Country roads take me home

Yay! I have only nineteen days left to go to be back in my Swades. This isn’t some NASA scientist a.k.a Mohan Bhargav talking about his homecoming to his native village but an impressionable young adult yearning to be back in the midst of family, friends, Bhaski and Cheddis after seven weeks in Singapore. Isn’t it just a four hour plane journey out of Kolkata? Yes, I know in many ways one can say that Singapore is India’s best metropolis with a decent dose of fair-skinned people thrown in. But I miss my country and all the heat, sweat, grime and traffic jams that come with it. I just can’t wait to be back in KGP bunking classes and staying up till three in the morning for the last plate of fried maggi at JCB, for the chai at Tikkas, for the endless bhaat sessions over the most absurd topics one can think of.

Singapore has been lovely though especially the last weekend. I guess it’s just one of those things that you tend to get used to. So, no matter how cozy your apartment maybe, how swanky the shopping malls, how organized the traffic- it isn’t what makes you feel at home.

Updates on my new purchases- Ipod shuffle that I can’t seem to get enough of, Canon Powershot SX210 IS digital camera that even makes my smile look natural and an electric shaver for Baba. That’s it! I am done with my gadget shopping. Having spent nearly a quarter of my salary on them, I put my hands up! But boy, does it not feel great to own these masterpieces of technology !

The last weekend was perhaps the most action packed one. Hadn’t planned it to be thus. So it seems even more thrilling that it turned out that way. Two close friends for company and my first night out in phoren land. A few lines were crossed. “Lal dupatta udh gaya re mere hawa ke jhonke se”- this jingle got immortalized in our music library for reasons having no far-fetched relations with music or melody. I traveled to the southern most point of continental Asia, watched the sunset against a picturesque blue ocean and trailed a thousand footsteps on the white sand.

And just when one thought that beauty couldn’t get more intoxicating, the full moon reminded me of a night spent under the spell of honesty and innocence when I was let into a world, familiar yet mystical at once.

It’s time to wrap up things. The shampoos, body soaps, nail polishes & chocolates are about to be piled up for people back home. I have a presentation to give for the completion of my last objective. Just hope that passes well. Had this wonderful director meeting with Harriet Guest, more like talking with a friend actually. Have never felt so good about myself after all the praise she heaped on my communication skills. I hope she meant it because I’m gonna need a lot of that in the days to come, in more ways than one.

Life is peace !

Had intended to write a much more elaborate post but so intoxicated I am with the charm of Anindo Chatterjee’s table beats drumming in my mind that I just don’t wanna wake up. A wonderful evening passed me by with the most awesome Japanese food I have tasted till now and Soha Ali Khan thrown in for some delectable dessert. Yes folks! She looks gorgeous in real life, a whole lot better than she does on the silver screen. We were just too shocked to ask for an autograph or a photo. Damn it!

And before I hit the bed on a day when a friend a few thousand miles away reminded me again and again how right it is to care and another who just seems to move away with each passing day, I donno what to say. I wish I could say , “ Why does it have to be this way ?”. But I’ll just fade away!

Just like that

Yes, it’s been a long time since my last post. A lot of water has flown under the bridge since then,literally. Nadal has been crowned the king of clay yet again, football frenzy has gripped the world and Singapore has witnessed floods. On the personal front as well, there’s been so much to talk about .I have welcomed a smartphone, a MP3 player and a brand new laptop into my family. Seriously, even for a non-gadget freak like me just the awareness that you own these cool gizmos gives an instant thrill unmatched by the joy of actually using them.

Where have I been all this while? Well except for the weekend gateway to Bintan, it’s been office-home-gym-bed-office-home-gym-bed…..,the normal routine that I have come to follow in the last one month. Somehow, I can’t seem to recollect what exactly has kept me busy in the last few days. Paying regular visits to the gym in the aspiration of having John Abraham-esque abs has been a welcome distraction. Working out really makes you feel good about yourself and the momentary pain and tiredness is what I have kind of come to look forward to at the end of the day. For one, it guarantees that you are dead the moment you hit the bed and you wake up feeling rejuvenated the next morning. New developments on the emotional front have left me feeling miserable and distraught at one moment, carefree and peaceful at the very next. The roller-coaster ride just does not seem to end. I consciously see myself going through this cycle of liking-attachment-expectation-heartbreak-hopelessness-numbness-realisation-selftalk-normalcy, again and again. I don’t know whether one can call it a quality but it never takes me long to come to terms with….you know what I mean. Maybe it’s because I seldom get attached to someone as intimately in reality as I think I do in my mind.

