The Deep Cut

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 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

It is that time of year, when the national dress code for guys is a skin-tight shorts, borrowed from the rickshaw-puller's son who lives nearby. On top, you display your manly shaven/unshaven chest out to the world. If unshaven, the chest-hair should be of contrasting bright colours - such as magenta, yellow or sea green - if shaven, then this chain of thought is rendered pointless. The vest that used to be, better known as baniyan (no Noelle, not banyan. That's a tree!), is so deformed that you use it as a belt instead. Your flip-flops are torn but you're unwilling to let them go.. But then all that don't matter, because you're coloured entirely in black, filthy green and silver and it won't be making any difference to an unassuming onlooker, even if you go naked right now. The festival of colours, ladies and gentlemen, is an official license for people to launch a colourful assault on each other. And it always brings back sweet, and some bitter-swee

Oh Bombay! As I otherwise immerse myself completely for the cause of foul-smelling genetically modified organisms in the lab, there are only the sudden, last minute get-away plans that have been my saving grace for quite sometime now. And my saviour is one of my junior-school friends, who is now working for Fractal Analytics . Posted in Mumbai, he resides just a few kilometers further on the JVLR, making it easy for me to make quick escapes from the lab. This Saturday, with the plausible excuse being meeting a third friend, I skip my preconceived afternoon catnap to gear up for another night out with the guys. After lazily browsing for the bus routes for half an hour on Google Navigation, I called a cab-service, only to take an auto-rickshaw finally. The auto-man, for some very odd reason, immediately asked me if I had a girlfriend. (I can't possibly be that handsome now, can I?!) Sensing weirdness, I cut my route short and forcefully asked him to drop me at the IIT  main

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

'Are you pissing?' That particular sentence from 'Life of Pi' brings back memories. They are the 'not-so-worthwhile' snippets and clippings from our mutual lives that I have decided to keep. And now that they have resurfaced, I'm going to force them upon you guys. You see before I start writing something, I think of you. And then I desperately try to bring out the essence of a memory that has left me, or is leaving me in a slow, painful process. The feeling is akin to be retiring to an armchair in old age, and staring out of the window overlooking the misty garden in winter. It is a soothing feeling and a grievous one too, both at the same time. Once I begin to write about it, it occurs to me that this is going to be a rare post. In a way that it is partly gender-specific. Men may appreciate some aspects of it more, while the ladies will have to do a little bit of guesswork and bank on their imagination out there. But it is in no way, a sexi

‘I can’t see me loving nobody but you For all my life When you are with me Baby the skies will be blue For all my life’ Don’t look at me like that! That’s one extremely sweet song by The Beatles. (And now imagine me, puppy dog eyed!) There, you’re doing it again… This is a special song – for it’s the one that was always on ‘auto-play’ whenever I came across her. Her is (rather, was) one particularly tall, straight haired, fair, dark-eyed girl in my college. Was-? No, she isn't dead or anything like that, she just passed out (in a non-medical 'passing out' sort of way) - a senior, from an unrelated department. Always the one to be noticed dressed only too nicely: simple, nothing flashy, yet trendy. Earthly, yet bright colored kurtis on a pair of dark colored leggings usually. She had a mole on her nose, to the right side. Small one, but prominently pretty. Jet black eyes, with a sharp gaze about it. Even her teeth were set too perfectly! But the thin crazy str

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

What shit! Don't tell me these puny looking, fragile, 11-year old kids are living alone, without their parents, in a crazily- disciplined hostel, run by saffron-donned monks? Seemingly yes, they are. And what's worse? Even we have lived like that in our times. Sorry, but I can digest this piece of self-rediscovery, only because I've been through it.. I visited my older school, one with the hostel, after about 5 years. 6 years after passing out, as an alumni. It was a strange feeling, as I had gone on a guardian meeting day - the only specified Sundays, when parents are allowed to see their wards. Standing on the other side of the fence, I realized how eagerly the kids on the other side were waiting to meet their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts or other local guardians. The eagerness was depressing and sad. Suman tried to steer the feeling to that of being funny, by pointing out to a weird, baby-faced, bespectacled kid , musing, 'If that kid sudde

Not many of you may still be bathroom singers now. But nearly all of you would have been bathroom dancers as kids. Am I wrong? No, I'm not including you here, Mr. ultra-nerd kid! You were, perhaps, thinking how dense the liquid (called water) is, over your brain, which is actually denser! What all you did in the bathroom, tell me.. as a kid, and an innocent one at that! Like my Mama's son here.. innocent, taking bath in the ultra-huge bathtub! Whenever we went to Jhansi, me and my cousin brother Anshu used to plead my dad to get the thing - I dunno what to call it - the container with the atomizing sprayer coming out of it from one side, used to water the plants - a shower kind, for the veggies. A flower-shower. Veggie-shower. Yes, that. To fill it with water and pour on us. It was a time, when there was no regular water-supply available in the dry, water-starved Bundelkhand region. The city of Jhansi, included. And thus having a shower in the bathroom would ha

There is a 28-year old orangutan at the Allen Forest Zoo in Kanpur. He was a friend.. When we used to live there, Kanpur was a lesser polluted city perhaps. And the part of town we used to stay in, was a niche in its own.. The area in our backyard was a sprawling forest covering a significant area, and deep within it was a meandering canal named Thandi pulia.. Thandi, for the place was at least 5 degrees cooler than the city itself! And beyond it, on the other end of the woods, were ruins of a hospital for the lepers. I have never been there, but I have heard about it from my mom.. The forest was a measure of quarantine in earlier times of the hospital. Now it stands desolate.. For reasons such as proximity, I was made familiar with considerably-wild animals (if not tigers!) from a very young age.. I would have almost learnt the timely calls of peacocks and other birds and what they meant had I lived there any longer; I was however, familiar with the timely visits made by