WhEn... tO CeleBRaTe, Or nOt To CeLEbRaTe, iS tHE qUesTIoN!!

Of late there has been a string of days dedicated to things and people. Fathers’ day, Mothers’ day, Music day, Widows’ day and what not!!

The day is not far when there would be more than 365 different things fighting with one another for a unique day demanding celebration. I am sure there is some economic aspect to it. The greeting card industry must be the one benefiting the most. No wonder there has been a sudden burst of websites selling cards, flowers, mementos, etc.

Anyway.... what I find interesting is that, associated with every special day are largely two groups of people. One which doesn’t mind celebrating Valentine's to Aids day! And the other which mostly does the work of criticizing the first group!

I often see people posting pictures of them with their mother, sister, brother or guitar on ‘World respective day’. Most of them I guess had been waiting for the appropriate time to post the relevant photo.  The pictures are often beautifully edited. Some even make wonderful collages with photos chosen after a great amount of thought. Then comes another subgroup of people who believe in celebrating the spirit of every occasion by wishing everyone. It hardly matters to them that their dog doesn’t have an account (most probably :P)  in that networking site. According to them, wishing it online is what the aim should be!! And now the second group of people comes into the picture.

For these people celebrating a particular day is a sin! They take it for granted that the people belonging to the first group never ever respect their parents or siblings all the year round and then one fine day they show PDA in social networking sites!

They find these people too nyaka and will go on commenting how silly and naive these people are. Who is right would be a very tricky and dangerous question to answer and I wouldn’t dare to think about it.

Personally speaking, even I don’t celebrate the different relevant unique 'DAYS'. The reason being sometimes I become too much occupied with my other unimportant jobs to celebrate or sometimes I don’t have enough money to spare and the rest of the time just because of the circumstances. But people who always manage their time wonderfully and sometimes even their finances beforehand to save something for the special day, hats off to you all. After all, theres no one in this world who doesn’t like to pampered :) .

The encounter

Posting something in my blog after a very very long time. As such I perpetually feel too lazy. And after I have started to stay in the hostel I don’t have anything better to do but  to daydream about going back home. But the incident which happened yesterday made me so ‘excited’ that I couldn’t resist myself to share it with you all and make my dormant blog a little active :) …..

Previous night I went to one of my friend’s room. It was around 11o’clock when I stepped out of her room.

As I got ready to descend the stairs I heard some footsteps coming from the  terrace against the background noise of a tin door banging tirelessly. I just casually looked up to see who was coming down. And what did I see???? A headless lady in a flowing white dress walking slowly.

Now the lenses of my thick framed glasses, which can endure my weight even when I accidentally sit on it, have unfortunately become scratched beyond vision. So I thought maybe I was facing some kind of a technical glitch :D !! I decided to look more closely as the lady descended but in vain. But still I could not see any head! It naturally scared the hell out of me.

I panicked and at once turned back and began to hurry down the stairs.

In the meantime the lady starting shouting from back ….. “Don’t run….This is just a face pack”. I felt a little relieved but still was a little apprehensive of turning back. My heart had forgotten how to beat for that fraction of secs.. More so because even after deciding to fulfill the exercise of finding the head for the second time, I had failed. Anyways I looked back and was extremely happy to locate her head at last. I think it was the happiest moment of my life :D

What I’m thinking is that what would have happened if the girl hadn’t called me from back. I would have thought all my life that I had really seen a headless ghost that night…..

OPPOSITE aTtRacTSSSSSS

I just don't know what's so special about the north pole which the south pole finds so attractive and vice versa. Personally I don't have any problem with their preferences as long as the magnets on my refrigerator's door are able to defy gravity.

But when we begin to apply the theories of physics to our lives, I think there's unnecessary 'complication'.By a perfect match do we really mean "Oh!He/She is so not like you"??
Or when we comfort someone saying you will find someone better, we actually mean the more diametrically different person you come across next time,the better it is?? Do People look for photocopies then?? Ooopss...that would be like spending time with one's twin!!

