of things unsaid...

2011-07-26T23:02:00.001+05:30

Shack

Early evening is not a very good time to visit Panditji's tea stall...not if you don't like being surrounded by a swarm of overwrought bankers, choking on their samosas and deadlines... in afternoons, when the bankers are safely chasing targets in their airconditioned cubicles, a cloud of melancholy hovers about the shack... a drain trickles by (carrying with it its drainy smell)... mongrels curl up at the foot of the rickety bench... Panditji scrapes the aluminum mug clean, pours some water in it, sprinkles some tea dust and places it on the embers of his chulha...

2011-05-29T14:54:00.005+05:30

5, Scott Lane

Framed by mannequin busts in gaudy crepe kurtas (pointy blonde hair) and diaphanous twirls of saris, was the entrance of Rahman stores. A magic depot of uniforms where parents would hand over chits and efficient counterboys would hand over neat stacks of shirts, full pants, half pants and blazers in navy blues, greens and whites. I remember the blue starched shirt, the brief new-shirt-smell-induced euphoria. But more than that, I remember the sweat-laced new smell that nagged me when I wore it for the first time...

When I flunked a year and had to change streams, I remember the embarrassment of visiting Oxbridge bookstore by default. But more than that, I remember the heaviness of the polytehene bag full of new books in my hand. The New Radient Readers and the complimentary bundle of Oxbridge name labels that the salesperson would always hide between books. For years I believed that it's some sort of a personal gesture. That is why I used them on my brownpapered books though they were not pre-glued and one had to wet one's hand with glue while sticking them ....

2011-05-26T00:29:00.001+05:30

Metro...
One could tell they are related by simply looking at their toes. Plump little balls with uncut nails. Dark cuticles. Dirt darkening the edges, dirt which can be scooped out in one go—a half moon of dirt. Eyes travel up polyester trousers, shirt (on the older guy), t shirt ( on the younger guy) and the same fleshy nose. Of course they are related ...

2011-05-24T11:49:00.002+05:30

Rain...

The bed has a mound of clothes. Dull blues and mossy greens. A splash of orange, but no red . Or yellow. The white pajamas (rolled into careless balls) have weathered stains around the edges. It's overcast outside, but there is no way one can find that out in this room. The curtains have been drawn and the tinted windows are closed. The floor has a thin film of dust on it, a delicate thin film which registers footprints with heartbreaking accuracy. Like an eager child drawing alepona...

2010-06-26T01:29:00.002+05:30

Phobia

There are three of them. The tallest of the three is seated in a chair with his back to me, the other two are at the counter, giggling and flirting with the attendant. One of them is wearing a black t-shirt with its sleeves rolled. He is short, about my height, but has a proportionate body. His t shirt hugs his curves snugly. He teasingly waves a thousand-rupee note in front of his friend who tries to snatch it out of his hand. The friend is slim and looselimbed but has an air of flabbiness about him. He is wearing a fitted shirt and jeans. He looks like a fat boy who has lost a lot of weight recently (takes one to know one). I can almost see the fat ghost of past hover around him like a pale shadow. Can he see my ghosts too?
They bring a tray of giant glasses to their table. The glasses are topped with whipped cream which they gingerly scoop out with spoons and feed each other. I look away...
It's raining outside and I'm wearing my shorts and a t shirt. My scanty mop of hair is plastered flat by rain and my bulky sandals are wet and ugly. I know I look odd. Not odd in a attractive way but just odd... “At least I am not a preening peacock,” I tell myself...
One more guy has joined them. He is wearing a polo shirt and is carrying a backpack... As soon as he joins them there is a round of hugging and cream feeding... limp-wristed cream feeding... I take sip of my lemon ginger tea, I make sure that my pinky is not up...

2010-03-27T22:02:00.001+05:30

Barbed Wire...
Dark clouds fester over the Kohima sky in the month of August… a family of giant, black mushrooms over the blue-green hills…
On one such heavy, mushroomy morning, Titu (with a goldfish pout and a brown dungaree) followed Mithu (with her Halo-shampooed hair and patchwork poncho) to the Ao residence… A slippery step at a time… a breathless step at a time… Past the morning due-laden shrubs, past the pig sty with oinking, baby pink pigs… past the Dey household where Jhorna mashi (a shawled mummy) was tending to her begonias…
They stopped in front of the Ao house…

2009-08-31T14:22:00.002+05:30

Dear Reader,

If you are here by some misguided desire of being treated to a slice of an unknown life then I’m very sorry to say, the show is over… in these five years that I have blogged I have treated this place with varying degree of sincerity… when I started off (and when I was evidently younger) I treated this as a scared place where unspoken truths can come into the forefront, where resolutions can be achieved through a particularly clever turn of phrase… Soon enough, insincerity and self-consciousness crept in and I found myself writing keeping certain people in mind… I can’t say I’m ashamed of that but I wish I could change that fact about my blog…
Today, as I sit here dipping a rusk biscuit in my tea, I wonder why should I do this at all… I’m the sort who believes that there should be a proper distance kept between strangers, you and me…
How can I strip my soul bare in front those who have never even shared a rusk with me? How can I tell you about my little indiscretions in the metro? why should i tell u that I was jumping moments yesterday in a munakka-induced hazed? my little truths needn't be subjected to your scrutiny anymore....

So here it is, without any awkward drama and self-important delay,

Goodbye,
Me…

2009-04-28T13:09:00.000+05:30

Fly on the wall

If I were asked to recount my school years, I will draw blanks… Of course I remember the school building (a white imposition over the serpentine lanes of Sealdah) … at least I think I do, but the problem that is they are all enmeshed in a hopeless little blob of a memory… so much so that I cant distinguish one from the other … the classrooms, classmates, teachers, tiffin breaks… the classroom must have been like any other … rows of window on the left, opening to the chaos of Sealdah’s Kolay market; in front, the weathered, white, blackboard, on which the teacher’s weary hand probably scribbled words they wanted to emphasise, their fingers covered in chalk dust… the teacher’s desk and chair on a foot-high platform… the walls must have been oilpainted in an antiseptic shade of green, devoid of any tenderness and comfort… there must have been a forgotten cupboard at a corner, full of books from previous years and coloured chalks which were never used (except for teachers’ day when the class captain would carefully calligraph a special message for the teachers)… my class must have been a microcosm of the world, populated with boys and girls waiting to grow up to be (hopefully) responsible, successful, future citizens … maybe they are important people now and I hear about them every now and then, maybe I don’t… the thing is, as much as I want to, I can’t distinguish any particular aspect of their personalities… Was Soumya‘s apparent calmness an act to hide his insecurities or was he really the Buddha, as everyone referred him to? Was Paromita, the pretty, shy girl with bangs, any different from other pretty girls with bangs in my class?

Oily, plastic wrapped tiffin boxes… scab-covered knees… teachers with vulgar, lipstick-smudged lips (I know I shouldn’t caricaturise them, but what to do?) … strains of a forgotten school song… early morning traffic on the Sealdah flyover… that’s all I remember of my schooldays… that’s all I want to forget…

2009-04-09T20:22:00.000+05:30

my amethyst eyes
licks my livery soul
aaah you stood by my bedside yesterday night emmanuel
like peace comes to dying gods
Your dreams breathed on my nightmares
Like chocolatey city moonlight

2009-03-24T12:37:00.000+05:30

Straight Talk

It’s the dead zone of an unnaturally hot afternoon. The crowd at the Coffee House has trickled to the die-hard regulars, and the hustle and bustle of College Street seems to be a distant dream thanks to the whir of the rickety old fans which drown all outside noise. The second floor of the seat of Bengali intelligentsia is however, astir with activity.
Pink banners, shouting AIDS and HIV are being tied next to a window, which seem to have attracted the attention of the local sparrows. They busy themselves pecking at the s rope that holds the banner straight. You worry about the fate of the rope but your eyes wander to the other corner of the room, where a young couple, oblivious to the activity around them, is sharing sweet nothings over a cup of tea and fish kabiraji.
Into all this walks a vision in black. Dripping sequins and faux pearls, Shyamolee (name changed on request) immediately grabs the attention of the boyfriend. The girlfriend fumes profanities to the cup, as Shyamolee settles herself in a table next to the couple.
The staring boyfriend doesn’t seem to affect Shyamolee, neither does the fuming girlfriend make any difference to her. She is used to such uncomfortable situations. “As a transsexual, one can’t help being subjected to stares. I realise that I affect these people, but I have learned not to make such a hue and cry about it,” she says before busying herself with her friends.
Shaymolee and her friends are at the Indian Coffee House to attend an adda on Sexuality rights and HIV, an endeavour which is quite unlike the usual Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) gatherings in the town. “The whole idea behind holding this adda in Coffee house was to reach out to people beyond our community. Issues such as sexuality rights is not limited to our community, these issues affect every human being,” says Anish Roy Chowdhury, a city-based LGBT activist.
Soon, other tables in the room are filled up with eager faces. A mike is installed in the middle of the room, a request for “the kind attention of the patrons” is made and the “adda session” starts. What follows is a potent discussion on sexuality and human rights. The microphone changes many hands as Article 377 of the Indian Penal code (which criminalises same sex behaviour) is trashed, pertinent points made and at times, irrelevant questions raised. After about an hour and a half, Roy Chowdhury is a happy man. “The evening is a success,” he declares.
In the middle of all these, however, the couple have made an unceremonious exit.

2009-02-12T13:18:00.000+05:30

25 Random things about me…

1) I lie… beautiful, random lies which make complete sense in my mind…
2) I try and wear nice undies whenever I leave home because I worry I will be run over or something and when they perform post-mortem on me I will not look nice (which is also the reason why I brush my teeth right before I leave home)…
3) I recently had bhang for the first time and proved to be a text-book drunk…
4) Whenever I want to sound interesting, I quote from The Hours or from the Home at the end of the World…
5) At times, when I’m particularly pissed with my mother of sister I take random stuff of theirs and flush them down the toilet…
6) I’m not as bad a person as the above five confessions make me out to be…
7) I have never physically assaulted anyone in my 27 years of existence…
8) I have recently developed a passionate dislike for peanuts (which used to be my favourite nut till about a week ago)…
9) I share a very troubled relationship with food…we are like Jimmy and Alison in Look Back in Anger…
10) I envy everybody everything…
11) Though I claim otherwise, nothing really icks me out…
12) I’m notoriously bad with money… not only am I a spendthrift I physically treat them badly too… notes are a crumpled mess in my wallet…
13) Animals unsettle me which is why I’ve never had a pet…
14) If I were a reader I would have moved on by now…
15) I’m mortally scared of being called boring and fat…
16) I like people who like me… as in I can make myself fall for somebody who likes me…
17) Cinema is the presiding philosophy of my life…
18) I don’t read newspapers…
19) I pretend to read books in cafés because that’s how I want to be perceived as-an attractive young man reading a book in a café…
20) I’ve hardly any memories of my school and college days… in get-togethers I just nod and play along with other people’s stories…
21) I’ve promised that I will buy myself a guitar by the end of this year…
22) I discovered scrabble a month ago and was hooked for exactly a day…
23) I fantasise about food every few minutes…
24) I’m a selfish shopper…so much so that I even grudge my three year old nephew his shopping hour with me…
25) I miss home even when I’m there…

I wont tag anyone coz I don’t believe in tagging…

2009-01-22T17:29:00.002+05:30

Abbas …

At my favourite Barista outlet, Abbas probably stands in front of the cappuccino machine, polishing its gleaming stainless-steel spouts and admiring the chrome finish of the Italian machine… Only the Italian can have such sense of lines and texture, only Italians have such sense of aesthetics, he is probably saying to himself…
For despite our presumptions about his background, Abbas is probably an erudite young man with a passion for Italian coffee machines. A passion so intense that he decided to take up a job in a coffee shop to be near one…
As I make myself comfortable in my corner chair and smile a smile of acknowledgement, he is probably saying to himself – “There is that guy again, I wonder what his story is…”
He is probably also considering the change in mid-afternoon coffee regulars… The old lady with the orange bag who always ordered a frappe and a lemon chicken sandwich, and slowly consumed it in her corner with the concentration of a surgeon at work, had disappeared…It’s almost as if she were a characters written out of a story… She had gone and taken her world with her… her small world of orange handbag and jingling change… The café now has a new regular, a beefy middle-aged man, who appeared out of blue one fine day, as if to replace the old lady…
Our little thoughtless gestures probably irks, disappoints or irritate him…
Maybe he flinches every time I pick up the copy of The Telegraph, because he is a Statesman loyal…
As we sat there and made casual conversations, there were probably countless moments when he could have interrupted and impressed us with acute observations… But as of now, Abbas busies himself with a cup of foaming coffee…

2008-12-02T19:24:00.001+05:30

Nothing unusual nothing strange
Close to nothing at all
The same old scenario the same old rain
and there's no explosions here

So I dreamt the other day… my dreams, of late, tend to be tepid replay of everyday situations… me queuing up for a movie ticket, minutely observing the dandruff on the shoulders of the guy ahead of me and the likes… but this time, it was different…

Then something unusual something strange
comes from nothing at all
I saw a spaceship fly by your window
did you see it disappear?

Fuelled by everything on television and a movie I’m in love with (Angels in America), I saw a scene from the film- the scene where Mary Louise Parker’s character talks about souls rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and floating up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joining hands, clasping ankles, and forming a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbing them, and being repaired…
Amie come sit on my wall and read me the story of Of O
Tell it like you still believe that the end of the century brings a change for you and me
Nothing unusual nothing's changed
Just a little older that's all
But then that’s what life is all about isn’t it? It’s about painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and hoping for a better tomorrow…

You know when you've found it there's something I've learned'
cause you feel it when they take it away …
Maybe this is the threshold of revelation…

2008-10-15T14:29:00.001+05:30

Mellow...

If you happen to be anywhere in Kolkata now, I would urge you to take a moment… before the gaudy festivities of Diwali take over, before we start welcoming a frayed, watered down winter (purely out of sentimental reasons), take a moment and breathe it all in … the delicious melancholy of “postpujaness”…
Look around, observe a city overwhelmed with a bittersweet hangover— the skeleton of pandals looming comically large over ever para more, the weary, dark-circled eyes of its denizens, the solemn dismantlers who guiltily go about their work of normalizing the façade of the city and the heaps of crumpled silver foils in street corners which bear mute testiomomy to the city's ravenous appetite…
I am ill-equipped in the philosophies of life, but I can tell you one thing, feeling mellow does you a lot of good…

2008-09-15T18:46:00.000+05:30

Memories ...
It was supposed to be a quiet afternoon…ma and me will take the afternoon metro to New Market, where she will shop for "parsi lace" (whatever that means) to lace her saree with… enamoured by the quaintness of the endeavour I centred my entire weekend around the trip… after purchasing the parsee lace, we decided we will catch the evening show of Mama Mia…ma will soak in the memories of her ABBA youth, while I sought solace in the collective memories of the 1970s (how I romanticise the 70s)… dinner at Nizams, where ma will tuck into biriyani …I will gnaw at chunks of panir in eerily orange gravy…
Early Sunday morning, we bickered and fell apart as usual… the plan was cancelled… but I have vivid memories of it… an afternoon that never was….

