life

“Not to admire, is all the Art I know”

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 4 Comments

BeFunky-collage.jpg

The city of Kolkata was getting dressed with lights, bamboo pandal structures, hoardings, happy faces and all the other ingredients of festivity. And amidst this fervor of preparations to welcome Ma Durga, I was packing my bags to leave Kolkata. This feeling was somewhat like getting a ticket for the show, entering the theater, seeing the stage, and then having to come out before the show began. So what do I do, I plan to visit the green room itself.

The green room of Bengal’s biggest religious show is called Kumortuli. In Bangla, Kumor is the person who gives shape to clay and Tuli is where people live as a small community. In the by lanes of north Kolkata there live the Kumors, the skillful artisans of Bengal and the place is known as Kumortuli. Long before the shiuli blooms or the kash turns marshy lands into golden yellow the Kumors of Kumortuli start kneading clay.

BeFunky-collage_2

Their hands give shape to Durga Protima ( the idol) and soon mere clay becomes Goddess. In the green rooms of the theater the make up artists dress up men and women to play their part of make belief on stage. And in this green room of Kumortuli the Kumors were making the Gods ready to play their part on the stage called Pujo Mandap. The audience in both the theaters perhaps want the same, the escape from reality for a few hours or days, to look in amazement at the stage and believe in the unbelievable.

I stood transfixed in front of the men at work. Hours of bending painfully to give the Gods a human form, to get the perfect stroke of brush on each protima, to bring that hint of a smile on the Goddesses’ face, to fill with light and depth those soul searching eyes, it is a craft indeed and something more surreal. Who is the creator after all was a silent question that kept enveloping my mind as I walked through those lanes of Kumortuli.

The artisans of Kumortuli are simple, poor, seasonal wage earners. Their homes and studios (quite a fancy word for such work place) reflect the simplicity and poverty of its dwellers. The houses had not been painted in years, the electrical wires overhead were all tangled up but surprisingly did supply electricity. I thought to myself that true genius thus resides in this maze of lanes and by lanes, hiding their poverty in the sheer brilliance of creativity. They are not celebrated everyday, but the yearly recognition of their craft, the coverage by news channels and print media gives them some borrowed time of celebrity status . Their hand to mouth existence does bring to mind some pertinent questions but nothing so strong that cannot get blinded by the dazzle of the flashbulbs! The constant stream of visitors, tourists and locals alike, capturing the images, colors, and work-in-progress moments brings a smile on their faces. Ask them once, and they willingly allow you to take pictures. After posing for the camera they get back to their work with undivided attention. I come back home filled with images both in my mind and in my camera. This year when I will stand in front of Ma Durga with folded hands and chant ” Rupam Dehi, Jasho Dehi ” my mind will certainly pause and think of the Kumors of Kumortuli.

BeFunky-collage_3

Tenancy Laws

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 9 Comments

Tenancy Laws.jpg

“Don’t push you chair back, it will spoil the wall ” said a house owner of a Versova flat we had gone to see. I was caught in a haIf sitting position and almost winced an ‘ouch’ before smiling back politely. No, the wall did not have fresh paint on it. Some people like their four walls spotless and I do not judge them. But for me to live in a house with two teenagers and spotless walls was a definite no. Though the house offered a glimpse of the sea from it’s kitchen window, we chose to choose a house which we could make a home. My sea-view apartment dream has still not seen the dawn, but in it’s quest I have managed to learn quite a few by laws of the tenancy laws and some life lessons too.

My in-laws were the only ‘laws’ I had known in my life till we reached Mumbai some fourteen years back. The only similarity between the in-laws and the tenancy laws being that I get to enter a new house (where terms and conditions apply) courtesy those ‘laws’. But tenancy laws (especially the ones which are not written on those fine lines of agreement papers) are the most difficult set of rules to adhere, understand and deal with.

I learnt the difference between landowner and licensor, and of the tenant and the licensee. Our new identity was of a licensee who lives in the house of the licensor. Just when I start to understand the simple equation of a family needing a house to live and another family wanting to put their property on rent, a third and most vital character enters the story, he/ she is called a broker. The director and producer, that’s the owner and I have to take back seat for the broker. He is the legitimate script writer of my story ‘hunted-house’. He is the bridge between the director and producer. One has to give credit where it is due, the broker does a lot of house hunting before he is ready to show you some half a dozen empty flats. Mr. Broker has the keys to multiple flats, the doors to which open like Khul ja sim sim, and you get a peekaboo into these houses. They are mostly empty, dusty rooms, which makes me feel very lost and confused. The idea of making these houses my ‘home’ seems very remote on these visits. I want to be in anyplace but this, but this is a transitory feeling in fear of displacement. After the first few times I pretend to have gotten used to the idea of displacement. Once we had walked into a flat where a window had been kept open and some two dozen pigeons had already made it home much before us. Another house we saw was totally furnished, even with crockery, utensils, and furnishings. The owner insisted that we bring in only our suitcases with us and live in like you do in a service apartment. But alas, my attachments to all my earthly possessions, (aka linen, glasses, pans-pots, books, boxes, wall pieces,etc) stopped me from entering a house without them. One owner refused to take away his name plate from the entrance, and we insisted on having ours put up, both forgetting the famous bard’s line “What’s in a name? ”

After seeing several houses one realization dawned is that the trick is in letting the mind win over the heart. You have to learn to look hard with a trained eye to see damp walls covered with fresh coat of distemper, sliding windows that don’t always slide, termites hiding behind bathroom mirrors and pelmets that may fall off at the sight of curtains. The list is long but not listed in any contract paper.  I have acquired all this experience over a decade of being a licensee in this mega city of dreams. My husband had done the ground work of renting our first flat in Mumbai all by himself, while the rest of the family were sitting like nawabs in our nawabo ki nagri, Lucknow. Therefore, moving into our first flat in Mumbai had left us without any experience of house-hunt.

