This, That and Some More

Practicing to write in third person.... They had met a year and a half back, a few hurried business meetings throughout which his eyes bore into her. She had felt somewhat uncomfortable and wondered if ogling at women was a habit with RK (as he liked to call himself) but she brushed it off and returned his direct eye to eye gaze as they spoke. RK was assessing the teams across the globe and how best to leverage them and also trying to come to grips with his new responsibilities and seemed to be somewhat out of his depth. Shahana patiently explained the Indian operations and how the team she headed fitted in the big picture and the conversation drifted to Alzheimer's disease. "Maybe you can try wearing your watch on your right hand instead of left, then your brain will have a new signal for a routine habit" Shahana said. "Really? Does that work? I think remembering all these Indian names will be quite enough for me" RK responded. Shahana was a bit needled, the so...

People asked me why I stopped blogging and I would respond that once I started to get paid for what I wrote, writing merely as a form of self expression seemed a waste of time. It's true I earned a few thousands when I wrote for some publications and I thought that offers would now pour in because whatever I produced was so eminently readable! Well offers didn't exactly pour in and I also did not pursue my career in writing in all earnest. I also lost touch with my one and only hobby thanks to good old greed. Well eminently readable or not, I can just write for now and rest can happen later. Hello Again!

It's been a long time since I sang out loud, at the most I have hummed and once in a while sang in a rush at a friends place to relive some school memories. In some inspired moments, in an empty house after listening to a particularly nice song I try to reproduce it, go hopelessly off key and then give up. I am also eternally embarrassed at most condolence meetings where I am asked to sing 'something appropriate' (a.k.a. Bromho sangeet or Ranbindra sangeet) and I sit stonily and mumble that I have forgotten to sing. At this stage people offer books which have printed lyrics (which seem to be peculiarly handy) and I cringe further and wish the Earth would swallow me up! But of course such things happen with only ladies as pure as Sita and not a out and out sinner (like me). I usually mutter more excuses and pass on the so called singing baton to the more abled. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) some people have these elephantine memories and recollect that I used to sing at so...

Dear All, I am pleased to say that thanks to a dear friend of mine, I have been published at last. It's an awesome feeling to see one's name in print. Here is my list so far: 1. Design Today (April-09) - Write up on PVR Phoenix Multiplex interiors 2. Good Housekeeping (April-09) - Protect Yourself from the Rainy Days - an article on how to manage your finances during recession 3. Good Housekeeping (June-09) - Action Plan: Help Your Child Reach their Potential Please do read the India editions of th emagazines listed above! Thanks! IC

Dear Taj, The dust has settled, the debris cleared, blood stains whitewashed, candles have been lit, marches and speeches are over. You stand strong while your core is shattered, a symbol in a way, of the Indian stoic resilience. You have always welcomed me so graciously and when you needed help, I was unable to be by your side. I wept invisible tears of anguish when I saw you and those you held in your arms being ravaged so ruthlessly and berated my general helplessness. You are so grand and so beautiful; I have always been in awe of you since my childhood. I always wanted to see you in person someday and it happened on my first trip to Mumbai for a job interview. A friend had invited me for tea and I accepted just because it gave me an opportunity to see you. Your grand staircase, beautiful paintings, chandeliers dazzled me. The view of the lighted Gateway from the Sea Lounge was ethereal in the evening. The tea and cakes were heavenly; the person playing the grand piano at the front...

A few years back, a lady named China worked for me in the capacity of domestic help. When she joined I asked her why she was named after a country. Her answer was that when she was born, nobody wanted her so the name China (meaning "not wanted" in Bengali) stuck. She told me her real name as well but I can’t seem to remember it now. China had this immense need in her to feel wanted and that showed up in her sphere of work as well. She used to pamper us with all kinds of good food and later she sought out the attention of my neighbors by preparing all sorts of delicacies for them - without my approval. Soon my monthly grocery supplies started to diminish at the speed of light. So I decided it was time for her to leave. She was politely given a one way ticket to Calcutta and asked not to return. The lure of money is too hard to resist and apparently cooks are in short supply in Mumbai. She came back and has been living and working in the area I live for quite some time. My curr...

Life and its polarities have always been topics of debates and discussions. What is good and what is bad dominates almost every aspect of our existence. Man is always attracted or curious about the "bad" while the "good" is just normal and boring. Prostitution has always been considered one of the evils of society, the ladies or girls are labeled as "bad" along with a wide vocabulary of phrases to describe their "fallen state". I was as curious as the normal average human being about these ladies who wear garish make up and gaudy clothes and stand on some bridges of Kolkata in daylight as well as early dark. I used to see them while going to Alipore and there used to be a queer silence in the car with some odd whispers saying "Look at them" while others turned their heads in the opposite direction in an attempt to shut out the seamier sides of the society from their lives. I was told that Kolkata has these "pick up points" in ...

