The Deep Cut

There are friends, then there are enemies, then there are the allies-turned-foes. And surviving that military-ish school, wasn’t it the best thing that went down the hose? Yet I find myself looking forward, looking around for another. For, as it turns out, the saddest day is- when you’re abandoned, and glory comes to a brother. I maybe, am a little intoxicated, I’m not going to deny. But I’m being subjugated to face a rough one here, -right at the end of the line! If there should be a dark yellow light, run away to which, I certainly would. For I’ve heard, it leads to a land with no guilt, or yearning – and if only I just could.. ‘Know I’m there for you’ said the one who should. But how does it matter, when you’re running different ways? He will wrest the chance offered to him, while for me its sunset, and someone already stole my hays. I beg to scream away from the hollow promises, the shallow advices and material consolations. For its that particular cadency in life, w...

I missed them in IIT Kanpur. I narrowly missed them in the Oktoberfest, Bangalore last year. Though I missed being born in Helsinki, in the very first place! Yeah, like they wouldn’t have deported me! Mental asylum cannot be pursued in holy places. Places such as Finland. Holy for precisely two reasons - NOKIA, world’s most indestructible cellphone, conceived in ancient times, forged from the volcanoes on Mount Doom (surely you have seen the e-memes on Facebook now!) is Finnish. The first thing from Finland that I consider holy. The second is the god-awesome band named Poets of The Fall. I first heard their music in the year 2007. It would be precisely 2 years after they released their first album Signs of Life. And it was right then that I turned into a HUGE FAN of their music! Not too hard, not too soft. Also, sometimes too hard and sometimes too soft. Exactly the way I like my music. So when they decided to tour India for the promotion of their sixth album Temple o...

‘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...

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...

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...