21 Feb

21 February, International Mother Language Day, reminds me of this song

আমার ভায়ের রক্তে রাঙানো একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারি

আমি কি ভুলিতে পারি

ছেলেহারা শত মায়ের অশ্রু গড়ায়ে ফেব্রুয়ারি

আমি কি ভুলিতে পারি

আমার সোনার দেশের রক্তে রাঙানো একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারি

আমি কি ভুলিতে পারি।।

Can I forget the twenty-first of February

incarnadined by the love of my brother?

The twenty-first of February, built by the tears

of a hundred mothers robbed of their sons,

Can I ever forget it?

These were one of the many songs/poems I heard from my ‘Dadu’, my grandfather and ‘Thakuma’, my grandmother. For those who are not familiar, this song by Abdul Gaffar Choudhury commemorates the killing of students by the police in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 21 February 1952. Thus began the Bengali language movement advocating the recognition of the Bengali language along with Urdu as an official language of the then-Dominion of Pakistan. 

My grandfather and my grandmother relived these legends of their times by telling stories to my father and my aunt and later to their 2 grandchildren. I remember them as stories of sorrow and heartbreak, the pain of partition, leaving your family and belonging in another country and watch them getting ripped apart by violent turmoil of the war. I was in great admiration of their courage and their mental strength to overcome all of this and start a new life in a new country.

My grandfather was a born raconteur. He was involved in a lot of activities pre-independence and many of them did lead him to trouble. Most of my childhood was spent in listening wide-eyed to his tales; his witty nature and light-heartedness made up for the grimness of these real-life tales. During his final year of Medical studies in Calcutta, he was charged with sedition and was unable to continue his studies at Medical College. Books like Pather-Dabi by Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay and Anando-Math by Bankim Chandra were considered to be seditious books; possession of them would lead to imprisonment. (No wonder those were the first few books I read during my sensible teens after the Famous Five and Hardy Boys!). During one of the frequent security sweeps, a friend removed his collection for his safety, but still he became a suspect in the eyes of the political police. He told us about the infamous Elysium Row, the torture chamber in Calcutta during the British-Raj, where he was questioned for 2 days and released on request of a Bengali lawyer, who was his father’s protege. He would have been amused to know that his descendants would later have a strong British connection. Today, my curiosity led me to this online book http://goo.gl/Vx5tD0 from where I have this screenshot

He told us many other stories where he was almost killed by his own-party members for not participating in the frequent riots. An unknown non-Hindu teenager, Badrul Haider Chowdhury, saved him and remained a friend till my grandfather moved to India in 1947. Later on Mr. Chowdhury became Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Why didn’t I ever think of showing Wikipedia to Dadu, he would have been so happy to see - http://goo.gl/u8JKQT

There were lot more such stories and I am not a good storyteller like him. Procrastination never allowed me to document them properly and now it’s too late; my grandmother doesn’t remember most of these. She mentioned that she will be alone this 21 February after 68 years. This was one way to cherish his memory and let it live on. Dadu was 99 years 4 months on 5 February.  

The girl in green

I hate summers in Durban. Not that I enjoy the cold rainy winters either. But now that it is summer, the sun rises irritatingly bright and shiny at 5.15 am. The curtains I have in my apartment are not opaque enough to let this not bother my peaceful slumber. Anyway, today, as most days, I pretend to sleep for another hour or so.
At around 6.00am the whine of my alarm woke me up in jolt. Finally I woke up and decided to give my running another try after almost a month.
I try to warm up a bit in the lift, while the people leaving for work at 6.30 am (!) smile at me.  I hit the road with a little bit of brisk walking. The last few weeks with good food at a workshop and loads of ice-cream (mixed with Amarula :) ) was definitely not a good diet for me! Anyway, I start jogging in a while and after 2.5 kms I get severe calf spasms. Luckily, I was not far from Wilks park so I crawled on my favorite bench to catch my breath and sooth my calves. Incidentally this is my usual spot to rest a bit before a deadly steep climb.
Today, the park was empty, maybe the heat was too much. Or maybe since its a Monday morning, people are at work at 7.00 am and only jobless people like me are trying to enjoy nature while soothing the sore calves.
I did see the little girl in green playing with dry leaves beside the swings. While browsing on my mobile, from the corner of my eyes, did see her moving across the park towards me. She came and sat beside me, we said hi to each other and I carried on my browsing. After a minute or so, she muttered something. So I stopped my incessant obsession with my mobile and turned to talk to her. She asked me again, 'Do you have some clothes?'. I thought maybe I didn't hear clearly, so she repeated it for the 3rd time. Then, to my shock,  I realized that there was blood on many parts of her body. I asked her what was wrong, and then while rubbing her tears, she told me that she was an orphan and had ran away from home, where she was beaten up everyday by her aunt.
There were bad bruises on her hands, neck and the blood from the recent wounds in the night before was still fresh. I had no idea how to help her, so I thought maybe I can speak to the security and ask them to take her to her house or any other place which might be safe for her. Unfortunately, the security was nowhere to be found.
I was clueless to what I should do next. I tried to speak to her more, and although she was not happy about it, she agreed to go back home and talk to her neighbors about it. I took her to my apartment and gave her some money, some old clothes and shoes. Her eyes brightened up when I offered her some food. And then she left.
I stood on my balcony trying to catch the last glimpse of that little girl in green.
Situations like this baffle me; what am I supposed to do? Was it a bad idea to let her go back to her hell house? But otherwise what should I have done? Should I have contacted some children shelter to take care of her? I hardly know the city myself, it would have been really difficult to do so I guess. A little ashamed of myself, choosing the easy way in this situation... 

