Hockey...

My blood has more cricket and bollywood than red blood corpuscles and
haemoglobin. I've never really tested my patience with any other game.
But just now I watched a Pakistan-England Hockey World Cup match...and
I was floored. What a game hockey is! Now if you ask me to define
hockey,I would say it's cricket and football clubbed together. The raw
pace and stamina is that of football's,but it's played with a bat and
a kind of deuce ball. It's so much more difficult to tackle/dribble
with the ball,with a bat while running at a cheeta's pace. Anyone who
loves to watch 'corners' in football should watch them in hockey. This
particular battle between two great teams ended in a 5-2 result in
England's favour. But every minute of the game kept any team's win a
possibility. I think I'll watch some more hockey now. I love the game.
And there was something funny in this match. The names of the English
players. How? Sample this,then. There was a Jonty Clark (in cricket we
have a Jonty Rhodes [S.A] and a Michael Clark [Aus]). Watch
hockey,people. It's an amazing game. Let's support our team in this
World Cup...

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An Early Morning Trip Back...

1st March,2010, 5:30am, En route to Arambagh from Joypur
Well,it's not exactly 'early morning'. It's 5:45. But the scenes
outside my bus-window are just AWESOME. I mean,I have woken up much
before 5:30 a lot of times,but breaking sleep in a city and in a
village are two entirely different experiences. It's cool and
fresh,the environment here,as my bus rockets through sleeping villages
of the dawn,from Joypur towards Arambagh. The only similarity with my
dear,dear Kolkata is the irritating honking of the old,demonish
vehicle. But well,one cant possibly hope to have everything without
asking... Thus I zoom into March with a special memory that'll stay
for a long,long time. Welcome To March With Me...

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A Journey To Another World...

27th February,2010, 9:40pm, Joypur, Bankura
Dad worked in the Indian Railways. Since my birth,the only other place
I considered a second home was a train-compartment. I know people who're
extremely uncomfortable travelling by trains,but I sleep best in a
moving train. I love making friends,and this too happens best on a
long journey by train. Besides,the railway fraternity has always been
like a family to me; I've seen dad engaged in friendly chats with
perfect strangers of TTs,station managers etc. But I
absolutely,totally loathe bus-journeys. I always have... Today I came
to Joypur from Belur. I took a local train to Tarakeshwar,and then
journeyed by bus for 3 hours. The bus-journey was fantabulous!!! I got a
window seat,thankfully,and there were vast,never-ending expanse of
irrigated fields before my eyes. At times the greenery hurt my
eyes...at times i thought I was seeing the same fields again and
again...as if time had decided to surrender to our mad race with
it.... Ofcourse,my co-passengers occasionally helped break the
reverie. But those heavily sun-burnt rustics were straight out of my
art-teacher's village-sketches. They were so carefree,smiling all the
time... Their simplicity stunned me. Even when they fought with each
other or the conductor, it was a lesson in patience and good manners.
I have travelled by bus before. I have come to Joypur itself twice.
But today I had an entirely new and absolutely amazing experience. It
was as if I had strayed into another totally different world...a world
that's poor no doubt,but a world that's happy. A world that hasn't
forgotten to put off its problems and smile once in a while. A world
that we can learn from,every minute...

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Holi...

It's time again for some splashing of colours.... I always loved and enjoyed thoroughly this festival. That was till class seven. Then there was measles one year, followed by chicken pox the next. The board exams played spoilsport the next three years, and after that I joined a college in which Holi was celebrated sans colours! Well, so be it, I said to myself, but soon discovered that Holi minus colours was like computers without operating systems... I still become nostalgic when I remember my days till class eight. We readied ourselves from the day before, with pichkaris and all that. On the day, from around 10 in the morning, the fun began. By 12, our parents were at a loss as to who was whose child. Each one of us looked a thousand times better that what our western brothers look on Halloween. And becoming drenched was the best part of the whole affair. Of course, there were teenage pranks played on friends. Some reached the extent that got our parents absolutely flabbergasted. Like for example when my father took me to the bathroom to scrub the tough colours off me, his eyebrows cocked up when he saw coloured foreign palm stamps on my buttocks and upper thighs, along with the rest of the body. But he only smiled and never said anything. I was so embarrassed! But then I needed Dad to take those colours off me. It was all so much fun... Even our teachers, who were required by the rules to punish us if we went to school with coloured faces, excused us. Because at times they too were unrecognisable.... But all that is lost now. This time I will be visiting a cousin's place in a village in Bankura to enjoy Holi with them. It will be fun alright, but not the wild kind that I so much miss every year. A Very Happy Holi!

