Antics at a Polish Shop

I have a roommie. He is Chinese. Well, no - not totally. Quasi-Polish...a result of staying for 10 years in Warsaw.

I live in Chicago. According to my European friends, good meat (esp. unalderated bacon) is difficult to find here. So, some of us decided to go meat-hunting akin to the prehistoric times when hirsute men would go out to hunt and the women would stay home and rear the children (haha! kidding...); by chance, we happened to see this little Polish flag from I-55. "Eureka !", exclaimed the Polish-Chinese (I'll refer to him as the 'Dude'); now, I - the supreme connoisseur of meat (ha! never did I have beef and unable to differentiate between the kinds of hog meat found here and good old Cal) trudged along with little hope of finding anything good about the meat there.

Inside. We take the coupon and queue up. When we reach the counter, the Dude thinks it very prudent to speak in Polish. Impressed I was, impressed my other friend (also with us) was. We see him speaking. And speaking. And speaking. While he speaks all the girls/ladies at the counter desert their respective chores and giggle; actually, giggle a lot...... Finally, he stops; expectantly we look up to him and try to understand what variety of hog/kine we shall consume that very night. And the Dude says he knows from where the lady at the counter was - an anticlimax, afterlike 15 minutes of gibberish, he tells us where the lady is from. Well after yet another prolonged spell of gibberish, we finally get the meat.

The meat was good. The trip was worth it. Now we are regulars there. But, the girls/ladies still giggle when they see the Dude and us.

Living with a Bong from Delhi

Did we bongs ever realise that shorsher tele machh bhaja smells really bad ? Or, we Bongs (only the ones from W.B.) are a lazy lot and waste(!) a lot of time discussing politics and playing carroms ? Well, maybe we have; the lingering doubt at the back of our minds regarding our self-proclaimed brilliance in intellectual matters and inaction often get obfuscated by our wishful thinking. Now, how would you like to be reminded of it day in and day out (ok, maybe not in and out, but sometimes) - no !
But, I have to. Now why is that ? I have a Bong from Delhi as my roommie (now, he is a jolly good fella, make no mistake about that) who feels the above stuff and many more and utters these only after after having a few shots of White Russian (like 'the Dude ')!

Of course he is right! Is he not ? But he is a Bengali too or according to him a Delhi-ite who speaks Bengali - I correct that broken Bengali (ha!ha!). Of course, he does not have any vendetta against us. But why does he feel this way ? What do you think ? Are we really like that ! Maybe we are.....maybe too lazy to think about petty matters like this.

Maya

Maya is unique. It is one of those words which can aptly define many situations.

Like for example, when a theory funda is too difficult to grasp, its said 'byapar ta to puro maya...kichhui bojha jachhe na'.

If you have to get over something or say no to something, you say 'maya kore dawa'.

It is also very useful when trying to describe a woman's mentality - 'puropuri maya'; yes dearies another way saying we men do not understand you women.

Also, saying 'ki shangatik maya' to describe a woman's appearance would mean she is very beautiful.

And, the biggest use - to describe the universe and all worldly affairs - 'shob i to maya'.

Something

Every single thing in life is beautiful. Not only is it beautiful, but also holds a special place - a defining moment as it were, in which everything else cedes to hold any importance, culminating in the something transcending into becoming everything. What is rather funny is that we humans pay little heed to this something at any other point in our life; yet, at specific time snaps we are forced to meditate on why we had given no attention to that something at any other moment.

Like, for example, leading a stupidly insipid life, away from home, friends and family, it suddenly dawned upon me the value of things we take for granted. Even the mere presence of known people here is indeed a luxury, nowadays. However, never did I in Calcutta realize or even think at all that whatever I hold dear would be a sort of a mirage at one point later on in life.

However, another important realization is nascent now. No matter how great is what I miss of Calcutta here, the feeling itself is something - ahem, something again - that I would invariably be not ensconed in when I get back. A rather jolly bit of irony, if I may, yearning for something is in itself a something which could be yearned for later on. Well, the vagaries of human nature at work again !

How else can one explain the phenomenon that the thing we yearn for at one instant becomes overbearing and no longer appears indispensable later on ? Is it mere human folly ? Or, is it the immaturity inherent in mere mortals from which we have not yet been able to rise into a realm of more philosophical realities. Will we be able to solve the conundrum or be drawn into its abyss more and more thereby limiting our capabilities and faculties and rendering us incapable of progressing any further
?

Only time can tell. Oh! A cliche. Well, cliches are something, are they not ? Drawing us into using them over and over again - well, that is what makes them cliches, right ?

(Wrote this a long time back, more than an year ago, pretty soon after landing here...)

My First Blog!

All right people, I do ultimately agree - blogging is quite cool. So, here I am trying to make myself cool - like Greatbong or Ani or some others.

Started I have. To continue and bore I shall.