Us!

I have read this particular comic strip atleast fifty times and each time I have said to myself "Oh Calvin, how accurate!" I find this somehow the best possible explanation of the hitherto unbeknownst four-lettered word. Love! It is, in fact, all that keeps us from strangling the subject(s) of our affections most of the times. Probably this is also the only reason that has kept me from strangling him all these years. Love.

People say, the best thing that can happen to someone is to have their full-time friend as their part-time lover. It makes life a lot easier and comfortable. However, what people never tell you is that it comes with its fair shares of "you-already-knew-this-about-me" and "you-used-to-be-so-much-better-when-we-were-friends" arguments during fights. Also, when that person happens to be someone like him, it takes a lot of hard work to remain sane!

For one, he is the weirdest person I have EVER come across. When we had just started our relationship, one of his male friends would accompany us often on our dates and it just irritated the hell out of me. I always thought that people craved to be alone with their sweethearts, atleast during the initial days of dating. But the guy had proved me wrong, and how! I always thought being slightly possessive about your girlfriend, saying mushy stuff once in a while, expressing emotions vocally, giving compliments, doing some occasional PDA are normal! But then he excelled at being super-oblivious to my demands and did what he was best at, be confidently weird!

We were great friends before we started dating, which is another story altogether and would be part of the autobiography years later. When friends would ask us how we met and got to know each other at our infamous maths tuition, I would talk incessantly for hours on end giving out all the juicy details, while he would sit there and pass some sarcastic remarks. In response, I would paste a "plastic" smile on the face, while mentally cursing him and regretting the moment I decided to take the plunge into the sea of criticism for the rest of my life. However, on other days, he would randomly say that how much he enjoys being in the hometown with family and friends, it feels incomplete without the daily evening meetings at 8B now that I wasn't there. On these  rare events I would feel the heart flutter, realising that I have fallen in love all over again :)

I remember when we used to talk at night over phone, he would just say "hmm" "achha" "sunchi toh" every once in a while. I always knew that he was not listening a word and was busy browsing the channels or doing something else; and when I would would ask him what I had said for the last ten minutes he would just make those terribly cute puppy sounds and apologize. And in case you are wondering, he would go back to the same "hmm"s a minute later :-|

I remember when we were dating in Calcutta, he would always keep me waiting for hours. I would arrive at our chosen place, albeit late, and call him only to know that he had just started from home/college. In the mean time, I would rehearse the choicest of words that I would say to him once he arrived. But then he would arrive with an angelic face and the most innocent smile and it would instantly melt my heart and made me forget the last half an hour of silent cursing.

Once, when we were living in different cities, I made up a story and told him that I was in love with someone else. I just wanted to see his reaction, expecting that he would probably create a lot of drama about it. However, he never asked me how I could do this to him, or what he would do now. He was just silent for awhile and then said to me "If that's what makes you happy, I'll be okay with it!" How I wanted to strangle him at that moment! I thought it didn't matter to him if I would be with someone else. I thought he didn't love me enough.

There are thousand other instances when I want to kill him; for speaking sarcasm as the first language, for being the biggest narcissist and thinking that I am an emotionally screwed up and immature person who is ALWAYS wrong, for taking me for granted, for not wanting to go out even when we are together and preferring to watch movies or talk instead, for not being ultra romantic on anniversaries or special days, for being so practical most of the time, for criticizing Aamir knowing that it bugs me to no extent, for never giving me a single compliment, for irritating me with those snide remarks about almost everything and then trying stupid tricks to pacify me, for never expressing emotions and for those innumerable instances when I am annoyed by his mere existence.

However, there are thousand-and-one reasons for loving him, reasons that are unknown to me. I always tell him, "there's not a single other piece like you in the whole world". But now I know that the best things in life , indeed, come in a single piece :)

So thank you PD for everything that you have done (and not done!), thank you for loving me with all my imperfections, thank you for being there when I am feeling low (and suicidal) and thank you for bringing an important person into my life whom I now consider a prized possession. Happy anniversary!

