Metamorphosis

Akashbani Kolkata. Khobor podchi Debdulal Bandopadhyay. Aajker bishesh bishesh khobor holo.

The place has changed. In leaps and bounds. In terra bytes and lumens. In concrete and steel. In glasses and chromes. In decibels and tenor. In lies and statistics.

But still the heart aches for the italicized words. Romanticized in its rich baritone as we ran for the school bus.

Like the pathos of the Doordarshan title track.
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A quotation

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. -Franz Kafka.
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Miracles

Wish. The only power that makes miracles. A wish so strong that makes you forget hunger thirst and sleep. A wish that empowers the world to do as you please.

A wish that is a belief and confidence. A wish we call God's miracle.
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Spider Man

The original spider man was Robert Bruce. Remember that guy who got inspired by the spider , metaphysically speaking of course. The cartoon took it one step. It let the spider bite - that too a biologically modified one. And voila ! You have a world web web.

But coming back to Mr Bruce. He got such a kick watching that he just went out and smashed all.

Point is that we are supposed to learn from this. Perseverance. But let us come to the rider. That guy had nothing to do in that God forsaken cave. But watch how the web broke.
This was not told in clear terms.

I mean if you have nothing to do, you can mug up the grammar of Sanskrit. But being good boys and girls, we left the unsaid to learn the lesson of infinite trials.

And man we paid. We all became literate but not learned.

As my son digs his own niche , this thought hit me.

Poor child. And her short sighted teacher. May God give him marks and the teacher her salary.
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A tribute on a happy teacher's day

Dear Miss,

I am so happy that you are my teacher. For i have learnta  lot. Not only what is in curriculum, but also what is outside. Let us take mathematics. We have learnt to skip chapters and makde all courses complete - so fast that S C Sircar would flusha deep red in embarrasment. YOu taught us to fight for ourseleves - so you leave the class giving your botes to one of us to teach to the others. Just imagine madam, teh delight we had in self reliance. The maths process you said did not end up getting the result as printed at the back of the book. But what the heck ! It is the adventure of going on wrong trails that's intyerseting, is not it ? And mam,, look at the family cohesiveness you have brought. Our evenings are spent together trying to decipher what you taught. Just imagine mam, we now have dads searching other dads out to compare notes. And mam, the English ! Wren & Martin is obsolete english , that I know now mam. And my classwork copy would send Chambers and Oxford in a suicide pact. But do not worry mam, like maths - the true reader knows what we wanted to express. And thrid language - I know mam, it is a third degree torture. I appreciate your teaching or lack of teaching- after all what is it's use ? We are all going to be engineers & doctors , right ? Thanks mam, for asking for peculiar handicraft projects. It's really helping our economy - the shopkeepers are happy mam.

And in the eventuality that we end up faltering in adding or writing something that appears to be English words, we would always have our projects to fall back.

Happy Teachers Day.

On a story

Always wondered how a story should be. When I was a small kid, a story was always a walk into a wonderland. The castles were then not built in thin air. And reall there were Rapunzels and you did not wonder what Garnier magic that was. Humpty Dumpty really was a simple egg shell fellow who just broke. There were no other connotations.

And then education stepped in. Spitfire questions on a carpet bombing mission. The only anti aircraft battery we had were our memories where formatted answers snuggled in to fetch marks.

Tennyson's Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead was a Class five misadventure. A oxymoronic Noun leading a sentence lost its nuance on a moron trying to figure out why would a mother cry when the ciild is placed in her lap in front of her dead husband.

It's like a chef having a dinner somewhere while trying to figure how the dish was prepared. It resulted in tasting without feeling.

Then we were made to understand appreciation of poetry - a peek a boo into the author's life or rather appreciating the compulsion that compelled him to do so dastardly an act of recording feelings for posterity. Why should we be asked to feel what he had felt. In hindsIght, it somehow exposes the inadequacy of words in expressing such ephemeral things as feelings. A Phantom of Delight would rarely ever evoke the flutter of a heart that the poet ever had felt.

Why not stories be as they are ? A melange of tastes that seduce the reader as the words unfold ? Let the words take their time to tantalize the reader in their understated delicacy as the reader delves into the myriad colors of imagination. And if some meanings are there to be excavated , let that be the residue of the fragrance after you have savored the base smell.

Written on Shatabdi while going to Ranchi.
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