Unruly words

And sometimes I have so many things in my mind that I don’t find what to write. During breakfast I thought I would write about my mother’s talent in turning even eggplant curry into a mouthwatering and taste-bud tantalizing dish. Then my thought shifted to the roads washed with the rain and the smell of wet soil which always takes me on a quick ride to my childhood days. While dressing up for office I thought I would write about my boss and his exaggerated sense of self importance. In the local train I thought I have to write about my joy rides to office; I thought of writing about my Mr. Perfect who isn’t so perfect after all but still manages to rule over my heart.

I am so overloaded with incidents and words at times that there remains no room in my heart, brain, mind, stomach, etc to nurture and en-cage them any longer. So, each of these words, incidents, observations jostle to come out and occupy a place in the electronic paper (read as MS Word document). As a result what gets typed is nothing more than gibberish.

I stopped writing and read my friends’ blogs and I found them so structured, so full of intellect and humor; I murmured sadly, ‘Ohh !! I was about to write something like this hadn’t him/her written it’ or “I feel the same but I don’t find the correct words to describe it on paper”. I opened my WordPad again with enthusiasm and yet another time I ended up typing and deleting the typed words and typing again

Finally, after wrestling with my words and deciding on my writing mood what I could pen down is this:

Let it stink in local train

I would dance in the rain

With you;

Let them boast let them brag

Let them drone let them drag

I would still be in love

With you;

Let them grow big and fat

I still like the silly chat

With you;

Let them think I am mad

Let them feel I am bad

I would still relish eggplant

With you;

Thanks for staying awake through the entire article and reading it till the end.

Practical Joke

As the sea receded his size diminished. He waved and screamed, pleaded to his friends to help him until they went out of sight. He was stripped off his pants by the surge of the sea; Ironically those were the same polka dot pants one of his friends wanted to wear and had dearly requested him for it earlier that day; But he had refused him, so there he was, standing disrobed in chest deep water fighting with the waves, begging for a towel. On the beach his friends enjoyed their midday meal, amused by the lingering penitence of their dear friend who had not only committed a heinous crime of refusing his polka dot pants to one of them but had also displayed his insolence by saying ,‘ you are too substandard to carry it off dude’.

I know many of you would question me “Don’t kids these days wear briefs underneath”. Or you would ask me “Wasn’t there anybody around, kind enough to lend him a ‘gamchha’ (piece of cloth used extensively in the east as a substitute of towel).

Well, I wasn’t a spectator of this incident. I had heard this story in a real-life-incident-tale-telling-session at office (The narrator being one among the merry revelers who had executed the prank) and I chose not to delve much deeper into the incident in order to preserve my dignity at work place. Hence, for the sake of the narrator’s credibility let’s assume “No” as the answers to your questions.

So, the sea travelled 2 and half kilometers away from the beach taking him along with the low tide waves. They had come for sea bath at 10 in the morning. Vengeance was not their motive but when it came along on their way by itself they could not help retaliating to their mate’s impudence. “We aren’t of your standard dude so we aren’t getting a piece of cloth for you”, they said when their unclad friend cried out for help.

The drama of sadism and penance continued till 5 in the evening when the nude man came nearer to his friends, floating with the high tide waves, still shouting out for help(I appreciate his tenacity). They drank tender coconut water on the beach and gleefully observed waves crashing over their impertinent friend, red eyed and flaccid with prolonged stay in sea water. It was turning dark when they reluctantly went to his rescue and offered him two tender coconut shells to cover himself and come out of the brine.

There was a riot of laughter in the room. The story made the audience of the real-life-incident-tale-telling-session roll on the floor laughing. People gasped, turned red faced laughing, appreciated the narrator’s act of bravado, “This is height of naughtiness” someone commented.

I was flabbergasted. Could this be classified as an act of naughtiness? I found it nothing more than malign bullying; an utterly shameful thing to be done to any human being, let alone a friend. The blessed guy was in saline water for 7 hours, enduring afternoon sun, sustaining heat, hunger and a surging sea and still didn’t faint! I found it preposterous. As per my limited aptitude, 7 hours in water impregnated with salt would dehydrate someone, would make him senseless and wash him away with the billows. If the same act had lasted for 2 hours it would have qualified as a prank but 7 hours was inhuman, it could have been fatal. The guy has commendable endurance if the story is true.

