This blog has been abandoned in public interest.
*bows and exits*
*bows and exits*
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Tambourine Man, before dawn.
Listening to Hey Mr. Tambourine Man at one in the morning is a strange and beautiful experience. I can feel every tiny vibration in his voice that I never heard before, it's as though he's singing it somewhere far way, right now, and knows I am listening. We share this moment, between us it's like a secret about a third person that we have been keeping for years.
And when he says "Let me forget about today until tomorrow" I know that that melancholy twenty-three year old is still there, hanging around, never to grow old, never to die.
And when he says "Let me forget about today until tomorrow" I know that that melancholy twenty-three year old is still there, hanging around, never to grow old, never to die.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Being a song. Being a bird.
In class nine, I heard Simon and Garfunkel for the first time. The song I heard was called Homeward Bound. “Every day’s an endless dream of cigarettes and magazines. Each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories, and every stranger’s face I see reminds me that I long to be homeward bound.”
How can you long to be homeward bound when you are in your room, a room that is out of range of the rest of your residence, and you are alone and free? I figure that I want to relate to the song. Maybe that is why I manufacture a make-believe feeling of homelessness that helps me blend with the song, close my eyes, and become the song.
“Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.”
…silently for me.
A little throb, and a drop of melody that falls on you softly, tentatively. Then the crowd breaks into a cheer, and I stop being a song.
My room has a personality of its own; it never really listens to me. Entangled earphones appear on the bed where I never kept them. Books jump to the floor when they no longer like the table. Clothes slide down (and up) the clothes’ line. The mirror is unwashed, a bottle lies empty and yellow on the floor, and the coffee mug on the window sill has a curious pair of ants on its rim, looking down into the dark abyss formed by the dregs of yester-nights drink. Perhaps they are debating on who should go down first.
My room is wet, stale and sad. A bit like me, I suppose.
The only wall of the room that is unblemished by switchboards has a painting hung on it. In the room of my dreams, there is a fireplace, a hearthrug and a piano, and paintings of the same kind; not that I would leave this sad, stale room for the dream one. The girl in Ravi Verma’s painting stares wearily and calmly ahead. Her dress is shabby, she has a broomstick in her hand, she could very well be a maid, but she looks so alone that I can’t imagine there being anyone else in the house, whom she might work for. Tachhara, she is smoking a pipe and languishing on a seat with her feet on tigerskin.
Who can she be?
On days like this, I am a bit of what she is. I have work but I still languish, I am calm and don’t care much whether I am happy or sad. Too lazy to create, too tame to destroy, I stare fixedly at that one drop of rain on the tip of a dry supuri leaf, waiting for it to fall. Why can’t I turn into the crow of a crow? Or a dove? I’d jump from wet branch to dry branch to wet branch and jump and jump and be lonely. And call and call till I got an answer from the faraway talgaachh, then fly to the talgaach and find him gone.
Sitting on the black wire, I find it wet and slippery. I get the feeling that I’ll fall but don’t, rocking to and fro instead. It sends a nice giggly shiver through my bones. I fly back in time and land on the lamppost beside a coffee house, many years ago, watching a tram drag along, a bus trailing off a curvy ball of smoke, fearing for my life. Then I stop being a bird.
I fear for my life. Often, when I’m by myself in my room I think of how it would be to live alone when I’m thirty, a rich woman with an equally big room, a careless woman with an equally untidy room, a woman with a room and no home. When I come out of the bath and stand beside the window, a sudden gush of wind breathes through me, I live one moment of inspiration, of wanting to make a difference, doing something new.
The moment ripples away like a soft blow on the face of water. I take out my law books, my highlighter, my backlog list, and start falling asleep.
Monday, April 6, 2009
The sepia tints of childhood...
It's a brown coloured day, a cloudy winter day, with a Didun-coloured sky, and a misty wind that smells of nostalgia. This is not the kind of nostalgia that you feel for school, or friends, or the nice lady who used to be your classteacher a few years back. This is a deep-rooted nostalgia that pervades generations, your own childhood, mother's childhood, even grandmother's childhood.
The world doesn't give a damn about the Didun-shaped hole in my universe, it goes on in its own way uncompromisingly and so do I, but so much of myself and my childhood is going away into that hole...
To name a few, there were those afternoons of climbing her trees with kaathpipreys all over me, those dark dawns of picking shiulis while she shook the tree, their fragrance enveloping my senses and the raw coldness of dawn biting into my bones. Those pitheys, jams, jellies, and achars that always smelt of her, irrespective of how they were flavoured. Those winter afternoons spent on her lap, sunshine on our shoulders and in our eyes, me listening spellbound to her stories while she knitted woolens for everyone starting from her beloved granddaughters to the gardener's child who had caught a cold. As I grew up, those Eoshop's fables and tales of mythology were replaced by anecdotes of her own childhood, her miserable womanhood. I heard how she fought with her whole family for the right of education, how she was married against her will to someone who didn't allow her as much as a pillow on her wedding night because she hadn't brought one from her father's place. I heard how a girl of seventeen blossomed into a woman, how that woman battled life for herself and her children, unaided by the man who refused to grant her the most fundamental human rights. The in-laws in the the villages of those days made me shudder whenever I heard how they performed rituals to bring about Didun's death earlier than Dadu's, how they almost murdered her first child by making her work at the dheki when she was pregnant. I've often been envious of my mum's delightful childhood, a childhood cut out from Pather Panchali, but when I heard an account of those times from Didun, I could only gape.
"Those were the hardest times of my life", she said, "Running the home alone, trying to cultivate vegetables on the little land we had and selling them, all so that my children could have enough to live on". Her voice went hard, "Sometimes, there wouldn't be a morsel to spare at home, but I had three hungry children crying incessantly for food, their cries cutting right through me, making me want to starngle each one of them..."
I would put a loving arm around her. "But mum says you never turned a begger away. How so? Surely you'd have to go without food yourself?"
"I did go without it when they came begging, if I had any food at all, that is. They were poorer, and their pain was my own. I was a mother too, you see. Not being able to feed hungry children is the worst curse for a mother."
How charitable!, I thought to myself, but immediately amended my thoughts. It was not charity, they could not afford charity. It was a kind of unadulterated empathy that had nothing to do with pity.
"You know, there's a reason your mum scolds you when you waste food. In her childhood, we had about two eggs once in three months, and one had to be shared among all three of your ma, mama and mashi."
"And Dadu had the other egg all by himself, right?"
Didun's tone had no tinge of a complaint when she said, "Well, he was the man of the family, you know."
"You should have given him a divorce!" I exclaimed in disgust.
She laughed. "And where would I go then? There was no divorce in those days, dear. I was luckier than many women, I at least managed to earn your mother a childhood, an education."
The childhood she earned for my mother was an extremely simple one. Wading across knee-deep slush for a mile on her way to school. Shivering through the winter nights because they could not afford enough warmth. Sitting by the fire on purple winter evenings, filling the long hours with ancient stories. Looking forward to an egg for months (no wonder mum glares at me when I refuse an omelette because its precise shade of yellow is not after my heart).
Yet she can perhaps be justified in singing, "We had joy, we had fun/ We had seasons in the sun" more freely than I ever can. She went without shoes, so she didn't have to stop and think before plunging into a puddle. Pressed by the barest human needs, she didn't have the sense of properness to stop her from climbing coconut trees. Friendship, for her, was not restricted by limits of cast, creed, or even age. For her, it was a divine sense of unity, the kind of bonding you develop from slipping in the same puddle together, swinging from the hanging roots of the same banyan tree before diving into the ice-cold water of a pond for swimming races, licking the same achar stolen from a neighbour. Those were the days you could safely love your neighbour more than yourself, eat at anyone's as long as they had enough to spare, and have sleepovers at friends without a paranoid mother ringing you up on your cell every three seconds. You could buy enough mowas(the village equivalent of our sundae ice creams) to last a month with a poor girl's weekly pocket money. Happiness was a lot cheaper than it is now, and in some senses a lot purer.
Those stories of her childhood often make me wonder: Are we really progressing? Do Domino's pizzas, arguments over sms cards and expensive watches, plastic smiles and synthetic tears really count as progress? The quality of being happy with whatever little we have is one I see very rarely in the world I'm growing up in. Small joys count but little.
In my native village, little joys still count. I have another grandmother there, a woman who is remarkable in her own way. She's another fountain of wholesome love, a person who understands the worth of little drops of water, little grains of sand. So she would always let my four-year-old self feed her cows and calves, and show them my empty dish after lunch to tell them triumphantly, "Look, I ate faster than you! You're still chewing!". She's the one who defends me when I spend rainy mornings snuggled up in the branches of her aata tree, much to the fury of my mum who has remarkable lapses of memory when she forgets all about her own childhood spent climbing coconut trees, and yells at me for trying to replicate her adventures. My grandmother also accompanies me on my visits to the paddy fields, where the endless green meets the endless blue at a colourless horizon. I can bathe in ponds, cuddle the goats, chat with the village girls while I watch them at the work of "ghunte dewa". The kind of warmth you get in those kuchcha houses with naked babies crawling all over the dusty uthons, ducks and hens scarpering at your feet, young girls grinning from ear to ear while they rush about making things comfortable for you, anxious mothers who pat your head with a dirty hand half-cleaned hastily while they peer into your eyes and tell you that good health and mental freshness come before brilliant results in the Madhyamiks, and urge you to try some of their own "khejurer rosh", is something that you'll never get here in this world of sophisticated sitting rooms with fashionable paintings and crystal displays. The best thing about the khejurer rosh is that I can lick all five fingers while enjoying it, unlike some well-furnished dining room of Kolkata where I tend to worry more about how to hold the spoon and fork than enjoy the food itself.
I love my village. I love its rugged, unsophisticated charm. I love its mornings, green and grey in colour, smelling of mists and daybreak and sleeping cows. I love its yellow coloured noons, in which the taste of sunshine mingles with the smell of new mown hay. I love its golden-orange afternoons, the shapeless, endless sky, the purple curtain of twilight pricked by a few stars. I love the sight of the silver moonlight flooding the sleeping village, accentuating the silhouettes of tall trees on long wintry nights, filling me up with a strange sense of awe at so primitive a form of beauty.
However, changes are already setting in. Thamma will follow Didun soon, and our ancestral house will be sold and broken down. The sighs and whispers and gurgles of delight hidden in the bricks of that house will crumble. The red coloured pillar which is the sole keeper of so many of my childhood secrets will fall to dust. The village itself will probably make way for a highly industrialized city in the next generation. No more of moonbeam floods, only neon lights.
I want to cry for the Krishnachura my mother planted, Its flagrant redness tells me that it wants to live. But there's nothing I can do for it. I have to watch it fall, the way every red rose in our garden withers away too soon, while I watch another love of mine dying slowly.
My golden afternoons and purple twilights will get lost. My misty Decembers will fade away. My palash and krishnachura will bleed their hearts out 'cause they cannot cry. The tide of time and breeze of change will try to wash the blood away, wash away the sepia tints of my childhood.
But the dust will remember.
And so will I.
The world doesn't give a damn about the Didun-shaped hole in my universe, it goes on in its own way uncompromisingly and so do I, but so much of myself and my childhood is going away into that hole...
To name a few, there were those afternoons of climbing her trees with kaathpipreys all over me, those dark dawns of picking shiulis while she shook the tree, their fragrance enveloping my senses and the raw coldness of dawn biting into my bones. Those pitheys, jams, jellies, and achars that always smelt of her, irrespective of how they were flavoured. Those winter afternoons spent on her lap, sunshine on our shoulders and in our eyes, me listening spellbound to her stories while she knitted woolens for everyone starting from her beloved granddaughters to the gardener's child who had caught a cold. As I grew up, those Eoshop's fables and tales of mythology were replaced by anecdotes of her own childhood, her miserable womanhood. I heard how she fought with her whole family for the right of education, how she was married against her will to someone who didn't allow her as much as a pillow on her wedding night because she hadn't brought one from her father's place. I heard how a girl of seventeen blossomed into a woman, how that woman battled life for herself and her children, unaided by the man who refused to grant her the most fundamental human rights. The in-laws in the the villages of those days made me shudder whenever I heard how they performed rituals to bring about Didun's death earlier than Dadu's, how they almost murdered her first child by making her work at the dheki when she was pregnant. I've often been envious of my mum's delightful childhood, a childhood cut out from Pather Panchali, but when I heard an account of those times from Didun, I could only gape.
