I was always 40

I write more in my dreams than in actual life. Every night I compose from among an array of hard hitting rants against society, deep love letters, apologies to ex-girlfriends, path breaking treatises, crime thrillers and more. Choose your night and wake me up. I will give you the next big web series idea. 

Nothing gets published. As obvious. 

But here I am on the threshold of turning 40. Wait... does that word have two "h"s or one? Never mind, I am not a grammar Nazi. Or a spell checker. Is a spell checker a subset of grammar Nazi? So yes, I must turn 40. Half life if I was radioactive. My target is to reach 78, so I am actually past half life. But who celebrates a 39th birthday with the fanfare of a blog post? So here I am. 

To publish some thoughts before I turn 40. Or the stuff that I dream. I am making it sound like I do LSD or meth or something every night. 

Now do I have any ideas on how to make a literary splash before my landmark birthday? Do I publish some sage advice for my offspring on my birthday? No, that may be something I would do on their birthday, if I considered my advice important enough, which I don't. Actually, there is no plurality in my next generation. But as and when my 8-month old son grows up enough to read this, he would be proud to note that I was doing okay on pronouns back in the days. 

The thing is I am not one to make a splash. Is that any way to lead a life? Where's the drive, where's the ambition, you say? Where's the will to be famous? To be remembered? Is this the advice you want to give to a teenager? This just seems grossly irresponsible as a father figure, a middle aged man of any respectable standing in society. 

Did you picture that middle aged man? What picture did you visualise? What would Dall-E say? I think I was always 40, but not in the way you think. Yes, I am grumpy in the mornings, I have a pot belly and my back aches at every opportunity but my hair is mostly black and my hairline does not recede, I don't talk about insurance and real estate and investments, I don't even own a house or even a car to tick the traditional boxes and I don't have control over every single thing in my life. 

Sounds happy go lucky at 25? So why 40? Because I am the boring guy. The guy who attends every party and stays till the end but does nothing memorable. The guy who commands respect in professional life but is no star who gets promoted out of turn. The guy who wants to eat less and exercise more but never finds the discipline for it. The guy who will climb the first 8000 feet of a 9000 feet mountain but will choose not to summit because the last 1000 feet is just too slippery. The guy... you get the drift. I hope. I am running out of allegories. 

In short, I have never been a risk taker. I have always run from confrontation. I have always been lazy - spoiler alert - if you never noticed the name of the website. So I have enjoyed the fountain of youth - which sounds yucky on hindsight - with a certain buffer of safety, never veering too far away from the median, always dousing fires instead of reveling in the burn. A more middle aged take on life if you will.

So what's the point? The point being, because I was always 40 and still am, I don't feel like I have aged over the last 20 years. I feel just that young or that old. As they say, age is just a number. Or the number of heavy breaths you take after 5 minutes on the football pitch. Who knows, maybe I will take a few risks from hereon, reverse aging is not that bad a concept. Till then, I will keep smiling and taking a few sips of, what else, whisky, and nod at you from the corner of the room, when we meet.

বাঙালি ও ঈশ্বর

ভারতের অন্যান্য প্রদেশের মত বাঙালিদের ও দেবদ্বিজে যথেষ্ট ভয়ভক্তি আছে। কিন্তু বাঙালি তো আবেগপ্রবণ জাতি । শুধু ভক্তিতে কি আর থেমে থাকে? দেবদেবীরা ক্রমশই আমাদের অনেক আপন হয়ে গিয়েছে ।

ভারতের অন্যান্য প্রদেশে লোকে এখনও দেবতাদের অনেক উচ্চাসনে রাখে, বিশেষতঃ উত্তর ও দক্ষিণ ভারতে । আমাদের এই আপন করে নেওয়া বোধহয় শুরু হয়েছে চৈতন্যদেবের আমল থেকে । ভক্তিরসের প্রভাবে আমাদের ঈশ্বরের প্রতি ভয় কেটে প্রথমে ভক্তি এবং পরবর্তী কালে ক্রমশ তা ভালবাসায় পরিণত হয় । এই ভালবাসায় নির্ভর করেই ঈশ্বর আমাদের কাছের লোক হয়ে উঠেছে। তবে এটা যত সহজে বললাম তত সহজে হয়নি, বেশ কয়েক শতাব্দী সময় নিয়েছে। ধীরে ধীরে হয়েছে ।

