glitches in bonding the universal sisterhood...

As International Women's day is approaching, the news paper's will be soon filled up with articles on victories of women overcoming the atrocities inflicted upon them by men. Dolled up heroins of Bollywood will say coyly in front of the camera that they are 'proud to be born as a woman'. Various channels will telecast ' Women's achievement awards' where girls during intervals will be prancing and dancing around on stage in skimpy clothes. So i was thinking hard that every year after reading the accounts of  male-operated atrocities and relative statistics on women in newspapers on this very day filled me ( and i am sure there are girls like me many out there)  with temporary dread and fury ( temporary cause after going through the 'Entertainment' section where hotties like John Abraham or Sashi Tharoor or Saif Ali Khan recalls the value of Women in their lives and thank and showers praises and love on their lady loves in the Women's day special column, we promptly change our mind from " All men are same" to " There are still some good men in the world" ) However, as all these random thoughts were passing in my mind, i realized suddenly that though i don't get along with men in general , i dislike women more than that and it's a intentional generalization. 

Then i promptly categorize the behaviors from women whom i meet with in my everyday life which triggered thus feeling though i ,myself. is guilty as charged with my many woman-isque follies but list them down is fun :-

• The" Looking like dagger" type : - I cross paths with them everyday, in malls. buses, restaurants everywhere. The minute another woman sits at the seat next to them or near them, this particular type starts sizing up the new entree from head-to-toe with a eyes like daggers. They   scrutinize your hair, make up, clothes, shoes, are you prettier than them, are you fattier than them, checking on the colors of your nail polish - and if they are a girl-gang they will whisper among themselves and giggle stupidly and you will be fully aware that you are the unlucky prey of their merriment.
• The " When are you....?" type :- Mostly they belong to your school-college friend groups or your  long-time-no-see cousins or aunts who surface suddenly to pin you with their inquiries like " When are you getting married?your parents are getting old, na..", "when are you having kids?now your time is running out' , "when are you losing some weights as you have put on so much?gosh, you are quite unrecognizable". They are full of questions and curiosities like a 5 year-old  child trapped in a bloated body.
• The " Don't eat my man you bitch" type :- I have found them generally in autos or multi-plexes. Suppose you go there alone, the seat next to you is occupied by a man and next to him is her gf / wife. The moment the gf / wife woman saw that you are sitting in a close proximity to their man, they will whisper something to that fellow's ear, and the fellow with a  face like a sacrificial lamb swap your next seat with his gf / wife woman. It happened with me few times and i don't know if others have faced similar kind of scene but i felt as if i am female anaconda who will  gobble up their 'george clooney'-isque bf / husband men.
• The " Les miserables" type :- They are eternally wretched ( and astonishingly, most of the time they are married). The moment you ask them as innocent as something " How are you?", they will you fill you each and every details of their everyday, miserable lives and what making their lives miserable and how sad they are and how unwell they are actually physically but they pretend that they are fine cause they have so many duties to do and how they don't have the time to look after themselves and their kids are eating up all the time and they have lost the zeal to work and they are just dragging on and bla bla bla. And the moment you are toying in your mind the idea of sputtering few words of sympathy to your sister from another mother for the sake of universal sisterhood, they will ask you something as basic as " So,When are you getting married ? you know time is running out and you are already XYZ" and you start suspecting that whether they are willingly tryin to drag you into the pit they are already in or they want some fellow traveler while going towards the road to hell.

Film review : An Education

As i got my new-found love for Hollywood Cinema recently, i am downloading movies left, right and center. The flick i finished watching yesterday is called " An Education". As i depend upon IMDB ratings immensely on choosing which movie to download, "An Education" having a higher point was on my radar for sometime now.

 Premise :-It's story set in 60's London. A  studious high school girl from a middle class, hardworking, conservative background fell for a much older man who is in some kind of shady art dealing and real estate business. Whether she dumped her father's dream of her joining Oxford after high school and get hitched with her lover or she went for pursuing her education- is the puzzle that unfolds at the end.

