Distant lit up memory

It is amazing how a totally unrelated thread conjures up a trail of memory and thoughts. I was reading Amartya Sen's "An uncertain glory" where he mentions the 2012 power outage in India which is one of the largest blackouts in history. It instantly brought back some memories from my childhood. My ancestral home is a small place called Nanoor which is about 22 kms from Shantiniketan (Rabindranath Tagore's base camp/ coincidentally Amartya Sen's birthplace). I used to spend my vacations here.Though officially electricity had reached these areas decades back but even till about 15 years back long and frequent blackouts were extremely common. When one has blackouts in cities it is in phases and very local to particular areas and one usually sees shimmering lights in the distance, hears a lot of traffic and activities continue over lit up candles after a brief sigh of disappointment from everyone. And the electricity is restored quite quickly which again only briefly blinds the eyes and brings about an orchestrated cry of relief while the television comes to life. The ceiling fan whizzes around clearing up the air of the waxy smell of blown out candle smoke dispersing away after their seductive wavy dance.

A blackout in the village is pitch dark. One hears voices from neighbouring homes while the moon shines on the pond in the backyard with frogs croaking in unison.If one listen's carefully one can hear the occasional prayer song and the tinkering beats of the accompanying khanjani from the vaishnav singers trailing down from the terracotta temples across the pond. The earthen lamp lit up as a daily ritual at the tiny alcove near the tulsi plant, shines brighter in the darkness. While these images are vivid in my mind there are some which are getting washed away by the years. Like the many stories which my uncle narrated from his readings. We kids heard him in rapt attention - stories of heroic pursuits and fairy tales and most fascinating horror and detective stories. He was a seasoned story teller who created an aura of suspense befitting the surrounding darkness and quiet. We bunch of restless children were entranced much to the relief of our mothers. 

I returned to the page I was reading realizing that I was fixated on it for quarter of an hour. I shut down the book and closed my eyes tight shut to remember some of the stories. The trouble is I am not well versed in bengali literature and therefore mapping stories to books/novels is a very difficult for me. But one word suddenly echoed in my mind - "Kalo Bhramar". I googled up the word and it instantly threw me the book of the same name by author Nihar Ranjan Gupta. I looked him up and read that he met Agatha Christie while in England and deeply inspired by her books wrote a four part series creating a detective of his own called "Kiriti Roy". One of the books in the series is called "Kalo Bhramar". 

My uncle passed away a couple of years back leaving behind a legacy of pleasant memories on otherwise dark summer months.

ps:- 

"Khanjani" - A musical instrument made up of metal plates which are struck to create a tinkering beat.

"Kalo Bhramar" - literal translation - Black bumble bee

"tulsi" - basil plant

The city in snapshots

When one pursues photography as a hobby, an unavoidable side effect is one looks at the world in "frames". Wherever you look you end up composing pictures.

As I travel in the city I look at the lady selling flower garlands and think of the vivid colors I could capture with her basket full of flowers keeping her wrinkled face and her guileless smile in the frame. The small grocery store with many many tidbits stacked in the shelves would make a stunning indoor HDR photo. The plump dog lying sleepily on the dusty road basking in the morning sun would make a warm and cozy composition. The small temple at the road side with the stark idol of the goddess and the burning earthen lamps lined up at her feet would help me capture a profound picture of devotion. A picture of the fish mongers sitting with their basket full of catch would make a good story of the city hustle bustle.

But then I wonder may be I should just buy a flower garland from the friendly lady and offer it to the goddess at the temple. I should probably go to the "mudir dokaan" or the grocery shop, get a pack of biscuits and feed it to the dog lazing around on the road. Then may be I could get some fresh fish from the sellers and return home with the delicious prospect of a sumptuous lunch of fish curry and rice.

Hmmm...fish curry and rice with two slit green chilies as a garnishing ...on a white and blue patterned plate. Now that would make a good photograph. Wouldn't it?

