Sinjini Sengupta's Blog

ELIXIR - A dream run!

Last year around this time, a very strange thing had happened to me which picked me up from where I was and put me on another zone altogether. 

As you may know, throughout 2016 we were invited for quite a few festivals as well as privately arranged screenings of ELIXIR across the country, after we were back from the Cannes and the film won a few big international and national awards. It was at the end of one such screenings, that it had happened. As we stood there in the auditorium after the film got over for audience QnA, customarily answering and thanking them for coming, a gentleman came forward, shook my hand, handed me a visiting card, and said if I'd like to write ELIXIR as a novel. "Would you like to bring out a novel?" Was it a practical joke of some sort? I wasn't sure as yet. "But i don't even have a manuscript!"  I was perplexed. "But this story belongs to a book." This man said. Turns out that he was the founder of a publishing house himself!

I signed the book contract last year around this time. I started the manuscript, the first word, the first line, pinching myself all the way through it. And here, now, well...

This is the book cover art. Do let me know what you think... Please? 



The book has hit the market next week, and is now available on Amazon and across bookstores in India.
Amazon link – http://amzn.in/an4Cofk

It will go on to have a multi-city launch. It was first launched at the Valley of Words International Literature and Arts at Dehradun by Anita Agnohotri.





The launch event for Delhi NCR is in Gurgaon on 2nd December (Saturday) evening, at National Media Center auditorium.


This will be followed by  other cities like Kolkata and Bangalore, in January and onwards. If you are in Delhi NCR, please  block your calendar. For I wrote it with all my heart and head, and now I need all the love and luck...

A warrior who never killed a fly!

White locks of hair pulled into a tiny bun, often covered with a pallu that is but a vague white extension of the once white but now faded 5 metres stretch of cotton, perhaps with a hole here and there over its entire stretch but carefully tugged inside to not be spotted – that is how Dida has looked ever since I can remember. Dida - the common grandmother – in our small but complete world of the neighbourhood, the place we were born and grown up at.


For a long time in my childhood, I did not know that my home and the house right adjacent to it are actually two different families. I’d get up in the morning from either of them just the same, and have food and take bath at this or that one, as if there was no difference. Dida, the mother of the two sons and the four daughters in that house, the uncles and the aunties who I grew up under, with, alongside, was the eldest and yet the most timid of the family. She’d silently work through the day, getting up at 5 in the morning and taking her bath the first thing, continuing her way into the day starting with the religious offerings at her small wood-carved front open box shaped “mandir” which throned many a named and nameless gods and goddesses. Her day would pass with one activity after another, always busy yet with a wide smile on her face, oblivious of the concept of recess whatsoever. We would continue to our schools, tutors, afternoon naps, the group games at the nearly park. The evenings will however be punctuated by a long, mesmerising sound of the conchshell that Dida would blow, thrice all over, as she offers her ritualistic prayers at the Tulsi plant just outside the concrete of her house, as the Sun leaves its place for the Moon to takeover. The smoke from the burning incense sticks, the small white balls of sugar in a tiny plate that she’d then throw open to us to capture, the tinkle of the keys as she moved around the house to distribute the blessings, physically, to each room in it… they created a kind of magic that words cannot conjure.

Pardon me, you, as I write this. I, the eternal staunch atheist, the one to always stand up against such role-divides by genders, such submissive, timid, silent existence of womankind through ages and times that do, urgently, need to be taken a hard look at. And then, writing in soaked nostalgia, about an old woman who stands as an epitome of sacrifice, silence and submission, a personification of deprivations and bereavements. Bear with me some more as I tell you the why and the what.

But before I begin, let me pause and tell you how, behind that apparently submissive, god-fearing, quiet entity of a person lay the bravest, strongest and the most upright person I’ve ever seen. So, let me now introduce Dida, in the way her life has been!

