My echo, My shadow and Me...

It was going to be just another weekend I spent at the news room, things moving slower than the weekdays. But God said "No"! The clock stuck 6 and there was panic in the room. Television monitors fitted on the walls beaming various channels started disseminating the "panic words". Blasts, one after another rocked Indian national capital New Delhi. The news room came alive. Suddenly from nowhere hustle and bustle started in the nearly empty room. Visuals of shattered stalls, charred bodies started pouring in along with "official bytes" and statements of panic stricken eyewitness. As time passed by, panicked channels first reporting four simultaneous blasts at different parts of the capital "confirmed three". Amidst all these reports about declaration of "Red alert" and "security tightened up" started pouring in. Statements of the police officials were there to substantiate them. When I stepped out of the office, one of my ...

I did not declare a hiatus . But I persuaded myself to go for one when I found the blank page on the word processor still blank (with two stray lines of discrete words) after an hour of struggle. It perhaps was time ripe to go for a break. The first and last option was to be to go for, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" which my relocated friend prescribed and left for me to read. "I should utlise this opportunity," I thought. But I was mistaken. Despite spending a voluminous time, trying to read the book for four days, I found myself at the 20th page only. I realised, I am stuck somewhere! Just like the gramophone recorder at my uncle's place (the second wonder I faced in the world!). Every day after coming back from office uncle used to sit with the collection of records and a cup of tea. Sipping at the cup of tea he would listen to His Master's Voice . After tea, there's the daily paper to accompany him throughout the rest of his musical journey. T...

The day I stepped into my first college, I was virtually crippled under the fear of being ragged by seniors. But somehow that was not as notorious as I expected. Perhaps I sneaked through, being with not so striking appearance. Now here's a similar demon in the blogsphere, with a t in place of r…tagging… Abaniko tagged Soumyadip who in turn tagged people within his sphere. First I thought it would not be that much of a problem. What I would have to do is to go through the posts and find some information about me listed. But when browsed through my earlier posts what all of them reflected were my confusions (something that is nothing new)…now after three days of sweating here are some lines that can be about me… 1. I love seeing the sun setting down into the darkness… 2. As a child I dreamt of being a "scientist" with heavily reamed glasses which changed to be a "physician" by the time I passed out of college, to be a "mathematician" by graduation an...

SEVEN "Why don't you accept that you are not happy? Why do you pretend to be happy when you are not?" she demanded. After a pause I succumbed "Yes"...She is one of the few who pull my inside out, forces me to "think aloud". MINUS ONE One day when I had a scuffle with her(one year back) at office on the issue of a news-tape, it was really unimaginable that one day I would find myself struggling for words to express the emptiness I am feeling from the time I sensed she is going to be even far-off. I can not recall when and how after that we settled down the differences and started behaving as amicable colleagues. Perhaps there was no individual bitterness in that. Still we hardly have had communicated, except for smiles exchanged at times and at times jeering each other. ZERO In fact I came to know that she has crept into my life only after one day she called up to say she will not be attending the same office again. Perhaps Simon Weil was not wrong whe...

It was difficult to resist the temptation. I followed the instruction. There was the six letter word in bold Arial Black font S I L E N C E. Yes, a good break fast for my mind, I thought . The question and its answer kept on reverberating in my mind for next an hour. Every one I met in office during that asked " Hey what happened? What are you thinking?" I tried my best to avoid answering back, to stop another silence from being killed. It was not long when my cynic mind came up with a counter question. Is the relation between "Silence" and "opening of mouth" symmetrical? Is the reverse also true? Will you be generating a SILENCE by keeping your mouth shut? If the answer is yes, they why even switching off all those noisy gadgets and closing the door does not help me in finding out a little space where I can sit quite and listen to my own mind waves? Why it is that I found myself struggling for silence even when the whole world around sleep?

