Oh Calcutta!!!!!

well going home finally,,,after three months,,,not that the time spent out of cal matters,,,more a matter of going back home during a time when every bengali or should i say kolkatan if such a word exists is his/her happiest,,,we all wait for these 5 days all thru the year,,,each and every one of those who have ties with the city of Joy and have been there for quite some time in their lives,,,calcutta finally awakes,,,i really don like to address it as kolkata,,thats just not a name which every one has ever used for the city,,,it was more of a bengali name and not representative of the millions of others who have made it home for the rest of their lives or at some point of time and have been touched by its innumberable qualities at one point or other,,,not wanting to sound parochial but Calcutta is one city which is viled all across without being given a chance,,,i have been to all the big cities in india,,,mumbai,,,bangalore,,chennai and now delhi,,,all the people i have met who have never been to the city,,,don even give it a chance,,only two things which are associated with it are leftists mamata and their bandhs,,,and not to forget supposedly asia s biggest red light area,,,sonargachi,,,thats all that people know of calcutta and thats all they want to know,,,u tell them of the people and how friendly they are,,,u tell them that Pantaloons one of out biggest retail stories opened their first store in Calcutta and they will doubt you,,,,i doubt if some stranger to cal and its people has asked for some help on the roads on cal and has been rudely turned away,,,in fact i wud go ahead and bet my dollar on it,,,because at times it just gets too much the help that is,,,because most people don expect this kinda treatment when they come to cal,,,

anyways cal and its charm albeit from a biased point of view will be discussed later,,,now back to the pujos,,,,as i said the one time calcutta awakes,,,there are lights on thruout the night,,,there are people all over in their best,,,children are free once to stay out larer than usual,,,,lovers get to meet and roam the streets widout having to look over their shoulder whether some one who knows them is around or not,,,u get delicious food on the roads every where you go,,,you marvel at all the work put in by the famous artisans of Kumartuli and the way they show their art on the face of Durga Ma,,,,you see a smile on every ones face,,,you get to go on binges without thinkin of the splitting headache tomorrow,,cos its the pujos,,,u go to maddox square and hit on all the birdies there irrespective on age,,,ask any die hard Calcutta lover and u will know Calcutta boudis have always been the ones like no other place in this country,,,though after Khan Market here i just might differ on that,,,,smoking one ciggarette after the other with cha in the clay pot on the roadside to take a break,,,walking lengths that otherwise would not even come in your nightmares full of enthusiasm just to get another glimpse of the goddess and goddess she is,,,standing in the lines which run quite a mile long at the award winning pandals,,,for all you know you get to see Osama and Bush and Musharraf in quite a different light,,,

all of life s stories and good comes out during these 5 days,,,and why not,,,after all they are going to be the staple for the coming few months whenever you sit down for a session of adda with your fr8s,,,"oh that girl we saw near muhammad ali park" and so on,,,,

for these 5 days that the goddess arrives in every calcuttans heart she not only gives us pleasure and joy but makes us forget the pain for those moments,,,i tell u,,,if you havnt been to cal just take out a lil bit of your times and go there once during the Pujos and you will find something so exhilirating and joyous and all encompassing in every sense that it will live u just amazed and dazed,,,not for so many of the reasons given above is Calcutta the City of Joy,,,Bravo Mr. Lapierre,,you got it right as usual!!!!!!!!

another weekend!!!

another weekend passes by,,,,m goin home end of the month for three days wud b quite a change and for the better,,,,plus as it is gonna be short and sweet so will b even better as i will b njoin every hour of it,,,,hmmmm,,,,m gonna meet my friends and family hopefully,,,and obviously the love of my life for one whole day which is 33% of my whole time spent at home,,,quite less she wud say and quite a lot fr8s wud say,,,and mom wud say quite a whole lot wid ur fr8s....