"Those were the hardest times of my life", she said, "Running the home alone, trying to cultivate vegetables on the little land we had and selling them, all so that my children could have enough to live on". Her voice went hard, "Sometimes, there wouldn't be a morsel to spare at home, but I had three hungry children crying incessantly for food, their cries cutting right through me, making me want to starngle each one of them..."
I would put a loving arm around her. "But mum says you never turned a begger away. How so? Surely you'd have to go without food yourself?"
"I did go without it when they came begging, if I had any food at all, that is. They were poorer, and their pain was my own. I was a mother too, you see. Not being able to feed hungry children is the worst curse for a mother."
How charitable!, I thought to myself, but immediately amended my thoughts. It was not charity, they could not afford charity. It was a kind of unadulterated empathy that had nothing to do with pity.
"You know, there's a reason your mum scolds you when you waste food. In her childhood, we had about two eggs once in three months, and one had to be shared among all three of your ma, mama and mashi."
"And Dadu had the other egg all by himself, right?"
Didun's tone had no tinge of a complaint when she said, "Well, he was the man of the family, you know."
"You should have given him a divorce!" I exclaimed in disgust.
She laughed. "And where would I go then? There was no divorce in those days, dear. I was luckier than many women, I at least managed to earn your mother a childhood, an education."
The childhood she earned for my mother was an extremely simple one. Wading across knee-deep slush for a mile on her way to school. Shivering through the winter nights because they could not afford enough warmth. Sitting by the fire on purple winter evenings, filling the long hours with ancient stories. Looking forward to an egg for months (no wonder mum glares at me when I refuse an omelette because its precise shade of yellow is not after my heart).
Yet she can perhaps be justified in singing, "We had joy, we had fun/ We had seasons in the sun" more freely than I ever can. She went without shoes, so she didn't have to stop and think before plunging into a puddle. Pressed by the barest human needs, she didn't have the sense of properness to stop her from climbing coconut trees. Friendship, for her, was not restricted by limits of cast, creed, or even age. For her, it was a divine sense of unity, the kind of bonding you develop from slipping in the same puddle together, swinging from the hanging roots of the same banyan tree before diving into the ice-cold water of a pond for swimming races, licking the same achar stolen from a neighbour. Those were the days you could safely love your neighbour more than yourself, eat at anyone's as long as they had enough to spare, and have sleepovers at friends without a paranoid mother ringing you up on your cell every three seconds. You could buy enough mowas(the village equivalent of our sundae ice creams) to last a month with a poor girl's weekly pocket money. Happiness was a lot cheaper than it is now, and in some senses a lot purer.
Those stories of her childhood often make me wonder: Are we really progressing? Do Domino's pizzas, arguments over sms cards and expensive watches, plastic smiles and synthetic tears really count as progress? The quality of being happy with whatever little we have is one I see very rarely in the world I'm growing up in. Small joys count but little.
In my native village, little joys still count. I have another grandmother there, a woman who is remarkable in her own way. She's another fountain of wholesome love, a person who understands the worth of little drops of water, little grains of sand. So she would always let my four-year-old self feed her cows and calves, and show them my empty dish after lunch to tell them triumphantly, "Look, I ate faster than you! You're still chewing!". She's the one who defends me when I spend rainy mornings snuggled up in the branches of her aata tree, much to the fury of my mum who has remarkable lapses of memory when she forgets all about her own childhood spent climbing coconut trees, and yells at me for trying to replicate her adventures. My grandmother also accompanies me on my visits to the paddy fields, where the endless green meets the endless blue at a colourless horizon. I can bathe in ponds, cuddle the goats, chat with the village girls while I watch them at the work of "ghunte dewa". The kind of warmth you get in those kuchcha houses with naked babies crawling all over the dusty uthons, ducks and hens scarpering at your feet, young girls grinning from ear to ear while they rush about making things comfortable for you, anxious mothers who pat your head with a dirty hand half-cleaned hastily while they peer into your eyes and tell you that good health and mental freshness come before brilliant results in the Madhyamiks, and urge you to try some of their own "khejurer rosh", is something that you'll never get here in this world of sophisticated sitting rooms with fashionable paintings and crystal displays. The best thing about the khejurer rosh is that I can lick all five fingers while enjoying it, unlike some well-furnished dining room of Kolkata where I tend to worry more about how to hold the spoon and fork than enjoy the food itself.
I love my village. I love its rugged, unsophisticated charm. I love its mornings, green and grey in colour, smelling of mists and daybreak and sleeping cows. I love its yellow coloured noons, in which the taste of sunshine mingles with the smell of new mown hay. I love its golden-orange afternoons, the shapeless, endless sky, the purple curtain of twilight pricked by a few stars. I love the sight of the silver moonlight flooding the sleeping village, accentuating the silhouettes of tall trees on long wintry nights, filling me up with a strange sense of awe at so primitive a form of beauty.
However, changes are already setting in. Thamma will follow Didun soon, and our ancestral house will be sold and broken down. The sighs and whispers and gurgles of delight hidden in the bricks of that house will crumble. The red coloured pillar which is the sole keeper of so many of my childhood secrets will fall to dust. The village itself will probably make way for a highly industrialized city in the next generation. No more of moonbeam floods, only neon lights.
I want to cry for the Krishnachura my mother planted, Its flagrant redness tells me that it wants to live. But there's nothing I can do for it. I have to watch it fall, the way every red rose in our garden withers away too soon, while I watch another love of mine dying slowly.
My golden afternoons and purple twilights will get lost. My misty Decembers will fade away. My palash and krishnachura will bleed their hearts out 'cause they cannot cry. The tide of time and breeze of change will try to wash the blood away, wash away the sepia tints of my childhood.
But the dust will remember.
And so will I.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sapitals
The history
One dark, rainy afternoon (or maybe it was a perfectly dry afternoon—I don’t remember), I noticed that I had developed a habit of using capital letters here and there, a habit I had not had in the first fourteen years of my existence. On deeper contemplation, I realized that the habit had been acquired as a result of long association with a certain Ms. Deyasini Dasgupta who had induced it to me.
So, when she came online, I decided to make her day by informing her in a sentence that I had got capitals from her.
However, one little quirk of destiny—(finger, rather)---ensured that the sentence would make history.
Me: I’ve got sapitals from you!
Now, I could easily have put a *capitals in the next line and drawn an end to it, but for some reason, I didn’t. Let’s see what she makes of the word, I thought.
Sapitals? What are sapitals? A volley of questions ensued immediately, which made me resolved not to correct the mistake at all. It occurred to me that an unknown word like that could imply various things for various people, and it would be fun to see how different people could interpret the same word differently!
Thereupon, ladies and gentlemen, began the Grand Sapital Quest.
The quest
So I set about to collect meanings for the word. And the more I did, the more amazed I was at the variety of the answers I got. But I succeeded in tracing a pattern in most of the replies, and it became rather fascinating to watch for the underlying patterns beneath the answers, and how the answers revealed something about what kind of the person the answerer was.
Now, the job wasn’t all that easy. Many people I tried to chat up went invisible, muttering curses.
On certain occasions, I got accused of being "high", but at least I got answers! Some chats earned me questionable compliments.
On certain occasions, I got accused of being "high", but at least I got answers! Some chats earned me questionable compliments.
me: Hey!
ramyajit: hello
me: I don't even know you: but still, will you mind if i ask you a very weird question? If you aren't busy, that is.
...[chat ensues]
ramyajit: hmm.....u know u r a bit strange.
“A BIT strange”? Should I be happy that he mentioned “a bit”?
I suppose I should be thankful.
Out of self respect, I leave out the insults of the three girls, one of whom called me mental, another accused of whom accused me of "pressurising the volatile mind", another who informed me I was "spamming her for the 17th time" because my SMS provider goofed up.
The meanings
But nothing can daunt Lady Roy that easily. I did manage to collect 19 meanings (spending about 35 SMSs, and one ice cream in the process).
So here follows the list of all the answers I got--
1. Devpriyo:
Taal kheyechis konodin?
Oi je 3te khob thake? [he meant taaler shaash]
Those khobs can be called sapitals according to me.
:)
2. Rohitashwa:
They are obnoxious brown coloured noses, which when let go from a height, do not follow the laws of gravitation, but soar upwards and fly away into the night.
3. Rohan:
Scandinavian mermaids.
[Deyasini added: As enchanting as Circe, as tender as the whisperings of the pines, as beautiful as the sunset from the peak of the high mountains draped in furs of snowy white...]
4. Deyasini:
Sepia hints of melodious prosaic poetry in words and thoughts floating gently in the wind and flying with the clouds, etched on the fabrics of time, and represents vaguely what your feelings are..
5. Niladri :
I would say it is a state of mind...when you are not sure of something....u feel like u want it but not sure if u deserve it....
6. Sumit:
Sapitals i think must be referring to some kind of person whose decision making capability is questionable.
7. Ratul:
A struggling guitarist!!
8. Koushiki:
Capital sapiens, rather, the awesome beings that we are..
9. Shuvroda(or is it Shubhro?):
SAP bole ekta company ache, tader capital investment division er naam hote pare.
Ba Mittal er natir naam Sapital Mittal.
Or...swapner taal gach.
10. Amrita:
It could be another word for ascent of sap.
11. Adrija:
Semi capitals. You know, when you're not sure of your punctuation, and use something an between small and capital letters!
12. Sohham:
Me thinks it's some sort of green gooey plant juice. Works wonders for boils.
13. Prithviraj:
Well, to me it means going nowhere. Small capitals. They've got to cancel each other out, right?
14. Aditi:
A wet slimy snaky slithery something?
15. Barnamala:
Sister of capitals? Maybe when a region has more than one capital, the other extras functioning at particular times of the year, they are termed as sister capitals or sapitals.
Or maybe the petals of some rare, sepia-coloured flower.
16. Ramyajit:
Er, it could be the name of some plant part.
17. Poudhi:
A new galaxy to be discovered by me!
18. Debayudh:
Something related to literature, like a definite metre used in a poem.
20. Sreyam:
20. Sreyam:
A very strong laxative and cure for constipation, 15 long trips to the bathroom a day - Guaranteed.
The future
You are entitled to question exactly what I gained from this whole process of lunacy. And honestly, I don't have an answer. But hell, it was fun! What more reason can anyone want?
You are entitled to question exactly what I gained from this whole process of lunacy. And honestly, I don't have an answer. But hell, it was fun! What more reason can anyone want?
However, I have lofty dreams regarding the future.
me: i'm always trying to articulate things and never cusseeding!
Riddle: cusseding. yes, i can guess.
me: new word!
yay!
Riddle: right.
me: Typos are good things!
Riddle: we are making new words very frequently these days.
me: I like them!
Riddle: yes, sometimes.
me: Sapitals, cusseding...we just need a few more typos and then we can write a dictionary.
Riddle: well, you are on the right track.
just keep this up.
me: It will sell like hot cakes1
Riddle: in all likelihood.
me: And...we'll have all the money we need to buy processors for our band!
And then we can make superhits!
Riddle: Right. that will be very nice.
me: And then our songs will sell like hot cakes too!
Riddle: yeah.
And we'll be rich,
good.
me: And we'll give the money to you, so u wont need to get into 9 to 5 job!
And we'll all live happily together ever after!
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Restlessness III
Am I spelling the word right? That's the third time I spelt it. I'm sure I've got it wrong this time. Jamais vu. (Or maybe I spelt it wrong right from the beginning!)
Warning: Anyone who looks for coherence in my blog right now is a dimwit. Go somewhere else. I am just taking my restlessness out here.
So, weeks gone by, and I still have nothing to do. Mum won't buy me a Physics book. I'm tired of asking her. Dad won't get me an sms card. I shan't ask him any more either.
One of my friends just smsed to say that he is going for Physics tuitions from today. I envy him. Sigh. I want to go to a tuition too! I want to study, get scolded for not studying, catch myself daydreaming when I'm supposed to study and then scold myself, and hide story books beneath text books and read them furtively. And feel my heart jump violently whenever anyone enters the room, grin sheepishly at the person if it happens to be Mum, and make a display of the very fat and erudite volume of Chemistry that I'm reading. Where is the fun of reading Agatha Christie first thing in the morning if there is no one to catch you at it and shout their lungs out? Story books seem more a lot more enjoyable when you're not supposed to be enjoying them, just the same way Hide 'n' Seek tastes doubly delicious when you have them mid-class, passing them under the desk to your friends while Sarbani Aunty blabs on and on about Cotton Textile Industries.
