AN ODE TO MY (L)ONLY WEAKNESS

I chanced upon this poem while my mom was selling my worn out schoolday copies. This is a poem I had composed in an especially boring chemistry class back in class X. I have fond memories of those turbulent days-the late teens were my period of self discovery,both physical and mental. The quest for self discovery persists,but that was the time when i became aware for the first time that I had a genital, that there are desires beyond topping in class X, that I could think,that each individual has different thoughts,that these thoughts,however idiosyncratic,have a common thread...

Now here is a poem that I am not especially proud of now.It shows every sign of my limited vocabulary,and even limited prowess in poetry( not that it is much better now). But I include it here in my blog because i am proud of the fact that i used to THINK,and THINK hard at that point of time. Precocious i might have been,but then great thinkers have always been precocious ,have'nt they?( ofcourse i don't imply anything!!).

AN ODE TO MY (L)ONLY WEAKNESS

Press,press,press and finally it flows
Pleasure rolls down my mind ,body and soul
Eyes close in a moment of satisfaction
And my heart breaks for long hours of depression.

My heart,my tender heart feels oh-so-guilty
He does'nt know from inside that it's reality
The hours then follow,the dreaded hours
Of doing nothing but sitting beside the bedside chair.

" You're Addicted and Shall Be Ruined"-warns the solemn Brain
But my minor me indulges in the pleasure of this suffocating pain.
I love it so, I cannot let it go
For , catering to the world and made to like what they see
These are the moments when I find the 'me' in me.

I would love to compose a poem on the same topic in this stage of my evolution.Turbulent days they were,with me always at the epicentre of the tug-of-war between my spiritual initiations at my weak flesh.The battle still rages,but I have finally outgrown the age of tug-of-war...

But before that I need to attend to that vicious vamp called the sem.And i would really like to get a reaction from any bored soul who might have cared to visit this blog.

Dashami..Beloved Dashami

Its over.The media frenzy,the serpentine never ending queues,the precocious teenagers,buoyed and radiant by the first trip out,the mahishashurmardini on every puja day in my neighbourhood is finally over. Its Dashami and and the media vehemently supposes me to be sad.Far from it!

Its all lighted to sunshine out here,so much so that one has to squint to see her.But there she is,somewhat demure(but that is obvious,this is the shukla paksha or the waxing half of the lunar month),garbed in a sombre copper-red attire,weaving mystery as she sews along the charkha.She weaved then too; before my pimples came out,before darkness became mere absence of light,in the frequent load-shedded,candle lit evenings the world was a warm lap,my maa's warm lap,and through the perforated cool aachol i had seen her weave the same mystery.The grand,ancient,ageless resident of moon,the chander buri. The world is now larger,and well-lit, but the mystery persists. And this day is the same all the time,for it is today(and it was today 15 years back and will be today 30 years hence), when the GODDESS looks so much like my mom.

The GODDESS , smeared with vermilion,a tinge of tear in the large , oval eyes, the women ululating happily around,an occult aroma of mother-flesh(and its not human flesh,for a mother is not human,though a woman born human can be the mother) transported by the frankincense,the dhakis beating a mad,raving rhythm...so much of maa...so like my maa.

There they come! A matador carrying the Devi and family,and another full of mirth,laughter and bollywood steps.And there comes another,and lo,yet another!..This pukur before me looks melancholy otherwise , but today is different.When I did not fake happiness,so as to say when I was a child,I envied the kids swimming here.The shining bathtime pond shimmered with rippling laughter,of kids learning to swim,of their instructors,and of the bored men and women stealing a luxurious moment before the hard,grinding day ahead.And this fascination of mine was mixed with a tinge of envy,envy of not being able to join the revelry courtesy my beloved mother!

But this revelry here is different.There ain't no heaving wet bosoms,hairy chests or shiny balds here.But the joy is wet indeed,refreshing wetness.The bored reader(u aren't bored by now? I bet) may recollect a Limca commercial with Riya Sen in the lead that was wet but refreshing wet.So is it,wet with myriad emotions,emotions that are a delectable concoction of sweet happiness and peppery sorrow of farewell. Ah...the water felt like cold piece (whatever that is supposed to mean..u will never feel if u haven't felt that!) when some mother...my mother sprinkled on us!

