One. Teacher: Look, suppose I give you two apples—one large, one small. If I say you can split whichever one you choose into two equal parts, keep one half for yourself, and give the other to your brother, which apple would you cut? Student: Miss, which brother are you talking about? My older brother? Or my younger brother? When the state speaks of equal rights, precisely the same thing happens. When distributing equal rights, the state observes: among those groups who will share this right equally, who holds greater sway? The numerical majority with greater muscle? Or the numerical minority with less? The state gauges the situation and determines the measure of rights accordingly. Two. Life is good with a cup of Starbucks with no fans or followers around. Life dances when no one around knows or judges you. Three. Hide your tears and show your smiles. No one is interested in your sad stories. By the way, meet Mr Lokesh! He is a nice hairdresser at Toni & Guy. Four. OK, I understand that you are prettier than most of the girls you know. But please try to understand that you are also uglier than many other girls I know. Know more people to know the truth. Five. Have you ever stopped to think—you who go about broadcasting your sorrows—what abyss the person you're telling all this to might be drowning in themselves? When someone who never shares their own pain is forced to endure yours—suffering that bears no relation whatsoever to their present circumstances—did you ever wonder how it grates on them? To force your tale of woe onto someone who doesn't want to hear it is nothing but buffoonery and nonsense. Grow up, idiots! Six. Never wish good things for a woman. Women want what they want, and you must want only that; even if something better enters your head, for the sake of peace, it's best to simply fulfill her desire. Seven. We rarely truly remember anyone. Life is not a simple thing. Everyone cannot stay. So if you spend your days fretting over who remembers and who forgets, you are only causing yourself pain. Someone for whom you were once willing to lay down your life may not even pick up your phone today. What of it! For whom does life stand still? Those who stayed have stayed; those who left have left their memories behind. Some people are nothing but names—and memory. Can people ever be as we wish them? People are simply as people are! Postscript. The words above have no connection to the photograph in this post. I simply love that image, so I'm sharing it. I can't recall what was written on the girl's shirt, but the feeling—the feeling endures. In this world, only one thing is immortal: a feeling. Eight. What is the use of all your achievements when you've lost someone for whom you're ready to sacrifice even your life? Nine. A person who never wounds is never remembered. It is the one who wounds and then heals the wound who lives in memory. Ten. So then, see you today in Tangail. Venue for the Career Chat: the Open-Air Amphitheater on the MAWABIPBI Campus The event begins at 9:30 in the morning and continues until twilight—or as long as you can keep me here. I have one strength: I work like a ghost. So my stamina level is remarkably high. Come if the spirit moves you.
My enemies too, come and let’s talk; conversation diminishes unnecessary distance. The warmth of the heart drives away suffering. This is why a hug sometimes works like medicine.
Worth noting: this is my first on-stage conversation at this university campus; the earlier one happened online.
If someone offers me the heavenly-flavored chomchom from Joikali, I won’t turn it down—I give you my word on that.
Eleven. After wandering through the Kurikhhai Fair and leaving it at twenty-minus-three, I still feel… it was far too brief!
Don’t understand? Then let me cough it up clearly.
The Kurikhhai Fair is utterly rustic. If you want to catch the earthy scent of soil and mankind, you can wander back from this centuries-old shrine-centered fair. Munching endlessly on crispy piyazu and moong-dal jilebi, strolling through the fair intoxicated by its spell, you’ll find real pleasure in watching people’s eyes and hearing their words. Bring time with you, plenty of it. The fair sprawls across a good expanse. It hasn’t fully begun yet, but even the preparation phase is quite splendid. They bring some very large fish to this fair—that’s its main draw. Next week it’ll open in full force. Today, wandering through, I suddenly remembered the fair in ‘The Boatman of the Padma.’
After leaving the fair, we all gathered in our quiet retreat and ate duck meat with rice roti, eating as we pleased. I stopped after seventeen pieces of roti and four plates of meat—not because I couldn’t eat more, but because I noticed no one around me could eat that much, and I felt ashamed somehow! I can be greedy, but I’m not shameless! Besides, having grown sufficiently health-conscious, I believe eating less sometimes is good for the body. Otherwise today’s meal would certainly have gone to six-minus-double-twenty with eight plates! Needless to say, at the Kurikhhai Fair alone, the jhalmuri, piyazu, and jilebi I ate must have come close to a kilogram.