I have Amitava Ghosh, George Eliot(no, not Silas Marner), Thomas Moore, those complicated-named authors whom I can't spell (Dostoevsky and so on), and Maxim Gorky to occupy me. Yet, I'm unoccupied. To what extent can you read on and on and on? Before the Madhyamiks, I wouldn't have believed that it is possible for any normal human being to get tired of story books. But now I am, and I don't know what to do about it. Riddle's comment on my last blog was scary. But the thing is: I dunno how to spoil the day and treat it like my only child (or whatever it was that you told me to do), I can only let each day slip through my fingers the same way I did before the Madhyamiks. And there is no regret at the end of the day, no fervent plan-making for the next day...nothing.
All of my friends are in the same condition as I am, and yet I am the only one who is getting so restless as to post three consecutive blogs on the topic of restlessness. I wouldn't blame people who get tired of these posts, as if I myself am not tired! I wish someone's birthday or mum-dads anniversary or something similar would come up. Then I could at least get busy making them a gift. No such chance till May! :-( Why do all my friends have their birthdays in the same season? Its not fair! Birthdays should be scattered all throughout the year. And people should have at least two birthdays a year.
Okay. High time I stopped ranting to myself. I've just realised that I have never posted a single picture on any of my blogs. All my friends have. I think I shall end with a picture.
I wonder who is going to have tea there. Perhaps it's a table laid out for two people who are meeting each other after a long, long time. They don't even know that they were friends at one point of time. Suppose it's me and Deya. We haven't managed to open the joint xerox shop after all. Through the years, we have drifted apart, and we are living our lives to the fullest. She is the head of the leading advertising agency of the US. I catch rare insects in Canada, and do some professional photography. We don't remember our childhood in India. It has grown to be a series of blurred colours, and we don't have time to splash those colours into our present lives. We have no time to look back; we only know the way forward.
She has contacted me for some photographs. She needs them for her advertising agency. It's a strictly business-like affair. Our meeting has been arranged by some people we don't know, at the spot where I am supposed to do my bit of photography. (Interruption: Why the picture looks so cosy, I don't know! People hardly have tea under such circumstances! Well, better not try reasoning, coz it won't get me anywhere.)Nowadays, whenever I see a beautiful scene, it has grown into my habit to photograph it. After photographing it, the second thought on my mind is to utilise the photo somewhere professionally, to gain some money. I don't know when I stopped photographing out of love, and started doing it out of habit. But then, I'm a professional.
She's a professional too, and we have agreed to meet at 9:00 a.m. sharp. The table has been readied a few minutes early. Soon, we are going to arrive. I am never late anywhere, so I shall probably arrive a minute or two early. She will, too. And maybe we'll spend the extra minute warming up to each other. Maybe she's going to face a sudden problem with her contact lenses and will have to take them off. Maybe her eyes, as I knew them in my childhood, will stir something in me. Maybe my toothy grin, something that I have carried unknowingly from my childhood into adulthood, will stir something similar in her. Maybe something will go wrong suddenly, and unwittingly set something right. Maybe I shan't want to photograph my surroundings all of a sudden, but just drink them in with my eyes and my soul. She will make a comment on the surroundings that will suddenly make me wonder....! Maybe we shall recognize each other, maybe we shan't...but...at the end of the day...the meeting will change us somewhat...change something in our lives. I'll go home and look up my old photo collection that has grown so dusty that I can't recognize anyone any more, and she will try to remember if she really did lose her old diaries...
Okay, okay, okay...I really got carried away. Nuts! It's 1:50!! Bang, and I land back to reality. Sorry folks, restlesness does strange things to people. I'll take a bath now, thank you. And do some diary writing. I hope Jupiter has something good for lunch.
And don't be scared away from my blog by this post. I promise I'll post something coherent next time!
:-)
Warning: Anyone who looks for coherence in my blog right now is a dimwit. Go somewhere else. I am just taking my restlessness out here.
So, weeks gone by, and I still have nothing to do. Mum won't buy me a Physics book. I'm tired of asking her. Dad won't get me an sms card. I shan't ask him any more either.
One of my friends just smsed to say that he is going for Physics tuitions from today. I envy him. Sigh. I want to go to a tuition too! I want to study, get scolded for not studying, catch myself daydreaming when I'm supposed to study and then scold myself, and hide story books beneath text books and read them furtively. And feel my heart jump violently whenever anyone enters the room, grin sheepishly at the person if it happens to be Mum, and make a display of the very fat and erudite volume of Chemistry that I'm reading. Where is the fun of reading Agatha Christie first thing in the morning if there is no one to catch you at it and shout their lungs out? Story books seem more a lot more enjoyable when you're not supposed to be enjoying them, just the same way Hide 'n' Seek tastes doubly delicious when you have them mid-class, passing them under the desk to your friends while Sarbani Aunty blabs on and on about Cotton Textile Industries.
I have Amitava Ghosh, George Eliot(no, not Silas Marner), Thomas Moore, those complicated-named authors whom I can't spell (Dostoevsky and so on), and Maxim Gorky to occupy me. Yet, I'm unoccupied. To what extent can you read on and on and on? Before the Madhyamiks, I wouldn't have believed that it is possible for any normal human being to get tired of story books. But now I am, and I don't know what to do about it. Riddle's comment on my last blog was scary. But the thing is: I dunno how to spoil the day and treat it like my only child (or whatever it was that you told me to do), I can only let each day slip through my fingers the same way I did before the Madhyamiks. And there is no regret at the end of the day, no fervent plan-making for the next day...nothing.
All of my friends are in the same condition as I am, and yet I am the only one who is getting so restless as to post three consecutive blogs on the topic of restlessness. I wouldn't blame people who get tired of these posts, as if I myself am not tired! I wish someone's birthday or mum-dads anniversary or something similar would come up. Then I could at least get busy making them a gift. No such chance till May! :-( Why do all my friends have their birthdays in the same season? Its not fair! Birthdays should be scattered all throughout the year. And people should have at least two birthdays a year.
Okay. High time I stopped ranting to myself. I've just realised that I have never posted a single picture on any of my blogs. All my friends have. I think I shall end with a picture.
I wonder who is going to have tea there. Perhaps it's a table laid out for two people who are meeting each other after a long, long time. They don't even know that they were friends at one point of time. Suppose it's me and Deya. We haven't managed to open the joint xerox shop after all. Through the years, we have drifted apart, and we are living our lives to the fullest. She is the head of the leading advertising agency of the US. I catch rare insects in Canada, and do some professional photography. We don't remember our childhood in India. It has grown to be a series of blurred colours, and we don't have time to splash those colours into our present lives. We have no time to look back; we only know the way forward.
She has contacted me for some photographs. She needs them for her advertising agency. It's a strictly business-like affair. Our meeting has been arranged by some people we don't know, at the spot where I am supposed to do my bit of photography. (Interruption: Why the picture looks so cosy, I don't know! People hardly have tea under such circumstances! Well, better not try reasoning, coz it won't get me anywhere.)Nowadays, whenever I see a beautiful scene, it has grown into my habit to photograph it. After photographing it, the second thought on my mind is to utilise the photo somewhere professionally, to gain some money. I don't know when I stopped photographing out of love, and started doing it out of habit. But then, I'm a professional.
She's a professional too, and we have agreed to meet at 9:00 a.m. sharp. The table has been readied a few minutes early. Soon, we are going to arrive. I am never late anywhere, so I shall probably arrive a minute or two early. She will, too. And maybe we'll spend the extra minute warming up to each other. Maybe she's going to face a sudden problem with her contact lenses and will have to take them off. Maybe her eyes, as I knew them in my childhood, will stir something in me. Maybe my toothy grin, something that I have carried unknowingly from my childhood into adulthood, will stir something similar in her. Maybe something will go wrong suddenly, and unwittingly set something right. Maybe I shan't want to photograph my surroundings all of a sudden, but just drink them in with my eyes and my soul. She will make a comment on the surroundings that will suddenly make me wonder....! Maybe we shall recognize each other, maybe we shan't...but...at the end of the day...the meeting will change us somewhat...change something in our lives. I'll go home and look up my old photo collection that has grown so dusty that I can't recognize anyone any more, and she will try to remember if she really did lose her old diaries...
Okay, okay, okay...I really got carried away. Nuts! It's 1:50!! Bang, and I land back to reality. Sorry folks, restlesness does strange things to people. I'll take a bath now, thank you. And do some diary writing. I hope Jupiter has something good for lunch.
And don't be scared away from my blog by this post. I promise I'll post something coherent next time!
:-)
Friday, March 13, 2009
Restlessness II
Restlessness has reached an alarming climax.
I cannot sit at the table throughout the lengthy business of eating. I take one mouthful in my hand, roam about while I chew it, and then come back to the table to collect the second mouthful. And I ate only half of my lunch today. Got too impatient.
I wonder what I'm looking forward to? Nothing seems to be happenning.
Oh, Monday, hurry up!
I cannot sit at the table throughout the lengthy business of eating. I take one mouthful in my hand, roam about while I chew it, and then come back to the table to collect the second mouthful. And I ate only half of my lunch today. Got too impatient.
I wonder what I'm looking forward to? Nothing seems to be happenning.
Oh, Monday, hurry up!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Restlessness I
Restlessness is not nice. And life's not all that nice either. I hate both my parents and Prithviraj and Rohitashwa.
Everything is bleak and dark and gloomy. Nothing seems to be working well. I think I shall take up Calvin's principle. "Nothing helps bad mood like spreading it around". Wise kid!
Everything is bleak and dark and gloomy. Nothing seems to be working well. I think I shall take up Calvin's principle. "Nothing helps bad mood like spreading it around". Wise kid!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Je ne sais quoi...
Another year gone!
When I was younger, I used to be amazed by the way time flowed. I would scale my height on the door and calculate how many inches I grew through the year on every New Years Day. This year, however, 1st Jan is nothing special. Just a day when the maximum number of SMSs I sent went astray.
The year of 2008 was in all respects a revolutionary whirlwind. If the Raktima Roy of 2007 met the one of 2009, they would smile two mysterious smiles that can run parallelly but never coincide. It's surprising how the tiniest of events, deeds or words can cause upheavals in your world of thought, how a small and apparently insignificant quirk of destiny can reveal new dimensions of thought that move mountains, uproot trees, heave up ocean waves and, in short, ensure that your world will never ever be the same...
As Rohan said, there's no knowing what you'll remember when you look back. A look, a touch, a word, a smell...anything. Years hence, all that I'd remember of our beautiful garden on the roof might not be the sight of it in all its glory, but the smell of some nondescript flower in one corner of it. All that I'd remember of my cherised synthesizer might be the sight of myself spraying insecticide on its sides, or perhaps the holes on its speaker through which I try peering quite often with the illogical curiosity of six-year-old. All that I'd remember of the Pathfinder seminar that I attended last week might be the banyan-root-house that stunned me on my return journey. I don't know whether to call it a tree or a house— that marvellous symphony of bricks and roots. A banyan tree that had grown all over a house had spread its roots through the gap between every two bricks such that roots cemented the house, and formed a curtain that covered up the lack of paint over its walls. I cannot tell why that split second glimpse of it affected me so deeply, why the primitiveness and rawness of life burst upon me at the sight, along with a sense of wonder at so unique at sight.
There, I went off the track once again. Well, as I was saying, there's no knowing which of the scores of incidents that took place in 2008 will have the greatest effect on me in the long run. I learnt a whole lot of things that were worth it simply because they were new, met a whole lot of people who sprung tiny revolutions in my world. I had a strange love life throughout the year, heard some strangely beautiful songs, played "My Heart Will Go On", watched Titanic. I got a mobile, a synthesizer, a room of my own. A guy told me one fine afternoon that I was looking great; Chandralekha Aunty smiled at me on a finer afternoon and told us that we had made her happy. Friendship was redefined for me with the formation of Penta. I tasted "real pizza" for the first time in my life, went out in the rain with friends, attended farewells and get-togethers galore.
