Thursday, January 22, 2009

Laugh at me!!!!!!!!!

I admit, I am at times, very unmindful and forgetful. Due to this, I end up doing many silly and crazy stuff. The stories of such stupid acts of mine have always been a great laughing stock for my friends and family and I feel so very proud that even in these stressful times I give people enough reason to laugh. But sometimes I wonder was it really me doing all these crap……..m I really so unmindful and forgetful? Strange seem the workings of my brain.I bet, I never forget to turn off the gas regulator or to switch off the geyser. I bet, I can recollect all the questions in toto after I give any exam. My concentration is so very good that once I was working and a fire alarm went off….believe me all the people ran out of the building but there I was still glued to my system unaware that there is nobody around me. But sometimes I am completely lost in my own unknown world and I simply act weird.

Once in my home at Silchar, a beggar was at the door and my mom asked to get a bowl of rice for the beggar. I went straight to the bathroom and fetched one mug water from the tumbler….I came to the beggar and was about to pour the mugful water in the poor man’s bag when I suddenly came to my senses and realized what I was doing.From then on, whenever I give any food or alms to a beggar, I cant help remembering that incident.

Then another day, My mom asked me to get the clothes from the courtyard which she had put out in the sun for drying. At the same time she had asked me to throw away some waste water in the drain. I collected all the clothes, took the bucket of waste water in my hand and can u believe, instead of throwing the water, I threw all the washed and dried clothes into that dirty stinking drain. I thought that I would get some good thrashing for this but the act was so very stupid that my mother, instead of getting angry burst out laughing. Multitasking is such a risk with me you see!

Then once in Bangalore..I was going home and had a flight at 5-30 in the morning. It was 3-30 and I was about to catch the cab to the airport .I was supposed to carry the luggage in my hand. I told bye to my roommates, made my usual prayers and you know what, instead of picking the bag, I picked the bucket and went to board the taxi. I never realized what I was doing……could not even feel the difference of weight. Good that my roommate noticed and screamed out laughing “Dear, where are you going with the bucket”. She got me my bag and saved me from the scare of reaching the airport without my luggage and tickets.

Then another day in Bangalore, my roommate had a kept a fast the entire day for the “Ganga Bachao Andolan”, urged upon by Baba Ramdev ji. She was making payasam with suji to break her fast. Hungry and tired , she was desparate to have her first grains of the day. She was making the payasam with great care……ghee, cashewnuts, raisins..she was putting all nice stuff to make the dish really tasty. The only mistake she did was to ask me to add sugar to it. I don’t know where I was lost but I added salt instead. As she put the first morsel in her mouth…….Yuck……she screamed “Tonoya..wat have u done?”..bloody me…..i could immediately realize what a mess a I had done. Poor my roommate…..i felt so sorry for her and so ashamed at my stupidity. It was 10 pm in the night and we had to get all the stuff from the nearby shop and make the payasam all over again. And this time she dared not ask me to add anything.
Then another day, my nephew Siddharth was trying to reach my place. He did not know the exact location and so after coming in the vicinity, he called me up. He told where exactly he was standing and asked me to guide him. With great confidence, I told him that two steps further on, he would find a big statue of hanuman and he is to take a right from there. Now my dear nephew kept searching for the statue but could not find any…he however found one picture of Lord Ganesha in the same place. Going by my track record, he immediately realized that may be that was what I was referring to and ultimately reached my place.

So these are some of the incidents in which you can get a very true picture of my extremely stupid self. Hope you have enjoyed reading and thank you for making fun of me!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

THE MOONRISE

The worst part of staying in big cities like Bangalore is that you always stand to miss the sweet and simple beauties of nature. For most of us it has been really long since we last saw the sunset .. the western sky all ablaze with the last golden rays of the sun….yes, it has been long since we watched the night sky ornate with thousands of stars. Mostly we do not have the time or the mood to watch these all and even if we do have both…..there is this pollution and the skyscrapers blocking our vision. But that Sunday evening for me was indeed very special….I was lucky enough to see the full moon rise.
My nephew has rented an apartment in BTM just opposite to the madiwala lake and the view from the balcony is very very beautiful. It was more so that day with the full moon rising against the backdrop of the evening sky and the lake waters sparkling beneath.
People since ages have enjoyed the beauty of the sunrise…….even I, when at Silchar, have seen and enjoyed many sunrises……the riot of colours in the east , brilliant tinges of orange scattered all across the sky….the red sun rising slowly above the horizon..it is all so very gorgeous. But that evening as I saw the moon, I felt that the moonrise has a divine beauty of its own which the much hyped and lauded sunrise can never match. The moon , closer to the horizon, was looking bigger than its usual size…much like a glowing disc..it was not white but more towards a very light shade of orange. The evening sky..not yet completely dark looked very calm…very serene and the young moon added to its beauty. Now I realized why all the poets across ages have so much been in love with the moon…why so much has been written and said on the moon……..why moon has always been linked to romanticism. I kept gazing at the moon which was crawling up slowly and steadily…..at the same time I wondered how man could manage to set his foot on the moon..I pictured that the Chandrayaan recently launched by India…made by our very own scientists is orbiting there somewhere very close to this beautiful moon. I stood there for a while gazing at the moon and much like Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” the pictures of the moonrise I carry in my heart is a lifetime treasure and indeed a “bliss of solitude”.