Monsoon was drowning the city the year we landed in Mumbai. Like an eager gypsy I had looked down at the city from the plane window with dreams in my eyes to see the place where I could make my own ‘ashiyaan’.  The blue plastic sheets over the roofs of Mumbai slums (the first glimpse of Mumbai from air) did not look anything like a dream. My Urdu sensibilities of ‘ashiyaan‘ jerked aside sighting ‘jhopar patti’ nestling comfortably all around Chatrapati Shivaji Airport.   “Life in this city would not be cake walk” my pounding heart told me as our taxi drove through crawling, rain-soaked traffic towards our new address. My still young children were trying to explain to me the meaning of BHK, a term they had just been introduced to. A definition of BHK, bedroom, hall and kitchen, marked your space in this apartment city. A four BHK would mean super luxury, a three BHK spelled very spacious, a two BHK meant comfort and one BHK was economy. I already knew that in the days to come I would be getting sad and miss my last house with a lawn, backyard, kitchen garden, and the big rooms for my children to run around and play hide and seek. But for now, I had to learn to play hide and seek with my emotions and practicality.

Our first rented house was a comfortable three BHK, but my nine-year-old son had exclaimed the cliche that first day, ” Ma why does the house end here? ” on entering the third room! Growing up in spacious government quarters till then, his understanding of four walls was much more expansive than what he was seeing in the ten feet by twelve feet master bedroom.  And why blame the child alone, we all missed our old home very dearly, but it was time for fresh perspective. The sliding windows of the flat kept injuring my fingers for some time, and then I learnt to slide the windows without hurting inside-out. The house owners of our first house in Mumbai were an elderly couple and in the years that we lived in their house bonded us like family and changed our relationship from licensor/ licensee to uncle-aunty / beta-beti. There are laws above tenancy laws, the laws of human bonding, of love and compassion.

From one lease period to the other we will keep finding a new home for ourselves. Maybe the larger picture is for me to understand that nothing that you own or assume to be your own is yours in reality. The bundle which I can hold within my heart and hand is perhaps all I need for a fulfilling life. Could not end this note without quoting these favorite lines which so beautifully sum up the story of our existence.

Time you old gypsy man , 
Will you not stay, 
Put up your caravan 
Just for one day. 

Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome, 
Morning, and in the crush
Under Paul’ s dome;
Under Paul’s dial 
You tighten your rein-
Only a moment,
And off once again;
Off to some city
Now blind in the womb, 
Off to another 
Ere that’s in the tomb.

Ralph Hodgson

With Liberty & Freedom

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 2 Comments

Journey Journal 4

When Chalk & Cheese entered New York City the second time within fifteen days, it almost felt like home-coming. The sight of two bright happy faces eagerly waiting for us at the airport made the picture complete. My son had flown in from India for his sister’s convocation, and here he was greeting us with a smile and already looking quite a Yankee.

My Tom and Jerry, (the children) who had come to receive Chalk and Cheese at the airport wanted to do things their way, and we happily gave in to the plans of the TJ club tour operators. Their arrangements were not lavish but loving, not perfect but exciting, not easy but thoughtful.  Keeping with their plan the airport to hotel ride had to be taken on a bus. To get the local feeling they claimed, to save the dollar – I thought with a smile. So, there I was sitting in bus number M 60 holding on to my suitcase on wheels with one hand and my hand bag with the other, smiling apologetically each time my suitcase rolled forward to hit and nudge the man standing in front of me. Two years back I had send my daughter to this city with a ‘suitcase full of love’ and endless uncertainties of a mother’s heart. Today as I sat balancing my little suitcase and bag my mind went back to those memories. My little girl had become a confident City person, guiding our way; time sure changes the equations of life. Today I need to hold her finger when walking on a busy street, my young boy scolds me more often than I ever scolded him. My children have really grown up, though Chalk doesn’t seem to agree as much, maybe he is not ready yet to give up his throne to his rightful heirs!

Chalk and Cheese soon realized that their children had kept two words, ‘rest and recoup’, out of the to-do list of things. From long walks at Central Park to midnight chilling at Times Square, from meeting old friends over dinner to shopping at Macy, from museums to metro, Chalk and Cheese were kept on constant march under Tom and Jerry ‘s strict regimen. They took us to China Town of NYC to eat at an authentic Chinese restaurant. In fact, it was so authentic that other than us all other guests were Chinese, and the person taking the menu for us looked lost when we spoke in English. What was he expecting? We speak in Cantonese! My taste buds were loyal to the sweet and sour flavours of Mainland China, and any other taste could not match up for me. But of course, experiencing China Town in New York was different. My crazy family planned a late-night Hindi movie in the city, in an empty hall, more for the fun of the experience than ” Meri Pyari Bindu”.

We took a ferry to the Liberty island, to see Lady Liberty up close. The colossal statue does get bigger and bigger as one approaches the island, and then a dwarfing sense of self takes over as you stand near the statue. The Freedom Tower on the other hand stands tall reflecting the endless sky, the very way freedom is supposed to be, endless and shining.  As we stood by the memorial of terror attacks a sense of grief gripped us. We saw how each name was lovingly remembered, how memories were preserved. Terror can wipe away years from our life but the resilient strength of man to fight back terror makes us the survivors, the real heroes. A friend of mine had once said about America “Where liberty is a statue and freedom is a tower”, but it is this liberty and freedom that draws people to this country. This is a country that nurtures dreams, and a land where one can fulfil dreams if you have the potential and strength to achieve those goals.

Traveling in this city most of the time by metro made me come up with a catch line ‘ I do not like going underground ‘, but my protests fell on deaf ears. One-night Chalk and Cheese got lost simply by exiting through the wrong exit of the subway. And then we walked and walked for over an hour to reach our hotel which was ten minutes from the metro station. Chalk thinks, if you have a good pair of shoes, and healthy knees, you can walk for miles without complaining. He forgets that I am Cheese, I was not born and raised into the military. I preferred hailing a yellow taxi to getting on the metro. I preferred walking in the Central Park than making round and round circles of similar looking blocks and streets at midnight.

