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…

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 ….

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….

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

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 …

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!!!!

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...

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…

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...

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?

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")

somethings in life are best left unsaid...

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.

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...

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 …

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 ...

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

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?

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

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….