Has there ever been a time when you have felt completely helpless? Like nothing seems to be going right, nothing at all. Everything is a mess, your work, your life , you .. everything seems to be out of sync?

And worse still, you cannot share it with anyone. No one. You are made to feel like that naked child who is abandoned at the pavement. The bitch who has a litter and one pup is forgotten to the ravages of nature.

You come into this world alone, and you shall have to leave alone. Some snatches from our Holy Book come to my mind. How true it is. Times like these are the ones which make you understand how many people are really there for you.

Grr...

I am angry. I am not sure if I am angry with someone but I am angry, as angry as one can get. But I am unsure how exactly I should vent out my anger. It is a situation where there is no one in particular that i can blame. It is really nobody's fault. In situations like these what I do is very detrimental.

I cry or I shout at people. And more often than not I shout at people who i know will keep on loving me just as they have always done in spite of this sudden fit of vicious temper. Losing one's temper really is one of the greatest vices of all, has it made to the seven sins? I am not sure.

From my childhood I have been protected and loved by everyone , I guess that is what has given me this amazing comfort zone about losing my temper at the drop of a hat. I am an only daughter. I guess the only person who has had a more or less rational and balanced approach towards me has been my mother. She spoils me completely though. She never really has been pampering me. My father pampers me still. And he is the shield I can take refuge behind if my mother is angry with me for any reason. But there have been times when I have had furious rows with either of them. And have said God-knows-what in my rage.

It is only in hindsight that I sit and think how wrong I have been and I should not have done this or that. But the word is really like a bullet, once shot it's gone. It's said and nothing absolutely nothing can undo that. However saying bitter stuff to people who are unrelated is a bit dicey. i cannot really expect them to understand.

I am the only girl among all my cousins. So even there I have been quite sheltered. If the bigger brothers were bad to me their parents would come to my rescue, if the younger ones were disturbing me the older ones would shoo them away. So what an only child does among his/her cousins, i.e. cry , shout, make a point and get his/her point across and taken was never really done by me.

Even in school I was among an elite group who nobody picked on. SO the natural defense mechanism which every geekish student has to protect him/herself is lacking in me.

Suddenly I am left to fend for myself. No amount of shouting or stony silences are being understood by people. How exactly do I get across the fact that I am angry, furious, totally ballistic. The thing is I am expecting too much. I am expecting that everyone will treat me like family. Everyone is going to think like my family. everyone is going to come with an icecream or a pastry to tell me it is fine.

My problem is I expect too much. I am too high-maintenance as a dear friend pointed out. I have been trying to deal with the situation and I guess this time around I am going to have to do it alone. I cannot expect so much.

Now that that is identified I need to figure out a way to control the absolute explosion that is to ensue. Generally in such situations I do some crazy shouting at someone. I had tried to cope with it once earlier and had resorted to obsessive eating to level of bingeing. But I don't think that is such a good idea after all. The thing is when I sit down later and try to think what it is that has angered me soooo much the issue seems so trivial that I wonder why am I so angry after all . I mean this is not such a big deal. It is not the event in itself and it's brevity or giganticity which invokes such moods in me but the reaction that people have.

They sit tight, lackadaisical, as if nothing at all has happened and do not even make an effort to correct the situation. I mean I know it's done , I am not asking anyone to undo it, at least try to compensate. There, there I go again.

Take a deep breath. I shall be fine. Lets find something to eat.

Ash face-powder

I would rather read a book or sleep than go to a party. Any party is but a glamour war for wannabe aunties. I may come out as a procrastinating lazy bum, because any number of times anyone would urge me to accompany them to a party I would put it of for that elusive “next time”.

I really pity this class of less educated women who were pretty faces in their heyday and had been married of to well educated, fat salaried men, the metaphorical “good catch”. These women feel horribly out of place when they are first exposed to this drink guzzling, beauty parlor frequenting, well groomed designer wear flashing breed. Soon however they are taken up in this dream torrent and they transform into beings they are not.

They watch BBC when their husbands are at work to perfect their English accents, they visit grooming classes to know the table manners and they dab on make-up when their husband casually asks them to accompany them praying they would stop to give an approving nod to the arm-candy they have dolled themselves into.

When they return to their parents, mostly in small towns they cannot be comfortable any longer without the AC neither can they understand what is the huge attraction their children have in the Playstation. They have left back the Rabindrasangeet and they pretend to enjoy the Bach their husband’s enjoy and cannot understand what Iron Maiden is all about. They cannot get their hands on a piece by Jibananda and they’d rather not read the Keats on the shelf.