On the day of the convocation ceremony we woke up early and reached the daughter’s dorm room to get her ready in a saree. It was a joint family effort to drape the nine yards around our small bundle of joy.  I have no skills at this very authentic Indian saree draping art. I manage my own but cannot help others. Thus, the brother, father and I joined together in this complicated art of folding pleats, making the perfect ‘pallu’ and finding the ever-elusive safety pins to keep the saree in place. All through she stood like a scare crow arms outstretched, giving orders.  Today she could get away with anything, and a little indulgence from family was pretty okay.

Once the drama of ” dressing the girl ” was over, we hurriedly got into our ceremonial best and reached the venue within the university campus to occupy our twenty-third row right most corner seats! My brother, his wife and daughter had driven down to cheer their niece, and to make the day very special for all of us. We were in the audience sitting in anticipation to witness that one moment of honour when one’s child walks up on stage to receive her degree. These young people are the trendsetters, shaping our today for a well-meaning tomorrow. It was one of those days when one was allowed to splurge on emotions, to feel blessed with a gift called life. After the presentation was over amidst much hurray and cheering, our daughter gave us a tour of Columbia University campus. She showed us her classrooms, libraries, cafeteria and seminar halls. We walked the corridors our daughter had walked for two years, learning and earning her way to find her path in life. It takes hard work, and perseverance to achieve the dream, the months of burning the mid night oil, the long hours over the laptops, the rigor of academics, all of it is a uphill task, and when they reach the summit of their dreams, the smile on each face speaks of fulfilment.

The evening of the graduation was like a memorable dream in blue. We walked on Brooklyn bridge seeing the city lights in all its splendour, climbed the highest floor of The Empire State Building which was lit with the colours of the Columbia University, blue. A city honouring its graduates in this illuminated manner for one evening was something I had never seen before, this is what makes the difference between ordinary and brilliance. The stars that shined brighter than the one’s in the sky that night were in the eyes of the brilliant young people who had just graduated.

The next morning we took another early morning flight (the woes of this before dawn flights chased me all through my journey) to Orlando. My nephew who lived in Tampa had driven all the way to Orlando to receive us. The children had planned a detailed itinerary for their day at the Universal Studios. Chalk joined the three young people, matching their enthusiasm pace to pace. A day was all we had, though it was not enough to see everything in such short time, but a plan of sorts was made with mutual consent of the three young people.

In the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, as we the muggles lined up to board the smoke trailing Hogwarts Express, the feeling was like…” We are off to see the wizard the wonderful wizard of Oz“. The world that JK Rowling has created in our minds has become in many ways a real world where we draw parallels with these characters. My son who wears glasses since childhood has long been called Harry Potter by family and friends. And our Harry Potter was the most excited person in this world of Hogwarts. As we walked down Diagon Alley, leading upto the world of Jurassic Park, reaching Superhero Boulevard, he became a kid once again.  Universal studios recreated a world where grown-ups easily shed off all pretences of adulthood and joined the gang. We felt like we had not had as much fun since we were kids. Chalk and Cheese forgot to agree to disagree. From butter beer to frog shaped candy we shared the fun together in this wonderland.

My nephew’s home in Tampa felt like an extension of my own flat in Mumbai. Chalk and Cheese enjoyed playing house, right from cooking, rearranging shelves, to doing laundry. The young man was more than happy to let us meddle with his house keeping for a day or two while he enjoyed some relaxation time with his brother and sister. Two days of home stay did wonders to my mood, with comfort food of ” sheddo bhaat ” and freshly laundered clothes in the suitcase I was ready to hit the road again.

We drove out of Tampa one early morning (yes once again that before dawn hour), driving through Florida highways to reach the white sands of Miami beach. The white sands immediately calls out to kick off the shoes and walk the sand; the beautiful blue of the ocean calls out to jump into the clear water and play with the waves; the warm sun calls out to give a tan you will regret for weeks. So many invitations cannot be ignored, not when you are in Miami, not when you are Cheese. Chalk knows Cheese is crazily in love with the sea, Chalk knows Cheese will not float away, Chalk knows Cheese always comes back. I wish I could bring back home a fist full of sand so white and water so blue and then colour my oceans in a different hue.

Miami made me want to come back again. It seemed one enters this city only to holiday, to let your hair down, and to feel high on life.  Having dinner late into the evening in one of the many diners on Ocean drive I felt as though the whole world had got here tonight just to make merry, laugh, drink, smoke cigars, drive fancy cars, walk hand in hand in designer clothes, totally oblivious to the world around them.  If there is a place to sing, ” har fikr ko dhunye mein ura ta chala gaya “, this would be the place, by the ocean, with the lined-up yachts of the rich and famous, a life surreal in many ways, but worth seeing indeed. A big hug and thanks to my nephew for making this joyous Florida experience so fantastic in every way.

Saying goodbye is the toughest part when holidays come to an end. The children have grown up and are well settled in their adult life but every time I have to say goodbye the pangs of separation weighs down the heart. There were so many joyous moments and hours packed up in those few days of holiday, that it seemed to burst from the seams. I just had to pick up a few memories very special and put them in this album of Journey Journal, to be cherished when memories fade. Hoping that these musings will someday fill my hours quite in a Wordsworth style ” For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. ” My memories are my Daffodils, bringing a smile even as I write this last chapter of the journey.

As Chalk and Cheese settled down in a homeward fight, flying above the continents, above the breathtakingly magnificent snow-capped Alps, I felt my senses numbed as though in opium drunk. I stole a glance at Chalk to see him deep in sleep, perhaps dreaming about the united colours of a nation so different. For the first time in many nights, I remembered my bed. A clear sign that it was time to return to base. This indeed would be a summer to remember forever, Chalk and Cheese will travel together many more times, making their own journey journals, but sharing this one with our friends made it very special. Hasta Maniana till we meet again.

