PAINTINGS ON MY CANVAS

Between love and a mosquito.

2011-06-23T01:32:00.002+05:30

Bankabihari needed sleep.He dismissed the idea of keeping his eyes open. The sudden increased brightness of the tubelight was hectoring him,were his eyes finally giving up ? Even the respiratory apparatus emanating from his nose was egging him to depart,his health had already failed.No one liked a dying person,fewer wanted to be near one.
His sons and grandsons and grandaughters and their children were all waiting outside. The "visiting time" hadnt started.
His thoughts moved around,lamenting that incorrigible habit of snuff which led to his demise,to the half drunk glass of
supplementary drink on the table, to that fly or mosquito which was flying around the glass. If it was a fly, he wouldn’t drink it. Maybe he did not have to. He tried to jerk off these thoughts.
He had heard that death ends life, but gifts in his eyes, a minute or two theatrical view into a man`s mundane life. All the memories worth going through, for the last time. He didn’t want to re-visit his life. His last wish was Kanchana, a glimpse of her. He hadn’t seen her face for one full week now. Some lost soul was playing a trick, denying this dying man his last wish he thought. A sudden thought perched in his mind. Kanchana had been with him for more than 30 years now. More than Sridarshini,his dead wife. Each and every night after he closed his eyes they met near the Doba-pukur, in raas-mela, in haat-bazaar and all the places of Srirampur. The daal-muug, the singaras and the ledikini that they ate together, and the shy smile of her as he washed his hands and brushed his face against a corner of her saree using it like a gamccha. He never dreamt those earlier days when she was ten and played kit-kit with him ,before she had left Srirampur, to be an actress.

Bankabihari had slept an average of eight hours a day, dreaming about her, for the last 84 years of his life,so he presumed ,his infidelity, which was an unforgivable felony in the court of god, would deprive him of a berth in heaven. He had never uttered her name ,let alone reveal his love to Sridarshini, lest his wife would leave him. They had a happy married life , but not a long one. Sridarshini died giving birth to his seventh child. Tears rolled down the old man`s cheeks. Children, the living examples of how he had cheated his wife ,every single time, how the only image that had swallowed his mind , sometimes against his wish, was that of Kanchana`s smiling face.Traitor . Till her last breath she had not known of the girl that her husband loved.More than her. Not once had she doubted as they went to see “ Premer agnisakkhi” “ Koto Dhaane koto Chaal” “ subarnolata” all starring a particular Kanchana devi.

He had tried to meet her once. When he wasn’t married.While she was shooting for a hindi film. She was dancing in a park full of roses, with a charming personality of Bengal cinema. His slightly protruding pair of teeth ,along with his dark complexion, a result of working in the sun, wouldn’t help, he knew. He had returned with memories and a delineation of his love that he wanted to imprint on each of his dreams forever. This world had not given her to him. But in my dreams, she is mine, he consoled.

His heart skipped a beat. And then two. He knew the time had come. He heard voices.That of his family .” Baba, chole jacchen” .sobs. He didn’t want this austerity of not seeing her for the last time. He tried to figure out her face. He knew face of the true love was the last thing that a man saw. But alas as his lungs stuffed out the last puff of air, all he saw through the eyes of his imagination, was a blurry vision of a house-fly perched on a glass. Or was it a mosquito ?

The confession

2011-06-22T23:32:00.000+05:30

The church doors were about to shut out the last rays of sun for the day ,when i heard footsteps. Doing God`s work was exhausting . The colour of white had faded from my robe ,given way to the colour of mud , grease from a man`s daily ventures , taken into consideration that this day hadn’t been scripted synchronous to my daily routine. How men waste away, doing nothing ,and still get those stains on whatever the put on ? The sudden blackened stain of cigarette ash , that yellow mark of oyster soup spilled ,due to some annoying ,disturbing thoughts pondered upon. The small pellets of soil stuck on my robe due to that sudden rain which still hadn’t stopped .The small kids ,who came for a little crumb of bread hadn’t come today, i was unaware why they stayed away from their daily routine .They gave me, some sort of company ,on those forlorn evenings. I taught them how to live. God`s verses.
The man in the black coat had moved towards the confession room. His appearance was as shady as the co-existence of the red glow of sun and those drops of rain splashing on the window, both unaware of each other`s existence.
“Had you been late for a minute or two ,you would have returned , your prayers unanswered, and confessions unheard, i was about to close the door and retire for the night.” I was happy to have a visitor .
“Doesnt matter, i would have come anyways Father, i am leaving for New York tomorrow.i would have woken you up.”
“A desperate soul, in search of peace i perceive ,what is it that you want to share ?”
“Father, can i light a cigarette ?”
I had quit smoking seven years ago.But a part of my senses never got over it. The eagerness to inhale came back as unscathed as it was when i had deserted it. “Try not to.”But that aroma of burning tobacco had already reached this side, through that small slit created for the sound to pass from the other partition where the guilty sat. Maybe , i hated this procedure of not seeing faces. It was better to tell on his face that he shouldn’t light up, my not so erasable weakness.
“ Father ,What colour does love symbolise ?”
“red, is your confession taking off with love ?”
“ Why isn`t it blue ,or green ?”
“Because red symbolises desire ,and love is a creation of desire,in its most innocent form.”
“What I am trying to say is Love hasn’t inherited its colour. Someone conceived the idea that it could be red. ”
“you have something to confess, don’t you ?”
“Father what do you call this imagination of comparing or metamorphosing an object from its one form to other.”
“Personification, metaphor. I am too tired ,to answer your questions which puts my grasp of English in doubt.”
“Father my wife suffered from a rare form of mental transfiguration .
Have you heard of synesthesia ?”
‘yes, sort of where a person gets hallucinated “
“ absolutely not, hallucination is to conjure an object in completely another form. Synesthesia is quiet different . haven’t you heard of people who see colour in numbers ?”
“ ya, they see 1 in red, blue in 2, do these things even exist ?”
“Ya, the witness is standing right in front of you. Though you were a bit wrong in your explanation. The person knows the letter 1 is printed in black. But his conscious mind sees it to be red.”He passed a piece of paper through the slit. something was scratched on it with a pencil
“ Xày”
“What.....”
“ If x is the object that our mind percieves , y is the form that a synesthete thinks of when he sees , touches or smells x. Audio, Video , Lexico synesthesia are quiet common though psychiatrists believe that there are more than 60 types of it.”
“ even if this disease exists ,whats it got to do with your confession ? “
“Father, it isn’t a disease. Richard Feynman had it. So did Nikola Tesla, Syd Barrett and John Mayer. They were proud to proclaim to the world that they had a sixth sense which others couldn’t perceive. Seeing objects or coloured smoke while listening to music is the most common form of Synesthesia. Have you used Windows media player ,Father ?”
“Are you trying to say the man who invented the “Visualizer” plug-in in WMP is a syenesthete ?”
“So the god`s man uses his computer as well .” he smiled.A “prickly” laugh.
“ Father have you read Dan Brown ?”
“Which one ?”
“The lost symbol .“
“Ya”
“remember those lines ...
Centered over the table hung a carefully calibrated light source that cycled through a spectrum of preordained colors, completing its cycle every six hours...The hour of Yanor is blue. The hour of Nasnia is red. The hour of Salam is white.”
“The description of Mala`khs house i suppose. “
“ya , another typical syenesthete who has the timeàcolour syndrome.”
“ My wife, father had a very unique kind of syenesthesia .She associated an object to any special action or quality of a human being . She never ate apple . She interwove apple with the feeling of guilt.”
“She involved her feelings to what she saw ?”
“ Ya ,what she saw through her mind-vision got connected with her feelings.
Remember “Shine on you Crazy diamond ” where Gilmour wrote “You cried for the moon ?”I could find only one human being on-record who had the same symptoms as my wife. Though Syd gathered it from extensive use of LSD. “
The rain had increased its pace.
“ It was raining one night , just like today . I returned from work to find my wife busy talking to someone. My first reaction was that she was through a phone call. But when i faced her, that small rug-doll on her arms , to whom she was whispering to , tore my world apart. “
“You don’t have a child ?”
“ We could never make one.She never endorsed adoption”
“she imagined the doll...”
His deep breath seemed to fit into my unfinished sentence.
“ I immediately took her to her doctor. I couldn’t let this seed grow more, though i knew it`s genesis.I knew this speck of disappointment would save her from drowning more and more into the whirlpool. She got admitted in a mental-sanctuary .”
“Did she get cured ?”
“Yes.”
He stopped. Lit a second cigarette.
“ Then why are you here ?”
“ You seem to be in a hurry , Father.
Yes, she got rid of this projection of her synesthesia , but when it come to peace of mind, no stone was left unturned.The constant nagging fact that she could never be a mother , had never left her mind. She stopped communicating with the world, even i was not a part of her sordid but nevertheless important-to –me circle of life. “
“ What did you do ?”
“A little drug would have caused no harm. “
“You drugged her ?”
“ LSD, the only drug that can cause surreal synesthesia.
Father... she died of drug overdose yesterday.”
The white colour of thunder filled my part of the confession room. A lightning had struck somewhere near the church.

