The Big Comeback Isn't Happening

a. Because a job takes a lot out of you.

b. Because there is hardly anything worthwhile to post on considering I am living too far off from the newspaper or the television or "the happening crowd ".

c. Because people are not blogging much these days - that means less chance of reading some inspiring post and then to subject the world to the torture of some of my views on the same.

d. Because I hate to treat my blog as a Twitter or Facebook update column and leave behind one-liners reeking of moronic simplicity.

e.g - " Have a new mouth to feed in two months. My cat got pregnant again." or

" Isn't Sachin the greatest batsman ever? huh? huh? huh?"

All Farewells Aren't Fun

It confounds me every time I see people raise raucous cries while carrying a corpse to the crematorium. They don't softly weep or wail in their hour of bereavement which would be the natural thing to do but literally take the Lord's name in vain. The otherwise eerie monotony of the "bolo hori....horibol" assumes such uncouth a tenor amidst their frenzied clamoring that onlookers are both scandalised and disgusted. Such shameless is the show of revelry in some cases that the uninititated alien might well feel an urge to join the picnickers in their joy-ride. Some even go ahead and hire cymbal-clanging kirtaniyas to test the patience of the dead on their last journey. Some of these "processions" seem similar to the chaotic janazas in the West Bank where grieving men and women beat their chests in despair while others wield their Kalashnikovs vowing revenge. Only here the dead stands wronged by his own who allow this sort of dishonor.

I wonder if any self-respecting human being if given a choice would assent to such loud and ludicrous a farewell. Such a show only craves attention when it is least wanted and makes a mockery of death which in all its somberness demands respect not ridicule.

At last

It's raining and all's right with the world.

To Hair Loss

I could hear them cry out loud
But never could have cared less
How the mighty and the proud
Nurse in them such foolishness
But now I bask in better light
Whisper in some silent prayer
When fanning fires of fearful fright

The pillow wears my crop of hair.

I see them squandered on the floor
And everyone of them doth sting
At my core of heart and more
- The blackest fibers of my being.
A shining pate of errant yield
No oil, no herb can come to aid
The mysteries of the scalp that sealed
This early autumn of my head.

photo: gettyimages.com

This blog isn't actually a weather update portal but it pleases me to announce that Kolkata has been blessed with a wild Nor'wester few hours back, easily making it one of the most pleasant evenings of the year. The sky took a strange whiskey-like complexion , something very close to taalmichhrir sorbot and all of a sudden  it started to rain - the sort of welcome thunderstorm in the lap of summer that would inspire the sentimental Robindro onuraagi to run to the terrace and sing 

       " Bhenge mor ghorer chaabi 

           niye jabi ke amarey" 

with open arms.

And some people just can't stop bothering about how the Knight Riders are doing. How ridiculuous can it get, I wonder. They will ride to their own graves at the end of the table when the season is over. Not to worry.

You cannot write if you do not read.

- That explains why I am always out of ideas when trying to post.

The random lines that hovered inside the head and somehow managed to make sense every time on the screen have all disappeared. And to live without your thoughts is living in loneliness.
A terrible feeling that.

Why don't I ever see you now?
Has it been that long, that late
That you could be just walking by
And I would fight myself to get
The name I called you by back then.
I wonder if you had the time
To sit and talk to me again
If you would fret on life like all
Or just keep to being yourself,
Clutching at your strands of pride.


It feels unreal now to see
The calm that's conquered your eyes
And set them to some chore of life
I never thought would be.
I could now call out your name,
Wait to see if you would stop.
With time, who knows, you could be you;
And I, what I could have been
- A boy to have loved you more.
For just a while in time.

The Voting Season Is Here

You can't miss "election season" if you are in Kolkata right now. Even if you are the reluctant voter, the politically disinclined or the stoic observer - the bhote gets under your skin one way or the other. Add to it the fact that this time around you aren't queuing up just to decide who's going to keep your sewers from clogging or basements from flooding but the people who will invent more lowly ways to stall the proceedings of the Lower House of the Parliament for the coming 5 years and the exercise of adult suffrage starts seeming solemn, even intimidating to some extent.

Loka Sabha elections have a flavour of their own. People clueless and lost in the middle of the road know when they have stepped into a different constituency by simply following the change in graffiti on the walls during campaign season. And talking of walls - if your house is located any place offering reasonable visibility your walls are doomed. The advantages of this pentannual exercise is that you won't have to spend for their white-washing and you won't get confused between candidates on the day of voting ( i.e vote for any candidate except the one whose name defaced your walls. Many residents have already made that threat known and it has worked).

