This Night is too long...

This night is too long...

This night is beautiful. I am sitting in the midst of the hour hand reaching 2. And still there is no sleep. With an excited mind, I am waiting for the morning to come. How many times, do we face such a situation in life? Is it the night which is not ending or is it the morning which is taking time. The first rays of the Sun have crossed Australia and making their way into Japan. And here I sit in Pune, India, waiting for them. So whats keeping me awake? 10 days of a voice, 10 nights of chat, and finally she is coming to my city. I cant exactly describe my feelings, however I am excited, damn excited I promise I am. Its a wait which has a purpose of its existence. I don't wish to share much but yes, I am looking forward to the morning, which will bring love and peace and happiness to one and all. On that note, on behalf of every Indian, on behalf of every hopeful heart, I welcome the morning...

They say I am different from you…But I feel you are my brother…

I also have a mother who loves me more than anything…just like you

I also have a father who works day long to feed my family…just like you

I also have a sister whom I play with…just like you

I also go to school to learn…just like you

I also play with my friends…just like you

I also cry when I get hurt…just like you

I also dress up in new clothes on my birthday…just like you

I also like the smell of fresh flowers…just like you

I also like good food…just like you

So how am I different?

My eyes may be a little darker, but that’s only because they have seen sorrow

My face may not glow, but that’s only because I don’t have a closed full of cosmetics

My teeth may not be as shiny as yours, but that’s only because I don’t afford a brush

My hands may be a little dirty, but that’s only because I play with dust

My clothes may smell, but that’s only because I don’t have abundant water supply

My feet may be muddy, but that’s only because I don’t have slippers like you

My English may not sound as good as you, but that’s only because I go the community welfare school

My toys may be broken, but that’s only because they are not new

My bi-cycle’s chain may break thrice a day, but that’s only because it’s not serviced

My notebooks may not be tidy, but that’s only because they are the remains of your last year’s books

Is that what makes me different?

My dear brother, “I have seen the most disastrous time in my life, which is beyond your imagination, an evening when our house collapsed … a night when I had to sleep in the station … a day when I ate a single slice of bread … a day when my dad’s patty earnings were stolen … Still I have lived on and I still don’t envy you…"

You are my brother…my God’s gift…all I expect is a smile when you see me next time…a little moment of brotherhood which shall make my day…

J

Babu…

Staying in the construction site near your 20 storey flat

The fall of the Night....

Night creeping in...its dark...a drop here and there...raining steadily

The night creatures trace their preys...amongst the rustling of leaves...
The rich go inside the comfort of their blankets while the poor checks his torn and battered plastic cover for shelter
The BPO guy continues his efforts to appease dumb callers...The CEO goes to bed thinking about another day's fight...
Some people dream...some are in the middle...some are at the climax while some have just started...
A beautiful couple make love...holding each other close embracing the night...
The party animals hit it hard on the floor...The nightman blows his whistle...checking for breaches...
A child kisses his Mom...good night...


As the night unfolds....

Great Expectations....

Expectations hurt, more often that not....don't they? They do. But still we expect. Is it in human nature to expect? Is there a condition involved in everything? If not, then why do you need to expect?
Saying this, I know myself...I am fond of my set of expectations like others. Whenever you think of someone, the mind creates a scene and then there is an aspect called expectation and then the mind takes its measure by warning you that the expectation might fail as well. Still you expect...why?
Lets take a scenario. A guy goes to meet a girl...he meets her...and goes back...there starts the list of expectations...."Will she call?"..."Wil she say Yes when I ask her for a coffee?"..."I think she liked my company?"...and the list goes on...depending on the imaginative capacity of his mind....
Why cant it be like I will see what to speak when she calls...?
Is everything reciprocable?...Is it possible for every quantity to match its inversely proportional variant...
The answer for me is No...and the world and its people are better off with their list of expectations cut down to a minimum...and let that bare minimum be termed as "HOPE"...

You always have a choice

How often did we hear our parents screaming, "You must choose your way of life", "You must choose whether this career is right for you", "You choose what you wish to wear", "You need to choose this", "and that", "and this and that"?
Tantalizing, weren't those times when we were at the cross roads of choosing our career paths. Well they were.
How often do we use this word, choice today? Very often I am sure.
Let's start the process with the meaning of the word choice first.
The Oxford defines Choice as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities; the right or ability to choose; a range of possibilities from which one or more may be chosen
Interesting isn't it?
Let's trace back, where we made the first ever choice of our life. 
Can you?...Its difficult I know, still I urge you to think...
Anything?....confused, not really sure are you?....Nothing strange....same feeling here folks.
Why is it such a difficult question?...Let's try and answer it.
May be its old....may be it's really old, or may be it's too old for our RAM to access.


