Obsess over one to the point of being haunted by one's form and soul.
Day in and day out. Wait. Pine. All In servile gratification.
All in the hope for the beginning of that never-before-experienced journey.
“It feels so right now, hold me tight,
Tell me I'm the only one,
And then I might,
Never be the lonely one.”
Prayers. Agony. Remorse and Regret.
And then move on.
Turn back to realize the intensity of the darkness lurking inside the cave that was just abandoned.
And what about a similar darkness in the one that has been stepped in right now?
They are equals in ways, aren’t they?
Results declared.
I fare miserably.
I mean almost miserably. Fifty Three.
Upset. But Relieved.
Parents almost glad. Supportive, in ways.
There is no way I could have done better with the fort night long preparation.
If you did well, you can be happy for yourself. Check me, even I’m happy for you.
As for me, I’m just waiting to fly away. From this nest, with the horrible pokey-twigs to one with delicate cotton-boll-lining.
Or is even that a mirage?
November 30, 2010
November 27, 2010
:) or :(
Among all my friends, some are falling in love, and for others, there are heartbreaks. Some are so happy while others are breaking down trying to deal with issues of their own. How helpless can someone get at times? Two friends got together today, after days of deliberating whether the question should be asked or not. And then there are some coping with rejection, a few more dealing with break-ups and heartbreaks, and some residing on an a different plane of disaster altogether...
November 18, 2010
Ten Lions
Ten lions have overstayed their welcome.
Just another of my great random fixtures, they have received more recognition than they deserved. However, this piece shall be used in remembering the kings, always.
November 17, 2010
November 9, 2010
Irony or Coincidence?
My name is one glaring example of an irony. 'Ritwik' means one who performs 'yajnas' in every 'ritu' to please the Gods above. 'Goswami' classifies as amongst highest-order Vaishnav Brahmins, who are ideally supposed to dedicate their lives to religious ceremonies. My parents are semi-agnostics, with no staunch devotion toward idol-worship, and both my sister and I are staunch atheists. This can be referred to as 'double deviation' to the rule that names-should-define-personality.
The other day, at Rohan's birthday party, both Rohan and I had red-tees on, and were posing for photographs with napkins with the letters S,F and I on them. I vote for SFI in college, but am far from being an activist. The following conversation that ensued is as follows:
Me: This is the first time I am coming out about my orientation.
Subholina(sitting beside me) : Really? Don't you keep screaming " I'm gay" all the time, everywhere?
Me: Let me rephrase that. This is the first time I'm coming out about my political-orientation.
Subholina: I see !
Ironically, the political body adverse to SFI in college identifies itself as I.C.
Ajju, Ikshaku and I were at Aqua Java a week back, and the room was jam-packed with weird-fashion sporting young adults smoking hookah. Ajju was showing to us videos of his Great Fall at the Ice-skating-rink in Shimla, the fall that had caused a leg-fracture. He said, at the Mock-Award-Ceremony at his college,this fall had been named as the 'Best Fall'. Ajju also showed us videos of manufactured-fall-situations that had to be created just to create other nominees for the 'Best Fall' category as it is never fair to crown something as winner when there is no competition. He was almost lamenting that his fall did not really have much of a competition and the win came easy to him. Right then, one of the semi-tripping, semi-dazed dudes in the room tripped and fell. Right over my legs and the couch beside me. AND HOW! The fall came in five parts. Each time he'd fall a bit, try to regain composure, and then fall further down. All the couches toppled over, as did Ajju's laptop, playing the 'Fall' nomination videos. Pure Irony,or a Huge Coincidence is for you to decide.
Originally, I had intended to cite only these three examples in this post. However, as the creation of this post was in progress, I found myself engaged in a Facebook-chat conversation with the star-senior Aishani Roy from Oxford University(Doesn't THAT sound magnificent?). We discussed how both of us would have like Prof. Amitava Chatterjee as the new Vice Chancellor of Presidency University, and how the new VC has the same name as our preferred candidate minus a 'Va'. She is called Amita Chatterjee. "What an irony!", Aishanidi said. And this conversation to happen right when this post was in creation, as if only to add an element to the post, was a huge coincidence.
This world truly amazes me, all the time.
