With the Warm Sun on My Back

 

Life, why do you wander?

Life, why do you sigh?

Come rest-a-while,

For the only thing you do is try!

 

The warm sun on my back,

How I wish you were here!

The pain of not being with you,

Life, it’s just not fair!

 

The gingerbread man is broken,

Life, you never gave him a chance.

With a broken leg and a cuppa,

Look at him dance, look at him dance!

 

Where are you my love?

Where did you go away?

Stay with me for while,

Stay till the words have their sway.

 

I wander around, quiet and calm,

There’s a storm brewing inside.

Life why do you smile?

I took everything in my stride.

 

Where do the sparrows go?

Where do the songbirds lie?

They never had a chance I feel,

Once concrete hearts willed them to die.

 

Songs and birds and mahogany stools,

The steel breathes fire every day.

Help me my love, my life.

I can no longer find my way.

 

The song and laughter is all I have,

Will you steal them from me?

All I want from life it seems,

A chance to love free.

 

It fades, it fades, it fades.

Memories come and go at will.

I wait and look at the setting sun,

My chin resting on the windowsill.

Wars vs. Trek and the Man that Settled It for me in 2022

 

There had to be a day when I had to throw my ring into the hat and give my opinion. The truth is no one asked for it but the First Episode of Star trek- Picard reminded me I needed to do it. The reality is that the debate between Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a manufactured one by the legions of fans who will always have their reasons.

 

Let us start with the obvious. Star Wars is a classic fantasy and adventure. Imagine a Western in a completely new world. It creates a world never seen before in a galaxy far far away. But take it away and set it in Ancient Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia Wars would not be out of character. It is probably one of the greatest stories ever written encompassing every story arc ever known. In fact, the story arcs became so powerful even George Lucas had to become a revisionist and give rise to the debate of whether Han Solo shot first! He did by the way.

 

And with Disney taking over, the Star Wars universe just becomes grander and bigger than ever. It is as close to a modern Epic that we will ever get.

 

Star Trek on the other hand was science fiction at its purest and at its best. Look at the progression of their storylines. Look at the details of the technology being discussed. What’s shown in Star Trek today might as well be technology of the future. But there’s more to that. It’s a story of humanity’s never-ending search for meaning till one day it will lead to our self-destruction.

 

Star Trek also differs from Star Wars on one critical aspect. Star Wars is about a battle between Good and Evil. It is about empires battling each other for what they believe is right. Imagine Star Wars is The Iliad. And that makes Star Trek The Odyssey. It is about exploring; it is about the journey. It is about finding home at the end.

 

And therefore, when held at a gunpoint facing the Wrath of Khan I would always choose Star Trek. Unless of course Yoda appears and gives me the Force. Who wouldn’t want to feel the Source? Unless of course you are a Man in the Wheel of Time World and touching the source will only drive you to madness. (I deliberately threw it in to show how cool I am)

 

But now let us get back to Star Trek – Picard. There probably is no other series equaling it today on streaming that can match it in terms of storytelling and complexity. I was always a bit put off by the reboot of the movie franchisee from 2009 onwards but Picard takes Star Trek back to what it always stood for. Science Fiction at its purest form. And I know there had to be a season 2 and that’s why Picard lives at the end. And probably that is the only place where Luke beats Picard. His bowing out of his world was spectacular. And will always remain so.

 

But Watch Star Trek Picard. The world of streaming will see a cash crunch soon (That’s my business acumen speaking) So enjoy perhaps the greatest moment in the history of content creation. One day into the future, this will be considered the Golden Age of Content.

 

The Hope Eternal

 Our species is a strange one. It likes to believe that all will be well in the long run. As the sun flies through the universe with its tiny little blue planet, the even tinier us like to believe that we are invincible, that we are not a happenstance but part of a larger design and a larger plan.

 

Even our most outrageous stories which dare to explore the concept of chaos, end up bringing the world to an order. Look at our popular culture icons over the last couple of decades. For every Joker, we find our batman, every time an Evil-Lyn embraces chaos and wants to let it loose, a Teela rises up to being order. Even our games call chaos Magic and asks mages and witchers to control them.

 

In our worldview order is good. Order gets things done. Ordre is the natural form of life and hence when cataclysmic events completely turn our worlds upside down, we get afraid of Armageddon. The Hindu pantheon calls upon Vishnu to preserve after Shiva’s Tandava destroys everything.

 

If you have managed to read through some of the older posts, you might see that the questions that troubled Siddhartha troubles me as well. He however became The Buddha and I just read about his journey and his teachings. The three biggest sources of suffering illness, old age, death starts taking new meaning in a world that we live in today. With everything up in the air, mortality has come closer to home. Age crept up while we masked up and illnesses became many with treatments becoming more and more expensive.