Letter from a Filmy Film-Goer

2011-06-20T02:18:00.003+05:30

Dear readers,

I hero-worship Bollywood stars( You may read Salman Khan). This adulation goes back to the time when every Friday night, my inveteracy of sticking near the television screen for 4 hours ( an hour of advertisements),watching the only new movie that Doordarshan aired every week,would infuriate my parents. You are becoming “filmy” day by day , my mother once complained . Had I not been an Indian , I would have looked up in the dictionary and wondered what she meant. Filmy adj. thin and translucent, to be covered with a film .But we, the people know what this metaphor symbolizes. Slowly , the only adjective that clung on to me was Wow ! this boy confuses sin 30 and cos 60 ,but see his volubility in pointing out the name of the film in which Rishi kapoor and Shahrukh khan both married the same girl,and then Rishi Kapoor died blah blah blah… .

21 and progressing, I still have an avuncular attitude towards films ( bad or ugly). I am fascinated by them, keep brooding over all the physics-defying acts of the hero and whether I had the slightest chance of imitating them successfully.I have lived the great Indian-dream. The desire to have those greek like delineation along with a big car and a villa with a swimming-pool.And so have millions of others. And this is where the bright minds behind this industry have succeeded. Feed them a dream,let them live through it for 3 hours. Encash the effect. ( Udaan shudaan don’t fall in the ‘filmy’ category.I have never seen them. Someone told me he slept through the movie.)

I have never questioned why does the villain guffaw throughout every film , whimpering in the end. Why are most of the hated villains South-Indian , and necessarily bald. Why does every film of Rohit Shetty involve a car-stunt, and whats with Bhansali and the colour blue ? Someone told me he used it in Sawaariya because the characters were somewhat based on Krishna and radha and Krishna had a bluish complexion.Crap, I said, he likes it to be in conjunction with his films ,separated by a hyphen.I didn’t watch Sawaariya.I preferred Shanti om.

I don’t find any objection in seeing a copy of a film.If all films were made abstruse then where would Salman Khan go? No one loves an emaciated, grief-stricken actor who has nothing to do in life except pondering over his life in bed and pleading for euthanasia.After a days hard work in the call-center or factory, all I want is some quality time spent laughing, eating and watching dhissum-dhassum.Someone says people like me are an endangered species nowadays.I don’t think so.

This was until I found out a complete new genre which is sprouting. Copying bits and pieces from multiple films instead of using a script . Are you ‘ready’ ? as the film tagline shines out. Songs from South . Location from east ( Awarapan anyone ? ) .Mar-peet from north ( Dabbangg). Salman khan is a magician. He never loses a pound,never gains one,never marries and never speaks without contorting his face . I fear ,that if he remains a bachelor, his acting skills will die with him. The audience laughed ( there were instances that even though I didn’t they did,I really felt shattered, had my ability to comprehend decreased ?), cried ,ate munched their popcorn and went home. And so did i. Marvelling at the new genre that would set the screen on fire. Business at its best. Reduction of cost of a script-writer, and including all those best parts of various films that audiences applauded .Way back to the hostel I kept singing this song.Not Dhinka Chika morons. A better one.

Na script hain na story hain, na koi director.

Jaane kab kahaan se aa gaya hain financer.

Ek hero hain ek heroine aur ek producer.

No problem yaar,ban jayegi picture.

Yours faithfully,

The filmy filmgoer

Recollection of earlier fragrances

2011-06-20T00:20:00.003+05:30

A flower, which blooms only before the month of October, or is it, irrespective of the month, a harbinger of Pujo ? The occasional maths exam that religiously commenced on the week before Mahalaya had deprived me of their smell. That preserved
smell of “A.C r hawa” wrapped in plastic bags which had new clothes inside, from the
only air-conditioned shops with clothes kept in them. The smell of shoe-polish, everyday trying to shine the toe-end of the pair, occasionally drawing night sky in the hands and the next moment`s antiseptic smell of soap lingers in still-not-spilled jars of memories.
I could never differentiate a rotten apple from a fresh apple. I seldom ate one. But I could make out a new book from an old one. Like a lover kissing those hidden letters kept between its pages,I took in their fragrance.The only time , I cuddled my big-fat mathematics book which lost interest in me as it grew old. The smell of “abir” has dragged me to play with them ,to let people paint my face with them. That tinge ofjealousy coming from the neighbour`s kitchen which stuffed my nose with smells of kababs and kormas which changed to the unwelcoming smell of dried fish when the neighbours changed.That faint memory of the story of a man who satisfied his apetite taking in the smell of all the sweet-meats in a sweet-shop sniggers and pokes me all the time that every tiny fraction of the fragrance of a rasgolla,or icecream that I stole from “Arun Sweets”,when i had been offered just one, was for free. Standing on the chair to steal that after-shave lotion, just to enjoy its fragrance, that impulsive spraying of the after-shave lotion on my face,to cry out in pain and that threat from ma of a juvenile bearded face has abandoned me. Now the smell seems commonplace.
The orange coloured smell has always been tied to the story of a tree that sprouts through the head with its roots in my tummy,if i swallowed the seeds.The hope and despair of a wish for a chewing-gum tree which never
came out from the so-many gums that I had swallowed. Minty sadness.Or was it the taste ?

Good things happen to good people. That then-so hard puzzle why our house-maid after
washing all our clothes and cleaning our rooms smelled bad has stopped bothering me.Is it the smell or the taste of a toothpaste which feels so comforting ,that occasional sniffing of nose while brushing my teeth has atrophied long ago. Maybe the smell of hot jalebis still hasn`t left me.I always dreamt of being that small boy who ran away from home,angry that no-one listens to him,only to be taken back by Ramu Kaka and greeted with a plate of Jalebis bringing a twinkle in his face.I never dared to do that.I never understood the difference between smell/fragrance/scent. Could a fragrance never be bad ? That comb with the smell of vermilion ingrained in it which had a three-in-one purpose, to comb my hair, to keep the vermilion intact in my mother`s forehead and to give me scars whenever I made a ”silly” mistake in my maths exercise book.

