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Showing posts from December, 2005

The year that was

I'm wearing a rather striking shirt, one that makes me feel like a clown fooling around in a graveyard. Roving eyes latch on to me and make me too conscious of myself. Checkered in red, grey, black and maroon, I've excused myself into donning it and looking silly for two reasons. It's Friday and…more importantly, the last working day of the year. Tailored half-a-year back, I never had the courage to wear it, not until today. It's that time of the year when it's time to reflect on the events that transpired. Last year ended on the worst possible note. Dad had expired and I was numb with shock. The repercussions rippled halfway thought this year. Things were so abysmal initially that I had lost the will to live. Acrid in everything I did, I was immensely angered by time phlegmatically flowing through its cadence. It was as if Dad meant nothing to anybody. What right did people have to live the way they always had when Dad was no more? Why was much of the world still ...

Featured Blog

One of my posts has been showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs . I'm embarrassed of the many typos that have crept in. I had written it in great hurry with no time to rectify the errors. I can't even edit it now!

A day in my life

I'm jolted to the awakened state by the alarm. I go thru the little chores half asleep. I wish nights would be a little longer. I find my clothes mostly crumpled and carelessly stuffed into the wardrobe. I dress for office. I open the door to the balcony and the light from outside explodes in. Noise is an annoying guest invading my room. I look at the street below. People hurry for office or college. A mother drags her twins to school. A cool breeze blows. The sun lends its golden rays to everything exposed. Today's paper lies rolled on the floor. I get back into my room. Santosh sleeps like a baby. I lug my office bag and leave. It's a virgin day but the streets are already maligned with overbearing people. I try to avoid the noise by treading along a narrow street. A housewife is busy brooming the front of her home and shoots a trail of dust into the air. Shutters are lifted, dry leaves are swept by the breeze. The street coaxes me to the main road. It's noisy and awf...

Opus 104

I'm a s-l-o-w reader. As I gradually sink into Vikram Seth's picturesque novel 'An Equal Music', I get more and more curious about the fictitious characters so vividly brought into life and strewn across the plot. What makes the novel all the more delectable is its thematic revolution around music. Michael, the protagonist, is a violinist. Seth's flow of words is brilliant as it takes us deep into the lives of Michael and the peripheral characters. Since the novel is loosely strung around music, I thought of building up the right ambiance today by listening to some classical music myself while I read the book. Brahms's 2nd symphony is the first to enter the scene. Though highly regarded by musicologists, I never found it appealing...not until now. The haunting 3rd movement, though, has been an exception in its mystical melody. The 3rd symphony, as usual, fails to impress me and I at once replace it with a Schumann CD for the solo piano. The final piece from Opus...

A Repeat Story

My 2nd credit card showed up. Not surprisingly, there were 2 glaring flaws. Inspite of providing the right address and sending them a copy of my mobile phone bill as proof of my residence and inspite of their executive coming home for verification, the address that was finally recorded by them shows 5th Main instead of 15th. But there's more. I was promised a Gold Card...and they sent me the Classic Card instead. I take heart in the fact that at least it's a Visa!

Steel Express

Like most bengalis living in Jamshedpur, Calcutta (now, Kolkata) was our Mecca. Our annual Haj would happen during the summer vacations. Since Jamshedpur was a hinterland of sorts with a sleepy ambiance and where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, I eagerly looked forward to the trip. Calcutta was in stark contrast to our town. Huge, noisy, unplanned, chaotic and stunning in its complete disarray, it was a shock treatment that I was awaiting all year long. Sharing my enthusiasm was Anirban, my good friend and neighbor. We had little in common except for our zeal for the trip and, of course...trains! Trains fascinated us to the point of being an obsessive topic of discussion every evening when we met to play. We would begin our daily rendezvous by discussing our latest finds on the Indian Railways. And since his pilgrimage to the holy land during the long vacation was very much like mine, our camaraderie found a glue in Steel Express. Steel Express was the mainstay of railroad c...

