tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63928762011-04-21T18:14:10.121-05:00This is the perennially paranoid me writing. I have no control on him. I will call him para-me. If anyone finds any sense or system or pattern or fractal or random walk or brownian motion in the rant, he or she is very creative or imaginative or is predisposed to lying or to flattery or to other vices not considered normal in the human civilization, which is where we live and which is what para-me is going to rant about.Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1143688573513987752006-03-29T20:47:00.000-06:002006-03-29T21:16:13.566-06:00

Here is a different list.It is a list of things I learnt while reading a translation of two passages: one in the Valimiki Ramayana and one somewhere more arcane.Here is the list: Kousalya, contrary to her usual weepy-woman image, was actually quite fun-loving. Quite so. Much of the mantras chanted in the yajnas consists of playful abuses of a risque nature In the good old days, the chief

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1143427435221714932006-03-26T20:25:00.000-06:002006-03-26T20:43:55.240-06:00

Here is something quite, quite sublime.The important point here is to enjoy it till the end, brood, ponder, ruminate, carry it in your brain and keep living it moment by moment, frame by frame.Waring 1: As usual, not for the weak-hearted.Warning 2: Can change your concept of beauty.Warning 3: Working knowledge of Bengali (absolutely) necessary.Check it out here.And here's a follow-up.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1141782282468538712006-03-07T19:29:00.000-06:002006-03-08T12:11:39.246-06:00

Every blogger belongs to a network: a small, almost closed group that is part of another larger network of many such small closed groups.We all have duties to such networks. Broadly, they are:Update own blogs regularlyIn these update, link to other bloggers within the network Provide a list of blogs read – which is a list of blogs in the networkComment on blogs in the network.Respond to others’

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1141673558341347152006-03-06T13:31:00.000-06:002006-03-06T13:32:38.353-06:00

It’s Sunday, after all. Take it slow.Look out the window. Life drizzles, everywhere, in tiny white dreamlets of snow. And then falls asleep on the grass, on the branches, on the shiny asphalt. Forget the cars whooshing past. They do not exist. Switch off your cellphone. You have nothing to finish. Take it slow.Notice the firefly at the tip of your cigarette. See how it rests sadly on the groove

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1140375719210013172006-02-19T12:55:00.000-06:002006-02-19T13:03:07.770-06:00

Here's another cafe story I chanced upon on the net. It was written by a High School student who lives in a small town somewhere in Ohio. Liked it, so I thought I would share it.Fitting In, Breaking OutBy Hilary M. PostCoffee cups clink on their saucers as the bitter-smelling steam rises and dances among the swirling cigarette smoke overhead. It is surprisingly quiet for a room packed with people

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1136857363181597292006-01-09T19:41:00.000-06:002006-01-09T19:42:43.196-06:00

I wake up with an acute physical awareness of it. Then I remember that it is Sunday and that I do not have a project deadline coming up, which means I can go back to sleep.When I open my eyes next, it is about eleven. I realize that I haven’t really been sleeping; it was some kind of a half-sleep with a mishmash of jagged images passing through my head like daily commuters in a train. Worse, I

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1136228880315700472006-01-02T13:05:00.000-06:002006-01-02T13:08:00.316-06:00

I am sorry for these long pauses. I am working on another story. I want to finish the story before putting it online, so I will ramble less.I also realised that the chronological ordering of blogger is a little problematic - blogger shows you part 2 of the story before part 1.So I though it would be nice to publish the whole story in a post.I have done that for the other stpry too.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1136228659166442142006-01-02T12:49:00.000-06:002006-01-02T13:05:22.776-06:00

The visionHe had never written prose before. No, that’s not true. No prose that was personal in essence. It just did not gel with his lifestyle. Prose requires too long a span of commitment, and he had had too many demands on his time. Too many women to think about. Too many books to contemplate reading. Wife. Work. Friends. Too many angry, jealous-of-each-other Gods to pacify. But primarily, too

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1129699914247186112005-10-19T00:31:00.000-05:002005-10-19T00:31:54.253-05:00

Then there is the problem with life that is her own, when left to herself. At present, there is no idea, no person, no thing – nothing at all to engage her core. Actually, there never was. She is slowly coming to grips with the fact that she has been carrying around this empty core in herself. She thinks it is called ageing. That thought, however, is scarier. A gradual greyish-blueing of all

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1129165756433578512005-10-12T20:08:00.000-05:002005-10-13T12:23:47.450-05:00

Like every time she does when life throws at her one of its little gems, she sucks at a cigarette. This dark corner, this noir aroma, this slow-burning dusk inside the café greeting the coffee-flavoured nightfall outside, this greyish-blue trail of the departing train in the track across the lazy street, rises in her chest like a lump of tangy lust. She takes it all in with a deep inhale. Someone

