Shuvashree Chowdhury's Blog, page 5

‘Across Borders’: Eleven Years, Now.

Across Borders, my debut novel is now in its eleventh year.
I have shared the albums of the release events and the videos in Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai in 2013 in the previous posts –
Please visit the Page Across Borders in the link https://www.facebook.com/AuthorShuvashreeChowdhury?mibextid=LQQJ4d
The book is available Globally on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Nobels and other sites.

You can read it and my five books, right now on any digital/online platform in the link below.
https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/page/2/?s=shuvashree&id=22661&post_type=productThe

You can get printed copies globally on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Nobles and in the link below
https://cinnamonteal.in/product-tag/shuvashree-chowdhury/

In India its here https://amzn.in/d/02ZjIXo

Photos credit: Bangladeshi portrait photographer – Jannatul Mawa, from a reputed bookstore in Dacca.
Thank you so much Jannat, for taking my books across borders.

Eleven years of my novel ‘Across Borders’: to sum up the launch event posts I just shared in Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai in 2013 with reference to the previous post – please listen to the views of four of us in the photos, at the Calcutta launch in the YouTube link –
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAfxCsc6bXZC1y3S4HQISvqIa3TP2V209#historicalfiction #bookstagram #books #booklover #bookworm #historical #fiction #bookreview #bookish #historicaldrama #bookstagrammer #booksbooksbooks #history #reading #readersofinstagram #historicalromance #bbcone #musketeers #alexandredumas #bookrecommendations #bbcthemusketeers #bbcamerica #themusketeersbbc #themusketeersfamily #themusketeers #highlyskilledsoldiers #historicalactiondrama #swordfighting #booksofinstagram #bibliophile

On Choti Diwali: Journalists via-a-vis a Novelist

Celebrating Choti Diwali yesterday in Kanpur: The beautiful sights and sounds of fireworks displays in the backdrop of fairy lights at home lifted my soul to childlike elation. I was sitting out in the front garden, after lighting 14 diyas to usher in the spirits of our forefathers and seek their blessings today and always – when this long drawn display in my last video frame here started just outside our gate. This was just after Roli(previous post), left with her husband and son.

Sitting out on the lawn swing, with its softly swaying back and forth motion, as I watched this with excitement I felt like a little girl over again when my father entertained us all with all these displays on the terrace and I was happy to simply sit and watch. He was always dynamic and sporty so he was like a real life hero.

The last few days in Kanpur, as always have been about meeting up Bishwanath’s friends from all phases of his life. Two of his school friends dropped in the day we arrived with their wives, then a current young reader friend from Lucknow and another from Kanpur, the next day – the two ladies spent the day going around Kanpur with us to places. Yesterday his journalism college friend Vijay Dwivedi and his wife came over – they are also visiting their home for a few days, from Jammu & Kashmir where he is posted in a senior regional role in the financial sector.

So the obvious discussions and long debates were on Kashmir, which we had visited in August. Vijay and his wife were all praises for all of Kashmir, the scenic beauty that abounds, the snowfall, especially the lovely charming and handsome people and agreed with me that what we see and read in media reports is such a distorted version of how life truly is there. Vijay gave us detailed descriptions of the charming hospitality, the warmth and friendliness, cleanliness and discipline of the Kashmiris with historical references to whatever we discussed. I also recounted several of my experiences there. They are loving their stint and he travels all over Kashmir regularly so has a detailed idea of life there.

I was curious about every aspect as I have long term plans, in working on a novel based there. My two lead protagonists are already set in my mind. The rest of it and the narratives need to be collated there and then written.
Vijay is a trained journalist who studied and then also worked with Bishwanath (who’s younger brother Rohit is also a journalist), for a year or so in a leading newspaper in Kanpur. I was pitched versus three debating journalists on various topics, yet could hold my own as with the varied corporate experiences including dealing with journos and press meets in Kolkata and then Chennai for years, other than dealing with the one at home and his chain of friends from all newspapers he worked at, I was not going to be intimidated with their high handed views on every topic like it’s the voice of god – just because their bylines make headlines.

This eye for an eye attitude I have – gave birth to my novel Entwined Lives and its detailed characterisation. As when I was asking Vijay’s wife on her views on Kashmir, Rohit was assertively answering for her – till in exasperation after warding him off for a while, with a wave of my hand not to intervene, I asserted, ‘I just don’t want any media views or reports on any issue. I have enough of it don’t I.”
Then could the lady speak from her heart.