Nirvana

Yesterday's retaliatory mail seems to have done the trick. Bharathi is no longer flooding my mailbox with unwanted forwards. An excerpt from my mail: Whatever b the cost, I'm ready to bear it. It'll definitely be cheaper than hiring a guy full-time to keep flushing my mailbox of your JUMBO-sized mails! A recipient of crap-mail, Deepanjan

Some Happenings

Trivialities seldom merit dedicated posts, a fact I've often divorced. However, the cumulative effect of such events ought not be overlooked. Thus this entry. My PDA arrived last Friday. I had shopped for it via MyValueShop . However, my enthusiasm soon ebbed when I realized that the nifty little gadget had an insatiable appetite for power. The brand new Duracells were significantly drained in only a few hours of operation. At this rate, I would be spending a fortune just on replacing batteries. A very disconcerting thought. I've decided to return the product tomorrow. My passport arrived and didi informed me about it. I was surprised as my name was not on the list when I had visited Jadavpur Police Station in July, even though I had applied 2 months back. I soon had to translocate to Bangalore and eventually gave up all hopes of ever getting the coveted thing. However, out of the blue came a mail saying that I was supposed to show up at the said station for verification purpos...

Just Arrived Via Courier...

...thanks to Indiatimes Shopping ! Dear Vanity Fair , I'm sorry but my patience with you has run out. You are too bulky, there are more characters in your pages than I've ever come across in real life, your language is too archaic and your period too antediluvian and alien. But there's hope. I may return to your pages some day.
Rajat has a voracious appetite for the choiciest ringtones for his mobile. Last time, it was a snoring man. Today's fad was the plaintive cry of a woman. Everyone at work looked up in utter bewilderment when his phone rang! Helps break the monotony. Erratum: Rajat informs me that it was the cry of a wolf! Well, anyone would be foxed!

The Red Umbrella

I saw Diya (my niece) the other day proudly flaunting her brand-new umbrella. Blue in color, the canopy had fanciful decorations that amply captured the imagination of the little lady. The metallic stem added to its beauty. Diya had been wanting an umbrella for long and her parents finally gave in to her constant tantrums. It was a fine morning with rain-barren clouds enveloping the sky, leaving little prospects of the Sun managing to peep through it. Obviously, an open umbrella was a misfit and had no business being there. Yet, there she was, Diya beaming with pride as she showed off her latest booty to everyone without a care in the world. I found it amusing and my mind instantly raced back in time to the halcyon years of my childhood when I too had an umbrella that meant the world to me. I mustn't have been much older than Diya. I had a second-hand umbrella today's kids wouldn't dare or care to flaunt. It was vanilla-red with a wooden stem. Though there was nothing allur...

I'm attractive...

...though not in the conventional sense. The hour-long bus jaunt back home is a period when most techies feel overwhelmingly sleepy after a hard day' s work. Many would slip into a deep slumber had it not been for the pothole-ridden roads of Bangalore. My next-seater (keeps changing) joins the tribe of wannabe slumbering travelers...and invariably begins to slump towards yours truly. And since I always take the window seat, my face is stuck between the window pane and a wobbling head. I silently suffer in my entrapment with nowhere to turn. Why can't the bugger tilt towards the aisle? Today's culprit was especially intimate. I could feel the radiant heat from his head!

That's it

I seldom visit the blogs of other people because they are generally very boring and utterly lack in the quality department. However, I had tried my level best to stick to some that began with a bang and promised the world. Sad to say, most of them have failed me. The blogging phenomenon ends up hogging server space and does precious little. Perhaps its only virtue lies in keeping some hoodlums off the streets. I'll stick only to a select group of bloggers who put quality above quantity. Too bad, most bloggers don't seem to know the difference!

