i have no clue what blogging is all about

porashunoe final jolanjoli

2010-05-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

i am so utterly sick of examinations. i dont usually say things like this, the person on the other side of the phone does. i am the one who keeps saying in a know-it-all voice "you know there's no use saying that, you have opted to sit for examinations and the you cannot beat the system, fucked up as it is, so you better join it.". all my life i have believed this, since i sat for my first exam at age ten. all my life. they have given me the rules and i have said to myself, the only way you can get the better of this system is by playing according to their rules and beating them at their game with as little damage to yourself as possible.
i am not paranoid about exams. they have always been just another one of those unpleasant things one has to endure, like menstruation...you can't let it interfere with your life, but you cannot be oblivious to it either. i have tried my best to do as well in examinations as it is possible to do without compromising daily adda and weekly parties. i have forced myself to study and said to my friends "porte ichhe korchhena abar ki adikhyetar kotha? porte hole porte hobe, byas!"
i have had enough. i cannot do this anymore. the last ten semesters full of incessant niggling bloody class tests and term papers and endsems and this and that and the other have pushed me beyond my limits. a day before my last university exams are about to start i realize with a jolt that i DON"T FUCKING CARE ANYMORE. i have nothing to prove to anyone anymore. i think i have proved it enough times that i am perfectly capable of reading a text, understanding it, and writing an acceptable 5 page answer on it under thirty minutes. i have proved this to n number of people n number of times each. and now i just can't be bothered to repeat this bloody circus act for the (n+1)th time. i am tired of it all. because it proves nothing really, neither my intelligence nor my originality. only the fact that i can imitate a machine with inordinate accuracy- a bloody answer writing machine. devoid of brains or finer sensibilities or true appreciation for literature. i have ripped apart my favourite poems and plays and destroyed them with banalities- either my own, or my those of my teachers or critics. i cannot force myself anymore. i just want to read king lear and think and cry my heart out for a stupid, rash, and misogynist old fool and not worry about whether the reconciliation scene was act 4 sc 7 or6.

megalomania

2010-05-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

i am a grouch. a misanthrope. a difficult person to be with. i have no idea why my friends put up with me, or why my boyfriend is still with me. i am ill-and-short-tempered, neither funny nor particularly bright, and most definitely not visually appealing. no really. i have thought about it, objectively, ala suchismita bose, and it is not out of self-pity i say these things. for despite everything i am completely and overwhelmingly in love with myself. i am firmly convinced that i am the best thing that has happened to the world since the invention of cigarettes. (who invented cigarettes by the way? euripides tells me that dionysus invented alcohol, but cigarettes?) inside my head of course i am stunningly gorgeous, and mindbogglingly brilliant, and side-splittingly funny.
what i cannot, for the life of me, figure out is why others think the same way! :-P

or maybe thats inside my head as well.
shob-e maya. i shall buy my friends gold medallions.

the garden of green honey

2010-03-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

so about a month of college to go. people talk about the pg2 farewell and i reach for my wallet to shell out the customary 30 bucks, it is with a jolt i realize this time i don't have to. chayer dokan is much the same. some old ones gone. some new ones have joined. but the old ones still remain like shadowy presences, we talk about them, we fill our conversations with what she or he would have said at such and such comment... frankly, i am not very nostalgic, i am scared ...yes. but strangely enough i am not afraid of losing THIS. what i have now. because deep down i am pretty sanguine that THIS is always going to be there, always...i am scared because i am losing focus. i am getting so increasingly sucked into THIS that i do not have time for anything else. all my grand plans for my life, a life i had always wanted for myself, or i thought i wanted for myself, are fading away. there is an odd stupor which is overcoming my senses, and vp has become like the garden of green honey. i know i just have a few months to make or break. i know if i let go now, i will regret it for the rest of my life. but there is this niggling little voice inside my brain which keeps telling me that maybe...just maybe...letting go of impossible dreams isn't such a bad idea. i keep telling myself its really the fear of failure. but i know in fact, however much i pretend otherwise, that its the irresistible allure of the secret drug with which kaka laces our chaa every evening.

We'll take a cup o' kindness yet

2009-12-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

in six months i will be completing my MA. 9 out of 10 semesters just flew past, the last one ain't gonna be any different. i know that. but today was a special day. a day i will remember forever. a day full of craziness, topsy turviness, a day imbued with the spirit of the bakhtinian carnivalesque. all rules were reversed and conventions were turned inside out. it was a mad mad day- even by judean standards. (which are very exacting as far as insanity is concerned.) . amlanda played pittu. swapanda was back. sukantoda almost winked at me. supriyadi demolished earthen pots. ex-students told dirty stories. all the seniors were back, with rum in jholas and packets of gold flake kingsize and weed. and i felt like i was in ug1 again. i smoked on the ledge. jude felt like home again. not the sanitized, antiseptic hell with obscene red no smoking signs, but the place that was once the sacrosanct altar of all our belellapona.
today was a day that made me realize all over again, that no matter what i do (or don't do) later on, no matter what i achieve or lose, these five years have been worth all and more. though my relations with the department have always been a tussle between love and hate, my memories both bitter and sweet, i knew today that whatever else i may regret in life, i will never regret being a part of JUDE.

multitaskings....

2009-11-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

1) neruda porbo

2) mod khaabo

3) goru khaabo

4) gojol shunbo

5) ekta shoru komor wala pretty boy ke chumu khabo.

EKKHUNI!!!!!

wonder years

2009-09-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

a friend of mine is leaving the country. once upon a time he was more than just "a friend"...he was my oldest friend...my closest friend...
no point in getting all nostalgic now. for the past 2 years, we have barely even been in touch. tomorrow i am meeting him for the last time before he crosses three oceans and disappears into some antipodal region. had it been three years ago i would have been so lost, so heart broken. today i don't know how to react, i don't know how to say goodbye. there's just SO much history. today i am just sad because i am wondering why i am not sad....
that's not entirely true. i am sad...though its not an straightforward sadness. i will miss him. not the person, but the idea. the fact that we were so close in some long-forgotten past life. because i know, when he boards that plane on thursday, that will be it, we will never ever really be friends again. the finality of that closure bothers me. it reminds of a way of life that's no longer there, of the only time in my life i was happy without any reservations..despite calculus, despite byartho prem.
..................."Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future, you cant forget your past;"

kaminey!

2009-08-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

i am arrogant, and pride is one of the seven deadly sins. tactlessness, though not officially in the list, is another deadly baby. i am being punished for that. that is just.

i am proud and stupid and tactless. and this world is full of opportunistic, two-faced, hypocritical, dirty, rotten scoundrels. and i just left it wide open for them. its a lesson that could only be learnt the hard way. i am glad i learnt it. whatever humiliation i have to bear is a necessary consequence of my folly, my rashness...

what i cannot accept with good grace, is that people i love and respect A LOT are stuck in this ugly morass because of my utter stupidity.

and in some tiny, almost imperceptible way, i know that i have failed them.

what is appalling though is the triviality and pettiness of it all...

homogenous empty flow

2009-08-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

aaj bhi na aye aasoo
aaj bhi na bheege nain
aaj bhi yeh kori raina
kori laut jayegi...

catch 22

2009-08-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

he is like nobody since i love him. if i could write i would write. but since i can't, i will quote. and keep burning in the meantime.
our petrarchan lover, poor chap, is truly buggered from all sides. never laugh at our petrarchan lover, gentle reader. one day his fate might befall you.
such misery, such desire, such torment, and when he looks at me and smiles all of a sudden a tidal wave of golden light. pure undiluted ecstasy.

pure nonsense, pure wisdom

2009-07-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I was reading Neruda….that poem ..”and it was in that age, poetry arrived in search of me…” and it was so exquisite…autumn testament was always a favourite but this sort of took my breath away and I sms-ed a friend saying that there is nothing in the world quite as beautiful, (in every sense of the word ) as poetry. Not even the full moon on Chilka. Later I retracted my statement and said that it really depended on the mood. And the man who made me choose words over the full moon on chilka is saying that all he wanted to do was to learn about life from life itself…

“I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.”

I want to learn about life too. I think that’s the only way you can actually write poetry. And feel poetry. And poetry comes in search of you…and you break your heart loose on the winds…Reading books…or rather only reading books somehow amounts to living life by proxy. The older I get the more I realize the absolute indispensability of books in my life, and the paradoxical inadequacy. I want more now. I want to live. And learn love through a single kiss.

split wide open.

2009-06-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

i want to start afresh. every single goddamn thing. and then again i want everything-that-i-have-today to last forever. talk about horns of dilemma!!

blah!

2009-05-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

"they thought they had only half-begun, in truth it was half-over"

for me, its more than half-0ver, and i still can't get over the feeling that i've only half-begun.

res-publica

2009-05-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

for the past four or five days i have been so hooked to the television its not funny, considering the fact that my end sems are going on it is even less funny. this is NOT a good time for examinations, especially for a 21 yr old who has voted for the first time in the loksabha elections.
i have realised that politics gives me a high. not the actual electoral battle, but the academic analysis that follows. i wasn't so engrossed before the elections, during the campaigns, i did follow the campaigns, but not as assiduously as i followed the exit polls. the post poll analysis, the nitty gritty of cause and effect, the dryness of it all, ...its fantastic. because it is more or less objective, and unbiased, because i like intelligent and politically conscious people speaking, because the speakers are usually devoid of party affiliations...
i have also realised that at heart i am a skeptic. i would much rather be an intellectual who sees both sides of the question than a ranting activist. i truly believed that in our state a change of order was needed, but i have little or no faith in the opposition(if you call it elitism saptarshi, then so be it.). i believed that the government needed to be jolted out of their complacence, and this the best possible way to have achieved it, because these are the loksabha polls and would not actually entail a change of order in the state legislative assembly, but their humiliating defeat would perhaps give them the much needed slap-in-the-face and shake them out of their hubris. if these were the bidhaansabha polls i would have been much more apprehensive of what the future would have in store for us...
i am satisfied with the results, but i am not fooling myself that these results will automatically translate into better government, because it won't. the pigs will inevitably begin to behave like men. and if the party at the centre wins again, next time, we would have to resign ourselves to the authoritarianism of the seventies and the tyranny of a dynasty. if in the bidhansabha polls we see an action replay of the loksabha polls, then we are sure headed for unruly times.
saddest part is, this imperfect and terribly fraught situation is perhaps the BEST we could have hoped for under current circumstances. if i had to choose between a communal, a pseudo-communist and an elitist party, i would choose the elitist party a hundred times over, but that doesn't necessarily mean that i would be perfectly happy with my choice.

to the man without whom i cannot imagine my life

2009-05-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

"Thy firmness makes my circle just
And makes me end where I begun"
- John Donne (quoted completely out of context.)

