Thought: Five Hundred Sixty-Eight
……………………………………………………
30 December 2013
I love you exactly as much as I love laziness. Therefore, there is no adulteration in this love.
31 December 2013
Damn!!! I forget everything, nothing stays in my mind. Not even how to love. When someone loves me, I should love them back—I don’t even remember that. Each time I think, later I’ll make time and love properly, I’ll love abundantly when I have plenty of time. Then I forget. Even when I have time I don’t love, even when I make time I don’t love. It’s not that I deliberately refuse to love or calculate for a few minutes before loving. The problem is, I forget to love. Forget, meaning it never occurs to me that I need to express the love I feel. What a wretched problem!! Love too must be demonstrated! Why wouldn’t it need to be?
6 January 2014
Often we pay a steep price temporarily for being unable to stoop to pettiness with petty people.
7 January 2014
Loyalty that cannot provide security is not loyalty, it’s foolishness. I don’t want to be immortal, I want to stay alive.
8 January 2014
Judging someone’s acceptability by their religion is the same kind of stupidity as judging someone’s appearance by their national ID card photo. Because in both cases, the individual has no hand in it. For achievements or failures that don’t belong to the individual, that person can neither claim favor nor become a victim of discrimination.
Not only Hindus…. STOP VIOLENCE
AGAINST ALL THE RACES! NOW!!!
8 January 2014
Whatever else might happen, excessively careerist girls don’t make for happy households. Though they may give much to country and nation, they give their families nothing but empty promises. First Girl Second Girl types have such airs!! Little wisdom, even less sense of humor. Their parents’ noses are even higher in the air!! I want a bride with poor academic results from a good institution.
9 January 2014
Office bosses are of two kinds.
One. Those because of whom we’re able to work properly.
Two. Those despite whom we’re able to work properly.
10January 2014
Happiness is……
When father wears the white-gray shawl I bought him and mother wears the black-orange shawl, and they go out together, watching them and smiling softly. How romantic! Even now!!
Oh! Winter is so very wonderful!!
10January 2014
…….. Writers are like prostitutes in some respects. When they uplift your spirits everyone says thanks, other times they curse them. Everyone just used their voices to speak their own thoughts, but no one cared about the writers’ hearts.
……… Where is such a wealthy man who can buy my dreams?
/ Where is such a pigment that can blend colors
into my watercolor? A song by Jatileshwar Mukherjee. The song sounds most beautiful in Radha Bandyopadhyay’s voice. Magnificent!!
11 January 2014
Happiness is…….walking by the seashore, eating hot spicy fried crab. Cool sweet breeze,
with Jagjit Singh’s voice from a friend. Ah!
Ah!!
17 January 2014
75 percent of all lipstick produced in the world goes into men’s stomachs!
Heard this just now from someone in conversation…….
Feeling mischievous mischievous
18 January 2014
Most of the world’s annoying people don’t know they are annoying. Until you tell them bluntly, they can’t understand that
you are getting annoyed. The problem is, you can’t say it that way either. The bigger problem is, if you don’t say it that way, they don’t understand either. Sacred cow! What else can be done!
The annoyance just keeps growing. One more thing. Not everyone is annoying to everyone.
“Strange! What’s there to be annoyed about here?” You can’t always think like this though. There has to be a reason not to be annoyed. If there’s no reason,
you have to create one when necessary. Most annoyance is therefore relative. However, I’ve seen some people
who can give the finger to all rules of relativity when it comes to being annoying. I don’t have time—
this phrase can also mean, I don’t have time for you. Knowing how to buy time with good behavior or clever tactics is a great big art.
19 January 2014
In a marriage, there is no ‘better
match’, there is no ‘worse match’, there is only ‘match’. We make it better or
worse. No couple is perfect, until and unless it’s made so. Here ‘perfect’ is
something left we are agreed to live with after compromising things. Marriages
are made in Heaven; families are made here.
O God!
Will there be another little life?
I had lived,
saying I would live a little differently. Alas!
I am alive,
saying I will live a little differently.
People suggest, don’t expect,
expectation kills, still expecting, we’ll listen.
Sometimes even lack of understanding
matters little, often misunderstanding matters much.
19 January 2014
Men……. Sen-afflicted.
Suchitra Sen. Aparna Sen. Raima Sen.
Women……. Tagore-afflicted.
Rabindranath Tagore.
(Couldn’t give more. Rabis don’t come in large numbers.)
Men worship beauty, women worship virtue.
21 January 2014
There’s trouble even in doing good. You keep helping someone, helping them; suddenly for some reason you can’t manage to do it once or twice, and they immediately become angry and agitated. Yet someone who never received any help at all — nothing happens to them. Being helped doesn’t fall under any right. Ingratitude is a mental illness.
22 January 2014
Freedom lies not in divorce from marriage, but in tasting the flavor of liberation within the bonds of marriage. ~ Annadashankar Ray in his autobiography
Fifth in the ICS on his first attempt. Three were selected. He took the exam again. Next time, first.
(He wrote that
he had taken the ICS specifically to come first. Whether he would have written such a thing if he hadn’t managed to come first —
that’s something worth pondering.)
First class first in Honours too. Same in IA. In the lines above, paraphrasing Rabindranath, he had conveyed his thoughts about marriage before his wedding. Happily, in his life
the phrase “Happily married” didn’t become a mere oxymoron. He called marrying the non-Bengali American girl Leela Ray one of his two greatest achievements in life. For some reasons……. I’m reading his autobiography. I’m enjoying it. Let’s see, once I finish reading it, if I don’t feel too lazy, I’ll write a short review.