I only want soul confessions as fodder for my writing, no preconceived ideas – especially not what’s out there to pick up from journalists. I tend to fight my last nail to assert the authenticity of my views as I have with narrating Across Borders from the point when hair of the prophet went missing at Hasrat Bal mosque in Srinagar to finally forming Bangladesh.

So you can imagine – we had a verbal display of all sorts of ideas and topics, like anar, patakas and sparklers – with sparks going off on a lot of topics especially on politics of north India as Rohit covered Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh for years – with the backdrop of the light and sound of choti diwali.
It was enjoyable intellectual sparklers, no personal attacks intended – going off in the backdrop of intermittent light and sound of real fireworks.

The photos are here: https://www.facebook.com/share/94C3bbzY7WhZjfUU/?mibextid=WC7FNeClick to read the blurb. Varied online digital formats of the book are here to read right now: https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/page/2/?s=shuvashree&id=22661&post_type=productThe

The book is also available globally on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Nobles.

#journalism #news #journalist #media #photography #photojournalism #press #breakingnews #reporter #tv #instagood #instagram #covid #newspaper #love #photo #music #politics #periodismo #art #india #radio #photooftheday #entertainment #magazine #documentary #journalists #fashion #newsanchor #television

Dhanteras: The Night Train to Kanpur.

On Dhanteras, yesterday: our neighbour Roli, the wife of a young airforce officer posted in Kanpur, came over to meet me late in the morning.
“You continue to do what you’re doing – I’ll just sit with you” she said, with a charming warmth and confidence in the other’s hospitality that you find in North India.

But I could not take her visit, her time for granted, so I took her outside to sit and chat in the lawn sitting on the jhula – swing.

Last year, she had assertively invited to apply mehendi for me just before Diwali and I had given in – though it was my first time in life, as we Bengalis don’t have it as a part of any custom or tradition. Also I’m not attracted to this art form or its smell. But this year she seemed kind of reticent, thinking perhaps she had compelled me last year. We spoke about mundane things, trying to break the ice after a whole year. Then suddenly I suggested, “Mehendi laga dogi, (will you apply mehendi for me)”
Her face lit up like a moon, as applying mehendi was her way of showing her love and fondness. She promptly got up and went back home to fetch the prepared cone. Then she set about diligently applying it to my hand as you can see her beautiful artwork in the photos – for a long time. We barely spoke a few words as she was so focused on what she was doing, but love transpired between us effortlessly.

It is in seeing Roli’s pleasure in doing this for me that I took immense satisfaction and I humoured her as she took all these photos and selfies on her phone, teaching me how to take selfies.
Her son Yuvi came to call her several times but she simply didn’t budge and kept making the artwork more detailed. Later in the evening she came dressed to take photos with me, her son matched with her. But I wasn’t ready like her and so I just took her photos. I have never celebrated Dhanteras as agian it’s not a Bengali custom, till I was suddenly in the thick of it as manager of Tanishq’s flagship store at Camac Street, Kolkata, in 2003 with a target of Rs. 1 crore just for the day. This was just three months after joining them. Then I was slapped with the awareness of how big it is – as nothing daunts me more in life, than sales targets.
My sister told me over last Durga Puja, “your tastes and sense of dressing and you have changed so much lately – you never wore glass bangles and bindis before.”

I didn’t make much effort to explain that what I have learned in life is that with time and wisdom, mostly spirituality, as your empathy and love for humanity increases and mine definitely has over the past decade as a writer – you realise making those who love you happy, is far more gratifying than keeping up images, shallow dressing to fashion trends or living up to be who you want people to think you are.
All through Durga Puja and other festivals in the last couple of years, I wore saris or kurtas gifted to me.
I no longer find the need to assert my identity through my personal choice in clothes and appearance – I advocate what I think strongly in my writing.
Those saris I bought myself, and I have to admit I still like to buy clothes – are happily tucked away for when I find the need to reassert my self esteem. People get more rigid with age – I’m growing in reverse order!

Diwali for me is all about inclusiveness and harmony. It is about mutual love, respect, humanity and empathy. To include everyone in little joys, and to be a part of other’s lives is what festivals denote to me. It is about eradicating the darkness of inequality and embracing brotherhood.

