Day 95!

Rains after almost a month of harsh Sun in Calcutta! That's my view after a short morning spell.

Day 94!

An early morning walk, right by the River Ganges. Thank you, Mamma for coaxing me into it!

Day 61!

And that is the Calcutta skies in the afternoon! Windy rains!

Day 60!

The rains! Calcutta had it's first touch of the oncoming thunderstorms! Tried clicking the mild lightning. Ended up with something strange.

Day 59!

It's back! Evenings won't be as boring again! Summers, now you're welcome!

#RahmanIshq! - The Rahman concert in Calcutta!

Yesterday evening, the God himself descended in Calcutta, armed with his instruments, the rains signaling his arrival and ceasing at his descent, darkness enveloping a crowd of thousands waiting for a mere glimpse, uproar at his first syllable, adrenalin rushing through the throbbing veins at the first hint of music. That was A.R. Rahman at Calcutta!

What happened on the stage in the next few hours was magic. Maybe see through at times, mesmerizing mostly. But what happened in the crowd around us was a different matter altogether. That too was just so out of the world!

Bang ahead of us was a couple who just couldn't get enough of each other. She seemed to be eating all the time, attracting the bees-like-hawkers (who were allowed to roam freely in the entire stadium, selling everything from 'cheeps', lemon 'peshaal' signaling special lemon tea, cool water and badaam and were guilty of the criminal offence of interjecting the maestro's music with their cries of product advertising!!). Her beau, oblivious to how much he was spending, couldn't seem to get himself to concentrate on the stage, is all I can say.

One row ahead of us to our left, sat a trio of the most boring young guys I have ever come across. They didn't clap for more than 3 seconds at a stretch, with gaps of at least half an hour between each such exercise. It almost felt like they had been punished  and were made to sit through the entire event. Even if Rahman himself had come to them, they wouldn't have uttered a cheer or enthusiastic hoot! I just hope they had free tickets to the show, because otherwise they've genuinely wasted their bucks!

And behind was a family with such levels of intelligence, I should have congratulated them. The boy was shouting to his dad for chewing gum in the middle of a sufi song when the whole crowd was swaying in the musical magic. Once, another one of them was completely unaware of the fact that it was their cell phone which was ringing loudly. And at one time when the sound fell really low due to some technical glitch for a few seconds, this man shouted from nearly the last row of the stadium "Raise the volume!". Seriously, Sir? You really think the organizers can hear you from this far? His voice decibels barely managed to reach the next 15 rows of people, I think!

When Rahman played out his crowd-favourite Jai Ho!, this man next to me, stood in the attention stance. I wish he knew Jai Ho is NOT our National Anthem. He could have crooned it aloud and fist pumped the air a little. But alas!

It felt as if the people around me were saving all their enthusiasm for the Goddess Durga! 'Cuz the other blocks in the stadium could definitely be heard on the stage!

That's the other side of RahmanIshq!

Reporting directly from the stands, signing off for the day!

Exam? What the hell!

Hi!

I have an exam to write tomorrow!

And here I am writing to you guys!

And that's because I've done everything else I could to distract myself from pages and pages of the boring-ly theoretical audit paper I have tomorrow. My under-grad audit paper.

Sitting at home, with the Celsius chart soaring, I could feel the bout of laziness coming over me in the morning itself! After much deliberations with my boss, I'd managed to get an off today. And there I was studying for half an hour at a go and taking a one hour break thereafter!

I watched half of Gossip Girl, then returned to 'Is the auditor a watchdog or bloodhound?'. Later, I tuned into a sci-fi comedy Fantastic Four followed by how audit is different from investigation. So bored was I that I went on Facebook after really long and liked statuses and pics randomly, installed, tried, then uninstalled apps on my phone and even checked out my Pinterest profile! All the while studying in between, mind you!

I still have around 30 pages to read. I've just tried on a new shade of nail paint. Read two pages. Started writing this post on insistence of my friend Ritika, who by the way, is in a worse state than me! She has 50 pages left to read!

Now that I've updated you guys, I guess I'll have to start studying again.

But before that, sorry Boss but I really, really am studying! Just with a little too many breaks in between!

Is it me, or is the world losing it?

The world is indeed a strange place to live in...

We Indians believe in God, a lot, mostly out of fear. We believe in dedicating each day to a God. And we believe in celebrating every festival possible. All good till here? Well, mostly. Unless like me, you find this undaunted staunchness in religion weird. Now comes the stranger part.
To honour the Gods and Goddesses, we don't play hymns or bhajans at the make shift pandals in Calcutta. We play the most raunchy Bollywood songs available! From Sheila to Fevicol to Munni.. You just have to name it!