Shifting coordinates

Having grown up in military cantonments, shifting houses or relocating to new places was never a sad or an emotional phase for me. It was rather exciting. My sister and I used to treasure hunt through the boxes that my mother packed up. Treasure hunt it truly was. You get back many things that you have lost. They peep at you from corners which have been exposed because of the cleaning and emptying. You get to see many stowed away tidbits which are kept in the boxes for memory sake - the little white and brown striped frock which my sister wore and then I did when we were babies or that faded picture of my father's colleague who gave up his life for the country kept safe in that torn diary  from 1980. Shifting meant a new house, new friends and a new school. In spite of the unhappy grumblings from my mother we kids thoroughly enjoyed the shifting.

After a three year stint, I recently moved back to Kolkata from Santa Ana. A feeling of de ja vu set in as I emptied my house. Once again lost things came back unabashed and not guilty from their inconvenient absence.Once again I was excited to pack up looking forward to the next leg of life.

After the house was emptied it looked like just how it did when I moved in three springs ago. Except that it is not that perfect. There is a scuff mark on the wall where the couch which was a company to my hours of lazing around rested. There is a spot on the carpet where I spilled my tea when I excitedly ran to receive my kindle reader as the postman knocked impatiently. The wall has a clean rectangular spot mocking at the rest of the faded walls of the house - the rectangle created by the Beatles poster my husband put up as one of the first personal addition to the house. And then the excitement was marred by a knot in the throat as I realized how with a stroke of paint and a dab of soap water they would clean away my three years of good times and bad times spent in this little corner.

Sister's stress-filled sojourns

My sister visited me for the whole of last week. We were discussing her travel exploits one evening.Trust me, they are amusing. Very. For one, she has never packed her stuff by herself. Ever. She would always find someone who helps her to pack. Mom, I, roommate and now her husband.And she always leaves back something or the other. A toothbrush, a pair of trousers, a lipstick, earrings... or even a packed suitcase.Yes ...a suitcase.In one of her travels she realized a little short of reaching the airport that she forgot to put the suitcase in the trunk.

And of course she loves the last minute action that happens when one is late for a train or flight.To jot down a few,

- missed flights
- reached just on time for a train but had no clue whether her reservation was confirmed from the waiting list or not
-paid 500 rupees extra so as to reach on time for a flight [the flight was delayed by an hour which she found out later].

This time I decided to make it a no-mistake travel. I booked the cab on time. Cross-checked with her everything that came to my mind -- tickets, boarding pass, cellphone charger, toothpaste, luggage ... everything. I dropped her to the airport.

I returned to my empty house and crashed on my sofa, a little saddened by her departure. Just then I spotted her Joseph Heller novel staring at me and I laughed.

Unbelievable.

De ja vu

I am in California these days. A place with over abundance of sunshine. Today it was cloudy. They call it June gloom. Not that I don't enjoy sunshine, but the weather today brought very fond memories of my stay in the UK. I have a lot of remnant songs in my ipod from the UK days. Many of them have become obsolete with the situation. "Cloudy"
by Simon & Garfunkel definitely does not go with a bright shining and smiling sun.Staying awake in such a weather is quite some work. A hot cup of coffee and a few peppy numbers help. So I started the day with a cuppa steaming coffee and some old forgotten numbers.

Until tomorrow when the sun shines bright again.

'Reflection' of Murphy's law

Today, I cancelled the alarm instead of putting it on snooze. Goes without saying that I overslept and was late for office.On reaching office, I couldnt find my ID card.I guessed I had left it at home. Got a temporary card made , but all this caused even more delay.Had a code to demonstrate in the afternoon.the previous day had kept everything ready. All data prepared etc.Yes you guessed it! The code would not work during the demonstration. Thankfully there were other people who had to demonstrate their code. I just said, let the others go ahead while I check whats wrong. I was shocked to see that someone had deleted the data I had prepared #@!#$%#$. I quickly fixed it and domonstrated the code. It went well.


On telling a friend about it, he said , "Well Murphy's law at work'. Yeah, all of us have faced it so many times. I wonder how Murphy could point out so certainly about somethings so uncertain. And that so, why does it work only in a negative way. Murphy's law says "Anthing that can go wrong, will go wrong". Now my point is, this 'Anything' can also go right, right? Er dont think I am making sense. What I mean to say is, an event has a possibility of succeeding or failing. What Murphy is trying to say is :- if an event has these two chances, it will fail.But why?? Why isnt the law "Anything that can go right, will go right?"