The pungent ,acrid smell of a bus-stand,and that cocunut oil flavoured fragrance on those numerous heads in a village-bus will always bother me .The smell of the first rain hasnt left me. That smell of the hot earth getting soaked by the first few drops still drags me out into the open air.The smell of that soaked stretched out hands and closed eyes with the diluted fragrance of that certain brand of perfume will romanticize me forever. A view from a distance. Not close enough to rake up that memory, but not far enough to forget it.That forbidden smell of one`s sweat (order from the high-court,causes sickness), which is the only thing that remains after every layer of borrowed ones have been peeled off is the only fragrance that we are born with.I refuse to believe that they come from the decomposition done by bacterias.

I want to smell music before I die .Or the words that come out from a pen, sometimes demanding, sometimes reassuring.

The un-biased coin.

2010-09-14T17:31:00.001+05:30

The unbiased coin.

20th August , 2008. 5: 30 Pm.

The sky above the port was the colour of television ,tuned to a dead channel. I hadn’t finished my cup of tea and it had already gone cold. My daughter had returned , victorious over death, clinging to that last piece of rock undisplaced , when everyone inside the bus had died in that cliff . 2 long years later, she had come back to me, when the world presumed Dr. Sen was lost, or dead. She had found me ,in this other part of the world ,on this long deserted island , just when my experiment was in a state of completion. I had so much to disclose to her.
“ Titli, have you heard about the second law of thermodynamics ? that entropy cant be reversed ?”
“ya,when I was young ,you often quoted that universe is the single most accomplished conspirator.”
“Exactly, it always tries to keep things in symmetry ,in a stable state.Nature hates Chaos . Now what if the theory of Probability is nothing but nature`s craft to eliminate chaos ?”
“ Biased coin ?”
“No, what if a heads falls because a tails would tamper with entropy of the system, the universe ?”
“let`s take an example ,I flip the coin ,heads, I send this email containing my life`s work to the world,and tails I go for a walk with you .”
“You better send that email,dad,why wait ?”
I flipped the coin. TAILS. “Hmm…lets go for a walk.”

7: 30 Pm.

Twilight in this island was dangerous. I should have waited for the moon,but what I cared about was some time with my daughter.
“Do you believe in spirits Dad ?”
“ Scientists have discovered that when a person dies, his weight is decreased by a weight of the order 10 ^(-6)gms. Applying E=mc^2 , that pure energy from a soul would be humongous.Now imagine so many deaths could trigger so much energy in the universe. Chaos.Unstability.”
“Then what happens to that soul ?”
“ I believe that it conjures itself to some form of dark energy or precisely negative energy which conspires against the symmetry, the stability.”
“Destructive ?”
“exactly, evil ,as the name goes,tries to disrupt the balance… .So where are we going now ,back to the camp ,or to the waterfall?Hmm.. let fate decide. Heads,we go to the waterfall.”
I flipped the coin.
HEADS.

7:50 pm.

We were walking beside the waterfall.
“ Dad, how can you exert that the universe selects which side of the coin is going to fall without biasing it ?”
“Symmetry. Let me illustrate to you. In your probability classes you symbolized heads as H and tails as T. If A corresponds to 1 ,B to 2 then H=08 and T=20.”
“Then why isn’t heads preferred ? for T has a higher value, thus greater entropy or chaos ?”
“not always,What does 20:00 oclock signify ?”
“8:00, indeed! This will change the course of the world. Maybe someday, someone would delve into your logic and find out a way to change the future.”
“That’s what I fear Titli. Am I interrupting nature`s course of stability? When I needed your opinion the most,here you are with me.”
“Go ahead with your work”.
“ Lets see the choice of the coin. Heads , I send that email”
I flipped the coin.
TAILS.
“ You rely on your coin too much. Send that email dad.”

8:08 Pm

“Lets get back to my camp.we ll go via the other way crossing the bridge across the falls. Maybe I should listen to what you say.”
“Dad, what bridge ? there`s nothing in front of us except the cliff giving away to the falls , are you hallucinating?”
I could see the bridge whose lime bricks were shining in the moonlight. I took a step forward .
“Dad, please, lets go back the way we came here.”
Wasn’t she seeing what I was ? A fear originated in my heart.
“I haven’t asked you Titli ,how did you know I was in this island ?I was cut-off from the world ?”
“Lets go back and I will tell you everything”
“ Heads, that rock to which you were clinged on, gave away two years ago”
I flipped the coin.
But with a quick glance at the watch , i knew which side of the coin I would see.
4 times, I had flipped the coin today. T-H-T-H. 20/08/20-08 , 20:08 o`clock. I looked at her face. She knew that I had solved the riddle. The puzzle that this universe had conspired for me. I knew it ended with the end of my life.
“I came back to save you Dad, so that you would be famous someday,theres no bridge across the falls”
I smiled. “No one intervenes nature`s course Titli. Lets leave it to someone else to prove me right”
I reached for her hands. And I took a step…forward.

Atanu and me

2010-09-05T21:21:00.002+05:30

Atanu and me.

That night seems to linger in my memory like a rain-stained window pane. Abstruse in interpreting what are the absolute delineations on the other side , but clear enough to form a hazed impression on a juvenile mind. All I reconstruct are just slivers, those effigies of Ma Kali and Loknath baba being packed along with those newspaper-folded boxes of spices. That large green box where mother had packed all bed-sheets and pillows together, doing the cumbrous task alone with a little bit of help from me. It was a dry night of 1995 , and my five year short life-span had never encountered a night long insomnia and a journey at the back of a truck. Almost all other trifles of that night has passed in evanescence. The night when my grandfather ,after a month of contemplation, made a self-gratifying decision of moving back to Siuri, the place he had fallen in love with when he was handsome.

I don’t think my grandfather could have figured out then, what a scrumptious but also dichotomous life he had conceived for me. Where Durgapur and the village called Parsimulia had entwined with each other to weave a world of reality vis-a-vis fantasy for me . A world where on one side existed those paunchy history and geography books , but on the other side was fire-flies, load-sheddings, rather mela, jilipis, khelna gaari and Atanu.

His real name is Manu. Atanu was the name gifted by my mother. He was born on the same year , I had seen Siuri for the first time ie 1995. My mother often enquires whether I remember Atanu sleeping peacefully in his grandmothers lap, that black koshti-pathor coloured infant. I politely say that I was just five, and when you are five , the only impressions that are immuted in your memories are of objects that are humungous , like a truck , a bridge or objects that are contrastingly out of place like a Romeo-juliet paperback in a stack of India-today magazines.A dark –tanned child is too dimunitive and commonplace . A platitude. I remember his face since he was five . The only efficacy in his silhouette type body was his eyes . The reason why I have loved reading “The kite runner”. I can never imagine how a person in the other quarter of the world had so perfectly described , the acquaintance I shared with Atanu. Or maybe a good book always stirs your imagination and sketches few things , that were just languid connections , so brightly that you are confounded by the astounding resemblance with the book.

The tree beside that pond where a thousand fireflies used to gather. Peeking through its branches those tiny lights of Tilpara barrage could be seen. That sand house made on the river bed of Mayurakshi, that mango tree which broke my leg while climbing, Atanu has been there in every incident . He was never a friend,this, my society had taught me. Cause there was so much sartorial, monetary and caste contrast. A Brahmin and a bairagi were never the same. This idea had been sown when I was born and had sprouted into a fully grown tree with its source too deep-routed to throw away. I remember once , mocking him for the way bairagis were cremated . In a standing-posture. I laughed aloud at the way he squatted on the paddy fields for clearing his bowels.
My day in siuri started with his satiric laugh beside my bedside. Mine started at 10 and he went to work in the paddy fields at 5 . He could never figure out the laziness and the munificence of my mother in letting me sleep. Hence the laugh. “Dodo kaka” when will you wake up ? We will have to enact the last day of Mahabharat today.

