Sunday, January 1, 2017

As this big blue rock we call home begins yet another trip around the sun, let's look back at the year that just passed, not with regret and tears, rather, with gratitude and smiles and be thankful for the good as well as the bad. Let's appreciate what we gained and remember what we lost...and like every year, let's resolve to be better, to laugh more, love more, live more. Here's wishing 2017 is yet another exhilarating roller coaster ride filled with happiness, well being and for us all! HAPPY NEW YEAR to you and your loved ones! - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

The silence of friends hurts much more than their harsh words - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought...

We are all busy stargazing, spellbound by their distant shimmer. While the stars that have fallen for us; stars that are within our reach are slowly, steadily loosing their glimmer. - Joydeep Majumdar #littlethings

Just a thought....

We are all just hell bent on making life complicated...unnecessarily... deliberately. - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Love..only love is worth it all, worth fighting for - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Memories...they can make you feel lonely in a crowd..& sometimes they are the best company when you are lonely - Gurudas "Guru" Salian

Just a thought....

Change is constant! Change is difficult! Change is GOOD! - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Hurtful words give us wounds that leave behind the ugliest scars - Joydeep Majumdar

Where everybody knows your name....

Recently, I went back home to Kolkata after 16 years. Yes, more than a decade. WHY? Well, for the lack of a better answer, I will say LIFE WHY ELSE?!
And I made some of the best memories of my life so far, with my dearest ones. Of course most of us have been in touch for most of these 16 years, even more so with instant messaging and internet finding their way into our lives.
But there were people I am guilty of having forgotten, those I remembered vaguely and just by their faces faded in my memories, people I remember only as part of our extended family. And yet, to my immense surprise, everyone of them remembered me by name...or maybe, just like me, they were trying to remember. Nevertheless it was the most warm & welcomed feeling I have ever experienced.
"It's you! You are all grown up!", "Do you remember me? You don't? Shame!", "Has it really been 16 years?", "Tutu is here!" "Come here, let's have look at you!" (sounds much better and more endearing in bengali)
It was by far one of the many amazingly wonderful parts of the trip. I mean, it makes sense, what the old theme song for a classic television show says, we all yearn for a place to go where everyone is always glad we came, a place where everybody knows our name.....

Just a thought....

Not being able to stay angry has to the biggest character flaw. People tend to take you for granted for it! - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Those who expect little things from us, give up & move on by the time we realise how much those little things did matter! - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

The thing I miss most about the non-digital age, sending handwritten letters to dear ones. The touchpad just doesn't have the same charm. - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

I am not sure whether it's irony or folly. We humans use every bit of the characteristic intelligence that separates us for animals, and strive to find simple answers to the most complicated questions, the most baffling mysteries of life and universe. And simultaneously, complicate the most simple things that life has to offer. I guess we as a race need to re-evaluate our priorities. - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Life is simple. People....they are complicated. - Joydeep Majumdar

Juts a thought....

If we all are a little more polite & a little more kind, things actually get easier - Joydeep Majumdar

Just a thought....

Respect, just like beauty, lies solely with the beholder - Joydeep Majumdar

Happiness, Unbounded...

Based on a pleasant true incident...

Two kids...tousled hair, soiled faces...a boy about 3 years or so old, the other, a little girl, who must have just learned to walk as she just managed to take only a few steps before falling down on all four, crawling. She could barely speak except for a soft yet loud shriek every now and then, as she tried to keep up with her nimble footed brother. The filthy rags covering their bodies could hardly be described as clothes, but that seemed to bother me so much more than it bothered them. It took me a moment to realize that the sound that had caught my attention, was in fact laughter as both brother and sister reveled under the hot sun, barefooted on the dusty pavement. Nearby, watchful, sat their parents over a make shift shop of plastic ware and knick knacks they were peddling on the floor. Like the children, their clothes were just about enough to protect their dignity. The mother seemed to have forgotten all her obvious woes and worries. Her eyes gleamed with pure joy as they followed every movement of both children, in that moment, she seemed to be the most content women on earth. Their father had a tired, faint smile on his face. I think he was brooding about his helplessness for not being to able to give his children a better life. The kids meanwhile continued their laughter filled play. They chased around what seemed to be a colourful round ball made out of pieces of rags sown together, which I am sure their mother had put together and an almost deflated orange balloon that was surely discarded by some child who had better choices for toys. To both of them, these two so very trivial items seemed as their most prized possession. With dirt covered faces and tiny bare feet, that would surely have been burning from the heat of the midday sun that glowed ever so bright on the concrete footpath, the children continued to fumble around for their playthings...continued to laugh as hard and as pure as they could. Even through the severity of their situation, the hunger, the poverty, which I know was too much for them to fathom at their age, they seemed to be so unworried , so HAPPY in the actual sense of the word. The kind of happiness each one of us spends every ounce of our energy pursuing, day by day, seemed to just free fall from the heavens for them. I looked around, and like me everyone that passed by, couldn't help but stop and stare at this innocent sight with smiles on their faces and I am sure, just like me, a little jealousy in their hearts as they witnessed happiness in it's simplest and purest form, carefree, unfettered...unbounded.