Married at twelve, she had given birth every other year just as women (sorry, girls) in those years would have. Some died, some lived, some even got lost! Two sons and five daughters are what she finally was left with. Hers was a rather peaceful and content life, with a husband that was a teacher, with a house that was big enough to house all of them well, with food and other necessities affluently met, with  farmlands sprawling for acres just behind the periphery of her house which amply supplied her with homegrown rice, pulses and vegetables for her kitchen. Cattle and fruits home-bred, schools nearby, life was just like a normal life should be, uncomplicated and self-propelled. Until, it happened! The Bangladesh War!

She had just stepped into her forties when the Banglaesh War happened. Located on the other side of Partition, as the communal war broke out, people had to run for their lives. So, when her husband was stabbed to death right in front of her eyes, she couldn't afford to stop to mourn. Rather, she packed all what she could and set out for an indefinite life ahead. She walked at a stretch - for seven days and nights, or more - with her seven little children. The youngest, a baby girl – she was merely six months old and feeding on her mother as they walked across the border.


“Those were the days,” Dida often recounted later on. “We walked through the dark of the night, and at times we’d spot a fox or a snake on our way, and freeze. When the sunlight showed up, I’d look around for food for the kids. I’d fast, but only until I could still milk enough so that the baby doesn’t go unfed…” – she would tell us, her cataracted eyes teary and gleaming with memories that were now but a nightmare, beyond which there has indeed been bright sunlight, no matter how long it had taken to shine back.


Days and nights spent in cantonments and tents set up to house the refugees that came from across the border, she had lost and found her kids quite a few times more until they found themselves, finally, a shelter. They never knew what had happened to their home there, to the fields and the farms. They just could save their own lives, and for then, for them, that was all they could ever ask for!


Life for her has been long and eventful ever since that time. Some lived, some left, and then, some died too. Life however moved on… Schools, colleges, mark sheets, jobs, marriages, kids, grandchildren, and much more. They said - the Muslims took away all what she had; she says – no, it’s just my fate. She never held a point of contention, a grudge of the loss. In fact, years later, when one of her daughters eloped with a Muslim boy that she loved, Dida was the first to ask them back, accepting the couple back into the family in full glory. Of course these communal divides are nothing but playing pawns to the hands of power, but yet, would you expect one to be matured and forgiving enough to see it beyond the divide, after all that life had put her through? She wore her smile intact as she walked through life, gritted teeth, with the struggle for bare sustenance, and yet she saw to it that each of her children get the education and the respect they deserve, each of them stand up in life in their own chosen ways, each of them have as little left to yearn for in their upbringing as much as she could put together.


And, you know what the most surprising fact is? That all these, all these, she did not just bear through with clenched teeth and tight fists, no! She went through it, embraced it - embraced life with its many salts and sugars as it brought along - with a wide smile, the happy kind of smile that she always wore on her face. 


Now, if that is not #madeofgreat, what is?





Fifty years since the Bangladesh War over which took away almost all that she ever had, which she herself had only barely survived, she's here today! She’s here, now, surrounded by her six children, grandchildren, their spouses and in-laws and greatgrand-children, and many others like ourselves whose lives she touched. She touched lives with a kindness, with a magic wand. She touched lives in a way that left a mark. Forever!



She passed away earlier today, just shy of ninety years in age. Painlessly. With a smile – a toothless, wide smile. A happy kind of smile! A heavenly kind of smile…

Good life? This!

Or rather, call it History!


________________________________
When a Greek pirate ship sails in to loot the wealth of the Cholas, it is brutally defeated by the navy and forced to pay a compensation. A payment that includes a twelve-year-old girl, Aremis. Check out this new historical novel Empire (http://bit.ly/DeviEmpire) with a warrior woman, Aremis at the heart of the novel.

Book Journey: Revelations of an Imperfect Life (Sankhya Samhita)

Now! How easy is it to wallow in self-pity, to etch your victim story when life’s handed you a handful of lemons? It is a temptation, yes, most indeed. Common. And instinctive. To tell your stories, your way. In which you are the hero in it, and you the means and the end. And if you have been unhappy, that was their doing. There they were, doing things to you to make you feel that way. They owed you light and sunshine, did they not?