News came in today that there's been a meteorite shower in Russia. All these years whenever the papers carried news of prospective showers, they never were actually visible. And look today what hit the unprepared Russians! Way to go NASA and similar organizations!

Oh and the main traffic signals of Calcutta have songs of Rabindra Nath Tagore being played all day long. Like the honking wasn't enough! But that is the change our Honorable Chief Minister believes in bringing about. Are we obliged or what?!

Oh! The Gods have a new song to listen to... Hookah Bar is being played now!

Durga Puja fervour in Calcutta!

It was 4:30 in the morning. The birds hadn’t even started chirping. Something disturbed my sleep. I awoke with a start. I could hear the dhak (drum beats). Durga Puja had arrived!

Covering my ears with the pillow, to muffle out the sound, I tried sleeping again, a smile on my face.

The Pujas had come! The next five days Calcutta would swirl and dance in the revelry of worshipping the Goddess, the city would shine bright through the night, people from the nearby towns would come to visit, sell, and soak themselves in the merriment!

One could see people anywhere, anytime! At 7 am, there’re people on the road. At 1 pm, again people. At 10 pm, still there! At 3 am, no the crowd doesn’t thin out!

These five days — dusk or dawn, morning or evening, noon or midnight – you just couldn’t make out the difference. The city didn’t sleep!

On the few tours made of the various pandals (temporary bamboo structures to house the Goddess), it was hard to miss that the traffic police personnel were having a tougher time manning the crowds than the vehicles!

One of the parks near my place had set up rides along with the pandal. Giant wheel was the hot choice! Not only did it give me the much needed adrenalin rush, but when I looked towards the sky, while my capsule was on the upward journey, I could almost feel myself reaching out to touch the moon. Those few minutes symbolized freedom more than anything! And then came the reality check. As soon as I stepped out of the dark and seldom used back gate of the park, I saw myself staring at a family of a mother and two children. Lying on the footpath, with tattered blankets barely covering them, the mother was trying to put her children to sleep amidst the din of celebrations in the land beyond!

The Pujas mix all hues of reality and of the realms beyond. They mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me it’s the time when my city looks and feels surreal!

The Pujas define Calcutta, its old-world charm, its people, its warmth, its serenity, its culture, its madness, everything!

As I sit here writing this, the roads outside are unusually silent! I hear the distant drum beats occasionally as the idols are being taken to the Ganges for immersion, marking the end of Pujas. A year to go, before She comes again!

May the Goddess bless us all!

Nostalgia haunts!

There was a time when school friends used to drag me in the rain and I used to enjoy the drops of water falling all over me! A soaked-to-the-skin trip home would be met with the ire of mother. And today I prefer to roll up the car windows when it rains!

While passing by a school church today, with the morning mass bell chiming along, I was swarmed with thoughts of our morning assembly in school. And then after so long I witnessed the adjoining school assembly going on, from the corridors of my college.

While attending a very boring lecture in college the other day, I noticed that the lecturer was rocking back and forth while reading her notes. So bored was I that I traveled two years into the past to a soft skills course I'd taken, where our Sir used to constantly reprimand us for moving too much while addressing an audience! you can very well imagine how boring the lecture was! And Zubin Sir, see I still remember what you taught us!

And the reason for nostalgia hitting me in the middle of September (a peak pressure period for the ones in the CA profession!), is that today after a long, long time Calcutta's seen a bandh, meaning an off-day from office and work! How I miss these bandhs which were a regular feature until the new government came a year ago! 

All nostalgic, waiting for another off-day to come my way! Actually even a holiday on Sunday would do!

P.S : I know I haven't been regular this month with my blog posts and I'm sorry people, but there has been just no time at all! See you post-September! Or maybe before (hopefully)!

What do you miss most?!

The Monsoon Drama!

Did you know carrying an umbrella is an art? It’s worthy of being practiced to attain perfection! You don’t believe me, do you?

This monsoon rains have been so infrequent and imbalanced with a vast array of diseases striking the city, that every little drizzle makes you whip out the umbrella! Gone are the days when we used to prance about in the rains and deliberately forget our umbrellas at home!

