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