February, 2026

 New readers, if there are any, may want to take a tour of the older blog posts and the other blog I write on. 

I've been writing something in Hindi, which I'll be sharing soon, along with its English translation. 
Again, you may agree or disagree, but that shouldn't stop you from reading it fully.
The hallmark of civil engagement is the ability to listen to various viewpoints, no matter how outlandish, with patience, honourable composure, and without any mark of condescension in our attitude. 
Most people can be reasoned with, and the few who can't be bothered may be left to their own devices. 

All sermonising apart, I've been reading 'Gaban' by Premchand. Anyone with even a basic grasp of the language must read Premchand at least once in their life. To me, his writing feels like a conversation more than a story, and he builds these characters you want to get to know and talk to. 
In my experience, I've felt this with very few authors and filmmakers. Ray, Kiarostami, Ruskin Bond, Ishiguro, Seth, and Hemingway are some examples that fall in that category.

Finally, I'm looking to read some short stories, poems and essays. I've been trying to get my hands on Manu Joseph's 'Why the Poor Don't Kill Us: The Psychology of Indians' for some time now. I've read a few excerpts online and can't wait to read the whole thing.
The weather here reminds me of late March or early April in Amritsar. The 10-12 days in between the end of the school year and the beginning of the new academic session were spent reading books and enjoying the melting of spring into summer. I'd order books from Flipkart/Amazon or ask my father to pick one from the school library and graze through them all day and ruminate on different storylines later. The only break in reading would be playing GTA Vice City or Counter Strike on my computer.

These days, I favour buying old books over new ones. In one of Suvro Sir's recent posts, I mentioned why that's the case. 

"..During my previous visits, I have only ever purchased old books. I like owning books that have passed through multiple hands. If I am lucky, I find a scribbled note here, a postcard there, or just some simple underlining. Some books were gifts to someone, while other copies were filched from some library. I often wonder about the journey of these old books I buy before getting engrossed in their content. Maybe its owner was a doctor who turned its pages during night shifts, or a college student who treated it as an escape from boring lectures, or a housewife who could never quite get to the end of the book due to being bogged down by this work or that chore. And finally, it ends with me, after making its journey on a pickup truck from some shop tucked away in one busy corner in 'Boi Para' of College Street. Nobody adopted it there, and it had to travel a few hundred miles, where I had to sift through tens of books before I decided that its slightly torn and creased jacket or musty smell of its slow death and decay did not bother me, nor did the markings of its previous owner, and certainly not the Rs 50 price tag. 

Right now, that book, along with the friends it has made in my house, lies in some corner gathering dust. Plato probably has spirited discussions with Orwell. Bored with that, Ruskin Bond and Vikram Seth confess their boarding school mischiefs to each other. Kafka, sandwiched between them, anxious and pensive, wonders and murmurs about vague topics, while Camus derides them all for their futile attempts at picking out meaning from mundane things. And below all of this, Griffiths, Zemansky, and Goldstein wonder why I have not thought about them for a while. Or maybe they have forgotten me, too. Yes, it must be so!

Hopefully, these books are now my prisoners, serving a life sentence. I do not want them to end in a pair of cold hands that would fix their minor imperfections-the scars from their previous lives-or straighten out decades-old dog-ears that meant something to someone, or dust them every day. I do not want to release them into the world where they will end up in a taped-up soybean oil carton with strangers, only to be picked, tossed, and discarded again by apathetic hands. They have travelled well and enough and must rest now..."

Tell me, dear reader, old or new?


