Mystery,Action,Politics,Crime,Revenge,deceit,basic instincts and the triumph of love

This is one of the firsts o my life. No my first birthday or my first love or my first proposal not my first blog but my first blog for whose net time I had to pay wit my wallet.Most of my posts have been the child of a menage a trois between free internet, wella time and my self assumed command over English.Hence this is small first wherein i Have moved my ass from my room to a cyber cafe and am typing my thoughts on a god forsaken key board.My current state takes me back to the tears I shed for half an hours after I had flipped the last pages of olivers heart break @ love story.

So here I am writing another load of crap after 3 years. The culprit is the same Eric Segal. This month I read four novels Ambler warning, Doomsday conspiracy, Dead on Time and Mea,Woman and Child.Four different genres, four different authors.Till the time of Ambler warning,I was of the firm opinion that no director can do proper justice to an authors literary prowess, I thoroughly enjoyed the visions imparted by Peter Jackson to JRR Tolkein's middle world but somehow I felt something was missing.It was definitely the closest I saw a director doing justice to literature.The harry Potters and even the great Capolla found me among the disgruntled minority.

Well I was in for some surprise. I thoroughly enjoyed Bourne supremacy. So now I had a new God to worship -"Robert Ludlum". In my lazy meanderings through odyssey -a bookshop @ Hyd- I picked up a copy of his novel Rudlum. With great expectations and hopes, I sat down to read this work. But it was shit,deep shit,horse shit, bull shit and all combined in one. Well, I get that certain works of imagination requires suspension of disbelief like the great "Gunda", but reading is a brain indulging activity.You just cannot switch of your logical brain in that fashion. Mr Ludlum, some deputy secretary of US state department cannot create a war. One person can never be so powerful.This novel was supposed to be a novel but 200 pages before the mystery was revealed I was hoping the mystery i guess was wrong. Well they were some of the false hopes of my life. To sum up, some directors can create great movies from pieces of shit. After a more than brief break necessitated by non ergonomic keyboard and paid net time, I am resuming my blog on four novels I read in the past two weeks. Ludlums work was about mystery and action at least it advertised itself as one. After reading this novel,another thing that made my mind flutter how come all novels have such great reviews pasted on their back pages. It would be easy to curse corruption but I would like to believe that not all agree with me and someone might like the novels I hate.They do sell.

The next novel, I pounced upon during my exceedingly jobless training period was "Doomsday conspiracy" by Sidney Sheldon.As a matter of fact, I did have some immoral motives in reading the book.As I would like to put it Sheldon tales are good with lots of twists and turns but certain primitive behavioral aspects of mankind are better illustrated. So, I started reading this book hoping to be entertained.After Ambler warning, this piece was definitely entertaining to say the least. It had a bit of suspense, a bit of inhumanity amongst humans, deceit and the almost predictable villain in the guise of a saint. I might have liked this book primarily because my expectations from a novel had declined drastically.But i guess the reason de maitre was the fact that the need of suspension of disbelief was firmly established in the first few pages.This meant I could digest the incredible ending. But in means can decent novels be insulted by clubbing this book in the same pedestal.This book was ridiculous it shows a serious lack of application of brains. At least scientific brains. If we are to encounter an alien they would never look like creatures we saw in ET. They will be different. In fact ET was a step better. The alien there was any other creature not a GOD.How things unfolded from the chamber of the doctor to the arrest of the admiral is never revealed nor is anything said about the saint who was made to look like the devil from the beginning.

Having upgraded myself from Ludlum to Sheldon, I still found myself in search of one masterpiece to fortify my belief in joy from fiction. A book that took me in the corner of existence not registered in any of the gps devices. I picked up the long haired economist Lord Meghnad Desai's Dead on Time. This book had nothing to do with economics but was a realistic albeit exxagarated account of power play doing the rounds in the arena of politics.I would not dwell much on the plot for I shall not be half as good as the master in naratting the same thing.IF you like power play at the highest levels,you got to read it; if you dont like political dramas, you got to read it;if you like human cunning, if you like see the role of fate in changing the course of (hi)story then read it, even if you dont like any of the things I have mentioned read it. If you can read English then read it, if you cant read it pester a friend to read it and narrate the story to you.

Now about the title of this, it ends with the oft quoted words "triumph of love". I am not here to give a sermon on the power of love. But I do feel tempted to quote the opening lines of the funny movie "love actually", it draws upon experiences of people about to die, they invariably remember the moments of love. Maybe love is indeed a very strong emotion.This novel had only one emotion,it had the simplest of story lines. Yet it flooded my eyes.The novel in question was "Man,woman and child" by Eric Segal. The emotions he conveyed through simple dialogues were universal and heartwarming.IT reminded me of what one of my seniors at college told while recommending "a love story" by the same author- if you are in love you got to read it. If you are not in love, just read it once and you will fall in love. I have only one complement for this book -"If you can read read this book, if you cant read learn to read and then read it", you wont like to bid adieu to the world without shedding a few tears for what you know to be pure fiction and imaginary and yet somehow you feel sad, you hear voices, you feel emotions you have never felt before.

