Yes, it can be done

Less than a year back, I had tried rock-climbing and fell down to break my bones. It was nasty, and I'd be lying big time if I said that it didn't hurt. So when I went with my colleagues (from my internship) to have some social gathering outside the office, the rock-climbing arena stood like a challenge before me. I took it, and I made it all the way to the top:


Yaay!! It was exciting, but the thrill of reaching the top was really well worth the effort. It was a sort of batman's "Conquer your fear" moment. Oh, letting go of all holds from the top was the most thrilling part, for sure --- you know, you are 30 ft up in the air hanging on to a small ledge and then you suddenly let go and jump down and the rope brings you back gradually! ;)

I was eagerly looking forward to the challenge as the two people before me went up all the way slow and methodically. When my turn came, all those years of fetching cricket balls from neighbour's balconies came handy --- time used to be of the essence since your neck was on the line ;) When I came down, my manager had two things to tell me. One: "You climbed up there like SpiderMan! What made you go so fast?" and Two: "Now I know how you broke your leg" :)

I just had to grin and tell myself, "Yes, it can be done!!".

To earn in rupees and spend otherwise

I was giving directions to my friend who will be arriving to join the university soon and I said, "Okay, so the cost of the prepaid ride will be $15, and then give a tip of about 3 or 4$ to the driver who drops you there". My friend was shocked... "You want me to tip someone 200 Rupees??!!". And I smiled, a real amused smile. My reply was, "Welcome to America!".

The realization about the currency conversion rate had took over for the first time when I visited Scotland. One GBP was worth somewhere around 89-90 INR at that time, and therefore every single penny saved used to be worth a lot at that time. Our salaries used to be converted into Indian Rupees and deposited into our accounts in Mumbai, and our eyes would light up at the end of each month when the money came in: the figures simply spread cheer through the team! Every single pound spent for the company (be it a cab ride or some extra allowance) was accounted for, and we submitted them religiously every fortnight to see those funny 2-3 digit GBP figures suddenly come in as massive 5-digit INR figures into our accounts. We were a bunch of recent college graduates, more accustomed to seeing sub-100 figures as our bank balance, and therefore on these days the glee on our faces was really palpitable! :)

However, it used to be equally bad when we had to spend it. When a cup of coffee costs you 2 pounds, the mental calculator would jump at us and scream that we were having a coffee worth 180 bucks!! A sandwich would cost 4 pounds, the boozers would get whiskies for 9 pounds, and a simple drycleaning would be advertised for 15 pounds for 3 pieces of clothing! You do the math, at 89-90 rupees to a pound, and then tell me how much our hearts used to be wrung to actually munch on lunches at the office cafeteria that cost us around 8-9 pounds every day!! :(

The funniest things that happened due to this currency conversion, of course, was the fact that when I went to India on a break, everything appeared dead cheap! I booked a taxi from Kolkata Airport to somewhere in Park Street: and it was Rs.208. My smile was inescapable to the man behind the counter as I handed over the money --- just 2.3 pounds for that long a ride?? Hahaha... I felt rich! :D But nothing beats this one: I recently left my life of a single earning bachelor in India and became a grad student in the US. After coming here, I luckily managed to get some assistantship. When I told the figures back home to my parents, my dad mentally calculated the INR value said, "Wow, so you are earning three times of what you used to get here per month... you earn more than what people with 3 years experience do!". If only he had seen the 50 rupees worth of coffee I spilled as I choked on that statement...

Much beefcakes about nothing

Like any self-respecting grad student who has to pay 200$ per semester as gym fees, I decided one fine day to go and visit the gym at the university. The first day, there was a whole feel-good factor about seeing so many instruments, such huge facilities, etc. The initial excitement prompted me to use every machine, try the various weights, and I also looked around for the shortcut ways to building a Dara Singh physique. It all felt really nice until I woke up the next morning aching all over my body and having trouble even while brushing my teeth. Hmmf... that was sort of a dampener to the enthusiasm, but I managed to cling on. However, assignments, midterm tests and the lack of company ensured that I left going to the gym midway. I've picked up the habit here again while I'm interning, but I don't know how long this will last.

