A man's dream

Probably there are two types of man in this world. There are those ones who let out a sigh after reading an “Andy Capp” cartoon and the ones who does not. Every morning while reading this comic strip a smile lights up my face and I always end up dreaming for a few moments "what if" I was going to spend the rest of today like Andy. But never succeeded to cross the "what if" threshold. Even if I am at home, I would not be able to spend the entire day for instance in that sofa couch of Andy. What amazes me the most is the extent that a person imagination might reach to create and keep a character like "Any" and "Flo" alive and filling up the morning of millions like me with their sense of humor and a feeling of freshness.

In the early days of my blogging I had written about the "Stay At Home Dads" where we spoke about the lucky “stay home husbands”. The lot who doesn't really have to struggle for daily sustenance and on the contrary could spend their time playing golf and socializing. But leading a life like Andy must be a dream realized only by a fortunate few or maybe an unfortunate few!

There is a bit of history behind everything in this world. If you are interested in knowing little bit about this comic strip the wikipedia probably will be useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Capp

Our Crime Master Gogo

"Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga" is a dialogue from the movie "Andaz Apna Apna" and no one can do better justice to this than my 15 months old. To put things in perspective, this is one movie I do not mind watching every time it shows up on TV because of the sense of humour and comic timing and to sum it up, I find it entertaining. The music too is entertaining with a comic as well as retro flavour. I do wonder if Amir Khan and Salman Khan are together in another movie. The villains here are portrayed as a bunch of comedians rather than the usual ruthless killers. One such character is "Crime master gogo" which is played by Shakti Kapoor. Every time he showed up, his opening dialogue was "Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga. Khandaani chor hoon. Mogambo ka bhatija, Crime Master Gogo" (Since I have come here I am not going to return empty handed.)

My daughter follows the same principle and so at times we affectionately call her "crime master Gogo". While awake, she is the busiest person in the house, doing something very important on her own, which we wished so much that she didn't. If she is not doing anything in particular, she will be stalking the house, looking for something to put her hands on. Till a few months back we had our home neatly arranged with many a object carefully placed at different levels to deck up the image but not any more! with every inch she gained in height, we had to come up with new ideas to relocate stuff and had to keep doing the disappearing act till we ran out of ideas and started to pack them off to be unwrapped sometime in the future. But the great thing about her is that she is not deterred by disappointments and setbacks. She approaches targeting one particular object but if we manage to move it before she reaches, she will settle for whatever else is available and never return empty handed. If we lift her up instead of moving the object she will try and grab something that is available at the higher level. Now that she has mastered the art of climbing a chair, we have moved them away from the dining table and placed them against the wall. We had her dining chair against the wall as well and I had to put her up there one day as she cannot get out of that by herself, so that she remains convict for some time while we ran some errands. But to my astonishment she was standing on the chair and fiddling with the door security phone very happy and very excited too. We let her play with the phone to her heart's content! Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga..............

She has reinforced in me to thrive to make the best use of all available situation and not to give up.

Isn't this a wonderful philosophy!

A Thought for the Day

Today as I was driving up to work, I had a thought which I would like to share with you all. It might sound a bit odd at the onset. Did you ever observe a strange resemblance the way we look at us and our cars!

As a new car is launched it becomes the most sought after object in the town. Everyone dreams for a few moments of togetherness. But only a lucky few succeed. The real character form within is often quite different from how it looks from the outside. We try to explain saying that looks can be deceptive!

The most striking fact is that the same car for which everyone vied for a few years back goes unnoticed in the crowd if it was not in the good hands. After the first owner has let it go after use and abuse, things has never been the same. It only exists as wreck of what it had been, a shadow of its former self.

But to retain honor and still held be held in high esteem after losing the youth, one has to be a Classic or a vintage model, well kept and well maintained and well cared for.

Don’t we treat ourselves and our fellow human in the same way?

