Kaberi Dutta Chatterjee's Blog: Life and Laughter, page 17

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,000 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: For a thought....

Jingle Bells, Jihad Bells… all the way?

CAN #Muslim radicals now dictate who should wish #MerryChristmas in #Canada? Comment!

Read Christmas edition of Citrus

 

Filed under: For a thought.... Tagged: Canada, Christmas, MerryChristmas, MuslimFundamentalists, MuslimRdicals

Thank you, Men of India

My son says I am over 45, fat, and married. Hence….

But after not heeding to alarming media threats of India being a “Rape country”, and romping off to the beautiful state of Rajasthan “alone”, with my 18-year-old son, a muscular man revelling in his newly-acquired adulthood, tucked along; of course him not having any inkling of the tricky ways in which business operates in India, I have come to the conclusion that women are anything but safe in this country.

Thank you, India. Thank you beautiful and handsome men all along my journey, along the entire breadth of the country, from West Bengal in the East to Rajasthan in the West, who took care of me and my son, calling me “Madam”, “Madamji”, calling my son, “Sir”, “Sirji”; often wrongly placing the food bill in front of him, wondering who was paying for whom… who was in charge.

Right after my take-off in the Rajdhani Express train, there were invisible saints along the way. The moment they realized I was a lone woman traveling with my son, instead of taking advantage of the situation, they took extra care. The hotel boy knocked our door and asked us to specially attend the complimentary breakfast. The camel man took extra care of me asking me to sit in front, as that was a better seat. The men in the train were holding doors when I went out of the compartment for the washroom and bringing down things I couldn’t reach without me even asking for help. (I remember in Canada, once, my bag of vegetables rolled off and were strewn all over the bus floor, when the vehicle took a speedy turn. Not ONE passenger got up from their seat to help me pick up the vegetables…. Just saying. )

Just for information, my clothing weren’t tent-like. I was in an experimenting mode, and wore whatever I got my hands on… or whatever my meaty body could wriggle into. But I never got one disapproving look from any man. No, not one I can remember. They were just too respectful, too protective, going into a flurry whenever I said I wanted to stop for a washroom.

My son says I am overage, overweight and over the hills and that’s why men were not interested. Maybe. But even then I want to assure you all over the world, that men in this country doesn’t deserve to be generalized. Please do not brand beautiful India with that ugly name. It’s an angelic country with delightfully helpful people (read: MEN). I am proud to hail it as my motherland.

See more in http://www.citrusmag.com/

The camel man, Tej Singh, in Khuri village, Rajasthan

Our camel rider, Harish

Our guide, Sunil, in Jaisalmer, Shonar Kella

Guide Anil in Jaipur, Amber Palace

Filed under: For a thought.... Tagged: India, Rajasthan, Rape, Rape capital, Touring India

What I see in India after 5 years

I better write before I get too used to it.

The honking, the barking of the dogs at dead of night, the cooing of the dove in the hot, humid afternoon, the bells from a nearby temple, the azaan from a far-away mosque in the wee hours of dawn, the chirping of the birds all morning and periodical cawing of the crows, and the relentless pom-pom of rickshawwalas ‘playing’ with their honks…. The sounds of India are overpowering to this India-born, who has come back to inhale her motherland’s air after breathing pollution-free, crisp, wintry Canada air for five long years! What was “cacophony” all my life is now music to my ears after living in a noiseless country for five long years…. I realized, I miss these sounds, I miss the salty, humid smell of air. I miss my home.

However, here’s a kind of reality check. Let’s begin by saying though I spent 80% of my life in India, after 5 years of being in temperatures below minus 20 most of the time, I wasn’t, just wasn’t prepared for the rude rays of the sun. The rays, the heat exploded into my face as soon as I landed in Kolkata airport, like a boorish hostess, with her eyebrows crossed, asking me to go back. But, hello! Ahem! My motherland should know me by now. If I’ve come, I have come to stay!  Ok ? So take up this HOT, HOT challenge if you want.

My brown skin color neatly camoflaged the fact that I was a foreigner, even before the plane landed. I was not given the Immigration slip and a callous lady at the security stood up in shock, just short of saluting me, when she saw my passport.