The frustrating part, however, is not the kind of lacklustre routine I follow about going to the gym. The real jaw-dropping phenomenon is the kind of fitness and strength the other regulars have and usually put on display when they come to the gym. While novices like me struggle to pull up anything beyond 90-100 lbs (I practise with much less), people pull up the whole rack of weights (250 lbs) and keep doing that on the machine 30 times. There are a few who come with ripples of muscles on display, and lift up the 150-lb iron wheels as though they are made of cork. The worst part of these frustrations, of course, come from the girls. I noticed this one girl who ran about 8-10 miles on the treadmill the other day and then came off the machine as though she had just had a stroll in the park, smiling effortlessly. And don't even get me started on the kind of swimmers who practice in the university pools. One day, a lady came into the pool in the lane beside me and was adjusting her goggles. I dived in and went splash-splash-splash and then paused for a second. I saw her go underwater from the starting point. By the time I had adjusted and gone a little further splashing tons of water, she surfaced at the other end of the pool and took in a gulp of air, absolutely no water splashed inbetween at all! And then again when I somehow was midway into the pool, she had returned to the starting edge and was doing backflips to get back. I was so, totally, completely frustrated with my swimming that day, I registered for the intermediate swimmers training within a week.

Oh, talking of swimming and pools, I must mention the mother of all culture shocks that I had seen when I went into the men's locker room for the first time. Guys of all ages: undergrad freshmen to really aged grad students, were walking about stark naked among the semi and fully clothed junta. I almost felt a criminal guilt walking into the shower room with my shorts on... thankfully my eyes have got used to such sights by now. :P

Book of poems

Another Face of Dice

You seem so remote at times,
A detached observer
of the tumultuous waves,
Breaking at the crags of
Life's commitments ---
Disturbing, agitating, unnerving,
Frustrating, ridiculing ---
Sweeping away in its retreating course
The very essence
That gives sense to life.

You stand apart,
Juvenile, confident,
Impersonal, withdrawn,
Mocking at the allured creature
Consumed into your flame.

---Arundhati Chatterjee

Dear readers, my mother, Dr. Arundhati Chatterjee has published a book containing poems which she wrote in her early youth. It is called "Songs and Lyrics", and the publishers are "Underground Literature", based in Hoogly, West Bengal.

The above poem is just one random poem from all the 60 poems that make up the book. I cannot do a proper review of the book because I'll obviously be biased. But I can say this --- this is a collection of poems which you will not want to finish off in one go. You will need to stop after you read each poem, ponder over the words, the meanings and the images it constructs; you'll need to properly savour the poem after you've read it. I, for one, have received a personally signed and autographed copy from the author! :)

I'm It is priced at Rs. 55 (yes, it is about a dollar and some cents in the US :) ) and shipping will be nominally extra if you're interested. You can write directly to me or to my mother at arundhati [dot] chatterjee [at] gmail [dot] com if you want a copy --- we can work out the payment details later on. Also, all comments, suggestions and feedback are more than welcome.

Beardy tales

When God made his creatures, he thought he should add something to the male of each species to make them look better. The lion begot its mane, the peacock its feathers and we men received our share of beards. The rest of the animals accepted their gifts gracefully. The lion didn't paw its own mane out, peacocks don't pluck their own feathers. We humans, however, have to shave.

My grandfather used to rub his cheeks against mine fondly when I was a kid, and his day or two old white stubbles used to tinge and nib my chubby cheeks. It was a lot of fun, but then I used to wonder when I would get my own beard. Elders used to laugh at me, assuring me that the time will come: and I looked on with innocent wonder. By the time I was in Class 9 or 10, the two of my classmates out of a hundred who had a full beard were the object of general admiration and authority on many subjects. One of them even acquired the nickname of 'dari', the Bengali word for beard.

The first sprouts on my cheeks came around class 11 or sometime. The initial hairs used to be so soft and flowing --- I think they added a little to the nerdiness that I needed to cultivate then. Every now and then, I would run my palm over my moustache down to my chin tapering off the beard as if in deep contemplation. And while I did that, out of the corner of my eye I would be very aware of anyone watching me so that I had a self-important look and feel about myself: I had to look "manly". At that time, scissors still worked on the beard: I didn't need razors yet. My sister had volunteered on some occasions to practise her cosmetological skills on me, and she was amazed how quietly I could sit around her when she had the blade at my throat. :)

Along came the day when I had to shave for the first time. Upon my mother's insisting, dad had given me a 2 min crash course in shaving (meaning I had stood there and watched him shave, while he narrated what he was doing and all intermittently asking about the progress in studies). When my turn came, I was so proud and confident of myself. The little cuts on my cheek and chin spilled a little blood from here and there from some bruised pimples, some areas under the jaw remained full of unshaved random stubbles, and boy did the after-shave hurt! But I came out beaming with pride, sporting an ear-to-ear grin while mother fussed over why the blood hadn't fully stopped yet.

