A lion furiously biting down the red freshly dead muscles of a musk, the pigeon on my window pane waiting for a week after her egg disappeared (the egg fell and broke in her absence), the radiance of a wild lily that lets the droplets casually slip through her skin, the pointless vastness of the sky which for god knows what is vaster than one can ever imagine, the veins of a leaf and the random structure that they naturally follow, the ripples in the water that form a whirlpool, the unending patience with which a horizon still confidently stands.. Waiting to be reached... someday... will I ever be that close to life?

Consciousness. Consciousness of existence. That's my bane, that's also the reason I am capable of jotting these things down. But where does it take me? I would not have asked this question if I at all were the pigeon or the lily or the horizon.... why was there the need for a race that could sit back and wonder about themselves, their crimes and prejudices, their world, their sight, their experience?

Applause was it?

It is too late for a lot of people to make any change for today. But we're just in time for a few years later.
Mothers: Start giving both your children (son and daughter) the same size of meat for lunch and the same amount of preference. That she is going to get married after some years is no logic.

Fathers: When she goes out wearing skimpy clothes for her prom night, tolerate it, tolerate skin show, it shows how as a part of the man community of your country, you can be okay with it. Have you ever seen men who have nice bodies not show it off? Do you think being a bouncer at clubs is insulting? Think about the opposite sex's bit.  You could secretly guard her to the party definitely without her knowing, but tolerate it.  Never inject this idea in her brain that wearing lesser closes attracts men, she should wear what she is wearing because she loves showing off her body, a natural gift.

Brothers: Know when to beat up that jerk who whistled at her. Giving her a letter is not bad behaviour, pulling her clothes, writing weird stuff in the letter is bad behaviour. For bad behaviour beat HIM up and not your sister.

Sisters: Don't complain about the wrong things, it's good that Aishwarya Rai changed boyfriends every year. She fell in love as many times as she wanted to, none of your business, unless she is using a friend for money.

Boyfriends: It's okay for her to work, its okay for you to survive on her money like it is vice versa. Cause its okay for you to cook or clean up, like she does. You don't need to drop her everywhere nor carry her with yourself everywhere. Trust me, when it's not okay, you'll know deep inside you. 

 Politicians and other influential parents: Your son raped her? He can? Cause he is your son? Are you sure it's making a man out of him? You sure he'd able to manage any bang on his own behalf? Try him, make him a man. Don't support rape. Tell him, pride comes when she wants it, wants it so bad that she comes and SAYS it, or makes other physical gestures. Also tell him, those gestures are not looking, drinking with her friends or wearing a small skirt. Teach him the gestures. There is a high chance even you don't know the gestures, learn it from the Casanovas. There's a pride when she wants it, I repeat, try to experience that, try to make your son experience that.

Families and society: If she has been raped don't blame her, blame the rapist. She is not a virgin anymore? With that set up of a mind, you anyway never knew if she ever was. There is no problem if one of you marries a rape victim. She WAS RAPED, she was not a RAPIST.  And barring physical handicaps (just like the recent Delhi Pulic rape victim is going through) RAPE cannot have any other effect on a woman's character. As in, being raped, does not make a woman want to be raped even more. It does not work like that.

Schools: All of you please become co educational institutes. Let the girls and boys play together.

Local club houses: Let them all play carom and badminton together. Now this is about bringing up a generation where they don't have the distance to deal with just before it's the time to marry. That brings up complications. Let them know their body, let them be easy about each other appearance and presence. Let them figure it all out, they are humans. Just like we are, just like our forefathers were. With a little bit of guidance, and mind you only the little, necessary bit, they will know each other better. Sex education is important. And sex education is not about why you should not have sex only, it is also about how and when and who to have it with.

The possible rape victims(who are all of us): Carry pepper sprays, carry the courage if you can't help it, even if it is hurting too bad, hit the asshole up his balls, even before you fall unconscious. If you're already a rape victim, then don't be ashamed, fight. And see to it that the rapist is avenged. This is not the area for forgiveness, those are different zones.

All this can start today and will only begin to come to affect in some decent amount of years. It would have by now if we started earlier. Let's all start today. We'll all make a difference someday. Cause it is only about a collective mindset affecting an individual mindset. 