Naamkoron-er Sharthokota

2009-04-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

what were my parents thinking when they named me 'Doyeeta'? doyeeta is so not me...
for the past 21 years, whenever i said my name is doyeeta, the other person inevitably said, "what? joyeeta?", and i replied "no, d as in delhi". my parents tell me when i was a kid, i used to get so pissed that i looked the other way when anybody asked me my name.
well, it did have the merit of being uncommon, but even that illusion was soon destroyed! there was another 'doita' in my school, in my own class, who then went on to become one of my closest friends.
with every passing day i hated my name even more. in class IX i read a seedy novel by suchitra bhattacharya, the protagonist was called 'doyeeta'. she was [ i then thought] a very immoral and horrible woman, because she slept with her fifty year old, married professor. (now i know Ms.bhattacharya was merely, in the time honoured manner of vaalmiki, writing the ramayana before the birth of ram!!)
it was when i entered college and people asked me the meaning of my name that i realised fully what a curse this name was. whenever i said 'doyeeta' means beloved/lover/darling, i was answered by smirks, sniggers or raised eyebrows (not unsurprisingly!)
doyeeta is a nyaka girl's name for chrissake, its a sissy name, with no fizz, no gumption, no...no force...on top of that its pretentious, there are some who insist on calling me "doi" which makes me want to vomit on their faces. aaaaaRGGGGHHH.
come to think of it, my friends' names are no better. i have a friend called suchismita, their is nothing suchi about her smile, indeed she rarely smiles. she guffaws in a most unladylike fashion from time to time. she should have been called "pigface" or "mem boroni debi"..but i suppose its too late now.
then there is laddoo, whose real name, believe it or not, is debarshi kumar banerjee. his grandmother ( may she rest in peace) was obviously not in her right mind. there is a narod-like side to him, i will not deny that. but debarshi kumar banerjee? a 23 year old alcoholic who has hair like...like jimi hendrix??
take shonai, who is called sayantani, which is a fat girl's name. a fat ,staid, bespectacled, salwar kameez clad girl's name. not even shonai suits her, she is like this alien from outer space, speaks a language which sounds gibberish to us, frowns and paints naked humans bleeding to death, wears a military print half-pant and a t-shirt with death's head on it, tattoos her own arm with a needle and gel pen...
she is...i mean she should be called milippipping khruk or something like that!!
i have two friends called subhayu. subhayu bhattacharya is the kind of boy our grandfathers or great uncles would immediately label as "kaapten" or "laayek". i mean, ideally his name should have been poltu or tenida! the other one, mukherji, well, he doesn't look a subhayu either, he is so,so...pnaachu!
romyo: his real name is diptarko, people call him romyo, he calls people bhosriwaal. i rest my case.
nandita: she is this wannabe don-type figure, she is not entirely devoid of the nyaka raabindrik shotta her name implies, she even looks like the archetypal boro bou, but stay with her for five days and you wonder why she is called nandita, or her father is called malobika roy, for that matter! she was born to be called mintu. all her role models and neighbours and best friends are called mintu. she says the name mintu like 108 times a day, like horinaam jop.
howlie, also, is called amrita.. (nobody knows by whom!) but if you have even seen her from a distance you know she cannot possibly be anything but howlie.
also, there is basu, whose name is soumyojyoti. he was very soumyojyoti (or nerd-like, kyalane, shaanto shishto) till about age 14. then he developed biceps, beat up people regularly, got stoned, got dumped, and developed some more muscles. he calls himself "the basu"...you know the type...under such circumstances, being called soumyojyoti is as ludicrous as my being called shaantilata, or my mother being called sharmila. (which, incidentally, she is called!)
bimbabati is the only friend i have whose name suits her. its the name of a freak, and she is indeed a freak of nature, unique specimen. the kind who are eventually killed off, preserved in formalin and studied by aspiring doctors.
know how the anabaptists believed in adult baptism(and nudity, among other things!)?? time to think about adult naming ceremonies? eh? like, you choose your name only when its time to enter it in a voting list, until that time you are called young-miss-majumder (the-tall-bespectacled-one-with-a-braid!) or something like that... what say?

et in arcadia ego!

2009-04-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

the only place i am truly happy these days is at the chaayer dokaan. on my way back home, i usually spend an hour and a half there, with my friends, singing, talking, smoking and drinking endless cups of tea. and my entire day is now centred around those hours wasted in complete idleness. away from the claustrophobia of home, away from the monotony of JUDE, far, far away from the malicious bitching, the cribbing about each class test and each term paper, and fighting tooth and claw for every hand-out, feeling betrayed, helpless, exploited, bitter, angry. feeling at a loss, directionless, somehow incomplete and inferior. i can't wait to get on the SD4 and get AWAY from all this shit!

yes we bitch at the chaayer dokaan, yes we quarrel, fight and scream our heads off. but there is a sense of security, of being understood for a change, of being accepted. we analyse the genesis of separatism in india, we debate about the concept of nationhood, we deconstruct marx and dissect the gender politics of the institution of marriage and the band politics of glass onion. and then when it gets too heated we talk of cabbages and kings. of the man who fucks his pet buffalo, and of bhola's diary, of mona lisa guest house and shubhayu's growing babai.
then when even that becomes boring we sing songs. and finally, spent we sit. and watch people stumble over the gorto in the pavement in front of us. and laugh like maniacs. have a final chaa and a cigarette. and leave.
that makes me happy more than anything else. i am not worrying about my future,i am not worrying that these guys would turn their faces away when we meet tomorrow. i am happy because i KNOW that tomorrow will be exactly like today. screaming obscenities, hitting each other, bumming fags, planning parties, being politically incorrect and biased and not giving a shit, singing, dancing, constantly passing comments (and judgments) at everybody around us,partying, drinking, puking, loving, hating, bitching, screaming being children, being happy.
and ten years down the line, this is the only thing i will miss, about my college years that is...

this, and the days spent at promod-da's canteen, i suppose it started out at promod-da's canteen,banging the tables and shouting about pluralism and anti-lpg...about IC and SFI (despite the fact that i, being a JUite, could vote for neither..)..but that's a separate story...albeit with the same characters...

in milton's words....

2009-04-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
 Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
 My hasting days fly on with full career,
 But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th¹.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
 That I to manhood am arrived so near,
 And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
 That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th².
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
 It shall be still in strictest measure even
 To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of
      Heaven;
 All is: if I have grace to use it so,
 As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye
substitute "three and twentieth" with "one and twentieth" and
"manhood" with "womanhood" and you have my life in a nutshell.
i wish i could summon that kind of faith though...fiducia..

safety net.

2009-03-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

families are strange....mine is particularly so...
as most of my friends know by now i have an unusually large family which until a few years ago was a joint one. now we have scattered all over the place, but still the joint family mentality sticks somehow. my house (as i have heard, since i have not had the courage to walk past it in the last six months) has been turned into a field. still all my uncles refer to it as "baari", at any given point of time during the course of a normal day you will find one or more of my family members sitting on a bench in what used to be 9 nombor.
my uncle who has shifted to tollygunge temporarily comes to deshopriyo park every evening for his walk. apparently he is unable to walk anywhere else.
they still indulge in regular drinking sessions, the venue of which has shifted to mej-jethu's place, the menu however remains the same. whiskey and mutton. everytime. my 68 year old mej-jethu drinks five large pegs of whiskey in 90 minutes flat. my 69 year old borojethu manages to finish off 2 large beers quicker than any of my friends.
whenever we go to a wedding we go together, in a large convoy of cars, even though we don't live together anymore.
queerest thing is its not one of those sickly sweet families you see in soap operas. we don't really like each other much. i used to think it was force of habit.
now i know better. its blood. i know its a cheesy thing to say. but its true. i know that whatever happens, however much we dislike each other, we have to stand by each other in times of trouble.
its an obligatory thing you know. so the best part is, we don't have to bother to be nice to each other, or even keep in touch on a regular basis, but when we are in the deepest shit ever, we can fall back on each other...
and deep down i know i will always make allowances for their idiosyncrasies and their individual pet peeves, because really, all said and done, i am too much like them.
though i really love my friends but its not the same way with friends, because friendship is a matter of choice, of mutual like and respect. which can increase with time, which can also sort of burn out, you know? and once its gone the bond is broken...
families...well you are just saddled with them and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
i'm not sure that's always a bad thing.

revolution

2009-01-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

i saw kaalbela today, not that its an exceptional movie or anything...but it made me finally sit and write this down, sort of organize my thoughts and...
well i have been thinking about this for long... wondering about what really happened back then? it has always intrigued me you know, and i have read quite a few books but they were all works of fiction. it seems to me at times that there is this conspiracy of silence as far as the movement of the late sixties is concerned. there is a huge cover up happening somewhere. the movement, the involvement of the students, the repressive action of the state--it was a huge thing. thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, raped, maimed for life... and yet as far as i am aware there has been very little research on this.
as i mentioned before, kaalbela, haajaar churaashi-r maa, ontorghaat, honyomaan these are all works of fiction. what about documentary history? there is nothing... nothing... the history we are taught in school ends on the 15th of august 1947. as if since then the history of our nation has been uneventful. and we have sort of "lived happily ever after".
i think the concept of our nationhood, the illusion of unity in diversity ended with independence. with the common foreign enemy gone all the age old domestic demons reared there heads right back up. and new ones are born every day.
anyway, i digress. what is it about the naxalite movement that makes it a taboo subject even today.? till date the people of the previous generation only whisper vaguely that this or that person in the para was a nokshaal. was the repression so savage that people are still afraid to talk about it? but how could they unleash such barbaric violence upon their own people? i mean this kids were scarcely out of school...their tormentors were people they knew, people of the same nation, spoke the same language, maybe had been to the same schools and colleges as their parents, lived in the same localities...
my own sympathies are ambivalent. these kids...they were my age...and...yet they seem (when i read these books or watch these movies) so much older... and there is a kind of idealism thats infectious, inspiring...that makes me want to spit on my compromising existence. at other times i feel they were fools, at other times i feel its me who is older by far, more mature, more cynical albeit a lesser human being. always a lesser human being.
it does not matter today whether they were wise or foolish.
what matters is, as animesh kept asking dipak, were they right or wrong? right or wrong? right in their ideals and wrong in their actions?is affirmative action, however misguided, better than this indolence, this lethargic indifference? is revolution so easy? does not violence always, always, always inevitably beget violence? how could they have not foreseen it?
then again, two decades earlier., when student revolutionaries were practising the politics of violence to get rid of foreign oppression, that was ok. that was laudable. and then all of a sudden, protesting against the oppression of an indigenous government became a crime severe enough to incur the wrath of the savagely retributive state machinery. why?
i don't know. i don't think one can ever know beyond all doubt.
but one can know facts. one can know history. and their history needs to be written.
and somewhere deep down i have a feeling that the only reason we are romanticizing and valourising their quest today, in books and movies, the only reason we sympathise with them, is because they lost. had they won, things would not have been different. not really. its perhaps for the best that they lost. had they won, the disillusionment would have been infinitely greater.

holy smoke

2009-01-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

smoking is good. i like smokers. smokers are good. it may be injurious to my health but do i look like i give a shit? many of the most intelligent people i know are smokers...
many of our best teachers are smokers, albert camus was a smoker, sartre was a smoker, sherlock holmes was a smoker, pheluda was a smoker, satyajit ray was a smoker, shokti chattopadhyay was a smoker and i could go on and on and on.. i don't care if you throw 5 non-smoking geniuses into my face for every camus. because I DON'T!!!
and the most obnoxious creep in the whole fucking department is a non-fucking-smoker. (i hope the schmuck chokes on his squeaky clean lungs. )
i like smoking. i love smoking. i love all smokers. i love the taste of smoke. i love the smell of smoke. i love the look of smoke. and boy, i ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ADORE the FEEL of smoke. and i curse the evil hour smoking was banned in my country. i do. i do. I DO.

oratores

2009-01-18T08:26:00.000-08:00

the final workshop's over. i think despite everything it went pretty well. we have done a rather neat job of it, considering the time constraint and everything. the work has been pretty fulfilling for more than one reason...
i got along with my boss and my colleague very well. i think in the past eight months i never seriously fought/was mad at any of them, which is saying something because i generally don't get along with people. we worked very hard and that was actually fulfilling. not just because this was a project we had invested a lot of emotional energy in, also because we had a BLAST!! 3 trips, innumerable parties, a lot of singing and dancing and ghazals and alcohol and food and madness.
at the beginning there was just the madmadam, nandi and bhringi. by last week we were a dozen people strong group.
but neither the vomiting woman in the bus to pailan on a scorching may afternoon, nor the principal of a college who asked pc why she wasn't married,nor the mad driver on the way back from deulti, nor even the countless trips to ITI where the 60 year old sundar singh kept winking at nandita managed to discomfit us as much the prospect of public speaking did yesterday. that was our waterloo. not.(borat ishtyle)
venimus, vidimus, vicimus. we came, we saw and we conquered.
despite the fact that i stuttered horribly in one slide and had boredom writ large on my countenance for the rest of the slideshow, and despite the fact that nandita skipped the per capita income bit, and despite the fact that we broke out into a fit of brief but uncontrollabe hysterics when pitroda's photo was projected, i think overall we pretty much rocked.
this is not a symptom of megalomania .. we are truly genies, and we live in bottles....
there is an entire song on this.... someday we will sing it for you.

kiss me....

2009-01-05T09:53:00.000-08:00

"Kiss me out of the bearded barley.
Lightly, beside the green, green grass.
Swing, swing, swing the spinning step.
You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress.
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight.
Lead me out on the moonlit floor.
Lift your open hand.
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance,
silver moon's sparkling.
So kiss me."

dunno why i am hung up on this song today...
it reminds of school, strangely enough, and that kind of love ...the kind only 16 year-olds can be in....and once you grow up all of that seems fake and silly and melodramatic...and suddenly its not about you wearing those shoes and me wearing that dress, its no longer you leading me out on the moonlit floor....all of that is stowed away, like so many skeletons in our cupboards...only when i listen to songs like these i have lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball....

i have realised...