High points :- 

1. In the role of protagonist "Jenny", Carey Mulligan is a scene to behold. In many scenes, she resembled to me 'Audrey Hepburn'. With her shy demeanor, strong personality and emotive expressions-  she shines through the film.

2. The actors who played the roles of her parents (Cara Seymour & Alfred Molina, and i suspect i have seen the latter in some "Spider man" movie) are very strong character actors and depicted the role of a set of middle- class parents who are trapped in their boredom and angst of living a ho-hum life and constantly fearing the same future for their only daughter, and thus pushing her strong for pursuing a good education or rich husband.

3. The cinematography of the movie is awesome, creating the 60's vibe of London. It's dreamy and real in both account.

4. The strong supporting cast in Jenny's friends ( specially the boy who played "Graham" ), her literature teacher Miss Stubbs ( Olivia Williams) and school principal (latter a memorable cameo, played by Emma Thompson).

5. Rosamund Pike who played "Helen "- a wannabe, shallow trophy wife and thus portrayed it to a T.

Low points :- 

1.The hero seemed to me quite irritating. He tried his best to excel in his role of a masked, smooth-talker philanderer but somehow i felt that he lacked the zing needed to portray this particular type on screen. He rather appeared to me a dreamy fella who would have been a poet or an artist chased by a school girl.

 2. His mousy (in terms of looks in the film) friend Danny (Dominic Cooper) who is good intentional but appeared differently altogether.He looked somewhat light in personality from the beginning then suddenly turn into a good Samaritan.His change seemed abrupt and forced.

  3.The length of the movie is medium but sometimes some scenes are just languishing and slow-paced.They could have been crisp.

Best Moments :

• According to me, the best scene of the movie was when Jenny was confronted by her principal on her choice of not taking exam and instead of getting married. This scene beautifully depicted the question of futility of conventional education system, one's right of choosing her own way of life, the confusion of every girl of every generation of whether to put their brains above their hearts or other way around.

•  When Jenny confronted with her parents nearing the end of the movie, on why they didn't stop her earlier on leaving her school and rather supported her clumsy decision to get married with a rich stranger and her father,in reply, expressed the universal crisis of a middle class father- to ensuring his child  have a better life than him and during this process if he appears as selfish or megalomaniac or stingy or opportunist- it's all because of the singular fright that my child won't end in the same pit where i am now.

•  The shot before the last scene was also beautifully etched. On getting the news that she got an admission in Oxford, Jenny sat at the bottom of the staircase to digest the surprise. The happiness, the melancholy and the hope taking form again in front of her eyes- all of these emotions playing at the same time on her innocent face- made it truly remarkable.

Overall, "An Education" is a decent movie with share of it's pitfalls and it's strictly one time watch for me but again this is only my personal take on the film and i believe there are many who will find it more spectacular and worth repeat viewing.

3 mistakes of my dislike !

As 2013 is already in it's full swing and marching ahead , i wish there are few (negative) trends which i happened to see around in the last year and the year before,may die a quick death this year -

1. 'Mobile-holic' bikers : This is one of the most irritating views these days in the busy lanes of the city, when a man on a bike, zooms around with the cell phone squeezed between his left/right ear and shoulder respectively. 

                                                        The first time i witnessed such a sight, i thought the poor man must be suffering from Spondylitis till i discovered a tiny square thingy between his left ear and shoulder.
                                                                   This year I pray that they should take a magic potion or they have a sudden epiphany which forces them to leave this habit ASAP and spare us pedestrians mainly!


2. The battle for "khuchro" : 
                                         It's like an epidemic in Kolkata ( as i don't know about other cities for sure ) where every other auto rickshaw- walas demand for 'khuchro' or change in terms of fare and if you hand them over a note, almost begging that you don't have 'khuchro', they will start scolding you like your parents. " othar aage bolte parten na? " or " eto khucro kothay pabo dada/didi?"

