The Black hole

I dread the black hole- no escape, no hope for anything to come back, to my mind it is the single most ominous reality. With everything in life that doesn't go your way you still have a flickering hope that your fortunes can reverse some day but a black hole represents the absolute irreversible truth. It represents the place in space where you hurl your stone each time with greater force hoping to finally make it stick and may be even shine like a star someday. Alas, nothing ever happens, the stone is lost, the effort is gone and you know there is never going to be a star smiling down at you.
However as I type the above lines I am wondering whether by condemning the black hole, I am maligning the wrong guy. Are we actually guilty of hope?

Its hope that makes us pick a stone each time, the black hole is simply the finality of the result- a dead end that seekers just run into. Sometimes hope can be brutal, it makes you go down the same path innumerable times only to come out all bruised and hurt. May be the black hole just tries to end the misery, bring an end to the vicious cycle of hope and trying. May be God just became tired of seeing folks hurl stones, and so created a black hole to stop them, dissuade them from trying.

I wonder if we can really be charged guilty of hoping, for that would raise questions about existence. An existence which lives in the constant shadow of its own black hole-death. Isn't life ironic, for all the hopes, struggles, black hole- it still should go on until the fateful end.

(Thoughts of an anxious job seeker braving the media frenzy of hurricane Sandy- crazy times)

Fall Glory..

Fall.. Leaves..Colors..

I tried to look at this V section,  like an ice-cream cone, the 'V' of the heart..

Just fell and flew through..

Yellow streetlight, yellow leaves..
Yellow lights filtering from window panes..
And everything around..
Yeah, it was all Yellow..

Collecting Durga

Photo credit: sr
It is good to receive Durga Puja pics after posting the blog :) Rana sent across this picture this morning and I thought I'll build a new collection this year with picture charity from friends. So this year it is 'collecting Durga's)!

Manged to retrieve the following from the old is gold collection-sony ericsson camera phone. Didn't find any Durga images but just some pandal decorations:

This one was some upscale pujo pandal in the salt lake area(AD, Tank no. 3 may be)











This is one was a more traditional decoration with generous use of bamboo


11/19/2012: M just sent me these pics today uploaded them as well :)
M is not the same as the 'M' in 007 but a dear old school friend who also has a Kolkata stint on her timeline!
Thanks buddy!

Remembering the Pujos

Good times always bring back fond memories.

Pujo's in Kolkata have their own unmatched charm. For a rational  mind it will look like 10 days of relentless incongruity where the otherwise inconsequential people collectively assume a state of drunken happiness. All one thinks, talks, sees is the celebration around- the bright lights, the creative pujo-pandals, multitudes around in their best set of clothes, the food, the fun rides. 

To truly understand the significance of pujo, one not only needs to witness the pujo in Kolkata, one also has to live in Kolkata through the non-pujo days to see the transformation the city undergoes suddenly!

I cannot match the Bengali nostalgia for Pujo but still in my own way I still remember and miss the celebration. 

I would have so loved to have an old Pujo picture on my blog, but just as I dug into my pictures folder, I realized I accidentally deleted all the folders with names starting with I onward therefore no more Kol pics on my laptop.

I next thought of searching my phone for some beautiful Bengali Pujo text messages although I really doubted that I would have anything saved from 2008-2010. I still remember few words of those messages, not sure if I can retrieve them with Google search. 

Next I dug into my old loyal diary hoping to find something preserved there. Thankfully you can trust yourself for some afflictions without fail. Found a note from 9th Oct, 2008. Pujo that year must have been earlier than  this year because this note was about immersion. The last ritual after all the festivities.

'In some ways, acceptance of transience rests on the way one treats the word 'immersion'. You immerse in joy as well as in grief. the joy of creation lies in accepting this duality, in understanding that any work of art or even emotional grooming blossoms in  a state of detached attachment!

Immersion takes a quick dip!

The whole of creation, its beauty all its splendor everything is transient. With as much as a blink of eye, you can gain all, you stand to lose all. Just have the heart to rejoice..'- newspaper article (TOI or Telegraph)

This note suddenly appeared more relevant than anything else I had read in quite sometime. Each one of us have our own ways to handle the 'immersions'.. Its beautiful to think about the symbolism of immersing the deity in the waters of the Ganges. To let her go whence she came from with just a promise that she'll come back again with all the fanfare next year..in another form and with another story. (I learnt that there is always a different story and a theme associated with how she will come back next year!)

So Far, So Close

All the beautiful things so far away..
Distant clouds,
Distant lands..
Distant sounds,
Distant lights
Distant sights..

All the friends so far away..
Distant laughs,
Distant walks,
Distant fights,
Distant gossips

All the noise so close,
All the fears so close,
All the falls so close,
All the losses so close..

I still try to look beyond,
I still try to shut the noise out..
I still try to fight my fears..
I still try to smile as I walk home in the cold winter rain..

The hundred

Dished out the last two blogs just so that I could ring in the 100th post before I dozed off :)

Hello Mobile..

Each of us have our cellphone stories, how and when we owned our first cellphone(self purchase/gift/second hand passed on by sibling). The basic model, the initial promotional plans, the coverage hiccups, the first polyphonic ringtones.The longest call that you made, the call that rings in happiness, the ones that break your heart. The times when you sit in anticipation for the phone to ring and the times that you dread the sound of the phone ringing. How each one of us traded our basic models for the swanky feature rich 'smart phones'. Some of us were  always quick to lap up the latest model only to be enamored by the next new thing that came along. And some of us still live in bliss holding on to our mobosaurs. This would be a sneer from some smart phone geek who thinks he is well past the Jurassic age of mobile phones. Only if he could realize that the mobile Jurassic age has shrunk to a couple of months and he will always be on the run..

