Hoyto

Hoyto ekhono bhalobashte pari|
           Tobu protyekta bhalobasha tei
                     Khanikta ami amar theke shore jaii
                     Khanikta amar mrrityu hoy|

Amar mrrityur por keu shoshaan jay na,
           Daho hoy na amar, keu kaande na bishesh -
Otrripto atmar shanti hoy na.

                     She phere baare baare,
                     Ghawre - baare,
                     Ghore, dor'e
Jotokkhon na abar mrrityu ashe nisshobdo chorone||

Chithi Chapati

Suddhasattwa Brahma --> Priyodorshi Banerjee I think we, the bengali middle class, have finally achieved the height of our cultural ascendancy. If you don't believe me listen, rather watch, to the song "Khokababu jay......". Finally a cultural revolution beyond Rabindranath and Jibanananda.....

hmm.. gombheer... koto bibhinno store amar mostishko je chhitke chhitke chotke gelo ta ei bhor ratre kawthay likhte bosha boroi chitto damadol'kor ek enterprise... tao onek gulo kotha shotti'i mone holo...

keno jani na video ta dekhe amar mone holo kothao ekta ascendancy bote... tobe horek proshno.. thik kishe ascendancy? kar ascendancy? keno ascendancy? ar ektu toliye dekhle boro "bhobo-unmaad'kor" kishob conclusion berochche.. ek post'e shesh hobe ki??

jodi amar monei holo ascendancy, tobe keno emon mone holo?? karon amader khub porichito Bollywood naach gaan gulo to prai hubuhu ei dhoroner ... of course aro komor jhakate hobe, maati-boma guloke agun boma banate hobe aro koto ki... kintu e to ekkebare ghore toiri marathi khabar.. bhalo lagbe na keno... tahole motamuti besh bhaloi amra onyer moto hoye uthte pari... khub shohoje tahole 'adapt' kore nite pari... erokom poromarthik ascendancy bhalo to lagbei.. bah!!

tobe etar credit kar??? oi bengali middle classer dike jehetu tui angul tulli, tai amay abaro bhabte boshte holo.. boro durbol oi 'class'tar proti.. of course ekta middle class production team full of bengalees oi tollygunje'er studio ar poilan'er mathe ghate otibo porishrom kore ei ascendancy ene diyechhe.. toh??? ei 'totum pro parte' ta to thik noy bondhu.. middle-class production team'er ei cultural ascendancy to somogro bengali middle class'er bhitor biliye dewa jabe na.. sheta onyay... je jeta koreni, shetar credit she pabe na.. hahaha

tobe khub swabhabik proshno.. jei koruk ojotha emon korbe keno... motivation chhara ki keu emni emni emon ascendancy pai?? na na keu ta pai na.. motivation ta kintu amar khub binoto mot'e 'cattle-class'er [kottor marxbadi'der boli, bhasha porimarjoniyo], thik oto ta middle class'er noy... jodi abar karur oi cattle class jukti ti'r proti birodh thake tobe marxbadi'der line dhore boli, desh'er reservation dorkar karon koto ekta bishal shotangsho (shottor'er opore) oi kono na kono bishesh class dhari, ebong sod orthe middle class noy.... kintu aha tarao to bajar.. kichhu bechar bajar, kichhu beche khawar bajar.. tai ei bajar tai shob byajar kore dilo re... khete shobai chai, bangali boro bhojon roshik, tai 2pice peye roshogolla-pantua boroi upadeyo... tai oi middle class chhora chhokra'r team ta emon ascendancy'r motivation pai... middle-class'er ar koto tuku obodaan....

punoshcho: ami apatoto kolkatay... bengalee der ei ascendancy sombondhe sompurno 'onwakibohal' chhilam.... ordho golardho duur theke ei revolution'er baani amar kaane pouchholo... prrithiba te je boroi chhoto jodi onno kothao shuto badha thake, eta bhebeo hothat mon'ta kemon udash ar bhalo ek sathe hoye gelo...

