Re-energized

After a long hiatus, I've decided to blog again... And suddenly why? It's rather simple! I'm bored - and nothing better than to write. I'm have a great job, and I come home to my parents, home-cooked food, washed clothes, made-up beds.. In short very little I can ask more for. Except that I am completely undoubtedly totally bored...

And so, sitting last night I hatched a plan - Something new every 100 hours. I run on a countdown timer, which gets reset - and the objective is rather simple. Ground rules are as follows:

a) Meet people you haven't met before
b) Go see places you haven't seen
c) Read books you haven't heard
d) Listen to songs you haven't heard ever
e) Do things I have never done
f) Taste food I haven't tasted before
--To sum it up, anything and everything new goes...

And what better than to keeping track of through my blog!

So let the crazy ride begins!

HOLDING MY HEAD HIGH

Question: What happens when you are seduced by images of colours and laughter anf fun and frolic, beguiled by the thrills of watching the trapeze artist swing high above or the fire-eater spout the living flames, when you fancy the music and masks beckoning you?

Answer : You get to wear a pink nose - just like me

And so it was one afternoon that I found myself in front of the famous Yuri Nikulin Circus, named after the famous clown there in Moscow, wearing a clowns pink nose in the middle of a park while sereval by-standers looked on.

The bone of contention was should I pose sitting on the lap of the cast-iron clown in the photograph : Thankfully all it took was just a poke upwards..

Loved wearing the nose though : My best souvenier from Moscow... hehe 

Not a Good Golly any more

Given that my blog was started on the note that my nephew was born - now that I do know how to put up pictures on my blog - I felt I must and I absolutely must put up a picture of my darlingest Golly.

Of course, needless to add that he's turned out to be an absolute chimp. A total mishchievous imp of the first order - when I call all the way from Russia, he doesn't let Saraswati speak and instead goes "Mash, Mash, Mash.." and when Saraswati does give the phone for him so that he can speak to his beloved Mash - by then something else would have caught his attention!

What a boy! What a boy! 

CAUGHT IN THE WINDS OF CHANGE

"Follow the Moskva - down to Gorky Park..."

Never had I imagined that I might really get an oppurtunity to really do it.

Misha is in Russia - a Russian nickname, from the moscot of Moscow Olympics, I always wanted to visit Moscow as child and here I am now!

That's in the Red Square - right behind me is the Museum which contains artifacts from all over Russia. Haven't been in there yet and cannot wait to go in. 

Over-educated and unemployed

What does an MBA fresh out of the BSchool do?

It seems to me all I do is cook and keep the house for my Mom.

Northward bound for a summer of hardwork, I figured a good chance to test my culinary abilities was to take over the kitchen for the month I'm totally and absolutely unemployed. It's always been something I enjoyed but never had much of a chance to do - that is a chance without someone looking over my shoulder and going - "Beta, that's not how you stir!" or "Why don't you put do it this way instead of that?"

But it's pure freedom for me as now I have a whole kitchen all to myself..

So what's on the cards tonight??? Pudina aloo, Nawabi Chicken ... and whole lotta fun while making it....

Life at XLRI sure takes me by surprise - just as everything seemed to have settled into the regular routine (what with a term of a million activities!) - the 1984 riots shook students into a frenzied discussion.

And while I refrain from quoting anybody - here's my take on it.

Maybe it's just time we stopped looking back into the past to just point outmistakes that have been made - there is no undoing them. Maybe it's time weleft caste, creed, religion and all of that behind and just looked at beingan educated human-being as opposed to literate. Maybe to contribute to achange we don't have to start a 'movement' so to speak - but simply do ourparts as a citizen of the country without always putting ourselves first.Can we just do that?

I am a Bengali and am proud to be so. I am an Indian and am proud to be sotoo. I don't believe that just because I am an Hindu, I would have to beanti-Muslim, and that because I am Indian, I have to be anti-Pakistan. Idon't believe that just because I am Bengali - I have to hate othercommunities. I am a human being - and that's what I believe I am first andforemost.

I don't support many things that happen and no, I cannot claim to have done a lot of things to contribute to these sentiments. But I can say I have, at every chance, stopped what I believed was wrong - not because I was a part of a country, or religion but because I am human-being with a sense of rightand wrong and a mind of my own.

I am proud to be who I am - and I am what I am as a function of my ethnic, cultural, religious and educational background. I am proud of them too.

Ramblings

Of late it seems to me I have plenty of time on my hands. Classes are rolling off my back with no extra effort on my part – except a presentation here or a quiz there. In short, it seems sometimes that eternity hangs heavy on me.

And so I decided to do what makes sense – make the most of my time, and what better than books. I finally got my hands on the Life of Pi, something that I’d been intending to buy for ages and never got around to doing. Anyway, I’m glad I have it now.

I’m barely 40 pages or so into the book and I don’t think I wanna even keep it down for minute. I’m totally hooked onto it. Reminds me of Gerald Durrell – the books I’d absolutely been brought up on a child. As the descriptions of the Zoo fills my head with sights of places I’ve never been to, my mind can’t but help move into the familiar pictures I’d conjured in my head while reading of Gerry’s antics.

Actually that was what made me pause and wonder once again and marvel at how I’ve changed. There was a time I was so passionate about animals – I just wanted to grow up and work with the likes of People for Animals. And here I am now, in a B-school – childhood dreams peddled for “education” and ‘branding” …

I’d been down to Kolkata for the weekend about a fortnight ago. It was good to be back in a city where everything was you. As the sunshine grew stronger, beat upon my head and then faded gently behind the curtain of clouds, it was like a familiar scene being enacted before me – one that reminded me of childhood days, Kolkata Durga Pujas, the crazy bustle and the beats of the ‘dhak’ … I could smell the coming ‘dhuno’ and taste the ‘puchka’ I always have during the pujo from right across my house.

I wished so hard then that I wouldn’t be all alone in a Kolkata for Pujo – the idea seemed so alien and yet such a real possibility. Pujo has always been a time of frantic shopping at New Market with Dad – who would never do anything till the last minute. Of course, Mom would have taken us to the tailors and have some dresses stitched but the last minute shopping, followed by a roll from Nizam was ritual. And then of course – Pujo was synonymous to Maddox Square and Dima’s house. Cousins, dinners and late nights, eating out, pandal-hopping, staying up late night to watch the ‘bhashaan’ – all seem to have faded away.

And now everything has completely changed – especially now even more. I acutely miss the city – and yet I know it’ll never be the same. But somewhere I also know it’ll always be there in my mind – exactly the way it was!

"Amaar neshaye - Kolkata; Amaar peshaaye - Kolkata;
Rokte amaar alok bataash jaagaye Kolkata"