The Smoke and the Hills

The cold wind blew through me...piercing me with its icy spears.... it didn't pain...not the way it used to. I thought ... perhaps its over...perhaps the wounds have finally healed.

I was walking through the rain... the saline drops tasted sweet...
I kept walking through the darkness...

Smoldering remains of a distant dream...the smoke, a mere puff of life...
i waited...still...

and then one morning the sun suddenly shone bright...the brilliance of its light almost blinded my eyes...
the overpowering...over whelming light broke through the darkness...the smoke dispersed...
the wind spoke in my ears...the greens smiled at me...and the birds sang lyrical poetry...
i could feel life rushing through my veins...i could feel my heartbeat once again...
the white cotton clouds floating in the sky.,,gave me wings...and then i felt free...yes, i could really fly...

but the clouds grew stronger...and stronger still... they turned gray...and then black....
they moved ominously across the sky...
the light grew weaker...and weaker still...
the force of life ceased...
the birds chirped...but softly....
the green grew dull against the gray...

the hills in the distance were covered by smokey clouds...the smoldering remains of my long lost dreams...the smoke, a mere puff of life...

Waking up

Waking up was different during different phases of my life!
As a child waking up meant either school, pending homework or exams! i grew up a bit and then waking up took up a whole new meaning...this was when i started waking up to dreams...!!
over the years, mom's shrill and high pitched scream of "wake up....or you'll be late for school" got replaced by a friend or roommate's sleepy "good morning..."...followed by..."mass bunk...and then movie...what say?!"

its been years...perhaps ages...feels like decades actually.... Waking up now means going to work...coding...debugging...more coding....getting frustrated...coding some more....taking mini tea breaks in between...n again coding...
weekends are the worst...you wake up late...have nothing to do...you feel lazy...you feel low...
friendship...fun...companionship...have all changed over the years...
there was a time when friendship meant Life to me! there was a time when  having friends around made me feel warm and happy... there was a time when living together with friends was the best thing that could happen to me!

and then...one morning...when i woke up...i realized...that everything had changed!

changes are a part of life...yes.
life is ever changing...yes.
change is the only constant...yes.

but when change walks hand in hand with indifference....it hurts!

i miss my hostel...i miss my home. i miss them for the simplicity of life that they offered. i miss them because they both served breakfast in the morning...irrespective of whether you wanted to eat or not!

a little bit of care is all that we humans crave for...
a bank account having 10K at month end...and still waking up hungry in an indifferent atmosphere with no provision for breakfast is not a life that anyone really cares for!

but then...in most cases...that is the life we end up living...and that too...indifferently.



Note: All in good humour! :)

The Truth

Integrate the moments you have lived...you will get your Life!

Differentiate Life...the moments of your Life flash before your eyes.

Tell me...What do you see?

expressing had always been my forte...until....i was convinced to believe that its best to remain silent. Silence is no longer golden. Today, Silence is Strength. 

Your fears, your anguish...your tears... if you express yourself...expressions label you W-E-A-K. 

Funnily enough...even your joy should remain confined within you. Your joy is your's...alone. Why bother others with it!

So what do we do... do we become a social recluse?

No.

We socialise selectively, closely adhering to social protocols.

We behave the way we are expected to behave. We say what is wished to be heard. We do what we are supposed to do. We pretend. 

We are forever confined within our self-imposed norms of expectations. We harness our emotional energy to give birth to a social paradigm which enforces the Law of Lifelessness in living entities.

An expressionless existence...punctured in the heart with a silent silver bullet...

We are doomed to be alone...an individual trapped within his/her own self. We are prisoners of our existence...waiting to be set free from the shackles of Life.

A Divine Gift...we have turned into a self-inflicted curse.

and then...

I close my eyes and differentiate my Life....darkness closes in on me.

The Search...

Perhaps its human to search for the Old in the New. New places, new people, new emotions...we always try to look for familiarities. Memories are like set-points in our life's system and we keep adjusting our life's variables to somehow attain this pre-assigned set-point. 
I know not if this is right or wrong....i don't know if our past should be given so much power...so much power that it can influence our present...i confess i do not know. then again, i presume that this influence varies from person to person.


