On being asked: Shorir Bhalo aache to? Part I

Many years ago, I had read about a pun in a Jughead Jones edition of the Archies Comics series. Jughead shoos Archie, his chum, out of the house because he is in the mood for an afternoon siesta. After a lot of deliberation Archie is out of the house and Jughead surrenders his eager soul to his favourite couch. He falls into a dream where he sees himself in front of a mountain of hamburgers. (Anyone who is familiar with the characters in Archies would know what this dream meant for Jughead.) Just when he is about to plunge into that mountain of burgers, the doorbell rings. Jughead’s mercury sky-rockets as he walks to the door, realising that the paradise he was just about to make his own, was but a dream. He opens the door to a postman who has come to the wrong address (as though that he had come at that fateful time was not bad enough) and asks him for directions. Jughead slams the door with a rare invective that , I remember had to be written all over two regular strips in the columns, of which otherwise, even a small one usually accommodates Jughead’s small, pointed words with ease.

After slamming the door on the poor uniformed creature’s face, Jughead returns to the couch desperately hoping that he could still fall asleep and catch the kite-like paradise, the dream, whose string had so cruelly slipped away from his hands because of the sheer villainy of chance. And soon enough he falls into a sound sleep, although this time he is finds himself in the central mozzarella-pool of an enormous pizza. He is grateful, elated and humbled. His spirits soaring up, he is just about to lose himself in that cheesy, melting joy when the phone rings viciously near his ear. He wakes up with a start, and this time his under eye, I remember, had dark spots of gloom and utter disappointment. This time, the invective that he uses does not feature the alphabet at all. It appears to have been selected from a universal script of ancient symbols used regularly on such occasions by civilised print media.

Disgruntled, harrowed and convinced of the evil world and its unforgivable malice for him, Jughead sits upon the couch, chin-on-hands and sheds a few tears of sorrow. However, after some time, the very tears lull him to sleep. This time he sees the Almighty’s glory in full splendour. Both the mountain of hamburgers and the giant pizza lie waiting for him. He is ecstatic...nay insane is the word. And insane with the glory of God, jubilant with the regaining of a paradise lost, he pardons all the sins the postman and the caller had committed and with a touch of devilish victory in his eyes, rubbing his palms, he prepares for that one step of Jughead, a giant leap for....Jughead!

The door bell rings again. It is Archie. Veronica has dumped him once again and he is not sure if it is ok to ask Betty out on a date. So, he thought.....might...as well......a..as..sk an old ch....u...u..m. Thats it! Jughead starts banging his head violently on the door to which Archie, completely bewildered asks why is he doing so? And then Jughead says: Because it feels so good when I stop.

On Being Asked of Being Married

This is a question that I have been asked on countless occasions, by innumerable people since the day I applied for a certificate of stupidity and was promptly issued one.
‘How is married life?’
Now what on the Devil’s name can one say to that? By the time I have thought of something polite and discreet to say, the person gets the point. On such a faux pas (and there already have been quite a few since the fateful day) I remember the immortal words from the Gita which say that often, inaction is the mightiest action. The embarrassment that ensues following such negative turn outs of what is usually mistaken for a healthy and performing brain is mighty. That is true. And the intensity with which I drive home a point a la Mr. Bean, that would otherwise have taken a lot of deliberate articulation and rehearsal, is mightier. But to what a tragic effect!
I am sure that the few friends I have been spared by the vagaries of life and cities are not among those who expected a cow to look back at me every time I stood in front of the mirror following marriage. They definitely meant good when they asked me this question. However, I cannot make head or tails of why the very and always concerned Mrs. Das and her ilk, should ask this question and expect that I answer decently.
Although I admit that I am totally at sea when it comes to understanding the nature and scope of this seemingly harmless question, I have been able to realise that the intent behind it is despairingly plain. What genius! I always had a feeling that marriage has not reduced me to a complete imbecile.
The problem behind my reluctance to answer the question in simple affirmative is the image of the Bengali woman upon whom marriage has very recently befallen. It has its moorings in everything that reminds the average Indian of fertility. The Jersey cow comes to the mind almost immediately.
So the question though may have been asked with the simple curiosity of wanting to know whether I like being married, does not remain just that once it has been used in a certain tone. For instance, an aunt who obviously had forgotten her way to hell and strayed into this planet, asked me the same with that melodious husk in her voice, suggesting what was unspeakable to her Bengali sense of propriety, with a pinch on (thankfully) my cheeks.
Therefore, I want to shout out to all those who have asked this question and have not been answered properly and those who want to ask the question the moment they meet me that I do not know what that thing called ‘married life’ is. I merely know that life is enough of a boil on the ass and for heaven’s sake, I had rather not known if it turns out to be any different after marriage.

