And then, there was Facebook

The courtyard was tucked away at the end of the blind alley. As the hot summer sun would start to tilt westward, the forever familiar faces would appear in the neighbourhood windows, calling out  names, impatient to run out of the house. My name was also on that list, I now remember fondly, counted an equal among my peers. It was a mixed bunch, some of us tried to speak in Gujrati or Hindi to sound like  them while they  joked in Bengali. And by 4 o’clock in the afternoon the courtyard would be full of little voices laughing, joking, crying, fighting and more than anything running around with the wind in their hair. 

And soon with the change of season the equation in the camaraderie among the little boys and the little girls, who were now in their adolescence and early teens, started to change. The girls and I started to wear plaits, grew quieter, took to giggling and chatting more with the sisterhood on the terrace while the boys continued with their backslapping brotherhood and loud, rowdy ways. Once in a while the playful backpackers, would yank at the shy plaits in mischief, not quite ready to understand why they had replaced the giggly ponytails .

And before the raging hormones could take control over the mind or the heart, some of us had to move on to other parts of the city. The moving away changed a lot. I moved away from the warm comfort of the familiar faces and moved into a colder para  which offered more of acquaintances and less friends. Once the initial barrage of ‘we all miss you’ letters had died down, I settled down for the occasional birthday or seasons greetings. And after a while, they too became rare. Time had come  for the ‘blind alley and its gang’ to fade from my memory.

We have all gone through this phase when we trade one set of friends for another, retaining only the favourite few. These are the ones who we call, we keep in touch with and turn to both in despair and in glee. It happened to me as well, in some cases I was retained in address books and in others, I retained some of the old faces. So whether it was  a fight, a breakup or a crush, whether it was to share grief or joy or simply to fight we called each other or visited those close by. I accepted that with each move, from one alley to another, from school to college and then on to university, I would make new friends and while  some old friends would remain in my address book, some would fade.

The transition from an address book to the phonebook stored in a memory chip was not too difficult. And keeping in touch couldn’t get any better. Mobiles brought in a revolution  that changed how we would  ’keep in touch’ henceforth. It suddenly brought back calling or texting to wish near and dear ones on various occasions into fashion. By this time I was also in another country, where mobile giants kept lowering call charges to kill competition. I spent hours creating messages for any given reason in any given season, birthdays, Diwali, Durga Puja, Christmas, New Year and I know some significant few still remember my fervour and as a result the deluge in their inbox.

But it was early 2007 when an email landed in my new Gmail inbox. “Come, join me on Facebook” it said, sent by a dear friend who I couldn’t refuse. Earlier I would stay away from  social networking sites, the likes of Orkut, because I found them a lonely place. Each name I had looked up returned the same message every time, “Sorry, the user you are looking for does not exist”.

Facebook was comforting in a strange way as I found a lot of  my friends, my compatriots, there. And one day I found a  curiously familiar face in my inbox with a question I had expected the least. The slightly balding, heavy-set face had a smile I knew from a forgotten time. He had left a message asking me where my plait had disappeared, a question relevent only if I was the same girl from the blind alley of his childhood. 

And soon my friends’ list on Facebook started to fill up with old, smiling faces from across the world. All were faces with whom I had common roots, in the alley, in school or college, at the University campus. Some went back to the cities I had moved on to with my new life, to coffee mornings in a desert city, to hours of Arabic lessons, long days spent at work or a group of knowledge seekers quizzing into the night.

Without the new revolution called social networking, these faces would have faded and would have been pushed to the dark alleys of the mind with the old ones. The freckled boy, who yanked at my plait and had once hit me with a deuce ball lived in Australia with a smiling wife and two pretty daughters with pony tails. One of my best friends from school, whose number i had misplaced and who never called back, was a research scholar at UCLA, California. The lady who got her Omani driving license at one go now lived in Zurich. My American friend from the Arabic lessons at Polyglot Institute had finally married his Phillipino girlfriend.

Smiling faces with perfect holiday albums and picture perfect lives gave me hope. Facebook helped me connect with that part of my life with which I had almost forgotten,  friends with whom I had lost hope to reestablish  contact. For nomads like us, like me, the fact that somebody from the past, distant or near, would remember, care to look up and connect gives a different high.

Dreams…

This is old wine in a new bottle. Its one of my favourites so I’m reposting it – Rose tinted glasses

I dreamed a dream in time gone by when hope was high and life worth living – Les Miserables

It was a dream. It was one of those dreams that puts the ever so restive soul to rest, a dream that gives a sense of roots to an ever searching soul, a dream that promises rain to the parched soul and a direction to the lost soul forever in search of its self.