After much pondering over a "tall iced-tea lemonade, passion flavoured, less ice and extra sugar" at Starbucks, I deduced the following - Just like things go wrong, things also go right in our lives. Lets take the example of the demonstration above.I have had many office presentations/demonstrations where I had goofed up but no-body noticed.That means the alternate also happens. Just that it looks too normal to us and we dont keep a note of it. The wrong ones hit us more and we remember them for life. So a day in our lives where everything went wrong stays in our memory. We try to explain so many things going wrong by taking help of a law.

I also feel that when a series of things go wrong, the root cause can in most cases be attributed to the first thing which went wrong. Let me explain how.
When the first thing goes wrong, it makes one nervous, specially if there are other things in line which one cant afford to go wrong. And the knowledge of the 'Murphy's law' adds to it. One is already nervous - "Oh its happening ...now everything is going to be messed up". And so we mess up.

I guess we soon need to coin the Anti-Murphy's law, for those days when everything goes right.

ps:- I found my ID card in my purse at lunch.

Common problem

I have a fairly uncommon name and in fact an even more uncommon surname, therefore I never understood what troubles a person with a common name has to go through.This blog is an attempt to empathize with such a community.

I have this friend, lets call him 'Santa XYZ' - who has an extremely common combination of name and surname.At work, I pinged him once or twice with a 'hi' for some work, but he never responded. I was kinda foxed, and then in a bout of humour wrote "Santanaaa...tana nana... :D "[mimicking the very popular song from the bollywood movie 'Kaminey']. I still did not receive any response. After two or three such attempts, I was furious.

Next time I met him I gave him a piece of my mind.He immediately knew the problem and told me to add name2.surname for receiving a response from him.

Well,at office we can add contacts into Messenger by searching user id[the quicker way- the advanced search has more options]. The general trend of user ids is name.surname. However if they have duplicate names the system generates ids like name1.surname or name1.firstInitialOfSurname etc.I searched for the friend's name.surname and the application added it.

Santa also informed, that the name.surname id belongs to xyz who holds some very nice and scary sounding position in the company.

:-/

ps:- The name.surname person definitely has received worse messages.That's the only way I can explain my not losing my job.

Deafening silence...

A very long time back I had an argument with two close buddies on which of the following is a correct idiom "Deafening silence.." or "Deafening noise..". [I said both are correct with different meanings. They were against the first one arguing how can silence be deafening, asking me to explain what I meant].

The other day I was in a place which actually described what I meant to say and reminded me of that day in the hostel.These days my workplace is on the 13th floor of a building bang in the center of the IT hub in Kolkata.A very crowded place down below. But there is a corner on the 13th floor, on the way to the vending machine, away from the hustle bustle of the cubicles. Here you can only hear the mild hum of the AC vent. At night the view stretches far far away into the dazzling lights of this city.This place is my favourite when the head starts to pound from the everyday happenings around.

Deafening silence:-
A silence or lack of response that reveals something significant, such as disapproval or a lack of enthusiasm.

Blessed

Today I got a blessing from my housemate's mother. I heard that I am a wonderful person from someone (other than my family ofcourse) after a very long time.

A year filled with dissapointments, neck breaking work, throbbing headaches, nightmares and yearning for dear ones, almost convinced me of my existence being worthless.

Yesterday, my housemate fell from the stairs. I just did what is expected of a human being staying with another one(trust me I am not trying to be modest). Today her mother called up to say "I dont know what would have happened, had you not been there."

Thank god, in today's world of profits,savinngs, recession, dollar value dips and job security, some one thinks that one human being needs to exist just to be around the other.

Sunshine on a cloudy day

I remember a similar scene in some movie, but cant remember which one.

Today was a very cloudy and grey day.And it very much reflected my mood. Was walking through a lane, when a man got out of his car. As is the custom here, I smiled at him when our eyes met. He said 'Cheer up lady !'. I gave a wide smile and walked away. Suddenly, I realized I was really smiling, I walked back to him and said .. "You know that really helped.Thanks.". He replied.."Really? I am glad it did."

I guess, despite what mom says, sometimes talking to strangers is not that bad :)

Pacing up

Yawning away, while reading a document, i realised that i have ignored this space for quite sometime now.