 

2020 was the year of survival. 2021 was the year of reassessment. How 2022 will turn out is anyone’s guess but as we have seen over and over again throughout our history, hope is eternal.

 

And as Bollywood puts it beautifully, “If the ending is not happy, it just means the film is not over yet.”

 

So there it is – another year goes by and when we look back fondly many years from now, we will remember how we survived on hope and prayers.

 

Because all will be well in the end.

The New Stages of Grief

 

This is the year of strangeness. A year back no one would have imagined the position they find themselves in. But beyond everything else, there is hope that lingers on. Because hope is what makes us human. That and worrying about a future we know nothing about. Amongst our closest ancestors and relatives, we probably are the only species that worry so much about what the future holds for us. The big primates seldom do. And that is an evolutionary marvel that probably allowed the homo sapiens to race through and become masters of the world around. All that we do is with an eye on the future. Even “Carpe Diem” that tells us to seize the day loses its sheen after a few glorious years. Because if something is an absolute in this world, it’s regret.

 

There are events in world history that change a lot of our daily lives. Let’s take margarine for example – first thought of as a butter substitute for the French Army and the poorer sections of the society it became the saviour as World War II ravaged the world. And then it fell from grace again as the world attained prosperity. Often, it’s all about being at the right place and the right time but more often than not, it is about missed chances.

 

The strangest things however were playing out in our minds and the phases of grief were playing out in a completely different order. In the beginning of the year there was disorganization and despair all around. Information was scarce, the hubris of the human race was at full display and we were winging it in the true sense of the word. Then came the shock and numbness when we couldn’t meet family, things went from bad to worse and there would be a glimmer of hope which would then die down. But we picked ourselves up and moved on to yearn and search for meaning between never ending calls, the need to head back to work even though things were not quite the same. Some of us were luckier than the rest and this was the year I felt we finally began the see the invisible hands that moved every economy. There were people out there braving the virus while we kept safe at our homes. We are now in the reorganization and recovery phase with the hope of a vaccine helping us go through the process to get back to normalcy.

 

At your workplace too, you truly realize who you are. This was a year when the usual stressors at work were mostly at bay because something gigantic had usurped their places as our key irritant. This was a year when you needed to find our who you are – at home and at work.

 

But the truth also is that if you didn’t bother to find that out, it’s all good. By the time the year was halfway through, Linkedin posts almost made you feel that everyone on the world had gotten a minimum of two PhDs with all the time they had in the world. Thankfully for me, I had mentors who told me it’s ok.

 

So here we are, having survived 2020 with a story we can tell our grandchildren. And probably given the strangeness of it all, instead of ringing in 2021 at the stroke of midnight hour, maybe we should pause and observe a moment of silence for all those who we had to leave behind.

 

See you in 2021.

 

PS: Stages of Grief is an amazing concept. If you want to read further, I recommend starting with the book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It was written in the late sixties so modern scientific understanding has really taken this forward.

 

My Favourite Girl

Didima’s no more. Today morning at around 7:30 am while the world was wondering what to have for breakfast or where to find their next sanitizers, Didima said her au revoir and off she went. And it’s an au revoir and never a goodbye.


vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya
navani grhnati naro 'parani
tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany
anyani samyati navani dehi

Almost every child growing up in an Indian household would have heard these lines somewhere irrespective of his or her religious affiliations. It’s a verse from the Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 Verse 22 and one of the most famous.


It says as a person puts on new clothes, discarding the old, the soul too gives up the old and useless body and accepts a new.


The soul in Hindu scripture is indestructible and I would want to believe that the purest soul that I have ever met would come back to this world. For suddenly today the world seems a little more barren and a little more colourless. Little Girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, so goes the nursery rhyme. Didima was made of Pure Love. I have never found anyone so full of love for everyone. I have never found anyone so forgiving, so selfless and so full of life. I have never seen anyone with such curiosity about everything in life with a true desire to learn. I have never seen anyone so diplomatic and yet stern and I know it was because her love was unconditional. Everyone she met, she made them feel special. She made them feel that they were the most important person in the room and they loved her back. My friends from childhood remember her, my mom’s friends came down to meet her for one last time. The world stopped for her.


Didima was my most favourite person in the whole world and I probably was her fifth (after the 3 children she brought into this world and her amazing husband). And as my Filipino friends had taught me, being in the Top 5 is always a great thing.


She gave me some of my earliest books. She gave me some of my most treasured gifts. But most important of all, she gave me the gift of writing. Anything I have ever written is because of her. My parents believe that I got my writing genes from her. People called her up asking her to write something for their children’s birthdays, weddings and sometimes even funerals and she could break into verse anytime.


