Chronicling Life.

The World's Tragedy.

2011-02-21T23:06:00.000+05:30

Hush!

I go about in search of love: and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things: foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to cats and dogs and pet birds because they come and ask for it.

It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. All the love in the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy! shy! shy!

Candida: George Bernard Shaw.

The 101st. :)

2010-11-15T23:14:00.001+05:30

So, this year round, I missed the birthday of my own blog. And realised it 3 months later.

Well, at least it doesn't complain.Also, I hit a century of posts, but this I realised only when I read a co-blogger's 100th post.

Now that we are done with the trivial chronicles, let's move on to things of greater significance. In August, some two years ago, I decided to start a blog- the name of which propped up almost instantaneously in my mind- Chronicling Lyfe. Because that was what I had meant it to be- essentially a chronicle, capturing slices of experiences and thought that would otherwise have just been lost- perhaps it will be lost anyways, as no expression can ever communicate emotion, but I was determined to make an attempt.
Then I dreamt up the 'Y' in the word 'Life'. Majorly to communicate that it was a personal chronicle.And I was fine with it. But the thing about being in a state of.........developing maturity shall we say? is that every perception is always in a state of flux. And the 'Y' in my 'life' has, for quite some time now begun irking me.
I look at it and it disturbs me. Perhaps its the anglophile in me. Perhaps it just has something to do with my obsession for order. If you don't like something about anything- change it. An infinitely better option than cribbing. So, I'm changing the spelling.

Yes, I am conforming.

11:23 pm

The Ugly Truth.

2010-11-13T23:40:00.000+05:30

We are all civilized people. Which essentially means that we are all savages except for the few trappings of refinements that recorded existence has thrust upon us- Clothes would be an example. Bathrooms another.Hypocrisies both of them.

The truth is, dear Readers( yes, I still dare to use the s), that Hypocrisy, for lack of a better word, is good.

Without it we'd be too ugly.

Hypocrisy makes a mother utter in sheer, genuine, disbelief- "my son couldn't have done that" where two and a half decades of upbringing would have surely told her something else. Or , at the most innocent level, it is hypocrisy that makes you tell that girl she is so definitely not looking fat. ( See the word looking?) We are not as ignorant as we would want ourselves to believe. But the next time, dig deep- if you have the guts enough to be found out.Or tell me that you can look into the eyes of a terminally ill patient and not reassure them that it would all be okay. Hell, even the harsher judgment on yourself than you would have passed on others was hypocrisy. But even more than the individual, hypocrisy is what the society needs- it was one thing to have broken rules in school and quite another to have flaunted it shamelessly- the latter is what revolutions- good and bad, are born of. The thing about truth is that it may hurt too good at times, but you wouldn't want a world of it. Few of us are worth a damn to anyone. Imagine a world where you knew that. Or, imagine a world where satyameva jayate was a lie.

And speaking of truth, there is another thing about it- Truth is arrogant. It is a proclamation of how what we think is more important than what others feel, which, at the end of the day is really not worth it.

I am a hypocrite. And this post is an excersise in my hypocrisy. It's just that as a breather, I seem to keep seeking beauty.

Because ~~I think that~~ I deserve some of it. We all do.

13.11.2010 ( Sat) 11:45pm

The Pidhi.

2010-10-23T23:24:00.001+05:30

At another routine day back after the Pujas in the library today, I was staring off into nothingness, looking back at my research of over two years now, mentally restructuring and simultaneously trying to come up with a world-stopping theory, when I realised that for quite some time now I had been looking out of the window at the astrologer sitting on the pavement, complete with his parrot.

Now I had never quite shared the disdain that quite a few of my peers have for him- overt or covert.Rather, I quite like him. His bread is as much an honest living as any one else's. And it is a hard living. Imagine trying to make perfect strangers believe in obscure, inscrutable forces and unfelt energies in the fragmented, disillusioned and marketed world we live in today.

And as I looked at him again, I realised that but for his very, very benign looks,he could have been a terrifying figure.Would I really want to have his well-trained parrot choose a card for me and me come to know of an insipid or perhaps even painful future? Have the knowledge of the yet-to-come shadow my small beautiful moments? Even if the knowledge comes with the assurance of remedy, really, who in their right minds would want it? Because what really, really worries me is the question of whether we have the power to shape our own futures. Of course, over time I have come to understand that unless we look at it theologically, our answers to this would be directly dependent on the measure of success achieved.

But, again as I saw a man sit down on the pidhi beside the parrot, I reflected that there is, after all a very fine line between foolishness and bravery, and till I manage to find the courage to make my way towards the now occupied pidhi, I remain sitting on a fence.

(Posted at 11:28 pm)

No Poetry Is Poetry Enough.

2010-10-22T18:59:00.000+05:30

What I concieve is poetry, what I write is a poem and between them falls a shadow so dark that it seems enough to plunge one into cynicism; A shadow so large that you seem to never reach its edges.

Forever Young.

2010-06-27T23:36:00.000+05:30

Today I subjected myself to a reality check. My last post had been on May 9.I have been putting off writing posts for so long I had now begun gliding over all thoughts of blogs - mine or otherwise. Not an unusual phenomenon when something piles up. But back breaking work now finally at a respite I must dive back into the multi-dimensional life that is more usual.

And I was in for a surprise- seems like it wasn't only me who had been putting off stuff. Most of the regular blogs I read( which aren't very many by the way) have litteler than usual posts. And always because of extra workload. And though it feels nice to be included, that is not the point of my post.

The point of my post is the one advantage of Windows over DOS that was revolutionary : Multitasking.
Many a summer ago I moved from laziness to work. Then came the transition from mere work to hard-work. Then from hard-work to the point where no more work was possible. At this point dawned the realisation that efficiency must be stepped up. Now comes multi tasking.

So in a sense, there are really no reasons for the gaping holes in my blog calendar. Only excuses which seem to sound more and more like cribbing each time you go over it.

Inspiration does not die : Ever. It only gets clouded over by fogs of our own making. And till the time you have the strength to keep clearing those fogs, till then, you remain young and un-disillusioned.

P.S: Out of practice, I took the liberty of coining a couple of words- I am no poet, so forgive me. :)

The Circle of Life - It has no Beginning, no End.

2010-05-09T23:34:00.001+05:30

I wanted to do a mother's day post, but realised that I wouldn't know what to write.

Of mothers perhaps.

There are loves that we are born into, and there are loves that are born of us. And painfully enough, the loves that are born of us, find, in some strange way, a precedence over the loves that we are born into. Perhaps its the love, perhaps its the responsibility, let greater minds debate on that. But it is the same primeval instinct that
makes a mother love her child.

That is what a mothers love would be. An instinct. And so, in a sense, a mother's love is also tragic.Because, an instinct must wean away from her the object of her love.

And when you dwell on things such as these, better left mingled in your being and uncomprehensive to rationality, you'll realise that the tragedy is heightened when the instinct is pure. Undiluted by learning and education enough to bring an awareness of the emotions undergone.

This is the point where you think of the millions in your country, the unsung heroines who haven't heard of a Mother's Day.

And even though you feel an anguish, the pain is washed over by a soothing balm as you watch your child play with the waves.

Kal Baisakhi.

2010-04-26T23:34:00.001+05:30

Just had the 'Kal Baisakhi' of the season. Was studying when the balcony door banged open and my room was filled with a cloud of dust. Of all the Nor'westers I've seen, this was a first. The smell is the best thing about rains, but believe me when I say that this smells different from all rains.Its just that much more of dust, that higher velocity of wind, and that much more of parchness awaiting it which makes it different. Was reminded of the beautifully shot scenes in The Japanese Wife: Kal baisakhi on the river, Kal baisakhi in the village.You have to watch it if only for a glimpse of the river Matla: It was life: Ebbing and Flowing; Tranquil and stormy.

Will have the first Mangoes of the season tomorrow while right now,I am off to have my customary bath.
*Debating if I should sweep my room before crashing*

Probably will.

Hope the weather stays same tomorrow at Dawn.

A Tag Taken Up.

2010-04-22T02:27:00.004+05:30

The tagger said that it just might turn out a fun thing some late night. It's more of early morning now, but let that not hamper my mood. :)

1. I'm allergic to Lux. Makes my skin itch. Badly.

2. Low-flying Aeroplanes make me happy. I feel a bubble rise inside me growing bigger and bigger, finally vanishing as the plane disappears.

3. I'm using the mouse-keys right now because my mouse is broken and I don't have the required 200 bucks to get a new one.

4.I don't drink aerated drinks because they are too strong . The fizz hurts my tongue. I no longer remember the taste of coke.

5. I have witnessed the winters here in Kolkata get warmer and warmer these past 4 years, And every summer breaks the record of the last having 'the hottest day of the decade'.

6. Friends come and go, but in some ways, they also stay on.

7. I have a vivid imagination. Sometimes vivid enough to be classified as hallucination.

Writing.

2010-04-08T23:26:00.000+05:30

Just through a blessed Easter weekend, it hit me.I've hardly taken out an hour over the past two months for something that had transformed into a love: blogging. With my PC out of order, I had a ready excuse, but then again, I could have used the one at the library. It 's been a mad, mad time, but I haven't complained even one of the very, very, many days I've woken up with a throbbing pain in my body. "A body as young as mine can adapt"- I told myself every such morning, but there must be something wrong with work that consumes you so that it has started weaning you away from what you love.

It's heartbreaking that I no longer find an inspiration to write, and the few vague thoughts that cry for expression don't find willing hands. I've always believed that fatigue at the end of the day is awesome. It gives you sleep that is therapeutic.I'm not too sure anymore.

I'm not particularly gifted. My posts often come out garbled at the end of the day, but its a release. But glancing behind I realised something else too- my posts form a pattern: A pattern of growth.
Its amazing how starkly obvious this pattern was. In the one and a half year of journey this blog has seen me through, it has amazingly chronicled personal growth.

And with that realisation, came another: You take a large credit for it.
For all my strong belief that I write for myself and my knowledge that I would continue writing even if there was no one who read it, as indeed I did for almost the first eight months of my blogging, I know that you reading pushes me on to put an effort to make my words readable. And I know that you reading compels me to draw from a reservoir I didn't even know existed, in times such as these.

Someday, I'll find the courage to write as if no one is reading. To strip to an ugliness that's me. But before that I must continue writing what I write, in the process sketching out my imperfections.

And before that someday comes, I'll keep returning, to this lost corner of the cyberspace,drawing comfort even in its imperfections.

Fair And Handsome.

2010-03-22T13:41:00.000+05:30

So, the yearly exhibition done and the caravan proudly displayed it was finally time for a brand new session and brand new books. Plus, a transition from three to four means that you even have new subjects- Science, History and Geography.

And I was glad to see the books devoured with enthusiasm not unlike mine when I encounterd new boks each session.

And then my aunt took it into her head to teach him the chapter on plants before he stated school. That was when horror unfolded.

"I can also make my own food."

"No beta, you cannot. Only plants make their own food."

No, but I can." was the stubborn insistence.

"Ok. Do you have chlorophyll?"

Of couse he had, he wisely explained. Only of a different colour. Brown perhaps, and that was why he was dark when all of us are fair.

The Indian obsession with fair and lovely starts young.

Iktara.

2010-02-21T23:02:00.002+05:30

The Iktara is an ancient North Indian single stringed instrument, capable of deep bass and sharp treble, and hence produces all seven notes distinctively, symbolizing life in its myriad hues.

Few months back I heard one of the most soulful songs I've heard in many, many years, and these late spring nights when I stay up preparing for exams, in the silence of an otherwise maddening place nothing seems more beautifully haunting.

Rooh ka banjaara re parinda,
(Rooh- spirit, Banjara- nomad, parinda- bird)
The spirit, like a nomad bird,

Chad gaya dil ka re gharonda
( chad- left. gharonda- shackles)
has broken the shackles of the heart.

Chad gaya dil ka re gharonda tod ke
Has left, breaking the shackles of the heart,

Re gharonda tod ke, gaya chod ke.
Breaking the shackles, has left.

Je naina karun band, band,
(naina- eyes; band- close)
And everytime that I close my eyes,
Beh jaaye boond boond.(2)
(Beh- wash boond- drops)
Pain is washed away in droplets.

Tadpaye re, kyun sunaye re, geet malhaar ki,
(malhaar- a classical north Indian raaga, sung with the coming of monsoons, the source of life)
Then why do you make me listen to the anguishing monsoon raagas?

Chorus:
Be malang tera Iktara (8)
The iktara has lost its melody and now continues without any symphony.

Itra tu baasi baasi,
(Itra- dialectical for Itr - a perfume made of herbal scents, popular only in the northern parts of india. : baasi- stale)
Perfume, you are stale now.

Padi hai sirhane,
(sirhane- the area along the head of the bed, often, in india, a place to keep things.)
and lie uselessly along the head of my bed.

Band darwaaja dekhe, lauti hai subah,
(darwaaja- dialectical for darwaaza, or door)
My closed doors see a morning return.

Thandi hai angeethi seeli, seeli hain diwarein,
( angeethi- a crude mud oven, used in the extremely chilly winters of north India to warm homes.)
The angeethi lies cold, and so are the walls.

Goonje takrake inme, dil ki sada
(goonje-echo)
And the dirges of my heart echo from these walls.

goonje hai re( 2) dil ki sada (2)
Ah, the dirges echo.

Je naina karun band, band,

(naina- eyes; band- close)

And everytime that I close my eyes,

Beh jaaye boond boond.

(Beh- wash boond- drops)

Pain is washed away in droplets.

Tadpaye re, kyun sunaye re, geet malhaar ki,

(malhaar- a classical north Indian raaga, sung with the coming of monsoons, the source of life)

Then why do you make me listen to the anguishing monsoon raagas?

Chorus:

Be malang tera Iktara (8)

The iktara has lost its melody and now continues without any symphony.

Waiting for Tomorrow.