Bintan acted as the perfect mood enhancer though. To be in the midst of serenity is a humbling feeling really. Picture postcard settings start popping in front of your eyes every moment. Especially this one seaside restaurant we went to for lunch, the turquoise colour of the endless sea all around coupled with a cloudy sky created an unforgettable image that is captured in my mind for posterity. Standing on this wooden passageway that juts out further into the waters alone with just the wind and rain for company reminded me of this scene in the movie Namesake where Gogol and his father walk together on a trail of boulders into the sea and Ashok(the father) tells Gogol that here they are together, just the two of them and that he’ll always be there for Gogol whenever he needs him. I was alone and yet I felt so comforted, so gratified in the solitude just thanking the stars for being kind enough to have brought me here. Almost as if the Gods had destined it to be thus when all of us were getting a little iffy about the weather getting worse thus robbing us of the chance to try out the water sports, the clouds parted and Bintan was bathed in sunlight once again. Time to try out some thrills and spills. Over the next three hours, I went through the most freakishly frightening yet immensely thrilling time of my life . Thrown out of the banana boat, gliding on the waters in a jet ski at top speed and going amateur snorkeling under the blue sea- what more can one ask for! We called it a day after a round of beach volleyball and sipping some chilled coconut water at the beach restaurant. Tired as hell, I hit the bed early. Not even the mouthwatering prospect of tasting Chivas Regal for the first time in my life could keep me up.

But we weren’t done with Bintan yet. How could we without some traditional Balinese massage to cool down( or maybe spice up) things a little? And man, was it relaxing or what! Yes, the masseuse was female. Yes, we had nothing but briefs on. Yes, there was music and dim lights. But that’s about it. An hour of unadulterated pleasure passed me by in a flash and before one knew, I was done with my first visit to a professional massage parlour. Phew!

Another week is almost done and dusted. We are off to Malaysia tomorrow. Time to throw caution to the wind and try out some real stuff, stuff that I’ve been told is very easily accessible out there. Meanwhile on the work front, which I hardly ever talk about even though I’m officially on an internship, my midterm appraisal went well. Got a B which is decent. The highlight though was this meeting that I had with the Asia head of my division and he seemed really impressed talking to me. To top it all, he even talked about it to my manager just before we were to go for the midterm appraisal! The Gods do smile on you sometimes. It was one of those occasions and I couldn’t help feeling, “ Maybe I am not as hopeless as I make myself out to be”. One really needs these moments of self belief you see, when circumstances conspire to elevate your mood and you learn to start appreciating yourself for what you are, not for someone else you would like to be. Leaving with that thought, I’ll say “Truly Asia”- Here I come!

PS: Made a video on my new touchphone on the beach at Bintan , the All-Souls-Bared kind. Dunno whether I ‘ll ever bring myself to showing it to the Subject, though.

Why I have come to believe in stars?

I am in a quandary again. A zillion thoughts race through my mind which I would like to see penned down in words the moment I see them in my head. It’s like wishing there was a genie inside your brain who would instantly interpret the random images that flash by and capture their essence in words just the way you want it to.

It’s been happening to me quite often of late. I experience these euphorically hysterical moments of sheer amazement where my mind roams free of all earthly concerns, wrongdoings and right-doings into a field where I see things around me exactly as I want them to be. Probably, this is a side effect of reading and re-reading Rumi and Khalil Gibran and Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam over and over again in the last few days. It leaves you with quite a different kind of hangover in which to dream is the only way to live, to ‘love and lose’ is not something to cry over but smile at. If ever one had any doubt whether a poet can encapsulate the entire universe of human emotions in a single book or a single verse, Khalil Gibran and Rubaiyat have been complete eye openers . I am not capable enough to even talk about their writing but all I’d say about how I felt after reading them is this-“ He is like a man looking with a candle for the sun”-Rumi. I was looking for relief and I found revelation (in more ways than one).

Praptoboyoshkoder jonno

A blank page has often managed to send my thoughts into a whirlpool. I have never been a person who has a very clear idea about what exactly is it that I want to write before I start writing. The titles of my blogposts bear ample testimony to that. I write when I feel that writing will make me feel good about myself and the people who make up my world. It is my own way of taking stock of where I am headed in life and acknowledging the simple yet precious gifts that I have had for company along this journey.

Unfortunate incidents in the family in the past week have made me reflect on the unpredictability of human nature and how things which one shrugs off by saying, “ These will never happen among our kith and kin”, do take place because somebody somewhere really really messed it up, and not just for oneself, but others too. How can somebody go so far down the road of deceit and self-ruin, I find the question staring me in the face. Somebody one is meant to have regard and affection for, somebody you remember having spent joyful moments with, however fleeting they may be. I guess as one grows up, our sense of right and wrong, possible and impossible, believable and unbelievable undergo a natural transition. But there are some things in life you just wish never fell into that possibility map. They are so damn disgusting! Strangely, when it did happen, beyond the initial feeling of shock and dismay, what dawned on me was the acknowledgement of how lucky I have been to have had the loving care of Ma, Baba & Didi all my life. People who ensured that I had a normal childhood where Sundays meant washing our new car and playing cricket with Baba. One might say, ”What’s so great about it?”. Well, I used to think the same way too until I saw how terribly fractured one’s childhood can become for no fault of one’s own. This is not a place to say thanks to Ma & Baba, why even saying “thanks” would be belittling their unadulterated love and affection and all the sacrifices they have made in bringing me and Didi up as normal kids who had normal joys & sorrows.