Wishing you a very Happy Diwali — More photos of Kanpur are in this instagram and Facebook reel and my Facebook author page Across Borders: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/zR2MrV3CPNrJWt4v/?mibextid=UalRPS

All the books are available globally on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Nobles, also in a variety of online/digital formats in the link below – from which you can read right away.

https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/page/2/?s=shuvashree&id=22661&post_type=productThe

I’m also sharing here a short story titled, “The Night Train To Kanpur” from my book “Existences” in this link: https://shuvashreeghosh.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/the-night-train-to-kanpur/

#indianwriters #writersofindia #writersofinstagram #poetry #love #writer #poetsofindia #writers #writerscommunity #poetsofinstagram #instagram #quotes #lovequotes #writersofig #wordgasm #india #writing #poetrycommunity #writings #microfiction #thoughts #quoteoftheday #wordporn #writingcommunity #igwriters #instawrite #instapoet #indianpoets #instaquote #shayari

Synopsis of my Novel, Entwined Lives: ‘Life in a Metro’

Entwined Lives:

It is the story of two attractive, strong, independent women, Sujata Anand and Aparna Nikhil, and of their lives in fateful conjunction with each other, from loving the same man Anand, a news-paper magnate. The novel is set in present-day Chennai and Mumbai. Sujata is married to Anand at an early age and shortly thereafter Aparna returns from Mumbai to work for his newspaper, from a marriage gone horribly wrong, due to alcoholism that eventually turns fatal.

It is after her honeymoon, Aparna realises she is married to an alcoholic, the severity of whose condition worsens with years, beyond the birth of their son – contrary to family expectation that it would change him, as is often the hope in getting an alcoholic son married. The husband, Nikhil, from a reputed industrialist family, has become not only emotionally offensive but physically abusive, forcing Aparna’s return to her parents in Chennai. This after a night she was compelled to spend on the public stairs of their apartment building, with her infant son, from Nikhil shoving them out drunkenly, locking the door after them.

Sujata on the other hand, after their honeymoon realizes Anand is an insensitive bore, and they having nothing in common. When she becomes pregnant, her fears are confirmed as he is not around at the birth of the first child, even the next, his parents making some excuse on his behalf of his dire need to travel, on urgent work. Anand not wanting children to begin with is aloof and irritable around them as they grow, shocking and hurting Sujata. She is thus obsessively, passionately defensive of them, trying to enforce Anand to love them as an ideal father ought to. Sujata has grown up in an open-minded, close-knit family, unlike Anand’s conservative upbringing, and wishes her children to have a father as doting as hers. In compensating, Sujata spends a lot of time with her own parents and family, to ensure her children grow up emotionally secure.

The novel explores the metamorphosis of Sujata’s initial delight in aspects of Anand’s personality. Then as disillusionment sets in, these same characteristics that attracted and delighted her pall, and her mundane relationship drives her to depression. And, ironically, as Sujata grows more and more unhappy and withdrawn, Anand flourishes and decides that marriage is quite a perfect state of convenience. Till Sujata’s extremity in behaviour, either long periods of cold silence or heated tantrums, shake his peace and equanimity. He has no desire to leave Sujata and the children, in spite of his attraction and relationship with Aparna and his need for her as a dedicated and indispensable worker in upholding his dreams.

Sujata’s awareness of Aparna’s growing association with her boss, are initially from Aparna’s late-night hysterical calls., to talk to him on her husband Nikhil’s drunken calls from Mumbai – threatening to take away their child from her. These calls and the sharing of her private problems, the liberty she takes to call him so late at night, and Anand’s involvement in calming Aparna’s frayed nerves, prove their closeness, and sends Sujata into fits of jealous rage and tantrums for days. After staff at the paper start gossiping of Aparna’s closeness to Anand whom she admires immensely and has let on from her awestruck behaviour around him, Sujata utterly humiliated, threatens Anand she would leave home with the children if he does not dismiss Aparna. But when Anand sticks to his guns on retaining her, insisting she is an excellent worker, Sujata’s anger turns to cold contempt.

Sujata now firms her mind to become financially independent before executing her threat to leave, or the children will suffer, and the court might compel her to hand them over to Anand if she files for divorce. Her humiliation, the turmoil and misery, propels Sujata into an intense friendship with Shekhar, a physically average looking, but emotionally commanding much older, wiser, sensitive, caring man, she meets through her work as executive search consultant. She has set up her own firm, after working in one for a year to gain experience.

The novel analyses causes of alcoholism and its fatal effects on men and women alike, and the aftermath on the children and families.  Shekhar’s as well as Aparna’s spouses, both succumb to its commonest outfall – cirrhosis of the liver. Anand hovers between romantic love and passion, though not allowing any of its froth to destroy firming of his dream castle – his newspaper that is growing from strength to strength. Aparna is given a senior role and responsibility to set up and run a Friday lifestyle magazine supplement, at a crucial period of organisational change and the peak of their romantic liaison.