In several of the social forums while discussing issues around emotional abuse and midlife depression, I have often stopped midway and wondered about a question that raised its head above the righteous proclamations floating in the air. I have often asked: is it really a one-way traffic, this unhappiness? This prey and predator relationship - who does it begin with, and how does it snowball? How can we tell a case of incompatibility from a case of suffering, and a case of suffering from a case of abuse? Why do we stereo typecast so much, well knowing inside our hearts that, that quite is not the whole truth, that there is another side to every story?
In a few apparently straightforward revelations of an imperfect life indeed, Tanaya (the protagonist) very much does just exactly that.

Her narration is simple on its surface, as she tells a story in first person of a girl who comes back to her hometown in Assam leaving behind a posh yet lonely life she was living in the city of Singapore alongside a frozen husband. Back home, cocooned and comfortable, she now turns around to face herself. Side characters form themselves around her in a comforting weave of warm support, a web of family of friends who seem to value her immensely and stand by her with unconditional love. The book is built up on throwbacks to her early childhood, coupled with conversations with herself and with others through which she unfolds her story and the working of her restless mind before the readers. Much of the book is around her introspections and reflections, culminating into making her mind up on the course of action hereafter.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But what I feel is, it is not. It is not simple to have the courage to explore the complications, the contradictions, the lack of knowledge of oneself. Iti is not easy to confess to your own limitations, to the faults and to the mind’s demons. It is not at all straightforward to take off the glasses of self-pity and narcissism, to be able to look at the opposite side with due fairness and consideration. Tanaya does just that. She braves the tall task of unfolding the virtues of her cold and distanced husband before the readers, risking the loss of their sympathy for herself. She gathers the courage to confide that it was not him but herself, the person she was slowly turning into, that she was really starting to be afraid of, which is why she left. She does not play a blame-game. She instead masters the confidence to look at things as they are, in plain light.

As a reader, I was simply blown away by the finesse with which Samhita has managed to draw these two characters – the wife’s and the husband’s. With an issue as common as everyone’s in today's age and time, she through her book has helped build a case for the society than one against those who are mere outcomes of its faulty system. She has looked at the very norms than at their helpless carriers, and that truly is where the problems lie lined up in a row.

In terms of critique, if I have to, I’d say that I found the throwback into the early childhood and the narrations around the family and friends from the present times slightly overly optimistic, than realistic. A small town brings with itself its share cosy warmth, indeed, but alongside it also does carry the virus of social conditioning deep-rooted in its people. The fact that Tanaya’s parents, sister and all her friends alike “got” her and understood the crisis of “emotional incompatibility” in its full legitimacy as much as we, as protagonists in our own individual stories, wish them to do is something I personally found a little far-flung. However, having said that, the unadulterated bliss of homecoming as an essential element of her self-discovery is an extremely potent idea in its own way. It is perhaps where it all started is where the keys lie!

All the very best to you, Sankhya Samhita. For all you know, you have just managed to clean a layer or two and reach closer to the truth of the illness that pervades the whole society today.

Fitness Choices

(This is a commercial post for "NESTLÉ a+ Slim") A true blue Bong, “fitness” is not a word that could keep me away from the restaurant menu card or the glass showcase at the sweetmeat shop. Fitness could not contest fun and flavor. At least, for a long time. In a short term. We were younger and stronger. Fearless. Myopic.

I wish we could stay that way, always. Could not, but.

After a certain number of candles on your birthday cake, after a certain number of yet another person in friends and family struggling with high diabetes, cardiac emergencies, and worse, the ‘bad news’, it was time for reality check. It was then that it came afloat in front of eyes. That, it is not just about the common suspects – roadside fries or dollops of ghee. It is more inconspicuous than that. It is the “hidden fat” in more everyday food, the usual non-suspects, that make up for a large part of it.

Watch out is what I have started to tell myself, more recently. Watch out, we must. Because without a fit body, the machine simply will not run!



