porashunoe final jolanjoli

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

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

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

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....

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

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!

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...