Rotten egg #2

My second rotten egg jointly goes to -

1. P. Chidambaram, the Indian Finance Minister, for initially putting a brave face and saying large things when faced questions on what the gov is doing to combat the ongoing economic crisis, but at last throwing the towel in and looking all dejected a day before diwali when the Sensex plunged below 9000.

2. The Indian petroleum ministry. When oil prices at international level were skyrocketing they were quick to respond by raising prices of petroleum products in the country. But now, when the international prices are dipping to an all-time low, their voices can barely be heard.

The Square Root of Three

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three.
A three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath a vicious square-root sign?
I wish instead I were a nine,
For nine could thwart this evil trick
With just some quick arithmetic.
I know I’ll never see the sun.

Such is my reality,
A sad irrationality.
When, hark, just what is this I see?
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square-root signs become unglued,
And love for me has been renewed.

(This beautiful poem appeared in the film ‘Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay’.)

Rotten Egg #1

Ahoy, the journey begins !

My first rotten egg goes to bollywood choreographer (sorry, i can’t call her a film-director) Farah Khan, for her comment about the nomination of Taare Zameen Par in the Oscars as the Indian entry. According to her, her (or rather Shahrukh Khan’s) Om Shanti Om was a better entry and she also guarantees it’d have been placed in the top 5 nominations at least. Yet, (for reasons best known to her and the memetic superstar SRK) they didn’t even send it for the initial selection!

A Six-pack Kartik …

Well, almost …

( proceed at your own risk, coz there are lots of Bengali words interspersed, and you’ve gotta understand them. )

The pujo schedule looked like this …

Saptami and ashtami – Bari,

Nabami – Mamar bari,

Dashami and Ekadoshi – Mashir bari.

I won’t call it my best pujo so far, as the actual reason for the mamar bari visit was the funeral of my mother’s jethima (although it turned sort of a reunion among us, the maternal and mashi-ternal siblings).

Um, you know, pujo is evolving. Before (and by that I mean even when I was in class 1 or 2) it was basically a matter of three days, dashami reserved for pronam and narkel-naru only. And now … the festivities and anticipations start from panchami itself, culminating in the bisorjon of the para idol in dwadashi! – yet another example of the famous (and ever-increasing) Bengali aalsemi (laziness).

Here are a couple of ‘curious’ snippets (of course opinions differ and everything is relative) that I came across this pujo, in the chronological order I experienced or heard about them …

1. Baahon dilemma … Nothing complicated, just plain common sense. Read it, and tell me if you’ve got a better alternative.

It’s about the pujo in our flat complex. It was held on the empty place behind the twin flats. Now the thing is that a couple of stray cats are used to get fed by some of the ground-floor people, hence they’ve turned quite pet-like, … and the Durga-idol that was brought was small in size, so you can guess the size of the baahon-s … the lion, peacock, owl and so on … not to forget about the rat though, which was more or less the size of a medium-size live rat. Naturally, you-know-what can always happen to the baahon-s in night when none is around except the two cats! So the organizers, our flat-ternal kaku-kakima-s decided to keep the baahon-s separate in the first-floor flat of one of them, bring them out in the pandal when it’s time to get worshipped, and back to the flat when done.

See? Can it get easier ??

1. The six-pack Kartik … without the ‘almost’ it would turn into a gross overstatement.

As a child I used to hero-worship the macho Kartik, although to my utter dismay they always used to make him more phulbabu-like and smaller than a macho image can suit. Compared to those days this one Kartik in a pandal near my mashir bari was of course a step in the right direction. He was bare-chested … well, almost (alas, again), if you don’t take into account his sparse net-like jacket (or whatever). Felt pretty glad to see the conscious effort behind giving him a muscular look, but alas the result turned out to be a bulky, overweight Kartik, evident from the fatty-looking upper arms and midriff (for obvious reasons, can’t use the jargon, i.e. ‘biceps’ and ‘ab’.).

You have every right to feel repulsed after reading the apathetic descriptions, but do keep aside a hats-off for them. At least they TRIED something new!