So many families live their lives in such pretensions. And at night when the lights go off and she wipes off her make-up looking into the mirror in the dark as the tired husband sleeps on the bed she might hum a song and have her own moment, but just that and no more.

Falling out of love

Sometimes things happen in the lives of other people and you realize how effervescent the nature of life essentially is.

Like a friend moving out of the city. She has to go into an alien land. She has meet new people, make new friends, and learn a new language. Like my friend moved to Bangalore and my cousin moved to Paris. I keep wondering how they will cope with these new challenges.

Perhaps it is my fear of the disturbance in status-quo. Perhaps.

Life was going on just fine. Everyone was happy but, like a drop on the face of the mirror still pond, things change. And it is the inherent quality of life to change. The question is whether this change is desirable.

Like break-ups. I have noticed this, whenever someone close to me, or even someone I know has to go through a broken relationship it shatters me at some level. This is not an exercise in baring wounds but a self-reflexive discourse. Why do I have to let things which happen in other people’s lives affect me? Why do I have to identify myself in a similar position?

Boy meets girl, girl meets boy. And then they are simply hooked on to each other. So much so that being around each other becomes more of a habit than anything else. So when do you know you are in love? Not making this into an Yash Chopra inspired gimmick it is a serious question. Are two people just sticking to each other because they are simply used to it or because of their love. Do they miss each other because it is a habit to be around or because of love? And what is this concept of falling out of love?

Then there are these various romances and break-up types.

There is the school-time hook up-break up. Here the two meet during school. Perhaps in the sixth-seventh standard, when you are just exploring the concept of getting attracted to the opposite sex. You are curious, and you want some first hand experience. Friendship is taken for love, and by the time they have grown from children to adults they have had enough of each other and they fall out of love, ideally when you are in the tenth –eleventh standard.

Then comes the high school hook up-break up. You meet people from different schools during school fests or during common tuitions and you fall for that elusive girl who wears short skirts and ties her hair in the cutest ponytail or that sweet boy who is as good on the sports field as with the guitar. You fall for an image, not the person per se, but an image in your head. Then you meet the person, go out on a couple of dates. Most probably you find out she is the dumbest chick or he is the most boring lout and you fall out of love.

Then is the hook up in school-break up in college story. You were friends when you were in school, and you were together for a while. Then you went to different colleges. This is more complicated, because as we grow up things do tend to get more complicated. We change as people. Our personalities are defined. And often we realize that the person we were with during school has grown up to be a different person altogether. Their interests are different, their friends are different and you simply dissociate from each other and you fall out of love.

Then of course the most famous the college hook up-break up. You meet someone in college, he/she is enchanting and different from anyone you have ever seen and you simply cannot be without him/her. You are with that person day in day out. You discuss movies, music, sports, life , politics, food and everything on the planet and beyond and as with all the other types one day you suddenly fall out of love. Perhaps someone more enchanting captures your sight or you are bogged down by silly socio-economic pressures.

So why do people fall out of love? Only to fall in love again? Or is it the destiny of every individual to fall out of love at some time. How do you know it is the real deal?

Pujo

It is that time of the year again. I wonder what is with this particular time of the year that my heart still flies out of the window like a balloon as it used to ten years ago. I would not do math then and I cannot for the love of God concentrate on my work now.

There is something mysteriously romantic about those bamboos being bored into the footpaths cordoning off pedestrians from flooding the streets. It is that time when the city dolls up like the bride, and the people come out in their best finery for four days of being caught up in the frenzy of festive joy.

Durga Pujo is here. Today is Panchami and from tomorrow this city is going to live up to its carnivalesque best rising above the fumes of the two-stroke autos, political colours, shabby buses and broken dreams. For people who call it the choking city, you are not invited. But that is just a way of speaking. I notice this striking similarity between the Pujo with it's authentic city flavour and one of my favourite places, Jadavpur University (JU). It has an all embracing quality which is unique to it. I have known many people who crib about the city, and maintain they would be happier in any other shithole than here, but come Pujo they are the same people who are at the fringes of the whirlpool of festivities more eager than anyone else to be at it's epicentre.