During my teenage rebellious years, I had said I perhaps put Sukanta Bhattacharya as a poet higher than Tagore because of his realism. And I, a veteran of many school debates had been brought to my knees, my arguments demolished, without making me feel bad about it.


So here’s Tagore for you – “ami Mrityu cheye boro, ei kotha bole jabo ami chole.”

 “I am larger than death, saying this I will leave”. (From Mrityunjoy – The conqueror of death) 

There are few people in this world who find God. I think she did it. She had such faith in Jesus that she believed in earnest that all that she would ask for will be given. And in her I found the true embodiment of secularism in India – a practising Hindu finding her personal God in Christ. Since childhood I have seen her straddle the boats of Krishna and Christ. My grandfather’s family came from Navadweep, the heart of the Vaishnavite movement in Bengal and her own family Deity as a child was Raghunath – an incarnation of Vishnu while her children went to Catholic Missionary Schools.


Often I have been asked at work why do I rarely say a no to a challenge? I think the answer lies with Didima. I have never seen her say a no to anything that life threw at her. She faced it, found a way to solve it and moved on. With a smile.


Exactly a year back, dadu had passed away. And I always knew that this day would come and she chose a Sunday. The entire world she had touched landed at her house. She caused no disturbance to anybody and off she went on the ides of March. Julius Caesar was her and my Dadu’s favourite Shakespeare.



Can an exit be more poetic?



And can memories be more beautiful?

Nalin Sarkar Street

This year has been the year of losses and they seem to keep piling up with heart wrenching regularity. Around a month back Choddidima, my grandmom’s younger sister passed away. I was in office when the news came and it just did not make sense. Slowly ties to my past were weakening and growing up was seeming a lot tougher than I had assumed it would be.

Choddidima was an outstanding lady. I still remember I was in college and I had called up. After enquiring after my health, her first question was had I heard of this young writer called Chetan Bhagat. I hadn’t. She had. And within a few years all of India had heard about him. She lived to learn. There was not a single news item in our daily newspaper that missed her hawk eyes. And she loved to get to the bottom of things. Like most people in my grandma’s generation, she could quote Tagore at will and there would be always the right song that she would burst out singing and it was difficult to keep up with her.

She was one of those who supported wholeheartedly my decision to head out of Calcutta for college. She was way ahead of her times and yet when it came down to checking the right ways to conduct a religious function at anyone’s house, she was the ultimate authority. I have heard so many of my uncles and aunts just pick up the phone and call choddidima before they performed any form of worship, lest they offend the Gods. It was always safer to call her and be sure.

My favourite memories of her however were through the movies. We discussed movies over the phone and when I used to come home for vacations, we would go together and watch movies of Shah Rukh Khan, her favourite young actor. I remember watching Swades with her, skipping a college reunion. It just seemed the more fun thing to do.

As I grew up and started working outside Calcutta, our meetings became infrequent. Telephone calls would have to do. However, I did try to meet her every time I landed in Calcutta at her house in Nalin Sarkar Street because of her stories. Her stories were a connection to our family’s past. India has a long tradition of oral history. She was my historian.

Like all good Bengali boys, I have numerous nicknames given to me at various stages of life by the large joint family I come from. She called me Ganguram. And after today, no one will. I guess that’s how life is. One less person to pamper you when you head home.

Will miss you loads

Yours Ganguram

Finding your song

There are few areas in life where raw talent can burst forth suddenly and mesmerize everyone around. Intellect is not one of them. Rarely do you dazzle someone with your brilliance. Impressing the world through your capability in Sports is possible but then you need a stage. But Music…. Music is something that can break out from the crowd, a voice rises above the din of the millions and transcends you to a world beyond the ordinary. You don’t require a stage, you don’t require an audience, all you need is your voice.

Perhaps that explains the never-ending popularity of American Idol or its Indian counterpart – the Indian Idol. And while every reality show has its share of dreamy eyed contestants perhaps none is more universal than a Singing Reality Show. Today was the Mumbai audition of Indian Idol at a school near my apartment. And since morning the hopefuls had gathered around, waiting for their chance at glory. At the end of the day, there would be only one idol. But today everyone believed in the dream, believed that they could be the idol.

The lines were long and serpentine. It drizzled a bit, long enough to make the umbrellas come out, the sun kept playing hide and seek. But every now and then, there would be a group that would suddenly burst into a song. The world suddenly felt a bit more bearable.

In every field in this world, there comes a point of time when you hit the outer limits of your talent. You suddenly realize that there are others far more talented than you, others who are not as talented but way more hardworking than you and finally others who are just luckier than you. In showbiz this happens in far scarier proportions than any other. Even the best fade away after winning the show. Bands become one hit wonders. A Music Director never manages to get the accolades of her debut album.