My past in terms of its fitness quotient has been complex and elusive. I skipped breakfast systematically, and a cup of tea found its way to me to kill the hunger pangs while rushing to work, in meetings, at my busy work-desks. Lunches cooked at office neither matched any fitness recommendation nor the taste-bud preferences, and the evening snacks breaks were uncertain and seldom. A heavy dinner, theonly timee at home, was a lengthy affair, and the rush to bed soon afterward did not help the cause either. But among this, the worst bit was this – that, I did not even stop to notice that it was not alright. Years went on, and the damages piled up. I had wanted to believe that all is well, despite the signs my body gave me, first more softly and then louder and louder. But after a breaking-point, I could not. Not anymore. I had to hand myself over to doctors.

My race against my unfit past, since then, has been a long drawn road. But, long story cut short, the most recent and most effective measure came not out of my regular visits to a gastroenterologist, medicine, neurologist, orthopedic or any such. In fact, strangely enough, it came from a visit to a dietician.

No, I did not ask her how to look curvy and fit into that little black dress. I could not care less about it. Not in my teens, in my twenties and not now, even. My question was different. What do I do, I asked her, to become fit?

And, as you can guess, it did come down to food habits. Timely eating, right portions, balanced proportions. That is all I needed. That is all I thought I never had time for.

And now? My resolution is to tell myself – I will have time for this. I will make time for this. I will.

And what, you ask?

Well. I am aware of the new products that are hitting the market, designed carefully keeping in mind the needs and requirements of the deficiency we as a generation have come to land up at. One such product is a largely fat-free milk diet, which I came across very recently. This could be a way to achieve the balance many of us are prescribed and so, sure enough, I’d give that a try indeed.

The other day while I was typing away at my manuscript with a stab of vengeance, a phone call caught me off-guard. An invitation, an event. From one of the web magazines I am an author with. Now, to be frank, I have been keeping away from these functions for a while given the sparing timelines on my calendar and the soaring mercury levels, that too. But this day, this occasion – it spoke to me. A dialogue with Nutritionist and a Physiotherapist, it said, along with few other luring carrots. I consented, after all. And reached. And how I regret not!

It was just the wake-up call I needed, for I too – despite the newfound realization and wisdom – had indeed slipped up on my resolutions. I was again back to my own sweet little vicious cycle, eating away to glory, little work-outs, seldom exercises. Well, okay, let’s be honest there. No workout, no exercises. Not even the ones that just need you to sway your neck from one side to another. No.

The gathering handed me out quite a few good things, of which the main was motivation. I am back on my feet, socks pulled up. I will, I will.

And how, you ask?

From the past food habits, my taste-bud always ranked above my real health needs and which is exactly where all my past fitness resolutions found a crack to slip through. However, just like new products, new recipes are also finding their ways to us promising taste alongside health. While I am personally far from being a kitchen expert, these interesting recipes do look luring. In the treasure hunt for fitness and health, I’d most surely like to learn and explore a few new recipes. What more? I’ll tell you too how they come out to be.
Hungry, are you? So, watch out!

Tags: NESTLÉ a+ Slim

Book Review: Kissing The Demon (Amrita Kumar)

Kissing the demon was one book for which, when asked to review, I did not have a single moment of dilemma. The very fact that an author has authored something, a handbook of sorts, for the benefit of others to use and follow, was enough reason to leap and grab it. And if not enough, the brief bio of the author establishes beyond a speck of doubt her eligibility to do so, clear and confident. So frankly, it was not a book to be reviewed. It was one to be learned from. 

The subject matter contained in the different areas of writing carry a distinct tone of knowledge, wisdom as well as humour. Quotations, motivations and analogies from all over of the broad vastness of English literature, complemented with insights and suggestions from real life experiential collections… the "voice" grows not just in strength but also by warmth. It is conversational, almost, how it shows what works, what doesn't, and what can, should, must be looked at. Wit is aplenty, plus the confidence of self-depreciation in stories, examples, ideas.
Cover to cover, it covers nooks and corners, on the art, craft and science of writing. It is when you delve into the chapters that you realize, this book can make you.

