To Home, with love. (= - Story 11

Hello readers, forgive me for my absence (or rather the absence of my posts). I know I owe you 3-4 posts. I will be posting them in a short span of time. In fact, as early as possible. So to say, lets start with recents.

***

Basically through this whole month, I had made myself cosy playing Assassin's Creed III. Hehe. Currently in Sequence 8. Currently, I am in Bridewell trying to assassinate Hickey.

So, basically I stayed hours glued to this game, while my mother kept calling me for dinner. The game and functions are awesome - Full Sync, Animus Database, etc. But it's a bit taxing on your GPU. The timeline is a bit loose, though.

***

November (and winter) is setting in. I have a few injuries after Children's Day, so I gotta rest. But all-in-all, Children's Day was awesome. DJ mixing, breaking window panes, cricket, fighting with territorial enemies, we had all. But it was breaking a window pane, not panes though. It was almost melodramatic. Someone throws the ball, points at the batsman for a four and the batsman gives a sixer. Nice. It hits the pane almost like those slo-mo ads we have these days. Bang! And then the whole floor is eerily quiet, as if nothing existed. DJ mixing; my friends Shuchita, Pritam & Sanjana brought the songs. While Sagnik, Rounak and I mixed them (with MIXX). It was awesome. 

We started playing cricket when suddenly a bunch of idiots started playing Basketball in our area. We moved to the Bus Bay and played football there and it was fine unless one of the people in my team stumped his shoe on my toe. Oh, nice. That's when I almost fall comically.

That's all readers, Await a few more in this month.

Concentration - Story 10

  I was determined to write a story today and after 5 hours of brain-racking and sweating like a dog I finally produced my first (which I feel) should-be-a-novel story. Just read on and believe me you will be caught up......

  Feedback is welcome.

 Stun Darts

---------------------

  Derek and Will got down from the public bus hesitantly. Their foster parents had kicked them out realizing that there was no use of these two brothers they had sheltered. But they had no idea of the place they has unknowingly stepped into. The smell of rotten fish and vegetable filled their nose and they were forced to travel along the tide of daily shoppers who came here to buy fresh foodstuff. And they found it too but without the adjective fresh before it.

  The CCTV which had been put across through the city tracked their every move. Even their swatting of a fly was carefully recorded on a hard disk with a capacity to last their entire lives. The people who were sitting behind the desks watching them however didn’t look as if they were going to last till Derek and Will’s death. They were pale and their skin dry and chapped due to the constant air-conditioning. They have been monitoring the boys for seven years.

  Yes, seven years. For seven years, these hairless and emotionless people had been employed to keep watch over these boys. Rarely, they asked for any food or drink. To one single room, more than 400 CCTVs were connected. They were constantly monitored by 80 people. There were four parts of the city – namely, North, South, East and West. And basically 4 groups – with 20 in each. The boys who had abruptly shifted from North to West had again brought a row of sighs from them. A rare sight was seen from these agents – grief.

  The last group of these agents codenamed “Vortex Dragon” was taken to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and shot down. The reason was that they were tired and decided to take a ten minutes’ rest. It turned out that as these agents were monitoring the boys, so were they being monitored by a higher group of people. Usual. But the current group of agents codenamed “Alpine Wolf” were tougher and had much more endurance. Downtime of 1 minute in approximate 525960 minutes. That’s it.

  The members of “Alpine Wolf” were taken to a training facility for elite agents in Iraq. For 1 year, they were on starvation rations –5 litres of water in a day, hard bread thrice a day and chicken stew occasionally. Every day wasn’t the same however. Monday was endurance test, Tuesday was strength test, Wednesday was skill test and so on. All in all, there was absolutely no rest.

What's a Bazaar? - Story 9

          Time - 7:30 PM. I wondered why the hell was I on this idiotic crowded street. Can't help it either - it's a shopping street. This area's also called Gariahat and most people living in our city know this place. I stood in front of the shoe store waiting for my father to return.  I stared at the world around me - I stared properly.

          A black tee-wearing guy asked one of the hawkers, "How much does that brown leather belt cost?"

"Rs. 445"

"So much."

And then as usual, he started bargaining (he had to conserve the human nature in him).

"I will pay 300."

"No, Sir. Not that much."

"OK. 330."

"No, no."

"340."

"No."

I could see the man getting desperate. Restless.

