Well....have you ever experienced how does it feel to have a sinking sickening feeling down the pit of your stomach.....living with it with all the weight of the world upon your shoulders contemplating about turning into a T.V so that you can be shut down anytime so that you don't have the ability to think, surmise and reflect......It should have been the hey days of my life......days where you can actually work harder than the ants lining to a lump of sugar.....okay I am not being lazy....for I wake up at 6.30 in the morning.....I dress up in 'power formals' as they have told......I have my breakfast with all the hurry and hustle as shown in the movies.......I sit by the blue screen of the flatscreen PC in a gleaming plush room with flourescent lights glaring from the ceiling....one of them flickering with the same uncompromising regularity like a tormentor picking at the raw wound of the captive....the A.C kicking on and off with the same precision as it has been doing from time immemorial........I rush out to have a smoke at all possible intervals just to return on time......... I come back all drained and flop myself upon the bed and switch on the T.V........but then I look out of the window to see the same span of fashionably constructed apartments sanding by the speeding high way that reminds me I am 2 hours of airway away from home.......I called up Bhandari..... jackass as ever .......upto I dunno what tomfoolery and tricks to deceive and dictate........I can't be the jackass.......I have to be "pro-active".....I have to do "smart work".......I have to pass eight tests....I have three attempts to pass one........I called up
Sri........she was the senseless stupid girl as ever......I can't be stupid........I have to be 'tactful'.....I called up Prasenjit......the big black glutton gobbling up I dunno what like the pacman gone beserk......I can't be the glutton......I have to take care of all the expense and be economical........Sohil is as hyperactive as ever........uttering all the improbable possibilities of fleeing to home.....but I am not Sohil....I am sensible........and I am not half as eloquent as he is........and then I called mom.......and thousand miles of electronic signals and optical cables conveyed the voice with slight static and a lot of pang..........nothing has changed in them........but then everything seem to be different......have you seen how chunks of snow hangs from the cliffs of mountains........so much mass all at once trying to hurl down upon the earth with velocity unsurmised but still somehow unable to leave the clutches of the rocks........only conveying the desire by the cold fumes emerging from them but never actually commiting to fall...........I have to wake up at 6.30 in the morning again........I lie down on the soft bed but the sleep play hide-n-seek.....and I am the kid too proud to scream and yell as he fails to find his friend hiding in some corner...always giving a hint of his hideout but somehow managing to evade the searching eyes of mine...........and then I listen to Led Zep......and try to come upon the conclusion as why and how the lady came to believe and be that all that glitters is actually gold......but I don't want to think...........I am thinking of turning into a T.V............

But two are walking apart forever
And wave their hands for a mute farewell

This probably is my last post for quite sometime.........and I can hardly think what to write.......so mean is this thing called 'leaving all behind'.......okay I am not overly emotional as all the pro-Kolkatan intelligentsia that appear quite frequently in the newspapers when any new issue of renovating an old worn out building appears quite with a sudden brilliance in the minds of the keepers of this city or when a new chain of restaurant tries do business with the epicural fantasy of the citizens...........but what the hell....its been 22 years......which I presume is not a very short time......I leave this Sunday.....and it is a strange feeling........every other alley in my not so pretty neighbourhood speaks of some rather foolish desparado of mine at some point or the other.........the plot of land which supports a new apartment now speaks of the number of cricket matches that used to be the 'end-all and be-all' of the afternoons.....the closely spaced houses now black and bleak with ages that used to be our 'kite-flying' venues as soon as September arrive........the not so sober kids of the encroached strip of land as our rivals..............the school......the horrendous bus rides and the spine chilling competition associated with it....................the ever-so-ludicrous crushes and their fallouts......the way I used to be all beckoning with its wonderous lullably as if to imply specifically that I am leaving all these behind............and I don't have the right words to say..........well......I guess there are times when poetry can actually surpass the need of words.....so I can come up with these few lines which I had read long time back..........which somehow holds more meaning to me than the do's and dont's behind the flight ticket................

"Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever."

....Tennyson

Evolving as a professional......

