You loved summer and ice lolly.You still love summer and everything that comes with it.I love you and I love the way rivulets of powder mixed with sweat run down your temples,the way you frown at the throttling sun and crave for a crate full of ice lollies.But you can't,because the mossy phlegm on your handkerchief safely tucked under your shirt and the inhaler in your pocket scream you can't.Because you have cold.Because you are old.Because craving for ice lollies or harping on one's happy past don't become a good old man.Baba,be a good fellow,be mellow.

Idiocies

1. As a kid,every time my father would wrench the remote out of my grip to watch cricket ,I would wonder what is so special about cricket that fathers and uncles would watch them for hours happily removing their minds from everything else in life for the duration of the game?!The moment it would end,snap and they would jolt back to reality.Of course now it's a cosmic truth that Bengalis and cricket are inseparable but back then it baffled me to no end.So then I gave myself a rather funny explanation for it.I assumed all the cricketers were Bengali and as Bengalis,fathers were obliged to watch their brothers play.It was familial duty after all.And then I remember mumbling good wishes to my extended family on the screen every time there would be a match and never complaining again about sacrificing my daily dose of cartoon on the old Cartoon Network.

2. My cousin and I as kids were convinced that incense sticks were mosquito repellents.That is to say,we confused them with mosquito coils and were convinced that one of the reasons mothers lit incense sticks was to drug the mosquitoes with their fragrance.So one fine evening,as I was sleeping a very deep sleep,the mosquito net tucked under the mattress to prevent the mosquitoes from entering my safe haven inside,accidentally slipped out.The mosquitoes lunged at me.What followed is a rare act of heroism.The said cousin thought he was the only available savior because my mother was away,cooking and he immediately lit an incense stick and shoved it through the space between the net and the mattress to save me.Of course he announced his act of heroism to my mother who came running to observe the pandemonium-smoke spiraling out of the hole burnt on the net and the daughter wailing painfully.And of course I live to tell the tale.

(I presume someday my kids or other kids would read this.So a word of warning-I have a bad sense of humor and you should absolutely abandon such beliefs if you have them already.)

3. I used to think we live inside Earth as opposed to living on it.And we had to carve our way out to the surface  to visit far off places.And the subway was the secret passage to these places and the metro,the medium.That's why it was called 'Patal rail' and only that,right?

4. I used to have a fetish for long hair and was convinced that contact with any random woman's long hair would help my hair grow faster.So I would deliberately stand close to random women with long hair and hope to see my hair grow over night thanks to contact with talismanic long hair of said women.

5. I used to think brides are goddesses descended upon earth to make uglier people prettier.I used to be mesmerized by their beauty,the gleaming jewelry and the bright red vermillion smeared on the temple.I would stand agape studying the lineations on the bride's face while secretly hoping to be touched by the fairy/angel in disguise.This would go on until my mother would nudge me to follow her to the dining table or to exchange niceties with familiar faces.(This belief is retained to some extent because Indian brides,irrespective of how ordinary they look on the rest of the days,on the day of their wedding,they are goddess-incarnate.)

*Yawns* Saving some for later.Have a nice day.

Rereading The Third Level by Jack Finney

These days,when students take up Science for plus two after class ten,their main agenda is to qualify one of them competitive exams.They spend hours inexorably juggling 'important' subjects such as Math,Physics,Chemistry and the heartless parents haul their kids up to get through the premium institutes for engineering or medical science.Unfortunately,amid all the juggling and hauling up kids ignore English.I am not saying this observation is general but it is most certainly generic to most schools I have come across.At least such was the case back in my school.And there is this disheartening notion about students shifting to Humanities in college after having studied Science in school that they failed miserably at the latter so they had no option but to take up English because apparently it was 'easy' to score back in school.Consequently the teachers teaching English in a class full of kids exchanging notes on Calculus,Organic Chemistry etc even in the English periods are totally disheartened at such a sight and end up teaching most chapters half-heartedly.
One of these chapters which seemed almost unintelligible to most of my classmates back in school is The Third Level by Jack Finney.I was teaching my student and he complained that he could not understand most parts of it in class.It piqued me.Of course I couldn't tell him it isn't the teacher's fault but the fault lies with the students.At this point I am beginning to feel most of you would think I am being snooty,but trust me I am only,sincerely making a plea to all the CBSE students studying English (Core) to take interest in the text.It's a very interesting text and so are most of the chapters.And I am only making an effort to raise your interest as a student who loves the subject.So here goes.
When we study a story/novel/poem,it's important that we also briefly study the author's background.Jack Finney,an American, wrote at a time when America was taking the helm at the Second World War(1939-1945).He was deeply aggrieved by the helplessness left in its wake and was a witness to the indictment of the war.Plenty of young boys were sent away indiscreetly and most of them never returned.This disturbed most authors writing during the aforesaid period and they explored many a crises which came as unfortunate consequences of the war through their writing.For them,like most of us,writing was an outlet for their pent up angst and distress.Some of them created a Utopian world which would be their means to escape into a world devoid of hardships and crises while others wrote fantasy,they wrote about time-travel etc all with the common motive of experiencing the 'other'.
So when the protagonist of the story,Charley,extremely dissatisfied with his ordinary life,wavers into the non-existent 'Third Level' at the Grand central Station and wishes to travel to Galesberg with his wife,he is certainly hallucinating.However,having failed to enter the third level a second time he turns to his Psychiatrist friend,to help him get better insight into the current state of mysterious happenings.Both the psychiatrist and Charley's wife Louisa refuse to believe him shrugging the incident off as a figment of imagination ( which indeed it is ).What's important to note here is the disconnect between the sequestered mind of our protagonist and people who are close to him.This disconnect is symbolic of the gradual, incipient chasm carved out between two people with the onset of the modern era.This inability to understand one another is ironically highlighted when the Psychiatrist sends Charley a letter,after having wavered into third level himself (He too is hallucinating of course) which the latter discovers in the midst of blank first day covers ( Note how Charley doesn't receive any letters from anybody and the only letters he has are first day covers with blank pages collected over the years).It is ironical because a psychiatrist is supposed to cure our mental illness,whereas,in this case,he is afflicted by the same disease he is trying to cure highlighting the extent of the mental disease.The story ends with the couple convinced that the third level exists after all because the psychiatrist has confirmed it and the latter cannot be questioned.
The story is a brilliant metaphor for the modern day existential crises plaguing the human mind so much so that it builds an illusory world of happiness and how it refuses to jolt back to reality.
Trivia-Jack Finney is the author of the brilliant novel The Body Snatchers which was adapted into the movie starring Nicole Kidman ,The Invasions.

