Hairloss,exams and anonymity

I remembered those high school songs today-the stuff we listened to when our hormones had lives of their own...
Mohiner Ghoraguli was one of the bands i started listening to,at 15...from old cassettes Ma collected.does anyone listen to cassettes these days?are tape recorders available these days?
I think i have a carton full of cassettes lying somewhere in the Golf Green house,or maybe the Salt Lake house.I must look into it this time and maybe,i'll look for my walkman too.
Anyway,after about 5 years from when i was 15, i listened to these lines...

"Kauke cheno na tumi,
tomake chene na keu-
shei to bhalo..."
("it's good that you know no one,and no one knows you)

I realised that one may run from one city to another in search of that evading anonymity,but very few things change.You become a known face,your habits become known,everyone comes to know what you like to eat,everyone ends up knowing how much you love purple...
everyone comes to know how you lose hair during exams.
each year.every year.

Plasticine smell and Fountain ponytail.

I was on my way to teach the kids-running down the Khan Market-Pandara Road junction when there was this sudden waft of plasticine smell.It was kind of weird because there was nothing around me except a huge plot of Metro construction which didnt have a remote possibility of using plasticine!yet there it was...in the air around me.in the air that entered my being.
i remembered days,seventeen years back,in a ground floor classroom-not very brightly lit,with colourful boards on the walls.i remembered this girl who sat next to me,who later came to know the best, and perhaps the worst, of me.this girl whose cheek i used to tug at everyday-with so much force that she cried (the cause of my violent streak still remains unexplained).and the very next morning,there she would be-smiling at me,with a fountain-like ponytail on top of her head.
pains we cause these days, seem to stay on forever.
i wish things were as simple now.

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.

Sea Person

whenever i have been asked whether i liked mountains or seas,i have written "both".having spent consecutive vacations in the mountains,i had really forgotten how seasides felt.
i am in the andamans after 13 years.i remember having been here in 1996 when my father was posted in Port Blair.after that,i really dont remember having taken a trip to the seas except that one swim in Digha with really sleazy people in a really dirty beach.
seas do to me what mountains can never do.they are like real people who act slightly coy when you dont get too close to them-they come to you once in a while,touch your feet and invite you, with alluring hues, to get closer.and once you do get close, they begin playing with you like some long lost childhood friend-greeting you,throwing you off your feet, letting you get up again and embracing you into that vast blue body of theirs.and when you finally come out of the seas, you feel fresh just as you would feel after meeting a friend after years.
unlike mountains,i can go on looking at seas for hours at end-anytime of the day.unlike mountains which never change,seas become green,white and blue infront of your eyes.the waves come to you with thoughts and once they retrace, you feel they've taken away all the dirt that was in you.
seas calm me down in a way mountains never can.
yes,i am a sea person.

p.s: the picture was taken at the Radha Nagar Beach in Havelock Island,Andaman. incidentally, this beach was declared the best beach in Asia by the Time magazine

never can say goodbye.

i shared my room with two people when i grew up-my brother and that man who stared with an icy stare,dressed in a black shirt and white jacket,the black man with super fizzy hair.the man in that poster behind my door.these were the days when "western music" had started infiltrating the impermeable membrane of rabindra sangeet around my family.
it was infront of this stare that we tried the moonwalk and failed terribly.those days international albums were sold for a princely sum of Rs 125.i had seen my brother walk to college and save up for the cassettes.
Dangerous was a song i was allowed to hear and dance to whenever i had been a good girl.
that poster was taken off when my room got painted.and my brother left for mumbai.
that man in the poster lost his fizzy hair and his skin colour.and the media said stories...
i remember having called up my brother and telling him that i am learning odissi,the same dance featured in the video of Black or White.he confused it with the malaysian dance,ofcourse.
they called him a pedophile,they called him anti-semitic,they called him a monster...but that man,for me,was a part of my growing up.and today he went away-taking a huge chunk of my childhood.
he could've been the peter pan of his own neverland...he could've always remained that little Illinois boy whose father whipped him with a belt each time his moon walking feet falter.
maybe,he wanted to dance like that little Illinois boy forever but the world couldnt let go of its whip that tried whipping him into perfectness each time his steps faltered.
RIP MJ.
you have been a hero to a generation which saw no heroes before you.