It is quite a similar story in case of JU. I have known numerous people who think only dopers and drunkards are on the campus, but they are the same people who die to be part of it. Since they cannot by right of a student they enter in various forms. They may be the wannabes at the canteens, the pseudo-hippie on the grounds or the painter/poet on the bridge. We do not have any qualms in embracing them and the sundry as one of us. The broad outlook which allows us to gracefully treat people of alternative sexual preferences and poets muttering to themselves makes us accept them too.

The Pujo brings everyone together. The pallette is just one colour on those days.

I do not know the logic behind all those mad moments, the often senseless laughter that we indulge in. What I do know is that I would not leave the city on those days for the greatest treasures in the world. An article by my friend Insiya actually prompted me to write this. In the article she says she doesn't quite know what is this madness all about. When I initially read it i was stumped. How can someone be living in Calcutta and be aloof of such a major event. It is like going to the Olympics and not knowing about it's history.

Then again i questioned myself was I not caught up by the excitement of the games, the taut tension of the sportsmen when I did not know about Heracles? Yes, I thought, of course I was just as excited. It is true that knowing more gave a certain framework or fabric to the excitement, but it was similar.

The same with the Pujo I think. I cannot claim i understand the near manic frenzy in which the days go by, or why I love to hear the mahalaya at 4 in the morningwhen I cannot understand half the things said, or why I am taken in by the majestic pandals and sore my legs by walking from one to the other. I do not understand... I do not think I ever will.

I love the Pujo but. It's manic traffic, teeming people, totally unhygeinic food, queues in front of restaurants, jammed cell phone networks, not finding a friend in a ground full of strange crowds when she's just a stone's throw from me, passing comments of fashion disasters of the year. Yes I live in a shithole, as some think, but that's life. Life is not about driving around in an A.C. car and looking at people from behind the safe confines of glass. it is about getting on the road, walking with the people, the dirt and grime of rickshaw and smoke of the scooters, and dingy roads and people and more people.

And it is at these times that I realize that the Pujo is what you make of the Pujo. It can be a religious sojourn where you are one with the almighty. It can be a welcome vacation from work. It can be some lazy days for gluttony and debauchery. It can be a non-stop party. It can be discovering yourself and people you know, or you think you know. It is a time to think, rethink or may be not; may be it is time to just relax, lay back and let your heart take control.

It is time, Panchami, just this night and the festival begins. Cheers!

Drops

Oh these rains! Yes it’s the poet’s favorite season and every romantic’s dream but when you are rushing to office and need to get there in time rain is possibly the last thing you wan. And if it is rain like the one ailing Calcutta for the past few days.. well only a Calcuttan knows what it’s like.

Today morning when I was coming to office the world looked fresh and fine. The last few days a terrible downpour had lashed down on the city. While just a day ago we were grappling with a draught caution and a rainfall deficit we had to tackle flood situations in a few districts and there was a surplus.

Coming back from office was a total pain yesterday. I left office at 18:30 and reached home 20:40, while this same distance takes less than an hour to cover on any normal day. First reaching the bus stand was a torture. Autos refused to ply. Half of them had broken down, the other half did not want to reach the same fate. Cabs were reluctant to take a passenger for such a short distance, getting up on the rickshaw was never an option on this day.

Roads were waterlogged. (They still are in parts of the city), Water ranged from ankle deep to Knee deep at places. Hundreds of morbid individuals, tired after a day’s tyranny in office, looking from some solace at home, waded through. And a series of buses, cars, vans, trucks (wonder what those do in the city before ten in the night and in the office area too!) of various shapes and sizes honked and toiled through.

Once I reached the bus terminus I found myself at the end of a serpentine queue. There was a bus standing, but seats were taken. I braved having to stand in for the entire journey and got up. And let me not mention the inhuman crowd that there was. With the furious rain washing the windscreen white, and a hundred tired bodies waiting for the maddening traffic to end.

But that was yesterday.

I reached home, took a bath and a dish of the hot khichuri and ilish maach bhaja awaited me. Today is a new day, and bunch of roller coaster experiences awaited me.

The monsoons have this peculiar quality about them which no other season has you know. I hate the season. It makes roads dirty, and eventually your clothes. But then again, after a rushed shower everything looks so clean. The leaves are greener, the dirt and pollution is washed off. Coming to think of it the air itself is cleaner. I can breathe easy, without unconsciously pulling the handkerchief ( or in it’s absence my hands) to the nose. So when I walked out today morning after a lazy late sleep after yesterday’s tumultuous experience everything looked greener and fresher. I felt good, a spring in my step as I headed to office.