A Saturday

A lazy Saturday late morning sleep gets punctuated by an ISD.. The pleasure of getting movie advice sought over an international call, priceless.. The old VISA ad comes bk to my mind... "For everything else thers Mastercard!"... I dont have one.. bt i hav frends who can not only fill in for tht plastic commodity bt fill ur soul with joy, priceless...

And suddenly I hav a lazy Saturday to lay back, roll-up and light up!!! The vague haze of past time makes me think of time as such... how life goes in circular orbits... how every one of us are placed on one of them... and so many orbits intersect.... and they keep meeting in rounds... at times the orbits have bigger radii and so even after revolutions their paths shall nevr meet... but only those at tandem shal keep meeting.. no matter hw long a revolution takes..

A revolution.. isnt life one? in all the senses of the word.. be it causing one or fighting one or even paving the path for one.. the stirrup in this huge endeavour are those threads of connection to the yester-time.. Isnt it all about completing the circle?? Isnt it abt returning to the comfort of the dreams of that past memory..??

Its so abt being as close to one as one had been yesterday to have movie suggestions, no matter what!!

Bon'er Pakhi ... The Freebird

“Not that anything of moment happened that morning. It was simply a non momentous day in a momentous time. A day to sit and wait for the seconds, hours and minutes to tick.” [1]. Nothing happened either that morning or the night prior, or even during the week that ensued.

The micro and the macro analysis are ever so different be that of what it is. Yes, the broader picture of me remaining as morbid as I usually am, never changed. Something sublime just stirred deep within somewhere at too micro a plane but somehow managing forever to remain innocuous to one and all.. to everyone, somehow defying the much hyped – Butterfly Effect!!

Someone just got liberated! Nahh! That didn’t sound huge. But for heaven’s sake I am screaming out loud that someone just got LIBERATED! Liberation at the level of an individual, a liberation from the estrangement that we choose to perpetuate with each breath of ours, demolishing the alienation that causes me to hold on to my ego and not reach out even when I know I should, breaking free from all that pushes an individual to choose oblivion. Someone just got liberated!

A friend just died… not literally may be… but definitely he died. Death to me today represents a barrier between me and my realizations. And perhaps also a barrier between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’! Death physically represents a distance, a distance that is an incentive itself – ballyhooing all that is lost and all the ‘to be achieved’ and ‘to be realized’ organized on the other side. He just crossed that line; I am left behind. That he has reached the other side is death, a death in the civil society that I live in. He left his alienation behind. He made even the ennui of time seem momentous!

Liberty no longer remains as a definable word to me. It no longer implies to me the freedom from external control – it rather is now, the independence from my own confinements created by the alienation that pervades my existence; it is the shearing of that very same estrangement that demarcates the line between me and death, between me and my friend. Goodbye Tanay!

---

[1] Ruchira Sen, A Winter Morning

Unending Meanders

Where is ur end
Oh my oldest dear friend?
You the one on whom I've trodden so long;
Are life's cherished reality,
Are the poignant truth song.

A vagabond of my like is tethered to ur tune;
With ease he crosses the vales and sad dunes -
Sojourning through the meanders,
For he just wishes to know
Where this path shall lead him, & where he shall go!

Where the horizon meets the sky blue,
Whence the real assumes a fuzzy hue,
I perhaps see my friend,
There is no end to you...
Like a wisp of memory smeared
This road merges into another
With a new rhythm, starting anew.

The Redemption of a Stoic

I dont know what had been the real reason behind me turning into the present me, at least the me I am being for the past one month now, but I know tht I had not borne a lot of things well - at least not with the grace with which I expect myself to carry things about.

Yes, I hv my own set of problems much lyk anyone else around me, but i pause to think now whether that is reason enough to push back those who are tryng to help! But i cant but blame circumstances and not myself fr all that is transpiring. After all, one has to halt somewher and ask as to how much is expected out of ones ownself. I am not going to go into the whole deal abt 'that is lyf' and 'thats hw thngs are' sort of crap.

