RAAAN - not RA ONE

If the readers think that I am a lazy man watching movies and ranting about them, they are almost correct. There are so many serious topics in one's life that when I think of writing about the lighter side of life, I feel safe in writing about the movies.

RAAAN - "Ranjana Ami Aar Asbo Na" is a far far better movie than the King Khan's latest venture "RA One". If anyone disagree, please make sure that you know the reality behind these two movies. RAAAN is the story of a Bengali rock singer and his relationship with a budding rock singer, who is a "Bengali" girl. "RA One" is somewhat a mixture of terminator II + terminator III + Bollywood masalas (spices).

For a very good review of RAAAN, please visit this link.

Why RAAAN made me to write this post? RAAAN shows Ranjana, the girl, who is a budding "Bengali" rock star. RAAAN shows Abani, our Anjan Dutta, the real Bengali rock star surrounded by Lew Hilt, Amyt Dutta and Nondon Bagchi.

Just think of Bengali rock star, a term that only emerged in the late nineties. A girl as a Bengali Rock Star? A new term that comes up in 2011 with the movie RAAAN. The voice of Ranjana, Somlata simply rocks.

I loved the way Anjan portrayed the inevitable frustrations of the creative people of loosing or fearing to loose their creativity in this movie. And in a short but strong role Suman was splendid. Both Parno (Ranjana) and Ushasie are amazing. And Kanchan Mullick, no doubt is good. A five star movie in my opinion.

Let me live as I am living now

"Jeta chilona chilona seta na paoai thak, sab pele nasto jibon..." ... awesome line from a song from the latest Bengali movie "Autograph". The song titled "Amake amar mato thakte dao (Let me live as I am living now) is excellent and says a lot about all of us. Similar incidence in all our lives where we are bound to say "Let what is not achieved by me as not achieved as achieving everything spoils the taste of life." There is an old saying - the grapes are sour - that is what you cannot achieve should be considered as sour, yet I would stick to the words of this song as my own guideline, saying "Let me stay at my limit."

Enough of rantings. I can write a thousand words but that will not make much sense, rather listen to the song yourself.

Vuvuzela and my daughter

The last day today. I am feeling a real sorrow a deep grief for the ending hours of my favorite tournament till childhood, the FIFA World Cup. This time, like all other times, it was a time to spend for myself. To stay late at nights, working hard at the day time. Full concentration of mine was to finish my assignments for the day and reach for the TV as soon as I could, during these whole month. The evenings were so colorful after nearly four five months since we all stopped watching TV totally. That is for the good of our 4 years old daughter's education and upbringing. She was having a very extraordinary hyper activity syndrome which is just for prolonged TV watching and our ignorance about that.

But, this time, after the world cup started, I loosened the restriction of her watching TV at least during the match. Not for her but for myself, my very own self. The only viewer being me, sometimes I enjoyed her company during these TV sessions (only the evening matches for her of course). I tried to let her know what is a goal, and the simple rules of playing this game. I soon felt proud as she quickly learned a bit of the terminologies with her little grown brain of 4 years and was so happy to see people run with the ball. Only thing she liked or disliked about the game was a continuous sound of Vuvuzela, mostly in the early games when may be the "Notch Filter" was not being used to reduce the raucous sound Vuvuzela produced.

The plastic made horn which produces 113 dB(A) at 2 metres (6.6 ft) from the horn opening, which can create short time Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) as it is blown. A similar instrument, known as the corneta, is used in Brazil and other Latin American countries. So, there were a great deal of discussions and controversy about the usage of Vuvuzela during the world cup matches where thousands of Vuvuzelas created an extreme disturbance to the players as well, kept aside the viewers. Finally Vuvuzela has become a fearful buzzword during the world cup.

Interestingly enough, my little daughter also started fearing from the Vuvuzela.
"Vuvuzela ke voi pacchi baba." (I am fearing from Vuvuzela dad.)
Wondering for a prolonged time, I understood, Vuvuzela is a collection of two words, Vuvu + Zela, where "Vu" stands for the initials of "Vut" the ghost in Bengali and Zela sounds like "Jail" in Bengali. So, she was fearing from a Ghost in Jail. Interesting indeed.

Finally she understood from my continuous convincing that there is no such thing like Ghost in this world and Jail is only for the criminals and most of all, Vuvuzela has nothing to do with neither ghost, nor jail, she thrown away the conviction she developed, and we enjoyed the matches happily together.

