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.