Through the whole reading, I found not a single place where i could disagree with the author, where i could offer a beer example, a more handy tip. The questions raised, quotations quoted and examples cited are simply enough to make the points she proposes establishes itself while not dragging a point beyond its boundary to a monotone plus leaving exceptions, space and rules for alternatives. 

She does not instruct, not at all. She chooses to guide you, instead. She picks you up if you are down in the journey, and she brings you down, ground, if you are flying, up and away. She sets you up the right place, the right tool box, the right measures so that you can do what you have set to do. Write.

What a lovely, enriching experience to read this. Thank you, Amrita Kumar.

Pursuits and Conflicts!

Personally, I've mostly shirked off when it ever came to discussing Mindfulness, Meditation and the higher order of things, even though I have spent a good part of my last two years embarking on the journey along these paths. While we easily talk about mental illness, we are wobbly when it comes to talking of mental wellness. The field of Positive Psychology, as much as I have explored, hands out more tools and techniques than awareness and insights.

I am on my way!
And yet...
And yet, like most others, I too have my own space of conflicts and reconciliations. I balance and misbalance my weights in two hands - my Spiritual Pursuits on one and hardcore Psychology studies, Mental wirings, deconstruction and re-creation of my ideas around Social reforms esp around Gender issues along with the higher senses, on another. Art versus Science, Philosophy versus Activism. I have fallen apart from the righteousness and rigidity of my old feminist friends who in pursuit of their goals stopped asking questions and thought they know answers they'd now like to teach. I have also given up on stricter regimes of Spirituality that often fall in traps of rituals over reasons. I have been trying to find my middle ground, my own thin rope walk...
Now, why such a long drag, why such a confused trail of thoughts?
Because, somewhere, the twain need to meet. Yes, they do!
I just came across THIS VIDEO.
It seemed to me to address what is perhaps what they call "the call of the day". I'd watch out. And so I also wanted to share this with others who may stop by this post. Like always, I want to know your thoughts, too.

Twin Flames!!

Really...

let’s talk about unabashed, unapologetic romantic love.

Shall we?



“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” used to be my 101 of love for a long time. Catherine had said this about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It was part of our course, and we were sold on it. Every girl from the classroom. We had assumed our life’s purpose to be a simple one, around that age and time. We needed to find our own Heathcliffs!


What is love, I have often wondered. Surely, it is not the red balloons at the traffic signals or about the Archie’s greeting cards that sell over the first fortnight of chilly Februaries. It is profound, much more profound than that, of course. It is perhaps the strongest emotion we human beings are capable of. It is often larger than life itself. It can change the life that you lead, and it can change the person that you are. It is important to know how every love stories is immortal in its own way even if it does not result into a forever. You are never the same person before and after it. Think of it - shall we ever be able to love as innocently, as entirely as we had loved in our first crush?

What we know and believe to be love in our teenages is really what the scholars have come to name as: Twin-flame Love!

The thing about soul-mates, the thing about being made for each other! Plato, the Greek philosopher, talked about that back in those days, and we talk about that even to this day. They say that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. They were complete in themselves. But the gods felt threatened. They split humans in half as punishment for humanity's pride and doubling the number of humans who would give tribute to the gods. But then, each human would then only have one set of genitalia and would forever long for his/her other half; the other half of his/her soul. So, by mistake, the Gods had created Love!!

It is said that when the two soul-mates find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another, that they feel unified and would lie with each other in unity and would know no greater joy than that. As I read more about twin flame love and the different stages, surprisingly I found this is exactly the same concept that they use in the Yash Raj movies or in Disney fairytales. It does talk about the very same story, of having someone marked for you, and until you find your soul-mate your life is but incomplete.

For a long time, I too had believed in it. I had imagined that there’s someone up there, possibly in a silk robe and long, white, flowing beard, who manufactures handcrafted hearts to the world. But before he sends them down, he playfully tears them into two halves and floats them in the air. For the entire lifetime of these two souls, their sole task is - therefore - to find out the displaced other half, and in union shall they be complete. In fact, when I was in school and had just watched Dil to Pagal Hai, I half expected that one day a tune will start playing from behind some closed door, and in a moment I will know who it is!