Butterfly Effect and the Mirror of Erised

Why is my life so full of confusion? Why cant I be sure of so many things in life? Its not that I seriously regret my major decisions in life but I am highly curious to know what would have happened if I had taken the other road. Maybe I would have become a better person with a better life but might not have come across all the wonderful people and incidents whom I cherish. Who is to decide which would have been better? But just think about it, wouldn't it be so cool, that you can tweak some of the initial conditions in your past so that you can see yourself as you are in the Mirror of Erised?
Wishful thinking! Now back to work :)

cal 9 1752

If you type cal in linux terminal, it prints the calendar of the current month.

For fun type

cal 9 1752

It will print


From the linux man pages of cal - The Gregorian Reformation is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on the 3rd of September. By this time, most countries had recognized there formation(although a few did not recognize it until the early 1900's.) Ten days following that date were eliminated by the reformation, so the calendar for that month is a bit unusual.

Why Are Some People More Angry Than Others?

I have always been referred to as a short tempered person. The biggest problem is I know that very well but can also provide justification for my actions, at least in most of the cases :D

Most so called studies claim that people like me have low tolerance level for frustration.
Now, why does that happen? It might be genetic/physiological; some children are born irritable, touchy, and easily angered. It seems that family background does also play a role; a chaotic home environment does not nurture true growth of any emotion. Being exposed to people who resort to anger to win over others, gives a child a wrong idea.
Providing a superfluous lifestyle where every demand of the child is met with, hardly gives a sense of adaptability and resorting to what is available. A minute discourse in the normal turn of events thus infuriates such a person.
Society claims anger is one word short of danger, but never teaches one to handle this perfectly normal human emotion constructively.

Now, what if I tell you that none of the above arguments would work for me. I was not born irritable. I was not raised in a disruptive family. My working mother even with her mother-in-law being a total jerk, never let me feel the pain or suffering she had to go through balancing work and family. I was mostly taken care of by my aunt, before she got married and left for her new home. My father never let me understand that with even my mother working, there was a time when they had to worry about how to take care of the next month finances. Its true I lived my life superfluously; a Rs. 15 Dairy Milk every month from my grandfather, travelling to nice places using my parents' bank LTC/LFC and dinner at a fancy restaurant on my parents anniversary were the things which I looked forward to the most. So, I had an enjoyable and comfortable childhood in my middle class family.
When it comes to adaptability, being a single child however didn't hinder me in anyway. I had a lot of cousins and thanks to them, being selfish was not an option :)

So, what went wrong? Actually, I gained this title soon after I stepped out of my teens. Of course, my teenage years had its natural toll of differences between mother and daughter on what to and not to do/wear/behave/say/expect and so on. This occasional nonsense was totally normal. But now, I considered myself to be a grown up, and just wanted people to treat me that way. A famous incident when my anger almost stopped a college performance by two of my very good friends. I still get to hear how hot headed I behaved. But no one asked me why I behaved that way, instead they just assumed that is how I am, irrational and impulsive. They never got the idea that circumstances can build up and a small push to a frail guy away from your body can cause him to lose balance. Don't worry, I didn't push him off the roof ;)
Later on, with more studies and pressure, I didn't have time to get angry. It was not that there were lack of incidents to irritate me, but I simply kept my cool.
The disadvantage of being a girl in a science environment is that to be social you have to hear continuous stream of sexual innuendos even if you don't want to. The good thing was, my adaptivity and high tolerance level made me immune to all these rants and helped me to enjoy the humour instead of taking offense. Now, this high tolerance that I boast of, is of course highly relative !
To whom one can be tolerant to? I am tolerant to people whom I respect, whom I can trust to a certain level even with all their shortcomings. However, there is a separate class of people to whom I show tolerance of a different kind, they are people whose opinion does not really matter to me. So I don't waste my energy arguing to convince stubborn people to open their minds.
However, why do I loose my cool with my friends, the person I used to love and my parents? Is it because that I expected them to understand me, expected them to believe in me and to trust me more than they can trust others? My parents are the more sensible of the lot, they understand my stress in my career and how I cannot settle down in life. My so called friends, always criticized me about having a fit of rage, a person who blows things out of proportion. But what they never saw were the circumstances which could have led to what they call a drastic outburst of emotion. I have been advised by a well read person that I should go for psychiatrist treatment. But why on earth, should I pay someone to tell me what any normal person without a degree in psychology can? Is it really so hard to find a person who instead of instigating the anger when someone is already irritated can actually calm the latter?
Anyways, too much of rambling after almost 2 years. Keeping a control on the anger issue, not very hard with the absence of such instigating people around me :)

Murud Janjira Fortress

A nice place to visit, Murud-Janjira Fortress is considered to be one of the five Unconquerable Fortresses in Human History according to this.
More details can be found here.

QR

Interesting thing I came across.
The Quick Response matrix code is currently the most popular type of two dimensional bar-code used in Japan.
This is the QR image of my name, generated using this link.