                                                 .Only god knows whether all the mints of  West Bengal have stopped coining coins or if they do then where do they go? And this is not only the problem of autos, even bus-walas, grocery-walas, and horror-of-the-horrors retail giants like 'Spencer's Retail' or 'Big Bazar' bug you for khuchros!

3. The beauty (products marketing!) myth :

4 out of 5 times when i visit a beauty parlor or a cosmetic store, the girl-attendant out there ( in almost all the cases they are female but last time i have an unique incident of meeting a male sales-attendant who was trying to faultfinding with my feminineness, keeping aside his machismo .Sigh!) ) first scrutinizes my face and then bug me with almost-hurting lines like " ma'am,you have wrinkles on ur forehead ,use XYZ cream" or " your hair is so dry and frizzy , u must avail of our ZYX hair treatment service" or "you have acne / pigmentation/ stretchmarks/dandruff and all the other defects of the world, so you must...." . 

May be it's their marketing strategy to push customers in buying products but being a bad student of  marketing i failed to see how come it can be a successful selling trick when you are actually making the customer feel bad about herself. 

Then there are another breed of sales-attendants in shopping malls who follow you wherever you o for browsing and then look at you with eyes full of expectations like lovelorn pets and if you don't buy the product their facial expression changes immediately and they discard your companion like torn napkins. It actually hurts the ego of shoppers like me who- browse- a- lot -but- buy- so- less. 
                                                                    Hope they too can leave us alone !

us 

The Wonderful Memories of “Mangsher Jhol” at Sundays in a bong’s mundane life…

Today as I returned to my all-girls’ paid accommodation before lunchtime, the weather was hot and humid outside and I was feeling extremely unwashed and stinky. Moreover, I caught cold and having a little bit of sore throat so I decided that it is going to be my feeling –blue day from hereafter. But then I remembered that today is Sunday and my “home delivery” kaku will be serving chicken with rice as Sunday-special menu and this very thought instantly lit up my mind. Though what he serves at every Sunday is what can best be called as remnants of chicken with mandatory 1 piece of aloo, floating in insipid “Jhol” or broth but when we (i.e. all my mess-mates including me) put it into mouth with hot rice, it tastes like something out-of-this-world. All the girls here starve themselves off from Sunday morning to hog it up later during noon.

                                                                So this same thought led to me thinking the quintessential role “manghser jhol” has played to shape up the lives of Bengalis across the country or I can say beyond- boundaries during Sundays, over the years. Well, I can perfectly remember what it did to my sister and me when we were mere Childs. Our household is devoid of mutton for years for the sake of health fad. So in every Sunday morning, when Baba came from bazaar, declaring loudly the ample quantity of chicken he had brought so that it can cover up for both lunch and dinner for that day, with a hint of pride in his tone- it used to make me very happy.

While Didi was considerably big girl then (at least from my point of view), I later asked her what she used to think of eating chicken with rice during her childhood (and before I was born) at Sundays. She assured me by saying that she just felt the same and it was a mini celebration in the house on weekly basis by having steaming rice with chicken curry, followed by a glassful of thumbs-up for ma,baba and didi each.

 Anyways, looking back to my childhood days, when after much anticipation, ma served us with hot rice, followd by shukto (that was almost mandatory) daal, some form of bhaja and then “mangsher jhol”- cooked in simple, traditional Bengali gastronomy which our mothers-and-aunts habituated to cook for years with lots of onions, garlic, and grin chilies – it seemed like a masterpiece in itself in my otherwise bhat-machher jhol fed taste bud during weekdays. The chicken legs were and still are meant for us two sisters to eat. We have coaxed our parents to have the leg pieces many a times for a change but according to them those are the best parts of meat in the body of a chicken so the minors of the house deserve them. Such an unselfish gesture which only parents can offer because I am crazy about chicken legs – be it cooked in Biriyani or curry and I am very doubtful about my ability that whether I would be able share them with anybody- well even with my kids (err… maybe I should buy two chicken so everybody in the home can have one leg each)..