I have never had a large, extended family, the kind where mashis & meshos & pishis & mamas & their kids gather at Pujo at the ancestral house at say, Uttarpara, for four days of unbridled fun and festivities. My world has mostly revolved around my parents and my sister and Thamma & Dadu as they used to stay with us . Dadubhai is no more. Thamma, even at this age, has lost none of her silken touch at making payesh and khichuri, things she can keep on feeding you till you say ,”Na, aar paarchi na!”. In a sense, I have missed having relatives one can spend quality time with, cousins one can play chor-police and shaap-shiri with. But as time passes by and I see how fragile these relationships are becoming day by day, how relatives more often than not instead of lending you a helping hand, a comforting hug in times of trouble are only looking for ways and means to deceive you ,take unfair advantage of you and compete with you, I wonder whether I have been unlucky at all, not having these people around. I know I am generalizing way too much here. There are many families where the brothers and sisters have absolutely wonderful ties that bind them. But I guess as one matures in life with age, the inconvenient truth that one wakes upto is this. No matter how many close friends and relatives one may be surrounded by, the only ones you can trust blindfolded are your parents and siblings( some would say there’s a question even on that). But Didi , I love you like crazy and I just can’t imagine in my wildest dreams, relations souring between us ever. So I’ll stick to that. I call it the core group, people who love you for what you are and will never harm you. And even if they are upset with you , know that it’s for your own good.

I can write pages and pages on what having Ma, Baba & Didi in my life means to me. To be honest, they are my life. And I don’t know why but with each passing day, I only seem to see them in a new light where a new facet to their awesomeness gets revealed to me. Maybe I am growing up, finally!

Finally, a post!

It’s been almost two weeks since I have made an attempt at writing something for either myself or for anyone else . The account of my stay at Singapore that I had so fervently hoped to maintain has got lost somewhere in the muddle of time, fleeting as it always is. Maybe I have just been too lazy or maybe too consumed of thought and feelings that have flooded my being in the last two weeks. Reading what someone else writes about oneself, about rap music, about rainy days and if you get lucky, about yourself as well has just seemed so much more fun and exhilarating all of a sudden. Or is it just the last two weeks? To be honest, that is what I have been doing since mid-March when on an otherwise ordinary day I was introduced to the world of delirium and delight and how seamlessly one can look at one as the other. Life hasn’t quite been the same ever since.
Doubts start creeping in often enough as to whether I am making too much of what there is in an attempt to dream about what I would like it to be. But that’s the best thing about thoughts. You seldom have any control over them. So, when they take you on a ride into a world where everything is exactly as you would like them to be, you just don’t wanna get off. Reality kicks in soon enough and you are left with the knowledge that the gateway to the “perfect world” is yet to open. Just keep standing in the queue, you seem to tell yourself. The time will eventually come! The taste of the fruit is not always in eating it but in pining for it, you see.
So, to come back to what I have been upto . Work and food have been the most prominent features. Laboriously working at something that you just know isn’t your cup of tea is an experience in itself. I won’t say I have been loving it because it teaches you how to overcome obstacles in life and all the crap that I parroted in the interview. I just look at it this way. I am here to do a job and I will do it to the best of my ability. The money I am being paid and all the amazing experiences that I am having out here more than makes up for the moments of self doubt and sheer disgust that creep up often enough. It’s Economics at play. Whether the remuneration of labour is more than the cost of it and in my case it surely is. I won’t bore you anymore with the philosophy and economics fundas . So let’s talk about Singapore, about Clarke quay, about Turkish ice cream and Chilean wine and futsal at the beach.