Sujata is then driven to seeking solace in an emotional and romantic liaison with another man, just so happens to be Shekhar, who in addition to being an emotional and romantic prop, mentors and guides her own dream project – the head hunting firm she runs. She also welcomes the romantic and sexual advances of a younger, attractive man, who she has met through her work. This is in spite of spurning the sexual advances of a powerful and much older man, a retired army general, who could have been helpful in her business.

Soon Aparna becomes confused and disillusioned with Anand’s blowing hot and cold with her, after their intimacy, also from the continuous stories he keeps telling her of his outings with Sujata’s family and his problems with her, yet clear leaving Sujata and the children is not an option. Aparna now meets a young Englishman online, on Face Book.  He woos her relentlessly, impressing her with his straightforward charms, enabling her to slowly steer away from the devastating true current love of her life, due to its hopelessness in culmination. But the Englishman, Stephan, a very handsome man from his numerous profile pictures, a real estate magnate in UK, is all too good to be true, from the start, the way he landed upon Aparna  ‘virtually’ and took her off her feet.

Sujata, by now successful in her business, with pan-India tie ups with multinationals as their executive search partner, her sons in senior school, walks out of her marital home for good, her sons in tow. This is after a heated quarrel, starting with something insignificant over their cook, but which taking on alarming proportions. It had for the first time sent Anand into an uncontrollable rage, from Sujata’s verbal assaults that now were beyond any control, and his slapping her. Sujata marches out, drives in stinging humiliation to the police station to lodge a complaint. With Anand’s reputation, the larger than life image he has through his premier newspaper, this is going to lead to a lot of muck flying around.

Entwined Lives is a story of relationships that begin with hope and devoted passionate love – that fizzle with time, familiarity, and disillusionment, partners going in quest of love, sometimes to return to each other and marriage without love, but a mature understanding. The novel charts and follows the continuing loves and lives of Sujata, Aparna, Shekhar and Anand, their relationships in its first throes of excited passion, idealization of the loved person, and then denial of it. This is not a grand tale, but one most can relate to, with the narrative involving the intricate nuances of love – of the death of love.

Entwined Lives: Is not just from the perspective of women, as none of my books are, but unbiased male perspectives as well, from a feminist writer.

A few random excerpts from ‘Entwined Lives’ :

1.”Nascent love requires a lot of nurturing, just as a sapling that has been sown into the warm brown earth of your heart. If it is ignored by the one you love – the gardener, not weeded off scepticism, ego and fear, it will be plucked out by the errant bird – self-pride, transplanted on to the fertile soil of another planter who considers himself blessed by the gift of love.”

2.”Sympathy is the most easily available of all elixirs, while empathy and applause the most allusive. The dying man often has more well-wishers than does a robust one, just as failure attracts more camaraderie than success does, even though the trail to the latter is usually more precarious.”

3. “A bird when it flaps its wings to fly, does not fret about being alienated by the universe, it looks towards an endless sky, assured that at some point it will be joined by some close friends and some new, then they will fly in patterns of ethereal beauty, for all they left behind to see, not concerned with those whose eyes hurt to look at them due to the glare of the sun.”

4. “Love is like a fizzy cola drink. Only the bottle perceives the pressure inside till you open it, though the world sees its perky colour. Then once you uncork, it keeps fizzing for a while and is unsettling, gushing out and over, till it slowly settles down to allow you to enjoy it, cooling you in the process, till it drains out completely and then leaves you with an aftertaste sweet or sour. If you’ve enjoyed the drink, which you’ll truly indemnify only once the bitter-sweet flavour leaves your senses, you’ll crave for another one, perhaps similar, if not you’ll avoid it altogether for a long time to come.”

5. “Thoughts are like nectar – that words both spoken and written carry as Bees do, into the beehive of your mind. Then once sealed in with the honeycomb of your attitudes and values, they produce honey that feeds your soul for a lifetime.”

Life in Chennai – a slideshow: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/A7rjJGjxq8tFgBkf/?mibextid=UalRPS

Entwined Lives, and my other books are available globally in paperback and a number of online formats on https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/page/1/?s=shuvashree&id=22661&post_type=productThe

Also, onKobo, Barnes and Nobles, Amazon.com and in India on https://amzn.in/d/1FHq17J

Sujata or Aparna – from Entwined Lives – take a guess!

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“Trouvailles: My moments of Yūgen” – Poetry book.

“Trouvailles: My moments of Yūgen” – Poetry book.

‘You are Not alone’: the Universe, speaks to me.