I do not understand if experience has made me more mature or
pretentious. It looks so weird to me today, the things I'd do for love
in the past, for people, for friends and for family.... some of them
I am sure I'll never do again and some of them I surprise myself often
by not doing. A few friends of mine say I'm selfish. If I am, haven't
I grown into it? Who knows? Who walked it? But even if it was so, why
didn't life make selfish things out of people who went through similar
experiences? These days, when I am unhappy, I give it a serious
thought weather or not I should complain. I do complain at some point
though, I hardly have that amount of patience. But the fact that I
give it a thought, the fact that I get scared I'll be repeating
things... the fact that complaining may become acknowledging the
problem muffles ideas in my mind.. isn't it a huge mark on my
spontaneous quotient?

I think this luggage of experience is binding me to something else...
I don't know if I connect to that something of a life...

I don't want experience. I want to give it away, right there. Cry when
it wants to run down my cheek. Slap when the mind is juggled. Run as
soon as it's intolerable. Kiss as soon as it's uncontrollable. Hug
when I'm the most vulnerable, without thinking of the consequences.
why don't I do all this? And the cherry is, I still don't do all of
it, may be I do half of it, and get interpreted as selfish, and hang
between nowhere! I want to be a child again. I want to be an Arian
again.

Some other time
I'll find that line again
That line that sparked in my mind
and by the time I had pen and paper
It had gone away

Some other day
I'll have that line.

Some other moment
will bring it back to me
when It's meaning will change
may be i'll change a word or two in it
but I'll find that line
i'll write that line.

some other day
I'll have that line.

This could easily be a post on how I spent my first Durga Puja without
Dadu. But now that the Puja is over, let's talk about bigger
complications.

I was having a conversation with my father this evening.

I: You know Baba, I think something definitely goes terribly wrong
with Bengali men during Durga Puja. They try out falling in love, just
for the sake of Durga Puja or something.

Baba: Why do you say that? Someone has fallen in love with you this Puja?

I: If not in love, they at least 3 men I can count have shown romantic
interest in me.

Baba: You?!!

I: Yes.

Baba: I don't know what is wrong with the men from your generation!
They fall in love with people like you? Short, fat, disproportionate.
(I frown) I mean.. of course as a daughter you're fine. But to fall in
love with, you'd have to be so much more beautiful for me. Eww! How
can people feel attracted to you?

I: You are not my target audience.

Baba: Who has fallen in love with you ? Tell me! Someone who was
already in love with you? Or is this some new joker? You should never
fall in love with men who fall in love with you. Coz they have bad
choice, they've fallen in love with you!

I: I am not falling for people, we're talking about people falling for me.

Baba: You don't have long legs, proper eyes, a proper giraffe neck, a
waistline. I could never paint you.

I: Well, apparently a lot of other men don't think so. They could sing
me, play me, write me... I haven't found a painter yet, that too
shall...

Baba: Oh please. Don't kid me. No one has fallen for you. Such bouts
of imaginations will only add on to your weight. Go lose some weight!
And what are having? Payesh? Stop having it. Give it to me.

*he snatched away the plate and gorged onto every seed of rice in it*

N.B.: He is a diabetes patient.

chena shohor, chinte chayena amay
chena shohor, chinte chayena amay
ratri bojhe shurjo o je amake bojhate chaye
chena shohor, chinte chayena amay

ki mone holo, bawle
shawhor chokh khole
aar chokhe daekhe je amay
holudh jawto aalo
amar gaaye dhalo
shohor ta bheej te je chaye
chena shohor
kinte je chaiche amay
chena shohor
kinte je chaiche amay
shopno bihin ratri'r rin ningre nilo je amaye


kothae jaabe bawlo.. hawthat kije holo
chup kore roeche shomoy
pichle jaye shawhor
muhurter mohor
jibon tao gune jaye
chena shohor
chinte je chayna amaye
chena shohor chinte je chayna amay

ratri bojhe shurjo o je, amake bojhate chaye
chena shawhor chinte je chayna amay
chena shawhor chinte je chayna amay
chena shawhor chinte je chayna amay...

All my life, I thought it was my tendency to hold on to things that
made me special. But special is a very tricky word. They also use it
for the handicapped. Now the fact that I feel everything belongs to
me, is my handicap. A close friend insisted that letting go, is the
correct thing to do. But wait, do I have an option really? It is not
the correct thing to do, it is the only thing to do. If nothing else
then, death shall snatch it all away. I have been striving on this
process and correctness of it for 3 days, I'm sure I must go through
this process. But achievement is a different ball game.