I am now located at a place which was in one of my "places visited" list,till about a few months back.This place held me in awe. The buildings,the crowd, the people, the ladies with with their tick-tocking stilettoes,the gentlemen in their thick rimmed glasses and dark suits and the colors everywhere.This seemed to be the dream workplace for those looking for a different experience altogether as far as "work - environment" is concerned.

In my last two tenures in this country I enjoyed the sleepy relaxed country-side,travelling to office in a snail-paced bus, reading some book with a plot in 1900 AD and listening to good ol' Bob Dylan numbers as the bus moved through different landscapes of greens and browns. Now I travel to office in a rushing train with buildings outside moving past even before i can catch the color of the paint used.The beats of the songs from the 60's completely out of sync with the clattering wheels of the train.The book replaced by the latest daily handed over at stations.The skyline showing big brands jutting into the sky from amongst buildings of various sizes and shapes.Walking through a sea of humans,everyone moves at a pace, where if i stop for 2 seconds to receive a call, I end up blocking the way of a big group.This is a new experience altogether and am trying to match steps :).

Child in Red

A poem by Rilke

A very beautiful poem in a friends blog space led me to this one. I almost could imagine the real life version of this poem. .... beautiful..

Child in Red


Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.

- Rilke



ps:- the color in it is not the only reason i love the poem.

Color conversion --> Blue to Red

Am feeling Blue.

An uneventful week along with some unpleasant happenings, brought a friday on which I received a message from a friend from the past,to meet up at London.A week consisting of
bad days at office,not feeling well and gloomy weather in a very morose place made the idea of
taking a break for a few hours from the monotony seem like an excellent proposition.

On a not so sunny Saturday, picked up my purse, my mobile and my ipod and started for a
rendezvous with an old friend.Luck favoured me with the train timings followed by a lovely
journey through the English countryside. All in all a great start to the day.

Friend had got stuck somewhere in the London tubes, which gave me enough time to browse the shops at the station.Bought some raisin chocolates at the chocolate shop there.Window shopped some cosmetics.Checked the latest prices of some of my favourite perfumes.[why cant there sometimes be nice surprises]

Friend made it to the station.

Both of us fought the London tube crowd to reach an Indian restaurant at Leicester square called Imli.[very soon London is going to beat Mumbai as far as crowd in trains go].Ended up among a row of Chinese restaurants.Chinese food not ok to my vegeterian friend.Walked half an hour through a series of Chinese,Lebanese and Carribean restaurants,till we finally found 'Imli'.Had a sumptuous meal[though jaws dropped at the quantity served] and shared our
chocolates with the waiter who said "If you are having chocolates in the restaurant, you have to abide by the rule which says that all chocolates to be shared with the waiter ;)".Talked of good ol' times.Laughed like crazy in an otherwise quiet gathering.

Left for Oxford Street.Roamed around the streets looking through shops which were much beyond our pocket limits.[London is one of the most colorful cities, I noticed].

Time up!!.Left for the train station.Sat beside a grumpy auntie with red nail polish and a stiff
upper lip.i-Pod came to rescue.Reached Morose-city.Walked from station to home listening to the following song and imagining Prince Charming singing it for me.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Ended it with the following song. This song somehow has this 'ultimate hapiness and freedom' feel to it.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Back home with the 'Blue' lightened by a great deal and specially replaced by the predominant
'Red' in London[You get to see the color Red in London a lot...the buses..lamp posts etc.].
Switched on laptop to write blogs.:))) while waiting for the dawn to break at some other part
of the world.... to share my experiences.

Friend for a few moments.

Sometimes it does cross my mind how some friends have remained so despite the fact that
I have hardly spent time enough for them to be called 'friends'.I hope I don't sound filmy,
but reminds me of some dialog in a film about how some people leave a mark at the first meeting
itself.I have never been in constant touch with these people but when I meet them, it feels
as if there never was a time lag between us.A farewell message, generally always ends with
'Keep in touch'. These friends never did that. But despite that they have remained good old friends always,without any expectations and without any promises.

