We Bengalis have this weird obsession with names. While people from most other regions of the country get through life with one name, Bengalis have atleast two.One “Bhalo Naam” or the official name that adorns certificates, exercise books’ labels, etc. One could say the “Bhalo Naam” is the “written” name. While “Daak Naam”, on the other hand, is the pet name used by the family or its equivalents and childhood friends. It is, quite literally, the “called” name. (“daak” means “to call” and “naam” is “name”)
I have had a love-hate relationship with my pet name. Admittedly it is not as embarrassing as the run-of-the-mill Buri, Mummum, Mou etc, but I never really got too fond of it. What is really interesting is this strange sense of comfort that one begins to associate with one’s pet name.
Somewhere down the line, I guess I have begun to cherish being called by my pet name and perhaps, also the people who call me by it. There’s this odd sense of reassurance when you meet an old friend who introduces you to his friends by your pet name or when, in an alien city, in the middle of a market with people who only call you by your “bhalo naam”, someone suddenly calls out your pet name. Though I’ve often been embarrassed by such loud greetings, I admit that there has always been an accompanying sense of ease in knowing that there’s someone who has seen me in my most basic self-perhaps with my braces on or with my ugly middle-school girl bob. It is with these people I can laugh out loud or maybe walk around in my pajamas.
The sad part, however, is that as we grow older, the number of people who call us by our pet name decreases. Grandparents pass away, grand aunts grow amnesiac and para friends drift apart. That is when, to reclaim that little piece of memory that “growing up” consumed, we smile each time someone-anyone-calls us by the name that appeared on the envelopes our family gifted money in or the name that our playmates shouted out below our balconies to announce the arrival of another evening that was meant to be spent playing-completely unaware of the days when this very name would betray its nomenclature and be rarely called.

P.S: i am sorry for not having blogged for so long.let's hope this is the end of my step motherly treatment for my blog.

Leather

Love is like that fly and the fire.
The fire that burns irrespective of how dark the world around is.
The fire that warms inspite of all the cold.
The fly that flies around, no matter how still the world becomes.
The fly that always runs into the fire, irrespective of whatever else he can run into.

Love.
Is like that rose they etched on leather.

I have always felt brides look the best on the "Baashi Biye" day, that is the day after the wedding-the day when she goes away to her In-Laws' place. It is on that day that i feel the strain of the wedding, that shrouds the bride for months, is gone and yet there is a sense of nervousness in her sleep deprived eyes. The loud make up of the previous night is washed away and the hair is freed from the tight bun held together with an array of pins.
There is hardly any trace of make up and her face sort of lights up with the tinge of vermilion in the parting of her hair and the gold of the jewellery she wears.
When my sister got married, she looked her best on her Bashi Biye, though she got herself dark circles from all the crying. But inspite of all the fatigue and all the money that was spent to doll her up the night before, I feel she looked the best without any makeup, in a bindi and those unsure eyes brimming with new dreams. There's a beauty in the way she looked that day.A beauty no stylist can reproduce with bottles and jars of make-up.
And that's the way my sister, as the bride, will always remain in my heart.

Of Femme Fatales...

Till the Film course happened to me, I watched Film Noir just the way i watched any other film-without analysing, taking in whatever flickered on the screen before my eyes.
So we were made to watch Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, on Saturday.Apart from studying the specific features of Film Noir in it, it was also interesting to note the fully loaded wordplay that couldnt afford to use frank sexuality owing to the regulations imposed by the Department of War Information that was operational in 1944,when the film was released.
The most interesting aspect of this film, and any Film Noir for that matter, is the way the two sexes are constructed. The woman is ofcourse the Femme Fatale (played by Barbara Stanwyck)who is the bad girl, carefully constructed with the physical pointers of the Gun, the Lipstick and the Cigarette.She is the amoral woman,bordering on immorality who decides to kill her indifferent husband after suffering years of a boring marriage.
The man (played by Fred MacMurray) belongs to an equally ambiguous moral standing as the woman.He kills for money (under the garb of love)after cold bloodedly chalking out each minute detail,has a torrid affair with a married woman,cheats on her by being extremely close to her step daughter and misuses the trust his colleagues lay on him. Infact,it is him who introduces the idea of murder into the woman's head.
But the script provides a neat portion to the man which he uses to confess his murder that helps him "redeem" himself in the eyes of God and the audience and brings him back to the position of the Good Christian man that every hero is meant to be. Playing along with the concept of poetic justice,he dies at the end of the film but not without gaining the sympathy of the audience.
The woman,on the other hand, is shot by the man shortly after she cant bring herself to shoot him. It is interesting to note that moments before her death, she was bordering on the realms of amorality and was threateningly close to the realm of morality as she began to talk of how her heart didnt allow her to fire the bullet at him, before being silenced by the bullet he fires.
What I find problematic is how he is allowed a chance to "redeem" himself and she is killed just when there was a possibility of a similar "redemption" for her.I do not say that she would have actually spouted words of love that would pull her back to being a Good Christian woman, but the problem is that the script didnt give her that chance.
In the narrative of the man who makes sure he is "redeemed" at the end, we do not come to know of what the woman would have done had there been a similar scope for her,and all we end up with,is a series of "What If"s in our heads.