Suddenly out of the blue (quite literally so) dark clouds started gathering and hid the sun. I was waiting for a shuttle car, but none seemed to be ready to go where I wanted to go. After sometime, I found myself with trousers rolled up to the knee, wet umbrella in hand, bag tucked under an arm waving frantically at every passing vehicle. Now that I think about it I feel I must have looked quite a ridiculous spectacle but at that tie it was the only sane thing to do!

Finally a white Ambassador car came to the rescue. Quickly five other fellow sufferers piled up in the car and the journey to the office began. Now I do not for the love of God understand why we have a bypass which has such heavy traffic. The cars just stand there. As if it was one big all-brand showroom of cars. You have brilliant looking locomotives, but their basic motive of motion is defeated!

We trudged along, with water dripping through the windows. And the roads! God save them, whatever bits and pieces of it survive. Like a malnourished child whose ribs are exposed, the roads on our city’s bypass lie writhing under the pressure of thousands of cars. As the slow motion car advanced I was taken over by this bout of claustrophobia only to find out that all the windows were shut and 7 able bodied adults were breathing.

At this point I focused my attention outside, on the road. Billboards were stripped to the bare frames. The potholes on the road were not only giving us the Captain-Haddock-in-rough-seas experience but would have shamed the craters on the moon. A lady had lost her sandal in a puddle and was very cautiously trying to look for it in there. A kid sweetly held on to her father’s raincoat as he drove the scooter even when she was blinded by the angry drops lashing on her small specs.

I had reached. I paid some wet notes to the driver. Umbrellas were flying hither thither, after two auto changes through muddy waterlogged roads, I reached office with a drenched dress, soaked shoes and unkempt hair. And from then on I am shivering in the chill of the A.C. and waiting to go home.

Tribulations of a child

Power relations in a house hold take strange and often surprising dimensions. My latest discovery is the wardrobe.

Now mothers have a general characteristic in thinking that their children are their property. And funnily enough this sense of ownership transcends unto their kid’s belongings as well. They absolutely love the institution of deciding what the child will wear, how they will wear and how they will carry themselves.

“ The green belt does not go with the blue jeans”

Ma, it’s called colour blocking, like contrasting, a colour stands out.. that way. Please don’t make me wear that obnoxious leather thing.

“Tie your hair with the hairband”

Ma, I want to keep my hair open

“Put oil on your hair”

Please Ma, oil stinks, I’d rather shampoo

“This skirt is too short; I told you the bigger size fits you”

Ma, this is the correct size

Etcetera

Often have I waited for myself to grow up so that the oversized Tee my mom bought would fit me. More often than not, by the time it would fit me, my mother would decide that either it’s too old, or it is discoloured and should be thrown away.

So when the tattered jeans were in fashion I would wear ironed and clean ones. When stilletoes were the cool thing to do, they were just too these-are-worn-by-grown-up-ladies-in-parties! And now that flats are in fashion she wonders why I have lost interest in stilletoes.

Just yesterday my mother and I sat down at night to do a Pujo-is-here-so-lets-get-rid-of-old-clothes cleaning of my wardrobe. She wants to throw away the pajamas in which I get the most comfortable sleep. Ma, they are my sleeping clothes, I do not have to look like a princess in them. She wants to throw away my school uniform, on which a lot of..ahem.. unparliamentary stuff had been written by friends on the last day of school. She thinks it is all trash.

And a hideous red skirt is something she thinks I will wear again. Then there is this brown flowery shirt she had bought which I think I wore one and a half times( once she forced me too, and second time I complained that the tag was itching near my neck so my dear dad politely allowed me to change).

My ,mother is the most sweetest sweet. She does not want me to wear torn clothes, so she quietly donates a pair of jeans which I had toiled an entire afternoon to cut and design. What she doesn’t understand is her and my definitions of style and comfort and very very different.

cherub or madman?

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

Why could Othello not contain his feelings though he loved Desdemona so much? Iago might have acted catalyst but the insecurity which drove Othello was there from the very beginning. Desdemona was loyal. She had not for once given Cassio a thought which would perturb Othello in any fashion.

Cassio was an excuse. Also a poor soul at that. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. He had no fault. Circumstances conspired against him. He was killed mercilessly and he could never understand what sins he was penancing for.

What was Desdemona’s fault? That she loved Othello? That she rebelled against her father Brabanzio and walked out with the man she loved?