Perhaps when we search for familiarity in the New we do so to adjust ourselves easily and fit into the New. The New often comes accompanied with the Unknown...so maybe our attempt to fit in and be comfortable is aided by searching for something familiar, something known in the unfamiliar surroundings. This search is perhaps primarily for comfort.


The following is a short note that i'd written in December last year....in a somewhat unfamiliar environment whilst missing a similar place far away in time and place.


A new place...strange familiarity...
As if the old had never left...just changed.
Miles away...
Yet the same feeling...
Familiarity knocks on my door.
Winter winds...a cup of stale coffee...
Miles apart yet similar...
As if the old had never ceased to be... Just changed...




A different junction...a new place...
Yet emotions remain the same...
Eyes search for the same faces, the same voices... But none of them remain...
A change...yes... Only of time n place...
Emotions....they still remain the same.


an attempt at translating the above into bengali (first attempt ever)


sob e natun...natun lagche aj sob
tao jeno sob e lage chena...
jeno purono kichui sesh hoyni...
bodleche, kintu chole jayni...
dur theke durante chole geche...
tobu onubhuti gulor rong paltayeni ajo...
chena sriti jeno aj dakche amay.
sei ek e thanda batash...sei ek e purono coffee...
tobu koto dure...onek dure...
jeno purono kichui sesh hoyni...palteche sudhu...


ek natun more...ek natun jayga...
onubhuti...chetona...ajo sei ek e rokhom...
ami khuje cholechi sei purono sob kichu...sei sob chena mukh...
ja chilo chena seta hariye geche aj...
palte geche onek kichu...
jayga palteche...somoy palteche...
tobu paltayeni sei mon....paltayeni sei onubhutir sporsho.

A New Me

Life is about changes...so much so that people often say that "change is the only constant"...

Its that time again...
Its time to change.
Darkness beckons me...
and all Light is in vain.

There may be no return...I shall not sway.
I choose to take this path.
The other road, i have travelled much
but have never found a way.

I shall be that part of me...
That which lies somewhere deep.
I'll let my heart unleash its wrath.
yes, I shall take the Dark Path.

Through the viewfinder

Glimpses of Kolkata through my viewfinder....

After the winter rain on a New Year morning...

P.S. Victoria was a woman, n hence the pink theme :P

A thousand words...innumerable thoughts...and some memories...all rushed through my mind when my eyes captured this frame through my cam's viewfinder....

Sharing with you some moments, stolen from my mind.

I was never fond of flowers....but this, somehow, changed my mind!

A bunch of flowers...love and joy galore...

and a precious smile in return!

Sharing in itself makes one feel good...n happy inside...

and sharing what i see with the world is an even better feeling... :-)

The Last One...

some things remain incomplete forever.... perhaps they are meant to be that way... and we have to accept them as such...

the uneasy feeling of incompleteness gnaws our soul...we burn inside in the fire of the desire to be complete again...a desire than can never come true...a wish that is destined to remain unfulfilled forever....
...n still try to be happy...try to live...hoping that some day peace would descend on us...someday our prayers will be answered.

...and then one day....life becomes irrelevant....and the prayer changes...the wish changes....

.....My Prayer...My Last Wish...

".....bring me closer to the End
take me closer to you...
End my pain...

In those last few moments of Life...
I shall find peace...solace...
My wings shall be reborn...
N i shall fly...
Free.
In those last few moments....
I shall find
Me.

I will smile one last smile...
The one smile in so many years...
N the world shall smile at me...
Contentment...on its face.

I shall care no more..
No worldly treasures can touch me again...
I shall be at peace...

In my last breath i shall smile...for
I shall be forever free....
with You near me...

Take me closer to You...
Take me closer to my peace...
Take me closer to the End."

Rockstar: My Take

"Ting linga linga lina...
ting linga linga ling...."

