The Deep Cut

I have always been severely judged in the way that I talk. "What is that, a colonial hangover?" I've been asked. When I moved from a city in northern India to the eastern part of the country, my first reaction was "Wow! I can't have spoken secrets now. Everyone here speaks Bengali!" - which blew my mind. I suddenly found myself relatable to the kids in the neighborhood. They spoke the same language, confided secrets in similar tongues in to their mother's ears and listened to similar reprimands from their fathers, just like the 10 year-old me. I made friends - who quickly became my closest friends - perhaps because I connected with them more personally, our mother tongue being the common factor here. Soon I developed a childhood crush on this girl who, among other common friends back then, was the only one who spoke Bengali and we used to go out skating in the evenings, hide together for hide'n seek and row together on imaginary lifeb

It must've been Phoebe, who woke me up a wee bit earlier than I expected to get up yesterday morning. In all fairness, I had fallen asleep late the night before. It was only after I had my dinner, did I start watching the 'Nick Nite' marathon of the never-gets-old TV series that, as I realize only now, is actually a typing nightmare! If you consider the full stops in between each of the unique capitalized letters from the English language... F.R.I.E.N.D.S! While I was doing that, I heard the neighbors drive in late in the night. It was a Friday, so it's only normal. I spied on them for a while from the gaps in the blinds. When they had moved inside their house, I noticed two extra cars parked on the parkway in front of my house. As if the repeatedly rhythmic sound of the bed springs from upstairs wasn't enough to tell me that both my roommates had had their 'better halves' come over after a long time. One of them had brought along her dog, named Phoeb

(Continued from How to be a Workout Nazi ...) "I also remember a guy during those initial days of gym. He used to go Ryan Gosling from  Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)  on us in the locker room. Although not fully nude, he would strip down to his bare minimum and do some free-hand exercises that would require lots of bending and twisting. Things, you don't want to see on your first day at gym. So, trust me when I say I braved it out there in those initial period. Trying to gel in, I stripped down myself to those shorts showing some skinny legs, lest they think I was homophobic!" The biweekly weight check and diet counselling was carried out by a professional who sits in an office at the ladies' gym. Not so surprisingly, everyone at the men's gym wants to get their weights checked all the time. After 4 weeks of working out (and two discarded, outgrown t-shirts later), I was asked to get my weight checked at the office. Little did I know, that th

Everytime I go to the northern parts of the city of Calcutta, I feel like I have gone back in time on a time machine. Not that I go much. Had I known that I just had to wait for the budding art enthusiastic friend to come back home from her grad studies in New Jersey in order to be rediscovering some forgotten history of my own city, I would have had something to look forward to in the summer! The northern part of Kolkata, oops.. sorry.. of Calcutta, is that old part of the city where people from south seldom visit. Many among the youngsters today, do not know that this city was once called the 'City of Palaces' (now used, rather in reference to Mexico city) - you can see for yourself the dilapidated palaces and their decaying columns from Victorian times on your way to the Howrah station. But you've got to visit North Kolkata in order to truly establish this expression. Just a few steps north from the M.G. Road metro station, further away from the Calcutta Me

All my train travels being interesting, I decided to do the extreme this time. Its a screaming 42 degree celsius in Kolkata, and I decided to travel to Bangalore on a sleeper class ticket on the Indian Railways. Yes, I was the original inspiration behind movies like 'Bheja Fry' . The only sane logic in all this was that wherever I would go, the temperature could only dip. I stuffed my rucksack with everything I did not need and a handful of things that I absolutely required. Then I latched a dozen water-bottles to my hand before I embarked on the journey. Immediately, I made acquaintance with an uncle, who asked me what I do. Making no sense of telling him that 'Dear uncle, I am a jobless globetrotter currently, and still so for another 3 months' , I fast-forwarded my story to a couple of months later and told him that I'm pursuing doctoral studies in the field of cell cycle and cancer. He jumped off his seat and introduced his unmarried daughter to me.

I have come to realize that my parents must've had some really bad confidant during the time I was born. Otherwise why on earth would they give a go ahead for me to be named Arindam at the age of only a couple of days? Do I, or did I ever look like an Arindam? Ughh. Arindam! So I have a problem. And before you say anything that falls along the lines of 'I told you so' please let me clarify. I've come to realize that my name wasn't always what it is now known as, to everyone. At some point of time, my parents had casually listened to some relative and had me   named  Arindam. Ughh. Arindam! What comes to your mind when you think of someone with the name Arindam? What indeed?