my maternal grandfather had made a pond in his house.as years passed,the people of his locality started using it to bathe themselves and gradually,the pond became a public pond.
i cannot swim in ponds so i have never swam in it.but my mother and all her four siblings had learnt to swim in it.
i can only remember one man whom i had seen swimming in it.a thin,bald,dark old man.i think i had seen him wearing a blue lungi once,it might have been some colour other colour also.i didnt know what his name was.we never exchanged words or pleasantries.
i came to know his name today.the day he died.
in the same pond.following a heart attack while swimming.they found his body hours after his death-floating along the sides of the pond.right where the coconut trees grow.his red towel was lying on that cemented embankment around the pond.it still is,perhaps.
his name,as i came to know today,was Neelu.

rant

no matter what N says,i've never been a brat.always ate what was given to me,always wore what was bought.i even wore frilly frocks till i was 13 and had mushroom cut till i was 10!
but it's crazy how,at 20,i 've turned into a complete brat these days!if someone orders a pizza i invariably end up craving for phuchkas and if ma buys me a tee i pull a face and say i want a kurta!
no,i'm not proud of it and i'm not enjoying it.
it's like having my ma inside me along with myself-it's like having equal and opposite forces of restraint and freedom withing oneself.
and it is killing me.
but today was fun.met some ten friends at this relief concert i attended.felt really nice.
and yes,i met someone after so long that i tried going down in an ascending escalator!
yes,this is a rant post.kindly pass.

post Aila.

today i realised how flawed our entire method of voicing protest is,in this state.and if there is anyone to blame,it is us.it is us who have acted indifferent to the most idiotic forms of protest in the city.
we are the ones who took a detour when a politician decided to lie down at Hazra More to voice only one of her thousand and one problems with our government.we sighed and shook our heads when the same politician lay prostrate in some other busy junction.
what we never realised that each time we walked past something as stupid as this,we contributed generously into legitimising such foolery.
today it came biting right back at our asses when few local groups decided to stall traffic,in order to voice their anger at not having electricity for several hours on end.they just decided to block any road at any time they wanted to-forcing people to get off buses or autos and walk miles to get to their destination.the funny part is that,also caught in that maze of traffic was the crane that was supposed to pick up the fallen tree that had been uprooted resulting in the snapping of the electricity lines.
you might say that it's all easy for me to say because my house had its electric supply intact.let me tell you i spent my day working in a 250 years old building for seven hours without electricity.
we have to realise that the cyclone is no one's fault and no government,i repeat NO government in the world has quick fix measures lined up for such events.if you can recall,New York City collapsed following a massive powercut a few years back and Japan,which has been affected by earthquakes throughout, collapses under each new earthquake.
i know it is difficult to live without electricity but it is hardly a reason to let go of one's civility.because no matter how much it is hard to believe,it is a fact that no government-Left,Right,Centre or Diagonal-asked for the Aila.
in a city which thrives on its intellectual prowess,it is sad to see people lose their civility and become just thoughtless beings who are so frustrated that they cant keep their frustration to their own filthy bodies!
Calcutta,civilisation deludes you.

1705

Did you see the circus unfold yesterday?
Were you watching when the red clowns fell from their trapeze,
While the green clowns balanced on their one wheeled cycles with ease?
Did you see the smiles they painted on their faces
With the war paint left from the long forgotten war?

Did you cry when the red clown made the green clown trip,
And laughed when the green clown boxed the red clown’s ears?
And sighed when they both fell off the ball they tried balancing upon?
Were you relieved at getting back your money’s worth,
As you sat clapping at the acts they put up?

And did you see them when they rubbed their painted smiles and tears off,
When all the shades of red and green became black?
As black as the soot that gathered on the portrait of our slain hero-
After days of candlelight vigils.
And as black as the ink that stained a million petitions.

Did you see the clowns when their black hands
Got stained with the blood of the people all around?
And did you see their black feet-
When they broke into an animated dance,
After hearing the sound of the bomb?

Did you see how pleased all the clowns were-
Now neither red nor green,
When the smell of blood touched their nostrils,
And tickled all their senses within?,
While we ran about chasing our flimsy dreams of change.

