YOU KNOW WHAT HURTS ?

When you have tried your 100 per cent to be your best self and no one acknowledges it.

When your family shows that they really don’t care about you as an individual.

When you have to justify yourself to people who you thought had at last learned to believe in your integrity and worth.

When you realize that however much you try to improve yourself, others will never let you forget your past.

When you realize raising your voice in protest against wrongs can be read simplistically and crudely as bad-tempered behaviour.

When you realize that love is futile, because blood always turns out to be thicker than even the most self-effacing affection.

When you have to struggle to survive, to establish your self on sterile grounds.

When you realize you are considered a burden, rather than an asset in what you had almost accepted as home.

When you realize that you have given up much of what really mattered for people to whom you don’t really matter.

When there are thoughts, wounds, tears you cannot share with anyone except your own little blog.

MADLY BENGALEE : DURGA PUJO, HERE AND THERE

During our stay in New Jersey for a period of 13 months, we happened to visit the pujos at Ananda Mandir and Bharat Shevasram Sangha, the closest we could hope to approximate in terms of pujo porikroma in 2008.On the evening of Shashthi, after a sumptuous lunch at our friends’ place, a film at Regal Cinemas and a bit of grocery shopping at Patel's Cash & Carry in Somerset, we finally sauntered into the pujo at Ananda Mandir. The milieu was entirely akin to that of a ghorowa pujo, my perception owing much to the thinner but quite-at-ease crowd and the friendly banter that floated to and fro, across the hall when we ousiders entered it for the first time. It was rather chilly that day and the warmth of the gathering was infectious. We left after paying obeisance to the goddess and the ubiquitous round of photography. A tall gentleman in a rust coloured panjabi politely solicited us to partake of bhog. We said we would come back. We had other plans, none of which included paying $40 per head for a single night's dinner. More so when you still haven't outgrown the habit of calculating the rupee equivalent.

Bharat Shevasram Sangha was a pleasant surprise for the senses. It had already distinguished itself from the other pujos by its determination to rigidly adhere to the Indian time of worship. That was a feat, taking into account the fact that US pujo takes place only on weekends, auspicious time or not. But now, apart from that, there were other novelties. I wondered at the presence of so many Bangalis when I had already reconciled myself with the significant absence of the commmunity from the locality where we lived, Somerville. We were greeted by a crowd that jostled but did not push, where sarees and skirts, dhutis and jeans shared wardrobe space, where the infectious rhythm of dhaaker baajna intersected with the American accents of NRIs and an announcement of the "recitation of a kobita", where patiently queueing up for choronamrito, proshad and vegetarian bhog ( jeera rice, alur dom, chholar daal, papad, chaatni ) did not deter the public from generous donations in dollar notes and where traditional christmas tree decorations cohered with colourful hand-painted thermocol cut-outs of dhaakis. I was impressed at the disciplined mass that offered pushpanjali to the goddess and stood eating a spartan bhog in open spaces around a makeshift tent, respecting the spirit of the festival and the essence of the gathering. The volunteers were simultaneously friendly and firm, the children playful and difficult, the worshippers devout and doubtful but the atmosphere was indubitably peaceful and pious. My heart went out in reverence for the monks at the ashram who were managing so many and so much with so little help and so much humility. Tomosho ma jyotirgomoyoh.

What struck me most about Durga Pujo 2009 was the fact that it was the presence of our friends and family in Kolkata and the re-igniting of familiar sensations that made our homecoming so special for us. There was nothing very radical we did this year as a matter of fact. We did the routine rounds of Maddox Square, Dumdum Park, Labony Estate, Ekdalia Evergreen, Ballygunge Cultural, Paddapukur, FD Block, Bosepukur, Bagbazar etc amidst the usual maddening crowds and uneasy humidity. We did not cook at home, eating out instead at a couple of new restaurants and a few old favourites (by default, mindlessly opting for the standard Chinese and Bengali fare), totally oblivious to the mounting calories. We wore what the media impressed upon us as very unique and trendy attire this year and muddled up our aantel intellects by trying to make mental notes of the latest fashion dos and don’ts. We devoured the latest sharodiyo shonkhya of the traditional pujo magazines. We kept aside our most expensive and arresting attire for the Ashtami-r anjali and waited irritably for the pongkti-bhoj to start so that we could soothe our growling stomachs and disappear soon after for some wholesome adda and the indispensable diba-nidra. We sat fidgeting, only half-attentive to the nrityogeeti and natok at our respective para functions, wondering where the lady in the next row had bought that awesome dhakai jamdaani (damn it, she was looking so irresistibly glam) and who the neighbourhood heart-throb was spending the time of day with on such intimate terms !