2008-08-28T12:33:00.001+05:30

The drip, drip of the long-haul…

Weekends are awful…a prelude to future… though I would lead myself and people around me to believe that there is dignity in loneliness, I do realise that there is nothing noble in being so chronically untouched that a mere whiff of a man standing next to you sends shivers of longing sraight down to your groin…to catch a flash of a young, lean man in the rear view mirror of an autorickshaw and wonder what his mouth tastes like… It’s not just lust, mind you, but a longing for human intimacy… to be held, to be wanted…
When I was younger I had such a vision of a content life… of warm libraries and bare, stark bedrooms… I also, in moments of weaknesses, would dream of finding someone… but one learns one’s limitations... Slowly and kindly it dawns upon you, that at the end you are all alone…

2008-08-21T14:13:00.002+05:30

It’s you face am looking for...

If there is one lesson I have learnt in my 27 years of existence, it’s the notion that repressed passion does no one any good. It turns ghosts out of vibrant men…

2008-08-20T16:40:00.003+05:30

The sweet and the lowdown

If I were ever to write a novel, this is how it would begin...

It was a Kohima of fond memories that I was born in. Before insurgency, before the gurgling brook that ran through it caught fire. We were four. Ma, Baba (was that what I called him), Mithu and me. We lived, fought and fell out in a rambling 3-bedroom cottage, with two cavernous, perpetually wet toilets. Our house was quaintly perched on a hillock, and there was no concrete road leading to it. Only a neat pile of stone steps that connected it to other hillocks and civilisation …

2008-08-07T16:00:00.003+05:30

C R A S H
When I’m alone I keep the television (which is two rooms away) on at night …disembodied voices and signature tunes of shows waft in, lulling me into a very urban sense of security… it’s as if the grotesque soap opera of life is unfolding outside while I bury myself in the blueness of my room… it’s nice this way …
I don’t feel completely alienated from my reality, though it becomes difficult sometimes, to distinguish what has actually occurred from what should have happened…
At times, I spend hours trying to think about people hurtling across the hinterlands in trains at that very moment… it’s a kooky promise I made to myself in a sleep-bereft train journey between Vizag and Howrah almost a decade ago… I had promised that in the security of my home, when I am safely tucked in my bed, I will try and think about those who are
uncomfortably twisting and turning in blue-sheathed bunkers… how fragile yet potent is their existence in these steel boxes… their lives and realities, their loved ones back home and their temporary bonds with fellow passengers, equally palpable and dreamlike…

2008-07-28T19:39:00.001+05:30

Sightings

It’s a stunningly bright day…the kind of day which can only signal impending doom …I am walking down Park street, inhaling a fragrant westerly breeze (or isit a whiff of Flurys)… and I’m telling myself —I'm in my early late twenties, my academic career is over and I still live with mom— such are the thoughts flooding my not-so-tiny head when I notice the new McDonald's that was blown up just a few months ago (or was it a year ago).. my God I deserve a break today, I sigh, all I ever get is the unhappy meal…
and that’s when he walks out of the plastic sheathed rubble that is McDonald’s now, like a phoenix rising from ashes… this guy, who is me… I mean who looks like me, so much like me that I'm breathless…
he looks at me for a startled moment and looks away… this guys, who is me…is he my other half? does he have what I don't? did he get the luck? the love? were we destined to meet or was I unwittingly trying to fight destiny by following him down the narrow Mirza Ghalib street? were we really separated forcibly or did he just run off with the good stuff? or did I? will this person embarrass me? will we indulge in awkward, silent sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again?
Such were the thoughts flooding my not-so-tiny head when I lost the sight of the guy, who is me…

2008-07-24T17:10:00.001+05:30

Differences …
So ma decided to renovate our "old" bathroom, you know the ubiquitous bong old bathroom—a cavernous, damp, water stained mess where we do all our laundry (maashi kapor gulo purono bathroom e dhuye nao) and which we surreptitiously guide our guests away from (no, no not that way, the bathroom is this way)… well she decided that it deserves a new lease of life…
bye, bye pink, chipped wash basin and hello gaudy glass basin and glazy blue tiles…
I try not to interfere with ma’s dealings and be judgmental about them, but what do you do when you bathroom looks like the setting of a lurid Sanjay Neela Bhansali dream…
My ma is so …baroque… and I’m so… not baroque… I remember the time ma insisted on hanging this elaborate painting of a waterfall which when plugged to a socket made "soothing waterfall sounds" *shudders* in my room and I relented simply because I wanted to avoid a showdown (we don’t believe in talking things out in the Biswas household)… it just hangs there and I avoid looking at it…the "soothing waterfall sound" however, proves to be a great distraction for my high-strung four-year-old nephew…
I hate the blue, glass basin… I hate washing myself on/in (?) it … I hate the way my foamy spit dribbles down its sides when I am brushing my teeth, it’s like spitting on your dining table…
Sigh…

2008-07-20T13:29:00.002+05:30

Eyes...

Let me share this... of recent, i have become a collecter of what i call the "but you could have been so much more" looks... you know , the kind of look people give you when you say or do things which are not in keeping with their perception of you ?the kind of look which leads to a change of attitude? I've been plagued with those...
no matter what i say or how i say it, the shadow looms... today, after losing a battle against invincible forces that subject me to such looks i have decided that i will become a connoisseur of the "but you could have been so much more " looks... i will accept them, and grade them according to the level of intensity...
After all, all forward motion counts...

2008-07-14T20:52:00.001+05:30

Life…
As years pass by, my doubts are confirmed… life is designed to be like a Cameron Crowe movie… a bittersweet balance that's funny, melancholic and romantic :-)

2008-07-05T21:52:00.001+05:30

Family

They settle down in the next table… the family of three… the mother clearly the decision maker… a stately, middle-aged woman in a black salwar kurta (or was it a sari)… the husband seems defeated- both by age and life (they arent the same thing) … he bends towards his wife, displaying his dandruff-infested shoulders…black is not a colour to wear when you are fighting a losing battle against scaly skin…
The pubescent son is the object of my attention, for obvious reasons :P…he is plain really … hollow-cheeked and lean, like most pubescent boys are… he betrays a strange impatience towards his mother…he almost flinches when she reaches out in her purse to give him some money… shifting his weight from on red canvas shoe to the other…What a strange family, I tell myself… and how disconcerting it is to see them in a coffee shop at this time of the day …
Sitting there, witnessing an awkward family moment, I realise that I'm alone, not in the way this family would recognize… yet, at this moment, I yearn for the familiarity of this dysfunctional family...

2008-06-17T19:37:00.000+05:30

Soulmate

Clearly, we are meant to be together… like Jonathan and Clare in A Home at the End of the World…half in love and half seriously contemplating a life together…
Both pilot and captive of the impossible sequence of events that keeps us away…But there she is, inert in a dusty corner of Hyderabad (a city which seems to be hell bent on discarding its glorious past and become a place where grotesque granite and concrete structures are considered to be man's highest form of artistic expression) surrounded by orange t-shirts, empty nutella bottles and walls of chick lits, and here I am, a hapless victim of vanity, pretending to read important books in empty Barista Cafés …

2008-06-06T19:41:00.001+05:30

From the archieve...

a post from the Dubai days...

I am male. Wit and charm will only take me so far. What I need is to affirm my maleness. My primordial instinct demands it. A throwback from the time when men like me ruled the plains and hunted everything to near extinction. Fortunately, household chores are a perfect platform for this. So I seek out the big games in my house. Pursue the laundry. Stalk the dishes. Ambush the unmade beds. Corner the garbage bag. Prey on dust bunnies. And I do all these with such poise that it makes alpha male of every species green with envy…

2008-04-21T16:23:00.002+05:30

Tra la la la
It goes tra la la, my mind, when I walk down the stretch of wonders that connects Kolkata’s shopping district (Esplanade) to it’s office para (Dalhousie)… It really does go tra la la, maybe the fact that I have my earphones plugged in helps…but tra la la it is… For, armed with a Barista take away cup in one hand and bag of dieters’ sandwich in the other, I play the part of the protagonist of this elaborate American soap opera that I have created for myself, and walking down that stretch, surrounded as it is with some of the most impressive colonial structures you will see in India, is the high point of the episode…and it has to be the title sequence-me walking down, unconcerned, attractive and desired, everything that I am not in real life, and the city being itself, chaotic, inquisitive and probing…sigh ...
Eventually, life happens….

2008-04-02T20:51:00.001+05:30

Hours

So here I am then, a man in orange kurta, typing out his feelings. Nothing more, nothing less.
And there is the city outside, blazing under the April sun. Nay, throbbing under it. Everything glowing and pulsating-cars, men, women and buildings. No respite, only greater and lesser degree of brightness.
And there you are. My reader. The powerful one. Armed with the discretion to dismiss me, applaud me or simply flip through.
And we all make sense in our own warped way.

2008-02-04T16:34:00.000+05:30

Desire…

It’s a fact most of us refuse to recognise — that you become heartless the moment you are desired. You flinch under the person’s adoring gaze, you feel suffocated by the attention. Then you consider yourself, in all your flaws –the receding hairline, the height, the stunted torso,the incessant need to be heard- and conclude that the person will be disappointed as soon as he or she gets to know you better.
Or maybe you will find the person unattractive for no logical reason whatsoever- there is nothing as repugnant as want in someone’s eyes.
You might kiss that person and it wont matter…it will be a pity kiss…something which will soon become difficult even to remember…
And inside you will feel cold and remote…

2008-01-18T16:18:00.000+05:30

Smoke...

I gave him a prissy schoolteacher look…the urchin so brazenly puffing on a cigarette… he is hardly 13- years-old and already smoking, I tsk-tsked …is it laced, I wondered…unaffected, he took another breathy puff… his cheeks hollow… his hair matted… and his lean and hungry body sprawled on the pavement…I could feel the blood rushing to my groin …my lips parted in desire…I considered my erection…it was harmless really…the pitiful lump in my trousers…of no consequence whatsoever…I will not work on it…
But how dirty I felt…

2008-01-14T19:55:00.000+05:30

Tears…

At times, when I push her over the edge, I see maa tremble…she is breathing, frothing, rage from head to toe …her mouth opening to say something but overwhelmed by a gush of saliva… it does pain me to see her so … helpless, pathetic and angry…
Yet I push her…waiting for her to collapse… both yearning and dreading the spasms of tears and saliva…like the time I used to take our neighbour’s 4-year-old kid for walks and pretend to abandon him in the middle of the road…he would invariably break into tears, his arms stretched out in a helpless plea… I would rush to him, and promise everlasting companionship only to repeat the trick…
How traumatic it must have been for his tender four-year-old soul…how traumatic it must be for maa’s 54-year-old soul …to be so offended by her own flesh and blood…to be reminded of all the wrong decisions she made in her life by her own son…how unnatural it is to be chastised by one’s own son …
But there is something wonderful about tears I think…there is something so cathartic to see them roll down her cheek…

2007-10-04T18:21:00.000+05:30

The other side….

As middle class inhabitants of a metropolis (if we at all can call Kolkata that) we lead a deceptively fragile existence… every morning we jostle the crowds in the subway to reach our workplaces, eavesdrop on other peoples conversations, curse the muggy Kolkata heat and breath a sigh of relief on reaching our dank, air-conditioned offices …on our way back home we pack boxes of sweets for our family (maa likes ladoo, I prefer sandesh)…we board buses and consider the city around us…fleeting glimpses of less fortunate lives scavenging garbage dumps and drains make us shake our head in dispassionate ruefulness … "This is no way to lead a life," we tell ourselves…
Until providence plays a cruel joke on us … like the last weeks floods which inundated the "safe, middle class haven" that is Bangur Avenue …464 mm of rainfall that washed away the semblance of dignified life we clung on to… In the past week I have waded through neck deep filth to collect food and water…we have had to make do without electricity for over 5 days…the taps ran dry for more than 4 days…
In the past week I have seen my mum fight over a jerkin of water… I have walked to office covered in filth and shit and god knows what…

Yet, as I sit to jot down my thoughts down things are slowly returning to normalcy… the sun is beamin reassuringly… caking the muddy leftovers of the last weeks deluge… party members in hired autorickshaws are making rounds of the city announcing through loudspeakers their intention to “help us in ever way possible”… ridiculous white lines of bleaching powders are littered along the open drains as a preventive measure against any possible epidemic… families many of whom were displaced from their ground floor homes, are scrubbing their moss covered house clean with a stoic good humour that irritates me … “This is a blessing in disguise, the flat is getting thoroughly cleaned before pujos,” says nicher barir Mukherjee uncle who shared with us the past weeks horror…
Maybe we will reconcile to the comforts of our middle class lives…maybe this week will be nothing more than a distant memory for us… but I hope I do manage to remember the feeling of complete helplessness that overwhelmed me for that past week… maybe that’s how it feels to be in the other side of the bus

2007-08-08T12:09:00.000+05:30

Of long shots and lazy Hyderabad afternoons….