I traced the flight patterns of pigeons and blackbirds, traced sceneries and love scenes in the clouds, drew circles in the mud with my boot, watched for the solitary brown bird that cries its way across the sky at night, digged out Dahlia roots, climbed Guava trees, learnt to live without my Debdaru, and discovered no less than five varieties of birds.
In the worn out pages of an old diary, I found a loveletter of mum's addressed to dad when she was pregnant with me. The letter, which had been torn up by herself later, made me realise, for the first time, that the mother-daughter bonding is not the only one that exists between us. There's another bond as well. We're both women.
And in the last week of this revolutionary year, for the first time in my life, I touched my Grandmothers hands and found them cold, without the warm pressure of her fingers closing on mine. For the first time, I kissed her once, she didn't kiss back twice. She smelt of chemicals, rajanigandhas and dhoopkathis, and not of tiler naru, murir mowa, kochi daab, akher gur, puli pithey, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, winter sunshine and mustard oil (shorsher tyal in her words).
At the end of the day, I have no idea which of these memories will count. I don't even know which I'll remember, except perhaps the sight of NRS taking my sleeping didun away and closing the door on us, the smell of chemicals, the glare of yellow lights, the beads of moisture on her face. And the whiteness and coldness of every inch of her skin.
I love you, didun. Here's a long, long kiss for you. A tribute to all that you ever said, and all that you never did.
I love you.
When I was younger, I used to be amazed by the way time flowed. I would scale my height on the door and calculate how many inches I grew through the year on every New Years Day. This year, however, 1st Jan is nothing special. Just a day when the maximum number of SMSs I sent went astray.
The year of 2008 was in all respects a revolutionary whirlwind. If the Raktima Roy of 2007 met the one of 2009, they would smile two mysterious smiles that can run parallelly but never coincide. It's surprising how the tiniest of events, deeds or words can cause upheavals in your world of thought, how a small and apparently insignificant quirk of destiny can reveal new dimensions of thought that move mountains, uproot trees, heave up ocean waves and, in short, ensure that your world will never ever be the same...
As Rohan said, there's no knowing what you'll remember when you look back. A look, a touch, a word, a smell...anything. Years hence, all that I'd remember of our beautiful garden on the roof might not be the sight of it in all its glory, but the smell of some nondescript flower in one corner of it. All that I'd remember of my cherised synthesizer might be the sight of myself spraying insecticide on its sides, or perhaps the holes on its speaker through which I try peering quite often with the illogical curiosity of six-year-old. All that I'd remember of the Pathfinder seminar that I attended last week might be the banyan-root-house that stunned me on my return journey. I don't know whether to call it a tree or a house— that marvellous symphony of bricks and roots. A banyan tree that had grown all over a house had spread its roots through the gap between every two bricks such that roots cemented the house, and formed a curtain that covered up the lack of paint over its walls. I cannot tell why that split second glimpse of it affected me so deeply, why the primitiveness and rawness of life burst upon me at the sight, along with a sense of wonder at so unique at sight.
There, I went off the track once again. Well, as I was saying, there's no knowing which of the scores of incidents that took place in 2008 will have the greatest effect on me in the long run. I learnt a whole lot of things that were worth it simply because they were new, met a whole lot of people who sprung tiny revolutions in my world. I had a strange love life throughout the year, heard some strangely beautiful songs, played "My Heart Will Go On", watched Titanic. I got a mobile, a synthesizer, a room of my own. A guy told me one fine afternoon that I was looking great; Chandralekha Aunty smiled at me on a finer afternoon and told us that we had made her happy. Friendship was redefined for me with the formation of Penta. I tasted "real pizza" for the first time in my life, went out in the rain with friends, attended farewells and get-togethers galore.
I traced the flight patterns of pigeons and blackbirds, traced sceneries and love scenes in the clouds, drew circles in the mud with my boot, watched for the solitary brown bird that cries its way across the sky at night, digged out Dahlia roots, climbed Guava trees, learnt to live without my Debdaru, and discovered no less than five varieties of birds.
In the worn out pages of an old diary, I found a loveletter of mum's addressed to dad when she was pregnant with me. The letter, which had been torn up by herself later, made me realise, for the first time, that the mother-daughter bonding is not the only one that exists between us. There's another bond as well. We're both women.
And in the last week of this revolutionary year, for the first time in my life, I touched my Grandmothers hands and found them cold, without the warm pressure of her fingers closing on mine. For the first time, I kissed her once, she didn't kiss back twice. She smelt of chemicals, rajanigandhas and dhoopkathis, and not of tiler naru, murir mowa, kochi daab, akher gur, puli pithey, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, winter sunshine and mustard oil (shorsher tyal in her words).
At the end of the day, I have no idea which of these memories will count. I don't even know which I'll remember, except perhaps the sight of NRS taking my sleeping didun away and closing the door on us, the smell of chemicals, the glare of yellow lights, the beads of moisture on her face. And the whiteness and coldness of every inch of her skin.
I love you, didun. Here's a long, long kiss for you. A tribute to all that you ever said, and all that you never did.
I love you.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The School Farewell, Or Apocalypse II (Part 1)
The School Farewell!
The excitement that precedes any event involving a gathering of friends started on the day we got our Invitation Cards, with Anwesha screaming, “WHAT! We have to wear school-dress to the Farewell!?” and self exclaiming, “A Farewell for us! Wow, we’re growing up!” with a strange sense of awe at how quickly I found myself at the threshold of one of the events that marked the distant growing-up world from the eyes of a twelve-year-old.
I didn’t have the faintest shadow of an idea about what a farewell was, but I tried my best to gather a more or less rough idea from the people around me. On purpose, I didn’t ask anyone in Class 11. Knowing exactly what to expect, I felt, would spoil the surprise.
Armed with the following information, I came to the following conclusion.
Information:-
Deyasini: How can anyone not attend the farewell? It must be something simply beautiful, a token of what we’re leaving behind.
Devpriyo: Of course I’m attending the farewell. You never know, I might even cry.
Rohan: I’ll come to the school farewell, but we’ve had our own farewell. I think I’ll remember that one more, won’t you?
My Music Aunty: In our farewell, we were given red roses at the door. Younger students performed variedly, and we were asked to perform too, if we liked. The Principal’s speech was wonderful, redolent of warmth, love and affection, and at the end of it, we all had tears in our eyes.
My Mum: In our school, things are done mostly the same way as that. We don’t give red roses, though, that’s a bit too much. There are performances, short speeches, good food and so on.
Conclusion:-
I gathered that a Farewell must be something filled with nostalgia, mushy songs, and boring speeches.
So imagine my surprise (too mild a word, I know) when the Farewell party started with a…..ok wait, I shouldn’t spoil the surprise by disclosing it so soon. One needs to build up the atmosphere huh? I don’t know how one goes about doing it, though. I guess, for an amateur like me, it would involve something in the line of boring my readers to death with small details of what happened before the farewell started, till they fall asleep. Ok, here’s the list of those little details that filled the 45 minutes that we spent waiting for the stuff.
1. I jumped up to the footpath where Kaustuv and Anwesha greeted me with an ear-to-ear grin and an enthusiastic, “YOU came on time! Woah-ha-how!” Laughing and waving cheerily while waiting for Deyasini was all we did those 30 minutes. I expended a good amount of energy waving jauntily at a couple of people only to discover that I didn’t know them at all. But they waved back twice as jauntily and so it didn’t matter.
2. The ground floor of Uttam Mancha was stuffy. To my horror, I discovered that we were going to be seated section-wise. Pratiti and I gave a short pre-farewell concert using our vocal chords to the best of their merits, complaining in a high-pitched melodious rhapsody about how the school authorities were involved in a conspiracy against EFL to keep them separated at all costs.
3. I said, “Hell!” in my special-effects-enriched banshee voice a good many times before realizing that I was screaming right into the ears of someone who had been unfortunate enough to place his ears two inches from my mouth. It was while bracing myself for a profuse apology that the body in question turned around to face me. Upon seeing who it was, my apology swallowed itself, and I turned away pointedly. The Law Of Interactions With Certain People states firmly that you never waste your breath apologizing to Debaruns.
He looked at me thrice and looked away again, before saying with what seemed like a monumental effort,"Er, have you completely forgotten?"
I don't have to explain exactly how warm I feel towards a person who needs this huge an effort even to talk to me.
"Forgotten what?" I asked coldly.
"Um, all of us, I mean.”
I didn’t snort, not because it’s unladylike, but because I don’t know how exactly one snorts. Coming from a person who had not even recognized me for the past few months, this was one golden snort-extracter.
“Remember who?” I said, to accentuate how well I had forgotten.
“Ok, fine don’t bother trying to remember who. How were your tests?”
“That’s the reason I don’t bother to remember certain people after the tests. If you want to boast about yours, you’re welcome. Don’t have to feign an interest in mine.”
“No, mine was really path…”
I turned away again, more pointedly than the first time. So much for an interview with a long-lost “friend”.
4. My excitement was increasing in leaps and bounds when we filed together. As is the rule when we stand within two inches of one another for more than two minutes, Roro and I started an Eardrum-Shattering Contest when I spotted a well-fed round fat tabby cat glaring virulently at me, its dangerously green eyes boring into mine. “Look who’s here”, Roro said in an undertone. “I spotted her first.” I shot at him, still in the quarrelling spree. “Ok, I give that to you.” He said with unexpected generosity. “Spotting tabby cats in the middle of what is supposed to be a happy gathering is not a task I take pride in.”
We made our way into the auditorium, mounting a dusty flight of stairs, to be led to the balcony. The BALCONY. My first disappointment.
“Wow” one of my friends said. “What a gorgeous view!”
“What the---” I exclaimed indignantly. “Is this the first time you’re inside an auditorium? We’re on the balcony, for heaven’s sake! Balconies don’t have gorgeous views.” Even I knew that, with my very meagre common sense. But then, I’d been in an auditorium scores of times, albeit on the other side of the curtain. “We have the worst view, dammit.”
If I’d known what was coming, I wouldn’t have regretted having the worst view. In fact, I was glad of it 15 minutes into the show. And now, after having put all of you to sleep in the process of “building up the atmosphere”, I think the time has come to plunge into a direct narrative of exactly what the alleged “Farewell” had in store for my unsuspecting perception.
“Insomnia” a microphone or something that spoke as loudly as a microphone, declared. Yeah, wake up!
“Huh?” was my reaction.
“Woah-ha-how”, a scream from Anwesha, who was sitting right beside me, gave my right eardrum quite a turn.
“Huh?” I said again. “What’s going on?”
At that moment, the Insomnia or whatever it was, burst into clamour. Thousands of elephants started to trumpet at once, forests after forests were uprooted, all the monsoon clouds started roaring simultaneously, and the Apocalypse began!
It was a while before I realized that it was nothing but the keyboard, guitar, and all those metallic thingies (whatever they are called) that were trying to create what was known to them as music, and that the hall had erupted into a tumultuous burst of cheers to assist them in the process.
I looked around helplessly. The laser rays were creating a marvelous design on the ceiling and to me, it looked to be the only place where you could glue your eyes. Everywhere else, the world was breaking into pieces, people whom I had believed to be sane all my life, were mocking my belief ruthlessly, the devil was working his will in the minds of all those I knew. There was not a single eye I could lock mine with for a look of silent sympathy. I gulped. My head was throbbing. I knew what one felt like when sinking into a mire.
The Farewell began.
The excitement that precedes any event involving a gathering of friends started on the day we got our Invitation Cards, with Anwesha screaming, “WHAT! We have to wear school-dress to the Farewell!?” and self exclaiming, “A Farewell for us! Wow, we’re growing up!” with a strange sense of awe at how quickly I found myself at the threshold of one of the events that marked the distant growing-up world from the eyes of a twelve-year-old.
I didn’t have the faintest shadow of an idea about what a farewell was, but I tried my best to gather a more or less rough idea from the people around me. On purpose, I didn’t ask anyone in Class 11. Knowing exactly what to expect, I felt, would spoil the surprise.
Armed with the following information, I came to the following conclusion.
Information:-
Deyasini: How can anyone not attend the farewell? It must be something simply beautiful, a token of what we’re leaving behind.
Devpriyo: Of course I’m attending the farewell. You never know, I might even cry.
Rohan: I’ll come to the school farewell, but we’ve had our own farewell. I think I’ll remember that one more, won’t you?