Hard Pressed

We all have our handicaps, don't we? Well, mine isn't exotic or seriously debilitating but stunting nevertheless. One of the frequent chores that bug me is the ritual of ironing my trousers. Really, this is a job way too menial for my genius. My flirtation with the iron began during the school days, although jogging my memory doesn't help in recalling when I was pressed into this demeaning job. I guess it was my mom who made me do the unthinkable, ironing my school pants. We had an ancient iron the weight of a shot-put and even lifting it was a Herculean task. Anyway, someone had to do the job and it might as well be me. I actually developed a temporary stoop after the ordeal was over. It was, quite literally, a back-breaking experience. The second press I had an affair with was newer and lighter, much to my relief. Kaushik, my roommate in Pune, was the proud owner of this little device that made life a lot easier than it otherwise would have been. Romancing the feather-wei...
My first credit card has arrived. It's a Mastercard from Standard Chartered Bank. I had insisted on getting a Visa card and they had promised to comply, but...
Blogging held the promise of making a Milton out of every moron...and too many of them fell for it. The quality of most blogs is appalling. I often get the feeling my own posts are adding to the litter.

The Tree Blog

If trees could blog day in and day out about their daily experiences without repetition, what would they write? Since my daily routine is very monotonous and stripped of spectacular events, my dilemma is very much the same. At least the tree could write about the dogs that would come up to it & do their business against the trunk. Not that I would yearn for canines having a similar affinity for me! Now let me tell you about my daily routine. I set my mobile to wake me up at 6:45 in the morning. I go through the early morning chores while cursing the night for being so short and the corporate world for its preposterous belittling of my creative genius. I leave home at 7:40 and tread my way to the bus-stop, an activity that consumes 11-12 minutes. The company shuttle arrives, I board, take the window seat and wait for the potholed roads of Bangalore to thoroughly rattle the bus...& in the process awaken me completely for work. The trip takes 45 minutes. I reach office, keep swipi...

The making of a cheating maestro

Well, the little peeks would happen way too often...and they really don't qualify for cheating, but the first time I cheated in school to an extent that would put even Lalu to shame was when I was a 7th grader. The UN was conducting a short study course on its history, structure, constituent bodies, et al. We were given a booklet that contained all the pertinent information that we were supposed to mug up in about a week's time. Being completely indifferent to academia, I conveniently gave it a miss. However, when the big exam day came, I was shocked to learn that unlike me, most of my peers had taken an active interest in the course and had actually studied very diligently! I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of the scoreline. Too late, I was helpless! Now some guys had opted out of the course at the very outset. My partner belonged to this rarefied tribe. Lucky me! The exam began and there I was, answer paper on table, pen in hand, an empty head and nothing to write...

Bagpack/Backpack

I don't know how it is in the rest of the world; but in India, school children are burdened with oversized bags. You can't help feeling sorry for the little ones having to lug heavy backpacks each morning to school and then back home after dispersal. I couldn't escape this ritual either. Packing the bag for the next day was a particularly tedious task, and dad helped me during the early days. Actually, he did it all by himself! Then came the dreaded day when he refused to go through the chore as he was busy teaching didi something. The task of packing my bag all by my own looked infinitely intimidating. However, a man's got to do what a man's got to do! So I braved the challenge ahead and emptied my bag. Out came the school prospectus among other books. The back cover contained my time-table. Dad used to arrange book according to their subject, refer the time-table and simply inserts the relevant books into my bag. A foolproof method, I must acknowledge. I ...

Microsoft Live Mail Beta

My elation was boundless when I finally got an invitation from the Microsoft guys to try out their Live Mail. However, I was soon to be disappointed. On clicking the link, I learnt that the service is not available to Indians yet. Why does Microsoft treat Indians like dirt? We had to stick to a paltry 2mb of Hotmail space when most of the world had been upgraded to 250mb. Does demographic segregation really help Microsoft?

Ganguli Bagan, Diya-Didi & Sebastian

In a dilemma

I had originally planned to buy the Nokia Wireless Keyboard. However, now that I've got some semblance of the price (which happens to be above Rs.6k), I'm not ready for the leap. Even desktops are now available for under Rs.10k.
I could write an entire book on the events that took place the previous week. Now, if only my memory didn't fail me yet again! Folks, you must have realized by now that I suffer from an impoverished memory...something that has bugged me since early childhood. In fact, I decided to blog to preserve the memories that would otherwise fail me. So what could have been a comprehensive narration...will never be.

Kolkata

Tulu Mashi, Dida, Pinki, Chumki, Didi