Its 8 o’clock in the morning as I wake up with a slight headache to find my mom calling me. The exact location of the cell in my unkempt paradise confuses me for a few moments as I grapple among the bed-sheets and the random sheaf of paper spread all over it.
While it keeps on ringing. Cutting through the silence of the stale Pilani air in my 8’x10’ room and screaming out the ties that one must maintain with the outside world.
When I finally do get to it, the connection is cut. Blessing my perennially null calling balance, I attempt to go back to sleep with the cell in my pocket. But the call returns like the black cackle of a raven. Screeching like the tires of a braking car through the half-sleepy trance I was ensconced in.
Grumbling aloud I take the call. To hear the dreaded cheer in her voice as she wishes me a happy Puja. To hear her talk about how my dreary matchbox-like locality is trying to dress up, trying to hide the Arkham in the midst of their hearts and minds. The glints of magical neon bulbs as people try to find sanity in the middle of insanity… I am afraid of it, afraid of it all…
Is it because I miss it all? I don’t know for I hardly ever was a Puja fanatic to begin with. Perhaps something to do with the overall apathy that my family had for all things that didn’t have a logical reason behind its occurrence. Tradition never cut ice with them, and even though they never went out of their way to propound their view-point, they never jumped into it either.
My mom goes on the phone about the preparations for a business trip that she is taking. She expresses shock at the fact that I have classes on Oshtomi, literally an act of blasphemy in Bengal. I half-expect her to mentally applaud my college for going against their much-dusliked mob tendency, but she doesn’t. Perhaps she realizes the rather low tone of my voice as I croak out responses in mono-syllables.
What is it that makes one home-sick? Is it home itself? Or is it the people in it? Perhaps it is just the myriad familiar colors of life that you see that you have grown up seeing, a cut away from the people that you see everyday in the rote of student life. Whatever it is, I’m cursing it now…
I know as I will step out of my room, my vacant wing will look back at me, laughing at my indecision. I will move to a Report Writing class, where a few other hapless souls will share with me the morbidities of being stuck in a cage of lost futilities. And after that, I will pretend.
I will pretend that it’s all the same. That the so-called ‘home-away-from-home’ is enough. I will go to the make-shift little Mandap at a desolate corner of the campus. And even as the blowing hot sand stings me, trying to make me come back to reality, I’ll join others in my pretence. And we will sing and dance in our own little madhouse. And the phantom drums will beat from within a broken cassette player tactfully camouflaged somewhere out of sight. And we will try to put forced smiles on our faces.
And perhaps we will just accidentally smile once. At the incredulity of it all.
But then I am getting way ahead of myself. Its 10 o’clock. Have to go and play my part in a Group Discussion on an obsolete topic.
7 comments:
Lighten up, emo kid. No, this ain't home. But don't friends and family mean the same thing? I you know I can tell fake smiles from the real thing - you weren't faking. And you were damn happy at the obsolete-topic GD, so try not to be the rebel intellectual without a reason. Life's good, and you find that boring. Live with it. Cheers!
@Sue: There are points where I disagree with you.
1> I AM NOT AN EMO KID !!!
2> You were not there when this happened.
3> I wrote this before the GD as is quite obvious from the time-frame.
4> I am not a rebel intellectual, just a lazy rebel, if any such species exists...
I rest my case. Bleh ...
@ arnie :
1> I agree. You're not an emo kid. But that was an emo-kid-ish post.
2> I don't have to be there when it happened. I'll know about it anyway.
3> You were just pissed at being woken up on a nice Saturday
4> You are not lazy in the least when it comes to things you care about. ( True, there are not many of those).
5> It was fun writing an acidic comment for a change :-D
'things were quite different 4 years back'---it's true though it may sound cliched. Pilani pujo had been a very personal affair for many of us, something that we felt intricately associated with. [i can vouch that on behalf of 'we']. the pujo had even brought some of us closer to bengali literature, music and of course Rabindranath Tagore. i personally have seen people get introduced to Tagore's works during Pilani pujo.
the build-up to the pujo had also been sensational, with weekly meetings [eatings] at profs' houses, to carrying wooden logs over bicycles for pandal construction, to Rabindra-natyo practise sessions in kakima's house [and of course mangsho-bhaat after it] were but a few generic experiences.
getting the idol to pilani was another interesting phase...[a lot can happen over the lorry you know :-) ]...{ i can narrate you interesting tales about illustrious bitsians and their activities over the lorry sometime}
'mandap' decoration was the next big thing! it usually took place in some profs' house who by then became "dada's", and after a hard days work the lucky few decorators were treated heavily by boudi!
on similar lines, prasad packing also had it's nutritious advantages! :P
then of course the pujo had to start, it was almost flamboyant for guys to flaunt their Punjabis under the Pilani skies.the technicalities of pilani pujo were done quite meticulously, since there weren't too many 'cooks'. Bhog was served daily and it was usually Shibashish-da serving us the chutney!
towards the evening, along with the phantom drums, we had dhunuchi dance, with real smoking dhunuchis [a rarity nowadays even in bengal], and a lot of us did that for the first time before the Pilani Durga! it was not easy to do under the cynical eyes of seniors, batchmates, profs, and of course the Goddess. yet we danced and sometimes in ecstasy, in groups, students along with their teachers, one in celebration.
Durga mother standing with her kids, who came along with their pets, such a homely picture, and then a bloody spectacle of Asura-nidhan collaged with it, and kids of puny humans dancing overjoyed, overwhelmed.
the evening programs followed, which involved some theatric acts, details of which is another story by itself. and in the nights, in some corner around the make-shift pandal, along with Sultanji's chai, topics from all time frames were discussed. during those sessions some characters were also reformed...some egos broken...sometimes spirits ran high...
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[]= bhashan and all the things that followed...i realise that i am getting a bit too nostalgic(?), will document those a bit later...
thanks Arnab for the article.
@Pixie: I cough THE cough...
@Diptarkoda: Thanks a lot for the comment Dipsi da... Keep the old stories coming... Missing those adda sessions a lot... Are you coming here during Oasis?
I knew you would *cough*. On to the next post, maybe? :-D
i liked the way you put it. 'pretend' a home away from home...with a makeshift mandap. Trust me...CDCs coupled with Dussehra and Diwali festivities going on...im really in the same boat as you :)
Nice post!
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