Have you ever picked up a glass marble and held it up against the sun? Have you watched the colours of the marble  dripping through your fingers, rolling down your hand to scatter like drops of rainbow around your feet? My dream was just like that. Like a  green marble dripping the golden sunlight and then bursting into drops of translucent rainbow at my feet.

The last time I dreamt such a dream was in my childhood, on a summer evening  in a house bustling with people, as I sat in the balcony watching the evening darken into night. The cool summer breeze grazed through my hair, a heady wisp of  jasmine  lifted from the neatly woven strands precisely coiled into a heap on a  platter to allure the sleepy neighbourhood and half of a crescent moon hung in the sky. And I thought the dream would never end, that times would never change, that I would never depart and all would continue to be the way it was.  

But dreams are after all to be woken up from, and that happened when I grew up. The adult  understood that it was but a dream.

My prevailing dream had the same tranquil air. As if my weary soul had found the oasis it desired, as if my vagrant gypsy mind had found a home, my yearning for calm had found mooring in a placid harbour, as if a  friend had reached out to catch my tears and replace them with laughter.

 It was the same languorous evening slowly melting into the night, a soothing wind caressed my face as it swirled upwards from the rain-soaked grass, a night-bird flew past my window soulfully calling out to its mate and everything enticed me to linger a while longer. And every time I wanted to depart it became more real asking me to relent, urging me to stay and imploring me to believe that it would never end.

And then I woke up. It was time for the dream to pass. The rain it brought was to change into a dry, scorching day; the friend it promised was to become a stranger again; the chaos that I had lost for a moment was to return; the soul was again to become a nomad in the desert.

Yesterday was Saptami….

For a Bengali Saptami means that Durga Pujo has begun in full swing. The house has already been given a springcleaning and  dons the  festive look. Out come the silk bedspreads, the vibrant curtains, radiantly coloured fabrics brighten up every room, out come the urlis adorned with floating candles and rose petals, the diyas light up each corner and  reach upto the doorway to dispel all darkness, the doorsteps are  graced with beautiful  alpana and  the henshel (a Bengali kitchen) downs shutters for the period (read the next five days) other than when guests are entertained, as all flock to feast in Ma Durga’s henshel.

                                            

  

There was once a Saptami in the heart of Bong ghetto in C R Park, Delhi, right after the Bee and I had got married, when I spent the day wiping tears while poring over a pile of photographs of loved ones, who by the way were enjoying their Pujo in Kolkata. I remember spending the evening flipping through Bengali channels which telecast Kolkata Pujo Parikrama. When night came, it brought the Bee back from Mumbai and along with him my Pujo smile.

About a decade later yesterday evening was somewhat similar to my first Durga Puja in Delhi. Just that this time I was in the ‘not-so-Bengali’ suburbs of Mumbai, but in a  neighbourhood that had made it to headlines in the morning papers for a Durga Puja which was featured more prominently than some celebrity pujas. The darkening sky outside started to fill up with the dhak beats, the air lifted the dhoop and dhuno smell and swirled it upwards, hurling it to stir the uninitiated and the languid, down in the streets neighbours poured out - bustling and rustling in their festive best, the Puja schedule read “Saptami Sandhya Arati at 7:00 p.m”, the little sprite swished around in her puja fineries and I sat in my Puja splendor updating Facebook – a caged moment that inched passed slowly as the Bee sat stuck in traffic somewhere in the middle of Mumbai. 

Finally, we did make it to the neighbourhood park where Durga has alighted in her full glory and sits in her shrine, a replication of the Surya Mandir in  Konark. Finally our Durga Pujo for this year has begun and Ma Durga’s henshel, at the neighbourhood park happens to be  catered by good old Jalajog from Kolkata where the menu card reads “Kobiraji Cutlet, Biriyani, Kosha Mangsho, Fish Fry“. Happy Pujo!

 

 

Shiuli

Imagine  running out barefoot on to the dew soaked grass at the crack of dawn. Imagine the soft light spreading out across the sky to light up the night sky. And then your eyes trail on to the wet grass where at the wake of this nippy dawn lies a veil of white and saffron, fragrant Shiuli.

