January 30, 2008
Filed under: Down the memory lane..., Family..., Funny!!! — chapters @ 4:34 PM
Bou is so sweet!! She is so innocent!!
Bou is not a high educated individual. She had done her matriculation. As you know, everything should have a strong base. So whatever I am today, it is because of the strong base my mother formed for me. She is the person who taught me the basic alphabets of Oriya, English and Hindi. She is the person who taught me the basic arithmetic operations and without her guidance and help I would have never been able to reach even at this place.
At this stage, sometimes I found her like a small child and who talks so innocently about the outer world. She imagines things on her own and tells us. It seems funny, but sometimes I just want to give a hug to her and tell how I love her goofing like this!!
She has diabetes. So one day papa bought toothpaste which was sugar-free. That was given to Bou and she was instructed to use that one instead of the regular one which we use at home. The next morning, when I woke up, she was about to start her teeth-brushing session… she took out a small amount of the toothpaste from the tube and put it on the bristles of the toothbrush.. started brushing and suddenly made a bitter face and told me, “this is fake!! It is not sugar-free”… I thought that it was sweet and so she is telling so. To ensure, I took a little bit of the paste and tasted it. It was sugar-free!!!
I asked my Bou, “What did make you to say that it is not sugar-free??”
“It does not taste sweet…that’s why!!”, she replied back.
“Sorry!! I could not understand it… “, I tried using my head for this type of logic.
“Sugarfree tastes sweet… and this paste does not taste sweet… so there is no Sugarfree in it…”, she showed me the small jar of sweetener, she uses in her tea and which is named as Sugarfree.
And, I tried my best not to laugh, but as soon as I saw my papa, I could not stop myself and had a hearty laugh over the matter. We still tease about that and she is so innocent that she laughs with us… like a child does…
I just love her when she laughs on herself 
Filed under: Behind the screen..., Funny!!!, uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 1:06 PM
I don’t know why every kaamwaali loves me so much. When I left my previous flat, my previous kaamwaali (we used to call her Reva didi) was almost in tears. And now when I told my present kaamwaali (I call her Didi), that I am shifting to a new place then she pleaded me not to leave. I don’t know why, she loves me more than my room mate R, even if R has been staying here before I came into the picture. Didi comes to me when she needs to make a phone call to her daughter staying in Medinapur and never asked R. Didi hates R & H, may be because of their behavior. R is really rude while talking to didi and ppl working under her. She thinks that they are always cheating her and taking more money from her without doing any work.
Let me give an account what didi does in our house and how much she is paid… didi comes to our flat at about 8 AM and cleans all the dishes, cleans the kitchen, sweeps the floor of the whole flat and then wipes the floor with water and cleans our clothes, takes the wet clothes to terrace and spreads them. In the evening, she brings back the clothes and again cleans the dishes and kitchen. Sometimes when we return late from the office, she comes in the night also to do the courses of the evening. And in exchange of this, each of us give her 200/- per head. So it makes 600 from our flat… but you know, were I had been in her place, I would have asked for more. Didi is a nice person and some times does our vegetable shopping also.
2 or 3 days back, when I returned to home, didi came to do the dishes and said me that R was denying to give her 400 for her and H for this month. R is saying that they were not staying in this house for 10 days as they had been to H’s place in Haryana. Her argument is that when she was not present didi has not done anything of her work and so she wont give her full 400, instead she will give her 200 for this month. Now let us think over this matter. Even in our office we have 2 days of holiday in each week… so for 4 weeks in a month we get 8 days leave, where as didi does not take a single day off from her work. She is regular and you wont believe, normally nobody comes in the night to work, but she does… through out the winter, she did every bit of work, starting from moping the floor to cleaning our clothes in the early morning, without any hesitation where as R was not even taking a bath because the water was cold!!! (Now I wish that R never comes across this blog or else she will kill me for whatever I reveal about her over the net…. But you know what… she did not take bath today also 
).
So now you people decide, did that worth a fighting with didi for 200 Rs??? I mean come’ on … you are working in a MNC, drawing money from the company for not working for months when there is no project and there is this didi, who works day and night without taking a single day off and still you are quarreling with her for a couple of hundred Rs notes!! Cutting off 200 Rs from your salary may not affect you, but 200 means a lot when that is 1/3rd of your salary.