What of my pebbles then?
Are they not mine?
Why am I carrying their weight, romanticizing with them?
I am scared to lose. To lose the capability to attach myself.

I am coming from a land I had built in my bedroom years ago.
Years ago, when my dolls were named..
when iron gates could be gates, could be barricades, could be the way
to another country.
There, in my room... the kites flew beyond the palisade.
Children were bred, children were killed.
Many a women met many a men.. all of them lived together, loved together.
And then there was sex, in pretending that my mother's dark brown
slender lipstick was my Aundrey Hepburn cigar.
And then there was cinema, in the way I'd lie down and imagined
someone noticing the curve of my neck from behind.
And then there was poetry, in me trying to feel like an artist.
And was seduction, in those scantily dressed seductive mono performances.
Ahh the mirror.
He knows it all.
Wherever that land could have come from, it still breeds beneath my
cushions, like dust mites.
I am nearly allergic to it, to it's easiness of random tours to any
and everywhere.
That easiness, I've lost it. I think, i think too much.
Work, infidelity, brilliance, competition, jealousy, envy... I think so much.

When you have short hair, you love your hair. you love touching it,
you love flaunting it's shortness, you love being the cute cool chick.
You also love the way your locks fall and cover up half your face
making your glance look mysterious. you know you're looking hot in
that red light in the party.No maintenance needed, they can take care
of themselves, their dry up in ten minutes and ur ready for the class,
and if u want the wet look, you'll look like a fem-fatal, and will you
love it! especially in my case since i flaunt clumsy so well, my short
crop is perfect. in fact I become a different person. I talk
differently, walk differently, turn differently, get lost within the
unknown, that too.. differently.

When wearing a sari, a short crop makes you either look like one of
those hot English teachers in school, or like a boho chick gone
traditional.. none of which is unimpressive. Preferably if there was a
red streak somewhere, the sari'd look even better.

But fashion, psychology and attitude is not all what a haircut
effects. IIt effects perspectives. In a country like India, a short
crop can also mean, easy going(which is true but read"available" which
is more true), cool, and incapable of home making(to some people).

secondly, one day when your hair will grow shoulder length, it will
neither remain short not be long, so now you become a girl with no
cliche, yet THE cliche.. which is..UNNOTICEABLE. Now that is good when
you really want to disappear, i don't know how many women apart from a
couple of really close friends of mine really wouldn't mind doing
that. strangely, both of these women I'm talking about, have gorgeous
waist length hair.

Yes so where were we? Mid-long hair. This one is a rather boring
state.you keep them open, you tie them up, you twirl them, keep them
wet.. all the same. your face just looks.. the freaking same.

And now the "men" bit. Men like short hair when they are wooing you
for fun. Remember, you look "available"? If i could not be harsh, then
you look cool, chilled and laid back. Which will possibly make more
men make a move than when you've got long hair. So the men make the
move, you take your pick from them, you fall in love, and while
falling in love the hair grows longer. and on second thought, you're
somewhere letting it grow because you're done with looking cool. you
want to look like a woman now, not a girl.

The tricky bit is darling, while you grow your hair from winter to
summer, the nature changes. Now there is, humidity, hence sweat,
terrible managerial discomforts.. and what not.the obvious decision is
to get your fizzy long hair either rebound, or cut. But by this time
the men in your life have got used to your "womanliness". not only
that, your mother possibly has taken the go ahead without asking you
that you bang on want to marry in a couple of years, your close
friends have started thinking you have matured as a woman as well.

but no sir.i haven't matured, neither am I marrying in 2 years and am
definitely less of woman than i look like. Cutting my hair down or
changing my hair style has got nothing so Indian.emotional, or
maternal about it.

