Truly Saptarshi

‘Holy crap! I cannot eat this food’, ‘Oh God! I cannot go to college every day’, ‘Frig! How can I live without the AC?’ Sounds familiar? Surely does to many of us because we grew up taking things for granted and why not when we have seen only a tiny part of the world and chose to neglect the not so happy realities. Hallelujah! It is time we start appreciating. There is a vast reality out there (nowadays even behind well-constructed walls) which we never get in touch with. I luckily or unluckily saw this reality carefully many times. I lived through these realities during my stays at villages and visits to slums, thanks to my tenure at the two NGOs and then a dramatic MBA life which is still on in Rural Management. When I joined my first NGO, I did expect to see some beautiful happy faces at every session, but as time progressed, I actually could see what’s behind those smiling faces. Yes, there is innocence, there is naughtiness, there is love like you have never experienced, but then ...

Thanks to the rich history and diversity of this subcontinent, there is something new in every corner and every nook has something different and enthralling to offer. We Bengalis are known for our festivities too besides food, literature, sports, cinema and music and there is a saying in Bangla, ‘ baro mashe tyaro parbon ’, which literally means ’13 festivals in 12 months’, it only says how much we love festivities and leave no chance to celebrate. But, two of the fondest memories of festivities at home for me has to be Saraswati Pujo and Lakshmi Pujo . Saraswati Pujo takes place in the Bengali month of Maagh (January-February) and Lakshmi Pujo during Aashshin (September-October). Aashshin is the month of autumn and during Maagh its almost spring. On these days, the whole household would have a different flow of energy and we all would be busy since morning trying to do our best to make the mother goddesses happy. But the fondest memories from these festivities have to be Alp...

I came across news of people dying without treatment at different Government hospitals across West Bengal ever since the doctors have decided to go on a strike across Government hospitals in the state which also includes new born babies. And going by this it is extremely disheartening and it has shaken me from within. I somewhere felt that are we not going extremely wrong somewhere? Who are we actually meting out our grievances on? I would just like to ask everyone out there, will you be very happy and satisfied if you are punished for someone else’s mistake? I am sure most of you will not be, if not everyone. But, now the same thing is happening to poor helpless patients across the state of Bangla. And yes I mentioned poor because the Government hospitals in India mainly caters to the poor. The rich do not need to worry much; no strikes can hurt them. After all, lives matter only when you have the money to make it matter. Now, of course the counter statement will be that is...

  A lot has always been spoken about feminism and might be I am one of the many who believe in feminism but is often misguided and transfixed by blatant blabbers. Today I read some popular Indian actor saying that she is not feminist and that she believes in equality. I read it twice and thrice and still could not digest what actually that meant. It sounded more like those commercial Hindi or South Indian films whose bombastic dialogues if actually pondered upon will only make us realise it was much noise about nothing. Feminism means equality and I am a feminist too. To be a feminist the only characteristic that one needs to have is that the being should be human, gender does not count at all. And I am seriously against seats being reserved for women or the titles like ‘first among women’ or ‘best among women’ because these are unnecessary. What is necessary is equal opportunities, equal pay checks, equal rights and a society where women are not judged by the clothes and make...

Pink are for girls, Boys do not cry, Girls should not sit spreading their legs, Boys should love sports, Girls should play with dolls and so much of this and bit of that too. Tags are attached with the smallest of things and every person keeps living life with the tags. It’s high time that we start living untagged without getting judged. Gay men are effeminate and vise versa. But I can show hundreds of examples in this world which says otherwise. Effeminacy doesn’t come with a tag called homosexuals. Effeminate homosexuals and heterosexuals do not need the tag. Single child comes with a tag that you are a spoilt brat. However, the world has seen children with siblings getting spoilt so the whole tag of getting spoilt has nothing to do with the fact that you are a single child or the hundredth child. Women should have the tag timid and vulnerable hanging from their neck (right in between their cleavage) and along with it a virgin tag makes them just ‘suitable’ for the ...

Our society is such that if the rapist and rape victim are on the same platform, at least there will be a few (if not a lot) people (sadly women too) who will point fingers at the rape victim. I particularly mentioned women because we are very far away from that time when a male rape victim can come out and say that someone raped him. And that has become something we live with and accept or compromise with thinking its ought to happen. Being a youngster I expect my generation to be people without the prejudices that pull others back but what I get to see only disheartens me more. Of course there are people who are just the kind that the society needs, they are free thinkers but being very small in number that shouts, those rebellious voices somewhere fade out. What I talked about is just to make us realise the nth time that what our society is largely like. And then this society, this very society which looks down upon a rape victim, which looks down upon a divorcee, which looks...

Yes we got this Independence due to the economic crisis that struck the British Empire after World War 2 but that does not diminish the kind of torture that our countrymen and freedom fighters have gone through. The sacrifice and resistance are spoken about a lot but let us then think what are we doing out of the freedom that took so much to achieve? If we did snatch our country from the grip of British, did we do so to make it a better and progressive place to live in or take it on reverse gear altogether? We fight for things as meagre as religion and caste, cows and pigs, temples and mosques. How unfortunate is that! Society to a great extent builds a human’s persona and that needs to be built up with the true sanity of freedom and away from all kind of prejudices. People have to understand that there is no replacement for education and that an educated mind is free and can change the world. By education, society should stop thinking about degree and marks because degree doesn...

