home away from home

Burrabazar among us mawaris is probabaly more famous than the seven wonders of the world! Many from the community have scripted their rags-to-riches story in the narrow lanes of Burrabazar. Some of the most successful "baniyas" (businessmen) can be found here dressed in crispy white kurta-pyjamas, chewing rajanigandha and spitting paan.

Hundreds of gaddis (business set-ups) exist cheek by jowl in the area's dilapidated buildings. However there is no "fierce competition" among them. A sense of mutual respect and co-existence lets harmony preside. A "gaddi", of all is a very humble place. Furniture here is minimal. Only a couple of mattresses covered in sparkling white sheets, a galla and images of Laxmi, Goddess of wealth and Ganesha, God of auspicious-ness is all you will find. Appearances are deceptive and this applies here too. So do not go by the humble interiors of a gaddi, business dealing worth crores is done here!

I do not know how and when I developed this "phobia " towards Burrabazar. Maybe it was the fear of running into those dark, perspiring, lungi-clad labourers earning their daily wages that scared me; or may be the sheer cacophony and disoriented-ness of the place repelled me. I always feared getting jostled, unable to gain control.

But then the best way of overcoming fears is by facing them, and face I did! Compelled by "shopping needs" and pushed by the urge to overcome the "burrabazar-phobia" I, one fine day, decided to visit Burrabazar.

As I marched into the marketplace, a certain sense of familiarity struck. Little did I know (but soon found out) that this place was just like any other marketplace in Rajasthan, my birthplace! It was a microcosm of sorts. Shops were named the way they are in Rajasthan. "Sohanlal and Sons", "Chandmal Sitaram", "Chhaganlal Shyamaldas", have you ever known shops named this way? Well, I have. You find them either in Rajasthan or, yes you guessed it right, in Burrabazar!!

Soon my ears began picking words in marwari from people's conversations. Bandhej and chunari (native Rajasthani fabric prints) sarees lay on display as I crossed them in shops, one after the other. Those perspiring labourers gave way to lovely aunties, some sensuous and others pot-bellied. (:D) Suddenly I felt releived, and safe. I looked around as gentle breeze from a nearby banyan tree caressed my face, as if to say, "Welcome home!".

Delightful mirth dwelled in me as I explored few more lanes around. Such was the aura, that I soon realised that one could easily pass off these lanes as  being those of Jaipur. I was overjoyed and wished I had "discovered" this facet of Burrabazar earlier.

"The leaving" was as difficult as "the coming" but this time the reason was completely opposite. This time I just didn't want to go! I wanted to explore more, shop more and in turn relish abit more in this new found "at home" feeling that the place was so generously exuding.

Alas! leave I did, but only with a will to soon return to my very own "home away from home". :)

( And oh! I had the yummiest curry-bhujia in one of the eatries there, it tasted just the way it does at home :) :) )

City of Joy?

Living in Kolkata is very different from living in any other part of West Bengal. I have never felt such strong presence of any city around me as much as I have done here in my 4 years of stay.

Its running helter-skelter,this city. There's sheer madness that i have felt- a madness to struggle today so that the tomorrow is secured. Tomorrow, however ushers in more such struggle. Everybody here is running, both literally and metaphor-ically.

There are so many people here, that a bus-stop sometimes resembles a fair ground. People, people and more, people! This definitely IS the population explosion that our books in school talked about. But you can't help wondering whether Kolkata is the city most affected by it.

This city has the more number of bandhs/strikes than any part of the country I have heard of. Politics was never so important in my life as it is now. In my stay here I have realised that political activities are capable of doing anything and everything to you.

They can make you miss your flight by causing a road block.
They can put a full stop to all your Christmas celebrations.
They can make them shut down the grocery store before you can buy your daily rasions.
They can also postpone my Advance Java exam by 12 days!!

Yes. Thanks to some useless nationwide strike on 31st May, my exam for that day has been postponed to 13th June!! This in turn made a friend postpone her Kashmir trip by over a week. Simply preposterous, isn't it?  In the name of "general welfare", political parties have begun interfering a bit too much into our private lives.

The degree of this interference is most if you are living in Kolkata. And why not! With a CM like ours, this was not far behind. What can be expected of a lady who labels a student Maoist before walking out of a chat show?
A maoist? Just because the girl questioned your governance? Is this how a CM is expected to behave? Definitely no.

Here's the link of how our CM fled the show, watch it for yourself.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx-2SsI4B9U

I worry for the future of this city, for the millions of youth living here with dreams in their eyes, dreams to make it big..to reach the skies..to live in and still love this city.

　

Day #2

Exams Exams Exams..there's no getting rid of them! So three more papers to go before I wish "Sayonara" to my 4 years of engineering.

The only activity I am doing these days is studying. So what good can I be expected of. Neway. But one good thing i did today was that i was agreeable, polite, cheerful and good to everybody i met. :)

I will be blogging intermittently as my studies will be keeping me occupied most of the time. Hope you fellas have a good time doing good and spreading smiles. :)

Chao!

DAY#1

So here it goes..the G-R-aaaaAaaa-N-D opening of my "GOODNESS" posts! Lets spread some goodness..through little acts of goodness:)

Incase you are wondering what this is all about, read HERE.

Since I have university exams from day after tomorrow, I had to keep myself confined to books, books and only books today. So there. Couldn't do anything extraordinarily nice. However I would like to pick a few good tid-bit actions from the day.