I mean look at me... I personally cant believe tht this is the same me that has alws been singing out loud abt Stoicism and all blah, who has now to sit and write this. I guess the beginning of the journey ahead shud be with an admission of guilt, an admission of failure. [Again there it pinches!! My ego hurts to do this!! After all had trouble at home, lost Whiskey, friends are dispersing fast, getting vulnerable, becoming a true cynic infact! So wht was I supposed to have done..]

I guess its true that a tree which bends in the wind does nt break. The root of my problems lie in the fact that i refused to be that tree. Standng upryt with all my ego all these years, refusing to admit my own fallacy has finally led me to this brink. I cant help but smile now at least - that i realised this. I mean ths is not the end of my stoicism but just gettin it renewed for a second round (then agn may be this is just another fallacious reasoning of mine).. The redemption of a stoic i suppose can never be that easy; specially for one who has failed once before.. The lifelong payment that needs to b made in compensation is perhaps this confusion, one that stems from the disloyalty that has been exhibited before. Its about accepting this at face value and moving on to make the best out of the rest. There perhaps is no end to the unending meanders inside one's own mind, and hence like everything else, there is no absolute redemption as well...

To Them and Just Them

Its the early hours of a Saturday morning... hav spent the evening and the night playing 29 and the remaining hour watching Boston Legal, seeing Denny and Allan celebrate their friendship on that terrace for the 'n'th number of time... And right then the net came back on.. It was an automatic reaction to get back to Orkut and check that thread on Mrs. Goswami's farewell..

I dont know; I am finding it extremely difficult to cope with the proposition that both Goswami and Dantes are retiring in a matter of one year... In fact to make things more ironic Ma'am retires today. Preposterous!!!

I know that I have a huge propensity of getting institutionalised. But then again, this is not just about them alone.. Goswami and Dantes are somewhere very tightly packed together with other memories that involves a lot many other people and yeah, some other memories as well.. For them to retire is kind of like the knell sounding for everything..

I dont know, to be honest, how to react. Right from the time, day before, I came to know about Dantes retiring as well, well, I am not well. At first I thought that I shall unjoin from all the school related forums on Orkut. I dont know why that ever crossed my mind. I guess its an angry rush at everything. Yes! for once I am angry that I am growing old... I am angry that the world is trying to tell me that its normal - no its not, come on, how can it be so to realise that all that you cherish shall and is coming to a halt!!!! And yes, I've read those fancy lines about these things being like a chapter coming to an end - BULLSHIT!!! This is the bloody whole book ending. I didnt ask for it - so bloody hell I've a right to be angry.

"For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone."

These lines were first explained by Mr. Dantes quite a few years back. In all my sincerity I believed that I understood them, only to realise today that then I knew only a part of it. The tremendous craving of an individual to keep even memories to himself, safe and wrapped up, attempting to relish them forever for one's own self-fulfillment is indeed painful and perhaps the primordial 'error'.

Goswami and Dantes kind of represents my idealism, my hope, my dreams, may be because it was largely for them that I learnt to dream. Its indeed a mad rush now inside my brain - I can see Goswami shouting (literally) in class about Tom Brown's Schooldays, her innumerable quips; I can see Dantes reading out 'Et tu Brute!', as also never agreeing with my interpretation of the last lines of 'Song of Myself'... But this is how I learnt to dream.

I dont know, why I am typing this out and that too publishing it on the net. My blog has always been about nostalgia I guess; be it the post on returning home for Pujo or the picture albums of Manipal, Jaisalmer, New York.... I know that this coming summer shall be the last one that we school friends shall be able to spend together.. Life forcing us out of the immediate life of each other.. Goswami retiring today, and Dantes a year after... Amidst all this may be this is my means of having a cathartic remedy of the malady of my life.....

Tenth Time For Her