But when you stand in the line for a chance at becoming an idol, you know that your grades don’t matter, your status, your background does not matter, you still believe in your own talent and you wait for your moment of glory.

As I saw the young aspirants line up outside the gates, full of hope and trepidation, I knew that in their love for life, music would play on.

The Life Well Lived

Today morning Didi called up at around 6 am. She’s the elder and the more mature one in the family. And the favourite. So she was told first. Dadu, my grandpa was no more. 3 days of illness and he was gone. Poof. Never to be seen, never to be heard.

He was 92. And as the call from Didi slowly sunk in, I realized I was not in pain. I was sad, yes definitely but I was definitely not melancholic. Dadu you see was a superhero in our eyes. He was driving all around Calcutta even when he was well above 80. When he was 70, he took my cousin’s bicycle and went for a trip around our locality while Mom kept pacing up and down, angry with her Dad for behaving like a child. But I know for a fact that secretly she was super proud. I mean who wouldn’t be proud after having a cool dad like that.

He was from a different generation of Bengalis. Probably the last of our Golden Generation. True he was born in a colonized India, yet to gain independence. But he was the generation that saw a new country being born. And probably that made him different from all the rest of people I know.

I surprisingly have none of the qualities that made him an amazing superhero. But from him I have learnt how to live life to the fullest. I have learnt how to be the most devoted husband and a doting father and a loving patriarch to a gaggle of grandkids. Whether I will be one I do not know. I hope I do.

We Bengalis are no longer known to be very entrepreneurial. He was one. Tried, failed, picked himself up, figured out what else he should be doing and did it. He could have tried again and succeeded but he chose family. I remember as we were growing up, on a Sunday morning we would suddenly hear a car honking on the road outside our house and it would be Dadu having driven over because he was missing his daughter. And he got us the potato fritters we so loved. So Didi and I attacked the fritters while mom behaved like a kid seeing her dad.

One of my cousins had married and moved to the US and she had this strange love of Mutton Samosas, (very Calcuttan I know!) So when she came back for the first time Dadu had ensured that the Mutton Samosas were waiting for her when she landed. Every. Single. Time.

My mom was his favourite. She tells me how they would play with their dogs together. How she would wait till Daddy came home so that she would no longer have to study and how on a moment’s notice they would just take the car and head down to the Maidan on an evening trip out with family.  Because for Dadu it was all about living in the moment.

In between he ensured he and his wife (with or without the kids in tow) travelled everywhere. Last few years they have not been able to travel; but in their 70 years of marriage they have travelled all across India. Grandma keeps reciting one of the ancient hymns of the Vedic texts which the ancients believed made the water in their palms represent the holy rivers of India

Gangge Ca Yamune Caiva Godaavari Sarasvati |

Narmade Sindhu Kaaveri Jalesmin Sannidhim Kuru ||

Anyway, her sense of pride was that together they had seen all the sacred rivers of India. They always felt bad about missing out on visiting Indus (now in Pakistan). I hope Dadu wherever you are you can see all the rivers from up above.

He loved Grandma. Actually, I am sure he still loves her from above. Their love is what makes me believe in life, family and love itself. I have seen the silent admiration for her in his eyes so many times. In fact, I think the sense of admiration for his wife never left him. She’s a poetess, can break into a Tagore poem anytime. She’s written so much, it’s probably hard to ever replicate. And he preferred to stay in the shadows. But as we grew up we realized what a powerhouse of talent he was.

Have you ever seen the BBC production of Merchant of Venice? I think Dadu could have done a better Portia or Shylock than any of the accomplished actors. When he recited “Quality of Mercy” we listened, in stunned silence travelling from his house in North Calcutta to the court in Venice.

One of Tagore’s best work is his version of the dialogue between 2 mythical characters Kach and Debjani. And when Dadu and Didima performed it, you could sense the power, passion and love. They completed each other like few I have known.

I met him last in December. His food intake had been controlled and my o my, was he unhappy about that!!! Poor grandma and aunt of mine had to be strict. But he wouldn’t listen. How could he! Like all true Bengalis he ensured that he never scrounged on finding the best quality of food. I sometimes believe if he was born in today’s age, he would have been a food critic, albeit a benevolent one. I blame him a lot for my love of Mishti, he made my taste buds that way.

So I came to office today and am here still reading my research reports, giving my POVs on packaging because I guessed that’s what he would have liked me to do. Live life as if there’s no tomorrow. Do what you love doing. 

There’s a quote by Pope Paul VI (I guess) Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

I think Dadu could have very well written it. Love you Maharaj!