How could someone do something like this to a friend and boast about it to his colleagues? I used to go to an engineering college too. I have stayed in hostel with people of different origin, have been ragged by seniors. I had more guy friends than girls and needless to say all of them were mischievous like how collegiate guys are supposed to be. I have seen them try out crazy stuffs, go errant on their bikes, go to college fests after drinking like a fish, violate campus rules ,feast at the graveyard, play pranks but never consciously cause serious harm(which involves life risk) to anybody not even to those with whom they had personal animosity.

There was a guy in my college who had thrown a pup from 1^st floor into the bushes when the later chewed his internet cables. The creature probably limped for the rest of its life .Is that a prank too? We used to detest him for his gruesome behavior towards the poor creature.

What is wrong and what is right, what is a prank and what is brutal is subject to debate. I would just pray my dear readers to think twice about the probable consequences before pulling a prank on somebody and giving way to your adrenalin rush. Some damages are irreversible in nature.

Dadagiri

Every one in kolkata is either your dada or your didi . Bengali synonym of elder brother and elder sister. That is what people here prefer to be addressed or referred to as. You are having a bad fight with a guy, you are calling him names and he screams back at you, “Son of a *****”; but the fact that he is still your dada and can rightfully claim to be addressed so remains unchanged, so amidst the swear shower you still call him dada and so does he.  You may be forty, but that doesn’t stop you from being a dada to a sixteen year old, neither does it stop the sixteen year old from being your dada. Unless he calls you kaku(uncle that is) , which clearly means you are old and you cannot hide it anymore .

You are young and twenty and you have been checking a girl out in your colony of late. Don’t think that she isn’t interested in dating you if she smiles at you one day and asks you “What is your name dada?”. It indicates that she wants your name so that she can suffix a ‘da’ to it (I am not sure if using half the word diminishes effect of its literal meaning ) , which may later on develop into your name alone and if you are a lucky bloke that may further develop into cheesy nick names like sweeto or honey .

Be it your co-passenger in a local train, be it a conductor in the bus, your next door neighbor or your manager at office, everyone shares a common identity… ‘DADA'(and of-course didi in many cases). Many of you have elder brothers who are bossy and are always ready with a lot of suggestions. By and large kolkata dadas are elder brothers of that sort. There are other kinds too but most of them, most of the times love to accost you like big brothers and warn you of the inevitable and instruct you to follow the path they have been traversing so long. They come on your way to enlighten you and make you realize your lack of wisdom.

The second kinds call themselves witty.You are the subject of their merriment. They love to ridicule you in public and raise their collar if they have successfully embarrassed you. Cracking ludicrous jokes on a soft target is an act of heroism is what they think. They make fun of the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you dress, your height, weight, smile, the websites you surf and the food you eat. Sometimes the reason for laughing at you goes so bizarre that you would pity their lameness.

We should not forget the political background of my city of joy. This place has always been the epicenter of protests and strikes. The third kind possesses the rebellious traits in them. I have mostly encountered ladies aka didis of such kind in local trains. Quarrels are very common at public places here. The amazing part is, as soon as the clash starts between two, people around divide into two clans, one group stands up for the cause the other against it. It won’t be a surprise if in the end the two central characters initiating the fight are missing from the spot while others fight a gang war.

Few traits are common in my brethren of Bengal. They are rich in art and literature; they love to travel and are great patrons of music and poetry. They also love hanging around in tea shops ,so much so that, in vicinity of a full fledged office building one may easily get a notion that there is a fire inside the office by the sight of the over whelming number of people loitering outside the premises . If some day you come to my office at 5:30 in the evening you would be astonished to see the humongous crowd outside the building engaged in serious or light discussion with accompaniments of tea in an earthen cup, snacks and sometimes a smoke.

After everything said and done if I say that there was no offense meant will anyone buy it? Or if I convey my sincere apologies to the subjects of this article will it do any good? I am certain that my fellow bengali dadas and didis have adjudged me a traitor of Bengali fraternity by now and are ready to get back at me anytime for the ‘dadagiri’ that I have pulled off.

