Carefree outings, free of hurries & worries ,in the lap of nature or being lost among the forts & fortresses, spending exclusive time with family—admist all these, there can be disappointments—In the past 19 years of my life, I have travelled to several places-from north to south- from west to east—each trip had its own share of joy and disenchantments!
Here’s some:
1.> so near yet so far---that was the exact situation when we went to agra after a fortnight long trip in Rajasthan. We had set aside only one day for Agra and that was a fateful Monday! (Monday blues following during outings too) To make things clear, Monday is(or was) the day when the Taj mahal is closed for public viewing. Goshh! It was really hard to swallow the fact , that we are in Agra and still will not be able to visit the Taj!! We encounterd a group of foreigners (who told us that it was their 8th consecutive visit to the Taj Mahal, how I envied them!!) .They took a path from the back side of the monument and soon we were on the banks of the Yamuna with the Taj in a transverse way. our only consolation was that particular bank was the place where Aishwarya Rai had danced in the film Jeans !

2> if the ‘visiting-agra-yet-not-being-able-to-visit-taj was not an enough blunder for this trip, here ‘s more…my mom had packed 6 of my new dresses in a bag and I was using it as a pillow . its thickness was enough for it to slip out of the window, and that’s exactly what happened! Its been almost 9 years and I still cannot forget the pain of losing 6 dresses!

3> it was around 6 pm and no sign of buses in the bus stop. After sometime, a policeman came and informed us ,that a riot has occurred on the highway so curfew has been imposed for 48 hours. shit! So our trip to Rameshwaram was not going to happen .how many times have I not fantasized about the ‘vanar senas’ constructing the bridge and how in my silly mind I had imagined that I would be able to see Srilanka from Rameshwaram ! so it was a great disappointment!

4> from 1:30 pm in the afternoon to 6:15 pm in the evening—well, this was the time we were stuck in the queue to visit Tirupati—quite a stress ,considering I was only 10 and my bro 6!
5> it was the majestic Ajanta & Ellora caves and there we made a blunder ! I was too young to understand why photography is prohibited and clicked! The result?? Our whole camera reel was taken away ! which has snaps of other places we visited!
6> back from our trip to goa, we decided to do some sight seeing in Bombay since our train was at 8:15 pm and we had plenty time. But rain god had other plans, it rained rainded, making us stranded in the station for the whole day. To top it, our train was running 8 hours late!

7>the weather gods did not show any mercy either during our 5 day stay in Darjiling. water showed all its forms-- be it as clouds floating by our hotel window, as rain spoiling our sunrise view, or as heavy fog blocking the view of kanchenjungha peak !!

the other day, while browsing through videos in youtube , i chanced upon my one time favourite video title 'school chale hum' which has music by the shankar-ehsaan-loy trio, lyrics by mehboob n sung by kunal ganjawala. it was created during the launch of vajpayee government's launch of 'sarva shiksha aviyan' scheme during the year 2004 and shown on the doordarshan channels many times during the day. and i remember everytime i used to hear the prelude ,i used to jump before tv , irrespective of what i was doing !
And thus started a whole lot of thoughts--what are we doing for the education of the more than 192 million children who do not have the privilege of going to school? n why do we still complain?

The video brought back many memories i had, while growing up, when television meant only doordarshan channels.Its not been a year since we subscribed to cable tv, not because of any thing else,but out of the wonder that when we can't watch these 2 channels,how can we manage a 100 of them!
memories of watching DD dates back to those sundays when the whole family used to be glued to the tv to watch mahabharat,of those monday nights when me n my bro used to finish studies fast to catch alif laila n sindbad, those saturday evenings when my granny also used to join us as sri krishna was dubbed in bengali! shows like 'superhit muqabla' n 'chitrahaar' were my first window to bollywood & the 5:30 pm cartoons on DD metro were the ones for which we waited after coming back from school! How some of my friends used to envy me because i had school holiday on saturday and could watch 'shaktimaan' on saturday mornings !

Now that i have started watching satellite channels, every damn thing here seems to be ghost driven for craving high TRPs-- be it glitzy serials or a sting operation on news channels.Reality shows are bitten by cheap controversy and so are fictional ones dealing with regressive concepts.
Every other day you have an awards function and new year programs are the same old song-n-dance routine!
with more than 10 scores national and local 24 hour cable channels , every idiot, be it your next door neighbour, or the pretty girl in a mall, is up on the idiot box these days!