2008-12-17T08:11:00.001-08:00

that of all the things i hate in this world (and believe me, there are quite a few), i hate pseudos more than any thing else. pretentious people try to be dishonest to themselves. that makes them both dishonest, and stupid. and attention craving. and horrible and intolerable in general. and this stupid department is chock-full of pseudos. bloody.

in defence of lancelot and guinevere

2008-12-11T23:58:00.000-08:00

Texts like The Quest of the Holy Grail gets on your nerves at times. why this extreme misogyny? why are women always portrayed as evil temptresses? why this incessant hankering after chastity and virginity? why is lancelot made to feel guilty because he loved a woman? and why is it guinevere's fault only? if lancelot hadn't copped elaine's cherry where would galahad, our model of chastity, come from? pray tell me?
and what did they think? these stupid monks? that we have nothing better to do than to lay traps for innocent knights? trying to distract them form their holy quests and giving them hard-ons at most inappropriate moments? stupid gits, this misogyny is all sex gone sour...believe me...just because they couldn't get it up anymore due to lack of practice. maybe their dicks shrivelled up and fell off, and so they took to this pleasant pastime of woman-bashing. the wife of bath hit the nail on the head methinks.
abstinence is not a virtue, honestly. if you don't want to do it, don't do it. don't pretend that you are doing the world a favour...its your choice, nobody is forcing you to be a virgin. its not even like vegetarianism, where you can at least claim that you are saving animals by not eating them, and thats a good thing to do. if you are not having sex who the fuck cares? god certainly doesn't. what kind of a religion portrays love as sinful?
Disclaimer: this is a feminist rant. please don't give me a thesis on the history of carnal love in vedic times or whatever....

facebook sucks....

2008-12-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

1. what does your user name mean?
errr....beloved...
2. elaborate on your user photo.
no photo here..the facebook one was taken by saptarshi, at shaat-tola, i think it was poulomi's birthday, i have a streamer around my neck!
3. how many comments do you have?
on the last post....many!!! :P
4. what's your current relationship status?
seeing someone...not very committed though!! :P :P
5.what exactly are you wearing right now?
a nightshirt and a shawl.
6. what is your current problem?
can i finish arnold's sweetness and light without dying of boredom.
7. what do you love the most?
books i suppose...
8. what makes you most happy?
friends, books...
9. are you musically inclined?
to-o-otally...this band called Glass Onion...??i will be singing for them soon, any day now... :P :P
10. what would you do if you woke up one morning and found out you were on cocaine?
sit down and finish kubla khan. writing it, not reading....that is...
11. if you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?
nothing really, except...well...even if i could go back in the past now i'd be as helpless as i was then, so...
12. if you MUST be an animal for ONE day, what would you be?
a dog?? no a bird...
13. ever had a near-death experience?
not really ...(touch wood!!)
14. name an obvious quality you have.
i am such a nice person...you won't believe only...perfect behaviour, never being mean to anybody...
15. what's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now?
hum hai raahi pyaar ke, hum se kuchh na boliye..
16. are you happy today?
i have victorian exam tomorrow, so no, not really...but this song makes me feel happy.
17. who will cut and paste this to first?
no one...
18. name someone with the same birthday as you:
osama bin laden.
m.s. subhalakshmi
an aunt of mine...
19. do you have a secret crush on someone?
never ever had a secret crush...
20. do you have a garbage disposal in your kitchen sink?
no, my mother believes in cleaning the kitchen after every meal. and apparently dust bins make people lazy and leads to accumulation of garbage yadda yadda. she has ocd.
21. have you ever been in a fight?
often...
22. have you ever sang in front of a large audience?
told you...any day now...9'o'clock...princeton...friday...
23. what's the first thing you notice about the OPPOSITE sex?
thobra of course...and the smile, and the height...
24. what's your biggest mistake?
making friends with totally weird people...school onwards...
25. say something totally random about you.
i change underwear thrice a day.
26. has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
if you don't count olive oyle...no...
27. are you comfortable with your height?
rather proud of it actually...
28. what is the most romantic thing someone has ever done for you?
if you knew my boyfriend you wouldn't ask that question...
29. what is your favorite smell?
burnt matches, cigarette smoke and old spice. also the smell of old houses, new books and monsoon.
30. what's something that really annoys you?
unpunctuality..
31. what's something you really like?
sleeping, reading, pujo...
32. do you give random hugs and kisses?
UGH!
33. what's the latest you have ever stayed up?
8 in the morning...party at shonai's place...

Mors linguae

2008-11-27T01:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my friend was wearing a T-shirt that said “ I blog therefore I am”. I wondered idly how one would translate it in Latin. Would it be “ Blogito ergo sum”? Rhyming with the original Descartian motto? Or simply “Blogo ergo sum”? If Latin were a living language, what would be the verb for blogging? “Blogitare” or “blogare”? and that got me wondering on the subject of ancient languages, and why they and how they became crystallized into “dead” languages, preserved carefully like the bones of dinosaurs but never used…

Why are all the classical languages “dead”? Is it because at some point of time every language loses its ability to incorporate newer concepts and ideas and phenomena? Is it because language is after all a human invention and can’t really keep pace with human progress? call it transmutation of the human race if you have a problem with the word "progress". The languages we speak today- will they too become dead and fossilized one day? Exhausted of all possibilities of further development, tired of trying to cope up with the incessant and ever increasing demand of naming newer and newer things? Sucked dry of all hope, convoluted and contorted to such an extent that it is no longer practicable to use such a language in daily affairs of communication. If every word is merely a signifier (I use the word as a layman, I don’t know much of linguistics) of a thing, or an idea, or an emotion, then the total number of such things must be infinitely greater than the number of such symbols, or combinations of symbols, the human mind can ever come up with…

Not everybody in Classical Greece and Rome spoke classical Greek and Latin surely? Not every body in India even in ancient times spoke Sanskrit? Of course I know there were languages like Pali in vogue even before the modern vernaculars came into existence. The people in their daily lives must have spoken corrupt or bastard forms of the language… very much like our own vernacular which has more than a dozen distinct dialects today..so may be those people, just got sick of the declensions and conjugations and the rules of syntax (which of course became more and more complicated with the passage of time) and decided to chuck it altogether and switch to a more flexible version derived from the parent language…maybe the influence of foreign languages caused the language to mutate and modify into a different language…maybe…

I remember when I read 1984, what terrified me most was neither the Thought Police, nor O Brien’s torture , nor the Anti-Sex Squad , nor even Big Brother himself, but Newspeak. The language, which was constantly progressing by shrinking, contracting, turning upon itself and consuming itself. And its champions dreamt of the day when the entire language would consist of one word only. The greatest marker of this nightmarishly dystopic society was the death of language, the cessation of words. Till date I find this reduction of language frightening. Languages have an organic life of their own, they grow and when they outlast their capacity for further growth or expansion they simply become outdated. They are preserved in that state of stasis, embalmed like the bodies of erstwhile monarchs, because in the history of a language, the history of human civilization is encoded.

One day I shall write a blog in Latin, I promise….

because i could not figure out how to do it on facebook

2008-11-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

first name: doyeeta
single or taken: not single, i don't like the word "taken".
sex: female
birthday: 16th sept.
siblings:none
hair color: black
shoe size: 4
height: 5 feet 7inches
innie or outie:maane ta ki???
what are you wearing right now: red top, blue jeans
righty or lefty: lefty, like most great people except bimbo!!(hi5 on that doyeeta!)
can you make a dollar in change right now: no
------------------------------------------------------------relationships------------------------------------------------------------
who are your closest friends? there are many close friend...closest...i dunno..
do you have a BF or GF? BF
best place to go for a date: we rarely go on dates, its mostly the chayer dokaan, with a bunch of weirdos.
---------------------------------------------------------------favourites...---------------------------------------------------------------
favourite place to shop: fabindia (for clothes)
favourite kind of pants: pajama
favourite colour: red...not to wear though.
number(s): pi. which is not 22/7. it is an irrational non-surd. i used to know what that meant.
animal:dogs, big ones.
drink: water.
sport(s): tennis.
fast food place(s): tibetan delights, maharani for kochuri, chini's,paramount, campari, missy's.
month:september
current movie:ummm..
juice: orange..and aam-pora and musambi.
finger: left index finger
breakfast: nuchi-chholar dal
cartoon character(s): popeye.tom and jerry.uncle fester in adam's family.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------have you ever:----------------------------------------------------------
given anyone a bath? a cat i had...it ran away.
smoked? yes.
bungee-jumped? no
made yourself throw up? everyday affair.
gone skinny dipping? no
eaten a hot dog? no
put your tongue on a frozen pole? why would i??
loved someone so much it made you cry? yes.
broken a bone? yes. my left hand.
played truth-or-dare? yes. favourite party game chhilo.
been in a police car? no
been on a plane? yes.
been in a sauna? no
been in a hot tub? no.
gone swimming in the ocean?not really swimming..bathing..yes.
fallen asleep in school? oh yes. pol. science class.
ran away? yes. not very far though.
broken someone's heart? not to my knowledge.
cried when someone died? yes
cried in school? yes. was beaten black and blue.
fallen off your chair? yes
sat by the phone all night waiting for someone to call? not all night
saved e-mails? not consciously.
fallen for one of your best friends? no.
made out with JUST a friend? no
used someone? yes i suppose. we all have at certain points of time.
been cheated on? no.
What is...----------------------------------------------------------------
your good luck charm? my viv richards poster.
the best song you ever heard?
the stupidest thing you have ever done? collecting polo wrappers..i'll leave it at that.
what's your room like? cluttered, cramped, horrible. once it used to be cluttered but big.
the last thing you said?"khaabo na" to ma.
what is beside you? an empty cup with dregs of horlicks.
the last thing you ate? ate? jilipi from moharani.
what kind of shampoo do you use?whatever man...
the best thing that has happened to you this year? i graduated...
worst thing that has happened to you this year? lets not get into that...
----------------------------------------have you had..----------------------------------------chicken pox? no
sore throat? uff...of course.
stitches? no
broken nose? no
-------------------------------------do you-------------------------------------
believe in love at first sight? no. not even lust at first sight. not the very first sight.
like picnics? yes
like school? LOVED it.
--------------------------------------would you/what is---------------------------------------eat a live hamster for $1,000,000 ? what is a hamster?
if you were stuck on an island, what people would you want with you? the swiss family robinson, who apparently could build houses out of nothing, build bridges, cook, and tame ostriches for transport.
who was the last person that called you? suchismita
who was the last person you slow-danced with? never slow danced.
what makes you laugh the most? friends, funny movies, wodehouse.
what makes you smile? dont smile much, am a surly bitch.
who is the last person--------------------------------------
you yelled at? ma i suppose.
who broke your heart? no one
who told you they loved you? laddoo?
who is your loudest friend? ragini.
------------------------------------------------------------do you/are you:------------------------------------------------------------
do you like filling these out? no
do you wear glasses or contacts? glasses, sometimes contacts...
do you like yourself? absolutely LOVE myself.
do you get along with your family? usually..
stolen anything over $50? no
obsessive? totally.
compulsive? no but impulsive.
,anorexic? no
suicidal? NO
schizophrenic? no.
----------------------------------------------------------------love life------------------------do you have a crush? yes...well not a crush really...no definitely not a crush...but similar..
if so, does he or she know? i think he guesses, but he is used to it.
have you truly told him or her how you feel, face to face? dhur shala...pagol naaki?
how did he or she respond? aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgghhhh.
what is so great about him or her? dont get me started.
-------------------------------------this or that-------------------------------------------------coffee or tea: tea.
phone or in person: depends on who it is...
are you oldest, middle, youngest or only child:only
indoor or outdoor: depends...
--------------------------------------------------final questions
how many people are you sending this to: none
what are you listening to right now? nothing
what did you do yesterday? hung out with friends, went to an education fair thingy...
where do you want to get married? at a house which is not there anymore.
if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be? my indolence, my temper.
are you a good driver? i will be, someday...just you wait buggers who scare me with your cars, just you wait..
are you a good singer?" i'm the best.."
what do you dream about? umm...having a house, having a job i like, having leisure at forty, having all my friends around me...doing something, worth doing..however insignificant. figuring out this universe.

resolutions

2008-10-26T00:47:00.001-07:00

its going to be a difficult year for me, and afterwards maybe i will never be really at peace. why do i feel guilty? why do i feel like a traitor? why do i feel as if i have broken a promise? why do i feel less honest? my integrity compromised? how does it matter anyway? worse fates befall people..worse tragedies happen...i shall not be weak, i shall not be dukkhobilaashi. i will think of baba to whom even the relief of tears is denied. i shall grit my teeth and clench my fists and try to keep my eyes shut.

memento mori

2008-10-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

the utter desolation that engulfs my para after doshomi is freaky. after all the pomp, the lights, the cacophony on nobomi, the silence of doshomi night (after the trailers have left for babughat) is so palpable that it actually grips you. the darkness is so thick you can cut it with the proverbial knife. in one word , its frightening. the transformation takes place in the space of a few hours. the frenzy of the past week reaches a crescendo during the bhashaan procession, the mad beat of the dhaak and the dance that continues for more than an hour, and then immediately afterward there is lull...the pandal is half demolished, the lightmen take down the lights, the decorators take away the chairs and sofas, the ballon sellers and junk food sellers pack up and leave. its like cinderella and her entourage after midnight, its like the town in thakurma-r jhuli that came alive with jiyon kaathi and went back into hibernation with moron kaathi. you are back in your shorts and all the finery of pujo is gone, you don't even feel like leching at the rockbaaj chyangra chheler dol. everything is...just...gone! as Dr. Hazra would say: "bhyaanish".
if somebody asked me to describe Death, i'd use doshomi night as a metaphor. its almost like the sudden, unexpected, unaccountable and absurd death of a young, lively, beautiful, exuberant person, a person you love....its like a reminder of our own mortality.
the sadness of this cessation lingers despite the realisation that there will be a resurrection in twelve months. the wait seems endless. there is mourning in the air. and the pujo smell is replaced by the smell of winter almost overnight.

i WANT...

