The part of Calcutta where we used to live earlier, is predominantly inhabited by people who during the independence were known as refugees. People who left their homes in erstwhile East Bengal , now Bangladesh. People for whom the mirth of independence was marred by the agony of partition.

Our family was one such. My grandma used to recount , how she, as a young lady along with my grandfather , had left behind her land of birth and set for an unfamiliar city with a lot of fear, pain , hope and anticipation. Initially they had taken shelter in a building at Park Street, which today stands tall a premier hotel.

Slowly , by laws of adaptation, their uprooted life began to find grip in the new soil. Land was bought , house was built. Moving out there, my grandma realized she was far better off than her neighbours. The neighbours were seven members , only five came to the city. The parents were witness to their daughter and son in law’s death. On the common note of anguish , they started to bond soon. So if Ilish was cooked for lunch at one home, the whole neighbourhood got a taste of it. They were complimentary to each other’s ordeal.

Along with stories of tuntuni, Ramayan, Mahabharat, alibaba, sindbad, tales of Dhaka and Borishal used to occupy the central place of my imagination. Maybe more than that. The places seemed like magical. The stories of unbound lands, ponds, playgrounds, Durga Pujo in courtyard, school journey admidst fields- perfect recipe to see a 7 year old’s eyes gleam.
“You know I got a double promotion in school”. I used to laugh.
During lunch, in the bed, I heard stories of a land I have never seen and formed images myself.
“ You know, there was this turbulent period of the late 70s , when curfew was imposed. Your Uncle’s marriage was a low key affair. People were not allowed to have illumination lest planes surveying understands that there is a city.”

Its tales like these, that my grandma used to tell me almost everyday, more so on the 15th of August...

I lost yet another umbrella today :( :( :(

Its mid April, and all I've been thinking is coming up with a sensible post . Nah :(

Teasing the teaser
It was some months back.Some Saturday afternoon.I had got up in the bus from my stop and got a window seat. A couple of stops later, a man got up , and sat beside me.A few minutes later he started behaving as if I'm his newly wed wife, putting his hands around the seat and odd stuffs suchlike.So. I turned towards him and asked him to behave properly.He called back his hands and tried to sit properly, though he kept pushing inside.I was on the verge of praying to God that this chap gets down somewhere near, when he called the conductor and got a ticket for Park Street. Gosh!
Now I thought that I was wasting the window seat by thinking about this idiot and started looking outside.Now again this man started pushing and trying to put his hand around.That was too much , I thought.Even the most wild billi of mine listens to me, but this man was worse. I just turned towards him, and said, "Why can't you just behave properly??" I don't remember whether there was something exceptional in my tone. The man said, "S-sor-ry" and promptly ran out of the bus. The place was some 8 km away from Park Street!

In the family
At times I wonder why both of my parents are engineers?
I tell you why.
On a recent trip to a seaside holiday, in the train. Conversations.
Me and my brother , as usual and as expected, talking crap.
-"Hey see those lotus leaves in the pond".
-"Hey remember how we used to count cows on our way to Jamshedpur?"
-"Not me idiot, you and Mithudidi used to."
-"What are those scarecrows made up of?"

Now my Mom gets excited seeing something.
-"What are those? Beside the scare crows?How come the utility poles are so wide apart? Doesn't that violate the norms?"
Now my father steps in.
-"Thats a three-phase leakage transformer, right? Its okay, you can't expect better mounting, at least in villages."
-"Last dat I was checking the 98B clause of the Electricity Act,it does mention the implementation of APDRP. blah blah.
And this the general scenario everywhere, in the dining table, in the car :(


Beginner's guide to Bargaining
3 simple steps: (from a Mtv program)
1> Shock shock shock---> Whatever price you are told at the beginning, just convey to the man , that you are simply shocked by the high price.
2>Know your maths---> You need to be really quick.
3>Half is full---> Remember this thumb rule. Even if you can't gauge the exact price of the product , just bring it down to half an your job is quite done.