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1128811413107881142005-10-08T17:29:00.000-05:002005-10-09T11:43:18.013-05:00

He has been asked to quote the fifth sentence of his twenty-third post.He trembles as he browses his postings, and then laughs.The sentence being written, his fifth sentence in his twenty-third post, is writing itself, quoting itself, and is wrapped in itself.The fifth sentence in his twenty-third post is a black hole.---------------------------------------------------------------------Thanks,

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1123797194153143982005-08-11T16:50:00.000-05:002005-08-11T21:45:39.083-05:00

He crossed the street, and the question chased him home. So, what does he mean? What on earth did he want to tell her?He realises that he had nothing to say to her. Nor was he interested in the content of what he conveyed to her, except to will her to come to the café everyday, every minute. He was never interested in the woman – who she was in her life, which land she came from, who she cared

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1123663466332439212005-08-10T03:39:00.000-05:002005-08-10T03:49:03.180-05:00

Something wrong?The green plastic chairs outside the café are all empty, as if waiting for someone with a sad somnolence. The coffee-cigarette aroma hangs listlessly in the desolate rooms, filling the normally redolent air with a damp heaviness. The man at the counter tells him that it is just too hot, and they are closing in five minutes. He picks up his daily cup, walks into the smoking room,

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1122351250189612172005-07-25T23:12:00.000-05:002005-07-25T23:14:10.196-05:00

She has come with her friends. They look happy. They look full. No chinks. No doubts. No entry. He too is happy, when she is absorbed and oblivious. Then he can comfortably withdraw from the happenings around him, forget the tension, and convert the café into a 3D cinema screen.She smiles a half-smile. Bittersweet. Tangy. Her friends feel the reason. They comfort her with a knowing quietude. She

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1121192881812357922005-07-12T13:25:00.000-05:002005-07-12T13:32:25.913-05:00

The next time he goes to the café, it is different.The smoking room regulars are all eyeing him askance. He feels that they all want to say something, but cannot because of the wall of obstinate non-being that he has built around himself over the last few days, sulking in his corner. He checks his fly. It is fine. Then what?The café man comes up: Is that really you, man? He is still befuddled.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1120861508051444962005-07-08T17:15:00.000-05:002005-07-08T20:19:33.730-05:00

He feels numb these days. The cafe is there. But she is not. Weird, because he never felt sapped waiting at the cafe for her before he had met her. Those days, it was the search that sustained him.The wait is very different now. He goes to the cafe, sits at this one corner seat, sips the same coffee and stares at the blank laptop screen. Nothing registers. Nothing is conjured on the notepad.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1119764446053628362005-06-26T00:39:00.000-05:002005-06-26T00:40:46.056-05:00

Every cloud has a silver lining. A saving grace of the debacle was that he now had more data about the person that reminded him about love. At least she no longer was confined to a vision distorted by desire and worn by repetition. He had seen her, heard her voice.The most striking thing about her was her ordinariness. There was nothing specific in her that made her stand out. If he had to

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1119586181639105182005-06-23T23:09:00.000-05:002005-06-23T23:09:41.646-05:00

Moments, moments, moments. They come unannounced, they leave without saying goodbye. They test you in a brief flash. You cannot run or hide. You are defined by how you receive the moment that visits you, how you take it in your arms, how you respond to its call. You don’t get a second chance.And he let his moment go. He had been praying for it, with all his being. But when it came, it blinded him

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1119398944358115962005-06-21T19:07:00.000-05:002005-06-21T19:10:53.866-05:00

The moment hung still, like a summer noon in a blind alley. He felt trapped in a time warp, where all that existed was the aroma of coffee and the dark odour of tobacoo wrapped around a tilted head with hair cascading across piercing eyes, and all that moved was wave after wave of doomed desire.He would probably have been asphyxiated, when he was brought back to the familiar world by her voice:

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1118723823284834332005-06-13T23:36:00.000-05:002005-06-14T00:08:20.603-05:00

The café looked quite the same, with the hum, aroma, and haze in its three chambers. The outside chamber, the façade, was the place where coffee-lovers came, sat, read, drank their cups and left. Then there was the lounge, with its sofas and board games. People came there to have a nice time. It had to be there because the inner “real room” was so different a world from the outer façade, there

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1118298546434622712005-06-09T01:21:00.000-05:002005-06-12T09:12:47.626-05:00

He is happy indeed. Some friends seem to take notice in him, his thoughts, his quirks. Ani and Runglee want to know what he reads.Born in non-America, most of his friends still belong to worlds elsewhere. They often eat with hands, and speak non-English. What befuddles him is that they all seem to read only English! That cannot be! Probably character strings mentioning French or Bengali or Tamil