If you love me, then invite me to a feast.
Twelve. In heaven, can one eat sweets as much as one wishes? If not, then hell suits me fine. Let my belly grow, let my beloved leave, I’ll eat sweets regardless! Whenever I travel somewhere, my first inquiry is: where can I find the best sweets here? A girl who won’t let you eat sweets isn’t a girl—she’s a witch incarnate!
I never care what anyone thinks about what I like or dislike. Life is mine, death is mine; for keeping my soul content, all the indulgence of my tongue falls on my shoulders alone. The person who listens to gossip and eats no sweets—that same person can listen to gossip and commit murder!
I ate rasgulla at a shop in Astagram today and ended up like that dignitary in Mujtaba Ali’s ‘Rasgolla’ story! If you don’t remember, let me remind you…
“… The dignitary put one piece in his mouth and kept his eyes closed for two and a half minutes. Even with eyes closed, he reached out his hand again. Then again.”
Yes, exactly that happened to me today… again and again! If I’d had more time, I could have easily gobbled down two more plates!
I can’t remember when I last ate such exquisite rasgulla. I swear, eating this warm nectar, I’d die content! If you get the chance, drop by ‘Akash Sweetmeat’ in Astagram. The taste of their rasgulla will linger in your memory for days.
When I get home and have time, I’ll write about today’s journey through the Howrah region.
Thirteen. But tell me… if you were assured my death was imminent, would you let me live exactly as I am?
Fourteen. Chanting is so POWERFUL!!!
Fifteen. If ever I notice a certain distance has grown between God and me, I know exactly whom to blame for drifting away… myself?
# What Is God?
Then I go still, and slowly try to find my way back to the veranda of my own heart.
Sixteen. Let me tell you something true. 🤐
I don’t usually check what percentage of charge my phone has. But whenever I do check, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I see the remaining charge is sixty-nine (69). Truly, this number keeps returning to my eyes again and again. It’s such a strange thing! 😑
Why does this happen? Is it because of my beloved Tamil film ‘Ninetytwosix’ (’96)? Or is there some other mystery behind it? 🤔
Seventeen. While thinking about the difference between God and gods, it occurred to me: God dwells within the heart, while gods dwell outside it. If you manage to hold a god within your heart, that god too becomes God.
What do you think?
Eighteen. This text was pasted on the glass door of a spectacle shop:
When your eyes fail, when you cannot see properly, come to us.
When your mind fails, when you cannot think properly, go to God.
On whose shop door? On the door of the shop I would have opened if I sold spectacles.
Nineteen. Today while getting into the car, I forgot to bow my head in time and hit it hard against the frame. Suddenly it struck me: most of the blows we take in life come simply because we forget to bow our heads when the moment calls for it!
Twenty. There is no real gain in thinking of people too much as one’s own. Most people remain dear to you only as long as they can use you. Once the use is over, forget about them calling to ask how you are—they won’t even pick up the phone properly. Then you have to suffer. You feel terribly foolish about yourself.
Almost all relationships in this world are bound by the threads of self-interest and pretense.
Twenty-one. Peace-loving people try to maintain peace with their partners, even if it means acting. Love-loving people try to extract love from their partners, even if it causes discord.
The first kind of people lie to preserve peace, showing love in the process. Their acting is for the sake of peace.
The second kind of people, in the guise of love, essentially extract fear. Their love is to keep others afraid.
People get entangled in relationships hoping to receive love, and then spend the rest of their lives enslaved to fear and performance.
Life together cannot run without performance.
Twenty-two. To those who haven’t yet fallen asleep… deliberately; who can’t figure out what their heart wants to do, but wouldn’t object to simply starting a movie, whatever that proposal in their mind might be—for them I recommend a film: Qala.
This magnificent cinematography’s concept and crafting will enchant you.
I’m watching it right now. Movie, chocolate, almonds, chips, and… whatever the fifth element is—even without it, I would be addicted to this film simply from the power of its luminous and shadowed language and its celestial music!
Come, let us consume cinema and drive away the winter.
Twenty-three. People ruin themselves in suffering.
Twenty-four. And finally, people gather some memories to keep. For there is nothing else left worth keeping to sustain life!
… And finally, people carefully hide still more suffering deep within their chests.
Yet, it returns to memory… it comes back to memory… to atone for the years lived.
Twenty-five. One day you will realize that no one anywhere is waiting for you.
