Duet with Deuta!!!

This post is about six beautiful lines of an Assamese song I sang in my early childhood. The memories are distant but the lines still bring on an effect of reducing the separation between my dad (Deuta) and I, whenever I hum them. I was about four years old when we used to stand outside on the verandah and sing this song. He would drape a white Eri (Castor) Silk Chadar that hung loosely around his shoulders to keep the chill of the Shillong nights out.I would hold his right hand with my left, and point to the sky with my right forefinger, as we sang them. Here they are:

            Neel Akaashote Jole
            Sau Juno Moni
            Sau Juno Moni
            Tora Ogononee
            Sewali Re Paporee Re
            Bhora Bononee

For those who know the Bengali song Kar Manjira Baje Rini Jini Jini, this song had the same tune, and here is my English translation of it.

           In the blue sky shines
          The pearly moon
          The pearly moon-
          And a myriad of stars swoon
          While jasmine petals abound
          The wilderness around

This is my last post for the year. Thanks for reading my blog and wish all of you a very Happy New Year 2013!

Love,
Mallika

The Apocalypse

The heart was heavy

Filled with lead

Eyes waited to burst

But the tears had dried

The mind went numb

And words went missing

As the body shuddered

Over and over again

Twenty little hearts

Would beat no more

Little sparkling eyes

Would see no gifts

Innocent minds faded

And words went missing

As twenty little bodies shuddered

Once and for all

Unquotes

A blue by any other name - cerulean, azure, turquoise  -  is just as cool.

The grass is always greener on the other side, since we can't see the weeds from far.

Love thy neighbor, but first love yourself.

Mirrors reveal what pictures carefully conceal behind smiles.

People who die young can never grow old. They remain forever young, in our hearts.

Rolling in the Deep

She was sitting on the white sand about two feet away from where the waves were retreating. An occasional big wave came a little further once in a while, leaving her feet wet. She had spent countless mornings, noon and evenings by the sea, yet today seemed different from them all. There was an unusual quiet. A quiet she could feel deep down in her heart, as if it had stopped beating. The only sound she could hear is that of the waves, and with that her mind drifted into the past. She saw herself as a little child collecting shells in the beach. She had a small net where she put her tiny shells, white ones with reddish-brown markings, ones which were white on the outside and somewhat pale pink on the underside, and the less abundant pretty bluish ones.

She lived just a stone’s throw away from the beach. Whenever she was angry as her mother had scolded her over something, or her little brother had broken one of her dolls, she would run to the beach and not return until dusk. On several such occasions, her dad had to come to take her back home. He would hold her hand and as they walked back, he would offer to buy her a new toy, or tell her about her favorite snack that her mom was making right then. At that point, all her anger would disappear. She loved the walks back home, hand in hand with her dad. Nothing in the world seemed to matter at that time, apart from his company and her shells. Later, at home she would string the shells into garlands with her mother.

Oh Na Na..What's My Name?

When Rihanna croons ‘Oh Na Na What’s my name?’ our desi Sheila could probably medley
in without much difficulty singing ‘My name is Sheila’, the name having an Irish counterpart.
However, Chikni Chameli ,Jalebi Bai or Anarkali will not have the same fortune. They will have
a little bit of explaining to do, if their names are to be pronounced correctly in the West. This is
what happens to most of us who medley the East with the West by migrating here, but bringing
with us the influences of our eastern origins, one of the most prominent among them  -  our
names.

About a century back, the Assamese litterateur Lakhinath Bezbarua created a character
named Molok Guin Guin. This character was of an anglicized Indian man who had changed
his name from Moloku Gogoi to Molok Guin Guin to make it sound more western. The
character was part of his satirical writing, mocking the westernization of Indians .This feeling
is held probably until this day. I remember growing up hearing instances of people who had
changed their names after landing in America. Few common transitions are Krishnakant to
Kris, anything starting with Dev (Devakamal, Devabrata, etc) to Dave. All such references
had some intonation of ridicule in the conversation. My father would jokingly say, let’s change
our last name to Barrow referring to the Chatterjees( formerly Chottopadhyay), Mukherjees
(Mukhopadhyay), Handiques (Shondigoi),etc

A Walk To Remember

Little unstable steps in black Bata Ballerina or Naughty Boy shoes, with hand-kerchiefs folded into wedges and pinned on the chest; little hearts make their first trip across the length of road that will become part and parcel of their lives. That is how the first day of school was like for most of us who grew up in the quaint little town of pines, Shillong.

Most of the major schools in Shillong are on the stretch of road between the bus-stops of Dhankheti and Beat House. St Peter's, Loreto, St. Anthony's, St. Edmunds, St. Mary's and St.Margaret’s are all almost adjacent to each other, separated only by the arterial roads to get to them. Three of these schools are boys' schools and the other three are girls' schools and all but one is not named after a patron saint of the same gender as students it admits. (Here is an exercise in data sufficiency for you …go figure!). So the common ground where these young generations of Shillong meet is on this road. This is also the stretch of road that connects to several major residential areas. Hence, for the students of these schools, this is the road they traverse daily for at least fourteen years of their lives, from kindergarten to high school. Barely 1.5km in stretch , this road remains no more just a road, but a throbbing repository of countless memories- friendly banter, drenching rain and a breeding ground for Shillong's innocent romances.

To Err Is Human, To Confess Divine?

I was about seven or eight years old when I did something that still awakens a guilty conscience. We lived in a house which had big windows with draping rods at two levels, which was common in Shillong. The higher rod was for the heavier curtain which was drawn at night and opened during daytime. The lower rod was placed in the middle, and used to drape net curtains which remained drawn during the day. They allowed visibility from inside while averting curious strangers from playing peek-a-boo with the dwellers. From basic white nets in the tin houses (houses that were very modest and had flattened mustard-oil tin containers nailed to the exterior for protection against the vagaries of weather) to ones with intricate patterns and vivid hues in the bungalows, every house had these. In the local lingo they were called half-curtains or half-purdah and the local Marwari businessmen made fortunes out of selling them.