Desires... Wants... Needs... and our Being

'As tough as wanting something can be ... the people who suffer the most are those who don't know exactly what they want...'  or so says Meredith ...

Have you ever lain on snow, full length, limbs sprawled ? I have...
 Its a great feeling...
Staring up at the dark night sky, from a white bed of snow, and just lay there... feel the bite of the snow, let the chill penetrate the skin and reach my bones, till they go numb ... and there is no cold,no pain, nothing.

We desire a lot of things, want some of them , but just don't need them all, at least not all the time.  But the thing we cannot live without, is our existense, the thing that defines who we are. It can be anything, our poetry, our parents, our kids, our car.... it can be anything. But it means so much to us that we know we will not be able to identify ourselves without it. And when it gets hurt, it hurts us. Sometimes breaks us.

We can forget about our unmet desires, can manage without our wants, can compromise without our needs but we stop surviving without our being.

It feels like falling into the water.... first we try to swim, to stay afloat and then after some time, the fight within us runs out. We try to find our happy place. We want someone to pull us out, someone to fight for us, someone to know us, to understand our being. And when we don't find that happy place, and when the person doesn't find us, we let the water inside us and there is blue everywhere. The sunlight moves further away as we keep getting pulled inside, waiting to save our being.

Shubho Nobo Borsho!!!(Happy New Year!!)

Nobo borsho jeno shobar jibone snigdha shukher alo protifolito kore!! (May the new year enlighten every life with happiness)

Shobaike Shubho Noboborsher preeti o shubhechcha! (Wishing every one love and best wishes on the occasion of New Year!) :)

Kudos to Decade 2K

As the last ray of sun swept over the bronzed skyline of December 31st 2010, it struck me that the most happening decade of my life was coming to an end.....









Just ten years back I remember sweating over fat books and thousands of sample papers ,preparing for std.XII Boards and when I got through with it, the anxiety of not being able to get into a college started setting in. And then, that day at my Granny's place Baba called me up asking me to take the first train next morning back to Bokaro. We were going to Vellore the next day to get me admitted to Vellore Institute of Technology and out of nowhere I was pursuing Chemical Engineering.

The next four years were probably my most exciting four years ever. It is great how some people and a couple of incidents  impact you and change you forever. I have had the good luck to meet such people and be their friend. I have always been shy while making friends and hence the very small number. While at college I added couple more people to my list, and we kinda became a family. First time out of home and living independently away from family, it was a totally new experience. Exciting!!  In these four years, I discovered myself. I found out for the first time how much I enjoyed breaking rules. Along with my buddies, we used to cook up numerous mischiefs and then charge our brain cells trying not to get caught. Late night sneaky birthday parties, Holi celebrations at 3:00AM in the common bath, bursting crackers in hostel, setting up home theatres in our rooms, rain dances, Indo-Pak cricket matches, Durga puja tours, Bokaro Alleppey journeys and the list goes on... I miss those days!

We met and mixed with different people from various parts of the country and with all our experiences, I started seeing things in a different light. The typecasted mindset took a break and a very liberal me started emerging. "Rights" and "wrongs" lost their face value and got reasoned out. Giving someone the benefit of doubt seemed better than dishing out judgements. I started believing that I would rather like to try something and fail, than to not do it just because all say its difficult. I found the spirited me, and it was my most important finding this decade..... and then I found someone special, in my best friend, whom I went on to revere as my most significant half.

After four incredibly adventurous years we left college with a degree and lots of memories, to set foot on the corporate land. Cognizant Technology solutions became my first company to join and through the rest of the decade I stayed loyal to it. Various projects took me from Chennai to Kolkata, and then through New Jersey, Ohio and Nebraska, back to Kolkata.

My stay at Kolkata after just being recruited seemed a bit dull, after the active college years, but it did get me few more friends and numerous unforgettable memories. We had our fun and then I went on to check out the magical dreamland of the United States.

Going onsite (to America) was an obsession at that point for me. I had always dreamt of seeing the other half of the world and its people, but more than anything, I needed the money :D ! But when my plane landed on the snowy whitelands, I didn't find it anything different from my land in India(except the snow of course!). I dont know what I was expecting, but the place or its people did not come as a surprise to me (yes, they had the general two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two ears, two hands, two legs and one heart! ). Dadabhai drove in to my Candlewood Suites on the day I reached to spend his weekend and I got comfortable in USA. I made some very good friends and visited most of the United States (around 25 of the 50 states, not bad! ;) ).

 I had loads of fun parasailing, rock climbing( not professionally!), long driving, bungee jumping and so on.I fell in love with the country, its long stretches of green grass, empty roads, clean air, deer and rabbits walking up to my doorsteps, geese cackling outside the office, undulating golf courses, fiery falls and colourful springs.