                                       Well, back to today- as I was having my stingy chicken-rice meal and it was raining outside, I was deeply pondering over the importance of “Robibarer mangsher jhol-bhat”( be it chicken or for the serious meat eaters -“only mutton” )in Bengali families and its effects on generations for years. It’s almost symbolic to other cult characteristics of Bengali way of life, like- “Mohisasurmordini” in Mohaloya , new clothes during Durgapujo, the wait for next issue of Anondomela, taking smells from the pages of our new set of books when we got promoted in the next class- hmm…Life is not that bad actually.

P.S. - As I don’t know how to cook so there is no way I can share the recipe of manghser jhol with appetizing photos here in the blog as it would have been the norm. But I promised to myself that whenever I learn cooking (hoping that would be soon. I mean I will try to make it happen soon or else it will be included in my next year resolution list) I will make this dish first and foremost along with finding out how to boil rice.

3 lessons learnt by a "Titanic"ed buff..

Come Thursday and Indian fans will flock to the theaters surely to watch "Titanic" in 3D. I believe there is a whole generation in India who got their first lesson in love from this cult epic. From the forbidden excitement of making love to feel the agony of lost love- Titanic was the sole institution- the school- the bible, whatever one may name it for people like me who were in their adolescent when the movie got released in 1997. Ours was truly a "Titanic"ed gen.Followings are the 3things I learnt from Titanic -

1. A kiss to remember : When Jack -n-Rose locked their lips, it felt like time stood still forever. I saw the movie for the first time with my mother in the cinema hall and when the scene came both of us cleared our respective throats and fidgeted a little ( may be we are the last generation who still feels uneasy in seeing intimate scenes on screen before parents! ) in our seats but amidst all these uneasiness, the image of lip-locked Jack-n-Rose on the deck, the sun was setting behind them,leaving the sky crimson red- etched into my mind forever. And there i felt the significance and beauty of sharing the first kiss with the person who deserves it truly (even if after that, we share our 2nd,3rd and then subsequent kisses with less worthy candidates accidentally or incidentally!!!)

2. Nudity in Cinema : Before that, i never imagined that someone can go au naturel on-screen. Well, but till then i had only seen Sridevi and Ravina Tandon dancing in a wet saree, shaking off their booties provocatively or Simi Grewal changing her unmentionables in " Mera naam Joker" or Zeenat Aman left very little to imagination in " Satyam Shivam Sundaram" ( as i was and am still a hindi movie buff ,and i had no hint beforehand that Hollywood can go such far ! ) Though i must say Kate Winslet looked so ethereally beautiful in that scene and throughout the movie, that even my puritan mother who doesn't approve such "inappropriate scenes" on screen, still recalls her praise fully.

3. My heart will go on : This iconic song had such impact on my mind ( and on millions of girls like me all over the country! ) that i took the pain to cram the lyrics and sing it proudly before my awestruck classmates. Before Titanic i was in no habit of listening to English songs leaving alone remembering their lyrics but after watching the movie, i promptly bought a pair of cassettes named "100 of all time hits" which contains songs and respective lyrics of 100 hit filmy songs from Hollywood the songs and it had this bird call by Celine Dion in it. So in a way, Titanic taught me how to sing the first ever English song of my life.

There are numerous other facts, experiences, memories i can fondly associate with the movie but I rest my case here. I guess in the history of world cinema, there were very few movies came which had been welcomed by the spectators world wide irrespective of their nationality, culture, language, level of education, social strata and so on. I had seen our own housemaid gone to cinema to watch Titanic and then discussing about it happily to us, to narrate her experience of seeing first ever English "pikchar" of her life, though she couldn't write her name in hindi, forget about english. I have read in Khaled Hosseini's book " A Thousands of Splendid Suns" that even in war-ravaged afghanistan , people flocked to cinema halls to see titanic dubbed in pushtu (?) or whatever is their national language and liked it very much though theirs is an orthodox society.