I had met K during a very temporary situation in my life.It was a friendship of 3 months where we bunked classes for that ice-cream at Nirulas along with a movie at Chanakya [Delhi].
Once I left for Pune for my graduation, it didn't look like we were ever meeting. I thought like
many of my other friends she would also remain another entry in my scrap book.Initially we
exchanged a few letters and gradually those stopped as well.Then again after a period of
a few years she dropped a 'Howdie' to me and we started conversing again.Since then we have
constantly got into this cycle of silence followed by 'Hows u...dude?' mails.But till date
whenever I meet her its like old times again.Through the years we have come closer,exchanging
notes on the latest happenings and updates.

S was my roommate during my engineering days for a year.Having stayed together for a year, we understood each other very well.Our favourite time of the day was in the evening when we sat with our cup of chai ordered across the hostel fence from the gujrati bhaiyya's chai ki dukaan.We discussed about life,future and all other concerns that crosses the mind of a 20 year old.When I left the hostel after my graduation S said,"One thing is for sure, I am not going to keep in touch. You know very well that I am very averse to writting mails or calling up.But yes, i will still miss you.". And true to her words,we havnt had more than a few phone conversations
since then. But whenever we talk, it feels like the same Pune air and that cup of tea.

Similarly I crossed paths with A, at the introductory training program organised by my company at Chennai for 2 months.We had the same crazy mind,the same idea of 'fun', shying away from studies and the false attempts of excercising to keep 'fit' and of course the same lousy sense of humour.Her company was a constant source of entertainment."Eh yedi, aaj woh item ne joh samjhaya ...tujhe samjha kya? Mere toh bheje me kuch gaya hi nahin." ...in her skewed mumbaiyya hindi was a riot.And specially since she spoke them with utter honesty and genuine intentions, made it sound even funnier, much to her confusion..."Arrey Mumbai me yehich hindi bolte hai"...she used to say with concern, whenever she caught me laughing.Today I met A at London.We spent those 4 hours laughing away to glory while roaming the streets ,speaking of old times during training days.Exchanged info on common friends and how some friends from Delhi have drifted away because we could not keep in touch.Suddenly she remarked ..."Pata hai aisa hi accha hai...yeh woh dilli wali junta bahut zyada senti ho gaye...ab kaisa hai na...tereko koi phona ya mail nahin bhi karo toh itne din se....kuch toh bhi aata jata nahin hai....itne din baad mile bhi..toh majja aaya na?

Buddies, hope to meet you again,some other time in some other way.Keep in touch..just the way
you have till date.

Kashi ahe...maushi?

Recently a friend of mine has left for Pune to start her "hostel life". Brought back vivid memories of my own days in hostel in Pune and also got me wondering what all those people who were a part of my daily life then were doing now.One such person was Maushi.Maushi was a shrivelled emaciated 70 year old who used to wash clothes for those girls who cared to pay some extra money to get their clothes washed by her.Most girls though were in a dilemma whether to get the clothes washed by her or not.She looked too frail to wash clothes and we were filled with guilt to let her wash clothes at her state, but at the same time that was her only source of income.Maushi was an integral part of our lives those four years.We had the language barrier between us, though eventually we did pick up a little bit of marathi. But in the initial days we used to converse with her without either side comprehending anything.The first sentence in marathi, that we hostellers picked up was "Mala marathi yet nahin..", which literally means, I dont understand marathi. Whenever maushi went on with her incomprehensible stories in marathi, we used to say that to her and she would be just too amused to hear us telling her in marathi that we dont understand the language.Mausi frequently blessed us and prayed for "changla nawra" or good husbands for us.One particular day, before the exams,she blessed a girl with changla nawra, when the girl replied indifferently "Mausi pehle exam pass karne ka ashirvad do.Exam pass nahin kiya toh accha nawra kahan se milega?". I dunno what exactly mausi deciphered out of that, but she nodded and went away smiling.One particular winter vacations, we were packing our bags to leave for home, when maushi came to our room and said "Aga, mala sweeeter de na?".She aksed us to get sweaters for her from home for her. The winters in Pune is quite chilly and I did notice that she dint have any woollens,apart from a torn shawl.On returning from home, I gifted a sweater to her.I noticed within a few days that she still did not wear any sweaters.I soon observed that the her grandson was wearing the one I had given. I questioned her why she had given it away to her grandson when she replied very innocently,"Such fancy things dont suit me, I prefer my shawl."[I got that translated by a maharastrian hostel-mate].One day,we in our room were short of cash.We had just a few rupees with us and had decided to go to the bank the next day.Coincidently the same day, maushi came to us in the evening asking for 10 rupees "Mala peesha de na?...daah rupiya ".In a very embarassed tone we replied, that we did not have any. She went away dissapointed and am sure not convinced that we did'nt have money.Next few weeks, I did not catch sight of mausi. I wondered what happened to her, when one fine day I again spotted her in the same corridoors of the hostel,smiling and chattering away.She had gone to her village for a vacation :).
The day I left the hostel, my friends saw me off and it was quite a sentimental moment all of us in tears and hugging each other.But mausi stood at the background waving with the same cheerful guileless smile on her face.I hope you are well mausi, wherever you are.