My Music Aunty: In our farewell, we were given red roses at the door. Younger students performed variedly, and we were asked to perform too, if we liked. The Principal’s speech was wonderful, redolent of warmth, love and affection, and at the end of it, we all had tears in our eyes.
My Mum: In our school, things are done mostly the same way as that. We don’t give red roses, though, that’s a bit too much. There are performances, short speeches, good food and so on.
Conclusion:-
I gathered that a Farewell must be something filled with nostalgia, mushy songs, and boring speeches.
So imagine my surprise (too mild a word, I know) when the Farewell party started with a…..ok wait, I shouldn’t spoil the surprise by disclosing it so soon. One needs to build up the atmosphere huh? I don’t know how one goes about doing it, though. I guess, for an amateur like me, it would involve something in the line of boring my readers to death with small details of what happened before the farewell started, till they fall asleep. Ok, here’s the list of those little details that filled the 45 minutes that we spent waiting for the stuff.
1. I jumped up to the footpath where Kaustuv and Anwesha greeted me with an ear-to-ear grin and an enthusiastic, “YOU came on time! Woah-ha-how!” Laughing and waving cheerily while waiting for Deyasini was all we did those 30 minutes. I expended a good amount of energy waving jauntily at a couple of people only to discover that I didn’t know them at all. But they waved back twice as jauntily and so it didn’t matter.
2. The ground floor of Uttam Mancha was stuffy. To my horror, I discovered that we were going to be seated section-wise. Pratiti and I gave a short pre-farewell concert using our vocal chords to the best of their merits, complaining in a high-pitched melodious rhapsody about how the school authorities were involved in a conspiracy against EFL to keep them separated at all costs.
3. I said, “Hell!” in my special-effects-enriched banshee voice a good many times before realizing that I was screaming right into the ears of someone who had been unfortunate enough to place his ears two inches from my mouth. It was while bracing myself for a profuse apology that the body in question turned around to face me. Upon seeing who it was, my apology swallowed itself, and I turned away pointedly. The Law Of Interactions With Certain People states firmly that you never waste your breath apologizing to Debaruns.
He looked at me thrice and looked away again, before saying with what seemed like a monumental effort,"Er, have you completely forgotten?"
I don't have to explain exactly how warm I feel towards a person who needs this huge an effort even to talk to me.
"Forgotten what?" I asked coldly.
"Um, all of us, I mean.”
I didn’t snort, not because it’s unladylike, but because I don’t know how exactly one snorts. Coming from a person who had not even recognized me for the past few months, this was one golden snort-extracter.
“Remember who?” I said, to accentuate how well I had forgotten.
“Ok, fine don’t bother trying to remember who. How were your tests?”
“That’s the reason I don’t bother to remember certain people after the tests. If you want to boast about yours, you’re welcome. Don’t have to feign an interest in mine.”
“No, mine was really path…”
I turned away again, more pointedly than the first time. So much for an interview with a long-lost “friend”.
4. My excitement was increasing in leaps and bounds when we filed together. As is the rule when we stand within two inches of one another for more than two minutes, Roro and I started an Eardrum-Shattering Contest when I spotted a well-fed round fat tabby cat glaring virulently at me, its dangerously green eyes boring into mine. “Look who’s here”, Roro said in an undertone. “I spotted her first.” I shot at him, still in the quarrelling spree. “Ok, I give that to you.” He said with unexpected generosity. “Spotting tabby cats in the middle of what is supposed to be a happy gathering is not a task I take pride in.”
We made our way into the auditorium, mounting a dusty flight of stairs, to be led to the balcony. The BALCONY. My first disappointment.
“Wow” one of my friends said. “What a gorgeous view!”
“What the---” I exclaimed indignantly. “Is this the first time you’re inside an auditorium? We’re on the balcony, for heaven’s sake! Balconies don’t have gorgeous views.” Even I knew that, with my very meagre common sense. But then, I’d been in an auditorium scores of times, albeit on the other side of the curtain. “We have the worst view, dammit.”
If I’d known what was coming, I wouldn’t have regretted having the worst view. In fact, I was glad of it 15 minutes into the show. And now, after having put all of you to sleep in the process of “building up the atmosphere”, I think the time has come to plunge into a direct narrative of exactly what the alleged “Farewell” had in store for my unsuspecting perception.
“Insomnia” a microphone or something that spoke as loudly as a microphone, declared. Yeah, wake up!
“Huh?” was my reaction.
“Woah-ha-how”, a scream from Anwesha, who was sitting right beside me, gave my right eardrum quite a turn.
“Huh?” I said again. “What’s going on?”
At that moment, the Insomnia or whatever it was, burst into clamour. Thousands of elephants started to trumpet at once, forests after forests were uprooted, all the monsoon clouds started roaring simultaneously, and the Apocalypse began!
It was a while before I realized that it was nothing but the keyboard, guitar, and all those metallic thingies (whatever they are called) that were trying to create what was known to them as music, and that the hall had erupted into a tumultuous burst of cheers to assist them in the process.
I looked around helplessly. The laser rays were creating a marvelous design on the ceiling and to me, it looked to be the only place where you could glue your eyes. Everywhere else, the world was breaking into pieces, people whom I had believed to be sane all my life, were mocking my belief ruthlessly, the devil was working his will in the minds of all those I knew. There was not a single eye I could lock mine with for a look of silent sympathy. I gulped. My head was throbbing. I knew what one felt like when sinking into a mire.
The Farewell began.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
A slightly different week
Life’s pretty eventless these days. I wish something dramatic would happen to me to break the monotony of this incredibly (or perhaps, quite credibly) eventless life of mine, with each day following and duplicating the last. I wish, one day, as I closed my eyes at night, I could surmise, or even dread, what would come the next day, instead of knowing every detail from beforehand the way you know the dialogues of movies that you’ve watched 144 times. Well, I guess we all spend our lives wishing for more drama, and wishing all the drama away when it comes. Personally, I wouldn’t ask for the romantic melodramatic kind of eventfulness; something as ordinary as Pratiti’s appendicitis will serve my purpose quite well. That reminds me, I really envy that girl. But as she herself said, one shouldn’t PNPC in a public domain, so I think I’ll keep my list headed “101 Reasons To Envy Pratiti Deb” to myself.
The only reason this week has been slightly different from the preceding ones is because I had to sit for those stupid Pathfinder Mock Tests everyday, which was the first Mock Test Series I ever sat for in my life. It began on the 15th with Maths for us. “Us” here refers to the EFLians (Or does EFLite sound better?) viz. Deyasini, Rohitashwa, Rohan, Raunak, and last and definitely the least, myself. On the first day, I prepared, practiced, looked at the theorems, went though the objectives, sent a good many SMSs to various people enquiring about what the papers were like, indulged in a good deal of hypertension, and, in short, did everything you’d expect a normal mediocrity to do before a normal Maths test. However, in spite of the fact that I found only two marks unknown, I flunked the test as badly as you can. Result: Ebbing of enthusiasm.
On the second day, I prepared a little less enthusiastically, I indulged in only tension without the previous prefix, and sat for the test moderately prepared. Not at all surprisingly, I flunked this one too. But since I’ve been flunking Life Science nearly all my life, it didn’t make me stop caring completely about Mock Tests. It simply diluted my enthusiasm a bit more.
Third day. Physics test. Or rather, Physical Science test. And it was because I forgot the difference between Physics and Physical Science that I had to suffer on this day. After completing the whole paper minus the Chemistry part in 2 hours quite happily and confidently, I was shocked to see that I was staring at a page of Hebrew before me. I gulped once or twice, blinked stupidly a few times, and then imagined I was sitting for a History test and switched to the “Invent Wildly” mode. With some brilliant guesswork, I managed to answer around four marks correctly. Then, realizing that I had completely covered up the shine of the Physics part by the slush of the Chemistry part, I burst into tears (metaphorically) and broke my heart into three meticulous pieces. The first piece said, “To hell with exams!”, the second said, “Who the heck cares about Mock Tests anyway?”, and the third declared, “I give up! No more studying for these wretched tests”. Thus, my tests ended.
Wait, that doesn’t mean it ended for Pathfinder as well. We still had History and Geography to go, but I couldn’t care less. I spent the major part of the next morning bombarding a friend of mine with SMSs (knowing him to be too polite to tell me to shut up), and the rest of the day glancing through a few objectives and important long answers. That was all the preparation with which I sat for the test, and surprisingly enough, I didn’t flunk it! I mean, considering that the lowest I ever got in History is 48 out of 100, flunking for me corresponds to getting less than 50.
Till that day, I had thought of the tests every night and every morning. I knew that the reason I went to Chetla was to sit for tests. On the day of the Geography tests, however, I had reached such a degree of emotional saturation that Geography was the last thing on my mind all day. My net came back, I chatted happily with a couple of friends who were sitting for the same tests in the same batch with me, lost my geography book and didn’t bother to search for it, and when I boarded the auto to Chetla, I knew I was going because—
1. I enjoyed travelling alone.
2. I loved meeting my friends there.
3. I wanted to sit beside Deyasini because it was probably the last time before July that I would be doing it, or maybe the last time in my life (if either of us failed to make it to SPHS in +2).
Someone was really, really shocked when I told him this, but it was true. I didn’t care two pence about what happened in the goddamned exam. Heck, I didn’t care a quarter of a pence! I didn’t know anything about the type of vegetation seen in Rajasthan and quite happily filled a page writing all about xerophytes’ adaptation that I had read in Bio, vaguely hoping that a science-ignorant teacher would take “phylloclade” and “sunken stomata” for learned Geographical terms. It amazes me to know that someone actually loves Mock Tests, but well, he’s an android after all, however vehemently he denies it.
I don’t know why I wrote all about this in my blog. It’s not that I’m really proud of my achievements and want to make a nice musical comedy of what is supposed to be a serious business. I guess it’s because I wanted to take my frustration out on everyone else. Or maybe because I wanted to update my blog but couldn’t wait to finish the long ones I’ve started. Well, whatever, don’t bother to tell me that my attitude towards exams is abnormal. And don’t bother to preach either. Have a happy Christmas!
Oh wait!! I totally forgot about Christmas! Yay!
“Christmas time is drawing near,
Santa Claus will soon be here,
With his presents and his toys,
For the little, girls and boys!
For dear old Santa we’ll give three cheers,
He’ll soon be coming with his swift reindeer,
And he’ll come so quick, with a ‘click-click-click’
In the e-a-r-l-y Christmas m-o-r-ning!”
Feels lovely to remember Nursery rhymes! Cheers! And adios for now! :-D
The only reason this week has been slightly different from the preceding ones is because I had to sit for those stupid Pathfinder Mock Tests everyday, which was the first Mock Test Series I ever sat for in my life. It began on the 15th with Maths for us. “Us” here refers to the EFLians (Or does EFLite sound better?) viz. Deyasini, Rohitashwa, Rohan, Raunak, and last and definitely the least, myself. On the first day, I prepared, practiced, looked at the theorems, went though the objectives, sent a good many SMSs to various people enquiring about what the papers were like, indulged in a good deal of hypertension, and, in short, did everything you’d expect a normal mediocrity to do before a normal Maths test. However, in spite of the fact that I found only two marks unknown, I flunked the test as badly as you can. Result: Ebbing of enthusiasm.
On the second day, I prepared a little less enthusiastically, I indulged in only tension without the previous prefix, and sat for the test moderately prepared. Not at all surprisingly, I flunked this one too. But since I’ve been flunking Life Science nearly all my life, it didn’t make me stop caring completely about Mock Tests. It simply diluted my enthusiasm a bit more.
Third day. Physics test. Or rather, Physical Science test. And it was because I forgot the difference between Physics and Physical Science that I had to suffer on this day. After completing the whole paper minus the Chemistry part in 2 hours quite happily and confidently, I was shocked to see that I was staring at a page of Hebrew before me. I gulped once or twice, blinked stupidly a few times, and then imagined I was sitting for a History test and switched to the “Invent Wildly” mode. With some brilliant guesswork, I managed to answer around four marks correctly. Then, realizing that I had completely covered up the shine of the Physics part by the slush of the Chemistry part, I burst into tears (metaphorically) and broke my heart into three meticulous pieces. The first piece said, “To hell with exams!”, the second said, “Who the heck cares about Mock Tests anyway?”, and the third declared, “I give up! No more studying for these wretched tests”. Thus, my tests ended.