The death of Bergman and Antonioni on the same day was a significant event for film lovers across the world indeed… but for an eclectic class of twenty people, who about two years ago shared lazy Hyderabad afternoons watching the best of European cinema, it was a time to share a few words and look back at what we had learned from that class…Much to the chagrin of our instructor some of us might have dozed off during many a Bergman long shot and giggled through Antonioni’s resolution scenes, yet, each of us took something back from the class…given below are the rough drafts (and when i say rough i mean ROUGH) of my assignment on both these filmmakers …

Winter Light is a story of disillusioned pastor, much like Sacrifice, which was about a disillusioned philosopher…but the difference lies in the way these two protagonists achieve a resolution within the self…while Alexander had to make a Sacrifice to be at peace with his spiritual self, the Pastor clearly has a more complex inner struggle…For he was in denial, denial of self need…
His repeated shunning of the physically tainted Martha and his longing for his marked wife shows that he clearly has not exorcised his own devils…
A priest who is supposed to be the representative of Jesus, the one who embraced the lepers, shuns Martha, because she is diseased . Martha on the other hand realizes that her completeness lies in being with him.
Jonas, the fisherman , who along with his pregnant wife , signifies domestic abundance is under threat too here (unlike in The Seventh Seal where Joff and Mia are the survivors).
Clearly Berman is a disillusioned man when he makes this film; he sees the threat of destruction of the humankind as an inevitable one.
But he never fails to hope, the scene where the wife of the fisherman breaks the news of the fathers death to the children in a warmly lit dining room , is a heartwarming one…fo life will go on, and there will be survivors…
The neurotic fisherman, Jonas, who kills himself because he fears that the Chinese will attack, brings in the greater concern to the movie… He enunciates what the world fears, another war…the constant threat of something drastic happening, is quintessential to most concerned European films…
In Winter Light religion is the only solace, not because of what it says but because of what it does…the pastor feels he is partly responsible for Jonas’s death because he couldn’t offer a helping hand to him…
At the end of the day the devout Christian in Bergman believes that the world will be saved by the milk of human kindness…

2007-06-25T23:09:00.000+05:30

Life in a day

He would be like them, he decided. It wouldn’t be difficult, he could be casual… "I will be casual,” he said to himself… he would be lost in the music and walk down the subway like they do… he will be young and reckless…”It is not difficult to be reckless,” he repeated…trains will hurtle past… the city will entertain itself … the air will be heavy with promise…

“I will be like them,” he chanted as he showered… he stole a glimpse at the mirror as he lathered his chest … “This is me,” he said “short, balding, yet youthful?” …. His large head was a sort of imposition on his slight body, at times comically so …

As he dressed himself, he could hear the piano piece build up in his mind… he was anticipating the crescendo … it will come with a sweeping surprise, taking his breath away, tearing the last shred of happiness away … he will drop on the bed, his face ashened … he will cry , theatrically, mourning all of life’s little disappointments….surely they add up to something bigger …something bigger than death??
“Why is everything wrong? Why can’t I be like them,” he asked himself as he watched the tears roll down his face in the mirror…

A young man’s whole life in a day… a day from his life….

2007-05-27T23:24:00.000+05:30

Anandi'
Female,
43,
India

Middle age suddenly happened to me. It was almost as if I woke up to it one fateful morning. My features suddenly took a severity that often I used to admire in my mother’s weathered face…
I was not as much alarmed by the occurrence as surprised. For years ago, after toiling through house work, when I would sit down to a fanciful ritual of applying an assortment of lotions on my face ( 10 revolutions clockwise, 10 anticlockwise, always massage in the upwards direction), I would wish away my wrinkles with an incredulous humour that only youth can afford… I was never serious about the implications of old age, ignoring my gynecologist’s strict instruction of watching my diet and taking calcium pills…dismissing it as something that happened to other people…

And now, here it is …staring at my face... eyeball to eyeball… and I can only laugh…

Thats how I deal with everything, my husband feels… I laugh at things…a dry, nervous laugh, which seems more like a query than an assertion…
Sex for instance…a queasy obligation more than anything else to me …when Ashok comes to me hungry and aching with desire, I submit to his lust with an almost comical resolution…pondering at his expanding midriff and ungainly technique… stopping myself from breaking into peals of laughter as he adjusts himself over me …ending it with a dry, nervous laugh….

2007-05-25T08:59:00.000+05:30

Souresh
Male
21
Kolkata, India

I am not a morning person. Even though I push myself out of the bed quite early, the world that stirs itself to vitality around me seems like another person’s reality. I’m a passive observer. Tea, biscuits and the morning paper are consumed flimsily, without the grandiose of a ritual. As if I were an indifferent guest in a hotel. Considering my lodging, never committing to it.
She always deems it fit to barge into my room every morning. My mother. I could have been jerking off. Or be in the buff. But she never seems to think about these things. Though I never really was walked into. Maybe she knows me too well. Maybe its the other way around. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
Privacy in our house is frowned at disapprovingly. Doors are never shut. Curtains never drawn.The unspoken rules of conduct were probably laid by my mother ages ago. Maybe before I was even born. My father, an unremarkable man with a remarkable jawline probably succumbed without so much as a whimper. He probably thought it was easier that way. To let someone take the reins of his life. Prone to occasional bouts of helpless anxiety, my father lives his life “on the surface”, complains my mother, as she greedily snatches the unfinished work away from him. He always seems only too relieved to surrender. I wonder if they ever have sex…

2007-05-21T02:04:00.000+05:30

Since my obstinate decision to move back to Kolkata last year I have often asked myself if it was a wise decision …. After all moving back in with mum is not the ideal thing to do when you are 25(heck I were in the States I would be considered demented or gay for taking such an action , come to think of it that wouldn’t be too far from the truth ) … my journey from the quaint Secunderabad station to the chaotic melee of humanity that is Howrah was in many ways symbolic of the confusion driven turn my life was taking…
After negotiating my way through an army of coolies, as I drove away in a taxi (the rusty non-electronic meter of which gave me anxiety attacks) the sight of the grotesque but familiar Howrah Bridge was like a confident hand on hesitant shoulders…

A year and a lifetime later I am still plagued with such questions… was letting go of the offer to move to Delhi a bad career move….wouldn’t I be happier being a lifestyle magazine reporter in Pune? Isn’t Hyderabad the place where i will get to be unapologetically me, what with the city teeming with friends who love me and understand me for what I am … Doesn’t Mumbai promise me everything that I could ever dream of ? Does my sister’s persistent proposal of moving to the gold laden city of Dubai make some sense, after all it has everything that modernity has to offer…
Maybe ….but life isn’t ever about answering questions is it??My being, I have realized is in many ways attached to this city…pragmatically speaking, that would have been the case had I been brought up in any other city… but the romantic in me likes to believe it’s a tumultuous love affair which has weathered many a storm (my 2 year stand with Hyderabad included)… Often, when I look out of bus windows and take in the sights, or walk the hallowed lanes of BBD Bagh ( there was a point of time when me and my sister used to presume that the “BBD BAG” emblazoned on the sides of the ubiquitous red Kolkata minibuses was actually an advertisement of a brand of bags) lined with spectacular buildings , bearing mute testimony to the changing fortunes of the city, I feel blessed … blessed to be a part of a community which has nurtured a way of life for centuries now… no matter how inconsequential and in the fringes I am...

P.S. thank u Kama for the snap

2007-05-16T01:08:00.000+05:30

In the early nineties, when we moved to Kolkata from what now seems like almost virginal terrains of Kohima, life offered of a labyrinth of experiences…. Everything was new and dazzling… city life was sampled by us in small installments during brief summer interludes… everything used to fascinate us….the tiled bathroom in our grandma’s as opposed to the cemented one in Kohima …the overhead shower as opposed to the tin drum which was the receptacle for regulated water supply… The paper Kwality tubs of vanilla ice cream which we used to lick to the last drop with an equally fascinating wooden spatula like thing... the spatula like thing in turn would be chewed to a pulp to extract the last drop of vanilla essence….years later when I were to see Durga Puja pandals adorned with those very spatula like things stuck on the walls to make various decorative patterns (the ubiquitous Indian paisley included) my first instinct would be to chew them up …

Me and my sister were a capitalist lot…identifying experiences with brand names… hot sultry afternoons were associated with frantic glugs of gold spot ( the zing thing )… comfort was a bite of Cadburys milk chocolate ( Cadburys , interestingly was so ingrained in the Bengali/Indian psyche that it became synonymous with chocolate …so one had to ask for Cadburys when one wanted a bar of chocolate….chocolate was a generic term for all kind of lozenges … things that took a long time to seep in)…
The clammy Kolkata weather ensured that my bar of golden foiled “Cadbury” (poor Amul catering to a thankless market even after it’s innovate marketing campaign displaying cute amul looking couples on the wrappers) was always melty and messy leaving a trail of sticky brown spots of my summery shirts and shorts…evenings meant darkened rooms enveloped in the blue shadows of the Weston colour television…the drawing rooms were animated with coming of age tales in Star Plus… beaming the American way of life to our collective psyche …oh how I identified with Kevin Arnold and his teenage angst though I couldn’t follow half of what he said in that cute American twang…

Sigh ….how I digress… where were we? Oh yes the dazzling city lights…Gah have completely lost thread now ….funny how I start saying something and inadvertently end up saying something else…

2007-05-12T12:05:00.000+05:30

Laladom…

Singledom is fun methinks…not that I have ever been in any other state of being, but increasingly for the past few years the bitterness and an incredible sense of longing that I felt after seeing my friends cozying up to each other or doing couply things (you know taking sips of each other’s coffee, casually sprawling on each other, completing each others sentences, placing each others orders in cafes, or just being with each other, happy and satiated) has waned… maybe its the city which is turning strangely moody nowadays, overcast, fast paced and incredibly unreasonable. So caught up am I in the city’s mood swings that i hardly have the time to negotiate with trivialities …maybe its my job which in a very feeble way challenges my intellect…

Gah …who am I kidding…Being single is a habit now and am not complaining…

2007-05-01T22:29:00.000+05:30

Gawd …have been feeling listless and bored lately…it probably has got something to do with the clammy Kolkata heat which leaves you feeling drained out and for some odd reason fat… maybe its the shirt sticking to your body syndrome (you know wet with sweat shirt clings to your body and highlights the hitherto unnoticed lovehandles )… but then my friends will point out that everything makes me feel fat…maybe they are right ....
But I wonder what will life be like without my weight to obsess about … I am done being the blithe one who doesn’t care about what goes in and how it comes out …now every morsel that goes in has to be accounted for …

Gah… lesson no 99999….never force myself to blog just for the sake of blogging …

2007-04-13T01:57:00.000+05:30

Good Morning Kolkata

Even before the first crow can caw for its breakfast,
Montu will bicycle his way through the narrow gullies of Shovabazar,
And throw the world rolled into a bundle, to eagerly awaiting bhodroloks in their verandahs ,
Sometimes the bundle will miss its target and roll down the moss covered walls
To fall into a puddle of yesterday’s rain
But that wont deter Potol’s father from sending the ever handy Minati masi
To go and collect it…
For his morning cup of cha and marie bishkoot is eagerly waiting on the plastic covered dining table….
So is a tall glass of lovingly made isabgol…
A few windows away little Minu is gobbling maach bhaat before bending in front of the thakur ghor and rushing out , water bottle in tow, to catch the bus…
Minus maa will follow her soon to school after finishing her chores,
Waiting patiently outside holding a tender coconut ,
As if her daughters future depended on the fateful sip of the nectar of the gods...
Minu’s Maa will also chant a silent prayer looking at the young college girls walking past
Praying that her daughter doesn’t turn out like these eye brow pierced freaks,
One of the freaks, Rhea, for a few fleeting moments, will reminiscence her tender coconut sipping days,
But quickly go back to worrying about the contraceptiveless sex she had the last night…

And before you know it my city will stretch herself awake…

2007-04-02T02:27:00.000+05:30

Life…in a Metro

Metro on Sundays is transformed inexplicably to a domestic zone….not that it is the office goer’s domain on weekdays, being the quieter and a relatively inflexible mode of transport of the city , Metro is clearly her most underutilized infrastructure (next only to the monstrous red over bridges that loom incongruously over the most quaint crossings)…
Sigh I digress again ….As I was saying, Metro on Sundays are characterized by the couples in various stages of matrimony or pre matrimony…as you listlessly make your way through moody electronic gates who greedily gobble up your ticket only to blink a vexing red cross and therefore you have to shout for the blue shirted metro guards (“ei dada please come na” … “ki holo ?? kothar theke uthechilen…ek minute daran”)…by the time you convince the dada to open a manual gate for you, the train you could have comfortably slipped into is missed by a whisker...but since it’s a Sunday you can afford to shrug and find a pillar to rest on … I always wanted to be the sort who is oblivious to the crowd and is lost in a book…but people always distract me…men , women children…faces , idiosyncrasies, and hidden agendas…shirts , trousers, duppatas and saris…talcumed backs, transparent blouses highlighted by black bras, damp sweat patches, flaring nostrils jungled with overgrown hair…shreds of chicken fibre caught between yellowing teeth, entangled hands, bulging pants….
Everything is noticed, smelt and felt… sometimes with disgust sometimes with morbid curiosity…
But on Sundays things change…everything is bathed in the hues of domesticity…squealing children, men and their wives, young men and their wives, old men and their wives, men with their soon to be wives and more squealing children...
Categorising these various stages of matrimony will be an easy job for even the most casual observer …
You have-
1) The just married type…bangled hands and blazing sindoor …great bodies contoured with great sex …tight jeans…flimsy duppata… arching backs…sweet nothings…
2) The soon to be married type…entangled hands…furtive glances…need for a room…clingy girlfriend ….irritated with desire boyfriend…parted lips…unspoken words…always jeans and sequined tops…
3) Married with young children type…tousled hair…inept hapless father…efficient, irritable mother…pinned synthetic sari…dark circles…contended eyes…chocolate ice cream stained shirts…
4) Married for decades type…talcumed and cottoned…sparse yet well nourished hair plastered into neat plaits and plates…lazy nods…comfortable distances…

Sigh…how I wish I could ever fit in …

P.S. incase you haven’t noticed my imaginatively titled post is my little tribute to the soon to be released Bollywood film with the same name…it has some great nos. by composer Pritam …pliss do check out :-)

2007-03-27T14:53:00.000+05:30

A year ago I used to think all that’s wrong in my life can boil down to a singular problem…my weight…
If and when I lose weight everything will fall into place … life will be easier…people will like me… I will be admired and lusted for…no one will think I am a lazy lump… I will breeze through my interviews ,confident and happy… I wont have to stand tiptoe all the time to appear taller coz when you are slimmer you look taller anyway…I wont make a sorry sad figure when I gobble up my third brownie….and most importantly I will have a lovelife…
A year and 16 kilos down the line I still stand tiptoe ….I still don’t have a lovelife….