 After my short, yet eventful stint, I returned to my country to start the most important project of my life, my marriage :) ! The wedding of my dreams was followed by a trip to the Paradise on earth!

 I started beautiful new relationships and six months hence, with a full-family-fun-filled Christmas at Mandarmani, the decade came to an end.










And as the new day, new year, new decade started, I could hear the old one whisper in my ears.....


'All these days that we have spent,
through thousands of moments that came and went,
We've seen each other revel in smiles

and spent starry nights gazing skies....


I have heard your whispers,I have seen your dreams,
and come sad times, have shown you other realms...
I have read to you, the stories we wrote,
in the chill of the snow and the warmth of your coat...


We have those seconds etched in our minds
so here I am again to remind
Flow with me and I'll be there
as your friend forever to care and share'

Happy New Year!!!!! :)

Its time to celebrate :)

It was the 28th of November, around 10 in the morning.I was in the movie theatre when Bhai calls me up..

B: Didi .... sobar naam announce kore dilo (Didi...They announced all the names)

I was waiting with bated breath, he was talking about the final selection results of Tata Consultancy Services, the first company for their campus placement, and he was sounding very low.

Me: OK... good...

I was literally struggling to get those words out, just to say something. My wordlessness sounded dumb, but I was trying not to give out any kind of expressions. "Break ke Baad" had already taken a back seat.

B: TCS pagol howe geche... (TCS has gone mad..)

He still did not sound good.

Me: Keno? (Why?)

B: Because AMAR MOTON KEO NIYE NIYECHE!!!! ( Because they have selected people like ME AS WELL!)

And then he burst out laughing!!

I have no words to explain the potpourri of emotions I was feeling at that particular moment. All I could tell him was how proud I was of him and congratulate him a thousand times. I was so happy, I felt stifled being inside a movie hall,not being able to shout out loud. He put the phone down to inform the parents and I entered into my land of nostalgia....

Was it just a few year ago when I took his hands to lead him and his classmates from the assembly ground to his classroom? He was in Nursery in Delhi Public School and I was the Cultural Secretary ( From the senior most class, Std IV, in the Junior building). It was his first day in the school.

Then the day when Baba got distracted for a moment and Bhai chose to finger the whirling fan of the scooter's motor. No prize for guessing, his index finger was never the same.

We had put up a swing in our drawing-dining room partition, specially for Bhai. Well, his antics on it gave him quite a few stitches and a cut mark on his chin. As if just to prove we were siblings, one fine day I fell off the bed in my sleep and got a mark of my own at the exact same place on my chin!At least we reduced chances of getting lost at the "Kumbh ka mela"!!

And then those days when he would come to the senior block to check out my lunch box and if my food looked better, we switched :).

It was all coming back to me... the way we used to fight, I was a brutal sister to have :( ! He used to find innovative ways to irritate me till my patience ceased and every day Mumma got to witness a new episode of Mahabharata, live at home!

He was always the better one in person, a child at heart. He would give me his things to use, even when I was stingy about sharing my stuff. Unlike me, he is a bit of an extrovert, and certainly much better at maintaining contacts. While he has never really been extravagant, I was still his ATM as far as mobile top-ups were concerned :) . Despite being too lazy to cultivate it, he is really good in literature. I think he gets it from Baba and his patience from Mumma.

At times I feel he has faced more hardships than me , be it a severe bout of chronic allergies complicated by incorrect medicines, just before his Std. XII boards, or the advents of typhoid, jaundice and so on in front of his major school and college examinations. I am so glad that he ploughed through all that and more.

He is my baby and I have seen him grow into a wonderful person. I love his excitement when he narrates all his stored up stories if we don't get a chance to speak for some time. He was my confidante when I told him I was in love and my spy at home in case my parents start groom-searching. He was always supportive of my decisions, even when he did not totally agree with some of them. Our best moments are probably the ones we spend managing mischiefs together, and then laughing our hearts out ,falling off beds and getting neighbours to complain  in the process (yes sometimes we are THAT loud :D) !

It was funny how he was absolutely not able to come in terms with the fact the I was getting married, same as me! And yet, he was there, comforting me and joking, to ease away my tensions as I sat on the pidi ( small stool), ready to see my groom for the first time that day. It hurt to let go of his hand the next day, on my journey to the new home...

And now he will be entering the next phase of his life. He will get the first taste of the corporate world or will check out the alluring academic world of Management studies.

Bhai is a wonderful person and I know he has big things in store for him. I wish him the best in his life and whatever be his choice, I hope he gets everything he dreams of!