"Mere kalam pe zamaane ki dard aisi thi/

ke apne baare me kuch bhi nahin likh saka yaaro

....ke main zameen ke rishto se kat gaya yaaro"

-Jagjit Singh's ghazal

I don't know why I quoted that.Of course I love it but there is no reason to.But then its good sometimes to just let things happen.It is happening again.I have been disconcerted of late and have just been sane enough to notice my speech getting incoherent.Perhaps it is the ROSHKOLNIKOV effect.The irritable,haughty,on the verge of madness protagonist of DOSTOEVSKY'S epic CRIME AND PUNISHMENT has preoccupied me for the past fortnight.And I want to let it be.It happened before too, in the turbulent,experimental,beloved days of adolescence,with a Sirshendu Mukherjee novel called DURBIN. I remember stepping out of Kalighat,my beloved holy Kalighat without offering devotion to mother and sleeping alongside the beggers and an insane mother. I recollect the stink,which got used to me in a few minutes( i was the intruder here) and which i started taking in in lungfuls.It is the stink,the bare ,reddish black torso of an invalid, the frozen eyes of the insane and her dusty,rugged hair,and the peaceful siesta in the pavement-these are the fragments of a jigsaw which still form a clear picture in my mind. Its inexplicable,but that clear picture i do not visualise;it appears as a grey mist somewhere at the back of my mind.I hate oxymoron and i might be annoying you with my duality but that clear grey mist is observed in meditation.I have found all my beloved images/sounds/experiences in that form.Even Isha is to me that sensation at the back of my mind,which i cannot visualise but i don't regret cause i feel it with far greater clarity than vision in meditation.

If you have managed to endure this ordeal this far then please forgive me. I was delirius when i wrote the above but this delirium is not apologetic..it promises to come back on the next BIJAYA DASHAMI, with my mother on tow. Its a long wait till the next Dashami..but the wait is worth it.The worthy should be few and far between....

"Apne Gham ko Geet Banakar Gaa le na/

Raag purana tera bhi hai,mera bhi/

Gham ka khazanaa tera bhi hai,mera bhi..."

-Sajda(Jagjit Singh,Lata Mangheshkar)

HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY BISWAJOY DA

Dear Sir,

I'm sorry if I've offended you by not sticking to the conventional "Respected Sir",but I could'nt help,for,in addition to the obvious respect,I hold you dear to my heart.In the long lost days of the first pimple,Resnick Halliday and the first smoke my heart retained the gift of wonder from childhood.I wondered about the busy monkeys in H.C.VERMA,about the alcoholic in Bahl and Bahl,the engaging endearing labyrinth of resistive networks,the form of the NORMAL DISTRIBUTION;I wondered...

But about 3 years back my heart turned into a mere cardiac muscle,the foetus of my questions aborted by MATRIX EDUCARE,and my wonder was replaced with hatred.Hatred for listless wander in the worn -out beaten path called the WBUT,hatred for being a typewriter (of dated notes),hatred for having lost myself.

Thanks a meg-ohm Sir for being the lighthouse I needed,Thanks a kilo-farad for bearing the beacon light of knowledge,thanks a lot for being my messiah Sir.

If you have managed to endure this ordeal this far,I would like to utilize this opportunity to express my love,respect and gratitude for you Sir.Some teach , you inspire;I promise not to let go of whatever remaining opportunities I have to feel inspired.

yours truly

Debrup Ganguly

unfinished..read later

Circa 2008
IIT Kharagpur


“… Of TIME you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
…Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
...…. And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.”

---KHALIL GIBRAN

Sometimes it takes a lifetime for a minute to pass (IEMians know better),sometimes a whole lifetime passes in a matter of minutes (only a fortunate few should know). To reproduce properly that empyreal experience yours truly dons a bird’s eye, and sitting atop the convex gleam of the sky (Shelley anyone?) gains access to the minds of three IEMians, one a poet, another super-intelligent, and the other an innocent, quixotic child of a man. If you endure the entire ordeal you might put these traits to names,but for now, their names in no particular order are, Dwip Sengupta, Debrup Ganguly, and Abhishek Dutta .


JUMP CUT:
VIKRAMSILA FOYER
ROBO RELAY,2ND ROUND:

“Oh God ,please..please keep it glued..”-murmuredt Abhishek while Dwip stared fixedly at the bot ,confident that the sensors could not go wrong this time.This was the 3rd and Final restart and he had been warned in the 2nd for uttering what is chaste French to the sane, expletives to some. Debrup soaked in the palpable vibes-a whole gamut of emotions openly swarmed in the arena;greed, anger, hatred ,joy ,relief-they were all there, as if there were faces no more ,pure human emotions to the fore, and the progressive tightening of three clasped hands perhaps provided a curious trimpot to their emotion sensors. 32 adrenaline soaked seconds later bliss took on as the hands were replaced with hugs, and the loudspeaker blared the latest entrant into the finals of ROBOTIX 2008, TEAM BMN.