Thunderstorm in Jena

Staying alone can be pretty scary at times. It becomes scarier when you stay in a quiet building on the hills, with big trees and bushes at the back. However, it gets worse when all these are accompanied by thunderstorms! Some people tend to enjoy the creepy feeling and the sudden doses of lightning. Some people are too preoccupied to even notice them. And some people find this an excuse to cuddle with loved ones. I thought I belonged to the first category, and partially to the third. But never did I think that a time would come when I would be scared of them. So, in an attempt to stay calm and not think about these devilish lightnings, I sit here and.. well.. write about thunderstorms! 

I remember running out to the balcony whenever there was a thunderstorm back home. The roar of thunder, those lightning flashes and later the torrential downpour intrigued me to no extent. Baba accompanied me often outside, while Ma and brother always remained cuddled inside. There's a common saying in Bengali which goes like this: "jhawr hole sankh banja" which literally means "in times of thunderstorms, blow the conch shells". As a kid, I never understood the correlation between these two. It was only in my teens that I got to know what the saying actually signifies. In our culture, conch shells are viewed as having distinctive spiritual qualities. It is believed that the sound emitted from the conch shell shall dispel any surrounding negative energy and purify the environment. Back home, whenever there was a thunderstorm, one could hear conch shells being blown in every house and then gradually the thunderstorm would stop! On most of these days, Ma made 'khichuri' afterwards with fried eggs and aubergines and we savored every last morsel. Sadly, the next day would always be a mess, with reports on fallen trees, destroyed roofs, broken wires, damaged buildings and injured people. In the last one and a half years that I have been in Germany, I have never experienced such a thunderstorm. Rains are quite a rarity here, let alone storms and lightning.  However, today was strangely different from all other days with almost an hour of thunderstorm. Maybe it's sole intention was to scare me and then teach me how not be scared even when I was alone and had no one beside. Or maybe to teach me how to stay calm and keep the mind distracted, rather than calling up friends for compassionate comfort. 

Whatever it was, it seemed to work pretty fine. I never realized when the thunderstorm and lightnings stopped and the sky cleared :) One more lesson in self-dependence passed!! 

You!

A greyish rainy afternoon, a large cup of coffee, research journals lying around, twenty tabs opened on the office desktop and I sit here and write about YOU!

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Presents are always special. So is the anticipation. They become more special when they are sent from across the oceans. They become even more special when they constitute books by favorite authors. But when they come in bubble wraps, bliss! 

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Not many would know that I have been into painting since childhood. Going to the drawing class, every Sunday, from 5 o'clock -7 o'clock in the afternoon was something I used to look forward to the whole week. Of all the things that I loved to draw, portraits topped the list. As a kid, I always asked Baba to buy me those sketch-books where they had pencil sketches of very well-known historical figures and I used to spend hours and days drawing them. Over the years, sketching portraits of historical figures gave way to portraits of role models, cricketers, TV and movie actors. But in all these years, never did I make a portrait of myself. I always had this wish that someone would make a portrait of me which I would then frame and hang up on the wall. 

After so many years, finally my wish has come true. I now have a sketch of myself, and ecstatic is the word I am looking for to decribe how I feel right now!

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I love writing long posts/mails/letters/messages. I love reading them even more. I have been a voracious reader since childhood, reading everything I could lay my hands on, and enjoyed almost equally penning down my thoughts in diaries. While there is no substitute for books, sometimes I craved for a looong mail or a letter which I could read on days like these. However since the last two-three years, I haven't. The cravings were met even before they became a craving. Small happinesses, I say :)

And when such a long letter arrives with a hand-written one, or with a cricket headband, 'small happiness' turns an understatement. 

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In the entire post, I haven't mentioned you even once. That's weird given that I intended to write mushy things about you and that how lucky I am to have you. Maybe this is because I fail miserably at re-iterations and voicing emotions. However, I know that you would know that IT IS indeed about you and that I don't have to write mushy things to describe you! Just a single word is enough for that!