Such is the beauty of the Shakespearean tragedy, it is really no particular person’s fault at all.

Iago is driven by ambition, Othello by great jealousy. It is the fault of this last mentioned emotion which becomes greater than everything else.

For Othello jealousy is like an all pervading tide, which makes any monument of love and geniality it finds in its way fall. Like a wild wanton urchin it uproots the emotion of love from the heart of Othello and crowds it with jealousy, envy, vengeance, anger and revenge. He is blinded. Neither can he see the friendship of Cassio nor the love of Desdemona.

But is Othello wrong? He has loved, he has loved Desdemona too much. He is extremely possessive of her. The mere thought of her betraying him irks him. Critics have evaluated the play as the inferiority complex of a dark skinned moor. Would it have been any different had Othello been a white man? Does not a white man have insecurities, or is he incapable of such passion? Conflating the Appolonian and the Dionysian may or may not be one of Shakespeare’s agendas, but the idea is interesting.

Reading the play on those lines is not what is on my mind. I simply want to clear the name of one of my favorite literary heroes. A lot of loose words are said about the flippance and insecurity of Othello. The love, and the almost wild passion which Othello has is overlooked. He is not a great man. He is the perfect tragic hero. He has the shortcoming of common men. He isn’t God-like , nothing of Oedipus shadows him. He is a common man, who loves his wife too much to see or even think of her with someone else.

How many of us have not had similar feelings? All those Archies Card quotes of letting your love go is as I said effervescent as Archies’ Cards. The love, and degree of love of Othello is quite another thing, perhaps to be understood only by people who feel similarly. Cupid is not the blind cherub, but a blind raging madman.

Virus

Arpan is not my best friend. And this write up is not about him anyway. It is more about me and this overbearing fear which has taken the shape of somewhat of a psychosis in me.

It was a lazy afternoon when a friend of mine informed me on Gtalk that Arpan has contracted Swine flu. Now there have been occasions when I have addressed him as a swine but him having this dreaded flu seemed as impossible to me as pigs having wings! (Funny that was the only simile which suggested itself in my head). Arpan is a nice guy, and so full of life, always jumping up and down. The clown in the class, cracking jokes at all times.

It is quite impossible for me to think that such a person would be ill. And the fact that someone I know has got the disease makes me uneasy. Makes it seem like the virus is closer than I think it is. First the news and the net told it was in Mexico. That is so far away I felt safe. The cases in Mumbai and Pune were reported and still I felt safe. There was a slight trepidation in my heart when the cases in Kolkata were being reported. But there was an ostrich emotion in me which said, “It cannot happen to me or anyone I know”. And then, this. To confirm that the news was a rumour I called Arpan, hoping to have a good laugh at it, only to hear that he was in that terrible place called the I.D. Hospital, Beleghata.

It is a government hospital, another one of those things I am so scared of. Leave alone the disease, the very thought that I would have to stay in a government hospital Would kill me. What is scarier is the fact that no matter how much money I can spend I have no option but to go to that government hospital. Like a dungeon’s stories became legends, similarly government hospitals in our times. And it seems closer and closer still.

I am scared. I am scared to touch my eye mouth on the road. Unconsciously my handkerchief covers my nose when in a public place. Yes, I have started using a handkerchief. I am scared to rub my eyes thinking there might be virus. Goodness gracious I am scared to breathe. When I sit down to watch a movie in a theatre I am apprehensive of my neighbor. When I am looking at a book in a shop I wonder who has turned these pages before me. I wish the currency notes could be sterilized. I shudder at the thought of going shopping. This fear is not healthy, and I cannot afford to fall sick now.

Yes, Arpan is a nice guy and it is terrible to think he is confined in a ward with stray dogs having easy access. (Or was that a joke he was cracking?). I just pray to God he is fit as a fiddle soon and released from the hospital.

p.s. I request everyone who is reading this to please pray for my friend.

totally random..

A few days ago I happened to spend some time with a very dear friend. The daily rush to office and mundane work had sort of robbed me of the unadulterated funtimes that i once enjoyed.

However this chance meet and ensuing hours of completely senseless banter that the two of us indulged in has sort of rejuvinated me for a few months to come. Coming to think of it I really cannot discern a wide array of topics that we discussed, the few that made to our list were definitely not anything that would serve the planet or change the course of any lives!