The Dad-aroo

So I am reading Sapiens and getting really sad about how my ancestors destroyed the Australian Megafauna and how we are probably the worst species in the world and then suddenly I realized I love marsupials. Effectively that means I love the Kangaroo because it carries the baby in a pouch. When I was a kid, I thought being a Kangaroo kid was quite cool. Imagine living in a pouch, being carried around by mom everywhere. Jumping around peacefully was all that I dreamt off.

So the last one year, where despite many promises of being regular on this blog, I have been absconding, there has been a real reason. I was undergoing a major transformation. Not satisfied with just being a Sapien, I decide to become part of a new species – the Dad-aroos.

The Dad-aroos are marsupial Sapiens, tracing their psychological makeup to sea horses. They are found typically in parks and malls, strangely attired very similarly in T shirt and shorts. The sometimes carry an additional pouch on their backs full of cotton harvested around the year. They carry the young in a pouch in front of them. The young, known to be completely disrespectful to authority, listens only to one voice – that of the Mama-roo. Hence it is lucky, that when the Dad-aroo walks, he is able to initiate a motion that resembles the young one’s time in the womb and if the young one allows, he can perfect the art of constantly moving up and down the clothes aisles in a crowded departmental store.

The Dad-aroos are quite harmless. They nod to each other, only pausing to eye the make of the pouches. There exists a pouch snobbery inherent in the species. Sometimes they also pause to gauge future parents in laws of their peacefully sleeping infants. But mostly they keep on looking for the Mama-roo to have her at arm’s length even if there is the slightest chance of the kid waking up.

So I spent the last year being a Dad-aroo and I was quite good at it. Unfortunately, the young grows up, outgrows the pouch and I already have a feeling how it feels when the bird will finally leave the nest.

So that was that. 2018. The year I turned into a full fledged Dad-aroo.

The Long and Short of It

More than 18 months back, in a quiet seaside beach on the Western fringes of India, I had sat down and wished hard for miracles to happen. But first I needed to know that there exists magic in this world. Because sometimes for miracles, you first need to believe in magic. Magic demands pain, Magic needs patience but more than anything else Magic requires sacrifice.

This Blog stopped after talking about the western sentinel. The pain started. The harsh sun beat down on everything beneath it. Mirages sprung up and vanished into thin air and yet there was the belief in Magic.

Sometimes Magic can work in wonderful ways. We do not comprehend fully how it works. At times it has form, at other times it is just a thought. Sometimes it comes from the North East and is called Ishaan.

Sometimes Magic makes a person disappear. The third leg of a tripod gets broken. The other two wait for its return. And in a world of 24X7 social media a person just vanishes. Miss you Bro. Find your peace.

The Magic from North East is all powerful. It drains away sorrow, bitterness and pain with toothless babbles. And yet it can give me the most excruciating pain, never experienced before. It demands attention, more importantly it demands what’s most precious – Time.

2017 was the year when Time became the most valued commodity. Time even for ‘us’ was hard to come by. But then when the tired traveller finds his pillar of strength, he knows that Magic continues to weave its wonders.

When pressed into a corner, the mind works in wonderous ways. For a brief period it went back years, nay decades when sarcasm was considered the high priestess of wit. But then sense and sensibility took over. But the joy, oh the joy of sarcastic wit!

Magic also makes you strong, showing you what you are capable of, making you push your boundaries. Sometimes there’s a battle for your soul and then you win. It’s majestic. It’s grand.

As the year passes on to the next, John Updike tell me, “Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”

The Western Sentinel

Far away from the dusty, tired roads of Mumbai, is the home of the Western Sentinel. The Guardian God of the West sits on his mountainous abode, looking into the west, a fact rarely heard of in Indian Temple Architecture. Our Gods look to the east; to look at the rising sun, to welcome a new day. In Ganpatipule however, he looks to the west, looking intently at the sea, perhaps aware of the dangers that could come our way; once again.

When you land here, you can feel the world slow down around you. Even the train station has none of the urgency one can think of. Straight from an R. K. Narayan novel, the station wakes up to welcome the trains and then go back to sleep again. At Ratnagiri, you can find the last memories of a forgotten Burmese King, held by the British, never to see his homeland again. Bit by bit, over the years in exile, he tried to recreate a piece of his home but it was never the same again.

The sea is treacherous around here; but beautiful. The beaches are quiet; devoid of humans and therefore of filth. It quietly rolls over the sands and within kilometres you can see the colours change from pristine white to jet black. Time moves slowly, allowing you to embrace it and feel every moment caress your cheek as it passes you by. The sea is calm and rolls incessantly into the night, playing music that can only be heard in silence. The stars come out in the night, visible without the incessant cover of smog over Mumbai.

The mangoes are everywhere. You can feel their presence as you drive by and the price does not frighten you off. The food feels distant and different from what you would have expected but then this is how cuisines develop locally and if you can find those small restaurants where the proprietors still make the day’s serving, you know you are in good hands. The most famous place to stay is the MTDC hotel and like most Government hotels the rooms are large and spacious and there ends the story. But the view remains outstanding from every single room.

