Colours of Diwali!

One more festival and thus, the euphoria. Diwali. Here are a few pictures of the festival and the value it holds for an average Indian. Enjoy watching these and do remember to leave your valuable feedback.

Rangoli - I

Rangoli-II

Rangoli - III

Rangoli - IV

Rangoli -V

Rangoli - VI

Playing with fire (the fire crackers)

Puja - I

Puja - II

Home decorations - I

Home decorations - II

Home decorations - III

Home decorations - IV

Home decorations -V

Henna

Series of festivities!

We so determinedly say that we are Indians, but seldom have we seen it the way a foreigner would. Rarely do we try to get into details and examine the affairs happening around us with even a pinch of curiousity. Well, I would not count myself out of the lot, but I dare say that past two days have changed things in me to a great extent. Reasons are two – Durga Pujo and Dussehra.

These two days must have crossed me every year for more than 2 decades but never I stopped and tried to understand their history or the reason why they took over a person’s lifestyle. This time having closely felt the drum beats coinciding with my heart thumps, I surely lived these two events.

Having taken the pain to travel all the way to CR Park and convinced my parents to accompany me, I was pretty excited to witness what I never had before. In fact, I could not distract myself from thinking about the super-awesome food being sold there, which my friend Debbie could not even stop to breathe while talking about. Thus, commences my accumulation of insights and observances.

CR Park is a home to a large Bengali community in Delhi and as Wikipedia says, today despite its growing cosmopolitan demographics, it remains home to a flourishing Bengali community, and hub to Kolkata-style street food stalls, offering Bengali cuisine, fish markets, temples and cultural centers. And, Durga Pujo is six days of worship of Hindu Goddess Durga, wrapped in loads of fun, frolic, excitement, music, dance and exhilarating celebrations. At CR Park, I not only witnessed huge pandals of Goddess Durga but also skipped a beat while watching people dancing to please her, carrying huge, nicely decorated drums. Not to forget the food, which was as deflecting as ever! I also could not stop looking at nicely dressed men and women, who were probably wearing their best dresses, further decking themselves up with their best of accessories and jewelry. Thus, with all this merrymaking, my day ended with a hard-to-extinguish excitement of being a part of such a colorful event.

The next day, Dussehra was equally jazzy and vibrant. Derived from a Sanskrit word, Dasha-hara meaning ‘remover of bad fate’, this festival is celebrated on the tenth day of Maha Navratri. It is also believed that this day, Lord Shri Ram killed the great demon, Ravana, who had abducted Rama’s wife Sita and took her to his kingdom of Lanka. I witnessed the burning of effigies of Ravana, which was filled with lots of firecrackers, which in turn is believed to purify the atmosphere.

In other words, these were two memorable experiences which pulled and tied me closer to my culture and beliefs. Here are a few pictures of the same:

Pandals at Durga Pujo

Fireworks at Dussehra

The Ravana effigy

Everything but Life!

I can quote myself as a classic example of a girl who has lived the best part of her life being a city girl, but could never imbibe what the city air carries with it, what it is loosely known for, the “modernity”. Having stepped out of the student life and entered the shoes of a professional, I finally grabbed a chance of moving out of the city on an “official trip” sans the parental guidance and supervision. The city was none other than the city of joy, Kolkata.

This experience brought about a superfluity of emotions wrapped in a nice, bewitching wrapping of being “independent”! I had Googled out a lot about the place where I was supposed to stay and the must-visit places around it. While building castles in air thinking about my future trip and breeding thousands of butterflies in my stomach, I carried that pseudo, expressionless face all the time at home so as to show to my parents how sad I was about the thought of going alone and the compulsion and urgency of the project I was supposed to cover there.

Time flew and the day finally arrived when I had to step out of the home bidding adieu to every one close. I dare say that when I came back home having intimately seen Kolkata, I was changed. For now, I knew what living alone looked like.

I got my hands on almost everything what Kolkata has been gaining fame for, be it puchkas, Bengali sarees, leather products, Park Street, New Market, Eden Gardens, Hotel Floatel, Belur Math, Fort William Stadium and last but never the least, Hotel Oberoi.

Though, what I liked the most was the starry treatment, the fun-filled four days and friends, who’d been as crazy possible sans their particularly corporate skin, what I appreciated the most completely diverges from what I find hip-yet-so-not-hip thingmajigs.

When we stepped out of our hotel so as to board a bus, I saw a couple, hand-in-hand, carrying their one-year old. The special thing in this scene was while it was a working day, the couple found time for their family pushing the day to day chores at bay. Amusingly, they seemed way too happy doing that. The woman was dressed in a typical Bongo woman wear, further bejeweled with a shaka pola and vermilion. The view itself raised goosebumps, kicking off a lot of good vibes.

The thing that inspired me was simplicity, commitment and nevertheless, veraciousness in conduct. This is precisely what I find nonexisting in my forward-looking state, and this is what I believe everyone yearns for!

Overall, this indeed was a wonderful trip to get back to, where I amassed lots of memories to hold dear. Lastly, I would like to share some of my reminiscences wrapped up in classic examples of amateur photography! :)

The view outside Oberoi

 Taxis

 Hotel poolside

 Howrah Bridge

 Vidyasagar Sethu

 Belur Math

 Boats in the River Hooghly

Finally, the room!