• decorated the wall by my bed with some messages to motivate me: "Be positive" and "Smile often" and "Love thyself"
• helped my roomate prepare for her exam, by making her learn.
• called up mom, dad, and little sis. Spoke at length to each and felt extremely satisfied after.
• stood in the porch to face the ferocious winds of the storm..loved the feeling of power that gripped me when the winds, with all their force couldn't move me an inch..YAAY!! 

:) :) :)

psst! the last wasn't a task in goodness, however doing it made me happy. And the evry essence of these GOODNESS posts is to make others and oneself happy.

!!!Surprise!!!

I have been really mean to this blog of mine, no? Lately I have been behaving like a step-mom; but wait! this blog isn't my step-child. It is duely my own; and first; and will always remain the dearest:)

The elder child is by default the more mature, understanding and compromising of all. More so if the child is a girl. I have always been all these things. Dad confided most of his worries into me. I would get worried hearing of his worries, but never let my expressions show that I was worried. And when I got worried all I did was pray, pray and pray hard for whoever/whatever I was worried about! ( :D )

Then when I had crushes in school I would be extra careful to ensure that nobody at home came to know about them. I don't remembering looking at myself too much in the mirror either. It was towards the end of school that I began caring about my looks ( :D ).

I-dont-know-why Im writing all this nonsense

I remember all the family outings, all the good things that happened to me, all the things we talked about and all the times we spent together..and thats when I start missing home. Four years among not-so-congenial and no-so-familial people is not a joke! I am so proud of myself for never complaining about anything to mom and dad! All I want now is to get back to them and see the family together:)

The mature me talking, eh! :)

P.S. i have been planning something for this blog. I have thought of this: at the end of each day, I will be posting about all the good things I have done in the day. If you happen to read this I would like to request/beg/plead/coax/ask you to join me. Post all the good things you have done in the course of the day on your blog and leave your link as comment below my post for the day.
These little acts of goodness can be anything. It could be something you did to help someone, or to make somebody happy or to make yourself happy...just anyhting that you did and feel happy about.

I believe this will help us all in becoming a better person, spreading happiness and remaining happy ourselves :)

Much love.

I have been wanting to talk my mind for long. There was this new ‘wisdom’ that somehow dawned on me and I decided to peep in. I began to yearn for my “self”. I wanted to face this difficult, unyielding “somebody” within me. I had to tame her, establish harmony with this girl I hardly knew. And so I decided to talk here, through written words.

After all this blogspot is the dumping ground for all my erraticly tumultuous thoughts and rambles!

This blog is my reflection (so if this space bores you, live convinced that I am a boring person! :D). The myself that I see here sometimes surprises me. I see a positive, happy person, a keen observer willing to express, willing to talk..without bothering about anybody listening. There is no awkwardness, no calculated words; there's just me...and the flow!

What I feel, say, write and express here is not categorized into the correct and the incorrect. Everything is correct. Everything is incorrect. And still, it’s none of the two. There is no code. I don’t have to please. I can be me. This is precisely why it’s called “Soul scripted..”

And now the rambling I was rambling about!

CAUTION: Read at your own risk!

I am a reserved person. I make friends, but only one among them becomes a fast friend. This is not because I want it that way. But this is because I have not been able to create a comfort zone with too many people. I have not met too many people like me. I can exchange a sentence or two, but beyond that I am available only to a selected few; or very few.

I would rather walk alone than walk with a forced company. I do not talk unnecessarily. I would rather stay quiet than talk about something I shouldn't or do not want to talk about. I want true friends. Even one friend will do, provided the person is true. I know i will find some more as I live on. 

There was a time when I would pretend to be some other non-self. I wanted to make friends and so tried to behave in a manner which would please others. This way I made friends, but I lost the inner me, the true self that I was. Also, these friends I had were there only at their whims and moods. They were there only when they wanted to.

...

and the blah!-s go on..

phew!

Thanx for reading! I’ll buy you lemonade the next time we meet, I promise! J J  

My second holi with friends! Was crazy to speak the least. I was never a Holi-person. My entire childhood is full of only observations of people playing with the colors. I always liked to maintain a distance, and watch.

Earliest recollections are of my parents and a whole lot of their friends. They would all come to our place in a car. Dad, in white kurta-pyjama would go with them somewhere.  Couple of hours later when they returned , dad would look like a ghost! His white kurta-pyjama now with patches of red, pink, green and blue colors all over. His chappals and feet smeared in abeer, applied by his junior colleagues as a mark of respect.

Then came the tussle. Mom wouldn't let dad enter the house in his "ghastly and colored" state. Dad, in turn would pull mom out of the house and overturn a packet full of abeer over her. Other friends would join, as I watched, sometimes from the balcony and sometimes from a distance somewhere.

One of dad's colleagues (we called him 'tauji')  would live in the same building as ours. I very vividly remember how dad hurriedly took us (my sister and me) to the balcony one Holi morning, himself carrying a bucketful of colored water. Tauji, all bathed and beaming in his new, sparkling white kurta-pyjamas was standing downstairs just below our balcony.  With a startling splash, the entire bucketful of water was dropped onto tauji! Bewildered, and with water dripping from all over him tauji looked up, and we all screamed in unison, "Bura na mano Holi hai!!" With that, all our mischiefs were pardoned.

That's the magic of Holi.

Smeared in color, everybody appears the same. Nobody is rich, nobody is poor. They are all red and blue and green.