Did you leave after the show was done,
Laughing all the way home?
Or did you wait to see the clowns share the last laugh?
Did you watch carefully as the tables turned on us,
And we became objects of their inexpensive joy?

We are meant to dance to their songs and provide for their whims,
And serve with our heads when they need to try their bullets.
We are meant to clap when they play with our brains,
And collect our respective pieces of cheap, ephemeral fun.
Welcome to the circus of the red and green clowns,
Where this is how things get done.

for the wet neonlit streets and OD...

I missed my camera more than ever today…when we stood watching the rains bathing the neon lit streets, when we stood barefeet on cement while our shoes got wet…

I wanted to capture each moment when we gathered raindrops on our palms… I wanted to keep those wet handprints intact, even after the cement soaked them into itself.

But maybe it’s better this way…it’s better that no one ever got to saw two girls run down the streets and how they stopped to take their shoes off.

Maybe it’s a good thing that no one saw us when we decided to stop running and walk very slowly instead, when you decided to stand under that tree whose leaves were dancing to the wind and when we shrieked with joy when we splashed water with our feet…

It’s a nice feeling that no one will speak of that moment when we ran with drenched clothes and wet hair…except those few neon lights and those trees who decided to sway to the howling wind with us.

Remember this day, OD, which no picture will talk of…remember this day because there’s nothing else to remind us how we became the little girls who live on forever deep inside our hearts.

sometimes words fail to describe the magic you weaved.
all i have is my humble homage-a silent prayer with my head bowed down~
that you continue weaving that same magic with my thoughts,with my pains and your words.

"Aamar shure lagey tomaar hashi,
jemon dhheuey dhheuey robir kiron doley ashi.
Dibanishi aamio je firi tomar shurer khonje,
hothat e mon bholay kokhon tomar banshi...."

i saw it from where god sees it everyday.
it looked like the veil of a bride...studded with little pieces of dreams that glow in the dark.
as i got closer,i could make out her shy eyes which looked out in eternal anticipation.
and when i finally touched her face,she smiled.
and i knew,i was home.

Scribble

Some decided to take a walk
and some hailed a bus.
Some blushed some blush on them
and some settled down for tea.
While some did that and some did this,
no one seemed to see-
You sitting down to see the setting sun on my wounded knee.

p.s:written during a theatre lecture...very very random.

BJP has really begun to scare me...Mr. Advani with his shining pate and half smile has begun to stalk me. Anywhere i go,there he is. Their Ad campaign in Delhi is really gloomy-with pictures of children crying and working to pay off their fathers' debts. I know it is a part of the Indian reality but it has always been a part of it...under EVERY government.What is really pissing off are the text messages I am sent-asking me to watch Advaniji speak on blah blah and blah on this or that channel.
I'm not anti-BJP...it's just that the Congress posters dont scare me as much as the BJP ones.I hate the very concept of advertising one's propaganda like this.
What they dont realise is that, I'm not interested in watching these ads.How can we choose people who will manage the country in the same way we choose our shampoos,detergents and body creams?!
Thanks to the hobos who constitute the committee that draws up voters' lists, my name hasnt been included in either the Delhi list or the Calcutta list. Maybe you should stop smiling down at poor souls like us from those disgusting posters and do something to solve REAL problems.
For once and for all, Mr. Advani (and all the other khadi-clad half smiling wannabe PMs), STOP stalking me around.

P.S: I really want to contest the elections sometime in the future...my mother burst a vein laughing at that.but i'm serious.

i found your letters yesterday.
in the pages of that diary i stopped writing months back...
in small white envelopes,now dirtied with time.
the words in them have stopped meaning anything now...they're just faint imprints of footsteps.
taken for a distance traversed long time back.
we got lost then and havent found our ways back yet.
i thought the envelopes would keep maps that would help me back home.
but all i found were these misleading footprints.
maybe,i will burn them today.

i dont like it when people cry while talking to me.
it leaves me wondering what i should say till that moment comes when this tiny lump forms at the pit of my stomach and starts snowballing into this huge mass of something that climbs up to my throat.
i keep quiet.
and let my eyes take away from the pain of that lump.
and silently feel the little drops slide down my cheekbones and wet my lips.
i keep quiet.
and feel the salt drops seep into the dryness.