2007-03-18T13:32:00.000+05:30

Summer for starters

Peppered with early morning walks
Marinated in long lazy afternoons
Sautéed with sweaty evenings
And garnished with chopped nights
Summer is served to me

I will take in a long deep breath of spring
Before I take my first heady bite

2007-02-27T19:28:00.000+05:30

Traveling alone almost always ends up a being reflective exercise for me …more so during the night time…so in a short 8 hrs train journey from the intimidating Howrah station (with its orange halogen lights and melee of sights and sound) to the bustling yet quaint Puri station (dotted with pilgrims carrying matkas of camphor smelling sweet rice and adorable grass boxes of delectable gojas) I ended up mulling over the same thoughts that make my train journeys what they are… I thought how when we are snugly tucked in our beds when we are home we never think of millions of people hurtling across the country in train ( I keep telling myself that I will try and think about people in trains when am home but I never manage to do that )…and about how vulnerable, curious , helpless ,disoriented and oddly comfortable one feels to wake up in a strange brightly lit station animated with the squalling hawkers and tea vendors (the ubiquitous, nasal “chhhhhay garam” )… and of course the mystery of fellow passengers , I don’t think anyone spends as much time as I do wondering what/who are they ? Where are they from? Why are they so obnoxious/pleasant/indifferent? What did they have for dinner? Do they take their clothes off when they go to the toilets? How do they manage not to soil them when the toilets are wet and stinky? Why do they think its ok to brush their teeth with germ infested train water but insist on drinking bottled water?

Sigh …mysteries…

2007-02-15T23:13:00.002+05:30

Different...

My courage is in the form of tears
My resolution takes the form of hesitance
My hope lies in my despair
Yet you say I am different…

Your acts of courage will never be tear washed
You will never hesitate at being resolute
You will never learn to hope the way I hope
You will never understand me ….

2007-02-13T23:18:00.000+05:30

Katra Katra...

It was not supposed to be like this … it was not supposed to rain today …withdrawing winters are about crisp mornings and summer scented afternoons…not wet newspapers and soaked-to-skin crows…
Yet it rained today…damp, cold and gray …rendering me hopelessly sad…causing my sweatshirt to smell like it smells in monsoon-mothy and wet…and those depressing puddles…infested with gasoline…with rainbow hued layers…they make me sick…
And children…wet raincoated children clinging to their mother’s mud stained synthetic saris…helpless and happy…couples sharing umbrellas and sipping raindrop diluted tea…uncomfortable and happy…rickshawpullers with conical plastic caps…exhausted but happy…
And its still pitter pattering…fills me with the dread of a deluged morning…
No wonder am unhappy….

2007-02-07T14:37:00.000+05:30

well a song in the head which refuses to go away ...
(i havent translated it though, someone called shubhi gupta from bangaloer has done the needful quite competently, if i may say so )

tere bin / besides you
sanu sohnia / my love
koi hor nahio labhna / i shan't find another
jo dave / who'll give
ruh nu sakun / peace to my soul
chukke jo nakhra mera / and indulge me
ve main sare ghumm ke vekhia / i have gone and seen it all
amrika , roos, malaysia / america, russia, malaysiana
kittey vi koi fark si / there wasn't any difference
har kise di koi shart si / they all had some condition
koi mangda mera si sama / some asked for my time
koi hunda surat te fida / some were fascinated with my face
koi mangda meri si vafa / some demanded my fidelity
na koi mangda merian bala / none wanted my demons
tere bin / besides you
hor na kise / no one else
mangni merian bala / wanted my demons
tere bin / besides you
hor na kise / no one else
karni dhup vich chhan / shall shade me in the sun
jiven rukia / (the) way you paused
si tun zara / slightly
nahion bhulna / i shan't forget
main sari umar / all my life
jiven akhia si akhan chura / you said, looking away
"rovenga sanu yad kar" / "you shall weep in my memory"
hasia si main hasa ajeeb / i laughed a strange laugh
(par) tu nahi si hasia / but you didn't
dil vich tera jo raaz si / you had a secret in your heart
mainu tu kyon ni dasia / why didn't you tell me
tere bin / besides you
sanu eh raz / none shall tell this
kise hor nahion dasna / secret to me
tere bin / besides you
peerh da ilaaj / what druid
kis vaid kolon labhna / has the cure to my ills
milia si ajj mainu / i found today
tera ik patra / a note of yours
likhia si jis 'te / on which you had scribbeled
tun shayr varey shah da / a varis shah couplet
park ke si osnu / upon reading which
hanjnu ik duliya / a teardrop fell
akhan 'ch band si / what was locked in the eye
seh raaz ajj khulia / was revealed today
ki tere bin / that other than you
eh mere hanjnu / these tears of mine
kise hor / won't be kissed by
nahio chumna / none else
ki tere bin / that other than you
eh mere hanjhu / these tears of mine
mitti vich rulnha / will wither in the dust

2007-02-04T15:05:00.000+05:30

Somewhere over the Rainbow…

So this is how it’s going to be …
Life…
Limbo, interspersed with entr'actes of hope
Albeit in the garbs of “how things could have been”…
Like those saxophone interludes in Nat King Cole songs
Beautiful… but sad …
And if life were a movie,
I would be the guy who got left behind …

2007-01-19T00:24:00.000+05:30

From the Archives

tee hee...

Of farts and belches…

Some time ago I had commented on how I hate the sight male of the species indulging in something which comes most naturally to them …scratching crotch , yesterday I was subjected to another sight which I find very repulsive , a very pleasant looking middle aged man was digging his nose vigorously, with such concentration and singular devotion that one would assume that his life depended on it *puke puke*... have u ever been in a dinner table where u heard the person next to you fart (and if its really not your day you smell it too) and u didnt know where to look because you were embarrassed for that person while he happily went on eating his chicken tikka (filling u with the dread of being subjected to a chicken tikka flavored fart …ewww) and after that you probably never did see the perfectly respectable person in the same light again coz u heard him fart ...or the time when the teller of the bank decides to burp right on your face polluting the air with the smell of his/her lunch… now I m no prude and I confess of indulging in each and every one of these very “biologically justified activities” but then why am I (in particular) so squeamish about the public display of them???

Farting is the spontaneous expulsion of intestinal gas through the anus and is as common and important a biological process as say blinking…then why is there the stigma attached to it …maybe because of the odor it emanates …

Wouldn’t it be nice if we accept these biological functions as normal and stop attaching the stigma to them? A world filled with farters and belchers and crotch scratchers !!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

2007-01-17T10:07:00.000+05:30

Latchkey life

How perspectives change when u live alone...

somehow my idea of havin the whole house to myself was a decadent one of sleeping into late afternoons, occasional making out sessions with random strangers in different rooms and peace ....instead i find myslef wakin early ,worrying about the day, leading my usual chaste life and being subjected to the tension of the houshold help arriving late...i rush out of office before 9 pm so that i find the vegetable stalls open and can make throwaway bargains...even on a very very rare day when i am out partyin with friends i spend half the evening wondering if i have really locked the door before rushing out to meet a deadline...

however there is somethin quaint about walking into an empty apartment..., especially when i know this is how rest of my life is going to be...

when u turn the key to a satisfyin click on your door things somehow seem to be right...

2007-01-06T20:30:00.001+05:30

Shey je boshe achche...

Alone he sits by the window knitting a scarf of colorful dreams …
His eyes belying his smile…
And old haggard clouds mock him with showers of tears…
A wet crow tries to waggle all hope away...
Yet the dream factory churns out hope of different shapes and sizes…
And the humming sunlight of his heart shines through the rain…

2007-01-06T09:58:00.000+05:30

The Hours...

I remember one morning...
getting up at dawn...
there was such a sense of possibility!
You know? That feeling?
And...and I remember thinking to myself:
"So this is the beginning of happiness..."
"This is where it starts!"
"And, of course, there'll always be more."
Never occurred to me
it wasn't the beginning,
It was happiness.
It was the moment...

2006-12-31T15:29:00.000+05:30

2007 or something like it …

I might spread a new bed sheet on my bed … I might redo my room… I might get myself a new wardrobe... I might even delete all those mushy e mails to my ex from my system…
But these lil exercises won’t make the year looming large at us new …indeed the year we are all so eager to welcome might only end up being an irritating thing to get used to while writing cheques…

What I need is a miracle to help me welcome the New Year with unbridled, innocent anticipation…

So here is to miracles…

Happy New Year folks …

Or if u are me welcome to another year in limboland…

and for u the suckers for mush ...

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.

525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?

How about love?

Measure in love.

Seasons of love.

525,600 minutes!

525,000 journeys to plan.

525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?

In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried.

In bridges he burned, or the way that she died.

It’s time now to sing out, tho the story never ends let's celebrate remember a year in the life of friends.

Remember the love!

Remember the love! Remember the love!

Measure in love....

(from the OST of the lovely "Rent")

2006-12-27T16:59:00.000+05:30

somethings in life are best left unsaid...

2006-12-26T22:19:00.000+05:30

2006-12-24T12:17:00.000+05:30

From the archives...

this is one of my favorite posts...not because it's a well written one (modesty be damned) or because it elicited an all time high of 22 comments ...but because its me ....

On September 3 1973 a blue fly capable of flapping 70 beats a minute landed on St.Vincent Street in Montmartre. At that moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a table cloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th floor flat on Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9 returning from his fiend’s funeral Eugene Colere erased him from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome belonging to Raphael Poulain made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. Nine months later Amelie Poulain was born …Amelie who likes looking back at people’s faces in the dark in the cinema …Amelie who likes noticing details that no one does …Amelie who cultivates a taste for small pleasures like dipping her hand in a sack of grain (cold and grainy) cracking crème brulee with a teaspoon (the blob sound is so satisfying)…Amelie who wonders how many people are having an orgasm at this very moment (72... on second thoughts make that 36).On honeyed afternoons when the world seems to be bathed in the most cheerful of yellows I try and invoke the Amelie in me…Amelie is my Movie of the Week.

2006-12-23T23:22:00.000+05:30

Carcapades

Disclaimer ...to some this post may seem to be a bit too explicit by my hitherto staid standards…

“We made out in the car and that’s a wonderful way to start a festive week don’t u think??” he said … blink blink …( ok its not as if I am entirely unexposed to the idea of ppl makin out in public places and stuff …but this is a frnd for chrissake … u don’t think of friends as lean mean sex machines romping about the Delhi suburbs …they are ppl u share benign cups of coffee with and discuss love lives antiseptically unless its Ugly girL who regales us with the nitty grittys of her sexcapades )
and yet I kept probing further …
asking him about almost everything… the sights, sounds, smells … and like all men he was only too happy to oblige… it was not as if I was sexually aroused by the narration of his amorous exploits… I was plain curious… so I asked him irrelevant questions like if there were dogs barking nearby (yes there were, in fact three dogs creating a ruckus outside) … did he have his car light on? if he didn’t how did he manage to see the person he was making out with ( he didn’t have to see the person he said …that way it was more kinky ) cud he hear the hawkers (there weren’t any hawkers around , he had slyly parked his car in a secluded spot in the JNU campus)…even as I was prying I declared myself a voyeur…but no, there was something vicariously moral about my queries … I think I have finally managed to detach the titillating element from sex …and see it simply as an act …
or maybe I haven’t …
but I sure was not jerking off after the tete a tete...

2006-12-18T22:56:00.000+05:30

My Happy Dog Eared Bookmark…

Left from AJC Bose Rd. Crossing, next to Bhawanipore College is the bookshop your dreams, points out the book mark in grids of arrows and lines…sigh…in this word of ready- to- eat Dal Bukhara and online bookings, bookmarks aren’t bookmarks anymore …nor are books books… NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE cries the cover of a recently adapted popular novel …as if the adaptation was the other way around…but this isn’t a post on the commercialization of books and bookmarks in specific, and reading habit in general, at least that’s not what I mean it to be, if it ends up being a comment on the phenomenon then it is entirely incidental (but my saying so defies the statement doesn’t it?)

This post was supposed to be a part of my musings on little things like browned saucepans (I love my tea post) and dog eared bookmarks…how I love talking about them … these little things which makes me feel at home by simply being… so familiar…

My Dog eared bookmark has for months yearned for the warmth and embrace of pages …a self imposed sabbatical from working life (read joblessness) has ensured that it gets a lot action …

Yay for my dog eared bookmark…

Sigh… am losing it …

2006-12-16T19:48:00.000+05:30

My tea…her tea…

Kiran Desai’s Booker acknowledged Inheritance of Loss opens with a quaint chapter on the ritual of afternoon tea…the lighting of the stove…the gurgling of the tea kettle…and the obstinate but lazy need for boiled camellia leaves… Kiran Desai captures it all and more, and in the process makes me romanticize a daily ritual which probably doesn’t deserve the dignity of the written word…but yet when I picture myself bending over the humble browned sauce pan adjusting the flame, adding a dash of sugar and pouring the whiteness to the golden brownness (it always breaks my heart to see the golden hue of unpolluted black tea disappear in the muddiness of milk infestation), I smile…
I smile at the fundamental difference in taste between a mother and a son ….she likes her tea with milk and I like the homogenized version…
I smile at the magic that these humble leaves create when they blend with water ….oozing out a subtle and aromatic flavor that has pleased discerning taste buds for centuries…
And more than anything else I smile at the chipped cup which i refuse to throw away coz i have grown up drinking tea out of it ...

2006-11-28T23:37:00.000+05:30

of honey and sweetness....

sweet ole bips ( a very dear frnd ) had once read one of my angst ridden posts and observed that it is "slow and sensuous pouring of emotions ...very much like fiona" ...though i dont have any such illusions about my rather plebeian writing skills ,thanks to her very generous comment i discovered fiona...and boy am i hooked...

You moved like honey in my dream last night
Yeah, some old fires were burning
You came near to me and you endeared to me
But you couldnt quite discern me
Does that scare you?
Ill let you run away
But your heart will not oblige you
Youll remember me like a melody
Yeah, Ill haunt the world inside you
And my big secret - gonna win you over
Slow like honey, heavy with mood
Ill let you see me,
Ill covet your regard
Ill invade your demeanor
And youll yield to me like a scent in the breeze
And youll wonder what it is about meI
ts my big secret - keeping you coming
Slow like honey, heavy with mood
Though dreams can be deceiving
Like faces are to hearts
They serve for sweet relieving
When fantasy and reality lie too far apart
So I stretch myself across, like a bridge
And I pull you to the edge
And stand there waiting
Trying to attainT
he end to satisfy the story
Shall I release you?
Must I release you?
As I rise to meet my glory
But my big secret
Gonna hover over your life
Gonna keep you reaching
When Im gone like yesterday
When Im high like heaven
When Im strong like music
cuz Im slow like honey,
andHeavy with mood

2006-11-22T22:53:00.000+05:30

Touch …

I brush past…
I push …
I jostle…
I squirm…
But rarely do I touch…
But when you embrace me with your eyes
When you look up…
Why oh why do I fade out?

