Hold Open The Glass Door...Please

Warning: Very long post, bit heavy with personal rants and may not be interesting for planet readers

I had read this blog post by Shobha De sometime before my planned trip to Guwahati and Shillong.

She writes:
There is very little pink left in the Pink City, which now resembles an ugly, impersonal,concrete urbanscape, devoid of any character or charm.

I had been anticipating before the journey that the memories of my childhood would be shattered beyond repair once I landed at Guwahati and then further pain awaited me at Shillong, where I was born and lived the first 10 years of my life. My ancestral paternal home was in Guwahati and most of immediate family (on both my father's and mother's side) lived in these two towns. My memories of Shillong are dotted with the beautiful meandering roads with pine trees on both sides, the blue city buses with their chimneys, walking to the Laitumkhrah market in the evening to collect the day's newspaper (we got them in the evening those days, and i learnt much later that newspapers generally come in the morning) and groceries. There was this Khasi lady who sold fish at the market and always insisted my dad to let her adopt me, as she did not have any daughter to pass on the family fortunes. I also remember getting lost while playing at the parking lot of the Nazareth hospital and at the ripe age of 5, walked myself home down mainstreet. Every sunday, it was a ritual to visit the Lady Hydari park, ride the swings and the slides, feed some chickpeas to the monkeys and bamboo leaves to the deer or feed the fishes from the wooden bridge over Ward's lake. There were some weeping willow trees in the park and daddy made me stand at a particular angle to take photographs. Every other week we also went to the State Library, where I used to choose from the rows and rows of Ladybird books in the children section. The year we decided to leave Shillong, we visted all these places and clicked pictures which are still in the family albums.

While Shillong was the daily grind of school, home, rains during school hours, Guwahati used to be the most fun place of this Universe. And the center of this Universe was the beautiful wooden cottage proudly announcing itself to be the residence of Advocate K.P.Bhattacharjee (later this has been changed to simply "Bhattacharjees"). The wooden gate opened into a quaint little garden which led to the biggest rooms, smelling of the incense from the thakur-Ghar and tamul (raw betel/areca-nut, smells foul beyond belief). Inside there was a courtyard and a verandah, where everyone used to sit cross-legged on the floor for meals at lunch and dinner times. A wooden staircase led to the other building, which was also made of wood and used to shake during the thunderstorms. Next to the thakur-ghar was the room with a magic black box - the telephone... oh yeah! When I had no corner to explore or trees to climb or worms to poke or goodies to stuff myself with, I would hover around the telephone waiting (and hoping and praying and sometimes scowling) for it to ring. This house also saw a steady stream of visitors - some came for a few hours and some came to stay for days. It never felt like a house where anyone seemed to live a regular life. It was forever 'festival time'. And the best part was the ride in the cycle-rickshaws, a loud announcement that we were now in the plains. We seemed to go everywhere on these massive cycle rickshaws. There were very few cars (Bijon-kaku had one and used to drive us to his house in it) and buses or any other vehicles. The only buses I seem to remember are the State transport buses that took us back to Shillong. The other important must visit place was the Shukreshwar Ghat, where I used to gape at the massive Brahmaputra river.

I had last been to Shillong in 1998 and to Guwahati in 2002. Those were the trips where my memories got their first jolts. Shillong had changed drastically. The city buses were gone, taxis were swarming the city and suddenly there seemed to be a lot of people everywhere. There was an ugly building in the middle of the city center and roads were dirty. And horror of horrors, there were buildings all over the place. I could not believe that the hill I was staring at from across my old house was the very same one, where we used to often see small fires burning amongst the thick cover of trees. It used to be difficult to spot the two lonely houses on the hill, because they had green tin roofs. The numbers had nearly reversed.

This time the roads seemed narrower. The buildings had grown bigger, uglier and spread in all directions. I visited my school, but no one seemed to be around and I dragged Sankarshan along on my pilgrimage from - old home - beat house - laitumkhrah police point - old school - Don Bosco square - the majestic 'White' Church (which btw has an ugly shade of grey-blue, but we still call it the White Church)-Nazareth hospital. Our plans to go visit the Lake and the Hydari Park were cancelled, perhaps to let my best memories still remain untarnished.

Our house at Guwahati had to be pulled down due to massive damages to the structure and in place of the cottage there stands a concrete building. And same goes for the rest of the locality. The hills around the town used to be visible earlier, but these days one would only get to see rooftops. The "wide" lane that led on to the house seems no bigger than an alley. The roads around the city are choc-a-bloc with traffic, wierdly piled malls and buildings add to the disfigurement and the green cover seems to be reducing very fast.

Like Shillong and Guwahati and Jaipur (and even Pune), perhaps there are more cities and towns in India which are shedding their identity and character to match up with the metro cities. Once inside an assembly line churned apartment home, one can hardly distinguish anymore which part of the country it stands in. And it does'nt seem likely to change anytime soon.