Men in Olive green.

Many a times I have come across some impressions that the citizens of my country hold of the Army or of the soldiers.
I have heard people talk about the 'free drinks that soldiers get'. Or for that matter, 'So your father is in the Army, alchohol must be really cheap'.
'Hey you get really great things in you canteens at great prices, isnt it so?'.
'The government provides you with a house and furnitures, right?'
It pains me to see that this is the only thing that comes to people's mind when they think of a person in uniform.
Another conversation totally left me spellbound. A group of us were discussing about the number of soldiers dying in insurgencies, when a lady said, 'So what? Its their job to die for the country. They get paid for it.'. At that moment,I was too repulsed by that person to make anything clear to her, but to all those poeple who carry this impression, all Ihave to say is, a soldier has as much right to live as any one of us.They definitely are not paid to die. They are paid to fight and just have a hazardous job like a fireman,policeman or an iron-smith.

I was talking to a senile veteran soldier, about the Army and the life it provides when with a distant gaze he remarked, 'Everything is all right...but the service that we provide is not acknowledged by the people and that makes everythingfutile.'. Very true Sir.

In a certain train journey while talking with my co-passengers, one said,'You army kids have a lot of attitude.You guys are too proud.'. Before I could defend myself, another one remarked, 'They have all the reasons to be...'.

On a lighter note, a humourous song heard in the army circles..:)

Hey I dont want to join the army now,
Captain, I want to go
Major I want to go
Show me the way to go home

The tents in the army, they say are waterproof,
You get up the next morning, you are floating on the roof.

The boots in the army, they say are mighty fine,
You ask for number seven, they give you number nine.

The ration in the army, they say is mighty fine,
They give you some gunpowder, mixed with turpentine.

..... And some desi versions of the paragraphs....

The breakfast in the army, they say is mighty fine,
They give you sukhi-puri and aloo all the time.

The doctors in the army they say are mighty fine,
They run after the nurses and leave the patients dying.

ps:- apologies to all army doctors for the last para. To be taken with a pinch of salt.

Lonely Traveller

While writing my previous blog it struck me, how enjoyable it is actually to travel alone. I am the sort who hates getting into a conversation while I am travelling. Be it my daily travel from home to office and back on the office bus or a train journey or a flight. And the very idea of me managing everything is quite cool, though the idea trust me is scary especially with my penchant towards goofing up. But even with all the goof ups, I guess travelling alone has a charm of its own.

Many of my acquaintances have guessed that I like travelling alone because I like to sleep off on the way. On the contrary I hardly sleep while travelling, the repercussions of which is felt later.

My first travel all alone was when after my graduation I was returning home for good. Having packed up everything including heavy books gathered during my studies, my luggage wasn’t exactly travel friendly. Moreover it was a flight journey with a weight limit. I being a novice did not care to get my luggage weighed before hand. Nor did I care to take the usual precaution of carrying an extra bag for transferring extra stuff into the hand baggage. During check in I was told that my luggage is 13 kgs overweight. I had no clue about the extra luggage charges, so very confidently told the airlines personnel that I will pay for the extra luggage. He looked at me apprehensively and I am sure guessed that I was a student and that I certainly did not look like the type who would be paying a lump some for extra luggage. None the less I was directed towards their office where I was handed a receipt for the money by an equally sceptical elderly gentleman. I looked at the receipt and handed over a 100 rupee note to him. He gave me a resigned look and told me “There is another zero”. I thought- “Oh my gawwddd 1000 rupees for 13 kgs!! This is obscene.” Well those who have studied away from home would understand that at the end of semester a person with 500 rupees was considered rich. In fact once, I and my sister had travelled 48 hours by train on 183 rupees! Though, we always made sure that the tickets were sponsored by Papa. For the current situation I made a meek face and excused myself and called up my friend who dropped me at the airport. Thank god it was the end of my college, the very reason why my room mate came to see me off with tearful eyes and moreover thankfully she had not left by this time. I gave her one of my suitcases to back, leaving it to my parents to figure out how to retrieve it from Pune to Kolkata.