Got History in my Eyes

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 3 Comments
GOT HISTORY
I want to escape from the mundane, from the myriad responsibilities of the daily life and live a few days feeling like someone else, almost like a borrowed life where there are no boring hours, long grocery lists, fixed office timings, dirty laundry, an empty fridge and so on and so forth. Waking up under the same sky above your head everyday does get monotonous once in a while. With the changing of the sky above my head my mood uplifts and soars up up and away into the beautiful turquoise blue to merge with the clouds , not bothering to follow any chartered flight path.
Though the flying route looks simple on the map , the airlines have their own strategy to make it look very complicated. They confuse us with their various options of connecting place A to place B. For every imaginable flight leaving your home town you have to take a detour, stop at another destination and from there take another connecting flight to continue your second phase of journey. A crow-fly connection is seldom available or affordable. To complicate matters further the stop over may range from one hour to sixteen hours or more. Getting on the right plane at all awkward hours of the twenty four hour clock is the biggest time machine challenge of any travel plan.
When my husband and I become travel partners all such minor issues invariably get compounded into a snow ball. The differences between our personalities show up ten times more magnified. If he is Chalk then I am Cheese. He leaves a mark when he speaks, I on the other hand melt and freeze a hundred times a day ! He is calm and decisive , I am lost and impatient. He is a planner, I am a dreamer, he is finance, I am romance ! But together we make a fine team or so we believe. When it is time to travel he likes to delve deep into the mathematical equations of permutation-combination to get the best deal possible. Our black board of planning is marked heavily by chalk, and the flights of fantasies keep melting like cheese.
So, the flight which had taken off in part 1 of the journey journal lands at Amsterdam in the morning . Between our landing and boarding another flight we had exactly one hour to find a new gate, go through security and immigration and then board for Rome. In that precious one hour I got into my hundred meter sprinter mode ready to run. Looking out for my partner I find him standing in front of a huge electronic board trying to understand it’s working ! There are more than fifty flight details and before I can read half way through the screen changes to another set of new information. If we had a sixteen hour lay over I would have loved to stare at this complicated board to locate my flight , but at this point with about fifty five minutes to go the impatient ‘me’ in the ‘I’ chose to seek human assistance from a counter marked ‘Information’. But my man is still transfixed in front of the electronic board, I literally had to pull him apart from this hypnotized transfixed gaze at the board. Thank God for the running shoes it helped us to reach finishing line just in time to board the flight. Panting and ranting together we settled down in our seats to continue flying for a few more hours.
Cheese starts melting (as though placed on some hot pizza ) even before touchdown in Italy. Aah Rome ! Rome of Romulus and Remus, Rome of the seven kings, Rome of Julius Caesar and Brutus, Rome of Antony and Cleopatra . An eternal city weaving myth and history into tales of ambition, love , loyalty, power, betrayal, an eternal theme running and ruining our life through the ages. I feel the attraction like magic, I feel impatience to see it all with a birds eye view, but to see history I have to learn patience, have to learn to walk the roads and hold the thoughts.
No matter how tired and wary we felt as travelers the euphoria of reaching Rome kept our feet busy. A driver and a car were supposed to be waiting for us. Chalk was sure his name would be written on a white piece of paper with black marker and held by a man in waiting. While he went in search of his name in a foreign land , I stood guarding our suitcases. On the other hand the driver who had come to meet us at the airport had decided to find us without holding any placard. He trusted his deduction skills, after all how many Indians can alight a flight looking like Chalk and Cheese ! So this man located me and came towards me grinning broadly and spoke in fluent Italian. I heard him out intently andconfirmed affirmative with a noddy- nod. I could not have missed my Chalk’s name and ‘India’ , even if he had whispered. The Italian driver thought I understood his mother tongue and showed me extra favor by offering to carry my suitcase. Grinning mysteriously at Chalk, I thought to myself the power of silent speech. The husband repeated our friend’s address to the driver some four times and then sat back quietly. The car moved through the broad streets and by lanes of Rome and finally stopped in front of a smart looking apartment building and the driver announced in broken English “I drive no more”. My surprised husband checked out the address for the fifth time and started telling the driver ” I drive no more ” will not work. Somehow I got the joke, our driver was just being funny. I patted Chalk on the shoulder and showed him the building number, we had reached our destination .We got off the taxi, bag baggage n all and waved bye to our witty Italian driver.

Our very kind hostess and the girl who calls me Di, welcomed us with open arms into her warm home. For the next few days she became our tour planner, guide, host, friend and family. Her house was decorated like mini India, an Indian oasis in the middle of Italy. She had a charpoy from Punjab, mirrored cushions from Gujrat, terracota horses from Bengal, it was simple, beautiful and home ; reflecting the artistic senses of the artist herself. She showed us her new home, her Rome…to us, in her own style. We roamed the city in the most unconventional, non touristy fashion. We ate, drank, walked, took bus rides, sat by the road to rest our feet, and seeped in as much of Rome and of being Roman as we could in that short span of few days. My friend spoke fluent Italian, had friends all over the city, and kept herself immensely busy while her diplomat husband performed his official duties. We have a special soft corner in our heart for this amazing couple. Rome was not built in a day and we could not do justice to the centuries of history, architecture and art in the short time we had , yet every experience made us feel very rich and left us wanting for more.
Venice and Florence , the two must-see places were squeezed into our tight itinerary. Like young bag packers Chalk and Cheese walked the paver blocked roads of Venice and Florence tasting flavors of Italy. Standing in the Piazza San Marco square of Venice, seeing tourists throng from all across the globe , I noticed something amusing and closer to home. I saw young Bangladeshi immigrants selling roses and reproductions of famous paintings and playing hide and seek with the patrolling police. The gondolas looked so colorful and being rowed by such handsome looking men, I could not have ignored them even if I wanted to. Sailing on the gondola I sang our ( Indians ) one and only ‘gondola anthem’ ,”Ye kashti wala kya gaa raha hai ” and embarrassed my husband every bit. But what could I do, this was my melting point of emotions, and I am Cheese after all ! I My son had prepared me with his version of the dramatized history of Florence, he had made me watch ” Medici: Masters Of Florence” on Netflix. Therefore when we walked through the narrow city lanes of Florence, when we stood mesmerized in front of The Brunelleschi’s Dome or popularly known as Duomo Di Firenze , I saw the stories of past unfolding. I saw Florence from the view point of the Medici dynasty, of how a banker family came to power and ruled Florence through the Renaissance , encouraging art and artists like never before.
As we walked those streets of Italy at some point we got lost only to find each other again, at some point someone thought I was a Spanish woman, at some point he discovered a new drink called ‘ spritz ‘, at some point we took selfies like kids, at some point we stumbled, at some point we held hands, and at some point we fell in love again. After our short romance with Italy we boarded another plain to fly to the city that never sleeps.

