To my Childhood!

Childhood! Thou art a pleasant memory
A treasure to cherish.
A feeling of warmth
A blessing that has been!

I ache to go back
To Embrace your being!
I long to be
In the state I had been!

Gone are those days
Of sheer simplicity
Of being so bubbly
With all the ecstacy!

Memories, sweet memories!

Another year has passed by . With the advent of every Durga puja, I feel that I am moving away farther from my childhood. Of course the memories still are fresh.
With every passing year, I realize more that the very innocent and small pleasures of childhood are very precious and with all the stress of a normal adult life, these memories are a treasure - the planning that I had done as to what would be my puja dresses. We had this tradition( as any other traditional Bengali home) that we would buy dresses yes- loads of them actually during the pujas:) including shoes, matching sweaters and jackets and not to forget the very important girlie accessories like the braclet, the necklace that was in trend and the earrings that you simply could not do without! How would the dress-up be complete without those earrings! It was the only time ever I think that we really dolled up:)
The days just before the pujas would be so much more interesting with topics to discuss and talk about- what we would wear, where we would be waiting for a friend, how some of us had an advantage as we lived close to Durgabari. Some friends will understand this very well:)
And then, the actual days of the puja would be out of the world for us! Those days, I remember we never had a trouble of getting up early in the morning. We would wait and strain our ears to hear the sound of the "dhaak". And the first sound of "dhaak" would make us very excited and me and my brother would make up a case as to how we were getting late and that all of our friends would be missing us already. There would be stalls outside Durgabari that we would wait to see in case we liked something from there and could get it. For the boys it was generally the "pistol-bomb" All the boys would be bursting out those bombs and all the girls would be mad that they were making a lot of noise and how it was so unsafe:)
Evenings were thronged with cultural programs. In my younger days, it was more of an enjoyment from the audience and as I entered my teens, I had also started participating in those programs - be it a quiz or singing.
I wonder whether we will be able to give those small pleasures to our next generation- the treasures that they can pass on to their kids , the memories they can reminisce in their adult life, the memories that say " I look forward to the pujas, how my mom and dad had made the pujas so enjoyable for us" , the culture that is associated to the pujas, the Bijoya pranam that had so much of a meaning in our lives .

A couple of weeks back, I happened to watch a movie " Untraceable" . I have this habit of reading the summary of the story at the back of the cover and this one was no exception. It seemed to be a thriller movie which I always happen to enjoy more. It was past midnight when I finished watching the movie and I ended up having a throbbing headache. The theme the movie was based on was kind of weird to me- people taking an enjoyment in watching other people in pain. There was this young man who would torture his targets before putting an end to them. He would host it up in a website and with every click on the page the victim would be tortured more ( the level of Sulphuric acid rising etc before engulfing them) . I was horrified to see and realise that there are actually people on earth who even after knowing that their clicks would torture the victim more , do visit the webpage or portal whatever that was and they take an enjoyment in seeing the torture of others. How brutal that can be!

Then a few days back from now , came the news of the Delhi blasts. A few months back there were the news of the blasts in Bangalore and Gujarat. When I had heard the news then, my heart seemed to reach out to the affected. And I was at a loss to understand how certain people could bear to see innocent people die.
After watching this movie, I seemed to look at things a different way. Yes, there were actually people who loved to see others being tortured and in pain. They say that they have an agenda( well, this is what they think) but the fact is that they have split personalities and the mad being in them takes precedence. Those psychopaths enjoy seeing torture and inflicting torture upon others. Well otherwise, they would not have killed innocent masses on the pretext of their so-called "agenda or demands". It seems Man still has a long way to go in Darwin's Evolution theory before they really become humans!

Human Dynamism

I often wonder why human beings are so difficult to understand. Whenever I think to myself" I am close to understanding this person" I am so mistaken. Then I feel that many people do not understand themselves so they are a medley of confusion to others also.

I had been fortunate to attend a class by a very well-known professor in the University of Bekeley. She was a well-known figure in the management world . She was saying that she was always boggled by the nature of humans.
When she - a very highly educated and well-known for her strategic suggestions said this, we were nowhere . It always intrigues me to read the faces of people . I should admit that I am far from being successful on reading the minds of people. It would be nice to be able to say before a person actually spoke out that "Yes, I know you are thinking about this and here is my duh..duh..duh...." Well, then again maybe the world would have been more confusing- not that it is any less now:)
But true to it's essence hyman dynamism is dynamic!

The daily grind!

Phew!! It has been a while visiting the blog site. With so much happenning around - the presidential race, the economy in stagflation, rather in recession, housing market in the dumps, there is hardly any time for one to muse over the common happenings in life and draw warmth from around.
All that seems to be covered in the news headlines is "How to save your job during the recession" and "Housing sales slowest in the last 16.5 yrs". Everyone around seems to be staying put in their job tensed to make any movements- as if you would jeopardise yourself if you just moved . It is as if you are walking on a thin sharp edge of a sword - you make one wrong move and you hurt yourself.
To all my readers( if there are any regular ones) I hope to be more regular in writing and updating my blogs. So till then! Bear with me:)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A very Happy New Year 2008 to all the readers of my blog:)
It's been a while I logged on- yeah yeah, I know I had all plans of being very regular but normal things of life take up the priority .