These tiny, creamy white buds on saffron stalks that unfurl their petals in the dark of the night, drop to the ground, as soon as they bloom, to crown the dewy grass with the first light. This white and saffron carpet from a Bangali’s  morning is the harbinger of  Sharat, the season of  longer nights, the crisp night breeze, a sharp golden sun and the coming of Sharadotsav,  the festival of Sharat, when the Mahishasurmadini Durga returns to us as Uma.

And here’s how to smell the Shiuli, the way my mother taught me. Pick up a handful of the star shaped flowers, rub them gently between your palms and then inhale the fragrance. The short life of the Shiuli notwithstanding, the heady fragrance will remain with you forever more. I know because it is this memory of the fragrance that I have carried with me wherever I have travelled . This is how I take my Shiuli  with me wherever I go .

 

 

 

Mahalaya

Ever since my childhood with the first peep of dawn on Mahalaya the big, old Telefunken radio sitting atop my grandfather’s bedside table came alive with Mahishasur Mardini and  the legendary Birendra Krishna Bhadra’s Chandi Path  broadcast on Akashvani (কলকাতা  ক).

 

Traditionally Mahalaya signifies the end of Pitripaksh with a pre-dawn ritual of paying respect to one’s fore-fathers on the ghats of Ganga and the dawn of Matripaksh or Devi Paksha, the fortnight of the Devi, fifteen days from the new Moon  of  Mahalaya to the full Moon of Kojagari Purnima.

But as a child, Mahalaya would have a very different  significance for me. I would start counting days as Mahalaya would mean Durga Puja was round the corner. The  Agomani songs would start the drum roll in my heart much before the Dhakis started doing their rounds down each alley, beating the traditional dhaks, flamboyant in their vibrant upholstery, to the festive beats. News would trickle in every day from  the neighbourhood Mallik Bari, where the Kumors or the artisans would be camping from after Holi, patiently giving  shape to an idol on a structure of  clay, bamboo, straw. As we would approach Mahalaya, the idol would near its final stages as well, waiting for a coat of ’garjan tel’ – a last touch of lustre over the mat paint.

 

I would wait for this dawn of  Devipaksh for watching Chakshu Daan. Every year my grandfather would take us through the  arched corridors of Mallik Bari, into the courtyard where the artisan sat creating magic with clay and paint. I would watch with awe as the master artisan added deft brush strokes of paint to  the eyes of the Pratima in the darkened hall of the Thakur Dalan, by the light of a lamp, a  ritual of painting life into the idol.  And with this the  mere idol of clay, bamboo, jute and reed adorned with mat paint and lustre, suddenly transformed into the living, breathing, all-seeing Trinayani Durga, the slayer of Mahishasur.

 

 

Picture courtsey : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarajit/2902763375/

Picture courtsey : http://www.flickr.com/photos/swarnendu/3893084940/

Sharat

Everytime, at this time  of the year,  in the month of Ashwin, the heavy, grey rain clouds start to pale and wane into fluffy white cotton candy and float around languidly across the azure sky. A mellow sun of the colour of  molten gold  starts to tilt and cast longer shadows. A  naughty, nippy wind nudges the weary, worn leaves to pry themselves off their nodes and fly away with it. And I wonder how to name this season. This season is not Autumn, as we Bangalis, and most other Indians, have another name for Autumn, Hemant. This season of the light, crisp air heavy with the fragrance of the Parijat is better known as Sharat, a season Kalidasa describes in Ritu Samhara as the season of  ”nights with silvery and coolant moonbeams of the moon, ... and lakes with white-lotuses”.

It is Sharat when glistening diamond drops of morning dew crown each blade of grass; when the Shiuli lies strewn on the lush, wet green at the break of dawn; when the fields come alive with the Kaash swaying with the playful breeze; when the care free cotton clouds roam the skies lazily. It is Sharat, the harbinger of Sharodotsav that presages Ma Durga’s  return home to us with Lakshmi, Ganesh, Saraswati and Kartikeya.

The  Bangali, especially us, who stay away from home,  during this extraordinary season we become a different being. No matter how much we denounce the nuances of our  Bangali roots, the nippy, heady, golden days of Sharat make us nostalgic. Some frenzied few are already homeward bound while others ready themselves to usher in Sharadiya in the land they call home. I, for one, look skyward to catch a cloud, wait to catch a glimpse of  a blushing lily, yearn for the golden touch of the sun. I, for one, lose myself in a flurry of  festive activities to welcome the Anandomoyee home.

 

 

She….