Except the quoted ones,all were in vernacular viz. Bengali

Scene 1:
Conductor: (flapping through the bunch of ticket as if he was shuffling cards) ticket ticket
Me: (hands him out 10 rupees)
(Now, there is a kind of unwritten rule, that when you hand out notes, without mentioning your destination /fare, it is assumed you mean to pay the minimum fare)
conductor: how much?(poor rookie, I thought)
Me: 5
C: are you sure?
Me: of what?
C: about your fare/destination?
Me: ya off course ! I travel quite frequently on this route( did I seem to be drunk, that I would be confused about my destination?)
C: give me a 5 rupees coin
Me:I don’t have one, I only have 10 rupee notes
C:why do people come to buses without change?( kept on murmuring, before finally handling me my change and ticket!)

Scene 2:
(the bus is racing with another bus on the same route, as to who would reach the next stop first. The drivers exchange some abuses)
an old man , who unfortunately has lost one of his legs, gets up in the bus, without much help from anybody.
Two visibly educated and well dressed people are gladly occupying the 2 sets reserved for physically challenged people. They some how could afford to notice the old man.
Occupier1: (to the old man) are you handicapped?
Old man: seems to be.
Occupier 1:should I get up?
OM: (tries hard balancing his clutches and taking out money from his pocket)
Occ 1: should I get up? Or can you manage yourself?
Oman: its ok.
Finally, one of the occupiers get up reluctantly, when already 10 minutes had passed.

Scene 3:
(the conductor again back to scene!)
a pretty girl standing immediately beside the bus door
conductor:: ( making a pat like act on her back) ticket ticket
girl: why are you touching me?
C: mam ticket please
Girl: cant u ask that verbally?C: sorry, ticket
Girl: everybody is up to some trick or the other thse days( hands over a 100 rupee note) from golpark to ‘last stop’
C:from golpark to?
Girl:’ last stop’
C: Golpark to?
Girl: ohh !! I will get down at the place where after which the bus does not go further
C: ohh , take your change mam...

While the earth continued to rotate from west to east,the USA witnessed another tragic campus carnage, gilchrist scored a century in his last one day match in his hometown, people in Calcutta still continued with their dilemma over having chicken or not….there I was, sitting on the topmost stair of the Open Air Theatre of JU on a chilly winter evening, and humming to the tunes of ‘Chandrabindoo ‘ performing live on the last day of arts faculty fest.

It happened like this that, one of my neighbourhood friends had called me and 3 others to her place to spend the evening together and thus celebrate her belated birthday.
Since her house is at stone’s throw from JU, we decided to peep in the ongoing fest iver there, rather than surfing the idiot box and pnpc-ing.

Mad crowd, circles of cigarette smoke in the air, dudes and dudettes,foot tapping music, rhythmic dances---the atmosphere had everything of an ideal fest.

The guest band thankfully did not take much time to warm up, thus saving the crowd from getting restless, which happens to be a common feature in many college fests.

today is valentine's eve,& shops, fm stations, card companies,jewellery brands, media, malls n everything else are going ga-ga over it for the past one week or more !no doubt it is touted as one of the biggest marketing gimmicks worldwide !

with the growing popularity of valentine's day among youngsters. business houses are leaving no stone unturned to woo love-birds to make sure that their cash registers keep ringing....!
while heart shaped soft toys and cards continue to be run of the mill type of gifts, business houses are making sure that technology does n't lag too far when it comes to making unique choice of gifts.

ICICI BANK has launched heart shaped gold goins, whose wight is around 5 gm and prices varies around 6000 INR.electronic giants are not too far behind...several laptop and iPOD companies hav come up with a new range of their product in shades of pink and red, colours symbolysing love.several fm stations have tied up either with some malls , or hotels n restaurants,or movie theatres and thus started giving out free passes to couples to spend the d- day with their loved ones.Admist all these fanfare, how can communication, one of the most important aspects in a relationship, stay far behind? Cellular companies are offering a slash in the call rates, thus allowing the couples to talk more, without burning a hole in the pocket!

so what was i doing on the eve of this much-awaited day? one of my friends called me out to go out with her to a nearby archies gallery to select some possible gifts for her soulmate....the shop was an extended gifts counter with items ranging from cards,coffee mugs, show pieces, chocolates to perfumes, pens , softs toys(this is fast becoming popular among kids as well as love-birds..weird though). After more than 30 minutes of surfing through the cards and other gift items my friend , fortunately, could settle for a huge card(size does matter! u know) and not-so-huge key ring , shaded in pink to suit the occassion...
the shop was too crowded , with people making their last minute preparations for impressing their sweethearts.In my otherwise boring visit to the shop, i overheard some planning over the phone, where to meet tomorrow where ther both can "spill their dill"

not finding anything suitable to buy for the time being , i settled for a fevicol gum priced rs 5, and headed back home , relishing a choco-vanilla ice cream!

ever since i last updated my blog,i have been straining my mind to think about the subject matter of my next post. And since , i could not settle for anything coherent, i just decided to pen down anything that comes to my mind.