2008-10-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

....to have an intense, passionate, shortlived but SERIOUS affair with a MUCH older man, who is shoumyodorshon, and very very intelligent and incredibly charming. it may or may not be "consummated"...it may be that we would just discuss Rousseau for a week...but that thing has to be there...not a fling, not a one night stand, but a serious, passionate, affair. with an older man. who is learned. and fun. and good looking. marital status is really of no consequence...and its going to be a week long thing anyway....is it asking for too much??

CLARIFICATION:::: the description contained in these lines are absolutely general and they do not indicate any particular person, and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely, i repeat, purely Freudian.

Taasher Desh

2008-09-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

the kids at rehearsal in Shishutirtho

Ishitadi runs an orphanage near Shantiniketan. its called Shishutirtho. not many people know about it. having retired from her job in Calcutta, Ishitadi now devotes all her time , along with her elder brother, to the upbringing and education of saontaali orphans. the children are taught painting, craft, pottery, singing and dancing apart from regular school lessons and whatever trades they have to learn. their resources are limited. neither Ishitadi nor Supriyobabu have much funds at theri disposal. their lives' earnings have gone into the making of Shishutirtho. but love, patience and single minded devotion make up for a lot. and today Ishitadi's children pulled off the most stupendous performance ever.

they enacted Taasher Desh, arguably Tagore's most famous musical, with a few of the most popular Rabindrasangeet of all times. and what a performance it was. the cast ranged from a toddler to a 40 something matronly lady,(who looks after the kids at Shishutirtho). the protagonist as Raajputro was superb. he sang and danced and delivered lengthy soliloquies, never missing a step or a line, never skipping a beat, never once faltering. everything was spot on, the dialogues, the expressions, the pronounciations. this last was a bit of a stumbling block for many. for the bastard dialect of bangla these children speak has about as much similarity to Tagore's language as gobbledygoo. but what does it matter if Ekkani slips up and says "taasser dess" a couple of time, when she is singing like an angel? the boy playing Horotoni's lover is one of the best Rabindrasangeet singers i have heard in a long long time.

our school productions of Taasher Desh were also good, but there was quite a bit of playback singing involved. but this one was a true musical. every single kid sang his/her own songs, while dancing, never running out of breath or veering off key. its a bloody difficult thing to accomplish. even the toddler danced perfectly in sync, till the very last group dance where he got a bit jostled by bigger kids and started doing his own thing!! the music was very good, and they had only a harmonium and a couple of tablas for accompaniment. considering the paucity of funds the quality of production (costumes, sets etc) was incredible. at the end, the packed audience broke out in sincere, heartfelt applause, punctuated by cries of " shaadhu! shaadhu!!" (for no Shantiniketani worth his/her salt ever claps).

it was a strangely humbling experience. an experience that in a curious manner purged me of cynicism, at least for the time being. to see the weeks of hardwork and saintly patience that went into it, and to think such talented kids would in a few years probably end up as mechanics in some factory, or clerks in some government office, or run small time businesses...in their stable but humdrum lives Bnaadh bhenge daao would be a distant dream-like memory, and perhaps tonight's thunderous applause would seem almost unreal...maybe...but it could have been worse right?

i am so inexpressibly proud to know someone like Ishitadi, someone who in her own silent, modest way is actually making this world a better place. not just holding meetings and publishing articles or organising marches, but by actively taking responsibility. i am so fortunate to have been her student.

PS: fleetingly, i was reminded of the last time i came to Gyan Manch, it was a play staged by the leading english literature department of the country, directed by a renowned theatre expert and performed by grown ups who have been to the most elite schools in the city and have had (mostly) previous acting experience. incidentally, that play, too, was a musical. they had sophisticated instruments at their disposal too, not just a rundown harmonium. i am sad to say this fleeting comparison proved to be rather disadvantageous for the latter play. frankly, it couldn't hold a candle to these children's performance, and not just because of the fact that poor Beaumont and Fletcher are no Rabindranath Tagore.

make your own party!!

2008-08-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

Budget
1) rum and coke (seasonal variation: vodka and limca) --- Rs. 75
add ons: chanachur(or prabhuji) and charminar filter.
2) rum and coke and momo and thukpa----- Rs. 90
Chhoto gold flake to go with...
3) rum and coke and asma beef chap-ruti---------Rs. 95
Needed: big casserole and volunteers to undertake the arduous journey.
4) rum and coke and pao chien pork--------Rs125
INFLATION!!! DAMN!!!!!!
Venue
1) 7E --plastic glass, coffee mug...one odd steel er glass
2)9 MN---only plastic.
3) rinki's place deserves a mention surely.----(proper dining table and glass crockery!!)
4) shonai baari chhather ghor, nighttime parties....cutglass er glass...khilli na.
Moojik
1) a bit of beatles
2) a bit of robi thakur
3) ektu khaani rdb
4) ektu keora hindi
after five pegs :
5)floyd of course
6) ektu ghazal
Aar assorted hindi-ingriji-bangla...
Saattola song : baanwra man. the rains for accompaniment.
No'nombor song : iris, come rain or shine....

any combination works.....satisfaction guaranteed!

rubaiyat

2008-06-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine. a Book of Verse and --Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
- Omar Khayyam

RANT

2008-06-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

its past two o clock, in the morning. i am transcribing the audio tape of a Research Scholar interviewing an Anglo Indian, whose only claim to fame is being an Anglo Indian. Christ, the things i do for money....

i desperately desperately need to go on a holiday. last week i went to a private college, in the middle of no-fucking-where. we had to interview a about 30 or more undergrads who would, in a couple of years, acquire BBA and BCA degrees and land cushy jobs, but who do not understand the meaning of the word "sibling" and when explained, one of them informed yes ,she had a brother and that his "sex" was "female." their parents are paying more money for this degree in a single year than my parents did on my entire education. i am NOT exaggerating.

then we spent the rest of the day interviewing equally moronic staff members, who do not understand what " social sciences" mean, who have no clue about the possible effects of privatisation of education. when we mentioned the phrase we were met with a blank, incomprehending stare from most of them. given the fact they teach in a private institution (that requires all of them to wear identical sarees everyday,) the situation could have been potentially hilarious had i not been struck, in a rather Kurtzian manner, by "the horror" of it all.

because this private institution, which has air conditioned classrooms, and where rich, dumb kids pay lakhs to study, is not a freak exception, it is more like the norm in our country. what is appalling is that our government seeks to establish hundreds of such "universities" in the next five years, under a Public Private Partnership venture, which is nothing but an euphemism for wholesale privatisation. education is increasingly becoming the most profitable business on the block.

i wish someone would write a paper on how and why and when india ceased to be a welfare state. in practice this entire Nehruvian vision of a "democratic socialism" was a sham, as was the whole deal with gandhian ahimsa. but it was there somewhere at the back of everybody's minds, even if "welfare" and "public duty" were mere words and nothing more. its funny how no one even mentions them nowadays. its funny how people are almost embarrassed at the slightest mention of these notions. its funny how people actually take pride in being the "hook or by crook" types. and its funy how without batting an eyelid the powers that be, devolve responsibility, hand over the primary areas of public duty to the tender mercies of private corporations. they dont give a shit, what becomes of the nation, if education and health go to the dogs, they dont have the grace to even blush when they advocate an "education for those who can afford it" policy, or when they say "isolated centres of excellence like IITs and IIMs should not be encouraged because they dont present a sustainable model of development,", they shamelessly promote mediocrity (backed with money, of course) in the name of equity. i know, its not new. they never gave a shit. they never, ever ,cared. but the difference now is, they dont even bother to keep up the appearances, to appear to care, to continue the pretense of giving a shit...if only a verbal one.

bored

2008-03-23T08:22:00.001-07:00

i am bored outta my wits....my life is and endless repetition of cycles of boredom and exhaustion...once again i have three papers to submit and a battery of tests lined up, on top of it i have work...and i am very much screwed...

i want to do new things, i want a different life, i want a break.....an adventure...anything...i want to go away....

tagger strikes again....

2008-03-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

life ten years ago: was disciplined, smooth but routine. went to school, came back home, studied everyday, read books till midnight, slept, woke up, went to school....during summer holidays i practised and perfected the art of stealing mangoes from my neighbour's tree with an aankshi , the 5 days of pujo were spent within the confines of deshopriyo park, in my spare time i wandered around the terrace talking aloud to plants and crows. my neighbours thought i was mad...i am still not sure they were mistaken. that was the year a precocious friend whispered the facts of life into my ear...took me another 2 yrs to come to terms with that momentous revelation.
life five years ago: was turbulent. too many things happened in 2003. life as i had known it changed completely. they cut down the mango tree to start with. the ghosts of my childhood became homeless, along with the crows. i sat for my first board exams, had my first cocktail, and my first overnight party. school was over, a way of life had come to an end.i encountered calculus for the first time, and on top of that i fell in love. everything went haywire. i started smoking regularly. byartho prem aar calculus khub deadly combo. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.... :D
life tomorrow: will begin with a test, so you can imagine....
5 locations i would love to run away to: umm..lets see ....chaartolar chhad has been my official gnoshaa ghor for years...apart from that, i dunno, why run away? i love where i am, the way i am....touch wood.
5 bad habits i have:
1)indolence.
2)tactlessness
3)in-your-face rudeness
4)smoking
5)losing my temper at innoportune moments.
5 things i will never wear:
1) nailpolish
2) stilettoes
3) leather skirts
4)costume jewellery
5) naakchhabi
5 biggest joys at the moment:
1) attending classes (who would have thought???)
2)drinking rum and partying every week.
3)29!!!!
4)reading (but thats always been there)
5)daily cha cigarette after college.
something to achieve by next year : a definite aim in life, an ambition, something to strive for.
something that impacted me last year: political events mostly.
what i will miss about 2007: friends who would be moving out of cal soon. and of course, home.
5 things i want to do before i die:
1) read a lot.
2)visit a few places. along with ma baba
.3)be able to take care of my parents. completely.
4)achieve nirvana.
5)and then go back to reading.
i tag yippeeehippie and tygger.