Congratulations and celebrations!!! :)

Fragrant singing memories

'Sajde pe tere jhukta hoon,tumpe hi aake rukta hoon... ' driving home from Parsippany ,NJ with my roommate on the next seat,singing the song....
'Nazrein milana, nazrein churana...' on the way to New Hampshire Fall festival...
'Soni de nakhre sone lagde..' Virginia trip...
'Rock on ' ... Las Vegas, Grand canyon.....
... and many more.....

I have a way of linking certain songs to my memorable moments. This mostly happens because the songs were playing during those moments, when they hit my subconscious and stayed there. It happens like a déjà vu. As soon as the song starts playing ,the pictures of those moments film afresh before my eyes, and this is quite a feeling!

Fragrances do the same to me too... Davidoff reminds me of a snowy romantic february day .... a typical fresh smell of leaves and a flower(I do not know the name) brings back my childhood days at 2023,out of the window of my room next to the blossoming Krishnachura ...earthy fragrance of the first rain on the cemented ground takes me to our basket ball court and cemented classroom window ledge at DPS,where we used to intentionally spill the water to enjoy that smell...... Ralph Lauren, of the moment before my wedding,sitting on the pidi(small stool),thoroughly palpitating with fear and wonderment about the new life...and the list goes on ...

I love it! I love the way my grey cells work to catch me off guard with such whispers from the past.... It is like a breath of fresh air during a routine ..... I love how I don't need to consciously sit down to recall those lovely moments .... I don't need to sift through photographs to experience my memoirs.... It is like a surprise of flashbacks.  It overwhelms me, sneaks up on me and wherever I am,I break into a smile!My fragrant, singing memories...

Three months young !

Note: This post was written on 18th October 2010.

Three months and a week back, in the midst of a crazy hullabaloo of 'to-do's for the upcoming Biggest Festival of my life, I had wondered about today and how it would be....


It was a week before my wedding, and things seemed to be going crazily out of hand. Mumma, Baba and I were constantly putting out fires everywhere,be it invitation card shortage,or microbial growth on the new gifts for in-laws(thanks to the incessant rains and damp)!To top the cake, I had my uncontrollable wedding jitters!


The complete project of "Bride side of My Wedding" had been planned right from the conception stage. Resources were allocated along with team leads. We followed the whole process of SDLC meticulously. After setting up the Production install date, budget and the concept on hand, I started gathering requirements and created the detail design document. It was actually fun to see things being executed efficiently, setting up status calls and I was pretty happy with the progress. Baba gladly overshot the budget to accommodate ALL of my bizarre wishes to conjure up my dream wedding. I minutely scrutinized and hand-picked everything from the wedding hall seat covers to my wedding ensemble and got on many nerves in the process. But my parents, Bishu Kaku, Bapi Mama, Babun Mama and Pishi-Pishemoshai toiled uncomplainingly to fulfill my hankerings. My emotional tsunamis were also being handled simultaneously by my parents and DB. Thank you all for making my wedding the best event in my life!


One week to the wedding and sitting alone at Pima Dida's flat on that Sunday,I was wondering how it will be three months down the line. I tried to imagine how the 18th of October will be like, what we would be doing, and how I would be feeling. But I could not. I have this weird habit of visualizing things before they happen, just to enjoy some of my day dreaming moments but this time I could not. As if I have had a memory loss,but in future! I could not even begin to view what the 19th of July will dawn and show me, whereas everything till the evening of 18th July was planned, starting with my Aiburobhat, evening dance party, Gaye holud on the next day, decking up for the wedding and then the grand finale! It was a strange feeling.


Today I feel like a little girl who got her Birthday gift early . The last three months have been full of such little surprises for me. The fact that I could not imagine it before,makes it all the more special. The new life has welcomed me in full splendour ,weaving a colourful gossamer of the new relationships. The new roles as a wife and a daughter-in-law seem like a far cry from my previously conceived images. I never considered myself to be a girl who would follow the conventional weepy 'Bidai'. However, watching Baba break down ,Mumma all welled up and Bhai's moist eyes,I lost it and my tears rebelled against me. Suddenly I was terrified. Terrified of losing my parents,losing Bhai,losing my family,my home....


Today its a memory I fondly look back to. I smile. My fears seem irrational. I did not lose my family,as I feared. I gained one. What shall I say? Three months into my marriage, I am home :)!

The first few lines

Scribbled away in a leaf of the Fall,

                                        the first few lines don't say it all,

Sporadic thoughts , my reflections and belief,

                                          will make this my Golden Leaf...


Four strong inspirations, thousands of whirling musings and hours of brown study later, I finally sat to pen down my first lines as a blogger. I call this my Golden Leaf.


As a kid, I loved to collect the yellowed fallen leaves from the Banyan tree in our backyard, just to write down a childlike poem or to merely set an example of my artistic capabilities. Today, I decided to borrow another leaf from my trusted tree, to put in my random thoughts, this time, not to wither away in my notebook.