From that day begins old age… whether your age is twenty or eighty… old age begins that very day.
People do not grow old because of years; they suddenly age from the absence of someone to wait for them.
Twenty-six. The person who was once ready to lose everything in life for me—there is no sorrow greater than losing that person from life.
Twenty-seven. Some people exhaust you with their praise.
… We call them devils.
Twenty-eight. Poverty and rage dwelling side by side seem terribly discordant.
Twenty-nine. Either let things happen or make things happen.
Thirty. Women are peculiar. They enter into relationships knowing full well what they must accept, yet later they find it unbearable to live with that very knowledge. This torments them, and they torment the beloved in turn. And yet I have seen the opposite too—women who could not even bear to hear certain things before commitment, who now accept everything for the sake of keeping the relationship alive, driven by circumstance or the hunger of love.
Thirty-one. The punishment for forgiving an excessively angry person once is that you must forgive them again and again.
And yet sometimes, knowing full well, one must invite the punishment. There is nothing else to be done.
You might say that an angry person’s heart is good at heart.
That is not always the case. And more importantly, the heart cannot be seen, but bad conduct can.
Thirty-two. There was a time when I lost all faith in people.
And at that exact moment, I fell in love with you.
Now I understand that knowing how to distrust people
and knowing how to preserve that distrust…
both are profound gifts.
Thirty-three. Among the small volumes that expound the principal ideas of Advaita Vedanta, one is the Drig-Drishya-Viveka. Today, on Swami Vivekananda’s 161st birth anniversary celebration, I shall attempt to speak from the first seven verses of that text.
Those with time and interest—come by the Chattogram Ramakrishna Mission at seven in the evening.
Thirty-four. There was a boy who would comment on nearly every post of mine: Brother, I love you.
Recently he got married. After the wedding, he told his wife: In this life, I have never loved anyone but you.
Tell me, are all boys really this much of a smooth operator deluxe? 🤔
He tells Sadia, I cannot live without you.
He tells Mim, I cannot live without you.
He tells Nusrat, I cannot live without you.
He tells Mitu, I cannot live without you.
He even tells Sumi, I cannot live without you.
I simply do not understand! How many people does a boy need to survive? 🤨 And yet a girl can live quite happily with just oxygen! 🙄
Girls are good. Boys, be like girls! 🤐
Thirty-five. When a beloved person vanishes from life, one becomes solitary. But when a friend vanishes from life, one becomes crippled.
Paralysis is more terrible than solitude.
This is why losing a friend hurts far more than losing a lover. And when the lover becomes your most trusted friend, losing them is scarcely different from death itself. The end of love is called separation; the end of friendship is called death.
Thirty-six. A friend’s wound you can endure, but misunderstanding—no. A friend who cannot be understood by the one beside them has nowhere left to go.
Thirty-seven. Showing proper responsibility is the first sign of love. Irresponsible people can never be good lovers. Where there is love, there must exist responsibility. Love means nothing without responsibility.
If you plan to be with an irresponsible person, you actually plan to suffer.
Thirty-eight. There exist in this world certain people who, no matter how desperately they wish to vanish, cannot be lost. Whether they are or are not matters to no one. Society feels uneasy accepting their existence, yet feels even greater unease denying it. To sense their presence alone brings joy, for along this thin thread of feeling, people sometimes climb to heights unexpected.
They are never lost. For they have no existence to begin with.
# ভাবনাদেয়ালের পলেস্তারা
When there is nothing left, even if it vanishes from sight, no one notices. And even if they do notice, no one bothers to search for it. How can one lose what nobody wants to find?
Forty-nine. There come moments in life when a person pushes away what is near and searches for peace in what is distant. In such moments, the near is absent, the distant is unattainable, and peace eludes altogether. It is in such moments that one sinks entirely into emptiness. Just before the drowning, there is a faint light; the hand reaches out to touch it, but all strength drains away before it can grasp anything. The hand cannot rise. Like stone, it drops and sinks.
What love? What passion? What bond? What custom? What pull from the past?
… Peace, yes, peace is what holds a person still; and yet this very peace is what drives them forward.
Forty. I love winter, but if winter gives me pain, I stop loving winter and start thinking about another season.
I love you, but if you give me pain, I stop loving you and start thinking about another girl.
When comfort is away, my love is away. It’s what I’m.