I shall now try to use my logical ability to play as I try to wind up this post.The triumph of love is not my own fictional creation but simple the fact a simple novel with a simple story appealed to more than three other novels of diferent genres.

lost in translation

For the infinitesimally small chunk of random people who happen to come across this page without going through my status message, I was born in Assam and have spent a large chunk of my life outside it. Currently I call Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh as my hometown. Among other things common to our generation,I find myself most comfortable in English even more than my mother tongue a few pronunciations might be off the chart but you are less likely to find me bewildered if you are using the words approved by some wise men and women sitting in Oxford.

Hence in this state of affairs, translations have been a cousin of oxygen I breathe. TO be certified as civilized, we are supposed to greet people, our nursery teacher made us lip sync good morning, good afternoon.India is a museum of celebrations I celebrated Bihu, English new year among the plethora of other festivals.The English way of wishing is prefixing the word Happy or merry. We have "Happy New Year","Merry Christmas" but we also wish "Happy Diwali" and "Shubh Diwali" but not "Good Diwali".Strange are the rules of translation.

The Making of DOGA

I guess many of you might know DOGA as a white fat chinki seen during ktj times.In fact there have been days in kgp when nobody called me by my hindu name "Himangshu Jyoti Hazarika". Before I joined this organization, I had to look around if some one uttered Himangshu to ensure it was I who was adressed to. For the uninitiated DOGA was my nick name @ IIT Kharagpur.It is an acronym for "Dean of Gay Affairs".

The acronym says a lot but you wont hget a clearer picture if you are not in kgp. Although I have nothing against gay, lesbians, I am not one. I am in fact an unabashed supporters of the rights of sexual minorities.I also realise that there are numerous rumours as to how I got this all too striking name.There were no record breaking smocches or any other physical activity. I hereby go on record unlike many ppl I have never kissed a junior(guy) by force, have never had any physical interaction with my senior guys. Since everything is in kgp context, all physical intercations are assumed to bet between guys anything else does not need a blog to be known to kgpians - last of all my blog. However I have been at the receiving end of many a males affection, I can't help that I am cuter than most if not all.

So, again reverting to the title of the post. In our first year, we had a guy called Abhishek Satapathy who proudly proclaimed to have a girl friend and a boy friend. In his own words he was bi. This was done in broad daylight in front of a professor and a first year class who were not yet familiar to the concept of bukning.So, it was news, it was breaking news.Now, in the long class hours where we understod nothing except when to respond to roll calls, we started conducting polls. Kgp has a dean for evrything from student affairs to academics to so on and so forth. We also have a DOPA(nothing to do with dope but everything to do with another form of adult entertainment). My batch mates thgought we needed a new dean for gay affairs so that people can explore other avenues in the island where God decreed that only one half of human species shall reside.This need catalyzed by the Satapathy affair resulted in a poll. Of course Satapathy was the front runner but although I did not file any nomination whatsoever, I found myself a close second.It was probably cos I was more molestable I guess. On my part, I never objected to any form of physical advance.

The next chapter of this story was played at the glorious NCC camp.In this camp the official DOGA Satapathy was not there, so at the very outset, I was appointed acting DOGA.Herein, we had to share the same floor, our mattresses got intertwinned and often I found myslef on my neighbours bed. SInce we had to run early morning in bone shattering chill, we often hudled together to warm ourselves. Interestingly, some more queer things happened, we devised a modified GPL, a pilow would be placed on someone, and a group of people would perform a sort of simple harmonic motion over the poor guy. We called this choda, I shall not elaborate on this matter on account of decency.The important thing is that choda was magnetically attracted to me. It followed wherever I went. One thing led to other and I found myself becoming the one and only original DOGA of kharagpur.

Central characters:
me, HAnsraj Mishra, Subrat Panda, Pankaj Chauhan and all from flight 4 AIR NCC IIT KGP

Adieu to five fun filled summers

It is funny but interesting that a word like myopia found itself an adjective cousin and is now reserved a whip to be wielded by the wielder of pen and keyboards on unsuspecting mortals. But at some level or another we are all myopic. In the physical, there is only a few hundred metres registered by our eyes.Even at a more intrinsic level, our memories fade as time flies by. But some landmarks do beat this trend. These memories stay on with us till we close our eyes in the grave. Not too long ago or rather five long years back, I was packing my bags, embracing myself for any form of ragging that might take place at an alien place called Kharagpur, a place I called home for five of my most memorable years of my life.

Having completed this phase of my life,I now find myself at a very interesting junction.I find myself bereft of words to describe how I feel. I am not sad, I am not overjoyed at leaving the calm village which we often likened to a prison. But every moment I brood over never fails to bring a smile on my face.But it is kind of strange to say the least. Phrases like "you can take a kgpian out of kgp but cant take kgp out of a kgpian" seems true.As things are I cant write all I want in this post.So, I shall try to write a semi autobiography.I hope they all fan out as funny. And most importantly, I would like to thank all my seniors, juniors and batchmates for feeling so many joyous moments in my life.