Kgp ki bandi....

Yes... we are intelligent and smart and beautiful!! And proud of it too! Not "arrogant" as you put it. And why shouldn't we be! You can't stand it when you see a girl more confident than yourself... and you call it arrogance! And you question our beauty! Well that's a lot to digest from someone like you. If you are so busy with all the little things that you do and you don't even have the time to bathe (or shave or get a haircut or change your shirt more than once a week)..... then we can definitely be pardoned for not having the time or patience to look like Christmas trees.

And what else? Too "career-oriented"? "Self-centred"? Well shouldn't we be? Aren't you? Nobody is going to give us jobs for our culinary skills (which might not be so good, but they are better than yours any day) . And we use you, do we? Stop being used, for starters. And secondly, hasn't a guy ever taken advantage of you "naive" nature? Stop generalizing. Live with it.

You say that you are much humbler than we are. We behave like "queens", do we? O well, you can't really afford to act like a king, can you? Unfortunately, we are heavily outnumbered out here by you guys and no girl is going to pay any attention to you if you start behaving like you own the world. So, for you, being nice is kind of the only option. And trust me, if the day ever comes that we outnumber you (I pray for that happy day) then your "niceness" towards us will decrease considerably. And then I am going to say "I told you so!".

In the meantime, try dating a guy.

I got a story to tell!

This is a story I had read sometime back. I had loved it at that time and I still do, though as the years have passed and I have grown considerably more skeptical, there are certainly some things that I don't like about it now! You will hear about those things too. Anyway, here goes......oh and by the way, I don't really remember the story as I had read it, so most of it is a result of my hyper-active imagination and bad memory.

Once there lived a handsome little bird who loved adventure. He loved to fly, he loved to discover new lands, he loved the feel of the wind as it brushed his feathers. This adventurous little fellow had seen more than any of his friends, but he didn't fly to go places, he traveled because it set him free... because he wanted to... and because it was just who he was.

So, you might have guessed that this is going to turn into a love story! Well, yes it is. It was a beautiful rose who saw this little bird and fell in love with him. She loved his free and proud spirit....the way he would listen to nobody and would stop for nobody. She yearned to be close to him and to ask him about the faraway lands he had been to. Whenever the bird flew past, she would look at him in wonder. Little did she know that the bird wanted to be with her too! But our proud little hero, who claimed to be fearless, wasn't any different from the other birds when it came to love! He fought his feelings for some time.... but then he had to give in.....

One day the bird approached the rose. He was overcome by her beauty and her sweet fragrance. The day soon gave way to night and then the night ended very fast. In due course of time, the shy young couple fell deeply in love, and realized that they couldn't do without each other. (In the actual sense, not in the Kgp sense.) They were very happy together.

But the bird missed his journeys. He wanted to fly again, and he did, but it wasn't the same any more, he never felt that he could go anywhere in the world with nothing to stop him. He knew that he could never do that again for the sake of the rose. The rose was bowled over by this sacrifice, and the bird thought that it had been worth making.

But things began to change..... as the days went by, the bird wasn't the same any more. He no longer had the same freedom of spirit that the rose had fallen in love with, he no longer was the charming hero of her dreams. The rose began to regret having chained down the bird. They realized that they had lost themselves, in trying to own each other.

The bird was flying one day, when a cool breeze tempted him away.... he went along with it, and then he realized that he had to go back. Just a bit more..... he told himself, and so he did go a bit more. And he went farther and farther till he reached a point where he knew that he wouldn't go back, because he didn't want to. So he continued with his adventure and for the first time in ages, felt truly alive......

The end. So that's the story I had to tell. Very nice. Very profound. Clap clap clap. Well yes, I agree, that it is good and the message is definitely something I believe in, and of course I believe that it's easier to preach than practice. Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. My first objection to this story is that the rose is a rose. Or a flower for that matter! I mean, the only thing she ever does in the whole story is just sit around and look pretty and smell nice! So, that's a bad thing. Seems like the person who wrote this story was a bird married to a nagging flower! Was that offensive? I don't know.

But more importantly, the practicality of the matter. I mean, this story obviously isn't for birds and roses (who don't really care much about each other, I'm sure). What if the rose were a very reasonable flower and the bird would his fly away on his adventures every now and then? Would that necessarily be a good thing? I mean, I know that freedom is important, but I find it so very difficult to know where to draw the line, or rather, if there should be a line at all. Maybe there shouldn't be. But imagine this..... suppose the bird were a naughty one, and would every now and then forget the rose who loves him, and want to do stuff with some arbitrary orchids who he meets on his travels!!! Then, what does the poor rose do! Sadly enough, the little fables that we read do not answer such questions! Anyway, I'm sure that the only thing for the rose to do would be find another bird, preferably an ostrich this time.

Well, jokes apart, I believe in freedom, but I also realize that it's easier to demand your own freedom, than to grant someone his freedom. And moreover, freedom means different things to different people. To me, freedom is not the lack of commitment.... rather it's the ability to choose what is best for you and to commit to that. And having said that, I know how hard it is to love someone so much to be able to let him do whatever he wants.

Back to things I love

Its been so long since I wrote when I actually didn't have to! That's a sad realization for someone who used to pour out her feelings on paper at the slightest provocation. Well, for starters, the paper's gone! No one in his right mind uses paper any more. So I'm following the trend..... getting used to pouring out on my keyboard now! But It's a different kind of feeling from the times a few years back when I managed to fill my drawers will papers full of feelings so deep (:P) that I would be too embarrassed to show them to anyone at all. Well, there they are still, unread and gathering dust... and well, it is kind of embarrassing to show people your writings (unless you are an established writer and people find out diverse interpretations of your lines when they actually just mean what they mean.)