2006-11-15T17:51:00.000+05:30

My Film Festival

this is an excerpt of my report on the Kolkata Film Festival ...it was rejected ...the person in charge of the website felt its was just a series of comments by the bystanders...my attempt was to string together the Film Festival story...

look at me am the quintessential whiney writer...

Long after the dust settles on Nandan grounds, the flavor of the sumptuous film feast will linger in the mouths of cinephiles. The Kolkata Film Festival is a veritable feast, which leaves its patrons hungry for more, and this year the feast was particularly well laid out. The discerning jury members like fussy Chefs, ensured that only the freshest and choicest of films were served.

Many People…Many Voices…

On every second week of November people from all walks of life in Kolkata come together for a cause célèbre; a week of celluloid revelry through which Kolkata celebrates her most enduring aspect: her mythical middle class intellectual who swears by Godard and dotes on Fellini.

Therefore one wouldn’t be too off the mark if one decides to track the “mythical intellectual” in the melee of Nandan Multiplex grounds. Armed with a note pad and a pen, yours truly decided to hunt him/her down and the results were surprising to say the least.

Sample these-

Aditya Mondol, a constable with the Kolkata Police, who has been posted as security personnel in the Nandan Complex (where most of the films were screened), says “ I would love to watch movies from different parts of the world, but I also realize that as a security person my duty is to ensure that cinema lovers of Kolkata do not face any trouble. So I am not complaining, I love reading the brochures…I thrive in this atmosphere”.

Anubhati Basu, a student of cinema rues the lack of enthusiasm among the youth. She feels that “Cinema, or for that matter any form of art, cannot survive without the patronage of the youth. The fact that none of my classmates are here is very significant, and I am disillusioned…”

Nihar Gupta, a businessman, says, “The film festival is a good place to see uncensored films.”

Shakuntala Barua, a popular film and television actress feels that the Film Festival is a pilgrimage for her. She finds the experience of discovering different films and cultures “humbling”.

Jigme Bhutia, content writer, is here because it’s a “cool place to be seen in. I fail to understand why should we treat the festival as a pilgrimage. After all it’s about people isn’t it? Why make it a pretentious orgy of intellectual musings?”

Parambrata Chatterjee, a popular actor and an up and coming filmmaker, feels that the Festival like everything in Kolkata is a celebration of its people. “ It’s like a Puja Pandal here and that’s wonderful. I love discovering new films here…” like a true student of cinema, this young filmmaker loves studying the subtler nuances of filmmaking. He finds the prospects of discovering new cultures through films “ exciting and inspiring”.

Arpita Bagchi and Siddharth Bagchi have been patrons of this festival from its very inception. They were regulars in the quadrennial International Film Festival of India (which is now an annual event in Goa) too. Their love for cinema is enduring to say the least. As Mrs.Bagchi fondly reminiscences “I still remember the joy of discovering Godard, Bergman and Adoor Gopalakrishnan…the festival is something we eagerly look forward to every year.”

Dipak Das, a tea seller in the Festival Grounds says “ I have served cups of tea to many luminaries with my own hands during the Kolkata Film Festival. I probably am not educated enough to fully comprehend their work but I make it a point to see them. Initially they didn’t make sense but today I think Bergman is a beautiful filmmaker.”

Chandan Sen a reputed theatre personality feels that the Film Festival is a good platform to “understand the thought process of the world personae.”
Probably, in between these somewhat conflicting views, I have found the true (and not the mythical) Kolkata Intellectual…or at least his/her shadow

2006-11-14T22:50:00.000+05:30

Signals...

Hardly do Kolkata roads hold as much promise from me as they do when I take an auto home from office every evening…the billows of smoke that carbon monoxide spewing buses blow on/in (?) my face don’t seem to be that bothersome…the irritable cab driver who insists that I pay him in impossible changes seems almost likable…and all these because of the assurance of a sanctuary to retire to…
And today my journey home was quite significant…. as the traffic signal turned green from red, everything seemed to make more sense…wonder what was keeping me from taking necessary steps…
The signal of course….

2006-11-03T13:28:00.000+05:30

Elizabeth, Darcy and more ....

Ahem ahem. …Encouraged by the somewhat unexpected response to my last post (4 comments as opposed to 0 comments on my last post …pathetic u say??? what to do am a man of mediocre ambitions) on a favorite classic adaptation I will take the liberty to critique another eternal favorite…

Jane Austen's delightful rendering of passion in polite society has inspired many an adaptation but the 1995 one, stands out not simply because of the canvas it employs to tell a story so heartwarming that it has touched the hearts of generations, but also because of the way it is told.

Austens six major published novels create a world within the world, the threat of the ensuing wars of that period and other socio political circumstances do cast their shadow over the dramatic flow of the novels but hardly so. One is reminded of them through an absentee family member or a dead one. But the world of Jane Austen is primarily that of a woman’s, Austen a wise and a judicious writer that she is, is believed to have said that since she had very little exposure to the outside worlds she could hardly write about them.

And this version of Austens arguably, greatest novel, plays on that very clash; that of the inner and the outer worlds, depicted brilliantly by use of spaces by the director. Elizabeth and her dilemmas find their way to the screen through the subtlest insinuations. We, the audience are enthralled by director Simon Langtons capacity to capture the inner conflicts of the characters through visual metaphors. Sample this- Elizabeth’s walks are important turning points of the film; the juxtaposition of her against the sprawling backdrops makes her a kind of a lone ranger, an iconoclast.

Jane Austen’s heroines were never overtly feminists, but in them a keen reader will notice the seeds of the feminist philosophy developing. Through their little way they defy the norms of the repressed English society of their times. Simon Langton’s Elizabeth exudes “a kind of self independent air “ which makes her quite detestable to the Bingley sisters, her gait and her mannerisms are not at all in keeping with the delicate movements that one associates with the women of that period. Her body language is distinctly more confident than all the other characters, both male and female.

Darcy is appropriately grave and smoldering but in him one sees the shadows of self-doubt and self-questioning (specially in his conversations with Elizabeth) that gives another dimension to the character. Interestingly the director chooses to sexualize Darcy’s character by making him emerge out of water (a la Bo Derek in 10 …ok maybe not that sexualized). One wonders if his intention to objectify Darcy was intentional….

Pride and Prejudice was always meant to be much more than the story of the realization of Darcy-Elizabeth love intrigue. Its as much a story of the other unions, namely that of Jane-Bingley, Mr.and Mrs.Bennet, Charlotte and Mr.Collins, Mr. And Mrs Gardener and of course Lydia-Wickham. The director rightly documents the development of these relationships as faithfully as possible.
The Bennet family is suitably dysfunctional, headed by an eccentric father and a hysterical, scheming, shallow, crude mother (Mrs.Bennet is not for nothing one of the most loved literary figures of all time). Mr.Collins seems to be a case of a masterstroke casting, for the actor lives the role. Thanks to the four-hour plus running time each and every character gets ample screen time to register growth.
All the actors more than rise to the occasion and deliver satisfactory performances, never trying to steal scenes from each other. The intention of each and every member of the cast and the crew of this production was obviously to produce a composite product instead of a patchily brilliant one.
Incidents that give an insight to the minds of the characters are of incredible importance in a novel, but most cinematic adaptations strangely choose to bypass them, focusing more on the dramatic flow of the film, this adaptation thankfully focuses on the incidents that shape the perception of a character i.e. the Charlotte -Elizabeth confrontation scene which ends with Elizabeth being disillusioned with the “pragmatic” Charlotte.
The BBC version of Pride and Prejudice is indeed a satisfying movie adaptation experience, especially to the sub genre of human race called “Pride and Prejudice-philes”. God knows we are hard to satisfy.
Here is to you Mr.Langton, your next fruit punch is on me.

2006-10-22T22:58:00.000+05:30

Little Women...

Nostalgia does bring out the worst in us…horrible bouts of sweepy,sentimental ramblings that we are so susceptible to, tend to overwhelm and in retrospect embarrass us…but still I shall succumb… today I viewed the 1994 adaptation Louis May Alcott’s fabulous Little Women after a long long time, apart from being a remarkably faithful and yet insightful adaptation ( the director successfully captures Laurie’s sexual tension layered chemistry, with each of the March sisters), it also happens to be one of the family favorites…we quite fancied ourselves to be the March family…sigh…me my sister and her friends…with me playing an androgynous cross of Laurie and Amy (Amy coz I was the youngest )…the sentimentalist in my sister quite liked embracing the tragic character of Beth …and there was a little bit of Joe in all of us…
It also takes me back to those heydays of reading with such unbridled frenzy…of those gilt edged pages of classics like Little Women, Secret Garden and Huckleberry Finn…and those unreasonable myths about peacock feathers doubling when kept in between pages…
Am already regretting this post….
But what the heck …

2006-10-17T15:25:00.000+05:30

Celebrations!!!

As my city’s weathered soul wriggles towards, what the pundits want to call a metamorphosis I can see celebrations all around me…a puddle full of a promoters unfelt guilt plays host to the revelries of dengue causing mosquitoes… open drains gurgle past perfectly respectable middle class neighborhoods in such unbridled glory that they would put Le Corbusier’s carefully designed fountains to shame… and more than anything the populace is celebrating its right to relieve itself anywhere, anytime; school walls, road dividers, electric poles you name a corner and its most likely that an on- the-move Kolkata man is relieving himself there at that very moment…why go to Bohemia for self expression when u have millions of men painting the wall with what seems to be the expressions of their innermost being…

Yay my city is celebrating!!!

2006-10-08T13:19:00.000+05:30

Of Sunday afternoons and pointless introspections…

It's Sunday afternoon… The sun is shining and you're relaxing on the couch reading the paper or book you couldn't get into during the week right???

WRONG!!!

Typing out substandard pages on nondescript painters who no one one wants to know about anyway, is more like it…you are, like all slaves of the IT industry, making up for Holidays…welcome to the soulless world of capitalism, where everything is in “lieu” of something…. and suddenly u feel your shoulders tensing up and this dark fog of rage tingle up your spine… “This is not what I bargained for,” you say to yourself “they have *beep*up my *beeping* life” …they don’t care about quality… all they want is pages …and what about my dreams of making the world a better place to live in and all that jazz??? They don’t want to change the world…and I CANT change the world by writing about painters…not unless my answer for world peace is free art classes…
This is where you ask yourself “when exactly did I sell my soul for the price of what now seems like a ridiculously paltry pay packet???” tchah I should have made a better bargain…”

2006-09-15T21:48:00.000+05:30

Babel
disambiguation
-a film
-a state of mind

A friend demands that I blog more often…being denied our regular heart to hearts we feel that the only way to understand what’s going on in each others mind is by reading blogs(bah... its a futile exercise only)"but"I protested “I have nothing to say”, “well” she retorted “u never ever say anything at all in ur blog” (I know that bitch was rolling her eyes when she said that)…
After a lot of introspection I realized that, yes I write/talk without pretty much saying anything at all (like am doing now)…but then it isn’t a bad thing at all is it ???Inthis babel of voices and opinions nothing makes sense anyway…

Babel se yaad aaya cant wait to watch the Alejandro González Iñárritu film ....

2006-09-11T01:55:00.000+05:30

Riding the auto with Shukla, Bula and Minati
or Vex and the City

It was a perfectly normal Bengali evening …or should I say Kolkata evening …well since both of them are interchangeable it hardly matters (no matter how cosmopolitan it pretends to be, Kolkata is essentially a very Bengali city)…haa so as I was saying it was a very Bengali evening…overcast muggy and the air heavy with a promise of a momentarily relieving shower…the mugginess was very Kolkatalike (you know, the-shirt-sticking- to- your- back-which- in -turn –sticks- to- the- Rexine seat cover muggy…)
And as millions of Kolkatawasis went about mentally devising and scouting their sashti, saptami ashtami couture I too got into the puja groove…
Armed with my first pre-puja salary cheque I made my way to the Shyambazar branch of my conveniently late -evening -service- providing bank….Shyambazar, as any Kolkatan worth his Golbari chicken will tell you, is the fountainhead of the North Kolkata milieu…thousands…nay millions of middle class Bengalis throng its by lanes for all their daily needs- for their banking needs (like yours truly), for shopping and of course for buying those lovely brocade costumes for their little bal gopals…
As I boarded my auto rickshaw from Ultadanga (a very reassuringly centrally located north kolkata junction…reassuring because its only 5 mins away from my home and the moment I get there I know I am almost home…) I wasn’t even aware of the other occupants of the rickshaw (rickshaws are almost always shared in kolkata)…was unconsciously humming a Himesh Reshamiya song and realized what I was doing (much to my chagrin) only when the something more interesting caught my attention …
The other occupants of the vehicle were discussing their puja shopping and husbands…now all through my growing up years I have been reprimanded, chided and ear boxed for listening to adult women talk …but I still shamelessly do so whenever I get the opportunity…women have so much to tell and most of it is so much more interesting than boring old men discussing their ailments, or if they happen to be bong men, their bowel movements…
So I perked up my ears, put on my disinterested look and eavesdropped to their conversation…

There were three thirty something married women (it’s very easy to distinguish a bong married woman by her shakha and pala) with their kids who were obviously out for some shopping after having picked their kids up from school…

“A ladies night out” …I said to myself and smiled as I pictured them walking down the Shyambazar roads a la Sex and the City …none of them in any way resembled Kim Cattrall or Sarah Jessica Parker of course but they were attractive in their own way …the first one was a squat little lady in a salwar kameez …pretty much the Samatha of the group, loud vociferous and brazen she had an air of wildness about her, the other two were both dressed in sari on wore specs and the other had bad teeth …chingri maach (shrimp) like…
To make things convenient, let’s name them …tee hee…I love naming characters…Samantha is….Shukla…the lady with specs is Bula and the shrimp toothed lady is Minati…

From their exchanges and the obvious familiarity I gathered they have been friends for a long time, maybe they were childhood friends…maybe they went to the same school…maybe they wore the definitive red bordered saris to school and saved precious rupees from their pocket money to buy a grand bottle of Gold Spot and some Hajmola candies every week…maybe they exchanged post card pictures of Govinda (na Mithun is more likely no considering it must have been the eighties) and giggled over his barechestedness as their overworked teacher caught up with some precious sleep in sultry afternoon classes…maybe they had discussed their first adolescent kisses behind closed doors as one of their mothers made omelets and tea for them…

