The Friend

Its been almost 20yrs. I no longer remember him. His hands groping me in the dark, that cellar where we used to play, his fingers counting the naked ribs of my body…they are all forgotten.

He was 18yrs old when he had come to our house to help granny with her household chores and he became such a good friend of mine. I could never imagine those summer afternoons without him. Granny sleeping in her armchair, mom and dad out for work and we, playing in the cellar. Our games nobody knew of since it was our own small world, our games, our little secret !

20yrs down the lane, he is just there in some amorphous form in my mind… lurking in some corner, my friend is long forgotten by the family but his memories still continue to linger on in my mind, no matter how hard I try to forget them.

P.S: this is my first attempt to write a story.

For the sake of the "Silent Noise" that resides in me...

It seems to be like ages since I had last written something. If I sit down and ponder I could probably think of 101 reasons for the same but sometimes, its futile to find the reasons behind a cause...
A lot has happened in both my macrocosmic and microcosmic world: Am almost in the middle of a new year; India has elected a "Stable" government hoping that it would bail her out of the present slowdown; an extragavanza called IPL 2 is over and won by the most unexpected team..etc.etc.etc: so much so for defining my macrocosmic co-ordinates.
As far as my microcosm goes, well it is difficult to put down the things in a),b),c) format. I was confused about the world and its people and am confused about it all the more now. The more I try to decipher the meaning of things, the more I feel I am getting lost in the labyrinth called LIFE. My sense of self has undergone a change. The self which I perceived as "me" has become volatile, amorphous; my earlier image in the mirror is getting blurred day by day and some new form is taking its place; the cacophony of the noises is growing louder and louder...their silences are turning more and more deafening...
...So I take my recourse back to the thing I enjoy doing the most; forget the 101 reasons of not sticking to it and go by the 1 reason which always makes me come back to it...

Dostana - a 'normal' story about the 'abnormal'

The basic storyline of the movie is how two guys-Sam & Kunal (played by Abhishek Bachhan & John Abhraham) fool a woman- Neha (played by Priyanka Chopra) into sharing her apartment by pretending to be gays. They eventually develop a strong bond & as expected both Sam & Kunal fall for Neha. Meanwhile Neha also falls in love with another man-Abhimanyu (played by Bobby Deol). Who wins the girl finally and how succcessful was their 'Dostana' is what the movie talks about.
As a lover of Bollywood masala movies, honestly speaking, I liked the movie. The movie sets out to be a light-hearted comedy & is successful in its attempt. Priyanka Chopra is looking hot throughout the movie. John Abraham as usual is looking stunning. Abhishek Bachhan has also done a pretty good job. As far as Bobby Deol is concerned, well am sorry, but he is looking more gay than the other two guys. In short, the movie is a perfect eye candy with beautiful locales, good looking actors and some really 'funny' jokes.
Oh! did I just say 'funny'; ya of course! because afterall I belong to the 'straight' upwardly mobile social stratum which forms the so-called "centre" of the society & who in tandem with the other members of the centre define what is 'normal' & what is 'abnormal', what is serious & what is funny. It is solely our right, our prerogative. So everything that does not follow our strict black & white classification, is termed 'abnormal'. The sub-altern does not have a voice, even when it tries to speak, its voice gets submerged in the clattering of noises from the teeming majority.
The movie exploits the cliches associated with their behaviour & laughs on them. A friend of mine after seeing the movie very nonchalantly commented "no matter what you say, 'it' does behave that way". The 'it' ! ... & my grammar teacher taught me that you use 'it' for non-living things, as in- 'it is a table' , 'it is a chair'...she must have forgotten to tell me that you use 'it' for human beings too or perhaps in her " Wren & Martin " such human beings were not even acknowledged.
So as we rated the movie as full ' Paisa Vasool ' for both the money we spent to buy the ticket and for the class we bunked on Friday morning to watch the show, did we even think once whom are we laughing at ? Our own hideous beliefs, our misconceptions...our own fellow human beings whom we have pushed to the fringes because they do not follow our scheme of things.
Or have we stopped thinking at all...Some don't think because they do not have a heart ( or brain, whichever you choose) to think, some don't think because they are unawares of such issues & some don't think because such thoughts would disturb their already disturbed world. Afterall you go to watch a movie to escape from the harsh realities surrounding you !
The reasons might be many, so we came back to our real life without even giving these thoughts a passing consideration...
Alas! I can offer only one consolation to my thinking mind- unawareness to acknowledgement to acceptance... this is how society grows. The movie atleast acknowledges that such maginalized elements do exist in our society. Hope so one day it would 'accept' them too...

LOST

My words seem stuck
somewhere in my throat
The pen refuses to oblige
Expression seems important but redundant
My lips just refuse to talk...
Numb in fingers, mumb in voice
i see people around me rejoice
am lost...
Lost amidst them
Lost amidst the noise which they call music
Lost amidst the tears which they call smiles
Lost amidst the darkness which they call light
and lost amidst the deads which they think is life.

" I am originally a Bengali, born and brought up in Patna, graduated from Delhi and presently doing my PG from Bangalore"....this is my usual introductory line when my friends ask me where am i from.
For my cousins in Calcutta though, I am not a Bengali. .... I can neither write in Bengali, don't even understand the meaning of most of the "shuddho" Bengali words and even my vovab in Bengali abuses is very limited.
For my friends in Patna I am not a Bihari either...I speak Bengali at home, my mom's culinary expertise is in a cuisine that is somewhat alien to their's and I manage to get ten set of new clothes for Durga Puja when they can hardly manage two or three.
Who am I then...a Bengali, a Bihari, neither or both? The more i try to answer this question, the more I get confused..."confused" we all are in this modern, globalized world. The more we move away from our sense of 'home', our sense of our 'roots', the more we feel nostalgic about it. We try to convince ourselves that we no longer need these parameters to define our sense of self but at the same time no Bengali can hide his pride when Saurav scores a century, no Bihari can hide his pride when a fellow Bihari tops an IAS exam.
Our roots though overlooked, are still there with us and will be there with us. The need of the hour is not to forget them but to move on from their. A Bengali is a Bengali because there is a Bihari as the "other". If the 'other' ceases to exist the 'self' ceases to exist too. So we need to appreciate the 'other' in order to understand the 'self' better. Only when we try to do so, an Assamese can co-exist with a Bihari, a Maharashtrian can accomodate North Indians, an Hindu can live with a Christian.
... an Indian would not kill another Indian
...a human being would not kill another human being.
and coming back to the point where I started .. as long as I get to enjoy my "chochchori" and my "litti-chokha" Am Happy.. am not ready for a trade-off yet!

i

'I'
defines me but itself elusive
quicksand
the more i try to hold it
the more it drifts apart...
the more i scream "its me"
the more it screams back " who me ?"

it lurks
somewhere
between my identity and my image
when removed
this self same 'i'
makes a 'dent' in my 'age[d]' 'entity'

who then is this 'i'?
...its there in my LiFE
...its there in my FAMily
...its there in the SOCiETY i live

its there following me
A SHADOW
which is there
BUT
still not there...

Cast Away !

Cast Away
in a world which is not my own
who is a stranger,who is my own
i do not know
the Silent Noise within me
is my only guide Here
I follow it, I dont know where.

My end is unknown
my beginning unknown
The only thing I know for sure
I begin to end
and i end to begin...
again & again & once again !