Mamata vs. Sachin

What a pity! Mamata Bannerjee had almost walked into the 'Goddess of Bengal' chapter of Indian history when a Marathi Manoos deftly played spoilsport. For every new train or school or hospital the minister gifted Bengal, Sachin hammered a sharp and bloody nail into the South African coffin. And Bengalis have always known what to choose and when. Arey dada, budget to kal paper'eo pore nite parbo, kintu ei oshadharon performance ta ki ar live dekhte pabo??? So true. Thus in the war of titans, a Tendulkar won over a Bannerjee yesterday. And now to the Budget. It's a good one. We aint complaining. Personally I wish the elections in Bengal were another two-three years away. Because then, we would've had the best performances of both the parties. As they compete against each other to win the masses, the people of Bengal continue to have an unprecedented gala time. It's raining lakhs, minority reservations, new jobs, regularisation of part-time jobs, railway coach factories, new tracks, newer, faster trains, model stations, model hospitals, and everyhting that we didn't have till now. So many 'model' endeavours, except the real one. The Kolkata Fashion Week got postponed, thanks to the last-minute walk-out of the title sponsor. The Rehmans didn't like Shah Rukh "cozy"ing up to the Todis, and to prove that although he's a Khan, he isn't heartless, he snapped the deal. Now the KKR team will have to hunt for new vests and underwears... It's another matter that in the last two editions of the IPL, the team was left underwear-less by almost all teams playing in the tournament. But Shah Rukh still managed to walk away with the maximum booty. And why not? His name is Khan, and he isn't a fool... Have a Nice Day, All of You

Kolkata a Safe City? Huh!

Anyone familiar with Kolkata knows that the area around Ashutosh
College is quite busy throughout the day. Infact,"hajra mor" is
infamous for it's office hour jams. There, only a few days ago
something happened...something that stirred a part of my belief in the
city. A friend of mine was returning from office. When she was infront
of the Ashutosh College (which houses the Shyamaprasad Mukherjee
College in the evenings), at around 8:30, a biker suddenly stopped
infront of her, and lunged at her. He also targetted her cell phone.
Somehow she managed to get away. The question here is, is it time
for us to wake up from the dream that Kolkata is a safe city? The
incident I mentioned happened only a few yards away from the
Bhowanipore Police Station. Add to it the fact that the evening
college was on at that time. My friend remained traumatised for a
couple of days... Only a few months before this incident, a journalist
friend of mine was followed in Jadavpur by some bike-borne drunk and
abusive sons of bitches. She was returning home in her office-car. It
was only when they overtook the car for further fun that they noticed
the 'press' sticker and sped off. The exact location of the incident?
May be fifty metres from the Jadavpur Thana. It's time our sisters,
friends and girlfriends learnt self-defence arts. The city couldn't
care less for its womenfolk, and the police is busy protecting the
VIP and VVIP politicians. Who already have goondas, cadres, or both to protect them. God Bless Kolkata

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Racial Profiling? Not just the Muslims...

Watched My Name is Khan. Good movie. But while in the hall Shah Rukh kept stressing again and again in the U.S of A that his name is Khan, and that he isn't a terrorist, I remembered something that happened to me a long time ago, in my own backyard, as it were. I had gone to Bhubaneshwar, to appear for an M.A. level entrance test of the University of Hyderabad in the Utkal University. After alighting from the Dhauli Express, I headed straight for the rickshaw stand. My Oriya (now Odiya, of course) rickshaw-puller uncles measured me with lusty eyes. When I reached ear-shot, each one competitively shouted "where to?" I named the place. "How much?" I asked. At this, one of the professorial types came forward and said, "see, the rate's twenty, but you'll have to shell out twenty-five". When I politely pointed out that I ain't a foriegner, they collectively (and even more politely) pointed out that I ain't an Oriya either. I was shocked! This was my first brush with some kind of profiling (regional). No matter how much we shout from our rooftops about America's frisking the Kalams and Khans of our country, racial, regional and caste profiling exists in our own motherland too. Mera Bharat Mahan, Problem Mein Hain Hum Sab, Chatterjee Ho Ya Khan