The other day, at Rohan's birthday party, both Rohan and I had red-tees on, and were posing for photographs with napkins with the letters S,F and I on them. I vote for SFI in college, but am far from being an activist. The following conversation that ensued is as follows:
Me: This is the first time I am coming out about my orientation.
Subholina(sitting beside me) : Really? Don't you keep screaming " I'm gay" all the time, everywhere?
Me: Let me rephrase that. This is the first time I'm coming out about my political-orientation.
Subholina: I see !
Ironically, the political body adverse to SFI in college identifies itself as I.C.
Ajju, Ikshaku and I were at Aqua Java a week back, and the room was jam-packed with weird-fashion sporting young adults smoking hookah. Ajju was showing to us videos of his Great Fall at the Ice-skating-rink in Shimla, the fall that had caused a leg-fracture. He said, at the Mock-Award-Ceremony at his college,this fall had been named as the 'Best Fall'. Ajju also showed us videos of manufactured-fall-situations that had to be created just to create other nominees for the 'Best Fall' category as it is never fair to crown something as winner when there is no competition. He was almost lamenting that his fall did not really have much of a competition and the win came easy to him. Right then, one of the semi-tripping, semi-dazed dudes in the room tripped and fell. Right over my legs and the couch beside me. AND HOW! The fall came in five parts. Each time he'd fall a bit, try to regain composure, and then fall further down. All the couches toppled over, as did Ajju's laptop, playing the 'Fall' nomination videos. Pure Irony,or a Huge Coincidence is for you to decide.
Originally, I had intended to cite only these three examples in this post. However, as the creation of this post was in progress, I found myself engaged in a Facebook-chat conversation with the star-senior Aishani Roy from Oxford University(Doesn't THAT sound magnificent?). We discussed how both of us would have like Prof. Amitava Chatterjee as the new Vice Chancellor of Presidency University, and how the new VC has the same name as our preferred candidate minus a 'Va'. She is called Amita Chatterjee. "What an irony!", Aishanidi said. And this conversation to happen right when this post was in creation, as if only to add an element to the post, was a huge coincidence.
This world truly amazes me, all the time.
November 5, 2010
Dilwaali Diwaali
There is a dark gully visible from my window. Throughout the year, when the roads are dark at night, the degree of visibility in that particular gully is determined by the extent of waxing or waning the moon exhibits then. The reverse holds as well, and there is this half-finished abandoned-building of a project right across that gully. I have mentioned this building several times before. How certain guys hanging out on the rooftop remind me of Chandler and Joey, and how the moonlight incident on the unused, jutting-out concrete cables makes me poetic, Concrete-jungle moon-sparks et al, and also once about the Blue Windows on the finished portions of the building. Tonight, however, is not quite like the other days of the year. On the occasion of Diwali, there are heavy laces and frills of light wrapped around all the buildings lining the gully, for the purpose of beautification. And though, just like certain Elizabethan literature heroines, these laces and frills seem to suffocate the buildings, the end of beautification has been amazingly addressed. Also, Kali Pujo is the only festival celebrated at the tiny little club in the immediate paara, so there’s a typical Orange-white temple-shaped pandal erected in the grassless field between the gully and our complex. So my room is lit up, red, green and blue. The ‘tuni-bulbs’ lining the box-grills of my window act to the effect, and if only I was a little stoned, my room would have felt like a live hard-rock café, for I even have Vintage Rock from the 60’s and 70’s and some really mellow Sikkimese music playing on the laptop.
Tonight, incidentally, is All Souls’ Day. Bangalis refer to it as Bhoot Chaturdashi. Souls descend on the Western Hemisphere on Hallowe’en. And then their Eastern Counterparts follow suit on Bhoot Chaturdashi. The minute graveyards at Kumardhubi might come awake tonight. Mrs. Jean McGinn, my beloved kindergarten teacher, she might come to visit her son, who threw her out of home, forcing her to eke out an embarrassing living out of rendering private tuitions even after retirement. I hope her soul comes back to avenge the injustice meted out to her. I remember how she was the first person to have put me on a pedestal of importance, by making me class monitor in kindergarten. I have been dethroned from and reinstated into that pedestal a lot of times since, but she made me feel important for the first time I remember, so that love for her, that reverence, I can still feel, FRESH inside me.