2010-02-11T23:08:00.000+05:30

Years ago, in the junior section, when we were introduced to the concept of having "bests", it was an extremely faishionable trend to have a best of everything. best colour, best food, best toy, best book, obviously best friend and extremely faishionably,best actor.It almost rivalled having a senior as your friend.And so, One fine day,extremely thrilled and exhilarated after having watched Baazigar, I pronounced my favourite actor to a selected group of friends, whose parents I knew did not allow them to watch anything apart from a couple of hours of cartoon aired on doordarshan in the early evenings.
"Shahrukh khan."
And to prove that I had even brought along a 50paise postcard with his picture on it, which , because of some jealous elements in my class was duly reported and confiscated.

This was of course, way, way before he started writing his name as Shah Rukh Khan.And also way way before our english was good enough for us to understand a movie in english.

Then that summer turned into winter and some more besides. My best actor changed into my favourite actor, but he was still the same.I hardly saw his movies, but obviously that should not be a factor when you are talking favourites.

Then along came another trend: Hollywood.This was something I did not understand, and the fact that we didn't have cable in our home did not help. The photographs I saw in the newspapers all looked the same.So,even risking appearing dumb, my favourite actor refused to change.Now,movies were classified good and bad instead of just liked or disliked, I became aware of the fact that movies had to be directed and produced and that a Shahrukh khan movie did not mean that Shahrukh got together with kajol to make a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai happen.

The leaves continued their yellowing, falling and growing freshly green,and the good lord knocked some sense into most of us. Thus crept in pseudo-intellectualism.Wierd movies were in the vogue. Critics awards were talked about instead of popular ones. I stubbornly refused to accept that Mr and Mrs Iyer was better than Mohobbatein.(and even looking back now,I think you had to be pretty precocius to have grasped that movie at that age.)

And then it started.

The superior smiles and condescending looks everytime I mentioned something I was habituated to stating. And people scorning the wonderful, wonderful songs that breathe the life of a nation.Because that is what it is: An entire nation defined by the movies they make blockbusters.It was then that I realised the symbolism of what I had held as a favourite for nearly a decade now.

Its the pulse of a nation that wants to believe in the beauty of dreams. Its the heartbeat of a nation that, covered in sweat and grime while returning home in a bus, wants to believe that a sangh-e-marmar ka farsh is achievable.Just like a boy from Delhi found his sangh-e-marmar. And more than anything else, It is also a nation who wants to believe in the innocence of romance among sarson ke khet. Perhaps foolishly so, but what does it matter to me?

I will wait for tomorrow, when on a perfect spring day I will witness the story of a painfully ordinary man undertaking an extraordinary journey for love, and a magic will be re-kindled.

Free Fall -2

2010-01-25T23:43:00.001+05:30

Read Part1 Here.

Hurling headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and perdition, His eyes opened as the brief prayer on his lips began to fade away into gibberish, and a familiar cloud began to steal over his senses.

He had been falling for nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, though he understood it not. It was just as well as eternity.

Another fragment of theWorld, another lifetime, and the same, uncomprehensible task. He tried to clear the mist enveloping his mind, but found it too heavy. Somwhere in the recesses, he was aware of a severed divine thread- The one thread of light that ran across all of Lord's angels. The thread, that in heaven, still illumined Vivacious.

And so, defeated, haggard and a weary mortal, he found himself, this time, in the heartland of a torn country. Not quite unlike the previous times, for every time it had to be a scene of torment.

But as he looked across the strifed land, he knew it was another age. An age of awakening, and an age of terrible despair. People massacaring each other to claim God's land.

"Fools!" Said the dying Arab. "do they not know where god resides?" "Do their scriptures teach nothing?"
"Fools!" Said the Fallen angel. "Were they not told of the Eternal Throne?" and turned to look at the dying man.

"Perhaps it will take another age to tell them so." And the glimmer in his eyes turned vacant.

"Tell them so"

Had those eyes still been alive, they would have seen a miraculous sight. A light spreading through the soiled man, spreading, as it seemed, from the center of his being, and drawing,invisibly, from a hallowed source.

And a prayer, though now in a different vein, was renewed on his lips:

"....that I may assert eternal providence,/ And justify the ways of God to men."

Antaheen - The endless struggle.

2010-01-21T23:18:00.004+05:30

I've been meaning to watch it for a long, long time now and when I finally did, it was worth all the wait. This movie is perfect balm for sored eyes.I say perfect, but ironically this movie is an exploration of how there is no perfect. Ever.

It's also an exploration of relationships, and the dilemma that you face at a cross-road : Of wanting to stay back, yet wanting to move on. Three relationships, three different pains. And a common struggle to find that perfect.Its a beautiful movie on how perfection is confined only to the unknown.

The struggle is not only that of trying to look for perfection, but even that of trying to look for beauty and meaning. That is what humanity essentially believes in. A struggle, always, of something beyond. Something on the horizon of tomorrow without which today is futile.That is also, perhaps, why so many of us are incapable of living today. Today is what it is in relation to the test tomorrow.

But even besides, very strangely, it brings out quaint yearnings. Perhaps it was the music, perhaps it was imagery- you have to see it to believe it. Rain splattered window-panes and wind chimes in the rain. Dark Clouds gathering over the Calcutta skyline.Droplets mingling on a Lotus leaf. Rahul Bose gazing away into that Beyond. The city twinkling away at night as its inhabitants fall into restful sleep.Old homes with mats drawn on strings in the verandah. And Radhika Apte is a revelation. Those eyes speak a million words and then some more.

This movie is a Canvas sensitively painted. And life is all of the things described above.

It is also the Red Kite with a Blue tail stuck in the antenna, struggling to free itself and fly away in the quest of that horizon and till the end, still struggling.

Random Musings on A free Sunday.

2010-01-10T23:48:00.003+05:30

I made a life-changing decision today. And the life of my 8 yr old cousin will never remain the same.It was the decision of making a caravan for his yearly exhibition rather than an Igloo, which, he elatedly informs me, is "smart." Imagine jealous stares and covetous looks as he walks in with his treasure a fine Monday morning. And being entitled to an entire day of righteous bragging. Sweet.

There are few things in the lives of students better than a host of movies waiting after an Exam. I watch Hollywood almost indiscriminately, but for Bollywood, the To-be-watched must pass screenings first.

a) Who are the actors. If its Shahrukh Khan, all further screenings are automatically discarded.

b)What is the soundtrack like. If it is brilliant, then the non-presence of Shahrukh can be tolerated.

c)What is the Storyline. If it promises deep explorations, the top two can be negated.

Kurbaan Passed the last two screenings, and so I found myself, staring, for the second time in the last 4 months, at the clothes of Kareena Kapoor. (note: That's Akki Narula). Feels astonishing to think that she is the same person who played a 'Poo.'

I maintain that there is a better movie made on terrorism behind what we see.And it is Khuda Kay Liye. Kirron Kher did manage to portray brilliantly the pain of a ravaged country. But if you want to glimpse how a country terrified after witnessing a terrorist attack on its soil reacts, watch KKL.It is a movie on confused and pained human minds, minds that are washed and hardened till they can scarcely be called human.More than anything, it terrifies you with a display of what degradation humanity is capable of, before ending with a call for prayer, and symbolically, as you realise, a call for hope and reason. But I am writing a review on Kurbaan. So, the stark realism and pain there mutes Kurbaan significantly. But for people who haven't watched KKL, this must have been a good watch.

After exams, as I had mentioned, there is always an overwhelming feeling of Idiocy that lingers in the general atmosphere.Excuse enough to watch the touted "Best Movie of the decade." Its an extremely entertaining take on our education system. And although I have my moments,overall, I personally have little problems with our system. Yes, I despise the rote-learning made mandatory and I acknowledge that introduction of original thinking is imperative,but To give a small example,you must have the letters of the Alphabet blind before you can move on to words.And so much of what was taught compulsorily till the tenth level seems matter-of-fact now, it surprises me that I sat to learn them once. It is as a reader of my blog commented once: I know spitting out the rote material seems meaningless; but you know as well as I that To get to the challenging, exciting courses of study you must first pass the boring and inane. I find it extremely difficult to attach labels of 'Best' and 'worst' so I shall refrain.More than anything, this movie is an assimilation of numerous small, beautiful moments.And a story of friends setting out in search of another friend: one who taught them about life, love and living.But as for this being the highest grosser of all times, just hang around till My name is Khan blows away the theatres.

Rocket Singh should have been marketed more aggressively, I think.It's one of those rare feel-good movies that does not try to thrust the feel-good factor into your face.

Be Honest. Like people.

P.S: Due to all the template-changing I had done in my initial days of blogging, the configuration seems to have gone permanently haywire. But this, more than a blog, is a chronicle. So I shall make every effort to keep the post date and time always accurate.

The Indian Twilight.

2010-01-07T23:48:00.000+05:30

* There will come a time when you will be old enough to start reading stories again. Then perhaps, you shall take this off from some dusty, upper shelf and remember me. *
- C.L Lewis.

There was a time, in the Samvat Era, when India was young, and still called Bharat Varsha, or the land of Bharat.

In those days, people would send their cows each daybreak with a cow-herd for grazing.There they would stay, under the watchful eyes of their caretakers, till it was evening, and time to return home. Perhaps, while travelling through trains, and with eyes that were young, you have, a lone time, seen them return to the villages. It is a pretty sight : the coming home of Indian cows.

One cowherd at the head, another behind- and cows in between. Black, white, spotted. Making a quaint tune with bells that tinkle on their necks and the rustle of thick undergrowth beneath their feet. As they go, it is always dusk, and in the fast fading light they move- through the sun-baked pathways not yet paved, so that their hooves kick up dust, till at last they are enveloped in a cloud, and the last rays of the sun filter through it against a scarlet background. In that moment that sight seems ethereal- and you can glimpse, as if through swirling mist, the creatures that a country holds sacred.

And so, the Indian people call twilight, "The hour of cowdust" or, Godhulibela.

A Hangover.

2010-01-02T23:12:00.001+05:30

I should have done the mandatory evaluation of the past year this year end too, but I didn't. But now, even with the new year in full throttle and resolutions all around, I find that I still have the 2009-hangover. I find that this is what usually happens when I try to leap over unpleasant stuff. Just like when in the junior school if I tried to leave out one of the nastier problem sums so that I could proceed with the rest of my home work, there was no way I could have done the rest of the homework in peace. There would be a continuous nagging, nagging, nagging.
Being a perfectionist has its own problems. But I digress.

Also, there should be some Calendar system in which, every new year begins on a Monday. I don't think that starting a Brand-new-year on a Friday is entirely nice. But I digress again.

So even while I agree with the historians who say that assessment can only be done after you put yourself at a distance because perspective and detachment is necessary, I found that I must sit again with a diary and a pen to my yearly ritual. What came out of it is not important, but what I realised of it is.
Its important to close the gates to past before moving on to the present, and the doorways to the future must forever be open, always holding dreams to keep stealing glimpses of.

To wishes being realised this new year:
Cheers.

The Chaos Theory.

2009-12-30T01:41:00.006+05:30

Have you ever heard of the chaos theory?
It is a science.
It tries to determine underlying patterns in chaotic systems. Weather, Ocean Currents, that sort of things. Well, it turns out that there are few things more chaotic than the beat of a human heart. Speeding up, Slowing down. A pretty face, A flight of stairs.
It's always changing depending on what's happening.It's an erratic son of a b***h. But underneath all that bump-a-ta-bump mess, there is, in fact, a pattern.

A Truth.

And it is love.

The most important thing about love is that we choose to give it.....And we choose to recieve it.
Making it the least random act in the entire universe.
It transcends blood, and it transcends betrayal.
And all the dirt that makes us human.

This year-end, Figure That out.

P.S: my VLC media player has a red cap on its icon(with a fluff of cotton at the end), Though I still have no idea how on earth that happens every year. And I am wearing woollens. So yes, All Is Well.

Hum toh Aise Hain Bhaiyya -6

2009-12-17T22:28:00.003+05:30

Remember this?

"Centuries after we decided we were one nation, we still have that to prove.Somehow the fact that the Indian state transcends regional identities has been an idea too difficult for our masses to fathom.And therein lies the problem. A problem so vast and so maddeningly complex, elucidating it feels completely and wholly out of my reach. I can only feel it. And bleed for it."

This mad, mad greed for separate states goes beyond any kind of logic. What goes even beyond that is normally sane, educated and liberated individuals abandoning all sense to give drive such demands.The Centre, removed from this mob-frenzy might have displayed some judgement, but I suppose it's just difficult to disregard all the lobbying that must necessarily have been present.And I also suppose that stating that the Centre should just pack off KCR into nowhere would be too naive. :) But seriously, I thought survival was something every Tom thought off before walking out on his parents.

Clearly, sometimes, some Toms are just too distraught. And desperate.

Birth Pangs

2009-12-15T23:50:00.000+05:30

I live in a crowded, ever-shifting locality, and though it had never been a cause of concern for me before, for the past few years I find that I've tired if it. As much as I love food, I'm tired of the new, newer newest restaurants that keep opening up. I'm tired of the new buildings that forever keep rising.And I feel angry every time that I look up skywards to see only smog and none of the stars that I've spent a childhood trying to count. Environment is something I'm truly concerned about, especially since last year when I experienced the warmest winter of my life. But I digress.

Sometimes, there's only so much of change that's good and as a blogger whom I read put it, "Change is often over-rated, and the known and comfortable past too under-rated and vilified."
Increasingly, there's a feeling that I tire of change itself. Not change as in newer experiences into which I gladly and a tad foolishly still jump into, but change as in a continuous movement.

But more than anything, I'm tired of a changing mind. Things that I hated earlier, I turn to again only to find that I like it after all. Perhaps you would remember this post where I wrote about my reaction to The God Of Small Things. The heavy pessimism still weighed down on me, but surprisingly I could just glimpse the beauty beneath the terrible reality. Sample this:
"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." . But what's painful is when you look at things that you loved and find that you don't like it after all. That hurts. Maybe this book was about having the maturity to have understood it. Maybe before growing up, life is about growing out of the birth-pangs.

Nothing Crushes Us.

2009-12-12T23:55:00.001+05:30

Dear Leslie,

It's spring again and more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than it had ever been in twenty years. More beautiful than anyplace I've seen in twenty years. Last night I saw the moon fairy again. She shone down our tree-top home, a moon-beam double bright. And I longed to speak to the squirrels again, but it was night and they were asleep. In the quiet I heard the stream gurgling, over the stones and festered lilies.