Here lies the beauty of Titanic. Even after 15 years, when it is going to release for the 2nd time (in 3D), i believe people will appreciate it again. It is as timeless as love.Though a section of cine-pundits or "intellectual movie-buff" found many a faults in the movie but again some says falling in love is also a mistake in itself.

5 things I hate about my childhood..

Once in a while, many of my Facebook friends keep posting the line "missing my childhood days" as their status message- I guess the reason behind this could be various, ranging from pressure-in-the-office to dumping-by-partner to back stabbed by friends-colleagues etc., only then can they realize about the patheticness of our collective miserable lives.But i must say that this is an occasional phenomenon (updating this status message) other time they are too busy uploading feverishly the pictures of their recently bought mobile-camera-ipod-car-bike, Sunday brunch,grumpy parents,trip to Digha-Puri-Darjeeling-New York (the latter for the more fortunate mortals among us )PDA with bf-gf and what not.

It made me think over some not-so-memorable factors about my childhood days which i don't miss anymore...

1. Private Tuition : The name says it all.It was nothing less than an epidemic.I am not sure the situation now but in our time, the most important man in our lives was our private tutor (or should i say men? in our town the female teachers in school didn't give tuition for some unknown reason so it was practically a male-dominated field); not our father,brother or new-found boyfriend. Students and their parents used to have sleepless nights on which tutor should be approached or for that matter how many even for one subject.Many of my friends had two or three teachers per subject (but strictly one or none for Bengali and English). Those who were less cerebral , they used to go to the dada-and-didis of the para (who were more pocket friendly and less ego-maniac ).Till class 10 the situation was somehow under control.But after that, it was a mad circus almost.There were so many categories for private tutors (and i am mentioning this only for science stream, didn't know much about arts or commerce)- those who give tuition for JEE and those who not.Those who give tuition for WBJEE , didn't give that for IIT or other engg entrance exams.For medical, there were some for state level medical exam, there were others for national level.Apart from them, some used to teach only in Bengali, some in English, some in both and they were always on- their- toes to find fault with the teaching method of the others.They had unbelievable timings,hefty fees, undecipherable pronunciations,unnerving egos and indispensable presence.

2. Mathematics : The less is said about it,the better.It gave me sleepless nights, countless nausea, tearful morning, frantic evenings and many more.But in our time, if one said the he or she is poor in maths or something like that, that person would be damned,doomed,cursed, ostracized etc. etc. Parents and teachers gave such dirty looks as he/she is caught red-handed for having illegal sex. But as i am grown up right now (at least bodily), i feel it's cool and liberating to say that i hate maths (even Farhan Akhtar had admitted it too).

So YES I HATE MATHS BUT I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE ! :)

3. Arts -and-Science : This world is divided on so many factors; Black-and-white, good-and-bad,curves-and-size zero, we-and-they but during our childhood days, the biggest division was among those-who-love-arts and those-who-love-science.The former group got such labels; if a boy took up humanities then he was labelled as" boro hoye kerani hobe noy to school master ar ki" and if the hapless person was a girl then "meye manush r oto science pore ki hobe,oto mathay nite parbe na".Even the science public had their own category too.If he or she was planning to go for general stream in college i.e. bachelor degree in Science then they are the 2nd class citizen in the sacred universe of science.If the cerebral genius was eyeing for JEE then he or she was one-ruling-lord-to-be-worshiped-in-a-pedestal by us-the less fortunate mortals (who neither love science,nor hate arts but took up the former as "father said so and mother nagged so and bubbly didi or bubai dada of some distant relative's offspring did so")

4.Horror of the horrors : I am meaning those sad-soppy-heart-wrenching-gut-churning stories which filled the front pages of the newspaper every time of the year when the results of secondary and higher secondary published.It was bad enough for backbenchers to see those chubby-cheeked, bespectacled ,utterly- disinterested- to -the- world- looking rank holders' photographs with their proud parents-grand parents-neighbours-dogs-cats on the front page (the most popular pose was mother-stuffing-rosogolla-into-the-mouth-of-the-first boy/girl and he/she-is-looking-helplessly-to-the-camera as if rakhi sawant is caught in the camera without her undies) and horror of the horrors was the story which featured how a poor man's boy/girl fared **.*% even he or she didn't have books, private tutors etc. etc. Now i am not against these,They were truly deserving candidates to occupy front pages but what followed was a scornful look from my father as he declared vehemently to my mother "Dekhechho, rickshawalla-r chhele ki koreche r amaderta ke dekho" and i ducked my head in shame (again i am not the only one).