No Eureka
Most of the cities have banned people from sitting beside the autowallah in an autoride. I don't mean to sound like robbing a privilege though.Now suppose you are sitting either on the right or left of the autowallah and the auto takes a winding turn.Are you going to fall towards the autowallah or will have a possibility of falling outside.
On this futile note I end this post :(

My Dida thinks that my cousin who is 27,has reached her marriageable age, and since she has not managed to find a groom for herself, its the elders who should take up this mammoth task . So every Sunday she makes it a point to go through the matrimonial columns in a vernacular newspaper , scan them and put a tick mark beside the ones which can be considered.So it was this Sunday,while I visited my maternal grandparents house, that I picked up the matrimonial supplement and started reading some of the ads:

# Alliance invited for Bengali girl,26+;mother senior college lecturer,father senior bank officer,brother settled in USA,cousin working in mnc. Mob:--, box no--- .
Now, we all know that its about loving your family, but where is the minimum information about the girl in question?

# Match for B.sc(h) girl, 23, Ghosh,5'4 , complexion dusky( like Bipasha),parents self employed,own house.Contact ---.
Dusky like Bipasha? What next? Husky like Rani?

# Match for businessman, 45(looks like 30), divorcee(with no fault of his own),passed 10.Bride should be extremely beautiful and educated.
!!!

So, I had enough of my entertainment and put aside the newspaper.
On other news , porshu is Valentines day. I was planning to get hold of somebody and venture into some parks , malls and places suchlike, but have this damn gd sessions in college. The blog was there on V day last year, but it didn't have any reader. But this year it has at least a few! So my dear readers , I love you all , Happy Valentines day .

Dear Cheeku ( now , don’t kill me for calling you like this),

Congratulations for your result !! you have made all of us proud and happy !

But don’t forget give my share of treat for doing your workbooks, for sacrificing my sleep because of your late night studies, for keeping all your pens at place before your exams and so on (the list is pretty long you see !)

Am i jealous?Not at all, why should I be? its your success that has brought a smile in the face of my loved ones :)

With each day passing by , I realize that I have so much to learn from you. Its you who strive me to do do better (really ! really !), its from you I need to learn how-to-keep-control-over –the-nerves-before-exams,its from you I need to learn how to be organized about every thing in life(be it those WWE stickers you used to collect or your study table or the way you maintain our book shelves), i need to know the secret of your yummy cullinary conquests in the microwave oven, how you win-every-NFS race, how to do soo nice power point and flash stuffs, and off course, guitar ! (see, the list is long here too! )

But, that does not mean that I am going to stop taking your favourite pen and return it only after i.ve finished the ink,I’ll get hold of the remote when you wish to watch your football matches, I’ll get hold of the morning newspaper first..etc etc ..(long list here too !)

Love you loads boy!

“Did you hear the ice cream vendor too?”

“Yeah, I did”.

“Arre, then go out in the balcony and stop him”.

“Why should I go out everyday?, you go out and stop him today”.

“ohho , he will pass by, if you waste so much time in shouting at me”

“Okay you get me the money fast, I’m stopping him”

“Wait boy, what flavour today? Budget is 10 bucks per head, you know na?”

“I’ll buy whatever I like”

“Shut up, don’t buy that twister, its horrible, and we have already tried that rainbow and vanilla zap, so anything other than these”

“Okay let me go, else the vendor will think we just stopped him for fun”

“Remember the things I told you about flavours, no Twister”

[this important business is a part of me and my bro’s summer afternoons for the past week]

My father’s office tour took us to a hydel power station at the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand.
This being my first train journey since watching ‘Jab We Met’ , so..you know…expectations and imaginations were really running high !
But unlike the movie, the train was not at all empty, it was full of a shit people. The women were running around wearing a whole lot of jewellery and men in their shorts and vests!
Man! This is only a one night journey and the train compartment is no way your bedroom !so , please..
The train was another crap character, stopping at every damn station…
Ok, finally after a bad night’s sleep admist cacophony contributed by kids yelling, people fighting over their seats, TTs shouting on the top of their voices, we finally reached the station..
So for the past 3 days , I have been

* Watching village girls and women passing by merrily , clad in clothes of brightest possible colours !