So each one has a story of our relationship with our mobile-the technical specifications, the grand stories of acquisitions, possessions, upgrades, theft, and relinquishment.
The other aspect of the story is how the phone has changed the dynamics of our personal relationship.
A daily call at 10pm ( 8:30 am India time) is my only link to my parents except for the occasional skype calls.
A phone interview is my only make or break chance to get that million dollar job that I have always dreamt of..(honestly neither have I had any such dream nor am I close to any such phone call  :P) but still for the purpose of argument it is a valid proposition.
Some arranged marriages entail an awkward phone call as the icebreaker(how ingeniously convenient)
Surprisingly some friendships are about long phone calls, sometimes small phone calls snatched between busy day schedules and also the yawning exchanges before you finally begin to snore.
We can almost look at relationships through the prism of our phone call registers..(just took fancy of the word prism and used it, though in this context we can clearly disqualify the usage)

Communication experts explain that communication entails both the verbal and non verbal aspects. A phone conversation communicates the verbal piece depending on the quality, reliability,coverage of  network service provider. That's a lot of compromise already as for the non verbal you just have to make the best guess and all of us have our stories of how tricky that gets at times. So good luck with the phony sixth sense :)

Just Overheard

Overhead this conversation on the bus this morning:

 "I remember it was 1998, I was in junior high school and it was the best year: The temperature in winters was a pleasant 70-80 F, Gas was 79 cents a gallon & the Illinois football team won the game which was the reason why a super strict teacher gave an additional one week for a submission"

What a year would it have been! However I have not verified any of the above facts and I didn't have my morning cup of coffee before i overhead this exchange. This conversation jogged my memory back to a side note which I wrote down from a budget editorial in India back in 2006-2007, I can vouch for the truth here:

"It was the best of time-GDP 8% growth

It was the worst of time-reforms have disappeared like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the grin

It was the age of wisdom-FM agrees that growth is the best antidote to poverty

It was the age of foolishness-we believe in antipoverty flagship programs of dubious efficiency and delivery

It was the epoch of belief-PM has raised the bar of growth to 10%

It was the epoch of incredulity-nothing in the budget to move the trajectory from 8-10%

We had everything before us..

We had nothing before us.."

Economically how do I remember the year of 2012. 

The year when USD INR exchange rate reached an all time high of 57.13 in June 2012, an average drop of 27%  against the US dollar over the course of a year. The year when round trip flight tickets(US-India) in Dec were above $2000 mark. The annual GDP growth rate was a dismal 5.3 in March 2012. To sum up in the words of a senior economist, India's economy is suffering from "policy incoherence, shifting global risk appetite and a comatose government"

Not the best of time for sure..

Yesterday was the presidential debate here in US, I did not follow it closely to make any intelligent comments about it or form any opinions. Lately I haven't really been following any economic-political stories. All that I seem to notice around me are the Apples and Google's of the world and their petty wars. Guess this is what happens when the newsprint papers gets replaced with smart phones and I only look at news feed courtesy Mashable on my Facebook page. No more Dickinson commentaries for me, no more argumentative friends around. May be after posting the blog I should read a real newspaper for a while.

A little sun...

In the last few days there were two small motions that I noticed around me that triggered a chain of thoughts in my damp head.

The chill is slowly trying to sneak in and how I hate the lousy companion it has chosen-the dim witted fog and the half-hearted rain. The depressing fog greets you every morning and the constant drizzle tests your patience through the day. This sloppy weather is making me miserably miss the sunshine, so much so that I sense a certain dull humidity in my own head. I hear myself singing,

Give me some sunshine, Give me no rain..

Give me another chance, I wanna love the weather again!!

Before I ramble more about the weather, I will come back to the initial purpose of the blog and talk of the two motions.

1) The digital clock on my mobile going from 9:30 pm to 8:30 pm as I just crossed over from EST to CST.  We were driving back from Indianapolis to Champaign and since I don't drive, my job was to extend moral support to the person behind the wheel and keep her company with an entertaining but not too distracting conversation. I would have so wanted to shut up and snore peacefully but I was duty bound. Since I was so awake I glanced at my mobile and saw the digits change in front of my eyes. To lose time on my way up and then gain it on my way back is no bargain but still to get an hour at 9:30 pm, made me suddenly more awake!

2) I sat by my window watching the light drizzle outside with not much of an appreciative look. There were clear signs of the onset of winter, the changing season. As I registered all the changes around I noticed the rain drops landing on the sun dried leaves, the leaves getting detached and fall freely to the ground. For me the movement of the falling leaves was a beautiful personification of Tom Petty song Free Fallin'..

And I'm free, free fallin'

Yeah I'm free, free fallin'..

I guess both these triggers were significant, they made me conscious of time and change. Perhaps the two most powerful things in our life's. Its really a cathartic experience to look at life sometimes and think how time has ushered in so much change in us. All the 'what if's' that come to mind, wondering what life would have been if time took you back or forward in life. All the people and places come to mind and I just smiled for everything that has come my way and brace myself for the winter that is inching closer with each passing day.

However all I ask for is a little reassuring sun somewhere in the sky above! I have no answers for this solar fixation but I blame my pahari genes... :) Or may be the sun is just symbolic of a constant that I like to have in my life when everything around keeps changing with each passing hour..