Yours Truly

My dear friend Sandip used to send me  emails during his stay in Mumbai .One of them was a beautiful piece of writing and I wanted him to publish it.As he is too reluctant to do so I am doing the honors. So here it goes:

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Dear Som,

This one should be titled “the (mis)adventures of a lost soul in a mumbai local train”. i have this suspicion that very soon i am going to see a hardbound edition of my mails to you with some cheeky title. the best i can think of is “the sandip choudhury adventures” right now. you already know about my horrible experience in the local train but since you asked me to mail about it (please dont make this public!)…here goes.

I had a great evening, chomping indegeneous burgers (more popularly known as “vada-paav”) and watching the waves crash all over the walls of marine drive. its a beautiful place and someday i would love to take you there. its somewhat like hyderabad’s necklace road, only bigger and better. but you need a red fiero with no horns and brakes to enjoy such a place. so till then you will have to wait.

we got into a train at churchgate, which is a terminal station and the train was empty with a handful of passengers in our coach. this was the first time i had a window seat to myself in a mumbai local and happily settled myself into my seat.

within the distance of a few stations the coach was converted from an empty one to a coeach splitting its sides with people. about six stops from where i was supposed to get off, i was remembering the local train commuting lessons: try to get into the wave to people while getting in/out and i hurled myself into the crowd about five stations from my destination.a couple of stations later i began to get a stinking feeling that i may miss my destination. and by thee time the train had reached my destination, my worst fears had come true. i was standing a couple of steps away from where i had been sitting and had to cross half the coach’s length just to get near the door.

so i missed my station. suman, who had been standing near the door all along tried to get off and he actually succededed, only to be pushed back by an incomng wave of people. he was the only one getting off. he managed to make a sucidal jump after punchng a few people at the last moment.

at marine drive, there were thousands of crabs clinging on to rocks for dear life while waves crashed all over them. i felt somewhat like the crabs.

we had unwittingly boarded the virar local, a very infrequent train to a heavily populated part of mumbai. so, thousands of people board this train but they all get off at virar.

a few people behing me smirked when they saw me pushing, pulling, twisting and grunting a lot. “beta, there is no hope. you cannot get off before virar”, a few commented. i saw a person’s glasses fly off. the poor fellow didnt even try to retrieve it. i could see helpnessness in his eyes. abuses were flying everywhere. so did the occassional fist. a person jammed in next to me was smirking at my bad luck. he was saying something like “a persons ability can be judged by how he travels in a train and how he manages his love life”. bullshit! i was secretly pleased when he missed his stop too and had to travel all the way to mira road with me. guess he has a horrible love life too. mumbai has lots of fat people and most of them were in my coach that evening. fat people are nature’s air-pads, and i was like a weak particle trying to push my way through a padded seal. physically impossible! i later found at least five people who got off at mira road had missed their stops.

five stops from where i was supposed to get off, i managed to wriggle my way out. i caught a train back and just to be safe i was hanging on to the door this time. never again on virar local!!!

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Courtesy Sandip Choudhury

Happy Valentine’s Day

The dust in the book fair embraced me and said ‘Welcome home’. I wandered in the fair like I was back to the place where I belong. I absorbed the mild sunshine and gently brushed off the dust from my face. My heart was filled with mirth. While returning back home I gazed out of the window of the city bus; I was drowned in a strange feeling, somewhat similar to what I felt when I had once fallen in love. Since then, this feeling visited me quite often .Even when I traveled in the local train or lazily crawled up in my bed, I felt the same. I didn’t know what exactly it was but I felt I was in love all over again. I was in love with everything, the dust, the sun, the noise and of course the one who I always knew I loved.

My room smelled of perfume. Sometimes we associate a place with a person, a person with a smell, a smell with a tattered memory. And in one moment every thing appears like a string of incidents in front of our eyes. My perfume reminded me of the walks with my beloved in the lazy afternoons and several other incidents of the last 10 days. Suddenly my heart squeezed and I felt a pain which I did not feel ever before. I was not new to the feeling of love, neither was I new to the feeling of parting from my beloved. Yet, this was a kind of emotion I had never experienced. Though my beloved smiled and said good bye, some unknown force constantly pulled me back and asked me not to leave. I realized that this feeling is born because everything around me was trying to stop me from leaving. It may be the manifestation of my beloved’s heart wrenching pain at my departure, which he never expressed; it may be the bond of my long forgotten roots with me. I did not know what attracted me like a powerful magnet.

