মাকে চিঠি...

এবছর এপ্রিল মাসে মা একদিন ফোনে বললেন "এই সময়" কাগজে লেখা পাঠাতে।যাদের লেখা সম্পাদকের ভালো লাগবে তাদের লেখা ছাপা হবে।লেখা ছাপা হয়ে বেড়োবার তারিখটা আগে খেয়াল করিনি।লেখার বিষয় বস্তু ছিল "মা কে চিঠি"- যে সব কথা মা কে বলব বলব করেও বলা হয়নি সেই কথা জানিয়ে মা কে চিঠি লেখ।মনে মনে ভাবলাম এযাবৎ কাটানো জীবনের সব থেকে প্রিয় যে সময়টা অর্থাৎ শৈশব সেই সময়কার কথা নিয়ে লিখলে কেমন হয়?

ছোটবেলায় ভারী হিংসুটে ছিলাম, এমনকি মা কেও হিংসা করতাম।কেউ সাজুগুজু করলেই আমার মাথা গরম থাকত! সেরকম একটা ঘটনা ভাবলাম সম্পাদককে জানাই, পছন্দ হলে ছাপবেন নাহলে ফেলে দেবেন।সমস্যা একটাই - লেখা সীমিত রাখতে হবে দেড়শ শব্দের মধ্যে।কি মুশকিল তাতে কি লেখা শেষ করা যায়? তাও কপাল ঠুকে পাঠালাম।পরের রবিবারোয়ারি তে দেখলাম লেখা ছাপা হয়ে  বেরিয়েছে। প্রথম আমাকে জানান আমার কাকিমা ফেসবুকে মেসেজ করে। ক্যালেন্ডার এ চোখ রাখতে দেখলাম আরে আজ তো বিশ্ব মাতৃ দিবস - বাহ কি আনন্দ..বেশ ভালো দিনেই আমার লেখা ছেপেছে দেখছি!কাগজে যে লেখাটা বেরিয়েছে সেইটা এই লিঙ্কে পড়তে পারেন http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=17516&boxid=4435109 অথবা 
http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&eddate=05/10/2015

শব্দের সীমাবদ্ধতার জন্য অনেক কথা বাদ রাখতে হযেছিল সেগুলো না হয়ে আরেকদিন গপ্প করা যাবে। এই সময় খবরের কাগজের ছবি তুলে আমার বোন ফেইসবুকে  পোস্ট করেছিল। সেই ছবিটা এখানে শেয়ার করলাম। 

When Smoking is a Bliss !

"When Smoking is a Bliss"...??!! Are you kidding me ? Smoking a bliss ? Someone who reads those first few lines can call 911 in USA and 100 in India and send me behind bars for provoking my readers of smoking and disobeying perhaps the popular most slogan of mankind "Smoking Kills". But trust me smoking could be a heavenly affair too !

I was never a great fan of smoke and smog unless that reminded me of some real great memories. My readers know that the word which centers around my life is "Nostalgia"! Smoke and memories - do they really team well? Oh c'mon now I am way too mysterious ! Okay no more riddles for you, here are a few the ecstatic smoking delights for you to think over :

1. The morning grey smoke from a clay oven at the tidiest corner of a rural courtyard where you could find the smoke seeping out of a lump of coal while you start your day in a peaceful village in India !
2. Those jet black smoke with the mystifying whistle of the childhood steam engine suddenly visible from a railway window when the train shapes out a nice curve over the meandering tracks and you have your head out in the sun from the window !
3. Those little black puffs from the toy steamer going round and round in your bath tab and sometimes turning upside down in water!
4. Pair of big (or small) smokey kohl bordered eyes made really over-attractive with mac / jack / hac etc etc which are bound to attract stupid men (pun intended) !
5. When a smoke enters the most sinful part of your body called the stomach adding a  euphoric taste to your mind soothing your soul and lingering around your tastebuds for eternity!

I have had experienced all three above,have seen friends practicing number 4.I was unaware of number 5 until my friend Julie introduced me to this unexplored boon of smoking! My first ever experience of a dinner with smoked chicken in United States that too homemade using Apple wood was in a single word 'enticing'. She brought them for me in office which was on a Monday.I could not have them immediately as Mondays are veg days for me but took them home for the Tuesday dinner. It was worthy a wait for a day at the end of which the outcome was memorable. Each and every bite of it had that uniform flavor of the apple wood smoke. My stomach was happy, hubby who shared a portion of it was happy and I was happy of course !

I could not resist myself from taking the snaps.Sharing them with you all.Take a deep look (though all are very well digested by now and what I have left is just the snaps and a great memory of it to share) and soak yourself into this joy of smoking !