I am a Hindu by birth, a Brahmo by marriage, I feel close to Islam and connected to Christianity yet I have never been religious, I believe in God and that for me is enough. I have lit a candle at a church, offered a chaddar at a mosque, I tied threads in a dargah and I have rung a bell at a temple, most of my experiences have been due circumstances or my curiosity to see the place. My first experience was when I went to Jharkhand with a group of friends; the trip in itself will need another long post which I will write later. We decided to do some trekking and found the hill on which a famous Jain Pareshnath temple was situated to be an ideal location. Right below the hill was a Digambar Jain monastery where we had to stop to attend to nature calls. We turned beetroot red with embarrassment at the sight of near total nudity of the senior male residents. We kept our eyes strictly focused on the way to the wash rooms which were incredibly dirty) and once done marched out with our eye...

India, a country with an ancient heritage and culture which is thousands of years old, a country which has many thousands of languages, in some way or another derived from Sanskrit and yet ironically we don’t have a language to unite our country. Hindi has been announced as the language that will unite India. It is mandatory to learn Hindi in schools but we often come across instances where people from other the eastern or southern parts of India can barely understand it. If the region has a high infiltration of Bollywood films then there may be some hope but down south where the influences of Bollywood have been firmly kept away due to a strong south Indian film industry, chances of people knowing Hindi is almost remote. In most schools down south, children are allowed to carry books and consult each other during the Hindi exam while the person 'on watch' kindly looks the other way, which of course is not the case for other subject exams. If you are a tourist in Tamil Nadu the...

Bidding farewell to tooth fairies in my thirties is probably a little late in the day as I should have done that when I was 10 or eleven as that is the time by when one looses all one's milk teeth. My one particular canine was rather reluctant to part with me so it stayed on refusing to budge as the years went by. In the process the suppressed canine protested and violently pushed up my fourth incisor on the right hand side, leaving me with one crooked tooth, a flawed smile and a general bad feeling about my appearance. The dentist gave me a wire brace in my teens which suppressed the crooked tooth for a while but it reared its ugly head (or is it face?) once my mouth outgrew the brace. The dentist maintained a stoic silence in front of a desperate teen, who had to flash pretty smiles at men but could not. He asked me to accept my crooked smile and said that it adds character to my smile! D'uh. The guys definitely didn't think so - no one said I have a pretty smile so far a...

I guess it’s a strange way to refer to my Kaka (Uncle) but it describes it the best. Jotu as he was known in the family, parts of the family also called him Lal Mama, because he was fair skinned and had pink cheeks, lived in Germany for almost his entire life. Some of his initial years were spent in Lucknow scraping through educational institutions after which he went to Germany to pursue further studies - at that time many Bengalis opted for the erstwhile West Germany to pursue further studies. From whatever family conversations I had heard about Jotu Kaka, studies were the last thing on his mind in Germany, blessed with good looks and oodles of charm, he was probably busier pursuing ladies rather than higher education. One particular lady - a very pretty lady named Uta managed to stop his wild ways and domesticated him. As the family lore goes, Jotu Kaka lied to Uta Kakima about his age, wooed her and finally married her. He was about 12 years older than Uta but claimed he was just 2...

I was checking with a colleague who has just moved from Mumbai to Kolkata and this is what he had to say about Mumbai and Kolkata brokers. I hope you all find this entertaining and in the meanwhile let me rack my brains how to rid myself of this darned writers block. I seem to be having rather long continous spells these days or was my 'writing' phase just a passing phase I wonder... " Just an example of the difference I am finding between the two places – “I met my broker for house hunting today. He is a 70 year young man with big black spectacles, dressed in dhoti and a kurta and greets me as “Kaimon ache babu?” and takes me around tree lined lanes of lake garden in a cycle rickshaw humming a old Bengali tune. He shows me 6 houses within 1 hour and manages to sit for tea with one of the landlord, a ‘bhadralok’, who forces me to have a cup too even if I am not keen to rent his house and discusses about the working culture in banks nowadays and whether Obama or Clinton wil...

Winter is the season for parties, family get togethers and picnics and so we even joined the hordes who set out of Kolkata to the outskirts in search of some open spaces, good times and of course good food. Lorries and buses full of screaming or singing adults and children are quite a common sight. The caterers follow with food to feed a small army for the rest of the day. One boiled egg, two slices of buttered bread and one banana is breakfast which is usually distributed to all in whatever mode of transport the revelers travel in. Inspired by this age old custom, even we packed neat boxes with the above. Lunch was purchased and packed in individual packets the previous night which comprised of luchi, alu'r dom, nolen gurer mishti, macher chop, one plastic spoon and one napkin (English translations would be pointless!). We set off to a place near Diamond Harbor - Radisson Fort was conveniently located there in case we feel the need for amenities and ambience. The Tata sumo was equ...