I think, the first choice we made was to accept whatever our parents taught us...the world they made us see, the food they made us eat, the clothes they made us wear, the toys they bought for us, the etiquettes they taught us, the education they introduced us to, the school they made us attend, the subjects they made us read, the religious practice they institutioned at home, the people they made us interact and so on...in short a phase when we had none or almost negligible choices.


Then came a phase, when we suddenly discovered the wonders created by the word "Choice". It was also the phase, where maximum misuse of this concept was attempted. The reason is quite obvious. "Teenage"...when the "Nothing can stop us" kind of feeling ruled and we wanted to grab everything that came our way, again a choice.


Then there were choices of course, college, job, life partner, family and so on.


My point of argument here is the fact that "we always have a choice".


God created the universe, then He decorated it with the numerous galaxies including the Milky Way. Then He created a raging fire ball called the Sun, off which certain minute bodies teared out to become the planets. His creation was colossal, so gigantic, so daunting. But there was someting lacking....Life.
A planet was needed to host His most beautiful creation, a planet which must have the fury of fire, but also the calmness of water, a planet which must have storm, but also the soil to hold on. And that's how our beloved Mother Earth was created.
Then God blessed it with life, first came the creatures of water, then creatures of land and water, then came the creatures of air, and then came the great Apes, slowly they chose to crawl, then one fine day on Mr.Jack Ape made a choice, which is probably the most important linkage to our existence. He chose to experiment with his back and chose to stand erect and walk tall. It was difficult, he may have failed, but he chose to continue, generations after generations, tried on and on, then suddenly after thousands of millions of years of effort, Mr.Jack Ape learnt to walk erect, and his name was changed to Mr. Jack Homo Sapiens, or more commonly known to us as Mr. Jack Man. God did leave him with a vertebrae to experiment with. But nothing would have been possible, if Mr.Jack Ape didn't make a choice.


My evolution theory is not related to any of the earlier celebrated ones. It's my way of understanding the choice of creation of life.


A certain distant descendant of Mr Jack Ape, right at the time when he differentiated between his 2 sets of limbs might have faced a typical problem. That he knew that the lower limbs were to be used to move, but what will he do with his upper set of limbs. He looked at them and did something that lay the very foundation of what we are today. He chose to think. And suddenly he came up with the dea of grabbing. But mind you, thinking is something and doing is something. He chose to try, but he failed. Invariably the object used to slip. He looked at his palm again and his fingers and realized something which is one of the most important discoveries of human nature. He realized the different shape of one finger. Why was it different? He chose to think again. He thought and one of his descendants may be after certain thousand years, applied the different finger at a different angle, "the thumb". Bravo Mr Jack (x'000), Job done! The object never slipped now. A Choice.


Moving on...


Jubiliant after the discivery of thumb, he started grabbing many things which was needed for his existence and in the process, one day...he grabbed 2 stones and started playing with them. Suddenly he saw something, which shocked him. He chose to try again. He striked them against each other. Flash!
And "Fire" was discovered. A Choice.


The list moves on....till today...The Choice List


Let's now leave Mr Jack and interact with some of our men who chose to change face of human existence on this planet.


Once there used to be an Italian young gentleman, who on his father's insistence, enrolled himself for a medical degree at the University of Pisa. But, he didn't complete the course, instead studied mathematics, the subject he loved. A choice. A choice made by a young person, who later happen to become the "father of modern science". Yes we are talking about Galileo Galilei. If he chose to continue with his medical studies, the fact that Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, mite still not have been proven. What a pity! Isn't it? Again, a choice which changed the fact of human existence.


And the list goes on...Mother Teresa, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Lance Armstrong, Diego Maradona, Diego Forlan, our own Sachin and Sourav....


By now I suppose, you have understood the intention of my post. Lets close this already long one with the statement from one of my favourite movies, the Spiderman 2 which reads....


"Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, We always have a choice. It's the choices that makes us who we are and we can always choose to do what's right."

If I had the Wings to Fly…

If I had the Wings to Fly, I would

see the whole world with my eyes
view every wonder of the world
feel the beauty & variety of Mother Nature
smell the fragrance of every flower
touch & feel the most beautiful things on this earth
witness every river uniting with the Sea
listen to every bird singing
cherish the first cry of every baby for his mother
hear every Musician play his Instrument
listen to every man telling his soul mate about his feelings
be the luckiest person on this planet !!!