Sigh… I digress…so were we??? Yes they were discussing shopping and husbands…Shukla aka Samantha went on about her purchases and how enthusiastic her seemingly metrosexual husband is to pick up clothes for her…a visibly piqued Minati retorted that her husband was magnanimous enough to give her a free reign of the shopping and didn’t interfere at all, making it clear that she didn’t appreciate any kind of male interference in what obviously is a female bastion…and then Shukla dropped her bombshell she very gleefully announced that her husband picked up skirts and jeans for her and goaded her to wear them… no one had a suitable retort to that…poor Bula seemed quite vexed with the proclamation …she very hesitantly asked if wearing skirts will be considered inappropriate…at which both her friends laughed…and then she went on to ask she whether she will have to buy petticoats and slips to go with them…clearly Bulas quaint world of five sarees and a salwar kameez was shattered forever…I couldn’t help giving them a smile as I disembarked the auto…but they didn’t notice …Minati and Shukla were busy explaining the technicalities of skirt wearing to Bula……

2006-08-29T12:27:00.000+05:30

Of gajars and steel Tiffin boxes…

A self-prescribed diet has had somewhat satisfactory results for me (ask someone who has been plagued with three tiers around his stomach what it means to achieve two tierdom…) but this satisfaction came at a cost (whoever said that there is a free ride to success was probably blow jobbing his/her {isnt it wonderful to be politically correct is such contexts ...tee hee}way to glory)…and the cost came in the shape of a phallic root vegetable (there is an impressive term for root vegetables which I cant for the life of me remember)…gajar or carrot…

Much to the amusement of my chole bature (yumm), Chow chow (we Bengalis call noodles chow chow …we are a weird race aren’t we …sigh…) and alu paratha-devouring colleagues my tiffin comprises gajar and cucumber (and the fact that the box happens to be a quaint lil steel one doesn’t help either)…so obviously have managed to become a lunchtime outcast in the office (they crack gajar jokes behind my back) …sigh…

Social stigma apart gajar has been a bane of my existence in many different ways…it doesn’t suit my system you see…causes …errm… lets say …acidity…

So after much consultation (with my friendly neighborhood sabziwalla, who insists that he will provide me with a tastier, cheaper alternative) have decided that …

Its goodbye gajar

And hello radish…:)

2006-08-29T10:30:00.000+05:30

An indignant Utpal Dutt to J. Om Prakash when he is wrongly accused of being a smuggler (those were the innocent days of smugglers, smugglers who would smuggle <>gold biscuits and if he happened to be sinister… this happened only in Ramesh Sippy movies…then he smuggled … gasp…hashish) -“Aap Police Officer nahi, aap foolish officer hai…”(You aren’t a police officer, you are a foolish officer)-Gol Maal (1979)

An embarrassed Jaya Bhadhuri answers, when her elder sister questions her about the ring that her boy friend (who the sister thinks, is a married man) has given her (the ring has his initial -S)- “woh mera naam hain na Vasudha v-a-S-u-d-h-a usi ka S hai” (the S stands for the S in my name v-a-S-u-d-h-a) Chupke Chupke (1975)

Utpal Dutt wants to confront a petrified Dina Pathak but is faced with the Herculean challenge of being able to sit on the moving swing she is perched on. Gol Maal (1979)

Amol Palekar to Utpal Dutt (punning on the moustache imbroglio): "Aapke aur mere beech baal barabar bhi deewar na khadi ho paaye (No wall, not even one as thin as a strand of hair, should form a barrier between us)." Gol Maal (1979)

Hrishikesh Mukherjee the master of Wodehousian comedies is dead…
With him dies Bollywood’s ability to create a space where the middle class man/woman (oof am done being politically correct…waitaminute person seems good enough)…middle class person then J… could throw his/her/ their head back and laugh at himself/herself/themselves (pheww)
Bbye Hrishida (is it presumptuous of me to address him with this term of endearment??? And much too corny too don’t u think…. sigh….)

2006-08-24T13:24:00.000+05:30

Malaise

Disclaimer; any kind of judgment being passed on me based on my innermost thoughts will be incredibly unfair…on second thoughts go ahead judge me whatdoicare…hmmmph…

Its one of those days when u discover your fecundness (I wanted to use the word "prolificness" but this annoying MS word insists that there is no such word and innumerable embarrassing incidents have taught me that MS word is almost always right when it comes to spelling and words)…little failures make u think and ponder over your abilities, but if u are me they take u to this incredible pall of malicious gloom where you questions the ability of those around you and make you dismiss them without even giving them a flicker of a chance (oh he is this upstart wannabe who shamelessly sucks up to the boss, she isn’t even from a proper college… she is after all, ridiculously ugly and has to let her work speak for her)…. am hoping penning this down will help me come in terms with that very malaise of mine….

2006-08-24T11:46:00.000+05:30

Desire des yeux

A rain swept office afternoon
And my glare stained eyes
Pines
For a splash of ciefl
Will you? Shall you? Can you?
Asks my weathered mind
As I gather the strength
To revert to a state of indecision
From a state of decaying status quo

2006-08-22T11:39:00.000+05:30

The other day (people like me are infinitely grateful for such phrases as “other day”, makes our inability to remember dates seem so …philosophical) a friend of mine (well she is not exactly a friend, its just that a bunch of us got along very well when we met in Pune when we went there for an interview about 3 yrs ago and have bothered to keep in touch ever since) emailed me (well it was more of a group mail) saying how happy she was with her husband attached a few “hum saath saath hai” snaps of her family (she also very significantly and disturbingly attached a disclaimer to the mail which said that she knows that her husband is better looking than her and she is all the more happier for it)… this particular email was the latest in the series of Latvia ‘s (that’s obviously not her name but I love the ring of it, and yes I know it’s the name of a Balkan country, so I wanna pseudonym my friend after a country…kill me for it) “Great Indian Wedding” series…this particular series started about a year ago when Latvia (tee hee) suddenly out of blue, mailed announcing(much to our dismay) that she is getting married in a weeks time and will not continue with her mass comm. degree from a perfectly respectable institute (I specify the respectability of the institute coz its important for me) …much to the annoyance of the feminists in us she went on to say she obviously wont work after her marriage and will keep house for her “wonderful” husband….this mail was followed by other mails at regular intervals which kept us updated with each and every significant event of her married life…the stress was always on/ in (?) the happiness factor…she would never forget to mention how happy she was …now the cynic in me drew my own morbid conclusions-unhappy, unfulfilled life tantamount to a superficial show of happiness…add to that her “my husband better looking than me comment” and you have a minor tragedy in your hand ( my eyes actually did well up after reading that particular statement) but then is saw the snaps …and she did actually seem ….happy…and her husband really was…better looking (this may seem horrendously politically incorrect but he really was )…

So why then the need to constantly establish her happiness??? I decided to read through our exchanges…and found the answer…it was me...I made her do that (and maybe many other “so called” liberated friends of hers)…my cynicism was so palpable in my mails that its not funny…she was only trying to reassure us that she neednt live up to our definition of happiness to be happy …she has found happiness in what we may think to be a constricting life…who am I /we to question that…
Here is to u and your better-looking husband Latvia …may u always be “happy”….

2006-08-05T23:47:00.000+05:30

well...i work now...let me rephrase that... i write...
am supposedly a travel writer...
but i write about paintings...
surprised ???
well dont be...life is full of lil mishaps like me...
this is one of the sadder pieces i wrote ...but i like it coz its about an art form i was quite happy to discover...i wont go on about constrictive nature of writin for website (the repetitive use of certain keywords)

Thangka Paintings

Thangka Paintings are composite three-dimensional products of art, which derive their themes from Buddhist philosophies. They are essentially religious objects and are of great significance to the Tibetan Buddhists. These beautifully crafted banners are generally hung on monastery walls; they are also an integral part of Buddhist religious processions.

The Tibetan word “ Thang” means a flat surface, which when suffixed with “ ka ”( painting) means “a flat painting” or a “painting on a flat surface”. These paintings are generally done on flat surfaces but they offer the option of being rolled up when not being displayed, a la scroll paintings.

Thangka-the structure

A Thangka comprises a painted or embroidered picture panel, a mounting, which is further embellished with a silk cover, wooden dowels at the top and bottom, leather corners and beautiful metal or wooden decorative knobs on the bottom dowel.

The Philosophy behind the Thangka Paintings

Most art forms, specially the religious ones hardly ever follow the doctrine of artistic intent, rarely, if ever, do they display personal vision and creativity. The overwhelming Buddhist Philosophy dominates the theme and execution of these paintings. Little wonder that most Thangka Painters have remained anonymous, as have the tailors who have made the mountings.
Essentially, Thangkas are records or pictorial depictions of contemplative experiences. Buddhist monks when instructed by their teachers to imagine themselves in specific situation for meditations, use the Thangkas as their reference point.

The themes of Thangka Paintings

Most Thangka Paintings have the tri-dimensional Mandala as the centerpiece. A geometrical representation of the universe, the Mandalas, depicts the enlightened minds and souls of revered Buddhist monks. Most Mandalas have the venerated deity Vajrakaliya or Vajrakumara as the focal point. This fearful deity has the power to transform acts of cowardice and selfishness into acts of wisdom and compassion. He is considered to be a great source of will power for the monks who have to lead ascetic lives. Other religious deities and iconographies too find their place in this complex yet geometrically flawless mode of art.
Some Thangkas represent the deity Shakyamuni in different imaginary places like palaces and secluded monasteries.
Most of these paintings have a complex web of minor figures that signify different aspects of the dominant philosophy. One has to cross various levels of earthly temptations, spiritual redundancy and physical moorings, to reach the center of perfection, which is represented by the deity Shakyamuni. The colors and style of Thangka Paintings
Thangkas, primarily have black, gold and red backgrounds. Some however use multicolored backgrounds too, but they are a rarity. They are mostly painted on cotton canvases and the canvas is tempered with herbal solutions before the painting. The colors used are natural water-soluble pigments. Most Thangkas employ the mathematics of geometry to create systematic grids of angles and lines. These lines are embellished with colorful figures of monks, flora and fauna. The vast palate of colors is used but the dominant ones certainly has to be red, gold, orange and blue. Blue is the color to represent certain deities. The brushstrokes are delicate yet confident and these paintings are characterized by their fluidity.

Thangka Paintings in India

The ancient art of Thangka Paintings is practiced in Buddhist dominated areas of India. Dharmashala , which has a sizable settlement of Tibetans, can be called the hotbed of Thangka Painting in India.
The west has seen Thangka as nothing more than a decorative art piece for all these years this perception is thankfully changing as the west is gradually being sensitized to the Buddhist Philosophy.

2006-07-15T22:00:00.000+05:30

It's a traffic jam when you're already late…

Things do go wrong …and boy does that bug you…just when u hope everything will work out …things go woefully wrong…like timing your journey to the last second so that u don’t have to face the dreadful perpetually belching, bowel- movement -discussing Calcutta suburban railway crowd…and the train u take happens to be the most crowded one coz the previous two have been cancelled…

It’s a good advice that u just didn’t take…

U scamper in unsure, scared and extremely vulnerable…but u decide to put up a brave front…u wont be a sitting duck, u tell urself…u will give it back to them, these hardened local train veterans, so as they go about their card playing huddles and vendor harassing sessions, u tentatively try to get a toehold…and then u look around…only to catch a burly man staring at u and then u look away and then again u look up and *gasp* he beckons to u …SEXUAL HARASSMENT u want to scream …but keeping in mind the homophobic nature of the suburbs u try and restrain urself and look away muttering abuses under ur breath…the train comes to a halt and the burly man brushes past u telling u “arre bhai bhalai ka toh zamaana hi nahi raha , seat de rahe they aapko” ( seeing my discomfiture he was offering me his seat as he was anyway disembarking in the next stop) …sigh…

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on youLife has a funny, funny way of helping you outHelping you out…

U reconcile to the idea of being hustled and bustled all through the 2 hour long journey and begin to take some kinda perverse pleasure from bodily contact (who am I kiddin u hate it )…u begin to take notice of the delightful samples of humanity and gleefully mindmark them …a vendor offering a “world famous in India” deal catches ur attention …he is offerin a comb, a set of 10 ballpoint pens and an issue of cosmopolitan for all of 10 bucks …a steal by any standards… as u try and connect his wares and draw up an endearing mental picture of a suburban long tressed Bengali housewife combing her hair while jottin down recipes with a pen from the issue of cosmopolitan …and u wake up from ur reverie to find an almost empty compartment, u blink ur eyes in disbelief and then seat urself in a comfortable corner saying to urself-

It is ironic …
I really do think…

2006-07-11T23:26:00.000+05:30

Threptin Dadu…

Sometimes people tend to be associated with things…this holds specially true for people whose idiosyncrasies overtake their persona…
My grandfather meant a lot of things to me …but even today when I close my eyes and think about him I can smell the wonderful scent of cigarettes mixed with brylcreem and Johnson baby lotion…
Of his weird habits which were supplemented with weird things…the capstan cigarette papers that he always used…the blue packet of tobacco that he made me rush to the neighbourhood pan shops for…his aversion to certain spices (garam masala and coconut) which he insisted he was allergic to but my grandma persistently put them in her delightful curries (for she could never compromise on taste) without his knowledge…and surprise of surprises, he never was affected…his packet of threptin biscuits which he believed were the only safe biscuits to eat in this spurious goods infested market (we wud never touch that saw -dust tasting things despite of his repeated cajoling) and of course that grotesque tasting toothpaste called emoform which so much looked like a tube of shaving cream that even today I have my doubts whether my grandpa has been using shaving cream as a tooth paste all his life (that wud explain his yellowing teeth )…his firm belief that all these electronic water purifying gadgets were hogwash and the only way to get pure water was to use the contraption called zero b…

Nirmalendu Bhattacharya, my grandfather was 74 yrs old when he breathed his last breath…I didn’t get to see him alive after I bid him goodbye two years ago…
Come back Dadu, this time I will have the threptin biscuits… I promise…

2006-06-30T00:17:00.000+05:30

The Seventh Seal

The other Bergman film which has really moved me is, of course his eternal classic “The Seventh Seal”…I talk about it in one of my assignments …here is an excerpt…

