Durga Pujo

Today is just another day.

Another day, I keep on telling myself as I restlessly open one random window after the other, looking for that ultimate distraction which will calm me down. I end up with opened sixteen tabs and a blank Notepad page.

Its Durga Pujo back home. Aren’t you back home, a friend asks me from Delhi. Naah, I reply, quickly quipping an excuse about college work before changing the topic.

I remember a certain day a couple of years back. Back in Pilani, Pujo was a bit of a different thing. Back in Kolkata, it was more different still, a small mind in my head tells me. It’s a vague indistinct memory in some ways, but I agree with it.

My mother has decided to get some homework done on her Facebooking skills. Even as I sit in office, trying to concentrate on circuits that suddenly seem to make sense in these desperate times, she calls me thrice. How do I tag my photo? How I make it my profile pic? WTF have you uploaded in that profile of yours.

Just another day, I say.

In line 673, a random delete debugs a week’s worth of work. Two more deletes later, there’s actually scribbling grey compilations on the screen, followed by a few flashing LEDs on the circuit boards. The computer creaks, in disbelief perhaps.

I report the update to the Manager, and earn an absent-minded approval and a new assignment. Where do you catch those BIA buses to the airport, he asks. Bloody flight’s in 4 hours.

The Pujo in FD block is 52 feet tall. Just like the Shravanabelegola statue, my mother mentions, perhaps drawing parallels for better understanding by my three-month-South-Indianized brain.

Another day, like any other.

A letter from the placements division asks the students to send in their resumes for McKinsey. Write how you have changed the course of the endeavors you have been a part of. Lead to something better. I call up Sunjaydottir, the only other person I know who has ever tried for Mackinsey. Can you think of anything special I have done? Sure, she says, weren’t you editor of your club and stuff?

Oh yea, that.

I miss writing editorials. Three juniors at 3AM. Walks to ANC and half-baked rants.

Messages from Pilani. No one cried this time, performance went off well. Sad smiley. No dramatics. Tomake pandel e miss kora hochche. Happy smiley. Ebar dhaki ache janish, sotyikarer.  Are you guys going and poking him to check if he’s real? Confidential XD. Old memories.

Who’s telling the ghost stories this time? I used to tell the ghost stories. Pilani ghost stories, I would call ‘em. Derivatives of urban legends and stories I had heard from seniors. The broken loudspeakers playing the Dhaak would stop; the night would get a bit chillier. I would play raconteur, as people huddled together for conversation and limericks. 1 AM. The Gandhi ghost. Thank you for not switching on the lights. MB story.

The voice would quiver, and I would imagine a shiver run down a few spines.

I will miss those days. A phone stares back at me. Facebook photos and friends in three shades. Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

Sixteen open tabs and a Notepad page.

I choose the Notepad page.

Today is just another day.