Friday, January 9, 2009

WELCOME 2009


BLOOD, TEARS, PAIN....
I CAN STAND NO MORE
NOW THAT U HAVE COME
HOPE THE BIRDS WILL SING ................................

HOPE THE HUES OF MORNING SKY
BRIGHTEN UP OUR DAYS
NOW THAT YOU HAVE COME
HOPE THE MUSIC REIGNS !!!!!!!!!!

Christmas at Silchar


This was my third Christmas in Bangalore and as usual it was not that great. Yes…we did have celebrations in the office on Christmas eve (good they declared holiday on Christmas at least!!!!!!!!!!!) but nothing can match the joy of celebrating Christmas in my sweet home at Silchar…….thanks to the enthusiasm of my father. We are not Christians but my father makes sure that Christmas is celebrated at our home in our own sweet self styled way. We decorate a cross made out of bamboo and place a picture of Christ along with the cross in our Puja room. We invite all the kids of the neighbourhood to join us for the evening prayers. In the evening, we light the candles before Jesus, say our prayers and distribute sweets among the kids. Usually, a kid is dressed as father and he sprinkles holy water all around the house.

In our schooldays, Christmas time used to be the most exciting and happiest time for us.Our annual exams would generally be over by November end and the winter vacation would immediately follow…. A vacation of almost 45 days…..a vacation which we enjoyed to the extreme. Those days, in our lane we were a gang of about 10 kids, almost of the same age group…….we used to go to school together, play together in the evenings, laugh together for no reason, fight at the silliest things….and most importantly, we used to get together with full spirits for Christmas celebrations. Well let me introduce you to our gang members… there was Mou didi (Moutushi Paul)… presently she is an engineer with BHEL….Devon(Deboprosad Paul)… presently he is doing his Btech from NIT, Silchar…… boro misti didi (Lopamudra dutta) who is doing BE from Pune..Shivani didi(Debjani Purkayastha) who is practicing in Guwahati high court, her brother Rajdeep(Purkayastha), persuing MBA in Delhi…, her elder sister Narayoni didi(Narayoni Purkayastha) who is married now and blessed with a kid…….Shivam (rabijyoti Bhattacharjee) who is a content developer with Infosys…and then there was me and my siblings….myself Misty (tanaya choudhury)..am a Sr. software engineer with Wipro Technologies, my brother rajon (Sarbajeet choudhury) and sister Titu(Saswati Choudhury)..both of them are persuing Law in Assam university.
Though each member of the gang was distinctly different but there was one thing that was common between us..ENTHUSIASM……Courtesy this enthusiasm, we would start making preparations for Christmas from the very day our exams got over… Making the decoratives, the crib, rehersing for the programme to be staged on the Christmas day and what not.We used to tear off the cardboard from the old copies and make stars out of these….we used to decorate the stars with glitters …..christmas tree, santa claus, the streamers, baby Jesus and mother Mary..everything we used to make and decorate on our own with the minimum resources we had……There was an innocent joy in all these…….a joy which is impossible to find now despite all our cravings and efforts. Ours was a talented group, I must boast….we used to write the songs, set the music, direct the play, prepare the welcome speech and etc etc. Our father, as I have already mentioned, encouraged us a lot and used to oversee all our preparations and correct us if required. We would reherse for long hours…making sure that we perform our best on the Christmas day. And then there were those endless debates and discussions on what dresses to wear ……on what role each of us would play in the drama and etc etc. I remember how everybody wanted to be in the lead roles and so role allocation was indeed the toughest job…there was always a risk that whoever would be a given minor role might actually pull out of the team) On the day of Christmas Eve, we used to set up a stage in the courtyard……two wooden cots placed side by side and fully covered with some nice carpet…we used to get a structure built with bamboos and decorate the same with different bulbs and our self made stars and streamers. Queer to think now, we used to write the invitation letter with the aid of carbon papers just to get the feel of a printed one . We used to distribute these among our neighbours , relatives and friends.We used to get chairs from every house in the lane and set these all in front of the stage for the audience. On the Christmas evening we used to have such huge crowd gathered that the chairs would always fall short but the people never seemed to mind standing and watching our function. And why not, all of us used to get involved with such excitement and enthusiasm…lighting candles before the portrait of Lord Christ, prayer songs, Christmas carols , drama on the life and teachings of jesus, magic show ..every single thing used to be done with the greatest perfection and passion. Every little cheer from the crowd would fill our little hearts with joy…..every single clap would encourage us to perform even better!!

Well that was Christmas for us in our childhood. So many years have passed by….we are all grown up now…..busy with our career at different places of the country….may be not having enough time to wish each other “Merry Christmas”…….but definitely we all miss those golden times spent together at our very own Silchar.