I've been love-sick and torn. My wounds unfaded, fresh and raw. Early morning today I saw again.You in your corduroys and converses, refusing to grow up and telling me stories. Of kingdoms whose kings were cowards.And new lands discovered. Monsters fought and defeated.Gentle giants won with love. I felt again. Your warm breath as you outran me to our lair.

Today afternoon, years later, I played again. Hide and seek with the brambles.And the bluebirds that return only after winter fades. It was the same bluebird, I think.

Its strange that Today, when I ran back twenty years, I felt only the fluttering in my heart as I looked, once more, at a Queen's land. I would never exchange that brief summer in an enchanted land for all the sparkling diamonds in the world. I wouldn't trade for all the magic in the world.

But I wouldn't trade the pain too. The pain and the senselessness.

This Twilight, as I sat nested beneath our tree and you beside me, I saw you speaking to the golden squirrel.

You smiled.

You hadn't ever left him.

And then, as the purple faded from the sky, I fashioned myself a crown again. A few wings. Light enough to fly me to another universe.

The king will return from exile.

Ready his palace.

Love,
Jesse.

A Calcutta Bus.

2009-12-04T12:39:00.003+05:30

I'm in love with Calcutta Buses.

"That's smart" my alter-ego argues.
"Smart?"
"Yeh. Smart to like something that in any case you are condemned to. Like the subjects you research on.""Or a hurricane-destroyed home."
"Whatever."

So there's this thing about buses, you get a lot of insight into people. Mostly it centers around how principled some are of not patronising deodorants.Though sometimes you might also get a glimpse of an intense belief that Dada is just about to return to cricket. But even beyond that, if you care to look hard enough, travelling in buses is also about sensing just that faint betrayal of wanting more. More than having to travel miles and miles in crowds with place barely enough to stand.

Today, returning home late from Salt Lake, I was stuck in jam at the Bypass.Usual journeys from Salt Lake smooth enough. But then, this was an unusual one. So, stuck beside the Hyatt Regency,I chanced to look up from my cell. There was a dinner in full swing at its lawns. And staring at the splendour, an entire bus of people.

Sometimes, just very, very rarely, Dreams find a way out of hearts and into the chilly air.

This was written yesterday, 11:45pm and left unpublished because blogger decided to play truant.

"What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief."

2009-11-26T23:23:00.001+05:30

No more be done:
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem, arid such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Lay her i' th' earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist'ring angel shall my sister be
When, thou liest howling.

Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Realisations.

2009-11-24T23:47:00.000+05:30

I wish I could call my blog a Happy blog too, but it isn't and if I tried to make it so, I would be being a hypocrite.

All the last two months I was literally leading a 7 am to 12 midnight existence, I finally realised why I write what I write. I love writing. It's as simple as that. And strange too, coming from the only writer in an entire family of Doctors. I'm a kind of a black sheep in that sense, but that's totally by the point.

I write out of compulsion. What I write maybe senseless unorganised crap, but writing it shall be. And besides, very sadly enough, there's little, too little scope for me to indulge in all the things that I think are wonderful. Painting, photography.

And there was also another realization. If you deliberately concentrate on the better parts of your dreary life ( yes, they will be there no matter how dead you are), If you consciously make an effort not to let your lows spill into places you keep returning to every few nights and is invariably the last thing you see before you hit the bed, then you still have hope.

My posts had taken on a monotonous shade of grey, and I don't think I like that anymore.

Because, if there's something you love, its always worth the effort to make it happy, isn't it?

The Beaten Road.

2009-11-21T22:59:00.000+05:30

Let's just say I'd lost my way. And life can lead you to strange paths. The roads I traversed are not worth documenting but I just felt like announcing, "I'm Home".

A crashed hard drive and lack of time and energy made me almost forget the look of my blog, but the writing couldn't be forgotten and though most of my scribblings would seem sadly out of context, I might publish some of them.

To newer ways.
Cheers mate.

The Great Bollywood Trick.

2009-09-24T23:18:00.000+05:30

I don't understand what this 'Kaminey' versus 'Dil Bole Hadippa' debate is all about. What I don't understand even more is why should there be the same intellectualist noise every time Yash Raj comes to the theater. Its been nearly a quarter of a century guys. Now Grow Up.

If you paid money for Dil Bole Hadippa people, you paid not to see Godfather re-invented. You paid knowing full well what was to come. No scams being run here. And I am bored. Of reviews from Hollywood- struck wannabe reviewers. Hell, I don't even know which newspaper is paid how much for each.

This will sound familiar, but yes, we have fantastic cinema. Not international cinema, not worldwide cinema, but absolutely fantastic cinema.

And if exotic India sells, Why not sell it? We need money.[ Let me see you debate me on this ;) ]
Sell exotic India. Sell sarson ke khet. It'll fetch you crores by the acre. Though apparently, in recent times, Shit-covered-India sells even more.

Years ago, Yash Raj brought along DDLJ, the NRI audience was discovered and Bollywood could never remain the same. It now had to cater to the Indians there instead of only Indians here, though of course it wasn't as if Indians there had confetti for brain. But the brains would have known that there were better movies to be watched with the same money. So the maestro tugged at the heart and Lo! Behold! The Great Bollywood Trick was born.

The Great Bollywood Trick culminates with Dil Bole Hadippa. And so does the trademark method of bringing back something from the gone romances. So we have to have Raj with his mandolin, the Veer- Zaara touch with Veer and 'Jhaapiyon sa desh hai mera.'

Just for the record, Kaminey just stopped short of just having been a really good movie. Just. The cinematography was bad. The realism is understandable, but it was wanting. And oh, it could have done without the blinkers-strapped Shahid. I mean that part was way out of the way, if you get what I mean.

I don't have any issues with my country basically consisting of people who like mush with an overdose of song and dance(preferably Bhangra). I like it too. Just as I like deep, issue based movies of foreign origin. Though if issues are what interests you, look deeper. DBH has them too. Light-hearted, breezy, but there.

Aaj discowale khisko, bhai desi beat bajaani.

When Illness is a Mercy.

2009-09-09T23:52:00.000+05:30

There comes a time in the lives of all mediocre people when they are dragged down into their own abysses for no reason in particular. Daily, everyday chores weigh heavy. Tiresome, cumbersome jobs needed to be dispensed with replace what is usually a joy.

In straighter words, you are stuck in a rut.

What do you do to pull yourself out of it?

You find yourself an inspiration. Even if you are talking about dreary, dead places and desert sands of dead habit. Remember. In another time you would not have believed that this was impossible. You would have laughed at the unwillingness of another to make an effort to pull himself out of habit. It wasn't an effort for you. Your spirit jumped into a new adventure everyday. How fast we scorn. You should have measured the amplitude of courage required.

You brush the dust off from old dreams. You convince yourself that they still remain and are not something that was foolishly wanted.

But most importantly, you tell yourself to wipe out that cynical smile that is playing on your lips as you type. Even forcefully if you must. You also remind yourself to stifle the half of your mind from whence originates all cynicism. That is the half on whose sword lingers blood of a mangled quarter of the other half, and Massada should not fall this time.

An illness, a body racked with aches and a fever has a strange way of recalling old determination.

The Shadow and The Soul.

2009-08-24T23:38:00.000+05:30

Tonight, I saw a dark shadow in the caves. This shadow came to me as a reminder, playing hide and seek in the crevices and behind stalactites and stalagmites. I was being invited to a game, someone whispered. If I could catch that mist, the fog, then knowledge would be mine she promised.

I smiled. Wryly, and barely. But I smiled. Why would I want knowledge? Is a battle within the heart not enough? And I Ignored. I looked around for exit as I remembered I had been doing before the shadow went swooshing past. Touching me with her coldness and threatening me with the unknown. Oh I like the unknown. I crave for the unknown. Did she think she could have scared me?

And again, the mist went swooshing past.I could have so easily grasped her had my hands been outstretched. But they weren't. I had heard of the legend of Dr. Faustus. No, I did not intend to sell my soul. And knowledge brought suffering, it did. So I turned again, blind and fumbling, but the exit was lost.

I was not hopeless now. Hopelessness had become a way of life a long time back. Then she took pity.

"You are ignorant" said she
"I know" shot I " Even though it does not bring me to the fools paradise"

She left.

Then the shadow came to rest and spoke :
"Knowledge brings pain, and it brings you medicine so that they may be healed.
Knowledge will make you aware of the chains in which I have bound you. Yet it shall teach you how to slip out of them. "

Without darkness there can be no light.
The earth rotates.

The shadow was me. The lost soul was me. Within the globe of my heart, one half sleeps and the other acts. Then upon awakening, the sleeping half condemns the acting one as it prepares to fall asleep. They tear at each other. Carnivores, blood-thirsty, ripping apart the womb fated to encase them.

I still fumble for the exit. It still eludes me.

When Things of past return to haunt, Morphed many times over in their terribleness.

2009-08-24T02:34:00.002+05:30

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough”
- Jean Paul Sartre.

A Sea.

2009-08-23T10:31:00.000+05:30

Sitting at the window seat of a bus on the Sealdah flyover thrusts the picture of vast humanity below you. It's fascinating. Everything moves. In continuous, unbroken waves.

There are three types of people that I spied in those waves.

The first were The Conformists. Obviously in the majority. They are the ones who surround me and suffocate me. They confuse morality with convention and we know them to be capable of terrible cruelty. Tell me, would they understand a genius genius differently?
The society does not respect them.

Then I spied, dotted all over the expanse, The Confronters.
Some found inclusion here by choice, and others in their callousness.
Do you know what happens when enters a microcosm in a macrocosm to create ripples? The macrocosm is disturbed.
So it re-groups itself and retaliates. It punishes the one who in deluded belief of being a society unto himself dares to disturb. The macrocosm would push these to its very periphery and deny them access to the core.
The society is weary of them.

Then of course, as the law of the universe dictates, there must be a group who has achieved a perfect balance. I think that the world was created in end September or start October and this is the reason behind it being doomed to be ever looking for the perfect halfway point. Neither entirely here nor entirely there. And so, finally, I spied The Non- Conformers.
They, the wise ones knew just precisely how to fit in their differences which did not ripple the waters. Or at the very least, did not start ripples which extended far.
The society is thrilled by them and it thrives on them.

But then again, I spied something else. Dots even fewer than The Non- Conformers. They embodied perhaps the one true characteristic of the waters in which they were born. They were the ones fluid and moving. They fit in neither of the three groups, and yet they perhaps found a place in all three.
They were the ones who did not know their place. Indeed, they did not know if they had one at all.

And then, a light turned green and I moved on.

Through the Looking Glass.

2009-08-21T07:17:00.001+05:30

In the post before last, I spoke of choices.

Now that post was very inarticulately written, but as S told me, it's all the age da.Maybe it happens to all, but currently, it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturbs me sometimes.And many more things besides. I still have steps to tread before I develop a distinct apathy that makes survival a happy affair. Though in alternate stages of my oscillation I doubt if I haven't too much of it already.

Do we choose the coloured glass through which we look at life ? Or maybe they are presented to us, gifts or curses as we make them out to be?

I look at life through Red coloured glasses, and this shouldn't come as a surprise, given that I've literally bathed myself in this colour since age 8.

Which coloured glasses do you look at life through? Find here.

Then share.

Being Free.

2009-08-16T14:14:00.001+05:30

And so two countries celebrated another year of freedom.

Are we politically free?
Are we economically free?
Are we culturally free?

Are we free to spin our own illusions?

Are we free to at least proclaim that we are free?

Of The Many Firsts.

2009-08-14T23:50:00.000+05:30

Tis' a season for travelogues and train journeys.

Yesterday was the day I traveled, for the first time ever in a local train. It was not a choice and I was out of options.

The station at Garia stank of rotten fish and shit. Small holes broken into the concrete clogged with squishy dirt in water with flies hovering over them. Not a pretty sight. And I had to wait for 45 minutes before I could board a train. I drank in every sight. A portion of the platform was covered in chicken blood and feathers. Killed for food, presumably. The flies were densest there.The food stalls surprisingly had less of them.

People might have seen spirit in people there, waiting for hours under the flimsy shade, mostly with heavy loads, usually goods to be sold, and often of weight capable of bending spines. The will to survive as it were, to fight. People might stand applaud courage they see. Courage to carry on. Carry on in all that misfortune and brokenness .

There are people who write of pain. I myself tried writing of it, and that was the point of realization. We can hardly write of pain without romanticising it. Just like we cannot write of the past without romanticising it. Remember the time you were ostracised in a juniour class? Bet it wasn't as nice then while you went through it than it is now when you write of it. Ruskin Bond did say it: " Looking back on boyhood years/ Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow"
No, you need to have truly fantasised about pain to imagine that it can intoxicate you. You need to have been truly insulated from pain to find it heroic. I envy you. You've felt hurts maybe, and slights also. But pain? I doubt.

The people I saw too did not have a choice. They suffer and endure not in heroism, but in necessity. Their sufferings are not awe-inspiring. Anyone placed in their shoes would find that they could continue to exist. It is the most ancient and primitive law of our existence.

Choice. That key-word.If your Choice to live your life a certain way brings you to hell-holes, I give you a standing ovation. That is why Mother Teresa is her. And indeed, so are countless others, all unsung. If your choice to be a vigilante takes you to our borders, we the people who sleep stoned at night give you another ovation.But if you arrive at our borders to fuel your hearths at home, we know that the day something else guarantees that, we shall no longer sleep safe.

They had to carry on. For the alternative to that is obliteration.

We sit, comfortable in our houses warmed by the heat of their bodies, and then we talk about Art. Literature. Poetry. And oh, we talk about the misfortune of their existence, hoping we could do something to change it. Then the more conscientiousness of us go home, stopping at the local NGO to drop off some notes, hoping to make some difference, as of course, that is all we can do.
And then, there are some people like me, who blog about it, every once in a while as the realization strikes them. Doing so eases a guilty conscience, maybe.

The drunks at the overhead bridge in Park Circus were no Devdases, pining away. That is their way of life, they know no better. They have never known any better.

Never mind, Never mind.

"With great power comes great responsibility" - Uncle Ben.

P.S : I'm not too sure of the point I'm making. Actually, I'm not sure that I'm even making one.
Confused, Confused, Me, Me.

