I always believed strongly in love having to do with spirituality. More often than not, what you want and the way you want it lands up in your lap.

It was perfect. The way it happened, the stars, the cosmic connections...

The big question we all forget to ask ourselves, though, is, what do you do when you get it?

It so happens that the last month or so has been a beautiful discovery for me, of a life I wanted to live, of a life that shook away all its sorrows and worries. A life that showed me to soak in a moment with a smile and look skywards when there's anger or misery beckoning, for it shall pass you by. In a lifetime, everyone must experience it sometime or the other.

For some, sadly, it doesn't last. Or maybe, for all of us...

And when it does pass you by like a little gust of wind or perhaps just a gentle breeze, you wonder, as I'm doing now. My mind goes back to that painting I love so much, and a strange hope springs up again. Hope....another of our greatest weapons from God after love, of course. This is what hope looks like for me....

She stands sideways, facing the wall, waiting for the door to be opened. She’d have wanted a more handsome face, not to mention that of a man, to open the door, instead of the bespectacled scowling woman that opens it. She swings sideways from her pose, leaving that romantic thought with her new shoes outside the door.

She swings the leather handbag down her arm and puts it gently, deliciously on the stool near the kitchen. Then, she starts washing the dishes in the sink. Oh, but those large eyes, though not beautiful, and that face ,though not attractive, are holding the glance of the dirty utensil, furtively. She’s used to this. This waste, and this feeling of longing she has for a life like they have in the movies, which she watches ever so often on her broken and protesting TV set, given to her by her employers. These employers of hers are benevolent people. The lady of the house realized a long time back that his is no ordinary domestic help she was hiring. Her name was bengali for poetry. Forget about whether there was any poetry that sprung up in her father’s mind when he named her so. With this romanticized daze of hers, she would sometimes stand in the verandah, lost in thought and with time coming to a standstill, perhaps embodying in herself the true meaning of her name for once. Ah, those thoughts. How she gets lost in them. She imagines she is that woman at the verandah, standing and watching helplessly, as her husband (now her favourite hero Uttam Kumar) leaves the building. There’s perhaps a tear that trickled down the corner of his eye. Or so she caught a glimpse of, before he turns away, leaving her weeping helplessly. He’s going to war and so they must separate. “Kobita!”, yells her employer, shaking her out of her dream. She gets back to the dusting. She gets back to being the household help, who often pretends she does not exist and isn’t party to the conversations that happen between the husband and wife whom she works for. She, in fact, caught this young couple fondling each other once, if only for a brief second. It was when she was dusting their room and wiping their wedding photo in a frame she wanted to possess too. She had a photo of herself and her husband, clicked in a studio when he was still alive and she looked much happier, with vermillion gracing the parting of her hair. She wasn’t jealous, no. She did not even curse her fate for taking her husband away on the impossible pretext of a fall into a mine while he was at work. She just took a look back at what she was like and then, almost mechanically, put the frame back in its place and went on to attend to the other chores.

As she leaves, she swings the handbag back on, draping her sari back perfectly. She cleans her hands with a soap her daughter gifted her, which smells like fruit she never tasted, and steps into her shoes, back to a life that wasn’t meant to be the way it is. But in her head, it’s almost always perfect.

Backpack

The nomad in me is waiting to be granted freedom. It's been surprisingly patient, especially with taking it in its stride the cancellation of my trips by myslef to Singapore and Malaysia last October, and then the Sunderbans expedition this winter. Cancellation thanks to my paranoid parents.
Of late, the people I meet and the websites I'm coming across are fuelling the patience and undying hope of this traveller in me. Especially last night, after meeting the fiesty traveller Shirin from Singapore whose courage and enthusiasm I'm totally in awe of at the moment.That's not surprising...the more hopeful we are about something, the more patient we are till we get it. Perseverence is the word, I guess. I'm still watching TLC and taking notes at a manic pace, with my mom and brother stealing glances wondering about what I'm upto.
Here's what's serving as an inspiration for me at the moment. Backpacking across the length and breadth of India is a Herculean task, but there's someone who's dared to make an attempt. Others soon shall follow suit, I guess. Maybe I will too...someday :D

http://www.iinindia.in/index.html

Khel rahein hain jee jaan se

I woke up this morning searching for just one image in the papers. I got the news from a friend yesterday that a 19-year-old was caught in the crossfire between the student wings of two political parties. The people last evening was so blinded by rage that they were hurling bricks aimlessly, one of which hit this teen accidentally. Accidents can be forgive, true, but someone's life has been almost ruined forever. His eye has been smashed and it's needless to say, he's been handicapped for life.