"350."

"Never."

He walked away angrily. I knew his tactic.

"No, don't go. Don't go." the hawker kept screaming.

The people around him didn't seem to mind it, nevertheless.

The guy came back and took Rs. 400, slammed it in his face and said,"400. Final."

"No. Sir."

"Should I leave?"

"All right."

He handed the guy the belt.

"Where is this belt manufactured by the way?"

"Made In Bangkok."

After hearing this, I couldn't restrain myself from laughing. I laughed hell loudly. I  wondered what kind of people these are. I wondered who created these hawkers and shoppers.

          I was standing right across the street. There was a Chinese food shop beside which a car was parked.   I could hear the child whining continuously. My guess was - he was probably asking for some Chinese food and nevertheless he didn't want to waste his calories by getting out of the car. After 5 minutes of this play, a really fat lady came out atlast and had just closed the door when another trial of crying began - a much, much louder one. She had closed the door on the child's finger. The child kept howling and the mother kept howling with him,"I am very sorry! Sorry." Idiots. Blabbering Idiots. It's your own son, dude.

Commencing New Year. –check status = boring – Story 8

Today was one of the boring days ever.  Although many people would be against me for making a wonderful day boring, truly my conscience couldn’t help it. To me, it was a normal, average, vacational holiday. Nothing special. Well, the ones next to my house had played loud music the whole night (getting  me stressed out in the process) so I was pretty sleepy the whole day.

Going back to the night, my thoughts too were pathetic – I was thinking of handing over the neighbours to the police. As the night progressed and I was unable to achieve a wink of sleep my thoughts turned weirder  - Why doesn’t someone set fire to their house? Why can’t the trolls steal their babies? Why can’t they just *shush up*? But finally as usual (and as all stories go), I fell asleep.

Now, fresh start for a day. I went to Facebook, talked to some guys and posted a picture which said – “KEEP CALM AND LET 2013 BE AWESOME”.

I turned to my study desk. Homework – Untouched. Project – Untouched. We had 17 days of vacation. Project for 8 subjects. Considering 2 days for each project, I only had 1 day extra. So, isn’t that heartless and all students know it too well.

P.S. Really Belated Happy New Year 2013!

The Belated Durga Puja Story - Story 7 - Part 2

Then, after we left that pandal, we waved for a taxi (cab or whatever) which soon arrived - taking the point that this 'soon' was relative to a bullock cart's speed. Well, we arrived (Yes! We did.) Although the journey of 10 minutes took 50, the cab was pretty fast considering that we were confronted with a jam (A.k.a. The Great Wall of Kolkata). One of these photos below are of Ekdalia Evergreen and the other is of Singhi Park (and sorry for the tilted one.) There wasn't much to see out here. As I left the pandals and was returning home,  I still remember the way I was happy. I was tapping the ground continously with my new shoes and humming and getting the lyrics and the tune fixed in my mind:

Walking high with the moon in the sky..........
Walking high with the moon in the sky..........

You might have assumed that these are concrete structures but it's not, you may as well see here.

The Tilted One.

Was about to take the picture from the centre on the pandal but those people suddenly pushed me.

The Belated Durga Puja Story - Story 7 - Part 1

I set out for my once-in-a-year (in other words, annual) pandal hopping. Wearing a Reebok tee, a fastrack watch and a Nokia Carl Zeiss camera in my hand I was ready. First came on my way, Bosepukur Sitala Mandir. I entirely and overall hated it. In my mind, I gave it a rating of 0.5/5 (that's something you call grace marks.) By then, my urge to have fast food was suppressed. I kept my mind fixed on one sentence - "Junking the junk food" (but this idea is not too effective, though).

What do you think? Not good at all. Bosepukur's pandal.

Next came the Talbagan pandal and I came back from the place very happy, not because of it's decor or something but because of the awesome snaps I got. My time and critical angle is always to right.

Taj Mahal? God, no. It's Talbagan's pandal.

Yeah, me and my camera is just too awesome.

Some "tal" trees of Talbagan are still living.