Of Careless Decisions.

2009-07-31T23:44:00.000+05:30

This day, a year back, I became a blogger.

It was a carelessly made decision, and it showed. I didn't care, there was no one to read it and I definitely intended to keep it that way. Then I realised that other blogs existed in the blogosphere too and I started to read. Reading made me comment and somewhere down the line my blog started being read too. The initial comments made me wonder. Comments were commented on the readable. So I tried my hand at better expression, and to another wonder, I was not as inarticulate as I considered myself to be.

This blog has seen me through a terrible year, and after a brief high of April-June, the slide has seemingly begun again. So it is only fitting that I remember its first Birthday. (Ah! the selfish alter-ego intervenes: you need it to see you through another long time.)

Happy Birthday, dear blog, and may you live for evermore.

"Through language we explore experience, emotions, the very essence of our existence. Unless all that we think and feel can find expression in natural, coherent words, we have not come of age."

All the growing up that is left, I'll do it with you.

Yet Again.

2009-07-29T23:34:00.000+05:30

Two more friends leave. Kolkata is fast becoming a lonely place.

And surprise oh surprise, a phone call was missing. I do not doubt that it shall come in whatever number of days it takes to reach Bangalore from Calcutta by train along with the words 'packing' , 'hurry' and 'sorry', but it is a terrible thing. To be the only one left behind as it were, while the other parts of your world march off. And march off together.

I am told that I'm often too hard on people. I suspect that it is usually on friends. And I fear that jealousy forms a large part of it.

Makes me feel very, very, small.

Brokeback Mountain

2009-07-27T02:49:00.000+05:30

Somehow, I had missed Brokeback Mountain when the world seemed to be enraptured by it, and so after a conversation with a friend I finally sat down to it.

After the first watch, all that remained of the movie was a collection of images and a realization that never before had I been so utterly moved by a love story, for that is what it is, titles of a gay cowboy movie be damned. It is the story of a shared love, love that is not once called love through a lifetime, because it yet does not know its own name and also perhaps because it is denied by its own preperator.

The second watch still left me dazed , the sheer power of Lee's imagery is incalculable. Jack and Ennis barely speak, their dialogues, especially Ennis' are at a bare minimum and yet they wash you totally with a deep, gnawing, longing.

After the third watch to-night, I think I can finally begin to understand the different layers on which this movie is fleshed out.

What is truly heartbreaking is Ennis' tragedy of not knowing himself, He is as stoic as the mountains among which he had come to love, and in his confusion he has learnt to lock himself within his eyes that do not once overflow. He is unconnected and out of sync with the world, and in his happiness with Jack we discover his vast pain. It's not easy being different, and Ennis' difference nearly bleeds him out. 'Its a film about hearts - broken or otherwise. It's pure romance.'

There is something forlorn and broken about Ennis even as we see him in the opening scene, and he walks with a head bent forward, weight on his sturdy shoulders, all his worldly possessions in a brown paper bag. The brown paper bag would re-surface at the end, when again, he carries all that he has in this world in a brown paper bag- Two shirts, remnant of the only love he had ever experienced .

And he has an enormous capacity for love, coming even from his abandonment. Through his life he makes terrible sacrifices for jack, quitting jobs and forsaking his marriage, not mentioning about his jobs for nearly 20 years, and claiming , when Jack turns up after his divorce that "It's a mistake."

As the story opens, in the silence of Jack and Ennis for so long after they first encounter each other, we see a foreshadow of the course which their love shall run- silent and intense. They are
actually placed in the role of a husband and a wife by the foreman who employs them; Ennis is the camp tender, while Jack is the man, who goes out herding sheep and instructing Ennis "No more beans." But because of Jack's complaints, their roles are more effectively reversed to that which suits them more. And indeed , in Jack we see tenderness and affection, and in one of the most haunting scenes of the movie, watch out for Jack's expression when he dabs Ennis' wounds with hot water.

One late evening, over whiskey, as they always have it,
neat,
Ennis speaks of his bringing up and slow abandonment by
his siblings, and though he bears no bitterness, its understandable enough that Jack is the first person he's ever mentioned this to. ('Hell it's the most I've spoken in a year.")
Perhaps there is a consciousness of having spoken too much, for Ennis seems partly ashamed of his now exposed brokenness. There is a ghost of a smile that never does come, inhibited like all other emotions in him. Yet he shall soon learn to open up to Jack, however briefly or rarely.

Four years after they went their own ways, they re-unite to a heart- wrenchingly beautiful kiss, this time initiated by Ennis. And Ennis chalks out a plan for them to able to keep meeting over fishing, making it obvious by his easy lie to Alma "We was fishing buddies" that he had thought about it long before he heard from Jack. Ennis' plans, unlike Jack's adheres more to practicality, and gives their relationship scope to exist in midst of cruelty that Texas, even today, meets out to Jack and Ennis. But Ennis' practical plans can never quite fulfill Jack's longings and he blames Ennis for a half-life in the climax of the movie, a climax were vividly Ennis' confusion of himself is brought out.

The two parts of the movie were Ennis is faced with the reality
of losing Jack, draws extreme physical reactions from him.
The first time , he breaks down sobbing uncontrollably in
an alley, the second time when Jack states " I wish I knew
how to quit on you " Ennis falls down to his knees, both
trying to escape from him and cling to him. Ennis might be in a state of cognitive dissonance , or denial, but sure as hell Jack wasn't to blame- "Its because of you that I am like this. I'm nothin, I'm nowhere. " This is Ennis' fear in seeing a murdered homosexual as an 8 yr old. He has painfully tried to carve out a safe path for himself and jack and nowhere does his scarred psyche and need for Jack become as vividly apparent as here.

Here also, there is a flashback, and those who have read the story would understand it in all its enormity:
Proulx writes, "What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. ...Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

This is a saga of an intensely complex emotional relationship, at the end of which we are left crying for the broken survivor: Jack is lynched to death as Ennis had feared he might and the closing shots are wonderful in their duality.

Ennis, finds a shirt of his which he had 'forgotten' on the mountain, in Jacks closet, still smeared with his blood, and within a shirt of Jack, also smeared in his blood. And in one of the rare moments of luxury when he allows himself to release his emotions, he feels jack's shirt with his cheek. We find the same pair of shirts in the very final scene of the movie, only, this time, the order is reversed, and it is his shirt which encloses Jack's. Perhaps Ennis is at last ready to commit, and maybe even protect Jack, but it comes a tad too late. Both times, their shirts, and metaphorically, their relationship, hangs within a closet, from which it could never emerge, and perhaps their only rightful place in those times.

Beside the hung shirts, we find a picture of the Brokeback mountain, framed within a postcard, which for Jack, is almost a pretend place, "where blue birds sing, and there's a whiskey spring" ; and just beside, framed within the frames of the window, is the landscape of America, certainly and cruelly real.
Both these frames are enclosed within another frame, that of the screen, and we realise that the movie is offering a choice- we can choose any of the two frames.

All through the movie, Jack and Ennis' love is shown against the background of the river, sometimes running and frothing, other times, calmingly present, yet immeasurably large and always pitted against the squalor and mess of Ennis' home and the lack of freedom in Jack's.

There is no doubt that the movie is a powerful lobby, and because it appeals to our hearts with images, rather than mind with words, we are left just all the more vulnerable.

The Notebook.

2009-07-22T23:10:00.000+05:30

I have been coming across many good movies, all one after the other and I wonder why. This Isn't quite like how things happen to me.

Watched 'The Notebook' , a conventional romance in every way except that its so much more beautiful. At the end of the movie I wanted to stand up and award Robert Fraisse with the Oscar for best cinematography except that he probably wouldn't attach too much importance to it even if I e-mailed him one. There aren't any layers to this, and watch it simply for a visual treat, or maybe when you are down and out and low and lonely.( So in hindsight I probably watched it at a wrong time)

What is it with the Romances? Hindi or English, they are all the same and yet they never fail to bring a spring in my step. And oh, did I mention that it's set in the early 1940's? and again, what's with me and the past? Period Dramas or Historical plays I lap it all up.

I remember S suggesting I see '13 Going on 30', but the future and their projected sciences merely intrigue me, they don't captivate me, enthrall me, make me wonder at what once was.
There is certainty and comfort in the past, the future brings mere doubt.

It rivals 'A Walk To Remember' and that, my friends, is saying something.

Watch it, and discover what it is like to long to visit distant lands and want to see beautiful places, hold them in still pictures and yellowed albums.

17 Again.

2009-07-20T23:29:00.000+05:30

One of my very late night movies, and loved every moment of it. There's something about no honks, loudspeakers, mothers popping in forever for just that little errand or a younger sibling asking "aisa kyun hua?" (why did this happen?) that makes a late night movie on a small screen memorable. But this did go beyond the 'Me Time ' I always keep craving for and getting so little of.

For those who havn't watched it, as I know most of you havn't ;) this tells the story of Mike who as a high school Basketball champion, now this was also one of the reasons I loved the movie- I used to play basketball in school, and it still remains close to my heart though alas I play it no more, but I digress. So to continue where I trailed off, Mike was a star athlete with a full college scholarship imminent. He seemingly had it all, when, right before the championship game, his girlfriend Scarlet informed him she was pregnant. In that moment, he made the decision to throw everything away (including basketball and a chance at a scholarship) and proposed to her, only to regret it 20 years down the line when bitter at his professional life he thinks that he might have had a better chance at life had he been to college.

So enters a mysterious janitor who gives him an opportunity to live back his life but "To do it right." Mike , transformed back into a 17 yr old lives a part of his high- school again, setting many things right ,before finally at the same basketball match, he throws it all once more for Scarlett.

And so we realize that maybe the best decisions are the ones made by the heart.

And at the fag end of my life, I will want to have lived my life like Mike. Knowing that if I am given the chance to be 19 again I will not have done anything differently.

To See Eternity In An Hour.

2009-07-18T23:50:00.002+05:30

(The luminiscent dial of his watch told him it was 3.00)

It wasn't easy. Returning home after another futile day . Endless rounds of begging had almost ripped him apart. If only he had money for a drink. All images of him worming would blissfully fade away. Rather like those streetlights which seemed to stretch on forever into nowhere. Or maybe like those stars that seemed to be looking at him, twinkling down sadistically.

Those stars, and a decade went swishing past. The twinkle in Annanya's eyes far outshone anything heavenly. Some years blurred.... Sayan, and the same twinkle. He would be there at his doorstep too. There simply wasn't enough courage to face that faith.

"Baba....ekhono chakri pao ni? chinta korish na.... kalke to sure"
( Papa... you still didn't get a job?? don't worry. Definetly tomorrow)

Some tomorrows never come.

Every drunken laughter mocked him. Every smile made him cringe. When had he lost it all? And why?

Sayan..... he felt repulsed.
An old man lay shivering. He passed on.
The cold air knifed at his lungs, rather like his grief that cut through him, slicing him, wounding him, over and over.

"Baba..."
(Papa)

He was passing through the beach now and he could feel the coarse sand grinding beneath his shoes, his last pair. He thought he spied a couple in the distance, and muted voices carried through the waves brought him words like 'love'; 'forever' and a jaded, cynical smile spread over his face.

He passed on.
Perhaps, over the sounds he had taught Sayan to hear in a sea-shell, he could hear Ananya's recital, A 16 year old voice speaking at an elocution:

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

He understood what that meant once. Not anymore.

The world, maybe in another world might have been his to see and show Sayan.

Eternity...Rather like the vast sea before him, streching on, changingand mutating with each new wave. Rather like the world around him that transformed with every new beat of his bleeding heart. Rather like every ray of the Sun, each that brought more light to the forsaken.
Rather like Sayan his only Hope and Love.

And Love?

Ananya could yet come again

A fiery red broke out on the horizon.
He would wait till the red faded into full daylight.

(Beyond the fog, the could barely make out the steeples from which the church clock was striking four)

A Thought.

2009-07-15T23:47:00.001+05:30

Its often only after the very tiring days that so many little reflections on life hit you. However its not always that you realize that these little nuggets were always there, right behind in the recesses of your mind and that it has just come to the fore in definable clarity and that there is no newness to it after all.

Que Sera Sera : Whatever will be will be.
There was a fly fallen in the ink pot of the Boss.He takes it out from the pot and places it on a fresh piece of blotting paper, to watch it dry itself and prepare itself for flight. But just before it flies off the Boss places another blot onto the fly, so that this time the task of drying itself is more arduous.Yet the fly like all mortals fights for its survival and raises itself for another time before a third blot wipes out its existence.
The fly has no consciousness of the boss and the blots are for it bolts of fate that keeps striking him down, with which he is utterly incapable of fighting, yet he fights unknowing that his existence is being overseen by a stout robust man over him.
We are different. And for us the knowledge that the ink blots shall drop on us are more terrifying than the drops that do eventually fall.
So we live our lives from one blot to another.

Whatever you can do:
There is this thing about your life just starting, you, very much like the fly think that you are responsible for your future and are filled with an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm and drive. You are determined not to make the wrong choices, you are determined not to slack off, you are determined and willing to start putting so many things on the backburner. Then you look around you to the many friends who have already gone off chasing dreams and your resolve turns stronger.

Then what happens??

'Hota wahi hai jo manzoore khuda hota hai.'
(only that which the God shall will will occur.)

P.S : Refernce to the fly taken from a short story by Katherine Mansfield

Of New York and just a little more.

2009-07-11T13:11:00.000+05:30

I wanted to save up New York to watch it with my friends, but that was not possible, and so I watched it alone, feeling lonely right through Junoon. And then 9/11 took over and I no longer missed anyone.

There are better movies made to depict racial profiling by the USA after 9/11. And there are better movies made on songs of friends. If I want to watch the earlier,I'd watch Khuda kay liye. And if I want to watch the latter, I'd watch Dil Chahta hai.

Speaking of Dil Chahta hai, there comes a time, and sometimes far, far too soon than u've ever imagined when you feel that your friendships aren't quite what they were not too long back. The differences that provided such newness and sparking conversations have just been reduced to frustrations at not being able to put your points across and you find yourself increasingly biting your tongue on a late night phone-call because your brain is numb with 12 hours of learning and you still have another 4 hours to go before dawn when you can finally go to get some sleep before it starts all over again.

