i received an award recently. my award was rediscovery of myself and finally have a vision and direction in life though its still very hazy. as the norm goes, I have to thank certain people for the award.

1. i want to thank my family for accepting me and pulling and clinging on to me whenever I showed signs for straying away.
2. for ACJ for healing me and show me direction even though i refused to see it at times.
3. chennai though i grudgingly admit it for letting me enjoy the stolen moments of peace and rediscovering the joy of walking, traveling in the public bus and local train.
4.my parents for introducing me to jogging. i found it ridiculous initially but it gives me an adrenaline rush and its a liberating feeling.
5. S, R, L, R, G for letting me retain my bitchy morbid self.
6. P and M for believing in the old sho.
7. some people in my ex-office who made me realize what i dont want in life and in the process making me see what i want.
8. P for teaching me to be there for friends whether they r doing something right or wrong.
9. hyderabad for letting me in whenever i wanted even though i never acknowledged it.
10. lastly filter coffee for making life worth it.

i went to kanchipuram recently to cover deprivation in other words search for misery, poverty and destitution. here is some things that i learnt:

1. journalism is now a sham. it is build on a world of cliches and stereotypes and it will not change the world. it only works on stories that glorify human misery and suffering to feed other miserable wretches.
2. deprivation is much beyond kuccha roads and houses.
3. deprivation is a term coined by the bourgeoisie. its the urban yuppies going to the rural sector and tells them u r deprived and u should have a problem with that. if there is anything to learn from the rural sector is the determination to be content and their aspirations.
4. never go on a trip with a menopausal woman angry with the world.
5. when a man wants to drink alcohol in front of a bonfire never refuse him even if its raining.
6. the government may not perfect but its not negligent. lets just appreciate the work its doing even if its not enough.
7. i believe in reservations though its difficult to explain how i came to this conclusion.
8. definition, reason, privacy, evolution, and toilets are modern western ideologies. where as paribhasha is a much older concept.
9. the people in the villages shit in the open space as a part of their social behaviour.
10. and i enjoyed playing antakshari after a really long time.

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

Eleanor rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

who is eleanor rigby? i have made up a couple of versions of eleanor rigby...

version 1: she walks with the help of walking stick extending her wiry hands as if expecting some help. her thin body is shrouded in a flowy cotton dress and her hair tied in a bun with strands of hair escaping the severity of the bun. her face is criss-crossed with wrinkles with each wrinkle telling a story...

version 2: eleanor rigby is a crabby old fat lady. she beats up her husband every night and she lost her front teeth in the process. she chases all the children that enter her patchy garden. she is mean and spits on people who irritates her. she once threatened to kill a delivery boy with a shovel. sometimes she is seen haunting the cemetery in the middle of the night with a shovel in her hand. eleanor rigby always insists on leading the church choir and she once confessed having sexual fantasies about the new young pastor.

version 3: eleanor rigby is thinly built with a crown of flowy hair. she lives in a hut wears tattered cotton clothes though the village gossips say she is a rich man's daughter. her eyes are sad and says a lot more than her 24 years of life. she is often seen cradling her baby in the porch while singing 'when this cruel war is over praying then to meet again.'

version 4: eleanor rigby is witchy and saucy. when she walks by all the men stares at her in awe and women stare stare at her with jealousy. her pouffed hair and red lips and her colt like gait has all the men tantalized. her sells chocolates and no one has ever refused to buy chocolates from her. the women say she killed her previous two husbands but the men swear by her innocence. even the history professor is entangled in what the women term as her 'magical spells.'

i am sure there are many more versions of eleanor rigby just like there are many more versions of us, as much as the mind can conjure up.

i don't suffer from Monday morning blues anymore, in fact i don't even notice the approaching Mondays. no i have not discovered a new mantra to ignore the horrifying Mondays staring at you. it is mostly because my weekdays are not same anymore. Monday i have a health presentation, Tuesday is reporting, Wednesday is international issues exam etc etc. i still don't look forward to mornings or no i do plan my days. my days rumble by with me stumbling and bumbling along with it. these days i do a lot of self introspection and discover the most obvious things and still get surprised.

