The Deep Cut

(Continued from an earlier, equally happening post, named ' My Travel Diaries - Nilgiris: Part 1 ') It was dark. Very dark, by the time we declared ourselves the unconquered champions of Frisbee! We even did a 'samba' to prove a point and were soon joined happily, by the losing team. After I joined the rest of them again in the garden, now pretty cold after an hour, they had started 'Dumb-charades' on movies - girls vs boys! The girls gave old movies to enact, hoping that we won't know. And we were ahead for two reasons precisely - one, me, as I'm the biggest movie buff in the gang! And two, we had the biggest nautankis  (if there is a male version of drama-queens) among us. However, we couldn't get the better of them, as some of our girlfriends joined the opposing team to successfully guess the most insane movies we have told them about. 'Caligula' and 'Prometheus' were heavily regretted. At the camp fire The

This was bound to be the most nostalgic one, obviously! But not as intense as it actually turned out to be. God, we're going to miss each and every aspect of the trip and the bums involved.. After the awesome experience and preliminary bonding in the trip to Ooty, in the October of 2008, our first year, that place was set in deeply in all our hearts. We always wanted to visit it all over again, but the opportunity never showed itself up. So after a few other minor attempts like the trips to Pondicherry and Yercaud, we ultimately managed it in our final academic year. Our actual destination was the tea-garden-on-one-side and forest-on-the-other hilly, green town of Kotagiri, some 30km from Ooty and another so from Coonoor. Weather was perfect, it was cold yet no need for sweaters. Only a simple fashionable jacket would suffice. The trip was made in two buses - one large and one small. The latter, having just about 14 seats, was conquered by just us, a gang of about, say..

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