:)

My friends can't be with me always even when i am in the darkest of
corners. They love me, but they can have to go to some party, or they
might want to stay alone at home because my sorrow has overshadowed
there normalcy in life. They might have to go get married, go get
laid, go get drunk.. what not. But they pay their visits. Mostly, not
only because they just have to, mostly because they care a lot. I
don't know how many in the world are like us, but we, as in, me and my
friends.. our lifestyle predominantly revolves around each other. Why
then, in spite of caring so much for each other do we chose otherwise?
because we can? It's not about what my friends do or have done with
me, i have done it to them as well. My friend might be sitting alone
in her house and i have felt sad for her during such times. So much so
that I have sat an entire night crying for her. I found it a little
weird crying for someone else's break up all night but I could not
stop myself. But the next evening, knowing in the heart of my hearts
that I must be with her, i chose the second option..a boy i like. I
have done this many a times, And my friends have done it to me too.

Forget friendship, I have done this to my mother.

Why then do we say that we need to love, when all we want is to be
loved? Or am I the only one who here is selfishly asking for it?

Speaking of being selfish, i think i've done a great job at it. i
myself walked up to the guy i thought i would die without and told
him, "we" wern't wokring. I broke up. And today it gives me no pain to
live without him. He is happy elsewhere and so am I. Why was I
creating such a big fuss back then?

After a couple of experiences, if we all know nothing is lasting
forever, then why do we try imposing the same god forbidden permanence
in relationships? why do love living the lie? i will possibly live
without anyone and everyone who seems indispensable right now, then
why cant i decide for ten years hence, right now?

i know it's stupid to invest in such weird questions.. but the lack of
permamnence in things and yet the urge of every living soul for it is
eroding my mind.

Only because I need to collect pebbles i must was all the undulated journeys?

tch

:)

more than philosophy.. more than logic.. more than destiny.. more than
anything that would be more apt of an srfti editing department
student.. or a carmel convent or jadavpur university student... for
once.. i am feeling like a girl who is in love with the basic idea of
love. and mind you.. this is the very ordinary love. i am talking
about man woman love. the love.. the physicality.. the distance.. the
intimacy.. ahhh...the poetry..the songs... the stupid.. VERY STUPID
poetry.. the jealousy.. the possessiveness...the habit...the boring
sweetness... the... petty needs.. the simple needs.

i am loving love in it's simplest form perhaps right now. why, how,
because, perhaps... all this is not for me to decipher out of me right
now.

let's keep it simple.

I love!

every story has a world that does not want it the basic way. every
story also has two characters. one of whom will compromise and the
other will keep fighting. In my life...on the contrary in keep
changing places. sometimes i am the character who will keep fighting
and sometimes am the character who will give up and give in and
pretend to move on .. though with that loss, some part of the
wandering untouched soul gets disturbed. It's strange how life can
make a weird thing happen, which perspective wise cannot.. one can get
to be on both the sides of the same coin simultaneously. one can break
hearts..and get to have a nice cruel heartbreak.. simultaneously.. one
can get to be a hero.. and quite a loser at the same time.

A year back i was fighting, revolting.. for a friend who i believed
had been done injustice to. today i am bonded into continuing the
slavery of that very institution that once has been unjust to my loved
ones. And no one in particular has forced me to take this decision
really. I did it myself. i took the more bland.. easy.. regular and
ordinary path.. i chose to do nothing and walk away from what i did
not like. i chose to pretend.. that it does not bother me today. I
chose to pretend that I never had any morals.

i have a senior in this same institution who i keep bumping onto from
time to time.. he is one lonely fighter.. i don't know if it is
correct for him to keep fighting for his cause. but i can at least see
the fire in him.. the fire that's missing in me.

i remember there used to be times i looked like him, i spoke like
him.. and i wish him all the very best.. may he fight.. may he win.
may he finish my story somewhere, so I can finish his story someday.

this is primarily just to inform that dadu passed away on the 19th of
december. i have waited since then hoping that some day i'll find
words to pen it all down.numerous i've logged in only to write a few
lines and then delete all of it. i realize through time, may be this
one, i'll never have words for. there's so much variety in it that no
expression would embed the impression of it. hence i thought.. let's
not try to communicate and fail. i want to look at this particular
post later in life and remember the feeling of no compatible
expressions to an emotion. i want to remember this lack of words. and
the irritation related to it's memory. so be it.

FYI: dadu passed away on the 19th of december 2012, 6:28pm. my
husband(or husbands) to be, children, grandchildren and their to bes..
i did feel. felt a lot for words i guess. i know thats a surprise for
the talkative me you will know me to be...but i guess i too fell mum
somewhere.

,,,,,,,and what a pebble it will make.
love you dadu.