That day set off a long set of experiments with various styles of beards and moustaches. Right from damn serious-looking moustaches to funky french-cut beards... been there done that all. And the fun of accidentally slipping a part of the moustache so that you have to crop it all, or convincing a friend that he would look better without a moustache and then forcefully shaving off his moustache so that you can mock him in full view of everyone else... muhahahaha!! :D Somehow in an engineering college, friends never forget to remind people without a beard (the late bloomers, that is) that it somehow indicates masculinity and therefore their chances of finding a bride were going to be difficult. Oh the evil grins with which that verdict used to be pronounced! :D

However, shaving now has reduced to a need-to-do basis. Some party coming up? More importantly, will there be girls there? I'll go fully shaved and groomed! First day at work? I'll go spic and span. But a normal working day at the lab or at school? Baah, who cares! All that used to be fine until sporting an unshaved look became the cool thing to do courtesy Hrithik Roshan or Abhishek Bachchan. And the poor losers are lazy people like me, who are accused of imitating these buggers. But the simple answer becomes, WTF cares what others think? But I'll tell you what the best part of having a beard is. You shave yourself clean in the morning and sometime in the evening you run the back of your palm over the chin to feel the evening shadow: that feels energizing. You have been pondering over a lab experiment for a week and haven't shaved. Then suddenly the idea clicks, and you type the solution in furiously and get the results! To celebrate, you go and take a shower, and then shave off the week-long beard. That makes you feel fresh... and young! :)

Okay, so I confess

All right everyone, thanks for bearing the brunt of the last post --- I was just a little pissed off and therefore found the best place to rant: i.e. here! :) Like many of you pointed out, I was reading too much into too little: and I trust my roomies very much. Just sudden outpours --- I hope you know.

Anyway, coming to this post. There are a few movies and actors, music directors etc. who I've come to like, but not necessarily everyone else has. I'd try to be specific about why I liked these actors/directors, but at the end of the day it is a personal choice.

First, Abhay Deol and the two movies he has featured in. The first one was "Socha Na Tha". It is both an uncommon and a common love story. I call it uncommon, because we don't usually find such a storyline in other Hindi movies. Usually the hero fights it out, kills a dozen bad guys and rescues the damsel. This movie was common, however, because it was so closely based on reality. There is something called a parental pressure, and we have to accept and reason with them. The movie's storyline played out beautifully, and for me it appeared as if it was a real story happening somewhere, where people bend to pressure, then again negotiate, maybe work it up again... and it ends like a happy romantic movie. But the hero is not someone who can beat up 10 henchmen, neither is the heroine someone who can dance like a goddess and also swap guns, etc. from the villians. It is a story that has perhaps happened next door: something that perhaps can happen in reality. The other movie again featuring Abhay Deol which I liked was "Ek Chalis ki Last Local". Sanjay Kanduri's writing and directorial debut also had a nice storyline, something that might be a bit far-fetched, but still something that could have happened. A thousand twists and turns, dramatic unveiling of personlities and their import in the movie --- it was all part of the story fabric. The actors do a good job, and even Neha Dhupia is tolerably okay! Therefore, I don't know what is working for Abhay Deol, but I will probably go and watch is next movie as well: at least for the storyline if nothing else.

Next, brace yourself... Himesh Reshammiya!! Yeah, I do like some of his music. Right from "Aashiqui mein teri" to "Gum hua hosh hai". Some songs are good, and there is no use denying the fact. But does that mean all the songs he musically directs are good? No. Does that mean I love his nasal inflections in all songs? No. Does it mean that I might go and see "Aap ka suroor"? Hell No! Unless I hear recommendations from people I trust about it being good, that is. Therefore, all ye people who dismiss anything from Himesh Reshammiya as crap --- sorry, I disagree. Also, for all ye people who wage wars on his behalf in the Orkut community portals: sorry, I don't sign up there as well. I just like (make that really like) some of his songs!

Finally, I wish people had liked "Tango Charlie". The story of this soldier who fights insurgents on the borders in the North-East and in Kashmir. Why did I like the movie? Good acting? Nope--- acting was okayish. What I liked was again the narrative. Like this one time when he confronts a 'militant' in the North-East, and chases him down the Brahmaputra. He reminisces that for the first time he saw the face of his 'enemy' from up close. And it wasn't that of a soldier hardened by war who just wanted to kill, but it was that of a 15-year old boy shaking from head to foot, who had even trouble carrying the gun that he held. The movie somehow broke the romantic ideals of being a soldier and brought home the ugly truths of what one is fighting, and for who. How life doesn't remain rosy in a battle, how the chivalrous gentleman has to stab someone half his age in order to live and come back to tell the story. I was reminded of this quote from G.B. Shaw's Arms and the Man: "You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub".