Forgive to Forget!!!!!!!!!

           Firstly I must admit this topic is inspired by one of friend’s FB status update. The update was ‘Easier to Forgive….Difficult to Forget’ and there was lot of agreement and disagreement with this statement. This statement reminded me some of the past incident of my life and I came up with this idea, lets write on this topic. According to some people, forgiveness make you a great person but you should remember the incident so you don’t walk through that path again and others think then u haven’t forgave yet. Here I must say, sometime we treat ‘let it go’ as ‘forgiveness’, & we never forget the sin and the person involve in the sin. If we think the incident was not a sin then we just have to let it go, there is no need of forgiveness.

           Once I asked my father ‘have you forgave him’, the obvious question was ‘who?’. I said ‘the man cheated you with your first savings’. He smiled at me & told me ‘if I have failed to forgive him, then I would never trust anyone else & we are not poor today’. Yes I agree he must have forgiven him but never forgot the incident, this memory he will carry lifelong, and some incident you can’t forget.

           I had a friend or I must say the person is still one of my good friend. Every time we meet, we chat and fight about my friend’s disappearance after the previous meet and no information about the incidents took place in our lives. Every time I think next time if I see the person in the road I will never talk back or I would never answer the email. But after all these years I realised I would never forget the person after all those act and now a days when my mom asks about that friend, I usually reply, well the friend would appear from some of this empty space. Then there would be an emotional drama and we will talk normally again, after some time we will not be in touch again. So sometime you have to let it go and may be you don’t want to forget the incident or the person.      

           Then there is another incident, I had a very close friend. Who actually help me a lot to overcome my difficulties, understand me the most and be there even when I haven’t ask for the help. I considered the person as my true friend and I had this believe whenever I would need the help most, the person would appear as an angel. But in the trouble time, the whole situation was reverse. My friend was the first person who left me in my trouble time and never came back. With time, i forgot the incident, but if you ask me about the forgiveness, well some acts never reach the level of forgiveness. This time is was easily forgotten but never forgiven.

           This is my idea about forgive and forget, it will vary from person to person. Some time we don’t want to forget and we can’t forgive but in both case someone hurt our feelings and trust.   

Crush, Infatuation and Obsession

This time the topic is related to LOVE, as it is the end of the ‘love month’.  The month February is the month of roses, teddy bears, chocolates, promises, proposes and obviously loves. February reminds us about Valentines Day, a day to show your love to the people belong to your world and miss them little more than other days. I think that’s why February comes with 28 days to end this crazy month soon. In leap year the craziness last longer for another day! So this time I picked out some words, Crush, Infatuation and Obsession, not the synonyms of love (must be noted).

           According to my dictionary, crush means hit or damage some property, actually which is true. In teenage it happens to everyone, a sudden like or dream about one or many person. But after some time, the dream changes and shapes differently, so actually it is a sweet damage. Here I must mention, it doesn’t happen only in teenage, it happen in other ages too and also need to note it is normal for human being. That why our favourite actor, actress, book, movie, serial, drama, writer, director, food changes with time or we have list of them (at least I have).

           Then the question is how infatuation is different than crush (even I’m little confused over here). In other word if ‘infatuation’ can be split as ‘in fat notion’. When crush last longer it turns to infatuation. Whenever there is bigger event in life than the previous the infatuation ends. After long time when you think about your crush, the memories make you smile but in case of infatuation it makes you angry (at least for me). It’s better for every one to leave the state of infatuation state as soon they realize.     

           Lastly obsession, I think it is abnormality of human mind. The obsession involving the person, give rise to insecurity, fear which is very dangerous for both parties. The person in obsession can destroy the main rules of love and turns to the most negative person, which is not expected from a person in love. It is a say that ‘everything is fair in love’, but how far you can go to achieve your love without hurting anyone even not yourself. This ‘say’ some time considered differently and finally obsession dominates and rules everything and destroys the pure love.

           Love teaches to respect, to forgive, to sacrifice, to be determined and broad-minded. Love comes with pains and tears, it’s not the end, it’s the destiny.

Saraswati puja or Valentine’s Day for Bengal

I think everyone is confused from the above title, how can be Valentine’s Day be correlated with Saraswati puja! Some people may think I am making fun of both the special days, but keep reading you will find the relation by the end of this writing. Saraswati puja, it is the worship of goddess Saraswati. In India Saraswati is the goddess of learning and music. Now i think everyone is trying to find the connection with Valentine’s Day.  How can be goddess of learning and music is related to love!

               According to my knowledge Saraswati puja day was the day for unlimited freedom.  This day my mom will not ask me where i’m going and with whom and most importantly when i will be back to house. Moreover the day of Saraswati puja and day after the puja day i am officially in holiday from studing!  So it was the day for unlimited hanging out with friends in own school, other schools and also outside the school. This unlimited fun starts before Saraswati puja like inviting other schools for puja, then decoration of school, coaching center. This fun part was absent in my college days, as we didn’t have saraswati puja in college or even it is there i never went over there. Even in my college days i use to go to school and coaching center and most surprisingly all our school friends and teachers use to know about this unofficial reunion date. No one has invited us, there is no contact between the friends during the year, but certainly we all found our friends in this day.