But everything revolves around him. Everything, even the name itself, reminds one of the existence of the hamlet. He is not one who has the riches of his week-long avatars of Mumbai, neither does he have the imposing architecture of the Northern and the Southern Gods. He sits patiently, listening to the bells and to the sea.

Ganpatipule is not for the movers and shakers, it’s not for the throngs of followers. It’s for those who want to pause, even if for a bit.

Punch in the Gut

When we were in school, a lot of lessons were learnt during the lunch break in the large playground of Don Bosco. Fighting for honour was common, so was fighting with honour. You never fought to break anyone’s bones but you fought to prove a point. Today after so many years, what we fought on is lost in the shadows of memory, what remains are the lessons learnt from them. We were an all-boys school so the lessons seem from another day and age where chivalry, honour and loyalty were all that mattered.

There was rarely a hit to face. The marks were the most visible and definitely the ones which would get the opponent at the receiving end into trouble when he goes back home. You also never hit the groins. The pain is unbearable and everyone knew it. That’s the first thing you learn when you play cricket and mistime a shot. The kick to the shin was acceptable and I do not know why because now that I am saner I know how scary that can be. But then now of us had the speed of the Premier League Players. We desperately wanted to play rugby but given that no one knew the rules and there was a lack of equipment, it never really took off. But what we managed was the shoulder shove, a highly effective manoeuvre that can come to use in both football and basketball. In the basketball games, it was brutal because of the hard surface. In the football matches, it was terrifying as the green grass left the signs for all (read moms) to see.

But the favourite by far was the punch in the gut. Never utilized on the games field, it was reserved for the one on ones that rarely happened, but if they did, they were always scheduled after school hours. It was the equivalent of a duel with a loaded pistol. Both shoot, but the one with the more accurate aim is bound to win. The punch in the gut was just that. Everyone knew that the one who could connect first would be the winner. It made one see the stars and the pain was only fractionally lower than a kick in the groins. The one who threw the punch always won, at least that bout. And then he helped the fallen man stand up on his feet. There was honour.

But the man who had fallen also learnt a mighty lesson. He learnt to take on whatever the world threw at him, embrace the pain, maybe double over if required but then find his own feet and get up. The punch in the gut made him stronger, over and over again till one day his own punch would land exactly where it was meant to be.

And as long as he had learnt how to pick himself up and become stronger, there was not a thing in this world that could keep him down.

Superheroes and the Dumb Down Concept

It was just one more weekend; but more importantly one more maddeningly frustrating date with a Superhero movie. Batman vs. Superman promised so much and yet it failed so miserably. And today as I was reading about heroes, I realized the importance they have in our lives.

One of the basic tenets of any story ever told in the world starts with a hero. And as the world around us become complex, we realize that heroes are rarely without flaws. Yet we struggle to find one who is incorruptible; who is steadfast and the one who will ultimately do the right thing. The question always remains what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ mean to people who face off each other.

Superman is perhaps the best example of a superhero who can do no wrong and Batman is one who like us is full of self doubts, limitations and is above all, very very human. Superman therefore has always been a superhero who follows a straight path to glory and often martyrdom. Batman is a vigilante. Superman follows the law as only he can agree to follow laws set by others; Batman rarely has few such moral qualms. His is a more dangerous territory; that of an outcast whose sense of justice might not be something you can agree with.

When these two superheroes face off, you expect a moral dilemma; a cinematic masterpiece which shows how the world and its twisted truths pull apart both men who claim to be on the side of right. And what you are left behind with is a lot of CG and mind numbing action sequences.

It could have been a great treatise on the internal conflict of ones blessed (or cursed) with abilities to impact the lives of those around and yet that never forms the centre point of the narrative. Even movies like Eye in the Sky with a predictable end could showcase the conflicts that pull morals apart.

I think I feel more betrayed by the fact that this came after the outstanding Batman franchise reboot by Nolan. There was always a concern about Synder helming this but then Man of Steel again had to make do with the strait-laced characterization of Superman. And there was little that Marvel’s Civil War could do to fare any better. They typically have the most straight forward storyline you can ever imagine. But then, hope remained, solely because of Captain America. But then you make superhero movies to dumb down your audiences, rather than to question and to debate. And the final dumbing down happened with X Men Apocalypse.

Comic Book lovers know about the concept of alternate universes. I wished after the 3 movies that these universes had not collided. But more importantly I feel we need to demand for better cinema, if for nothing else but for the love of cinema.