Yes I will curse, I will roil, I will sit back and go down the lane of nostalgia. I will keep doing so because I cannot forget her, I cannot stop missing her. Nothing can replace her. Every first time has been with her. Every joy, every sorrow, every love, every fight has been with her by my side. From books to food, smoke to peg everything has her name written on it when it was the first time. And now when i am far away from her, how can I just ‘adjust’ without getting vexed? And trust me food although being a problem, that we do not get good fishes or sweets or posto or shukto it is not always the biggest issue because there are more to it. How will i get away from the place that imbibed in me the love for art, literature, music, introduced me to poetry, to ‘good’ cinema and plays, to dance, to everything good or bad that I have today. Everyone else may find these to be not so important in life but what if all these have shaped you up in life? How do you get away and adjust? Ho...

গন্ডি দিয়েই রুখবে সমাজ যতই তুমি উড়তে চাও। গন্ডি দিয়েই ফন্দি গেড়ে, রাখবে তোমায় বদ্ধ করে। সবার থেকে আলাদা হবে? ভেবোনা তুমি যেন, এই ভেড়ার পালের সাথেই কাঁধ মিলিয়ে চলো। তবে কি সব অন্ধকার? একদমই তা নয়। কণ্ঠে যদি ফুলকি ওঠে, মনে ওঠে ঝড় তুমিই পারবে ভাঙতে শৃঙ্খল আর রুখতে সব বর্বর। গন্ডি তোমার সমাজ নয়, তুমি করবে ঠিক। তাতে যদি সমাজ রোখে, ভয় পেওনা, দাঁড়াও আবার। ঠিক - ভুলের ফারাক বোঝে, এমন মানুষ খুবই কম, গন্ডি কাটার খেলা খেলে, ওটাই ওদের মুষ্টিদম। মরণ তো হবার হবে, গন্ডি দিয়ে নাই বা হল। বাজে কথায় কান না দিয়ে, খারাপ ভালো বুঝতে শেখো। সঠিকটা কে বেছে নিয়ে, নিজের গন্ডি নিজেই আঁকো।

Yes! We do exist and we are as or even more Bengali than people of Kolkata. At the very beginning of this post, let me make one thing very clear, Kolkata is a city and not a state. The state is West Bengal or preferably Bengal. There are many other cities in Bengal and some of them are very far from Kolkata. All Bengalis do not stay in Kolkata and do not need to either. I may sound very stupid but trust me, how some people seems to believe is that the state is called Kolkata. Recently when I had been to Bengaluru and people asked me where am I from and I used to say Durgapur and their reaction would be like, 'O! Its in Kolkata?'. Very similar would be if someone hears me speaking Bangla somewhere outside Bengal and they would be like, 'O! You are from Kolkata?' Come on folks, grow up! Every Marathi is not from Mumbai and every Kannadi is not from Bengaluru. There can be two sides to this issue, one is that simply people are too ignorant to understand basi...

I have always maintained that my nation needs men and women who support feminism but situations come such that it drastically changes the outlook towards things and from time to time I find that its hard to be a man in a men's world where women are both feminist and always eager to take all the not so feminist advantages in the name of feminism. Its just another incident that happened a few days back at a workplace where a few boys and girls had gone for training and it was their last day at the place, so everyone were to be marked by their respective mentors. And as the feedback came in, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) a boy who had done his project seriously  was sitting all sad and on the other hand the girl who made a honeymoon out of her training period was all happy and rejoicing... why? Because she has scored full marks, and the boy scored lower than her, losing all faith in hard work. But, this is injustice... isn't it? Of course not! How dare the boy a...

Amidst all our near and dear ones, we often find people ‘loving’ a person because they find him/her to be docile, one who can be ‘tamed’ easily and usually doesn’t shout out to proclaim his/her existence. The person usually does not force his/her opinion on others and agrees to people’s opinion easily. These people are very ‘sweet’; you may even get diabetes I tell you. However, one fine day that person feels very insecure or gathers little confidence to face the world and thinks that why not try to put forward his/her opinions. The person tries to live life on own terms, thinking and doing things that will make him/her happy and contended. The person feels very confident that since people love him/her so much, opinions will be accepted by the ‘dear ones’ easily but suddenly something happens that he/she never expected. People suddenly start saying that they do not connect with the person anymore. Whenever they put up their views either they try to shun the person or just t...

We are the only creatures who segregate each  other on basis of gender, language, religion, region, skin color, sexuality and everything else and still proclaiming to be together in a world of similar looking creatures.  Whenever we think like this should have been like that or this person will react like this to that situation, it has most of the time been something very different. Being judgmental about human beings has always ended up being erratic. Generalizing is human nature but somehow we all feel we are out of the box. Then what does the box comprise of? The summer makes us sad, the rains make us gloomy and the winter makes us lazy. What else are we left with to feel good? We crave for love and then feel claustrophobic if someone starts being too loving and possessive, We crave for food and end up with stomach upset when given too much. We crave for laugh and end up choking ourselves with too much of it. We love to talk and end up ignoring talkat...