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.

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.

Controversy - Let's avoid it!

The word controversy is a very scaring word for me. Though I pretend that I am least bothered about a controversy, I generally keep away from such discussions which lead to controversy. A discussion, which may become a total fruitless one, can reveal a lot about you in a point when you, like most, will also try to establish your own point of view.

Now, let's take up any latest topic or news for our discussion, be it IPL, Dada's (Saurav Ganguly) performance, the Maoist movement, the new political steps of Ms. Mamata Banerjee, a new movie like Pathsala / Houseful, the man / woman who is your boss, the concern you work for, literally everything you can have in your mind. Start a discussion, face the controversy and you have made yourself clear to others. You are rigid, hypocrite, selfish, moron, and whatever else the other party think you are, at that moment. And the result will be a "mental separation" between friends / colleagues / partners. So, these ultimately fruitless discussion in controversial topics will lead to nothing but pain.

In my opinion, let's first be in a place where there is no "we" or "they". Let's talk about some thing that will not lead to any controversy. The belief and disbelief of people will not confront each other in such topics, where both are ready to discuss without taking in a particular side. Let's talk about the golden era of something or about some people all of us respect. Say, "Kabiguru" (Preceptor) Rabindranath Tagore or Late. Mr. Satyajit Ray. We all respect them not only for their works alone but also their lives as human beings. Let's avoid controversial topics like Maoist movement or political matters, rather, the performance of an actor like Rudranil Ghosh, where he acted as a chimpanzee, in a movie "Love Circus" may be discussed.

I can still recall an incidence of my childhood, rather adolescence when Diego Maradona's controversial goal with his hand became a hot topic to discuss. I had a discussion with the father of one of my friends and I was against this goal because for a player it is unethical to score a goal which he knew was a handball. My friend's father argued that winning matters, how do you win doesn't. My friend has won the battle of life, much more than that I have, please don't ask me how, but I have lost the respect for his father for ever.

Enough of my demented rants, at last, I would like to mention that, this is a particular fortnight when two of the Bengal's pride came on earth. On 7 th May, "Kabiguru" (Preceptor) Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate, who left no stone unturned in the field of arts (his scientific articles were as good though!) but one, cinema. On 2nd May, Late Mr. Satyajit Ray was born, the Oscar winner film director, who mainly wrote for children and worked on the celluloid to turn the last stone, left unturned.

Learning ABC

She is someone I love the most. She loves me too. To an extent that can not only be felt when she is around me, but be felt all the time she is not around. Though she is too young a child to be scolded or beaten, I, rather, we, her parents sometimes don't have other alternative, but to scold her a lot. That is because she goes out of one's wits end very often. Very very often.

According to her mother, she is like me. Every bit of me. Every bad habit, as I have, has as if automatically transmitted to her, or rather getting transmitted to her as she is getting older. Like all other bad habits of mine, she is moody. Really moody. You can neither pursue nor pressurize her, when she is not in the mood.

She is 3 Yrs and 3 months now. We have tried many a time to pursue her to write the letter "A" on a paper with her pencil. All the time she writes a "V" instead and strike through it, telling 'this is A'. Now, with real logical sense, she is right. A struck through "V" is an "A" indeed. We tried to make her understand that it should be just opposite, but in vain. She always stuck to her principle that a struck through "V" is A.

May be, this is because she has learn it from her teacher who has shown her from her side an "A", which eventually turned out to be the reason of this mistake.

After a prolonged persuasion for around 2 months, she never made a mistake from her side to make us believe that what she believes is right. Finally, suddenly, she changed her mood and adding to our utter astonishment, she wrote "A" through "E" on her copy-book at ease. We, her parents were really overwhelmed with joy, and that's why, this post.

Wish, all of you will send "Guntu (Signora)", your best wishes, so that she can be in "mood" to learn her "ABC" as soon as possible.

By the way, you can view her in this video on the eve of Dipawali 2009.