Then I asked myself, is that all for which I wish to have Wings?

Then I heard a voice which said,

If I had the Wings to Fly,I would have flown

to the country where disaster has struck devastating Humanity
to support the people who became homeless due to a deadly flood
to comfort the mother who just lost her son at war
to hug the father who just lost his daughter in an act of terror
to stand by the youth whose rights are suppressed
to talk to the prisoner who stabbed a man to save his daughter
to reach the Old Age Home, where an old lady is waiting for her son for the last decade

Then I asked myself, “Do I really need wings for these?”

And I got the answer “No I don’t, All I need is the urge to sacrifice the comforts & luxuries for serving others in need of the basic necessities of life”

Again the voice said, “Life is like a flowing river…It never stops…sometimes the banks are smooth and green…sometimes they are rocky and thorny, but you shall never stop until the objective is reached”

And then I recognized the voice, it was of Conscience, and it never sounded that confident.

“Wake before it’s too late, Wake before it’s Time”

Debi Bandana...Jaago !!!

Debi Bandana-
Maa aschhen (Maa is coming)...sabai jago...sabai esho...Maa aschhe (wake-up everyone...come everyone...Maa is coming)....
What does it symbolize- The Durga Puja...Triumph of Good over Evil- as in with most of the Hindu Rituals.
Question#2: How do you define Evil?
Answer: Any force which is against good, therefore God ! (I guess that shall be the most voted answer)
Question#3:What is Good?
Answer: Good is the way to reach God ! (I am not sure about the popularity of this one)
U must be wondering, why am I throwing questions so early in the post and myself answering them. Well friends I also share the same kind of feeling while writing these lines.
Ours is an interesting case..."Ours stands for the habitants of the Sub-continent" !
Interesting as in we know how to laugh at the worst of times...by worst, I mean highly unfavourable times.
Its time to celebrate and welcome Goddess Durga on the Earth for a week. This is the time to forget all differences and smile and hug each other.
"Shubho Sharadiya"- thats precisely the most used Bong word during this period. Its an unmatched feeling which every Bong goes through. Life today has taken a toll and moved the sons of the soil far away from their Native place. It has taken me away as well. Away from the Ganges...away from the plains of Bengal...away from the delta of Sundarban...away from the Bhat- machher jhol...away from the small uncatered villages...away from the majestic union of Diamond Harbour....and away from Kolkata.
I am sure this is going to establish a direct connect for all Bongs living across the planet. This is the time when we all feel united, united with a spirit of togetherness, united and strong, and its when we miss Kolkata the most.
I am a Bengali...What does it mean?
Something is there which connects us all, all Bongs by heart...Shiuli Phool'r Gondho pachho tumi (Can you smell the fragrance of "Shiuli" flower)?
I can, can you hear the bells, can you hear the Shankh?...I can...
Maa is coming....the Goddess Durga...She is coming to remove all sorrows...She is here to make you feel special in this unimportant world...She is here to answer those questions which has been bothering you for an year..She is here for a new beginning...
But how do we welcome Her...apart from the tradition...is there anything special we are doing?
Something She might have waited to see for years, but has never really happened...
But She will come again....with a hope...a small yet potential hope...that will see us through.
We are living in a jungle called Life...where there are dangerous animals all around...we have to save ourselves...we have to save money...save treasures...thats will protect our family- its a Treasure Hunt.
Isn't it?...from the day 1, we are born, we are taught to look after ourselves (only), educate ourselves (only), earn money for ourselves (only), protect your family (only). The Capitalist theory says, it has to be the individual who has to come up, the society shall come up by itself. And its kind of true as well...atleast the India we live in.
Then who shares the burden of others, the burden of the person who has no sorts...the burden of the person who shall never develop, the burden of the family who shall still crave for 2 meals a day...
The intention of this post is not at all to take away the happiness surrounding this festival.
But to remind ourselves of those who wish to see the lights, but dont have the eyes, those who want to dance, but don't have the legs, those who want to enjoy, but don't have the heart.
This year lets welcome Maa Durga with a promise to make some people smile, some people dance, some people see...some people enjoy.
I guess, thats the best we can do being human beings and do some justice to the title of being the most responsible species on this planet.
Sorry for trying to establish a Bong Connection. It just happened with the flow.