• For starters, like me, carrying an umbrella atop your head and handling a side bag along with making sure that you don’t land in the puddles or poke someone with you umbrella, is a difficult task! And what if your cell phone starts ringing?!
• If the rains bring along the winds, then you have make sure the umbrella doesn’t fly away, thus removing your attention from the fact that you might be getting wet face-down!
• When I’m walking on the footpath, alongside ether people I have to make sure that my umbrella isn’t too low, or else I might end up poking those without one. And now when I’m holding the umbrella high to avoid causing inconvenience to others, I kind of end up getting wet.
• And Calcutta footpaths, where available, tend to have such constricted spaces, that a lot of times you have to close the umbrella, pass the spot, and the open it again. Defeats the purpose of not getting wet, don’t you think?
• Oh and please do tell me how am I supposed to react when all those people sitting in the bus crib that my umbrella’s dripping water! People, for God’s sake, it’s raining outside. I’m carrying an umbrella. I just got on to the bus somehow. Of course my umbrella’s going to drip water! Unless someone out there has invented a water-absorbent umbrella!

So that’s my story of the recent trysts I had with the umbrella!

Someone bring out those raincoats, please! They also save you from the muddy water flicked across by passing cars!

Rain, rain, come again!

I was waiting for my Dad to pick me up. It had started drizzling. A heavy bag on back, rumbling stomach, tired after a long day's work, I parked myself under the shade of a nearby well-known hotel's portico.

Knowing that Dad would take time, I started fidgeting with my cell. Taking out my earplugs, I started disentangling them (They always get entangled!). A sudden gush of wind, throwing droplets of water all over me, made me look up! The drizzle had now turned into a downpour. People had flocked around me by then. Some were talking among themselves, some on the phone.

I wish someone had taken my pic! ;)

It dawned on me that the city which had been boiling in the past two weeks was finally getting a wash of relief! To hell with the phone! Shoving it out of my gaze, I stood looking at the small droplets of water being blessed on us by Him. I could feel my lips curving upwards! As if in agreement, lightning jolted in the sky, thunder startled everyone around!

The next few minutes no thought crossed my mind, no messages had to be answered, no calls to attend… Just the wind blowing my hair around, the water splashing on me in and out, the coolness tingling my wet skin, eyes sparkling at every streak of light in the sky, claps of thunder sounding like music!

Just a Calcuttan enjoying the first showers!

And then Dad came. The phone came out and this post was born!

Calcutta - the City of Joy?

As the day went on, and Calcutta sat through another bandh (after very long, though), I fell back into my thoughts. I have been brought up in Calcutta. I have always considered Calcutta to be my hometown. I love this city and would have happily spent all my life here. Until recently!

Calcutta for me is a city with boundless love for all those who come to her. It has heritage, it’s rustic, has an earthy feeling. It’s laid back, far away from the world’s rat race and yet you don’t feel like you’ve been left behind! Sometimes when you walk down it’s streets in the afternoons of summer, you’ll feel like you’ve landed in one of those R.K.Narayan stories centered on villages. The dusty streets, the scorching sun, only a handful of people around… One thing I’ve always felt is — No one gets lost in this city! They just can’t! Because someone’s always ready to help!

Yet somehow over the past few months, I’ve been feeling detached from the city. People are getting frustrated, mindless quarrels are waiting to happen at every corner, the youth is going away, the industries don’t even think of coming here. Calcutta’s been in the news for all the wrong reasons, of late! And our new CM seems to be making matters worse. Today, she declared another rape case as an attempt to malign the Government. Excuse me? Malign the Government? How exactly? More importantly, why exactly?

All those crib deaths happening in Bengal for the past year have been labeled as the Opposition’s conspiracy! The lady’s comments defy all logic! Basically, the Left didn’t do anything in their 34-year rule and now they are the ones who are doing everything wrong!

Every morning the papers bring news of another murder, theft, sexual assault or suicide!

It’s depressing to see that a city I once found to be so safe is now turning into a dangerous den of criminals!

I can only wish that Job Charnock’s City of Joy regains it’s allure and charisma before it’s too late...

Puja Revelry (with a twist!)

With the Pujas in Calcutta coming to an end and the city going in a temporary slumber, I present to you some photos taken in the middle of the night, literally (at 2 am!). Photos which do not feature Maa Durga or the beautifully created pandals of my city.

The crowds seem never-ending as we wait for them to pass our car...

The dogs were also awake at 2! Whether enjoying the Pujas or cursing us humans remains a mystery! ;)

At 3 a.m., work for the next day has already begun for this flower-seller...

Even at 3 am the little girl has the zeal to bounce around the streets of Calcutta

The Puja celebration brings along a lot of mess to clean up