SENTIMENTALLY VIRTUOUS.

/ sangeeta_chakladar / Leave a comment

Sentimentally virtuous.  

I am feeling a little of both, sentimental and virtuous. Why do I become so sentimental about being virtuous specially when the festive season is knocking our doors I wonder. The virtues of being virtuous never get so highlighted as during the festival season. The season of symbolic festivities and celebrations has started. With every festival a story is always associated which translates into a symbolic message to fit into our lives. We have written our own religion, our own stories, for religious stories are our all time favorites. These stories have been created to remind man about the importance of righteous living. If so be it, why does virtues and morals get out of fashion as the season changes. 

Soon we will get swept into a cultural extravaganza of greetings, rituals, new clothes, great food, dazzling sales, and an overwhelming sense of bonhomie with friends and families. The sense of community who recognize each other’s devotional needs reaches its zenith during religious festivals. Festivals are meant to bring out the best in us , to spread happiness, to reach out and touch the lives of all others. The ingredients of happiness is but so simple. It never was or meant to be complex ,we just forget the recipe for true happiness from time to time. The old forgotten ingredients of love, compassion, smile, friendship, tolerance, respect, acceptance, understanding, all come out from within us and we rediscover the simplicity of pure joy. These virtues never seem to lose their fragrance of well being. We like to forget our troubles for a day or two and make the most of the happy times. And just as easy it comes we let this happiness slip away as soon as the festival day or season is over. My sentimental mind foolishly questions, why do we put a time tag to our happy days , why can’t happiness and being good be an everlasting festival of the heart. 

The calendar is jotted with days of religious festivals, from Id- Ul-Fitter to Ganpati, from Janmashtami to Id- Uz-Zuha, from Durga pujo to Diwali, from Guruparv to Thanksgiving , from Christmas to Holi, the list goes on. We chose our festivals , make it a religious thing or a cultural celebration. These are the days when we either rejoice with family, or mend our ways, or break the walls of silence and accept people with open arms.The colors, lights ,new clothes-all of which fill up our homes during festivals bring with it a desire to clean up the accumulated dust of prejudices within. This is indeed a very good and positive attitude . But once again I get sentimental and wonder, where do we hide this loving, forgiving being within us for the rest of the days. Do we need a calendar to be reminded of goodness !

Year after year Ma Durga the deity of assimilated ,unparalleled strength and power comes on earth and we remember how she killed the demon. Yet the demon does reappear again and again . Does the demon ever die is the question-where does the demon live after all ? Of course, this is easy to answer, the demon lives within us, in our minds,our thoughts, in the narrow alleys of our heart. Hidden within the glittering lights of festivities the demon resides with all it’s darkness unmasked. How many years of symbolic Durga is needed to remind us of the omnipresence of the demon. The demon is the product of our diseased society. We are our own sinners. Jesus will be crucified again and again for all our sins, only to resurrect to save us from ourselves . We pelt stones on our own messiahs. We pelt stones on our own conscience. The lights of hundred years of Dipawali will not do away with the darkness within, if we forget to light the lamp every day. The Id milan and brotherhood of man has no meaning if we are blind to the tears of the orphaned child. What use is one days Thanksgiving if we can live for the rest of the year without remembering the hundred thousand people and reasons to be thankful for. All our fasting, praying, rejoicing are but beautiful manifestations of our will do reconnect with our inner self. Deep within us the deity and the demon can both reside, and the choice is ours to make, wether we can conquer our fears and can battle the evil. The choice between a days celebration or a life long promise to ourself to bring in happiness within, to do away with the darkness . 

Life is not a merry-go-round. Beyond the days of gleeful celebrations I need to make a promise to myself to maintain the equanimity of mind. The remote control of my inner engineering is in my own hands. If I can open the magic box of happy ingredients on certain days of the calendar year then why cannot I try to remain the same wonderful person for the rest of the days. I am a little sentimental with the life happening around me, I am a little virtuous with the deep seeded values within me. With the rhythmic beat of the ‘Dhak’ my heart beats with joy as I tap my feet feeling sentimentally virtuous . 

A tale of Two Cities

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 7 Comments

 

                                                                           Capture

The mileage points keep adding as I shuttle ( Oh so frequently ) between my temporary address and permanent address , the city of dreams ‘Amchi Mumbai ‘ and  the city of joy ‘Amar Kolkata’. In recent times I made a choice to live in two cities, Mumbai and Kolkata, alternately. I divided my time, house, books, furniture, wardrobe, kitchen, between the two homes I set up in the two metros. Since then I have been swinging like a pendulum between the two cities and feeling quite dizzy;  I have no one to blame for this situation but myself. Thus in this dizzy state of affairs I try to keep pace with the time machine I created for myself and here is my oscillating attempt to share the woes or wows of my experiences.