Not that you like it. You were the one who would take joy in all your differences and say " Friends don't have to be alike . They have to know how to enjoy their differences together." Not to mention newer friends with whom you find it easier to converse, simply because they seem more on the same plane. And you are ashamed of yourself because, in your hearts, this is traitorous and you don't have the guts to talk it out with your friend because of the unsureness that you have been feeling for nearly a year now.

We find comfort in those who agree with us. Growth in those who don't.

???

P.S : Just when John's finally learning how to act, along comes another to claim his discarded crown.
P.P.S : Isn't it the same new york which KJo shoots??

P.P.P.S: For my readers:- In school our classmates named the three of us Amar, Akbar and Anthony. We however named ourselves differently. After DCH- Akash, Siddharth and Sameer.

Who am I ?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

2009-06-25T23:40:00.001+05:30

Saw it. Finally.

And managed to see a little bit more than its sheer beauty.

I saw the basic being at the very core of all our shrouds of civilization in Mr. Button , when stunned at the death of his loved wife and the deformity of his child that might otherwise had also been loved, his irrational senses compell him to almost drown his child before Benjamin's destiny leads him to the Old- age home.

I also saw that the essence of any kind of relationship, of life itself that has to be shared, lies in meeting midway. As Caroline and Benjamin realise after a beautiful ballet class, he growing younger and she older. That is a profound philosophy. We may bend backwards and forwards and maybe all the ways in between, But real understanding would come only when you meet exactly halfway. Anything otherwise would be unfair.

We all want to be different. To stand out. To be looked at. Stared at. Admired. But being different is difficult. Especially when you are really and truly different. Not different in the ways we know, in having only Prada and Gucci and Puma. But different in ways that are inexplicable. Being different in the mind. Being different in the body. Being handicapped. Then it cuts and bruises and we can ask for nothing more than normality. Ordinariness.

And of course, I saw that everyone does different things.
Some are born to sit by the river.
Some are struck by the lightning.
Some have an ear 4 music.
Some are artists.
Some swim.
Some know buttons.
Some know Shakespeare
Some are mothers and,
Some people dance.

I know Shakespeare, but he is not enough.

A Mother with her Son.

2009-06-23T01:25:00.001+05:30

It's officially monsoon now and I'm still baking and broiling. I thought the worse was over when April was, But no, June still roasts. The weather's been so much on my (and everybody else's) mind I can hardly think of anything else. And for most of those load sheddings that I still endure, I could of think nothing except the people who overuse their A.C's so that I have to sit with my books in the balcony hoping for an occasional waft of cool breeze.

But today, returning home 1 in the afternoon, I saw something.

A malfunctioning ATM door of Punjab National Bank.

And sitting there, at the steps, in the cool draft of the AC within,a mother with her son. I don't think I've ever seen a broader smile on an urchin before, or more relief on the face of someone with a hand stretched out for alms.

Come all the load sheddings that may, I'll keep in mind that picture of a Mother with her Son and feel blessed for the sluggish fan that rotates in my room nearly 20 hours a day.

Apocalypse

2009-06-19T23:49:00.004+05:30

I can't stop ranting enough about my exams. As soon as one's over, I'm staring at the other in the face. But the one next month (exactly 15 days and 6 hrs away as I type this *faint*) is the most important of them all. Now I usually don't freak out before exams. Correction. I never freak out before the exams. Never as in never have in the 13 yrs of my schooling. And believe me, looking at the amount of studying I do for them, that's saying something. But I digress. so , to repeat,I never freak out before my exams. But this academic session, as I look around at my brand new classmates, I am starting to feel like I have a lot of reasons to freak out. I'll tell you why:

There are exactly 4 types of people in my course:

The Weirdos: before you call me rude,I didn't name them. My friends did.(fine friends I have, still indulge in kindergarten name-calling) They are exactly five in number, move around in a group, are cold (make that icy)and they even have separate notebooks for their electives. Alone and effortlessly, they make me feel very,very inadequate.

The Cool Dudes: they are the ones who spend all their free time in the auditorium(our cafeteria stinks),take turns testing the willpower quotient of the weirdos( last count, the wierdos were left unshaken) ,yet manage to come for exams with the syllabus complete.They are the majority.

The "Kichu pori ni":( translated- did 'nt study anything) They hang out with the cool dudes in college, do all their studying at home, are hypocrites to the last degree and come with their syllabus complete AND revised.

The Library-worm: I alone inhabit that category. I sleep in class( just sometimes), and use my free-time to raid the library and study as I see fit. Most of the time its extraneous because loving the subject as I do, I find the syllabus incredibly and hatefully dependent on rote learning. So I look up stuff related to what I should be studying(but don't)and just Read. Extensively and voraciously. Doesn't help too much with my exams though and I end up for them with an incomplete syllabus, hoping for the best.

You would've noticed , category 4 is the only one where people don't study and being alone in it has thoroughly shaken me up.So I'm thinking maybe I should panic. Maybe it will help. Maybe it will shock me into studying.

15 Days to go. Will it??

P.S This post was composed on 18.06.09 ; 1.45 am but left unpublished due to load shedding.
P.P.S In this unbearable heat ( averaging 40*C) we are having an average of 3 hrs load shedding everyday.

Or Armageddon

2009-06-19T00:03:00.001+05:30

Another day of fruitlessness, and I'm tired.Don't take it to mean that I've worked my ass of over my files of research, because I haven't. But I did open up my class notes and and wondered if at all it was possible for me to get round without having to do everything as copiously as the others have done.I wanted to plan some selective studying too, but ever since I 've given my ICSE exactly 3 yrs back, my plans have perfected a way of falling flat on my face.

I'm just weary of the system I've been seeing since the past year. There's simply too much of rote and that when the course has so much more to offer. There are vast areas that could be explored if simply there wasn't a do or die situation always hanging in the background. I mean obviously we need to be tested but there should be some elements of applicative study too involved.

Its important (and preferable to me ) that the examinees expand their knowledge to include a comprehensive idea, a kind of an overall view of the bigger picture.

But we don't do that. Instead we commit to our memory specific portions so thoroughly that we can recite them cold after being shaken up at 1 in the morning.If at all we are lucky to sleep that early.(I'm not talking about me here. I'm off to dreamland by 12.30)

I'd just like to go library tomorrow and read up something good. Something really nice.

It will wait.

Believe it or Not.

2009-06-14T13:55:00.003+05:30

I would never have believed this, when I started writing my unread blog in 2008.

Farewell At Howrah.

2009-06-08T23:48:00.002+05:30

Another friend departs. This time to Mumbai, a charmed city. And obviously, there are usual promises, but as always, these will lose significance, fade.

It's something like standing on a platform at the Howrah station, waiting for your train among chatters, excitement, reminisces and maybe, some tears. It comes and you wait for it's departure with the twin feelings of dread and hope.And then it leaves, with the sound of the whistle you've grown to love so much since your childhood. Only, this time, you are on the wrong side of the iron strips.

Soon you are left standing alone on a deserted platform, looking round with a lump in your throat, and a head filled with years worth of memories to other platforms,where more separations, more uncertainties await.

A Quest.

2009-06-05T12:07:00.002+05:30

I want to be able to write. Beautifully. I want my words to move you, inspire you and make you want to lift up a pen too. But I'm no good at it. Thoughts rush into my mind every time I sit at this page, a whirlwind after the other, and I can never grasp them and fit them into my chubby fists, just like I could never quite catch the colourful bubbles at the entrance of New Market, then with chubbier fists. I do not cherish a dream of being published. Yet I feel like an author every time I hit the publish button. I want to mould my words into perfectly ordered paragraphs but again I fail.

I fail repeatedly and yet I persist. Even at the cost of scorn and laughter I carry on. Because, someday I'll want to be able to produce words effortlessly. I'll want like what I've written. Now I don't. I think that whatever I write is either too mushy, or too drab. Sometimes I feel, they are too contrived and sometimes , too spontaneous.I'll want to read that something in perfect balance, perfect harmony, written by me.

But for all my quest of perfection, I think my half-baked efforts are worth chronicling. And worth displaying. Because failure is beautiful. Its beautiful in its inherent humanity. Its beautiful in its ordinariness that shows me as an unremarkable human. It is the last, ultimate proof of my mediocrity. And that is why, much as I want to, I do not take off so many of my trashy posts, mostly written in my earlier days of blogging. And I continue to write more of it.It is, for me, a harsh lesson in reality.

And that is why so many unfinished drafts still lie, littering my dashboard. I deem them too ugly to show them light.

This blog was always meant to be personal, never private. But now I find lines blurring. And I realise that I need to pull in my reins once again. Perhaps I'm afraid that the more I enter into the private,the more deplorable its content shall be. Putting something into black and white makes it a final, irreversible reality. And then I wouldn't be able to shut my eyes and ignore things, believing that if I ignore them for long enough they shall go away.

Would it be possible for me to write about the deformed and ugly that is me without cringing while re-reading it?

Till the day I can't, I must continue heeding the lines I drew a long time back and watch my life chronicled through detached eyes.

(words did find their way through my fingertips, and I re-wrote this post on 7.06.09 ; 11.55 pm)

A Letter From My Mind To My Heart.

2009-05-24T00:01:00.000+05:30

Dear Heart,

I am ambitious. I aspire. Aspire to reach higher levels of knowing, understanding and omniscience.
Yet I find myself chained. Chained by you, who have such inexplicable rein on our master. Everytime I reach out for those great philosophers whose thinking and discoveries so enchant me, you pull me back into the mundanity of your existence and the trifles that are the definition of your being.

I exist to expand frontiers of the vast human empire of knowledge. To raise man from the abysmal depths of darkness and the terrible fate of ignorance into the light and life of reason. To chronicle his efforts as he has through centuries, floundered, groping inspite of my guidance, because you have blindfolded his eyes and dimmed his faculties.

I resent you. Resent you for dragging me into ruin, aiding the rotting and rusting of my capabilities, stifling me in the pursuits of idle joy and momentary pleasures.

I have, for 18 years of my existence, watched in horror,as you have, again and again overpowered me with your tendency towards the simplistic. You have thwarted my repeated efforts to break through your chains, to travel the untraversed world, pulling me back into the comfortable embraces of familiarity. I look at you with disgust as you are awed by the half- baked thinking of your peers, being incapable of comprehending anymore. I sneer at you everytime you expand with pride at a well-done for a petty task. And I only pity you as you find fulfillment in little beyond the animalistic instincts of survival.

You have continuously angered me and frustrated me and I have borne it patiently, because I know that you are handicapped as you are doomed to be. I have cringed as you have put forward your diseased and jaundiced views to me, hoping I'd accept them, as so many times I almost have. So many times that you have gagged me as I have attempted to speak out the truth. The truth that I know owe to minds around me, Truths you have silenced forever.

For 18 years I have been forced to co-exist with you, and now, in finality,I evoke my fundamental rights to freedom and free existence . For too long have I grappled foolishly, hoping to find a way out of your deadly clutches- those that have poisoned me all the years I fed and nourished it.

And so,now,On this day of history, I declare myself a sovereign and free from your bondage.

Regards,
Mind.

The Afghan Girl.

2009-05-09T16:58:00.000+05:30

It is said of the Pashtuns that they are at peace only when at war.

I had seen her picture way back, in school. I knew her as The Afghan Girl. I thought she was hauntingly beautiful. And she is. Only, now I know that her beauty haunts because of searing pain that comes with being a refugee.

A shattered and devastated nation finds expression in more than numbers and statistics.

Read how she was lost and found in the debris here.

A Late Night,

2009-05-08T03:35:00.000+05:30

and I am, uncharacteristically, awake.(3.23 a.m).

Memories are better abandoned every time they bring only pain instead of wet smiles she remembered. Last time she visited the hazy past, there were better fruits for her. Leaving forever and leaving forever are two different things. The first brought her anger and resentment, the second brings a void. And it is yet too early to decide what is preferable.

But even through the numbness, a realization seeped in. Unlike the real ones, bittersweet endings always leave hope.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya -5

2009-05-07T00:02:00.000+05:30

And so we enter the last phase of the great Indian carnival. And by far the most important development in the phase last was the arrival of the dimpled Gandhi in the arena.Never mind that the left remained frosty and frozen. I quite like the insistence of Congress that no matter what the ratio of composition, Manmohan remains the prime minister. Besides me liking the man,that's called having a backbone.And personally I don't believe that UP is a battle lost. Back here at home things do look extremely good for TMC. Watch out for the day the darling sister arrives. There'll be an entire country's worth of people welcoming her.

Btw, has anyone told Mayawati that she is in the danger of fast turning into her party's symbol?

Kolkata is steeped into the the election fever, comletely geared up for the conclusion of the greatest and most wonderful exercise in democracy,no matter how flawed, the world ever witnesses. The KKR plight helps extremely.That reminds me, all ye Kolkatans who tune into broadcasts from South Africa, the action is happening here . Cricket's very own deep throat with news, masala and entertaintment from within. Im not reccomending this for shahrukh khan fans though.Trust me u'd rather not hear about Dildo.( :D) This blog has more action than the entire edition of the IPL put together and if this mystery man is to be believed,(which he is, considering how the athourities are in a tizzy) then the stadiums there are far more empty than shown on Tv, with cameramen specifically instructed to show only the filled portions. Really? And some of the names are going down in history too. Ive never seen better ones.

And so with this and that I shall wait for the 13th as India shapes her destiny.... again.

Theorising.

2009-04-29T13:35:00.001+05:30

Why does SRK wear the keffiyeh?

a. he likes wearing it.
b. he wants to experiment with table-cloths.
c. subtle advertising for his look in 'My name is Khan'
d. he's not aware that this look went out of fashion a year back.
e. his designer is not aware that this look is very last-year.
f. he wants to hide his surgery scars.
g. he wants to go back to his middle class roots with the gamcha look.
h. he secretly uses it to wipe perspiration when no-one's looking.

Ans: h

Keffiyeh.

2009-04-28T15:53:00.005+05:30

He's ubercool. Seriously. Even if he's trying to look like a 20 year old in real life too. And even if in some, disenchanted moments, I feel that he's a pompous big-mouth.