I even came to know of it as true, when I had met a boy and fell in love at around the age of eighteen. We had gone the usual way as is commonly travelled by one and all. We had professed our love to each other when the time had come, shy and yet eager. We had marked the first days together, or everything from the first movie to the first boat ride. To the first day we had kissed. And made out. And told our parents. And fixed the date. And had gotten married, eventually.

Fifteen years have passed since that first of the firsts had happened. We’ve had our share of things, let’s say. We’ve spent endless days of anger and dismay. We’ve spent endless nights of candle lights and whispers. We’ve grown apart, and we’ll fallen back together. Almost in a cycle. And in the process, we’ve grown up.

As much fairytale as it sounds, now I know at every step of our lives together how the myths and magic frames of Twin flame are really, well, just myths. How matches really are not quite made in heaven but right here, on the dry, coarse earth. Now I know how a marriage needs to be match up to its demands and desires, to its fames, fortunes and fates. It is not an easy happily ever after, ever, as the Disney hard covers would like you to imagine. Girls are not to sit pretty in nice, rich clothes playing the damsel in distress. Neither can they and nor they should. No prince charming comes on horseback. Girls come back bitter and drained out from offices, just as the boys do. They fight over the chores, and upon how the other is so lazy or irresponsible. They fight over what each other’s parents had said six months back, and how they had not turned up somewhere that the other has wished they did. They fight. They fight it out at the kitchen, over the dining table, in the bed. They realize that agreeing upon their political orientations and religious beliefs, and sharing intense likes or dislikes over movies and storybooks do not make their marriage. That, marriages are made of real lives, and real lives rub against each other into bruises. They become lonely, detached, dismayed. They work their way through the dense forests, amidst the hungry, sly foxes. There are digressions; detours. There are despairs and even dooms. And yet, if they wish they can get up, rub the dust off the knees, and move. They can stay or they can quit. But they know now, and remember, that they cannot take things for granted. For granted it is not.

They walk a long, long way, and then they finally come home. To themselves.

And so have I done, too.

My heart is still not the one which had beaten to the rhythm of a Yash raj tune. My heart is sturdier and stronger than that. More than that, it is complete.

I am not a twin flame lover anymore, and neither is my spouse who had once played the role of the Charming Prince and rode the horse. No, not anymore. We have both come of age. We’ve grown up. Together!

An edited version of this post first featured as the Valentine's day post on Bonobology.

Book Journey - Broken Open (Elizabeth Lesser)

This was first published at Writersmelon




Spirituality sounds like a big word, especially when you are twenty-three, and haven’t had any real crisis in your world so far. That was when I had first come across this book. The name on the cover read – Broken Open. And then there was a line below it, which read – "How Difficult Times Can Help US Grow."  I was yet to know what that may mean. And yet, I had turned over its pages.