Accidental Geek

I was one of the kinds who find solace in their li'l ignorant world, free of anyone poking with unheard-of concepts or terminologies, when at work. That was the time when I was an editor – a journal and a book editor. From the time I’d stepped into the shoes of an editor and owned them for about 8 months, I’d started finding warmth in the cozy editor skin, until when, something happened which clicked and changed my life, forever. 

 I guess it was the somewhat heavier paycheque, which cost me my favorite pelt. Two words, "New" and "Media" before my old profile, one switch and here I am, an accidental geek.


Call it a boon in disguise or a curse in veil, my new profile doesn’t let me breathe in an unwitting shell. With the clock running fast to strike 6:00 in the evening, I am the one panting heavily asking for some more time to complete my day’s job while others gawk in awe.


The fact that I-will-learn-and-then-do-it attitude has made me start from a scratch in order to get a tighter hold of my chair. Keeping an eagle eye on technology forums, I’ve to constantly hone myself to safely handle the weird questions of my colleagues who think a new media editor is a person from terra incognita who can safely combat a NASA scientist’s or a Google programming head’s doubts.


Fight and make your way out, I once heard some one in some action movie say. Though weird, I can so relate myself with the adolescent in the movie gearing up for his some future fight. My each day, without even a single soupcon of spice, resembles his, the only difference being the fact that I don’t have to stress my body with 100 abdomen crunches to start my day. :)


So here I am, conforming myself in the said atmosphere, making my way out of technically weird situations and calling myself an accidental geek! :)

Reality frightens, does it?

Read this: We have more than 750 million active users on facebook, more than 100 million active users on Orkut, and more than 190 million users on twitter today! What’s absurd with the real world that intellects today fear to tread on it and rather find the virtual space cozier? I guess reality frightens, does it?

Feel this: Things across decades are becoming chokingly difficult to fight off. Talk about any issue which matters to a layman and you would surely find it strangulating him to death. Be it defining his space in the office, sticking to the chair given to him poking into all the pairs of eyes staring at it, living up to the expectations of several people, recovering from the aftershocks of ever increasing prices or getting his kids admitted into some nice school, things are certainly no more a cakewalk.

Realize this: The fact that virtual space does not ask a person to dress well and look perfect, the number of zeros in his salary cheque, the problems he faces every day and how a big loser life makes him feel he is, virtual space is indeed bringing a lot of solace to every one. People might end up being totally insular and would not need anything except for their comp or tablets to spend some good time, the heart of the matter is that the concept has engulfed the globe and, trust me, it’s indeed too late to get rid of it.

And why not catch it by the collar if it makes one shut himself from the troubles he faces out in the real world? He now is so addicted to his virtual space that he anyhow manages to steal a moment to check any updates or any new scraps, any mentions or retweets, any tag or any new photo upload.

The crux is that the virtual space is any day more assuasive. It makes one shed the burden that real life makes him carry all the time. It’s like insulating oneself in a room with no one eyeballing him.

Keeping an eye on the increasing popularity of networking on virtual space, I sense that the era of identity crisis is not that far!

Decide when you can trust us

Have you ever had a tilt with a person whom you loved the most? This might sound an extremely brainless question, as the answer will definitely be, ‘Yes’! We fight with the people whom we love the most as the sense of right over the person conquers every lobe of our brains. But, this fight tends to take a different turn altogether when the second party here turns out to be our parents.

Nothing in the world can match up to the care and affection our parents shower on us and the level of sincerity they express while dealing with the issues solely concerned with the present or the future of our lives.

But at times, this never-ceasing downpour of their finicky and extremely watchful attitude tends to choke the neurons of their kids and deviate the end results from the desired ones.

Though this might reignite the almost perpetual debate on validity of the existence of ‘generation gap’ but parents should make their viewpoint a bit flexible to witness the world the way their children do. The faith that seeds might not always mature to bloom flowers or reap juicy fruits but they won’t definitely go out of the way to harvest cactuses should stay engraved in their cerebellum.

Parents should trust their tykes with the principles that they have imparted to them, the way a farmer sows seed and gives the right amount of attention required at the right time. Just trusting the minors with the inherent talent they have, the level of skills they have imbibed in them and the knowledge they have gained since they have crossed the boundaries of the home can actually do wonders for them.

Trusting them with the choices that they make in life, the learning that they have gained outside, the skills and the mannerism they exhibit when they meet people can surely smoothen out things for them.

Therefore, a sincere appeal to all the parents: 'please trust your nestlings with their way of leading life. Their actions are anyway controlled by the educations imbibed in them by you right from the birth.

They would certainly think twice before going against your words and making a path of their own intellect. If you think that they might not be intelligent enough to make their own decisions, well… trust me, most of the times, even they think the same. The matter is that they just might not want to display their dim-witted intellect while accepting this in public.

But that’s how one learns; by hit and trial or by falling and standing again. And may be that’s how you must have learnt. Agree that life might now always turn out to be a bed of roses but if you pick the thorns together and not you solely take all the pains, don’t you think life would seem a little more controlled and a lot more peaceful?

Decide when it is the right time for you to take the back seat and enjoy the drive, trusting your children that they won’t let the automobile called life crash!