Diwali - 2009

Diwali was fun too. Totai, my sister came from Jaipur and we all had a very good time :)

Some pics:

Our balcony

Nothing can replace the earthen diya

Me and Totai making the rangoli

It's complete

Lakshmi Puja - 2009

It was fun as it was my first Laxmi Puja after marriage and I followed all rituals by fasting and preparing sweets for the puja. And finally I started giving alpona. always love to make alpona. I remember how I used to decorate the entire house with alponas and how the next day I used to spend the entire morning cleaning the floors. This year too I gave alpona and lucky they are that they got shot; thanks to my hubby; and I thought to post them here though this year I had no time alpona like earlier years. Here they are :

After Marriage

Things change. Here are some things that keep happening to/by me:

The shopkeepers now calls me 'baudi' and not 'didi'.

I have become 'aunty' to so many kids who otherwise would call me 'didi'!!!!!!!!!!!

I have started to wrap a saree in less than 5 minutes! Time doesn't vary with the change of texture...the time taken is same for cotton, taant, silk or chiffon!!!!!!!!!

Unknown people start talking to me in Bengali in the shops, market, roads in a city like Delhi. Thanks to my Shankha and Pola. It took me some time to figure out the correct reason though!

People don't hesitate to ask me personal questions like "hey, yours was an arranged or love marriage?" I dont remember to ever confront questions like "hey, have you got steady boyfriend?" or "hey, you're single or committed?" before!

In the shops, the shopkeeper gives the bill to my husband and not me!

Durga Puja - 2009

First time that I was away from my mother :(

First time after my marriage :)

Second time in Delhi :

First time that I didn't wear a single new dress :(

First time that I didn't see any puja apart from the own locality one :

First time I was so unwell that I visited doctor's house more than the Puja pandal :)

Life moves on :) :) :) .............................

Some Quick Facts

Gurgaon is changed........... so much that I found it beyond recognition! I kept searching for my old office and just didnt realize when it passed. The huge flyovers, roads, skyscrapers have made it look like a different place altogether.

So is Noida. Though the change is visible less in Noida than Gurgaon. The metro route is now near where we used to stay - in sector 19. If we were still staying in that same house, we could have seen the inside view of Atta chowk metro station just from the balcony!

DTDC is now going the BEST way. I mean, DTDC is following some facilities of the BEST bus service of Mumbai. The government is now replacing the old bust stand banners by new ones with a new addition. They are now writing down the bus numbers that would stop there. Must say, its a good step by DTDC.

And I missed Before The Rains. Quite expected it was. I had missed Tahaan also. So that makes my tally to reach two - the number of Santosh Sivan movies missed by me. Bad...I feel bad!

Durga Puja is round the corner again. But somehow I am not not feeling the heat this time. May be since I am not going home this year so there's no mad rush for train, plane or bus tickets. Though I have already started celebrating it my way by reading Anandamela - the pujabarshiki edition.

PS: I hope this time I havnt made any typo :)

A Life Not Ordinary

Then we were in our graduation. We were excited as the classical singer duo Rajan Mishra and Sajan Mishra were coming to Silchar to perform. We had obtained permission to attend the concert and bought the tickets as well. The tickets were expensive but we were not listening anything as we had missed too many classical music concerts just as my father was always apprehensive to allow us to attend an all night show. But all classical shows were all night. We never wanted to go to any Kumar Sanu or Udit Narayan show. And this time our mother also decided to back us. And there we were. What a show. What a performance. So many years have passed, but still I can hear the sound in my mind. One funny thing about the show was very few people were aware of these world renowned singers. For most of the people, classical music is limited to Ustad Zakir Hussain (Thanks to his hair-do that gave him more popularity than the beats) and Pandit Ravi Shankra (Thanks to his multi-colored life and link with the Beetles). I have come across many people who claim themselves to be great aficionados of classical music, but do not even know the difference between the titles Ustad and Pandit, forget about following the art form regularly. But thanks to my mother who used to read out loud the detailed review of Dover Lane Sangeet Sammelan every year from Desh, the magazine, we were well acquainted with the world of classical music. But to both my mother and our dismay, we couldn't learn music just because of some unsolvable problems. We enjoyed a lot when we went to attend Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma’s concert too.