....untitled

2008-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

they cleaned out dadu's almirah today, it is going to be shipped to pondicherry to my phuljethu's place. we get the organ, ranju gets the four poster and so forth. two lives, two people, divided, parcelled out among their five sons.
inside the almirah every thing was intact. the pen knife in its patched leather cover, the box of paper clips, dadu's magnifying glass, a dried up tube of glue, a bunch of those now-obsolete,blue inland letters, a black back scratcher from puri that everybody used to have once upon a time, the stethoscope inside the black leather briefcase and the matchbox in its place, a copy of sri aurobindo's 'the life divine' thoroughly underlined, with notes pencilled in the margin in his illegible handwriting (the only thing i managed to inherit, apart from the legendary temper and the bnyaka kore angul), and a photograph of him in a white suit and striped tie, graduating from calcutta medical college, looking so incredibly handsome that you would never believe he was my grandfather.
then, a stack of diaries, report cards of grandchildren, childish scrawls saying "happy birthday dadu", preserved with so much love, so much care, horrible drawings of mountains and flowers, dated and arranged with characteristic meticulousness..., the university brochure ranju sent from edinburgh, the transistor he bought dadu with his first salary...and an entry in his diary where he wrote what he never managed to tell us but we knew all the same.
he taught me everything i know today, my alphabets, long division, vulgar fractions, gerunds and participles, the functions of the nephron and newton's laws of motion. he taught me the difference between an ace and an ordinary service, he taught me what lbw meant and that any person in his/her right mind always roots for Man-U and Mohunbagan. he told me weird stories about imaginary ghosts, and how he smoked his first cigarette in a tea shop on college street, how he sneaked off from their house in jalpaiguri in the middle of the night to watch a seedy jatra,how the royal families of europe were stricken with haemophilia, about don bradman's last innings, about the great calcutta killings,and about his lifelong passion for greta garbo.

four years have passed, and i still have conversations with him, everyday of my life, at every crossroads i run to him for the answer,at every crisis to seek refuge,i still love him beyond all reasonableness and i still feel the jealousy of a ten year old because i still believe he loved ranju more, nothing has changed really. nothing can change that.

i wonder if i make him proud.....

merry christmas

2007-12-26T01:46:00.000-08:00

i had five large pegs of rum in less than three hours. i had roast pork, chilli pork along with it. i sang, i danced and freaked the shit out of my friends, then with superb dignity and exemplary self control i asked for a bucket in which to throw up. i was handed one. i did the needful. then i washed it with detergent and antiseptic. then with equal poise and sobriety i said my goodbyes, was escorted home where my mother thrust the telephone into my hand and said "talk to your aunt!". i did.i discussed the merits and demerits of the present system of education (i think!) then i talked to my parents about bangla theatre in the 1970s. i politely declined dinner,read shakti and neruda side by side and discovered hitherto unfound significance in familiar images and rhetoric. then i discussed the various aspects of literature for two hours with a friend. i read "robibaar" for the two hundred and thirty second time and went to sleep. i have new found respect for myself. seldom have i seen a more intellectually inclined,dignified puker.
p.s. i woke up at five because of loose motion.

whats the use??

2007-12-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

what is it exactly that i want to do? yes ladies and gentlemen, one of the great unanswerable questions that torment 20-year-olds across the world today....the answer of course is "ummm, i am not sure...maybe management or something, journalism is a definite possibility, or computers or stuff!!" (i should add "in most cases" to avoid controversy)
when i say "want" i mean what i really wish to do for the rest of my life, regardless of the actual probability (or lack of it) of my wish coming true,or the abilities or potential of the dreamer...what i want more than any thing else in this entire world, a life i envisage, i daydream about, not a life that i meticulously plan, not a concrete goal that i latch on to because i think its achievable and then work towards it with herculean determination and perseverence....not that, just what i would like to do...not the next best thing,or the next next best...but the foremost one, the most cherished one, the one secretly and jealously guarded forever, the one whose very existence we vehemently deny in front of friends and lovers and parents for the fear of sounding ridiculous, irrational, stupid, over-ambitious, impractical, and the dream that still lurks in our hearts after 30-years of toil, and reminds us intermittently that in spite of the flat i bought, the new car, my brilliant kids, my monthly pay cheque my life is one colossal failure...a huge farce...
a recent conversation led to this question, and i found myself saying the only thing i want to do, to keep doing for the rest of my life is to read books....just...just that...and i want a lot of money so that i dont have to go into the hassle of earning a livelihood and i can just read books, of all kinds, of all places and ages and people and kingdoms....and attend a couple of brilliant lectures now and then and just listen to really learned people...and learn, about people, about the world, and places and histories and philosophies and customs and languages and societies...bewildered my friend asked "kintu tarpor ki?eto porey ki korbi?"... equally flummoxed i replied "kichhu na..."..he said "taholey kyano?"..."kyano boi porbo?"why would i rather read books than do anything else?that is a question i never really asked myself,maybe because thats the only thing i can do, the only real addiction i can never kick....or maybe just....definitely not because of a specific agenda,not because i want to do something concrete with all that reading.....
my friend said dry intellect which is of no use to anyone is..err well...useless.thats okay. i agree. i dont really aspire to be useful. but i guess i'll just end up like my baba, whose secret dream was to eat countless marie biscuits dipped in endless cups of tea and keep reading books until he died, who became a stupid businessman instead, a reasonable profession and very useful....uselessness is genetic you could say....if you cant make head or tail of this really disjointed piece of shitty prose i dont blame you....

shilly point

2007-12-03T07:42:00.000-08:00

Rules:
1. Put your MP3 player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what. No cheating!

tagged by march hare person. very silly tag i say.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
mera jeevan kora kaagaz..kishore(aha, ki angst!)
WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
children of the grave...ozzy, konodin shunini(na, na, eta shonai-er line e ..ami oto morbid naaki?)
WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
oh, pretty woman Roy Orbison (ektu gender-ta...maane ami khub shanghatik hetero kinaa..)
HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
what else is there?Royksopp(oh es... i am bored, naholey ei tag keu korey?)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
ki aar korbo bolo :Chandrabindu (very apt, jodio prem trem shob-i bujruki)
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
overture: Rush (okay...if you insist)
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
where are you going? Dave Matthews Band (love this song, hate my friends!!!)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
save tonight : Eagle Eyed Cherry (really now??)
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
aamra baangali jaati :chandrabindu (yeah baby, i am so obnoxiously proud and parochial)
WHAT IS 2+2?
rush Tom sawyer, never heard it, what are these songs doin on my comp anyway?
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
beat it Michael jackson (ha ha ha, beat it!)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
hum hain raahi pyaar ke- nau do gyarah (the person i like better be flattered)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
tum aa gaye ho- aandhi (babbah!! ke tum bhai?)
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
with or without you-u2 (equivocation eh?)
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
set me free :velvet revolver..(shesh kaale ei?)
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
money money moneyabba (more like what i think about them)
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
yeh dard bhara afsana-kishore (keno?kar shonge biye hobe?)
WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
dream on aerosmith (ektu ultey gechhey!)
WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
in a little while U2 (yes, procrastination)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
dude looks like a lady aerosmith (now lets not get personal here!)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
fast car tracy chapman (kaiku?)
WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
love in an elevator aerosmith (this is getting inane and nonsensical now. why on earth?)
i tag scorpionragz (who has disappeared from blogosphere,) Rapid eye movement, and whoever has enough time to waste....

ever after....

2007-12-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

My mother was 20 when she got married. My father was 25. She was still in college, he was earning exactly Rs.1100 a month. They got hitched. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE THINKING!!!I was not there to intervene, you see.. anyhow, they got hitched. She continued going to college, he refused to go to work for more than thrice a week. The rest of the time he sat at home and read incessantly. Every evening a bunch of rowdy, jobless changra chhnoras came over and created ruckus till 2am, after which point they debated whether to stay over (as usual) or go home (for a change!). Every evening.
During summer they went to Deshopriyo Park and whiled away the evenings with cha,chiney badam, and cigarettes. Then Ma finished her M.A. and got herself a job, it was becoming difficult to make ends meet. Didn't help much, though. She blew up her salary by the 15th of every single month. On food, on books and on travelling.
Whenever they managed to save a hundred bucks, they a)went for a movie with the entire gang b)went and bought obscure Russian novels c)went to Campari or Pao Chien and ate like savages. When they scraped together 500, off they went to Darjeeling, or Ghatshila or Shantiniketan often on a day's notice! And of course, intermittently the gang got sloshed, took out my Dadu's car and went for crazy long drives at 2am(evidently their favourite time of the day!)

27 years have passed since. The thin, timid girl of twenty who used to cry for her parents (who lived only three houses away!) at every given opportunity, and who scandalized her entire shoshur baari by wearing gloves while washing handkerchiefs, has become a large, shrill, ebullient, domineering school teacher types ginni. The guy who used to read for 12 hours a day is now a workaholic who goes out at8 in the morning, comes home at 10pm, and falls asleep every night with a book open in his lap. They have stopped giving books to each other on every birthday and anniversary. They fight from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep. But they are still together. And strangely enough, still very much in love. And that is no mean feat.
The gang has dispersed. Baunduley bachelors have become much married men. But every Sunday, three or four of them turn up with beer bottles, and sit around till Ma yells and turns them out. All of them get together every pujo and make me blush with their keoramo. At times i feel ashamed.
But one thing i know...and that is, if 27 years from now I manage to have a life as warm, as fun, as secure and as honest as theirs, my gratitude to God would know no bounds. I know i dont say too many nice things about them,( nor for that matter, to them.) But here's to Ma and Baba, whol despite never having succeeded in making much money, have made such a brilliant life for themselves ....and for me!! Cheers...and touch wood!

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

2007-11-27T22:26:00.000-08:00

it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain any kind of inclusive practice in the politics of our state. the breach is in your face and every sphere of public life is split, down the middle and wide,wide open. i thought i was indifferent about politics, i thought two people could be friends/lovers/cousins regardless of their political allegiences, it is becoming increasingly difficult in the wake of the atrocities perpetrated by the ruling party in nandigram, suddenly all those forgotten, buried incidents come rushing back- anandamaargis, baantala. maarichjhnaapi...names, of places, of people, of horror.all i can manage to do is swallow my scream,hold it in. i must be going mad. or else the world is turning into a phantasmagoria of evil dreams. i open the newspaper and i see the picture of a young girl tearing down the the streets, stark naked, and a guy behind her taking pictures on his cell phone camera. i feel like throwing up. i feel like physically mutilating that guy, actually gouging out his eyes,tearing out his fingernails, castrating him.i feel not shame but hatred. such utter,blinding,searing,foul hatred that i want to cease existing. but it is not the first time...every other week there is a little paragraph hidden away in some obscure page about dalit women who have been stripped and paraded by policemen/panchayet men/de facto zamindars....nobody takes pictures,so they dont make it to the front page. every time we walk the streets in protest they throw us a question with the casual nonchalance of a victor "what choices do you have?to this raping, killing,exploiting regime?"...everytime we are effectively silenced. it is shit scary when the only alternative to tyranny is anarchy. i think its woolf who said sometimes in order to breathe you need to break the window open.....

incoherence

2007-11-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

i did a strange thing today. i stretched myself on the , shiny emerald green floor and felt the metallic -cold of the cement against my palms ,my cheeks, my shorts-clad bare legs, i felt the warmth of blood seep in, i put my ear against it and heard the throbbing of four generations of hearts, i heard the far away din of 72 long years of laughter,conversations, fights and weepings, i saw fleeting glimpses of births, deaths, marriages, funerals, jhulons, saraswati pujos...i whispered to my house and it whispered back, and then i kissed the floor and asked for its forgiveness, for i am powerless to stop what is going to happen to my home...i feel like a hypocritical,two-faced,lying,conniving,snivelling,spineless bitch...four poster beds look incongruous in cramped,two roomed, low ceilinged flats....i am sorry,i am sorry...

dhur sala...