I am always dancing in the rain: as I have learned to let it wash away tears and pain and fill me up with dynamic resilience. 

This morning, when I went out on my regular morning walk at 7am, it was drizzling slightly. I proceeded to open my umbrella, just at my gate and looked forward to the solitude and union with myself in walking into and through the rain. 

After a ten minute stretch, it suddenly  started to rain heavily, so heavily that it was difficult to hold my umbrella up to its strength. But I was quite far from home to return – as often happens to me emotionally – that I continued to walk ahead in the lashing rain. 

In my solitude, on the deserted streets, streaks of loneliness crept into my heart and with it insecurity and fear sneaked in as well. 

What if I were to slip and fall, I thought desperately, there would be no one to help me up, no one to even call the ambulance or hospital – I might just lie wallowing in pain and die in the slush and no one would know or care. I had not carried my regular phone with numbers and ID, just one basic one for radio as I always need music in my life.  I was saying my chants mentally, as I tend to when I feel alone and lost and continued to walk on, now almost at the center of the street that was getting inundated with the furious gushing water. I pressed onwards, as if I sought shelter I might be stuck in the angrily rising water, as I was imagining it taking over me and my not being able to return. 

Suddenly to my right, against the railing of the divider – it being a main road, a woman fell down to the ground with her umbrella and a little bag in hand. I thought it was a figment of my imagination. I looked away from the scene for a moment and quickly my eyes went back to the spot. It was real. She was draped in a baby pink cotton Tangail sari with a purple border just like one I have, but haven’t worn yet. Perhaps somewhat older than I am, and maybe going to work as an ayah at this early hour to assist a much older person. 

I promptly rushed to pick her up, imagining it was myself lying on the ground there alone. I imagined my soul desperately seeking help. 

By now the woman was rolling on the ground, involuntarily, just not able to pick herself up as it was all slushy and slippery around her. She had slipped on layers of muck. I shoved my hand at her and said, “Didi, get up slowly, take my hand – you will be alright, don’t worry.” To my relief she grabbed the bamboo fence in front of the iron one that is there and slowly steadied herself, covered in black muck over her baby pink sari, hands and face.

The moral hand that I offered her pulled her up without my real hand. Looking dazed she started to walk as I repeatedly asked after her – I hope you are alright. Then I resumed walking again in the pouring rain coming at me like in a deluge and I felt like the sea was coming to get me in all ferocity, to swallow me up whole. But instead of fear, now there was a surety and confidence in my steps, as I marched onward at the center of a main road that was deserted, but a bus or two I dodged rushed passed. This was with my shoes and socks drenched, also that from head to toe I was soaking in holding down the umbrella in helping the lady – luckily I was dressed in sweat proof material – now holding up the umbrella till I reached home as a flag to my moral victory.

This was the universe speaking to me as it always does – not to be afraid – that I would never be alone – someone would come in a white horse and save me even if I were to fall and lie alone and helpless. I always listen intently to what the universe tries to teach me. It was not that I, a complete stranger, was present and offered to help and save the woman, I was also prepared to take her to the hospital and see if she was alright.

It was the universe assuring me that I am never alone – don’t be afraid and march on in life as I have your back. 

These soulful conversations I am blessed with are the source of my confidence, resilience, spirituality and dynamism I have tried to illustrate in my five books.

Photo courtesy: reputed Bangladeshi portrait photographer Jannatul Mawa, on a walk with me a year back – just in front of where the woman fell this morning. She insists I call her only Mawa, but I prefer and insist on calling her Jannatul(meaning paradise). She had sent me the photo with the message: “Ki shundor Tumi ar bristi”(in Bengali – so beautiful, You and the rain). 

Please visit my Facebook author page Across Borders https://www.facebook.com/AuthorShuvashreeChowdhury?mibextid=LQQJ4d

Oscar Wilde // “A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.”

#books #rain #rainphotography #spirituality #dancingintherain #universe #selfesteem #portraitphotographer #booksbooksbooks #poetry #literaryfiction

‘Listen to your Heart’: ‘My Heart & I’

‘Listen to your Heart’

Love, the simple and true one -
finds you when you least expect it
and then you have to listen
carefully to the strums of your heart
and follow it blindfolded,
for your heart to truly feel alive
and go on forever and more.

Sometimes, life and love
pass you by as scenes running
in the opposite direction,
outside of a moving express train -
such that only when you are way gone
in your journey and reached home,
do you recognise it was real love
waving at you - to grab your attention
at a forlorn remote station, midway.