The other day, while i was travelling in a bus from by home to gariahat,i got a seat immediately behind the driver. That entailed me two privileges...

1> i got an exclusive side window [if one remembers, the seat planning in a private bus in calcutta, there are only two such seats,parallely , at two ends]

2> the sound box of the fm radio was installed was installed right above my head, thus ensuring fool-proof sound reaching my ears.



after a whole lot of nice, ear -soothing musics and chit-chats Of the RJs during borings jams and tedious journey over potholes and indisciplined roads, finally when i was about to get ready to alight from the bus,

the 93.5 red fm started playing one of my current favourite tracks --the song maa from the film 'taare zameen par'. from the core of my heart , i started praying hard, that the traffic jam may , no , must continue , so that i can listen to the full track, before getting down...! the first stanza ha passed off smoothly, and just when the song was on its melodious high octave, the driver tuned the radio to some defferent frequency , which had a shitty song on air......!

concious, subconcious, or semiconcious---in every possible state of my mind , i felt like hurling mean to meaner abuses at the crappy driver, for commiting such a heinous crime (!) and thus depriving of the opportunity to give some respite to my ears from hustle and bustle of the traffic...!

but , remembering the saying , " to err is human, to forgive is divine", i chose to forgive him reinstating in my mind that " choices do differ"

my bus stop had already arrived, rescuing my mind from further brooding into such trifle grudges !!

the weather god did not seem to be very happy in the morning, as the city geared up to celebrate the 1st bandh of the year! with thick fog enveloping the surroundings, the mood was set to spend some more time under the warmth of the quilt( or watever you use)

but as hours past by, sun shone brightly ,state buses n autos started plying at thrice frequency(thus adding to the already noisy life of our house beside the main road),thus sending the message that if you have the will to come out, govt cant show you the way...

this bandh being called by oppositions does not have the option of completely paralysing city life,as most of the transport unions are affiliated to the ruling party of the communists.
but still, people dont want to take a risk..but a lot has improved with the starting of the IT industry in sector 5, calcutta has witnessed a new lease of life in its infamous work culture with the growing IT companies.

If for a minute ,just not think about the plight of those daily wage earners who are robbed of their wages due to the bandh,of those conventions,inaugarations, seminars that were to be held in different parts of the city, of those visits of foreign delegates who had come to survey for investments,of the anxiety n tension of those who have flights and trains to catch.....

then the bandh does come as a welcome--when you have test the next day and you dont know any stuff..when you are not willing to face the monday blues and the bandh comes as an extended weekend, your frend has not invited you to her birthday party and the bandh comes as a curse to her! the wonder of seeing ever busy streets tranformed into no man's land, the stupid joy of playing cricket admist empty streets..

but we cant...and that is why , inspite of supporting the issue of bandh many a times,(ranging from as tragic as the police firing at nandigram and north bengal to issues affecting our daily lives as hike in fuel price ),we cannot fully agree to this form of democratic protest---it harms more than it heals(if at all)....

my day stated with shakira and her hips..ya its the alarm tune that i had set last night.
i had to finish off with the poster presentation which took more than 1 hour ,thus making me rush for the bath in water whose temp was around......?? arre yaar, yeh to kabhi socha hi nehi !

getting bus n auto is so very frustrating in the route from my house to ruby..u'll see buses n autos plying in front of your eyes, you can boast that i have the mighty s9, small yet powerful m2, but getting into them at office hours in the morning is a task hard to accomplish! autos get full from the big bazaar stop, thus i make futile attempts by waving at them, n buses , with their jam packed appearence just glide pass...

ok , finally i have reached my destination anyhow!

there happened to be some faculty meeting , n thus our presentation got postpond..

so we headed for the new addtion to the mall in calcutta...the south city mall
loacted in the almost residential area of anwar shah road and thus making the area clogged during peak hours, south city mall is touted to be asia's largest mall area wise, with 'name-it-and-u-hav-the-brands' kind of experience.
sprung in vast 5 floors, the top floor hosts a large cafetaria. We could not finish with all the outlets as time n tiredness did nt permit!

thus passed another day,specificall february the 5th.......