Another journey I undertook was when I travelled to Mumbai on a Volvo bus, on the Mumbai – Pune expressway. Those who have taken this journey would agree with me that this is one of the most scenic and beautiful roads in the country. And when everything seemed perfect, they played the movie “Baghban” on the bus video system. Arrrrrrgh!. My parents would have been pretty glad though. They feel that movie deserved nothing less than the Oscar. A prospective wonderful journey dampened by the tears of Hema Malini and Amitabh Bacchan. Thankfully on the return journey the video system “played up a bit”, much to the embarrassment of the driver and his assistant. Sometimes it’s nice to see some things not working. :)

Another one to Delhi had a funny end, just how they show in the movies. My friend came to pick me up at the airport. On my way out there was quite a crowd. I just could not figure out where she was, when I was told that this one is not the only arrival gate. God bless the person who discovered mobile phones. I called her up and she was equally perturbed for not finding me. We wondered whether we are at the same place and so described our surroundings. We realized later that we were actually standing at a distance of a couple of meters with our backs to each other. For close to 10 minutes we described what we could see within our sight range but neither of us had the sense to turn around. After much talking, she asked me keep standing where I was and that she would ask a few people how to get there. As a landmark, I told her about a big blue balloon hanging from the ceiling, when she shouted “What! I am standing just below the blue balloon”. That’s when we turned around and found each other.

An unknown place. A new house. A new workplace and the lonely me.

Well don’t be scared, this is not some weepy story of a helpless girl left alone in the world. But when I landed here, it seemed quite so……. to me at least.

I have been sent on deputation to UK and though this is the second time I am visiting the country, the experience is certainly very different from the previous one. To elaborate, on my previous visit I was sent on an assignment for a project where I had worked previously for close to 2 years. Apart from the shift in location everything else was familiar. A familiar group of friends and it was a known turf. I hardly felt away from home.
This time, everything is new. The place….the people….. and the work.

During my first visit here, I had been advised by a close friend to pen down my first impressions. “Its nice to read them later.” , he said.

My impressions during my first visit:-

· It was cold. [brrrrrr…..even recollecting it gives me the shivers]

· Women wear awesome shoes. While waiting at the coach station at Heathrow, I spent the entire two hours watching the shoes that the ladies around me had put on.They actually manage to run around comfortably in 4 inches stilletoes !...wooaahhh

· The journey from London to Bristol was …well black and invisible, because I was travelling at night. I really wished then, that I was travelling at day time, so that I could see the famous English landscapes, I had so often heard of.

· This is a place to apply all that you have learnt at school about saying “sorry” and “thank you”. Courtesies are very much appreciated and I quite admire this. I noticed that I started sounding much more polite than what I did earlier.

· I loved the very popular “fish and chips”.[It’s a different story that the needle on the weighing machine went an inch ahead on the right side, because of this and the one below.]

· Awwwwwwsssssssuummmm cakes. Sllllluuurrrrrpppp!

· The Sahara dessert has more crowd than a discotheque here. :(

My impressions this time:

· Travelling alone to an unknown land was not that bad. :)

· Broad daylight at 9:30 in the night!!!.

· The place is much sleepier than the one I stayed before.

· Tonnes of colours all around

· The office looks like a scene lifted from a sci-fi film, where they show campuses similar to NASA.

· And of course a very new experience of staying with a British family. Am getting to know their way of living from close quarters. Not very different ….trust me. More on this later.

· The shopping centres [more popularly called as the town centres], in every town in UK looks the same…..the same shops and the same layout. On second thoughts, all towns here look the same!