আমাদের কথোপকথনে, আমাদের সাহিত্যে, আমাদের ব্যবহারিক জীবনে এর প্রভাব পড়েছে।
আমরা মা কালী, মা দুর্গাকে এখনো যথেষ্ট ভয় ভক্তি করি। কিন্তু গণেশ যতটা পশ্চিম ভারতে গুরুত্ব পায় কদিন আগেও এখানে পেত না। আমরা ছোটবেলায় যখন দশমীর ঘট নড়ানোর পর সব ঠাকুরকে প্রণাম করতাম তখন একবার গণেশের ভুঁড়িতে হাতও বোলাতাম।

সাহিত্যে যদি দেখি তবে প্রথমেই যেতে হয় আমাদের নিজস্ব ঠাকুরের কাছে অর্থাৎ রবি ঠাকুর। রবীন্দ্রনাথ তার অনেক কবিতা ও গানে ঈশ্বরকে বন্ধু, সখা বা প্রাণসখা বলে সম্বোধন করেছেন। আসলে রবীন্দ্রনাথ তার কবিতা ও গানে এতই আন্তরিক ঈশ্বরের প্রতি যে তার কাব্য পূজা পর্যায়ের না প্রেম পর্যায়ের বোঝা অনেক ক্ষেত্রে ই মুশকিল । নজরুলও তাকে “বিরাট শিশু” বলে সম্বোধন করেছেন। সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায় তো কবিতায় সরস্বতীর প্রতি রোমান্টিক মনোভাব ও প্রকাশ করেছেন।

বাঙালির আগমনীর গানও এক সম্পূর্ণ অন্য আঙ্গিকের। আমরা ডাকসাইটে মহিষাসুরমর্দিনীকে একেবারে ঘরের মেয়ে উমা হিসেবে আমাদের ঘরে আবাহন করেছি। ঈশ্বরের প্রতি এই একান্ত ঘরোয়া আচরণ বোধহয় সর্বতোভাবেই অনন্য। বিজয়ার বিষাদসুরের সঙ্গে আমরা সধবা কন্যার পুত্র কন্যা সহ স্বামীগৃহে প্রত্যাবর্তনের বেদনা একাকার করে ফেলেছি। মা উমার সাথে সিঁদূর খেলাও একান্তই বাঙালির নিজস্ব ।

শিবের গাজন নিয়ে ও একই কথা বলা যায় । অন্যান্য প্রদেশের দোর্দণ্ডপ্রতাপ মহাদেব আমাদের বাউন্ডুলে জামাই।

বাংলার লোকসংগীত এ তো আরও কাছের
করে নিয়েছি আমরা সবাইকে। দু একটা উদাহরণ ই যথেষ্ট। যেমন, “কথা কসনে লো রাই শ্যামের বড়াই বড় বেড়েছে”। এর থেকে এককাঠি উপরে “মাঈ তুমি জলে না যায়িও, কদম গাছে বসিয়া আছে কানু হারামজাদা”।

বাঙালিরা ঈশ্বরকে শুধু আসনে সাজিয়ে পুজো ই করেনা তাকে একান্তই আপন করে বুকেও স্থান
দেয়। বাঙালির ঈশ্বরের সঙ্গে এই যে অম্লমধুর সম্পর্ক এটা সত্যিই অভূতপূর্ব ও অনন্য ।

আজ এ পর্যন্তই ।

Sujit Sarkar

২৪শে মে, ২০২০

Sunday, July 10, 2005: A new beginning!!! (hopefully)