Soulmate :)

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P.S. I cannot thank you enough for the gifts, and the thoughts you have put in to make each of them special.  I loved them, each one of them. I feel blessed to have you and to be loved and cared by you. I do not know where life will take us, but if I had the power to control destiny, I would never ever let you go. However difficult the circumstances are. And sorry for being such a rude and selfish giant on the 23rd's, Jan and April 2013.

The rest, you know.

(This somehow reminded me of the last scene of 'Marley and Me'. When the dog dies and is being burried, everyone takes turn to say something or the other to the dog, as a final note of love and affection, to proclaim how much they loved the dog. The eldest kid, who the dog was closest to, just says "He knows". One of the best closing lines in a movie that I absolutely loved!!)

All I can say is that the moments spent with you are what I call a kaleidoscope :) :)

Jonmodin-e

Since ages, I had this habit of writing in my diary on my birthday- about people who wished me at midnight (funny, I used to rate their importance in my life and my importance in theirs depending on the time of the day they wished me!!), the gifts that I got, the lunch that ma cooked, the payesh :(, the extra chocolates that I could eat without thinking of getting fat(ter), and how exactly I felt on this particular day. I remember, in school, we always had summer vacations during this time and I always felt sad about 1) not being able to distribute candies to my classmates and 2) not being able to get more wishes, and consequently more gifts and chocolates from friends. But as I have grown up, I have realized how ridiculous those thoughts were, and how silly I must have been back then. Perhaps it is the wisdom that has come with age, that has made me realize that it is not about the number of wishes I get, rather the efforts that people put in to make the day special. So continuing with this tradition of writing on my birthday, today I write (albeit, digitally) how it feels on having stepped on the wrong side of twenty! 

Strangely, I don't feel old, even though I have recently noticed a few strands of grey/white hair on my head :(. When I was younger, I used to think 'twenty-five is old, atleast old enough to be the mother of two kids!' But definitely not anymore. On the contrary, I feel hot, matured, calm; and happy! It's hard to believe that this is already my second birthday away from home, family and friends, away from the city I love the most. However, the loneliness is much less this time and it's certainly because of the people I have around and the efforts they have put in to make me feel special on my special day. It feels nice to be the center of attention for just a day, to get a wish from the same person twice for two different time zones; to receive calls and texts at the stroke of midnight; to see best friend getting up at 6'o clock in the morning just to wish from across the oceans; to see the Facebook page overflowing with wishes and greetings; to see the excitement on the faces of colleagues and to realize how much I am being loved. Isn't it incredible when you see text messages from parents and old friends in the morning, when a close German friend drops in abruptly and presents a bouquet, and then shows that she has worn the Indian dress that you gave her just because it's your birthday, when friends whisper to each other during lunch breaks and plan wonderful surprises, when a colleague gives a big bag of gummy bears to binge on during boring office hours and then says 'I know you love them, so..', when a friend drops in with your favorite French wine, when an office-mate asks if he would make birthday-special coffee for the birthday girl, when a colleague gives a pack of beauty products, each less than 100ml, and says 'this is for the vacation in Nice and Barcelona, since you wouldn't be able to carry bigger cosmetics in the flights'; when another close friend brings flowers, icecreams and strawberries and then suggest to sit outside in the sun and chat for a while, when a friend installs skype for the first time to have a video chat, when office-mate compliments on the choice of dress and then flatters unnecessarily saying 'the sun is shining today after two weeks just because it's your birthday today', when a close acquaintance brings you a beautiful piece of junk jewellery and says 'you'll do full justice to it!', when another friend presents a hand-made container that she got from Kenya (and you realize the essence of globalization) :), when a friend wishes inspite of a huge fight two nights before and when PhD supervisor sends an awesome wish via skype and makes you feel so special. These small and big happinesses take away the pain of fighting with best friend, the frustrations of PhD, the loneliness and the pain of being so far away from home in a foreign country. 