Recommendations:

Literature: Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi's Gyan Vapi by Dr Vikram Sampath
                 
Music: The Older I Get by Alan Jackson

Media/Shows: Hannibal (starring Mads Mikkelsen)

Wagle Ki Duniya

 Last month, or maybe the month before that, this detail doesn't matter as much, I stumbled upon a very good collection of videos on YouTube. The playlist is titled 'Wagle Ki Duniya' and is based on the works of the great cartoonist RK Laxman. I don't think RK Laxman is a name that needs any sort of introduction. In fact, any such attempt would never do justice to his breadth of work or how his imagination became a part of the average Indian's life. One could argue that he isn't relevant anymore, and they wouldn't be lying. I doubt most young people would even recall that name or even have the foggiest clue about his body of work, or simply who he was. This is one complaint I have with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

(One thing that I need to add here is that I believe that the definition(by year) of Gen Z should be shifted to anyone born after 2002 in India. In many ways than one, people born between 1997 and 2002 lived the same life as anyone born in, say, 1993 or 1995. The big cities would be an exception, but as it happens, in most cases, they always are. So when I write Gen Z, it means anyone born after 2002.)

Coming back to my primary grumble. A lot of these people, some I know personally, are living a life significantly detached from their own history, culture and society. Their humour is American. It would have been so much better if it had been British. The wanna-be accent they try to mimic is the one used by African-Americans, and they fail hilariously at that. The way they write English is messed up, and I can't even understand all the abbreviations they used. What sense does one make of a sentence like 'umm lkr sybau fam what even is chhole bhature omg get this matcha fr it slaps lowkey smh'?
Did a drunk cat stumble across your bloody keyboard? Also, none of their references are local. While they are physically in India, their own persona is that of someone living in New York City or Los Angeles.
I'm no Shakespeare or TS Elliot or, Hemingway or Vikram Seth myself. But I try, to my best knowledge, not to butcher a language based on the latest rapper/hip-hop artist enjoying his 15-minutes-of-fame by mumbling and gargling the words in his mouth. This also happens to be the most mollycoddled generation with helicopter parents. My belief is that while parents should strive to provide the best for their children, insulating them from the realities of the world after a certain age only shifts their obnoxiousness on unsuspecting strangers minding their own business. Also, these kids then grow upto be adults who chase idealism and fall prey to all sorts of new-age self-diagnosable maladies when they realise that the real world is a completely different, pragmatic and unforgiving. Some of them became terrible hostel mates, too.

The more I try to become like these guys, the more I come to the conclusion that I will never understand my generation at all. I'm not cutout for the kind of lives they live, the silly little innuendos they consider humour or how comedy means a string of expletives. I am sorry I can't dress like I got my clothes by disrobing a homeless person, and neither can I have a cauliflower as the inspiration for my hairstyle. (To be honest, in a few years, I will have a bald head, so the latter could just have a tinge of jealousy!)
Again, I'm no Greek God myself, nor have I been sculpted by Michelangelo; it's just that I cannot connect with these guys despite my many attempts at that. It feels superficial and fake to me.

That being said, I don't take away their right to dress and speak and laugh in a way that feels right for them. If that's the skin they feel comfortable in, I do not wish to flay them for this. I have just voiced my view of the whole thing. There are things I admire about them, too. That's for another day.

This is the precise reason why I, to seek solace, indulge myself in sitcoms or shows from the last century. That world, a part of which seeped into the early years of the 21st century, seems more relatable and, in some ways, real and uncontrived. Those shows are part of digital media, and digital media is one large prop, but regardless of that, they seem more connected to the world I recognised and cherished. I am no sucker for the past or some hopeless nostalgia junkie. It's just that familiarity is my preference over the unpredictability of the world I see around me. The capricious and mercurial  'present' with its erratic moods, seems overwhelming at times and completely strange on other occasions. That's when these old things come to the rescue.

