Collected Status Messages - 2

Here is a selection of the status messages I posted on my social media account during May/June/July/September 2014 months:

(Note: The messages are not in any chronology.)

I. I still remember this young apparently hard-working little boy in one of Kolkata's bylanes selling Singharas and Jilipees. I bought sweet singharas from him. How can I forget him? His pose for my camera says all about his confident personality and his way of life on the street. I wish I had met him again. I want to though and that would be great. Just want to tell him that he had been quite famous on my Social Media circuit. Perhaps, he will not understand that. But he sure will think back to the day when I clicked his candid picture. God bless him.

II. A 'melodiously intensifying' Hindi tune burst into my head when I was riding on my motorcycle to the office. (Yes, I forsook the service of my self-chauffeured car today). I began to hum and as soon as I did that I felt I was taken over by the pulsating melody of the song that rose and fell in tumultuous waves in my head.

It breathed a whiff of fresh air into my mind’s psyche even as I kept riding my bike at the bare minimum speed (luckily!) deeply immersed in loudly humming the tune with my head enclosed in the helmet. The song I am talking about is this:

"Tum se badhkar duniya mein na dekha koyee aur

zubaan par aaj dil ki baat aa gayi.

Kya khub aankhen hain teri,

Inmein jindagani hain meri.

Jee lenge hum dekh dekh ke inko…

Baatoh mein teri ek ada hai,

Teri ada mein wafa hai.

Zubaan par aaj dil ki baat aa gayi.”

III. Just read that Google is launching ‘under-USD 100 Android One' devices in India. Wonder how big a deal that will be. Well, if it’s good then will prefer to buy one. Or else I will settle for a much-hyped Samsung Smartphone or an HTC with Android One technology will do the trick for me. But I don’t know why I can’t get my head around the handset makers of Micromax, Lenovo, Lava, and that old Spice. Never mind that! Right now though I feel very welcome to the new Android One ecosystem!

IV.

"Na Jaane Kyun,

Hota Hai Yeh Zindagi Ke Saath 

Achaanak Yeh Mann, Kisike Jaane Ke Baad

Kare Phir Uski Yaad Chhoti Chhoti Si Baat 

Na Jaane Kyun...”

I stumbled upon a new world; open in front of me when I first listened to this wonderful track by Lata Mangeshkar. I was a student then and returning home from school I was wonder-struck by this song coming on our Bush radio. I was as if transfixed and listened intently without moving. I forgot my school bag still strung on my shoulders. Na Jaane kyun…

Afterwards, I saw the movie Chhoti Si Baat and then when the song came I became a wide-eyed eager admirer of the beautiful and elegant Vidya Sinha. Amol Palekar, his co-star in the film, who forayed into television by directing his first TV serial Kacchi Dhoop (Blast from the Past) in which the actress Bhagyashree acted, too became an important actor graded high on my list. (Yes, Bhagyashree (of Maine Pyar Kiya) was a child artist in that early 1980s TV serial that came on the great Doordarshan channel!) The song "Na Jaane kyun…" Vidya Sinha has sung onscreen and never left me ever since. In fact, it brought me more closure to loving and adoring Hindi films and their inimitable songs.

V. Besides those new stories I’d be working on, I have a couple of others waiting to be published such as:

1.     "Chapter 12: Our Boss Liked to Draw Blood” (My memoir ‘Lost Days of Glory’ continues in this series). The chapter is almost ready; maybe, I'll publish it this weekend.

2.     And then there’s a short new one coming up. Not a story per se, but stuff filled with philosophical rambling, titled “Arguably, Modern Life is Rubbish”. It’s an interesting take on one’s life’s ‘issues department’. Interesting? Well, at least I think it is; I mean, I am after all entitled to my opinion.

3.     And there is a collection of titbits (of status messages mostly) I keep posting on that kosher Facebook wall from time to time. Life, my life, is pretty much filled up with such new-fangled stuff like that.

VI. Oh! What a pleasant siesta-leaden afternoon is this... What else but to slide in an old Hindi CD into my music system and listen to this beautiful song…

"Mausam pyar ka

Rang badalta rahe,

Uhin chalta rahe...

Tere mere pyar ka karvaan.

Kahaan kahaan se hoke tujh tak,

Laayi hain mujhko yeh raahein,

Choroonga main kaise yeh baahein..."

VII. On Reading 'Green Poems' by Gulzar:

Of late, I have been reading some poetry and these are a couple of poetry books I am sharing with you. 

First up ‘Green Poems’ by Gulzar are some of the finest poems I have read in the recent past. 

They are really lovely poems: about rivers, snow, rain clouds, trees, forests, mountains, the sky, the earth tree, and Kulu Manali, Bhutan’s scenic city of Thimpu. 

And Pritish Nandy’s book of 140-character poetry 'Stuck on 1/Forty'. Some quirky good stuff there!

VIII. Hear...Hear...Hear! 
It's official. I am coming up with 3 stories back to back and the titles are:

1. The Wolves of Shallow Lake City: A Farcical Marriage Circus (Written and published on my blog with the title The Wolf of Salt Lake City, a burning satire. The web link: http://arindammoulick.blogspot.in/2014/04/the-wolf-of-salt-lake-city.html)
2. The Chronicles of Wolfish People: The Moneyed Class Ass
3. Elephants, Dogs, and Hippos: The Party-Farty People

By Arindam Moulick

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Pix courtesy: Internet

CHAPTER 17 - Love, Loss, Loneliness, and Longing

The Advent of the Monsoons

Year: Late 1998

Somewhere between the end of the month of August and the beginning of sweet September. Pre-monsoon showers were gathering up a storm all over the western skies of the city.