Religion had changed just one thing in the village. Oblivious of maths and science, the only thing that a village boy learns by heart is those two epics , whose authenticity is often questioned. Atanu had an edge over this strand of history, whenever a conscending situation came. He knew `who was who` in Ramayana more than anyone else. He never disagreed when it came to the endowment of roles. Hanuman , my best friend had the priority job of finding Sita , killing Ravana was a job to be thought of later. He had made me a bow and arrow, whose arrows were often hurled at him when I was angry , and he was satisfied with the gada . I still remembered the frequency of my unending laughter when I figured out that the smeared poster which his grandmother worshipped as Ram-Sita , was that of Arun Govil and his co-actress whose name I cant recall. Ignorance is bliss.

I still remember the day he first got a sip of Coca-cola. The way he punched his head to stop that fizziness in his stomache had been an item of humour in our family whenever we needed a light environment.
I last met Atanu 3 years ago , the day his sister died.She had been burnt-to-death by her husband. He had fled from the village.I still remember Manu`s misty eyes as he promised me ,he would grow up to be a policeman so that he could catch that scoundrel alive. A quicksilver conversation between two immature and impractical boys. But that small incident has silted all my thoughts revolving Manu with guilt. Guilt that I wasn’t just a toy of entertainment to him as he was to me , an escape from books ,from studies. I was his mentor ,that was what he thought. Maybe his brother.

I didn’t realize the trauma and helplessness that flowed under his statement for a long time. I have heard he is studying in class 11 and is flourishing in his studies. Maybe siuri in parallel with Atanu is the only reason that I have that slight knoll of literature and fantasizing in me amidst that unending plain land of Crap-studies.God help him.

Glasgow kiss.

2010-07-06T15:36:00.000+05:30

I was quite quenched with this 10ft * 25ft of space that i had pulled in. Maybe the smallest performance
space on earth. Warner theater where Petrucci played had a performance space of 250ft * 200ft. Didnt matter.
Every place has its idiosyncracy.Someplace Else was smaller than the green room of Nippon Budokan.Still
the biggest stage of my life.I was given a time span of 10 minutes. The time a band takes to optimise itself.
"Orient Express" was already there.Having a mug each. I gave life to my guitar.

3 years ago..
“John ,have you been to the only pub in kolkata which plays western and nothing else?”
“ Do such places exist ?”
“ya they do,and we are standing just few metres away from one of them .”
“Oxford has a pub, roshan?”
“ WTF, The park has “
“Its called ‘Someplace else`”.
The name sounded somewhat provocative.
“ Hey lets go there, make a round trip”
“ John, that’s a pub.”
“So ,we wont drink .”
“you ll go to the pub and wont touch booze?”
“we ll sort it out , lets move guys”

To go into the place which is someplace else ,you ll have to move through the lounge of one of the oldest grandeurs of kolkata. It smells money. Big time money.
Someplace else is the restroom of generally 2 types of people in kolkata. The people who reek alcohol, and people who reek money. The sofa on the left side are generally for the family. The tables flirting on the left are for couples . Only the few stools are left behind for those few who pay a visit to appreciate music. Conclusively, no place for school students.
We sat on the stool. The sofa and the chairs had signs of ageing in them , I noticed. The favorite trick of the hotel management students ,dim the light ,play the music ie reduce the vision enhance the auditory sense. The bartender came with his bible. We looked through it . We didn’t drink booze. There was just a pineapple soda and a himalaya which we could afford or preferably which was non-alcoholic.
“One Himalaya please”
The man in the black suit smiled at us.The smile symbolized “What are you ass holes doing here?”
“Sir, anything else along with mineral water ?”
“Lets, leave john”
“ one pineapple soda only”
My 100 bucks were going.
I was not ashamed that day.Not guilty of our stupid ignorance.I knew I had to come back here someday. For there was a 10 ft * 25 ft of space present in Park street that I had completely fallen for.

1 year ago...
“Dad, I want to play in a pub called someplace else. This economics doesn’t suit me anymore.”
“ Are you drunk ? or youre doping ?”
“All I am is serious right now”
“ You learned guitar , I didn’t bark .You play in a pub. You go out of the house.”
My dad didn’t utter the same syllables twice. My fate had been written.
6 months ago…
I didn’t go out of the house , but my dad stopped recognizing me. John was gone , for him . But I knew someday it would be perfect someday. The only thing I admired and loved was my Yamaha 6 string. I wanted to make my bucks with it. Not a degree given by a University which doesn’t even allow quarantined students to give a re-test. I knew where I had to play. That small 10ft * 25 ft space. I googled Orient express.

I wanted to start with Glasgow kiss . “ I am gonna play music from my new solo album Suspended animation, and this one is called Glasgow kiss”-John Petrucci
But somehow my hands were protesting .My father`s face was the only thing resurfacing in my mind. He would never know, mom would never tell him. That made me feel more guilty. I started with “Lost Without You” .It somehow fitted in.
There were few claps .few trinkles in the glasses. Maybe it wasn’t that good. Still, my first earning . I packed up. I wasn’t still happy . I heard someone call my name. I recognized her. Tania sen . “ Are you jobless , right now?”
“On all accounts ,ma`m” “Call me on Monday , I think I have something for you.” Hope, I thought .
I was moving out when the bartender called me .
“Sir, a gentleman offered you a beer.”
“Where?”
“On the leftmost corner.”
It was dark as usual. I had to go to the table to recognize him. The broad smile on my face was brought back seeing that special blazer father used to wear for once in a blue-moon occasion .
“ Well , ever had a beer ?”
“No,dad”
“ Don’t tell mom”
“ I wont”

Who says beer is bitter ? it doesn’t after you’ve had a kiss from the world. A Glasgow kiss.

Home made parody

2010-03-03T19:53:00.000+05:30

TRIED TO MAKE A SONG after many months.hope it turns out well.

Home made parody

2010-03-03T19:37:00.001+05:30

EvoLovE Ma-Riju-Ana Scene 2 in G-issshtyle

2010-02-06T10:51:00.002+05:30

What happens to a person who is illiterate but madly in love with someone else?Who comes to his rescue?One who is empty of words to express his desire has to lose to some Angreji babu ??No.... Cause DOG Ahhhh... i am sorry GOD comes running for assistance.Love is not bound by any linguistic barrier.Cause then Riju would have never been the husband of Ana .Here s a memorable story of the Desi Cannabie who married an english teacher Cannabie , a friend who betrayed another, and of DOG ...ahhh there again Sorry blokes ....GOD obviously .... in G-style. Note that it takes place before the advent of inspector Manish Dubey.
For Riju it was love at first sight,he confessed this to his best friend I-Gunda on the first day itself.The Green paar HOLDE saari and the Anglicized Hindi of Ana seemed to cut through his heart.He wanted to learn english .He wanted to make Ana his bride.But alas he was only a good for nothing cannabie.He asked I-gunda who knew a little bit of english ,but flaunted of it in the whole G-para ,to write a letter for him on the eve of V-day, to express his emotion to Ana.But as his name suggests I - gunda was evil. He was always jealous of riju`s personality ,his charm and green muscular dilineation. So I- gunda thought` What a chance to insult riju and forfeit his amoural desires forever ?? ` He wrote a letter in G-style.This is what he had written-

" Dearest Ana,

As......... I am yours forever and ever......

This is something i will never say.

I will never hold your hand when you are alone.

Whenever i sleep ....

I take your name,inhale your fragrance,lose myself to that dark hair of yours

Dont you think so??

Cause If you do, you are so wrong.

Do You think i will leave you in the crossroads of life?

Do You think i will let you cry ,let you ever feel the pain of separation?

You are so right about it.

If you think i lose myself completely in those greenish eyes of yours.....

You must have lost your mind.

You are asking me " Is there someone else in my life??"

Its great you figured it out.

Thank God !! I am, sort of relieved.

I also had an inkling that you wanted to be my Valentine ??

