An ‘odd’ fixation

It’s strange to be blogging after so long. Truth be told I am a little scared. Although my love for writing remains intact my inclination to blog has diminished over time. I have little idea why this is so. It maybe one of those things that captures your interest in the beginning and with time your obsession with it heightens to a climax when it becomes a part of your way of life, but then gradually, for some reason the love starts to wane before you completely decide to be off it and for good. Or it could just be the testing times I am going through. It has lately been putting me off a lot of things I love to do.
I have been debating with myself as to whether its time I gave my blogs, all the three of them, a more serious picture. Like, integrating them and turning them into purpose driven journals with the aim to talk about only one issue, be it Advertising (ah yes, advertising reminds me that there’s a lot that needs to be covered, my departure from Blogger has indeed been inordinately long) or music or whatever it is I decide to write about, a focused blog and not something haphazard.
On the other hand, I could just leave them the way they are; one, a bullshit blog meant to collate my most bizarre ponderings among other zany and totally pointless ramblings; this one, a regular diary, if I twisted an ankle in the staircase I would write about it here; and finally, the third and my favourite, “Gods got a twisted sense of humour..!” which is a documentation of all things memorable and not so memorable in my life. What else are blogs meant for afterall?
Honestly, I miss those days when I could just and belt out anything that came to my mind. Just about anything. The language I used was the voice that spoke from inside. Word to word and not the slightest bit of it was revised or corrected for perfect grammar or context. Now, that to me is true blogging and that was what I loved. Nowadays, I am simply afraid to write. I judge my writing a lot and I take it a bit too seriously, so seriously that I am afraid to sit and write down anything that flies through the doors of my mind. And why is that? It’s mainly because the grammar obviously wouldn’t be right. The content might not be so profound. I might not be able to do it the justice it deserves and the biggest fear of all, in my attempt to polish all grammatical errors off my writing I might end up diluting the very essence of the words and most importantly, the feeling that I set out to emote. But at the end of it all, it still far from perfect and that frustrates me.
Now, I will, for a moment digress from the present topic to talk about another pretty worrying situation I am facing. I feel it has got something to with my predicament as described above. What you are about to read may appear funny but it definitely wouldn’t be so if you were the one to face it and yes, it took me a lot of courage to write about it here.
I have never talked about this to anyone before and I would not have either, untill tonight, when I realised that this could actually lead to something serious. I am sure I hinted on it in a previous blog entry where I wrote about my uncontrollable habit of washing my hands repeatedly till I am convinced they are completely rid of any living organism, good or bad. But I feel my readers should know about this.
I have of late begun repeating words in my head feverishly, over and over again for no reason at all and I am doing it right now as I type. For example, if I hear a word I like, I feel a strong, almost insane need to repeat it in my head for a definite number of times till I feel satisfied. In my case it is mostly 11 times or any odd number, even number wouldn’t do. I have to repeat those words 11 times in my head and say them aloud 11 times. I can’t control it. I have always had this problem and initially it was much worse, if I scratched one ear I would have to compulsively scratch the other. Before leaving a room I would turn on and off the lights 11 times. If I looked at a person a certain way, I’d repeat it 11 times with that person standing right in front me watching me do it. I have been able to work my way out of that madness successfully but little things like, if my tapped my left finger twice I will have to tap that very same finger on the right hand twice and if I tapped one extra time by mistake I’d have to tap the left finger one extra time to balance the number of taps, still exist till date. Also, I tend to repeat facial expressions and I do it on the sly for obvious reasons but it’s hard, very hard.
I pray for my parents lives every fifteen minutes as a voice inside my head keeps repeating stubbornly that I am going to lose them. I have tried to work my way around the problem by instead trying to think they’d live longer but it doesn’t work.

I see a certain disorder at work here and I am at my wits end as to how to set it right. I guess I am still in denial and wouldn’t call it OCD yet but I know I am getting there slowly. It’s scary how obsessed I am with the proportionality of things and how I hate people walking behind me. It scares me like nothing else to be walking down an empty street with someone walking behind me even if he were several meters away. This is perhaps why I hated playing chase as a kid. It would send chills down my spine to have someone on my tail and I would run for my dear life.
Now, having said all this, I see my mad fixation with grammatical correctness of even the smallest of sentences I write, as an extension of this strange anomaly. That’s why the fear.

of The JB…

The foot opposite the Standard Chartered Bank branch near Kolkata High Court isn’t exactly the place one would expect to find such things lying around, especially, if you know that the sort of people that work or live around that area wouldn’t know of the existence of such a thing as Bourbon and that too JB.

Some one around clearly has very good taste and knows his Bourbon..

The fever

I am in office and I can feel the fever coming. My shoulders feel heavy, like someone just slung bags full of lead over them and my head is throbbing with pain.
My eyes are dizzy. Now ,thats a good thing cause its fun watching hazy images of people floating around and nothing that anybody tells you registers.
Makes it easier to face impending troubles. I dont need to see these people.
So everyone should get a little fever every now and then.

Weird stuff...GOOD stuff!