These apart, I was a Kolkata girl! :)

Or so I thought! :(

Riding autorickshaws and rickshaws, which I rode with so much elan earlier, and which my 80-year-old father travels in in absolute ease, were first blows to my confidence. I was physically and psychologically rattled after each ride. The next blow came when these vehicles sped across the small-intestined traffic like they either couldn’t see, or they saw the lolling pedestrians and roaring brand new imported cars at the last minute. Just that its a wonder how vehicles and pedestrians slipped around each other, just managing not to touch. As though they had an invisible anti-magnetic field that did not allow collision. Of course there are no lanes… There is no need for any lanes! We have a mature-thinking set of drivers in India, who don’t need indicators to know which way the car in front will go.

My second battle was the heat. Like, now I’ve forgotten what minus 20 in Canada, my home country would fee like, similarly I had forgotten what plus 38 along with 75% humidity would feel like! I thought we “sweat” in summers in Canada, untill I came to India. Here we do not sweat, we BATHE in sweat. And I am not overreacting. A person, simply walks back home from the bus stop and his shirt is fully wet with sweat and grime. It has to be given for washing. No wonder every household in India has at least one personal washing machine!

And maids??? How can I forget the maids? I was served food on a beatiful plate, made to sit with all kinds of mouth-watering dishes around me. Of course, I’m suppossed to eat all of that, or the hosts feel bad. At least taste each kind. And then someone actually got me drinking water in a tumbler, extended a tissue (they call it napkin here) and stood around me watching me eat. After every dish you have to appreciate the cook. Who doesn’t care for any tips, but just that you appreciated your food and enjoyed the taste. In fact, in a long time I’m in a place which doesn’t appreciate money. It values ethics, relationships, appreciation, sacrifices and hospitability much, much more. I’m so proud to say I rose from here. So what if I’m such an unfit in this materialistic world!

Neverthless, I’ve stopped thinking whether switches are turned off, or turned on, when pressed down, which side of the car is the driver sitting, and it doesn’t matter which side of the road the bus comes from. You just have to make an eye contact with the driver and he is all yours! ;)

A few remarkble observation for all you foreigners out there wanting to visit India:

Hardly any pollution!

Barely any garbage strewn around, at least in the big cities.

People have become litter-conscious with several innovative-on-going anti-litter campaigns,

No mosquitoes!

No cows grazing on the roads: That’s a myth now.

Barely any power cuts!!

And the most important of all: I walked around in my kepris, long skirts and light T-shirts, (with a symbolic scarf around my neck) and I wasn’t raped.

However, there are still some factors in which India will remain forever green. No-regulations is one of them. Even if I was carrying the “born-here” armor, I stumbled at every intersection trying to cope with no-regulations. That notoriousness still remains. And street-smartness, that anything is possible. Armored with corruption and a no-implemented-rule society, the street-smartAsses still run the show.

It should take another billion years for corruption to fade into glory, after which India will resemble just any other country. Till then, let the uniqueness of my motherland make me proud, as I plan to visit her again before such an accident happens…

Filed under: For a thought....

What I see in India after 5 years!

I better write before I get too used to it.

The honking, the barking of the dogs at dead of night, the cooing of the dove in the hot, humid afternoon, the bells from a nearby temple, the azaan from a far-away mosque in the wee hours of dawn, the chirping of the birds all morning and cawing of the crows, and the relentless pom-pom of rickshawwalas ‘playing’ with their honks…. The sounds of India is overpowering to this Indian born who has come back to inhale her motherland’s air after breathing pollution-free, crisp, wintry air for five long years! What was “cacophony” all my life is now music to my ears after living in a noiseless country for five long years…. I realized, I miss these sounds, I miss the salty, humid smell of air. I miss my home.

However, here’s a kind of reality check. Let’s begin by saying though I spent 80% of my life in India, after 5 years of being in temperatures below minus 20 most of the time, I wasn’t, just wasn’t prepared for the rude rays of the sun. The rays, the heat exploded into my face as soon as I landed in Kolkata airport, like a boorish host, with her eyebrows crossed, asking me to go back. But, hello! Ahem! My motherland should know me by now. If I’ve come, I have come to stay!  Ok I so take up this HOT, HOT challenge if you want. Being brown in skin color I was neatly camoglaged that I too was a foreigner, even before the plane landed. I was not given the Immigration slip and a callous lady at the security stood up in shock, just short of saluting me, when she saw my passport.