A Day in Winter

The sun-lit veranda has become a haven of comfort now. A strange chemistry goes on in the air between a lot of things, cherry trees and half-ripe oranges perhaps. One does not know whether it is the pink blossoms giving off that peculiar, dear scent of winter or the leaves felled by the winds, smouldering at nondescript street-corners and adding yet another element in the creation of this nostalgic season. The characteristic impact of Shillong’s winter upon the nose and therefore, the mind, is difficult to capture.
The other day, a walk along the road near the Civil Hospital drew my attention to the low hills in the distance, densely populated with houses perched like nervous birds upon even the most impossibly steep of slopes. The evening having been hastened by a short day, was turning the grey sky indigo, the fog had become even denser and just then, it seemed as though the hills had turned to water. For the hundreds of windows began glowing in a supple diffusion of their own light and the gliding fog transformed them into bobbing lamps that boatmen use while they are out fishing in the sea at night. But barely had I thought of how fog magically turns houses into boats, when I strayed into a different line of thought. I began thinking of the people who live in those houses and who assumedly were not at all aware of how beautiful a scene they were being a part of.
The part of Shillong’s winter that lingers in the mind, well after it has given way to spring, is simply mesmerising. The way-side scenes of ladies selling sohplang and oranges, the mind turning back again and again to corners where a heater has been lit, the breath of winter, its charcoal, the warmth and even the chill and the smoke are parts that play a significant role in making the beauty of winter immortal. The locales look as though they are pages from a collection of poems. There is that definitive air of languor written so large everywhere, one thinks of turning to a book with a mug of hot coffee, tucked into a warm blanket.
But just as I think of the beauty of winter I am sure the beggar who sits on one of the many busy footpaths of Police Bazaar, playing a duitara for his meagre share of coins, thinks of all these things albeit with the finger of heaven forbidding him to think about them or anything at all.

Was Wondering, Could You Talk to 'Me' Please?

You think the blog-space is one where you can be yourself? Well you only thought it was one. After my first blog I was not expecting the least of what I heard. A concerned friend informed me that such 'out pourings of the heart' are unwarranted in a place where every one knows every one else and no matter how much information may jump to avoid being intercepted by the wrong heads, it invariably finds one. He thoughtfully added, utterly concerned, that one should be a little more discreet when blogging in such a small place... because if you are as foolish (read this as 'emotional') as this, then you have tattooed trouble with a capital T upon your already blistering forehead. The last part was not utterred by him but it was not difficult for me to infer either. I obliged him with a polite smile saying that I had 'got his point.'

The most interesting part of this amusing concern story however, was that my friend had not read the blog himself because he is, as he proclaims himself with a dollop of pride, a Technological Retard (TR). Hence under all circumstances, he could not have accessed it himself. Apparently, the 'brandied' bit of information about someone he probably thought of as his holier than thou friend (and that is me) diffused to him through a well developed network of informers, whom our proud TR calls 'his tentacles'. Now this is obscenely interesting I thought. Why did the same evolutionary mechanisms deprive me of such worthy tentacles? My mind was immediately suffused with an image of a now-old advertisement of a popular men's undergarment where a befuddled have-not shouts out in despair,"What's he got that I ain't got?!"

Tentacles my dear, I said to myself. You do not have the edge of such worthy Tentacles.You never needed them and the resouce-efficient god did not think it necessary to confer them upon you. Those who need 'em have 'em. Sigh!

Humour, it is said, is not humour if it fails to evoke the expected response from those at whom it is directed. I am sure that my concerned friend and his concerned tentacles and the entire nexus of concern that has been meticulously created for the sake of protecting and popularising the Progressive Society of Harmless Commentary on Social (In)Discretion will continue the good work and absolve me of the sin of having what is obviously, a bad sense of humour.

Moral of the story: 'If interested readers should give a primary feed back to anyone about what an author has written, then by all means it should be the author himself/herself.' You poor ignoramus! That is how you thought it should be but it isn't. By Darwin! Of course you do not have tentacles!

Those who deserve 'em have 'em. Sigh!

May I add, with all the humility one can muster in a 'small' place as this that 'I' am open to all your comments, good and bad.

And We Will Kill Winter

Its June in Shillong and I still am a nondescript poet, some Nabanita Kanungo living in a place that is truly and anomalously called 159 Relief and Rehabilitation Colony at times and 159 Rynjah Refugee Colony, at others. The feeling is close to when you came from school as a child, drenched in rain and wanted to get rid of your wet clothes as soon as possible and sit by the mellow heat of the chawlah, but you could not because the coal had selectively run out of stock on that particular day and there was no one to get it from the market.Then you thought dearly of the heater to realise that there was no electricity. I failed to get through to JNU the year before. They said that it is the best place to study social sciences, before I left for Delhi. I came back to find the same people telling me that JNU was not worth it; it has its own 'agenda'. I started working as a peon in one of the projects in the North-Eastern Hill University for a temporary period of two months. It gave me an illusive picture of being employed. I then appeared for the entrance test for the Ph.D programme there and was thankful that they had passed me. It felt like a favour then. An MA gold medalist of a charitable institution, strangely it felt good and bad that it felt good.I remember vividly that someone who told me with a cluck of his tongue that there was no other way but to take me in, since I was 'their' gold medalist. I also remember having gone with my son (he is a friend, the only)to Heritage, a palace turned luxury hotel, for some brandy. We needed to celebrate.That was last year.This year, I got a job as a lecturer in the college that I had studied in. Sooner than I had got in,i was asked to leave because the state government objected to the appointment of a non-native.Nothing has changed in Shillong. So what does one do? One blogs bad blogs. perhaps because there is a simple assurance that here its you selling your secrets and not your acquaintances. The divide between me and many of my erstwhile friends and teachers seems indissoluble for now. I still cannot stop loving Shillong, that old lady who sells oranges, her kwai-disfigured mouth, the daisies in her hair. But I have my son, a native who listens to me when I blabber endlessly. He asks me questions like,"How do you feel now? I mean... deep inside your heart?" and that is all I need.