I feel blessed to have friends like these; friends who care, friends who are excited just because I am excited, friends who are happy because I am and friends who love me inspite of misunderstandings and fights. In the end, I await a grand night with friends and colleagues and a blissful beginning of the twenty-sixth year of my life :)

P.S. (follow-up) The party was indeed a huge success, with so many people turning up to wish the birthday girl. And the icing on the birthday cake was a present from closest friends which definitely could be counted amongst the best birthday gifts ever received!

Binges!

So, today was one such day when I thought I would die from over-eating. Well it seems like I didn't, afterall, but I definitely would have. Rather should have, from the shame of overeating, if not from the overeating itself!

I am that kind of a person who takes the famous quote by George B. Shaw- "there is no sincerer love than the love of food"- quite seriously. In one word, I am a food-fanatic and proudly so. I live to eat and can die for it too. This undying love for food probably comes from 1) growing up in a typical 'Bengali' household, where the second most-often used remark by elders is "ishh ki roga hoye gechhis, nischoi thik mato khawa dawa korchis na" (how thin you have become, definitely not eating properly!), even when one is visibly over-weight (the first being "o maa kato baro hoye gechis!" which means "how much you have grown since the last time I saw you") 2) growing up in a family where 'eating' has always been considered synonymous to 'living' and 3) having a mother who, apart from being the most amazing cook, believes in investing deep thought and taking immense pains to feed us well (and how!). So while gorging on endless amounts of food, I have always shamelessly blamed my Bengali upbringing for those extra fat on the body. In Calcutta, the love extended mostly to those typical Bengali foods that 'straddled a million tastes, used a million ingredients and engulfed all the five senses'. The palate also often consisted of North-Indian dishes, Continental and Chinese delicacies and American fast-food. In Germany, however, it's the wide range of desserts that makes my heart skip a beat, literally. Perhaps this again goes back to the Bengali upbringing where a meal is never complete without a mishti and/or mishti doi, where rasogolla comes a close second to fish and where sweet-shops are super-crowded at all times. Although in Germany one can hardly find these (except in those Arabic or Indian stores), the country makes up for it by providing mouth-watering desserts and chocolates. But, for someone who fails to draw a line between indulgence and sinful over-indulgence, this often becomes a cause for concern! And that's exactly what this post had to do with!

So, cutting a long story short, today I wanted to give a break to my veggies-for-dinner routine and therefore decided to order some nice food from outside. Being the health-freak (the annoying health-freak at times) that I have turned myself into who always counts calories for every food she eats, the choice was between a Pizza/Lasagne without dessert and Greek Salad with dessert (since Pizza AND dessert would mean more calories). It was a tough call, but in the end I decided to go for the Salad which automatically meant that I could treat myself with a dessert. So I ordered a large Salad and, well, Tiramisu. Tiramisu is one dessert which I love to death, and which often makes me want to marry an Italian. Then again, I love German cakes, French crêpes and Swiss chocolates, and practicing polygamy might not be such a great idea afterall! Nevertheless, when the order arrived and I checked the delivery, I figured that somehow they have given two cups of Tiramisu instead of one. Now, I am not sure how this happened, because they would not have possibly figured that I absolutely love Tiramisu. So either it was a mistake, or it was a special couple-offer (!!!) or something. Anyways, since the delivery guy had already left (and even if he hadn't, I would definitely not have returned the other one), I decided to keep the second one for tomorrow and finish off the rest. I was completely full by the time I finished the Salad, but since my eyes were hooked onto the Tiramisu, I decided to finish it off too. A moment later I was done, and I felt that my soul was finally at peace although my stomach was almost aching from eating so much. I decided to watch a few videos and read something, but somehow my mind kept wandering to the other cup of Tiramisu in the refrigerator. I tried to distract myself by watching a movie, by calling up friends; but somehow that goddamn Tiramisu was too strong to resist. Moments later I went up to the refrigerator, took out the cup, and finished it off in one breath. And then, I felt like bursting. How i wanted to kill myself for not being able to control my pangs, for not being able to resist food, and for not caring about my 'diet'. I sulked for about an hour, decided to spend an extra hour at the gym the next day and promised myself not to have dessert for the next three weeks. But having said that, the satisfaction it gave me was undoubtedly, unparalleled! 