When I sit down to write this assignment after having sampled the work of both Bergman and Tarkovsky, I can’t help but put my feelings in words… While Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by what I call “meditative plodding”, Bergman's films are tighter - he is able to more effectively advance his own doubts and speculations to a dramatic end - and also, his body of work more diverse. Bergman's films are disturbing, funny, eerie, tragic, and always well-paced, no matter how introspective the subject matter.
The Seventh Seal is the first film that comes to ones mind (at least mine) when one talks about his effective way of giving a resolution to dramatic tension.
Towards the end of the film, after the storm has blown over and Joff and his family are shown to have survived it, Joff is witness to the eerie dance of death-one of the best…no probably the best silhouette shot I have ever seen- and he doesn’t seem to be horrified or shocked by it, on the contrary, he obviously is mesmerized by it.
And that is the true resolution of the film for me, the same visionary Joff who was so intimidated by Deaths presenc’e, that he had to escape the group (one could also attribute this decision to his good sense), seems to be the ideal audience of this dance…for he has learnt the most valuable lesson of his life, that death is a perpetually around but the gift given to mankind is his ability to live as though he is immortal.
Joff and Mia (one can’t help but draw parallels with Joseph and Mary) are the quintessential survivors; because they are blessed with the innocence of a well rounded domestic life…they will form communities. But the Squire and the Knight are the peripheral figures: they can never be a part of communities, because they have been tainted by knowledge…which is why the scene where Mia offers him strawberry and milk, is so poignant, the Knight who is initially reluctant to accept, eventually gives in to the warmth of the domestic scene, only to realize that Death and a game of chess is waiting for him.
The Knight, in The Seventh Seal, seems to me more of a Tarkovskian character, because he seems to be philosophizing as much as the director…many a times in the movie one feels that , the Knight has reached his philosophical limit and can now only gaze into the unknown…
The Squire, who is as much of a thinker as the Knight, seems to be less challenged (probably because he does not have death hovering over his shoulder), he is someone who seems to think without philosophizing…
Bergman like Tarkovsky, produces brilliant visual metaphors, but unlike Tarkovsky they are not self generating, they are conscious and cryptically are so…the dance of death metaphor in The Seventh Seal is a recurrent one, through frescos and other little pointers, Bergman leads us to the climactic spectacle.
His other, more obvious visual metaphors, like death playing chess, are more subjective…to me it means that life is like a game of chess where everything is leading to one inevitable resolution, death…
One might wonder why am I copy pasting my assignments in my blog …well firstly because I want to talk about these things(don’t roll ur eyes I really do) and secondly and more importantly coz I have been giving my blog link to my interviewers…impression ka sawaal hai…

2006-06-23T01:02:00.000+05:30

After a particularly bitter argument with my mother today, I sought solace in a Bergman movie (not a very good idea as anyone who has seen anything by Bergman will tell you)…the film I chose to watch was, not very surprisingly, Autumn Sonata…now before I go on to discuss the movie I need to give a background, in other words a detailed account of my love affair with European Cinema ( regulars will remember the almost rejected Tarkovsky assignment…sigh , who am I kidding there are no regulars)…In my last semester as a MA student I had taken a course on European cinema in which in between dozing off in a comfortable air conditioned room and being told off for bunking classes I had managed to catch a few life changing films (ok am not very comfortable with this sentence, but u get the point right?)…a diary of Bergman films was to be maintained as an assignment , but I did not include Autumn Sonata in it , mainly because of two reasons, firstly I wanted to discuss other movies more urgently and secondly(is there any such word as secondly??? Ummm …whateva) secondly…I cant for the life of me remember the second reason…ok lets not digress here…the point being, I didn’t get to discuss Autumn Sonata in my assignment so I have tried to discuss it here , in my blog…Jesus!!! I used to take pride in being comprehensive and concise…higher education na….
Autumn Sonata, happened to be my first Bergman film in colour, and what struck me was his generous use of it.
For a director who had used Black & White with such resolute understatement, he sure did go overboard with colour, or so I felt.
Autumn, is, I presume, a season of violent colours in Europe…the over ripened atmosphere which is waiting to be muted by the dullness of winter, dazzles before it flickers out…
And so is the story of Eva and Charlotte, their relationship is at the last leg of alienation, but yet there are so many things which have been left unsaid…
Bergman is relentlessly despairing in this chamber drama about a daughter and her love story with her mother. Hs worlds were characterized by a sense of hope in his earlier film; in Autumn Sonata he creates a world of unspoken guilt and incredible tension.
And the colours seem to add to the tension…when Charlotte walks in a resplendent red dress, and is automatically contrasted with the drab Eva, one feels the confrontation coming…
The piano scene, where ingrid and Liv ullman react to each others interludes, is a very important one, because Bergman is one of the few directors who can make his actors live their roles, the gamut of emotions that their faces register says volumes about their troubled relationship…
Though Bergman does not give his characters the place or the liberty of “inner breathing” that Tarkovsky does, he ironically manages to flesh out more poignant characters.
Music in Autumn Sonata is an inseparable element of the story…Chopins interludes are used to the best possible effect, rightly encompassing in its folds the pain and the violence of the relationships that we see crumble in the screen.
Strangely even the most uplifting interludes which are in a warped way, in harmony with the visuals, fail to rescue us from the feeling of gloom that envelopes us along with the characters.
Helenas character is introduced as a trigger by Bergman but she ends up being more, for she in her heart has nurtured a love which will make her a survivor. Charlotte who refuses to see things as they are has to gaze at her own reflection in the train to finally surrender to her fate.
Eva will continue to live a life of denial, for she has been denied what she has wanted most in life, love.
Autumn Sonata left me wondering, why should we be subjected to such despair in the grabs of such deceptive beauty…

2006-06-19T18:25:00.000+05:30

Have been home exactly for 96 hours now…and haven’t unpacked yet…not only because I was busy doing things I had to do, but probably because home is no longer home now…stifling kolkata heat remains the same and so does my mothers need to control each and every aspect of my life and yet I am not home…
Does that mean I was more at home in Hyderabad, amongst likeminded ppl??? Not necessarily…for there was an intense need to escape that set up too…
(yaa I know this is dangerously turning out to be one of those angst ridden self introspective pieces so lets shift gear)…
what am I sayin …am home and am happy…yay…I guess…: (
umm…here is the lyrics of the song I have been listnin to in loop for the last 4 days…its dido and am sure half of the world knows all about her…but then the other half is just getting to discover her…indulge us…

Sand in my shoes

Two weeks away feels like the whole world should have changed
but I'm home now and things still look the sameI think I'll leave it till tomorrow to unpack, try to forget for one more night that I'm back in my flat
on the road where the cars never stop going through the night
to a life where I can't watch the sunset, I don't have time, I don't have time
I've still got sand in my shoes and I can't shake the thought of you
I should get on, forget you but why would I want to
I know we said goodbye, anything else would've been confused
but I want to see you againtomorrow's back to work and down to sanity
should run a bath and then clear up the mess I made before I left here
try to remind myself that I was happy here before I knew that I could get on a plane and fly away
from the road where the cars never stop going through the night
to a life where I can watch the sunset and take my time, take all our time
I've still got sand in my shoes and I can't shake the thought of you
I should get on forget you but why would I want to
I know we said goodbye, anything else would've been confused
but I want to see you again
two weeks away, all it takes, to change and turn me around I've fallen
I walked away, and never said, that I wanted to see you again...

2006-06-14T12:22:00.000+05:30

Remains of a life…
As I scrape down the last shirt off my wardrobe(for that’s how I pack), It dawns upon me that this probably the last time I will see the insides of this room…smell myself in it…
And as I look out of the window to wipe away a tear (yes I indulge in a lot of drama…) I see the clothesline where I used to hang my frantically washed clothes twice a day ( for am an obsessive washer)…
We tend to sentimentalise everything don’t we...sigh…
The comp which connected me to u all now has to be safely cushioned in its cardboard box so that it can withstand (along with me) a 27 hour long journey across the Andhra Coast, Orissa and then rain swept, lush Bengal…
And then of course there are the remains…little things that I can’t bring myself to discard…a bunch of 10 downing street coasters (which a giggling Ug and I flicked from the hallowed pub, what I, a teetotaler was doin in a pub is a different question altogether)…
Catalogues of various art exhibitions we visited for our incredibly lame Modern Indian Art course…stupid withdrawn magazines from the British council library that I never read but took just coz they were for free (I mean why would I ever read Science today…)
Brochures of plays that I went to…gift wrappers which I always neatly fold and keep under my mattress…Film Club posters which I so passionately made (what a fool I was to think that they will ever be appreciated)…
things that I will not need…
For they are the remains of a life I am leaving behind…
p.s.the pic is that of a sunset as viewed from our terrace...it was captured by the myriad minded "myriadmind"...

2006-06-12T19:32:00.000+05:30

Solan said...hummm Shyamalee said... hi.. so nice reflection. I too feel Happiness is something to be found... not to be searched myriadmind said... hey ...that rhymed so nicely Ajay said... Pehla Nasha is d best . Immortal :) Anonymous said... earlier it looked like you could only bullshit…you have variety too reality check said..hey anonymous! don't you dare trouble serend.. beas hyphasis said... beautiful! Comment Deleted uglygirl said...hullo!!! miss you!!come back quick L>T said... That's all well & good, but what is the name of the movie? arunima said... Accha, is this a sketch of a court room proceedings during the days of the Raj? the white man and the moslem , gave me this impression. and ur description was wonderfuly graphic. the fool on the hill said...
look in the sky..its a bird, its a plane, a ballistic missile....aiiiiieeeeeee...no, no, its Loverboy to the rescue!he's here to save serendipiduous. weep not, child. weep not. muaaaaaaah

i love comments

2006-06-08T19:02:00.000+05:30

juhi is lookin cute no...

2006-05-31T18:00:00.000+05:30

Happiness is a grossly overrated and, a mythical state of being…
All my life like any other normal human being I have aspired for that elusive state of being…
But to no avail…
In retrospect I think in between moments of peace and contentment, with family and friends, happiness began and ended…
Ironically , I couldn’t recognize it…

We rarely feel it.I would buy it, beg it, steal it,Pay in coins of dripping bloodFor this one transcendent good…

2006-05-31T17:31:00.000+05:30

Would u believe me
If I told you
In my fifth birthday
Life gifted love to me
Wrapped in pain
Tied with humiliation
Love has come to mean
Much more than a rosy vision…

2006-05-24T13:15:00.000+05:30

Anyone who has anything to do with me, knows by now how this incredibly popular search engine wronged me by not offering me a job…
But what they don’t know (and I didn’t either, till I replayed the whole interview over and over again in my mind) is how I managed to muck up everything…
All I remember are the good bits- this incredible and finely balanced combination of apprehension (overconfidence will put them off, a lil bit of nervousness and apprehension is good, it shows earnestness) and confidence that I apparently exude, the doctored honesty ( “I was disillusioned with my graduation results, I can probably blame it on lack of hard work, but I personally feel I was punished for being overtly creative”…read- I sleepwalked my way through my graduation years and thank god I can blame my poor show on Calcutta University’s notorious rigidity…) and of course the ever disarming smile…
But the not so good patches will and has answered all my questions and doubts…
Sample this-
Interviewer: why this incredibly popular search engine???
Me: I knew this was coming…well …maybe coz of the freebies that you offer…*nervous laugh*…no just kidding *damage control*…

Interviewer: how will all your cultural studies courses (feminism today, modern western thinkers etc) help you in your job?

Me: ummm this is where I say something wonderfully impressive and bowl you over don’t I… but I am really drawing blanks…*trying to melt the interviewer with my 100 watt smile, who seems suitably amused* am sorry but am still drawing blanks…

I managed a semblance of an answer only after a minute or so (but boy did it seem like eternity)

So the next time i come to any of u for any kind of sympathy regarding this particular failure, u know what to say…

2006-05-18T23:49:00.000+05:30

I was born in Kohima and have spent the first 8 years of my life there; therefore I would like to believe that, my understanding of the Naga identity will be better rounded than the popular stereotypical one. For I, at least will refrain from attributing the most ridiculous stereotypes to the Naga Identity…or will I???
“Oh, they eat dogs there don’t they”…”are there still head hunters there???”…”where is Nagaland???” …these are the frequent questions I have to encounter when I reveal my Nagaland connection…
My answers to them are obviously not important, but what is important is the fact that these questions are asked, not out of curiosity, but with a touch of disdain and mockery…

My stay in Nagaland was very fruitful one and was during the most impressionable years of my life…for even at that young age, through my interaction with my Naga neighbours and friends I realized that we might share a common space but we live in different worlds… For me they will always be these wonderfully colourful race which I admire and in a way exoticise ,but never can be a part of, and for them I will always be the plain manu (people from the plains) who can be befriended but never be trusted…
Never have I mad a conscious effort to see the world through their “chinky” eyes. Never have I questioned my understanding of their difference…
The Naga Identity has been always been a topical one , mainly because of the ethnic clashes which has brought almost 50 years of unrest in this incredibly picturesque state…
In fact it would appear that any determined young man of any of the region’s numerous ethnic groups can proclaim the birth of a new national liberation organisation, raise funds to buy weapons or procure them by aligning with other militant groups and quickly become an important political player.
The sheer number of militant organisations in the region is extraordinary. But what interests me as a fence sitter, (for I like to believe that my unique history gives me a more or less unbiased viewpoint) is the implication of this cultural militancy, that has coloured the pan India perception of the Naga Identity…
An ethnic groups which cannot be pinned down to a conventional structure ,is always problematic…For historians always need to label ethnicity… and unfortunately Indian policy discourse on the region has gone little beyond the colonial cliches of tribals and non-tribals…
Ever since independence Nagas have been asking for something which I think is incredibly unfeasible…to be seen as not a part of India…for they never see themselves as Indians, (nor do we)…but I consider it unfeasible because of the fact that their ethnicity should not be a reason for their alienation…the topography of their state can be a reason …but will it not be a shame on me if I fail to see my Naga friend as a fellow Indian…
But then you may ask why should that stop them from seeing themselves as different and wanting to be granted that difference …maybe because perceptions shapes identity and vice versa…
I don’t know if I make any sense at all , but my understanding of the Naga identity is that its Naga, nothing more nothing less (or so I wud like to believe)…

