'Pets' nowadays...

I read somewhere – Falling in love may be instinctive, but maintaining it needs hard work and understanding, compassion, and compromise. Love, after all, is a decision. It is not something that appears out of the blue as something wonderful. To maintain love, you need to respect. Another great saying – excess of anything is bad. Having said these two things, I now proceed to telling the actual story.

I had gone to the barber yesterday for a hair-cut. As my hair was being trimmed, a customer, an elderly man entered the shop. He was probably the barber’s acquaintance, and from what they were speaking, I could make out that it was the marriage of the man’s son, and somebody from a girl’s family would be visiting their house in the evening.

Below, I have tried to reproduce the conversation as it was spoken between the two.

[The customer enters the shop]

Barber: Ki dada, ki khobor?

Customer: Ei chole jachche... Tomake je dekhte bolechhilam, to tar kichhu holo?

Barber: Hnya, ekjon achhe. Mamra te thake. Meye ekta kon college e lecturer na ki ekta. Lok bhalo ora. Ora bolechhe je sosur bari jodi bole, tahole meye chakri chhere deete raji achhe.

Customer:  Dakho, amra kusti fusti mani na. Aajkaal ei science er joog e jodi kusti mani tahole er theke lojjar aar kichhu hoy na. Aar o sob bis pochis hajar takar chakri amader lagbe na. Bis pochis hajar takar jonno chakri korte hobe na. Amar chhele je chakri kore tate 10 ta lok ‘POOSTE’ pare.

Barber: Hahahaha... apnar chhele ja chakri kore, tate 10 ta lok to durer byapar, 10 ta family ‘POOSTE’ pare. Ki bolen?

Customer: Hmmm... Ami je taka te shesh korechhi, tar double kamaay amar chhele ekhon; aar ekhon to or sobe suru. Osob bis pochis hajar takar chakri amader lagbe na...

Barber: Apni koto te shesh korechhen?

Customer: Ami jokhon shesh korechhi, tokhon ami 51 hajar petam... Aar amar chheler to ei sobe suru.

I could make out from the conversation that the son is just another money making machine, probably an MBA, whose father has bloated egos about his son’s salary and education in science, and has not an inkling about how hard it is to look after a family with the current salaries given the increasing cost of living everywhere in this country, and had at some point of time in his life kept a “PET” in the form of a wife, and expects the son to do the same. The fellow also probably does not know that astrology, even if some part of it may not be acceptable, is also a science. (I also do not believe too much in astrology, but I also cannot disregard it as totally bogus. There are many people who believe in it, and they are far far more educated than I am! It is all about respect.)

I also understood one more thing. These people have never seen so much money in their lives. They feel that they can buy the world with 1 lakh rupees per month, which is ridiculous. This money is excessive for them, and this has made them look down upon other humans. From the way the man was speaking it seemed as if his son was the CEO of some multimillion dollar company – trust me!

So readers, what do you say now? Is it not so abvious why the so called ‘high profile’ and white collared job holding people generally do not have peaceful and happy families? Is it not so obvious why there are so many divorces nowadays? If parents speak like this, then it is nothing so strange that their children are becoming all the more ill-behaved everyday and treating their fellow human beings just like animals – parents speak ‘tutor rekhechhi’ (I kept a tutor for my child), as if the teacher is some animal. The day is not far when they will say ‘bari te ekta bou rekhechhi’ ( I have kept a wife at home) just like they say ‘bari te ekta Alsatian/Doberman rekhechhi’ (I have kept an Alsatian/Doberman at home).

(Speaking of how ill-behaved children have become, I relate another incident here in short even though this may be a bit out of the topic. I was travelling in the metro rail one fine day, and I saw two boys of about 14 years of age come and stand in front of me. Suddenly an elderly lady came running, snatched the sunglasses the one of the boys was wearing inside the train, and started shouting at him. From what she said to the boy, I understood that there had been a fight between the two over a seat, and the boy had told the lady aged almost 50 ‘Shut up’. Unthinkable, right! Yes, of course – at least in our times. And in our parents’ times, it would send a chill down the spine of a child to do such a thing.)

