Welcome to the World of Idiosyncrasies

Hello and Welcome to my world. Here, you are free to feel as you feel without guarding your emotions, without acting matured and rational etc etc etc. Its an idiosyncratic world and you have every right to feel happy, sad, upset, cheerful, grumpy or whatever else you feel like! No judgements at all.
Oh, and while you enter, please leave you judgmental thinking, and stuck up attitude outside. It's a mad world in here already; and the least you could do is not add to the troubles. No one loves a drama llama ;)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

JEET – THE LOSER

Jeet looked out of the window towards the setting sun & wondered why his life didn’t set down as the sun did. It was painful to live a life of guilt. Five years. Five years of guilt to be precise. His life had changed & there was just nothing that he could do about it. Tears welled in his eyes as he looked out of the window. If only it had not happened, life would have been so different.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the loud arguments between his nephews. He looked at them. The thoughts came tumbling back to his mind. He was the one who had turned them into orphans. If only that wretched accident had not taken place. If only……..

It had been a day to celebrate when his wife had told him that she was expecting their first child. His happiness had known no bounds. “A dinner followed by a drive” was what they had planned. His sister and her husband had also joined them. They had decided to leave the kids at home. After all, it was not often that they got the chance to spend time on their own. They went for a long drive.

“One wrong turn and down you go!” Jeet had always said. He had been a safe driver, but not that day. The music in the car had been too loud for them to hear the honk of the oncoming truck. By the time he realized, it was too late. He swerved the car and it hit against the ratings.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital.

It had been a head-on collision. No one had survived. The doctors had given up hope on him too. They had said that he too would not survive. But survive he did. Survived to live the life of guilt.

The accident had left him paralyzed. If only he had been a little more careful, the accident would not have taken place. His survival haunted him. The guilt was unbearable. He always wished that he had died along with the others, but fate had not decided that for him. If only he had not survived, he would not be living in his world of guilt. If only nobody had died in the accident ……….. Why did it happen to him? Why did he have to live a life of guilt? if only he could do something… if only… that was all that he thought all the while …… if only!

He was jolted out of his thoughts by his nephews who were arguing in the corridor. It was their daily routine to play cricked in the long corridor! He looked at them with tears in his eyes. He blamed himself for turning them into orphans.

“Uncle, here is your food.”

He looked on, the feeling of guilt engulfing him.

“Uncle, here is your dinner,” said Sahil, his eldest nephew. Jeet looked at him and smiled, “No, I shall join you at the dining table tonight. Can you wheel me there?” His nephew shot an amazed glance. Was he hearing right? He was delighted. Jeet’s parents looked at each other when they saw Sahil wheeling Jeet to the dining table. At last he was coming out of his cocoon. They were glad that he was making an attempt to get out of his shell.

It was during one of the cricket games his nephews were playing that the through crossed his mind. It was one of the usual arguments when he intervened, “Why don’t you let me be the umpire? I know the game well, and of course, you will not argue either,” he said. His nephews were game for it, and then he joined them every evening to play with them.

“Why don’t I also play with you all?” he asked, “one of you could wheel me and we can really have a good time. His nephews readily agreed. It was nice to see their uncle participate in their game. And it was during one of these games that it happened……

Sahil was wheeling his uncle to take the run, and it happened in a matter of seconds. Sahil stopped, but his uncle on the wheel chair didn’t. Sahil watched in horror as he saw Jeet fall down the long winding staircase. He saw him cringe in pain for a few seconds. When he reached down, Jeet was a mere lifeless lump.

Two years later …….

Sahil looked out of the window towards the setting sun. Tears in his eyes he wondered why did it happen?

If only, he had run slowly ….

If only! Then Jeet would not have fallen down and died. Perhaps he was running too fast. He blamed himself for Jeet’s death. He looked at the wheelchair at the corner of the room. Why did he have to live a life of guilt? If only he could have stopped Jeet in time.

He walked out of the room, with tears in his eyes. The feeling of guilt haunted him.