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1117866316355330802005-06-04T01:22:00.000-05:002005-06-04T10:16:57.086-05:00

He mulls over it for a long long time. Cannot decide. Paces across. Does so for an hour. Wife notices. Doesn’t say anything - used to it. He reaches for a coin in his pocket. Mumbles his call. About to toss, but stops on the way. Brings out a pad. To commit to the call, scribbles: Heads – go for it. Tails - lucky, safe.Then tosses the coin. It’s a tail. Relief, indeed.He looks back, hesitates –

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1117500430004366972005-05-30T19:45:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:18:22.880-05:00

Then it occurs to him. Like a flash. He tries to arrange it in plain, no-frills, brass tacks terms in his head. It frightens him.The search had so far been his private luxury. His life might not have had a point, but it had a career, a family, some norms he had abided by, some carefully constructed myths which he lived by, some limits and a slow movement in a certain direction. Even while he

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1117320875599483732005-05-28T17:52:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:17:03.796-05:00

She was here, the owner tells him.Disquiet, disbelief. Who? He asks again. Yes, it was her – the one you saw – the café guy says. She just left.His first feeling was one of being wronged. Violated, in a hundred ways. If he missed her, why did he have to know it? Why would the café guy have to know his story? Why would someone else, who did not pine for her, who did not deserve to see her, get the

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1117315748445413902005-05-28T16:24:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:16:28.426-05:00

He has lately got interested in the idea of parallel universes, anti-matter blah blah....So here's his other self.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1113407397014133342005-04-13T10:48:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:16:06.826-05:00

Much of modern philosophising tries to establish some point in the very pointlessness of life, of anything. He doesn’t see any. There is really no secret, nothing lying at the centre waiting to be revealed. There is no destination, only another road at the end of the road. The same onion story.Why does he go on living, then?Largely, because he is stuck with life. The switching cost to non-life is

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1112825313280460032005-04-06T17:07:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:15:36.143-05:00

Sometimes she hates her shadow. She wants to run away from it. Then she flies. She flies over lands and hills and lakes and seas. She feels the warmth of sunlight on her wings. She knows that just like her, her shadow is also running with her along the lands and hills and lakes and the seas. But she cannot see her shadow. She takes comfort in her distance from her shadow. (Is that how I think

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1094274794937981772004-09-04T01:10:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:15:09.363-05:00

There is no story here, he discovers. But does there have to be one? He wonders why most of original writing, prose, at any rate, tells stories. There, things happen, and things follow – like a column of men marching under orders. It puzzles him. Feelings always come in eruptions. Visions always pop up from nowhere. It is this constant oscillation of shock and surprise that makes life worth

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1093916916122702442004-08-30T20:47:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:14:27.520-05:00

She did not want to be a fairy. Fairytales are always partial to the good. The only one she likes is where one has to kiss a million frogs. That approximates life, which really is an endless stream of chimerical frog-kissing. The value of the prince is in his non-existence: if one gets the prince, he decides to go after the next one. So, in general, she hated fairytales where people lived happily

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1093296506511113852004-08-23T16:26:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:11:42.640-05:00

As soon as he is done posting, an emptiness hits him. So long, the vision was his, very intimately, very secretly, his own. Now that he had translated it in words and laid it bare in front of the world, he has nothing to cling to. He feels naked. God! She is on the internet! The world can now peer into him. He cringes. He feels powerless. She is no longer his captive – she has slipped out into

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1093154415542937562004-08-21T23:53:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:12:37.376-05:00

He knows that he has to distinguish between the act and the vision, but he can’t . The vision is his and his alone, he can turn it over, rewind it, fast-forward it, replay it. But the act belongs to a different time and a different person. Being human, his immediate desire is to possess what is just eluding him – that again is another human drive that has built five thousand years of civilization

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1092345924664050202004-08-12T16:23:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:08:31.633-05:00

What is sacred, he asks. Fixed points, probably. The Absolute zero, say. Some axioms he can anchor his thoughts on, that tell him that he is, that distinguish his self from his perceptions. Without acknowledging it to himself, he has always been somewhat suspicious of “truth”. But he has been all too aware of the dangers of ending up in madland in his attempts to escape the thrall of perception.

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6392876.post-1091496492732106632004-08-02T20:27:00.000-05:002005-05-30T20:07:42.876-05:00

He had never written prose before. No, that’s not true. No prose that was personal in essence. It just did not gel with his lifestyle. Prose requires too long a span of commitment, and he had had too many demands on his time. Too many women to think about. Too many books to contemplate reading. Wife. Work. Friends. Too many angry, jealous-of-each-other Gods to pacify. But primarily, too many

Souravhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04832277878306158872noreply@blogger.com