Right....its only eight days left for me before I start a new life......which I believe is a decent way to say that in a matter of eight days I would actually be employed... you know....people always talk about different
phases of life.......milestones....turning points....and I always used to listen to them without paying much heed to all those
high sounding monotones which somehow lacks the more lively harmonics of sound........okay I accept...back then it was
kinda boring and following my rather caustic sense of humour....had received quite a bit of silent slanders from me......yeah back then....its funny actually how I describe these events that had occured not more than three weeks ago as 'back then'....its even more ludicrous as how these few weeks seem to make me much older than I actually am.......and the transformation
has been in different stages.....first there was this odd sense of excitement about going to a new city and the unlimited amount of freedom of having a new apartment of your own where it is upto you to decide wether the drapes would be light green or dark chrome........where you can indulge in a lot of things that is somehow not so convenient right now.....then there was these outrageous rumors about all the million things under the sun and our frenzy of actually involving into it even if we knew there is hardly any shred of reality into it.......and we plunge ourselves among the confusing labyrinth of the internet to gather even more 'dirt' and meaningless possibilities out of them...and somehow all these internet hunts never seem to yeild anything other than a collection of ads about "find your love compatibility"....."matrimonials"...."find out who is waiting for you" or "hundreds of jobs for you".....I think you know what pops out every time you log out of your mail.....I remember searching for the actual status and position of the company I was going to join and I ended up in the webpage of a guy who is actually working there and following a link in that page I had somehow landed somewhere displaying the vital stats of a number of actresses working in a number of B-movies.......so I decided to give it a break and as usual chatted about this whole 'talk in the air' with an equally baffled and confused friend of mine......so the next stage is serious contemplation about the pros and cons of all the options available at hand and it never fails to surprise me how every time the options other than what I had selected seem to be carrying more 'sense' and 'wisdom'......and the situation worsens with each passing day untill more out of frustration of being rather helpless, we actually buy the tickets for flight...and ultimately reconcile to the beleif on the certain entity called the 'faith' and decide just to 'get on with it'...and refuge under the umbrella of the big name that the company has........that marks the fourth stage......okay...there were few uphill moments in this so called transformation like a number days of getting wasted in a friend's joint......few old school reunions.....and stuff like that untill one fine evening it actually dawned upon us it is infact the end of our days of tattered shorts having horrendous brands.....worn out jeans....round neck T-shirts and cheap cigerettes and we indulge in several days of window shopping and couple of days of actually bying few varieties of them....albeit much cheaper and that too wonderfully synchronized with the time of n percent discount on every purchase and baits like 'buy one and get one free'....thanks to all those considerate businessmen successfully plotting an economic imperialism under the banner of 'SALE' just by swapping the tag of lets say 'Rajababu shirts' with...err...'John Miller' or 'Turtle'.......basically just a western name..........then comes the difficult and the more painful stage when our wonderfully dreamy and excited parents actually transfer years of their savings into our own personal account to help us 'stand on our feet'....basically a carte-blanche or a free ticket for being the prodigal son......and when even that is over....its only eight days left.......and all you can do is to make promises like quitting the fag which you are sure not to comply with and just sit before the internet.....and go on refreshing the pages of orkut as pictures after picture of our 'friends' change with each hour and suddenly you decide to jot these wonderfully wasting and ofcourse tiring train of thoughts which even you are sure no body would care to acknowledge with even a rude dismissive comment....so its just you and your counting days.......

The thing about i-phone.....

Communication redefined................for 600 dollars!!!

Theres always some irony if you can't have it!!!

Corporate

Okay how about this...????

Being Aquatic....

Well now I feel what Tom Hanks felt in the Castaway......I mean its monsoon in Kolkata( as if you don't actually know) and its been two days since the city is having serious excretory disorder......and its rather difficult to surmise why havent we developed webbed feet by this time......I mean we are told that necessity is indeed the mother of creation....but I guess we all are somewhat hoaxed by what is much endearingly known as the 'drainage system'......yah right the drainage system.....thanks to beautiful nature of we Kolkatans to address things more humbly than they actually are....as a result we do have to put up with a lot of grin and a little scorn all the bemusing variety of things like the strike....the cricket match.....the not-so-encouraging muddy soccer matches.....and now the sad reminiscences of what used to be streets in sunnier and more predominant days of the year.......as it is, its now all water.....and we actually manage to derive sufficient amount of solace and......what...fraternity ??.....from the fact that we are not the only one....thanks to the equally efficient drainage system exhibited on the other side of the country in the commercial capital..........and if you have way too much free time to switch on the radio.....you know sometime you actually get bugged of the more fashionable service of visual media that the television promises to provide...just for sake of.....well romanticism....nostalgia....and err......a break.......you can actually come across an amazing collection of rhetoric from a number of more fortunate and poetic souls scattered across this 'cultural capital'(oh yes.....bazaars replaced by shopping malls....notes on banishing the tramways......cultural capital indeed) commenting upon the beauty of the rains and the imaginative train of thoughts triggered by it and what are they eating in this endearing month of monsoon.....as if life is short of things to do!!!!But if you think about the taxpaying duties that you performed few months ago that somehow became a part of this 'democracy' and decide to go out for an errand just a few blocks away...you may come up with a scene of domestic water transport which will make the nobles of Venice pluck their beard with envy......its definitely not gondolas here in Kolkata....but people have actually come up with more prudent and materialistic ideas that even the most mundane amenities of life can actually be used for water transport with surprising effectiveness.......automobile tires....dilapidated roofs of hamlets......and the more docile varieties of inflatable rubber canoes all wondering with confused frustration as rows of yellow cabs lined up with half their torso deep down in water.....pedestrians.....to be more specific fellow half-swimmers trudging the wall of water with slowmotion strokes.......slippers floating by.....the crows enjoying a nice cruise upon them....and elderly gentlemen commenting on what the leaders commented upon the 'state' of the city....as if all its residents are suffering from hyperopia.......and then you come up with someone more sympathetic to the 'sorkar'...ie the government and supposed to have a 'politically balanced mind' explaining how our bygone rulers of two hundred years had actually developed the system that Kolkata has to drain out only liquid waste and how the more imbecile citizens use them to dispose their solid wastes as well...and he throws a big packet of jackfruit peels and continues lamenting........well at last you come back to the dry safety of your home and sit by the window overlooking the 'jhupris' and the 'bastis' where the residents had long ago come up to their thatched roofs with most of their belongings and you turn on the radio yet again...this time its "n point n FM"...and you listen to the weather departments amazing prediction of the development of the depression resulting into this many milimeters of rainfall....and what the opposing party leader say about its entire 'infrastructure'.....and more 'civilized' citizens provide immaculate statistical detail of the 'development' of the city's condition over the years.....

