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.

Another Mr. Perfectionist (Father) - Story 6

The father-son duo currently residing was an exact copy of each other. Too pedantic. Too perfect.

It was an awesome Saturday morning – well until then. The Puja Vacations had just befallen and there was very little work for me to do. My father suddenly came up to me, looking as if he had just been fired for no reason and whispered to me in a sinister undertone, “Clean up the room, boy.” I looked up at him lazily. Then, his actual borrowed from a lion, roar-like voice spoke to me, “No storybooks must be kept in the study room. Stationeries must be kept separate from the books. All your gadgets must be kept out of the room.” And on and on and on……………………………….

Finally, when he finished reading or rather reciting his rules – I was practically dead. Well, not practically but literally. So, to re-peace myself, I went up to the refrigerator and poured myself a nice glass of Getorade. When I again felt like myself, I asked him boldly, “Can you repeat?”

He did repeat, only this time with some proverbs – which were maybe to gain my concentration but nonetheless I didn’t understand.  So, I started cleaning up my books. Arranging them and stuff. And that’s when – bang! There was I arranging the books with a Oxford Mini Dictionary at the bottom of the pile and a class 8 Maths book at the top. Obviously, there were hazardous results, well not that hazardous – I had to suffer a bookslide . Finally, after arranging all the books, I went to breakfast thinking – how much longer I have to work like a POW (prisoner of war) for this great duo.

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.

The Varun - Story 4

It was a nice, average morning school period.  When suddenly, the kinda ‘geek’ of our class, Aadipta went in fits of laughter. Obviously, some of the guys needed to comment. So, they did.

Most of the faces in the class spelt the same question, “What happened?” Aadipta spoke with a weird broken voice, mixed with smirks, grins, smiles and whatnot, “Varun.  Just see Varun. His pants are torn. And even his shirt. Such a big hole. Whoa! Seems like leopard spots.”

By the time, I concluded that the ‘leopard spots’ joke was lame, the whole class was laughing including the teacher.

Finally, the teacher intervened and restored silence in the class with ultra-loud bangs of the duster on somebody’s desk (it was Pritam’s desk and as per his character he still kept laughing). So, this gala period is to be remembered by me, atleast for some days – after all this rocks.