Why can I not write?

Writer's block are very common to the writers. There are known remedies, mainly thinking and jotting down what you think brings back the writer in you to business. Now, knowing the remedy and knowing that it is such an easy thing to do, you plan to think. Thinking and thinking and thinking all the time. That's become the writer's new state. So, thinking becomes the new habit. Jotting them down, again remains far from reality. At least that is what happens to me regularly. I am the kind of man, who loves to think, imagine things, sometimes methodically deduce something but writing becomes and remains a very hard laborious task for me as it was.

Actually, writing is the real good habit that any aspiring writer should love to adopt. Again, for writing something one should read a lot. Mainly for writing stories you need to read a lot of stories yourself. Mostly works of writers who proved their excellence in story writing in the course of time, and the works, which are indeed became timeless classics. To name a few, for writing short stories, one may read the works of Guy De Maupassant, O.Henry, Anton Checkov,Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hamingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, as I have read and still reading. I was going to leave the list of best seller authors of all times behind, here is the list .

Again, I have left the names of Bengali authors, like Kabiguru (Preceptor) Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Tarasankar Bandopadhyay, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay, Saradindu Bandopadhyay, Bimal Mitra, Premendra Mitra to latest writers like Sanjeeb Chattopadhyay, Samaresh Basu, Samaresh Majumdar, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Ramapada Chowdhury, Syed Mustafa Siraj, Budhadeb Guha, Narayan Sanyal, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Joy Goswami, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Bani Basu, and many more.

I get totally carried away while reading their works and get so preoccupied enjoying the style, the picturesque, dramatic narration that, ultimately I end up reading and not writing.

Actually a good time management is always the driving skill in all your ventures. True, in the case of creative writing. Thinking, writing and reading should go together hands in hands and that's where I always fail. And that's why there are so less amount of short stories irregularly posted in my blog GolporKhata.

Hate Khari ( The beginning of writing)

"In the Vedic system Saraswati ; Chinese: Biàncáitia-n, Thai: Sarasawatee; Japanese: Benzaiten) is the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. Saraswati- has been identified with the Vedic Saraswati River. She is considered as consort of Brahma. She is the daughter of Durga and is seen alongside her during Durga Puja celebrations along with her sister Lakshmi and her brothers Ganesh and Karthikeya. Saraswati's children are the Vedas, which are the oldest sacred texts of Hinduism."

This is what I have found in the wikipedia, my favorite encylopedia a, searching about our beloved goddess "Devi Saraswati". Bengali people are grown up with goddess saraswati from their childhood days as they are mostly interested in "learning" knowledge for their "earning". If you study well, you will get a good job, a better living. Even the illiterate "Kalidas" became "Mahakabi Kalidas" (The great poet Kalidas) by the grace of goddess Saraswati, so will be you. That is a childhood story, almost all Bengali hear at least once from their parents or elderly relatives, who are brought up in a very "Bengali" culture in true sense.

Saraswati Puja (worship) is a part of Bengali culture and at almost all educational institutions and every Bengali family organize this Puja. If you are a Bengali, you must have been through and may have been part of the "Hate Khari" (first lessions) of children during Saraswati Puja. At the age of three to four, you are supposed to ritually start writing the first letter of Bengali alphabet (same with Sanskrit and Hindi), on this very day. If you want to have a better idea what the ritual is, here is a link of a video, where a little lady starts her writing.

Bristi's Hate Khari

I am writing this post about the "Hate Khari", though keeping in mind the literary meaning of this phrase, I would like to mention some other forms of "Hate Khari" here.

• The eve before Saraswati Puja have a big significance to many Bengali School College students (me as well) for the "Hate Khari" (first lessons) of communicating to the opposite sex. Both boys and girls get a nice chance to mix with themselves in the school and college they read in and staying late there with proper permissions from their parents for the arrangements of the "Puja".
  
• Most of the cases, students of colleges stay the whole night at their institution and therefore get the chance of "Hate Khari" (first lessons) of smoking, drinking liquor or worse.
• The day of Saraswati Puja is an auspicious day again for another kind of "Hate Khari" (first lessons), wearing the traditional dresses of Bengali. "Dhoti - Panjabi (Kurta)" for boys and "Saree" for the girls. Dear reader if you never experienced this, you have missed the most of Saraswati Puja and the Bengali culture as a whole.
• Attires being that of the adults, the school children and college goers look lovely. There are several awards now a days from different Bengali media channels for best looking people on this day. My best wishes to the organizers of such an innovative effort, this certainly add a lot more enthusiasm to the young people for their "Hate Khari" (first lessons) in these attires.
  