I came to know that you think i want to go on a date with you?

This is the biggest joke i have ever laughed at.

What made you think so ?

You think i am dating a girl more attractive than you ?

Actually I am.

Am i thinking what will you feel about me after reading this?

I GIVE A DAMN !!

And for the rest of the world

I have never cared about it.

I dont care whether You will ever love me....

This is the first time i am saying this to you isnt it ??

I hope you enjoy this precise moment throughout your life.

I will forget you , i ll forget your face, your heart that you gave me.

cause i was lying that day when i said

I love you and will love you till my last breath ....... "

I-gunda was full of pride at his creativity of writing such out-of the box Hatred letter in G-style.He gave it to ana saying that Riju had written it for her. He was jubiliant to see Ana`s face contort with hatred as she read through the letter. but.....picture abhi baaki hain mere dost.

The world is a strange place, love is presumably more complex and stranger than it. Love turns the world upside-down... makes a guy write something what he never meant. Then DOG ,sorry GOD comes running for help.And whispers into that beautiful G- girl`s ears ,
"My dear kid, In love ...all you have to do is... to retrace your path along these words in order to get his real perception towards you" The girl seemed confused.
" What are you trying to say ,God ji ?"
"Idiot ! read the letter backwards,Love is blind ,it can take any path which moves forward or lead back. Depends on you to choose which one you want to tread ....Pyaar andha hota hain Ana beti...."
The rest what they say was written in the stars...
And obviously in.... G-style.
But did riju- ana live together forever ????
to be continued.....
PS: maybe this is one of the most creative blogs that i have written,if not the best grammatically...who cares bout the grammar when its written in G-style??

Exclusively Raj !

2010-02-01T10:42:00.002+05:30

Raj Thackerey had employed a senior research scientist from MIT , who made a ground-breaking revelation ( Only for Indians ) : a Bengali has a different DNA structure from that of his Gujrati neighbour and Marathi wife. D-day for shiv-sena(or whatever sena,keep forgetting the name of his new party).Well more of a nightmare than a dream , but thats what i had last night. Penned it down for keeping a memoir of such an exclusively intangible reality or an alternate and impossible future.

Raj Thackerey becomes the Prime minister of our secular country . He deploys his newly formed bureau-Indian states traffic control organization ,seals borders of each individual state, keeps DNA-check toll booth in all the borders ,starts the usage of inter-state passports and initiates a chain of cultural, economical and god knows what other changes in the country .Heres some that come into my innocently ugly mind.

1. Chetan Bhagat is in jail. "2 states" Huh ?? Outrageous ! Preaching inter-state matrimony is a crime.

2. Jyoti Basu dies. CPIM top notch Prakash and Brinda Karat taken into custody for paying a visit to the dying comrade without providing prior information to the authority.

3. Nit s expand their state intake to 100 % and national intake reduced to 0%, no more Gulti`s in Bengal , no more mukherjees in Trichy.

4. No more Durga pujo pandals outside Bengal. Abhijeet (the overhyped singer) taken into custody for initiating a durgo pujo in the heart of mumbai itself, playing with meat in the tigers den .

5. Price of rasogollas hiked to Rs. 10 / piece ( all halwais sent back to Bihar)

6. Mamata Banerjee made the supremo of west bengal. remember Ratan Non-bong Tata ?? What happened to Singur impressed the Thackereys.

7.Bansal classes in Kota closed. Intake from other states stopped.

8. Shreya Ghosal, Shaan jailed for not singing in her mother tongue , but in hindi.

9. Rickshaws are extinct in Bengal.99% rickshaw pullers were from Bihar.

10. Shahrukh Khan turned for questioning , Usage of improper Bengali in front of 1 lakh janta in eden."Haamra Karbo ladbo jitbo re"

11. Subtitles banned for regional films. If you dont know the language , theres no point in watching it.

12.Akshay Kumar taken under custody for feigning a false name and title ( bhatia = punjab), nitish kumar = Bihar, Dilip kumar =???

13.Meer taken into custody for mimicry of Shiv-sena supremo.

14.Mumbai is the new capital of India.

15. Roaming charges for mobile users tripled.

16. Aamir Khan jailed for making a film on Raj and sena. Name : Raj-ni

17. Frito- lays increase their cost of chips from 20 to 40. inter -state potato transfer forum demanding 100% tariff.

18.Chhat pujo banned in bengal. 10 Non-bongs caught red-handed in a lake in kol. doing with the rituals.

19.Governers to be elected from the state itself.

20. Sonia Gandhi and family in deep shit-hole trying to figure out which state they belong to .

21. the commercial video "mile sur mera tumhara " banned in all television channels , the people in the video put under house arrest.

22. Royal bengal tiger is no more the national animal, so is the peacock the national bird. The maratha government in search of a exclusive maratha animal and bird.

23. Shivaji is the new Father of the nation. Rajnikant put to jail for acting in a non-marathi film named after the father of our nation.

22. No more Neha`s, Priti`s,Sonam`s . shift of amoural liasions to all the mitas, ritas, shrees pornas...

Not that i am out of ideas.

Im out of courage . My laptop prides in having a sticker just beside its keypad which proudly boasts a "Marketed in india under acer industries Mumbai...." emblem.

You could fill in some ideas or comments.Thankfully, Blogger wasnt MADE IN INDIA.

Ma-Riju-Ana.... a love story ,G - isshtyle !

2010-01-29T20:35:00.003+05:30

i dont pontificate.So my life story ,as i am going to narrate will be a true introspection rather than a pompous ballad of a hero. I am malignant to humans, i am consumed by men who find me esoteric .I am a fountainhead of immense pleasure,of NIRVANA and untimely death.This story is not for people who are languid,goofy enough to neglect me ,incorrigible enough to consume me doggedly.I have raised men to unreachable success,i have fallen men to their ashes.Who am i ? I am Riju. Shah rukh Khan is my favourite hero.
Dhanbad was my birthplace.My native place is a paradigm of coal-theft.The coal theives prefer to consume us with their coal money. But i wasnt brownish when i was born.Like all the members of my species i was green in colour.The Americans are such buggers ,arent they? Prefer to omit "u" in such a small word colour,lazy creatures.Unlike the others of my clan i dont like americans. The field where i was born belonged to a bald old bihari whose fart smelled of rotten "muli", the cheapest vegetable found in bihar,sorry jharkhand.But that didnt stop me from polishing my knowledge-quotient which solely came from the "transistor" of the Ganja Bihari. I was apprehensive regarding the origin of my name,i pleaded to god that GAANJA did not originate from ganja.Now i know the truth . Thats why i am happy.
Ma ,wasnt mother india for me.She was just 3 weeks older than me.Ana was 3 days younger.From the 5th day of my incarnation , my eyes were fixed on Ana.She was the most greenly voluptous female of our "khet".And i was the most greenly muscular one.So whenever the transistor played the Sharukh Khan hit "Ana meri pyaar ko tum kabhi jhoota na samjho jaanaa....." She used to flutter her leaves in embarrassment and i used to whistle in G-for gaanja style.Mom used to be embarrassed.But alas we are stuck forever to where we incubate.So all Ma could say is "Barey badmaash ho tum...."(in case you forget from the film saawariya).By now you must have guessed that the only means of communication of desi-cannabies are bollywood numbers.Thanks to the "transistors ".
"Kabhie ana tu meri gali" that was all i could say . Time of amusement were over.The ganja bihari was plucking all of us and laying us bare-skinned under the sun to change our tan from green to coal black.I had heard(via transistor) that one hell of a human who gave a sudden shot of a dogs bark "AAUUUU" now and then had changed his tan from Black to white(skin pigmentation).I felt empathetic towards him. Even cannabies didnt like changing to a negroid tan.Racism was prevalent among us.The greens were impuned.After getting a sun-bath for two days my mother ,i and to my greatest disappointment Ana went "Black" .Naaahh not the Rani mukerji style, the "hum kaale hain to kya hua dilwale hain" one.
Polythenes are banned in the world of humans,arent they? but Ganja was oblivious of the fact.He stapled Ma, ana and me in three different plastic packets and kept us among his vast collection of cannabies .I could hear Ana singing "Soona soona mann ka aangann" .but her Saif s hands were stapled.But i sang back"Kurban hua"in G-style.Then came the police.
"Inspector Manish Dubey naam hai hamaar, gaanja kheti karta hain ,wo bhi bina license ke ganja kahika" India was the only country where you needed a license to grow a drug from a debauched politician who consumed them.
to be continued.......