my recent discovery is that dreams should never be full filled. not because it is difficult to chase it but it is pointless. we dream and spend all our energy to make it true. and then we suddenly realise that it is not as fascinating as we dreamt it. it has flaws in it and then we abandon it to chase another. dreams are never meant to be real, they cant represent truth. then why not keep them in our imagination and take the pleasure of enhancing and nourishing it. i would rather dream about being about adding value to my life than make a mad chase at full filling it. how pointless that would be?

my next discovery which is again but obvious is me being dorky with early signs of dementia. i have my suspicions of being schizophrenic and am almost convinced i will end up some kind of mental disease. no i am not morbid by nature, its just that i feel that all of us suffer from some kind of mental disorder. life becomes so easy that when u know that u suffer from a mental disorder. u advertise the disorder and make perfect excuses for your quirkiness. u scream at someone for no particular reason and make the perfect excuse of saying that i suffer from bpd. i am not under playing the enormity of the disorder and people suffering from it. i think they laugh at the so called normal folks saying they are worse than us.

i don't stand by these thoughts and nor do i deny them, as always it is incoherent and i prefer it to be. incoherence adds the meaning that order fails.

everybody goes thru a phase bitten by the poetry considering oneself a Keats in the making...even i had written poetry years back...but the my own composition disgusted me so much that i never made a second attempt...alas the resolution was not very strong...yesterday in a weird mood i wrote another poem....

here is my lame attempt at poetry....

i know your little secret 

in those furtive eyes and hesitant smile

and your cheeks going all claret 

hiding it has now become futile

it is a candlestine love story 

a love lost of untold pain

it is the morning glory

a tale of unpleasant gain

you smile and cry

you celebrate and grieve

you are inert and wry

you quetion and believe

a clash of self and alter ego 

a continous battle of you and me 

a process of holding back and letting go 

a mirror of tragedy and parody

 

i am in the mood of rambling and none of it is going to be coherent. the last month has turned my life topsy turvy. 2 years of redundant work heightened my frustration. at one point i remember only cribbing. be it my work, the people, my height, lack of intellectual stimulation - my day wasn't over without cribbing. i cribbed in groups, i cribbed alone, i cribbed over coffee and i cribbed in my dreams. i wud have given anything to get rid of the situation. desperation led me to apply to colleges in australia, india, uk and scotland. and when i thought i had sunk into the deepest mire, i saw sunshine which almost blinded me. i got offer letters from all the colleges, my family life was perfect, i got rid of my job, the daily frustration, i was surrounded my smart and intelligent people. now i have no reason to crib absolutely not. i have started doing things that i have never done. i finish my homework on time, i dont bunk college, i have turned into a complete family person, i dont bitch about people and in fact i am not even condescendingly nice. i have gotten so used to bitching about anything and everything, that life without sarcasm, the instinct to kill people, cheesy songs, brain dead but feel good movies have almost become surreal. 2 years of seriously avoiding people have generated a phobia of socialisation. after a 5 min conversation i quickly rush back home and put as much distance as possible with the person. 2 years of wanting things badly, when i am finally getting it, its hard to believe that its my life. i have become a casual observer of my own life. my self obsession is also gone. i no longer notice if the person is eating jalebi with a spoon, i just notice them like a detachment as if it does not involve me anymore. i even get confused when people ask me where i come from. do i come from kolkata, hyderabad or chennai? i end up looking stupidly at the person and mentally doing a tic tac toe to finally arrive at a destination. life without worries/problems has become transient. i am not complaing. nothing wud make me go back to that situation. secrectly i am enjoying this phase where i am not expected to do anything.
i just want to quote robert frost:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the tother, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy ans wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled byAnd that has made all the difference.