Walking up to the framework of tinted windowpanes that straight-lined the nether side of the big hall, Arinvan saw the skies belly-ache with rain. It was such a joy for him to see the bleak sky rumbling with the potential possibility of pouring rain. White cottony clouds turned threateningly dark and heavenly sparks flew all over. The entire expanse of the beautiful Hussain Sagar Lake was shrouded in cool mist. Tesser Towers looked several shades darker due to the complete absence of sunlight from the skies. It began to drizzle at first and in the next instant the rain clouds got angry, very angry, and tore down their heavenly contents all over the desperate land like a big typhoon. The inky dark Lake was no longer there; a swirling mass of white mist has taken over its place now and how. And before you know it, the skies again sent down sheets of rain hammering fast and furious onto the windowpanes just short of cracking them. It poured and poured for an hour-long and then some more.

Arinvan tried hard to locate the monolithic Buddha statue straight-postured in the middle of the deep-gray bestial waters of the Lake from the place where he stood on the 5th floor’s East Flank hall of his office building. It was invisible. From where he stood it afforded a panoramic view to the whole D-shaped Lake, the Necklace Road in the foreground and the Tank Bund road stretched somewhere far away in the deepening haze of the dark and ominous Monsoons.  Soon it will be a deluge everywhere. Rain gods were not done yet. They wanted to pour more. But for Arinvan it was a welcome change; never mind facing a little hardship out in the streets – riding through the water-logged roads and all. The promise of rain and cold breezy winds far outweighs any hardship that almost always comes with it. So welcome home, dear rain. Please don’t go away anytime soon!

*

I slid the slatted window back into its ledge. Spattering rain and howling winds wetted a good part of my shirt and the upper part of my trousers. Realizing my mistake of opening the window to look outside, I hurried to the restroom to use the hot-air hand-blower to dry my wet shirt first. Then walking back to my cabin, I waited for my colleague Manpreet Singh to arrive. I started to become a little apprehensive about how I am going to drive (my red Honda) home when my schedule ended at 3pm. I was already starving; lunch was high up on my agenda. I was so looking forward to it. Today, I had come in early at 7am and by 3pm I hoped Manpreet will fly open the glass door of the hall and galumph in and begin his graveyard stretch till 11pm as per our scheduled timetable. Think of him and he is right there – dripping with rainwater, wet to the skin and bone – his heavy-set boots slop-slopping a bit; his shoes appeared unusually jet-black that day probably due to rain and even shining like stainless steel. He trod heavily towards our much-loved promenade: our watering hole. His firmly-knit maroon Pagdi wrapped around his head that gave him a look of an unsung conqueror also got dampened in the Monsoon rain.

“Ek mint…main abhi ayaa (I’ll be in a moment),” announced Manpreet suddenly and slop-slopped away from our shared cubicle.

"Thik hai…,” I said and instantly craned my head to see him rush into the men’s room!

Maybe he felt like making use of the hot air blow-dryer to dry his shirt and pants. One can do exactly that by placing oneself at an embarrassing angle directly beneath the dryer with your waist hoisted up to an inch-long rectangular mouth of the hot air dryer. Beware! The hot air blow-dryer is a felt-feel apparatus. You need to keep your wait hoisted up, keep it steady, without moving much so that the damn thing keeps blowing hot air onto your clothes. The thing when done patiently can be quite useful for you if your pants are wet and you want them to blow-dry (whatever that means!), besides of course it can be pursued whenever you want to blow-dry your wet hands. Caution: Do the thing carefully when no one’s there in the washroom, for you might get someone startled with your act!

Jaadu Hai Tera Hi Jaadu...

It kept raining for a little over an hour. Another hour of rain and the city roads will disappear! In fact, they already might have! Great! How nice! Instead of roads we will have elongated serpentine swimming pools everywhere. How thoughtful!

Driving through the city becomes a bit of adventure in itself when it comes to wading through the knee-high grimy rainwater and your wheels ludicrously bumping on the concealed puddles. Though the traffic was sparse that day in September ‘98, one doesn’t really have the benefit of not getting mud-spattered during Monsoons, does one? Well, even that is welcome! Anything for the Monsoons.

The Monsoon Season is one of the most-awaited seasonal changes of the year. Everybody welcomes it with resigned happiness and awe. One gets to experience a special kind of affinity towards its brilliant fury: one of Mother Nature’s own, his bountiful grace. Monsoon rains make a whole lot of difference to the lives of every living being in this part of the world. It’s a time of plenty: not only of bountiful water but also expectations of life-sustaining good times to come with water in constant supply.

Somehow the sweet smell of the rain seeped through the open windows somebody opened at the end of the big hall a few feet away from where we were seated. Revanthi Rakani was humming the newly released song from the Hindi movie Ghulam: “Jaadu hai tera hi jaadu, jo mere dil pe chaahne lagaa…” and working at her computer. Working with Revanthi and Raufia Begum before they eventually shifted to Satyam Technology Center at Badaourpaly was one of the best experiences of our lives.

That day I went home soaking wet with Monsoon showers all over me, even my black wallet in my hip pocket was sopping wet and the notes inside got pulped. Sometimes, thanks to the Monsoon rains, I like everything wet; in fact, I don’t mind it at all! I rode home all wet. I loved it.

I love rain, I do.

END OF PART 1 OF 'LOVE, LOSS, LONELINESS, AND LONGING'

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

- This article has also been published on EzineArticles.com in a slightly different form. Following is the web link: http://arindammoulick.blogspot.in/2014/09/chapter-17-love-loss-loneliness-and.html

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.