"Rockstar"....is much more than what meets the eye. It is the story of Jordan, the Rockstar \m/ .....yet it is more than the rags to riches story of a simple Delhi boy who had always had the dream of being a music sensation.
It is the story of a boy who used to audition relentlessly and face rejection every single time for not having the "zing" or the persona of a Star. It is the story of a boy who was told that the only thing that could make him stand out...make him a true Rockstar...is PAIN. Intense pain. And so...off goes the boy...in search of the same.
And then...one day, the Rockstar breaks down...

This fame, this success...i don't want any of it. Just don't let my heart break...please... he pleads.

"...Katiya karoon Katiya karoon
Tera roo katiya karoon
 Tera roo tera roo tera roo roo roo..."

Rockstar is a love story...enveloped in the tale of the meteoric rise of a music sensation.
This movie explores love in a different way altogether.
Janardhan Jakhar, a simple Delhi boy, fishing for a heartbreak...which according to his mentor is the only way to become a true-blue Rockstar like his idol Jim Morrison...is drawn towards the beautiful sophisticated and curious Heer.

Friendship takes a deep plunge and transforms companionship into love.
Circumstances drift them apart...and it is again these circumstances that bring them together...only to part them yet again...
Eventually his love for Heer breaks him apart...completely.

Jordan evolves... "The unshaven, troubled, defiant, long-haired music sensation with a peculiar, rustic wardrobe, the making of Janardhan Jakhar to Jordan is an offshoot of his fickle equation with the woman he loves."

He had once expressed his amazement as to why an entire crowd applauded Morrison when he raised his middle finger in public.... and then one day, he, himself, raises his finger and proclaims....

"...Sadda Haq Aithe Rakh..."

This is a story of transformation through the experience of pain. Pain may not be a welcome emotion. Yet it is a part of our existence. Some perceive it to the extent of making it their life...while some live though it all and try to look at the sunshine rather than the clouds in the sky.
Jordan looks at the clouds. Perhaps he is too emotional...perhaps he is too sensitive. From a boy who had never had the chance to worry about his basic necessities...had a family...a life... Janardhan seeks out pain and lives it to be successful. In the end his success eats him up...his pain gnaws him from inside...and he says..
am not happy inside...ander ek jalan si hai...

It is neither a standalone story about the rise-of-an-underdog who goes on to become one of the  biggest rockstars ever nor is it merely a love story with a rockstar backdrop. The director somewhere attempts to correlate the rockstar's rise with his romance. There is a constant play in the narrative which moves backwards then forwards then again backward and finally stops in the present. The first half opens on a very high note... and the film ends with the same sequence. But this time its a different note...there is an overtone of sadness, of pain...of loss...

There is a sense of a desire for reconciliation with one's true identity. There is a sense of the desire for true happiness. There is a sense of a desire for love that is slipping away with every heartbeat.
Jordan sings...
"O Nadaan Parindey ghar aaja
O Nadaan Parindey ghar aaja"

The director, Imtiaz Ali, tells a story of love, loss, pain and treacherous success in an intricate way. The storytelling is crisp. Anil Mehta's cinematography is brilliant. And, needless to say, A.R. Rahman's music gives the movie its life. The storytelling could have been a little less intricate. It does add to the brisk movement of the movie in the first half but somewhat makes the second half stretch a bit. But the overall effect is impressive.
Ranbir has done complete justice to Jordan...he has performed brilliantly. A true Rockstar! New-comer  Nargis Fakhri has great screen presence and Shammi Kapoor is the surprise element of the film.

The end comes just as you start wondering as to how the director plans to end it. The end is completely justified. It has a sense of incompleteness...just the way Jordan's life is...incomplete...

The movie is a simple tale of success...which is rendered useless in the absence of love...in the absence of true happiness....
...andar ek jalan si hai...


"Jo bhi main...
kehna chahu...
bardaad kare...alfaz mere.... alfaz mere......."

Knowing me

Don't look at me. Look into my eyes. I am not who you think I am. 

I appear to be the way you want me to be...but take a look inside...I am not who I appear as.

In the glow of the Reflection...

A Self is lost.

Under the cover of existence...

Life struggles to live.

And,

In the chaos of Life...

Identity dies a premature death.

Take a look at the person in the mirror...

Is it you? 