"I am at cross roads. Khalid asked me to marry him. I want to say him yes. But for that I will have to change my religion and obey the strict rules of Islam. That's something I am not thrilled about. Shall I follow my heart or the reasoning? Please show me the right direction to go. ---Ivana" It was time for me to be in dilemma. It's merely six months that I was introduced to Ivana, through the listings of Names Database. As it usually happens, you do not take the communications through the internet too seriously. She was working at a local TV channel in Zagreb city of Georgia . She wrote about the problems the country is facing, embarrassing situations she faced while reporting events, quarried about the country I am living in. But I was not expecting her to seek suggestion from me in a matter as serious like this. I was not sure what to suggest. She was facing a conflict between her mind and conscience about something that was going to decide the future curse of her...

Living in a world ruled by zeros and ones, just as invisible as God. You can’t touch them; you can’t even see them. But you can feel them if you wish. These zeros and ones (Z&Os, we will say hereafter) remain awake in your alarm clock to wake you up in morning, ensure that there’s no disruption in the metro (or tube) that you travel to reach office on time (until and unless there’s something like London!). When you start your work, you are totally at the mercy of these Z&Os. But they are loyal enough to make you feel comforted. You never think about them, express your gratitude to them. In fact you do not have time enough to do that and in fact they never demand also. All these thoughts went through my mind when I found in the newspaper that it was World Post Day today. I started wondering what these Z&Os have done to our lives. You just give your commands and just like the good old faithful doggy, these otherwise invisible sequences of zeros and ones start working. You thi...

My first encounter with the word was in Bhopal, when I reached there for higher studies some four years back. "Hey why don't you look like Chinkis?" The first person I met with yelled after I introduced myself. I did have no Idea what does Chinki mean. I produced a questioning face. Next moment threw a flat smile as if I knew what he tried to know but not interested in answering. Next time it was from my classmate I met with first…I decided to give up hesitations and ask what it means…I felt some kind of current passing through my spine when he enriched my knowledge saying " that is how people from North East (NE), especially the youths" "Why is it so?" "Their look, their dressing, and the way they carry themselves around. When we heard that a boy from Guwahati has joined our class, we were expecting just some one with big swollen eyes, in jeans and Tees, with an awkward haircut, and a damn care look…. But you are so different!" I felt disgra...

AT times you strive to, tend to be like the ones you admire. "That's obvious as you admire those with when you can identify your expectations, your hopes and dreams." Yes, but what about the ones whom " whether you admire or not", you tend to follow and act like instinctively. Your actions, reactions match with theirs'. So much so, at times you feel the things about you were predetermined. The way you will be, the way you think...No I am not talking about those stars above us that are supposed to 'outsource' the decisions that ultimately give shape to our lives. I do not believe them. I am talking about the permutation and combinations of those 36 million genes, reasons behind my existence which science books say are unique to me. Alas, even then they fail to make me some one different from "Deuta" (as we call father) From my child hood I have heard relatives and people saying "He has gone to his father". That made no sense to me...

This is not the first time I have become aware of the many faces, I keep on changing with time and space. But perhaps for the first time I have decided to spend some time in reviewing skill I have acquired over time without any conscious effort. Something, I have learnt beyond textbooks. What I found stunned me, the proficiency and I was really stunned by the proficiency I have achieved in it. What if I stop using these skills? What if I tear them apart? What if I put on the face that is really mine? Will the people in my sphere of influence accept me as it is now? Will the relations I have now remain intact? Or will my life be formatted like a floppy drive? But which one of these thousands of faces is mine?

We are the bricks of a huge wall popularly known as MEDIA, a descendent of something called PRESS (We still use this identity also, even though we differ in many cases)...we both are the self proclaimed guardians of the human societies. So, we claim some privileges (we express through the stickers saying PRESS/MEDIA in the front of our vehicles) that the most of the societies formally deny (and accept non-formally). We keep the right to be anywhere and everywhere and ask questions about the rightness of anything and everything under the Sun (in fact we are the dreaded ones in many cases). While PRESS do something called "publication of news reports", what we the MEDIA do is "break news"...we say so as ours is a faster medium...we cover (or expose!) incidents as and when they occur... While PRESS derive its strength from the pen, BYTES and VISUALS are elements of the fire power of the we the MEDIA have. BYTES (=8 bits? Come on, do not go that far) these are actually ...