“Its only half-done” ,declared Dwip ,carrying the bots with motherly care. The pleasant spring breeze(the ISHA breeze,as per Debrup) caressed their delights, on the way back to hostel. Abhishek was still busy exchanging ‘pleasantries’ with people who had previously sneered at their naiveté. Naïve they were,and their mechanism was simply ludicrous. But they had the moody mistress called luck by their side,for reasons best explained in THE ALCHEMIST. They had wanted it with all their heart ( they’ve always shared a single heart and they know ‘noun numbers’) and to their astonishment the universe did conspire to help them achieve.(Thank You Mr Coelho, both from me and on behalf of Farah Khan!)


“ ...We reached the dizzying heights of that dreamt of world”
---PINK FLOYD



Theirs is an adolescence grown on DIL CHAHTA HAI. More precisely, that opening note and the 3 bikes have always been their vision of freedom,of joy and camaraderie. That image was replaced forever with the sights of the lush lonely but filled lawns, the entwining complex of roads, the queued toilets, the constant buzz of activity and the taste of the DREAMLAND RESTAURANT.

Dreams prove deceptive when realized , dreams do not appear like dreams in the process of realization .

The biting February Kharagpur Station was far from the warm kolkata spring, the auto ride to IIT-K (and the fare) was not the shortest, and the first view of the place was overwhelming in an uneasy way. This place hosted a failed dream, gallons of midnight oil,sweat and the hefty sum paid to FIITJEE-its surely not that dream, just a 3 day stay. Or so they thought.

MIFFED..NO..DISAPPOINTED?..NOT SURE

MIFFED?.. NO..DISAPPOINTED?..NOT SURE.


These columns have often read my ramblings about TIME.Yours' truly has often whisperd about the ambivalent feelings of entrapment in a time warp.That playful mistress has other moves up her sleeve as well. Like the one in Orwell's 1984(ah..loved it!),where it was always the same time/month/year by the government clock,that being the only clock in the land. It might or might not be 1984,but it was difficult for the protagonist Winston to disagree with the notion of date,of history,of TIME,because censoring at best reaches the cardiac muscle,but the HEART beats with/in time.What a plight living in untime( r/f 1984..it must have been added to newspeak by now) is! How hard Winston might have wished to acknowledge, be let to acknowledge the passage of time; in a way wishing time to pass.

But then there are instances when one does not detect the passage of time for a few split moments and does not regret it either. On each glimpse of ISHA I have not missed time. On every rare moment of speaking to her,of watching her in solace , I have been oblivious of time. How hard my subconcience might have wished then not to let time pass;how hard my ego might have tried then to let time pass( I'm an egoist big time,and am aware of myself even in meditation,but not in those fortunate moments).

Today I again prayed desperately for time to pass. The advantage with bad dreams is that they are easily forgotten,the difficulty with bad reality is that it is hard not to remember. Some memories stay etched;this one too shall. Things did'nt look propitious right from the beginning. Everything that I hate,sluts blocking view,small obstinate groups that stink of negative vibes,that obnoxious trio,the unholy nexus,my insecurities,.. and my friends. Some names used to sound like my lub-dub till this evening,now every view is through a broken prism. I don't know what the CRYSTAL says, I know I should'nt crib and brood,but I hate tainted shirts and cracked glass. I prayed desperately for time to flow then;
flow , flow,flow at your deadliest,
flow through my cells,
flow through my numbed eyes and sore mind
(i'm not intoxicated and i know this language),
flow any which way you like,but please flow. i don't to be encaged in this time warp,no i don't.

JAANE BHI DO YAARON

I have often wondered about an overwhelming, ubiquitous entity called TIME. It has a mind of its own, for its always been him that has decided 'my time’, in spite of my best efforts to dictate. It flows straight undaunted, seemingly innocuous but often it creates voids and warps, in reality or perhaps in memory where it never advances. Its a bitter experience to know that i know something when I'm sure that I've never known.Riddle?,deja vu?,i wish it were so simple.I encountered that eerie feeling again while watching a film today;Kundan Shah's JAANE BHI DO YAARON.The film was released in 1983,and though i had a certain curiosity, I thought even the cd stinked while serving popcorn on a gloomy holiday,ah the perfect day for a cine-buff but will the movie be a spoiler?