Above, he's wearing the keffiyeh (an Arab scarf). And everywhere that Shahrukh goes, the keffiyeh is sure to go.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya- 4

2009-04-27T21:15:00.004+05:30

"nine out of every ten people on this earth" says Carlyle, "are fools."

" how flawed democracy is as a concept because it helplessly relies on the rationality of the masses who are inherently irrational and are so deluded that they are sure of their own rationality and infallible judgment. "
(quoted out of context)

My search for an understanding of our democracy keeps pushing me into uncharted waters. :)
Sure, principally men are fools but democracy is, very simply defined, a system of governance, that has, through the trials and errors of history, been recognised as the best.Its not a debate on whether men have the capacity to choose what is best for them. Though incidentally , as Dumbledore told Harry, we do have a knack for choosing what's worst for us.
Its a question of the right to choose what we want that forms the keystone of the entire , massive , framework of a government that's by the people. They might for themselves, choose a government that throws them into the 19th century, or go back to the Harappan Civilization in a quest for self- sustenance. But if that means that they are happy at having beaten the recession ,then hey, democracy's worked. Though of course no one's going to like it without electricity, and personal computers and sales and motorcars and yada yada yada.

I remember the discussion a few of us were having the other day, where most of the people present so animatedly favoured congress.Once inside the ballot room though , they might push a thumb as easily for BJP. And that, in my eyes is the sheer beauty of our democracy.We choose freely what we want, without fear or favour.Even if its an extremist, separatist and up-in -the arms agenda that we vote for, we've got only our conscience, or the lack of it to answer to.And India has always, overwhelmingly, and completely chosen moderation over extremism. Throughout.Though its violence that catapults radical leaders. It was Godhra that made Modi.And I fear that 11/26 shall make another one.

Are we really free? I ask. I know that I am.But the rest?? The real India as i like calling them. Are they free?? Is there coercion and force and threats and bullets that, unknown to me force ballots? By all that I've come across, No.Though of course, my memory reminds me, the biryani that a party served at elections last in lieu of votes can be sufficiently called manipulative. But as I think deeper, its probably not.We vote for what's important for us, and if I think that a biryani that I have once in a red moon is incentive enough, I vote for that biryani.Period.

P.S : above quote taken from here

On A Personal Front.

2009-04-24T11:35:00.001+05:30

Eliot knew something about my city, Eliot did. After the warmest winter I've experienced in my living memory And the cruelest April in 3 decades, I've really,truly and finally woken up to global warming. even though my neighbours are apparently unaffected. mere samne wali khidki mein They still sleep under those warm, soft fur blankets( no I'm not making this up, you can send it to Ripley's ).
So so thankfully,things have picked up from Jan and from the two exams that are over to bigger two that are coming and numerous twenty minute walks to neverland in the sweltering Kolkata midday heat to guarantee myself some bread and butter, to other stuff like espanol and reading things I had lined up for a long time and many more besides, I finally have something to do. I had experienced an absolutely horrible last half the year before, the likes of which I hadn't experienced in nearly two years preceeding that, and tis' not a fate I would wish on many. All work I had was non- stop nonconstructive activity from nine in the morning to five in the evening, often stretching to six or eight at night when I returned home, too exhausted to do any more, all building of myself gone to the dogs,and no light on the horizon. That hasn't changed by a large degree, but it has, and for now, it'll have to do.That was actually when I started this blog,sloppy as it was then, dripping with soggy, stupid posts. That too hasn't changed by a large degree but then again, it has. (:D)

One of my great, heroic ambitions in life is to stop procrastinating.Now, if you know me, you'll realise that's one tall order.But for now, I've procrastinated procrastination,and I shall take solace in that, though sadly, my experience tells me its not for long.As I see it,life is about to pick up further and id welcome that. from last April to this, it was a sea-change and not one that was particularly pleasant.But now, off I go to things that scream my (loving) attention.

On my book stand: 1. Inheritance of Loss
2. Shantaram.

Hum Aise Kyun Hain??

2009-04-20T14:22:00.002+05:30

Everyone is qualified to comment and opinionate on the great Indian democracy. The one Great, redeeming factor of the shambles that is our way of life. From rickshaw wallas to peons to the corporate honchos to the industrialist czars, all shall exercise, and all shall decide.

Easter.

2009-04-14T21:58:00.002+05:30

Easter time, Easter time,
flowers bloom at Easter time.
There's a little bunny...........

Today, returning home, I saw the late spring flowers bloom. Reminded me of another day forgotten. sigh.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya -3

2009-04-14T21:23:00.003+05:30

My ayah knows more than me about politics and as she told me the other day, she has already decided whom she'll vote for. She's voting for Mamta Bannerjee because Mamta has reduced her monthly train fare from Rs 220 to Rs 25. I'm happy for her. Considering that I've never been much of a fan of TMC, it might sound strange, but for all I care, she can even vote for Shiv Sena, Goonda sena, Mawali sena as long as they work for her upliftment. She is India in majority and I'm glad that the India in majority is changing. Becoming aware. Change, Obama wanted. Change, India needs.And we are but small agencies.

This brings me to another pertinent question: Vote for the candidate or vote for the party??I'd rather vote for a deserving candidate who'd see to it that my locality is not filthy but then looking at the bigger picture, ultimately a candidate will track on his party's ideologies. So it might make more sense to vote for what you believe in. Want.

Still Knowing.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya- 2

2009-04-12T12:20:00.000+05:30

This is in a continuing vein of my quest for political awareness. Turns out that a home upside down has its benefits after all. I found an Outlook dated last November with a cover story on Leftist Politics, which I (not unusually) devoured. Though its kind of embarrassing that I had to turn to that after 18 years of living in West Bengal. And from what I could gather,(which wasn't really much) I think that the Left is prone to dragging the economy towards the 20th century. 19th even, if only they were given half the chance. Though this is not to ignore the CPI(M)'s efforts in singur,and as they make no mistake in crowing about, they probably helped in making India reasonably crisis-proof in these worst of times.

But this might not have been such a great achievement anyways if we regard congress' socialist agendas. That certainly should have helped. Try coupling that with the red-flag waving party goondas I see round my city enforcing bandhs and placing banners and defacing my freshly painted walls, I find it a sorry picture. But in all fairness, had I lived in UP, I might have been saying the same for Congress. Never I mind. I'll just focus my attentions at what who's done and proposes to do.

On hindsight, the election tamasha dipped a scale lower, with Modi calling congress a budhiya and gudiya in turn. Methinks it was directed to Sonia and Priyanka respectively. Kudos to Congress for having always maintained the dignity of the electoral process and high offices. If anything, I can garauntee that we won't ever hear abuses being sent forth from 24, Akbar road.

They just won themselves another point.

Upcoming: An IPL post that has been brewing( like so many other posts) in my drafts for a long long time.

Misconceptions.

2009-04-09T21:27:00.003+05:30

Caught me saying that renovations take roughly a week?? Perhaps its just as well I abandoned maths. Its taken my home a conservative estimate of 20 days and still going strong. I'm no longer at the brink of insanity. I toppled over a week back. Whatever little is left is sustained by the smell of fresh paint.

I'm in love with smells- kerosene, petrol, turpentine. Wet earth after the rains. And oh, dust blowing before them. Hot, strong coffee. Unfiltered. Hot wafts of freshly baked cakes.The chilly stark smell of deep winter.........

Aur aise hi rahenge.

2009-04-09T00:39:00.000+05:30

I'm revising my earlier opinion of Meera Sanyal. Turns out she didn't quit her job at all, but has just taken a leave. That doesn't really take a He-Man courage. Though I stick to my statement that we need educated, young blood. So in a sense I'd still be rooting for this independent candidate had I lived in south Mumbai.

Well, someday......

P.S I think I finally managed to correct my blogger clock. :D ( yay me !!)

Hum to aise hain bhaiyya.

2009-04-07T19:33:00.000+05:30

This is going to be the bloodiest election ever in the worlds largest and most thriving democracy.Ask me, I actually feel happy for it every time I cast my glance westwards ho(:D).An added incentive? I've just received my voters Id card. Though I still don't know if I`'ll vote and for whom.Politics in India is pretty disillusioning. Add petty and selfish to that too. Centuries after we decided we were one nation, we still have that to prove.Somehow the fact that the Indian state transcends regional identities has been an idea too difficult for our masses to fathom.And therein lies the problem. A problem so vast and so maddeningly complex, elucidating it feels completely and wholly out of my reach. I can only feel it. And bleed for it.

We don't need Shatrugan Sinha claiming that he is the "asli " bihari babu. We don't need a family of Thackerays claiming that Maharashtra is for the Maharashtrians. We dont need Varun( I find it shameful that he puts Gandhi after his name) wanting to cut hands and gouge eyes to prove his Hindu credentials.We don't need politics of hate and politics of shame. For all the seats that it may win, it only leaves us more bloodied and more scarred than before. Actually Im not even sure of that. It may win some seats at the regional level but to succed at the center we need secularism. Ask Rahul. Ask sonia. Ask priyanka. I don't think they'll be playing any kind of regional card soon. Over and above any kind of practical reason and benefits that it may entail, it is just not the legacy they've inherited. I do think that their beliefs and political ideologies have been shaped right from the pains of being a colony through the trauma of partition and the pangs of the indo-pak wars.

Though that is not the reason we should place congress in the circus at the centre.I just find it extremely heartening that the farmers are given such predominance in all its policies.If you look at the 1.1 billion population of india of which nearly 800 million is rural, I think that makes more sense than hankering after our IT industry which I think will manage to sustain itself anyways. Apparently India Rising and India shining somehow doesn't feed these stomachs and that's why we have all these farmer suicides.

Ive been pro congress since I was 8 I think, though then it was because it was the only name familiar to me. Im still very much pro congress though Id like to see and evaluate the kind of results acheived over the their past tenure before pushing the ballot button. Right now, all Im saying is that their manifesto looks far better than the Hindutva policies I see floating around. The muslims do not stay on in india at the mercy of the Hindus who were kind enough to take them in. It is as much their land as it is of them.

More than the Lalu Prasads ,we need the educated, young blood in the thrones of power. Not that I hold Lalu's lack of eductaion against him or am making a mistake of underestimating his shrewdness. A case in point is Meera Sanyal, contesting elections in south mumbai. for her I say she's got the guts. Not everyone would ditch a high profile career to descend into the murky cess pool of indian politics. ( she used to head ABN Amro) . Its taken her courage to do that without any chance of winning.She'll get what, some 10,000 odd votes from the likes of me?But she'll make herself heard. She's made a start.

And that heralds new beginings.

The Klutz.

2009-04-04T22:32:00.000+05:30

That was me, at my Spanish class today.Don't you ask me why do I have to learn it when I have trouble enough with the four I know. It was my idea of fun. Actually, that's the problem with most of my ideas- they rarely turn out the way i think they will. But that's not saying I ever regret them. It started off innocently enough( the course silly, not the class ), the fun I thought it would be, before nightmarish tests made it a big pain in the wrong place. But then again, that's not saying the incomparable joy of knowing something new and undiscovered faded. Its pretty much still there and is primarily responsible for dragging me off my bed at unearthly hours two times a week, every week.But I digress. So there we were, the very few of us ( majority being already disenchanted ) translating conversations into Spanish. I managed. Or so I thought before the check revealed gaping mistakes in my conversation.One that, for example, implied I change my name and identity from time to time. Though this is not what embarrassed me. Ive seen people do worse.
Trouble reared its ugly head in the form of my teacher asking me and another person to read out the conversation in Spanish. You might understand why I thought it would be difficult to do so. Anyways , to cut a long story short, I realized that there was no way I could have read out the part of the receptionist without making a fool of myself and so I wanted to take the part of the other character- a certain Mr Garcia. Guess what I end up saying?

Me: " May I take the part of Mr Gracias?"
( Gracias in Spanish means Thank You)
Roar of laughter.
Me: (mumbling) "uh, sorry. I didn't mean that. I meant Mr Garcia. sorry"
My Teacher : "De Nada, Miss perdón"
(perdón in spanish means sorry)
Another, bigger roar of laughter.

Fun enough for other people.

April Fool.

2009-04-01T14:16:00.000+05:30

I spent almost the entire day trying to dream up a prank. And though I thunk and thunk, I wasn't successful . Well I could have fooled my cousin, but he is 7 yrs old and I don't think he counts. Though according to him, he makes a fool of me everyday( by doing things like telling me that my mum's calling me and when I discover that she isn't, there i am, the standing fool :D) . You'd think I would have wizened to this by now but the fact remains that if my mum's really calling me, then it'd get really difficult to explain why I didn't turn up.But I'm falling off the track.I also tried to fool N who just stared at me in the face and questioned: "April Fool??". Now that's embarrassing. It doesn't help you know. People are too aware. Perhaps the year next I'd dream up a perfect prank, the kind that seems too believeable not to believe. Something that might last as the memory of memories. Or I might just save myself all that trouble and fool people a day before or after- " advanced April Fool"; "belated April Fool."

nice??

Thinking Things.

2009-04-01T13:44:00.000+05:30

My friends seem to think that I don't call them up or otherwise contact them for months on end. Now that's pretty strange because as far as I remember I'm the one doing all the calling.Though you wouldn't want to place your bets on someone who can't remember birthdays. But to be fair to me, thats nearly all that i've ever forgotten.And when people call up in moods its always smart not to challange them. Especially if they've got career breaking exams staring at them in the face. Not that im the one to fight on petty things but I do wish that the inherent beauty of flawless truth could have been exhibited.

Maybe another day.

Best of luck.

Soulmates.

2009-03-22T14:26:00.000+05:30

"Sometimes, in course of our life's journey, come messengers of our soulmates from unknown parts of the world, to enlarge the kingdoms of our hearts. They arrive unbidden. But there comes a time, one day, when they no longer answer to our call. Departing, they edge our life's fabric with an embroidery of flowers, leaving our days and nights forever enriched."

Holy Mess.