Setting the message out and loud right at the beginning, Broken Open then takes you on a path stringed through a number of stories, memories, realizations and thoughts. It takes you from the metaphorical mystic forests where Jesus spent his Dark Night of the Soul to the journey of Vietnamese monks who left their countries due to wars and came to America to seek and to spread the gift of world peace. It takes you through stories of human mistakes and fallibilities, and through stories of humane greatnesses. In the process, it tells the story of you, and of me. And of the author herself as she recollects her childhood and her early memories, her first love and marriage, her void and her lust, her story of cheating and of being cheated, of falling and thereby rising, over and over and over again. It also tells you the stories of the world, right from ground zero in the aftermath of nine eleven. It tells you stories of births and deaths, and of falling and rising in love. It tells you stories of victories and bitter losses, and of lost paths and loose grounds. And through it you discover a way of looking – at her, at the world, and at yourself. The stories and sayings strangely start to resonate with you from half the world apart of a distance, as you realize that we at the core still remain the same people, and similar are our hopes and insecurities, wishes and inabilities to make the right decisions. Or, what is even a right decision? Are they not just experiences, this way or that? The book digs up and explores the human vulnerabilities in form of personal stories, and rise together with them to give it all a new meaning of grandeur. And she does that out of the simple fact that our life and our world, indeed, is a masterpiece which can only be marveled at with due wonder and gratitude. And the best service we can do to ourselves is to let ourselves open to the breeze and to the blow, and to experience all of it, all out.
The book is divided into six parts, or better termed as “stages”.  “The Call of the Soul” talks about the perspectives that great souls had held towards the mystery of human life, through the words of Dante and through the words of Einstein. It establishes our lost curiosity towards the phenomenon of being alive. The next section hits straight into the bulls’ eye, around what the whole book is really going to be about - “The Phoenix Process”. It talks about the miracle of rising from the ashes, and how we can use our grief and misfortune to turn the table over towards light. We hear of the wisdom that you receive when you let the light enter through the cracks in you, just as Rumi says. Part 3 is of “The Shaman Lover”. It talks about unadulterated, unabashed romantic love. It tells a personal tale, of how instead of staying easy and closed in moral boundaries the author had found herself walking the path of secret passion, and how she found her way back home through it to herself. It talks about how unearthing the dormant sexuality served as a possible doorway to discover the feminine strengths in her. Everything changed in her life, and yet she thanked the process as through it she found herself like never before. Part 4 then comes to “The Children”. How parenting is in itself a spiritual journey full of rise and falls, studded with moments of compulsive self reflection, and how through it comes the most exotic learning of human lives. Part 5 now, suddenly and yet almost in a smooth flow, comes to talk of “Birth and Death”. From the romanticized ideas of poets to the real life realization of death bed stories to the postulate of Interbeing from the school of Buddhism, it opens up a whole new way of how we can possibly train ourselves to look at life through the lenses of beginnings and ends that are both, in their own capacities, stories of plain miracles. The final part of the book culminates into “The River of Change” in which Lesser wraps up the pebbles of wisdom that she had shared throughout the earlier parts, in a way of silent prayer and celebration. We come to terms with ourselves and our own lives, almost, In a way, as she takes us through the quiet roads of acceptance - of life, deaths and changes. AT the end of the book, she offers us a “toolbox” of meditative practices and routines that can help us stay closer to our own souls as we take our individual journeys along the path of life.

Coming to the craft, “Broken Open” is written in a rather lucid style, and the narration style makes it possible for the reader to step jump up or down the line. And yet, I would not call it a very easy read, as it is likely to make you stop and ponder several times on its way. The way it hits you quietly and yet hard in your own way of looking at life is something that will stay with you long after you have turned to its last page. More, you may want to come back to it as well, as I did several times over.
There are books. And then, there are bibles. For me, this one has become a Bible. Now as I look back, I can only say that this book had happened to me before I knew I needed it. It had stayed with me for over a decade, coming out from the last rack back row of my book case right next to my bedside and going back to its place, in turns and over and over, based on how much I needed it when it was time to be reminded of the right way of looking at things; to take it easy, and to take it deeply. I have had numerous nights of falling asleep with the book on me, just holding it just so that I know through my sleep that I have a friend in it along my journey.
“Broken Open” by Elizabeth Lesser has remained a faithful constant in my life, and you too may want to give it a chance someday too.

GOOD (K)NIGHT and GOOD MORNING!

Those were the times of coils that came in hard green pungent sheltering smelling cakes, shaped in thin spiral mazes. They could hardly beat the beasts, for when it was evening they would come around in battalion forces. The blow of the conch shells - they came in triads from different neighborhood houses and just when the sun would turn orange from white. We would know that with the first sound of it, we must hurry to climb up the beds, sofa or the benches  closest to the walls, to grab the wooden windows by their edges and pull them shut. The more organic households would put coconut leftovers into an iron handi and burn them to keep them away, and then, when even that would fail we would gather to clap our hands into a mad mass mosquito killing spree. Not that we hated it, for it also meant a respite from handwriting practice.

