Lazy Afternoons

The blog suddenly invoked the nostalgia of lazy afternoons in those precious two days of the week, the weekends.  We would have early lunch and by 12:30 papa would have already tossed his side twice in bed, maa would still be busy in the kitchen, dadabhai (my elder bro) would be half asleep with the pujabarshiki and I would just pick up my math textbook and radio and sneaked into the other side of the bed.  It was a blue colored Santosh radio (half a normal brick size) with a round knob and a mid size antenna…by best friend of many years to come…Not that I was a damn serious student and all. But I loved math. I have always. I used to set a target...Problems of two chapters...those 3 hours used to be magical. I would listen to radio programs and keep solving math problems…All India Radio and Bibidh bharati was all I had...Every program used to be of 10 minute duration… most popular of them was “Sanibarer Barbela” depicting a ghost story every Saturday at 1 (or 12?)… a company with a brand sign of “haturi” (Haturi Marka phenyl-ex)…now when I think of those stories…Every story used to have almost same story line… some guy has promised to come to his sister’s place at bhaiduj …It would rain heavily and the bhai would knock the door at almost mid of the night …and the sister would be almost in tears and would celebrate bhaiduj…next morning her husband will return from work with some bad news… her brother died in a boat accident the previous night...it was not frightening or unpredictable…because the bhai-behen thing would be easily replaced by a couple madly in love with each other, who were to meet up for the last time…but the whole package was enticing enough to hook me up for the afternoon … the other sponsor for this show was “Oasis Hair vertilizer”. And the advertisement used to go like this

“Mathai Ghono Chul Jokhon

  Marubhumi hoye jai

  Oasis niye ase marudyan

  Megher chayai chayai”

Translating these words will kill the essence but I just have to do it. It says “when you have lost all your hair and your bald head almost looks like a dessert. Bring in “Oasis” hair vertilizer and it would be like an Oasis amidst a dessert.”

I would finish one chapter, fold my leg, kneel over my elbow and drag the quilt and tune the radio to all India radio @ 2:30. Lux used to sponsor a celebrity chat show. Every Saturday I would patiently wait for this program to check if a certain Mr. Khan is going to be there. Yes, Aamir Khan, my child hood hero, I was so damn crazy about him. It would leave me heart-broken. But by that time all my math problems were done. Maa was again back to kitchen. Papa was waiting for the evening tea and dadabhai was ready to tell me the climax of kakababu’s story. It was time to move on. It was time for the evening Bengali movie at Duradarshan.

spend time with yourself...

yesterday I came across an ad..
"Come with your family and spend time with yourself"...
so true...we rarely do that.........

...ultimate mojito

had it yesterday evening at TGI, New York. well NY seemed to be quite a happening place...but thought London was much better...........

I reached early and still had 5 hours to go before I catch my next flight to Newark. There was no one I could talk to. Or perhaps I did not want it either. I was alone with so many people around. It had been a long journey. I had no idea as to how should I feel now. People I could see around were mostly old couples on a trip to visit their son, mothers traveling with one or two kids to meet up the fathers and one or two IT people. I was hungry but could not feel like walking few steps back to get a chicken mayo sandwich. I was wondering whether I am compatible enough to for a business trip for one month without him there with me. Last time when I called him up he had just finished with cleansing. The split AC in our bedroom was not functioning properly and we needed to get rid of the dust on electric fans too. So he had been doing all these cleansing all alone in my absence. And here I am waiting for my next flight to Newark. It’s very cold now.

worst sunday ever..

Today had been the most lonesome Sunday I ever had with no grocery shopping in the morning, no arguments over how I would prepare mutton, no fight over remote to switch channels from star one to Bengali E T.V, no movie plan in the evening and no plan for late dinner before going to sleep. I skipped all sort of banalities from my daily routine. All I needed was a tight hug from him. All of a sudden my ordinary life had become extraordinarily void. I could foresee my struggle to get a new job and shift to kolkata. Everything seemed to come to standstill. I felt to be so negligible, unimportant part of this whole mankind. I am a complete failure. I needed someone to talk to

dying to...

finally it is raining in mumbai...
listening to "mera kuch samaan"...dying to jump into his arm...
its raining...

Marriages are arranged in...

Our parents are going to meet on 6th June, 2006 for the 6th time in the last 2-3 months and decide our wedding date. It got postponed from 23rd November to 26th November, 26th November to 5th December and so on and currently they are arguing over 23rd and 24th January. The prospective bride and groom fought like cats and dogs, both the moms accused their children of emotional blackmail and shed tears enough to feed a “champaner” in Rajasthan (unfortunately gauri did not have mother otherwise Lagaan could have been avoided I guess), and our fathers did exactly what any ideal father should do, they maintained a dignified and diplomatic silence. It was first decided to be on 23rd November. Bewildered and overwhelmed with excitement that finally we are going to get married…we threw parties in a lavish manner; people boozed more than we did, then we made ISD and informed our friends about this long awaited grand success only to discover that the wedding cannot take place on that day as the “shaadi ka muharat” was quite an odd time, 5 o clock in the morning. We could actually but the only constraint was that people other than we two were not ready to keep awake till that oddly hour just to witness a marriage. How mean!! . Life moves on and so did our moms. Next probable date turned out to be the same date my fiancé’s sister’s math’s exam was. I never knew I would ever hate this subject “mathematics”. Then it was his birth month followed by mine and eventually they have zeroed down to these two dates, one of them is the day Bengalis celebrate their Saraswati Puja and have complete-veg in their meal. Now please stop giving that shocked expression in all of your faces.. we bongs do have Veg on some days in a year…and 24th is the day when all the married/unmarried mothers are not supposed to have anything (anything means anything under the sun!!). And till they strategically analyze and find out which one is more suitable (or if at all suitable) I would stop here and by that time u guys have to agree that “Marriages are certainly not arranged in heaven!!!!”.