But you had not recognised love then,
so you could not savor love’s sojourn.
Then you relegate your heart
to rewinding slide shows in your mind
and watching the film - to ensure
it was love and not your imagination -
dreaming, waiting for it to be reality.

Would you go back to that station
as in films - to look for that love
you just had not recognised
when it was staring you in the face:
Or would you simply move on
thinking you will find love again
at another convenient station of life?

To allow your heart to go on and on
you have to listen to it -
pull the emergency chord
to bring the train of life to a halt,
allow Love to come and take you along!

— Shuvashree


‘My Heart & I’

I listen to my heart -
to follow it as it chases the wind,
it throws me off balance -
from its saddle I slip,
trampled by youthful hoofs
as the horseshoe slips downhill -
my wise soul still pats its shin,
sends it galloping into the sunshine -
it has a long life to still live,
to give birth and raise colts
who it’s long life will enrich,
to bring me back a contentment -
as letting go in love will be my win.

—- Shuvashree

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetryporn #poetrylovers #poetrybooks #books
#love #reels #novelist #poetry #authorlife #love #lovequotes #loveislove #lovefindsyou #loveyourself #lovestory #lovewins #poetry #poetrylovers #poetrysociety #williambutleryeats #yeats

Click below link for poetry readings…

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/HbVmDasHUEcCQEXt/?mibextid=WC7FNe

The three poems I’m reading, are from my 1st book of poetry, Fragments – available globally, in any country and in a variety of online formats as well as in print – in the links in the post.

‘Item Song and Dance: the Indian Mind’

‘The Item Song and Dance: the Indian Mind’

You don’t stand up for a woman
when she’s heckled at work –
at society meetings when some ‘jerk’
makes slighting sexist remarks.

You don’t stand up for her,
when a woman’s pride and dignity
are verbally, brutally attacked –
her ideas are trampled,
and her hard work is mocked at –
by one or a group of patriarchal men,
who see her as a threat to their ego –
so fragile it liquifies their bone marrow.
Eve-teasing, a society has suckled on!

When her dignity is attacked
you look away into the blue,
her work and career, mean nothing to you –
behind closed doors at white collar jobs,
when defiled by rank and file,
pulped by sexism of those in command
who compel her to bow or bowl out
of the fight, even before it has begun –
by confining her to a glass ceiling
that mocks her if she points a finger at it.

Yet, to fight a collective war you step out –
on the road pick up the flag of feminism
to shout and challenge political clout –
as if you are the biggest propagator
of women’s empowerment and rights.

Then you go back to watch on television –
the uproar you have caused in a pond,
in a land that still lauds the ‘Item’ song,
to jeer at women’s inciting form –
so much that without it a film must flop!

So now go and hang the festering scum –
taught lifelong to jeer at woman’s form,
as it has no use than titillating male form.
Then you may go back to your Item Song!

PS: the photos are only indicative of ‘Item’

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #breakingmysilence #feminismmatters #womensrights #womensupportingwomen #patriarchy #rgkarmedicalcollegedoctordeath#kolkatanews

On Student Protests, Overthrowing Governments and its Aftermath: Bangladesh.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreou

I joined Delhi University, as a college hostler in the year 1990, just a few months before the agitation against the Mandal Commission reservation started in August. 

It was still our ragging period, which that year for hostlers had extended till Dussehra, I have described in my novel Across Borders. 

One morning, after I came to my class, which used to be rather late every single day, as I was on the court/field playing inter collegiate Basketball, only for which I had managed to get an admission into the Bachelor of Commerce( honors) course, that needed a cut off of marks above 97/98 percent. This was in spite of my mother, an ex teacher of that college for 8 years along with the principal, insisting I should take English honors instead, as my marks in the subject were better than all other subjects and I had the requisite for that course. 

I didn’t want to take up a course that I knew I was to be good in, but which in my opinion had not much practical utility, other than my becoming a teacher I wasn’t interested in. Though for many years, I have been a formal trainer/coach in my work assignments. Teaching was something I inherited from my mother, who retired from a teachers training college as principal. I have even accompanied her for practice teaching sessions at schools to review her students. 

So this particular morning, in 1990, in my college in Delhi University, suddenly a couple of senior girls, hostellers incidentally from Bihar came into our class and asked the entire class, that is all those who wished to, to follow them out. I thought this was again some sort of a ‘ragging’ and even though I was extremely tired from hard core basket ball practice, I didn’t want to risk being ‘boycotted’ for defying or ‘‘boycotting’ the ragging. 

Soon we were loaded into a big bus outside the college gate.  On looking around, I had the assurance of seeing my roommates and several of my batchmates, along with several faces I did not recognise. 