And then had come the golden two words, almost as a knight in rescue. Good Knight! With its breezy smell, it would flute away the battalion forces into some oblivion, and almost in trance they'd dip on the floor to be broomed away next morning. No bloodshed, no violence. No loss of work, or time. It quietly did its work from the far distance of a switchboard. No malaria, finally, parents would say, heaving a sigh of relief.Times, they indeed are changing. Malaria is passe. Even malignancy is treatable, often,  and NASA is sending rockets God knows where. And yet, you wish!! For beside those headlines are those silent news we often overlook…

"I don't think she will make it," reports my cook this morning. Today is the fifth day in a row and she has opened the conversation with the very same statement, only her frown tightening with every passing day with a tragic sorrow. The four years old chubby little one from her next door is now fighting for her life in the ICU, and perhaps will bite it soon - my cook has been telling me. This is the fourth hospital she has been admitted to. She was carrying fever for long. Her face is swollen, she cannot take in even a drop of water. Have the doctors been able to diagnose, i ask her. Over these five days, I realize i too wait to hear of hope everything she success carrying updates. They are awaiting blood tests reports, she keeps saying in reply. But today, she finally says yes. The reports have arrived. Dengue, turned terminal. What?

I'm scared, very scared. For her, for them and for us. I remember the several checklists that are doing viral rounds on whatsapp or on Facebook. Cautionary lists, what not to do, prohibitions. These mosquitos, they come during daytime, they say. But haven't we always known that the windows need to be shut in the evenings, the repellents to be put on for the nights? 

Times, they indeed are changing. We need protection to keep diseases at bay. We need protection, daylong. Always! I now keep the machines burning whenever we are indoors, throughout the day. When we step out, there's the roll on - http://www.goodknight.in/fabric-roll-on/. It says it is safe, made of natural oil. Nice smell, long lasting too. But frankly - what matters, much more, is that we are safe. Protected! 

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পাড়ার মেয়ে

“পাড়ার মেয়ে” শব্দ জোড়াটা আজকাল প্রায় উঠেই গেছে বলা চলে। কোন বাড়ির মেয়ে, বড়জোর। অর্থাৎ কিনা, বাবা কাকা কেউ যদি পলিটিক্সে থাকেন বা অন্তত সিভিল সার্ভিসে, অথবা ডাক্তার উকিল কিছু একটা পারিবারিক বংশপরাক্রমে। একটু বড় হলে কোন স্কুলে দিলে গো মেয়েকে, বা কোন কলেজে চান্স পেলো, কোন সাব্জেক্ট? আবার, আর একটু বড় হলে মিসেস হেনা তেনা কিছু একটা, যাবতীয় লিঙ্গ সাম্যের মুখে চুনকালি মাখিয়ে। অফিসের ব্যাপারটা আবার আলাদা, ডিপার্টমেন্ট দিয়ে নামে চেনা যায়, ভিজিটিং কার্ডে একঝলকেই আন্দাজ করে নেওয়া যা কি বা তাঁর পড়াশোনা, কদ্দুর কি ক্ষমতা। বাচ্চার স্কুলে সেই বাচ্চার মা, ওই যে, ছোট করে চুল কাটা, বা একটু মোটার দিকে চেহারা। পরিচয় অনেক রকমেরই হয় বইকি। সব কিছু পেরিয়ে আবার এও জানা হয়ে যায় যে পরিচয় শব্দটাই একটা আগাগোড়া ভুল ধারণা, পুরো জীবনটাই আসলে নিজেকে খুঁজে ফেরার অলি গলি পাকস্থলী। তবু… 
তবু, এই বচ্ছরকার শীতকালের সময়টায় যে নিয়ম করে “ওমা, কবে এলি?“, হোক না মাত্র কটা দিনের জন্যই। অতীতের মায়া দিয়ে ঘেরা এই ব্যাক্তিচর্চা, এক নিশ্বাসে অনেকগুলো বছর অতিক্রম করে যায় চক্ষের নিমেষে। পাড়ার মেয়ে পরিচয়টা, আগের মতই এখনও, ডাকনামের উষ্ণতা নিয়ে ঘিরে থাকে আমার শীতকাল।