Mad among the mountains.....

Well......following the rather lucid reminiscence that my friend has put on in his latest post (click here to see his post)....suddenly I feel this
urge to follow suite........well I just cant help these sudden fancies that dawn upon me with more ludicrity
than whim........and I end up commiting something which definitely cannot be quoted in "Jerry's Book of Conducts"...
Well I dont really remember what time of year it was.......but it was in the first year of our college.....if that is of any
relevance to our 'adventure' that we did.....but I definitely feel the same stupid thrill that flew down our spine when
me,Bhandari,Nandy and another unfortunate inclusion in our....err....I dont know....group(maybe).....decided to return
from Singtham back to our college by a rather unconventional 'path'......and that paying all tributes to the government of
Sikkim is an overly endearing term.....followed quite out of compulsion due to lack of vocabulary........so if you havent seen
these individuals.... you may define Nandy as a bounty from the boss above....both in length and breadth...and back
then in first year....HUGE!! The other members of this adventure are rather non-descriptive sort having all the spirits of the
world as only guys from the plains suddenly plunged hard among the hills may have...except this aboriginous trait of human
that decided to tag along with us......as usual the precursor of this mad desparado was Bhandari......deciding to break free
from the manacles of normalcy that somehow seem to bog him down and we decided that come what may, its time for
a little hiking...and so we watched with no little apprehension at the narrow winding dirt track by the hill lost in woods
flanked by the ever so turbulent Teesta....and when we actually stepped into the track,it was nothing more than a dusty
shingly trail made more out of necessity by the wood gatheres and their domesticated animals....and we had to dodge a
ridiculous collection of piled up bio-mass shamelessly left by thousand generation of four legged creatures.........so it was over an hour that we trudged along what was still an acceptable edition of a track untill we came upon this point when the way
before us bifercated and both seem to disappear among the stupifying collection of foliage....and we had to stop........
Well perhaps you have been in the middle of an absolute black out somewhere unknown in whichever city you live at the death of the night......if yes then you can only fathom the silence....and nothing else.........the honks of the cabs all died
down in the thin air and all you can hear is your breath...in this case the lullably of the flowing Teesta......and the odd chirpings
of the full fraternity of birds that somehow seem to loose their mind simultaneously at this senseless encroachment upon their
privacy.....well we had to have an excuse to loose ourselves in this madmaze of silence....so we lit up a fag and just sat there
in that deliberate state of comatose untill reason came back and urged us to reconcile to the tickings of the clock.......and the difficult part came......we had to decide which path to take....and Bhandari as usual took the 'wrong' way around if there is anything right about the entire scenario...thanks to his sense of direction....or rather lack of it.....more like a dog with sprinkled pepper on his nose......and we came upon a slide in the bosom of the hill.....we look up and its a wall of trees bent with ages....we look down and its the water of the Teesta churning with her omnipresent rage...we clawed at whatever holding we found......repurcated back by odd varieties of prickly shrubs....our limbs ached...there was earth within our thumbnails and snail slow we went on untill I slipped....much like the movies...and here I was dangling by a thin yet powerful trunk of a tree.....unable to move as wind hit back with a cold fury....bits and pieces of earth rolled back and the adrenaline pumped with insane urgency of survival.....I was afraid...I was thrilled.....I was mad......it was then I saw one of the most beautiful sight in my life.......miles away in the undulating slopes of a distant hill there was a collection of hamlets......bordered by wild varieties of violet flowers....and rows and rows of maize fields and even farther away.......there stood.....with all the monotony of the world a worn out hanging bridge....connecting the hills with the otherside of the world....and here we are
four absolutely freaked out souls staring mindlessly at the single gateway to the same sane civilization that ultimately after yet another hour of wiggling......crawling....dragging and swearing managed to reach.....and after all these years...I can still feel the scars that developed in my hands and the same rush of neurons that had gone through my body........