24 January 2014
Is anyone near the lighthouse area this evening?
If so, I cordially invite you to treat me to a cup of coffee. Along with
conversation. Come,
I won’t object to drinking coffee in the least. Promise!!
Thought: Five hundred sixty-nine
……………………………………………………
25 January 2014
Some individuals’ behavior is so arrogant, so arrogant, I become confused —
does the person create their position,
or does position create the person? A small-minded person, even when they become big (a person in a high position), can’t shed their small-mindedness.
26 January 2014
When a girl remains more faithful to love itself than to her lover, one must definitely assume that this is not her first love.
30 January 2014
Today two paths diverged
The princess I see in dreams remains
This is only a day for songs
If this path never ends
This honeyed night
On the banks of this very Yamuna
This night is yours and mine
In this beautiful golden evening
Who are you that calls to me
What rainbow is there in my song
Sleep, sleep, moon
I don’t know when it will end
You who are mine
You may not stay near
The nest is small, no matter
Growing up, watching Suchitra, I understood
why Ma would play these songs for Baba in the old days. (When I came near, the songs would change, becoming gentle hums. Hehe…)
So many of these songs feel intimately close to me. How can one not feel drawn to Mother’s favorite songs!
The quality Baba would speak of in Ma (and still does):
Dignified yet romantic. (I wonder,
isn’t Suchitra the same way?
Then perhaps…
)
Spent the entire weekend evening on YouTube with Suchitra. Happiness is…….. when Suchitra’s eyes cast their spell on Rama’s lips.
When Suchitra was Rama,
or had just become Suchitra, there was a slight typical East Bengal accent in her pronunciation. The director of her first released film, Saat Number Koyedi, Sukumar Dasgupta, had asked the great actress to better herself by reading Saratchandra. The play Bindur Chhele. Why did I mention this? Those of us planning to correct our many flaws are not wrong at all. For those who have faith in Suchitra Sen’s perfection, let us shake off our rage at our own imperfections this very moment.
5 February 2014
What happens if you eat the blessed offering from Saraswati Puja with dried fish curry?!
Ma just makes unnecessary trouble. But God is so good;
I never make any trouble with God,
God never makes any trouble with me. We’re on such good terms!!
………feeling doesn’t understand, Ma doesn’t understand…….. doesn’t understand, Ma doesn’t understand.
6 February 2014
In this world, no one feels more unfortunate than someone whom nobody could understand. ~ Ashapurna Devi,
‘Subarnalata’
9 February 2014
Announcement! Announcement!!
Today, in the dim twilight moments before this overcast evening, a coffee celebration of foreign origin has been arranged at Batighar bookstore in Chittagong through the financial generosity of brother Rimel. He has informed this humble soul that even if your gracious presence causes some reduction in his bank balance, he shall consider himself supremely fortunate.
(Dear brother Rimel,
had you shown mercy through your own virtue, the flexible skin on this poor younger brother’s back would have remained safe. Hehe……..)
11 February 2014
There are two contradictory impulses in the human heart: when someone falls into misfortune, everyone offers sympathy. But if they somehow manage to overcome that misfortune, then we feel a kind of disappointment again. Perhaps this is putting it too strongly,
but we almost want to push them back into that misfortune and watch. Thus, unknowingly, a kind of hostility toward them develops in our minds, even if indirectly.
Do you remember Kurosawa’s Rashomon? The storyteller behind this film became one of Japan’s highest-ranking writers by writing nothing but short stories, both small and large. The interesting thing is, although Kurosawa took the film’s name from his ‘Rashomon’ story, he drew the main plot from the story ‘In a Grove.’ In almost all his stories, we see a shadow of melancholy. Suffering from mental exhaustion, the writer committed suicide at the age of thirty-five. Those who have seen Rashomon know something about the writer’s thought patterns. The words I began this piece with can be found in his story ‘The Nose.’ Both Rashomon and The Nose were written when the author was just twenty-four. He was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. Upon reading his story The Nose, Natsume Sōseki, the literary emperor of Japan at the time, wrote an enthusiastic letter of praise to the young writer. His stories are written with a masterful fusion of ancient Japanese and Chinese literature with modern European literature. I’m reading his collection of stories in Shekhar Maitra’s translation. I’m captivated to see how the water from that distant spring touches the reader’s heart and mind so fluently through the writer’s incomparable literary style.
12 February 2014
What did I just see? The umpire seems to be like my beloved! Got the biggest decision wrong!
13 February 2014
Whether anyone gives you flowers or not
Today is spring
My friend Zunaeed probably sent me this once, ten years ago on Pohela Phagun,
In the spring breeze……..
I love! Say it with emotion.
Everything is there, yet………
Why does it feel so lonely!
My friend is no longer alone. He also has his fairy-like little daughter with him. I pray that when she grows up, she becomes even more enchanting than Humayun Ahmed’s heroines.
Friend, truly I tell you, when spring comes, I remember you.
Two days ago, Hillol-da wrote,
Those who have no one have Facebook.
Those who only have Facebook truly have no one.
I extend spring greetings to Zuckerberg. May the writing on Facebook, “It’s free,” never change. May those whose days haven’t yet stopped revolving around Facebook stay well without paying a penny. Since morning, Ravi Babu has been playing in my head……. May those who are happy stay happy…….
May no couple in the world ever break apart.
May the flower business flourish. May the tissue business decline.
May beautiful word-processions come from Facebook statuses into life.
………. Why? Don’t enchanting people become BCS cadres? If you want to be a good person, can’t you be enchanting?
But this much is true: 99% of the girls who take the BCS are beautiful. The remaining 1% become BCS cadres.
