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.