These apart, I was a Kolkata girl! :)

Or so I thought! :(

Riding autorickshaws and rickshaws, which I rode with so much elan earier, and which my 80-year-old father travels in in absolute ease, were first blows to my confidence. I was physically and psycologically rattled after each ride. The next blow came when they sped across the small-intestined traffic like they either couldn’t see, or they saw the lolling pedestrians and roaring brand new imported cars at the last minute. Just that its a wonder how vehicles and pedestrians slipped around each other, just managing not to touch. As though they had an invisible anti-magnetic field that did not allow collission. Of course there are no lanes… There is no need for any lanes! We have a mature-thinking set of drivers in India, who don’t need indicators to know which way the car in front will go.

My second battle was the heat. Like, now I’ve forgotten what minus 20 in Canada, my home country would fee like, similarly I had forgotten what plus 38 along with 75% humidity would feel like! I thought we “sweat” in summers in Canada, untill I came to India. Here we do not sweat, we BATHE in sweat. And I am not overreacting. A person, simply walks back home from the bus stop and his shirt is fully wet with sweat and grime. It has to be given for washing. No wonder every household in India has at least one personal washing machine!

And maids??? How can I forget the maids? I was served food on a beatiful plate, made to sit with all kinds of mouth-watering dishes around me. Of course, I’m suppossed to eat all of that, or the hosts feel bad. At least taste each kind. And then someone actually got me drinking water in a tumbler, extended a tissue (they call it napkin here) and stood around me watching me eat. After every dish you have to appreciate the cook. Who doesn’t care for any tips, but just that you appreciated your food and enjoyed the taste. In fact, in a long time I’m in a place which doesn’t appreciate money. It values ethics, relationships, appreciation, sacrifices and hospitability much, much more. I’m so proud to say I arose from here. So what if I’m such an unfit for this materialistic world!

Neverthless, I have stopped thinking whether switches are turned off or on when pressed down, which side of the car is the driver siting and it doesn’t matter which side of the road the bus comes from,you just have to make eye contact, and the bus driver is all yours! ;)

A few remarkble observation for all you foreigners out there wanting to visit India:

Hardly any pollution!

Barely any garbage strewn around, at least in the big cities,

People have become litter-conscious with several innovative-on-going anti-litter campaigns,

No mosquitoes!

Barely any power cuts!!

And the most important of all: I walked around in my kepri, long skirts and light T-shirts, (with a sympolic scarf around my neck) and I wasn’t raped!!!

However there are still some factors India will remain forever green. No-regulation is one of them. Even if I was carrying the “born-here” armor, I stumbled at every intersection trying to cope with no-regulations. That notoriousness still remains. And street-smartness, that anything is possible. Armored with corruption and a no-implemented rule society, the street-smartAsses still run the show.

It should take another billion years for corruption to fade into glory, after which India will resemble just any other country. Till then, let the uniqueness of my motherland make me proud, as I plan to visit her again before that happens.

Filed under: For a thought....

FinalDraft

Did you know how much similar #Pakistan‘s national anthem is to #India‘s?

Watch: http://www.citrusmag.com/

Filed under: For a thought....

The day I got lost…

It was quite a few moons back… maybe decades…I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter.

Exasperated with what life had to offer me then, I deposited my three-yr-old son on the lap of my responsibility-ducking husband and went off for a camping trip with people I didn’t know. It doesn’t matter who they were. It was a three-day tour into the interiors of Purulia forest, in India, where the only sounds were the swishing of the dry leaves, the only light was the light of the moon and the only food was what we cooked on fire. We slept inside tents and went for toilet deep inside the forests with a stick and a torch. It was wild nature at its rustic best deprived of any trace of human civilization.

This is the time when I started shedding my shackles of bonding one by one. First it was a relief to become just a woman, not a 24X7 mom… Then the terms “man and woman” merged in the face of nature and I became just a “human”, with no name and no identity. I was not anyone’s mom, wife, daughter, friend, journalist or writer. I lost all identity. I was nobody. Then, with the passage of a day, I had merged completely with nature and had no body, no existence… had become just a soul.

I was soon just a part of nature, an insignificant part of creation… another one like a bird, a flower, a leaf or a blade of grass. I had become one with them.

I left the camp members the last day at dawn and decided to get lost. I walked over brooks and dry leaves through the forest, unarmed and barefooted. It didn’t even matter if I didn’t have clothing on. I was way beyond civilization.