Forty-one. Waiting for the old you to return, clinging to myself with such force, I lost the old me somewhere along the way. Now I understand: a person cannot be changed. To try is to invite unbearable harm. People learn to perform, to hide—but they do not transform.
Forty-two. What one cannot obtain even through prayer becomes the prayer of one’s entire life.
How many souls are blessed enough to live with their prayer and the answer to their prayer dwelling in one place!
Let there be one person in life to whom you desperately want to say, “Can’t we go back?”… and yet, no matter what, the words will not come.
Emptiness is the oxygen of prayer.
Forty-three. Anjali’s husband: How tedious it is, having to mend Anjali’s hurt feelings again and again—you should see!
Anjali’s former love: How exquisite the pain of losing forever the right to mend Anjali’s hurt feelings—you should know!
Forty-four. Someone spends their time strangling, through wounded pride, the urge to send a reply.
Someone else spends their time keeping alive, through shamelessness, the desire to receive one.
Forty-five. A beautiful balcony can heal a person.
We have only a house, not a beautiful balcony. Our house has only space—no place to sit.
We return only to the wrong house.
We must live in the wrong house.
Searching for a home, we lose life itself.
Forty-six. Why did I have to fall in love with you? Life would have gone on perfectly well without falling in love with you!
Forty-seven. If you plan to watch only one movie in 2023, watch Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
If you plan to get married, before doing that watch Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
If you plan to die, before dying just watch Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
If you want to settle down with someone, before deciding that watch Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
If you are off to fantasizing about love at first sight, you better consider watching Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
Then decide.
Your life is more important than everything else. Your parents, your job, your friends, your everything… are secondary. You never need to take anything for granted.
Just watched it, though have been planning to watch it for the last 7-8 years. I regret not watching it before dot dot dot.
Trust me, this movie is one of the best wines I’ve ever consumed. A pure food for my soul!! Even Blue Label fails, dude!! (Don’t tell me to post the photo! Ha ha ha)
I wish I watched it long before. But you know, better late than never.
Watch it, feel it, kiss it. Thank me later.
Maybe I’m talking much, but trust me, it’s worth it!!!
Forty-eight. Sometimes, not asking… Why are you feeling sad?… is the best way to remove sadness from your friend. Just stay beside them silently, let them be with their sadness, and the rest will follow. Trust me, it’s a magic. You do everything by doing nothing for your friend. Trust me, just your silent company works.
Forty-nine. Sometimes, you need a place where you can do whatever you want to do, provided that no one around notices or judges you… to mend yourself.
Fifty. Sometimes, alcohol and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara together make you feel much better than your possessive girlfriend.
You can try it!!!
Fifty-one. Somehow your heart knows what you want. Listen to it, or you will suffer later.
Fifty-two. Sometimes you need someone to sleep with under the roof.
Sometimes you need someone to sleep with under the stars.
Life is difficult.
Fifty-three. I wish I had no one in my life whose call I have to receive. Obligation sucks!
Fifty-four. Please don’t reply to my messages! When you don’t reply, even a little of my sin finds expiation. There is no greater sin than falling in love with someone after letting them go forever! You are that goddess whom I neglected, and because of that my entire life has become accursed. You are the regret of my whole life!
Fifty-five. If you are poor, never underestimate the power of money by consoling yourself with the lie that money cannot buy happiness or such rubbish things. Only the rich have the right to underestimate the power of money. Of course, poverty deserves some silence.
Fifty-six. In a country where becoming a BCS cadre is thought to be the same as becoming learned, the pursuit of knowledge will naturally happen in BCS guidebooks.
What did Messi gain by returning to PSG? Instead, if he’d enrolled in a BCS coaching centre, he would have at least had a chance of becoming learned! And if he could become a cadre, well, that would be something else entirely… thousands upon thousands of disciples, hundreds of thousands of followers!
Fifty-seven. Stop telling me about your philosophy. People suffer for your practice, not for your philosophy. If your conduct is tolerable, your philosophy is tolerable. If you are bad, your beliefs cannot be good. What you do matters more than what your philosophy teaches. Period.
Fifty-eight. The Height of Stinginess:
The man was so miserly that he hoarded everything, unwilling to spend a single taka… so much so that at the time of marriage he was searching for a woman who already had children, so that after marriage he wouldn’t have to spend anything on producing offspring!
Fifty-nine. Love not, suffer not.
