Putting the right foot forward

The last post was an expression of my angst and fury. And this one is an expression of the fact that I still believe in humanity(male and female). Each time we put the right foot ahead of the left and form a step, we are actually taking a decision to move ahead, to cross barriers and borders, to take a plunge into the unknown, to discover and to live whatever comes in our way. Each morning before the tiny step we are renewing our ethereal faith, we are renewing our trusts in people and in God.

A few days back these images were mailed to me by Suraj. It is a chain mail and many of you would have already seen them. But I will still go ahead and use this platform to share these lovely images and message that each of them carry.

They renewed my faith and made me see beyond myself. Hope they light a spark in your lives too. For the ease of reading I am retyping the message below each image.

Stand up against racial discrimination. Stop Racism

Get out of a destructive relationship when there is still time


Children learn fast. DOn't fight at home

Do not neglect the Girl Child

Adopt!! You never know who you will bring home.

Think before wasting food.

Protect your child. Abusers are usually people your child trusts!

Is this what your child surfs on the World Wide Web??

Drive safe! Better late than never!

Tell me what you feel..

Like my blog, I have been neglecting a lot of things that are close to my heart lately. I have been putting it all to the back burner, saying the same lines repeatedly,"Next weekend, when there's a bit more time.." I must have said this a dozen times over the last couple of weeks, to my kids, to myself, to my friends.. only to realise just a while back, that time does not come, I have to create it!!

Talking of realisations, I have suddenly realised that men like trash!! Am I seeing raised eyebrows? Am I seeing a few eyes getting closer to their computer screens? Or am I seeing,"DUH!!! what did you think?" expressions!! Hahahah, but really, I have always prided myself, to the point of being egoistic that I was attractive to men because of my wit, of my intellect, and to an extent, because of my nature!! But believe me that's not what men want..MEN LIKE TRASH!!!

By trash I mean, women who throw themselves over anything male(had a better way of saying it but, my daughter reads the blog..so being careful with my language here), by trash I mean women who are constantly on the prowl, making overtures, making moves, being vampish, being dumb and being damsels in a perpetual state of undress as well as distress. And believe you me - all men, starting from tramps to technocrats like that!!

Another realisation is that offices are a hub of politics. It was so 13 years back when I started working, it is so, even now! The faxes and the software could have changed but the people have not. It's either a power game or a blame game, and in between all this and the numerable coffee breaks, if there is time, some work ends up happening.

Just a few realisations and their announcements at the cost of sounding naive, biased, judgemental, frigid or all of the above!!

Lets hear what each one of you gotta say!!

Our world

"Remember how we watched three Uttam Kumar classics back to back that Saptami night? which year was it? Remember..Rintu was in college I think, it must be '96. And what about the saree shopping we did together on the gariahat roads? remember the crowd, and the phuchka breaks we kept taking. That year Pujo was the best, we were all together, the pandals, the dhunochi naach, the aaroti..."

It is at such moments when I see mamma go all nostalgic about her past, that I realize what a completely different life we bengali children lead here in Muscat. The set of kids that I mix with and also some others whom I see around have our own little culture, and we follow it to the core. Uttam kumar could be missing, and we might not have fond memories of gariahat road, but this post will give you all a peek into our culture.

When we, pre-teens and teens meet each other at the Bengali parties, that we are dragged to, or at pujas and other such social functions, do we greet each other like our counterparts in Calcutta? do we say, "Ki re kemon achish?" No!! we dont, we usually say "hey" and give a hi5 or just smile and say, "You alright?" The irony is not here, the irony is in the fact that in the same breath we greet our elders in proper unaccented bengali, we continue to eat bengali food without the slightest knowledge of its name or recipe, we continue to respond to the queer pet names we carry, and we continue to live in the little cultural domain that we have created in a faraway shore quite naturally.

We have no idea how great Soumitra Chaterjee was as an actor, or how beautiful Suchitra Sen. We think Mithun is a loser and feel bengali black and white flicks are a bore, we hardly know anything about Tagore, and yet we dance to his songs and even sing a few for social dos, we get the steps right, we get the tunes right, the lyrics, written using the English alphabets are easily memorized, we even manage the expressions, but we remain passionless about his emotions, we remain aloof to his sentiments. His essence is lost in us.

We buy clothes whenever we want or feel like, there is no excitement about new clothes during the festive season, we live typical NRI lives and yet return home on time to report the day's events in Bengali to our parents, our lives are a paradox that even we cannot explain, and yet we live it without any difficulty in this small world of the Bengali kids in Muscat.

This was a break I took between my exam studies. If my brother can become a hit here..why not me?? c'mon guys, I gave you a thought to ponder upon..let the comments flow in.

with love
Toshali