Wait, that doesn’t mean it ended for Pathfinder as well. We still had History and Geography to go, but I couldn’t care less. I spent the major part of the next morning bombarding a friend of mine with SMSs (knowing him to be too polite to tell me to shut up), and the rest of the day glancing through a few objectives and important long answers. That was all the preparation with which I sat for the test, and surprisingly enough, I didn’t flunk it! I mean, considering that the lowest I ever got in History is 48 out of 100, flunking for me corresponds to getting less than 50.
Till that day, I had thought of the tests every night and every morning. I knew that the reason I went to Chetla was to sit for tests. On the day of the Geography tests, however, I had reached such a degree of emotional saturation that Geography was the last thing on my mind all day. My net came back, I chatted happily with a couple of friends who were sitting for the same tests in the same batch with me, lost my geography book and didn’t bother to search for it, and when I boarded the auto to Chetla, I knew I was going because—
1. I enjoyed travelling alone.
2. I loved meeting my friends there.
3. I wanted to sit beside Deyasini because it was probably the last time before July that I would be doing it, or maybe the last time in my life (if either of us failed to make it to SPHS in +2).
Someone was really, really shocked when I told him this, but it was true. I didn’t care two pence about what happened in the goddamned exam. Heck, I didn’t care a quarter of a pence! I didn’t know anything about the type of vegetation seen in Rajasthan and quite happily filled a page writing all about xerophytes’ adaptation that I had read in Bio, vaguely hoping that a science-ignorant teacher would take “phylloclade” and “sunken stomata” for learned Geographical terms. It amazes me to know that someone actually loves Mock Tests, but well, he’s an android after all, however vehemently he denies it.
I don’t know why I wrote all about this in my blog. It’s not that I’m really proud of my achievements and want to make a nice musical comedy of what is supposed to be a serious business. I guess it’s because I wanted to take my frustration out on everyone else. Or maybe because I wanted to update my blog but couldn’t wait to finish the long ones I’ve started. Well, whatever, don’t bother to tell me that my attitude towards exams is abnormal. And don’t bother to preach either. Have a happy Christmas!
Oh wait!! I totally forgot about Christmas! Yay!
“Christmas time is drawing near,
Santa Claus will soon be here,
With his presents and his toys,
For the little, girls and boys!
For dear old Santa we’ll give three cheers,
He’ll soon be coming with his swift reindeer,
And he’ll come so quick, with a ‘click-click-click’
In the e-a-r-l-y Christmas m-o-r-ning!”
Feels lovely to remember Nursery rhymes! Cheers! And adios for now! :-D
Friday, November 28, 2008
On Being Thin: Catharsis Of A Proverbial Pencil
Problem 1: Tenderhearted long-nosed guests
“Riki”, my mother’s melodious voice rings from downstairs. “Tidy up your room today. I’ll have some guests.”
It’s unlike me to respond at once to anything my mother says, but the guest-is-coming danger signal works miracles.
“What kind of guests? Why do I have to tidy up MY room for YOUR guests?”
My mother sighs. “Oh, it’s Mrs. XYZ. She’s been offering to call for days now, I never really had the time. Do up your room you must. They’ll ask to be shown around, you know.”
It was just as I’d feared. A lady guest! One of those housewives from our purono para who have nothing better to do than calling on various people and making their lives hell for a day. I know that wasn’t decent of me. Ma would probably kill me if she heard me thinking along those lines. But the truth is that I hate some of these visitors of ma’s. In fact, to say I DREAD them would do better justice to the feelings that swell up from the pit of my stomach when I hear the sounds of their paan-chibano voices in the basement, the nasal “Oma, ki sundor”s punctuated by the scuffle of their saris, and yes, the sounds of their laughter. They’ll give the hyenas a run for their money any day! Having never seen my own mother wearing lipstick or any kind of make-up, I’ve always had a kind of prejudice against women who redden their lips like they’ve been sucking blood, and line their eyes deeply with blue-and-black as though they were afraid that their eyes wouldn’t be spotted otherwise. Sometimes, they even happen to be teachers from mum’s school, but for some strange reason, I never quite manage to put them in the same position as Tabby Cat or our dear old Ruchira Aunty. They come, they gorge on mum’s lunch, they eat up the best pieces of chicken, they make awful comments about the younger generations…And then come those dreaded words: “Koi apnar meyeke toh dekhlam na!”(Why, we didn’t see your daughter!) As if daughters are exhibition articles, to be viewed from all angles, commented upon, and priced.
Not wanting to appear rude, or rather, not wanting to face my mum after behaving rudely to her guests, I come down the stairs, almost always forgetting that to have a countenance that looks at least remotely like a cheerfully smiling face is an absolute necessity on these occasions.
The first stage is the worst, when they ask, “So which class are you in now, dear?”
Stoically sealing my ears, I let the mechanical reply cross my lips, “Class Ten”.
“Oh! (gasp) Then you’ll be sitting for the Madhyamiks this year!”
Thanks for the reminder; I’ll go jot it down in my planner right now!
“How she’s grown! Why, the last time I came here, you fitted in my lap!”
Ugh! Don’t tell me you ever took me in your lap! Now I know why I hate strong perfumes!
“Isn’t it amazing, the way kids grow?”
Once, hearing such a comment when I was younger, I had asked the concerned woman right away, “Wouldn’t you have been a bit more amazed if I still fitted in your lap?” Thank god I was only nine then, being cheeky at nine is considered an asset. “Oma, ki smart meyeta!” she had said. Now, however, I can only fume; comments in that vein are no longer welcome. Of course, I’d LIKE to try that again and see what happens, being fond of experiments with unpredictable results, but the reaction of my very excellent mother is so distinctly predictable that I wouldn’t dare!
The next inevitable statement: “Why, she’s gets thinner everyday! Don’t you EAT, my child?”
That’s a cue for Mum to take up the thread with a pathetic grimace, and with the air of a lifelong sufferer, she begins: “I can’t make her see sense! She has no appetite for anything except fast food! Why don’t you talk to her—”
I suppress a sigh.
“Oh, dear child! My cousin’s sister’s friend’s daughter is exactly the same age as you, and she looks way older! She eats everything that’s set down before her, you know.” Turning confidentially to my mother, she starts, “Vegetables, dearie. Feed her more vegetables. And kacha amloki sedhdo! My cousin’s sister’s friend believes in that!”
All I can do is watch in mute horror as my mother turns a sickeningly cheerful face towards me. “Hear! Hear! Are you even going to touch it if we get you something like that?”
You bet not! I glare.
“Oh yes she will. She’s a good girl. Madhyamiks do make one lose appetite, tai na ma?” In a sympathetic tone, “You must be a very sincere student. Do you study all the time? When do you go to sleep at night?"
Usually, I stop studying at 11, though I go to sleep at 2. But I cannot embarrass myself by telling her that! So I choose silence,
"Ah, I see! You surely study very late into the night. Don’t study so much, darling. Eat a bit more and yes, another useful vegetable is--”
My hopes of escaping them are dashed. I need to interrupt the conversation. At any cost! Or else we’ll probably have a raw-vegetable feast for dinner. “Ma”, I hurriedly chime in, “Did you see the pink rose that has come out today? It looks so amazing…aunty, you must see it!”
That always works!
My mother’s greatest pride is her garden. Indeed, she’s raised that garden with greater care than she’s raised us, and well, it’s paid back. It blooms and smiles and she can show it off; unlike her two children who have rewarded her care and concern by growing into two proverbial pencils that draw sympathetic sighs from every corner.
The mother-daughter love scenes
As soon as the visitor goes away, the real scene begins.
“Mum, there’s no way I’m eating that horrible stuff. I’ll continue the way I am, thank you!”
Ma, of course, goes up in smoke! “Look at you” she fumes, “Just look at you! And look at your friends. Now, Deyasini, she looks twice as big as you and she’s just your age! Remember her?”
Remember her?! She’s my best friend!
“She isn’t! She isn’t even taller than me!” I protest, starting to have second thoughts about organizing a Penta meeting at my place. The rest of them are bigger and fatter than Deya, and I can’t afford to have my mum noticing that. “And if you’re going to start the comparison cruise, then let me tell you, she doesn’t eat amloki seddho. She eats at Dominoes and Zeeshan and goes out to eat with friends—” My mum’s eyes have narrowed so much that I feel it’s prudent to stop.
“I suppose we make you live on raw vegetables?”
“Well, no, but the last time we had chicken was—”
“Yesterday” she finishes coldly.
Damn my memory! We’ve had chicken for the last five days.
“And how do you know your friends are going out?” I can feel her heating—“YOU’VE BEEN CHATTING ONLINE INSTEAD OF STUDYING?” She finishes in a dangerous whisper.
“CHAT! WHAT! She SMSed, Ma!” I didn’t lie, she did SMS. But sensing that the conversation is about to enter the danger zone, I quickly make up my mind, choosing the lesser of the two evils. “So you’re adding amloki seddho to the list from tomorrow? Chhola-badam, doi, chhana, amloki…I suppose the next will item on your list will comprise something in the line of cow-dung.”
"You need to get a shape", Mum says. "You cannot remain a straight line forever."
Stunning analogy. A straight line is dimensionless. So, no more arguments.
At the family dinner table
Though momentarily closed, the topic resurfaces at the dinner table.
“Why do you take half an hour to come down to dinner everyday?”
“The beautiful food!” I answer impertinently, and immediately regret it.
“Does this kind of thing happen even in the afternoon? Jupiter!” my dad calls strictly.
Jupiter, the maid, appears. Her answer is direct and to the point. “Oh well, I have to call her around 50 times then, she hardly hears a word when she’s at the computer.”
I close my eyes, knowing what will come next.
Why, oh WHY do I never have my lunch in time?
“COMPUTER!” they both shriek. “She sits at the computer!”
“WHAT DO YOU DO AT THE COMPUTER?”
All I can do is ensure my mouth is filled with food. I don’t have the guts to follow any of the two courses of action left before me: Invent a lie, or tell the truth.
“I know.” My brother says complacently, “She blogs!”
My beautiful bro!
“Blogs! What are they?”
“A place to make all sorts of announcements, probably.”
“Or is it a place to e-mail friends?”
“I think it’s an indirect mode of chatting.”
I keep chewing. Unimaginative parents who are completely computer-ignorant are REAL blessings, compared to the computer-educated ones. But imaginative computer-ignorant parents are anything but b's.
“Relax!” My brother says. “She doesn’t chat much nowadays. The last time I saw her chatting with some Devpriyo Pal and Kiki S on Facebook was—”
“Yuck!” I interrupt hurriedly, “I can’t eat this stew, it stinks. Yesterday's left-over, isn't it? I'm going to be sick.”
“Does it,now? No, don’t eat it then, wait, let me check it!” Clever me! The conversation is diverted immediately. My father is very health conscious. “Jupiter! How many times have I told you NOT to give left-over food-items to the children?”
I knew my mother wouldn’t buy that. “That stew,” she says slowly and coldly, “is more nutritious than all the other items on the table today. And it was cooked an hour back. May I know exactly why you think it'll make you sick?”
I decide to quote a 7 year old kid I had chatted with online that day. “I just don’t like stew. It has stuff in it.”
“Really? What kind of stuff?”
“How do I know what goddamn stuff you put in my stew? Something that will make me grow into a Michael Phelps overnight, no doubt.”
She takes a deep breath.
“My dear,” she begins. It’s never a good sign to have mums beginning sentences so tenderly. Her next words confirm my worst fears. “Just in case you think you are the most beautiful girl on earth, let me remind you that you resemble a Sakchunni more and more with every passing day. (Consider myself beautiful? I suffer from obtuse mirror phobia, mom!) I can almost count your bones. (Big deal! I can too...206! I knew that in KG!) Your figure, though you never noticed, makes you look like an underfed lizard.”
Let me make something very clear here. I have no delusions about my looks. I DO NOT fancy that I look round, cute and lovely; in fact I know I probably come as close to the physical demonstration of a dimensionless straight line as possible. And it’s bad enough to have the mirror pointing that out mercilessly everyday, without having my mum picking it as an excuse to stuff me with all the food items in the market that compete for tastelessness. Whenever I try to show off my knowledge of Life Science by telling her that vegetables do not contain fat, she silences me with a you’re-not-the-only-educated-member-of-the-family look.