2007-11-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

three friggin term papers to submit. three days to go. and i am blogging...globbing...how does it matter anyway?stupid bitch of a librarian keeps fining me 20 bucks for books which were in tatters since 1969...i come back from two back to back trips and i sit down with chaucer!!and i recently discovered that i am not just the laziest and most indolent bum alive, but i am also a moron par excellence. i will flunk, or worse get average marks, and i will never ever get a job. in which case my boyfriend will dump me and my parents will disown me.(my nearest and dearest ones are guided solely by vested interests in their dealings with me),there...now i have become completely schizophrenic...reading a certain blog for too long takes its toll on one...where was i?oh, the complete failure that is doyeeta's life...yes, so i will never get a job..because i suck at everything...seldom have i met someone who is as singularly untalented as i am...i suck at sports, singing, dancing, painting, cooking, and pottery and skydiving and playing the banjo.(i can, however, roll joints of hash and marijuana,or both together!). i am also rude, foul mouthed and bitchy. my value in the marriage market would be lesser than mamata banerjee's. so, since i will never get a job, and will be disinherited and dumped unceremoniously on my bony ass, maybe i will offer tuitions to people even more dimwitted or merely misled. and when i am thirty seven and still skinny, maybe i will marry a fifty yr old, five feet three, widower, with a paunch, a bald pate and three pesky kids. or even better, die a virgin. there. thats my life for you. oh god!! this is so pathetic....

kashi bashi

2007-10-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

benares trip was an eye opener in more than one way. it was my first real trip minus parental supervision (i want to forget the nightmarish memories of shantiniketan), so basically we were six girls and a guy absolutely on our own in a city which overwhelms all your senses and faculties with the sheer energy it exudes, the tremendous livingness it pulsates with. benares is crowded beyond imagination(by humans,bulls and monkeys and horses), it is dusty, dirty, with terrible roads, even worse transportation, the stink of cowdung clings to your nose no matter where you go, but god is it beautiful!! its breathtaking,and in a very palpable way it is also holy. the vishwanath temple with its labyrinth of convoluted galis, prasad snatching monkeys who pee on pilgrims, the stampedes which occur every hour, the slippery floors slick with mud and rotten leaves,flowers and milk, heavily armed policemen at every bend in the lanes, is holy and you can feel it. not because of the shiva linga drowned in a tub of milk, but because of the thousands who make this pilgrimage everyday, from every corner of our vast country, with so much faith in their hearts.poor, underfed, illiterate, they probably spend their lives' savings on this single venture, they stand for hours in a confused queue, bewildered, tormented by monkeys, jostled and frisked by policemen, sometimes not understanding the language even, they wait patiently for a glimpse or a touch of the linga, have done so for centuries past, will do so for centuries to come,believing, truly believing, and that is awe inspiring, that unquestioning, unshakeable faith is what makes the place holy.
the ganga arati was another spectacle that enthralled me. we hired a boat from dashashwamedh ghat and went down the ganges looking at all the ghats, from the one where raja harishchandra slaved under a dom, to the one where rani mukherjee danced for laga chunri mein daag! it was twilight, and since it was the day after bijoya some bhashans were still taking place. we sailed down to manikarnika and i was mesmerised by the burning pyres and the smell of scorching flesh. it was like being caught in a time warp, it was so ancient, so enduring...i never was an atheist,but i never thought i could believe so much in any ritualized, institutionalized religion as i did then. i snapped at friend for trying to take pictures of the pyres,for some reason it seemed sacrilegeous and irreverent.we headed back to dashahswamedh for the arati. it was an hour long performance by four priests (7 on prayag ghat),and it was perfectly choreographed.the arati takes place everyday,yet the the ghat was crowded as if it was a once a year affair.i thought of huxley of all people,but with a shock i realized i did not share his rational attitude,nor his cynicism.i did not despise these people for believing that a dip in the dirty, polluted waters of the ganges wouldsend them straight to heaven, the idea of being "lukewarm" in their faith seemed ludicrous and unreal to me. i was a part of these people,not a detached observer, for all my education and scientific bleeargh the arati moved me spiritually (inspite of its obvious artificiality)and emotionally. i returned to the vishwanath temple again the next day braving the risk of being trampled to death. while watching the superbly synchronized arati on dashahswamedh and prayag ghats i furtively dipped my hand in the slimy waters of the ganges and prayed.

irish cream myths

2007-10-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

it tastes of very cold coffee, with a dash of caramel and a generous dousing of remy martin...its heavenly...believe me....just that calcutta's weather is not really tailormade for anything irish, coffee or cream, i sweated for hours....but its worth it...butter and alcohol, laced with milk and melted sugar, with a hint of coffee...or coffee and alcohol with an aftertaste of butter....the taste is so fluid, so smooth, so changeable, i could describe it in a hundred other ways...i know now...this is the much publicized nectar ...the stuff with which greeks washed down their daily ration of buffalo meat(if you have read iliad you know all about the buffalo sacrfices and then the meat and the hides etcetera)...oh yes!!!either that or the other drink which their indian counterparts had a penchant for..somras... and it deserves all the hype....

cliched story

2007-09-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a civilized, secular city there was a boy,who was poor and a muslim. and there was a girl who was rich and a hindu. they fell in love. her family disapproved. they eloped and got married. the family members were hurt. now, the head honchos of the police, for some unfathomable reason took matters into their hands and interceded on the family's behalf. maybe their benevolent souls were touched by the family's grief. anyhow, they tried to coax,cajole and finally coerce the boy into leaving the girl. the guy was poor, the girl was rich. but they were in love, and newly married. so he ignored their threats and their bribes. sounds like a plot replicated in a zillion bollywood movies? here comes the twist.
the girl went to visit her father,rumoured to be on his deathbed, and never came back. a few days later the boy died. ostensibly he committed suicide. very likely, right?the most natural thing ,for a spirited,defiant young man,all geared up to fight for his rights, to do?and perhaps the most convenient thing to happen for all parties concerned......
the girl is nowhere to be found. the familyhas vanished without a trace. and the head honchos,inthe time honoured manner of all head honchos escape unscathed.the media and the politicians have a ball,cashing in and slinging mud to their hearts content.the girl is silent. as always.
moral of the story: there are two kinds of people in this world,only two kinds. ones who are rich,have power, have agency, in short ones with clout. and ones who are poor,with no clout,who are disempowered to an extent that it is a wonder that they survive.and the ones who can get away with it make this world a shitty place for the ones who cant.i am not saying that the religious factor isinsignificant in this case. but would this have happened if the guy in question had been shahrukh khan? no. but this might have happened if the guy was a hindu,and as poor,as disempowered.
but this is a convenient ending to a hackneyed story. this is how it always ends. men are either made to conform or killed. and we,women, cant make a difference anyway,or choose not to.

from the autumn testament

2007-09-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

sometime if we are not yet
if we are not gone,if we have not come
under seven layers of dust
and Death's dry footsteps
we shall be together ,love
strangely confused together,
our spines,our cheeky eyes
our feet which never met
our indelible kisses. but what is the use
of graveyard unity? let life not
part us,and to hell with death.

i quote from memory,so please pardon omissions or alterations,if any. i am not good at this.

random ranting

2007-09-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

oh and i also forgot to whine about how they don't make them like that anymore,ones-who-can-make-you-go-wobbly-at-the-knees-with-one-single-glance,damn!!

men,i mean,of course.

its a rich man's world

2007-09-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

i am going through an all time low as far as finances are concerned, neither my birthday nor the upcoming pujo yielded enough cash from my 'raboner gushti', i mean whats the use of having a dozen uncles if they aren't going to pamper the youngest in the family by showering her with blessings(monetary ones, that is).
1)haven't been to oly in 9 months!!! christ!! i am mortified.
2)of all times,i chose the present to fall in love with,of all things,smirnoff green apple twist, which costs 130 freakin bucks a nib!!
3)have to take the boyfriend out for dinner.
4)and then there is pujo....i hoped to drown myself in expensive booze,but never got around savingenough dough.
5)swimming season over, taar maane full fledged smoking begins again, tar maane 4 bucks per cigarette!!!
bottomline (for dimwitted people like march hare who always miss the point) too many things to do,too little money to do them with,i think i will go rob a bank or something.........

absurd

2007-09-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

I suck at crossing streets. whenever i see a car or a bus speeding towards me i shut my eyes and stand rooted to the spot...which is just about the surest way to commit suicide. yesterday while stranded at the rashbehari crossing opposite Jugals it suddenly occurred to me that whenever i get out of my house i place my life in other people's hands. we all do. think about it. we start walking when the traffic signal is red, which means that we have faith on those people who are behind the wheels that they would not suddenly start their car and run us over. there is no reason why they should, again there is no guarantee that they won't. right? the fact that we do not go to work everyday armed and armoured from head to toe proves that we take it for granted that...say for example,our colleagues wont stab us in a fit of anger...or bash our heads against the wall or even shoot us. i know this sounds absurd but think about the world we inhabit...you go to a theatre with your family,and there is a blast and 90 people die, or you are going to office and a bus runs you over trying to overtake another, or there is a blast in the metro...yet we keep faith. perhaps mainly because there is no other way to survive,if you lose faith in your fellow human beings you will crack under the strain and probably be diagnosed with schizophrenia, but partly also because we want to. this entrusting of one's life into hands of complete strangers,this keeping of faith i think is the mark of civilization, of a community. there is something very tragically naive in this....human beings still believing in a cause and effect correlation, still looking for a rationale, still believing in an essentially arbitrary, absurd , and irrational universe.

a moment

2007-08-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

is it a sin to be happy?what if i look around me and see dirt and death and indignity and violence everywhere and yet i am happy here and now?does that mean i am an insensitive creep?i am sorry but i cant deal with morbidity....very rarely does life on this planet seem worth all this shit,i agree, but it does sometimes,however rarely.these are my profound thoughts of the day.wonder why i am blogging with a vengeance?

2007-08-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

i wish time would freeze. i like it right now. nothing special...but i feel unusually content...

2007-08-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

somebody said recently that reading Petratch's sonnets is one of the great moments in one's life,like reading Keats's Odes for the first time...or Hamlet maybe....its a transformative experience...sure is...dunno bout petrarch...but when you are reading ,at times you stumble upon a line, a phrase, a sentence that is so beautiful and you think of the grecian urn...happens to me...its such a thrill of sheer hedonistic pleasure...its a heady experience, a surge of pride in what human civilization can achieve, a sudden revival of faith in the now dead and gone vision. if i could write something like that, i would die happy.

fuck all that!!!

2007-05-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

i think sometimes we tend to ruin the pleasure of reading with too much criticism. thats the only thing i regret about studying literature. nowadays i cant seem to be able to read a novel and just immerse myself into the world it depicts. no... coz i am too busy dissecting it ,style,content,narratorial perspectives and god knows what else. critics who dont have it in them to churn out a single convincing work of fiction spend their lives in analysing (read:finding faults) in works of literature which however juvenile technically,still make me cry. reading catcher in the rye gave me a trip,i was hallucinating for weeks afterwards.now if i had sat down to analyse holden's existential angst then ...i dont know...the trip wold have been ruined,my reading experience would have been ruined.you can propound high faluting theories,but literature is not meant to conform to theories,is it?can literary theory ever be precisely applicable?it isnt like physics or some thing for god's sake.when i finish reading a book or a poem i like wallowing in it,enjoying the lingering aftertaste,finding arbitrary connections with other completely random books i have read before.trying to formulate a coherent chain of thought but really enjoying the disoriented feeling of being stranded between reality and fiction,chasing ideas which are appealing because they are elusive...coz i have tried pinning them down..and then they only make me feel stupid.walking down the street and then suddenly 2 kids on motilal nehru road remind me of scout and jem...that is why i am addicted to books,and have been so ever since i could read....and since i dont wanna lose that,well there's just one option....i simply have to stop studying!(at least for today......seriously man...i cant take this chaat anymore....)

homeward bound....

2007-01-30T00:49:00.000-08:00

i'd forgotten how great it feels to be back home...really...sleeping in a four poster...high ceilings..beams..orange street lights...and oh...wonder of wonders..to be actually able to see the moon from my window...the sky...sunshine...a top view of the street...windows wide open,verandah door ajar,my home...teak doors gleaming darkly at night...the thrilling adventure of going to the loo at night...across the dalan..the terrace...then scurrying back as fast as possible...slipping back into bed ...breathless and triumphant ,at being able to get the better of all the ghosts and thugs the terrace is infested with,yet again,after months of no practice...but my imaginary spectral adversaries haunt the terrace no more...not because i am 19 now..but because the mango tree which was their thek ,has been cut down....like this house will be brought down...and though the grown up part of me is conviced its for the best,and is fighting valiantly to keep up appearances, tua is counting the last days of her existence, for with no 9 no. my childhood will vanish without a trace...forever...and i will hate the sight of the monstrosity that will replace it...geographically speaking,that is....................

ME BACK!!!