So ……. the best way to remain respectful and honorable and withstand the test of time in this world is to thrive to be a classic!

That's a thought.. think about it!

An Effort Worth Taking ...

Earlier this month my fellow blogger Gaelikaa of “Gaelikaa’s diary” passed on an award to my blog and I thank her for that. I like to receive awards of all types like any other fellow human being. For awards and citations are recognition and appreciations for what we do.

I have not received many awards like most of the achievers of today’s world. I remember having received only a few of them, 3 to be precise. And out of that only one was at a national level and remaining 2 at zonal summit and nothing in the International level. Those were long way back during my college days. I do not even have the certificates as they were hanging in our college department wall when I saw them last. I hope they are still hanging on and have been joined by many more brought by the boys, who came after us!

Though I was very happy to receive the award, I was not able to put it up in my blog. I was a bit too busy doing something which I have not done in years and definitely not done it enough when other does it most. Yes! You guessed it correctly. I was preparing for a professional exam and by the grace of good God, I was successful and my score was way above average but unfortunately not the “Crème de la Crème”. It was quite difficult for me to say the least. But I was lucky to have my wife around who used to be a school teacher. She not only did take care of the daughter but also monitored my monitor so that I did not drift away from my goal. It was a good reminder of good old school days!

But as the saying goes... All Well that ends well! I am happy and so is everyone else. An effort worth taking!

Once through with that I decided to put a bit of effort on the other blog that I want to put up. It is called “A slice of Art & Design”, I intend to showcase Art and Design and Architecture in there. I invite all of you to pay a visit there whenever your time permits. I would love to hear from you.

Durga Puja ..... In our hearts and minds

The Bengali self within me does not allow me not to think and talk about the Durga Puja while at home we are celebrating the biggest annual festival. This is the time when all Bengalis come together in celebration leaving behind all their differences, well most of it! This year we did not get the taste of the Puja, we thought of going up to Muscat and then we thought of visiting Abu Dhabi but finally decided to sit back ruminating through all the earlier Puja. The only taste of Puja this year was when my brother let us listen live to the “dhaak and kasha” playing in our building for the “shandhya arti” via Yahoo Messenger voice service.

The puja in Agartala used to be the greatest in terms of fun and enjoyment and I cannot imagine having the same fun in any other time of place. Ironically I did not quite enjoy the celebrations in Kolkata to the same extent even though it is the heart of the Bengali land. But it definitely provides immense pleasure to see how vibrant a place can be and how all sections of people can have fun forgetting all their worries.

Delhi which was my next stop used to be quite a different place. For us it was the first time that we realized that the 4 days of Durga Puja could be working days. This is something which is quite unimaginable for a typical Bengali. We used to have a small theatre group of our college friends and we used to go around the city (with prior booking) and perform one act plays with portable sets, stages and equipments which we carried along in our car. I used to be the light man or the prompter and giving hands to all the ancillary works. We could perform only in the outskirts while the stars performed in the downtown. I still remember the massive gathering and celebrations in C R Park areas both the old ones and the new one that started in pocket 40.

After New Delhi, it was Muscat. Muscat had two well structured temples and is the only place in the Middle East to have proper temples. Every few years there used to be a new idol and I was there in one such occurrence while we unpacked the Goddess who came all the way from Kolkata and put her up in the altar. The ladies usually would take care of the worshipping and other rituals during the morning hours. The men folk used to gather after working hours and after few moments of socializing all used to move out to one of the auditoriums reserved for the purpose far away from the temple. It was a big community get together and invariably a “Good food – Good wine” event.

Twice I went to Sohar, a suburban town and a few hours’ drive from Muscat where the Bangladeshi community hosts two Puja. I was touched by the way they received us took us among them in spite of being total stranger and mind you this is in stark contrast to their Indian counterpart (outside India).

We love to sing the song ….