Ah how good it feels to be writing again...its been almost 10 months since i last posted anything on my blog! I am decidedly poor at this, unmotivated u might say but that's my attitude towards everything, or u might also say, common human attitude. The marginal satisfaction keeps going down but in my case the marginal rate of decrease of satisfaction follows an exponential curve. Ah see, now an engineer-cum-wannabe manager speaks in his engineer cum managerial jargon. So typical. And so unavoidable. So u might be wondering and so i make it clear...i've passed my engineering exams and am now officially a graduate, B.Tech (Hons.) in Manufacturing Science and Technology from IIT, Kharagpur. What an achievement! I feel like laughing. What a gross wastage of the nation's resources when they turn out engineers like me from the nation's premier engineering college. It reflects poorly on the system but that's the way things work here. Add to that, i've now decided to waste the nation's frugal resources further by getting myself admitted to another of its most highly rated institutes, IIM Calcutta and prrof of my unsuitabliity is that i have enuf free time now to waste on trivial issues of life like blogging. But I keep taking these plunges, knowing not where i'll reach finally. I try and make some sense out of the whole process but sense and sensibility eludes me. As Hemingway said so shall i ask, '' For whom the bell tolls?"...any answers? Not me...not today...not tomorrow but definitely sometime in the future which is ever so dark for me. Not figuratively dark but actually dark...i can't see into it, i need some very bright lights. Who's gonna provide me those? Anywayz i'll keep it at that this time round...short and enigmatic, to say the least. Next time i'll update u on whats been happening in my life all these days...how i landed up at IIMC and how life actually is at IIMC. I promise to chronicle my life out here, lets see if i can live up to it.

What to blog?

The thing that follows logically from my last blog( for those poor lost souls who haven't read my earlier blog, this is one way of making you read it) is what i should be writing about in a blog. Sometimes it might be that you have been contemplating some idea sparked off as a reaction to what has been recently happening around you and you think you should pen down your thoughts. Coz that's why we are supposedly here...to pen down our thoughts. But tell me, is it humanely possible that you have incisive thoughts day in and day out...thoughts that are fit enough to be penned down that is, coz it would be an understatement if i say that we are not thinking all the time, but mostly the cutting edge of all those thoughts are connected with a blunt tool!!!So as i was saying, is it only about writing down what you have been thinking? Even that is a difficult proposition...who can ascertain that your mind works only when you have a computer handy? And it is really hard to write about some feeling that's come and gone...well ok, u can try but it won't come off that good.So another option is you can try updating on a daily basis or at least on a regular basis important facets and events of your life...that will throw some light on your character...what you like and what u don't...what you like to think about and what u don't...but here also, comes thew very important question of why you are writing, for yourself or for the readers.I would advocate a middle path...write about things that you yourself would like to read at a later stage and would make you reflect about yourself... how you are evolving as a human being.Or you could use this medium to advertise your writing skills by posting articles about any topic under the sun...by writing about personal experiences and how they have affected you...others might relate to your experiences and be compelled to consider how they themselves would have reacted under the same circumstances and appreciate the different ways in which a human mind works. Coz as a blogger, i know it is a pleasure to go through a well compliled blog, you not only learn about the other person but it helps to broaden your horizons.What i've written thus far may not appear to be quite compact and leading to any conclusion as a whole but that's the fun of the whole thing...who says all thoughts must follow a pattern...thoughts really are quite like particles of dust flying in the wind...you never know which one you'll catch when...so write whatever you feel like, whether on a predetermined topic (like this one) or sth that's just struck you or sth that's happened ages back...who cares what u write about, just do it!!!

Why blog?