Catharsis Continues...
I wish I could wake up one morning to find myself swelled up like Aunt Marge. I’d bounce mildly down the stairs (Okay, maybe I’ll miss the joy of jumping 3 stairs at a time like I usually do!), and mightily refuse all the garbage they offer me in the name of nutrition. Being fat, you may not have a lot of admirers, but you at least have a long line of sympathizers. Skinny people miss out on both! :-( If you’re fat, people are never blunt enough to add to your misery by pointing out that you could sink through the floor any day. On the other hand, thinness is considered to be a mildly amusing joke, and people keep telling you all the time that you’d get blown away if you sigh too hard, or that you’d be indistinguishable from your shadow if you ate a little less.
Only yesterday, I was reading an article written by someone who I bet weighed more at conception than I did at birth. (Wait, no! I was born overweight!) Well, the article ran as follows:
If only I could enjoy that kind of a diet, and make all the fat people jealous, then being thin would be WORTH it. But thanks to my over-cautious mother and also my metabolism, I don’t. Pshaw!
I guess I’ll sign out now. I’ll be skinned alive if I don’t finish the doi that’s waiting for me downstairs. Sigh! And bye!
“Riki”, my mother’s melodious voice rings from downstairs. “Tidy up your room today. I’ll have some guests.”
It’s unlike me to respond at once to anything my mother says, but the guest-is-coming danger signal works miracles.
“What kind of guests? Why do I have to tidy up MY room for YOUR guests?”
My mother sighs. “Oh, it’s Mrs. XYZ. She’s been offering to call for days now, I never really had the time. Do up your room you must. They’ll ask to be shown around, you know.”
It was just as I’d feared. A lady guest! One of those housewives from our purono para who have nothing better to do than calling on various people and making their lives hell for a day. I know that wasn’t decent of me. Ma would probably kill me if she heard me thinking along those lines. But the truth is that I hate some of these visitors of ma’s. In fact, to say I DREAD them would do better justice to the feelings that swell up from the pit of my stomach when I hear the sounds of their paan-chibano voices in the basement, the nasal “Oma, ki sundor”s punctuated by the scuffle of their saris, and yes, the sounds of their laughter. They’ll give the hyenas a run for their money any day! Having never seen my own mother wearing lipstick or any kind of make-up, I’ve always had a kind of prejudice against women who redden their lips like they’ve been sucking blood, and line their eyes deeply with blue-and-black as though they were afraid that their eyes wouldn’t be spotted otherwise. Sometimes, they even happen to be teachers from mum’s school, but for some strange reason, I never quite manage to put them in the same position as Tabby Cat or our dear old Ruchira Aunty. They come, they gorge on mum’s lunch, they eat up the best pieces of chicken, they make awful comments about the younger generations…And then come those dreaded words: “Koi apnar meyeke toh dekhlam na!”(Why, we didn’t see your daughter!) As if daughters are exhibition articles, to be viewed from all angles, commented upon, and priced.
Not wanting to appear rude, or rather, not wanting to face my mum after behaving rudely to her guests, I come down the stairs, almost always forgetting that to have a countenance that looks at least remotely like a cheerfully smiling face is an absolute necessity on these occasions.
The first stage is the worst, when they ask, “So which class are you in now, dear?”
Stoically sealing my ears, I let the mechanical reply cross my lips, “Class Ten”.
“Oh! (gasp) Then you’ll be sitting for the Madhyamiks this year!”
Thanks for the reminder; I’ll go jot it down in my planner right now!
“How she’s grown! Why, the last time I came here, you fitted in my lap!”
Ugh! Don’t tell me you ever took me in your lap! Now I know why I hate strong perfumes!
“Isn’t it amazing, the way kids grow?”
Once, hearing such a comment when I was younger, I had asked the concerned woman right away, “Wouldn’t you have been a bit more amazed if I still fitted in your lap?” Thank god I was only nine then, being cheeky at nine is considered an asset. “Oma, ki smart meyeta!” she had said. Now, however, I can only fume; comments in that vein are no longer welcome. Of course, I’d LIKE to try that again and see what happens, being fond of experiments with unpredictable results, but the reaction of my very excellent mother is so distinctly predictable that I wouldn’t dare!
The next inevitable statement: “Why, she’s gets thinner everyday! Don’t you EAT, my child?”
That’s a cue for Mum to take up the thread with a pathetic grimace, and with the air of a lifelong sufferer, she begins: “I can’t make her see sense! She has no appetite for anything except fast food! Why don’t you talk to her—”
I suppress a sigh.
“Oh, dear child! My cousin’s sister’s friend’s daughter is exactly the same age as you, and she looks way older! She eats everything that’s set down before her, you know.” Turning confidentially to my mother, she starts, “Vegetables, dearie. Feed her more vegetables. And kacha amloki sedhdo! My cousin’s sister’s friend believes in that!”
All I can do is watch in mute horror as my mother turns a sickeningly cheerful face towards me. “Hear! Hear! Are you even going to touch it if we get you something like that?”
You bet not! I glare.
“Oh yes she will. She’s a good girl. Madhyamiks do make one lose appetite, tai na ma?” In a sympathetic tone, “You must be a very sincere student. Do you study all the time? When do you go to sleep at night?"
Usually, I stop studying at 11, though I go to sleep at 2. But I cannot embarrass myself by telling her that! So I choose silence,
"Ah, I see! You surely study very late into the night. Don’t study so much, darling. Eat a bit more and yes, another useful vegetable is--”
My hopes of escaping them are dashed. I need to interrupt the conversation. At any cost! Or else we’ll probably have a raw-vegetable feast for dinner. “Ma”, I hurriedly chime in, “Did you see the pink rose that has come out today? It looks so amazing…aunty, you must see it!”
That always works!
My mother’s greatest pride is her garden. Indeed, she’s raised that garden with greater care than she’s raised us, and well, it’s paid back. It blooms and smiles and she can show it off; unlike her two children who have rewarded her care and concern by growing into two proverbial pencils that draw sympathetic sighs from every corner.
The mother-daughter love scenes
As soon as the visitor goes away, the real scene begins.
“Mum, there’s no way I’m eating that horrible stuff. I’ll continue the way I am, thank you!”
Ma, of course, goes up in smoke! “Look at you” she fumes, “Just look at you! And look at your friends. Now, Deyasini, she looks twice as big as you and she’s just your age! Remember her?”
Remember her?! She’s my best friend!
“She isn’t! She isn’t even taller than me!” I protest, starting to have second thoughts about organizing a Penta meeting at my place. The rest of them are bigger and fatter than Deya, and I can’t afford to have my mum noticing that. “And if you’re going to start the comparison cruise, then let me tell you, she doesn’t eat amloki seddho. She eats at Dominoes and Zeeshan and goes out to eat with friends—” My mum’s eyes have narrowed so much that I feel it’s prudent to stop.
“I suppose we make you live on raw vegetables?”
“Well, no, but the last time we had chicken was—”
“Yesterday” she finishes coldly.
Damn my memory! We’ve had chicken for the last five days.
“And how do you know your friends are going out?” I can feel her heating—“YOU’VE BEEN CHATTING ONLINE INSTEAD OF STUDYING?” She finishes in a dangerous whisper.
“CHAT! WHAT! She SMSed, Ma!” I didn’t lie, she did SMS. But sensing that the conversation is about to enter the danger zone, I quickly make up my mind, choosing the lesser of the two evils. “So you’re adding amloki seddho to the list from tomorrow? Chhola-badam, doi, chhana, amloki…I suppose the next will item on your list will comprise something in the line of cow-dung.”
"You need to get a shape", Mum says. "You cannot remain a straight line forever."
Stunning analogy. A straight line is dimensionless. So, no more arguments.
At the family dinner table
Though momentarily closed, the topic resurfaces at the dinner table.
“Why do you take half an hour to come down to dinner everyday?”
“The beautiful food!” I answer impertinently, and immediately regret it.
“Does this kind of thing happen even in the afternoon? Jupiter!” my dad calls strictly.
Jupiter, the maid, appears. Her answer is direct and to the point. “Oh well, I have to call her around 50 times then, she hardly hears a word when she’s at the computer.”
I close my eyes, knowing what will come next.
Why, oh WHY do I never have my lunch in time?
“COMPUTER!” they both shriek. “She sits at the computer!”
“WHAT DO YOU DO AT THE COMPUTER?”
All I can do is ensure my mouth is filled with food. I don’t have the guts to follow any of the two courses of action left before me: Invent a lie, or tell the truth.
“I know.” My brother says complacently, “She blogs!”
My beautiful bro!
“Blogs! What are they?”
“A place to make all sorts of announcements, probably.”
“Or is it a place to e-mail friends?”
“I think it’s an indirect mode of chatting.”
I keep chewing. Unimaginative parents who are completely computer-ignorant are REAL blessings, compared to the computer-educated ones. But imaginative computer-ignorant parents are anything but b's.
“Relax!” My brother says. “She doesn’t chat much nowadays. The last time I saw her chatting with some Devpriyo Pal and Kiki S on Facebook was—”
“Yuck!” I interrupt hurriedly, “I can’t eat this stew, it stinks. Yesterday's left-over, isn't it? I'm going to be sick.”
“Does it,now? No, don’t eat it then, wait, let me check it!” Clever me! The conversation is diverted immediately. My father is very health conscious. “Jupiter! How many times have I told you NOT to give left-over food-items to the children?”
I knew my mother wouldn’t buy that. “That stew,” she says slowly and coldly, “is more nutritious than all the other items on the table today. And it was cooked an hour back. May I know exactly why you think it'll make you sick?”
I decide to quote a 7 year old kid I had chatted with online that day. “I just don’t like stew. It has stuff in it.”
“Really? What kind of stuff?”
“How do I know what goddamn stuff you put in my stew? Something that will make me grow into a Michael Phelps overnight, no doubt.”
She takes a deep breath.
“My dear,” she begins. It’s never a good sign to have mums beginning sentences so tenderly. Her next words confirm my worst fears. “Just in case you think you are the most beautiful girl on earth, let me remind you that you resemble a Sakchunni more and more with every passing day. (Consider myself beautiful? I suffer from obtuse mirror phobia, mom!) I can almost count your bones. (Big deal! I can too...206! I knew that in KG!) Your figure, though you never noticed, makes you look like an underfed lizard.”
Let me make something very clear here. I have no delusions about my looks. I DO NOT fancy that I look round, cute and lovely; in fact I know I probably come as close to the physical demonstration of a dimensionless straight line as possible. And it’s bad enough to have the mirror pointing that out mercilessly everyday, without having my mum picking it as an excuse to stuff me with all the food items in the market that compete for tastelessness. Whenever I try to show off my knowledge of Life Science by telling her that vegetables do not contain fat, she silences me with a you’re-not-the-only-educated-member-of-the-family look.
Catharsis Continues...
I wish I could wake up one morning to find myself swelled up like Aunt Marge. I’d bounce mildly down the stairs (Okay, maybe I’ll miss the joy of jumping 3 stairs at a time like I usually do!), and mightily refuse all the garbage they offer me in the name of nutrition. Being fat, you may not have a lot of admirers, but you at least have a long line of sympathizers. Skinny people miss out on both! :-( If you’re fat, people are never blunt enough to add to your misery by pointing out that you could sink through the floor any day. On the other hand, thinness is considered to be a mildly amusing joke, and people keep telling you all the time that you’d get blown away if you sigh too hard, or that you’d be indistinguishable from your shadow if you ate a little less.
Only yesterday, I was reading an article written by someone who I bet weighed more at conception than I did at birth. (Wait, no! I was born overweight!) Well, the article ran as follows:
Scrawny waifs are not happy unless they are making us fat people cry. They gulp down five or six donuts, an entire box of chocolate-covered cherries, a box of cookies, a tub of ice cream, a couple dozen bagels with whipped cream on top, and a bowl of chocolate mousse, and then they cry about how unfair life is, because they don't gain an ounce, and they really want to gain at least ten pounds. Meanwhile, we fatties have just gained ten pounds by watching them eat.
If only I could enjoy that kind of a diet, and make all the fat people jealous, then being thin would be WORTH it. But thanks to my over-cautious mother and also my metabolism, I don’t. Pshaw!