………. Oh brother, you’re absolutely right. I was thinking, whom should I request, “Girl, would you kindly divorce your boyfriend for me?”
14February 2014
At the Vivekananda Education and Culture Council picnic. From Mirsarai Mahamaya Eco Park on the way to Ramgarh. Destination: Vivekananda Orphanage. Destitute hill children live there. At the orphanage on Valentine’s Day. A side effect of Vivekananda. Good, then,
or not good?
Shubhra Deb is playing in the car. This heart of mine is no stone…… Before this came….. For some reason he couldn’t be turned away…. I’m quite charmed by the driver’s sense of humor!
16February 2014
feeling আঁই কিচ্চি!!
17February 2014
The boys are needlessly chattering away, heating up Facebook. Completely pointless!!
Birth, death, marriage,
Bangladesh’s victory
—- these four are in God’s hands!!
Thought: Five hundred seventy
……………………………………………………
20February 2014
Is anyone around the Prothoma-Batighore area in Jamalkhana this afternoon?
25February 2014
Ekushey shopping. Third round. Some of this from the book fair, some from the book mart
(I mean,
the bookstore)
Nabo-Neeta
Arun Mitra’s Translation Collection
Unknown Uttam
Dream Tales of the Successful
Seventy-One and My Father
Now and Then Manik Ratan
Prashanta Don
(Two of four volumes published)
A Story About Another Storyteller’s Story
Three Paisa Worth of Moonlight
The Virus of Belief
Baudelaire, O Baudelaire
The Concept of Mind
In History’s Theater
Upal’s Anguished Pace (Bibhuti’s wife’s memoir of Bibhuti)
Shahaduz Zaman’s collection of stories, non-stories,
and un-stories
Marjimahal (2 volumes)
In Search of the Key
Losing Myself to Find (2
volumes)
Stars Speak in the Face of Stars
On Life’s Sandy Shore
In Search of Character
A Hospital, An Anthropologist, Some Broken Bones
José María Merino’s 151 Micro-stories
Tanuja Barua’s
Young Woman Lost in Water and Moonlight
Ustad Allauddin Khan’s
My Story
Leonardo da Vinci
A Small Man’s Childhood
Nivedita-Memory
Shaheen Akhtar’s Peacock Throne
Kalashnikov’s Rose
Life Revisited
Some Childhoods
My Life Story (by Nagendranath Basu)
Letters from Seventy-one
Onu Tareq, Ahmad Mostofa Kamal,
Murtala Ramat, Tanbira Hossain, Chorom
Udash and a few others aren’t in Chittagong. Even after pleading a hundred million times with Dipankar-da from Batighore and Raju-da from Prothoma, I couldn’t bring you all even to a planchette session. Just because we live in Chittagong, don’t we have the right to go bankrupt? Even looking at Hillol-da’s face, you could have at least arranged to send one copy. We would have made photocopies, even if it meant being called mango-public. I leave this question to your conscience……… (I mean “leaving” in the sense that I’m going to the Dhaka Book Fair on the 28th. Don’t get too excited—I’m not going to buy your books, I’m going for work; maybe I’ll buy your books by chance. You people don’t give a damn about us Chattogram folks. You’re all so awful!! May cold cash fall upon you. Amen.)
Friends, if any of you have books coming out at this year’s book fair, please let me know. I want to buy them.
•Avijit Roy’s The Virus of Faith. Brother, I forgot to tag you.
Hillol Dutta, anyone can arrange to bring Chorom Udash’s book to Batighore. If I can be of any help, I’m always ready. Please let the writers in my friend list know.
I’ll buy some more books by Shahabuddin Nagari sir from Dhaka. I’ve only bought In Hemingway’s Country so far.
Oh yes,
I bought Letters to Camellia. Those who haven’t bought it, go ahead and get it.
27February 2014
In the city of wasted income and age. In Dhaka.
Books are my wife. If I don’t spend money on my wife, should I spend it on you?
28February 2014
I’ll be at the Bangla Academy Book Fair from this afternoon. Will any friends be around there? Would love to meet. Yesterday evening too I met many people, most of them harmless cadre-types without weapons, claws, or teeth. I come to the fair every time; it seemed like this year’s sales are higher than other years…… Had good conversations, got a couple of books from people (I’ll acknowledge what books I took and received later); I didn’t return empty-handed either—gave blessings filled with heart, soul, and chest. Getting a well-off and kind-hearted father-in-law and getting a well-off and kind-hearted friend—both are matters of fortune!…… I realized that no one goes bankrupt by giving and receiving books.
1 March 2014
Man, who runs after career like
Hell, is often found to reach there. It’s really difficult to live with people
having a ‘Career First’ attitude. Someone once asked me, ‘Gentleman, you’re a
smart guy. Now, what’s your life plan for the next 10 years?’ I answered, ‘Dada,
I’ve not planned what I’m going to do in the next 10 minutes ever in my life.
Yet I’ve no regrets.’ He didn’t like my answer. He was highly careerist and
very serious about life. To me, a good career offers you 3 things:
~Solvency
~Time to spend your earning in your
own way
~Social recognition
Better to live a short life without
regrets than to live a long one with sighs. Yes, you can be a part of the
popular rat-race. Run run and run only to stop peacefully. The problem is, even
if you win a rat-race, you still remain a rat. Fact is, your career offers much
to others comparing to you and your family. Most people say goodbye to the hell
they’re living in early before they dream to say hello to the heaven, they’re
dreaming to live in. I really don’t want to build a castle where I myself can’t
live.
1 March 2014
Two days ago, in a fit of pique, I wrote: birth, death, marriage, and Bangladesh’s victory—these four matters rest in God’s hands.