She had evidently tried to run down the stairwell when they had chased her. She had tried in vain to open each of the doors leading out into the corridor and reach the apartments beyond. She had tried to fight them before she …..

The receptionist in the auditor’s office on the first floor, next to the stairwell,  had arrived early that day. She had heard a soft thud of something falling around 8:00 a.m., she would tell the investigating officer later. The nightwatchman was almost over with his duty, he just had  to switch off the stairwell lights. On his last round, when he had entered through the door beside the still sleepy lift bank towards the rear of the building, he had discovered her in the lonely stairwell, lifeless but still warm, he would relate to the investigating officer.

Apart from the two of them, nobody else in the 15 storey high rise building that boasted of a polyclinic, a departmental store and offices on the ground floor; more offices on the next 4-floors; and then residences all the way to the top, not a soul, would remember her or remember seeing her earlier or even recount seeing her enter the building, nobody else would have  heard a sound.

When she was found, they would discuss amongst themselves later, the bystanders – residents, office goers, maids, house boys, that they remembered how her lifeless eyes still stared at them through the door kept ajar by the officers. They would recall her eyes asking them questions and pleading with them for answers. The officers scouring the stairwell,  one step at a time, would find bits and pieces of whatever belonged to her in her last moments, strewn all over the stairwell. Only nothing would point to her identity, her name, her address, that she belonged to a respectable family, that she had a purpose of visit that was not illicit or immoral.

Her youth, her beauty, her fairness of skin, her jet black hair and her pain – was finally covered in a white shroud and she was taken away, to be questioned, even in her silence. The normal cacophony of the morning in a building  fully awake with the unfortunate happening had been silenced  that day, by her and her silent cries of fear and pain.

Then everybody, in their need to get over such a tragedy, dispersed from the lift bank – only to huddle in the corridors, in front of their doors, in the parking lot, in nooks and corners. Everybody was curious – about her name, her identity, her past and her present but not the  future any more – some were thoughtful enough to question her dignity, others her mental make up, some sighed at her fate and a few shuddered at her pain.

For the next one month, all that remained of her in and around the building were whispers, speculations and rumours.The investigating team considered the case very seriously, so they questioned every resident, all visitors were stopped at the gates, all the house boys and maids were cross examined – they left no stones unturned. They even ransacked through empty or recently vacated apartments they found suspicious for reasons best known to them. The residents once in a while winced at the thought of a killer at large among them.

And just as the nation was about to come together in celebrations and festivities, the investigation came to a close. Everything, according to the strict laws of the land were clear as crystal. They now had knowledge of her, of her family, past and present. She did not belong to this desert country, she was not a National. She was merely married to a son of the soil. So she still remained a foreigner, from the shores of the Mediterranean, a woman resplendent in her beautiful youth. But she was not a tamed spirit, not having belonged to this country, the customs, culture, values were foreign to her. So her free spirit with the wind on its wings had refused to remain tied down to one man, they judged. But, unfortunately, such flights of fancy never brought happiness to anybody. Her family was distraught with her wayward ways. Her husband, a pilot by profession had tried to give her the moon, he had confessed to the court under oath. But she would only have her way. She had ended up being on anti depressants perennially. The visiting psychiatrist to the ground floor polyclinic suddenly  remembered that she had been his patient for a while. All this he narrated to the court of law under a solemn oath to tell only the truth and nothing but the truth. Suicidal was what he had diagnosedher to be not so long ago and had prescribed the anti depressants.

So the supreme court of justice, which ruled above all, kings and men alike, adjudicated that on that fine morning, unable to live under the guilt of her disarrayed life, she had driven from a distant corner of the city, past much taller buildings with much less security, to this apartment building, climbed up to the 15th floor and then taken her last flight of fancy. Case sealed, signed and justice delivered.

 

 

 

 

 

On cloud 32 in Maximum City

I dreamed a dream….

 

I dreamed a dream in time gone by when hope was high and life worth living – Les Miserables

It was a dream. It was one of those dreams that puts the ever so restive soul to rest, a dream that gives a sense of roots to an ever searching soul, a dream that promises rain to the parched soul and a direction to the lost soul forever in search of its self.

Have you ever picked up a glass marble and held it up against the sun? Have you watched the colours of the marble then drip through your fingers, roll down your hand and scatter like drops of rainbow around your feet? My dream was just like that. Like a  green marble dripping the golden sunlight and then bursting into drops of translucent rainbow at my feet.

