Sudipta's Life

I am adding to the numerous existing criticisms of Steven Spielberg's film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . And nothing can better portray my emotions about this movie than Shashi Tharoor's review, titled India, Jones, and the template of dhoom . My indignations are just plain rants, but I have some course of action in mind which we could count as revenge. This, in brief, is what the film is about: ... hundreds of millions of people, mostly young and impressionable people who almost certainly had never set foot in the subcontinent, met an Indian family, or read an exposition of Hinduism acquired an abiding image of India. It was of a country where kings and courtiers feasted on stewed snakes and monkey brains, where Kali worshippers plucked the hearts out of their victims and embroiled them in flaming pits, and where evil, poverty and destitution reigned until the Great White Hero could intervene to restore justice and prosperity.  If you have watched the mo...

 Each one of us needs a hero. An idol, a point of reference, a larger brand identity about which we feel proud to call ourselves fanatics. You get to choose some of these for yourself. Like your favourite song, or your favourite author. For some things, however, the idol or larger identity is thrust upon us. Your religion, your nation, your sect, your football team - you don't really have a choice in these: you inherit them. And, unless you are fiercely independent in thought and had the conviction of your beliefs even during your adolescence, you have also picked up cultural icons simply because your peers believed in them. In a sum total therefore, we all have some larger identities who we simply "belong" to, or our lots are thrust in with them no matter what.  Any such idea or identity whose inception happened within us is usually a stronghold. We do not seek reassurances from outside that indeed our choice is good. Consider your favourite trip you have had so far in...

One way of looking at marriage is to think that you are moving in with a room-mate of the opposite sex. The way we speak, the content, the choice of words, the topics - all of them are novel and unique and are fascinating to understand and observe. "Understand" may be an overstatement here, though. We mortals merely seek to understand the quirks of the opposite sexes' mind. In corporate lingo, "strategic alignment of priorities and cohesive engagement in synergy of visions" needs to happen. To paraphrase, the two must see things in the same light. Take, for example, the concept of a dress. Or rather, what to wear. In spite of all the evidence you may cite, as a general rule, guys don't care about what they wear as much as women do. Yes there are carefully careless girls out there and so are smart and well-groomed men, but we are talking averages here. More importantly, guys do not notice what other guys are wearing. Actually it is more like something not e...

I was returning home after some tuition classes one day. This was when I was in class 11-12, (for my readers in the US, this is your "high school"). In a more or less crowded mini-bus, a stranger with a stubble of a beard and a "knowing" smile came and sat beside me. He was about 45 years of age. Lungi clad, unshaven for a couple of days maybe, with a "jhola" in hand from which two or three plastic bags and vegetables were peeping out: this person seemed very friendly and simple. We exchanged pleasantries and he commented on the school bag I was carrying. Out of courtesy, I told him that I was a student at that time and I was returning back from some tuitions, preparing for my JEE and Higher Secondary exam and stuff like that. - "Where do you study?" I answered. The next question took me by surprise, though: - "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?" -"About what?" -"Oh nothing big... just about some stuff yo...

In short, no I don't think so. We are the most diverse, yes, but no we aren't the most racist people in the world. I see this being thrown around quite a bit, and it hurts to see even educated people blatantly criticizing our own countrymen without thinking it through. This post is directed at addressing that question. I am going to support my point with five arguments. First, I believe what we mistake for racism (most of the time) is actually rivalry and some of the things that come with it. Second, the immensely diverse nature of our society and country is actually an asset which we confuse with xenophobia to call ourselves racists. Third, yes, there will always be some among us and others who will be intrinsically anti-social and absolutely racist - but you cannot disown them, as the " No true Scotsman " fallacy points out. And oh, lest I forget, some of us do behave in a manner that portrays a negative/uncultured image to the outside world about Indians. These p...

My room-mate, Anirban, recently attended the "North American Bengali Conference" which happened over the July 4th weekend. In a way, he was "invited" to this august assembly: he was roped in as a volunteer (He insists it was he who had offered his services voluntarily). He has started chronicling his experiences from the conference on his new blog, called " Anirban Ubacho: অনির্বাণ উবাচ ". If you are a Bengali, please pause reading this post right now, and head over to that one. For those of you not familiar with the nuances and innuendos that one can slyly put across through my mother tongue, here is a rough attempt to translate the first post into English. And believe me, as I even approach this task, I sometimes wish I could just plug in that little Bengali word here or quote that little idiom there to express myself. Note that this is not a translation by the letter: I've taken certain creative liberties myself. However, if you feel offended by any...

