retired.

She fell in love with a colleague of hers Krishakishore Mukherjee who was a T.V. anchor in one of the local channels and married him. Marry him she did, but, secretly in a temple in a far away village in West Bengal. Why this secrecy?

After her wedding she went to stay with her husband in a flat in a multistoried apartment at Behala, Calcutta. According to her statement she had sex with her husband after the wedding,[ presuming she did not have sex earlier, either with her husband or with any other man] After some time she came to know that her husband was already married and his wife lived in the same apartment but on a different floor.

Being wiser now she refused to have sex with her husband, who getting infuriated assaulted her and drove her out.

That is the gist of the matter as per her complaint to the local police.

Now this affair raises some interesting questions.

Is she an absolute greenhorn, a novice that she consented to marry in a remote temple in a remote village by exchanging garlands? She is a qualified woman and ought to know that such a marriage is not recognized in a court of law. Why didn’t she insist on a proper registration of the wedding?

The women I have talked to in this regard are of the unanimous opinion that she is a ‘nyaka’, a Bengali word that defies an English translation. But I will try to explain by giving an example.

Say, a woman having experience of premarital sex puts on the airs of a virgin on her wedding night during a traditional arranged marriage and cries the cry that must be cried on the nuptial bed to simulate her defloration [Sir Richard Burton: Arabian Nights] and somehow manages to paint her bed sheet red on the morrow is an exemplary ‘nyaka’.

It is the height of stupidity to lodge a complaint with the police in so sordid a matter and be the laughing stock of society. What exactly does she want now after having lost her maidenhead to a Casanova, a wolf preying on young women and who has a wife at home? She is certainly not the first woman to have such an experience and she will certainly not be the last.

It is earnestly hoped that better sense shall prevail and we will soon see the end of this disgusting yet lurid affair.