So, for the umpteenth time, I decided to forgive myself! Afterall, happiness comes in little boxes, or cups for that matter :)

                                

Holi!

.. that time of the year again! crazy pre-holi bash at college, bonfire the night before, the insanity that follows, early-morning surprises planned by best friends, bombarding each other with colored water balloons.. desperate attempts at making the color as hard-to-get-rid-off as possible.. abir-smeared happy faces and soaked shirts everywhere, those 'e-ki-kore-esechis-ekdom-ghawre-dhukbi-na' looks from ma immediately followed by 'ei-ei-amake-rawng-lagabi-na-ami-eimatro-snan-kore-berolam' cries, a grand lunch afterwards, meeting friends at Cafe coffee day in the evening, adda and gossip over cups of brewed coffees, and finally a peaceful sleep... how I miss being in the city of joy during the festival of colors! :(

thankfully, there are enough videos on Youtube to make me happy :) .. albeit with a pinch of salt :( 
 

Calcutta

A few weeks back I came across this blog by Vir Sanghvi called Oh! Calcutta. It seemed a very popular article, an obvious inference given the number of views the page had. I do not quite recall how many times I went through the article in the next half an hour that followed. I also do not recall how many times I felt a big lump in my throat. But by the time I was done, I could actually remember almost every little detail that he had mentioned about THE city. And also that I got goose bumps every-single-time. 

Okay, perhaps it was not the best of time to read a post about Calcutta- 1) because the Durga Puja was just a couple of days away, 1) because it was the first one I was spending away from home, 1) because it was getting worse with each passing day with the exponentially increasing Puja posts on Facebook (I know numbering, it's just that all were priority one). Later, I wondered if the article would have exuded the same emotions had I read it in Calcutta. Perhaps not. I mean when I used to live there, I used to get annoyed by the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the fact that garbage was everywhere on the road, the humidity and so on. But now, I crave for these very things (definitely not all, but most of them). I remember when I first came to Jena, a friend had asked what I miss the most about Calcutta and I had said 'the chaos'. Earlier, traveling with the bus or the metro would be painfully annoying and I remember how I would curse under my breath every few seconds. But this time when I went back, the first thing I wanted to do was take the over-crowded metro and go to Esplanade. And auto-ride to Gariahat! Earlier Jadavpur was one of the places I wanted to avoid, because of the terrible traffic system. But this time I took loads of pictures of Jadavpur and brought them back with me. And I payed particular attention to the fact that the pictures should capture the true essence of Jadavpur- with the autorickshaws and the buses and the taxis blocking the road, people crossing the road from every side, hawkers almost in the middle of the road and so on. I remember how I was constantly complaining about the bureaucracy while applying for the transcripts at the University, how much I was pissed because of the slackness and complete unprofessionalism of people, how much the lack of sanitation and poverty bothered me. Ofcourse they still bother me. But when I think of the city now, somehow I just look past these things. Recently I read a Calvin and Hobbes comic post about Calvin wondering if his mother would still have the nerve to love him if he was 'gray and grimy, slippery and slimy, an oversized hors d'oeuvre'. Apart from the fact that I absolutely love it, it quite echoes my feelings for Calcutta. 

Now and then I wonder if this love for the city has its source in the infinite memories and special people it has given me (Wake Up Sid, perhaps?). But then I think the city means more than that to me. Somehow the city has just grown on me, and even when I have left the city it has not left me. Clean cities, AC buses and trains, almost-perfect traffic and hygiene system, well-constructed roads, super-fast customer care services are always a delight. But even with it's drawbacks, perhaps it's the 'nari-r taan' -a strange connection that can neither be explained nor seen- that makes the city so special. To the Calcuttans. On that note I sign off, with a link to another goose-bumpish article Buffalo boy’s Calcutta crush! :-)