What then was unique about this pujo ? Maybe it was the sheer creative spectrum embodied in each pujo mondop, big or small, defiantly countering in art the lurid political panorama looming over our deceptively stable social microcosms ? Maybe it was the relief at being able to sense anew what every Bengali feels during this festive season : that these sacred five days will pass by all too soon and then there shall be the entire one year (of endless bandhs, bypass surgeries and bland jhol-bhaat) to endure before we are all together in spirit once more, celebrating our culture and our lifestyle. Maybe it was the realization that this one time of the year, we manage to forget our mundane existences and live on in a trance of dhaaker badyi induced psychedelia, certain that we can garner from the auspicious montro and the blessed bhog the shokti to metamorphose the humdrum into the hallowed, the chaotic into the cosmic.

Otherwise why was it that after a whole year of absence in my motherland, my pujo reconciled me to all that I had missed in a whole year and made me feel that it did not matter after all : I was home at last ? Ma Herself had accompanied me here and although she returned to her husband’s abode all too soon, she did leave me a happy human being : Madly Bengalee !

Ad-ing to our Woes !

At last, we’ve managed to sell off all our living room furniture. The latter included a sofa set, a coffee/centre table, a TV with wooden stand, a floor lamp and a small storage unit, popularly known as a microwave table. With the disposal of these items, it feels like a huge load of responsibility has been taken off our minds. Another actual proof, I suppose, of how material issues engage our lives to an idiotic extent. Among the residual and mostly minor items left is a metal strolley, a bucket, a pedestal fan, an iron and ironing board, a toaster and a couple of chairs. The car has verbally been booked, a monetary advance due over the weekend and a deal worked out that’ll keep both parties happy, that is, the buyer pays a certain amount less and we keep the car till the last possible day. Now all we have to bother ourselves with, one would presume, are the cleaning and packing. But well, the amount of trouble I had to go through to sell off the furniture was enough to make me feel like I should purge myself of pent-up stress by penning the whole saga.

First, let’s talk of the ads. Nothing in the ads, be it the tagline (enticing words like ‘great price’ or ‘’real deal’ or really cheap’) or the content (where my favourite pastime, photography came into play) or the actual low prices quoted seemed to be of much help in drawing customers in person. I first advertised on a Thursday afternoon and hardly anyone responded till the weekend except one lady named Virginia, who wished to buy the 5-bulb floor lamp with colourful shades and recently purchased CFL bulbs. She was the only person who was prompt in replying to the ad by mail, following it up with another mail (once we gave her our contact details and fixed up an appointment), then a phone call, and finally her august person on Sunday morning. She didn’t even require any assistance, although K did offer to dismantle the lamp for her, in case that made things easier to handle. Politely turning down the offers to help, she paid the amount quoted in cash without the embarrassment of bargaining and ended up carrying the unwieldy Hydra of a lamp back to her SUV on her back herself. We couldn’t but help be impressed !

But then she was an exception. Even the car ads on the weekend triggered off several phone calls but produced no one actual customer, who was resolved to come over in person to show proof of his interest in the item on sale. I tried refreshing the furniture ads on sulekha and craigslist, which was executed without much of a problem on the former, but met with an unexpected obstacle in the latter. I was warned that if removing the ad only to repost it for the sake of top-posting took place within a specified time and date, my ad was in danger of being considered spam, or worse, deleted. Now that was a setback of sorts. And yet, top-posting was a compulsion, since hundreds of ads were posted in a particular category per day and it was practically impossible to expect potential buyers to spend hours poring over the list for that day with endless energy. Finally, after racking my brains for several mins, I came up with a solution. Of course ! I could re-post it as a fresh ad from K’s a/c in that particular site. No sooner said than done. I made some other changes as well. I converted the keywords’ font to bold and upper case with a bit of lower case thrown in between to provide relief to one’s eyes. Other baits were thrown in, in the form of free bonuses like vases and soft toys (which we’d have given away in any case). I also reduced the asking price of the sofa set by about $20.
I wondered what would happen next.