I didn’t plan this note out; it is just taking a shape of its own. I remember how, before the first day of kindergarten, when Ma brought home news about Mrs Mc Ginn being my class teacher from the orientation program, I had sobbed for an entire day, out of fear arising out of having been allotted the scariest teacher, ‘who threw dusters to burst her students’ skulls’, in the school as Class Teacher. Now when I look back in retrospect, how unfounded and baseless the worrying of that afternoon seems.
The other time, when on Bhoot Chaturdashi morning in 2002, we landed up at the Hazaribagh National Park, and Buiya and I hatched plans of staying back at the National Park, at one of the cottages without electricity, (because we had no such prior plans, there were no proper-cottages booked for us), and how excited we got at the prospect of being visited by spirits from the dead as also Indian Tigers and jackals in the same night, and how disturbed and miserable we had been left feeling, when our parents didn’t approve of the idea, and rejected such a brilliant adventure just because they were worried about the mosquitoes. Both Buiya and I had refused to speak through the entire journey back.
The Diwali of 2005, the year when a blast had ripped the heart of Dilli just before the festival of lights, and our Tarumitra Nature Convention at St. Patrick’s, Asansol, where we planted trees, and socialized with people from other schools, and marveled at the sheer size of the Boys’ Dorms at St. Vincent’s, and the wonderful nature walks, the magnitude of the combined complex of Patrick’s, Vincent’s and Loyola. Also, Francisco Almeida, his attempts at teaching me those little nuances of Portuguese, and the way I was taken into the Anglo Indian Dinner Ceremony, long after the others had made the phone-calls back home, and had returned to the dorms and taken to their beds, and how I saw the art works by the Christian Brothers, and how impressed I had been at the sheer creativity and talent of the young artists. Also, discovering the half-dead rat-baby on the corridors, and handing it over to the Big Man, the planner of the event. The staying up nights with Alok, and dozing through the seminars and sessions the next day. And how Mrs. Sriparna Choudhury, perhaps the calmest and sweetest lady, and teacher ever, passed away to a minor accident a fortnight after this, and how shocking the incident was for the entire neighborhood-town.
Diwali in Jharkhand was so cold, snug and cute. Diwali meant November, and Chhath, and the men and women walking towards the Chhat-Ghat in colorful, fluorescent sarees and translucent shirts, and the huge assortment of gifts to the Sun God they all carried on their heads.Chhat would also mean ‘thekwas’. Every building was lined with diyas, and tuni bulbs, and the temperatures would hover between 9 degrees and 12 degrees, and even then there would be invitations from every house in the colony for the ‘parsad khaana’. Since every house housed a patient of my father or a student of my mum, there would always be the extra respect associated with being Daktarshaab or Medam’s son. 
A lot of this I have left behind forever. There’s no returning to any of it. But I have tonight. Suddenly now, I’m wishing there wasn’t so much light flooding in through the window. Maybe I’d be visited by a friendly soul. Or maybe Peeves. Mayukh reminds me of Peeves, it is funny really. Tomorrow is KaliPujo/Diwali 2010. Another one in the history of my life, to be fondly recalled later maybe?
Tonight, incidentally, is All Souls’ Day. Bangalis refer to it as Bhoot Chaturdashi. Souls descend on the Western Hemisphere on Hallowe’en. And then their Eastern Counterparts follow suit on Bhoot Chaturdashi. The minute graveyards at Kumardhubi might come awake tonight. Mrs. Jean McGinn, my beloved kindergarten teacher, she might come to visit her son, who threw her out of home, forcing her to eke out an embarrassing living out of rendering private tuitions even after retirement. I hope her soul comes back to avenge the injustice meted out to her. I remember how she was the first person to have put me on a pedestal of importance, by making me class monitor in kindergarten. I have been dethroned from and reinstated into that pedestal a lot of times since, but she made me feel important for the first time I remember, so that love for her, that reverence, I can still feel, FRESH inside me.