it almost takes one and half hr for me to reach home from office. this is the time i utilise in retrospecting about the nagging yet neglected questions of my life - george clooney in ER or eric bana in troy or which is more preferable butter chicken /fried prawns. the shops, people, hoardings also grab my attention for sometime. once i noticed this ad by one of the insurance companies. it had the picture of a child and the caption was something like this 'for your child to have the perfect education, which is IIT then IIM get an insurance.' in india your dreams are almost fixed the minute you are born. if you are a girl at least u r given the choice of not having any career, but every second male aspires to join the coveted and much revered IIT. why is it so important to follow these stereotypes? why is your success measured in terms of which B school you graduated from? somehow fulfilling the simple pleasures like learning to float on your first swimming class is far more important to me than learning socially respected pretentious golf. i gave a real hard thought and have finally made the top 10 must do-list (the list is bound to change in 3 months time). here they are (arranged in no particular order):

1. marry anthony bourdain. if thats not possible then host a travel show in the manner of anthony bourdain.
2. trekking pindari glacier and reaching top of the peak and recording video saying i love my mom.
3. color my hair blonde.
4. have an affair with a french guy after i am forty.
5. retire in the himalayas. own a wooden house and behave like Mr. Heckles. of course die by 65.
6. act in an ekta kapoor serial with full make up and heavily sequined sarees and roll my eyes in front of the camera.
7. write a book. bit of ayn rand, virginia woolf and j k rowling.
8. join interpol and be an undercover spy with a cool background music.
9. convert to kabbalah.
10. dress like 18 th century jane austen heroines.

i have many more on my list and i am sure there will be more to add in the future. i agree many of these are unrealistic. but i choose to not to make my dreams a toothpaste like mass product.

my ancestors were from Bangladesh. my great grand father was an accountant for a muslim jamindar. his son and my grand father were playmates and grand father was like a son to the jamindar. during the partition, my family shifted to kolkata. as a parting gift the jamindar gifted grand father a watch. that was my grandfather's last gift to me. my identity, family history and the memories of grand father are attached to the watch....
history, love, family ties, separation...the story above has got everything except the truth. yes my ancestors were from Bangladesh, but the rest is all fictitious. but it doesn't mean i haven't shared this story with anyone. this story is a reality to me as much as my getting up in the morning and brushing my teeth. in fact, there are many more fascinating stories related to my bangladeshi ties. this whole fictitious world is probably created because my grand parents or my parents never provided me any accurate details about our past in bangladesh or life then was so mundane that it would even be embarrassing bringing it all up. i took it upon me to glamorise my family history a bit. at least my grand kids will have interesting stories to boast about. who knows, my creativity might lead me find a mughal or genghis khan connection (as most of us in the family look like the mongolians) to add the cherry on the cake.
right from enid blyton's faraway tree and currently ekta kapoor's serials this fantasy world amuses me. let me just support ekta kapoor and say that her serials are the adult versions the faraway tree, famous five, st clare's combined. one of the top things in my to-do list is to be a script writer of ekta kapoor or write a complete masala bollywood movie something like om shanti om or any rajnikant movies. the so called non commercial movies with the critics award are very easy to make. i mean u can get inspiration from the normal day to day life. but to create the song dance where 50 different people dancing in the same graceful synchronisation, returning of the dead, reincarnation, the dialogues for eg. "pata hi nahi chalta kab betian jagat jananiyan ban jati hai" etc is pure genius. it is very easy to ridicule such things but to achieve that state of ridiculousness is a form of art. and the fact that those movies/serials are promoted with absolute sincerity is amazing. have u ever seen a sooraj bharjatiya or ekta kapoor smirk when they are promoting the tulsis of their world. 'dariya kinare kanhaiya,' 'saajan bina adhuri sajni' wud probably the name of few of my movies. i am confident that i will bag at least 5 filmfare awards.
whenever i worry about the lack of zing in life, i just think about my split personalities 1. zulekha from afghanistan protecting herself under the wings of terrorism, 2. sophie a jewish descendant who is also an interpol agent 3. sohini who approves ads. like they say its all in the mind.