Lately, I no longer feel like harboring resentment even toward my beloved team. When you can only feel bitter toward someone you care about, and even that desire for bitterness fades away completely, you truly feel helpless.
Mother, at least let me feel a little resentment sometimes.
2 March 2014
Boys, while pretending to love, don’t realize when they truly fall in love. Girls, while truly loving, don’t realize when they begin to pretend.
~Samaresh Majumdar
Master, hats off!
How did you know this, boss!
How did the outsider learn the inner secrets? My goodness!
Writers know everything!
Reading this feels like seeing myself naked in a mirror! How uncomfortable it is to see oneself naked before oneself!
The master is coming to Batighara this evening at 6 o’clock. I’ll go to hear the creator of Uttaradhikar-Kalbela-Kalpurush from afar. Those who excel at anything always seem like gods to me. I revere them deeply, even from a distance. Bow my head beneath the dust of your feet… Are any friends coming this evening?
3 March 2014
He’s not exactly stunning to look at with rapt attention,
yet everyone gazes at him with a certain enchantment in their eyes! He said
he used to envy Sunil, because beautiful women would flock to Sunil after reading his poetry
(Of course they would!
Even those of us who can’t write a single decent line show such audacity…);
yet yesterday I saw how the radiant beauties in the lighthouse were utterly spellbound by this novelist’s words;
the longing I witnessed in everyone to get his autograph or take a photograph with him—if one could become that close to such a person, being alive itself becomes an unexpected bonus. One cannot get too close to great people for two reasons: because of the crowds, and because of the sense of inadequacy born from one’s own smallness. The love that great writers receive from women
never allows any man to be his beloved’s ‘first love.’ This alone is reason enough to write, though only a handful of writers are fortunate enough to find such a lover whom they don’t marry;
the rest are writers whose wives
are simply their lovers. No man receives all of his beloved;
and if by good fortune the beloved reads a book or two, then the poor lover becomes merely the shadow-body of the beloved’s favorite writer or some character from his works. In crowds, whenever I see a beautiful woman, she seems somehow familiar. It felt that way yesterday evening too, until Samaresh arrived;
I simply don’t care to recognize beauties who belong to other men. After much waiting, he came,
pushing aside the India-Pakistan match, the entire lighthouse was submerged in Samaresh. Any woman attracted to another man seems beautiful,
all the regret of not being able to be beautiful accumulates unknowingly within,
at some point I admit to myself,
I am not insignificant, but that other man’s extraordinariness is not within me. When Samaresh said
that Manik-Bibhuti-Tarashankar were writers, while he was merely successfully acting the part of a writer,
my head bowed in reverence, and like the rat in that Ratatouille animation movie, I wanted to say again,
Anyone can write, that doesn’t mean anyone should. I’ve never been able to get anything through pushing and shoving in life,
not yesterday either. I got an autograph only because someone else kindly got it for me. The photograph with the writer couldn’t make it from my imagination’s lens to the camera’s lens. Despite being as physically distant as many others who stood far away yesterday, Hillol-da and I, standing closest to him yet equally hidden by the photographers’ inconvenience, spent a wonderfully pleasant evening in the blissful delusion that our beloved writer was speaking to me alone or speaking just for me. Many people asked Samaresh many questions, yet amidst the crowd of answers I possessed, no question could emerge. Thanks to Dipankar-da of Batighar for creating the opportunity to be in the presence of such beauty.
Thought: Five hundred and eleven
……………………………………………………
4 March 2014
I like them,
I respect them,
if I like something of theirs I say so, if I dislike something I say nothing lest their feelings be hurt—
why do even such people upset me? What pleasure is there in that!
4 March 2014
More pleasure than thrashing the Pakistanis! Yes,
this is exactly the Bangladesh we wanted.
4 March 2014
I know, only our results are rewarded, not our efforts.
Yes, we lost. Yet we defeated poor performance, mental inertia. Is that not something?
They played brilliantly. There was not the slightest fault in their effort. Bangladesh’s stereotypical image of all these years has completely changed. I’m happy,
very happy. My mother’s face may not be that beautiful. Does that mean I can call some other smart woman ‘mother’?
Never!
Dear Bangladesh,
move forward. We were by your side, we are,
we will be. Always.
What can I do! I love you so!!
5 March 2014
I learn something from every match. I may never meet Tendulkar. Yet his influence on my life is boundless. In various fields, there are many others who are my idols, like gods to me. I know how difficult it truly is to perform. Many are expressing disappointment about yesterday’s game by Bangladesh. Playing on the field and playing in front of a TV screen are not the same thing. Anyway, let me share some personal observations about yesterday’s game…….
~ Never take anything for granted,
even your failure.
~ Never call it a day until &
unless the day ends.
~ Only your results are rewarded,
not your efforts.
~ Really perform when you’re
performing.
~ Only your performance performs,
not my prayers or curses.
~ Sometimes your luck matters much
more than your performance.
~ Excuses are of no use. If you win,
you need not show them. If you lose, you should not show them.
~ The game is always ON. So…….
JUST PLAY!
~ In life,
in cricket and in politics there is no such thing as the end. But the result comes after the game is over.
~ Last,
but not the least…….
an old realization of mine…….
Birth, death, marriage and Bangladesh’s victory—these four are in God’s hands.
Friends, your observations?
6 March 2014
In Dhaka……. life
runs out in jobs,
traffic jams and sleep……. With the amount of patience I endure stuck in traffic,
if I could listen to a girl’s chatter with even half that patience, I could have fallen in love at least a dozen times by now.