“Where are they taking us?” I  looked at my roommates questioningly, “Where are we even going?”

“To India Gate,” came the prompt reply from one of the seniors who had brought us out of class.

On the bus, already having picked several students from different colleges with the final stop in front of Delhi school of economics, that’s in front of the back gate of Kirori Mal college, someone made a speech on the cause we were up against. It was the Mandal Commission reservation. It recommended a 27% reservation quota for OBC resulting in a total 49.5% quota in government jobs and public universities. V.P Singh, the Prime Minister implemented the recommendations in August 1990 which had led to the protests. 

The senior who was in the bus gave us a brief, but it was so concise that it didn’t really register in my mind what we were going to do.

Now this was the time way before the internet or Google, much before it was all on the palm of our hands on a smartphone. So all we knew was we were going to participate in a rally in front of India Gate. We were just like a herd of cattle being led to obstruct the government’s decision, and what better way than to be left in front of the India Gate, so that we would literally obstruct any movement.

On the driveway, to the India Gate flanked  by heavy chains, we were let out of the bus and we marched ahead in the August heat of Delhi in human chains. Suddenly,  to my  unimaginable thought at that time, the police started a lathi charge and the crowd dispersed. I even felt a smack on my shin or maybe I imagined it, then we turned and started running. It was all so crazy and chaotic as tear gas shells were hurled at us. They erupted all around me. Now we broke into a run away from the gate, with the police charging us. The best we could do was run into the chained barricades and keep running. I was a good runner back then. As atleast we would not be hit by the huge thick lathis, or worse break our heads from falling on the road, even if hit with tear gas that we would survive. 

A long way off, running in total panic and I being dead tired from the several rounds of jogging around a 400 mt track, followed by rigorous basketball practice, I abruptly stopped. I couldn’t decide which was more painful, exerting my rigid and resisting muscles to the point of tearing or being hit by lathis. Thankfully, standing, bending low, after I finished doing the post run deep breathing exercises with flinging hands loosely we athletes know how to, I looked to find just one or two known faces. Slowly, together we limped back to as far away as we could get from this madness for a purpose we still didn’t understand well or at least fathom the implications of for the long run. 

The student wings of the political parties and their comrades, however won many brownie points for the next college and university elections. 

Then the next few days we were taken all around town Delhi, starting with CP – Connaught Place. Where we were instructed to do all kinds of low paying jobs like stopping cars and cleaning them, just like the kids often do at signals, to polishing shoes of passers by and any conceivable ideas to demonstrate that soon enough we would not get any better jobs so we were starting to do what was considered as menial jobs. The conductors of these road dramas we participated in were the University seniors and political party youth wing leaders – in DU at the time any college’s senior could and would rag any fresher, especially from the North Campus. We did not have a way of telling who was a Senior and who was not. So we just quietly followed anyone who spoke authoritatively. Though we surely knew who ‘freshers’ were, as we would wear strange mismatched salwar sets, but much more from our demeanour. 

These innocent protests, theatric as they might seem, suddenly snowballed into self immolation bids and several were drawn into this frenzy and were badly burnt. Colleges were all shut in the city and all of DU asked to go home and stay away from the campus. As there was much agitation in every other street – with tyres being burnt and slogans being screamed and all of that constitutes aggressive student protests. But not vandalism anywhere close to what we saw in Dacca the last weeks. 

My mother, a long time college teacher, took no chance to ask me to come home by myself. As what was the guarantee I would, who knows whom I might be influenced by to stay back and fight the cause at hand. She traveled from Calcutta where she taught to bring me back home. I was at home in Calcutta for a few months till the agitation came to a halt, with the supreme court’s intervention and normalcy prevailed.

The thing I distinctly recall even from 1990,  was that it was all and all out, a students’ protest and agitation, and no public property or humans were attacked. No police were beaten up, at the most heckled. Self immolation, was the worst outcome of this Mandal Commission agitation, which was a very sad thing to happen. It was primarily this fear that imposed curfews and the shutting down of the university campus. 

That was contrasting to what happened for a similar cause, as in reservation, in Dacca in the last few weeks since June of 2024. 

So much of Bangladesh’s assets and properties were damaged, which in a poor country that was just limping into economic stability or let’s just say growth to begin with, is just outright criminal. The amount of destruction in terms of financial and workforce to cost of living to the country, of course the numerous innocent lives lost of many policemen, is definitely the plot and doing of mischief makers outside the government or protesting students I would have to conclude. 