2006-11-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

ashamed as i am to admit it, i read my first bankimchandra novel pretty late in life...actually a couple of weeks ago!! at the risk of sounding irreverent i just have to say ...the dude ROCKS...oh yeah!!contrary to my previous preconcieved prejudices(there arunava...beat that!) he is any thing but slow...in fact its one of the fastest reads in bangla i have encountered in a long time. in terms of readability and grippingness(if there is any such word) he can give any modernday thriller a run for its money. the language is crisp and lucid and astoundingly simple(yes simple,remember bangla prose was at an infantile stage back then)...initially the heavily sanskritized bangla and the interminable compound words flummox one a bit,and the addressing of women by replacing the "a" at the end of their names with an "e" (following the formula of declension of nouns in sanskrit) seems very quaint, ...but you get the hang of it by the fifth page..from then on its smooth sailing. the plots are fantastic,his knowledge of history is mindboggling,his style is racy,fluid,and without any jerks whatsoever,his wit is unparallelled,in one word: UNputdownable.

finished 'kapalkundala' and 'durgeshnandini' in rapid succession..'anandamath' lined up next!!
refrain from cursing me people for boring you with what has been said in a 100 different ways before this....i was so overwhelmed i just had to ...you know...gush!(pretty much like the rustic who waxes eloquent after seeing the metro rail for the first time or something of that sort...you know what i mean)...thanks ma for nagging me until i took down the rachanabali out of sheer frustration!!

growin' up and likin' it for the first time

2006-04-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

me voted, me exercised me democratic rights, me fulfilled me democratic duties, me went to the polling centre with me voter's id with me parents and uncles and the rest,me waited breathlessly while they looked for me name on the list, me danced an impromptu jig when they found it, me strutted selfconsciousy upto the machine and me cast me vote, me came home delirious with joy and self importance, me called up d and talked nonstop nonsense,me is still ecstatic, me can't stop staring at the blue ink mark on me index finger,me participated in the politics of me nation for the first time,............
.......and anybody who says me vote is trivial in the larger scheme of things or that voting is a meaningless activity, me would request that cynical bastard to go screw himself/herself....'coz i don't give a fuck what people say...me knows me vote counts...

wonder whats wrong with me???

2006-04-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

1)its april and already the heat is unbearable!

2)end sems are practically round the corner and i am still unable to move my lazy bum and get down to some serious studying!

3)i am sick,literally,physically sick...ma is sitting me down to lunch everyday with a wooden ruler in her hand and a look on her face that says she wont hesitate to use it if i throw any more tantrums!

4)i think most people around me are pretentious lying bastards or retards...has to be either one!

5)the constant terrifying anticipation of this month's phone bill is scaring the living daylights out of me!

....................and yet i can't stop smiling to myself!!!

PISSING OFF!!!

2006-03-24T23:14:00.000-08:00

being born and brought up in calcutta,and being an outdoor
person,and above all being a girl,i am pretty much used to
people passing comments at me....in fact i have become so
accustomed to the fact that girls,generally are commented
at,that it scarcely bothers me anymore...

today however i came dangerously close to losing my
temper...an hour ago i went out for a smoke with 3
friends(perhaps i should specify that all 3 were guys)...the
first fag of the day still gives me a pleasant dizzy
feeling,so me and a guy sat down on a "rock" and lighted
up...3 people(men) sitting on the adjoining "rock" turned
around and stared long and hard at me...and i bet they were
thinking the same thought:"kolijug!!"

if they had been content with just that look i wouldnt have
minded in the least...but then i guy says"meyechhele hoye
jonmalo keno?betachhele holei parto!"times like these indeed
make me wish that i had been a guy...i think its the epithet
"meyechhele" which got to me,i dont know why i find it
extremely derogatory..my friend got very pissed but i asked
him to ignore it,being a guy he was of course blissfully un
aware that this is something girls have to face
everyday,this and more,liked being groped in crowded
buses...i'll write another blog on that sometime ...getting
back to today's incident...then they went on to sing obscene
bhojpuri songs..and said stuff like"era sob injiri bola
mal,dekhle hobe khorcha achhe.."..i wanted to go and
khistify them to hell and i am confident that when it comes
to khistis i can give all of them run for their
money..bangla khistis at that,not"injiri"!!but they were 3
guys with me,i didnt want a public brawl...R(my friend) was
fuming,but i swallowed my anger and asked him to chill..he said"its so damn unfair,that i can get away with it 'coz i am a guy,and u have to face this just 'coz u r a girl?"..the sheer futility of that statement made me smile.."welcome to calcutta" i said!!
i am not trying to defend smoking here mind you...i do NOT think that girls who smoke are progressive or modern or whatever...smoking is not cool,it is unhealthy and harmful,and an extremely bad habit,but its equally bad for guys AND girls,what i'm trying to say here is that it doesn't make it worse just because i am a girl!!

since i joined ju,i have grown used to people not giving
girls who smoke a second look,but outside the safe haven of
my university and presi(which is where i mostly hang out)i
see the world hasn't changed a bit...disapproving looks i
can take,raised eyebrows mild comments i can take,but
sometimes people just cross the limits of decency...i always
hide my fag when i encounter elderly matrons on the
street...why hurt people's sensibilities deliberately?my
parents know that i smoke,so do the resr of my raboner
gushti,i told them myself,because i didnt want them to come
to know of it from gayepora relatives or neighbours...if
they dont have a problem with it(i mean they do,but not
because i am a girl!)what the fuck is the problem of these
people?
whoa!!!that was one intense blog!!good thing i got it off my chest though....i should stop before i turn into a militant feminist!

LACK IN LIFE

2006-03-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

couple of friends have decided to join the blogging community....which by the way means that they have reached those dizzying heights of lack in life,from where the only escape route is through blogging,otherwise i've heard that people often die of absolute inertia!!so here's to the new bloggers on the block{drumrolls...........12gun salute.}

On a more serious note the lyad is getting worse everyday...the other day we decided not to meet(or call ) each other for 48 hrs,needless to say our love for each other got the better of this noble resolution...of course i blame it all on the baishnabghata-howrah minibus!(i'm sure yippee would concur)...suddenly yippee has maniacal (is there such a word?)gleam in her eyes...and before we knew it we were dragging off sen and ragz onto the next bus(bbd bag incidentally!)...then we called up all sorts of people and told them to come over to scoop,then we sang on the top of our voices( from light my fire to soundof music tracks to purano shei diner kotha...versatile kake bole?) the people on the bus later complimented us on it...i swear i'm not making this up!!

anyway we went to scoop,and from somewhere,i do not know where,swarms of people turned up,and from a quartet we became a group 15 people strong,singing lustily,swearing and cursing our way to glory!!ishita brought along some hot chick...my illustrious chhoku cousin rolled up his sleeves and got to work immediately...and we walked all the way to eden gardens,thence to maidan,while chatofying them shamelessly!!!then some more lyad consumption on the city greens...

finally we mustered enough energy to move our lazy bums off the grass and onto a metro...needless to say kukhyato metro pagli got into her groove..me and yippee got off at rabindra sadan,stalked a guy or two on our way to bcl,where we got books(an activity markedly out of sync with the other events of the day) and finally after a couple of fags we made our way back home...the tables were ironically turned against us and in one of the dark alley ways of our beloved city a lady scared the shit out of us simply by smiling at us without any apparent reason! we hailed a cab and ran for dear life...and when i got back home i heaved a sigh of relief and thought to myself"now THAT is a day well spent"!!!

here (h)goes (h)to hangla hutom

2006-03-11T06:09:00.000-08:00

8 qualities i would want my guy to possess:
A)has to be older than me and taller than me...fat guys stand NO chance!!!

B)has to have a proper name and surname,has to live in a proper locality(yeah baby!!i am a despicable snob as far as para is concerned!!)...i will have to post another blog(with yippee)in order to elucidate upon 'proper locality'!!1

C)has to be a bangali,not just in terms of parentage...actually make that a calcuttan...

D)HAS to be a guy,if you know what i mean...has to be in to sports and a lot of direct bawaali and bangla khistis and...has to be genuinely changra and bokhate,mane keoramota jate ontor theke ashe,not a wannabe keora,has to be seriously chhitial!!!......nahole kukhyato metro paglir sathe jombe ki kore...

E)parallelly,he has to be tolerably well read in both english AND bangla..(any other language is an added bonus,but these 2 are compulsory)...also into music(anything but heavy metal,kane jate kala na hoy!!)and movies...snobs and aantels needn't apply though,if he looks down on sholay or rahul dev burman he can go fuck himself!!!

F)has to be intelligent,not brilliant academically,but intelligent,sensible,PRACTICAL,streetsmart....al pacino to hobena,but i have to be physically attracted to him,and he to me...plus has gotta be good at...er...well...lets just call it stuff..shall we?(hope i am good as well!!)previous experience will be appreciated,jouno rog will not!!

G)this one is really important....he MUST be able to hold a fantastic conversation...my definitions of a fantastic conversation are somewhat unconventional,has to make me laugh till my sides ache...i must be able to talk to him,you know ,really talk,about anything,ships and shoes and sealing wax,cabbages and kings,........late into the night,not necessarilly everynight,but pretty often,often enough to make me stay in love with him..

H)which brings us to our last point..i must be in love with him...and even if he isnt IN love with me,he must love me at least(yes ,there is a subtle difference)as far as it is possible for him to love anybody,i refuse to play second fiddle to anyone ...has to trust me unquestioningly,unhesitatingly,(which will be reciprocated),has to give me my space,and kinda be aloof..i mean i HATE gayepora public...has to be my friend....possessive alpha males needn't apply,kono shala banchod amake terms dictate korte ashbena...i value my independance too much!

PS:neshakhorder bishesh patta dewa hoibe!!!

heavy fuel

2006-03-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

Last time I was sober, man I felt bad
Worst hangover that I ever had
It took six hamburgers and scotch all night
Nicotine for breakfast just to put me right
'cos if you wanna run cool
if you wanna run cool
If you wanna run cool,
you got to run
On heavy, heavy fuel

I don't care if my liver is hanging by a thread
Don't care if my doctor says I ought to be dead
When my ugly big car won't climb this hill
I'll write a suicide note on a hundred dollar bill
'cos if you wanna run cool
If you wanna run cool
Yes if you wanna run cool,
you got to run
On heavy, heavy fuel

heavy fuel by dire straits.....gotta thank ragz for introducing me to MY ANTHEM,i ommitted 2 stanzas in the middle on purpose,didn't have any relevance for me...

with or without you

2006-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

...you have started it again,why do you keep doing this to
me?every fuckin time i think that this is it,i'm not gonna
fall for this anymore,ever again in my life?
8 months of
effort is flushed down the drain by a 15 mins conversation,8
months of superhuman restraint,self control,self
castigation,8 months of supressed yearning,of desperate
desparate loneliness....all annihilated because of one
goddamn phonecall...no tell me,seriously,how do you do it?tell me,will i ever get over
you?give me a chance,guru,you cant just keep doing this to me
,you know...you cant just plough your way through my
defences,give me time,give me space,its hard enough without
you reappearing in my life every single time i heave a sigh
of relief ....or longing....whatever.
can't really blame you when at the back of my mind a little
voice keeps thrusting the truth in my face...that somewhere
deep down i do not even want to get over you,and though i
know nothings gonna happen between us ever,and though i know
i will never be satisfied with the "we-are-just-friends"
situation either,i still keep stumbling around in this blind
alley...
i don't wanna risk it again,i don't wanna let you know that you are the only person in this world who can make me cry,i don't want you to find out that as far as i am concerned,the rest of the world can go fuck itself as long as you are ok...and the gyanpaapi that i am,in full possession of my senses,totally aware of the consequences of my actions i walk straight ahead,unfalteringly......... 'coz i can't live with or without you...

we,the whores...

2006-02-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

the whores of jude...yeah people,thats what we've been
officially branded as,by a certain students union in our
university!and very frankly,my sense of modesty (if whores
have any,that is) is not outraged,if anything i am
amused....but then i am a fallen woman!
the whores:mojo(matal m***),sen(nati
m***),scorpionragz(porua m***)and yippie,the madame
anc:our pimp/regular client/test pilot
alluder:his sidekick
the morcha this time is,"ANC HATAO,LEDGE BACHAO"...anc
apparently causes visual pollution by cuddling up with
us,the inmates of his harem...and we being the sexually
depraved sluts,dont protest while he violates our chastity!well what can one expect of hussies?if we'd been good girls
i would have slapped anc everytime he tries to do a
porphyria on me(ie tries to strangle me with my hair),sen
would have filed a complaint with the antisexual harassment
cell (of which NG is in charge) when anc wiped his nose on
her hair,yippie would have pushed him off the ledge while he
unsuspectingly used her as a pillow,but then,as i said
before we are all fallen women,so....
hmmm....i think the poor dudes are
seriously,severely,sexually frustrated(am getting better at
this alliteration thingy)...i feel for them ,i genuinely
do!i understand their consternation at the apasanskriti we
are spreading like wildfire(or hiv??)by our shameless
behaviour,of course we are expected to overlook the fact
that they can conveniently overlook the people having sex or
having grass(according to their preference) on the stairs but the dudes should really get a grip on their fevered
imaginations and also get a life...its hightime!!!but i reiterate folks,we aren't pissed or hurt,we think you
are hilarious,keep up the good work of making our sides
split with laughter every now and then....come to think of
it,i might even vote for them this time.

aschhe bochhor abar hobe....