Nada

I feel so anachronistic at times.So old.You know that moment in between conversations,meetings when you suddenly feel you don't belong.Or maybe you're not as indispensable as you might like to be among people YOU deem as indispensable.Yes these days I feel it all the time.
I am also in a non-creative limbo.What is that supposed to mean now? Who decides if I am creative? Who decides if I am well-read? I haven't read Harry Potter.Yes I haven't and it's a confession.The more the popularity kept jarring on my ears,the farther I retreated. Is that even an explanation? Anyway now I feel erudition is incomplete without Harry Potter.So I will read it.But when? I got caught up in the doldrums of everyday life and I didn't finish Nine Lives.So the book review isn't happening anytime soon because I have an exam in less than 45 days.Of course that is no excuse either.
I check my blog page everyday hoping to be able to write about the ordinariness of my life.That one quality I love most and confound at the same time.I stare blankly at the screen for some time,groan,and leave.Is that possible? Yes you reader do you feel your life swinging between two extremely opposite emotions on alternate days? Happy on Sunday,Irritable on Monday,Excited on Wednesday,and so on...? I am beginning to lose the train of thought.This is the worst post ever.

Pent up angst and anger.

So lately I have been going through my college notes plus other notes that I have collected over the year for scholarly ( Hneh I love that word.Also adding that 'n' makes the common 'heh' irritatingly nasal and accentuates my disgust ) purpose and I have arrived at one conclusion.Since we are so used to copying left and right from literary reviews written by other noted critics and shamelessly,dastardly producing them in our answer scripts that we,as students of literature hardly ever evolve.We might become more knowledgeable but do we really evolve as students of literature? Can we not put our foot down and produce what we truly,discreetly feel about the texts we read in the answer scripts? Since time immemorial we have been hearing notable alumni of our very own Calcutta University complain about the course structure and how it endorses only rote-learning as a means to doing well in exams but unfortunately they have been only fastidious naysayers and not true alumni because then they surely would have come up with more novel methods of teaching in class,suggested updated texts or better still would have suggested other texts in class and encouraged us to read them so as to identify the intertextuality between the latter and the ones to be read for the examination.Sadly,my professors are such megalomaniacs that you can't even openly share your views lest they should ban you from the class.I am just disgusted and very very sad.Dear Lord,send me to a good univ for PG.Please oh please.*contorts with anger and helplessness*

For once, 
let's not be literary 
but literal. 

Let's break free 
from the chaotic reviews 
unduly reduced 
from innocent gazes 
at snippets of life 
to blurry mazes 
of tired thoughts gone rife. 

For once, 
let's be literary 
And literal.


P.S-My posts are getting lamer by the day and I am only getting more elusive.

Jibber jabber

I would like to marry thrice,yes-
Firstly,I would like to marry a Japanese because the Japanese are amazing storytellers.Look at the gamut of  works they have added to their literary oeuvre especially works of Haruki Murakami,Kazuo Ishiguro et al.I think what makes their writing so profound are the two death blows-The Second World War which continues to mutilate lives some 70 years after the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of course the series of earthquakes.Each one wiping a civilization off the country's face.And when you read them you realize that they are the ones endorsing the aphorism Carpe Diem best.So then I'd like to marry a Japanese and get sufficiently inspired for writing a novel/story and then cheat on him with a South Indian guy.
Yes,my second marriage would be to a South Indian guy because I like their cuisine.Most people I know who have shifted to the southern part of India on the pretext of work or studies complain about South Indian food.Yeah I know one argument could be eating that stuff on a daily basis makes you sick but I don't care I can binge on South Indian food for days.
And then after garnering storytelling skill from the Japanese and after getting bored with South Indian cuisine I'd like to settle down with my boyfriend because we'll both be old by then and I will put use to my storytelling skill  to keep our lives going.

I can't help thinking that I am a rare cross between Christopher ( Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time anyone? ) and Alvy Singer.Yeah that's right,I am stupid and paranoid and I am scared of everything,practically except I don't puke when life gets chaotic but I let out a squealing "I hate!" to express my general hate.(But then I would like to believe I am also witty :( )

It's nice how I have had such amazing experiences of reading,watching and listening stuff that's rendered me speechless.Never Let me Go ( The movie ),Feist's music.Ah how I love my personal space again !