Birds chirped in my window in the lonely afternoon. I rolled in my bed and enjoyed the last rays of the sun. Some times later I noticed the birds returning back to their nest. I wondered if even I would ever be able to fly back to my nest. I thought, everyone returns back to their home one day no matter how far they fly from their known branches, even I will. My heart ached but there was a pinch of hope in it. All of a sudden, the cry of the hawkers, the slogans in the microphone, and the sound of cycle rickshaw horns, everything seemed so pleasant to me. As if, all these varied noises blended to say ‘Happy Valentine’s day’.

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Useless Talks

Another lonely afternoon. I was pondering over something said by somebody over a light conversation and smiling in my mind. He said that I talk a lot and that too, useless stuff. I was elated! It feels great when people say that they are not able to make sense outta my words. I feel, I don’t belong here and once again my instincts are proved correct. I feel, I am myself, the oblivion. I am not a mathematical equation. L.H.S = R.H.S and its over, clear cut, soulless, meaningful. Wise people would definitely pass a smile of disdain at this and say “Hey girl, you blabbering parrot. What will you know about wisdom and intellect?” I would pretend that I have taken it as a serious verbal assault, just to add spice to the commenter’s words, just to add little more meaningless talk in the conversation.

Then I would smile in my mind, smile the entire day realizing that I’m not one of them who speak the language of 0 and 1.

One day in the land of Robots and wise people, I would want to be the useless music, the meaningless poetry. The enormous flow of my useless words would probably mitigate the epidemic. The epidemic that would break one day, where every diseased person, would struggle to match L.H.S with R.H.S. Every diseased person would want to count the number of words they are uttering per minute so that they can measure the amount of energy spent on the spoken words. It’s a strange syndrome of equation, where people would try to equate, analyze and measure, trying to find meaning of even the movement of leaves or dew drops. Headache and stress laden individuals would then be soothed by the meaningless, by the useless.

To me, the silly, useless talks are the lyrics to the music composed by the wild birds. They are the sketches made in the clouds. They are meant to be meaningless. Being useless is their accomplishment. I would like to thank my critic a million times over.

Why?

I have stopped protesting. I don’t know why. Am I becoming one of those stereotypes around here, who would smile and nod their head to whatever a stronger person says? Otherwise why did I keep my mouth shut when my colleague said “His name sounds like that of a terrorist’s” when I referred to a Muslim guy at office? She said that as a matter of fact without the slight hesitation in her voice. I work in an IT firm where educated people with high social status come for work. What an irony! If this is what education gives us, I would like to stay illiterate in my next life.

Was I too reluctant to protest or is it that I have got used to hearing amazing things like this? I have come across guys who would slip off their chair if they come to know that there is a girl who consumes alcohol even if he himself would be a drunkard to the core. I know super brainy guys holding respectable positions in the organization who would say “Women should stay at home and look after their household after marriage and quit their job”. Many more, many more. Each day I hear things, which can easily shake my entire nervous system and can give me a sudden Parkinson’s attack.

I would have argued till my face turned red but what’s the point. I can win an argument but will I be able to change the way a person sees things. Well, I am justifying myself. Actually I have become one of those stereotypes around here, who would smile and nod their head to whatever the other person says.

Nostalgia

On sleepless nights I am reminded of night canteen and of juice ups and of endless talks in someone’s room. I’m reminded every nook and corner of our humble campus, the open air theatre, canteen, girl’s hostel.

Our comprehensive examination used to happen in May, which is the peak summer time.Hyderabad has a terrible climate during the summers. We had to sprinkle water on our beds before going to sleep at night. Juice ups used to be a treat during those crucial hours of last moment study.

Night canteen was another joy in our life!! Night canteen facility was available only during the exams . It used to be our motivation to stay awake the night before the examination day. We would skip dinner and wait for 11:00 pm to happen so that we can order noodles from the canteen. I remember how we gathered coins from Polo’s drawer, sneha’s pen stand, Archana’s table. Hema would contribute 10 bucks, Neha 15 may be. Reddy and Nayab would put the last 2 rupees to make the amount enough to buy two plates of noodles and 3 cold drinks. After our grand feast we would go to Neor’s room only to find her positioned carefully on the chair, with her book open in front, a li’l corner for her pillow on the table, dozing away.