What I did leave her place with was a sense of a small bird called pride, just because I am associated with someone like her. In a rash action of sounding petulant and fakely polite I must agree to the fact that I completely adore this creature for the sheer guts and grit she has.

To have ideals and beliefs is one thing and standing up for it is quite another thing. To argue is easy, I can totally see myself create a ruckus for something. But making your point in a fashion that would entail walking out o\f the comfortable confines of home is something i cannot even begin to imagine.

When put in a tight situation would I be able to react like her? would I have had the courage to lead a life alone? May be, may be not, I would never know. But then again do i want to?

Question

There is some large scale beautification work going on all over the city. We have roads lined with folklore images, traditional stuff like conch shells. Road islands are having fresh trees. The walkway is decorated with new bricks and the walls have murals.

Are we missing out on the potholes somehow? or the lack of coordination between our electricity suppliers and water suppliers, who have almost taken an oath to be digging up roads one after the other and especially during the monsoons?

work

The last friends you make are when you are in college. When you are in office you do not really make any friends. You might be part of a bunch you like to hang out with but they are never your friends.

It is the same competition here. You want to be the best. Just like in school. You want to be in the good books of the teachers (bosses here). But only the p[arameters of the assesment is different. It is not marks any longer which you are talking about. Here you get to see the colour of money and you don't want to take any chances.

You are always right and the others are all wrong. There might be things you have done the wrong way but people do not think twice to make it look like somone else's mistake.

and if you are not alert you get screwed.

The Good, Bad and the Ugly

It was a dark dank alley way, a lone figure walked on. Suddenly more silhouettes came out from the shadows. The figure walked on still. There was a tension in the air, a slight trepidation in the heart.. “should I go on? Should I walk back?” They suddenly surround the figure and there is no way to run, nowhere to turn back to. This would be nice, filmy nice, but nice. But nothing like this Joy Baba Felunath scene took place on 9^th June 2009 at noon in Saltlake, Calcutta.

What happened was this…

It was a bright, sunny, totally humid Calcutta afternoon. I was going out for lunch. As all lanes in the city would be at that hour it was a sleepy locality. I was walking, lost in my own ocean of myriad dreams. Suddenly a dog crept out from behind a car parked on the right. Now street dogs are so aplenty in the city that I have sort of come to terms with the fact that we must co exist though I really do not encourage us encroaching upon each others’ territories. So there I was walking. This seemed to be an innocent and good dog out for a walk just like me.

At this point of time I hear this snarl on the left and I see another one of the canine species baring it’s teeth. Looked pretty bad and gave me a cold sweat. I would be lying if I say that I was feeling “just fine” at this point. My mouth was going dry and I walked on without showing any fear. Now another dog leapt out from the left and this one looked ugly with its mottled brown body cringing around the spine in a bid to scare me. The first dog was tugging at my salwar, tried moving that leg and it bit deeper.

Okay, I decided, enough is enough. I had heard often that when there are street dogs near you which are hostile you need to relax, you should not run or shout, do not panic and you will be fine. I did all of these and I had three dogs at my legs! So I went AAAAHHHHHHHHH and ran. I ran as fast as that guy who is running in the Olympics for the last time in his career and he knows this is the last chance he has got to make his mark in history. By the time I reached safe territory I had torn clothing on my legs and people staring quite obviously at them.

And now I have to take silly anti –rabies injections for these foul beasts.

Postscript.. instead of heading for a hospital and getting an injection right away guess what I did? I thought walking around in a torn salwar was worse than death itself so i went to Shoppers Stop and got myself a pair of Lee jeans. Yes the HR wore jeans to office on a weekday.

Its only words, and words are all they have to take our heart away

What is the one thing you do not tell you kid to do when he is learning spellings in Kindergarten?

Do not watch the rear of any public transport vehicle (auto, rickshaw, bus etc) or trucks.

Have you noticed the most inane things that are written in a quagmire of flashy and loud paintings of attempts at a flower or a pretty girl? Lets start with the most obvious.

In bright, bold letters the word "Danger" is the most common writing you are likely to find. Now the spelling or this particular six letter two syllable word is a permutation and combination of an array of different letters in the alphabet (whichever the owner or the artist takes a fancy to) starting with D and ending with R. I have seen the following variations on different vehicles at different points in time:

• Danzar
• Danjhar
• Danjeher (perhaps he thought poison must have to do something with it)
• Denjer
• Danjer (ridiculously close to "Bangal" pronunciation)
• Denzar
• Denjar

etcetera.