As a result didi was unhappy. Today in the morning, when R & H were off to somewhere, didi told me that she is working here only because I am here. The day I will leave, she will also stop working here. Then I realized, even I will also miss her in my new flat. Seriously and I have started hating R & H too. I just want to get rid of them as soon as possible.
You know, what the funny thing is??? Didi also told me that she will leave working here as well she will also make it sure that nobody works here!!! Smirk smirk … afterall, they also have a community…
I can well imagine how R & H will manage everything if actually didi does so!!!
It is not funny, but then… I think R & H deserve that!! What’s say????
He ha ha ha… that’s my typical ogre-type laugh 
January 29, 2008
Filed under: Behind the screen..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 1:52 PM
Today I would like to talk about my roommate(R) and her husband (H)…
R is from a Brahmin family of Haryana and H is from a Punjabi family. They studied in the same engineering college and since then they had loved each other. After completing their studies, H went for a job in his core company, Electronics and R got a job in a small s/w company. Then R told her family about H and wished to get married to him. H had already told in his family and in his family no body had any objection. But, things were not easy in R’s family. They denied completely. They denied because he is not a Brahmin, that too he is a Punjabi, he is not into any good job and many such reasons. They waited, patiently, in the hope that someday R’s parents would agree and they would start their life together. In between R got a job here in kolkata, in my company. She came over to this place. Before coming here H told her to do registry marriage. But she denied; she wanted her family’s permission for her marriage… she wanted to wait a little more.
Then she came here. Till then her family thought that she had forgotten H as she never talked to them again after their refusal. So they started looking for suitable candidates for her. When she came to know about this, she again brought out the topic of getting married to H; same arguments, refusals started all over again. She got fed up, called up H one day and asked him to come here. She arranged everything on her own for their marriage and when H arrived, they got married here, in a temple, followed by a registered marriage in presence of 2 of her colleagues. She did not tell her parents about it, but H’s family knew it and they supported them. Finally after one year or so H also got a job in the same company and came here to stay with R. As I have already written that I am staying with the couple, ( I mean, obviously in a different room, but in the same flat… but thank God that I am going to shift to some other place very soon ), sometimes I can eavesdrop some of their conversations with R’s family over phone… well I don’t mean to hear that, but then they are gifted with so loud voices that I have to hear all those things even if I try my best, not to.
Just 2 or 3 days back, they were arguing with R’s mother. I had met R’s parents some months back. They had come to Kolkata and stayed with us. As far as I had felt, they are good people, at least not some ones who will beat their daughter. But R always tells me that they will beat her enough to make her not to come back here, once she goes back to her house. I don’t know why, but I never believed her, especially after meeting her parents. They are so simple and humble that you will love them. (on the other hand, I doubt R can beat them… haha… … there is another incident, I will write some other time, where she had taken Maa Durga’s form and beaten my third roommate 6 months back!!!).
OK, I am diverting too much from the topic at hand, let me go back to the original topic. So R & H were arguing with R’s mother over the phone, which I overheard while trying to actually sleep in my room. I heard R shouting at her mom, and then I heard H trying his conversational skills over the phone. Here are few lines which I could remember till now from his bakwaas
R aur mein ek saath itna khus hain ki hume aur kisiki jarurat nahi hai… (We are so happy with each other that we don’t need anybody else.)
Mein R ko aap log ke paas nahi bhejunga… mein agar kahunga to woh jarur jayegi, lekin mein use yeh nahi bolunga… (I wont let R go to you people… if I would say her to go then she would surely go but I wont do that…)
aap bas ek baar bol dijie ki R aapki koi nahi hai to mein khud aapko meri aur R ki shaadi me invite karunga (you just tell us once that you no more own R, then I, myself will surely invite you to our marriage.)
I don’t know exactly why, but I cried that night. I thought about R’s parents. They are pleading her to come back. Well, it is different thing that she does not want to go back, but H is saying all these rubbish things to her parents.
I put myself in that situation. What would I have done then? Firstly, I hate the way H talks. Obviously I could never have liked that person. He behaves as if he is the only knowledgeable person in this whole world… Whatever he says is correct and no body has nay right to oppose him…
Okay let us think that I like some body else, and my parents deny our relationship… would I elope with him??? Obviously not!! I will try my best to convince my parents… mind my words…I said convince… not force!! I would not do something stupid as committing suicide. Now that does not mean that I will dump the person whom I love. I don’t know whether I am correct or not, but one thing I have learnt is that no relationship can be forced on anyone. If forced, that relationship loses its charms and it sucks out all the happiness from your life. and somebody had told me “jab maa-baap khus nahhi rehtet, tab bachhe kabhie kisi haal me bhi khus nahi reh sakte…” (when parents are not happy, children can never be happy in any condition). I would have never abandoned my parents like that. I would have waited.