Wagle Ki Duniya, both literally and metaphorically, is an escape from this age of information onslaught. The characters are similar, and if you look closely, you'll see your family in Mr Wagle's Family. A simple, light-hearted and relatable sitcom. Wagle Ki Duniya feels somewhat less pretentious, and equally conniving(if not less). However, the comfort comes from the familiar. This is about the sitcom and the Wagle's world, both. You'll find the link below. Therefore, Wagle Ki Duniya is about the 'Duniya' we lived, even if for a brief moment, in the past.
My repeated watching of the Feluda telefilms and the old Feluda films also points to this.
I think the rant is enough for today. For the rest of the day, I'll find something else to be mad about ;)


Sitcom: Wagle Ki Duniya
Song: Raag Khamaj by Pt Ravi Shankar
Reading: The Fate of Man by Mikhail Sholokhov

Portrait Of A City

 The angled January sun was warm enough to make me sweat a little in the late morning. The city, however, snuggled under a thick layer of dust and light haze, slowly stretching its arms and legs and torso to come to life. There was honking. A lot of it. And the occasional ambulance was sandwiched between people who were obviously super busy. After all, a family going out to watch their afternoon movie, or ladies on scooters en route to their kitty parties, and the auto rickshaw sans passengers had more right of passage than a poor fellow counting his last minutes surrounded by a worried family. Driving by some roads, you could witness an argument here, a brawl there. Some were fighting-what a manly activity-while others watched, and a handful of them had their phones out. Again, a peak example of positive masculinity. If this is how January feels like, I shudder to think about March, April, May and June. Surely, many more would lose their minds.
Amidst all this activity, the one thing I never fail to notice is people. People. Of all shapes and sizes, colours, religions, rich and poor, good-looking and those who believe that the real beauty is inside, people on bikes, autos, cars, buses, trucks and the few who walk. Those who cannot drive and those who pretend to do so, traffic police officials gossiping among themselves, a poor hawker who's treated badly by everyone and the occasional VIP convoy passing through who thinks little of all the others I've described.

I too was one among the crowd that day. The only pleasant thing about winters is not having to use fans as much, and the cool morning and evening weather in Bhubaneswar. Otherwise, the dry and dusty city gives me a headache each time I step out. Especially in the area around the KIIT Campus. However, this time, that was the last thing I focused on. Having booked a Rapido bike to travel from the Fire Station Square to the KIIT Square, I waited for the Rapido captain to arrive. The middle-aged, soft-spoken man didn't keep me waiting too long and didn't follow the ritual that every other cab driver/bike rider does these days. He didn't haggle on the price and didn't ask for any extra amount. I walked up to him, as the local autos are known to beat up the app-based taxi, auto and bike riders in their 'zones', and made way for the destination. Midway, he stopped all of a sudden and asked politely if I could get out of the seat, as he was having issues with his phone charger. I didn't mind, and he took no time to fix it. Just as soon as he'd done that, he took out a packet of Marie biscuits from his bag and made a dash for the taps installed by the government near the CRPF Square bus stop. He tore up the packet(slightly), filled some water into it, and drained out the rest. Then he looked at me, pointing to the packet in his hand, probably his only meal for the morning or afternoon. His eyes and emotions didn't betray anything. It was part permission, part 'hope you don't mind,' part 'just give me a minute,' and one part 'sorry to keep you waiting.' I just gave him an empathetic assurance by raising my palm, hoping to signal, 'it's okay, I understand.' What more could I do? I knew that the image of that man was now stuck with me for the entire day. He finished soon, just as he'd promised, and we were on the way again. For someone like me who feels deeply about such things, the incident kept playing repeatedly in my mind. With that happening, I reached the KIIT square soon. As dusty, crowded, loud and chaotic as I had seen it last year. I paid him the fare, and before I could pull out some change I could spare to pay the man who definitely deserved a tip, he'd already crossed onto the other side. 
A bit disturbed, I started to walk to my destination when I encountered a 65+ year old guy who was scolding some poor young chap outside the fish shop, probably a daily wager, for not having moved his cycle fast enough and that his cycle tyres had left a wee little mark on his white i10. People are mad at the silliest and most trivial things these days. Anyway, as I moved away from the little crowd that had gathered, I could hear the words 'aukaat', 'paisa', '@#$@'  before they drowned out in the noise of the city. 

The return journey wasn't remarkable. The markets were full of people haggling over Rs 10, someone was painting the road red with his spit, and some people were working to clean the mess left by others on the road. A pretty Sisyphean task, if you ask me. So is our life to some extent. That's for another blog, but forgive me for digressing.