It was a long time ago when Kolkata was called Calcutta and Ballygunge was, well.. the posh neighbourhood as it still is. Being a posh neighbourhood, it used to be ridden with lazy police sergeants in the deserted afternoons, strolling occaisonally in the neighbourhood for the sake of security. This is a story of one such ambitious and veteran police sergeant and his crossing ways with my distantly related grandpa. There Will Be Blood. ... On his way to the office, like everyday, he takes his son to the Ballygunge High School. All his son's classes being in the day shift, it is almost noon by the time his classes start and he has his daily cigarette at the makeshift paan shop at the corner of the street. As an old habit, he would then laze around on the promenade till he finishes his smoke. Few walks down the street, there is an alley where seemingly the entire dirt of the city is dumped and people pee on the very sign that says "Do Not Urinate On The Wall&qu

I've always believed in a particularly enigmatic method of time-travel. And before you abjure this piece of information raising doubts on it's credibility, I'd put forward another claim. That you'll believe me when I explain. Smell. Indoor smell, to be specific. "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." - Helen Keller I've always had an intensified sense of smell. When I was little, I would go about taking everything in with my nose in a dilettantish manner. Little did I know that a long time after that, those scents would come back stalking, haunting and frequenting their way into emotions every unwary moment of reminiscence. I could smell interesting odours, uplifting aromas and soothing fragrances from miles away, but I could never smell trouble that was but only two inches away from my face! My earliest memories of scent is one of the most common memories for all. Its th

I have traversed the seven continents and have crossed seven seas to find the truth behind why most of the perfect women in Kolkata date almost all the wrong kind of men in this city. Why the smart and beautiful Bengali girls are going out with the slimy haired, cigarette smoking, sling-bag flaunting 'Ekta chumu dao na, shonamuni?'-waale Bengali boys. And as you would have it, I have emerged enlightened in this quest. All I needed was to travel by a mini-bus from the archaic Howrah station to the upscale Park Street on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. After seeing off my uncle, aunt and my cutest, youngest cousin at the Howrah station, I got on the relatively empty bus and found myself a place in the second last seating by the window. Before the bus could find a way out through the routinely heavy traffic that follows once you get on the Howrah bridge, I found the entire bus filled. Including of course, the seat behind me, where sat a relatively young man in his early twenti

As I celebrated the new year's eve on train this year, I found myself among a band of babblers for company. It consisted of a precocious girl of 18, her dad: by the way he spoke things, probably he's almost the same age as his daughter, and the mom: more than double the age of everyone else's combined. There were others too. Another dad and mom in their mid 50s, without the children.. and a Marhwari boy, caught in between emotions ranging from a pitiful 'AAAAH!' to an embarrassed 'Ooh!' You're probably wondering why I didn't take up a flight. But one should know that I find airway journeys, at the zenith of the most boring things to be done in the modern world. And you wouldn't ask, if you'd have read my earlier train experiences here  and  here . So, where was I? The girl's family, yes, was the kind we see in game shows, reality TV shows and somewhere among the spectators of the cookery shows where the hostesses exude doctrines

If there’s something I could ever be guilty of, it should be eavesdropping. Yes, it so happens that I find it extremely pleasing to my curiosity. Eavesdropping can become quite a hobby; or what many may stretch to call, a habituation. And I’m the addict here. In a cosmopolitan campus such as that of my University, you get to hear about ten different languages easily, and not all of them are strictly Indian. Adding to that, my being a Bengali gives an added advantage towards my mother-tongue! Unsuspecting Bengali couples in the campus (everyone agrees to it: we bongs, are everywhere!) fight, talk, or even do their typical coy-stuff, while I immediately tune my ears to that frequency.. … Yesterday, I sat beside one such couple in the Food Court – one of those intellectual kinds! And over the entire meal, this is, but everything they talked about: Him: ‘Hey, I saw Abar Byomkesh yesterday! I’ll pass on the movie to you tomorrow..’ Her: ‘Aah! The great Sharad

I was supposed to write about this account of family escapade, a long time back. But in my defense, I got caught up in the routine. The rushy routine of the last academic semester in the University. But before all that, dad planned another get-away! A road trip to 'Garhpanchkot' - a hilly place covered in forest, with historical ruins and a haunted temple in the middle of tribal haven. All this in one place! Dad had booked rooms at the forest lodge, owned the forest department. Located at the foothills and almost entirely encroached by the surrounding forest, the boundary wall was the only protection we had against elephants, porcupine, quite a few types of monkeys and wild cats. Few years ago, there used to be sloth bears too. The place is located near the Panchet Hill Dam, that comes under DVC. One of the mega-projects that rocketed an independent India to its current 'mildly developed' position in the world. A massive 4.8km long pass over the river Damoda