"তুমি বৃষ্টি ভিজো না, ঠান্ডা লেগে যাবে......"

অবশেষে বর্ষা এল। এমন করে এল যে বাইরে বেরোন দায়। ঝেঁপে বৃষ্টি আসছে আর যাচ্ছে। মাঝে মাঝে ইলশেগুঁড়ি। এমন হাওয়া যে বৃষ্টির ফোঁটা মাটিতে পড়ার আগেই উড়ে যায়।তবে ইলিশ এর দাম মোটেও কমেনি।যা কমেছে তা হল বাজারে ভিড়।আমার গ্রীষ্মের ছুটি নিয়ে অনেকের অনেক বক্তব্য আছে। তবে এরকম বৃষ্টি-বাদলার দিনে ঘর বন্দী হয়ে থাকতে মন্দ লাগে না। শহরের বুকে এই ত ক'টা দিন ব্যাঙের গোঁঙানি শোনা যায়।


আমার ছেলে ত আর জলে কাগজের নৌকো ভাসাবে না, ওদের বৃষ্টিতে ভিজলে ঠান্ডা লাগে, জ্বর আসে, test দিতে পারে না, বাব-মা কে তার জন্য অফিস কামাই করে মহামান্য প্রিন্সিপ্যাল-এর সঙ্গে দেখা করতে যেতে হয়। শৈশব তো আর ফিরে আসবে না! Base কাঁচা হলে তো কোনো future নেই।


তাই ওকে বলি, বৃষ্টি না ভিজে একটা essay লেখ দেখি, কেমন পার! আর সেটা যেন, তোমার হিজিবিজি কল্পনা না হয়, তাহলে আর তোমার ক্লাসে সবার থেকে এগিয়ে থাকা হবে না...

Mastering the Teachers

I really have been watching that the teachers in West Bengal have long stemmed their expectation of living up to their dignity. Call them with whatever name you want to, and they have the sacred forgiveness earned through their education in the literal sense. The question comes almost everyday that within so few hours they have less work and are overpaid. However the teachers have never stopped anyone entering into the same profession. Sitting in a cubicle, with air-conditioning machines turned on, enslaved by the bosses, there are so called learned intellectuals, who have perhaps, never ever in their lives have made a single illiterate child learn his first alphabet and preferred to idle away their leisure hours in beer pub, suddenly become socially conscious when they come across the pay-packets and the holidays that the teachers in schools enjoy.

Those who do not know, I would like to mention that that the teachers have got the Saturdays working while in the private sector almost all the parallel designators enjoy leaves on Saturdays. In a whole year, the teachers in West Bengal have 65 days of leave (including the vacations and all the public holidays) while those working with the private sector, especially in the Information Technology industry, enjoy 52 days of holidays that the Saturdays in a year conjure up. Added are almost 25 days of public holidays. The same applies on the State and the Central Government employees.

Now let us come to the question of being overpaid. In United Kingdom (for those who salivate at the Civilization in the West) teaching and nursing (not medical practitioners as doctors) are graded the most dignified profession, as these directly relate to the service of mankind and thus the professionals are paid that the dignity in the job deserves. Undoubtedly, less the dignity, the government has made arrangements, all over India, so that the teachers are not deprived of their deserving honourarium. 

Strangely enough,, In West Bengal, the well placed educated people, cannot stand the changed deserving status of the teachers, here. The teachers are to be called MASTERMOSHAI forevermore; they should be ever clad in ragged clothes and put on torn chappals, but know and teach ever better than the God himself.

If they manage to live better, try every means to pull them down to the real status of living hand-to-mouth. My dear friends and those who cherish a perpetual grudge against the teachers, I cannot change your learned outlook to the teachers, because as your purses are thicker than them and so with the virtue of your daily enslaving mark of glitz of corporatization you earn the fundamental right of becoming jealous of the teachers. But think hard, if you had the knowledge and ability to TEACH one single child on earth would you have chosen to be enslaved thus?

Do remember, the things you have learnt in your life are only through the teachers at your first school. So, please do not sulk, they deserve it.

Vintage

Memories

I still can smell the raw paints on the walls of my favourite hiding, a cupboard, of the house we lived for eight long years at Belur, a kilometer away from Belurmath itself. In it I used to spin all my dreams, cry, laugh and frown at my parents who did all the things they wanted to and restricted me from doing all the things I wanted.

I really don't know if the first rhyme, I had written on my own on the walls of it, is still there or not. I had foolishly imagined, after my first return from Konark, Orissa, that someday my creations would be discovered thus. So to lessen the burden of the archeologists I had written my own name there too.

Memory still lingers in my mind of my first sight of the deep blue sea at Puri, and how scared I was when the sand passed from under my feet with the waves dying down back to the sea. I felt like Sita, in The Ramayana, being gorged down to Mother Earth.

If a human being treasures something in him, it is his memories and only memories. Bigger memories with greater and wider significance are called History. To an individual his own history, however big or small, makes a man of him when he grows up.

I have grown up with memories, good, bad and ugly and references to them still help me finding the right ways at the complicated cross-roads.

Kheya

Everyday, all, baked with the scorching heat of the summer sun, look forward for a relieving Kalboishaki at the end the day to be entailed by at least a temporary relief. Last Sunday, though was, a different story for all the residents of Lakeview Cooperative housing society Ltd as an annual cultural programme was organized. No one wanted to be a spoil sport to see the children of Lakeview to take the stage by storm, instead of Kalboishakhi.

And everyone lived far above our expectation making our jaws dropping. Catastrophically we remained open mouth, too, with wonder that how could be the sound system so poor in quality!

Hats off to all the performers who never let their own efforts fall to give their best out despite such inconvenience.

 

শুকনো লঙ্কা

মিঠুন চক্রবর্তী-কে আবার দেখলাম। মোহিত হলাম।

রবিঠাকুর, তোমায় প্রণাম

আজ আমরা যেখানে থাকি সেই লেক ভিউ এ আমাদের স্বপ্ন দিয়ে বোনা 'কাঁথাস্টিচ' এক অনবদ্য অনুষ্ঠানের আয়োজম করেছে। ঘরোয়া জলসা-ও বলতে পার।আজকাল তো এসবের বালাই নেই বললেই চলে, তবু আমরা চেষ্টা করছি ব্যাপারটা যাতে মরে না যায়।

Sikkim : The Laughing Stock

Can you ever imagine sitting here in Kolkata that you are stiff-jawed obedient to the traffic rules when there is no traffic police? People will laugh at you, if you are one.

I had been to Sikkim recently and even the most uneducated driver obeys the traffic rules there. They do not blow the horn unnecessarily as a precautionary measure because one, the chances of accidents are less because even when the road is empty, they stick to the left instead of the middle and, finally it was rather queer for me to know from a driver, who has never been to school, perhaps,and supposedly knows even less than my seven-year old son, that blowing horns indiscriminately causes noise pollution, and apart from rules being very strict at Sikkim, all the drivers maintain that, even when there is no chance of Police catching them.

We, the Kolkatans, are to laugh at such a joke and cuddle that how fool the people at Sikkim are.

Pelling : Somewhere Close to Heaven