This time i thought i should spend some time thinking why i'm keeping this blog...this must be a much deliberated topic in blogging circles...however, since i'm a absolute newcomer to this arena, i confess i'm not quite privy to the accepted norms of maintaining a blog...i sometimes wonder whether i'm doing this just coz some of my peers are doin' it too...confess it, men, i know though you would like to pass it off as only inspiration derived, there is always the iota of deficiency if u haven't tried your hand at sth your friends have tried and found quite interesting...so even if u didn't think it was a good idea at first, u might change ur minds once u see ppl reading blogs of friends and appreciating the efforts!!!Of course, this is not the main reason for everybody, for some it might be a genuine urge to try their hands at something new...or as was the case with me, try to dabble in a creative arena just for the heck of it, a medium of expression when u've nothin' better to do or no one better to tell...but this urge might also be mixed with a sense of personal satisfaction or smugness with the knowledge that ppl will be goin' thru ur writings...ur 15 minutes of fame wat?Some of this might sound too concocted but they do affect you subconsciously while you are writing a blog and might render it a not wholly honest ''from the heart'' effort but an effort suited somewhat to the tastes of the reader...perhaps we do not intentionally want to keep the reader in mind but we cannot eliminate the factor either!!!Blogging thus, might be pretty useful for those wishing to promote glamour tabloidism but i'm not saying that we do not write just for the fun of it...for most of us, we derive happiness in our written word, the type of happiness we cannot get from speaking, we let our words flow away with us and carry more than we ever intended them to!!!So keep up the good work bloggers...we might just someday change the way the world thinks!!!( see that's wat i was just saying...that last sentence was aimed for the readers with blatant disregard to the tone of the article...not good...not good...i'm yet to be an honest blogger!!!)

Light at the end of the tunnel

Well firstly i must inform you with absolutely no sense of pride that ive eventually landed a job at some weird software consultancy firm called accenture...for the uninitiated(dont worry i was in the same grp till yesterday morning) it means accent to the future...watever that's supposed to mean. The only good thing this does is make my mind a little lighter, which was beginning to feel a tad overburdened of late.Not that i was ever in fear of not getting a job, but time is a major factor, especially for someone who cannot look beyond a career in management and sees a certain sense of unaccomplishment(watever that means) and unfulfilment in anything else.Indeed i dont know where else i wud be if not in management.Any other scenario does resemble a horror story to me...i feel i wud be in a dark tunnel with no light at either end.Well i wont be more morbid today but these past few weeks have opened a lot of avenues of self-contemplation inside me.Like what exactly do i want from myself and my life.Like what are my current expectations and my current capabilities...after much contemplation i've come to the honest conclusion that i dont know much abt the basics of any technology but i've a good working knowledge, that i'm good at analysis and logical reasoning, that i've got a good grasp of language and that I'm good at MCQs...speed and accuracy are my main weapons.So what do i do with these in my armoury...what exactly are these good for...ive no damn idea.I would have liked to work in an industry i.e. factory maybe primarily coz my father has served so long in one.So factory stuff has always fascinated me and this childlike fascination led me to beilieve that i'd be very happy on the shop floor...i dont know how long this wud've held true were i given the chance!Well i wasn't and really after being kicked out by 8 bugging companies you wud take anything that comes ur way. I really didn't feel that waiting any longer was going to serve me any purpose save prolonging my exasperation. Because of two things i was very much sure, luck is the single most important factor in this respect and that your performance in any campusing event is hardly reflective of your capabilities. So keep faith in your capabilities and be strong...the law of averages will catch up one day...this was my only thought during the last few days.Anyway this weekend i'll be most probably going on a trip to Puri alongwith a 20 member team from my mamarbari(thats's mother's side of the family) which had been planned long back and had i been unemployed for a little longer, i might have put both mine and my parent's plans in jeopardy coz however much my mom might have denied not being tensed about my not getting through for so long, i was sure that was a charade so that i would not be unnecesarilly burdened! So it makes me very happy that i'll be enjoying with them this weekend, coz honestly speaking i deserve this and much more.Bad luck can only hold me back this much. Beyond that its my attachment to my friends and family and my belief that their happiness is what matters most(myself included) keeps me going.chalo this much for now...my friend sandy rath is breathing down my neck...so i'd better go now coz u see i'm using his computer and not allowing him to use the messenger. I may still be single, but that doesn't mean that i shud ignore the feelings of thoss who aren't...wat say?