How about a mix of like and unlike characters??Someone who is contrasting enough to complement us and fit into our lives like those missing pieces in an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. And at the same time who has more or less a similar thought process like ours.
Someone who would understand us completely. Less differences in ideas would probably mean an enjoyable walk in the journey of life.

"Opposite attracts" now seems so passé!! Instead how is "the perfect ratio of opposite and similar characters attracts (the ratio varying from person to person and from time to time)"??Phew!!No wonder humans are the most evolved ones on this planet (way ahead of magnets that is) :P

~~ThE aRT oF BoaSTiNg~~

The most common tendency of people I have come across is "giving ads", or in simple word boasting!! Gone are the days when people would just relentlessly go on and on exaggerating about their accomplishments or that of their near ones, thus diminishing the interest of the listener :P!! The art of boasting has evolved over the years. It has become more subtle :D. And the main purpose of this is to retain the attention of the listener....

One thing that remains constant about boasting is that it is extremely contagious. Once a person starts boasting, the listener wouldn't stay behind for a long time :D! I,however, refrain from it, when I am at the listener's end. I believe when the listener too takes part in it, the speaker becomes overcharged and then once again says something to override the listener. Thus, an endless loop starts :D!! The best decision would be to give a smile and listen patiently when the other person is speaking. Never dare to encourage him as by doing so you would end the probability of ending the topic soon :P

But this doesn't mean I discourage boasting!NEVER!!!
Boasting is extremely healthy. It makes one feel good and helps replenish one's energy and self confidence :D! But once you find your listener participating in it too, the wise decision would be to stop ;)



Boasts are never meant to be taken seriously!! Just listen to it from one ear and take it out from the other. The best thing to do if you are not enjoying anything would be to give a blank smile or if you are not even feeling like smiling, just give a blank stare :D! The person at the other end would stop!!

Anyways, as the title says....Boasting is an art. A person knowing the art has the power to overawe people while someone lacking it may end up disgusting others! So, BOAST AT YOUR OWN RISK :D

Sa Re Ga Ma....

Like almost every 6-7 years old, I too used to take music lessons. I loved music and enjoyed singing a lot....though I was not too good at it! It isn't that I don't enjoy it anymore but I was kind of obsessed with it then.
Seeing my enthusiasm, my mother admitted me to a nearby music school when I was in my second standard.

On our next visit to Kolkata, my father bought me a harmonium. I loved it. I just had one complaint against it. The upper removable cover of the harmonium and the front portion of the bellows had the name of the shop,"DAS FLUTES", engraved on it. I wanted my name or at least my surname to be engraved instead of it. I asked the shopkeeper to change its upper cover but the shopkeeper and my father laughed off my request! I was very angry on both of them :D!

Back home, initially I used to wake up quite early in the morning for riyaaz, thus disturbing the sleep of my parents and my poor neighbours! But then after some days this impulse of mine faded away and my practice was more or less limited to just the evenings!

As a child, I never missed any chance to show my skills whenever someone asked me to sing. I remember, once one of my aunts had come to our house and she asked me to sing. I sat with my harmonium and started singing right from the beginning, all those I had learnt in the past months. After some time when I showed no signs of stopping, she just turned the pages casually and saw that there were 30-40 more sargams left.She asked me apprehensively if I was going to sing all that was there written in the diary.... and I happily nodded my head saying yes, without interrupting my singing :P....

As of now I can recall another related funny incident. My sister had once mocked at me saying I had learnt music uselessly.... as never did I get a chance to record any song like big singers get :D! My singer's ego was hurt :P ! My father came to know about this incident and he brought a blank audio cassette for me.
He said to me that he would record my songs on it :P . I was overjoyed! I sang on my harmonium and recorded it on our tape recorder! For the next few days I played the cassette and listened to my own songs :D . My sis told me then that there wasn't any significant difference between me and Lata Mangeshkar :P! We both are unmarried, we both are trained singers :P , and most importantly we both have recorded songs :P ;)

The sweet memories of my childhood related to the harmonium are tucked safely in my mind. It is still one of my prized possessions as it used to be when I was young :) ....