Smoked Chicken  Wings!

And finally with great pleasure I would like to introduce all my readers with the inspiration of this blog and my dear friend Julie - the tallest in the below picture without sunglasses. 

This is more than Déjà vu !

Right from kindergarten I was closely fascinated towards collecting colorful and attractive toffee wrappers, chocolate boxes, bus tickets, sweet boxes, perfume bottles and many more which can fill this entire blog. And I am more than sure that it's not only me who did this in school and even college days. There had been occasions when I acted super responsibly to store all my above mentioned precious possessions and lock them in a box (usually a metal or paper-made).That responsible act would then gradually vaporize from my "over creative" mind. And then one fine morning Ma would discover untimely appearance of an army of ants in some corner of our house. Following their trajectory she would successfully hack my treasures !! And then of course series of incidents followed by not so sweet exchange of words from my memory below : 

Me: Why did you open the box ?  

Ma : Why  on earth did you keep those junks ? 

Me: Those are not junks - they mean a lot to me ! I have restored them for my Mini's marriage and her totto (Mini happens to be my favorite doll who is still living at my Behala residence but unfortunately lost one of her arms and totto is marriage gift tray) ! 

Ma: Well then you are behaving as a Kagoj Kuruni and I need to tell your Dad that you will not go to school from tomorrow ( Kagoj Kuruni is someone who earns livelihood by collecting papers and throwaways from waste bins and these were uttered of course with due respect to that livelihood but out of sheer anger followed by frustration of having known that it was not suitable for our society) !

And then no further conversation for the entire day and finally me giving up to win back her heart ! 

Honest confession over here -  I would not throw away all of those wrappers but used to keep a few which looked really fascinating to me and which I thought would remain a treasure throughout my life (worth mentioning a golden flawless absolute round makri made of the inner gold wrapper of Cadbury's Éclair's made by one of my cousins is still in my Pandora box). 

This is not for the first time that I left my loved ones behind and started on a new venture .. Loads of love, luck and food traveled with us from India this time as well. Mostly all of them were in my check-in luggage and final one was a pair of "Perk" chocolates handed over by Baba when we were entering the airport gate ! I was sad to leave all my people behind but happy to have their touch in my hand bag at the final hour of my departure as if all my people are travelling with me. I know I will have this wrapper with me for many years now.


Today in Schenectady I have so many of them to touch and smell (some from latest India visit and some from earlier days) .Well, now Ma needs to utilize her visa once more to come over and make me guilty of stocking them :-) 


Whenever I want the touch of the near and dear one's I would feel those wrappers and take a deep breathe to plunge into the faint aroma of the product or element which it used to enclose once upon a time ... Ahhhhhh!! I call that heavenly feeling something more than a Deja Vu.. !

Deja Vu !

My world of Imagination 2 - Raja O Rani

My mornings at home in India started much earlier than it used to be here. Apart from jet lag the most important reason for "early rise" being I never wanted to waste the grand opportunity of spending quality time with my family and my surroundings.They are simply invaluable in comparison to whatever little I have in United States. And two most precious corners of my Behala house are our Balcony Garden and my dance practice room! Speaking of mornings - well one would usually have found me taking a homesick walk in my sun-kissed balcony garden with my toothbrush clasped between two fingers.

I admired the silent hide-n-seek moments between the oblique sun rays and the lush green plants around the balcony.The sun rays changing their directions and colors from morning to sundown -White- Yellow- Orange … is it not a miraculous gift from Mother Nature?!

These Raja and Rani pots were my collection from a handicraft fair which took place many years back at  Karunamayee, Salt Lake. They used to hang from another side of our balcony, unnoticed for quite some years. With course of time their faces grew darker and grim. This time during my vacation I managed to get them cleansed (thanks to Manju) and gathered some “nine-o-clock” plants. Baba carefully planted those nine-o-clocks into these pots. Floral arrangements were such that the colorful flowers would always keep on beautifying Raja and Rani’s invisible crowns as jewels!

Well now after setting up Raja and Rani in another corner of the balcony which gets the first golden ray of the sun I feel good about the majestic couple ! Faces which used to be dark and ugly once are now beaming with marbled jewels on their heads as if Rabithakur’s Raja and Rani have been personified! And yes Kudos to that unknown craftsman who made those terracotta pots now adorning our balcony !!

