Muhurto...

Muhurto'ra komte thake
Tophat'ra jaye bere
Muhurto'ra jomte thake
Dekhi pichon phire
Muhurto'ra kothaye chilo
Elo hothath kaache
Bujhte pari ora sobai
Chupti kore aache...

Ekta shokal...

Ekta shokal cholche kaal theke
Odekha neel onekta gaye mekhe
Ekta shokal laagche khub bhalo
Rod'ta kom onek ta tai alo
Ekta shokal onek kotha aane
Kichu'ta mone baki'ta tai prane
Ekta shokal koruk elomelo
Hoyeto tai shobur kore elo...

it all started with a divine disobedience...

Confession of an irreligious mind…or rooted in rootlessness

During this time of the year, when Autumn tiptoes into the pristine Bengali psyche letting a brewing festivity sweep through beating hearts in sweet anticipation of an imminent rendezvous called Durga Puja, I begin contemplating means to fit into that overwhelming scheme – often groping for some divine intervention. 

Why? Because I’m a brazenly irreligious fellow.

Being born into a Brahmin family I inherited my religion and cared for it just like any other heirloom – shelved and dusted occasionally - routinely bowing to deities wherever asked to. As ‘Divinity’ remained a nameless presence to me, I kept scouting for a ‘reason’ to align with the thought behind this grand affair, blend into a celebration that verily owed it root to religion. 

I am one of those who left home for good – an outcast by choice – gladly blending into a population remorselessly seeking empathy in the company of fellow outcasts. Any random recollection of my unripe years prompts joyous memories of accompanying Ma on her Puja shopping sprees, the scent of ‘Sharodiya’ magazines or the thrill at the prospect of donning new dresses during Puja days. Could that joy be disproved by any intrusive Rationality that I yielded to as I grew up? Perhaps I just traded simplicity for something unworthy, untenable, unsteady. I just grew up yet didn’t grow! Those sweet recollections stood out as stark souvenirs of an innocent, happier time. Along the way I just feigned contentment yet remained rooted to the rootlessness. 

Questions and answers cannot coexist. To let the answers surface I had to drown the questions…and so did I. Durga Puja reappeared with a new agenda – as a synthesizing platform for collective prayer, a divine excuse to rejoice. I happily succumbed - bowed to the spirit of festivity.

I am a Chartered Accountant almost by inheritance and Photographer by choice. The Puja pandal generously lets my passion flourish by turning into an expansive studio with an infinite assortment of photogenic faces. I walk around the ground sneaking into huddles [often stepping into puddles too] and snooping into gossips freezing fleeting moments. I find my innocence back during Puja.

…and I do not need to be religious where celebration far outgrows religiosity.

Found the confrontational self back after long...unsure if I would feed him to death or starve to life! Does an obliging life accrue all that it promises to shower...or just bite the dust in the end?

Watched 'Manjhi' - a cinematic lowdown on the conundrum of Love - nourished and fondly left undeciphered for ages. With its endearing clumsiness and engaging disorder the movie turned out to be a perfect ode to the absurdity of love. I soaked in!

Night has a mystical, innocuous yet opaque dishonesty that dies in morning's luminous flatness...intriguing and inspiring at once.

The supremely incontestable allure of recognition irreversibly suspends and irreparably damages creative progression of any kind.

Knowledge of some kind increases the capacity to endure struggle...

nonconformity...or conformity in disguise!

Someday I would love to join a nonconformist gathering...to see one nonconformist conforming to another.

I want to see if there too they remain as much unbending in actions and interactions...or tacitly seek fitting conformity from fellowmen just by dropping the 'label' in the comfort of a kindred company? 

Does a nonconformist nonconform only in conformists' presence?

Befriending a nonconformist is the quickest way to be a nonconformist. There exist the perpetual 'nonconformists'...and there are those who just nonconform occasionally - as a welcome reprieve from the grind of conforming. A nonconformist, ideally, needs an establishment or thought...an object to espouse or expunge. Some nonconform since birth and some to requite. And some nonconform without knowing what it's all about. And some gloriously do so upon imagining the infallible prospect of infinite popularity inherent in a nonconformist label. Touché!