My point with this wasn't to highlight privilege, class divide, social problems, etc at all. It's just anytime a thinking man steps out into any city and tries to observe, it comes naturally to him; he'll find these instances that find their place on both sides of the social scale-balance. Somewhere, he'll observe the gutter mentality of our people, and at other places, he'll see something that'll make him trust in human virtues once more. Although this has become increasingly hard to come by. I don't know whether it's money, or power, or the fact that we are just venal by design, that leads to such bad treatment of others. I had a very interesting conversation regarding this with Suvro Sir on New Year's Eve, and then saw it happen right in front of me a few days later. The call was probably the best discussion I've had with someone in a very long time.

I hope more of us behave better, treat others better and show a little bit of kindness. 
I'll end this post here.

Now, recommendations!

Book: The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Song: Donna by Ritchie Valens
Movie: Jalsaghar by Satyajit Ray


P.S. Another thing that doesn't cost a lot of money or fortune is commenting on blogs. Hope to see more of my readers share their views openly. You don't have to agree with what I say. In fact, I'd very much like counterarguments and a spirited discussion!

Also, the weather is much clearer in my part of the town now. The fog and haze are gone. The days are clear, and at night too. I can see the shimmering city lights from my balcony much better these days. Living next to a forest has its perks. 

New Year, New Rant.

It's that time of the year when we all struggle a little while writing the date. For those in a hurry, scribbling the 5 to write 6 would be a preferable choice. Those with an artistic inclination summon all their skills in geometry, symmetry and art to try to morph the 5 into a 6. The latter is rather useful for bank or government forms. Anyway, like most things, writing the date becomes a habit. 

It is also that time of the year when people are the most motivated. From my balcony, I saw the largest crowd of morning walk enthusiasts walking briskly through the fog with loud 'Goooood Mornniiing' and 'Haaapy New Yaaaar' greetings to each other. How many of them later went to relish hot kochuris,vada ghughni, aloo chop, is something I do not know. Since we're all slaves to our habits, I reckon the self-proclaimed nutritionist of the walking group would have said something along the lines of, 'One samosa or Aloo Chop doesn't harm the body. After all, enaargy is needed na!', and then they would have descended on the telebhaja cart to help him with his bohni(the day's first sale, similar to handsel).
Despite their archaic mindset, the newly retired generation in India is having the time of their life, having retired in what I call the 'golden moment'.
More on this and their little laughter club will be shared in a later post. 

I have given up on the idea of New Year's Resolutions altogether. My philosophy is simple: Anyone genuinely interested in changing or adopting good habits and wanting to let go of bad ones wouldn't have to wait for a special day. Therefore, if I need to improve myself, I should be able to work on it whenever I want. Regardless, I am interested in learning about the resolutions of my readers. So, don't disappoint me and feel free to comment about the changes you wish to adopt from today.

Finally, coming to the rant. Each year, right after the New Year parties across various cities, some visuals emerge that I find distressing. Young boys and girls are barely able to walk under the influence of alcohol and whatnot. Some pass out on footpaths, on the streets, get into fights, or just engage in rowdyism. Most of them, judging by their looks, seem to be literate and engaged in the formal workforce of the country. While I am in no way against celebration, parties, drinking or other forms of enjoyment, I fail to understand what joy one gets out of completely losing all sense of self under the influence of intoxicants. Personally, I have never been a fan of such things and will continue to hold this view. 

One thing you may expect from all posts starting with this one is a song or a movie recommendation(or both)! I generally prefer (old) country music, some ghazals, instrumentals and some songs by KK.
The songs may or may not have any connection with the posts. Same with the movies.
Also, I'll be spending some considerable time editing my posts too. From the next one, of course! :)

Until the next post, I wish you all well. Live, Laugh and Enjoy!