Did the sky clear up? Did it rain? Did my maid turn up? Did Isha call?..for 132 hypnotised minutes that began from 2:00 pm I forgot even these questions that clutter my mind all the time (I wish i could say this before the exams,but they haunt me even during the exams..lucky are people who are not poets/not in love/have regular maids).

The film/experience opens up with 2 young photographers, who've set up their studio and have invited people for the inauguration,scouting for their guests while stealing glances at the sumptous spread that they've set up.In a flash one understands that this was the pre-auto-rickshaw,pre-egg-roll generation when the enterprising youth set up studios at the still available nukes and nukkads. Simple check shirts,trousers,things didn't stink of brands then,did it?..Yours truly doesn't suffer from the "golden era" hangover(there has never been a golden era as a matter of fact),but what was on display was real,tangible and something that still exists.I could draw parallels with every single visual of the film with the age i live in..as if it is still 1983,as if its a time warp.Substitute the studio with an auto-rickshaw,view the roads with a flyover above;only the roadside nukkad cannot be found,don't even think of substitution,its extinct,its treasure.

The film is itself a treasure trove of images of my father's generation( gen "w" perhaps..soft drinks say this is Gen Y,i should be Gen X),images of our generation,images of generations yet to come,images of INDIA.I am not a pessimist,i do not conform to the film's cynical view of the "system"(as potboilers would say) but its only hope that i have to refute my cynicism,for i find a Vinod and Sudhir in today's MANJUNATH(salutes martyr),today's Jessica.

I might be terribly wrong,but I've often observed a tendency among people to label a performance according to the role.There are examples galore where kudos go to the person enacting a role that is amply supported with props,sentiments or other emotions that is easy to manipulate among watchers by a giant screen and blaring sound.Herein lies the greatness of Naseeruddin Shah.His Vinod,an aam admi in the truest sense of the term,never inspires one to break free,one never sheds a tear for him and chances are u might never appreciate his performance because he has played the person whom u see everyday in the mirror combing,by the roadside spitting,in the desk working/not working.(Don't be mistaken,Naseer's Vinod is an upright hardworking youth).Only one man comes to mind TOM HANKS,the Nasiruddin Shah of Hollywood!

But its not only Naseer,its the film as a whole that is an elevating experience.Agreed it is slapstick at parts,but even those moments of idiocy evoke genuine laughter,for the film is not only rooted but seeped in reality.A reality where there is no rigor mortise,where the dead stands upright,where time bombs burst late and are innocuous,but which is realistic enough to make one smell the smell of the city,the stink of the sweating polyester,the rot of lust.

Built on a shoestring budget of Rs 7 lakh(unbelievable eh?!..that was the pre inflation era),this NFDC film never looks needy, for the superlative performances by the likes of OM PURI,PANKAJ KAPOOR,SATISH KAUSHIK,SATISH SHAH and the rest more than make up for the lack of gloss. Incidentally much of the supporting cast were stalwarts of the golden era of Doordaarshan,in the immediately following future.Naseer and Om of course made it big not only on the national screen but on the international scene as well.The assistants like SUDHIR MISRA and Vidhu Vinod Chopra also are renowned filmmakers of our day.Incidentally it was the director KUNDAN SHAH ,who could not create anything half as substantial as this.Once again,strange are the ways of time..

At the end, the meek submission of the helpless protagonists(and therefore justice) before corrupt lawmakers is both touching and captivating.Incidentally I watched this movie on 15 AUGUST,our INDEPENDENCE DAY.Oi je bollam,strange are the ways of time..


If anyone out there is a crazy bollywood buff like me i strongly recommend this film because this film has many firsts;because this film breaks away from the bollywood song-and-dance routine;because this film portrays women who are not exactly sita/ganga maiya,neither surpanakha but somewhere in between;because this is the first niche Hindi film that came even before INOX was thought of;because it ensheaths u in a time warp that is no RIP VAN WINKLE trick,but a sad eternal reality;because it is simply a great film that is trademark bollywood.


I wish TIME catches up with u to fill my wish as i pray may the world revere it again.

MY MISS SUNSHINE

This poem was composed in the middle of an internal assessment exam,not because the questions were difficult(they weren't),but because the poem had to be composed then.