However, nothing can beat a homecoming. A generation has moved ahead and these days instead of songs emanating unexpectedly in my older Uncle's voice, the tinkle of my young niece's phone can be heard. But there still is the hulla-balloo of the "Bhattacharjee" residence. The food still tasted the same and my aunt continues to make sure everyone is well fed, goodies of every shape and flavour could be "accidentally" found in various jars around the kitchen, the visitors still trooped in at every hour, endless cups of tea floated in and out of the kitchen, more books and shelves have been added, heated arguments about politics, literature, movies, etc shatter the silence and the 'festival still continues'.

First up.. Wishes for a Happy Sankranti, Pongal, Lohri, Bhogali Bihu and all the nice things that are being celebrated today. I was up till nearly midnight last night trying my hand at making "pithe" (পিঠে). Nothing fancy, just the commong "churi-pithe" (চুড়ি পিঠে) that looks similar to "samosas", albeit flatter. Its called "Karanji" in Maharashtra. The fun bit was, I could not make the zig-zag design on them, when I tried the way I had seen my mum do it. So I had left that bit for later and went on with the stuffings. Later on, I picked one up again and this time I could do it, sort of okayish. The reason was, my mum was primarily left-handed and I am not. So I was trying to emulate what I had seen her do and failed miserably when I tried it the first time. The next time, instincts kicked in and voila! Anyways, pictures/procedures would follow soon on my recently started food-blog.


Well, things that happened since the last post include:
1. A whirlwind trip home and spending some nice time with daddy.
2. Saw the most obscenely big mall in South City, Kolkata (courtsey: ishita+surajit) and had some lovely food at Prince (courtsey: sayamindu)
3. A biker decided to dislodge the rear bumper of our car
4. Mad rush with finance management for the entire family (includes me+husband)
5. An enjoyable sprint for KDE 4.2 to complete the required bits translated
6. A potential Firefox 3.0.6/3.1 release for bn-IN
7. A one-day trip to Lonavala with ramkrsna, rakesh, kashyap. (Fultoo fun)
8. Started an itsy-bitsy terrace garden. Hopefully, by the end of the year it would grow much larger (and if those pigeons from the neighbourhood stop eating the plants)
9. Playing around with poterminology
10. Some more events, both in the personal and professional front that makes 24 hours seem just too short a time.
... can't remember the rest. Its been a bit hectic for a while and I just decided to gift myself around 2 hours of time today, to catch up on the pending things-to-do list. (An update in the blog update was one of them)

---

I might have put off writing this post, if Pike had not tagged me. Ok so here goes:

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.


2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.


3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.


4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Seven things:

1. /me once got lost in the streets of Shillong when she was in Kindergarten (but she figured out the way to get back home.. and thankfully one parent was home to inform the other parent, who was still searching frantically.)


2. /me secretly wished for specs since childhood. Result: stuck with a pair with complicated trappings since sometime of the end of the aforementioned childhood.


3. /me NEVER played/plays Holi, but likes coloring pictures even now!


4. /me does'nt know how to swim. (Although the school I went to promised that they would teach us how to)


5. /me has never lived in a hostel


6. /me is terrified of snakes (Even on television. I get nightmares just by the thought of them)


7. /me detests dill leaves and has learnt atleast 3 names (in sylheti, bengali and marathi) for it, to make sure she does not eat it by mistake.

Ok and now for my shikaars!

1. pradeepto


2. ramkrsna (This would be too interesting)


3. Barkha


4. santhoshtr


5. Mdious (In the hope that he makes a post in his now hibernating blog)


6. Ankita


7. Aanjhan

Note: Folks, feel free to break the chain. Its totally up to you. :-)

i WANT to go on a vacation...

end of rant

Looks like there would be lots of stories for me when sankarshan returns :D

So things were a bit busy for the past 2-3 weeks. Among the many things that happened, I took the Red Hat Certification exam and became an RHCT on Red Hat Enterprise Linux v 5. Shall try for an RHCE certification later some time.

Meanwhile, I am trying my hand at Publican, with some expert advice coming from mdious.

I was reading Nirav's post about becoming an Enlightened Worker. I particularly liked this point:

"Surround yourself with people you admire and respect. When you work with someone better than you, your performance will improve."

This is something my dad always told me when I was younger and I feel with each passing day. Working or socialising with smarter people helps retain a sharpness in the thought process, as well as building up a practical sense to resolving problems. Being the smartest among the pack may get you to the top, but like the full-moon, the only open path would be to wane and fade.


The other ones I liked from the list are:

First recognize that you are responsible for your own future.

Mission statements for your organization and life are key to enlightened work. The mission statement is a compass to guide your priorities and decisions so you do not become lost in day-to-day activities.