Starting in reverse . It all started with ours bumping into a senior from college and ended with an hour of sweat soaked ball chasing at the beach. We sucked at the game, all of us and it was shame that guys twenty years our senior appeared so much more agile and adept even at their age. Then the counsellor’s voice in my mind came to the rescue. I was having fun at the end of the day feeling proud of the fact that I was here, at Singapore , on the beach , playing with seniors from a college where the fact that you area a KGPian is all that it takes to bring you together. The age, the place, the time doesn’t matter. Who cares if I sucked? I suck at so many others things as well. Football is just one of them. How easy is it to rationalize with oneself, isn’t it?
Coming to Chilean wine , margaritas, chocolate chip muffins, prawn fillets, mega mac burgers, ………the list is endless. What a gastronomic delight my stay has been at Singapore which I can safely anoint as the food capital of Asia. You ask for any cuisine that comes to your mind and chances are high that a restaurant within a one kilometer radius serves it! Not only do they serve great food, the entire experience is what makes it even more memorable right from the ambience to the courteous service. They almost make you feel embarrassed by the number of times they say “thank you” for each and every little thing! And yes, how can I forget the Turkish icecream. Facebook bears testimony to what a katwaing experience it was but I would recommend it to each and everyone who visits this place even at the cost of making a fool out of yourself in public. The taste’s worth it, I guarantee!
And so it has been ! Time has really flown, just to use a cliché. It’s been three weeks in a new country and it seems like yesterday when we landed at Changi , a little dreamy eyed. The rest of our ten week stay is going to pass even faster as each of us gets involved in more serious work and with our planned trips to Malaysia and Bali taking up the weekends. But yes, to be honest there have been moments even in this fastlane that have made time stand still. Moments that made the heart skip a beat, that made an otherwise boring day appear magical. When the fullmoon cast a spell in the sky , when sun signs started acquiring a meaning of their own, when discussing allergies over ISD seemed fun, when all that mattered was just the realization that Life for, all it’s miseries and disappointments is just too precious to whine and grumble about.

The Weekend

Yeh, so I haven’t been able to keep at maintaining my diary as I had expected. Primarily because of the addiction that free high speed wi-fi connection in the comfort of one’s bedroom brings with itself. And partly due to the fact that I have been busy discovering the sights and sounds of Singapore to the fullest. It’s ironical that I have managed to find out time in the middle of office hours to write this blogpost but then workload has been almost inexistent for the past week or so. Barclays surely does treat it’s interns like toddlers helping them to figure out the A,B,C’s of the investment banking world with a lot of care and freedom.

The weekend was pretty colourful as expected. Clarke quay, where I stay , has an amazingly vibrant festive feel to it . With restaurants serving exotic seafood, bars with live bands playing,discos blaring out foot tapping numbers and the young crowd out to let their hairs down, the place is a tourist’s delight. Tired after our visit to the Marina Barrage, worthwhile though it was, we settled for a can of beer and our first tryst with the cigar. It turned out to be quite an intoxicating concoction!

After waking up at around 12 noon on Saturday, we decided to try out the Robin Hood movie at Plaza Singapura. To put it very mildly, both the multiplex and the movie was a disappointment. Only the hot dogs that we had at the Cineplex seemed like value for money. It was now time to head for the famed Night Safari which thankfully brought an otherwise lousy day to an exciting end. A trip to the Amazon rain forests, the grasslands of south east Asia, the Savannahs all at once was more than we could have asked for. Highlights would include spotting the snow leopard, the Malayan tiger, the giant ant eaters & the Asian Lion. The night safari tour on the tram with that typical sound of frogs quacking and crickets buzzing around us as we made our through swampy marshes generated a lot of excitement and ooohh and aaahs among us. The only dampener, so to say, was the fact that we could not capture the animals on film with flash photography prohibited. On our way back we were almost on the verge of being forced into a night safari of a different kind with us managing to lose our way to Clarke Quay. It was a miracle that we happened to board a bus which was to go to Clarke Quay and thus we were saved from burning a major crater hole in our packets.

I visited Little India yesterday and it really did feel like being back in homeland. Traffic jams courtesy no traffic rules, loud music, bright lights, hawkers and most certainly more people per square foot area. My heart soared with pride when I saw hoardings in Bengali and Bengali music playing on the speaker. Little India has this significant Bangladeshi population who run these grocery shops and restaurants where you get things really cheap. We had a bottle of water for $1 and Aamras for $2. Nice deal, I would say. Mustafa’s, the famed shopping mall is huge. You can step in owning nothing in this world with just your credit card and walk out ready to start a household. As for us, we bought GoGo sunglasses and some basic food stuff to last us the week. I promise to be back here before my internship ends for all the shopping that I need to do for people back home.

Other highlights would be the amazing two day training we had at 7city educational services. I only wish it would have stretched on a little longer. Sean King, the burly American guy who was taking our classes is one genius joker. He managed to keep us awake through the 7 hr lectures for two consecutive days, which when one s the fact that the class consisted mainly KGPians, is a big achievement. Raffles place where we had the classes can give downtown Manhattan a run for it’s money when it comes to skyscrapers. And our intimate relation with flesh and meat continued unabated with turkey being the latest prey. My Oh My, is the turkey and bacon grilled burger at Burger King sumptuous? Just have it and you’ll forget Mcdonalds and Subway.

And so my first week at Singapore came to an end. It’s been amazing to say the least. I have discovered so many places, tasted a plethora of gastronomic delights in such a short of a span of time and done so little work at office.! What more can one ask for. I only hope that the coming weeks are as enjoyable as the first with some real work at office interspersed in between though!