Now let me put myself in situation where the parents of my beloved are denying. I would never have advised him to elope… I would have waited for his parents and him to be ready to accept this relationship. Now it is different thing that everything would have depended on him. If he decides to dump me and get married to someone his parents chose, then I would have accepted it. I do respect his parents as well as my parents. But I never would have forced him to marry me. I could not have done that (and I did not!!). if someone can not convince his/her parents then how do you expect to convince someone else’s parents??? You know, it would have hurted a lot (and it hurts), but I still believe that your life, your happiness revolves around your parents. As long as they are not happy you can never be happy. At some point of your life you will regret. At some point of your life you will be also someone’s parents and then you will know how it hurts when children don’t listen to you.
I don’t know whether I am right or wrong, but you know what, this is a problem, in which you try to put yourself in any situation, in anybody’s place, you will always lose something. Some one will lose his/her parents’ love, someone would lose his/her love, and someone would lose his /her son/daughter.
These age old caste systems will destroy our lives; so may lives are already destroyed. Still people do not understand. Parents denying, children running away from homes, splitting families, broken hearts… this is our society. And I belong to this society, I pity on me. I pity on every single person who has been a victim of this society, may it be a family whose daughter ran away, a family whose son abandoned his aging parents, a person whose beloved dumped him/her because her/his parents denied, or a person whose family disowned him/her because he/she wanted to marry someone who does not belong to his/her caste.
I am fed up with all these things and I need some fresh air to breathe.
I can not help R & H; they are old enough to take their decisions… they know more than me… may be they are right in whatever they are doing. But somehow, I detest being R’s room mate.
January 25, 2008
Filed under: Down the memory lane..., Friends..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 4:46 PM
We have a proverb in odia, “Tulasi dui patra ru baase…”, which literally means that, basil’s seedling is recognized from the smell of its 2 leaves. And if you read between the lines, then it means that one can predict what a child will become when it grows up, from the child’s activities. If a child is good at studies then everybody assumes that he/she will be a successful individual in the future.
I was never very good at studies. I was OK. When I was in upper primary school, I used to have a friend CP. He was a very talented student and my tough competitor. I was jealous of him. He was good at mathematics, science, history, geography, Oriya, drawing,… everything… he was an ideal student and I always tried to be like him. Every teacher knew him and always praised him. It was not that teachers did not know me, but still I felt that he was loved more than me. In the last year of that school, just before going to high school, he got the “best boy” award and I got the “best girl” award for that academic year. The local news paper which covered this event printed his name in the next issue, but my name was missing. I felt bad that day and thought that, may be being a “best boy” is better than being a “best girl”!!! He was a good friend of mine, still it never came out of my mind that he is better than me and I felt sorry for myself.
Then we went to different high schools. I went to girls’ high school and he went to the boys’ high school. And after that I never heard his name. I heard so many boys’ names getting good marks in the boys’ high school, but his name was not among them, as if he just vanished from there. Still then I considered him to be my competitor and so never tried to find out where he is. I knew that he was studying in that school only. I started to progress in my studies. Scoring well in the high school was little tougher for me as there were many students and many were talented. Competition was harder there. I tried my best. I never came first in the whole class till the end. But I had come second… that too for lagging the first ranker by 2 marks only. Still I was happy that I could stand in the competition.
Then came college days… I am from a Odia medium school and after 10th we don’t have any other option except to go to college for 11th and 12th. We do not have 11th and 12th in school. Then I had almost forgotten about CP. Then came my BTECH days – 4 years. No news about CP. Actually I never remembered him. I had so many good students to compete with that I forgot my that friend because of whom I had learned to compete.
Then it is been almost 1 and ½ year since I came out of my home town for my job. Never thought of him. Then suddenly, yesterday, I found out that Orkut was no more blocked in the office and I had no work to do. So I logged in and started looking for some old school friends. Found one friend; and there, in his friend’s list I found one very familiar face. It was CP. I could not help myself but to contact him again.