“Mehman jo hamara hota hai

Who jan se pyara hota hai

Zyada nahin lalach humko

Thode mein guzara hota hai”

(The guests who visit our homes are dearer than our lives, we do not ask for a lot and are content with whatever little we have). And they love to practice the same! Since then I only visit their celebrations! Because they are so much like us yet so different. I am not sure how many of you will agree to this?

While I was in Bahrain there used to be two Puja in the same temple, one by the Indian Bengalis and one by the Bangladeshi counterparts.

And then it was Kuwait and again we spent our time with the Bangladeshi community and we enjoyed a lot. Here are a few images of the Puja in Kuwait.

Finally Shobai ke janai Sharod Abhinondan!

Wishes to you all on this festive season!

Those Two Days

Two months back I celebrated my first birthday. Do you this was the second biggest party of my whole life. We celebrated the first one in Kolkata. It was the day I got to taste of rice for the very first time and along with that a lot more thing that made very little sense to me. Many curries including Fish and also sweets, which could hardly fit within a 10” plate... all I could think of at that moment was... "ore baba re" (OMG)! They (ora) like to call it my annaprashon. You know, I was very sad this time as we do not have my relatives here in Dubai and I missed them all very dearly. I thought I will not write about this party at all as I missed the family so much. But now that I have spent a good one month time in Kolkata with all of them, I feel much better. This time most of the uncles and aunts we know here in Dubai have also gone out for their summer vacation and there were suggestions that we postpone the birthday party. But tell me how can we postpone my first birthday party.... yes the first birthday! Actually at the end we did have quite a few guests and I made many friends though they appeared to be a little elder than me. I had great fun running after them and shouting aloud... yes shouting with all my strength.... you see, I still have to learn how to talk like you guys! It was sad though that Ma did not allow me to go around the pool as it was too dangerous.I actually thought it would be somewhat similar to the annoprashon party. at one was in Calcutta Rowing Club and believe me, it was a great party. I almost felt like a queen, that evening. We actually sent out invitation cards well in advance all those cards created especially for me. I had my grandparents, uncles, aunts and so many other guests.
At the annoprashon earlier in the day it was great fun too. You know for we Bengalees it is a very auspicious occasion. This is the day we worship our family Guru and are introduced to the real world of all the perceivable senses. Everyone was ready with their cameras when Pishimoni (aunt, father's sister) got a plate with lots of goodies, as I was sitting on my mama's (mother's brother) lap and I was supposed to select whatever I liked. There were money, jewelry, cosmetics, pen, pencil and a book. Can you imagine that I selected the book from all those things? Everyone was very excited ... I did not quite understand why! It was actually a book on finance from kaka (father's younger brother). After that all the elders started to shower me with all sorts of ornaments.... I wish I had many of such occasions! But it only comes once in a lifetime.But all in all both my parties had been great fun. ... A lot of fun!

Thinking Aloud

Be it a tilt in priority or a time management issue but the matter of the fact is that I am not being able to do much of blogging for the past few weeks. I do try and take a quick tour of the blogs that I follow whenever I can manage. I wish I could scribble a few lines in my blog now and then but ….. I guess blogging have to wait a bit more!
I could best describe this situation by following Filmy line …. “Majboor ye halaat idhar bhi hai udhar bhi” (“I am restrained by the compulsion is on either side”. Excuse my poor translation)
Following are a few pictures of My City, Calcutta. These are taken from emails which have been making round for sometime now and most of us have received once already! These pictures were taken in 1930ies (nineteen thirties) less than two decades prior to our independence from the British rule.
One point bothers me whenever I look at these images. Almost 200 years into British rule our people have been dressing themselves in traditional attire. But what happened in the next 25 years that made us to abandon(except for special occasions/ festivities) the “dhoti - kurta” altogether? Could we not have tried to do make our traditional attire evolve itself to stand up to the need of the 21st century?
I am thinking aloud and would welcome your thoughts on this!
Please click on the image for a bigger picture.