Mr. Perfectionist (Grandfather) - Story 5

It was one of those rare occasions when my grandfather came to visit us. He was a kind of ultra-happy guy who had nothing to do on any day, except maybe going for a doctor’s checkup. He used to smoke regularly but after his sudden brain hemorrhage, he reduced it to 1 cigarette. And more or less, he used to have paan everyday. But as the world goes – everybody has their own uniqueness. He was too pedantic, as you call it. And often this character of him befell on me as a great calamity. Like one day, I wrote my Bengali essay in the best of moods so it was actually ‘kinda’ awesome. But my grandfather’s eyes didn’t search for all that. His eyes went up to the level of the misspelling and his face became a scowl.  His eyes seemed to be telling, “Hey! What the heck are you doing? Can’t you be just perfect? You are too imprudent.” I couldn’t stay there anymore. I just took my chance and blazed out of the room. There were so many of these events. But that’s nothing bad. He’s a nice grandfather and used to love me dearly.

I asked him, “Grandfather. Why are you so pedantic?”

“What does pedantic mean?” he questioned back.

But before I could answer, he had already gone up to the bookshelf and chosen a somewhat large dictionary to search for the word. Finally, he found it and continued the conversation.

“Well, yes I am, my dear boy. You see I always liked to be perfect. Call me, Mr. Perfectionist if you want. That’s how I could journey through and reach this stage of life. Extreme discipline and perfection, that’s what I believed in. Now, let’s go and have dinner. We’re getting late. Enough talk for today.”

I gave a lot of thought to what my grandfather said – and finally deduced that he was somewhat right.

Oh! Damn it, my nose - Story 3

It was a fine, nice morning. Must be the second period or so. Ma’am had not yet arrived, so as usual, everyone was playing, chatting and doing whatever they liked. I was sitting and chatting with my friends. Suddenly, my concentration shifted to Pritam. He was playing all alone with a ball. I wanted to play so I politely asked him if I could and he agreed without hesitation. Suddenly, after about 5 minutes of play, I don’t know what struck him, he threw a pencil at me. And there it hit me – right on the nose, beside my left eye.

Instantly, the wound started bleeding (anyway, that’s what was expected).

The next part went pretty fast. First of all, my nose looked revolting. Secondly, the expert comments which was being passed around. Although, they weren’t disgusting, they were irritating. Third of all, my nose was paining so much (that’s usual, isn’t it?)

“Pritam’s gone. What punishment will he get?” somebody said.

“Ankit’s day is only bad,” said another.

“What happened to Ankit?”

“Was the pencil sharp or blunt?”

All these comments flooded my ears. But as usual, Pritam’s voice was the loudest in the buzz talk, “I didn’t do it purposely. It was an accident. I did it mistakenly.”

I was rushed to the infirmary with two of my friends by my side. So, I went there and the two nurses treated me commenting that I was so lucky to escape my eye and finally after 10 minutes of bandaging and stuff, I returned to class. By the end of the day, the topic of the buzz talks shifted from my nose to the consequences which Pritam received.

Alas! The Charts - Story 1

The day starts with a bang. I enter the class with a lot of enthusiasm but no sooner my face becomes a scowl (a really big one). I sadly looked at the torn charts. It was the 3rd time we made those charts and somebody happily comes and destroys it all in some minutes. 1 weeks' effort destroyed in minutes. I was completely hopeless. Why does that heck of a person come every time and destroy all our efforts. We are back to square one, what's the use of making it (afterall we can't do it for eternity)?

It was also our class teacher's birthday today. I wondered if she would like the birthday gift presented by some anonymous Mr. Who.

"Happy Birthday, Madhumita Ma'am", we wished but was it a happy moment. Our whole class was in gloom except some faces which expertly hid their gloominess. "Nice present", I thought. I went up to Rounak and asked him about his comments on this incident. But then he was bent on studying our classmates' body language. We had our conversation in installments and after the end of each session he remembered about his mother's book on body language. I went about the desks and as I reached for my place, my face went completely blank - somebody had written on my bag, ' I' m an IDIOT '. Again I was hopeless. I finally headed for the dining hall for breakfast with a completely blank mind.

Walking for a nearly 200m and then climbing 4 flights of stairs I approached my class with extreme exhaustion. Then, the consequences of the theft and attack started to show up. We went through repeated enquiries of various teachers and by the time it was lunch, my throat was sore. And I seemed if I was dead meat. I just hoped that all this stops soon and the damn thief (and vandal, after-all he stole and also destroyed property) is caught. So, I am still waiting for it..............

N.B. Its hopelessness which gives me more hope.