• Seeing the future look of their "liked" ones in these attires, getting a great chance to freely talk to them in public, the young people stays in great mood on the day of Saraswati Puja. And this is why it is the known date for the parents to know that Saraswati Puja is also a main occasion for Hate Khari" (first lessons) of love. Yes, most of the school-college level love stories start from this day, and the "liked" ones turn into "loved" ones.
  
• I would also like to mention that, many of us who in our school or college level had organized or had been part of the arranging team, have got their "Hate Khari" (first lessons) in organizing. Later on this experience help them to organize events in future. A beginning lesson in event management.
  

I have mentioned (or tried to mention) about the different "Hate Khari" (first lessons) on this auspicious occasion. Please let me know about your views and experiences in Saraswati Puja, which will enrich me and all the readers. Have a great Saraswati Puja! Wish you all the best.

Durga Puja - Redefined

Though the durga puja is widely celebrated all over West Bengal, all over India and all over the world where Bengali reside, it is Kolkata where one can enjoy the excellence of Bengali in conducting this Puja.

This single sentence will raise a lot of eyebrows towards this post, the writer of this post as well. Non-Bengali indians celebrate the Durga Puja according to the real mythological calander, as they start this puja from the first day of "Devi-Paksha", "Mahalaya", the first day of these 15 days of goddess Durga at her home place. The non-bengali Duga Puja is according to the rituals started by "Sri-Ram" while he was in war with "Ravana", the king of Lanka who stole "Sita". The non-bengali Durga idol has 8 hands in contrast to the idol with 10 hands worshiped by Bengali. Gujrati people stats "Garwa", a dance form around fire, each night from "Mahalaya" to "Maha-Nabami", the nine days festival, named as "Nava-Ratri", followed by the symbolic killing of "Ravana", on the 10th day, the "Duserra", "Bijoya-Dashami" for Bengali. Thus, the Durga puja, started by "Sri-Ram", turns into a Puja of "Sri Ram" or "Lord Krishna" for non-bengali people.

Many of the readers will agree that Bengali are considered to be the most emotional of all the inhabitants of India. The emotion during the time of Durga Puja remains so high that, be it outside of West Bengal (Delhi, Mumbai, etc.), outside of India (as in Bangladesh, USA, UK, everywhere), they worship goddess Durga like they do at Kolkata, West Bengal. The memories of Durga Puja in West Bengal the minds of the older generations are still very alive in most of the Bengalis around the world. The changes from "normal" puja to "theme" puja, which orginated from Kolkata, is now being widely followed all over the world whereever possible. Let me explain the "theme" concept in a few words. The theme can be any concept that will be depicted in the external and internal decoration of the "Pandal", the place where the Durga Idol will stay, along with the Durga Idol itself. The theme can be a very rural picture of a almost unknown culture of West-Bengal, say, the "Swantal" village (a renowned tribe of West Bengal). So, entering into the "Puja", you suddenly will feel that you are at a Swantal village. The goddess idol may be created with blakish wood as the other idols of gods and godesses worshiped by the tribes. The theme may be "Tom & Jerry", where, other than the actual idols of the Goddess and her family members, everything is to be with a touch of "Tom & Jerry". In the attached photo, you can visualize, the idols are even designed as the idols of "Radha - Krishna" as depicted in paintings found at "Rajasthan". Nowadays the "Theme Puja" is almost everywhere, even at Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, etc. The Durga-Puja, has been being changed into "Theme-Puja" in most of the cases.

Only except the Puja conducted by "Ram-Krishna-Mission"s all over the world, much emphasis towards the correctness of the "Durga-Puja" according to the perfect schedule and perfection of the recitations of the "Mantra"s are avoided in most of the "Puja"s. Signifying, Puja is more for relaxation, rejuvenation, recharging of energy for the Bengali people, more than a ritual. My point is, be it Bengali Puja or not, we are moving away from the concept of "Puja" in general as a ritual of Bengali hindus and enjoying that very much. It's the enjoyment, the reunions, the freedom, the relaxation, the rejuvenation of vitality, that matters.