Now coming back to the topic, one last question – will any girl want to be a pet, or a mere commodity to be used to do all the hard work in the day and give pleasure in the bed at night?

[P.S. - I will be thankful from the core of my heart if someone can please do an English translation of the conversation for me that will give the same feeling as the Bengali or the Hindi one. It will be published in the comments. I did not find the right words for a proper translation.]

Holiday in Mumbai (March 27th to March 31st)

It has been quite some time that I have returned from Mumbai, and I am very late in writing this travelogue. It was the 27^th of March that I went there. It was the first time in my life that I would go to Mumbai, and naturally there was a lot of excitement in my mind. I was very apprehensive of the trip, and I had reason to be so. I was going to see one of my very dear friends who stays in Mumbai.

It was only a consecutive 5 day holiday for me, and that too was possible because there were so many holidays that were present consecutively – I had to take only a single day’s leave! I went on the day of Holi. The flight was early in the morning at 6:10 AM, and I had managed to get very little sleep in the frenzy. I woke up at 3:00 AM, and one friend of mine dropped me at the airport on his motorcycle at 4:00 AM. I spent the 2 hours at the airport waiting, and waiting, and waiting... It was as if the wait would not end.

The aeroplane was a good one, in the sense that there was lot of leg space in between the seats and one could stretch his legs and be perfectly comfortable, and every seat had a small TFT screen in front so that the passenger could choose from a list of programmes that were being played. One could watch movies, listen to the news, or get weather updates about the altitude and the outside temperature. I did not feel like I was on board an aeroplane belonging to a domestic airlines company. There was free food also!

I reached the Mumbai airport at 8:45 AM, and my friends Debajyoti and Debasis were there to receive me. Tired that I was, I was in no mood to play with the colours of Holi. The rest of the boys played with the colours and I was the photographer that day. Afternoon, and we ate like monsters the chicken that we had cooked. A very long and deep sleep post lunch left me totally lethargic in the evening, and I felt that sleeping would be a better option that going to the Juhu beach, dirty as the beach was from constant abuse by locals and tourists. We went to the Juhu beach in the evening only to find that a crowded and dirty beach awaited us. People littered food packets, rags, plastic glasses all around. Where was that Juhu beach that I had seen in the film Anand? Nevertheless, we started strolling on the sands of the beach, and finally reached a dark end of the beach that was absolutely quiet and not frequented by tourists, thanks to the unavailability of food stalls and also to certain rotting smells of sea fish and sea shells that one finds there. It was a moonlit night. The airport was just beside the sea, and we were seeing the aeroplanes taking off above our heads. Sometimes roaring, sometimes hissing, the waves were crashing on the beach, and the white foam in the moonlit night was a majestic view.

Next day I went with my friend Debajyoti to the Elephanta Caves. Located somewhere in the distant sea, one required to travel on water for almost an hour and a half. We launched the ferry at almost 12:00 PM from the Gateway of India. We passed the warships of the Indian Navy, lots of cargo ships, and lots of hills in the sea, but the thing that amazed me most was that there was human habitation in those hills also. I wondered how people live in those places – some remote island in the sea where there was no food, no modern facilities, no schools, a place from where you would need to travel to Mumbai on water even if someone falls ill in the middle of the night. It was so amazing!

The caves were beautiful at Elephanta, but the green hills there were even more beautiful. When we went to the top of a hill we found two canons that the ruler of the place had placed there to protect the whole region from invaders in the past. We spent a fair amount of time there and again retraced our way to Mumbai after a 3 hour stay there. In the evening we went to the Marine Drive and spent a lot of time there sitting beside the sea, enjoying the cool breeze of the sea and gossiping. One can find lots of super cars and super bikes that the super rich of Mumbai take out in the evening on the Marine Drive.