Why would a party/government in power go about randomly shooting youth and imprisoning them, knowing that they would have to face the wrath and blame forever and thus never return to power. This mandate would require extreme stupidity to execute.

Also students, I would think, whose demands against the reservation quota were met could not be acting like the crooks and petty thieves we saw looting the ex PM’s house, shamefully picking on and displaying her saris, suitcases, food from her tables, worst being the underwear of a 76 year lady displayed from both arms on camera. If these agitations are touted to be the doings of students I am sorry for the pathetic state of affairs this nation will meet in the future.  

All this mayhem is definitely the mastermind of radical forces hell bent on making the government out to be so evil, they had to be amputated for the country to survive. But the worst fear in all this is that two strong forces – the government versus the students, both  were ignited by radicals, who will now perhaps rule the country, making Bangladesh not just dangerous to itself but to its neighbors and all around the world. 

Bangladesh has a history of radical elements hijacking important and pertinent issues like it once was about a language movement, Bengali, that turned into a religious bloodbath from which we are still reeling. The desire to speak one’s language, one’s mother tongue officially, does not amount to wanting to destroy every living person of another religion as was made out to be. 

India also had a language rebellion for long,  but it wasn’t hijacked by radical elements to become a weapon of mass destruction.  

Perhaps we don’t teach relevant history to the children and youth, so that they may become discerning students, to recognise what is real and what isn’t, which is the truth and which isn’t. This is, just as we don’t publish stories that create thinking citizens out of mass frenzy provoked youth. Personally I tend to find myself in the thick of a lot of controversial experiences as I don’t usually tread the beaten track. So that I may learn from new paths and write about them. 

I’m not saying it’s an easy task to create thinking individuals, in text books and marks/grade fearing nations, but it’s surely worth a try. 

This post is a continuation from my earlier post shared here again: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MtpPLr9MA6exwxC/?mibextid=WC7FNe

#Bangladesh #Dacca #politicalmotivation #mandalcommissionprotests #historicalfiction #author #authorlife #indiabangladesh #thinkingindividials 

‘Nature’s Antidote’

The rain this morning…a video
“Nature’s Antidote”

I just came back, from my morning walk -
with heavy rain chasing my track. 
By the time I had changed 
into dry clothes - out of my walk wear, 
that had absorbed the muggy Calcutta air -
rain beat me, to greet my plants. 

I heard the brisk thundering from my room - lightning had no time for much impact,
on the world’s stage still filled with morose 
leftover from the long term impact 
and destruction of lives and livelihood, 
from the Coronavirus - of loss and death, 
but much more of humanity's mental health.

I rushed to my balcony to meet the rain,
for there is no better cure for any malaise -
than to swathe in the bounty of nature,
secure in the folds of solitude for a blanket.
To let rain, nature’s cleanser, wash our souls
from magma formed from loss and grief -
that erupts as lava of chronic depression
from cracks of our psyche -
as tantrums or feelings of hopelessness.

As our temperament, is like Earth’s surface
that cannot take the load of sadness,
and with time cools around us repeatedly 
to form hardened volcanic mountains
of our once cheery selves - from depression,
to lie unfeeling and dormant to life around -
threatening to erupt, or spurting fire so often.

I sit on my balcony, surrounded by rain
that’s like a dam opened upon the universe,
sweltering in a mega cauldron of woes -
unable to impart our kith and kin any solace.
Who in turn, seek it on social media bars,
to get a momentary high from projections 
that are removed from reality and reason, 
with daily highs-lows as tides of an ocean.

Yet the plants, all robust, green and strong -
as I sit amidst the sound and smell of rain,
are putting up a stiff, straight-up resistance -
for they have withstood a scorching sun
that threatened to wither their tender stems.

Plants can deal with emotional deluges that drown the frailties of humans to resuscitate -
as we’re lacking resilience to heal from pain,
that we’re not convinced it’s a passing please. 

Drenched to the bones Mynas and Bulbuls, 
come sit on my railing, looking dazed, 
yet in the pouring rain they hop erect -
perhaps looking around for crow friends 
who are nowhere to be seen or heard,
as fear of rain makes them caw in disdain. 

I watch the rain recede to a drizzle now - 
as in my view sparrows chase in and out,
of the railing illuminated in sublime light -
with Mynas and Bulbuls hopping around,
just as wet crows emerge aplenty to sit down,
and start their symphony of mindless cawing.

— Shuvashree Chowdhury 

#poem #poetry #lifeanddeath #depression #mentalhealth #rain #raininkolkata #lifecoach #nature #naturelovers #psychology #natureheals #bloggerday2024