Like thousands of Indians who reach Mumbai with a dream, I too had one, a small one or so I thought at that point. My dream was to live by the sea and count the waves on a full moon night. Admittedly a very childish and ignorant dream of my incorrigible romantic mind. But dreams are dreams and they defy logic. Soon I learnt that in this city of dreams only two sections of people live by the sea,the rich and famous ( not so sure about the fame though ) and the fishing community. The latter sure keep count of the waves for their livelihood depends on the tides of sea , but the rich perhaps have no time to count waves. For the rest of us we live in busy narrow lanes and cross roads of suburban Mumbai mainland. We  live in  high towers, counting either a hefty rental or EMI each month, and the dream of counting waves soon get washed away. But on sudden days the smell of sea hits me and the sea breeze carelessly flirting with my  hair reminds me of the waves, the roars, the sand and my dream. I rush to the beaches of overcrowded, litter floating sand and sea, I see the setting sun in its glory and drive back home counting road bumps.

Home is reached even though the journey is bumpy and the google maps are busy locating my destination as Kolkata.  Kolkata is the city where I grew up, my building blocks of memories are from this city. I keep them tightly packed in a box called nostalgia. Years back I had moved out of Kolkata, I traveled and stayed in various smaller cities and towns of India. But like an umbilical cord the city kept pulling me back no matter how far I went. The bend of roads, meandering Hooghly, the iconic Howrah bridge, landmark Victoria memorial, familiar shops, road side eateries, schools, colleges, all hold the familiarity of home to me. The city landmarks change with time, new ones come up but the charm of the city still remains. In the years that went by Calcutta changed to Kolkata, and Bombay changed to Mumbai, but character and essence of these two old cities stood strong and unshakable in the hands of time.

Mumbai gives me the zeal to seize the day, this city challenges my hours and minutes. The  work culture of Mumbai inspires everyone who comes here, from the daily wage earner to the movers and shakers. The simple philosophy which operates in this crazy chaos of Mumbai is live and let live.  Kolkata on the other hand gives me the much sought passion for life. Kolkata people are passionate about almost everything, be it music, food, literature, football, cinema, politics, travel, education, the list goes on. But in context to business, finance, work culture, the laid back and casual attitude often disturbs me. Every second person on the streets of Kolkata has a political and social view point but in deliverance lies the problem. This I say with no disregard or prejudice to any individual, it is the sum up of a general feeling I often get myself and also hear from people around me.

NH 6, connecting Kolkata and Mumbai perhaps sees less traffic on an average day than the emotional traffic of my brain that keeps traveling everyday between Kolkata and Mumbai. In one city I have a home of my own ( keeping aside the transient thought for a while ) and in the other city I have an empty nest. In my city of joy I get lured by fish curry and strong Darjeeling tea. Together with friends and family we raise a storm of opinions warming both our heart and hearth. As quintessential Bengalis we are very opinionated and vociferous , whether politically correct or incorrect, adda holds the center stage. In Mumbai,life is more centered around work, making people a little impersonal and self centered. With everyone chasing some pursuit it is easy to feel lonely and left out in Mumbai. I long for both the cities simultaneously, I miss not being in one when I am in the other. A sense of being displaced chases me as I keep shuttling between Mumbai and Kolkata.

I feel amused with my confused love affair with my two cities. My taste buds, my musical ear, my choice of clothing , the languages I speak, the emotions I feel, are constantly torn between two choice. Sometimes I feel richer by this unique blend of two cultures within myself. With chameleonic ease I  change my personality as I shift between the two cultures.

Draped in a cotton sari, wearing large ear rings I attend a musical evening of rabindrasangeet in Kolkata. Where as in Mumbai I don’t dress particularly for any occasion, such is the pulse of the city. A very casual dress code defines my Mumbai style and a more elegantly dressed me defines my Kolkata style. But the woes of my divided wardrobe is very obvious.My wardrobe has suddenly thinned in size after this division of clothes between two homes. I remind myself that I must have had had more clothes than I could wear to begin with.  My pink churidar set is in Mumbai but the perfectly matching dupatta is resting in my Kolkata wardrobe. If my tussar sari is in Kolkata my blouse for the same will be in Mumbai . The smell of moth balls fills the air as I pack up each item in airlock zip bags, unsure of when they will next see the light of day.The brown heeled shoe smile back at me when I start looking for the black sandal. As I lace up my running shoes and start running in an illusionary attempt to bridge the gap between the two mile stones, I feel that distance is only a state of mind.

In my constant state of transit my taste buds stay happily busy and always wanting for more. From pani puri to phuchka, Mumbai bhel to Kolkata jhal muri, mishti doi to shreekhand, I am spoilt for choice. One can never have a favorite amongst the favorites. How can it be easy to chose between Aminia Biriyani and Berry Pulao from Britania !  Will I vote for Amar juice center against Badsha rolls, no. Both the cities delight me with mouth watering dishes. The confusion starts when I enter my own kitchen and start looking around for the pots and pans, spices and grains on the wrong shelf of the right pantry. I make meticulous grocery lists, or so I pride, soon to be ridiculously challenged by the mix up I make between my two kitchens. I buy what I think I need only to realize it is for my other home. Between my two kitchens I perhaps have enough stuff to open my own store, but ironically the needed stuff is never in the needed place. Thus these days when taste goes wrong I promptly blame the kitchen, not the chef. The chef scurries from the kitchen to a more favorable place, my library.

Our library too has not been spared from this divide and rule policy of mine. My children like me are absolute book lovers. They find it difficult to forgive me for having send more than half of their books to another home in another city. Kindle is still not an answer we are ready to accept. When I get the sudden urge to read Keats or Shelly ( yes some die hard romantics still read them )  or a novel of a particular author, my book shelf seems too far, too out of reach. The Internet is always an option but the pleasure of leafing through tea- brown pages of a book with memories attached to it cannot be imitated. Therefore we keep buying new books all over again, and wait for the pages to turn tea-brown. Like memories I keep adding books to my lives, for no matter where I choose to live  books shall always be my best friend.