Tension

Well I told u i am lazy...so here i am, posting my 2nd blog a good 40 days after my previous one. I have excuses, no doubt, but nothing more than sheer laziness when u come to think of it a little more dispassionately.Now what do i write...my entire mind nowadays is occupied by one single thought...a job...koi mujhe achha job dila de plzz...jaldi!!! Unless n until i get a decent job, i'm not being able to concentrate on anything else and its a rather unnerving phase of life. Being rejected outright by companies is a nightmarish scenario but its true that all life is an experience and all experiece is an arch where thru gleams that untravelled world whose margins fade for ever and for ever as we move( not my lines, of course...adapted with a few pardonable mistakes from "ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)...ya so coming back from this literary stupor, wat was i saying? Oh yes, the constant tension is making me even more unproductive these days...so u guys who want my creative juices to flow better pray for me.Nothing much else is going on these days except long and winding discussions about future plans and priorities. Many of my friends have clear cut goals but some, like me, wud prefer to wait n watch...i'll take whichever path life offers me...but this throws up conflicting thoughts inside me...u know, all this while, all i believed in is that i shud be happy in my life, watever i may be doing doesn't matter coz happiness of myself and my near and dear ones is all that matters. These days i sometimes contemplate this to be a slightly selfish thought process...is my happiness all there is to my life...is that going to be that be all and end all of my existence or am i meant for something else?This morning i was having a rather stimulated discussion about the much publicised hanging of dhananjoy chatterjee and contemplating the pros and cons of a death penalty, or more generally any corporal punishment. We were unable to reach any concrete conclusion but the point that drove home to me is that there is a wider world beyond my own selfish ''happy'' existence and that there must be some contribution that i might be capable of making that might change just a little sth in some little corner of this earth. If i can achieve just that little and be able to influence ppl to do the same too, perhaps i would be making the best use of my education in one of the best colleges of the country because there is no denying the fact that IIT's education system is designed to make not perhaps the best engineers( I think ppl from the NITs are more capable academically that most of us out here)but to make us capable of handling and managing any situation and to broaden our horizons. That is why IITians have proved to be so successful men because the 4 or 5 yrs they have spent here has completely changed their outlook and mindset. And if so many examples are out there who have managed some change, however infintesmal it may be, then perhaps it would not be a good idea to shirk my responsibilities...perhaps i'm meant to repay the debt of the nation...its certainly no small matter and needs a lot of level headed thinking...if u have any solutions do tell me...till then,bye bye...i'm thinking, u see!!!

My rediffblog posts

I am copy-pasting all my previous blogs on rediff for easier reference for future blogs. Here's the first one:

since this is my first effort at writing on the net i'll keep it short and limit it to an introductory one...myself, suvro sarkar, final year student of engg. at IIT Kgp...currently doing my training at Alloy Steels Plant, Durgapur...if you are wondering why i chose such a weird place, its coz this is where i hail from and this is the company that has fed me and my family for the past 32 years...so RESPECT!!!Anyway i got the inspiration for this blog from my batchmate,hallmate and friend kriti sen sharma who's himself started a blog and it seemed to me to be quite an interesting prospect what with the internet on my fingertips anytime i cud keep you updated on my life almost real time.So here i am...wish me luck...hope this will be quite an enjoyable saga...c u again soon...tata!!!

First Post in blogspot

Well i'll just say this much...check out my blog at http://lazygarfield.rediffblogs.com coz that's where i have been blogging for some time and will continue to do so...i'll try to post the same things here too, but may miss out on some, so bear with me.
This account is primarily created with a view to post comments on blogs i read and enjoy...i believe commenting is an essential component of blogworld and without appropriate comments, the writer is incomplete...so there...nywayz till the next post
~ensoi