On the Other Side of my Song

Few years back a certain TV serial took Bengali Satellite TV viewers by storm. It had all the elements in place for the Bengali intellectual; the ones taking their last breath in a century that’s completely alien to their philosophy of life. The serial was called Gaaner Opare. It was a clash between the old and the new; traditions and modernity; almost the same things that every Bengali Soap is made of (if not about the members of the extended family trying to kill each other). But it had one major difference; the context of Gaaner Opare was Rabindrasangeet. The male protagonist was the dream of every teenager going to JU or Presi (Jadavpur University or Presidency College for the uninitiated). He was a rock singer trying to redefine Tagore. That’s explosive and he had the drop dead intellectual looks of his dad; the second most loved “Feluda”. The female protagonist on the other hand was someone who every mother in Bengal wanted as her daughter in law. Independent yet upholding tradition; wearing the most gorgeous Sari in the day and age of Jeans and T shirts and a voice of gold singing Rabindrasangeet in just the right way.

Cutting a long story short; the show ended as well; thankfully without trying to extend it’s runtime. But Gaaner Opare left a mark. A few days back a friend with a strong connection to Calcutta suddenly pinged me asking me about the true meaning of this song. And I was dumbfounded. Probably one of the most esoteric of Tagore’s songs; like many of his later works it masquerades as a love song in the grey area between spirituality and platonic, unfulfilled love. And therefore as the rains lash Mumbai forcing me inside my house and on my bean bag; here’s an attempt.

The Original Bengali Genius

Dariye acho tumi aamar gaaner oparey x 2

Amar shurguli paay choron, ami pai ne tomare.

Dariye acho tumi aamar gaaner oparey.

Batash bohey mori mori, aar bedhe rekho na tori. x 2

Esho esho paar hoye mor hridoy majhare.

Dariye acho tumi aamar gaaner oparey.

Tomar saathey gaaner khela duurer khela je,

Bedonate baanshi bajay shokol bela je.

Kobey niye aamar baanshi bajabe go apni ashi; x2

Anondomoy nirob raater nibir aandharey.

Dariye acho tumi aamar gaaner oparey.

Amar shurguli paay choron, ami pai ne tomare.

Dariye acho tumi aamar gaaner oparey.

My English Transliteration Attempt

You stand beyond the realms of my song x2

Probably my tunes reach you in their trembling steps;

but I have never been able to get to you

As you stand beyond the realms of my song

The winds blow; oh how beautifully; do not hold your boat back  x2

Come cross over to the very centre of my heart

And yet you stand beyond the realms of my song.

Singing a song with you; is celebrating the song of distances

The pain of it emanates from my flute all day long;

When will you take my flute to play your beauteous tunes? X2

In the darkness of the night filled with unspeakable happiness?

You stand beyond the realms of my song

Probably my tunes reach you in their trembling steps;

but I have never been able to get to you

As you stand beyond the realms of my song

The Silence of the Stones

It was mid day and the sun was bright, directly throwing his warm winter light on us. We were halfway through our journey and yet it felt we had seen nothing, observed nothing. High above the mountains of Ajanta, we stood looking at some of the best examples of art in Indian history. Ajanta is magnificent. And there is no other word that better describes the rock cut temples of Aurangabad.

Often you will find people telling you that travelling to Ajanta and Ellora is a day’s journey. They could not be more wrong. Every cave temple has wonders that you can stare at for hours. The paintings that you see in front of you are one of the greatest treasures of art in India. Year after year, craftsmen made these caves come alive with the most primitive of equipment, fuelled only by their passion to create.

Start your trip with Ajanta walk up the hills, the tourist guides and guidebooks will tell you that the best displays are in the first few caves. Do not believe them, rather take the entire journey and explore every cave. Understand the frustrations of the carvers of stone as they kept making the stones come alive. Listen in to their hushed silences still trapped in the stones. Listen to their dying footsteps as the royal patronage trickled to a close forcing them to leave the caves unfinished. Hear the faint noise of the religious chants as three religions coexisted for centuries. Look for the intricacies of the carvings; the brightness of the colours still remaining and try to imagine the interlinkages between the religions. Forget the babble of tourists and feel yourself transcend into a world of quiet scholarly studies and self-imposed mendicancy of monkhood.

Next day travel to Ellora. Start at Kailasa; for nothing else matters. Imagine a giant boulder. Men and women such as us will look at it in wonder and even if an inspiration seizes us, we will start chiselling away starting from the front. But imagine cutting through the rock from above and creating the abode of Lord Shiva on earth. Kailasa tells us of our own perfection; of the grandeur we were once capable of; of human triumph in pursuit of God or ungodly vanity of kings. Look at how Shivaism and Vaishnavism coexists under the same canopy. Once you have made your peace with the feeling of insignificance make your way to the left or right. The ancient rocks will tell you untold stories of Jainism and Buddhism. Look up at the Tirthankaras and the Bodhisatwas. They will smile down upon you and show you how their facial features changed with centuries.

