A song close to heart (by Tagore)

Sakhi, bhabona kahare bole?
Sakhi, jatona kahare bole?
Tomra je bolo diboso-rajoni,
Bhalobasha, bhalobasha.
sakhi, bhalobasha kare koye?
Seki keboli jatona-moye?
Seki keboli chokher jal?
Seki keboli dukher saas?
Loke tobe kore ki sukheri tore,
Aemon dukhero aas?

Aamar chokhe to shokoli sobhon,
Shokoli nobeen, shokoli bimol.
Suneel akash, shyamolo kanon
Bishodo jochona, kusumo komol.
Shokol amari moton.
Tara keboli hanshe, keboli gaye,
Hanshiya, kheliya morite chaye.
Najane bedon, najane radon.
Najane shader jatona joton.

Phool se hanshite hanshite jhore,
Jochona hanshiya milaye jaye,
Hanshite hanshite alok sagore,
Akashero taara ke aage paye.
Aamar moton sukhi ke aache?
Aaye sakhi aaye, aamar kaache
Sukhi hridoyer sukher gaan
Suniya toder judaabe pran

Protidin jodi kandibi keno,
Ek din noye hanshibi tora,
Ek din noye bishado bhuliya,
Shokole miliya gahibo gaan.

This is one of Tagore's song that I learnt from my father. Recently it was featured in a movie, sung amazingly. Many of Tagore’s songs are very close to me. They intrigue me in a way; they make me dive into the fundamentals of emotions and feelings. This is one of the song, I relate a lot to. My father had once explained the meaning, the background of it. It's about a young girl who sees the world with it's complex emotions and asks some simple questions about love, pain and tears. Because she yet doesn't understand those complex bonding and ties. The song goes like her asking to some friend, " What are feelings, and what is pain? People talk about love day and night, but tell me what is LOVE? Is it only pain? Is it only tear drops and sighs of sorrow? Then for what sort of joy do people want to embrace such sort of love?

In my eyes, everything is so pretty, young and pure. Everything is full of life. Whether it's the blue skies, or the green forests, poisonous fireflies or the blooming flowers. They are all like me.They only laugh, they sing, and they live their life so merrily. They don't know pain, and sorrow and they don't know all all those complex bonding that cause those pain..

The flower withers away smiling, the fireflies disappears with a laugh, and in the cosmos, the the stars comes out smiling. Who is so happy like me? Free of pain and sorrow? Come to my house, friend. We will sing the song of happiness and take your heart.

If you cry everyday on the trivial matters of life, one day you will learn to laugh. One day you will realize life is too precious to waste in tears and pain, and, you will see life in a more positive way, and sing the song of joy."

Well..I have done a like line to line interpretation. But the real philosophical meaning is far far and my literary skills have died down long back to explain that. It's amazing.


Here's the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPs1fONKaeM

Time passes by

There are times you wake up to a dream, wondering if it was real. I had a dream today morning; I saw myself and Akash happy together, and in love, like I believed we were. Everything was perfect in the dream,just like it was apparently. I had such dreams when we broke up for the first time and I was in Chicago. I used wake up and cry. I would try to call him; I would bike away to some far off place and think of dying.I would want to do everything to make it right. Even now it feels heavy in my heart, when I remember our time together early this year.About the fact, how much I loved and trusted him. How much he meant to me. And yet this time, I would change nothing. May be it's a part of growing up, when you accept the truth and realize that sometimes we do live the wrong dream.

I have been traveling on and off from Mumbai. The last time I flew from Delhi to Mumbai, I remembered how excited I was when I was flying there after coming back from US. I couldn't wait to meet Akash. I couldn't wait to kiss him again, be in his arms. It's funny how we sometimes we go to a place with some purpose and life gives us some different reasons.

It's been over ten days I am in Kolkata at my home. I realize I have done nothing except some occasional visit in my college to do some fixing on my project work.Staying with people makes me lazy, captivated. The city still gives me the freedom, but the fact that I have to explain my when and where I want to go and so on suffocates me.Somehow days are passing like in a wink of an eye, without doing anything at all. I have lost count of these idle days. I need to return to Mumbai desperately.

The fact is, here my decision to go somewhere would be met with so much dissatisfaction and commotion, that staying home becomes my only solution. But I usually have a tendency to get into a depression.I should so something I leave; before I become convinced my time here has been an entire waste. I came here for the paperworks of my visa, but turned out to be a bad idea...it has been delayed.I have to come back again.

Today is a vehicle strike. A bandh. Some bandh happens atleast once every month and the city gets a holiday. When you can't even step out of your house. The young leaders of "elaka" would make sure to get you out of your own car if you try to defy the bandh called by them.Or burn few buses and cars. The city stays paralyzed. And the party which called the strike happily announces the success of the strike.

There is some truth to this : Once you start living by yourself, it's so difficult to go by someone else's terms.

Some quick updates!

I am in a cyber cafe, somewhere near my home in Calcutta, realizing, life without a laptop and internet is like half survival.

It's monsoon here. The sky is perpetually cloudy with drizzles of rains then and now. Still waiting for a decision to fall from the sky, atleast make arrangements of where I should go now. Half of the year has passed by in a wink of an eye, and the next half..I am quite a bit nervous to face. I want things to fall in place.

So many things going on in my mind, wonder why taking a decision is such a tough thing to do. A part of me wishes and longs to travel to Paris, be just on my own, and do away with all those bonds and needs. I am still wondering if I should study at Ecole rather...I don't know. The thought is tempting..to be in a land where no one would know me, and I can start afresh. And there, there is the United States, the place where I keep going back- Chicago.

Sometimes I am scared that I am going into an endless loop of the same thing. Not finding the right thing I am passionate about. I hope I do, I need to.

My hours are over. Will write more later.

Delhi

Damned! I've been thinking of scribbling for a while now, but didn't happen.

I am in Delhi right now, staying at my sister's place. Meanwhile traveling the city and to Agra as well. It was fun. Came here for an interview by the French embassy, which worked out great and got an offer. However still indecisive about where to go and what to do.

Meeting my family after over a year. Feels strange. The ties were weak before, now they are barely there. I feel like another stranger among a bunch of familiar faces.

The Sunset Boy

I want to write about you, but I still have two more sunsets with you...On the third sunset from today, I will think about you, about us and write this blog

On my list this summer ;)

Mumbai & Murund Janjira near Mumbai
Matheran
Kashmir
Nepal
Bangalore
Hyderabad
Chennai
Calcutta( obviously!)
Delhi

Damned! two months to go...yahhooo ;)

Some Fragments

I only remember bits and fragments of my early childhood. We- me, Ria, Mom and Dad- we used to stay together, in an appartment. I remember being close to my dad, listening stories and all, going places with him. It’s a very vague memory though. I remember the one fight when my dad grabbed my mom by her neck and almost strangled her… and I was scared.I found a stick from somewhere and started beating my dad asking him to stop. I remember they fought a lot one day, and Dad shut himself inside his room. They seperated pretty soon- Mom left home with me and Ria. I was about 4.

Mom slowly developed an uncontrollable temper. After we moved out, I did not have any friends as such. And being the younger one, my mom had hardly much to say to me.
I grew alone, and was a very mediocre student.My mom never asked me about my studies. Nobody liked me somehow. I don’t know, most people still don’t.

As years passed, mom got more and more violent. She used to beat me like anything. I remember she did, and so many times I planned on running away. It was cruel. With shoes, with belts. She used profanity that I never understood back then, which I know now means motherfucker, fucker and so on. I cannot imagine why she used such words on a 7-8 year old kid, but she did. The memories are vague and distant now, the pain and lonliness of those years I still remember. Around eleven and twelve I escaped into my world of imagination. I met Nick, and he was my best friend as well as my boyfriend. He was there to save me everytime. He came to my rescue, like the prince in a Cinderella story- and he became almost a reason for me to live. To me he was real. I loved him, I believed him and he meant the world to me. My mother’s violence never stopped. In anger she would also say- Go and sleep with your father. I was too naïve to understand the implications back then. But I would be hurt.

Quite often I would wish I were dead.

I had other friends than Nick, which included Crystal, William and Derek. When I was eleven, my dad suffered a heart attack, and we went to see him. I had met him some few times during the period we were seperated. This time, my parents probably thought of reuniting, but it didn’t work.

We didn’t have any close relative either. Divorce or living seperated in Indian society was a big deal. I just ended up being different from the other kids. Every now and then I would seek a best friend to rely on, but it was very difficult to find one, hold on to anyone. I wasn’t good in anything. After I would return home from school, I had no one to talk to..other than my elder sister Ria sometimes. I was left out, and stayed by my own, till I discovered the joy of writing and imagining thing. And all the low feelings used to dissapear when I used to step into the world of imagination- where Nick and others would care for me so much. The pain was so much easier to handle now.

Still there had been times, I had tried to run away, thought of killing myself.But Nick would never let me, tell me he loved me. I owe him the six years and more of my life …till I met Arjyo.

Then and now I would understand Nick might be only a fantasy. My dad suffered a lung rapture when I was in 9th standard was was paralyzed with thrombosis for six months. It was then we moved back in. It was very strange…suddenly living with a man, whom you hardly know that much. But it was scary too-to see him suffer so much- the nights when he would wake up screaming from pain, and my mom did take good care of him. No matter even if she hated him, she did care enough to make him get well.
I had my first serious crush in 9th standard. A guy who looked exactly like Nick. My next two years revolved around the dreams of him, though nothing ever really happened between us. He played around with me a bit, but in my world of imagination he was very dear and close to me. I built long plan dreams with him- may be , may be he is the one to my rescue finally?

I suffered a heartbreak when I came to realize the guy was an asshole. Sometimes I look back, I wonder how silly I was! I can't imagine falling for him now. Good looks matter, but they form so little of the whole package I look for in a guy. In 11th class, I got my first proper boyfriend, Arjyo...who had been my best friend for a while. Though the relationship had more commitment than any other ones ( not counting with Jesse :that's special) I have had so far, it marked the start of my degrading grades in high school. Eventually I graduated school and got in a very ordinary engineering college, where Ria had gone as well. I had never wanted to study engineering. But mom insisted. All I wanted back then was Physics.

But like now, I didn't have the courage to make my decision.

That pretty much made the first 18 years of my life. The next five years, I have been someone else.