Is it the same person who talks to you when you are alone? Is this the person that you invariably entrust with all your secrets? Is this the person who knows your dreams...even sees them with you? 

Or is it the person that the World sees in you...

I ask you...again...is it you?

A sky...as dark as darkness could have made it...

A moon...as bright as light could have made it...

Its a still night...

And a silent shadow hovers near me...

The Shadow of the me that i was...

The Shadow of the me that i wanted to be...

A Shadow is all that remains...

It is all that was ever true...

It is all that could have been true...

I move ...the Shadow follows...

A constant reminder of life's probable possibilities...

The only thing that remains...and is mine...

n will forever be so...

Is my shadow

My shadow is how I see myself...without a mirror...through my own eyes.

The mirror reflection is the me you see...

my shadow is my Truth

...and it follows me.

Let there be Light!

Deepawali...a festival of Light...of colours...of burning away the Darkness....

Diwali is about rediscovering Life within one's own self. It is the festival of a personal Enlightenment. It is a celebration of victory...the victory of reconciliation with one's own self. 

This Diwali....give your Life a single minute...

Your Life deserves meaning... 

go ahead... smile an extra smile...make someone happy...

go an extra mile...give your Life a chance to breath... It is your Life...live it.

Brightness beckons you... midst the Darkness... embrace the warmth of Life...let it glow...

Make mistakes...make wrong choices....learn the right way... give yourself a chance to be imperfect... Life will become so much more perfect. 

Cry till your eyes ache...n feel the happiness gush through your veins. Nothing is as important as happiness.....let it fill your Life...let it fill you. Its in your heart...let it flow.

Celebrate Life....its a Festival.... it has chaos and mayhem...it has music n rhymes... it has mirth n joy...

brace the darkness only to dispense it with your Inner Light. Yes...the Light is within you...feel it....find it...share it. Let the world glow in your Light.

HAPPY DIWALI!! :)

The Spark

Came across a wiki link that made me feel more than proud of the family i belong to!

I had grown up knowing that my mom's side of the family has a rich cultural and historical background. But to see the facts on a page, on the internet...that too on wikipedia...is quite overwhelming!

My Grandfather, Samir Roy Choudhury, born in the family of Subarna Roychoudhury, the Zamindar of Kolkata, prior to the arrival of the British, was one of the Founder fathers of the Hungry Generation.

About the Hungry Generation, my mom can tell you better stories as i came into the picture much later!!
I was born and spent the initial months of my life in my Grandparents' Patna residence. The environment was always culturally rich. And Post Modern Literature had been an integral part of my growing up years. Like they say, what we see and observe in our formative years...we learn. And these lessons become a part of our very self. It becomes a part of who we are.
So true.

From what i've gathered from the reviews i've got from my valued readers, the effect of these childhood lessons have been reflected in my writings over the years. I distinctly remember the article that i had submitted to the College Magazine...the Teacher Editor had classified it in the category of Post Modern Literature. Knowingly or unknowingly the subconscious works in a way that reflects the learning of our formative years.

Incidentally, my Grandfather carries a notebook and a pen with him...nearly always. His 78 years old self has retained the creative spark...infact the spark has brightened over the years.
On a recent visit to a hospital for a tumor surgery, he had a dream. In this dream he saw policemen chasing a thief. The day he returned home, he asked me for a pen and a piece of paper...any paper, he'd demanded. Urgency clear in his manner and voice. He then quickly jotted down his dream on the paper that i'd given him. Am sure that dream has already developed into a short story or a poem.

Distant memories of a tiny me sitting on a tray, in a Dark Room of our Photography Studio, and watching my maternal uncle work.... of paint brushes and colours lying around and experts editing photographs with them... 1990 didn't have Photoshop facilities!! ......somehow did leave an impression on me.

My first professional work to be published was on the cover page of my Grandfather's publication, a Little Magazine named "Haowa 49" .....infact my design was critically acclaimed. The thing is...i was 4 years old then.

The little that i know and all that i can know has its roots in my family.
I've always been a happy and content family member but today i feel more than proud of my family.

Somehow when others tell you about yourself...you get to know yourself better! :-)