Of old photos and the lines behind them...

i have been going through old photo albums for the past few days.one of the few things my mother brought from her father's house is an old battered photo album with small square black and white photographs.the ones that you paste onto the black pages of the album.
ma's album has many photos of very beautiful women-they were all her friends in college.i figure,it was almost a custom to give your friends a pic of yours before leaving college.some of them even wrote a few lines behind the picture.my mother almost had tears in her eyes when i fished out this album and showed it to her.
one reason behind this sort of an attachment with these pictures is,probably, the fact that a photo wasnt a very common thing then.it involved an entire ritual of wearing a pretty sari,visiting a studio/calling a photographer home (not many had personal cameras back then)and holding a smile till the box camera agreed to click.
today we have photos of our friends everywhere-on our phones,in our computers and even ipods.and maybe that's why we dont attach an emotional tag to photographs.
but picture this,twenty years from now...your child fetches out a photograph and comes running to you and that happens to be the only memory of your college best friend that you can touch,see and feel.there's absolutely nothing else that you own that will remind you of her or the last few lines she wrote to you.
the picture above is of a woman called Shakuntala who was my mother's room mate.she doesnt know where her friend is or where she did her masters from...for my mother,her room mate's memory are the few fading handwritten lines written with a blue inked fountain pen behind the photo:
"Tobu mone rekho jodi dure jai chole,
Jodi puraton prem dhaka porey jay nobo premojaale...
Jodi poriya mone,chholo-chholo jol nai dekha daye noyonkone,
Tobu mone rekho..."
(Remember me if I go faraway,
If new found loves take over old ties...
Even if tears dont gather in your eyes when I'm gone,
Remember me...)

i have always associated a particular smell with hospitals-a weird combination of antiseptics,phenyles,medicines and room fresheners...makes me want to throw up each time.
hospitals are places of both death and birth,but it's always the former that i have associated with these places.
they even smell of death.even the swankiest ones.
green cloth,stretchers,dark rooms,white uniforms...and that smell.
nothing has helped me get that smell out of my system.
i hope a blog post helps this time.

Time

someone i knew very well recently told me,"i dont know what time does...i dont know if its a good thing or a bad thing"
she was right.
i dont know if what time does is good or bad...it's strange how time benumbs us.something that affected me a lot a few months back has become just another memory for me,now.and like this person,i dont know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
i went to my school's reunion yesterday.
there were these girls who had given me a tough time in school-you know the usual bitching,mud slinging and all that.but something in me made me talk to them and take super giggly pictures with them.
i guess time had forced me to move on beyond those days...
and on the other hand,none of the people i was closest to in school turned up.today,they're just memories of good times i've had.i want them to remain that way.
now,is that a good thing?

La Femme

I was thinking the other day if I’m a feminist only to realize that like most ideologies, feminism too has different brands to it.
I went to a girls’ school and I don’t remember one instance when we discussed feminism- be it among friends or with teachers. I guess all my school taught me was I had the right to enjoy what I liked and to do what I enjoyed doing.
Now that I’m in a college which is believed to be a breeding ground for feminists, I have come to be aware of the various perspectives one attaches to the ideology. People have different views- some say it’s about being treated equally with men, while some claim to be even better. There are some who believe men to be the bane of a woman’s existence while some think it’s about not wearing a bra.
The past few days in my college have been a tumultuous experience. We did things that no one thought could happen in L.S.R...girls sloganeering, carrying banners and sitting down-refusing to budge. There seemed to be a certain spell that held them all, that made them get over their own problems and made them shout out in unison. It wasn’t about the “geek”, the “intellectual types” or the “babe” anymore…it became a ground where a few hundred girls found out what’s common between each one of them, something that couldn’t be given a name. I realized that there’s a certain power Estrogen has that allows one to defy. It has this innate way of letting us know that no matter who we are, we don’t need to take shit, and we don’t need to silently listen… and it’s okay to shout. Coming together sometimes helps you conserve the voice that you would’ve lost had you shouted alone.
Ofcourse we need to shout. All of us- Men, Women, Children. Everyone needs to shout when people decide to go deaf on them. Feminism for me lies in that decision I make to shout, irrespective of who else is shouting or who else has shouted before me, and it lies in the widening of the space that allows me to shout. It is important for voices to be heard- be that of men or women. There has to be neutral ears that do not engender the voices they listen to;there has to be a complete absence of biases.
That is my brand of feminism.