10March 2014
Advantages of not being in love:
You can fall asleep quickly.
Disadvantages of not being in love:
You don’t want to fall asleep quickly.
11March 2014
Those who keep calling and calling without any urgent need when you don’t pick up the first time or cut the call are utterly senseless. “Brother, my leg’s broken and I’m holding it in my hand. What am I supposed to do with this broken leg?” Or,
“Boss, I’m running away with your wife. Hehe…….”
If it’s something urgent like this, that’s fine. But when I see questions like, “How can I come first in the BCS exam?” (Such people ask this kind of question when their entire family together couldn’t manage BCS even if they tried. Annadashonkar Roy took the civil service exam precisely to come first. After getting first in the ICS exam, he mentioned this in his autobiography. Whether he would have said the same if he hadn’t come first,
I have my doubts about that.)
Or, “Brother, my beloved little dog hasn’t had a bowel movement for the past two days. What should I do?”
When they bother you during work hours with such foul questions,
one no longer feels like being a gentleman. Being decent has so many, many problems.
During night coach travel between Dhaka and Chittagong, some people talk so loudly and cheerfully,
one feels like grabbing and slapping them. Last Saturday I got angry and said,
Brother, if you spoke just a little louder, you wouldn’t need a mobile phone at all. Another class of idiots has ringtones of ghosts’ piercing screams. In the peaceful drowsy state of night,
at that moment the ghost shrieks, shaking one’s very soul. You can imagine the situation……….
12March 2014
Happiness is: Suddenly finding a book I’ve been searching for so long. I snatched up Italo Calvino’s
Invisible Cities and Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Maybe you have wealth vast like an ocean. Could you ever buy anything that made you feel like a happy king?…….. Feeling awfully rich!!
Thanks to Hasan Shibly bhai for telling me about Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
Thanks to Dipankar da from Batighore for bringing me both books at my request.
13March 2014
Have you noticed an interesting thing?
In arranged marriages, the proposals that usually come are never from your Facebook friends.
14March 2014
Embarrassment is:
Going to a restaurant to meet a potential bride or groom and discovering at the next table someone you refused a few days ago or who refused you a few days ago, and pretending as if you haven’t noticed each other and aren’t noticing each other.
Thought: Five hundred seventy-two
……………………………………………………
16March 2014
In every office, there exists a certain breed of people engaged in professional adultery. No matter how they handle their own work, their sole aim remains to needlessly worry about others’ tasks, skillfully turning others’ minor mistakes (even though they themselves commit far graver errors) into mountains out of molehills and spreading them around, and causing harm at any cost. Working with such people is truly difficult, because not everyone can grow big by making others small, or perhaps they simply don’t have the time to stoop so low, or they genuinely want to grow big by actually becoming big. So, tend to your own home, live happily with your own wife, and if you have idle time, eat crispy puffed rice mixed with mustard oil, chanachur, onions, and chilies while watching old Bengali films with your wife—don’t engage in shenanigans with other people’s wives (don’t you have a wife at home?). Who is impotent and who is virile—who are you to determine this? You yourself are that impotent Mughal emperor whose harem women’s suppressed sighs constantly weigh down the air. Have you never noticed this, boss? To cure your impotence, take dream-obtained medicine if necessary, but what good does it do to sigh into others’ dreams? Does one night’s nightmare destroy all the remaining days’ sweet dreams? Every dog has his day. Are you his line manager or what? People of the housemaid and gatekeeper class gossip without any reason. They chew betel and spit on others’ backs. Aren’t you an officer? Therefore, say ‘no’ to professional adultery, master professionalism, live happily in your own household, and let others live happily in theirs too. Say ‘no’ to both envy of others’ prosperity and lust for others’ wives. Let me share an interesting fact. There is no English equivalent for “parashrikatarata” (envy of others’ prosperity). Why do you think that is?
16March 2014
How will you understand the atmosphere of Bangladesh’s game?
By listening to the background music… just played a moment ago…
Why don’t you understand that without you I am helpless…
Alas, sometimes this too must be played…
Weigh anchor, weigh anchor, for the time has come, has come…
16March 2014
Success is the sweetest revenge!
Love you, Bangladesh!!
17March 2014
It’s not right to believe everything said by in-laws or prospective in-laws; not even when the wife or prospective wife speaks words of hope. If in-laws were really so good, people wouldn’t call the wife’s brother “shala” (brother-in-law, used pejoratively).
18 March 2014
Why are we letting Nepal play like this?!
Is it because the Nepali beauties will be heartbroken?
Brothers, if today, because of you, tears come to the eyes of our beauties like that day,
we won’t spare you. Getting tremendously angry!
18March 2014
Sincerely, it feels awesome to admit
that your contestant played well only when done without regrets, only when you
manage to win.
Result talks louder than effort!!
Well played, Sherpas! Thumbs up for
your effort!
Better played, Tigers!! Hats off for
your result!!
19March 2014
Brother, sacrifice if you must, but please don’t tag.
People tag even their own profile pictures. Utterly pointless!
What am I to do with such magnificent visages?! Men put on kohl and lipstick to take photos and then tag away. It’s maddening!
This kind of love between one man and another doesn’t sit well with me.
Girl’s sense of humour: When you’re
kidding with her, you must tell her you’re kidding.
22March 2014
They say raising chickens is much better than falling in love.
Who says such things?
Why do they say it?
What joy prompts them to say it? The exhaustion of love?
Have you ever seen what it feels like to remain loveless?
To be weary from lack of love? It seems to me
that buying and eating chicken eggs is far, far better than never loving at all.
Being alone has become impossibly painful these days. No!