There are other cities and other worlds where the sun and moon travels to, where the waves break on lonely shores and rivers flow under wooden bridges, someday I will go there. Till then I sit in my balcony looking up at the sky to catch a glimpse of the full moon between the high rise apartments. I remember my favorite moon chase game from my childhood. During long drives at night I would look up at the moon and wonder whether the moon was chasing us or were we chasing the moon ! Perhaps it is a little crazy counting waves and chasing moon between the city of joy and city of dreams , but it is a blissful lunacy which keeps me swaying like a pendulum. Both Kolkata and Mumbai enrich me, my nomadic life and my two beautiful homes. This is my ‘ Tale of two cities’ .

I Am The Buyer

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 4 Comments

For long they have been selling their dreams,
And I am the buyer.
For long their slogans churn the stream,
And I am the buyer.
They sold harvest, they sold gold.
They sold Marx , brave and bold.
They sold a comrade, they sold voice.
They sold placards, deafening noise.

They sold the darkness of a damp cell,
What was I buying I could no more tell.

For long they have been selling their thoughts,
And I am the buyer.
For long their slogans brewing wrought,
And I am the buyer.
They sold wisdom, they sold help.
They sold freedom, but not for self.
They sold light, a bit too bright.
They sold praise, they sold fire,
They sold a future with a date to expire.

They sold a world down in a well,
What was I buying I could no more tell.

For long they have been selling their faith,
And I am the buyer.
For long their slogans igniting wrath,
And I am the buyer.
They sold agitation, they sold purification,
They sold terror, they sold fear.
They sold the hearts of someone dear.
They sold religion to suit their region.

They sold faith in a closed shell,
What was I buying I could no more tell.

For long they have been selling their progress,
And I am the buyer.
For long their slogans deepening in regress,
And I am the buyer.
They sold commotion, calling it revolution.
They sold racism, burying humanism.
They sold a house with a rigid wall.
They sold a market where values fall.

They sold a heaven which looked like hell,
What was I buying I could no more tell.

For long they have been selling potions of power,
And I am the buyer.
For long their slogans of decaying desire,
And I am the buyer.
They sold knowledge of a twinkling land,
They sold a world within your hand.
They sold restless, jaded generation,
They sold youth without passion,
They sold ambition with delusion.

They sold a soul which can not sell,
What was I buying I could no more tell.

Unfaithfully Yours

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 2 Comments

img-20160930-wa0005

When the pocket sized, green covered,New Testaments were periodically handed over to us in our convent school, matters of faith, religion or dogmas of moral behavior were of little importance to me. The silky thin white pages and the fine print marveled me, the contents had no significance . Between school and home my religious upbringing swayed like a pendulum. Though the goal of both must have been the same, to indoctrinate in my little brain the values of good living. At home there was an alter with various Hindu Gods and Goddesses, there were incense sticks, evening diya, little sugar crystallized balls of prasad, and Slokas in Sanskrit ( the meaning of which I still don’t fully comprehend due to my ignorance of the Sanskrit language ) . Back to school , there was the chapel, holy water, morning prayers and the hymns. Thus happily I grew up singing ” The world around us sings of The Lord.. ” in school and “Mon ek bar Hari bol” at home, both with equal ease and fervor. Why the fervor the mind never asked, it just knew that religious practice is an important world of the adults in which we were being tutored to partake.

My brain had not started it’s uncomfortable questions yet, but curiosity was perhaps the first seed of question ! The divide between Moral Science class and Catechism class in school made me curious. We knew that us, the non- Christians were supposed to attend Moral Science class. But I was curious to know what was taught in Catechism class which was different. In a vague way my child mind had perhaps already understood that the teachings of being good from bad cannot be differentiated by sitting in different class rooms.

The seeker seeks everywhere. The seeker is almost like a lost lover knocking from door to door. There is no difference in the silence within a gurdwara or a church. There is no difference between my fasting or yours. There is no difference between your namaz or my puja. When I hear a Bangladeshi Muslim talk of Durga pujo, when I see young adults practice lent and giving up more meaningful things than food , I feel like telling myself “All is well”. For we the humans are not mere puppets of mass hysteria, we have faith in one religion ,called Humanity.

No one in particular teaches you this but the young mind learns to understand that God is the immediate helpline number you dial with folded hands and closed eyes. This need for helpline is simple when we are young. Just before every exam, report card,or simply to sort out silly differences with best friends ! Even today I find myself praying for the ‘report card ‘; this time though it is for my children. The obsession with ‘report card’ keeps chasing me. A voice within keeps mocking and reminding of the true meaning of ‘report card’.The need of Gods intervention from the school report card to life’s report card happens in the process called growing up. I stumble and fall, I fail and lose, I hurt and reconcile. The lessons of life are learned and unlearned many a times and many a ways.

With every festive fervor my questioning mind awakes. The uncomfortable questions of why and how we seek Divinity arises. The atheist and the believer both dwell within me. In the battle of logic and faith the realm of reality and metaphysical collide. The answers are not simple. Often I have come across true atheists with much deeper knowledge and study of the scriptures than the blind believer. To quote Paramhansa Yogananda ” Faith means expanding your intuitive awareness of God’s presence within, and not relying on reason as your chief means of understanding.”

I sway once again like a pendulum between being ritualistic and spiritual. Rituals keeps me busy and distracted, spiritual seeking needs hard work. But peace descends when I sit at my altar with the single candle burning. My mind wants to surrender and grasp that fleeting moment of complete bliss which does not flicker with the flame. With age I have realized that the helpline I have been dialing since childhood has always been redirected to me. The answers I have seeked out wards have always come from within. It is time to look within and reconnect with the seed of strength already sowed inside my heart. As the world prepares for the festive season , the true blue Bengali me rises at dawn to listen to the chants of Devi Bandana, is it religion or culture I forget to question. The walk on the path of self realization is arduous and the journey has just begun.