The next day it was a visit to Laalbaug. We made the decision late in the day to go there, and a car was booked immediately as the decision was made at 11:00 AM. The car arrived at 12:15 PM and we set off at 12:30 PM. The driver was a jovial one, and by the way he was driving I could make out that he loved the drive. It was a brand new Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire LDI, and it was so comfortable inside. The driver told us that he had a Tata Indica earlier and this was his second car. On the way to Laalbaug we passed through jungles and hills on winding roads. It was a very long drive and we finally reached Laalbaug at 3:30 PM. I was feeling sick because of heavy consumption of food on the way. I somehow could not enjoy the day at all. I was feeling sick. On top of that the sea breeze made me all the more ill. Both Debasis and Debajyoti had accompanied me, and both of them ran into the sea and enjoyed a lot. They went rafting, and they insisted a lot that I should also go with them. Alas, only if my body permitted me! The glare of the sun and its scintillating reflection in the water gave me a headache, and I felt like vomiting. But I did not want to spoil my friends’ day, so I kept quiet, and took only a few photographs. Nature displayed to us her beauty in a marvellous sunset – I saw the sun gradually hiding itself from us, bidding us goodbye for the day. Unfortunately, the camera started giving some trouble, and the autofocus did not work properly, so I missed the photographs of the sunset. However, the setting sun gave me some relief. My sickness faded away, and I went with my friends for a stroll on the beach. The twilight was very beautiful – the beach was dark, the roaring sea was dark, but the sky was a brilliant fluorescent red. I had never seen such beauty before! I stood staring at the beautiful sky until it became dark. This was the first time that I had seen so beautiful a twilight! It was time for us to return to Mumbai after that. Back in the car, I fell asleep. When we reached home my friends had to wake me up.

The last day in Mumbai was nothing so eventful. I went out with Debajyoti to Bandra. We had biriyani at Arsalan in the afternoon. Then we sent to see the sea link, took some photographs, had a ride in a taxi on the smooth road of the sea link, and finally went to a shopping mall where they sell Aston Martin cars, Ducati motorcycles, and BMW Motorrad motorcycles. I am a lover of motorcycles, and seeing the Ducatis and the BMW Motorrads, I was astounded. I just felt like experiencing a test ride on those powerful monsters, each with more than 1000 cc of engine displacement. In the evening we went to the Gateway of India once more, and then we went to a restaurant to eat some good food. Evening found us aboard a local train of the Mumbai suburban railway, and we were home at about 10:00 PM.

The next day was the 31^st of March, the day of my return. My flight was at 6:00 AM. I did not sleep at night, and I also did not allow my other 2 friends to sleep. We spoke the whole night – we spoke of what we used to do in college, we spoke of what we were like when we had joined our jobs, and we laughed. We mostly discussed all the happy and the funny moments. We laughed for more than three and half hours at a stretch, and that gave me an aching stomach and made me dead tired when I was to leave for the airport at 4:00 AM. Both of them (Debasis and Debajyoti) accompanied me to the airport to see me off. Even there we did not stop talking, recalling old memories and laughing. Finally, at almost 4:30 AM, I decided that they should return because they were also dead tired.

I checked in, and the next one hour found me yawning – drowsy, drooping and languorous. I was trying hard not to fall asleep and miss my flight. Once aboard the aeroplane at 6 o’clock, I fell dead asleep. I woke up only when the airhostess woke me up for the breakfast, only to fall asleep again after gobbling up the food somehow.

It was 8:30 AM, and I was in Kolkata...

Gratitude

Thank you!

Many of us use these two words very frequently for various reasons, but how many actually mean it when they say it? How many of us actually remember those persons in our lives who had done something that had/has been of immense help to us at least for that moment, or had done something to be thanked again, and again, and again throughout our, or rather their lives, and who actually either got a very formal ‘Thank you’ or ‘Thnks’ for something that they did to impact our lives in a small or a big way?

