Notes from wherever I happen to be
Saturday, October 08, 2022
A suitably (heavy) book
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
A library closed down
My book haul! Usually a thing of enormous delight. Not so this time.
Ekta library bondho hoi gelo. Aar kichu diner modhe, the owner D.P George will pull down the shutters to this tiny one room library and leave Kolkata forever for his native Kerala. A combination of reasons. Primarily, not many patrons for libraries now a days. Well times, they are a changing.
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Anandamela & Anand Bazar Patrika Puja Barshikis arrived together a week back, heralding the advent of Maa Durga!
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay has a story in both. I am more familiar with his bucolic sagas in Anadamela with 100s of characters each with separate stories all coming together in a madcap, side splitting way. Hirangarer Byapar Syapar promises to be the usual laugh riot set in a village with an ensemble cast. On the other hand is the curiously titled “Amake Biye Korben?” (Will you marry me?) in AB Patrika, for an older audience.
I settled for the latter for my bedtime reading. The opening sentence didn’t read very romantic. More like a crime thriller. Curious. Suspicions confirmed a few lines down. Shabor bench e boshlen. Detective Shabor Dasgputa of Lal Bazar!!
Whaaaaaaat? A new Shabor Story? Hurrah. Then a new film
in the offing.
Story wasn’t too great. Hirangar should be more fun.
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
2 cakes, 1 Birthday and 1 New Year
R baked my favorite apple cinnamon upside-down cake on my birthday eve. Pater, Mater and perhaps sis were expecting I’d cut my cake soon. I desisted. Birthday cake must always be cut on one’s birthday. And at a decent hour. Not at midnight for the middle of the night social media pix / fix! Which anyhow, rest of the world would see the next day.
Next morning, or on my birthday, I cut the cake after our (R’s, ma’s, and mine) morning cup(s) of tea. Conversation flowed like it does every morning, about this and that and menu for the day. Suddenly ma sang out “Happy birthday to you” and just as sudden went back to conversing with R.
A couple of hours later, ma asked me to get some dhania pata from the fridge. I told her that it was already in the kitchen. She then asked me to get something else out, which too was already in the kitchen. She seemed to think of something else and then laughed. Open the fridge. Your cake. What cake? Its already on the table. While I was in my room doing yoga, a white forest cake was delivered, which R had to receive and then hide it in the fridge. Now I had 2 cakes. Felt for R. All her plans to surprise me, bheste gelo!
In the middle of it all, Baba came out of his room, saw me and said “Happy new year”. Bojho! Seeing the look on my face, he said, “New year, for you".
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
A 100 years from today
Sunday, May 03, 2020
The Bagdi Meye
I came across these lines in the marvellous, poignant "Daughters of Jorasanko" by Aruna Chakravarti. I had bought this book couple of years ago but reading it only now, housebound as I am, in the LOCKDOWN. Just as well because any earlier, I wouldnt have known what Bagdi was. At best I'd have thought it to have been a surname.
Thanks to a wonderful gift by a generous friend, I now know better. I am the proud owner of a Pot Chitro of "Bagdi Meye" by the Late Shantanu Potua, fishing in their traditional way!