So......back to things I love. Someone has just asked me to write a book!!! Well, interesting thought... and moreover it was a childhood dream to see my name up on a shelf at a bookstore, some day. But, being as impatient as I am (well, for the uninitiated, I am very impatient) let me tell you that I had started out more than once, and then abandoned it mid-way. But yes, its nice to know that someone still remembers the dream that I had myself forgotten. Thanks a million for that! And I promise to try.

Writers always say that writing gives them this feeling of never wanting to stop.... the feeling that the most important thing in their lives is to share their thoughts and that they could never make out why anybody in the world would not want to write. Funnily enough, I can completely relate to that. Writing was my passion, that thing that could make me forget everything else in the world, and make everyone wait till I was done with the very last word. Well, that last sentence was oddly intense! Forgive me for being melodramatic.... but I guess I really mean that.

So, I am back to writing for good! I should have never given it up in the first place. I mean, I can always say that I had other things, but then, this feeling that I am getting at this very instant, while writing these words..... is something I cant really describe. I missed it so much. And besides, I have so much more to say right now. After I left school, I have learnt so much, and changed too.... I have beautiful memories, and deep scars too.... I learnt that the terrible things that I could't imagine happening to one of us while I was in school, do actually happen to real people just like us. But I know that we have to fill our scars will our beautiful memories, because those are the things that make our life worth it. So, I treasure the happy times, and laugh about the naughty times, and learn from the bad times. Yes..... I have many other such sermons to deliver! And sadly enough for you, I will deliver them.

Ankik Da.....

Ankik da... someone who would strike you as incapable as doing anything that could even remotely be called "normal". That is what we all love about him. And somehow I never realized how much I did till 2 days ago, a day that I know will haunt me for all time to come.... But that is not what I want to remember, and it isnt what i want to share with anyone who reads this. I want to share with them the good times we had all spent with him.

Ankik da and I hadnt talked in a long time, our last communication had been over gtalk, when I was having one of my intern funda sessions. Well, it wasnt just that.... with Ankik da you could never restrict the amount of talking that goes on! He could go on and on about anything on earth. So there was some girl funda that he needed, (somehow or the other, he always did...he was completely at a loss about women!) then we discussed the possibility that he was gay (yeah, that used to be one of our hot topics of discussion, and we would never get tired of it), and then he would ask something totally random that would make no sense to any sane person on earth. And what would follow was totally "classic Ankik da"! Ei eta ki amar bole thik korlam....Amar ki eta bola uchit hoyni.... (Did I do the right thing by saying this? Shouldnt I have said that?) And he would never ask once, neither would he ever ask just a single person! He would turn the whole world upside down over things that you wouldnt ever notice.

We hated his choice in clothes! Anybody would! But he never cared, and he just loved doing things differently, maybe he even loved the fact that we hated them! It would always give a lot of room for talks... and boy, did he love to talk!!!He would never be happy being just one in the crowd. So when he went to a shoe store looking for sandals, he would buy the fluorescent orange ones, claiming that he had bought the first ones he had seen. He said that it was "sundor, ujjwal" (beautiful,bright). We would always wonder how the first things he ever saw anywhere were the abnormal ones. And he loved pink.Pink T-shirts, flowery shirts, red three quarters, torn jeans... each of these would lead to a series of terrible PJs, which would take care of not only the rest of the evening, but also the rest of the night and a part of next morning as well...yeah, he never slept, or that is what I always felt.

I could never imagine Ankik da sleeping, or feeling sleepy, or feeling tired... or for that matter, seeing him in any other state than the one he was in. I could never imagine him sad, or crying. I just thought that he was incapable of being anything except either happy and laughing, or at other times so serious and dedicated that it drove you nuts! But never sad, that I could never imagine. We called him tempo da. Where he got all that tempo, how he kept it up, and how he would drive it into everyone around him...that none of us ever discovered.

He would drive people crazy, asking about their studies. After results were out, sometimes I would keep away from him. He had this uncanny knack of asking your CGPA when you were least expecting it, and when you wanted to say it the least. And he wouldnt rest till we told him. We always wondered how many hours he put into his studies, but he always came out a 9-pointer. He was brilliant. And we all knew it. We just always wondered how he did it, he was that kind of a person... someone who makes you always made you wonder. Then he would tell us to study well, but we hardly ever listened, we always tried to change the topic.

Ankik da was a chicken-destroyer! The first time we discovered that 'Murga Masala' existed at Kgp, he was there with us! And it drove him crazy! It drove us all crazy. But he had repented so much that the day he discovered this out of the world dish, was just months away from his graduation date. But he made sure that he had his share of Murga Masala by then! On picnics we would always try to fill him up with potato fries, or posto, or chutney, and keep him away from the chicken...and he would curse us like hell. I remember him ordering me to never serve food to him ever again, and it was hilarious. The day he said that, we made him eat a whole glass of sickeningly sweet chutney, which he would recall every now and then!

He used to teach us 3rd class dance steps... tap khol, cycle chala, shower on, flush kor....these were the steps he showed us with every expression of seriousness on his face. He was an awesome dancer, and he could make people dance...if he could make me dance, then that speaks for itself!

There are so many more things to say, but nothing will ever be enough. And now there are certain images in my mind, that I know will never be erased. Somehow those are the images that are floating before me every time I am alone and quiet. I just want to say, I will never forget you, Ankik da.