Orkut does a lot of good things, such as connecting old friends, help form new connections and fraanships, etc. So when the other day I received a friend request from a person I knew in school, it was a pleasant surprise. A couple of scraps were exchanged, with the general CBI-meet-FBI information exchange and 30-second elevator talk. He was in India and had graduated recently and was employed. Then one fine day I saw a chat request from him on google and was glad to accept it. Soon afterwards, there was a little window blinking in the toolbar. "Hey, hru?" was how the conversation had begun. I obliged with the typical "I'm fine, thanks" and was about to reciprocate the routine when he popped the second question: "So you've been there for about 8 months now --- how many girlfriends do you have?" I was a little taken aback: I did not really expect a friend talking to me after about 10 years to be interested in my set of girlfriends as the first thing...

You will not understand this book unless you've lived away from home sometime. You will never catch the little nuances of the story or the vast hollows in the hearts of the characters if you haven't lived alone, faced the world in all its wilderness all by yourself. You must have felt the need to find your roots, reminisce about your near and dear ones, missed them for the simple comfort and warmth of their welcoming smiles to be able to feel the theme of this book, The Namesake. The story traces the life of a child born to Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, who migrated to the USA when Ashoke came there to pursue his doctoral degree and post-doctoral faculty work. Through a quirk of fate, the name Gogol which they had originally thought of as a pet name for their son sticks with him for life. We see the life of this immigrant family through the eyes of their son as he grows up. Somehow the confusion of his name points to a more fundamental identity crisis in his generation. He never u...

I installed a bunch of little tools on this blog sometime back. You'll find all of them on the right column of this page, towards its very bottom. Yes, I know they are a bit narcissist in nature: displaying a map of the world to show where around the world the visitors came from, what they were referred to here by, etc. After all, no-one really is interested in knowing all that if they came to this blog. If you, as a reader last longer than reading through the latest post, you might stop by to comment. Perhaps the more interested people also read through the other comments before shooting one off on your own. But thats about it --- it doesn't really bother you to see that there is a blob of readers (or visits) even from Madagascar! As the author of the blog, on the other hand, these little tools are more than just that for me. They are sort of little pieces of a huge puzzle that come as hints from everywhere. Let me put it this way: imagine how you would feel if you could sudde...

When I signed up with blogger about two years ago, I never knew what to expect. I was just trying to get a little more net-savvy then, and therefore getting a blog was the next cool thing to do. I guess my initial posts were all therefore quite disjoint and frankly of 'yuck' standard. Don't bother going through the archives of 2004 or even early 2005: I know they form the classical definion of crap. But then my writing began to mature, and I perhaps began to use this blog more as a medium of expressing myself and penning down thoughts that would otherwise be lost after some introspection into the recesses of the brain. And I felt happy about that: since the joy of blogging is in the unwinding, in the open declaration of your ideas. And more importantly, perhaps, is the fact that there cannot be a better way of having a one-way conversation where you can ramble on and on uninterrupted with your train of thoughts. But then as I visited other blogs, I noticed the phenomenon of...

The hit counter on my blog reached 20074 today. Why you may ask, is that news, and why hadn't I cheered myself up when it was at 20,000 for example? Well, it is news because 20074 has been a very special number for me during my entire college life: it was my admission number, and my system-wide unique identity. It is strange, and surprising, how these numbers become a part of our identity. The social security number, the passport number, the id number in the college, or even your roll number somehow becomes an almost innate part of the day-to-day life. As soon as I see the same number somewhere else: maybe on a telephone, on a hitcounter, maybe somewhere else... a thousand memories are triggered. As my eyes struck the hitcounter showing 20074 right now, I was thrown back to memories of filling up exam answer sheets, hostel admission forms, library recall requests, and so much more! I believe that number was present on almost every official form which I filled in college: even when ...