The blog's not dead, yippie!

I accidentally re-discovered this blog during a phase of extreme narcissism.

I think this is turning out to be pretty cool actually. It feels a lot like a diary, except that it suffers from intense time dilation. Which works pretty well, since it creates snapshots of my life with time-lags, the latest of which was two years in magnitude (and forward in direction).

I'm about to turn 26 in 12 days. Try not to show up for my birthday. I'm not a big fan of choosing special days to celebrate. All they remind me of is how each day of our life is NOT  a celebration, warranting the need for SPECIAL days. Love day, hug day, friendship day, 'lora' day, 'lasun' day.

I like the self-centered tone I had set to this blog. It makes me unapologetic.

Which is great, since my hiatus over the last two years has taught me this – people are dicks.

No, they are, really. That best friend who manipulates you all the time – dick. The love of your life who holds you back from excelling – dick. The feminist on the street whose real war is against women she deems more beautiful and unflinchingly labels as dumb sluts – dick. The cynic who tries to debunk every sincere effort made by you (and others) while he sits on his couch doing nothing – dick dick dick!

We are all dicks. I am a dick. You are a dick. Yes. You. Are!

Try to put your ego aside and reflect on the truth with humility. You will KNOW you have been a dick and are probably being one right now.

Once you realize it, though, you will have taken the first step towards turning back into a human.

P.S.: This blog was intended to be a personal diary and not a philosophical rant-house, but I supposed 26 years have merged the two into one yucky whole!

P.S.S: The pun was accidental.

An attempt to ease a grief

             Almost all the members of my family have lived the majority of their lives a tad dramatically. I would say this is an interesting case study on cause and effect -- one can never really be certain if prime time Bengali soap operas are more based on their way of living, or the way of living is essentially inspired by these soap operas. It's quite a vicious cycle overall.

             Be that as it may, the usual dramatization of everything in our household ensured that nobody was too surprised when Baba said to Ma one regular evening with red-tinted eyes 'Don't get too used to him. It will break your heart when he leaves', the reference being to my imminent departure to the US and the last two months being spent super-energetically with family, friends and girlfriend.

              I, on the contrary, consider myself to be exceedingly practical and rational. It is possible that I avoid emotions, but I don’t consider it likely (judging from the number of times my girlfriend hears my howl in a month). So while I do miss everyone I left back at home, Skype sessions ease things a lot, and I am, at present, having enough fun here to ensure that the emptiness of long evenings aren’t filled with depressing nostalgia. Thus, one of my best friends’ omen  ‘Stop acting so super cool about the partings. You shall cry for full days when you are alone out there’ has not transpired yet.

               Rationality can tell you that relationships don’t break unless you stop desiring them, that comfort zones are lost only if you lose the courage to trust, that technology can indeed ensure togetherness if you’re willing, notwithstanding 5000 miles of geographical distance. In fact, I see the love of my life in person around ten times more often than when we used to live in the same continent! But for some things, rationality will only teach you what irreplaceability means. These are the things that you get ‘used to’ in the true sense (which is probably where Baba’s Ekta Kapoor-ish lines were bang on). These are the things that Skype can never bring to you.

                 I remember sweat filled metro rides. I remember gold flake sticks for Rs. 4 with a ‘bhnaar' of tea, Rs. 4 too. I remember traffic jams. I remember taxis whose drivers I adorned with the choicest of expletives as they refused to take me where I wanted. I remember shopping malls filled with our suburban neighbors, who got a nearly equal share of the same expletives for crowding the hangout. I remember autos, bus tickets, khuchro, black water laden footpaths, mini bus races. I remember the pissed office goer, the ‘bhikhiri’ girl offering roses for Rs. 10, the constable banging on your car with a ‘lathi’, the masala thumbs-up maker, the super fake cool bro in CCD, the aantel with a guitar in Nandan, the ice-cream wala who sells a Rs. 7 orange stick for Rs. 10 on account of the price of the ice, the amazed newly-wed visiting her husband’s city from a quiet village in either of the two parganas, the crowd of people on Midnapore Local, all about to descend ‘ei ektu agei’ (just a little further) 10 stations away at Bagnan. I miss so much more, and this is getting so goddamned clichéd, that I shall stop.

                  Another friend of mine had once asked ‘Just food and dirt and crowds? Don’t you miss people? What if they are no longer the same when you return?’ I do not know if I am a fool or super lucky or heartless, but no, I do not think that will happen. Each of the really precious people I left behind is with me always, and will be, too, as long as we both stay alive. And there are new people here who are, well, just as much like ‘people’. So it’s all pretty cool if you keep your head straight and avoid momentary indiscretions.

                  But Kolkata—you don’t carry Kolkata around on Skype. . You don’t stay unchanged for Kolkata and ask Kolkata to not change for you. You don’t fall in love with a different city and apologize to Kolkata. You never replace Kolkata, and you never have a pseudo-Kolkata experience when you are not in Kolkata (although pseudo-bong experiences are pretty common and very irritating). Kolkata is too cool for all that shit.

I miss you, Kolkata. So mind-fucking much.

Rongeen

Jante chaicho amar mone ki rong dhore?
Shobuj? Holud? Neel?
Naki ghono garo kalche ek laal,
Jate rong diyecho tomra shobai..
Ek-e ek-e egiye eshe tulir taane.

Doure gechi tomar kache,
Rong cheyechi buk fuliye
Rong ta kebol choose korini..

Tai toh tumi moner shukhe, tuli-r choway, shetai dile,
Jeta tumi bhalobasho,
Lukiye rekhe holde-shobuj neel-er tolay..

Rangiye dile amay tate!
Tai dekhe shei thatta holo,
Hashir shrote lutiye gele
Tomra shobai..

Aj amar ei rong-ta niye,
Baire ashte lojja lage.
Hnasho tumi..

"Keno tumi shobuj na go?
Neel hole na amar moto?
Keno tumi bachhle eta?
Keu ki sheta kore?"

Lojja amay japte rakhe,
Boli na tai mukh-ti fute.
Rong-ta ami bachhini-go,
Tuli chilo tomaar haate....

An update.

It has been a while. Most certainly.

Firstly, I ain't 20 any longer. I remember that the first post was written last summer, almost exactly a year back. Third year of college happened after that. It changed things, VERY drastically.

It feels almost creepy to reflect on how things have gone since I wrote that post. THAT happened while I sat in a ground-floor room of my Salkia home with a set of assets, worries, hopes and dreams. I sit now in the bedroom of a Los Angeles apartment with a new set of pretty much the same stuff, but one which is somehow very different from the previous one. Dreams have been realized and broken, hopes have been satisfied and disappointed, people have left and arrived, illusions have been broken and created. I guess I'm pretty much the same person, despite the fact that so MUCH has changed...

Am I writing a chornicle of my life in 09-10..? I guess I am, in some sense, even though I don't quite know how it's going to turn out yet. Still, I cannot begin this post without mentioning the first major event that happened after the last time this blog was updated. Mammam, my grandmother and the person with whom I shared the most amount of affection in the entire world, passed away about a month later. I haven't yet written a tribute to her or even mentioned her loss in public a lot, for I never could figure out how I could mourn it. All that stays in mind is how I moved through the days following the loss immersing myself in life with aunts and uncles and parents and cousins, organizing with gusto the 'shraddha' ceremony, spending time with Dadai to somehow push his loneliness away, and crying alone in bathrooms before I took a bath each day.

Still, time didn't stand still, like it never does. Soon enough I was back in college, organizing the freshers' dramatics production for our society, staring with bewilderment at juniors who stood up to wish me and addressed me as 'Sir' (in the precise manner that they had been ordered to by my very dear peers), trying to instill 'tempo' into life by getting football boots and a gym card and failing, as is usual, and struggling with the highly complicated task of optimizing attendance.

Then came August 7th. With it came convocation night. Came Nirmalya Karmakar and the founding of the trio. Came SB.

I am quite certain of the fact that if I had to choose the day that changed my life to the greatest extent, I would choose this without any hesitation at all.

I remember Nirmalya giving me a call saying he was arriving. I remember me greeting him and begging for a taste of weed (which I hadn't experienced previously). I remember our discussions with Bhanu Da and Donu in order to get explicit directions of procuring it, followed by a trip to the infamous shop and attending convocation dinner with the stuff in my pockets.

We moved to my room, invited Sarajeet over, introduced him to Nirmalya, and started preparing for ecstacy. Three joints and about 10 floyd songs later, I began texting her, clueless of whether she would reply this time.

She did, and before too long, I had asked for permission to call her and actually got it. Then signal strength lessened, the call got disconnected, and I ignored her missed call to accompany my friends to JCB canteen for the trademark 'egg-rice'.

The call got repeated the following night, this time for an hour without interruption. Joints got repeated a week later, the night before the 15th august production of our society. The two became parts of my life, the former to a very large extent, the latter to a lesser. And so it went.

Come durga pujo, and I got stood up, returned from Howrah station having cancelled a trip after the train had reached the platform, waged a tough battle against domestic madness (which I eventually won) and returned to college in pretty low spirits. On the train back to kgp grief overcame ego, and I texted her. She made me call about an hour later, and I came to know she had broken up. Painfully.