Your self-confidence increases when you know you have done good work. Good results come from healthy self-esteem.

Speak your mind and share your ideas. Do not keep them to yourself.

Under-promise and over-deliver. Keep all commitments.

Be flexible and learn to live with uncertainty.

Celebrate the successes of others.

Wealth and power won’t make you happy. Health, love, and peace of mind will.

"Peace of Mind" = Definitely

P.S: And yeah... am married to a smart guy too.

Tags: slash.me

Indigo answered my prayers and now I am off home, on their spiffy new Pune-Kolkata flight (via Ahmedabad of course). But much much much cheaper than the other airlines. So I shall be away from mail and IRC for two weeks. Meanwhile I am pretty much anxious, that I might return to find sankarshan opening a chocolate factory inside the house. See ya folks!

A bug related to the positioning of the ৺ (Isshar sign - U+09FA) was fixed by Rahul today after quite a bit of research by Amitakhya and me. The character was being positioned at-level with the other alphabets:



As far as everyone could remember, the dot within the sign would have to be at level with the matra - the horizontal bar on top of the alpbhabet, looking like this:



According to the Chalantika written by Rajshekhar Basu, this sign is used as a prefix for the following:

1. Name of a deceased person (শ্রী শ্রীমতি শ্রীযুক্ত etc. are used for living people)
2. Name of a deity
3. Name of a holy place

dd told me earlier that, since it was used mainly by printers there had been no standardization. That compounded the problem. It would be great to have an RFC on this matter. As of now the current positioning looks perfect in conjunction to all the shraddha chiti (শ্রাদ্ধ চিঠি) that I have seen over time.

Anyways, moving from the morbidness surrounding this entire symbol, its good to see so much activity happening with the Lohit fonts thats very much part of the Fedora Indic locales. It holds a special place in my heart because... I named them (shamless plug) 3 years back! :-D

I woke up this morning after hearing sankarshan speaking to someone on the phone. Turned out to be an interview for the OpenOffice.org Education project that he is working on. Cool stuff.

So we decided to try making something new for lunch today. Ended up making the very popular bengali snack called "Hing-er kochuri" - a puri stuffed with dal thats been grinded and lightly fried with asafoetida. Came out pretty well..but not as good as the shops-around-corner at kolkata. Not many recipes of it online and now looks like I used the wrong dal to make the filling. Got to correct that next time.

Post-lunch it was the usual CSI weekly re-runs that we catch. Some bits of the Bengali cinema Joi Baba Felunath that was being aired on Zee Studio as part of the "Tribute to Satyajit Ray" series. I heard another one of the Feluda movies released on Christmas Day last year. Nothing against the new bunch of actors...as a matter of fact I quite like Sabyasachi Chakroborty (the new Feluda), yet the two movies of the older series are more charming to watch.

As part of the lazy-sunday (and also due to the addition of cough to the already present cold and runny-nose), dinner is going to be hot-soup.

I see no reason why truckloads of firecrackers need to be burned to celebrate and generally usher in a very polluted first-morning-of-the-year. The housing complex next door was having a celebration of sorts with loud music and crackers etc. Right now I can hear the caterers wrapping up after the party and talking to each other in extremely high pitched bengali.

The last weekend I met up with a few friends from my school - the very first school I went to in Shillong. Its quite funny that we were meeting in Pune (a second time in the same year) and chit-chatting over coffee. I left this school in Standard IV. We did not go to school that year for more than 6 months (ethnic violence) and later that year my family moved to Kolkata. So I did not get to say goodbye to a lot of folks.

The picture below is a wikimapia grab.



Legend:
1. I was born here
2. My school
3. The house where I lived.

All in one frame :-)

Thanks popcorn09, svaksha, Tazz for the eye-care tips. Am feeling much better now. :-)

Wishing a year of good health and peace of mind for everyone.

Sometimes my eyes hurt a lot. I often get some sort of an allergy that makes me blink too much. Popping in the anti-allergic medication is not possible during weekdays as it makes me very sleepy. So until the weekend I have to blink away crazily and the muscles around the eyelids hurt. On other days (like yesterday and today), I get all bleary eyed and my vision becomes foggy. My eyes need to strain for a better vision and looking at the computer screen gives me a headache. How I repent the fact that I had ever wished (at the age of 6-7) that one day I'll get glasses. Just to ensure that the wish is fulfilled in every possible way, I am unable to retain contact lenses. Its a pain. The spherical corrective measurements have now stablized at around 8:50 but its a major mess at times. This week seems a bit bad, so probably might have to push back some of the pending work.

I quite like this picture of me taken by Karunakar

Was listening to this song from Taare Zameen Par...

Well...its been sometime but then miss her sometimes

Thanks to ramkrsna, I got a new hackergotchi too.