Bully

Life is like that bully who tormented you in high school, hits you hard right in stomach when you least expect and watches you collapse to the floor, writhing in pain. Now, the choice is yours, stay down & keep taking the abuse or get back up, face your bully, fight back and eventually, become the best of friends.
-Joydeep Majumdar

The book and it's cover...

The 9:15 AM slow local train(they call it slow cause it halts at every station en route) has been my regular mode of transport to work. And like every day for the last 5 months, I found a seat right next to the window, settled down and got engrossed into my cellular phone for my morning dose of social media. The horn blared a couple of times and the train was set in motion. The cool morning breeze started to blow through grilled rectangular windows and filled the boggie as we began to gain speed.
I glanced up from the glare of my phone and looked out the window, around the boggie and that is when I noticed the fellow sitting right across from me. This shaggy-haired, guy who was about my age is the reason I am recounting this somewhat eye opening incident.
As soon as the train began it's journey, he had taken out a pair of old glasses, the lenses of which had visible scratches and had turned pale yellowish over time. He wiped them a few times on the sleeves of his faint blue shirt which had been washed far too many times by now, but still had stains all over. He noticed me staring as he put the spectacles on and smiled, I smiled back and went back to browsing headlines on my phone.
He began searching for something in his shabby old backpack that had only one functional zipper left. I saw his gray jean trousers, maybe they were  black trousers once, washed out due to over use and his shoes even more so, the soles were barely holding on to the numerous stitches the cobbler had put on them time and again.
Pitiful, I thought and somehow had a vivid mental image about the chap's life, his poverty, his background, his job, his home, his education or rather the lack of it, his struggles, everything, as if I were some high functioning know it all.
And that is when it happened, this guy whom I thought to be poor, illiterate and even unemployed just because of his appearance pulled out from his backpack, what at first seemed to me like a date book or diary, but was actually an old and somewhat raddled, hardbound book with dark brown leather cover. In bold, embossed, faded golden letters, the cover and spine read "The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens". I read it aloud in my mind and felt guilty for the thoughts I had moments ago. The bookmark told me that he had read the book almost halfway through.  "Good book!" he said as he opened the book. I had been caught staring again. "One of my favourites" I replied and we both went back to reading, him a literary classic and me the drab nonsense of social media. Who was the misfortunate one here, I thought.
The irony is, we all do it, more often then not. Prejudice is human nature. We pass judgement our fellow humans on extrinsic appearances. I am sure my fellow traveller had his own ideas about me as well.
Be it acquaintance or stranger, friend or foe, something as simple as clothes and shoes, makes us evaluate the lives of others in our minds, regardless of facts and might I say, common sense. I guess we all forget that we were once taught not to judge a book by it's cover.
I looked up yet again, he was still absorbed with his book. I remembered being equally absorbed by the same book a long time back, the train's horns blared and I made a note to remember this little life lesson the next time and went back to reading news bulletins myself.

Just a thought....

To the grim reaper we are all alike. Neither the wicked nor the angels are spared from death's icy hands. - Joydeep Majumdar

C'est la vie (literally ‘that's life’)

