A dollop of ice-cream....

Saturday, November 07, 2009

.............................

Bruno died yesterday.....Nov 6th.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Finding India abroad .......

Ofcourse I can never rediscover or recreate India abroad, not through Durga pujas or Dandiya festival celebrations or selected hindi film screenings. But imagine my joy when I discovered Ndtv.com and live screening of the news as seen back home. :) I have been skipping about in glee, and clapping my hands once I realized I will get to see all my favorite ads (call it ridiculous if you must!!)

Not that I have ever been a stickler for news (starting today I will be: my horoscope says that the more constructive feedback I take in today the better for me in the long run ;) ) ...... I must have been the worst at quiz (except literature) and gk in my school...... and throughout college life - all the hindu and times of india newspapers that I got would end up in the waste paper basket. It's never late to recover though. So after reading all about Indira Gandhi's 25th death anniversary and about state politics in my home state, I googled out two of our bollywood heroes blogs.

The first: Aamir Khan
The second: Amitabh Bachan

That's old news for many. I myself have happened on them before and forgotten them. But then since today I am supposed to work on improving myself (again by my horoscope :)) so I'll make new beginnings. I tweeted for the first time in my life, worked out on Wii fit plus ... let's see what else can I break my head on..... ( but you know these signs, it's the over-enthusiastic beginner trying to rediscover him/herself.... very quick downhill slope trend :)).

Bruno still fighting...... Baba is home so Bruno is spending as much time idolizing Baba now.

I am on the verge of giving up on something but with this new found joy of self discovery I might just have to brave it out and stick on, let's see.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Losing a dog....losing my dog .....losing Bruno

How many of us, when frustrated with life simply wish that we were dead ! Sometimes life shows you the true meaning of your words. My little dog of 12 years is suffering from cancer, now quite rapidly and steadily plummeting towards his death.

We had hardly believed he would survive so long - the mass of cancerous cells swelling into a tumor, ebbing away on excision, and reappearing with mightier force the next time around. I had not dared to hope of seeing him alive when I arrived home. And yet there he was, to welcome me, possibly for the last time. Remarkably thinner, with a white bandage masking the left foreleg, where he had undergone repeated excisions to keep the cancerous mass under control.

As I said life shows you - even though I argued with Maa, that Bruno was so alive because he didn't know what was plaguing him, that he was dying, I or for that matter everyone of us everyday would bow to the spirit of life in him...... whether slobbering over chicken rolls and forcing us to give him two thirds of what we ate, or shaking his head with his favorite moo pillow tight in his teeth in that "bullish" way to play with us or refusing to come home when we was taken out for his walk or sniffing out a cat and chasing it till it had run out of the neighborhood..... it seemed all he wanted to do was live...... for the simplest pleasures of life as he knew them.

It's hard to accept death, even when day in and day out you see someone waning in front of your eyes. And that is when it hits you with its solemnity. Something beyond your control and fighting, something that is really not jokeworthy at all, the gap which death creates can never be filled up. Ofcourse these are all known and morose thoughts and that is why it is best left unsaid, best not dwelt upon, but "accepted".

Let's leave it at that though and move on to more cheerful thoughts and memories....... here is a video link to Bruno's forays into the Bay of Bengal, last month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V5rZuUq7CM

Bruno is one of the most avid fans of road trips, and that's what we did. We took him to Mandarmoni by car. He loved the trip (in his own excited way of barking continuously at everything in sight) and he loved the ocean even more. We love you Bruno and will always miss you. You became so much a part of our lives that we dread how life will be without you and dread the gap that your going away will create.

Bruno and I parted proximity when I boarded my flight back here, but he is still fighting out his last few days back home. The malignancy has attacked his lungs and is manifesting as respiratory distress. I don't know how many days he has left ... but I pray that the ones he has left are to some extent painless.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Diwali from the skies , home, Bruno and more

I had the misfortune of having to leave home on diwali. Even after a decade, I wasn't able to burst crackers on the festival of lights. However I did get to light red, gold and green sparklers or 'fhul-jhuris' the day before, and also try my hand at lighting flower pots better known as 'tubris'.... only the 'tubris' true to careless workmanship, ended up bursting at times at the end of the shower of golden light (that's the closest I can get to being technical about fireworks.)

On the other hand, I am sure few have had the fortune of viewing Indian cities from the sky when they are alit and celebrating diwali. Believe me, Kolkata was glowing with the light from small diyas arranged on balconies of flats and houses, buildings with electric lights and rockets bursting into red and blue glitters and garlands above them. Delhi had five times the fireworks and beautiful silhouettes of parliament buildings. I couldn't help but feel lucky that I knew how it felt to set one of these alight myself, instead of sitting on the bank of a water-body and watching the display of fireworks stranded on a barge.

To be contd..

Saturday, August 08, 2009

A short "continued"

I haven't written in so long a time , that I was almost on the brink of forgetting this part of my existence. But hopefully I am back in time to save me. It won't be a long one this time around, but I am sure they will get longer, as I get into my habit of rambling.
I was missing my mom immensely and more than that was missing her simply fussing over me... about the oh so little things that only mothers can make a huge deal about. I guess its another bout of homesickness, but I wish I was back home right now, to be in that cocoon of mom' s protection, to share with my brother the joys of starting out on his own, to help my little old dog of 12 years battle cancer and still live like he so much likes to, maybe just be back in Jamshedpur for a spell of vacation with baba, maa and Tukan..... something that would bring those faded kodak photos back to life again. Sigh ..... I wish ....