I guess I’ll sign out now. I’ll be skinned alive if I don’t finish the doi that’s waiting for me downstairs. Sigh! And bye!
Saturday, November 22, 2008
On Loneliness and Romance and Blogging…
I hate the orange colour of the blog-post headings. Can anyone tell me how to change it? And....“Random Reflections” is such a nice name for a blog! I wish I had come up with a name like that; mine is the stupidest and egotist-est name ever! Not that I mind it, everybody’s pretty much the same when it comes to egotism; some are probably a few shades cleverer than others at covering up the fact. I don’t know how one can be human without being an egotist. A friend of mine says, “Talking about myself makes me feel like an egotist”. Heck, as if anybody’s foolish enough to assume that you’re not an egotist if you don’t talk about yourself!
Okay, before I drift off the point with my incurable talent of rambling, here’s one point I wanted to make: I love blogging! Here’s a toast to Pratiti and Rohan and Kiki, for introducing me to the world of blogs. It was a bit annoying at first to find that people whom you’d never have invited to your blog in your right mind visiting it and commenting on it, but the fact remains that the best part of blogging is looking at the bottom of the page and seeing a new comment or two waiting there, so cheers to all those who took the trouble to comment! *raises bottle due to lack of glass nearby* The “Comments” link looks as inviting as well-wrapped birthday gifts, waiting to be opened and explored and exclaimed at. I maintain that the best part of a birthday gift is the opening of it, of which simple business I always insist on making the grandest possible ceremony(as grand as permissible when you have to open some 20 gifts in a Bengali class of 35 minutes which is to be followed by an English exam in the next period. Never shall I forgive Ruplekha Aunty for dropping a test on my 16th b’day). I’ve known people who, on receiving birthday gifts, tear away the wrapping unfeelingly, claw at the box, and feel absolutely nothing till they hold the actual gift in hand. Poor things! They’ve probably never felt the thrill of the first sight of a wrapped gift, admiring the gift-wrap from every corner, opening it slowly, as slowly as possible, making dozens of improbable conjectures as to the contents of the box, letting the inward excitement reach its boiling point, and finally drawing out the gift with a sharp intake of breath. And catching their jaw, and gasping, and feeling an irresistible desire to hug the giver right there.
Er, I hope you didn’t miss my original point. It was that comments are very nice and I invite them.
_____________________________________________________________________________________I I wish I could type fast enough to complete one post at a time; I hate it when I have to continue something I started in a cheerful mood in my current mood which is anything but cheerful! Heck, I WON’T continue with what I was writing, I’ll begin anew.
It’s a pretty nice day, today. I wish I were as gifted as some of my more-gifted-than-me friends who can make their surroundings materialize all around you with their amazingly vivid descriptions. I wouldn’t even dare to try and put into words the magical melody of that naam-na-jana bird that went “Krrrr” right now, or the harmonious cacophony of crows, sparrows, and all sorts of birds of all sorts of colours and shapes and sizes adding to the surprisingly resonant chorus that shatters the silence of this otherwise quiet afternoon. I’m so glad I don’t live in the alleged “heart” of the city, where the melody of a beautiful fall afternoon is broken by the honking of traffic, and the beauty of a full moon night destroyed by street lights and brightly lit hoardings. It is here in Garfa, an unassuming remote lane in an unheard-of corner of Kolkata, that its “heart” lies. Here, the music of the birds is broken only by the sound of a woman’s voice in the distance, accompanied by the hiss of a running tap. Who would wash dishes at this time, I wonder? Maybe some maid who wants to leave early. Maybe she has a sick son or daughter to attend to somewhere far away. I wonder what she is thinking as she scrubs the dishes, vehemently fighting against her heart that tells her to abandon her duty and rush of to her sick child! It would be lovely to read her mind right now. Oh, I wish I had a mind-reader. Or wait, I don’t. I wouldn’t be able to survive very long with an outrageous power like that. It’s not as simple and harmless as flying or going invisible. Flying would be pretty boring as a pastime, I think. If I were a bird, I’d spend more time at my nest feeding my chicks and peeping in at the windows of little girls who sat at computers, wondering what they were doing, than I would spend flying. Anyway, a bird can’t fly beyond the sunset, I can. Having the ability to fly would simply reveal the limitation of destinations to fly to. Invisibility, now, is one hell of an amazing power! What wouldn’t I do, starting from peeking into Tabby Cat’s private life, to…? Well, let’s not think of the extreme limit of what I’d do, lest I should lose interest in the power!
On afternoons like this, loneliness is the best friend you could possibly ask for. Loneliness, at this hour, is a transcending presence; it has a spirit of its own. It hides in between the lines of Hey There Delilah, in the invisible spaces in my darkened room, and the momentary pauses in the dulcet chorus outside. Every song you listen to, seems to take on a new meaning in these surroundings. Even though I’ve never had my heart broken in love, I can feel my heartstrings being stirred by the insidious pain that reverberates in every note of “Soledad”.
“If only you could see the tears in the world you left behind,
If only you could heal my heart just one more time!
Even when I close my eyes,
There's an image of your face.
And once again I come to realise
You're a loss I can't replace!
…………… …………… ……………
Soledad,
In my heart you were the only
And your memory lives on,
Why did you leave me?
Soledad…”
In the middle of a well lighted busy street, loneliness is a curse, because then it is a soulless vacuous space, not a presence. It’s even more painful if the vacuous space has a definite shape and size. Here, however, loneliness is simply too beautiful and romantic for words.
Romance!
Well, if you sit in a dark room all by yourself listening to heartbreaking love songs, you are bound to ruminate on romance, even if you know that there are more constructive topics that can to be cogitated upon. After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that old-age romance is after all the most romantic form of it. I know it sounds amusing to hear a teenage girl talking about old-age romance, but really, after observing most of the so-called “committed” teenage couples around me, and also after a test of my own commitment, my opinion of teenage romance has taken such a low profile that I can safely say I’m not likely to fall in love anytime in the next five springs, let roses bloom as red as they will. Imagine falling in love at the age of, say, sixty or seventy, when you’ve seen enough of life to know what you want from it, and grown cynical enough to believe that you’ll never have it. That, I think, is truly beautiful, as beautiful as pink roses blossoming in the middle of summer. The joy of suddenly discovering that life still has something new to offer, to feel the hope and promise of young love at that age, to watch your life taking on a new meaning after 60 years or so…wouldn’t it be the amazing-est feeling ever?
Well, I guess I must stop my long and romantic post here! Or else I’ll have to wait one more day before posting it, which I couldn’t bear! Here’s wishing a happy romance to everybody, at whatever age it finds you! Cheers!
Okay, before I drift off the point with my incurable talent of rambling, here’s one point I wanted to make: I love blogging! Here’s a toast to Pratiti and Rohan and Kiki, for introducing me to the world of blogs. It was a bit annoying at first to find that people whom you’d never have invited to your blog in your right mind visiting it and commenting on it, but the fact remains that the best part of blogging is looking at the bottom of the page and seeing a new comment or two waiting there, so cheers to all those who took the trouble to comment! *raises bottle due to lack of glass nearby* The “Comments” link looks as inviting as well-wrapped birthday gifts, waiting to be opened and explored and exclaimed at. I maintain that the best part of a birthday gift is the opening of it, of which simple business I always insist on making the grandest possible ceremony(as grand as permissible when you have to open some 20 gifts in a Bengali class of 35 minutes which is to be followed by an English exam in the next period. Never shall I forgive Ruplekha Aunty for dropping a test on my 16th b’day). I’ve known people who, on receiving birthday gifts, tear away the wrapping unfeelingly, claw at the box, and feel absolutely nothing till they hold the actual gift in hand. Poor things! They’ve probably never felt the thrill of the first sight of a wrapped gift, admiring the gift-wrap from every corner, opening it slowly, as slowly as possible, making dozens of improbable conjectures as to the contents of the box, letting the inward excitement reach its boiling point, and finally drawing out the gift with a sharp intake of breath. And catching their jaw, and gasping, and feeling an irresistible desire to hug the giver right there.
Er, I hope you didn’t miss my original point. It was that comments are very nice and I invite them.
_____________________________________________________________________________________I I wish I could type fast enough to complete one post at a time; I hate it when I have to continue something I started in a cheerful mood in my current mood which is anything but cheerful! Heck, I WON’T continue with what I was writing, I’ll begin anew.
It’s a pretty nice day, today. I wish I were as gifted as some of my more-gifted-than-me friends who can make their surroundings materialize all around you with their amazingly vivid descriptions. I wouldn’t even dare to try and put into words the magical melody of that naam-na-jana bird that went “Krrrr” right now, or the harmonious cacophony of crows, sparrows, and all sorts of birds of all sorts of colours and shapes and sizes adding to the surprisingly resonant chorus that shatters the silence of this otherwise quiet afternoon. I’m so glad I don’t live in the alleged “heart” of the city, where the melody of a beautiful fall afternoon is broken by the honking of traffic, and the beauty of a full moon night destroyed by street lights and brightly lit hoardings. It is here in Garfa, an unassuming remote lane in an unheard-of corner of Kolkata, that its “heart” lies. Here, the music of the birds is broken only by the sound of a woman’s voice in the distance, accompanied by the hiss of a running tap. Who would wash dishes at this time, I wonder? Maybe some maid who wants to leave early. Maybe she has a sick son or daughter to attend to somewhere far away. I wonder what she is thinking as she scrubs the dishes, vehemently fighting against her heart that tells her to abandon her duty and rush of to her sick child! It would be lovely to read her mind right now. Oh, I wish I had a mind-reader. Or wait, I don’t. I wouldn’t be able to survive very long with an outrageous power like that. It’s not as simple and harmless as flying or going invisible. Flying would be pretty boring as a pastime, I think. If I were a bird, I’d spend more time at my nest feeding my chicks and peeping in at the windows of little girls who sat at computers, wondering what they were doing, than I would spend flying. Anyway, a bird can’t fly beyond the sunset, I can. Having the ability to fly would simply reveal the limitation of destinations to fly to. Invisibility, now, is one hell of an amazing power! What wouldn’t I do, starting from peeking into Tabby Cat’s private life, to…? Well, let’s not think of the extreme limit of what I’d do, lest I should lose interest in the power!
On afternoons like this, loneliness is the best friend you could possibly ask for. Loneliness, at this hour, is a transcending presence; it has a spirit of its own. It hides in between the lines of Hey There Delilah, in the invisible spaces in my darkened room, and the momentary pauses in the dulcet chorus outside. Every song you listen to, seems to take on a new meaning in these surroundings. Even though I’ve never had my heart broken in love, I can feel my heartstrings being stirred by the insidious pain that reverberates in every note of “Soledad”.
“If only you could see the tears in the world you left behind,
If only you could heal my heart just one more time!
Even when I close my eyes,
There's an image of your face.
And once again I come to realise
You're a loss I can't replace!
…………… …………… ……………
Soledad,
In my heart you were the only
And your memory lives on,
Why did you leave me?
Soledad…”
In the middle of a well lighted busy street, loneliness is a curse, because then it is a soulless vacuous space, not a presence. It’s even more painful if the vacuous space has a definite shape and size. Here, however, loneliness is simply too beautiful and romantic for words.
Romance!
Well, if you sit in a dark room all by yourself listening to heartbreaking love songs, you are bound to ruminate on romance, even if you know that there are more constructive topics that can to be cogitated upon. After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that old-age romance is after all the most romantic form of it. I know it sounds amusing to hear a teenage girl talking about old-age romance, but really, after observing most of the so-called “committed” teenage couples around me, and also after a test of my own commitment, my opinion of teenage romance has taken such a low profile that I can safely say I’m not likely to fall in love anytime in the next five springs, let roses bloom as red as they will. Imagine falling in love at the age of, say, sixty or seventy, when you’ve seen enough of life to know what you want from it, and grown cynical enough to believe that you’ll never have it. That, I think, is truly beautiful, as beautiful as pink roses blossoming in the middle of summer. The joy of suddenly discovering that life still has something new to offer, to feel the hope and promise of young love at that age, to watch your life taking on a new meaning after 60 years or so…wouldn’t it be the amazing-est feeling ever?
Well, I guess I must stop my long and romantic post here! Or else I’ll have to wait one more day before posting it, which I couldn’t bear! Here’s wishing a happy romance to everybody, at whatever age it finds you! Cheers!
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