If only …





No one had ever noticed the cleverly cut brake cables of the wheelchair.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Ramblings

Why is it that things go awry
At times when we are happy
And content, prosperous, self satiated beings
Rational in thought and judgement

I gave my wrath to a parent
Who did not know
What to do with something
That he had neither contributed to nor understood

I gave my trust to a BFF
Who did not know
What to do with something
That she neither keep nor could break

I gave my dubiousness to a friend
Who did not know
What to do with something
That she neither had instigated nor had control over

I gave my heart to a man
Who did not know
What to do with something
That he neither desired nor could throw away

But most of all..
I gave my injustice to my soul
Wallowing in self pity
And indulgent in sadness
Not knowing the severity of my crime!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Aleya aila re!!

Traffic comes to a standstill in Kolkata due to the uprooted trees and water clogging.




The mighty Ganges. Still hungry after gobbling down a jetty.




Speed thrills, but it also kills!! A bike skids on the Vidyasagar Setu.



Police at the mercy of Mother Nature? A police jeep lies helpless in Shakespeare Sarani



Weight down by nature or by our own deeds?



The lamp post bows down for mercy!!



A very common scene on Monday. This particular one from Bangur Avenue.



A brave yet futile attempt to keep the water away!








The cyclone that shook Kolkata, the rest of Bengal and certain other parts left some deeply etched marks. I have tried to get some snaps but most of them are from the Anandabazar Patrika, 26th May,2009. So i really am sorry about the pathetic resolution of the pictures.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Rains - Relief or a Reason to Wonder and Worry?

What with all this rain and my laptop and my cell phone all going dead for a good couple of hours (there was a power cut in entire of North Kolkata due to the power disruption caused by the cyclone Aleya [Ayala according to some] that took about 30 lives in Kolkata alone) , i decided to stop procrastinating and start writing. Just general chit chat events, if not amazing things, which i cannot write anyway!!

Went to sleep at three this morning and saw that it was drizzling. Pleasant breeze blowing. Jaak babba!! Uttopto Kolkatar buuk ektu thanda holo! But by nine in the morning, what was then a slight drizzle had turned into a torrential downpour accompanied by heavy gusts of wind and the frightening howl that only a cyclone can bring.
Ma and myself were running frantic in an attempt to keep the house dry as no matter all windows and doors that remained shut, the wind and the water somehow found their way through. All afternoon went in an effort to keep the water out. The water that was so welcome a couple of hours ago, had turned into nuisance and was soon turning into a terror!!
It was not without its reward though!! With the rains came the reason for "khichudi" and "kosha maangsho", the leisure of "muuri" and "peyaaNji" and the relish of coffee and long forgotten bits of anecdotes.
And then there was the television. It's perhaps not wrong to think that the Bengali always keeps a keen eye on all events that happen around him... no matter how material or immaterial!! We too keeping true to the tradition, tuned in to the news; partly because there was little else to do apart from eat and chit chat; and partly because we were concerned about the condition of the traffic with Baba not home yet. Tit bits of news kept floating around me as i munched the papad with concentration. People dying due to uprooted trees. Colonies flooded as water gushes inside. The adversely hit villages of Gosaba and Patharpratima in Sunderbans. We click our tongues and discuss about the sad plight they are facing at the moment.
Politics zooms in and we agree on Mamata Banerjee's accurate strategy of visiting Kakdwip instead to going to Delhi. We smile knowingly about the Chief Minister's decision to visit the affected areas. Babba.... etto din toh jaoya hoyni!! Mamata ashtei bujhi chhowk palte gelo? We are after all, the sitting-at-home-watching-TV-but-know-it-all Bengali!!
But then, the media has been always known to be a great influencer! The rains, the swaying of trees, the water making a mad rush, the upturned autos, the breaking down of the bank of the Ganges....it sends a chill down the spine. All of it does!! Just the enormity of it if not anything else.
Its just that all this rain and storm makes me wonder how trivial, how insignificant, how helpless we are in front of nature!!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Back from Hibernation.

Just yesterday i was posting comments on some one's photographic talent on his blog and his mail back made me realize that i too have a blog that has been dormant, passive... dead!!
But thanks to the inspirational note, i decided to come out of hibernation and start posting again.
Feels bad enough that almost half of this year is over and yet this is my first post of 2009.
I often wonder, why don't we write often? For me, writing is like penning down what we think, feel or perceive. And we do that all the time isn't it? I am talking about thinking silly!! So whats the harm is thinking with a pen and paper?
I plan to do it more often from now on and hope this wish lasts longer than my New Year resolutions!!


PO: Thanks Kankan... i owe you this!