Sixty. 1. I buy most of my books online. And so, I have a book-marital relationship with the delivery men of courier services.
2. After years of teaching students and delivering speeches both online and on stage, I have become a man without a microphone… my voice carries quite enough force on its own.
Sixty-one.
A Man
loves his children,
fears his wife.
(Note: unless the word ‘own’ is understood before ‘children’ and ‘wife’ respectively, the post will be gravely misread.)
Sixty-two. A personal library of over 12,000 books, beside it a tidy bed-dining-drawing room, the office within easy reach.
This is me.
Sixty-three. Sometimes I wonder how those like me, who crumble in winter, who cannot bear the cold at all, manage to settle in frigid countries by leaving Bangladesh?! (I speak of immigration, not migration.)
Would anyone speak from experience on this matter?
Tell me, does a man grow melancholy in extreme cold, now and then?
(I don’t want comments of the ‘blessed with wealth and grain and flowers’ sort; we know and accept all that.)
Sixty-four. Never underestimate your boss’s ability to underestimate you.
Sixty-five. Why did Sadia’s child learn to speak much earlier than other children?
Natural! With how temperamental Sadia is, how much longer could the poor thing sit in silence?
Sixty-six. On days when the house is spotless and orderly, when the fridge and table overflow with food, when the cooking is masterful, when time sprawls for storytelling—on those days, not a soul darkens the door.
Yet on days when the house lies disheveled and unkempt, when the fridge and table offer only sparse fare, when the cooking is merely passable, when busyness fills the hours—precisely then does a visitor knock.
What a cruel jest!
Sixty-seven. : I’ve a bad habit… I pee in the washbasin.
: I’ve the worst habit… I love you.
Sixty-eight. Your smile is a treat for my eyes.
Your voice is a treat for my ears.
Your face is a treat for my soul.
Your touch is a treat for my feelings.
Your absence is a treat for my existence.
Thank you for your beauty.
Sixty-nine. You are like raindrops scattered on the window grill, a muted procession of wetness…
Not here, not there…
Yet everywhere all the same.
Seventy. While giving quality time to a stranger, I usually check whether it adds value or pleasure to my life or not. If the answer is yes, I give time. If the answer is no, I simply ignore them. I usually prefer spending time with myself to spending it with someone else. Often, giving time to a stranger destroys our inner peace.
Seventy-one. If you truly love,
then do not gaze upon me this way;
instead, look where I look.
Seventy-two. This life of ours, with which we are quite content, is the dream beheld by some courageous souls. Life is a sort of translation, and perhaps those great architects of the manuscript never find time to savour it. How many can truly live in a dreamed-out life? They die and show us how fiercely they lived! Those who forgot to live while keeping us alive—those sublime artisans of existence—I remember with reverence. Glory to the victorious.
(I posted this status on this day in 2013. A dear friend had saved it.)
Seventy-three. Where no light seems to reach the eye, there still lingers a faint glow somewhere in the shadows… one must search for it.
In a home where every lamp of hope has been snuffed out one by one, suddenly a thousand suns ignite… if fate permits.
Even he whose sole companion in life is fear sometimes cries out with wild courage… when time smiles.
If from nothingness something can be born, now and then, then tell me—what exists that has neither birth nor death in emptiness?
Seventy-four.
Good morning
Most of my writing is archived on my website.
Those who read my work generally come from four places:
From the wall of a page
From my website
From YouTube’s wall
By downloading the Sushanta Paul software from Google Play Store
To those who read my pieces from the website, or who occasionally visit and browse around—I am seeking your counsel. What changes, in your view, would improve the website? What features might be added? What might be removed?
I would be grateful if you would share your valuable thoughts in the comments.
(For your convenience, I have left the link to my website in the comments.)
Seventy-five. What good is being a rich man’s dog if you don’t get proper food from that house? To strut about on a skeletal frame, showing off and saying, “You know who I am? I am Choudhury Sahab’s dog!”—is there really any profit in this empty boasting at the market and the street corner? When a prince begs for alms, he is no prince at all, merely a beggar. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand such simple things. The clubs in our universities are endless, the presidents endless too. Vice-presidents and officers with fancy titles—the boys and girls holding them are innumerable! And the vanity and joy they take in it knows no bounds. Some among them learn greatly from this, mature, and put their learning to use; most simply cook thin rice-cakes in the heat of their presidency and waste time pure and simple. Time is a precious thing, and wasting it brings sorrow.