As you walk away, tired but fulfilled, remember to leave the places clean. You owe it to your own future generations for Ajanta and Ellora need to remind us for our triumphs and our impermanence.

The Brotherhood of the Waiting Men

We wait; silently. We nod at each other at times. We know we do not have anything against each other but we also do know that at a moment’s notice we would be our fiercest adversaries. We are soldiers, following orders, ready to plunge into the chaos at the slightest nod from the overlords but we respect each other as we all have been there.

We know the young eager ones from the old time tested ones. We know the ones like me who have been bloodied in the battles and have laboured on. We relish the moments when we see someone mess it up so badly that there will be hell for the poor lad when he reaches the trenches at night. It’s a complex manoeuvre that takes years to hone skills in and the young ferrets never seem to get that. We respectfully step aside when the generals march in; their eyes full of contempt at the mere sight of enemy soldiers standing near the common grounds.

The gadgets in our hands give us some respite. It tells us about the world outside. A world full of red bulls, footballs and cricket bats. A world where one day we will return after the call of duty has been answered. But the gadgets often fail when raw muscle power is required to snatch another soldier’s hopes before his own eyes; my downcast gaze silently apologizing before returning with the trophy.

Handing it over to the general; I wait slowly taking in the silent admirations of the enemy soldiers around who have failed to find their exact shades of pink, purple or lilac.

We all wait praying for each other so that this visit to the trial room is the last in this outlet. 

The Goodbye

Long Long ago, in the Summer of 2007 to be precise, four little mice had boarded a ship. The docks were silent, the night was still and the moon played hide and seek behind the clouds. The ship set sail into the unknown and before one knew, the stars above realigned and the four little mice saw each other. Each different from the rest but they soon realized they were all the same in being different from the rest of the animals on the ship. But that is a story everyone knows!

The mice charted different courses within the ship till one day one of them set sail, then another and finally even the third. The last remaining mouse looked on as their boats sailed further and further away.

The airwaves carried their squeaks to him, faint and yet conveying the different emotions that swept over them. Trepidation, anger, joy, love, hatred, frustration, fear, ecstasy and sometimes even indifference. The world was unforgiving, sometimes all it let the mice have were memories of a life less complicated.

The last mouse remains. And he hopes and prays for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to be true. Let the mice indeed be the most intelligent species on Earth. For each have made their choices and some day each will need to say goodbye.

The Recap

This year started with a promise to be more regular with my blog and apart from the bursts of a creative itch once in a while, the promise remained just that; a promise; shamefully unfulfilled. But this year was strange in the way it shaped up. Imagine an inverted bell curve and January and December being its end. Starting on a high, falling down the slope and then as the end of the year approached, pulling oneself up to feel nice about the world around.

This year has been a year of learning humility. It was also the year of farewells. Invincibility took a beating; friends said goodbye. And somewhere in the middle of the year; life became mechanical. Imagine yourself as a firefighter and noticing the hidden flames all around you. Will you have time to go and water the seeds you had planted in your garden? 2015 taught me not to lose the woods for the trees, to let go off battles not worth fighting for and not allow one’s own self to get hurt by actions of others.

2015 was not the easiest of years but suddenly somewhere inspiration came up. You realize that when you are looking at the bottom of the barrel; it’s up to only you to pull yourself up. Strangely help came from unknown quarters. A little bird made her nest in our balcony and she refused to give in to the daily efforts of 2 adult humans who kept guarding their turf and before we knew there was a birth. She never moved.

It taught me to overcome my fears and focus on the task at hand. And somehow, things started moving at a more interesting pace. Once you cease being afraid, a lot of changes start happening to your life. And suddenly you feel free.

2015 was also the year when I took the bull by the horns and started driving. Inspired by memories of NFS in Budh Front, I decided it was time to go for an automatic vehicle. However, Kherani Road taught me that NFS is not exactly replicable in real life and dents on your car costs actual money to repair. Sadly no one seems to be paying me for a drift well-made or a sharp turn on 2 wheels! And more importantly the one who always rides shot gun if she is not at the wheels refuses to allow even the least transgression while driving.

Most importantly I managed to read. I realized that the number of books I read in a year was going down in sync with the number of blog posts I upload. 2015 changed that. 30 books along with numerous articles and treatises on marketing and strategy is not a bad way to sum up the year.

2016 will be tough as well. And that’s how Life will be for us in our thirty somethings. The occasional memories of the future that could have been will tug at heart strings but the war will rage on.

“Going in one more round when you don’t think you can – that’s what makes all the difference in your life.” – Rocky Balboa