The "N" th IDIOT ( 3 < N < [1/0] )

2010-01-09T11:51:00.003+05:30

STATUATORY WARNING:

1.This is not an eulogy of the film that you must have guessed by now.I do not possess the oracular power of commenting on an Aamir khan film,lest criticising it.

2. I suck in engineering studies.And I am an egalitarian, believing that 7.97 and 8.00 are equal and Electrical machines is the single most bugger of a subject in this universe.

An Engineer refers to a person who has an ability to control and manipulate a machine,as defined by the oxford english dictionary .But wait, this was the Brit`s version . In India ,as one of my friends inputted me, Engineering means--

1. a) Rs. 10^7 dowry in Bihar if you are an IIT-ian ( cant clarify whether its only for the B.tech course) b) reduce a zero if you are a NIT grad c) Reduce another if from someplace else.

2. "O ji sunte ho ,hamare padosan ka beta IIT-Mandy mein padhta hain ,wo kabhi ghar aaye to khub se khilana pilana ,hamare shyam ko kehna uske saath chipak jaye taaki wo bhi kuch shikh sake."

3. Getting an Mba degree from IIM or II"P"M and working in a bank . Then start writing. These days publishers have a fetish for grads of good colleges.

Somewhere down the line we forget that the hard-bound 1000 page doctrine (Often used to kill a thief from a balcony dislodging it on him,seldom used for going through it) correlates an "Engineer" with his "machine".

An engineering college is one of the best place to inhale friendship, to develop so many ephemeral relationships with the opposite sex,even to start a band.But not a place to study .I am sorry that im not complacent about what i am studying or learning .

In your first year you are hectored by your seniors, and for the next three years either

1. you coax your proffessor till he drowns in flattery . You can expect a Cgpa of 8 if you have succeeded

2. Start studying english ( usage of that big ,hard bound book ) to bell the feline,and enter "The Bank of **** " anything other than India , Deustche,swiss being the popular ones.

3. Take note of each and every word that a proffessor says,including his cough "Ahemm" and mugging up till you have imbibed those precise words used in the definition ." Machines er definition ae ADVANTAGE word ta na likhle kintu marks paabena, zero boshiye debo ".Success is guaranteed ( cgpa > 8.5)

4. Cultivate an "ISHQ" with someone special, comb your hair , ignite your bike`s engine, and vrooom "THERE GOES THE COUPLE OF THE BATCH".

5. Your turn to hector your junior.

Only 2% of the total strength of teachers intrigue studs to learn engineering. And 100% of the total strength are ready to catch the fellow taking refuge of dishonesty.Thats unfair. A little bit of altruism is necessary. After all MEMORY is the least of the necessities to qualify AIEEE or IIT exams , so there`s always a chance of Shift + delete , an external drive is the only refuge ,isnt it?

"DRAW A NEAT FIGURE OF THE HARTLEY-OSCILLATOR"

Im sorry.An idiot like me ,has to use a piece of paper named "a Cheat".

Isnt it preposterous to learn nothing but score a perfect 9 in your semester ?

Isnt it jocular to disgorge flippancy to your teacher behind his back and cajole him in front ?

(was this a self-aimed question ? Dont know, maybe.)

Machines are not a means of emancipation for me , Rancho was an exception.Im infidel to them and find them mundane.Fidelty if possible should be reserved for a lucrative liasion,not a ghastly machine.

I do not want to make a career as a photographer or a musician ,for that matter.I want to earn money from the knowledge that i have imbibed in my college ,which tends to zero .(Maybe tends to a negative value, i keep forgetting what i had learnt in my school)But the thing which transfers me to a state of delirium is , what if one of the interviewers of a company questions me something that is beyond-

1. "DRAW THE DIAGRAM OF AN OSCILLATOR"

2. "DEFINE IT,EXPLAIN THE DIAGRAM"

"Dont worry , your MAN would not have learned something more than that .We are all petals of the same flower- ENGINEERING" my friend had joked.

But what if Rancho s exist in real life ,and both he and i have the misfortune of sitting face to face in an interview ?I dont think Idiot-1 will enjoy interviewing the "N th " one ,will he?

IIT-mandy,Nit-siuri...... yaar ,i know the population is steaming in India, but still so many PARADIGMS of engineering education arent needed. Whats needed from the bureaucrats is to spend money on existing colleges, to get good teachers for each college . Recently newspapers flaunted with pride that 30% of teaching posts in IIts , Nits are lying vacant.

Ain`t there anybody interested in teaching engineering ?

Corollary:

"WHAT IS A MACHINE,DRAW A NEAT DIAGRAM OF IT" doesnt amuse any of the generation of engineers, they dont prefer to take the post of someone, they had previously planned of writing an obituary.

I have taken refuge of that age-old friend of human being which mews seeing a bowl of milk.

Any college giving that masters of business administration will do for me.

Call me a bugger, i dont care.

Call me a moneyphilic, i dont care.I come from a middle class family , i love money and i need it.

But, Call me an idiot. i do care.I was never good in mathematics.

For i havent found out the value of "N" yet .

So ..... have you ?

If you have. "AAL IZZ WELL".

Looking through her eyes

2009-10-13T12:31:00.002+05:30

I am learning all about my life… by looking through her eyes.

Music crunches you from within, A sense of paranoia which sets those hidden plethora of self inflicted wounds, those piled down blanket of tears , of flushing cheeks ,of those wine red yet undone lips. Vodka + Through her eyes is a deadly combination, ( I haven’t tried it out , maybe somebody should) Pain brings out the best of an artist, so is with this weird cacophony that’s bound to bring tears in your eyes.

She wasn’t given any choice,desperation stole her voice….

I don’t have a clear idea whether the artist had to incur any loss as mentioned in the song, maybe his child had met the same fate ,maybe not , Im gonna Google it out in a few minutes but …haven’t heard much of Dream Theater but this one s really gone deep down ….

Some memorable pictures of Kalbela......

2009-08-25T09:20:00.003+05:30

Revolution and the loaded gun....

2009-08-24T09:40:00.002+05:30

A year ago one of my "to be" doctor friend complained that seniors from his "to be " college were motivating him to join SFI . The timeline: joint results were out the previous day. I was completely amazed to find the vigour of the union members.

I had been told that a membership in the SF could fetch the M.B.B.S ,a job in the government hospitals in kolkata. Was this a bait ???

Supposedly, everyone of us , infact our generation has grown up learning from our parents that politics with a BIG "P" is the most vile and futile profession any one can dream of. How many Bengali teenagers dream of being a Buddhadeb Bhattacharya or Rahul Gandhi ? I insist on using the word "BENGALI" cause there are friends of mine from Bihar and Jharkhand , passionate about politics aspiring to be a Lalu ( ver 2.0). I am not proud to include myself in that non-ending list of Bengali youth. I had always had a suspicion that something must have happened in the mid era of 70s and 80s , a storm had extinguished the fire inside, the urge to change ,the zeal of constructive energy from our soul. Before that Kolkata had been the powerhouse of youth politics. I have read in a school, supposedly among the best in our district, studied and appeared for a paper in Indian history in the I.C.S.E, but still why has the curriculum been designed in such a way that no one even gets a glimpse of the enormity of the naxalite movement that shook Bengal inside out??