This brings the reason for the protest to the forefront. What was it? Some students from a so-called reputed college on Kolkata wanted to enter Mamata Banerjee's house. Why? I hope they knew the reason themselves. No, the boy with the smashed eye didn't want to know. I hope the guy who was responsible for hurling that particular ill-fated brick knew so he can live his life justifying his action to himself.

When I was watching Khelein hum jee jaan sey two weeks back, a thought kept echoing in my mind. For 200 years, all the illuminaries of our country tried to awaken the masses against the atrocities of the British. 63 years later, the firebrand hasn't died down. It keeps burning like the eternal fire the Zoroastrians worship. We're so used to screaming and shouting and protesting, we've become blind and we've literally blinded everyone else by hurling bricks at them too. The result? Like kids who sometimes cry for no reason, we cry and fight and burn down places, following diligently in our forefathers' footsteps and hurl bricks. So blind are we, that we can't see the reason. We just fight because the images looked so glamorous to us. A poor chap set fire to himself sometime in the 90's for the world to see how far he can go for a cause. He just died and remains forgotten.

When we were in school, it was almost a compulsion to learn Rabindrasangeet for all the school programmes to sing for. We were the lot who would hardly ever protest but sing with grim faces and thank Tagore for relieving us every pochishe boishakh, while going back to attending classes and pleasing all our otherwise silently protesting teachers. Then there was me among all of them, who would receive a "...and congratulations to YOU!" in the middle of a serious maths class from Mrs. S. Roy, for having sung well. The singing well part of her compliment appealed less to me, from whoever it was, than did the part in their compliment which said I sang it in my own style. My voice is different and I didn't sing Rabindrasangeet in the typical "Shantiniketan style",they'd say.

My understanding of the music was limited to learning the verses written in Bengali with a lot of difficulty, poring over the texts intently for hours together to decipher what is written (this was only initially,though, I'm used to it now) and learn the melody which was more or less the same for almost all the songs.

Recently, when I sang for the nrityonatika "Chandalika", I was angered immensely. ALL the songs, and I'm not exaggerating one bit as most of you will know, sound the SAME. Except for one song "Jageni", every song has the same melody and I wonder as to how no one wants to tear their hair and cry. My wise friend Mayurakshi, all of 14, explained to me though, that not all the songs have their melodies composed by Tagore himself. Most of the boring monotonous ones are thanks to Tagore's less talented brother, who composed in the most uncreative way possible. This is a fact I didn't know before.

As I discovered more Tagore this autumn, I'm getting closer to understanding and appreciating him than before, when, on that culvert over the gutter in our school, I'd sing the songs hatefully and never ever tried to understand the sentiment behind the songs. There are so many songs which appeal to me now. There's one song, Bhabona Kahare Bole, which I really like but I discovered a Kirtan yesterday, which is beautiful, to say the least. A Bangladeshi band called Arnob and friends has reworked this song very impressively using a Nagra and Saxophone, besides the guitar(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYQZcOyUg80). For now, I'll leave you with these beautiful lyrics.

Majhe majhe tobo dekha pai,chirodin keno pai na?

Keno megh ashe hridoyo-akashe,tomare dekhite dey na?

Khoniko aloke aankhir poloke tomaye jobe pai dekhite

harai-harai shoda bhoy hoy,haraiya feli chokhite.

Ki korile bolo paibo tomare,rakhibo aankhite aankhite.

Eto prem ami kotha pabo nath,tomare hridoye rakhite?

