Omnis Cellula e Cellula

Among the household chores that I am expected to perform (thankfully not everyday), the one I like the least is getting the milk. The entire process of convincing a deaf goala that I know that he has arrived, and then proceeding downstairs and squatting to get the milk just gets on my nerves.

This post has, however nothing to do with my disliking for my milkman. It boils down to last Friday when I trudged down the stairs to do the deed. Instead of letting me slam the door in his face (as I usually like to do), he told me to note down his cell phone number! What the hell? Even my frickin milkman has a cell phone.

Though I do possess a cell phone (I admit that I am rather attached to it), I find that I suffer from a rare form of passive-cell-phone-irritation syndrome. It is actually quite like passive smoking, yet much more irritating and not quite lethal. At least not to the sufferer.

I recall the time that I went to watch Sarkar at Roxy. Crap hall, with even crappier sound. On top of that some moron had his cell phone ringing incessantly. Dude! There is something called a silent mode. It’s when your cell phone doesn’t make any noise and doesn’t disturb anyone. Thankfully I was in august company that day. A brief session of bawali and taunts stopped the noise. Well, at least for the next fifteen minutes.

Footnote: India has just crushed Sri Lanka and now leads the 7 match series 3-0. Dhoni 183*. Damn! Dukher bishoi ei je dadar fire ashar aar bishesh aasha nei. Btw, Lonka kober theke eto murgi holo?

fifty-five

Okay…sorry I’m so late with the story. I’m such a slob…

And babel, I was so supremely confident that I would not be tagged for the story that I read your story but didn’t read whom you had tagged… *holding ears doing mental oth-bosh*. Now I’ll stop rambling and get on with it…



It was a one in a million chance. He tried to stare past the sheets of rain and the cloak of the dark. He was alone. And there she was. She moved towards him. So close he almost heard her breathe. She smiled. The glint in her eyes hypnotised him. She turned and was gone.

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

Aww man…why do all good things have to end so soon. After a disastrous pujo last year this year was going so so well. I had something to do every single day of the puja. Panchami was a bit boring but good. Shashti I enjoyed ragging a ‘dude’ who fancied that Bengalis are rubbish (please ask no further). Saptami I pulled my first all-nighter. Despite being forced to engage in matal-management in the wee hours of Ashtami it was all-in-all great fun.

By far the best of all days was Nabami/Dashami. The day was absolutely sublime. I spent the whole day with my two best friends, of whom one is kinda special to me *blushing*. It was magical. It was like I was on some dreamy cloud (#9 maybe). Floating my way across the aggregation of (sublime) pandals in South Kolkata *dreamy sigh*. For the first time ever, everything was going my way.

Was it to last? Not really. Now I am sure. There is some sort of ‘larger plan of things to keep me depressed’. In what I can term only as heresy, I found people who had partaken in shidur khela. I was passed by groups of people merrymaking while on there way to bishorjon. Could someone please stop picking on me? Am I destined to be the ant under the magnifying glass? Not only do you have to cut short the pujo, but do you have to rub it in??? *takes of specs and massages nose for some strange melodramatic reason*



Well, on a lighter note. MS Word spell-checker’s suggestions for corrected alternatives to ‘Saptami’-

1. Sap Tami


2. Septum


3. Pastrami


4. Satanic


5. Pastime

I especially enjoyed number four. ;)

Lost in Translation

Warning: The contents of this post are highly contentious. They are merely an opinion. Please be gentle when posting comments.

Literature has given one hell of a lot to me. Without it and my sense of humour I would probably have lost the will to live a long time ago. The writings of authors such as Amitav Ghosh, John Steinbeck and George Orwell are sublime, each in its own unique way. The power of a piece of literature just cannot be measured.

There is however one aspect of literature that I have failed to appreciate—poetry. It may be because I found the methods in which they were taught at the school level to be dry and overall attempting to dissuade the student from taking any interest in the subject. I must admit that the collection of teachers from whom I have learnt English should have been in a zoo as opposed to teaching in a school. While we were doing ‘Old Man and the Sea’ I recall one of our teachers summarily informing us that ‘Santiago’ means ‘good morning’ in Spanish.

I am not saying that all poetry (or poetry for that matter) is ‘bad’ or meaningless. Few things compare to the lyrical genius of ‘Lochinvar’, the sheer brutality of ‘The Tiger’ or the brilliance of ‘To A Skylark’. However I find a lot of other poets to have written poems that really seem to have no head or tail.

The single poem that drove me to a dislike of poetry is ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. The first time that I read the poem I thought that I had missed some crucial message. Even when I read it as a text, the poem failed to expose its inner meaning. When a friend (who fancied himself as a poet) explained to me that there are a number of interpretations of the poem I found it almost ridiculous.

Poetry is by far the best medium for expressing abstract feelings that cannot be passed on in prose. The poet should logically have some thought in mind when he pens a poem. If that message is lost behind a veil of obscure references and allusions then it may be that the message is lost forever. Different people come up with suggestions of what the poem could mean. Nobody really knows for sure. People may even interpret messages that weren’t intended. Doesn’t that really defeat the purpose of art?

I sincerely feel that I am missing out on a lot. I love to read and when I see others enjoying something that I find I am incapable of enjoying I feel kind of left out.