I can’t bear it anymore. I too will buy chickens. Tell me, brother, which breed
(I mean, variety) of chicken lays the most eggs?
It was in the Class Seven agriculture textbook; I’ve forgotten.
22March 2014
Genius + famous handsome boys are either the bumbling type or the lady-killer type.
(Someone threatened to murder me if I gave status courtesy for this status. Listen kid, if you’ve got the guts, come face me. B-))
23March 2014
Sunlight sliced into strips soaked this morning as if…………
The heart burns in rain, gets drenched in sunshine.
25March 2014
Sadness is…………being unable to write anything good about Bangladesh on Bangladesh’s match day.
26March 2014
One evening, talking with my younger brother, I felt he was suffering from deep despair,
on the verge of giving up entirely. In such states, a person thinks he is utterly alone,
that everyone has moved far ahead of him;
even those closest to him are not truly his friends. He had begun to think
how exhausting it is merely to exist! Everyone is his enemy. No one loves him. How can someone
whom nobody wants continue to live!
That very night I wrote this piece for him and posted it on his wall.
I have lived at the extreme boundaries of both hope and despair. I know what it feels like when nothing but emptiness stretches ahead. I know, too, how much a person can live on hope alone. I didn’t need to study any theosophical lectures to understand what a life of penance means. To those who claim they are in great suffering, that no one could suffer more than this, I say: there was a time when even counting the hours until death seemed like a luxury to me. To count such hours, one must at least be alive; and that very act of being alive—what a terrible luxury of torment!
I have seen that just staying alive accomplishes many things. If you disappear, except for those very close to you, no one really cares. So, stay alive. Your death would cause terrible discomfort to some people who find peace in wishing for your death. If only for their sake… live!
Staying alive is the greatest revenge. So, if only for your own sake… live!
Live, for yourself. Live, for others.
31March 2014
I want to dedicate this century to those who love me and those who criticize me. For those who have made nasty comments about me, this is my gift to them.
Extraordinary!! Absolutely extraordinary!!
I started my day reading Pakistani opener Shehzad’s words from yesterday’s press conference in Prothom Alo. Oh my! How winning silences everyone! I think, if performing were as easy as talking nonsense, how many people would actually perform!
And a good thing. This status is by no means pro-Pakistan sentiment. It’s only my habitual ‘selfish’ weakness for greatness.
1 April 2014
Sushanta Pal
Assistant Director
Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate, Dhaka. My posting has changed, along with my designation. I joined today. Just yesterday I was still working at Chittagong Custom House. From today, I’m here. Humbly proud to be a civil servant.
Thought: Five hundred seventy-three
……………………………………………………
5 April 2014
When you’re irritated with yourself for your own stupidity, it’s only natural to get angry at your girlfriend—even without any reason at all! Just because! Can’t do math—girlfriend’s fault. Boss gave me a scolding—girlfriend’s fault. Lost my wallet—girlfriend’s fault. Even in the most romantic setting, some damned unromantic mosquito bites you in all the wrong places—girlfriend’s fault. Why aren’t there enough mosquitoes at home to kill with the mosquito bat, why can’t I enjoy the simple pleasure of mosquito-killing—girlfriend’s fault. The rickshaw driver was rude—girlfriend’s fault. Listening to music makes me want to grab the singer and beat them up—girlfriend’s fault. Dozed off blissfully on the bus, missed Farmgate and ended up in Uttara, now have to drag myself back to Farmgate with all the world’s weariness—that’s also the girlfriend’s fault……. All this drama doesn’t really accomplish anything. If you know how to do it with style and finesse, your girlfriend will actually pamper you and make your anger melt away. But then why do I get angry at my ex-girlfriend too, for heaven’s sake! Total pointless, foul rage! In this cruel world, for someone who has no one to soothe their anger, it’s better to go away and eat puffed rice soaked in Sprite rather than getting angry!
9 April 2014
Heading toward Batikhana. Any friends around the area?
Batikhana is a bookstore.
Batikhana is Bangladesh’s largest bookstore. The store is far more reader-friendly than any other big store.
10April 2014
Last year’s experience. After giving their 33rd BCS viva, many people would call me. Brother, they didn’t ask me anything from such-and-such topics. They only kept me in the board for this many minutes. Of everything I studied all this time, they didn’t even ask about 20 percent of it. Et cetera, et cetera.
There’s really no pattern to viva exams at all. Viva marks do matter. I’ve taken this kind of viva in only two places so far: IBA viva and BCS viva. I was in the IBA viva board for 18-20 minutes, in BCS for 4-5 minutes. How long they kept you there, what they asked, what you got right, what you got wrong—these aren’t as crucial as we think. All’s well that ends well. It seems to me that the viva is much more subjective than objective. What does our experience tell us? Some people you see and have to calculate every word you say to them. Others you see and feel like slapping them twice. If you can’t, you feel oddly unsettled. For doing well in vivas, preparedness is more important than preparation. Everyone practices, yet the century still goes to Tendulkar’s account. Whether that day belongs to you is largely determined by your luck. There are those “I came, I saw, I conquered” types too. What matters far more than what you know is what impression I form about your knowledge. You will never get a second chance to make the first impression. Some people’s appearance and attitude make you want to ask them the length of the Padma River, while others make you want to hear stories of floating on boats in the Padma’s embrace, touching moonlight, or walking hand-in-hand with a lover along the Padma’s banks. Or something else entirely—things that require no knowledge to tell, yet can convey everything so easily. Those who sit on viva boards are truly much more expert. They understand very well what you’re saying and what you’re hiding. A clever man knows how to cheat; an intelligent man knows how to make others let him cheat.