Seventy-six. Here is a piece of wisdom—even if your heart resists it, try to follow it; you’ll see, it will often save you:
When you need advice, never seek it from someone you don’t trust. But if that someone, uninvited, comes forward with counsel, try your best not to accept it. One must know how to ignore the meddling advice of busybodies.
(If I belong to that category, then happily disregard the wisdom I’ve just offered.)
Seventy-seven. Let those whom life has given nothing much—now and then give them the chance to curse the successful and feel, in that moment, the thrill of victory. This too is an act of merit. For the defeated, the ability to hurl abuse at the success of others is itself a kind of triumph.
Seventy-eight. Wherever I turn my gaze, poetry falls. O God, how shall I bear so much beauty with these eyes of mine? It is beyond my capacity to contain it, and so I must spill some of it onto the page just to survive. If I can spill it out properly, I will manage. Such beautiful, beautiful verses fall like the glittering, henna-dyed feet of a girl in her girlhood, which you stare at with a fixed gaze—as if there were music in them, melody.
Before this beauty drives me mad, let me write it down for you, God. There must be some proof. Do not fill the earth’s breast only with evidence of ugliness and deformity. Give beauty a place, give beauty a place…
Seventy-nine. Why should I tangle myself up with you?
I am free as the Alaknanda!
Why would I rest my head on your shoulder?
You are bound like all men are bound!
Eighty. I love you. I want to say this to you over and over. Sleep now, little one. You are so beautiful. I only want to kiss your eyes. I don’t have the courage to say it. You only ask me to leave, scold me, curse me. Well, I will leave, won’t I? But these few days before the wedding, I want to kiss your hands, your forehead, your eyes—there is no way around it. Just scold me. I feel like crying so much. I will marry and run away to the distance. I will make a life with my husband. Then there will be nothing left between us. You don’t understand.
In my final hour, even having someone near me—that too may not be granted.
In any case, are you sleeping?
Perhaps you look beautiful that way.
Whoever wakes first and sees you at such a moment is terribly lucky. I confess, I envy them fiercely.
Eighty-one. I am, to put it plainly, ninety-nine percent unemployed.
I don’t work now; I had a couple of tuition jobs, but those are gone too.
Perhaps you could give me some money sometime. Even next month would do.
“What will you do?” “How much should I give?” “Which online page will you order from, tell me honestly?” “Who is that boy at the bKash shop?” “Seven years ago I gave you 459 taka in cash—what did you do with all that money?” “Why did you give money to so-and-so?” “When winter comes, is there really a need to donate in so many places?”
… I earnestly request that you refrain from posing such absurd questions and spare this helpless creature further torment.
At your request,
A temporarily unemployed woman
Eighty-two. I know you all wait eagerly for my posts.
What can I say! Once I went to South Korea on office work. At someone’s home, they invited me and cooked seven dishes and fed me. That hospitality, I have not forgotten. But what can I do, I tell you! I couldn’t cook more than four dishes. Halfway through cooking, the gas pressure suddenly dropped! You saw it all happen, didn’t you?!
Note well:
Argentine-Korean, brother and brother,
There is no shame in hosting a meal.
So please don’t come empty-handed. Bring your Bangladeshi-origin Argentine friends along too. Will your friends be able to eat with such a modest spread? You’ll have to make do with a little difficulty and eat—I am a poor woman…
I know you’re all terribly annoyed that my posts keep appearing on your newsfeed. Yet you can’t seem to unfollow me. How could you?! You love me so!
Rabindranath Tagore once said, love is like jackfruit sap… it doesn’t let go easily!
Because you cannot disobey the poet’s words, boys and girls alike all come running to my embrace like this! Ah, it brings tears to these old eyes!
You surely know too that he wrote elsewhere, if blunders come often, post often.
Tell me, how can I disobey such a great soul’s command?! How many heads do I have on my shoulders?! My heart for posting is as vast as the sky-blue sky!
I am very, very, very fond of pickle. I’m eating Saudi date pickle and missing Saudi Arabia. You love me so much—can’t you send me a jar of pickle sometime? Kuttos kittos tuttus kutt-gullas… huh!
P.S. When victory is assured, a wise player doesn’t play in an overly aggressive mood but keeps himself safe for the next match.
Quiz: A pen of a particular color appears in the picture. You must tell me—what is the name of that color?