A lot, it seems. I was flooded with phone queries regarding the availability of the sofa set that afternoon. The queries incorporated some odd questions like whether we had pets and whether the fabric of the sofa was cotton or not. The latter was tough on me, I being so ignorant about fabrics in general. The only thing I was able to confirm with reasonable confidence was that the material was definitely some sort of natural fabric. Another caller wanted to know how long we’d had the sofa or been using it. The next few phone calls were more forthright and mostly from Indians responding to the sulekha ads, The callers were men and asked more relevant questions relating to when they could actually come down and have a look at the articles on sale. One of them, a stammering South Indian, called from his office in Princeton in the evening and wanted to know if he could come over within an hour. I was in a bit of a fix, as I'd already assigned the respective times of 6.30 pm and 8 pm to 2 other parties who’d expressed interest in coming over to inspect the furniture that evening. I didn’t want to put Murali (the aforementioned S Indian with a nervous stammer) in an embarrassing situation, where multiple parties were bidding for the same object of contention. Fortunately, K entered at that moment and told me to go ahead and ask him to come over straightaway as it's a quite common experience to find most of the expected parties not turning up after all. In fact, the 6.30 pm party belonged to that species of traitors. But Murali did keep his word and was impressed enough to buy the coffee table and microwave unit and carry it off straightaway. K helped him with the latter, pleased to finally be able to dispose of these major furniture items, now that we were actually heading home. They took such a while to get the coffee table into the back of the car that I called up K on his cell to ask if there was a problem. He said no, Murali had just been taking his time to adjust the car-seat (for infants) at the back to make way for the microwave table. I was glad to hear that, for the next thing I did was to put a couple of soft toys we had in the inner panel of the microwave table and ask Murali to consider them a gift from us to his little son. He looked really pleased and touched at that and thanked us in his own special stammering manner.

A couple of hours later, the 8.30 pm party, two brothers named Vishal and Vikas arrived to take a look at the sofa. It was sweet the way the two interacted, the former so evidently protective of his younger sibling and eager to see him settled in a reasonably comfortable surroundings, which occasioned their interest in our sofa set. I was discussing the merits and demerits of the sofa but was interrupted midway by Vishal, who announced in a hearty booming voice that the only criteria that the sofa needed to meet for them to approve of it were his brother’s taste and the said furniture’s ability to withstand his own weight without totally giving way under it. That was plausible, considering that Vishal was a 6 foot tall strapping hulk of a fellow, as broad as he was tall, with a considerable paunch and a lot of excess fat at his disposal (besides the extreme patience he sported in answering umpteen phone calls within the short span of time he spent at our place that evening). I laughed, saying I wouldn’t want to comment on that anyhow. Vikas looked quite comfortable, once he'd made himself comfortable on the three-seater. They were, a s a matter of fact, unexpectedly polite, not even venturing to touch the sofa unless I gave them a go-ahead of some sort. That was a novelty in my experience and indeed that of many others, as far as I’m aware of. Well, to cut a long story short, they decided to buy the sofa set and carried it out to their cars with K’s help. Here, we were in for a pleasant surprise. K came back after his second exit (with the loveseat) beaming. On being asked about the source of such glee, he announced that the brothers Sharma had decided that the deal we were offering on our TV and its stand (which I'd casually mentioned to them, wondering if they knew any interested parties) was too good to be passed over and so they were going to take immediate advantage of it. Now that was good news indeed ! It only meant that there was going to be no TV for us for the next week or so, which caused K more sorrow than it did me, since I only watch a couple of cooking and travel shows at lunch and a sitcom in the evening or night. K however looked and indeed confessed to feeling quite unhappy at this sudden turn of events, used as he was to his daily dose of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’, ‘Friends’, ‘Seinfield’ and ‘George Lopez’. But of course, at that particular point of time, selling off all the furniture seemed overwhelmingly more of a priority than getting our usual fare of TV programmes. So we reconciled ourselves to the unhappy truth that ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ was the last film we’d watched on our beloved piece of electronics. So Sharma and Co departed soon after, with a bonus in the form of a couple of glass vases in excellent condition, one of which I was particularly sorry to part with, as it had been a gift from a dear friend on our 1st marriage anniversary, which we’d spent here. But it was impractical to carry back home and I had long since hardened my mind to the anticipated inevitability of its sale.

The house looked strange indeed after the sale of the major items of furniture ; and that is something I find very unnerving, the anguish that attaches to a house that is no longer home. I couldn’t help feeling that there’s nothing half as upsetting as the look and feel of a house that is soon to be vacated and all I could think of was my relief that our days in that apartment, and indeed, this country, are numbered, and that there is a permanent home that we are soon to return to after all.

Happier times :






(more updates later...)