· All shops and markets close at 5 in the evening :(.

· This place actually has a jungle on the way to office :D. They call it a sanctuary. Haven’t seen any animals though.

· The cakes still are as yummy as before. He he.

Photographic memories...

During one of my visits to my dida’s[Bengali for grand ma i.e mother’s mother] place, I happened to find an old album lying at a corner. Many of you must have felt similarly, I remember to my young mind it was unfathomable to see my mother and uncles so young. Well my mother had the same face just a little childish and dwarfed. The photographs simply fascinated me. My mother in a polka dotted frock and pigtails, a passport photograph of her in school dress. A photograph of her and her cousin, which looked like a scene, lifted from a nineteen-seventy’s Sharmila Tagore movie minus the hairdo -- two ladies standing in a short-sleeved blouse and bold floral printed saris, demurely smiling at the camera. A photograph of one of my uncles as a baby, and a photograph of him grown up and looking cool in bell-bottoms. Another photograph of my mother sitting pretty on a chair,which I came to know later was sent to papa for a look before wedding .Dida has preserved the early photographs of my father, of my parent’s wedding and one much later. I found some of my photographs and my sister’s, which I had never seen myself. It was almost like finding a treasure.

I ran to dida, seeking ownership of the album. She simply replied – “You have my daughter…let me have her photographs”. Her words almost made me guilty. Since then I have never laid claim to the album again, but till date browsing through that album seems to be a favorite activity whenever I visit her.

Celebrating a success or a failure?

I received this picture in a mail forwarded to me by a friend. The subject of the mail said “Ads for thought”, so this one got me thinking. The idea was to impress upon people not to abandon or abort a girl child and that girls can be more successful than men, by pointing that Ms.Kalpana Chawla’s brother runs a “small” business and is less successful than her. But what got me thinking is that no doubt we should celebrate the success of Ms.Kalpana Chawla, but should we debase her brother in doing so? Are we happy that she succeeded or are we glad that her brother failed?

This has been going on for quite some time in my mind, that the many feminist who raise different issues or non-issues, concentrate more on degrading men rather than uplifting women. This makes me wonder are they at all clear about their objectives??

For example, these days there is a lot of talk over whether a lady should write her maiden surname or her husbands surname or both after wedding. My question is does it at all make a difference? Does a woman writing her husbands surname become “less of a daughter” for her father? Or can her husband deny that she is his wife if she writes her maiden name or for that matter, is she a little bit of a wife and a little bit of a daughter if she writes both the surnames? And I further would like to question all so called “feminists”, how important is this issue to that woman in a village who actually needs “upliftment”[Please excuse the distortion to the language]. Will her husband stop torturing her if she writes his surname or will her father agree to support her after a failed marriage if she writes her maiden name?? Or will her husband respect her a little bit and her father help her a bit if she writes both the surnames??

Another example is if whether to write Mrs or Ms. Well, I echo my question what difference does it make to the position of women in the society? Will your colleagues treat you with more respect and will acknowledge your capabilities if you write Miss? And if they do so, are you really being respected?

My aim in pointing these issues is to highlight the futility of such issues; rather I would like to call them non-issues. How will the position of a woman improve if her male counterparts fail in their lives or if the surname or title issue is resolved?

What I would like to understand is why in the quest to uplift women do we end up concentrating on degrading men? Well, let us women actually ask ourselves, are men the only reason why women don’t have an equal position in the society. Are women not equally responsible? Consider a case of dowry death. There are many cases where the mother-in-law is also equally involved along with the husband. Isn’t she a woman who has an equal hand? Or for that matter, in villages very often the mother herself doesn’t want her daughter to be educated. With such cases can we just blame men for our position? We condemn the “saas-bahu” serials because they frequently show scheming and evil women, thus putting women in a bad light. But isn’t all that true, just dramatized obnoxiously? Again to see the other picture of this, don’t men have a big hand in the success of women? Didn’t Kalpana Chawla get immense support from that “not-so-successful” brother of hers to reach where she did? All women who are in a better position than others, can they deny the role of the men around them for their better life?

Are we going to define “women liberation” as “the time when men will start fighting for their own liberation”?