Can we remember how many times we have thanked our parents, not every time by saying it, but sometimes by expressing happiness, sometimes by letting the whole world know that we indeed have great parents who have taken care of us and have helped us live through odds, and by various other ways that will let them know that we are indeed grateful to them for all that they have done for us? Hardly ever...! It is as if it is our birth right to go on and on demanding from our parents without ever expressing our gratitude towards them. One great man in my life told me that gratitude not expressed is not gratitude at all! It is indeed so true. Have we ever seen the joy in our parents’ eyes when we do something, whatever little it may be, for them? They express their gratitude, and do not take their children for granted for whatever small they get from them. But children, more or less as a rule, as far as I have seen, are ill behaved (in many instances, I have also behaved very badly with my parents, so please do not think that I am writing this post for everyone except myself), care the least for all that their parents have done to protect them throughout their lives from all kinds of disease, bad weather in the streets when they used to return home from primary school, from all kinds of bad people out there in the streets who are always on the prowl to carry away little children and no one would ever come to know of what had become of them and other such bad things. Do we ever think of these things? Maybe not, that is why more or less every child gets a better life than the parents, but not all parents have the fortune to get back from their child(ren) something in the form of a good life, satisfaction, peace and other such beautiful things, and eventually end up in old age homes living forlorn lives in complete isolation, living in places where they are considered to be useless for the rest of the world, just because old age takes its toll on them. It is ironical how those same children, when they become parents, expect their children in turn to take care of them in their old age! Strange, isn’t it? Reminds me of a song called ‘Briddhashrom’ by Nachiketa...

Now let me touch upon something else. Let me get out of family issues and take a look at those people in the society who actually see to it that we live. One may feel that I am speaking of the ‘netas’ and the policy makers or soldiers. No friends, I am speaking of those people who are considered the least human, those people who get up in the morning before the sun gets up from its sleep and go farming with their bullocks, or take their carts to pick up the garbage from our houses to dump them, or take up the brooms in their hands and go around the city sweeping the streets so that when we, the ‘human beings’ of the society, can go around the city for walking and running in the mornings without having to tread on dirt and dust and dry leaves. How many of us have ever cared to take a look at those faces? We walk on the streets the whole day only to make them dirty again, so that they are cleaned the next morning. We are ‘human beings’. If we walk while they clean, they stop so that our walk may go on uninterrupted, but we never consider taking side. We consider ourselves to be ‘well behaved’! And regarding thanking them, forget it. They might be so lucky as not to hear abuse from us for failing to work one fine day just because they might also fall ill. Ironical, is it not, that we consider ourselves to be civilized?

Now let us have a look at what happens in offices between employers and employees. The boss always gets the ‘Thank you’ word from his subordinates, but does he ever care to express his gratitude to his team members? Be late one day for whatever genuine reason it may be, and you will inevitably have to hear something harsh. However, your boss may arrive late and (s)he has always got the right to be busy. I provide this link – please read it. I do not think I need to explain too much about this after what has been said in it. It may be my good luck that at present I am not having to deal with such a boss, but had the bitter experience of actually having to deal with one such fellow in the past.

Thank you is indeed a very valuable word. I have given just 3 examples of where we can say ‘Thank you’ to people - there are numerous more situations where gratitude can win hearts. This word, when properly used, can do wonders. It can build beautiful relationships, can strengthen existing relationships, can motivate people to work more, and can also save you a lot of trouble in times of need. It takes nothing to be grateful. One of my friends told me one day, ‘Swallow your pride. It is not poison – you won’t die!’ Getting rid of ego is one of the most difficult things to do, and again strangely, if you try, it is one of the easiest things to do, so why not get rid of it?

Let us try to make our lives beautiful, let us build beautiful relationships. I believe, out the many ways, this is one to rebuild a beautiful world.

Sir

It has been quite some part of my life that I have associated with a person called Suvro Chatterjee for Durgapur and the rest of the world, Suvro da for people who know him from his 10's or early 20’s, and Suvro Sir, or rather just Sir for me and some other people. When I tell ‘my Sir’ to people whom I know, everybody knows whose name I mean.