The next is the various words of wisdom. "Traffic aain maniya cholun" (Follow the traffic laws in Bengali) written on the vehicles like autos and matador vans which are most likely to break the rules! There are of course others trying to ward off the evil eye of people who are jealous of your vehicle, no matter how old, weatherbeaten and dilapidated your motor vehicle happens to be. some I have come across are as follows:

" Hingsha koro na, tomar o hobe" meaning Do not be jealous of what you see, you shall also have success(here ownership of similar vehicle)

"Dekhbe aar jolbe, luchir moto phulbe" meaning You can only be envious and burn in jealousy at my vehicle!!

"Bure nazaar waalon tera muh kaala" meaning The one with the envious eye will be left with a black face

Or the more funny ones, taking a crack at the world and fate...

"Ma go Ma, to e ki chholona

matha bhora taak dile .. taaka dile na" meaning Oh Great Mother, what deceptiveness is this, you give me a headfull of baldness but no money in my purse. ( Ok translating is a tough job!!)

The pining of the broken heart...

"Love is sweet poison"

"Dard- e - dil ki dawa kya hai?" meaning What is the cure of the aching heart?

"Awaara dil ko samhal" meaning Take care of the flippant heart.

However my pick is a piece of wisdom regarding road safety which I came across a few days ago which took me 5 minutes to decipher which goes.. " Much rease na dena" . The cipher: Do not raise (accelarate) more than necessary (much)!!!!

almost

It was evening. I was returning home.

I was at a juncture of heavy traffic in Saltlake, namely, Karunamoyee. there were two private buses standing at the bus stop. A kid was getting off the bus. I began to cross the road. Suddenly I saw through the corner of my right eye another bus overtaking the one standing at the stop. By this time I am already half way across the road. The overtaking bus is fast and rash. The bus which was static for so long also starts and picks up speed.

All I could see was a headlight steadily growing in size, all I could hear was the roar of the bus engines. My right ear was all noise, my right eye a great yellow headlight. I could see headlines of newspapers, faces of loved ones, people shouting across the road.. it was completely crazy. I remember turning aroundlike a zombie, and walking back to the pavement. To me this entire thing was extremely slow, but of course all happened in a matter of seconds.

Shit! i almost got run over.

Rainy Day

We Calcuttans need to wake up to a fact. The MET department is correct, on certain accounts.

I agree we have grown up at a time when the Calcutta weatherman had no equipments and most of his " forecasts" were pure guesses. I agree that on most accounts when the forecasts predicted a severe shower and our mothers would arm us with the "raintime attire" which would comprise of the following:

a) a yellow Duckback raincoat which smelt like the car tyre and the buttons of which would invariably fail during a quick shower

b) an umbrella which could conversely be used to hit out worst enemies at school

c) if the above to failed to do their needful service, a Coldarin

However on most of these occasions there was no scope of using these tools as there was no downpour as promised.

Maximum that did occur was a slight drizzle. That of course did not make us use any of the given array of equipment.

Funnily enough, the days when you did not take that umbrella would be that fateful day when the sky would decidce to tear down. Not having the umbrella would mean you could take a walk back home instead of taking the bus or the auto. Yes, there would be red noses and an immense amount of sneezes to take care of later, but who cares?

This Monday was one such day. No, its not one of those days when i was not carrying my umbrella. In fact i have a brand new one. But yes it was definitely one of those days when I passed some frivolous comments about how worthless our Calcutta weatherman is and why his prediction of a cyclone will not be anything more than a slight drizzle and breeze. Hence i braved all odds and went ahead.

While sitting in the cozy confines of office I could hear the occasional window pane breaking and tree breaking but the actual tumult was far from what my imagination could even begin to fathom.

It was late afternoon when most offices called it a day due to power cuts (trees had fallen on high tension wires) or water entering premises. There was no conveyance whatsoever. Buses and cabs refused to go even when paid at a premium simply out of fear that they might be hit by a chance tree or lamp post. The look of the city was essentially bare. Trees had fallen all over the place. A bus stand was smashed to bits. Hoardings stood naked as the advertisement sheets had been torn to shreds. And hundreds of people were walking on the roads, in that perfect zombie walk you find only in Holocaust movies. Shoes in one hand, trousers rolled up to the knee, an umbrella precariously dangling in the other hand, they were walking. They kept to the middle of the road avoiding the trees and other allied items which might endanger their lives. The few vehicles which were plying were being mobbed.