The Piscine Passion

Never separate a simple man from his cheese they say. In this part of the continent the saying enjoys a slightly different variation; here in Bengal we never separate a Bengali from his fish!
I experienced a nonchalant display of such fixation early yesterday at the fish bazaar. Now, unless it is obvious, there is nothing I hate more than having to wake up early on a Sunday morning and being sent off to buy fish without even being given a cup of tea. I had to be the only customer in that smelly, slushy, fly plagued market who after ordering his fish stood photographing everything around him!

“Aare dada, maccher chokh deke bole deova jaye she mach bhalo kina…!”
(You can look into the eyes of a fish and tell whether it is good quality or not!),

“Mamaaaa……Ami Puri-te giye shudhui Katla, Koi, Ilish, Rui, Nadosh, Pabda, Bhola, Bhetki ja peyechi gaande- pinde shatiyechi…jibon amar sarthok holo guru!”
(Duuude…. I visited Puri and voraciously ate whatever fish I could find; now my existence makes sense (followed by a long list of fish))

“Peti norom hova chai, NOROM, tita hole nebo na!”
(The stomach needs to be SOFT, I will not accept it if its bitter!)

"Phees Cutlet, Phees Phry, Phees Chop, Phees Kobiraji, Phees Phingar, Phees Pulao, Phees-er jhol, Shorsher-tele bhaja Ilish-er gaada, jast Phees!"

(A food-shack owner screaming out his fish-menu to passer-bys!)

Watch the Bengali argue with a fish vendor over the quality of fish and you will get a fair idea how Plato and Socrates would have debated a Metaphysical phenomenon or Western Philosophical theory; the knowledge and ingenuity thrown across at each other is just unsurpassable!

"Deem chharan, Deemta chhariye alada kore deen, bhaja khabo!!" (remove the eggs and pack them separately, I'll fry them!!), I said to the fish vendor as he removed a blob of eggs from the belly of my two kilo Rui and kept it aside.

I am one of them too.

The Recession hit Kolkata Cuppa

Cant live without these, I'll admit that first off. Over the months though, the size of the average 'Bhaand' everywhere has shrunken distinctly.

Yesterday I was seated at Bankshall Court waiting for my case to be called on and realising I had time to sneak a chai I ushered a chai-walla lurking nearby. The minute he produced this dwarfed earthen pot I made a face to which his reply was priceless.

"Reesheshaan" (Recession), he said.

I bought one of these for Rs2/- like the quintessential, overpaying recession hit customer and needless to say, the 'reesheshaanary' (recessionary) earthen pot was dry after I took a single draught.

So whoever said, recession hits everything, DID afterall have Kolkata's 'Bhaander Cha-walla' in mind while making his inference!

And salutaions to the chai-walla for keeping abreast!

An ode to Cad-B

Honestly, this was a long time coming. I had earlier been introduced to the Cad-B shake during the final months of college in Pune but could never remember to write about the blessed thing. For the uninitiated, Cad-B shake is the thickest chocolate shake on the planet and by ‘thick’ I mean REALLY thick and viscous, in near freezing temperatures you can invert the glass for as long as you want and the thing won’t even flow out!

To add heavily to its sinfully addictiveness is a heap of grated chocolate spread generously on its surface, served frozen for the maximum near-orgasmic pleasure!

You can get these shakes in two sizes, Half and Full and boy you should see the difference between the two! The Full Cad-B shake is a universe of chocolate and you can’t dig deep enough into its thick, brown depths to scoop out those little chunks of chocolate floating inside.

I have often fantasised about the Cad-B shake and imagined wonderful variations of it. What if there was a Strawberry Cad-B, with chunky strawberries floating around deep in the chocolate? Maybe a Honey Cad-B with a dollop of honey on the chocolate grating..? Or for that matter even a Caramel, Mocha or a Mint Cad-B…!

If you are new to Pune or have never tasted the beverage before, maybe you should take a walk down to Deep Bangla Chowk or Kamla Nehru Park (among other places) and have one, maybe two, you can never get enough of Cad-B!

Warning: It is not meant for the “Oh I ate a pea I am gonna get fat..!” kind.

The constant duel

My present predicament has brought me to a face off between philosophy and pragmatism. All my prior decisions and actions have been taken favouring the latter whereas the former has always been set aside as fantasy, as romantic ‘gas-balloons’, gas-balloons that eventually get lost in the sky or pop.

I was standing at the edge of a cliff all this time and the coup de grace has just come through, I have finally, more or less come to terms with myself on a decision I am going to take pretty soon but this time its philosophy I am going to go with.

Philosophy, a refuge for the confused, the dazed, individuals seeking answers deep within themselves, introspecting all the time.

We shall see if philosophy brings me happiness, satiation. Mine is a rarely trodden path, a path for the brave, a walk in the hills at night, blindfolded, a path for those who are willing to endure pain in order to pursue their aspirations, an image, a single image of the perfect future.

I think its motivation that’s more like the gas-balloons, they either get lost high up in the sky or pop. It’s the motivation that needs to be garnered, protected.

A strong, single minded focus is the binding string, faith being the fabric.