Let me start with school. I had seen this person for some days when I was small but until the end of class 5 or the beginning of class 6, I did not know his name. Then one fine day, some idiot told me that this person was a very angry man, and his name was Suvromonium something. From that day, until the end of class 7, I knew that this person was a ‘khadoos South Indian’. I remember having uttered the word ‘sala’ in front of him when I was in class 7, and on seeing him at some distance behind me and coming towards me, I suddenly realized what a big mistake I had done. As it is this person was so dangerous, and if he had heard me saying ‘sala’, he would for sure see to it that I was removed from the school. I had already been caught and warned once, and my parents called by the school authorities for using foul language while I was in class 6. I feared that my days in St. Xavier’s School, Durgapur were nearing their end.

Thankfully, however, nothing happened, and I thanked my stars for it. I was happy that he had not heard what I had said. Then one evening, my parents decided that I would get admitted in his tuitions, and I was taken to his house (I do not remember when, but probably after my class 7 results were out). I was very sure that I would not get an admission, because I was always a very average student, and as far as I had come to hear in the past few days, Sir was the best English teacher in Durgapur and used to teach only the very brilliant and the cream section of students – he never even took notice of people like us and warded average students and their parents alike off from his house. Surprise awaited me at his house - he spoke so nicely. Little Pupu was trying to play hide and seek from behind the curtain with my mother, and he said nothing. I had not expected, but was surprised and relieved when I was finally taken in his class. It may sound strange, but this is a person who told me not to join his class even before classes had started, the primary reason being that he was my class teacher in school. He said that it was totally unnecessary for me to go to his house for classes. I came home and told my parents about this, and I have to thank them that they did not let me do so, otherwise I do not know whether I would have ever known Sir the way I do. I would never have actually dared to speak freely with him, had it not been for his tuitions.

After all that I had heard about him, how would one think different about him? Who would know that this person was so nice and would become a part of my life, a person in front of whom I could pour out all my troubles and he would listen patiently just like my parents listen to me, a person in front of whom I would never feel ashamed to admit any wrong that I did and who would always be ready to tell me ways to get rid of those troubles. He is one person apart from my parents who knows my weaknesses and constantly tells me to focus on them, to get rid of them, and also tells me ways to get rid of them. Apart from my mother (I do not mention my father’s name much because he has never got enough time to focus on me and to interact with me, given the kind of financial troubles that my family has faced), this is the only other person in my life who has taught me to think free but to speak less (something which I have not been able to master – I speak too much!), to take care of myself and do good to myself without harming others (the normal trend is to do your own good at the cost of others’ harm), to read a lot (again something I do not do too much), to take care of my health, to respect people, to be patient, to be polite, to stay away from unwanted ‘human parasites’ by constantly making me aware of what forms ‘human parasites’ can take in this society, and the list can be endless! My Sir has all the qualities and teaches everything about which society tells otherwise, and mind you, by otherwise, I mean the negative.

And yes, about his being negative and having some qualities that everyone may not like, I think everyone has negative qualities – we are only human, and we have to be accepted as we are! A few negatives cannot rule out all the positives in a person.

I want to give just two from the numerous examples from my own life about the kind of person that Sir is:

1. I remember an incident when I had just completed class 10 and went to Sir one evening for getting a speech corrected by him. He was probably not a good mood and shouted at me. I had come back from his doors literally in tears, and had decided not to recognize him ever again in the future. But this is one teacher who just does not teach you to say sorry for something wrong done – he actually does it. He has the courage to do it. I remember, when I was in great mental agony over this whole thing, Sir called me up and spoke with me, told me sorry, and told me to go to his house the next day to see him. He admitted that he had indeed behaved with my very badly, and gave me something that I did not deserve. I question, how many teachers say sorry to their students after they feel that they have wronged to their students?

2. After college was over, I was suffering from jaundice and was in a very bad condition. Sir and boudi came to my house to see me and frequently called me up to inquire about my health. How many teachers nowadays care for their past students like this?

I thank my stars that I was lucky enough to get in touch with this person in my life. The role that this person has played in my life is too big. Impacting the way a person thinks is something that requires something special, and Suvro Sir is indeed a very special person. It is very easy to find an instructor, but very difficult to find a teacher! I have found one, and I consider myself lucky for it.