I am sure this makes us think of Sharon Stone ice-picking through various men but believe me, the basic instincts portrayed by Sharon Stone and her various men comes way below in the list of other prominent basic instincts displayed by humans at public gatherings. During Durga Puja, most probashi Bengalis (Bengalis living away from their state) spend the better part of the days and nights at the community puja pandal. The kitchens in most of our homes shut down on Saptami, Ashtami and Navami where bhog is served in the afternoons and dinner is usually a mad rush for all the typical Bengali food available at the adjoining food stalls. We moan and groan about the hectic schedules, anjali in the mornings, bhog in the afternoons and the cultural programs in the night and of course we MUST doll ourselves up with fresh (preferably new) clothes on each visit to the Pandal. The much designer saree'd women, dripping with diamonds and gold jewelry and the men with their elaborate panjabi wit...

I have this chronic sensation of goose bumps all over whenever I go for a movie at an Adlabs hall (movie theater chain). I am not sure when I discovered this apparent malady but since the last 4 or 5 years it happens every time - without fail! After the usual advertisements, there is a roll of drums and screen message 'Please stand up for the National Anthem). Almost always, the response is immediate except for the popcorn laden people who get up an in the process create a carpet full of crunch. The tricolor flies high in the wind in full size in the screen in front while the National Anthem plays in the background. Most are still embarrassed to sing along though I do see a few lips moving. Most kids sing on top of their voices though and shout a spirited 'Jai Hind' at the end. I don’t sing, but I swell with pride and patriotism when I hear the National Anthem and that is when the goose bumps appear. I can imagine how people who represent India in sporting events feel when ...

After spending eight years in Bombay, Irani cafes were still virgin territory for me, something which I had read about in every single publication, heard about from many friends and acquaintances yet somehow never had the opportunity to go and discover the much talked about culinary delights they served. To add to my worries, I also kept reading that most such institutions were shutting down or selling out to make way for the retail boom in the space starved south Bombay. On 14th August my husband and I were in South Bombay for some work and we made desperate calls to friends and acquaintances to tell us about an Irani cafe in the vicinity - a Google search may have yielded better results though! Some friends were vegetarian and did not know about any while others were vague about directions, one last call was fruitful though and the kind gentleman told us the exact location and said that Britannia would be closest to where we were. After a few misses and wrong turns we did finally fin...

Some images remain with you always and they are best retained in our memories as we can retain what we felt, heard, smelt and of course saw unlike the two dimensional photographs which just manage to capture the visual moment. One such image that has been my most perfect visual moment is from my ancestral home in Calcutta. It was about 11 in the night; there was a power failure so I went out to the balcony. It was pitch dark, the crickets humming, a frog croaked somewhere, mosquitoes sang in my ear and the glow worms twinkled off and on at a distance, the leaves of the coconut tree in our garden swayed gently with a hint of a breeze and a bright full moon just above the coconut tree casting it's gentle light below. This is beauty that no camera can capture; it just is something that I will always remember for ever.

I once read a post about personal space in a Blog I visit often and I was reminded about it in an incident today morning. Our country being densely populated with over a billion people, personal space in mega cities in public modes of transport is not even a millimeter. Almost every part of one's body is plastered against someone else’s and one is left to deal with body odor, sweat and what not! I have outgrown my days of traveling with the masses but I do use the office buses that my organization provides to ensure that we reach office in time. Today morning I was sitting quite comfortably between two scruffy looking ladies and since it’s a long ride, I either read a book or look out of the window and count all red cars going by (ha!). My two neighbors had in the meanwhile dozed off. In the midst of an intriguing chapter from the book 'Feluda's Last case' by Satyajt Ray, I find one head dangerously close to my left shoulder. I cringe at the thought of the hair laden ...

Have gifts become irrelevant in this age of self gratification? Most of us have enough financial muscle to buy ourselves things reasonably within our reach. If it is slightly beyond our reach then there is always plastic money and the numerous personal loans which all banks are dying to offer us. The burgeoning economy and the retail boom add to the options of buying just about any international brand. Do people even appreciate the sentiments behind a gift in this day and age? Increasingly, I am seeing that a gift is judged by amount of money it cost, from the shop it has been purchased from and such like. I have myself snottily turned up my nose at a lipstick given to me which seemed to be purchased from a throwaway sale - the label showed 0.99 cents. Immediately an internal voice from somewhere rebuked be for being crude and said its the thought that counts, someone cared enough to remember me, someone cared enough to think I was important enough to bring me a little something from s...

During my days in LA, on a gloomy day I stepped out of my apartment with no specific aim about where to go and walked down to Santa Monica Blvd to catch a bus that goes somewhere. On my way I discovered this beautiful tree in full bloom against the backdrop a red brick house - on that gloomy day this vision was the best thing I could have started with...