It’s not yet time to say anything. Be patient until the results come out. Don’t start singing just yet: “Hello, is this 2441139……” Let Bela Bose remain a little longer in nostalgia in this city of lies! (It doesn’t last, brother, I know. Still… blessed is deceptive hope.)
And speaking of good things, if anyone’s interested, they can read my Facebook note about viva preparation: “In the Waiting Room of the Dream House.”
Let me see if I can suggest some frequently asked viva questions for you all. If I can prepare them, I’ll post them. Both laziness and the desire to create are immeasurable. We’ll see.
13April 2014
About a week ago, I felt quite embarrassed and ashamed receiving everyone’s congratulations on one of my status updates, thinking that many might assume I’d gotten a promotion. I haven’t received any promotion or demotion. Assistant Commissioner and Assistant Director in the same department carry the same dignity in rank. However, the scope and pattern of work are different. In that sense, I’m fortunate, because I’ll be able to gain experience working in a different arena. It’s true that the work of customs intelligence or investigation officers is somewhat sensitive and sophisticated…
15April 2014
When you can reach the office without traffic jams, even Dhaka city feels like your own.
Sumanda, I’m from Chittagong. When there are no jams in the city, that city becomes my familiar Chittagong.
17April 2014
I’ve noticed something. This happens in almost every case.
When women love men, they love both their good and bad qualities together. Here, love itself is primary, the bad is secondary. When men love women, they love their good qualities. Here, the good is primary, love is secondary. Therefore, in women’s love, the beloved grows larger perhaps than they do in men’s love. Both forms of love can be explained through evolutionary psychological traditions. That’s a story for another day…….
Statutory warning: This is no divine revelation, this is merely a personal Facebook status. A simple confession in response to Mr. Zuckerberg’s “What’s on your mind?” question.
20April 2014
Paying attention to well-being will bring about another wonderful thing. Think about it—does the thought ever cross your mind that time is running out, nothing is getting done? It always does, doesn’t it? Whenever you look at the clock, you see it’s later than you thought. The problem is, as long as we keep running blindly after money and power, we won’t even see the other aspects of life. We’ll forget to be curious. I’ve seen my mother enjoying life with curious eyes all the time, whether she was washing dishes in the kitchen or feeding seagulls by the ocean. From life’s little things to the various mysteries of this universe—everything captivated her equally. Whenever I complained about something or stayed upset, Mother would repeatedly give me one piece of advice; she’d say, ‘Darling, change the channel. The remote is in your own hands. Why watch scary shows again!’
~~ Arianna Huffington
Thought: Five hundred seventy-four
……………………………………………………
23April 2014
: Does the heart have some kind of switch that you can turn on and off—love when you want to, don’t love when you don’t want to? There isn’t one, is there? Why not?
: If you got answers to everything, how good would that feel for you? No one lives happily in the land of ‘having everything’; they don’t exist either. Go check. If loving feels good, then love; if it doesn’t, then don’t. That’s it! Why do you want to control this? Think a bit and tell me, what exactly do you want? If you got something like that, I mean if you actually got it, perhaps that’s the first thing you’d want to lose.
23April 2014
Heart proposes, religion disposes.
21April 2014
For others…….
A woman being good is far more important than being beautiful.
For myself…….
A woman being beautiful is far more important than being ugly.
26April 2014
Today at 2 PM, a team led by the Director General, Joint Director, and Deputy Director of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate recovered 904 gold bars hidden in 6 toilets of Bangladesh Biman aircraft, each weighing 10 bhori, totaling approximately 106 kg with an estimated value of 50 crore taka.
Among the several gold consignments seized by the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate in recent days’ operations, today’s haul is particularly noteworthy.
Smugglers propose, customs officers dispose……….. feeling excited & proud to be a part of this directorate!!
27April 2014
Led by the Director General, Joint Director, and Deputy Director of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate, our team today at 12:30 PM seized 6 crore Indian currency and a huge quantity of drugs from a cargo flight arriving from Qatar. Counting continues……. with click! click!! feeling……. Feluda Feluda
Smugglers propose, customs officers dispose.
30April 2014
Past expensive perfumes, liquor, cigarettes, and sunglasses, my eyes caught on the glow of a smooth, delicate, light pink saree. The enchanting play of shade and light doesn’t just breathe life into sculptures—sometimes it transforms the living into sculpture too. A portion of silky black hair conceals one eye of this slender figure, while the other eye, dense with dark allure, announces that beauty’s attraction lies in concealment. One could die for these eyes alone! The thin pink lips seem to cast some spell across her forehead, cheeks, chin, neck… everywhere. She just keeps smiling, keeps smiling!
1 May 2014
feeling joking apart, please help me…
This post seeks advice………..
This humble computer engineer (judged solely by institutional credentials), having remained steadfast in the principle of acquiring only the absolutely essential in matters of technology, and having spent a long time laptop-less, finally feels the overwhelming necessity for a laptop. This technology-averse outlier has come to realize that laptops have claimed a special place on the list of the absolutely essential.
With your counsel, which laptop might this humble soul purchase for approximately 50 thousand domestic currency, such that there remains a strong possibility of treating you later to at least a modest meal at the ‘Al Sala Diya Dhaka’ restaurant? Awaiting your valuable advice………………
(This humble soul, having strayed from the path, has rendered a special service to the motherland and nation: no one can point fingers and say, “Look, look! What manner of ass does CUET produce!!” Following the principle that the small utility of a hen’s egg surpasses the vast futility of a horse’s egg—if some noble soul, considering this, bestows upon this poor one a laptop with the selfless love of the great soul Jalil Uncle, this wretch shall raise no objection; rather, he shall pray that the Almighty’s grace may shower increasingly upon that magnanimous being.)