Another aspect of elections is what is commonly known as "gola-baaji" or slogan-baaji. Just a month to the election-day and leaders start raining from nowhere onto the make-shift podium at your paraa-more, howling inanities in the name of political speeches like they have been doing from time immemorial. And, what's more? There is no escape from their cacophonic propaganda. Even if you have an exam the next day or being just a unsuspecting passerby, chances are you will be sucked into the jostling crowd, elbowed till your ribs are sore and fed to your ears the efficacy of an "inclusive agenda". If you have not taken sides even after this you can expect people coming to your house at all odd hours to make sure their voter-list is in perfect order and then proceed to promise the moon to you albeit in small packets. At the end of the day you will feel pity for all these poor souls braving the heat and humidity to paint walls and plant flags for some person/party who won't even care to shake their hands if they win. Just a "bijoy michhil" (victory march) will be their fill of festivities and that will be all.

I will go cast my maiden vote to honour these tireless individuals even if they lionize perfect hoodlums with their sheer toil and sweat this election season. Only that I might not agree with their party's candidature and choose to vote for someone else won't be a rankling issue, I am sure. After all it is not for nothing that the "Voter is King" in a democracy.

Who Moved My SCRAPS !!???!!??? :X

MISSING!!!!!

7000 scraps from my Orkut scrapbook!!!!

Only the other day it read 27,800 something and now its languishing at a measly 20,348 and I don't even know who is to be blamed for the dastardly act.

There was a time, not very long ago, that I used to pride my colossal scrap-count ( Ya, that sounds "childish" but that was a secret fetish of sorts around that time). It used to fill me up with immense joy to see, sometime around mid-2006 I think (early days on orkut, those), my scrap-count booming by 1000, sometimes 2000 every day. I remember having "orkut friends" then - people I never met in real life and perhaps never will. Then one fine morning I felt strange that I had befriended aliens in an anonymous medium and hacked them off my friend list. After half an hour a 530 strong friend-list was reduced to 250 - each one whom I knew in person. I felt curiously relieved after I did that. The reason behind that relief is still a mystery to me for I am not particularly known to be a rabid misanthrope in my circles. After this incident scrapping dwindled and day-long presence on orkut came to occasional visits - the act which the avid orkutian calls "scrap-check" these days. The direct consequence was disinterest but still I never moved onto "greener pastures" i.e Facebook, the true Orkut loyalist that I am. But, now when I see my hard-earned scraps snitched all of a sudden I feel terribly annoyed and offended. After all, 7000 scraps is not a matter of joke! People who don't even have 5000 scraps after being on orkut for the last 3 years would know their true worth, I am sure.

So, Whoever moved my scraps this is the last reminder:
Return what is not yours to keep and it all shall be forgotten.

Or, Brin and Page might just have to step in to look into the matter.

Challenge-d to the hilt!

Why should I go buy a ticket to a Bengali film if it cannot even command 15 minutes of attentiveness from its audience?

Well, I don't have any rational answer to that after I laboured through the screening of the film which was being touted as the next-big-budget-crowd-puller from the Tollywood stables and yes, it was none other than the much publicized/marketed (courtesy-t2, The Telegraph) - Challenge.....nibi na sala.

People with even a feeble grasp of Bengali would be hard to convince regarding the "respectability quotient" of a film with such ruffian leanings in its nomenclature itself. Still, I ventured an audience in hope of "some mindless entertainment" if not a "memorable love story" told "differently" as is always promised. Needless to say the company of friends who would give any film a chance in their idle weekends made it sort of inevitable for me. One of them travelling half the city to watch the opening show of "Don Mutthuswami" is a case in point.

A detailed review would be a waste of cyber-space so let me put the slush succinctly, if ever there was such a phrase i.e. Shipping tycoon dad's (Rajatava Dutta) overprotectiveness about pretty daughter(Subhashree) meets fierce, fun-loving, goon-bashing brawn of college boy (Dev) and the "challenge" is born. The inanity of the proceedings is exemplified by the fact that the only dialogue evoking ceetis and taalis in the entire film belonged to the Mithun-starrer "Mohaguru" (explains why the last Bengali film I watched in a theater was "Tiger" by Mithun). The newcomer pair does little except pose prettily or murderously as and when required by the invisible script, if any. The saving grace of the film is some definitive moments when Biswajit Chakrabarty ( hero's father) helps us to some laughs in his encounters with the caricature that Rajatava Dutta has come to make of himself with every passing film.

In short :

People who went to see gravity/logic/physics/biology-defying action sequences came back disappointed.
People who went to see a cute/cuddly/teddy-bearish love-story with fresh faces came back empty handed.
People who went to check the "promised land" of micro-minis, hot-pants and tank-tops (as in the film posters) came back frothing at their mouths - demure salwar-kameezes being the chief culprit of them all. Traitors! Frauds! Thieves!


So, next time any director promises a "different" film make sure you send in your friends ahead of you to get the right review and not the ones doctored by newspapers to give trash any semblance of respectability. After all, hard-earned money is not best-spent in buying boredom of a darkened auditorium, that too empty.

Did I mention that my ticket was paid for by a friend.
Yes, the same one who went for "Don Mutthuswami"'s premiere.