1. Restraining your words!
2. Giving interviews.
3. Talking about politics!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
how it has become
me: Nanny!!!
N: Tina!
me: what u doing up so late
N: Oh, bas bored
me: so how goes
N: aah. Well. It goes medium rare
me: hehe
i am actually getting really old. i get aches and pains on my body these days
N: hahaha. me too
N: hahaha. me too
me: sure signs of aging. ki obostha (what have we come to)
N: uff. ki hocche eshob (What the hell is happening!)
me: yeah man...this growing up thing is getting on my nerves :P we better just shake off, and get up... and start running like Forrest Gump
N: YES
lets all just run
Thursday, September 2, 2010
this independence day
I think the date was August 15th of this year. My uncle, who is visiting Kolkata after 11 years, called us over for lunch at our ancestral home in Shibpur. The occasion was this: India won the world cup for cricket in 1983. Makes no sense? It will.
So 27 years back, an ardent cricket enthusiast, pledged to god that "hey god! since we all love food, and you must too, I will sacrifice a goat for you if India wins the world cup this time." (no no my uncle doesn't do animal husbandry. so technically it's not the uncle but the poor goat, who understands nothing of cricket, who will make the sacrificing bit, should India win.) We have a familiar term for this kind of "divine" bribing: manat. A Bengali word, also shared in Hindi, hence possibly has a Sranskrit origin.
Anyway, as much as ludicrously funny it had seemed to me by just the act of retrieving back on an ancient promise of a well-chosen-goat-for-lunch made to God for a game of cricket, what's funnier is my uncle's justification. He had very good intentions. Of course, not for the goat. But this is what he thought: his family was going through so many set backs, and had been disease stricken for the last many years that it only made sense that God was furious that the promised sacrifice was never made. And right after India won the world cup, my uncle forgot all about the promised goat, and instead went his merry way. and so did the goat. "there goes my lunch!" thought the mortified god.
"Like it's not enough that a bunch of bangalis had to have "mangshor jhol" (mutton curry) every frigging Sunday afternoon. How cunningly I evaded them so long. And now, all of a sudden here's this fella, who comes from United States! after decades has his heart fixed on my head!," were perhaps the goat's last thoughts before the executioner plunges the blade on its trembling neck. Thus, a poor unsuspecting goat had a new... rather old reason to die. Quite an irony I thought that all of this happened on India's independence day :) Alas a long way to go, yet.
So 27 years back, an ardent cricket enthusiast, pledged to god that "hey god! since we all love food, and you must too, I will sacrifice a goat for you if India wins the world cup this time." (no no my uncle doesn't do animal husbandry. so technically it's not the uncle but the poor goat, who understands nothing of cricket, who will make the sacrificing bit, should India win.) We have a familiar term for this kind of "divine" bribing: manat. A Bengali word, also shared in Hindi, hence possibly has a Sranskrit origin.
Anyway, as much as ludicrously funny it had seemed to me by just the act of retrieving back on an ancient promise of a well-chosen-goat-for-lunch made to God for a game of cricket, what's funnier is my uncle's justification. He had very good intentions. Of course, not for the goat. But this is what he thought: his family was going through so many set backs, and had been disease stricken for the last many years that it only made sense that God was furious that the promised sacrifice was never made. And right after India won the world cup, my uncle forgot all about the promised goat, and instead went his merry way. and so did the goat. "there goes my lunch!" thought the mortified god.
"Like it's not enough that a bunch of bangalis had to have "mangshor jhol" (mutton curry) every frigging Sunday afternoon. How cunningly I evaded them so long. And now, all of a sudden here's this fella, who comes from United States! after decades has his heart fixed on my head!," were perhaps the goat's last thoughts before the executioner plunges the blade on its trembling neck. Thus, a poor unsuspecting goat had a new... rather old reason to die. Quite an irony I thought that all of this happened on India's independence day :) Alas a long way to go, yet.
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