Song: To Take....To Hold
Movie: Perfect Days(2023). I watched it yesterday. It's like a poem, and the scenes are its rhyming scheme. I liked it.

A whole lot of nothing

 Today, like most days, I have been letting my thoughts go wherever they please. They’ve been running up and down the hills and valleys of old memories and new, frolicking about the gardens of happy thoughts and meandering, with a sunken head, through the bog of regrets, failures and missed chances.

For people familiar with my writing, and me as a person, it wouldn’t take them long to guess that it’s been a rainy day today. It came as a respite from the brutal, sticky, humid weather I’ve had to endure over the last 4 to 5 days.
I love the monsoons, and I feel happy when it rains.

Coming back to the title. It is a fitting heading for what has happened over the last few days.
The same boring routine. I also suspect there may be a pattern involved in what I have for lunch on any given day of the week. Additionally, the neighbours living upstairs make a lot of noise and continue to be a nightmare to live with. One good thing about living on the floor below them is that I’ve learnt to get over my anger issues. Can’t go about punching people, right? Relax, dear reader, I would do no such thing.
Also, my hate for pigeons now overwhelmingly exceeds my fear of dogs. I can already sense you judging me. Go on, then. Judge away.
But why are there so many of them? All they do is multiply, replace better birds and crap about the entire place. My hate isn’t without reason or justified cause. I’ve had to wash the same set of clothes two times now because they’ve decided that my shirts are a better place for them to relieve themselves than trees or open fields, or the cars parked wrongly on the street.

I guess, judging by the nature of the complaints, you can tell how boring the last few days have been. One good thing has been that I have started
watching Suits recently. The show has been good so far. But it doesn't beat the sense of warmth and comfort that I get from watching the old Feluda films by both of the Rays. Quite recently, I discovered a really simple set of telefilms directed by Sandip Ray titled 'Satyajiter Priyo Golpo', and I enjoyed it without a doubt. Surely, I will be watching them repeatedly.

I suppose I will end the rant here. Thank you for being a patient audience to my outburst.

Dear reader, what’s going on with you these days? Have you got any complaints or rants? Feel free to drop’em in the comments.

Thanks for stopping by, stranger.

Best.

All the things I’ve wanted to be

 [originally written on July 22, 2025]

My recent train journey, a part of which has been documented in my previous post, brought back a lot of memories.
Travelling with my parents and brother, eating homemade food, the anticipation of meeting my maternal grandparents and cousins on my mother’s side and not having to use so much sanitiser (COVID screwed my brain) etc. In fact, none at all. My grandparents' home was my happy place. It remained so until they moved closer to a city/town due to grandpa’s health issues. I only have happy memories of that place, and whenever I search for it on Google Maps and browse over its current state with the street view option, I can’t help but feel sad about its current state. Nobody lives there anymore, but anyone who’d visited that place when all of us used to be there would tell you about the happy times that place was a witness to. One day, if life permits, I would like to retire in such a place. 

Another funny memory about train travel was my fascination with the life of the attendant. That man was responsible for handing out clean linen, bedsheets and towels and then collecting them whenever someone new boarded the train. He was also the person who’d be asked by the 70-odd people travelling in one bogie/compartment to repeatedly fiddle with the AC temperature. Some would want the compartment completely chilled, while others would like it relatively warm. Poor fellow never had a moment of rest while responding to such requests.

However, the attendant’s life always surprised me, and I was fascinated by the nature of their work. Naturally, for a child, fascination with any profession leads to them choosing that as their future career. And I was no stranger to this emotion. So, during one such travel, while I sat between my parents, who were serving lunch to me and my brother on paper plates, and also sharing some with our co-passengers, I was asked a question by a middle-aged uncle sitting in front of me.
Now, one thing you must note is that in India, a middle-aged uncle who is particularly fond of loud burps and listening to scandalous bits of media with his phone’s volume turned to maximum is a ubiquitous scene in trains, buses, metros, etc. They make their presence felt in all modes of public transport and are curious by nature about the careers and political views of anyone travelling with them.