How to NOT make chilli chicken!

Believe me friends....its really difficult to prepare non-veg dishes than the veg ones. At least I find so. So, I have decided to cook vegetarian food more often than non-veg in future :D (bad luck for someone :P )

2-3 days back I decided to cook chili chicken yet another time. The first time I had tried my hand in cooking chili chicken, it turned out to be a disaster. My mother and sister couldn't have the gravy because of the over usage of the ingredients!! Though I pretended to enjoy it to the fullest :D


This time I tried to be careful about the quantity of ingredients I used. At first I marinated the chicken with corn flour,vinegar,etc. As long as I don't have to deal with fire, things are fine with me. Now I turned on the gas oven and put the wok. After it got heated, I put the oil in it. I was very much aware of what happens when you fry something in hot oil. Its really more 'violent' when you fry chicken or fish rather than vegetables! Last time a little oil had splattered on my hand. Though a little oil spurt isn't that dangerous :P ,yet just the idea of it freaks me out! So while the oil was getting heated, I went to my cupboard and took out my lab apron and put it on :P .... but then suddenly I realized that my forearm was bare and I needed something to cover it. So I took a towel and wrapped it around. :D

By the time I was 'prepared' to fry the chicken, the oil got heated up. I lowered the flame and put a piece of chicken in the wok. Suddenly there was a 'terrible noise' and oil started splattering. I ran out of the kitchen with the khunti in my hand, as if the ghost of that chicken was haunting me! My mother came to my rescue and put the chicken pieces in oil and asked me to continue frying. The oil spurting hadn't stopped and I was wondering if its safe to start frying! I couldn't gather enough courage and again called on my mother. But by that time, the pieces were over fried!

After the chicken, came the frying of onion,capsicum,etc! I fried them myself. Everything went on well. At last I put the over fried chicken pieces and the chicken stock along with some cornflour in the wok and mixed them with the fried vegetables. The gravy turned white! I called my mother again. She said I had put excess cornflour. My sister was worried right from the beginning thinking about the fate of our dinner! She was now considering maggi as a better option!

My mother tried to nullify the effect of the extra cornflour, yet there was an unpleasant taste in the gravy! At last she had to put the entire thing in a pressure cooker (!) ! It worked!!!! The unpleasant taste was gone and we all had that HAPPILY for our dinner. :D

Dreams and hopes

The title may sound somewhat philosophical and the content may too. But this is the only topic I can think of now.Just a haphazard thought :)

I dream about things I hope for. There are a lot of random things which I hope to happen. But what I fail to realize is that my dreams don't have a concrete base to stand on.

I consider hope a very dangerous thing. It gives us an illusion of the beauty of a dream. But what it hides from us can be experienced only after our dreams begin to shake. Worst is the case when hopes get entwined with someone else's. The dreams become so very complex and precarious. Its like two different persons building a "house" with playing cards on the same piece of cloth. And when a slight pluck displaces the cloth, the cards fall down within a second.
But after they fall down we fail to distinguish our cards from that of the other person's. We had been so engrossed in building it that all the cards,now, seem to be the same! Hopes are nothing but these cards and what we build with them is a dream.

Not hoping for anything could be a solution to not dreaming and thus, there would be no expectation from life. It would free us from the unwanted distress associated with broken dreams. But isn't it impossible for humans to stop dreaming.... to stop hoping and wishing for something?
I wish I could hold on to all my dreams. Watching dreams break, which had been nurtured in our mind, is quite hurting. Why do dreams break? Why isn't there any adhesive that could hold them together?