Since childhood, we grew up in a different world -a world of Tintin, Abol-Tabol, Khagrai, Gupi Gayen-Bagha Bayen, Asterix-Obelix, Kakababu, Santu, Professor Shanku, Feluda and many others who had no real existence on world expect for on the papers or in children's minds. Our house is still full with those hundreds of books that we three brothers and sisters used to fight to read first. I remember, I used to enjoy how people used to react seeing my mother's collection of books.

Though my mother came from a very cultured family (a family that was well known for it's art and culture in the region) and still maintaining her class of taste, I have never seen arrogance or sense of pride in her. She never under-estimates other's choice or ignorance. May be this is the reason my mother is the most popular person in our house. People come to our house to see her. She never imposes her decisions or choice on others. She respects all, which I find sometime impossible for a person to do. All life I have seen people asking my mother various questions like, information on a certain era's literature, the work of certain writer which is difficult to get these days, questions on religion and history, information on music as which song would suit to a certain, some relatives studying on literature coming to ask for reference books and many other queries and of course on Rabindranath Tagore. My mother actually breaths his works. On one hand when she can guide any big Puja with effortless eloquence and can tell you countless stories and anecdotes of Ramakrishna Thakur and Vivekananda, she knows a great deal about the current culture. Ask her about films, and she would describe you her most favorite scene from Rang De Basanti as excited as a teenage girl.

She is the greatest lady I have seen in my life. I have always wished to be like her. I wish I were like her.

Translated Bengali Advertisements

All the advertisements that are made for the national audience are either made in English or Hindi. Then those advetisements are translated in local languages and aired in the regional channels. After coming to Delhi, my ear caught some sound bits of those adveertisements. Interestingly, I noticed something. I used to think that the Bengali translations are done in Kolkata. But recntly I realized that they must be done in Mumbai itself and the voice over artistes have to be from Mumbai. This is undestood only from the child voice over artistes as they speak in a heavy non-Bengali accent. This is because that is how they speak in their mother tongue Bengali since they are growing in Mumbai and not Kolkata.

Why So Serious?

Why are we so serious? Life is short and the youth is even scaringly shorter. Then why bind the life in rules and regulations so hard that there's no scope to escape? But some people may be so habituated with the day-in-day-out rules and bindings, that they don't even understand or may be don't want to understand what fun they are missing. Prejudices and apprehensions play a major part in the minds of those people who consider each and everything they don't do as bad, ugly, uncultured and undoable. And with this high self esteem they fail to feel the hearts of others while they just can't respect those people who wish to live life differently.

But now a days the television and media is so strong that many people are willing to shed their stubborn nature. But what about those people who don' want to open the window of their mind?

There is an advertisement in the television that I find very much like me and inspiring. That's the new Cadbury dairy Milk advertisement with Varun Badola. That's such a wonderful advertisement that it touched my heart instantly. After seeing the second version of the ad, I am sure that it touched other's hearts as well. So, that means there are moire people in this country who think like me or want to think like me :)

I remember when I started working and earning money, my salary day used to call for a celebration of no reason. During my first job, me, my brother and my sister used to stay in Kalkaji and I used to buy lots of chocolates and snacks while coming home. And yes, my brotrher and sister also used to do the same. So we were partying for no reason. We used to go to the nearby cinema halls and restaurants just for no reason.

Then I was in Noida, where I was with my entire family including my parents and it used to be so fun buying home all those food items of everyone's taste on the salary day. And recently when I was in Mumbai, I used to get coupons worth 1000/- on the last week of the month as part of the salary. The day I used to get it, I used to fill my bag with chocolates, cookies, chips, biscuits and what not for my sister. So again, we were partying for no reason.

Do we need reasons to celebrate with our near and dear ones? The main idea is to keep our loved ones happy and try to give them what they want unless they want sonmething really ungivable.