few snaps I took with my new phone during my stay at the village home

                                         This is my late grandfather's sister. Till a few years back

                                          she used to stay in Delhi and beg. Today she is mentally

                                         unbalanced.

  A view of the forest in front of our village across a swath  of verdant  of paddy fields. In the past there used to be much trouble between the villagers and the police involving illegal felling of trees which are mostly eucalyptus.

Goutam,my nephew. However in our home everyone calls him by the name Prosenjeet.

our neighbour whose entire life till now  had been a sorrowful tale of ailments, chiefly related to her gastrointestinal system.

                   Pradip/Banku/Babu. My cousin and  with whom I spend most of my time when I am                         at my village.

                                               our village street in the dying daylight.

                                 My youngest sister Sima with our nephew Ringo.

                                Grandmother and cousins Rima( pink dress) and Papiya.

                                                            Mother with Ringo.

The Ritual

I just finished reading 'The ritual' by Graham Masterton. Going by my previous post you could well imagine I read it on my mobile. It is the most gruesome book I have read till now. It is a good read and the theme of cannibalism only makes it more unputdownable provided the reader has the guts to handle the gruesomeness. The very idea of eating one's own body, deliberately and litlle by little, is enough to give one the creep.

Number of images, of mutilation and flesh and blood, still lay embedded in my mind. There was a girl who had cut and eaten all her limbs and only had a head and a torso wrapped in white bandges, left. The climax scene was exceptionally gory. There in the kitchen while the devotees butchered their own body or what was left of them chefs took the flesh and turned them into delicacies for others to eat.

However,the book has a dissapointing ending. Jesus himself and a somesort of devil appear in the end. That particular developement destroys , to some extent, whatever plausabilty the story line held.

If you can get hold of the book and read it though I should warn you it is not for everyone.

Here is an excerpt:

"At the first table, a young naked girl with long brown hair was sitting up, supported by two blue-shirted Guides, and she was sawing through her own arm at the elbow. Her eyes were fixed and wild-looking. Her teeth were clenched on a hard rubber wedge, to prevent her from biting her tongue. She had cut through the skin and muscle of her upper forearm with a surgical scalpel, and now she was rasping her way through the bones, radius and ulna, bone dust mushing white into her bright leaking blood.
At the next table, a one-armed boy of about twenty was grimacing in concentration as he cut long deep slices of flesh from his calves and his thighs. One leg had already been reduced to the bare bone, and the raw meat of his upper thigh was bound around with a rubber tourniquet to prevent the boy from bleeding to death before he had finished stripping the meat from his other leg. Blood ran along the gutters around the table, and poured darkly down the drains.
One hideous spectacle followed another, eleven of them, and M. Musette tugged Charlie past all eleven. Velma was there, or what was left of Velma. She had sliced off both her breasts, and then cut open her own stomach in an attempt to drag out her liver and her kidneys. "

If you wish you can download it from here

http://rapidshare.com/files/219464388/Graham_Masterton_-_Ritual.rtf.html

http://www.esnips.com/doc/ddba9787-f705-43d6-82fb-f43aa0851544/Graham-Masterton---Ritual

(Open the downloaded file with wordpad)

My new phone

I have bought my first ever mobile. It is a nokia 5800 xpressmusic. At the moment I am completely besotted with it.
It plays fabulous music, has 8gb space for my videos, a great camera, but what I like most is the ebook reader. I am reading all the time. It feels almost like a real book as you read while inclined on the bed or while travelling.

reading books

When I returned home for my summer vacation I made a concious decision. No more computer games this time, I told to myself, why not read some books? Ever since I got myself the computer I had been preoccupied with games. I did not even remember the last time I read a book. Before the computer came things had been so different. I would regularly visit the library and most of my spare time would be spent reading.

I unistalled all the games from my computer, retaining the saves. I have a large collection of ebooks, all in lit format. I started with Hannibal and then in the course of fifteen days I read Kalahari Typing School for Men, Congo, The Camel Club and The Bourne Identity one after another.

The reading made me feel good, like one feel after reuniting with a long lost friend. It also made me enthusiastic enough to resume my writing which I had given up about a year ago.

Return of...

Hello! I am back....after a long long time.
Where had I been all these months leaving my blog languishing in some forgotten corner of the world wide web? Well, firstly I have had my net connection terminated for various reasons ( bad service , pressure from family, me staying from home for most part of the time). And secondly a lack of commitment. I could have easily visited one of those hundreds of cyber cafes nestled within the narrowest of alleys for a few minutes and updated my blog but simply put I was too much preoccupied with my studies. Studying medicine may sound good but to actually go through the process is a gruelling experience. No doubt many will agree with me. And most importantly after making a mess of my first year in the course I was careful not to be on wrong footing again.
Oh yes it feels god to be back! Surely it does.