At this stage, almost everybody miss school friends. We were friends, since the time when we did not even know what friendship meant. And after so many years of forgetting, (almost after 13 years), I was overwhelmed by the memories….
The day we had painted the whole class room walls with our water color brushes. How he had done a very good painting on the wall and everybody praised him while I had done a small cartoon and everybody said it was OK. How afterwards, we played holi with the remaining colors, how he had painted my teeth blue!!! How I had felt so Superior, the day when I was announced the first monitor of the class and he was announced the second monitor. How we had been punished for not doing the monitoring properly and the whole 7TH standard, C section had stood on the bench for the whole lunch break. How I had teased him when he got his head shaved for some religious reason. How he had always called me “Moti” and never called me by my name. How we used to collect 10 paisa from each student to buy duster and broom for the class room.
Everything came up so clearly in mind… as if somebody just wiped away the time’s dust layers of all these past years from my memories. I sent him a friend’s request and posted a scrap asking whether he recognizes me or not. Then I anxiously waited for his reply. After 3 or 4 hours he replied. He still remembered me. I was so happy. Then we exchanged few scraps there in orkut, but found it to be very slow for communication. So we switched to gtalk and started chatting there online. I asked him what he is doing now. He said that he is still studying architecture. He is in his last semester and still had not got through any campus interview. Life has changed for him after the upper primary school. He was not a good student at the high school and never tried to be. He is doing a part time job somewhere in my hometown. I found him being changed a lot. What a mischievous, active and fun loving boy he used to be and now he has changed so much. I asked him just once, “What happened in high school?? I never heard your name after that??”, he replied, “lets not talk about that… history is history…”
I did not asked again… rather changed the subject. We talked about other friends. Exchanged our cell numbers and promised to be in touch hence forth. While going back to home yesterday, I was thinking about him. What has happened to such a bright student? Everybody was expecting him to be so successful. And there he is… so much lost in his own world… away from the past glorious days of his life. I am not saying that I am a successful individual. But I had least expected HIM to be without a job at this stage when every good student of my batch is well settled with a job in hand. I never bothered till now, but after talking to him I found out that he has lost his self confidence. The brightness of his face is missing. He seems tired. I don’t know what went wrong with him, but I felt sorry for him.
I wish I could do anything for him. After all, I had learned how to compete from him only. I hope he will overcome whatever barriers he is facing now and he will be able to reconstruct his life. I just wish him all the best. He is the first and best competitor of my life.
January 23, 2008
Filed under: Behind the screen..., Very strange!!, uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 3:21 PM
I have come to my hometown for 3 days. I will be boarding the train tomorrow at 6 AM for going back to the place where I work. After I started maintaining my own blog, I have so many topics to write about that I get confused and end up writing absolutely NOTHING. Today I want to write about my mom. I call her “Bou”. I am from Orissa and in odia language “Bou” means maa. There are some strange incidents happening around me. I don’t remember the exact time n date previously and I did not mention it somewhere. But now as I have a platform where I can express it, I want to write it down.
Just yesterday, I took Bou for shopping to a nearby market. From there we went to a self help restaurant to have a quick snack. We ordered something like dosha and all. Then I searched a seat to sit down and told Bou to sit there and came over to another counter to order a milk shake. When I was waiting there, I heard the sound of bangles clinking and suddenly I felt that this clink belongs to my Bou’s bangles. I was around 100 feet away from the place where Bou was sitting. So, I almost smiled to myself and thought what a fool I am. There are around 10 women present there and for Indian custom, all the married women should wear bangles. That clink of bangles can belong to anybody. Still I turned around and looked in the direction where Bou was sitting. But I was surprised to see that actually she had walked to the counter and taking the dosha to the seat and that’s why her bangles clinked against each other. I was thrilled!!
This is not the first time this thing happened to me. From the childhood, I could recognize my mother’s bangles clinking within so many other ladies present nearby. And now I can remember that, few years back I had discussed this thing with my brother too. He had also agreed to the same thing. It is really astonishing…
How can a clink of bangles identify somebody?? Sometimes I feel that a mother-child relationship is really so much sacred. A child stays in its mother’s womb for 9 months. May be, then it hears all those clink-clank of its mother’s bangles and from then onwards, it can actually recognize the special sound. How amazing…
Does anybody have such experience?
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