I walked for miles in the dawn and climbed a small hill. I sat down on top of the hill, watching the rays of the sun come up. The birds chirped around me, squirrels scampered around, I felt at peace and sat down beside a tree. That’s when I started to cry. I don’t know why I cried… but I howled and cried aloud. And I decided never to go back. I decided to get lost.

Then suddenly something happened. A three-year-old baby’s face appeared from nowhere, stretching out his arms at me…. “Maaaa….”

I wiped my tears. And stood up. I had to go back. I retraced my steps and here I am, today.

But I have walked with my soul.

I am not afraid to go back.

Filed under: Serious matter

To The Adult.

I quivered that day… But it must have been a story told-and-retold.. over eternity…

But I still quivered that day…

It must have happened to millions and billions of living things before me..

But I still quivered.

Not from fear, but from excitement.

My pain wasn’t important. The creation was.

I quivered as I delivered my own creation!

Today the sheer audacity of it’s existence is overpowering the joys of it surviving.

The pain is becoming very important…

As the precious bud explodes into becoming an ‘adult’.

Piercing pain that millions experienced before me

But is still tearing my soul apart.

Shredding it into bits everyday, crushing it with its logic and pride.

The creation is turning ‘Human’…

I hope it is turning ‘Human’….

I hope it becomes ‘Human’….

Filed under: For a thought....

My Great Escape

My Great Escape
By Aneesh Chatterjee
I escaped. I escaped my home. I don’t even remember if I ever called it my own.  I wasn’t a victim; I was not oppressed.
My life was average, normal, unnoticed, blessed.  Of course there were spines. Creatures, vile.  But who doesn’t deal with that? I did for a while.  Yet, I escaped. Without knowing why back then.
But now that I’m here, I’m beginning to see.  My home was a hell-fire, and I was protected,  oblivious to the suffering and screams around me.
The reach of evolution has brought us close, and perhaps a bit too close for my taste.  For here, in the comfort of peace and security,  I’m seeing what I might have had to face.  My home was burning.  Prisoners of the corrupt, the greedy, the sickest bowels of humanity, stared at me through their bars with eyes that demanded justification for my freedom.  Or perhaps they merely stared; perhaps the hell-fire is stronger within my heart, tearing my conscience to pieces,  at the thought that I was randomly selected to leave the pit, and enter the kingdom.
What gives me the right? I asked.  So did they. I could hear them scream. I was a citizen of my home, cursed to suffer within it every day.
This life – this happiness – it wasn’t even a dream.  My friends toiled and burned and fought,  with me watching from a distance, indifferent and confused. I don’t know if they ever asked me for their loss, but I know I can never provide, what they have been refused.  My home is filled with monsters, creatures that ruin lives for a living. From here, it’s all clear: the sickening acts are too dark to see.  Innocent souls assimilated, destroyed, lost and grieving; I couldn’t imagine what it would have done to me.  But I escaped. I was protected well.
I was one of the lucky few who had no stories to tell.  My hands are soft still, my psyche unharmed.  I am safe, sound and secure; no reason to be alarmed. So why does it burn? Why do I cry? Because it’s my own home? Because that’s where I’m supposed to die? Is this patriotism, or sympathy? Or is it just plain confusion? I am lost in my own fortune, my faltering delusion.  My home is beautiful.  Its colors outshine the brightest of any other.  Its life, laughter and arbitrary adventure are found nowhere else in this world. It tastes wonderful. Could I stay there forever? No one could not. The living quarters are too cold.  And so I escaped. I watched millions of my people fall below as I rose to the skies, left to be thrown in the construct of psychological torture and die or live a slave.
I wished I could bring some of them with me. But then I realized, the real world is not so fulfilling. Not a dream. Not so brave.  I escaped because I was given the chance. I was guided without hindrance.  Guided away from the colors, lights, laughter and tears, from the blood-curling screams and turbulent fears. Today, here, at this moment in time, I know I can never go back. My home is a sin of humanity, in itself, a crime.  I couldn’t care less what it lacked.  I cannot love my roots,  I cannot state my blood with pride.  All I can do is watch the place burn,  as I allow my own flames to subside.  I will never make the mistake of calling it my own. For that day, I escaped. I escaped from my home.
Filed under: For a thought....

Had forgotten all about this…

1414 Bongabdo, Sarani, Puja Special.

(I have translated the story in English and will appear along with my short story collections, Whiff of Tempest, to be published soon. Thanks)

Filed under: For a thought....