2006-05-14T12:33:00.000+05:30

1992
A year full of painful realizations and pleasurable discoveries (if you know what I mean)…the 10th year of my life was eventful in many ways, but a single event (or should I call it a phenomenon) coloured my view of life that year. A movie which affected me like no other, not because it was a brilliant piece of movie making, but because it was... the enunciation of my preadolescent emotions…
Some things in life take on a entirely new meaning without meaning to, they begin to stand for your personal stories, crushes, tragedies…
Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander was one such thing...
And yet now some 13 years after I sneaked out for a first day first show of it in Hind theatre (Kolkata), I relate to it, but very differently…an incredible feeling of loss that most people call nostalgia overwhelms me and I am left pining for those horrible painful yet beautiful years…
This post, like most of my other posts, is not so much about Jo jeeta Wohi Sikander as it is about me…I amaze myself with my insularity…
But for the uninitiated Jo Jeeta wohi Sikander is a cult Bollywood classic,which the incredibly promising Mansoor Khan (why,why,why did he make Josh???) made right after his incredibly successful (and another personal favourite) Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988)…
Since I love this movie so much and I am in an incredibly JJWS mood I will provide you stupid unJJWSed guys with a synopsis too…
Sporting rivalry has always existed between the three main schools, namely the one for the rich and wealthy, Rajput; St. Xavier's (boys); St. Anne's (girls); and for the not-so-wealthy, Model School. Ratanlal Verma (Mamik), from Model School, is the prime candidate for the cycling championship, with his main rival being Shekhar Malhotra (Deepak Tijori) from Rajput. As the day for the competition draws to a close, the rivalry gets intense and personal. With Ratanlal's easy-going brother, Sanjaylal (Aamir Khan), getting involved with one of rich girls, Devika (Pooja Bedi), he lies to her that he is a student at St. Xavier's, much to the chargin of Shekhar. Sanjaylal gets exposed and dumped by Devika and is thrown out of the house by his father, Ramlal Verma (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), for stealing money. Then Ratanlal is in an accident that may leave him incapable of participating in the competition. It looks like Shekhar is all set to win the race without much competition from anyone from St. Xavier's College and Model School…
Sigh…pehla nasha pehla khumaar…

2006-05-10T20:30:00.000+05:30

The ordeal of the undecidable

Decision is the ability to form firm opinions and stick by them.
Decision in the world of justice is something that “cuts”, “divides”, it is supposed have in its fold the “initiative” to read understand and interpret the rule .
But what do I mean when I say “it cuts it divides”? It cuts because it’s supposed to be equitable and proportional.
This decision which cuts and divides also gives birth to the concept of the undecidable which is not merely an “oscillation” between two contradictory and valid rules it is also an experience which forces us to take account of the various dynamics involved in the process (e.g. in a particularly difficult trial one takes into consideration various dynamics of a situation and then comes to, if not a correct, the most valid decision).
A decision which doesn’t suffer the ordeal of undecision is not an autonomous decision at all its just a natural unfolding of an ongoing process, it s not just and fair, because if you don’t think and debate over any decision then you are only going with the flow (e.g. if I want to buy a pair Nike shoes I need to debate with myself about the viability of the purchase, if I don’t I am just falling for the Capitalist dream).
Even if we do arrive to a seemingly correct and just decision, the decision doesn’t remain the same it is engaged in a dynamic process and is reinventing itself and is therefore no longer just according to the context, decision in fact was never at all completely just, either it was never according to any rule and even if it was the rule could have been colored by other factors and was therefore not “guaranteed”. Coming back to my Nike example, even if I do argue myself into buying the Nike shoes (bringing in the durability, comfort factors) it will be because of a predecision , i.e. I will argue with myself only to convince myself and not otherwise.
Therefore the unbearable agony of undecision is not just a process to come to a conclusive decision it’s the only way to engage in a discussion involving the pros and cons of a given situation, so what if its end product (the decision) is still tainted by discrepancies it would at least be less tainted and coloured than an undebated one.

2006-05-07T19:28:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I flatter myself by saying that I will capture those incredible things that eyes almost sees and the soul feels…the relief of summer evenings, the nip of the first winter draught, the flaming flowers that burn against the green of the grass, the feeling of incredible helplessness that overwhelms me when the first tear is dispelled from my obstinate eyes…
But then I am no Vincent and I cant paint eloquent…

2006-05-01T02:54:00.000+05:30

"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans - in fact, few Kansans - had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there."

Bennet Miller’s Capote is a story about two men who could have been each other but weren’t…its also about love found in most incredibly dismal surroundings …but more than anything else,its about the pain of not being understood, of alienation…
Truman Capote found immortal fame with his “non-fictional novel” In Cold blood…Capote tries to trace the story behind ‘genre creating novel’, but in the process also manages to bring forward the angst of not being seen for what one is, or maybe not knowing what one is…the existential crisis that is a recurrent theme in so many of effective biopics seems to be its theme too, but the sub conscious of the movie has different tales to tell…it leads the audience to the problematic position of judging ones own sense of right and wrong ...
Truman Capote tries to justify his fondness for Perry Smith (one of the killers of the infamous Kansas murder case) by saying “its like we were brought up in the same house…I took the front door out and he took the back door…”
I wonder what if I had taken the back door out??? Or horror of horrors, what if I HAVE taken the back door out…

2006-04-27T20:47:00.000+05:30

I hate the uncertainty that is life now…
But I love the feeling of not knowing what tomorrow holds too, for every decision I make now will shape something as concrete as a career …and a job will not be some intangible myth that everyone talks about but never experiences…and phrases like “settling down”, “future prospects”, “bank balance” and “provident fund” will colour my hitherto bohemian vocabulary…
And these overwhelming realities do unsettle me for I have chosen to ignore the adult responsible being in me for much too long …am 24 and haven’t ever held a position of responsibility (professional or not so professional) in my life, which makes me, in polite terms a “carefree guy”, and in not so polite terms a “loser”…
And now that I have something/someone wonderful in my life, I would like to live life as it should be, with responsibility and independence…
Tomorrow, after all is all about what you couldn’t do today…

2006-04-23T18:13:00.000+05:30

All through my growing up years, there would be nights when I would wake up with my heart beating violently, and I would lie in terror, unable to fathom the cause of my dark despicable fear…
Little did I know that they were the ghosts of my unresolved present haunting me…
Now that I have exorcised those ghosts, I dream of a bittersweet life without unfathomable fears…
Am happy and am in love…

2006-04-17T19:28:00.000+05:30

My labour of love was flung on my face (well almost)...

Five hours of pure meditation produced something which , am if not proud of , quite happy with...i rush to my course instructor only to be told that he doesnt want me in his course (well cant blame him, i slept through his course, bunked classes and did not submit assignments)...but that doesnt take anything away from those five hours of "intense academic concentration"....

Tarkovsky's Sacrifice...

Anyone could characterize Tarkovsky's work as meditative plodding, which is both right and wrong: the meditation is often rewarding and always more intellectually appealing than the work of most other filmmakers, but it can also venture into the realm of the ponderously ponderous. Who is doing more philosophizing, Tarkovsky or his characters? Sometimes I cannot tell, and those instances lack the immediacy of an artist (in the guise of the character) poignantly reaching his philosophical limit and an emotional climax at which he can only gaze helplessly into the unknown. At such times, Tarkovsky momentarily loses control of his themes, and that some of his films more or less lack clear resolutions (and I don't mean simple or reassuring in the Spielbergian sense, but simply that we are able to discern without mistake what remains) seems to emphasize this. But that doesn’t take away anything from the spiritual world he creates through the journey of his characters…
In Tarkovsky's last film, The Sacrifice, we see the hero, in a black-and-white sequence, running from a house in which we have just seen a nude young woman in a bedroom. We then see him wandering in a large garden, where he picks up some small coins from the mud and rotting leaves, before freezing into immobility amidst the falling snow and the old trees, which thanks to his brilliant camera work seems to be a part of his being. The eerie calmness of this sequence is akin to the feeling of waking up after a horrible nightmare, but it is neither one nor the other, its something in between nightmare and reality. It seems to be a feeling captured in celluloid. Something which is as personal as inner breathing. The tangibility of which, seeps in only after you meditate on it.
This particular scene is quintessential Tarkovsky, not because it is characterized by his trademark craftsmanship, but because it carries within its fold, Tarkovsky’s understanding of the human nature.
The Sacrifice is a story of lack of spirituality in mankind; it’s about Alexander, a journalist and former actor and philosopher, who tells his little son how worried he is about the lack of spirituality of modern mankind. In the night of his birthday, the third world war breaks out. In his despair Alexander turns himself in a prayer to God, offering him everything to have the war not happened at all.In his attempt to charter the spiritual journey of his protagonist, Tarkovsky, meticulously depicts, through visual metaphors, the spiritual journey of the mankind.
In the opening scene of The Sacrifice the hero's son and a postman appear on the shore of a bay, where the hero - before a motionless camera, no a very slowly moving camera - is transplanting a withered sapling. They approach as if they were dragging along the vastness of the whole world outside from over the horizon. Their garrulousness (the postman) and their silence (the mute son) seem to form a complete, "synthesized" chord with the hero's soliloquy, in which they gradually join. The use of sound in Tarkovsky's films is legendary, however. His unique "music" which almost always manages to unsettle me, is intrusive, discreet by turns, at odds with, and in harmony with the images, is an inseparable element of the director's vision. Even if we take only The Sacrifice, we find images on the screen accompanied by the sound of an unseen coin tapping (as the tired hero falls asleep on the couch), a loose sheet of corrugated iron clattering in the breeze (as the introduction to a scene showing the Alexander's son asleep), and distant music and ancient chants in Swedish or Japanese (hence remote in space and time). The sounds themselves transport the visual to a distant setting, to other lands and other times, which provide the indispensable counterpoint to its present reality.
The spiritualization is not limited to human beings; his brilliant use of light manages to breath life to the most inanimate objects, giving them spirituality, and through them an understanding of his spiritual world begins to develop. A gleaming porcelain jug, which carries within its fullness the satisfaction of human thirst, is given its due screen time…
The cupboard, whose door twice opens beside one of the characters without anyone touching it, has a life of its own…
It is not that everything in it is inseparably tangible, sensual, and "spiritual", that the outward form of things cannot be divorced from their emotive significance, from the investigation of their inner meaning - his films are unmistakable evidence of the functioning of one person's subjective vision. Tarkovsky’s vision is self generating , it constantly needs to be subjectified, in fact at times one feels that these are images that the director did not invent but allowed to happen…
In brief, this film seems to have been created almost in the biblical sense, as something with an independent existence. And through the movie one experiences the world with redoubled intensity.Tarkovsky's images are not merely the product of his inner vision; they also have the ability independently to increase and multiply infinitely… during the fire scene in a nearby meadow we find a replica of the hero's house reduced to the size of a child's toy. As it was evidently placed here by the hero's son, as a birthday present for his father, it suggests an image of the future taking shape in the present, the reduplication of the present in the future...
In Tarkovsky's work, childhood is a treasure lost before it has begun. The creak of the sheet-iron, which, with the flickering light, accompanies the hero's son as he falls asleep in The Sacrifice, announces the destruction of the house in which he is growing up, and lays the foundations for his future on this loss.
The idea of fertility and regeneration seems to be a recurrent albeit disillusioned one in The Sacrifice (even though the mute child through his act of nurturing, seems to give us some respite from the feeling of desperation that overwhelms by the end of this film).
All Tarkovsky's female characters, incidentally, appear at once calm and troubled, aristocratic and primitive. They give the impression of being like "God's creatures", dedicated to higher things, but also possessed by the devil. They seem to hold the key to good and evil, love and hate. When the hero's wife is seized by convulsions on hearing of the approach of war, she writhes on the floor, with her skirt riding up her thighs, as if shaken at once by insatiability and an organic need to destroy.
The heroine of The Sacrifice is symmetrically complemented by the countrywoman Maria, who evokes at once Christian sainthood (by her name) and a pagan priestess, b the act of love with the hero she enables him to save the world from destruction.

"Once upon a time, long ago an old monk lived in an orthodox monastery. …." Alexander narrates a story to the "little man". "Once he planted a withered tree on a mountain side. Then he told his pupil, a monk named Kolov, to water the tree each day until it came to life. Every morning he filled a water carrier and went out. He climbed the mountain and watered the withered tree and at night fall he returned to the monastery. He did this for three years and one fine day, when he climbed the mountain, he saw the tree covered in blossom".
The story that a father narrates to his son seems to be the essence of Andrei Tarkovsky’s
The Sacrifice….

Premankur Biswas.

2006-04-14T19:24:00.000+05:30

All my life I have tried to be different from her. There have been so many decisions in my life which I have consciously taken, not to end up like her.
I hate it when she looks at me expecting to see a bit of her in me…I hate it when I look at my reflection and see her…

Because deep down, I know I will never be like her… I will never be able take the cruel blows of life so determinedly as she has… I will never be able to love life as passionately as she has… I will never be able to make the mistakes that she has made… I will never be able to learn from those mistakes as she has…

Because she has given me so much that I grudge her her generosity…

Today in reterospect I can safely say that I want to be my mother…my identity lies firmly and happily on the fact that I am my mothers son…

This is for u mom, the grande dame of my life….

She turns 52 today…

2006-04-13T00:19:00.000+05:30

I love artist’s impression of court proceedings…they are so very quaint and so wonderfully pointless…like the script girl Bergman never forgets to mention in his credits…the script girl of course is a 30 something, once sharply pretty now fluffy on the sides, spinster…she wears crisp white shirt and asymmetrical brown/black/grey/ knee length skirts…has shoulder length hair always tied up in a bun…and is of course bespectacled…

2006-04-11T23:04:00.000+05:30

End of an affair....

My tumultuous Google affair comes to a bittersweet end...

Dear Premankur,

Thank you for taking the time to speak with our campus interview team.While we carefully reviewed your background and experience, unfortunately wedidn't find there to be a close enough match for a positionto move forward at this time.Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your future endeavors and hope you might consider us again sometime down the road.

Sincerely,

Google Staffing

My Reply

Dear Google Team,

It has been quite an experience interacting with your very capable and efficient campus interview team. It's unfortunate that our association has to end here; but I will definitely say that I walk away enriched from this experience.
However, I wonder how you managed to review my background when I hadn't submitted any documents or reference numbers. But then, you are Google and everything is just a "lucky search" away for you guys.
Warmest regards to Sachi, Shiraz and Nicolette for guiding me through what could have been a series of disastrous interviews (not that they weren't).
And as years of diligent Googling has taught me, a perfect alignment is just a click away.

Thank you for bringing me a step closer to it.

Premankur Biswas

2006-04-10T21:16:00.001+05:30

1051200 minutes
Is two years of my life…
How should I measure it?
In daybreaks, sunsets, midnights???
Or
In heartbreaks, surprises and lies???

2006-04-10T21:16:00.000+05:30

This is again a very tentative effort to translate a Punjabi folk song (I have been told that I suck at this and yet I obstinately carry on)…

She who kneads the dough
She who spins the yarn
She who weaves a quilt of dreams for her children
Has wisdom of her own…
Why then, should she shower her son
With all that she has
And gift her daughter
A legacy of misfortune???