it's crazy how i never get high,no matter how much i drink!not that i want to,but it's weird seeing one's friends getting as high as a kite and yet not knowing what it feels like.i remember how i was absolutely sane the last time-i infact walked a good kilometre back home.but i guess i shouldnt complain.i mean,it's not a bad thing that i am never in the state wherein i puke out the day's breakfast on someone and cant sit straight.
on a completely different note,have you ever visited a historical monument and felt like an extreme atheist?i mean,have you ever seen what human hands have done and credited them to be greater hands than those of God? i have.i went to Qutb Minar yesterday.

i've been living in a haze for the last few days-you know how you just stand back and watch things zoom past your eyes and you just absorb the haze they leave behind, and take in the the residual momentary lull.
i had to write term papers at break neck speed, meet deadlines for each of the committees i had enrolled myself in.you see, the problem with me is that i can never know when to draw the line-i just go on accepting responsibilities till kingdom come, and then cry for mercy as each one of them come biting at my ass.
i also happened to fly home for three days for my cousin's wedding.my city has changed.they say you cant say if a person has lost/gained weight if you keep seeing him/her everyday.it's the same with the city.when you stay in it,when it becomes a part of your everyday domestic trivialities, you fail to notice the little squares of the mosaic,when they change colours.
but home remains home,no matter how much it changes...the same way mothers remain mothers,no matter how intolerable their idiosyncrasies become.

p.s:took this picture during my winter break with N's new camera.very cool camera it be.

all my life,i've seen my mesho have just one best friend-debol jethu.
he suddenly passed away this morning because of a heart attack.though i have never seen my mesho get perturbed at anything but today,i can just imagine him letting go of a huge chunk of his life,which debol jethu took away with him.
i dont know if the concept of "best friends" exists today...i mean,you do have very good friends and then your boyfriend becomes the best friend.but do we really have the kind of friendship which traces its journey back to the playgrounds of school but still manages to remain the same,defying grey hair and wrinkled faces?
my sister (mesho's daughter) took the first flight to cal,because for her it's almost like losing her father.
i raced my imagination to say...50-60 years from now,would any of my friends' kids do that when i die?
scary thought.

the blogger is: IN

the last few days have been like a whirlwind...
Delhi suddenly got colder.actually,it's not so much about the cold.it's actually the wind which is making traveling in autos almost seem as if you've just mistaken Siberia to be Anjuna beach and decided to sunbathe!
after days of shouting at the Reliance people,i finally have my net connection back...so i can breathe now.i almost feel like robbing Tina Ambani of the yacht her husband gifted her from the money we pay for USB modems that dont connect!
i have also been very pissed after the Chennai trip got cancelled....it would've been fun,specially with S around.moreover,it was supposed to be a trip with new people and for a new thing-not the same old play!
college's been very hectic with a thousand deadlines to be met and the journal work.
i hope i survive all this...in one piece.
and finally,it feels great to be back :)

i turned 20 yesterday.
it's a weird feeling really...it's like "shit i'm old" but then i guess by the time i'm 21,i will be used to living in the second decade.so i should just stop making a big deal out of such things.didn't someone very famous once say,"what is age,but a number?"!
on a sadder note,i leave for delhi tomorrow with a laptop which doesnt have a internet connection.so i guess,this calls for another one of those sad hiatuses from this space.
but keep watching,i will be back (soon,hopefully).

angst

it is disheartening to see the world zoom past our city as it just about manages to peep through its shroud of smoke.it is sad when one hears of youngsters flocking the Delhis and the Mumbais for call-centre jobs.
i feel angry when i see rallies on the city roads and imagine my friends in Delhi speeding down some new flyover.i shout abuses at cabbies who strike against something which could be remotely "progressive" had it been better planned.
it hurts to see the Calcutta of my fairy tales become a story without a beginning,middle or end-a story which just goes on without a plot.
it hurts more because Calcutta is home.it's always been.
it still is.
"Shaat koti shontaner hey mugdho jononi,
rekhecho bangali kore,manush koroni"