2009-03-13T13:55:00.000+05:30

There are people and there are people.The first category of those who feel affinity towards and hence inhabit pigsties. I admire them. Their prowess at being able to extract the one piece of paper from piles of scribbled ones, important ones, ticket stubs and pamphlets that they got at the Sealdah station amazes me. They can have every piece of clothing from their wardrobe in a heap on the balcony railing and yet be able to tell the clean ones from the dirty ones (I secretly don't believe that but if this is what they claim, who am I to cast aspersions on their level of hygiene?) I simply marvel at their ability to sleep and snore on a bed that has a bedsheet not washed in weeks. And I find it profound that the only inanimate object given some semblence of respect is the PC/Laptop. These superior beings usually land from Mars.

And then there is the second category of people . Lesser beings like me, who, out of circumstances are forced to inhabit pigsties. The circumstances in question maybe (a). Having category 1 type of people in family or (b). renovation/ painting job in the home that turns it into a pig sty.

Circumstance (a) is unfortunately permanent. You are stuck with it for life. Yet if you are as resourceful as I am, you realise that there is a way out of it. Divide your home in pigsty/non-pigsty zones. Even if your room is the only non- pigsty zone, it really helps. Encroachment can be avoided by use of vocal chords. I have extensively used it over the years and this was the only reason I did not win Indian Idol 3.
Circumstance (b) is temporary and lasts roughly only for about a week. But if circumstance (a) combines with circumstance(b) then this do ki shakti throws people like me completely out of focus.

Any kind of mess throws me out of gear. It reduces my ability to concentrate. It irritates me and agitates me. I find it difficult to get any kind of work done, let alone the studying I should be doing for my exams starting on the 16th. My surroundings are directly proportional to my productivity and I feel disturbed if I am in the midst of cacophany.I empathise very very strongly with any one in Rani's position in Chalte Chalte. That ought to explain it all.

P.S My crap writing capabilities though, I am baffled to say, remains cooly unaffected.

We, The People.

2009-03-13T11:39:00.001+05:30

Kudiyon na dariyo kar manmaani

badhiyo na mudiyo kar naadani.

belated Happy Women's Day.

ME.

2009-03-07T16:09:00.000+05:30

I play
I love long drives
I sing
I indulge
I celebrate valentine's(well, not exactly)
I own a guess (someday........)
I like quick money
I cross limits
I lie
I break rules
I splurge
I bunk
I eat junk
I trek (or at any rate, plan to)
I study (before the exams, yes)
I am aware
I question
I have opinions
I elect
I count.

Untitled - 2

2009-03-01T17:41:00.000+05:30

(......contd)

Her face was blackened with smudged kohl and coagulated blood. From this distance it seemed impossible to distinguish.Her hands bore wounds from where the broken glass bangles had cut her skin and from where the rough coconut ropes had bound her wrists, leaving them raw.Both just about distinguishable.Her foot was bare. Not at all unusual in this part of the country where all except the sahukar went barefoot. Her loose, soiled sari was soaked with blood- receding as it flew down, originating at her neck which was sliced. This clearly visible.

Swearing, Prasad brought out a spade from his toolbox at the banyan tree and started digging just next to Padma's body. She had bewitched Kara's land when she had walked through it late the previous year and now the crops wouldn't grow this year. There had been whisperings ever since she was born- an ill fated birth which saw the death of her father and within a week of that, her grandmother. "born at amavasya- what types are born on such nights you tell me?"whisperings which continued even as she grew up- "even uses maaya to learn her lessons Sita told me."
why of all places did they find only his field to dump her?

(to be contd)

P.S. I certainly did not get up at the crack of dawn to write such crap. there something wrong with my post time format and it seems that its just as stubborn as I am.And it actually had the audacity to display that changing time was illegal. Beat that.

Untitled.

2009-02-28T17:43:00.000+05:30

During the summer afternoons in the sleepy village of Mau, life slows down. Unbearable heat rises up in waves, enveloping all. Hot humid air from which only the homes protected by dripping jute provide protection. The sun beats down merciless and unyielding on the vast, arid, flat plains. Humanity retires from work, seeking respite in the intoxication of sleep. So it has been for centuries. So it was on that dusty afternoon.

Prasad lay under the dense banyan tree, half reclining,half sitting. Beside him lay a steel tumbler and an earthen pot containing the only kind of cool water known to him. In a distance only a restless crow cawed restlessly. As Prasad was slipping away in blessed drowsiness, the hot air wafted a heavy smell towards him. Dense and rotten. He cursed at this extra hand of work, conjecturing that he would probably have to dispose of a dead rodent. Usually, the hawks found in the vicinity would have done it for him, only his field was thick with unripened grain. Walking on for a few feet, he sighted something far larger than a rodent. Reaching the corpse, he surveyed it disinterestedly.

(to be continued)

A Debt.

2009-02-25T18:54:00.000+05:30

Congratulations, Rahman. This was a credit due for 17 years.

Billu Barber

2009-02-24T15:24:00.000+05:30

Id still go with the old title, even if I have to fear for my life,or worse, my money,in case the hairdresser down my street decides to sue me. I always classify movies on the basis of the repeat value it has for me. I'm no less a sucker for thriller or action than any other fan, yet I wouldn't put any suspense- packed thriller down on my list of favorites if I'm not going to watch it again.(which I usually don't, given that the suspense expires in a single watch). Favorite for me is evergreen, much like Rishi Kapoor in main shair to nahin which looked so fresh even in Hum Tum.

Its nothing much really. Just a simple story endearingly told.And a type that you can watch anytime you feel like going far from the madding crowd. And its a Priyadarshan movie. And its got SRK who actually repeats a dialogue from LBC. Well okay, not verbatim, but close enough. I think He's the only one who can get away with it and even sound better the second time round.And its a feel good movie so you wouldnt be compelled to look beyond whats shown on the screen.And its a movie which you can enjoy with a gang or without.

If you don't remember the last time you left a movie hall feeling warm in spite of the air-conditioning, go watch Billu.

Back to books.

2009-02-23T07:57:00.000+05:30

See how fast I renege on my resolutions???? :D But Ive been doing what I like best- reading.With the deathly hallows went out a small part of my life and two sunday mornings back, I suddenly realised that almost for 3 years Ive read no book that has absolutely enthralled me. So I dug out this old old list of books Ive been meaning to read since the donkey's years (and please dont ask me how could I still be in possesion of such an old old list) and set out on a quest to beg,borrow, steal and scour gariahat for them. Once in possesion of them I read them like the one possesed.

ANGELS AND DEMONS.- The only one of Dan Brown I hadnt read so far and shall I say the best?
Especially the parts with the absolutely wonderful rhetoric on science Vs God. Slick, modern, shocking( Im making it sound like a sci-fi movie, and its got a hidden motive- to make you read.) This book has made me put Italy on my list of places to visit and no, this list is not dictated by the monetary concerns other sensible people might find prudent to include. My bro finished this book with indecent speed and I simply refuse to believe that he read it cover to cover( he's the type who'll watch a movie on a computer backwards. My personal opinion is that he can't stand the suspense), though in his defense, he does read with insane speed.
I just hope they dont decide to make a movie out of it.

BOYHOOD DAYS- Arguably the best of the lot. chelebela is entirely my type of a book. I find such charm in colonial india( contribute it to my lack of knowledge on the bengal famine, black hole etc etc, though I did see Bhagat singh). Ive always known, and known particularly that translations can at times, be as ruining as movie adaptations but inept and inarticulate that I am in bengali this is the closest I'll get to tagore. He never disaapoints. My earlier trysts with him include reading some of his letters, translations of few verses of geetanjali and the Valmiki Pratibha.

A TRAIN TO PAKISTAN- Quite similar to what Ive heard from my grandmum about those worst of times. All through the book I pictured it on the lines of the godhra riots. Not the type of book id like to read just before sleeping. But perfectly fine all other times of the day. Especially if you get an unexpected day off because of a bandh and you don't( for a change) have exams breathing down your neck. Id say Kushwant Singh is losing his touch. Or maybe its just the constriants of a weekly coloumn. With my limited capabilities in being able to write, Im in no position to comment.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS- Depressing to say the very least. Its too dark, too gloomy, and too real. Well ok, even A train to pakistan is too real but this book has a kind of heavy pessimism that I completely disliked. Id say what ive perhaps never said for any book before,no matter how disliked( not that there were many anyways) : I wish I hadnt read it.

UNACUSTOMED EARTH- the latest addition to my list. Not good . Not bad. Readable but nothing beyond that. I expected better from the author of namesake.

None of the books enchanted me as I remember even the mystery Enid Blytons used to.
Maybe i was looking in the wrong places.
Or maybe, Ive just grown up.

P.S Not at all related to the post here but speaking of Enid Blyton made me remember Spiderman and my favorite line from my favorite part (part 1).

"With great power comes great responsibility"

THIS DAY........of all days.

2009-01-26T14:33:00.000+05:30

India and all her military might.......such grandeur and pomp...

today, nothing seemed a bigger joke.

A Second Read.

2009-01-20T15:27:00.000+05:30

"In spring, when woods are getting green, I'll try and tell you what I mean; In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you'll understand the song."
- Lewis Carroll

To feel the magic you don't always have to understand.......

The Birthdays.

2009-01-14T18:39:00.000+05:30

People who are even remote acquaintainces of mine will confidently tell you that I usually forget things. Especially B'days.(yes, I know that you know where this post is going but you can wipe that smug expression off your silly face.) Ten days into yhe new year and ive already forgotten two B'Days. Not my fault. When ive got 4 exams for which im not prepared, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Haule Haule, Tujh mein rab dikhta hai and Dance pe Chance all together what can the poor me do? You tell me. would you have been able to cope? And then they are not even on orkut. And I dont even have a cell to set reminders in.

But oddly enough I hate people to death for forgetting my B'Day. Thats a henious crime I dont forgive people for. A few suns ago A had forgotten my birthday. And knowing me,( she was my friend after all.) she didnt have the courage to call me up for months. And I mean it literally. For months. When she finally did...I think she'll remember that phone call for years to come. And probably even live to tell tales to her grandchildren about it. On second thoughts, knowing her( I am her friend after all..) she might not.

So now off I go to make a call. And hope that the heavens and the earths have mercy on me.

Something found.

2009-01-02T15:09:00.000+05:30

I should have found this a week ago when I was all christmassy.But I didn't then and I did now. So im putting this up, late though it may be. It expresses so perfectly what I found inexplicable.

"Christmas is not a time or a season, but a state of mind.To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, to have the real spirit of christmas"
- Calvin Coolidge; 30th president of the United States.

A New Begining..........

2009-01-01T15:10:00.000+05:30

........and the first one for my blog.

I spent my day studying as i usually like spending my 1st Januarys.....just a kind of superstition that I have. You spend the entire year doing what you do on the first. So today was a day spent in exhaustive brain activity. Ive long nourished a secret ambition of becoming a workaholic. Looks as if im getting closer to that year by year. Liking my studies more and more.....If only I could ignore the absolutely vast periods of lethargy that would put even hibernating creatures to shame.

I love the modern century. Its so fascinatingly complex. Makes you realise the fragility of man in his entirety.The helplesness it itself faces from a world changed by him alone- willingly and eagerly. the modern man...confused rather than being empowered. Unable to cope with his rapidly changing psyche.Man is at new crossroads in his eternal quest to discover the self. And he must survive the harsh winds of change that threaten to tear him apart.-winds he's churned up himself.

"the woods are lovely, dark and deep....
but i have promises to keep...
and miles to go before i sleep"

Ive got many promises to keep. Most of them to myself. Somehow I dont really like promising things to other people.Unlike the ones you make to yourself you cant break them.

Newer beginings, Newer adventures, Newer awakenings.

15 minutes before an new begining.

2009-01-01T13:15:00.000+05:30

At my tuitions today, I was halfway through trying to decipher Marvell. That man writes such brain twisting poetry , i feel absolutely confident that i could understand Kafka or Freud with lesser effort. Not to mention the absolute grotesquness he seems to take such delight in.My personal opinion is that he was a sadist. But I digress.

Sir called us out on to the balcony to show us the moon.A fine crescent with an 'ask' of the whole moon in a blurred but nevertheless, bright form.......its kinda hard to explain, but beautiful.. just the perfect sight to end my year with....two lines from Harivansh Rai Bachchan's poem keeps playing in my mind.( u kno the way some tunes get inside your head and you cant just seem to make it go??? Like That.)
"जीवन में एक सितारा था .....माना वोह बेहद प्यारा था........
जो बीत गई, वोह बात गई...."

New year sort of marks the end of christmas........not that I celebrate either...but you would know what I mean.Looking forward to oh-nine.....the first part of oh-eight was amazing,and so was the last part in its boringness. I stopped making resolutions way, way back....maybe in class eight. I couldn't be sure. But the reason I stopped was that I usually forgot what resolution I had made in the first place. I always had a strong suspicion that it was to study harder, but then i really didnt like believing in that so I preferred suffering from selective amnesia.

Anyways, ill make a resolution this year. or even better, ill make two.
1. Remembering B'Days
2. Blogging more.

the second one's funny, considering no one really reads my posts( save over-interested siblings who have noses a foot long each); but i always wrote only for myself. im hopeless at the first one but i can always try. We always feel that way at year- ends don't we???

Ill hope for brighter stars this new year.

Elementary, my dear Watson......

2008-12-26T19:21:00.000+05:30

Sherlock holmes: looking up at this vast universe, I feel so insignificant....
Me: strange. Looking at a mirror makes me feel the same way.

That time of the year.

2008-12-24T23:05:00.003+05:30

" silent night......holy night...
all is calm.....all is bright.."

a crisp chill in the air and the quaint tunes of soft carols, Christmas comes again.
its soooo much more than the breed of MBAs wud hav us believe.Christmas,that resides in its spirit,a spirit which tells us that giving is, and always has been, infinitely better than receiving. Which extends so much farther than a string of mulicolored lights...in the forgotten parables read out to us years back wen we were in the primary section...in the memories of reading A Christmas Carol,at the end of which our hearts were gladdened at small, homely and generous lives..in havin learnt the lessons of generosity.

Christmas .....it invaribly brings along in me a desire to do good,to help,to reach out, to revisit the part of me that shall always remain in the classroom of 1B.....listening ,for the first time ever the tale of the man who made the blind men see and the lame walk,seeing with wonder,a shiny christmas tree.