MY MISS SUNSHINE

I'd love to wake to a morning
Through your eyes Miss Sunshine
I'd never ever be mourning
For my losses before eyes thine.

Radiant,they never speak,
For they glow and spread
One glory of a smile that passes the nick
Of time,and halos GOD,never to be dead.Smile is passe,she'd chortle
Mortals speak,she'd hymn(s)
Hum-move over ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE,
(I've)Dipped in,she is Mnemosyne !She's grasped my mind and more
As if some Ecstasy I bore
Injected enchantment-bliss,marks no more
Even in hallucination her images galore.

WHY DEBRUP IS NOT "NUMBERED"

Hello,
You know me as Debrup.But that is about as much you know of me,which is pretty minuscule to form an idea but also dangerously tempting to form an idea.Agreed,an idea of mine won't push you into frenzied yells of "EUREKA",but I must ensure that that idea is not unduly distorted lest it may add to an already overflowing pitcher of BAD KARMA(mine,of course!).A few of our ancient elders,in some other time,some other neighbourhood,were hesitant to take pictures for they believed a part of their VITAL FORCE gets trapped into the picture;though i'm not quite a
PAGAN myself,i do believe one carries vibes with oneself,vibes that are formed by the curious superposition of one's own nobility and his impact/reflected vibes from others.So I suppose my eagerness to clarify is in right earnest.

Let me begin with a story..for once take a ride with me to those precious pimpled days(my pimples,of course),those days of innocence,of a very inquisitive innocence,of ash colored trousers and skirts.Upstart magazines call those days TEEN AGE(UNISH KURI) , yours truly calls that AGE [no not biological,that was an era,akin to the NEOLITHIC/CHALCOLITHIC AGE] the ISHA AGE.

So picture a pimpled 15 yr old,intoxicated with the just discovered pleasure of JIBANANDA(he used to read only BANGLA those days,and ppl said he read a lot),the pleasure of an infant moustache,the pleasure of the first puja hang-out with friends,the pleasure of FTV. He felt redeemed every sec for every feeling that rubbed his mind was new,fresh,pure unadulterated experience of stepping into the threshold of adultery.

Presently our man is walking back home from school,weary for he skipped lunch today,the tiresome walk writ large on face. He has saved 15 mins (worldly equivalent of 27 rupees!) he thinks as he turns right,while the sad road turns left to home.He stealthily enters a suffocating cabin whose sweating wall reads " pulse-90 secs" (inflation was still to hit INDIA,things were cheaper then,weren't they?).

HE had read in insipid books that the heart goes lub-dub.But he knew for these frozen moments every week heart went krring-krring.He knew the telephone receiver was receiver no more;it has become a stethoscope enabled with a loudspeaker.He heard his heart race krring-krring at a deafening decibel,every week ,week after week while his mind settled into a numb,nerves frayed into a clutter of questions:
WHAT IF HER FATHER PICKS IT UP?
WHAT If KAKIMA ASKS WHY?
WHAT IF SHE HERSELF ASKS WHY?
But believe me everytime ISHA would pick it up,everytime the conversation was same,he always had the same sweat which would progressively vaporize with each word of hers,words seemed like notes then,everytime he would fly back home,everytime...
Looking back,those moments can never be replicated,neither can he feel deja vu for those moments were,are, frozen in time.

The story ends here for what follows is bitter reality[what u read is sweet reality,and i want the story to stay all sugary.]
As we grew up we both got cell phones.I didn't have to skip lunches any more,neither did she have sit b4 the land line on Fridays like an expecting mother, for we were all too accessible to each other now.Access to her was what i pined for but that came at the cost of the mystery about her.No i went wrong there,there is no mystery about her,she is mystery.

U know dear reader,LOVE for me is all about exploration,exploration of each little emotion that i felt for her,exploration of her mind body and soul.She is a quest for me that would keep me on the hunt for the next 7 births...but if the mystery dies the quest ends.I don't wanna grow ,i wanna be imprisoned in the time warp en sheathed by those frozen moments .So keeping the cell away is an attempt,however meek,in that endeavour.I know its not a very practical thing to do but then i care more for my idiosyncrsies,my reflections and my heart than i care for the cares of rationality.

If u have reached this far,then congratulations at having endured such an ordeal..and i'm sorry but then even in this age of MATRIX EDUCARE,there are no made-easys for the matters of the mind.