Aar karo paane chahibo na aar, koribo ami parno pon-

tumi jodi bolo ekhoni koribo bishoybashona bishorjon.

(My sincere apologies for Bengali lyrics in the english script)

Disco Bimari

Yesterday when I walked into class with my kiddies, I found the rooms almost empty, barring the two sole enthusiasts standing in the middle of the room with I'm-begging-you-please-let-me-go expressions on their faces. The festivals for them are almost never ceasing so most of them came in for a surprise visit to let me know they're finding the celebrations a tad more interesting than my classes. When each of these kids were giving me their pop up surprises, I noticed something peculiar and, well, funny to a certain extent, on their faces. They all had big white dots painted on their ear lobes and a bigger white dot on their foreheads, right at the center of the eye brows. When I asked one of the boys in my classroom who gave this little face painting thing a miss what the whole deal was, he said it's being done by the villagers to protect themselves from something called the "Disco Bimari". I pressed him on when he explained to me that Disco Bimari makes a person shake and shiver (almost like he/she would when in a disco) and the only cure for the disease is to make the affected stand in water for four hours.

I was left in a bit of a shock and a lot of confusion. I went on to ask a shopkeeper in the village what the whole deal was. Here's what he had to say.

On the night of Kali puja this year (which roughly translates into Diwali for the rest of India) a few youngsters were caught "sinning" in a temple. From what I could make out from the appendices being delivered by the wife of the shopkeeper simultaneously, a couple of young chaps were drinking alcohol and indulging in some other objectionable activities. "Ma" of course, is unforgiving. In Kalyug, there's a price you pay in this very life for any wrongdoing of yours. As a revenge, Ma has inflicted the people of the village with the inexplicable and peculiar Disco Bimari.

These are uneducated but God fearing people, there's no doubt about that. What left me wondering and feeling rather troubled later was the fact that these people are happy in their world, living with their dogmatic beliefs that refuse to be shaken. The village is infested with mosquitoes so I came to a random conclusion that it must be Dengue doing the rounds. What troubles me though, is the fact that even the first generation learners in the village won't be able to make any substantial difference. It takes a lot to shake the foundation of beliefs as strong and illogical as theirs. Children who are being educated will find it hard to make a change overnight. Well I don't want the children to go preach to the older generation that God does not exist, but to simply look at things in a different light and not attributing all their distress to Gods and Goddesses. Anything's better than dipping little kids in cold water for four hours and increasing their suffering.

Finally the number of followers has risen from the unlucky 13 to 14. Weeee :)

Had a whirlwind trip to Mumbai. It's unbelievable how bad a planner my dad is. We took the Geetanjali (33 hours journey,yes!) on friday, landed in the middle of a bustling Dadar on Saturday night, had a crazy day in the city on sunday and whoop! 4 am, Monday morning, preparing to jump onto the train again.

All the lack of foresight apart, it was Mumbai I experienced almost fully for the few hours I got to be there. My first impression of the city was that it isn't any different from my Kolkata. Dirty, confused, hoarding laden and chaotic. What puts it on a higher pedestal than Kolkata is, of course, the spirit. I fell in love with it, period. There's nothing more commendable about a city than its citizens, who work hard round the clock and don't care who thinks what. When you are stuck behind someone in Kolkata in a crowded place, you know you're dead. There's no one in Mumbai,on the other hand, who'll block your way. Everyone's running and you can run just as fast, the wind in your hair and all that jazz. For someone whose adrenaline flows at the thought of competition, like me, Mumbai is the place to be it seemed. A day is too less to base your judgement upon, but well, for a city that never sleeps, and which overwhelmed me as soon as I got off the train, I fell in love with it head over heels. And no qualms, mind you. Vada pav, marathi manus et al, it's a bigger and better version of Kolkata. I'm coming soon :)

P.S. on a local on saturday night, 11:30 pm, I met a bengali father-daughter duo. The girl was all of four and chattering away in bengali. I swear, I couldn't help myself. I carried on a long conversation with the kid, almost breathing a huge sigh of relief, of assurance..whatever I think is now unfathomable. There's a hardcore bangali sitting in me. No kidding.