A clever conspiracy of the ruling government? Something to ponder about….

Books are best means to swim through any time zone you want to. Sometimes they do change your outlook towards a specific genre . "All quiet in the western front" by E.M Remarque and "freedom at midnight" fall in that elusive list. And so does KALBELA…

Animesh Mitra , a name which has nothing to do with reality. A failure in life, in carrying out his social responsibilities ,in giving his love that speck of Red dust that every Hindu woman dreams of keeping safe in her forehead. Then what was so special about him that made him the unforgettable protagonist of a simple work of fiction???

Maybe a quality that our breed of GEN-X have stopped inheriting : Pure ,unaltered love for ones country .

What happens when an India Pakistan war rolls? We see our 20 billion praying for one army to win , sending abusive curses to our opponent, but what when the war is against someone who is inside the countries border`s? Someone who has got an Indian visa, an Indian bank account and money of endless Government employees working night and day for bread…Someone who has got a seat in Lok sabha to boast of and a Vip car to disturb the public with its endless alarm roaring in the traffic?

" Tum politics kyon join karma chahte ho ?"

"Arrey yaar, bahut paisa hain isme , tu kya sochta hain main khaak mein engineering ka naukri chod ye sab karoonga?"

God save the mouth which blurted out this inconvenient truth. Had he been born in the age of Mahadebda,and Subas da (active naxalite heads) ….. :D

Were the naxals right in choosing which side of the loaded gun they would face?

Were they right in killing the money sucking swines in the society ,taking the law in their own hands to bring equality in the society ?

Thinking about this I came to one simple conclusion : history wouldn't have been the same if the REVOLUTIONists had got an able national leader , a father figure who could steer the movement agaist the storm just like Mao-tse-Tuang and Fidel Castro .

One simple mistake, maybe calling them "The Naxals " just creates an invisible barrier between the simple middle class man and them, but why do we forget that Studs of Presidency, Scottish church and C.U were the backbone of this movement , the so called "BUDDHI JIBIS" of the society . What was it that had dragged them into this revolution .??

"Love for ones country " , the chromosome missing in our genes now :D.

Kalbela wouldn't be complete without possibly my best dream- woman Madhabilata Mukherjee. Animesh had raised his gun against the society, but Lata had plunged into the revolution ,remaining inside the society facing it, a more difficult task to me . A heck of a woman ! Take my bow Madhabilata , cause you deserve it. Revolution doesn't happen only with a loaded gun ,it happens when people like you comprise of the society….

Animesh was tortured until paralysis by the police, Madhabilata s womb was burnt with a cigar in front of him. But still, the story ends with animesh pondering" where are my fellow comrades? Can I still be of any use to them with my paralysed leg?"

Of what earth are these idols made of ? Idols who lose their world but not their faith. And when they are on move even the strongest bow to their will… Men whose name are avoided in the pages of a history book out of fear, cause their names themselves are enough to rekindle the fire, to start a new revolution….And their story?? Sends a chill down the spine of those sitting on the throne of power..

P.S : Dear reader, if you have read kalbela or have something to share about the naxal movement please do leave a comment… I have been greatly inspired by it and look forward to know more…

Siuri and Sharat

2009-07-22T15:15:00.002+05:30

My grandfather and grandma are the best in the world.

They understand each and every unorthodox mentality of a young man which seems ludicrous and intangible to all other adults. I adore them and share with them everything from Madly bangali to Roman holiday ,from sarat chandra to j.k rowling , from the naxalite movement to the recent gay fiasco. I have never seen a more romantic and adventurous doctor other than Dadu.Typing this article, sitting in front of my lappy, on the sands of Mayurakshi I somehow feel that the present generation ‘X’ somehow fades to the grandeur of the youth of 50s and 60s.

Yesterday was a notable day in my life, I had a 3 hour long conversation with my grandparents about their lives . I also read a sarat chandra classic “Anupama r Prem”.

The ‘ Saontals’ are jumping from the bank into the clear water. I had heard that any kind of dust or sand is injurious to laptop s health. But I cant compromise this unique picturesque .Sorry dad.

Many of my friends have commented that they have never visited a village. “GRAM”!! along with the “Nak unchu” phenomenon. Well from distant childhood I have been an urban Saontal and loved the days I have spent in suri. I have fallen in love with Mayurakshi since my toddling times and still feel that now and then it attracts me like a seductive magnet. I have first learnt swimming with a “kolshi” in mayurakshi and the club s pool in durgapur is no match to it. I have sat cursing life,along it s bank when I have screwed up in life and felt as if the water was making a synonymous sound of grief. Suri has been my best friend whenever I have felt alone.

Anupama was a novel –philic ,impractical idiot. She imagined and created a lover of her own in Suresh never willing to ask what he felt about her. And Suresh was the REAL LIFE NERD , the B.A degree wallah Mazumdar who seemed to have a grudge on having his wife living in the next street.

( I have an inkling that even in those days educated indian youth had a weakness for GORAA CHAMRE WALI TOTAS, that’s why he wanted to cross KALAPANI so eagerly. :D )

And then came Lalit Mohan , the drunkard who had an eternal love for anupama. He was jailed ,he lost his self respect but was always in time when he had to save Anu from drowning. :D

Suresh fled on the day of his marriage , anu had to marry a 50 year old man who died after 3 years.

Anu was on verge of commiting her last suicide realising that Lalit was the only one who had ever loved her when Lalit made another miraculous life-saving act. The story ends with the most elegantly poised dialogue of the whole story.

Anu: ” why did you save my life ?“

Sarat chandra could have easily dethroned all the Chetan bhagats and the salman rushdie s had he been born in our era and written in english.

The best part of the story is the excerpts depicting the suicidal addiction of anu. She wanted to end her life innumerable times drowning in the pond but Alas ! what a pity that she knew swimming.

Enough of writing. I have brought my towel and its getting rainy. The clear water of Mayurakshi is waiting for me and so are my friends “LALU, NONTE , KEBOLRAM ,SADAI AND ATANU”.These scroundrels never seem to grow up!

Signing off.

Mayurakshi, here I come…..!

Love, Rain and Sunshine

2009-07-21T23:21:00.003+05:30

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

The stars shine a little more brightly,The moon is no longer a vestige of the night . The human instincts prevail over the logical half as the raindrops soak into your skin. The slight cough and cold are too insignificant an after-effect then ,as the umbrellas suddenly reduce in numbers and the mirror and the comb suddenly gains a lot of attention. Time transforms itself into an unpredictable constrain dragging itself to unfathomable length in times of solitude and ticking over in a fall of an eyelash in those special moments of life.You are supposed to be in utopia forever.
But honestly speaking, that does not happen.

At least not in this edition of Michel Gondry s surreal take on love. One may have a derisory as to why spent ink and attention on a film whose most of the dvds are off the shelf ( its been 5 years)! But believe me Eternal Sunshine… is such a motion picture which can be loved,critised but simply not ignored…
Well if you think that this scribbling is a mere criticism of a film then you can avoid the rest part as it will leave you dissappointed. And its best to watch the film first , cause only then the writing will fully fit in as a giant zigsaw puzzle.