They all fail to see nonconformity as a situational and social weapon to be used with caution and care.

Conformity is the highest kind of nonconformity. When deep within you know the distinction yet do not distinguish. When all that you carry is your awareness and not the carrier...without yielding to any normative chore known to man.

managing Past...

Rather fatefully my like and dislike grew happily together. It was always like watching the order and chaos coexist and behave of their own accord. 

These cognitive patterns are largely observed when I look around. [I refrain from using 'looking back' rather responsibly and conveniently just to drive home that point. 'Looking back' turns the act so very unidirectional, predictable, corny.] And most of the 'resentful' dialogues between my nonexistent past and ubiquitous present are initiated by the past. Understandably, may not be agreeably though, as past is always sacred, raring to dispute present's validity. The wanton 'present' doesn't oblige, justly. It has only moments. It is experiential...unlike past.

Why do I need to wait for another 40 years to face myself? Why cant I die everyday to be born again? Why don't we revisit our conclusions and keep on concluding untiringly...inconclusively?

'stay' and 'don't leave'...

Do they mean the same? Does 'Stay' purport exactly what 'don't leave' does? 

No. 

They do not say the same. Just because they do not come from the same being. Though both share the same vent, they spring from different states harbored within. The dominant state dictates the wording often risking the betrayal of the ruling mood. Asking to 'stay' springs from plain knowledge of one's presence as opposed to 'don't leave' stemming from a fear of loss. 

Accept the volatility with an unwavering knowledge of the presence. Let the knowledge take over the fear. Or let fear yield to knowledge. The stench of fear is usually nor perceived when the aroma of knowledge reigns.

Say 'stay'...be in celebration and not in denial!

To add to all that has been said over the ages...we never learn anything from great stories. They just generously afford a turf where we meet new people resplendent with their vulnerabilities and strengths...may not be in that order. Great stories let us connect to ourselves through others and feel the overwhelming ambivalence we endure.

Life is no Palindrome...

This book cannot be read backward.

The reader cannot flip pages back. Ripping a page off may just suspend the possibility to flip back yet will not take the longing away. Perhaps the weaving 'words' just disappear once read and lived...what are left then are just disarrayed dry 'letters'.

Perhaps that's the only similarity between a word and life...none would make sense when spelled backward...Life is no palindrome.

Over the years endured I've grown fond more of the people who confounded me than those who comforted. I am made to maintain that life is all about discovering one's vulnerability often sweetly 'misspelled' as 'strength'. Strength, as it appears to me, has two kinds. The strengths we are born with make the first kind. The other kind has those we cultivate along the journey...

We are always born more than once. It is not a choice to be exercised but a phenomenon to be endured or rejoiced...it is ordained.

the magic of leitmotifs...

Though 'leitmotif' owes it origin to Wagnerian opera, over the years it has grown to be one of the most lovingly used words across the imaginative brotherhood - signifying a recurring theme or object relatable to the reappearance of a person, situation...or fancy. Kolkata is a city where leitmotifs abound...some momentarily and some forever. I hail from that city making it agreeably obvious to carry a bit of it in me wherever I go...recurring themes!

what I impose...

Perhaps I am by choice absent in everything that I do or pursue. But they are all essentially there in me, though in bits and pieces, little by little building a haze that only lifts to descend again...the impositions I make,if at all I do, speak more of them than of me...fortunately!

Reflections are verily as impermanent as chicken tandoori...hardly are they served to a drooling lot than are shovelled in. They just come and go. Yet unlike tandoori, reflections change hue with time, age, company...or the lack of it!

To know...or not to know...

Hardly we get to renounce the eloquent trappings of overwhelming quotations and their imposing influence on life. Until an age I used to keep buried in quotations for hours fascinated by their sheer charm, brevity and ingenuity - struggling to appreciate the emotional accidence of each on the original utterer. They are more often quoted than understood.

With time I began searching for relevance, connections, subjectivity. Unsure of the exact state I am in, I have lately started succumbing to and, to my surprise, empowering the quotations to unfurl further to give away the meaning I otherwise wouldn't have discovered having approached them with a 'reason'.