The rest of the sem was marked by the sinusoidal curve which characterized my mental state, the amplitudes being boundless excitement and hopeless depression. Then came the winter holidays, a trip to Mumbai and Didi's, a trip to Nainital with my best friends, and ever-increasing craziness. Oh, and reciprocation, finally!

January brought with it a new semester, a portrayal of Leonidas on stage with the sizes of my chest and tummy reversed from the original, a birthday kiss and the spring fest.

Oh! The Spring fest! Three days, 8 friends, whiskey, weed, music, football and foot-cricket, laughter and joy, disappointing star nights, night-outs on rooftops, trips to the institute roof drunk, trips to cheddi's drunk AND stoned... I could write pages and still miss out on parts. I should dedicate an entire post to it, as I should to the million other snippets in this tale.

Spring fest ended and was followed by Sarajeet and I, best friends on campus already, finding insane levels of bonding. EVERY evening was spent at Vasky's over tea and cigarettes discussing nonsense and deep and beautiful philosophy (two things I often can't distinguish between). It was heavenly! I am pretty certain I was falling in love with two different things simultaneously.

Then came February. The first Valentines' day with a distinctly likely subject. Confessions of feelings in the lead up. Creative art sent through email as the first gift ever. Speaking from 12 am to 12 30 am over the phone, followed by a break to brush teeth. And the news arriving before the break ended....

The second loss in a year, and the one which was definitely more shocking. Ankik Da, college senior, mentor, friend, stunner, shouter, jumper, singer, dancer, actor, player, scholar, biggest personification of craziness ever, passed away in a bomb blast inside German Bakery on 13th February 2010. Again, I haven't come up with a tribute yet, for I am still clueless about how one writes a tribute to such a person. The shock took months to sink in. It still is, I suppose, as I struggle to believe the fact that a person like him can really be no more.

A week after his passing away came the news that I had been selected for an internship at the University of Southern California. It was the exact same place where he had done his internship in his 3rd year, but I wasn't able to reach him to gather funda.

March saw me bonding closer with sarajeet over tea and sutta, and brought with it a greater amount of workload than any I had experienced before. Bengali dramatics, captained by me, brought a gold medal to our hostel. It was celebrated with whiskey, weed and a trip to forum with arpan and the lady, followed by a movie and the first moves. Project work proceeded with a sense of organization, and for possibly the first time in my life I felt professional. Then came annual drama production, which I bunked. In the process I hurt several people (including myself) quite a good deal more than I had anticipated. The lady got separated by a greater distance and S.T.D calling rates, and got shocked at the amount it grieved her. She returned a week later with a couple of deer (which had very sharply adorned heads) for the two of us, and on April Fool's day came a proposition which was accepted.

April brought with it a new friend, a new involvement between me and Sarajeet, and a conclusion which left more than one person both hurt and fortunate at the same time.

I've pretty much come to the end, and for some weird reason am feeling quite a bit like David Copperfield. In the month of May I took a flight to L.A for the internship I mentioned, and that's what I'm presently in the middle of.

It's a beautiful evening, and I think I'm going to take a walk now.

INTRO

I couldn't come up with a shorter, wittier title for this blog.

That kind of defines who I am. I have an annoying habit of doing things in a roundabout manner...something that I probably inherit from my father. It also means that I put unnecessary attention to useless detail, which kind of ensures that I hardly get things done...it's all mostly confined to my head.........but more on that later, I better get started with the real stuff.

So here I am.....aged 20, single, generally frustrated and highly hapless. The first blog I wrote was meant to project my insights on life. It turned out to be hugely unpopular, warranting just 2 comments from one person (that too due to a reason totally unconnected to the blog topics). Nevertheless, I havent stopped thinking, and the last post on that blog is most certainly not the last post ever written on it. The same goes for this blog as well, I shall carry on writing for as long as my interest remains.

As the name of the site indicates, the reason why I write is to give meaning to an otherwise pointless life. I mean, there's plenty to do and achieve (atleast on face value), but all that seems quite distant as days pass on without purpose, and mostly without excitement too. I have an inherent tendency to act absolutely lazy and stupid, which I believe to be a criminal wastage of resources that I possess. (Yes, I do realize how vain and wishful that sounded!)

What this blog will contain are generally humble accounts of my shortcomings, frustrations and disappointments, along with the glimpses of joy which make this existence totally-worth-it. I will ensure that it isn't an exercise in depression, and not cynical either. I hate cynicism, even though it seems to be exceedingly popular among people in general.

Also, I will put forward my views on the world we live in. I hope they will be interesting.

Lastly and most importantly, I consider, as of now, the motive behind this writing to be merely personal satisfaction. This view is likely to remain unless I get the feeling that there exists a good-enough readership (both qualitative and quantitatively) to warrant responsibility.

What that meant is that I ain't apologizing if the above essay happened to have bored you stiff. :)