Sometimes it also makes me relive all those last days just before the christmas hols;yelling mery christmas and writing the same on blackboards.....christmas was the best part of all dose days back at Loreto.......straining my ears, I can almost hear the corridors of my school ringing with Away in a Manger.

The chill is more pronounced this christmas eve in Kolkata,and most streets in northern calcutta shall still be bare,because people here still spend christmasses with family,.in quiet thanksgiving and love. Christmas is not to be celebrated with the drunk and the rowdy.

And I'd still like to believe in the fairy Mrs Anthony told me about.The one who reports to santa about whether I've been good all year.

Spread the cheer mates...Merry Christmas.!!

A Month Later.

2008-12-24T22:53:00.002+05:30

Some ghosts refuse to be exorcised.
The horrors of Parition returned to haunt.
Even half a century and a decade later.

Shaurya....

2008-11-11T15:08:00.000+05:30

shaurya kya hai?

thartharati is dharti ko raundti,
faujon ki ek paltan ka shor,
ya sehme se aasman ko cheerta hua,
bandukon ki salami ka shor...

shaurya kya hai?

hari wardi par chamakte hue
chand peetal ke sitare,
ya sarhad ka naam dekar
andekhi kuch lakeeron ki numaish...

shaurya kya hai?

door udte kahmosh parinde ko
goliyon se bhoon dene ka ehsaas,
ya sholon ki barsaat se,pal bahr mein,
ek sheher ko shamshan bana dene ka ehsaas,

shaurya kya hai?

behti hui aas mein kisi ke khoon ka,
hole se sukhb jaana....
ya anjaane kisi firaaq mein,
pal pal ka dosakh bante jaana...

shaurya kya hai?

baarud se dhundhle is aasmaan mein.......
shaurya kya hai?

vadiyon mein gunjte kisi gaon ke maatam mein.....
shautya kya hai?

Shaurya...
shayad ek hosla,
shayad ek himmat,
hamare bohot andar...

goliyion ki betahasha shor ko
apni khamoshi se chunauti de paane ki himmat.
marti marti is duniya mein,
nihatte date rehne ki himmat.

Shaurya....
aane wale kal ki khatir,
apne hisse ki kayanat ko aaj hi bacha lene ki himmat.

shaurya kya hai????

aap kahiye...

Quote Unquote.

2008-10-17T13:17:00.000+05:30

courage is what it takes to stand and speak up.....
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

dreams.....

2008-10-16T12:15:00.000+05:30

"jaage hain der tak hame,

kuch der sone do....

thodi si raat aur hai,

subah toh hone do."

"adhure hue jo khwab hain,

pure na ho sake.....

ek baar phir se neend mein,

woh khwab bone do..."

PROFOUND. MAGICAL. TRANSCEDENTAL.

The Singur Saga.

2008-10-15T15:18:00.000+05:30

It seems quiet after the storm.....and there's a strain of sadness in this quiet.
Bengal has just missed out on an industrial rennesiance that would hav taken it back to the glorious 50s.... wen it was the hub of industrialztion. Just before the naxalite movement, trade unionism, and a certain Jyoti Basu reared their heads.

The Nano was crucial...for a revolution....something that Bengal has needed for nearly 4 decades now, with is economy stagnant and incapable of generating new avenues of employment and wealth.
The Nano was crucial....to realise somebody's dream of Amar Shonar Bangla.

And yet....i found it difficult to bat 4 Bhattacharya every time i heard him abused.and so very colourfully at that.For u see...i dint see Mamta Banerjee as the opposition.

I saw Mamta Bannerjee and Medha Patkar and Arundhati Talwar and Arundhati Roy and Aparna Sen and Shaonli Mitra. I saw feminism demanding its right to be seen. To be heard. To be able to make a difference. Which they did. And three cheers to that.

Chauvinism in beauracracy plagues India.It was overcome as im sure its dentined that it must. Thats a start. A start that heralds newer beginings.....Beginings which promise greater equality. Its utopian to believe that complete equality is in sight.

Its been exhilirating to follow this Saga.....and overwhelming to watch it end. This was DEFINETLY one, long ride. And the gang of girls did everything just perfectly. As im sure P wud hav said........ "way to go gals!"

i saw indomitable spirit, inflexible covictions and tremendous will power. Never before, i believe, has the destiny of a collective mass of people been shped so decisively by women.Or maybe im just forgetting Indira Gandhi.

Foolish though the cost might have been, and heavy though the price, the Tata's goodbye seems to hold up a message- bold and clear.....Bengal has finally come of age.

2008-10-11T18:18:00.000+05:30

the useless me was surfing the net 2day......and dis is wat i found -http://http//www.blogthings.com/areyouaperfectionistquiz/results/?result=68
i strongly suggest dat hav a look ASAP (4 dose wid limited intelligence/vocabulary; strongly suggest= just do it, ASAP=NOW )

dis is wat it said abt me:

You Are 68% Perfectionist
You are a true perfectionist. You are both demanding of yourself and others.While it's great to have goals and standards, they don't need to be sky high!

fish.

2008-10-09T13:52:00.000+05:30

not been riting anything latly.....If u want an xcuse...my keyboards not wrking( rite now im usin da on-screen 1......and its a real pain in da neck...trst me.).......nd if u want a reason......well...ive been lazy. one lump of butter.

since i dont see any change of keyboard in sight (and now, if u want a reason 4 DAT TOO...ud bettr ask my father- lol) ...thght...mite as well visit da shit i manage 2 pen down in my usual groggy state...

2day was a day of fish. not bcuz ive got a new aquarium at home(which by da way.........i HAVNT..). but bcuz...i had fish thruout da day......and i mean 4 breakfast lunch AND dinner. now i LOVE fish....or atleast watevrs bong im me loves it. Dats 90% of me.
however, on days lik dis..we often realise many things......1 of dem mite be dat dere is only so much u can hav of something.......even if its fish.maach.machli.

im satiated. completely.

Evil.

2008-10-01T13:06:00.000+05:30

There is always a fascination for the abomination........for evil is powerful...and goodness insipid.
evil entices as no other...it lures and it ensnares. because there are always the willing.....the ready.
Forbidden fruit is sweet. Very Sweet.

A MIRAGE.

2008-09-09T15:04:00.000+05:30

Thre's a mirage constantly beckoning me............pulling me towards its vanishing facade........and i dunno myself wat exactly it is..... just a feeling of urgency ..... a feeling at the back of my mind that's telling me to act before its too late.........is it a wrong turning ive taken ???????

sumtyme sits not enough to be doing what u like.........maybe, just maybe, the satisfaction lies in doing wat u ought to.......or does it????

Dreams r worth following. Are mirages too???
As i said..........Maybe. Just maybe.

a little prayer..

2008-09-09T14:04:00.000+05:30

"...... so i say a little prayer,

and hope my dreams will take me there

were skies are blue...

...over seas and coast to coast

to find the place i love the most."

life's an incredible journey......it goes so far...we keep growing as we tread on the paths that it may offer....what paths are offered is destiny,but turnings are always
ours to choose. Dumbledore said it so perfectly..."its our choices that show us more truly for what we are.....far more than our abilities....."

every turning point has seemed so confusing, every bifurcation so bewildering......

there r so many tymes dat a chosen road may hav seemed ardous and painstaking.....and so much so that we begin to wonder ...and doubt our choices....at the hazy dreams at the far end of the road....and despairingly ask if there's any road to it at all.......see ppl on other roads who might seem closer to there and feel like retracing steps back to the turning point..........if dere's a turning back at all.........

for there are so many ppl who'd advise this..and no strangers dey r too....they r ppl who r likd, revered and trusted......cud dat be da wiser option?????

Dreams r meant to be followed....arn't dey? thats wot id like to believe.......they r always worth giving another shot........

The journey must be undertaken for the goal lies not at the end of the rainbow.......its learning to grow ....with others....for others....as we keep on walking. trying ceaselessly to push urself to the ever elusive next level...........

theres sum1 followin a dream...sum1 whos daring to wait a while longer.....just 2 stay on the road that mite lead to dose dreams....for theres a belief dat dose dreams r worth a million bucks.

faith is important. faith in urself, faith in ur capabilities, and, above all, God. Ive never seen a stronger faith, or a more stubborn belief.

and so ill say a little prayer for you too...
and hope ur dreams will take u there...
where the skies are blue.....
......over seas and coast to coast....
to find the place u love the most....

lyrics courtsey westlife.

A Phoenix's rebirth.

2008-08-24T19:34:00.000+05:30

The olympics exemplifies the very ideals that man has stood for....over centuries.

Man's eternal quest to overcome nature....pushing himself, excruciatingly, punishingly, inch by inch, beyond boundaries that are only human.the spirit to achieve.....to shine among a galaxy of millions....to posses the olympic halo that pronounces one the ultimate victor.

The greatest show on earth.

A personification of all that man can, ever, achieve. An embodiment of man's ultimate aspirations,dreams, desires.............

But my blog is not about this already talked to death about topic.No. its about another talked to death about topic.

A certain Abhinav Bindra.Who sent billions into a celebrating frenzy.

A socerer who reincarnated a whole nation.he has come to symbolise that eternal hope for India. Awakening a long awakening spirit; a victors will to conquer.

Maybe brought us those few precious moments when the quaint, ancient tunes of

Jana Gana fill us with a passionate pride.

Somehow, very strangely, economics, business, five year plans, public sector....

all fade away beside the figure of this slight man. Or maybe we just choose to ignore all else beside him. its a rare enough indulgence.

i have always believed, india with its teeming populations can stand tall....... a giant dwarfing giants. my country's strength.....its youth.

Watch it rising like a Phoenix. For though India has the makings of a shambles, it also has the potential to be a celebration of life.

Pain.....

2008-08-16T12:43:00.000+05:30

Pain is not romantic. It is ugly , vicious, parasitic. There isnt any glory, there isnt any praise associated with it. Nothing to make the pain feel worthwhile. It is unjust, unfair and merciless. it brings charity and sympathy , never empathy. And
all too often, it brings sadistic pleasure. Lapierre was wrong : there is no heroism in suffering . the human spirit is resilient. It survives. Nearly always.

I LOVE MY COUNTRY............

2008-08-11T21:48:00.000+05:30

Cynicism is as easy to catch as malaria and far more dangerous.especially for the young people.we pick it up like an echo from professors, from movies,from one another.

it sounds adult. sophisticated.worldly wise.One who knows.

Another 15 august is upon us.The daily papers have daily news of daily disasters.This horrible country. Why cant we be like England? America? Australia? Canada? Anywhere?you see, its all these filthy politicians.its all because of our education system. its all a matter of population.its all because we are a tropical country. Its all because we are simply illiterate.All the stuff about helping the poor-what can you do with millions and millions of them? what are we paying taxes for? stop right there.

There is indeeed a lot that is wrong with us.The thing is, that there is a lot that there is wrong with every country in the world.I would not like to be in a country that despises me because im brown. In a country where everyone has a gun and is likely to shoot me because they feel like it. Where i would be treated as contemptibly inferior. where they havent got a language they can call their own and little enough culture.whre my religion makes me a terrorist.

No. i think I would prefer this country that I live in. On. With. For.

I am proud of my roots.Of a country that defied empires to arrive at freedom,even if we have made a bit a mess of that freedom, freedom it still is and we are working at it. This land flows in my blood, breathes in mylungs, pumps in my heart.

Welcome 15th August.

Vagaries..........

2008-08-07T22:08:00.000+05:30

it couldnt have been him. No . Of course not.Even as he lay wounded and dying, he was desperate for one thread of of assurance ,a glance,an indication,an iota of someone's belief....... a whisper that could put his tortured conscience , finally,to peace that had eluded him for years......in the last thereos of life,one often hears...........scenes of life flash before one's life................. then was he dying??? Maybe. Probably.

Somebody was shifting the venetian blinds.............and bright sunlight filtered in..............

"tomar bondhu esheche"

"ke? ashish?"

"hmm"

..................it was such a sunny morning..............how could it have turned into one of darkest days of his life????????

life was fast ebbing out of him..................he was now aware of a numbness that was gripping him...........how long before he turned cold????........

the highway was in perfect condition.........perfect enough for a real spin before college................the sensations were so real........... flying through the air................great music.......
heavenly day.

Blackness was spreading over his eyes............blurred streetlights in the distance....... honking horns all fading away........maybe he might yet find peace...

........Ashish's smashed face loomed large..........what had happened???? how had Ashish died???
surely he wasnt responsible??? No,of course not. wasnt that what his mum had told him??? his dad had repeated???

Maybe he'd ask Ashish. Ashish always spoke the truth.

heyyyyyy......lyfe;s just startin..............

2008-08-02T22:26:00.000+05:30

that was me.strolling down the beautiful lawn of my college on what was the first day at college.......it felt like a dream..........and like with all good dreams,i was soon jerked out of my reveries......my teachers.....?(.oops,sorry...lecturers they are called i was told.)gave me a rude shock.

the kind that not merely wakes u up- it throws you off the bed and onto the floor and makes you run right out the door...............

college SIX DAYS A WEEK?? ???

right from 10 in the morning to 4.30 in the evening????????

she couldnt have been serious......im sure of that.
somebody has a sense of humor.

attendance for all the classes taken in the SAME REGISTER??? so that if you attend one class you have to attend all?????????????

a lunch break for only 15 MINUTES????(i mean even in the jail some people call school we had half an hour to satiate ourselves....)

my college athourities call it discipline.
actually , its more like child labour. i mean its just not legal.

truly.......;" colourful clothes do not a college make".
we live in constant hope.im sure im dreaming.im having a nightmare.somebody please, please
wake me up!!!

7 things I learnt from school.

2008-08-01T19:51:00.000+05:30

1.the best thing about going to school is the ride back home.

2.breaking rules doesnt necessarily necessarily mean disrespecting authority.

3.the most charming people can be really and truly rotten inside.

4.you can tell a lot about people by looking at how they treat theit infereiors.

5.there is always a next exam to do better in .

6.perhaps the best knowledge imparted .........is in those ungaurded moments when teachers dont teach....

7.long after you've left people behind,somtimes on rainy days..............u remember not how many papers they topped in........but how they made you feel when you sat beside them in class....

PS:this'll be my last post about school.I promise.