my friend is getting married. the other day when all of us were sitting and discussing about the marriage, all of a sudden i realised that the marriage is not exactly about the couple who have finally decided to spend the rest of their lives together. its more about the extended family, relatives, friends and what is their role in the marriage and how everyone has suddenly a very important role to play. the marriage to me is almost a cause. attending a marriage is probably the most demanding and stressful task for a girl - (by the 'girl' i of course mean not the bride). selecting what to wear, which hair style to sport, which jewellery to match your outfit with is a heculean task. the planning starts almost one month in advance and when we are not even sure what is the date of the marriage. it always starts with the saree of course. that is almost the uniform for every wedding. suddenly i find myself leaving my friendly jeans and t shirt and donning the uncomfortable saree and pretending to be demure, innocent friend of the bride. here is a typical conversation:

bride(eyes round with excitement): so what r u wearing for my marriage.
the clueless friend: i dunno, probably a saree...
bride: ooohh!! what is the color of ur saree?
friend (smiles): black...with orange motifs..
bride (seriously): black how can u wear black?? its an inauspicious color... (accusingly adds) u wudnt wanna wear a black saree for MY wedding...
the friend almost has a panic attack by this time and thinking fast as to what be done and how the sudden dilemma can be solved. when another friend suggest "why dont u buy a saree?"

Then phase 2 of attending the marriage starts. typical scene in the saree shop.
friend 1: i am so confused...i like both..the blue with pink border and pink one with blue border...(by this time even the shopkeeper has lost interest)
friend2: i think u look good with the blue one but the pink is more for a wedding...
friend1: the blue is so adorable...
friend2: i know and u dont even look fat in this...but its too party type...

next stage is when u describe the saree to another friend and of course the very important blouse to go along with the saree.
friend1: so does ur saree look like.
friend2: its very pretty..
friend1: really.. what is the color?
friend2: pink...
friend1: which shade is it the baby pink or the pink rose kind of shade...
friend2: u remember the dupatta of that salwar i wore on so and so day...it had some pink flowers, its of the same color.
friend1 (having no clue quickly diverting): so whats the border like?
friend2:the border has copper sequins..
friendd1:how r the sequins arranged...(and it goes on...)

next is the blouse. how to stitch the blouse. its very suprising that for some strange reason all the tailors in the city r ruled out and labeled as not competetent enough to stitch the blouse of the 'oh so beautiful saree'
friend1: u know that guy is very good but am not sure if he will give it on time ...(a month left for the wedding)
friend2: i know a guy near my house he is quite good and delivers quickly also...
friend1: i am kind of fussy..u see this particular design is very unique...i cant trust everyone with that...
And the hunt for that desirable tailor starts which will make any treasure hunt look lame and easy. and trust me this is the predominant conversation for the next 3 weeks. additioanally the pressure of looking interested and participate with genuine enthusiasm in all the conversations is also huge. it does not end here. it goes on with the jewelerry, hair (whether to perm it or blow dry it or should i go for a haircut..) it just goes on...am sure the communist party is not giving the nuke deal so much of a thought than we are giving to my friends wedding...

without hurting any sentiments i shud actually thank my friend for actually obliging us and deciding to get married. so that i get a second chance to undo my pudding image...