5. No country for curvy women : In recent time, curve is a craze.Men drool and fantasize over Vidya Balan's curves in Dirty Picture promos. Je Lo's butt got insured.Bipasha Basu piled up silicons on her "assets".But back then, curves were synonymous to fatty, big butts were labelled as "ki boro *****" and rest of the comments were censored.So girls like me who were in the wrong side of size "M" were subjected to bullying among peers, lectures from teachers on dieting and all, admonishing from kakimas-and-pishimas on "shorir komano" and heart-breaks from the boys-on-whom-we-had-crush coz they used to give rides to miss skinnies on their bikes.

And i believe this right now is a fantastic time to be yourself, to celebrate and being unapologetic about your body.

And i certainly don't miss these factors of my childhood diaries.

My Independent Moments

My Independent Moments

There are few incidents in my life which can be defined as my little, precious, independent moments. On the eve of 64^th Independence Day of our nation, I thought I should re-visit there of the most important times in my life when i felt senses-of-freedom :-

1. Because you’re worth it: - I used to watch the ads of L'Oreal Paris with kind of awe, when they first aired in TVs. With all those firang babes in their shimmering gown, milky complexion and silky hair- looked like goddesses in my juvenile eyes. It was hard to believe that something-as glossy and sassy as a branded shampoo ( it is claimed to be used by Hollywood stars) would leap into our middle class household’s way by any means possible- back that time. So when for the first time my sister gifted me a L’Oreal shampoo+ conditioner with her first salary, I felt kind of sense of elation(elation from my sister’s achievement-the feeling came out from the deep rooted bonding of universal sisterhood or women financial liberation or any such gigantic terms) and freedom ( freedom from middle-class shampoo brands!).

2. A kiss to remember: - In our childhood days, any interesting and important word which starts from “S”- was a taboo to utter in our houses. We discussed it in hush-hush tones behind our school-desks, left the TV screen at once in the presence of elders, when Amir Khan smooched Karisma Kapur as there-would-be-no-tomorrow manner in “Raja Hindusthani”, cringed in the movie hall seat when rose kissed jack in “Titanic” (not by the visual impacts it did on our minds and vision but by the whistles and taalis by fellow hoodlums of an audience) and savoured hungrily every words which other lucky girls in the school who had boyfriends told us about their daring love-acts. So till now it was a shameful thing and a forbidden fruit. But in standard 8, i read “Nau hannayate”- a famous semi-autobiographical novel by Maitreyi Devi in Bengali.It was a saga of a love-lorn couple-Maitreyi and her first love,an European hunk called Mircea, who met-separated-again met in a heart-breaking manner. The book is one of my favourites till date-and the way the first kiss between Maitreyi and Mircea is depicted in the book-all hushed-up and embarrassing feelings gone and kissing became a moment of treasure between two right kind of people at right times. And it was a tiny step towards my freedom of understanding the otherwise socially-tabooed topics with my own judgement.

3. Waistland :- It’s a story of my waist which from shameful early-mid 40 inches became mid-30s (it’s fluctuating always)after much trials and tribulations.To cut a long- story –short,i got rid of tailor-made salwars (‘cause “Plus” size was not such an in-thing during our school-college days for “Plus sized” ladies like me) and now i am a little bit of hopeful that after knocking off another few kilos, i would be able strut in Rio De Janeiro beach in polka dotted bikinis (if budget doesn't permit, then pattaya beach would do)-As Donald Trump said “If you dream anyway,dream big” or something like that.