I didn’t plan this note out; it is just taking a shape of its own. I remember how, before the first day of kindergarten, when Ma brought home news about Mrs Mc Ginn being my class teacher from the orientation program, I had sobbed for an entire day, out of fear arising out of having been allotted the scariest teacher, ‘who threw dusters to burst her students’ skulls’, in the school as Class Teacher. Now when I look back in retrospect, how unfounded and baseless the worrying of that afternoon seems.The other time, when on Bhoot Chaturdashi morning in 2002, we landed up at the Hazaribagh National Park, and Buiya and I hatched plans of staying back at the National Park, at one of the cottages without electricity, (because we had no such prior plans, there were no proper-cottages booked for us), and how excited we got at the prospect of being visited by spirits from the dead as also Indian Tigers and jackals in the same night, and how disturbed and miserable we had been left feeling, when our parents didn’t approve of the idea, and rejected such a brilliant adventure just because they were worried about the mosquitoes. Both Buiya and I had refused to speak through the entire journey back.
The Diwali of 2005, the year when a blast had ripped the heart of Dilli just before the festival of lights, and our Tarumitra Nature Convention at St. Patrick’s, Asansol, where we planted trees, and socialized with people from other schools, and marveled at the sheer size of the Boys’ Dorms at St. Vincent’s, and the wonderful nature walks, the magnitude of the combined complex of Patrick’s, Vincent’s and Loyola. Also, Francisco Almeida, his attempts at teaching me those little nuances of Portuguese, and the way I was taken into the Anglo Indian Dinner Ceremony, long after the others had made the phone-calls back home, and had returned to the dorms and taken to their beds, and how I saw the art works by the Christian Brothers, and how impressed I had been at the sheer creativity and talent of the young artists. Also, discovering the half-dead rat-baby on the corridors, and handing it over to the Big Man, the planner of the event. The staying up nights with Alok, and dozing through the seminars and sessions the next day. And how Mrs. Sriparna Choudhury, perhaps the calmest and sweetest lady, and teacher ever, passed away to a minor accident a fortnight after this, and how shocking the incident was for the entire neighborhood-town.
Diwali in Jharkhand was so cold, snug and cute. Diwali meant November, and Chhath, and the men and women walking towards the Chhat-Ghat in colorful, fluorescent sarees and translucent shirts, and the huge assortment of gifts to the Sun God they all carried on their heads.Chhat would also mean ‘thekwas’. Every building was lined with diyas, and tuni bulbs, and the temperatures would hover between 9 degrees and 12 degrees, and even then there would be invitations from every house in the colony for the ‘parsad khaana’. Since every house housed a patient of my father or a student of my mum, there would always be the extra respect associated with being Daktarshaab or Medam’s son. 
A lot of this I have left behind forever. There’s no returning to any of it. But I have tonight. Suddenly now, I’m wishing there wasn’t so much light flooding in through the window. Maybe I’d be visited by a friendly soul. Or maybe Peeves. Mayukh reminds me of Peeves, it is funny really. Tomorrow is KaliPujo/Diwali 2010. Another one in the history of my life, to be fondly recalled later maybe?
November 3, 2010
Frigid it is no longer...
I have been intrinsically very selfish. I will admit, that deep down, I do not think that the fault has been mine, but I feel guilty nevertheless. I have been taking an easier exit out of sticky life situations. One of ignorance, of faking unawareness and a façade of nonchalance. I have pretended not to care when I have seen others capsize and sink into a whirlpool, and have walked by, always assuming that the one gasping for breath and reaching out for a support wouldn’t want ME to be the one’s support. Internal self-loathing and other-corollaries of such insecurities prevail here. Excuses, the one might complain, and there’s no way I can blame the one. What if I never successfully allowed the bifurcation of mind and body, heart and soul, and never looked at myself from the external point of view? What if the one(s) always truly wanted me there, as now I know from their sporadic claims, and I never reached out, for fear that my hands might be seen as dirty and not accepted as an aid, as a support. Calculative I have been for long, but these those who love me, and have stayed by me for this long, can I not, for once, give in, and extend my hand to them? They need me, and I them, and with a bit more of integration, I think my mud specks can join in with their delta-of-cooperation? The past is the past, but it is never too late to begin anew. Some questions I shall never find answers to, but some insurgencies have already begun to die down and give way to greater peace. I think it is time to open up, and to let in the light. The sun has come, and I know, it is going to be alright. It might have been away for years, but I’m ready to welcome it with a grand homecoming.
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