I am going through the most confused phases of my life. The only philosophy that I have taken seriously ever was 'go with the flow.' My folks insist either I study or I get married. Study - did biotechnolody but joined Advertising to avoid phd. Now imagine myself doing phd and working for the UN as consider self to be featuring on Oprah as the evanlegist making waves in the war torn middle east. Marriage-again my natural instinct is not to the trust the system. Advocator of feminism but believe in the Rhett Butler/Darcy/Heathcliffe/all three of them to sweep me off my feet. My favourite topics that I can passionately discuss are Marxicism, Greek lieterature, Hitler, Gandhi Osho and Dilbertism but cannot prevent myself getting engrossed over John Bipasha relationship status. Have pushed myself getting intersted in TV channels like Discovery, NDTV profit but always end up watching the re-runs of the OC. Will be caught dead in pink UCB attire but have longingly looked at the manniquins outside the malls with the season's collection and ending up sulking over a cheese cake. Consider self a responsible mature woman of the world but cannot avoid indulging in licking my fingers in a restaurant or enid blytons or the american teenage sitcoms which makes you giddy with the sugar.
Deep down, am convinced that there is something that I will never take seriously and that is life. What if I refuse to believe that there is a purpose to every life and convince self that the only purpose is to live life and indulge in every fancy without giving an explanation.

sands of time are slipping from my hand. there is a voice which calls out 'what if life ignores you?' am tied and bound, the barb wires hurt i have lost my voice and my pseudo self decides to take over. its as if the remote control of my life is handled by someone else. am watching the rushes of a movie - a movie on my life but the director is not me i have no part in the script. my pseudo self or shall i say my evil twin very cliched i know is just there living my life pretending to be me. only i know how hollow it is inside. it has borrowed every breath from me every heart beat from me. it refuses to take instructions from me or it is incapable of doing that. how ridiculous of me even expect to live my life, i keep forgetting its pseudo, fake, unreal. it has invaded every space of my life. it is lurking as the dark shadow. i cringe and i fail i scream but it is just a bubble. i reach out but the fog is engulfing me. it dawns upon me that i dont exist anymore it is shadow who is living. my shadow with that leering smile and ugly gleam is says it wont kill me but let me live. it feeds on my struggle for existence. it is all my fault. i let it grow, i fed it and now it is larger and powerful than me. is it my fall? how do i get rid of this mask the mask of pretence of individuality of happiness of confidence because its not me.

before i begin i should put the disclaimer that the things that am about to write will absolutely not make any sense whatsoever i have never really cared about that. my friends definitely agree that i have an enormous capacity to talk crap and personally i take pride in that. i call it an art. in fact the people who really know me have learnt the art to tune me out but it is the unsuspecting souls are the ones who interest me. this afternoon i was thinking yes that is a big deal to me. i mean there are a million things going in every one's head but do we really patiently pay attention to them. its the day to day mundane stuff that occupies your mind. the secret recipe of being the enlightened ones is listening to these tiny flicker of thoughts and processing them. being always a part of the dark side of life finally today i was forced to think as i had else to engage myself. the result was this brilliant philosophy by the way only i recognise the brilliance of the theory others labelled it as garbage. so not deviating and plunging into my theory i feel that the purpose of everyone life is hedonism that it the only tangible religion, the only faith, the only achievable goal. the path to this achievable goal is narcissism. if you are incapable of loving yourself you wont be able to love anyone else. admit it or not self love gives me you immense pleasure. if i dont know my worth then it is virtually to impossible to understand and respect others. if am not able to love myself then i wont have the confidence to get anyone's love. narcissism is beautiful, i fall in love with myself over and over again and it is one romance that is permanent and loyal. i could on in this tone with this ridiculous train of thoughts. it is one those rare moments where i take myself too seriously and decide to publish a post.