2006-02-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

you know how people talk about their earliest memories...?i was trying to remember mine today,and i realized that almost all of them are inextricably linked with saraswati pujo....they don't form a coherent picture,just a few disjointed,unconnected bits and pieces which resurface from the abyss of forgetfulness...like that night in late january,my entire family(which amounts to close to 30 people)crammed at the back of a lorry,along with our saraswati thakur,towering majestically above half a dozen other diminutive idols(belonging to friends)the lorry thundering towards babughat,everyone screaming their respective heads off,and poor little three yr old me,sobbing my heart out on baba's lap because i was exiled to the front of the lorry by ma who thought i'd catch a cold in the open!...cut to another year(or was it the same one?)2 o clock at night,our drawing room full of people,thakur (the cook,not the goddess) bringing in cups of tea at regular intervals,the room reeking of homemade glue(flour boiled in water),everyone frantically cutting out patterns out of silver paper because the decorations were still incomplete and the pujo was in less than 5 hours,.....
i still live in that same eccentric joint family,saraswati pujo is still a huge affair,there is the same madness,pandemonium and reigning chaos,but every year i feel something slipping away...my jethus are mostly on the wrong side of 60,most of my cousins have shifted base to other metropolises..other countries even,so have my father's friends and their children,me and my battalion of friends still manage to infuse life in the pujo with our 'changramo'......dunno what will become of it after us...i mean maybe what was unimaginable to us ...9 no. bari without saraswati pujo...is slowly looming up as an inevitability.

sgt pepper's lonely hearts club

2006-01-31T04:45:00.000-08:00

a friend of mine came up with this brilliant idea,all us single people are going to unite and form a club of the aforementioned name,and there are quite a LOT of us out there. we are going to have regular meetings(read:booze parties) where we'll exchange sobstories and bitch about people who are seeing other people...we'll also have a band(lead vocalist:yours truly) which will regale us with thoroughly depressing music.members who are indulging in clandestine affairs are to be punished with expulsion.
what is surprising is neither the fact thar we are 18yrs old and already this frustrated,nor that we actually have enough lack in life to be enthused about such an idea,but that some of my friends who are in relationships are sad because they can't join our nesha sessions and want to dump their partners temporarily just so they can get sloshed with their friends!!now you cannot possibly beat THAT ,can you?you know what they say about the grass(no pun intended)being greener on the other side....
as for me,i am joining the club in a desperate attempt to tempt fate....and i look forward to the day i will be ceremoniously kicked out of it!!

refreshers

2006-01-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

after one entire semester has passed us by,we finally got a fresher's welcome. i should we should be grateful that we got one at all. wonder what kickstarted our seniors into frenzied activity?could be our incessant nagging(yeah!thats right..we had to beg for a freshers),could be their "bibeker dongshon"...doesn't matter though,what matters is that we got one!ug 2-s went into a lot of trouble thinking up a weird quiz and a crazy(albeit exhausting) scavenger hunt...food was ok,and we had several glasses of cold drinks each(wish our drinks were spiked though)
Boy!are we hung up on our professors or what?i mean lets give the poor blokes a break...we are constantly gossipping about them,leching at them,and our seniors go a step further by organizing quizes about them {sample question:who poured ink down whose ears?}there was also a round of banging..............the DESKS,you pervert!!!that was our take of the buzzer round.then a scavenger hunt,where we tore through the campus like maniacs looking for the mass comm. dept.(which,apparently is located in the middle of nowhere)and then back to the english dept. again...thus we confirmed the already deeprooted conviction of the rest of the university that all judeans are raving lunatics!we created a huge commotion in our own dept,much to the consternation and amusement of our prof.s,..we caused suk chou to retreat back into his office,which,my seniors tell me,is a feat unparallelled!the expression on adg's face made me wish for a camera,sup chou came out saying"eshob ki hoche?"...we paid little heed in our madness.
gigantic gulps of 7up later,we settled down for a round of spin-the-bottle.this one ug2 guy had us in splits by his "jean jacket"performance,'sen' was the item girl,don juan had hug and kiss(ugh) an ug2 guy,the second part of his task remained unaccomplished(god be praised!!)after a couple of rounds of dumbcharades,the ceremony was ended by our seniors announcing unceremoniously"its over,go home,we're off ourselves!"the only thing missing was live music...man where is SUTTA?nonetheless it was an original idea,and extremely good fun!ug2 people, if you ever happen to read this-THANKS!

the answer,my friend,is.........

2006-01-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

i have a question with which i have been badgering all my friends for a pretty long time now.no khillifying dude,i need a concrete answer now,what is it with guys and blowjobs?why are guys(the perverted jerks that they are)so hung up on blowjobs?i personally am of the opinion that blowjobs are freaky...why would you want to put it in your mouth when there are so many more interesting ,hygeinic,logical,and fruitful options present?i mean,c'mon,mouth is for FOOD for god's sake...and what guys like putting into it are not only their sexual organs but also their excretory apparatus,ugh i swear,how much dirtier can you get?...of course,i am but a naive ignorant fool. still,no guy ,however experienced, has been able to give me a proper answer to my question(which i ask from a very disinterested,objective and purely academic curiousity).you can guess my level of utter frustration from the fact that i am even posting such a blog..but trust me,this question has been bugging me for a long time now..so people ,jobab chai,jobab dao. ps:no indecent ,pornographic,or personal comments please!

i am happy

2006-01-07T07:57:00.001-08:00

it is thirty minutes past midnight,i stand on my balcony..the street in front of me is bathed in an eerie saffron light,the night is chilly. wrapping my shawl tighter around me i rest my elbows on the railing and philosophically survey the streetdogs coiled up,sound asleep...kaleidoscopic images flash through my brain,all of a sudden there is an aching void in the pit of my stomach and a huge lump in my throat,i ask myself "hey what's this?"..having had no prior experience,it is sometime before i realise with a jolt it is nostalgia i am stricken with. i was 13 years old when i suddenly discovered that this world is a wonderful place to live in.the boundaries of my world coincided with those of my school and considering the fact that my school had always been (in)famous for its notorious lack of space,it is indeed a wonder that i never felt claustrophobic!i could keep count of the number of times i was absent from school during those 5 yrs(viii to xii)on one hand...school was a constant source of entertainment,school was a place where i learnt everything i know today(not lessons,the stuff which matters you now)...i learnt paradoxical lessons in deceit and honesty,chivalry and cowardice,how to get into scrapes and how to extricate ourselves by lying ourselves black in the faces,first crush,first heartbreak,first drunken party during the digha trip...man i could write a book on this and give the goddamn "war and peace" a run for its money....in short school was the only thing "worth living for,worth dying for,worth fighting for"(especially the last,the brawls inevitably ended with poor -undernourished -but-lionhearted -me being beaten black and blue!) and then,just when i thought we'd started rolling,it was packup time. no,i don't want to "go back",that never works ,right?i am happy,wherever i am...but when i walk down that familiar stretch from anandamela to phaari(ahhh!phaari ,even the phuchkawala knew us by names) i feel like just walking those few steps and rushing to school,i restrain myself,i know i'd just end up feeling sad and confused,though i hate admitting it even to myself,i know i don't belong there anymore..actually i don't belong anywhere..except perhaps in my gang ,people i've grown up with,people,who(i know for a fact)are similarly plagued on sleepless wintry nights by happy memories which leave them inexplicably sad......they are the people with whom i am at home,in the truest sense,god bless those bastards ,i love every one of them!sure i am happy today,at least i have them,most of my college friends have no one to fall back on you know,and i have sense enough to realize that nothing,but nothing,lasts forever,and that's the way it should be.but last saturday when we did go to school to collect passes for our reunion and we ended up spending two breathless hours playing hide n seek and kumirdanga in the empty courtyard like we used to, during countless tiffin breaks...i felt kind of silly but also in my heart of hearts i knew that i'll never ,ever in my life,be as deliriously,blindly,insanely happy as i was back then...no substance in this world can give me that kind of a high again i was kind of apprehensive about my own emotions regarding the reunion next week,now i couldn't careless,i already had my reunion! it's past one'o'clock...i might as well try and get some sleep...

momentary lapse of reason

2005-12-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

yesterday was an incredible experience,amazing but very very scary.after my exams got over we went to the lakeroad ccd,my college gang and my school gang.we were having the usual hookah after a lot of bawali(can you believe it?the losers asked for age proof!)i was shuttling between the two groups...then 2 more friends dropped in. we were just about to get moving when these two,actually 1,came up with this brilliant idea......"ai erase-x korbi?"..korbi mane? we learnt soon enough!ok,i'd better confess right here that i broke my resolution of abstaining till the new year.in my defence i didnt know that erase-x could get me that high.oops ,did i just say high?i meant SPACED OUT!!i'd better begin at the beginning.we bought 4 bottles of erase-x,and then we took out the actual bottles of whitener,apparently the diluter was the real stuff.we went to a friend's place,that building is crawling with my professors and their (weird,cute,pinktailed!) progeny.we then proceeded to his flat .,,all the time he had been telling me how erase-x could make us hallucinate,i was very skeptical about the entire idea because i'd tried sniffing erase-x in baba's office..nothing happened.i didn't know that not only was i using the wrong technique but also the wrong bottle! the great guru however showed us how to DO it,you pour some of the stuff into a plastic bag and then shove your head into it and then start sniffing.we got the hang of it ..then he dimmed the lights and put on some fantastic music and finally we got started..i took my first sniff and i haven't a single clue what hit me.i took a secon d sniff and i spaced out then and there.i wasn't high,i wasn't stoned,i wasn't hit...i was simply spaced man.totally...then i dont know..isuppose i kept on taking sniffs..and kept getting more and more spaced,and there was some music in the background..floyd probably..but in that kind of a situation floyd would be playing in my head anyway...i was in the truest sense 'comfortably numb".(was that the song?)and i had a vague feeling of......grabbing one bottle after the other and the sense of tragic loss on finding them empty and then.... nothing!and then suddenly we woke up ,all of us,as if from a trance,a deep slumber is more like it.we just stared blankly at one another's faces and it was pretty much written there that neither of us had the foggiest notion what had happened in the intervening one hour(it was past seventhirty already)..i had a dim recollection of calling up suchismita and a chorus of indistinguishable voices said something utterly unintelligible,(i later learnt that shion and the rest were khistifying the shit out of whoever had induced me to take chemicals)you wont believe it but we snapped out of it in a matter of minutes,we were completely in control without even a trace of a hangover.an amazing stroke of luck...ma called seconds after i came to.i mumbled some excuse for being late.and we sat wondering what just happened trying our best to recollect something....anything ..but it was as if we were stricken with partial amnesia...it scared the living day lights out of me,i mean can you imagine?the memory of an entire hour wiped clean,deleted,ERASED by the erase-x.the stuff directly hits your brain,when i took the first sniff i could feel currents coursing down each separate vein of my bromhotalu..and i dont remember the rest. you know why it is scary?first of all its a chemical,second it gave me a kick the likes of which i'd never felt before,third on the surface it appears to be deceptively safe 'coz there is no unwanted hangover included in the package-deal,fourth,as soon as we hit reality the jonota started clamouring for more,fifth,though you recover in an absurdly short space of time,once you get hooked there is no escape,sixth,if i hadn't been in the right company i could have been screwed...literally!and i probably wouldn't have remembered that either!last but most importantly(for perpetually-broke people like us)it is cheap...for twenty two bucks you can have the trip of a lifetime..with hallucinations and everything. these are the reasons why YOU must stay away from it,and also the very reasons why i will not! HI HI HA HA HAHA!!! GOTCHA! ok if any one accidentally stumbles across my nondescript blog and actually has enough time and patience to read this nonsense,i would like to add on a more serious note....NEVER EVER TRY THIS unless you have amazing selfcontrol.