*Visiting the hydel power plant. Its Asia’s largest pumping project, done in collaboration with Japan.
Construction wise, it had an upper dam, lower dam and the usual switch gears,lock gates, turbine chamber, control rooms.
This visit made me realize how vast the difference between theoretical knowledge and practical experience is. I did not have the slightest hint how huge a transformer can be and what complexities it can have in its construction, whose circuit diagram we draw at one go of the pen!
The job in the field and control rooms involve a lot of expertise and tension.

*Visited the ‘Charak mela’…this ‘mela’or fair held in the villages of West Bengal for the last 3 days of the Bengali year, is all about fanatics and faith at its extreme.
People walk barefoot on burning coal,jump bare bodied on sharp iron rods, dangle a child with his body pierced brutally, from the top of a huge stick, hurting oneself in the name of god, and to top it all, on the final night they have 300-400 slaughterings.
The traditional ‘Chau nach’ is probably the only creative aspect of the fair.

*Ram navami was also slated then, when the streets came to standstill with people displaying fights with sticks and swords.

*Our driver took us to a place where bangles of hand made from ‘gala’ . it involved lot of persevearance and creativity. From next time, I go shopping , I’ll try not to bargain for handicraft goods. Their prices are justified.

*Walked the village roads in the mornings,chased herds of goats, took snaps with calves, ate at dhabas of truck wallahs in the afternoon , and counted stars in the evening lying on the terrace of our guest house!

Then , again, there was the inevitable train journey.
This time around, the journey was smooth, if I ignore the fact that the train was running only 4 hours late.i thank the sudoku in my mobile for helping me pass my time in the station.

So back to Calcutta. The taxi breezed fast over the Howrah bridge. There’s some thing in it. Whether it’s the architectural marvel, or the fact that it bridges such a wonderful city….but everytime I see the bridge..it does something to me.....

Dear bro,

I have really lost the count of the ‘scores’ of the names I have given you in all these years , and hence let me just address you as just bro! As a 4 year old, when I came to know from my grandma that I have got a brother, my only concern for the time being was –“then who will wear all my dresses?” do you remember, when you were 3 years old, how I coaxed with you to wear my white fairy gown and and how you demanded 5 milkybars to comply to my request?

Well, life was much sweeter ,years back. Wasn’t it so? Those physical fights, complaining about each other to ma & baba, those accurate bisection of a pastry you used to make by measuring it with a ruler, those home alone evenings, those fights to snatch away tv remote ,those rain drenching together on the terrace,those culinary conquests using microwave oven—I remember it all.

You know, having a younger sibling is like having your childhood and adolescence extended. Have n’t I stayed awake with you while you were spending sleepless nights before your board exams? Have n’t I helped you with all those workbook submissions? Have n’t I brought home even a small 5 star which a friend had given me as her birthday treat? And what about those saviour acts of mine ,those blatant lies,which saved you from ma’s scoldings?

But have n’t there been times, when I was angry of you? Jealous of you?

Sure , there have been.

I hated you when you made scratches on my school copies,thus letting the teacher punish me.i hate you at times, when inspite of you being the defaulter, ma says”he is younger to you, na”. I hate you at times, when I am being compared to you.

But I love you .I love you when you make sure I have all my pens in the right place on the exam day. I love you when you too settle for the butter scotch ice cream, cause I prefer it over your favourite chocolate. I love you when you agree not to tell ma, how long I chatted over the phone.i love you, when you try hard to take coins out of your piggy bank, to buy birthday gifts for me.

Thank you for all the love and care you have shown to me, thank you for all the patience you have showed to search a song I demanded, thank you for making all those powerpoint presentations for me, thank you for rushing down to ground floor to get the newspapers for me,thank you for everything else. And I assure you , there’ll be more to come!

Yours Didi