Summers in West Bengal are traditionally all about mangoes and lychees. But this has turned out to be the Summer of the Egg and not even the most hard-boiled political observer could have seen that coming.

After the Trinamool Congress (TMC) was ousted from power in West Bengal this May, almost every other day, there comes news of yet another party leader being pelted with eggs. The targets have included Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC national general secretary, all the way down to local councillors and neighbourhood dadas. Meanwhile, keeping with the egg theme, TMC’s existing MPs and MLAs are being poached by rival factions while the rest scramble for cover.

Observers call this the pent-up anger of ordinary people fed up with corruption and extortion. The revenge of the petit-bhurjee as it were. Apparently, there is a thriving market for rotten eggs now, hitherto destined to become fish feed. Some wonder why the TMC leaders who hurriedly deserted the mothership and swore allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seem to have escaped the egg barrage. And who might be egging on the aam aadmi since eggs aren’t cheap?

Meanwhile, while politicians face eggs aplenty, they might vanish from mid-day meals under the ISCKON pilot programme the government wants to roll out. But the general consensus in Bengal seems to be that you cannot make a new omelette without cracking a few eggs.

A throw to remember

It all makes one wonder though about the strange satisfaction we derive in throwing things, snowballs to javelins. Or eggs. In the hunting and gathering times, being able to throw a spear accurately meant there was dinner that night. Slowly, that became less of a necessity but throwing remains baked into many of our sports, from cricket to darts. Accurate high-momentum throwing is a sign of our evolution as a species. Science says a good throw can result in a dopamine rush. Conversely, my inability to catch a ball thrown at me from across the field always made me feel a lesser human.

Perhaps, that’s why when we throw something at someone powerful and it lands, for a moment, we feel superhuman. In America, frustrated activists often threw pies at politicians. The activity came to be called pie-ing. Famous anti-gay-rights activist Anita Bryant had an aluminium pie-tin filled with banana cream thrown in her face in 1977. Anti-capitalist protesters have pied Bill Gates and economist Milton Friedman. 

On the other side of the political divide, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary have gotten pies in their faces. The group Biotic Baking Brigade specialised in this form of protest. It was humorous, relatively non-violent, fed into a sort of David vs. Goliath narrative, and ultimately made the news (and a mess). It was, writes journalist Ben Paynter, an “early political meme”.

Of course, pies are not the only things we throw to vent at the powerful. At a press conference in Baghdad in 2008, an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at former U.S. president George W. Bush calling it a “farewell kiss from the Iraqi people”. Bush ducked and the journalist went to prison, though hundreds marched in solidarity, carrying shoes attached to poles.

Closer home, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and India’s Arvind Kejriwal have also had shoes thrown at them. There have been more exotic missiles — banana and salted caramel milkshake at the U.K.’s Reform politician Nigel Farage, condoms filled with purple flour at Tony Blair, and a dildo for New Zealand minister Steven Joyce.

A rotten state

But in Bengal, Deem Therapy (eggs are called deem in Bengali) is playing out like a reality show with a new episode every day. While there is scant sympathy for many of the targets, the glee with which this sport has been embraced proves something is deeply rotten and it’s not just the eggs. When legitimate means of protest, from marches to police FIRs to even Instagram and X posts are routinely squashed, the anger doesn’t go away. It festers like rotting eggs.

Today, the target might be politicians perceived as corrupt, and there is pleasure in seeing the powerful left with egg on their faces. But tomorrow, it could be anyone the mob dislikes — an actor, a writer, a social worker, a freethinker, a protester. Already, a school head- teacher was reportedly “egged” after news emerged of condoms being found in the schoolyard in West Bengal’s Malda. And what, in the end, is the anda ka funda?

Unfortunately, deem therapy, satisfying as it might be in the moment, does not ultimately make for an egg-alitarian society.

The writer is author of Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal.