The narcissist.1.i.i(Durga puja)

I don't like durga puja, not as much as the other folks here do at least.Then again i never had friends who i could go "pandal hopping" all night with and even if i did have some, i am not sure if daddy-dearest would allow it.My experiences with the pujas have been limited to say the least,usually restricted only to an occasional evening trip and the morning anjali.My dad tried to do the best he could but he was nearly always ill and despite being the sadist that I am i didn't want him to be sicker because of me.However its not just because of my limited experiences of it that I don't like the pujas .Mindless crowd-bashing ,dancing ,smoking,drinking and loud bollywood music could never figure in my definition of having a good time ,not by a long shot.The one of the only things I like about the pujas are the dhaks .I have never claimed to be a spiritual person but I think a good dhaki can give anyone an intellectual orgasm.Something i thought only pink Floyd could do.The thing is with the sheer number of people fighting it out in the pandal ,reveling at the dhaks gets rather difficult.I am serious,the bengali aunties in a puja pandal would make the blokes at a mosh pit wet their pants. The only thing in your mind then is getting your ass(intact) out of there.The dunuchi naach looks pretty cool but when you're a guy who has never danced in his entire life anything remotely related to shaking a leg can give you serious panic attacks,especially if it involves fire and smoke and people staring.The thing i hate most about the pujas however are the people some of them are drunk ,most of them are rude and nearly all of them stink.So would i if i had to wrestle my way through a thousand people every time i visited a Pandal .The music gets to my head And my ears and by the time I get home I feel like a villain from a 90's bollywood flick ,beaten to pulp while the rest of the world dances to bad music .

p.s - I love these trademark durga eyes , They seem to be this epic celebration of feminine power .No where else in the world does one find , female power glorified to this extent.The western world has for centuries regarded the fairer sex as weak.Little wonder that jesus ,moses and allah were all men .It took the twentieth century to make them realize the potential of women.In india ,we knew this for centuries. I wish we didn't though , Mudiali had atleast a million people yesterday.My precious zodiac shirt now looks like a floor mop.So much for phemale empowerment.

The seductress

The wait was over,she had arrived .The light flashed and then after the habitual time lag came the sound ,more “kick-ass” than any of those super-expensive sound systems. The people who were standing around me started to scramble for cover they didn't want to be out in the storm ,they wanted to feel her..too but from the comfort of their living rooms. I was tad more adventurous though ,as I looked up and saw her ,I saw how murderously beautiful she was.She reminded me of the bollywood beauty queens, unlike them however,she was allowed to be dark,fat and ill-mannered. Nature wasn't stereotyped,great nor was I .I looked on.. blissfully unaware of the fact that every one in the thoroughfare thought that I was the biggest weirdo ever to set foot on the face of the earth .Then it came unbiased and unprejudiced she dint care if I was rich or poor,well dressed or otherwise, all she cared about was getting me drenched and the fact I had no umbrella meant that I had to oblige. Cosmic justice put two choices in front of me get drenched in the rain,or take an autorikshaw ride home I would have chosen the latter had it not been “for the autorikshaw affair” and the fact that she was looking so damn beautiful. I started to walk fully aware that dad will kill me when he sees me wet. The occasional bolt of lightning lightened up my senses as I walked along ,my shirt sticking to me,my shoes making weird noises,but I was feeling great and that's what really mattered.



I tried a to do stuff with my hair,didn't work though .Then again usually it didn't .The streets were totally empty now a few minutes of rain had scared them all away ,apart from the raindrops and the occasional roar of thunder their was an eerie silence all around me.I did have her for company or did I.....,darkness was gradually setting in and she was fading away into the distantness .Since the seductress was gone now ,there was no point in walking,I saw an auto approaching .Then with the dexterity of a bojpuri film star I whistled for it,it stopped like clockwork. Then still confused about what all had happened till then ,I got in.


p.s:her picture the next day/

A long walk

The summers were getting worse with each passing day ,on that day however the mercury had touched a staggering 41 degrees.School getting over meant that going home fast was the only thing in my mind. I was however pleasantly reminded by a friend that i had tutions after school .Though reluctantly i made it there.I got to the place where the classes were supposed to begin and then just as the teacher entered and was just about to start the oh-so-boring-class.The the monkeys working at the electricity department pleased at the fact that i had fed them (yes bananas )initiated a power cut & Yes the invertor thingy was low on charge and we thus got a holiday.Yipee!!.Now normally i would have just boarded a bus or something but nothing beats walking through streets of Calcutta in the dark.The fact that the street lights too were busted helped(the monkeys again!!) .As i walked ,"fear of the dark" played for the millionth time on my phone .My eyes fell on a  woman walking past me .She was a professional ,her uniform told me that much.She wasn't really very attractive physically as i had hoped she would be.Then again few women are, but she was confident, she was promiscuous,she had broken every single  shackle that our Hypocritical society puts on her,.She had become  every thing the stereotypical indian woman was not supposed to be and all  that made her attractive in a very strange way .As the sound of her footsteps faded i had to  turn my attention to something way more important. "low battery" was being conveniently flashing on the shitty symbian based device.So realizing that the the laws of cosmic justice would soon shut down my phone .I turned it off myself  .Denying it of the pleasure, it so desperately wanted.   I turned my attention to other things namely tottenham's 5-2 defeat last night ,Rednapp's grave tactical blunders had cost us the match ,i wished i was the manager.Could have done a better job at least.Pavlyochenco deserved a start.Funny how the people who matter make the wrong decisions and the people who make the right decisions don't really matter,

Suddenly i tripped on some pothole on the road making me,ALmost land on my face ,i was just about to curse the municipal guys when i saw the moon .In all her glory ,till then i was blissfully unaware of the fact that it was a full moon night.The solar system's fifth largest satellite had never looked this beautiful .For the remainder of the journey i regularly Glanced at the moon,disturbing my view only to make sure there were no more potholes in my way.


I walked quite a bit after that, when a spine chilling moan made its way to my ear . It seemed as though something was dying.I didn't want to look ,but i bloody had to.On a closer inspection i found that a dog had fallen into the drain and couldn't get itself out.It was literally "rotting alive".For an instant i thought that i should rescue it or try and end its misery somehow ,but some thing pulled me back.I looked at the street where i was standing i saw that many people passed the dying dog ,all of them had heard its cry .The creature almost begging for death to befall on him somehow,but no one even bothered to look they were too bothered about their clothes ,and the fact that the missed their soaps because of the powercut.But i shouldn't blame them though for i too did nothing to help it( it turns out my parents dont subscribe to certain a detergent companies”daag ache hain” campaign ).I did something else though i switched on my phone and tried to take its picture.I knew emotional pornography made for great photography subjects but i coudn't make myself do it though,I coudn't mock it's pitiful existence any further..I started to walk again and  my mind started to wander,wander as I wondered what is it was like to be a war photographer,taking pictures of dying men .When every thing around him is absolute devastation all  he does is take a picture. .I don't know how he does it.I don't even think its humanly possible.

As i turned my attention to the road I realized that the streets seemed awfully familiar.I was almost home.The guard greeted me with his same big smile,which by now had almost become his trademark..I tried to return his smile but mine could have never really matched his ,for his reflected absolute contentment mine, mere courtesy.I soon made my way to my bed.I coudn't sleep though.I'd like to think it was just the heat,but it wasn't .A few of the thoughts ,that had made their way earlier that evening kept lingering around my mind.Disturbing me at very frequent intervals.  The  dog slowly rotting away to nothingness,the lady,the photographer.The dog specially though,i just couldn't get him out of my head. .But  i knew and so did the dog perhaps that in time even its  miserable death would  fade away from my memory and would become just as obscure as his life always was and maybe then i would  get some well deserved sleep and he his redemption.

The autoriskhaw affair,

The day began as it usually does for me ,my dad pulling me down from the bed .Then trying to explain that how waking up so early (5 a.m)is supposed to make me feel "fresh " for the rest of the day. As i tried to explain how i had studied late last night and not sleeping enough could lead to permanent memory loss he told me that my teacher had called (last night)and had apparently informed him about my disastrous performance on the Vectors test(8 out of 40),realizing that this was not the time for explaining the the effects of not sleeping enough. I got out of bed ,went to the toilet, got myself dressed ,smuggled the mp3 under the Fat physics book ,and (ugh!) forced by the laws of cosmic justice started to study .Two numericals and thirty tracks later it was already time for school .

This was supposed to be the first day of the "new academic year" and i was requested(at gunpoint) not to be late .Yet again cosmic intervention(football forecast ESPN)seemed hell bent on making me miss my school bus.The thing is i am given 20 bucks(dad's a) ,for transportation in case i miss my bus but i generally used that money to buy chewing um .Ditto for that day despite knowing that my chances of missing the bus were astronomically high i couldn't help but buy 3 Orbit chewing gum sheets ,leaving me with 5 rupees change for the autoriskhaw fare .My superhuman intellectual capacities reminded me that the last time i has missed the bus ,the fare was 5bucks ,but what it forgot to remind me however was that i had moved recently and my current residence was 3 times as far from my school as my last one.As i boarded the rikshaw ,realization eventually had to dawned on me."i did not have enough " i thought ,and  No matter how many times i counted the coins they still amounted to just 5 bugs, the strategically located "Auto-rate chart" , had Rupees 7 conveniently written on it.After doing some advanced mathematical calculations i figured i was 2 rupees short. Just two stupid measly rupees. I searched my bag a few times in case some money was left over from the post exam food bash we had ,but again "cosmic... blah.." played spoil sport .The fact that i was in a bad fix became more and more apparent to me .I think i didn't even notice the hot woman walk past the rikshaw(or maybe i did).I realized I  had to start  thinking of other ways(apart from counting my coins) to get out of this "situation", After a long session of pure logical reasoning .I deduced that a stray asteroid from the kuiper belt knocked out from its orbit due to a collision with Ceres ,heading straight towards the earth was probably  the only feasible way i could be saved from absolute embarrassment. I was trying to calculate the probability of that happening, when an elderly looking aunty happened to notice my predicament.She asked me what was wrong  ..now normally i would have said "you are fucking ugly maaam,thats what is wrong" or "is it really this hard to mind your business" .The situation however clearly demanded otherwise . I told her what was wrong,how i was two rupees short and how she had a once in a lifetime opportunity to make it to heaven by helping me. She agreed readily ,but it did not stop there .The autodriver who was listening in to this said that i don't have to pay.I said thank you .I bloody had  to ,but this one time i think i might have meant it.