“How happy is the blameless vessels lot,
The world forgetting by the world forgot,
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,
Each prayer answered, each wish resigned.”

Alexander Pope

Mind Space

/ sangeeta_chakladar / Leave a comment

photo

The sky is my space ! I live there with my dreams, I live there with the twinkling stars, I live there with the sun set glow, I live there with the hues of blue. But down here on Mother Earth I live in an apartment with a veranda which is the window to my sky abode . Once I tried reaching the sky in a para glider, the exhilarating experience finished even before my heart beat stabilized. After some pondering, I came to a conclusion, that no matter how beautiful it felt up in the air like a bird, I would henceforth chose airplanes only, to fly !. My passion for flying with wings never saw the day of light ; but occupying the passenger seat is something we all do so often. As I live near the airport I get to see airplanes everyday flying very low above my house. Half a century of staring at the sky and looking up at airplanes has not diminished my gaping wonder of this flying machine and of the vastness of the skies which makes the planes appear like tiny birds as they keep soaring higher and higher .

Whenever I fly , I look out of the aircraft window trying to catch a glimpse of my house below. But I have never been able to spot my house. All houses from the sky look the same to me, their distinguishing characters vanish as I keep rising higher. The vast dome unifies us all till the the sky and earth meet up at the horizon. The horizon too is a line of our fantasy which keeps deluding us the closer we reach. Therefore we must take to wings and fly, to see what lies beyond, for “man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s the heaven for”.

Coming back to my story, I had to travel, I took a flight. My journey began in the most predictable manner. A delayed flight, a window seat and soon after take off I had settled down to sky gaze. As the aircraft kept gaining height I soon lost awareness of my surroundings, submerging my senses in an oneness with the world I saw out of the tiny oval window. My imagination turned the clouds into magic carpets, waiting for me to alight. Like a hypnotized person I got up from my 23 alpha seat and moved towards the aircraft door, with a practiced hand movement and one smooth twist I opened the door of the aircraft and took one hesitating step on the closest white ball of puffed up cotton or was it a cloud ? I did not fall in the bottomless pit of the space below. I took another tentative step and then another till I stepped out completely and shut the door of the plane behind me.


Like a bus which had dropped a passenger at a deserted road, the plane dropped me off at my cloud junction. The plane then gathered speed once more and kept moving ahead. I saw myself standing in a big ocean of blue sky and waves of clouds all around me. I do not fall, though I cannot fly but I do feel light as a feather, running , jumping and dancing like a ballerina . I kept moving from one cloud to the other in pure ecstasy, feeling of home… at last. I was wearing a red dress, red soft silk of hundred pleats swayed in gay abandon with my dance movements. Was I dead or still alive ! I could see my plane pass by. Curious faces on the oval window stared back at me in amazement. I smiled back and waved a hand at them till the plane vanished from my sight. The dance of my dream continues , I lose all sense of time and place. Dancing with the floating clouds, singing my own song, I am intoxicated in bliss. At some point of my dancing trance I stop mid way, my well trained ears wait for the familiar echo of applause. I look around for my audience. But there were none. Panic grips my senses. My glide freezes , my graceful steps falter, I fall on a cloud a step lower. I look around once more, my audience, my audience, cannot see a single human face far and wide.

A sense of emptiness hits me hard. My cloud keeps on floating as I sit transfixed in a daze. From some deep coma of remembrance Wordsworth comes into mind “I wondered lonely as a cloud.. ” the rest of Daffodils fade away. The same line keeps going on and on in my mind as in a broken record. Why I wonder, I do not cherish wandering alone on a cloud? I am where I have always wanted to be. I am in my sky, my airplane has brought me here, my clouds are all around me, yet I am scared. With this endless sea of pristine beauty all around me I still feel deserted. I cling on to the seam of my red dress. Red becomes my hope, my symbol of life, my colour of reality. Once more I need to find my house amidst many undistinguished houses. From the edge of the cloud I peep down searching hungrily for one glimpse of my house below, my apartment with a veranda. But all I see is an ocean of blue turning grey to welcome night. I cover myself in red and sink in the lap of a floating cloud waiting for sleep to come and take me beyond my fear. Within the aircraft, seat twenty three Alfa remained empty, or so it seemed. red_aunty_2

Which House Was It ?

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 15 Comments

Which house was it where my first steps seemed like a mile!
Which house was it where my parents spread their loving smile!

The roof above my head will change its colour once more,
With the break of dawn, I will shut another door.
From the walls I have erased all our noisy talk,
From the wilting garden I have plucked each stalk.

Which house was it where I planted my first sap!
Which house was it where I rocked my baby on my lap!

‘Carpe diem’ my love, you had said one day,
Wish you were here to show me the way.
I will lay my shirts in another room tomorrow,
I will line my plates in another kitchen burrow.

Which house was it where I cooked my first meal!
Which house was it where eating together was a big deal!

How many houses have I made my home,
How many times have I moved my dome.
The thrashing waves never count the grains of the sand,
The wandering gypsy never leave their traces on the land.

Which house was it where we had our first fight!
Which house was it where I stayed up all night!

A favourite cricket bat is chipped from the top,
A discarded pencil heel from the designer shop.
A wall filled with posters, someone’s scaling chart,
Where do I stop, and where do I start.

Which house was it where you first came home late!
Which house was it where I always waited by the gate!

I have packed the boxes with memories old and new,
Many pieces discarded, yet tenderly held back a few.
The family picture of our first holiday in snow,
Our radiant smiles by the bornfire glow.

Which house was it where I taught the children to soar high and fly!
Which house was it where I saw them spreading their wings in the sky!

I will walk another stretch to match your stride,
I will run all the way to be by your side.
A house called home perhaps awaits us by the lane,
A home we will build with all our love and all our pain.

Which house is it where we will rest our tired feet!
Which house is it where all of us will some day meet!