I myself stopped a few cabs asking for a lift. By this time my umbrella was broken, I was soaked, and I hated it. After long trudging through mud and muck, above broken branches and lamp posts I finally reached home to some hot coffee and noodles.

So, lesson learnt: Do not mistrust the weatherman

Half life

Maggi in the microwave

A sandwich bite’s allowed,

No spread out platter

No time for dessert

I am running; I am running,

Have to get up on that bus

Can’t let it go, Leading this half life

Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Disconnected..disturbed

Losing my temper

Losing my soul

So many special people

No time or words for them

Losing myself

Leading this half life

Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Gloom

My company eats my salary for breakfast, my happiness for lunch and my peace of mind for dinner.

Employers around the world are making life hell for employees. Suddenly the same " human resource" who were assets to the company have become their liabilities. As our Inbox is spammed by Boss/Company bashing messages and forwards the truth is that the employee is left at the end of the day like the donkey who toiled breaking his bones and still got water and peanuts for the day meal!

Okay lets not get into the economics of world finance, lets concentrate on our country. This was the year that some unfortunate people like me and my classmates graduated and went out into the big bad world looking for that elusive dream job. Thank God we were sane enough to expect that our first jobs would not be our dream jobs! However none of us had expected to be hit by such a nightmare.

Most companies went on a hiring freeze. People are throwing jargon at random, and the funny thing is that most people are believing in them. "you cannot expect a good job in this gloomy market"; "We are unlucky to have been hit by recession" etc. etc.

A report shows that in the past few months " recession" is the most popularly used word on the internet. Just goes to show the depressed environment that we are living in. But the fact of the matter is that India has not been hit by the recession at all. What exactly is the recession? A recession is a decline in a country's real gross domestic product for two or more consecutive quarters, according to http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession

Hence before our country even went from one quarter to another how exactly can you say that we are facing a recession? What we are facing is a slowdown, and not a recession. Anyway how does it matter, because our employers are using the R-word as the alibi to do almost anything to the employees. Cut pay, cost cutting, lay offs, and a million other fancy sounding things which basically leave us all screwed up at the end of the day. It is a smart ploy that these guiys have come up with but what they do not realize is that the wheel of fortune shall turn. The same employees who they treat like trash, are actually the asset, and if you do not value your own asset, you are in for trouble.

The Crusoe life

Living the life of Robinson Crusoe is tough. Especially if you are not living on an island. And you can just walk out of the door and get a sealed pack of potato wafers.

The fact that I was going to be catapulted into such a scenario came to me as a divine sign a few days ago. My laptop started acting funny. This came at an inopportune time as I had still not recovered from the grief of the sad demise of my desktop computer a few months back. I saw a huge amount of lively music and wacky photographs in a heap of dump and I could do nothing about it.

No intravenous or intensive care could do anything about it. So we indulged in a painful (for me) euthanasia and my friend through school and college lay dead., reduced to a piece of furniture.

Now my laptop had managed to salvage a part of my music and photo collection (I have lost my complete Pink Floyd and a few birthday bash pics though). So when my laptop started acting funny I had the biggest butterflies doing all sorts of things in my tummy. The power wasn’t coming. The screen would not shine bright the moment I hit the power button like it used to. I was totally angry, frustrated and generally dissatisfied with life. I wanted to shout at someone, but it felt like I was simply filling in a lot of noise in a cocoon and all the outer world could see was a Brownian motion experiment in process.

I was doing all sorts of social activities but I felt like no one could understand what I was going through.

Anyway that issue got resolved after I plucked out the battery and wiped off a huge amount of dirt with the help of painting brushes (Tip # for all those facing similar laptop problems)!

Today morning the Crusoe syndrome came back to haunt me, in an all new avatar. This time my other favourite gadget was on the firing line. My phone has stopped working. But it is not the fault with my phone. Vodafone has suddenly decided that they do not want to earn revenue through a valued customer like me. So what do they do? They stop all kind of calling facilities on my phone. I cannot make calls, no one can call me, the works. And it is a trouble my entire office is facing! The entire bloody series tends to fall into the trap.

I cannot call anyone, or receive any calls. Just goes to show how dependent I am on the phone. I am cut off from all civilization. I mean I can very well walk out and talk to people but I cannot do it from the comfort of my space. So , yeah, Crusoe had one hell of a time. I wonder how he lived through it.