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I had thought....

I watched some 3 movies over the weekend and Monday... starting with Sense and Sensibility, A Wednesday, The Last Lear and ending with The Lives of Others. Each of them was very much a revelation and a thought-provoker in their own way. I am very happy by the evolution of the storyline in hindi cinema. Each one comes out better than the previous.... very different.... very down to earth and realistic. Ofcourse this is all minus the constant commentary of my brother that there are infinite loopholes and how could I have EVER overlooked them.

But each is an interesting viewpoint nevertheless. An interesting viewpoint of the director, the story-teller....... more so the story-teller and that is the point of my whole blabbering actually. I don't know how I become indoctrinated to stories... I remember somebody, Maa, Baba reading out to me. As it is, it seems I was this talkative little brat who would never stop talking. I remember vaguely ... like those one or two childhood memories which become embedded forever and are the only ones you can recapitulate..... sitting in my little frock with my legs outstretched and hands holding on to the balcony railings....
there was a wide expanse in between me, the balcony and the next building..... the wide expanse of the park where I spent my every childhood evening.. playing and swinging ... boy did I love to swing.

But I am digressing ..... as I said, it seems I was this talkative brat ... maa says my talking would fill tapes and tapes... funny all those words somehow disappeared as I grew up. :) Well anyway.... that one childhood memory that I guess I will never forget is how I would spin up stories about actually belonging to that house across in that other building.

I had this entourage of dolls whom I loved. They would be set up in a line and be scolded and fed and made to sleep and then told stories. They would also have birthday parties with doll size luchis my "mashi" would especially make for them. How well they played along... dressing up everyone in their most pretty dresses and having a doll birthday party.

I also had this lovely kitten book. Each page had the most adoring kittens staring out at you. I can still recall each picture and how much of Johnson's baby powder I would have spent on each of them, just prettying them up. I don't know which story-world I used to live in. But I don't think I ever grew out of it. Even now ... I can fall back on a story anytime. No wonder I get mesmerized by movies... because it communicates the thoughts of someone who thought about the story ... how the characters would act, what they would say, how the relations between them would interwine and disentangle and join together again.

Relationships, that's one topic I'll never grow bored of. Even when I think I have deciphered how and why people act the way they do, I still let myself be surprised or hurt. Funny huh!! Not to say that I am not always to blame... as it is every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Every person builds up the world around them as best as they know how. They adapt to it as best as they think they can. And then they spend their entire life living it .... I guess my point is that that's how I arranged my life. Some things happened, the rest I arranged and here I am. But if I did look in the mirror today and ask myself (blatantly copied from Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford) "If I were to die today, is this the way I would like to spend it ? " ... I think my answer would be yes. I wouldn't want to change a thing, (except maybe being in India at home :) ).. there was a time when I used to detest working. Believe me, the very thought of having to go to work from 8-5 was distasteful to me. But then something happened, that it became my escape and my existence. So much so, I really don't mind it anymore because it defines a part of who I am. Ok, either the philosophy or I have become a workaholic. .....

In any case, I think somewhere in the mush above, I made my point... a little bit of trying to define who I am and a little bit of who I have become.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Me myself and myself - one liners

The following are my rants followed by my rants :). Caution: do not read at risk of losing mental sanity.
I wish I were a positive person - like the one who sees silver linings on every cloud kind of thing.

I have heard somewhere the first step in turning your wishes to reality is turning the word wish in the sentence into do/am.

I wish I was not turning into my worst nightmare - an 8a.m - 5p.m cube monkey who finds solace in work, who finds that work is the only means of shutting out the other pieces of life he/she is not able to tackle..... who doesn't know life without work ...and who would rather work than be anywhere else.

I wish I could still be a child, see the world through rose-tinted glasses. (My post, my space, I can write what I wish .... and heavens knows why I needed to justify that).

I wish I could protect those/that I consider the most pure in my life. But I do a bad job at this, mainly because of the subject line.

Nothing seems to happen the way you thought they would, nothing turns out the way you had EXPECTED them to.

Expectations are the root of every or most problems.

Very nice saying from my friend's status message: he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. I wish I had the why, then the how's would be easier, but the point is the why is an eternal never-ending search for me. (not to mention use of both never-ending and eternal is redundant).

Elizabeth Taylor had said: nobody can make you feel inferior unless you let them. I do just that.

I don't think I am marriage material yet if anybody knows what that means. maybe I will be by my marriage date.

I consider myself damned lucky in some ways and damned unlucky in others.

There must be at least one person in the world right now who understands why I am saying what I am saying.

You are a lone reed (courtesy You've got mail) even when you think you are not.

"You were born a street rat , you will die a street rat and only your fleas will mourn you"...in the Zafar like snarl courtesy Aladdin.

The solution to half the world's problems is having A sympathetic ear, who is willing to listen and tell you where you are wrong.

The solution to the other half is a warm hug.

goodnight.