was passing by the road the other day,,,found the till then perfectly clean road very close to my office,,,,it stays clean cos of the biggies who stay on those roads,,,army chiefs,,,ministers and u know who,,,the usual delhi suspects as i call em,,,,so there i find the road littered all over with flyers of all hues and colors,,,with pictures of people on em,,,on closer scrutiny found that they were the flyers for the Delhi University college elections,,,and every flyer had the face of the candidates of the different candidates,,,and their usual exhortations corresponding to their respective idealogies or so they let us think,,,

m writing regarding this cos a spoof toon on the paper got me thinkin where two PYT s talkin to each other and one says that she thot there was no money involved in coll politics for sure!!!so wat was all the hulla ballu all bout,,,,which got me thinkin as well,,,,was it all bout hubris or were this guys.girls actually believers...not tat i have come across too many in politics,,,and most people i have met who have dabbled in it,,,have come out none the better but disillusioned to say the least,,,wat is heard is never felt wen u in it is the common refrain and how dirty and slimy it really gets,,,

so i think if it aint bout money and at the end of the day it aint bout ideologies as well,,,then wats it all bout,,,means i being from the generation that m from,,,cant really c someone gettin into this jus for the power of democracy however good it might sound,,,and havent really come across someone who really wants to change the system for the better who gets into such things,,,might sound jus like all the uninterested souls out ther,,who don even vote or think of getting a voters card,,,but then,,,,is it really hubris or is it really freedom and victory of democracy and exercising that right,,,,

to tell u the truth don know too many politicians say from these DU elections who have maybe won in the last decade from the different coll parties and then gone on and entered mainstream politics and done sumthin good,,,or are at least in someplace good politically speaking,,,,

so it jus keeps me wonderin at times wat happens to all these leaders and winners,,,where do they all go,,,,wud love to hear someone else s take on this,,,,if some is readin this at all,,,,

75 odd days in Delhi

hmmmm....its been that long i have been here in the capital of the Republic of India,,,and what do i have to fall back on as memories?????good question,,,but the answer is real hard to come across,,,,let me think,,,,the roads,,,maybe yes after the minefields and alleys of the City of Joy everything looks and feels great,,,,the women & cars on those roads,,have not seen so many bentelys and audis pass me by,,,ye ye am a man after all,,,the traffic,,its all the same wherever you go to in India,,,better than Bangalore for hell,,,the weather,,,it doesnt get worse than Delhi in the summers,,,and they are telling me that its just gonna be another extreme when the winter arrives finally,,,,so nothing really to look forward to,,,but then these are what every innocent bystander would say,,,,anything special,,,well people, the culture,,,as for every place in this country is different,,,but then the question arises does it have a culture to call its own,,,or maybe the place never found time to cultivate its own,,,let me tell every one am not against Delhi,,,and that aint any criticism,,,just passing observations,,,

so what will i remember when i do move on to another city another place,,,god knows,,,cos i
really have not got any evidence,,,the night life,,,hmmmm,,,maybe i will remember the malls of Gurgaon and their sheer audacity in coming up one after the other,,,and still being choc a bloc with people at all hours of the day,,,,

i will remember the brazeness of most people i come across out of the office environment,,,have seen people full of themselves,,,but so full,,,nah don think so,,,,

now people will be thinking,,of all people who am i to share my thoughts or monologue on what i have not seen yet in Delhi or didnt try to look at all,,,well guess everyone has their perspectives and this is mine,,,again,,have been in many big and small cities in my whole life,,,they all somehow had something which got me closer to them in one way or the other,,,,but it hasnt happened yet with me here,,,

so is it the people or my own ignorance,,,well i surely hope it is the latter for my own good,,,cos will have to spend a whole lotta time here in the future albiet for economic reasons,,,,

guess one thing i will remember is,,,the food,,,not cos its special but cos u get everything here,,,starting from the dhabas to the continental cusines of the world,,,,and if you know the right places you really wont have to shell out your hard earned money.

spending so much time and space just on what i have not seen in Delhi yet,,,you guys must be wondering this guy must have lotsa time on his hands,,,well i guess i do,,,but then hope against hope that the next 75 days will be as memorable as the last 75 ones havent been.....