One, belonging to this species, asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
Without thinking much, as I was too focused on finishing the chips packet I had in my hands, I muttered the words ‘Train Coach Attendant’. This probably threw the Uncle off guard, as he didn’t ask any further questions and went back to heated political discussions with another passenger. How could he respond to that? He probably expected me to say doctor, engineer or a bureaucrat or something similar. And to that, he would've boasted about how his sister’s brother-in-law’s uncle’s daughter’s son is studying at an IIT and that I need to work hard. I probably stole his thunder by saying something so ‘low-class’. Anyways, good riddance, I thought. My brother was giggling through this entire thing.

But from the corner of my eye, I had noticed my parents staring at me. My mother had stopped counting the pooris in the casserole, with a smile that she failed to hide, and my father, too, had a slight smile. What followed was a 15-minute lesson on how difficult their lives were and how people never treated the attendants with any respect. To my point that I would get to travel all the time on trains, I was told that I could travel without becoming an attendant. This was my short tryst with being a train attendant.
Quite honestly, my parents were right. In a country like ours, where labour isn’t treated with adequate respect, jobs like that never have happy workers. Plus, I loved science a tad too much to leave it for anything else.

Another thing that I still maintain that I’ll become one day is a milkman and own a dairy farm.
Why? Well, because I like milk, curd, cheese, butter and everything associated with milk. I also plan to open a shop that sells Bengali sweets so that I can have them whenever I wish. This could a profession I take up in preparation for my retirement.

Finally, one that cracked up my entire family. Once, I was crying over something my mother said(okay, I was in my teens and boys do cry at times), and my father and brother decided that they would tease me over it while I was still wiping my tears. Over the course of the conversation, when I was told that scientists don’t cry because what if tears fall into their apparatus, I told the 3 of them- ‘I won’t become a scientist. I will become a thinker.’ They paused for a moment and asked me, ‘What do you mean?’. I told them, in all innocence, that I would sit and think! You should have seen the laughter that followed as my mother, unable to control her laugh, gave me a hug.

There were more things I wanted to be and still do. All from simple innocence, I guess. Some of them are a dairy farmer and shop owner, a sweet shop owner and a writer.  

Tell me, dear reader, what quirky profession did you choose as a kid?

Waiting for your comments.

Thanks for dropping by!

Best.

P.S. Don’t hesitate to point out grammatical or typographical errors.

Birthday, Travel and nothing much really

 [written originally on July 19, 2025]

I turned a year older and took another trip around the Sun.
I am supposed to be older and wiser, but I am none of those yet.
Also, I am supposed to make more friends and meet more people and socialise more. That’s what my mother says. Sadly, I am no longer that obedient.
I recently came across a post on a social media platform that mentioned how Immanuel Kant lived a fairly uneventful life, spending his entire life in his hometown and never marrying. Other than the fact that I have no hometown, or designate any town as such, and that I have lived in different places throughout my life, I think our lives match quite a bit. Except, I am no philosopher.

Also, I got to travel a bit after more than a year and also took a train after 3 long years. During both journeys, I spoke a lot to my co-passengers and also finished reading a poetry book and a short story by Gogol!
(I would highly recommend reading ‘The Nose’ by Gogol)

Other than that, nothing remarkable has happened since I last shared something with the few readers I have here. I originally wanted to write about what I observed during my train journeys but I think I’ll reserve it for some other day.

Also, gotta rant about the horrible weather. It’s hot and humid and I have a refrigerator to clean. As it was switched off for more than a week, some mould has developed inside it, and it doesn't smell very pleasant. Tomorrow is going to be a long day of cleaning.
So, send your prayers and best wishes!

Finally, dear readers, what do you want me to write about? What new topics?
I await your responses.

Thank you for stopping by! Have a wonderful time ahead!

Best.

P.S. Forgive any typos and grammatical errors. I wrote this while on the train on my phone in between countless debates and discussions with my co-passengers.