Kate winslet doesn’t give her best performance ever in this one , Jim Carrey seems to be only the shadow of what he was in Mask or Liar Liar(the comical factor). But even an absolute perfectionist in UNDERACTING would admire their roles in this film. Joel and Clementine are not characters juxtaposed from a fictional novel , they are the ones we meet in real life in the streets of Durgapur ,kolkata, delhi and mumbai.
What happens when 2 persons ,their personal idealogies being poles apart find each other to be special and fall in love only to be driven to the extent of erasing their each other s identity from their memory by a fictious Lacuna inc.??
The answer is they meet again only to fall in love for the second time never knowing that their past were once entwined.(well, they do know at last)
The major portion of the film circles around the memories of Clementine being erased from Joels mind and as gradually as he realizes that Clementine is too special for him to forget and tries in vain to keep an outline of her in his other memories (childhood ones which didn’t revolve around her)
I personally found the following exchange of words to be the best one in the film.Its when Joel realizes that he cant be happy without Clementine but matters have gone too far.

Joel: It would be different if we could just give it another go-around.Clementine: Remember me. Try your best. Maybe we can.
And yes one can truly appreciate the film if it is watched more than once.

ERASING OF A MEMORY by mapping the brain and cutting out the portion of the memory involving the person !
What would be your first instinct if you had to erase one single human bieng from your life….
Someone you hate or someone you have loved and lost??
The world is a strange place. And human mind is stranger than it. For it always tends to prefer the latter choice,but ends up with the former …

A Silent Protest...

2009-07-05T21:38:00.001+05:30

“ Maybe I know that the path im treading is wrong, maybe it leads to nowhere but at least I have got the courage to walk a long way along it…..”
That’s what animesh told madhabilata when she demanded him to move out of the naxalite movement in samaresh mazumdar’s “Kalbela”.
And that’s exactly what I thought when I opted for “THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ,DURGAPUR” on my counseling day.
Today I know I was right then.
Im not animesh, was never as daring as him and to some extent idolize him .
And this piece of scribbling is not a ballad on my college.
One of my friends who s really thrilled me with some fascinating blog articles seems to have a sea of discontent flowing over our college , so does her beautiful piece of poetry suggest .I know the list of Placements and dreamjobs ist of Placementap wont interest her much . She s got some real doubt over the credentials of our students. Well I should let her know that ive found a few madhabilata s and animesh s in our college.
OKAY enough of shit lets get to the facts.
Lets listen to a story,or maybe a narration to be precise.

“There it is I thought amidst the waves, isn’t it?? The small paperboat fighting its way down the river?” A rough push broke my hallucination . “its getting late son ,we ll have to go back before sundown” father said. I stopped my ipod “behte saagar mein tanha kahin… geeton ko tumhare khojti..”.so that was the reason I was seeing the paperboat(filled with my dreams) I broke into a smile and suddenly that sunny afternoon filled my thoughts. “ Soham, have you seen The Bong Connection?”ayan smiled. There was no electricity and we as usual had bunked classes and were having the usual ”adda” on a rooftop.”its really a good movie ,you better watch it”. Had I not listened to Ayan that day maybe I would not have got the anjan dutta recipe which now plays one of the most important part of my life.
st important parrget those never ending discussion about satyajit ray ,rabindranath tagore about “OUR NATIONAL POET ‘SONNET’ ” and obviously about konkona0� and obvious Well to be true ,I have got a lot of friends studying in college s far better than mine in IIT s,ISM s and all the ones with IT ending its name but…..barring one
The only interesting topic that seems to come up when we meet is “ Kire kota girlfriend holo , koto jon ke potali and bla bla….”
The only place where we end up every alternate day is below the 89 cinemas .
Don’t know, unwillingly feel a part of lust-starving men who have been deprived of their testosterone in their collge. I wont leave them ,never do that ,for they have been with me through the rough, but I must admit I have found a few good men in my college who actually think exactly as I do . People who are not robots programmed to success .
People who have failed big time as I have. People who dare to sing “Dariye aacho tumi aamar.. “ at 2am the day before the semester exams ,and yes people who are unhesitant to help.

The poetess seems to have a lot of grudge over the fags and vodka.
But (though I haven’t had much) a nip or 2 has a comfortably numb effect on you I must say. Still remember the day I wasn’t “OUT” .
“Yesterday love was such an easy game to play…”
The beatles song multiplies its gripping effect when you are intoxicated. Obviously another one is” Somebody s me”.
I have found in rishi, ayan ,sumantra ,basu, sam, people who have lived life the way they wanted. We have been rebels against the wrong just like animesh and without deciding whether it was right or wrong walked along the path.i have seen my friends fantasizing someone and loving her even when she moved on with somebody.i have found my friend in the middle of a love story playing a character till the end , with the real world faded from his eyes.

WE ARE STILL “HUMAN S” IN OUR COLLEGE”.
“HAVENT BEEN GRINDED INTO A MACHINE”
Maybe the facts that she included were partly true.
But who cares.

someone s knockin at your door.

2008-10-23T03:18:00.000+05:30

THE FACE INSIDE ME

2008-09-12T23:55:00.004+05:30

Well this a song that i had composed a few weeks ago.well i know a song without music is a body without soul but i will upload the music ,in a few days.
walking down the streets of another town
i met with faces i have never known.
faces with tears ,with a lovely smile
faces i have come across for a while
faces which gave me tears,
faces which made me cry.
but i havent got the chance you see,
to read the face present inside me......

they say when you have read it, you touch the sky.
you are then a complete, man ready to fly.
faces who gifted love, and then denied.
face of god above, looking satisfied.
faces that a mother cares,
faces that a lover stares.
but i havent got the chance you see,
to read the face present inside me.

to read the face present inside me...

to read the face present inside me.........

Chinese checker

2008-09-12T02:10:00.002+05:30

The world is like a checker board, a big star you see. the star isnt the bright and shining one you see in the blackened sky.It has got holes , holes from which the humans incubate. you get tripped over because of the holes , you are tripped over by your opponent who moves a hole further than you. And this is where all it starts and this is where it ends.

"sahaabji,chai laaon kya?"(can i bring some tea) pramod asked The Master. "bari zor ki thand hai"(its cold).
The master replied ,"Hey son of a bitch , dont you know it,askin me you fool!". "go to a near restaurant and bring me some samosas."

"but sahabji its too cold out there, its snowing you see. i will die ""then just fuck off, i have seen more of you than i ought to , wont get your salary"
"give me the money sahaabji"
pramod had never had the courage to argue with his sahabji. He needed money for his mother ,his wife to survive.
Wearing the raincoat that was supposed to save him from rain he went into the dark darjeeling night.
He had been forced to work for The Master. he had no job to do and his wife and his mother were goin wheat-less.
the Master had already completed a dictionary of abuses for pramod. Money gets you everything you see, power to humilate ,power to buy, to sell and to write a dictionary too!
Pramod brought the samosas(food) ." Today im going to show him what he ought to be paid for his evilness" he thought.
he bought a rat-poison along with the samosas(with his own money,Master paid him only for samosas.)
Next day an old man was found dead in his apartment in darjeeling. He had died due to excessive doses of poison in samosas. All his money had been taken by his servant who had gone missing.

few years later.........

"sahaabji,chai laaon kya?"(can i bring some tea) vinod asked.
"Hey son of a bitch , dont you know it,askin me you fool!" His master said.. "go to the near restaurant and bring me some samosas."
"but sahabji its too cold out there, its snowing you see. i will die ""then just fuck off, i have seen more of you than i ought to , wont get your salary"
"give me the money sahaabji"
vinod needed money for his sisters marriage. he couldnt argue with his Master.
While coming back with the samosas he brought a dozen sleepin pills. im gonna teach that grit a lesson "vinod muttered.
next day a middle aged man was found dead due to overdose of pills.
his neighbours informed the authorities that his name was pramod.
his servant had fled with all the money.
so what do you get- pramod tripped over his opponent only to be tripped by his "succesor".
the whole took both the master and his slave.
The money about which the story is written maybe was the player of the chinese checker board.it decided what to do with its units.