Last time I remember dreaming such a dream was in my childhood, on a summer evening  in a house buslting with people, as I sat in the balcony watching the evening darken into night. The cool summer breeze grazed through my hair, a heady wisp of  jasmine  lifted from the neatly woven strands precisely coiled into a heap on a  platter to allure the sleepy neighbourhood and half of a crescent moon hung in the sky. And I thought the dream would never end, that times would never change, that I would never depart and all would continue to be the way it was.  

But dreams are after all to be woken up from, and that happened when I grew up. The adult  understood that it was but a dream.

My prevailing dream had the same tranquil air. As if my weary soul had found the oasis it desired, as if my vagrant gypsy mind had found a home, my yearning for calm had found mooring in a placid harbour, as if a  friend had reached out to catch my tears and replace them with laughter.

 It was the same languorous evening slowly melting into the night, a soothing wind caressed my face as it swirled upwards from the rain soaked grass, a night bird flew past my window soulfully calling out to its mate and everything enticed me to linger a while longer. And every time I wanted to depart it became more real asking me to relent, urging me to stay and imploring me to believe that it would never end.

And then I woke up. It was time for the dream to pass. The rain it brought was to change into a dry, scorching day; the friend it promised was to become a stranger again; the chaos that I had lost for a moment was to return; the soul was again to became the nomad in the desert.

Confessions of a wired mind…

The strolley standing in the dim foyer was packed and ready for the next 4 days. The Nokia sat on the centre table with its new Matrix sim-card, the sticky ‘post it’ with a note of the flight details and the hotel numbers hung on the refrigerator door. The Bee’s Blackberry came alive with the chauffeur details of his cab. And soon after a peck on the cheek and a bear hug later the Bee disappeared into the mi-conic lift, on his way down to the waiting car.

I made the usual big mug of coffee and made my way to the lounge chair. The little red book awaited me on the corner table,  a book where I scribbled down chores that needed my attention in my leisure. It held a list of books to catch up on, a list of  ‘must watch DVDs’ and all that. I ran through the list absent mindedly, while my mind was busy putting together another list. There were some significant others that had started to distract me of late, somethings that I thought kept me in touch with the time, in touch with myself.

There in my camera’s memory chip were pictures from several social dos and images of our weekend frolics that needed to be uploaded, tagged and posted on Facebook and Flickr.  The mobile camera went where the camera didn’t and captured on the spur of the moment slices of life  – they made for great candid camera moments to be shared on Facebook. Sassy snippets waited in my Twitter ‘favourites’ inbox to be ‘tweeted’ and to become status updates on Facebook. My Linked-in contact list required a spring cleaning, as did those on Facebook and Twitter. That reminded me of the interesting links I needed to link on my Facebook and Twitter profiles.  And then there were those who shied away from social networks, and I liked to keep in touch with them on the mail. So a number of birthday greetings, travel plans and general keep in touch ‘feel good’ forwards waited for my attention in my mailbox. Of course, I almost forgot about the post that waited to be published on my blog’s dashboard. Silly me! And my R had handed me a list of tracks to be downloaded on to the iPod. I was getting forgetful, I chuckled to myself.

Of late, I  had secretly come to love the ’social networking Diva’ tag a friend of mine generously bestowed on me and I wanted to make good use of the following days to retain the position, I told myself! My reflection on the mirror didn’t interest me anymore as much as my profile picture.

Thus elated by my current disposition, I made my way to the  den, where my sojourn awaited me. The room, being at the back of the house had a tranquil air. The palm by the window swayed in the gentle breeze. The armchair sat merrily with the floor cushion at its feet. The books lined the bookshelf in neat rows. Everything was in order, just the way I liked it. The table – wait! Was I dreaming? There was something amiss!

There was a void, a numbness was gripping me, my vision was blurring. But even in that disoriented state, through the blur all I saw was a gaping, empty spot. The space between the printer and the scanner, where the laptop usually sat snug as a bug on a rug, was empty! Everything else was in order - upto the umbilical chord of the broadband modem, lying listlessly, detached from the computer.

A quick rewind to yesterday,  to a brief conversation over dinner between the Bee and me.  I painfully recollected a mention of a presentation the Bee was to make to an august company at an international seminar on the necessity of listening posts in the current recession hit corporate world. It brought me back to real time and I remembered blowing a kiss at the Toshiba, cushy in it’s leather bag, slung over the Bee’s shoulder as he disappeared into the mi-conic lift.