Friends sans borders

Perhaps, this is the best out of numerous social networking sites on which billions of people try to make a virtual world around them. I heard of virtual friends turn into real-life buddies, guys who have found their life partners on the Net, but never I came across such a space, which gives you a different perspective about friends and strangers around you!

Couchsurfing was a new term till one of my colleagues told me about this over a dosa at a south Indian restaurant in central Calcutta on a hot summer afternoon earlier this year. Since then, I chalked out numerous plans to visit different places. The best plan that I could think was at an altitude of 14,500ft at a tent on the Himalayas for a trek to the Alps!

Last month, two CS — as Couchsurfing is commonly known — friends flew down from Bangkok for a month’s tour to India. It was a great experience to listen to their side of story — particularly the discussions on environmental policies of Bush and Obama at a Calcutta café. It was something unimaginable to me to have an exchange of ideas just like that!
Through this short piece of blog, I request all of my friends to join CS, and enjoy surfing!


© Supratim Pal, 2009

Perils of Paranoia

For me, SRK is a victim of paranoia than religion. A sense of insecurity that was born soon after some eccentric fellows hijacked and rammed two flights into WTC still permeates our mind and soul. What remains is the body — frisked by securitymen here and there, then and now just to find a terrorist out of us, out of me. But can one change my mind, if I want to take on the world around me with a fearless stride? Will the gun-toting men in uniform be able to stop me from turning into a terrorist?

No doubt, we will point security lapses if an untoward incident takes place, but isn’t it more of intelligence inputs and source building that the men in khaki should work for? Guns only give rise to corruption, it cannot protect a common citizen from being blown up in a blast at a bust stand or crowded station. When I was a student of Class VII, fence and grills were constructed around our hostel and verandahs to stop kids from escaping. But I’m sure children have attempted successfully to escape from the bounds of securitymen at the gate or monks at the hostels in the past 16 years. Forget childhood, even now I am made a victim of paranoia everyday when I take the underground Metro or even entering our office.

The other day I have to explain to a plainclothes policeman at a Metro station why I keep a raincoat during monsoon and why I carry breads in transparent boxes for night shift! Our office is superb in that respect. It has recently made a rule, stating that its employees cannot enter the premises with any printed document, like a book or a magazine or even the day’s newspaper. If you insist that you really read it, you have to get a stamp on it by prying securitymen. They expect some dumb asses will do office work only and cannot read even a book whenever s/he gets bored! What a high level of paranoia — I don’t know how an innocuous piece of paper can harm my colleagues and bosses and who not — it is!


©Supratim Pal, 2009

...

She did not want me to see as a school or college teacher, although I was almost becoming so with on the verge of completing BEd more than four years ago. Her reason was simple: I would even forget to spell "ticket", whether with one ‘t’ or two at the end after numerous mistakes in scripts! It’s not that I don’t need to correct spellings or syntax everyday in my present job, but the way it was said by Topu masi when I was just seven years old was really funny.

After 22 years, when my mother reminded the same to Topu masi today, she was all tears. She stared at me for over five minutes, trying to figure out whether it is the same boy who once lived just next door in a village called Panagarh, now a bustling town in Burdwan district. I had a great time with Topu masi and Sikha masi — both remained unmarried and my mother’s colleagues in the social welfare department. On Mondays, I used to have a great piece of news for both when they would return from their weekly visit to their respective parents: what was shown in the Mahabharat on TV on Sunday. They would listen to my description of the great wars with rapt attention and Topu masi asked me which weapon I liked most.

For me, the mornings in the pre-satellite TV era would start with spiritual talk on the radio. Before I was readied for school by my elder sister, I could see Topu masi glued to Pratyahiki, a popular AIR programme based on letters sent by its listeners on a specific topic. Ma used to say: "Topu would write a letter on this month’s topic." I can’t recall whether Topu masi indeed wrote a letter or not, but she read a lot of Bengali novels and short stories those days.

Being children, we used to subscribe Anandamela, and my brush with "elders’ magazine" Desh — something a no-no in our childhood then — started at Topu masi’s desk. Had there not been Topu masi, I might not have grown an interest in studying at Santiniketan, as Samaresh Basu was writing the biography of famous sculptor Ramkinkar Baij in Desh. With paintings by Bikash Bhattacharjee, Dekhi Nai Firey, was a fascinating experience for me even if I could not make out much from them. But somewhere Dekhi Nai Firey was embedded in my mind and years later when I was keen to make a documentary film on Ramkinkar, the first thing Ma told me: "Call up Topu, she will be happy to know about it."

Images are aplenty. Cut to 2009.

I took Ma to bed no. 106 of a cancer hospital off Park Street this afternoon after a call from my mother’s another colleague. There, on a white bed, Topu masi was lying under a red chequered piece of cloth with tubes, monitors and anxious relatives counting final hours around her. She enquired my wellbeing with a voice not heard in many years. After some short conversations, when Ma reminded her of the "ticket" tale, she just smiled and stared at me. Before bidding her goodbye, I told her: "Topu masi, get well soon and we’ll have a long chat." Only a drop of tear answered on her behalf.

©Supratim Pal, 2009

Thy hand, not great anarch

How come the hand that was sought after too much for its warmth could turn out so cold overnight? I tried to find an answer to this simple question that racked my brain last night.

Well, the problem is not mine, although it might sound like that. My only concern is the guy. Is he a fool? Or, he deliberately did it to end a relationship like that. What sort of endgame is it? Every good thing ends somewhere, even if a deep love relationship between two human minds ends in life or in death. I don’t believe in life after death. To me, the guy let it happen to enjoy pain in life itself.

But can one really enjoy pain? Is it not a bit of sadist attitude on his part? Could the situation be handled differently? Did the guy of our age, brought up with an open mind, really want to harm or insult the girl in question with his touch? It’s the same paradox, rather problem, which dogged another friend of mine who married after a couple of years’ courtship. Two years maybe a short period of time to know each other, but they were confident that they could pull it through in marriage. Only 10 months into it, the girl deserted him for better life, but not before accusing him of marital rape — a serious allegation in this country now when laws are twisted to give "advantage" to women, who have been tolerating domestic violence for ages. Touch is a problem, not untouchability.

"Are these the same hands that once touched your feet? Wasn’t it paying respect?" he says, barely audible to my ears in the din of the city of joy. I could figure out pain in his eyes, where she did not find love a year ago. What is love? Isn’t it taking care of a person in distress? Isn’t it supporting someone in crisis? What is it?

One thing I know that whatever it is, it cannot be in Alexander Pope’s words "thy hand, great anarch".

©Supratim Pal, 2009