Every festival in college was celebrated with great boom. We had extended celebrations of all these festivals in the hostel. Splashing water on each other a night before holi and flooding the Hostel corridor, bursting crackers in the loo, with few of us involved in modus operandi and the rest diverting the attention of the crowd. Rishika and Archana were the goons and polo, I and the others were the crowd pullers. It was worth watching our warden after such merrymaking took place.

Another great event in our life was serving our warden and making her life more beautiful. Rubbing the ‘t’ off  from the fancy ‘asst warden’ written on her door, drawing her cartoons outside the studyroom door,Locking her up in her room(so that no one disturbs her while she is sleeping) are few of them. God! She would freak out and bang the door like a lunatic (which she was) everytime we locked her up. Next she would come out of her room, yelling on top of her voice, swearing at us in Telgu. Spoo would come into action then. She would sympathize with the warden and ask her what the matter was with her very own innocent expression and come back to us, bursting in laughter and relate what the warden had said to her.

Dressing up for a party was another joy in our life. We would go shopping a week early and if we don’t find anything suitable we would ransack each other’s wardrobe. We would do a demo ramp walk at night with our new/borrowed outfits and change the accessories and dressing style according to our in house critic’s opinion so that we can outshine our juniors in the party.

So many nights spend on the terrace, so many nights spend chatting in someone’s room, breakfast with ‘Rakshash ‘ ka Bonda and tea, Girls outing at club 8, trip to Vaizag. There was mirth and laughter in the air. On sleepless, lonely nights these good old days appear as a flashback. I have met people after I have left college; it’s not that I don’t have fun now. It’s not the fun that I miss. It is the warmth which I do not find anywhere now.

Alone time in the loo

People around me are just disgusting. This is one thing I feel most of the time. Not that they really are. Not that they aren’t. Who cares? This is a blame game where I cover up my faults by accusing the person on the other end. I don’t do it purposely. This is how my mind works. Unconsciously I hold someone else responsible for the tribulation and salve my conscience. I feel guilt free after I manage to put the blame on someone else.

Sometimes the blame game doesn’t work and it seems that the hell has broken loose. This is when I want to escape, cry aloud or hide inside a dark cave. All these options for seeking refuge are practically not possible. In a place full of grandfathers (and of course grandmothers) cut in alabaster you cannot even utter a word in high pitch, forget crying. People would take you as a lunatic.

Coming to the other option, escape. Well, you can go anywhere virtually. I mean you can imagine you are in Antarctica and you are there. But this is same as day dreaming. You have no other choice but to come back to reality. And then ‘BOOM’ all your virtual happiness gets crashed once again. Going on a trip for few days is a good option. Does this mean a real escape? You have to come back to the same rotten world after a few days. Isn’t it? However, a break from the monotonous crap sometimes acts as a balm to the bruised mind. This option however depends on many factors. Like availability of leaves, money, “will my manager grant me permission” and above all “where to go!” Funniest thing is you want to escape but you are worried about things you want to escape from.

Now the last option, hideout in a cave. This option sounds most fictitious of all. Cave? Hello!! We are not living in Stone Age. In this era we do not find a square foot to shelter ourselves without shedding our sweat and blood you want a cave! That too (though not mentioned) devoid of perils of wild animals? I am sure you did not mean a five star cave like the one claimed to be owned by Mr. Osama Bin Laden.

Aaahh!! Let me end these confusions now and do justice to the title of this article. Well, you can find a cave within your reach very easily. You just have to be a bit imaginative. Imagine the loo as your luxury cave. I do this quite often. I put  the commode flap down and sit on it for long. You might as well cry there if you want, just make sure all the taps are running. Otherwise people outside would outsmart you and embarrass you by asking obvious things like “Are you upset?” “Is there anything wrong” and all, once you are out. So relax, have a nice time in the loo, tear tissue papers, Make faces if you want to and DO NOT forget to keep the taps on.