   রাজা ও রানী

        এক যে ছিল রাজা
সেদিন   আমায় দিল সাজা ।
          ভোরের রাতে উঠে
আমি     গিয়েছিলুম ছুটে ,
          দেখতে ডালিম গাছে
বনের    পিরভু কেমন নাচে ।
          ডালে ছিলেম চড়ে ,
সেটা     ভেঙেই গেল পড়ে ।
          সেদিন হল মানা
আমার   পেয়ারা পেড়ে আনা ,
          রথ দেখতে যাওয়া ,
আমার   চিঁড়ের পুলি খাওয়া ।
          কে দিল সেই সাজা ,
জান      কে ছিল সেই রাজা ?

          এক যে ছিল রানী
আমি     তার কথা সব মানি ।
          সাজার খবর পেয়ে
আমায়   দেখল কেবল চেয়ে ।
          বললে না তো কিছু ,
কেবল   মুখটি করে নিচু
          আপন ঘরে গিয়ে
সেদিন   রইল আগল দিয়ে ।
          হল না তার খাওয়া ,
কিংবা    রথ দেখতে যাওয়া ।
          নিল আমায় কোলে
সাজার   সময় সারা হলে ।
           গলা ভাঙা - ভাঙা
তার     চোখ - দুখানি রাঙা ।
          কে ছিল সেই রানী
আমি     জানি জানি জানি ।

- রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

My Raja

My Rani

Raja and Rani basking under the sun !

Raja and Rani basking under the sun !

Crowned with Jewels !

Raja o Rani adorning our Garden !

My world of Imagination 1 - Proshno

​My vacation was "extraordinarily exceptional" for a number of reasons.One of them being my childhood memories relived at my parent’s places especially at the balcony garden.

We had a prose piece from Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s Pather Panchali in our secondary curriculum named “Apur Kolpona”.Bibhutibhushan’s Apu was a known romantic character.This prose piece was about Apu's fantasizing scenes from the epic Mahabharat. Whenever he had a glance at his backyard coconut tree, he would fervently visualize Karna trying to pull out the chariot wheel which was engulfed into the terrain. This habit of daydreaming is a very common affinity a child would have assimilated after having heard stories from mother or grandmother or someone else who had that “touch of a fairy wand” to take him or her to another world full of bewilderment and wonders (a world which you might not have heard about or seen earlier and hence you are free to imagine anything about it).

Everyone has an “Apu” inside – so do I. My imaginations centered mostly around Rabi Thakur right from childhood. Ma used to read out poems by this bard to me, sometimes for me to memorize them and learn by heart, sometimes as a bed time story of having been a good girl throughout the day and sometimes as a part of my elocution test preparation for in school. It is said that in order to recollect an event human brain tends to associate that with an object or aroma or may be with an imagination itself.And this time I had lot many objects and aroma to walk down the memory lane.

This simple yet fascinating arrangement of a pora matir statue gifted by my Boro Mama (big maternal uncle) now placed carefully at the base of a Poinsettia plant to team with the crimson color of the plant at our balcony garden reminded by of the poem "প্রশ্ন" which is very close to my heart. Glimpses of the day below as  I captured these snaps and experienced a refreshing flashback of golden memories ... I could imagine Ma reciting "প্রশ্ন" for me....

"মা গো, আমায় ছুটি দিতে বল্‌,সকাল থেকে পড়েছি যে মেলা।

এখন আমি তোমার ঘরে বসে করব শুধু পড়া-পড়া খেলা। "

Motivation !!

​

I just came back from a rejuvenating fun-filled vacation from India and still living merrily with my Kolkata fever on top of everything. The moment I close my eyes, my mind travels back to the place where I was born and brought up and once I open them I could see the happy smiling faces of my loved ones as if they are sitting beside me. No wonder I am a day dreamer and why my college mates used to call me “Ms. Philosopher”! The portions of my delightful days in Kolkata that I now miss the most are my parents calling me by my nickname because no one calls me by that name here in United States and unique address of my sister as “Didi” as again no one calls me just Didi if I am older to him or her rather my name every time gets prefixed before didi with the last "di" truncated !

I am now tired of boring my better half with my long list expressing displeasure about life outside India and life away from family.And this list started getting longer from the time we said temporary good bye to our families at Netaji Shubhas Chandra Bose International Airport last week and ran for our immigration and security check. He now usually stares at me without uttering a single word (probably he must be trying out his patience) while episode of me lamenting because of  leaving my loved ones back in India and flying to another continent for unknown number of days goes on for hours.I feel as if I am torturing him and should start diverting myself until I return back to India. Then can blog be a best place where you can talk to yourself without bugging anyone? How about trying that for some time?

This happens to be my so called first “blog” and am not sure how many readers would be following my blogs….will they ever?! Never mind, even if I have one that is going to be me for sure. So thought this can be a place where I can speak to myself and share my thoughts to myself!

Let the baby start taking its first few steps…one…two….three….!!

 

          Smiling Faces on my bedside table !!