Advice is more desirable than likes.
Having to thank all friends makes this brief. Thinking I’ll buy this………..
HP Probook P450 G1 Core i5 4th Gen.
4200M(2.5GHz,4GB,750GB) 2GB GF 15.6 Inch Notebook.
Noman bhai,
I don’t harbor much regret. What I’ve received in life,
most of it is bonus, really. I wasn’t meant to get
so much, brother.
2 May 2014
The French-born Algerian writer Albert Camus—renowned for The Outsider,
The Plague,
and The Fall—upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, first remembered his mother with deep gratitude,
then immediately thanked his elementary school teacher. Reading the letter below, one’s head bows in reverence to both the literary genius and the human being that was this great writer. I was similarly moved when I read A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s expressions of gratitude toward his teachers. May my head bow before the dust of your feet………….
19November 1957
Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these
days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have
just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.
But when I heard the news, my first
thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate
hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and
example, none of all this would have happened.
I don’t make too much of this sort
of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have
been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and
the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys
who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace
you with all my heart.
Albert Camus
Special thanks to my friend Kamrul for sharing this letter.
Friends, come—let us first be humble, let us be grateful; then let us be successful. Now tell me, in becoming who you are today, which teacher has contributed the most? Who comes to mind at this very moment?
Think about it and speak,
you’ll see how good it feels. When one of your own students takes your hand and slowly transforms from nobody to somebody,
and acknowledges this with gratitude,
doesn’t it create an impossibly profound joy?
2 May 2014
Sadness is…………when going to another room
must be called “returning.” Returning to Dhaka.
4 May 2014
Customs Intelligence team seized
6Swiss goldbars weighing 6 kg worth about Tk 3cr from a passenger of Malaysian
Airlines. He was in the guise of a critical patient on wheelchair. Those bars
were kept hidden around his waist……. All credit goes to our honourable DG,
JD, DD & our team.
……….just overlook if you don’t
feel comfortable to look at. I mention because I’ve something to mention……
Anyway, thank you.
7 May 2014
Alone in the crowd……
It’s raining…..
This solitary being, all by myself…..
I’m listening to this song by Srikanto. My heart is strangely at peace.
Around me there are so many people,
they flock together, laugh with delight… yet how strange, in this crowd of so many souls, I walk alone…
If no one comes when you call, then walk alone…….. Ah!
But I don’t even feel like calling out.
7 May 2014
Someone with a kind heart might just loosen the purse strings!*
*Conditions apply. Said person must possess pockets in their outer garment.
10 May 2014
Wedding fever on Facebook!!
So-and-so married what’s-her-name,
what’s-his-name married so-and-so,
the wall’s flooded with such posts. Embracing tightly,
sitting side by side,
gentle touching and caressing, lying this way and that,
twisting and turning, and countless other poses in every shade and style! My body’s tingling all over!! In sheer joy I feel like climbing to the top of a coconut tree and singing myself to death. Don’t know why, but everyone’s wife-girlfriend is extraordinarily beautiful. I’m properly envious! Grrrrrr………
Bengalis must have one fault or another. Either envy of others’ success or lust for others’ wives.
Then there’s the child-marriage brigade posting kids’ photos non-stop!!
Such cute, adorable, chubby little kitten-babies with their sweet poses!!
Makes me want to grab them and smother them with kisses and love!!
No envy arises,
just melting affection. Delaying so much I’ve even spoiled the opportunities for jealousy!! Jealousy turns to affection. What an irony!
Being unable to inspire envy and being unable to feel envious—both are equally painful.
12 May 2014
Let’s escape!
When you’re running away, does anyone actually flee while announcing their destination???
12 May 2014
Sir, I appeared for the BCS interview 3-4 times and successfully failed each time. Then when I got this job, I thought, well at least the PSC gave me something, didn’t send me away completely empty-handed.
Today at our office, during the joining ceremony of 39 Assistant Revenue Officers, when our Director General asked everyone to share their feelings, one officer said these words. This humble person is in overall charge of training the newly joined officers (officially titled Course Coordinator).
Hearing his words made me feel rather disappointed. Because I know very well how crucial our field-level workforce is in conducting a successful anti-smuggling operation. Its impact on the country’s economy is direct and significant. This should be a source of pride. For instance, just recently, in a nearly 5-hour operation by customs intelligence, 105 kg of seized gold increased the government reserve by approximately 48 crore taka. So I couldn’t quite accept his phrase “at least something.” I said,
To fail successfully is an art. Not always luck meets you in the way you want, but it’s still luck. Sometimes, Allah responds by not responding.
14 May 2014
Waiting for a girl is more pleasurable than comforting a girl who’s been waiting.
Feeling……. boys are born waiters for life
17 May 2014
In your conversation, your writing, your dress, your style, your eating habits, your selection of books and movies, in what you like, and even in what you dislike—there’s a mark of taste. You’re such that you don’t even dislike things tastelessly.
What a compliment! I just bought you an ice cream. And that prompted such an elaborate, earth-shaking discourse!!
Feeling……. oily
19 May 2014
Two kinds of people suffer more in this world.
One. Those who trust everyone, considering them their own.
Two. Those who expect precious things from cheap people.
20 May 2014
We can never imagine where life takes us. Life is always stranger than fiction. Many of us know where our limitations lie. Yet, it seems to me, most of us make mistakes in recognizing our strengths. That’s why we can’t dare to ask for something big. It also happens that we’re afraid to wait for something good, yet that very good thing waits for us. This is what happens in careers.