whenver am in the Howrah station waiting for cab i just stand grounded and stare at the stream of people moving about some with a purpose, some without. i always get so engrossed just looking at them without realising its so easy to get lost in the crowd. it happens to me so often am in a party and standing in one corner just observing people engaging themselves in animated conversation without even bothering to do the same. its as if i have some kind of cord with which i connect to people and disconnect myself whenever i want. when am at home it almost becomes a pain to even talk to people. the cell phone becomes a burden. saying hello to everyone with remotest civility is an effort to me. it dawned upon me that i can lead my life normally without actually talking to anyone. there is always so much to think about. the web goes spinning. yet am not lonely. i have often been told that am so full of myself. it true to an certain extent. am a self confessed loner and very comfortable being one. people say its an attitude problem. but i must confess that i dont deliberately ignore people its just i dont notice them for my own absentmindedness. i must confess that that sometimes i have the best conversations with myself. as if its some kind of madness which i really dont want to get rid of. i close my eyes and purge myself of all the unwanted thoughts and just concentrate on the functioning of the organs. to feel the clock work precision of my brain as if there is a person in the brain and continuously tuning my body clock, the rhythmic beat of the heart reminds of a factory environment. and if i concentrate i can almost hear each every tiny cell breathe. the pleasure is almost undefinable. call it madness or self obsessiveness but i that search for that deep contentment is almost worth every whim.

'pulp fiction' u love to critisize it but cant resist reading and watching it. the pure thrill, suspense high drama and lust its like a sinful burger with loads of cheese fries, u know its junk but that does not stop u from grabbin it and bittin into it. its often critisized as cheap and of poor quality but what makes it such a huge success? the plot is usually the same revolving around revenge desire and and the ability to perform in all odd situations. either its about 'hell hath no fury than a woman scorned' or it is the wronged guy at the apocalyptic end makin a super human effort to kill the bad guys. what makes it interestin is the way the protagonist rises above the ashes and almost with one single judo kick kills 70 leering villians with identical face value. uma thurman boardin the plane with a samurai sword is almost to the point of being hilarious. the age of sensationalism began with these pulp fiction magazines creating the heroes engaged in the job of saving the damsels in distress. if u really want to enjoy pulp fiction u have to throw intelligence and sense out of the window and cruise through the world where the lead characters walking around with AK47 and mass murdering emerges as a hero. it is pure entertainment and takes you to a different world.

what does the first thing that comes to ur mind when u think of 'pickin nose', a feelin of extreme disgust! but y? ever wondered the usefulness of such an action. v have trained our minds to consider that exercise as futile and disgustin but v forget the extreme pleasure and the usefulness of diggin ur nose. apart from hygeinic aspect, imagine u r in deep thought contemplating life what helps u then to swith on the tubelight of ur dormant brain nothin but the gold in ur nose. the feelin of extreme satisfaction and contentment that follows is undefinable. and as u roll it up with ur fingers it brings a slow smile on ur face which u fail to notice. while readin newspapers u often notice that the finger stealthily reaches ur nose and lo behold the diggin starts again. standin in the bus gettin crushed from all sides but u with a brisk movement of ur hand start pickin ur nose and all ur frustrations ends rite there. examination hall the questions r way too mind boggling, u know that if u sit idle u'll attract all the worng attention and in that moment of desperation u start diggin and miraculously u come up with an answer. if pickin nose has got so many advantages is it really fair u revolt the minute u c someone pickin their nose while serving ur food. in this age ven everybody's mind is clouded with the film of hypocrisy, where pretentious sophiscated behaviour is being adopted by everyone v shudnt really allow this natural habit to die out.

a very amusing and mind teasing question i came into my mind about a child's dream. i mean a baby not more than one year. what kind of dreams do they have? what scares them in the night that they wake up screaming. ven i see kids i feel that they r so happy without any worries but am sure they have their own insecurities which is projected in their dreams. what really scares them? are they afraid that they might lose the mother's touch and their warmth or the support that is given to them. or are they scared of the beast under the bed. the beast under the bed is almost like a myth to all adults but may be to the kids these hidden demons scare them in the middle of the night. these beasts become a reality in the form of money relationships scare the adults. fascinating part is these kids are witnessing these with a muteness which u cud never expect from any grown up. the anguished wail must mean a whole lot of things. at this stage only a mother can reaasure the baby with their touch and smell which they can identify with. its strange as adults how we forget the insecurities of a baby.