             The fun of Saraswati puja doesn’t ends here, as it is a festive day all the young girls and boys dressed very beautifully for the occasion. All the girls wear sari (traditional Indian cloth) and boys also in panjabi or kurti (traditional Indian cloth). So all the young people of various age look totally different, i must say very beautiful with all these dresses, jewelleries, perfumes etc. If you go to Kolkata during this day, i can assure that you would say ‘o the city look more colourful and beautiful than any other time’.  Most amazingly only this day there is no barrier between the boys school and girls school, and mostly all the boys are infront or inside the girls school! Also lot of boys notice all those girls in this day, whom they never notice in the whole year. It is the beauty of this special day or the weather of Kolkata. Now you know why i was calling it as Valentine ’s Day for Bengal!

         During my long stay in UK, twice in a year i miss Kolkata most, once during Durga puja and once during Saraswati puja. I really miss those days. Choosing mom’s sari, then mom’s warning about the sari safety. Then keeping track on my friend’s information as they want to disappear with someone, so i need to manage (as their parents will know they are with me!) etc. Also during decoration time gossiping, dancing, singing, painting through the night before and in the very next morning running for puja arrangement and then the priest’s sought at me as i did something wrong in the puja thali like every year.  For me it never became Valentine’s Day, but from the eyes of my friends, cousins it was more Vday than puja day. The love blooms everywhere, the festive season starts in Bengal with this puja in the spring, more will come in the coming months, and the perfect love rose will be ready by Durga puja!     

Friendship @ social network

Friendship is the most important and sensitive word in a human life. What comes first in our mind after hearing the word ‘friend’, some face, some words and lots of memory! Have we ever thought if friends are not there what will happen to us, for me the world will become colourless, silent and mournful.  People say friends are the only family chosen by us, all other relationship we get them as a birth right or work right. Friends from school life, college life, work life and social network life and this time my topic is about the friendship happens by social networking.  This friendship has killed the real meaning of friendship.

            Friendship is the ship, by which we promise to begin a lifelong never ending journey forever; the ship travels through the ocean of sorrows, sea of joy, beside the trouble island. Sometime we can see some holes in that ship, but it never fall apart, we always feel save there.  A person’s popularity can be measured by the numbers of their friends and valuation of the friendship is impossible in terms of their social status. I know lot of people will agree with my statement and lot people will think who is the mad person will say something like this about friendship! Social network has proved the above statement is so true. Recently I found out one of my friend has 550 friend in the friend list and I asked how you know so many people! The person replied ‘more than 200 people is in don’t know category’. This reminds me about another act of my other friend, suddenly we found out, the number of friends was decreasing in his social profile and his answer was, he was deleting the unknown people. Even I get those entire requests, please add me as an orkut friend or a friend request in the facebook without any mutual friend! I replied them as do I know you? They answer was, now we can know each other. Sorry strangers I am happy with the friends I have.  

            Even the persons we know, how much we are aware about their life! Some people don’t have their status update or picture uploaded in the social network, do we ever try to know about them or remember them once in 2-3month! Even if we see their social status update, if they had a bad news do we call them after sometime to know how they are now! If social network is not there, I feel we would have call our close friends atleast once in 6month to find out about them, now we have these assurance, o the person is in the facebook, I will find the activity other there, does it truly work like that!   

            I’m not telling that all these is so bad, you connect to your very old friends and you can keep in touch with them, without the social which was impossible.  However, nothing is impossible if you do care about the person, you don’t need them in your social network profile. You will gather information about them by other source and if they need you, you will be beside the person in the time they need you most.   

A New Year with the old hopes

Time passes by one year comes and leaves us with lot of memories, achievement, sorrows. Then again another year comes and all of us hope for the best. I think in every New Year we all wish to fulfil the old hopes what we have not achieved in the past year. If we make a list of the wishes in every year in the 1^st week and try to read in the next year, i can guaranty 50% of them will be the same.  

Once i have asked to one of my friend, that what is his new year resolution? He said the resolution i took last year and last last year and even year before that. He never fulfilled it in any of these years so every year he wish that he will fulfil in this year and so on in the coming years. Then he asked me what about my wishes. I said i never had anything in my mind in the start, i just move with time, whatever time asked me to achieve or lose i just go with flow as i can’t predict the future. If you want something in the start, then if you don’t achieve at end you will think you did nothing in the whole year. I don’t like that emptiness.

Once i have asked to my mom, what she want in this year. She smiled and told me, i will cook, watch serials, wait for you and your dad at the end of the day, go to your uncle’s place and later shout at you, all i did last year. There is nothing new, everyday is same to me 1^st or 31^st. I realised that the life is different for house wives that the working peoples.   