Life hardly ever turns out as we plan, and most of us are just improvising...playing along, as the chaos unravels, bit by bit, trying to hold on, as this wild rollercoaster ride leaves us breathless and queasy ever so often.
Take this blog as a simple example. I started it in a flash of creativity...well...actually it was the result of total procrastination(there was absolutely no flash!) back when I was total slacker(and a pretty good one too) and had a lot of free time on my hands. I bothered many a people for suggestions on the name for the blog and bored them with rewrites of whatever little I posted, like I said, a LOT of free time. No, I don't consider myself a writer(actually, I secretly do) neither am I looking for an audience(of course I am, who doesn't like a bit of attention) but I have always been good with putting down my thoughts into words, that is if you believe my high school teachers or rather teacher(good with words, and absenteeism) That being said, the point of my rambling is...blog started...LIFE had other plans!
I mean, among the very few people who are reading this and the many who are reading far better things, there might be hardly anyone who can say their life turned out exactly as they drew it up. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule , there are people who said they wanted to be astronauts and actually went to space(they get on my nerves, these people!), but then the exceptions are limited to a handful. For the rest of us, life lays out its own path and we all end up making a beeline for it. Even I went from being in  arts and design to working in mortgage loans, from CMYK to cibil scores, now if that doesn't tell how topsy-turvy life can get sometimes, then I don't know what will. Life is not unpredictable just in terms of what we end up doing for a living, but it's chaotic in it's every aspect.
Now, I don't necessarily mean life is unpredictable and chaotic in a bad way(well, not always at least) rather, I think it's the erratic nature and the pandemonium that makes life an adventure; an adventure that is certainly not for the softhearted.
It's takes tremendous effort right from birth, to come  into the world, to live and survive with as frail an existence as that of a human being. But this endeavour for survival I think is the purpose of life. Finding order in the chaos, peace in the pandemonium...the eternal pursuit of Happiness and love through all the hardships and heartbreaks, that's what life is all about.
No, I am not some wise old man from the Himalayas and this is absolutely not some prudential life lesson, I am just stating what should be painfully obvious to each one of us. Like I said, it is quite a rollercoaster ride, ups and downs, twists and turns, joys, sorrows, secrets, disappointments, love are all part of this short lived, tiring and exhilarating journey. And it is actually pretty short lived, I mean you could blink and miss most of it, so I say buckle in, hold on and have some faith, love, laugh, LIVE! Cause, like the good old song goes, we can't always get what we want, but we do get what we need and that's life, literally, C'est la vie!

Just a thought....

Words that hurt need not be harsh. The strongest poisons are said to be the sweetest after all. - Joydeep Majumdar

Back to Blogging...

I guess I am a decade or so late...blogs are now a thing of the past and might slowly fade away soon enough as many "trends" like it have. But I am still gonna be blogging till that happens.
I started it way back in 2010, got hacked and deleted, restarted in 2013 I think, but just like a broken new year resolution, I never got around to keeping it updated. Life, work are two of the many reasons I could put forth for not doing the same... But they are excuses nevertheless.
Now, I don't write for an audience, I write because it's kind of cathartic for me, because it gives me a place to store my thoughts and make room for more in my head and because I love going back and reading my memories. Of course I wouldn't mind a few readers and their criticisms, I mean who doesn't like a little attention & appreciation.
So, here is another attempt at blogging, I will really try this time...weekly updates at first, maybe daily later in. And everyone is welcome to read if you don't have anything better to do that is. I might not have much to offer, but words, I have in abundance and maybe words are all I have...

*Reading this blog, comments and criticisms are optional.

Just a thought....

Possibilities are endless with a little more kindness, a little more faith and most importantly, a little more LOVE! - Joydeep Majumdar

Happy Valentine's Day! (belated)

It's the difficult, trying times in life  that reveal the true & formidable strength of LOVE! Happy Valentine's Day - Joydeep Majumdar

The freedom to be stupid!

We live in a democratic nation that bestows fundamental rights to every citizen irrespective of their religion, caste, economic status and...yes...Intelligence! These rights are afforded to the clever and the dumb alike. So it should not surprise us when a few fatheads misinterpret the freedom of expression and speech as their right to spew poison,  spread hatred or even to share their profound asininity with the rest of us.
Now, the quality of being a dumbass is not limited to those who are illiterate, it actually has very little to do with a lack of education. Imbecility is  rather inherently present in every human being to some extent and I think we are all supposed to make efforts to subdue the moron inside us and that is what books, knowledge and common sense are for.
Of course, there are some people, actually quite a few of late, who are intrinsically immune to intelligence, maybe due to some genetic flaw or maybe by choice and I think the later seems more likely. World leaders, scholars, the so called "saints", people who are apotheosized by their fellow humans have time and again proved that asininity spares neither king nor  jester.
Recently, students of a reputed university, whom you would expect to be intellectuals or at least intellectuals in the making, proved the point I am trying to make here. They spread the poison of hatred and flaunted their ignorance and vacuousness with much swagger,  all on the premise of freedom to speak and express. The rest of the morons followed suit, barring a very few who made some sensible comments about the issue, media, politicos, all went on to make it into a "who is the bigger dumbass" contest. Social media went berserk with blind re-shares like always. At one point, it was painfully obvious, for most, it was a gimmick, a chance to get on the trending news bandwagon.
What surprises me the most though, is that we are living in a time when human intelligence has set new benchmarks and yet the thickheads seem to be increasing in number day by day. Sadly it is a very common phenomenon, the most intelligent species on the planet actually seems to be getting dumber by the day, and the dumbest are making the most of freedom to be mind numbingly stupid and spreading like an unstoppable epidemic. If you think about it, most of the world's problems can actually be resolved with careful thinking, mindful words and a little bit of common sense.
So beware, ignore these pseudo intellectuals, these hate mongers, these poison spreaders, these utterly stupid excuse for human beings are best left to themselves. We are all better off, reading a good book or maybe even a decent blog.