P.S: the opinions expressed are totally personal and i do not mean to push them down anyone's throat.

Uchhala Jaladhi Taranga.

I guess blogging on an impulse has become a habit these days. This blog post is not a post that was supposed to be up five days back because the thought behind it is something that just struck me while i sat wasting time on youtube.
I realised that the lyrics to our national anthem are just too beautiful for words.I guess we never really try looking for what the words really mean, even after years of standing in the sun in assembly lines and singing the anthem.day in and day out.
I really dont want to get into the entire issue about Tagore actually composing the anthem to welcome some British king.But I want to point out how our national anthem does not praise a particular ruler, a la "God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!" or, even for that matter, the motherland. What it does instead, is to herald the minds of the people of India as the arbiter of India's destiny.( "Janagan" meaning "people", "Man" meaning "mind", "Bharata Bhagya Vidhata" meaning "arbiter of Bharat's destiny")
Can any truth get stronger than this? Doesnt the future of any country depend on the way its people think,plan and decide? The country, interestingly, has been described as the ruler of all the people's minds (Janagan Man Adhinayak) and not something like the "land of the free and the home of the brave".
Most importantly, it is set to a tune that can be sung by even the most musically challenged person unlike other anthems like "Amar shonar bangla" which is set to a very convoluted musical structure.
I dont even know why i got into this...not like i am on a patriotic overdrive or anything. Just got struck by the beauty of the lyrics and tried making sense of it by myself. Having done that,i now realise how the singing of "Ujjala Jaladhi Taranga" by ignorant,impatient schoolgirls standing in the sun, makes a huge difference to meaning of the anthem that goes "Uchhala Jaladhi Taranga"...

I dont know why i feel like writing about rains today...perhaps because delhi needs them badly or maybe because i have been feeling very suffocated-just the way one feels when rain clouds hover all around but dont rain.
Rains remind me of just too many things-especially that scene from Dil Se where Shahrukh walks into this station on a rainy night-sipping tea under dripping tea stall roofs and Manisha Koirala crouching under a sheet of tarpaulin. Also ofcourse, the black umbrella and a very wet Nargis come to mind as she lipsyncs to "kehta hai dil rasta mushkil...malum nahi hai kaha manzil"
I remember getting wet in that thin school uniform of ours and then waiting for everything to dry, so that i could come back home. Rains are supremely romantic for me and most of my deepest desires revolve around rainy afternoons. It's weird because rains supposedly bring in the dirtiest times in India-potholes,mud,traffic jams. But isnt love like that too? Doesnt love lie in its own imperfections?

OK,this sure was random.

Dear Home,
I heard they hit you again,hit you till you bled and ran wild in the streets.I heard they raped you again and made you run naked infront of those eyes that wanted to devour each bit of your organs.I heard they burnt your soul again and laughed when the last bit of it dissolved in the smoke of burning buses.I heard they smelt your blood till they could no longer distinguish its smell from that of burnt tires.
Maybe they killed you today like they have been killing you over and over again.Maybe this time you're dead for certain,making sure i go back to a ghost town next time.Maybe there I'll find you amidst charred bodies, struggling to spread your wings again and become the phoenix you were destined to be.maybe..
Love,
Me.