I had a cousin who was trying really hard to pass a competitive exam and she was stuck in the mid, As once she passed the written exam, then next year she didn’t got a chance after the viva exam. So after these years i asked her ‘you have tried for three times, still you want to try’. She said may be this year will bring the luck and i will accomplish what i want. After another two year she got the job, so for her new year means a new opportunity, she can sit for another exam. For my uncle it was how to gain more crops in the bad weathers and a new strategy for survival in the new year.  

However all of us just want to chase the old dream or hope, so a new year with the old hopes. This year will be different and we will achieve all we wanted last year as the time is changing every year. May be you have seeded your dream tree last year and this year it’s time to collect the fruit from that tree and try to multiply and amplify all those dreams. 

Happiness: the biggest relative parameter of life

           I should write at the beginning, this topic is inspired by two songs. One of them is from Satyajit Ray’s popular movie ‘Gupi gayen Bagha bayen’, ‘Ek je chilo raja, tar bhari dukho’. I think all of us from Bengal know this song and the other is from Rabindranath Tagor’s ‘Mayar Khela’. The first few lines of the song is ‘Era sukher lagi chahe prem, prem mele na, sudhu sukh chole jai, amoni mayar cholona’. Ok people who don’t know the songs, the first song were about a king, who is very sad despite of having all the happiness possible and the next one is about love & happiness, searching one of them to achieve the other. If you ask me, I would say happiness is a biggest illusion, only your heart can decide your happiness or sadness. You can’t buy happiness or you can not beg for it. I think we all search for happiness or sometime we earn it or even snatch it. How happiness is a relative parameter will tell you now.

           From last week the north-east England has been turned to white. I never had seen such snow madness in the past 3yrs, continuing for more than a week in the month November. Like other yrs when it started, everyone around me was very happy. For some this is the first time in their life to see it, smell it, touch it, and feel it and for others, its time to play with snow. Seems like the unfinished game in snow will be completed this year! But for me it was the same old trouble knocking the door. I was really sad. Snow so early! I expected no snow this time, as it was really bad last year. The reasons of my unhappiness,                   

1. I can’t ride my bike now, so I have to walk: wastage of time.
2. My snow boot was leaking last year, now I have to buy a new one!
3. Snowing means, the outside temperature is around 1°C to –(6-10)°C, I have to turn on the house heater. How much I’m going to pay for electricity bill! And it is only November, more is expected.

           Even I agree when you walk during snowing, it feels like God’s blessing are showering on you and the beauty of the surrounding can not be explained in words. It feels like someone came with white paint and painted the trees, the houses, the roads, the hills. Latter the sunshine in the snow makes me to collect the glitter in the ground, for the time I forget I’m felling cold. But the truth remains the same, my leaking boot, slipping in the icy road and late arrival in the university reminds me the miseries. So the sadness and the happiness both are my illusion.

           Even I saw it from my childhood, human being is not happy with what they have. They can always see what others have more than them. But they never acknowledge what extra they have! When you achieve some of your desired happiness, you want more and then turned to unhappy again. So it is what we decide ‘Happy forever’ or ‘Sadness is my friend forever ’.

An unknown face behind the known mask

I can’t remember where I have heard this line ‘Mukh mukhosher arale se ek achena manush’, in English ‘A stranger hidden in the face mask’. I really liked this line and surprisingly I realized we all have a range of face mask which changes with time and place. Some people will name it as change of strategies with situation. I will start to analysis about this ‘face mask’ with examples among my relatives, neighbours and friends etc. The people seem to a lot known to us.

           My uncle, who always believed that, if you have a daughter, then you should start saving. You should provide a reasonable education to your daughter to catch a high-quality groom. When I entered to an engineering college, the first comment was, now you can have a NRI groom. I became red in anger and left the place. My idea was how you can say that after being a head teacher of a school! Then, when I got the admission for UK, he was the first one who brought me the suitcase to travel. Which one is the real man & which one is the mask is the confusing question now. A man can’t change his idea about a particular subject in 4yrs! Another uncle who seems to have a pride about me, that I am an engineer. Suddenly he gave a peculiar suggestion to my father, when the news was in the air that I’m leaving for UK soon. The suggestion was, why she can’t do a job and you should search for a groom, stop all these nonsense, a single girl going to UK! This time I was not surprised, as I have already got the idea of ‘mask’.

           I should tell another story related to one of my neighbour. When he came to the neighbourhood, we came to know that he was a very well known retired SP. Then one day there was a fraud in our house. So my mother just called him to verify the matter. He came and talked to the person & as he didn’t put any question mark to the matter, my mother just gave the money to that fraud person. Latter we find out he cheated us and he usually do it everywhere. My father just said to us, now I know which kind of SP he was. This incident left me with a big question, do we see the real man for the time or only the ‘face mask’ became familiar to us day by day. 

           In my friend circle I found that lot of people became important when they got a good marks in different exams. For some people, they start to fly in the sky when they got a good job; they thought that they can rule others. Some of them left their old friends as they don’t match to their friend’s category now. So their change in acts hurts a lot at the beginning, then I try to analysis, what is my mistake. Now I know that the person I knew before was a ‘face mask’, may be this is the real person, or it is another mask! Who knows…?