trying to be a good man

You hear people say and as a school going boy you read in your thin moral science books- Honesty is the greatest virtue. At some point in your life you realize, indeed it is so. The best thing you can do in this mortal life is to maintain your honesty. So you try to be honest, to be known among your folks as an honest man. However there is not honesty alone, there is kindness too. You do not want just to be honest. You also try to be kind. Apart from honesty and kindness there are so many qualities that define a good person and you try to imbibe all of them in your characters; ultimately you want to be one whom people may describe as a good man. As days go by, through every moment you deal in your everyday life your effort is untiring. Then sometimes along the line you stop, turn around, and cast a long look behind you. You ask yourself, how good a person you had been till date? You remember some instances that give you assurance. But at the same time you recall some that disturb you. With a sad feeling you realize, you had not been a very good person after all. And there is a secret or two; imprisoned somewhere deep down within you, which you would never dare to set free. A sigh churns up in your chest and escapes. You take a look around, you look up at the sky once and you set out to try again, to be a good man, knowing well that the moon cannot rub off its black spots but it can surely make them less prominent in the glow of its light.

a face in the crowd

You look out through the window of the crowded train you are traveling in and you suddenly see something on the platform out side that takes you by a pleasant surprise. Tired and surly you hobble along the overflowing sidewalk and suddenly in the sea of sweat smelling people you see it. You get only a glimpse yet that is enough to make you forget your tiredness, even if for a moment. I am talking about a face of a beautiful girl. You see her when you least expect. When you see her you don’t become leery or start fantasising about her. A feeling of well-being fills you. She comes to you as a whip of fresh air among all the unpleasantness that wraps you around. Long after she disappears the feeling the glimpse of her divine beauty stirred in you remain with you and you sense a new spring in your footsteps until she becomes one of the crowd in your stale memory.

exams!......exams!

It has been long since I had posted my last entry.But I had no choice other than keeping any thoughts about updating my blog out of my head, for, it, my head was full with things related with exams. Exams! yes another exam. This was our 1st semester. The whole process took up almost a month and I had no time to visit the cyber cafe( I have put my internet connection on hold; very bad service).Some times these things called exams really put me off. I look back and with amazement I find that I had spent my last fourteen years sitting in exams big and small. Hopefully three years more and I would see last of these exams. But again I may get rid of those particular type of exams whom I fight with a pen and paper, but will I escape exams as a whole? How to face them? Ok let us say we love challenge. It sounds good.

god won't ask

God wont ask what kind of car you drove, but He’ll ask how many you drove who didn’t have transportation. God won’t ask the square footage of your home, but He’ll ask how many people you welcomed into your home. God won’t ask about the clothes you had in your closet, but He’ll ask how many you helped to clothe. God won’t ask about your social status. He will ask what kind you class you displayed.
God won’t ask how much material possession you had, but He will ask if they dictated your life. God won’t ask what your salary was, but He’ll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it. God won’t ask how many promotions you received, but He’ll ask how you promoted others. God won’t ask what your job title was, but He’ll ask if you performed your job to the best of your ability. God won’t ask what you did to help yourself, but He’ll ask what you did to help others. God won’t ask how many friends you had, but He’ll ask how many people to whom you were a friend. God won’t ask what you did to protect your rights, but He’ll ask what you did to protect the rights of others. God won’t ask in what neighborhood you lived, but He’ll ask how you treated your neighbors. God won’t ask about the color of your skin, but He’ll ask about the content of your character. God won’t ask how many times your deeds matched your words, but He’ll ask how many times they didn’t. God won’t ask why it took so long to seek salvation, but He’ll lovingly take you to your mansion in heaven, and not to the gates of Hell. God won’t ask how many people you forwarded this too, but He’ll ask how many people you didn’t because you were too ashamed!

(courtesy :newsletter of Burdwan St.Xavier's School alumni association)

two man two different stories

If you are a frequent traveller on the local trains that start from Howrah station and head out for the suburbs you would certainly not miss them. One day or the other you will come across them. They, these two men, both are blind and yet so much different, different in their attitudes towards their lives that are shrouded in a perpetual cloak of darkness. You, seated in one of those wooden benches, only if you are lucky enough to claim a seat defeating the jostling crowd, munch on nuts you bought for a rupee from one of those many hawkers and wait for the train to roll and this is when you see a blind young man in soiled clothes and a bag slung across his shoulder walk along the aisle, finding his way with the aid of his walking stick, and plead for a coin. His heart-rending pleas would make you, like many others among your co- passengers, reach for your wallet and fish for changes. After he has moved on to the next compartment, you would notice a hawker selling chocolates that he carried in a large transparent plastic bag enter the compartment. Actually at first you would barely notice him but a few passing glances and you would like to take a closer look at him. You would realize that this young man selling chocolates is blind. This unexpected realization makes you happy. The happiness you feel when you see a man go beyond his limitations and do something extraordinary. He could have easily chosen to beg and reap the benefits of sympathy of people who can see the colors of this world. He could have as well sit at home and let his family feed him. Yet he has chosen to do something, which probably none expected him to do. The first man to me is just a poor blind man who begs for living and who needs some pity from all of us. But this second man is a hero to me. I don’t like the kind of chocolates he sells so I have never bought any from him. I don’t want to buy from him out of pity because I feel a hero does not need someone’s pity and perhaps he too does not want any one to show him pity.