Eighty-three. I feel bad for Japan. They fought that way throughout the entire match and then got so nervous at the end! Holding pressure till the very last is a very big thing. My wishes for Croatia.
What a breathtaking match I witnessed! Truly a feast for the eyes!!
Eighty-four. Through my job, I went to Satyajit Ray’s father’s house…
Standing before this ancient house, I felt a strange tremor and reverence.
Sukumar Ray spent his childhood in this house.
Eighty-five. If the person you lie with is the person you cannot live without, you are likely to suffer very soon.
Eighty-six. Sometimes taking the decision no one imagines you taking is the only way of living the life no one imagines you living.
Eighty-seven. Whoever leaves only keeps leaving…
Eighty-eight. In the state of ‘void,’ is there any place for truth-falsehood, sin-virtue, good-bad? My position has always been in the chamber of void. If I become emotionless, I’ll reach close to the door—I believe in control.
Eighty-nine.
However good you may be, there will always be people to hurt you.
Ninety. My mind is unsettled. Yesterday I wanted to touch you, to see you closely. There is so much I wish to write to you, yet I cannot.
I can never tell you how much I want to come to you. Why do body and mind never heal together? Only when you are near do these two beings become one, do they mend. Why did you teach me this?
Tell me—when someone occupies your thoughts so deeply, can words truly explain it to them? It seems to me that simply holding them would solve so many things.
Your embrace was deep. Through touch I could feel it—our souls were dwelling very close to each other.
Ninety-one. I often call you near, just to speak for a moment. Without it, no words come to my mind, that feeling does not work. Even without you present, I grow restless. There is only one reason—I cannot write without speaking to you. As if merely exchanging a few words with you brings me a little peace.
Once you were angry with me. I thought then, I will never write again. But after seeing you again, something happened. I began to love you even more than before.
In any case, if this were not so, perhaps I would have no trouble not speaking to you for a month, two months, a year, even three years—believe me. I am not like that. I myself withdraw from everyone, talk for a while and then ignore them again.
But there is one thing that frightens me deeply. If you ever grew weary of me and left, I could not bear it. That is why I was trying to distance myself first. But somehow, you understood this each time, and you set everything right.
Ninety-two. Let me say something.
You once said my writing is my mind. Because, as you know, I had no experience of writing before. You also said you see in my heart an existence of pain and love together that you find nowhere else.
You understand so much! Tell me—do you know what happens to me when I come near you? Do you know why it is like this when I touch you, when I feel you?
Do you know what this bond is called? Is it something spiritual, something we cannot understand? Just as it is in most things—people cannot gauge their own capacities?
Ninety-three. (A conversation between the writer and his eight-year-old son)
: Dad, my teacher said I have to write a whole paragraph about my family and bring it. What do I do now!?
: Come on, silly! What’s the trouble? Look at me—I write entire books!
: But Dad, I was thinking of writing something good, so I’m really stressed!
Ninety-four. You have a heart within you. Learn to feel with it.
You have a sun within you. Learn to scatter light from it.
You have love within you. Learn to touch it and keep yourself well.
You have an ocean within you. Learn to awaken it and roar.
You have silence within you. Learn to break it when you must.
Fear will come as you do these things. It is only natural. Those who have done them were afraid too. The first step toward doing something new is this: fear itself. And the next step is this: to not stop despite it.
Ninety-five. If you only wait, waiting merely grows.
Ninety-six.
I was last on stage about three years ago. Then Covid spread everywhere!
After this long absence, I’m coming to talk with you again at the Career Chatter organized by Rabindra University’s Career Club.
Coming this Saturday. 10 a.m. At the Rabindra Kachhari House Auditorium.
Open to all.
I’d been wanting to come to Sirajganj on Friday. So, what’s there to wander around and eat in Sirajganj?
Ninety-seven. Stay by my side. I’m not saying that if you’re beside me there’ll be no storms in life. There will be storms, things will feel chaotic. But I won’t be lost—we two together will set things right. If you’re beside me, I’ll find courage. At this age, crying alone exhausts me too much.
Ninety-eight. When the one you gave joy to brings you sorrow instead,
why then do you seek from him
the very path to drive that sorrow away—
from one to whom you’ve never given anything at all?
Ninety-nine. If you won’t speak of love,
then at least speak of this much;
don’t stay silent.
One hundred. In discipline and through discipline… at your service.