The Cat's Cradle

So the day before yesterday, this housecat had a funny feeling about going to yoga. It's not an easy job - moving. It fucking sucks even though the end-product is great. I had finally moved most of my stuff and was contemplating an early evening nap as is the custom of the housecats. DV was out and had said that she would come back for yoga. This is what happened afterwards:
- Decided not to be the little sucker (bad decision, being a sucker suits me)
- Hauled ass up to Yogaloft
- Found it closed
- Cursed
- Told self on the way back that I should pay more attention to my funny feelings
- Came to the big intersection
- Waited for the pedestrian light to come on as any conscientious citycat should do
- Started crossing and looked left while almost in the middle of the street
- Saw a car coming towards self pretty faster than is good for my health
- Tried getting out of the way of the tires
- Got hit in the legs and tossed into the air (Yay, Housecat is now Flyingcat!)
- Spent the next six hours in the ER having the greatest time with DV and RN.

State of Chhayanat

Okay, just for documentation's sake.... it's -25 degree centigrade out here today with a wind chill of -34(only! and not even snowing anymore!) and I tried to walk across the street to get some nourishment in shirtsleeves, froze, tucked my tail between my legs and took the pedway on my way back. The prairie winter bullies you into submission. But I must say it's a nice day. Sun's a-shining, pigeons huddling on the glass roof of the greenhouse that my window looks out onto - it's the only surface without the snow-cover anyway - and I have only a remnant of last night's Saawariya-induced headache. Awesome! The randomness of life has reached that level where I get out of my house and walk seven blocks in the snow with the intention of doing some yoga and end up watching my brain getting arse-raped by the Kapoor contingent. There! I have said it! I was hoping to muster enough courage, conviction and emotional maturity to deal with this trauma on my own, but I fail! Epic FAIL!

The Hundred Club

A question that I have been mulling over for some time now is whether I am living in excess. I know, a grad student living in the great Northern Whites - how do you even define 'excess'? Apparently other people thought about this when they reached a life and an apartment choked with stuff that they didn't need and probably forgot that they possessed. Other people in the North Americas - makes sense. So they started the purge and described it as an "emotional process" drawn over several years of prioritizing possessions. And since a hundred seems be a nice, friendly number, some people are trying to reach the state where they can live with just a 100 of most essential objects. However, this is the area where it gets a little blurry as far as the goal definition goes. 100 Things? 100 Objects? 100 Items? Clearly, if I had ever possessed 756 pairs of shoes and about 21.6 of past and current love interests, then it would probably make sense to club them as single items. Having had none, it was still kind of unclear to me as to how should I exactly proceed. But being a grad student living out of a suitcase should make it easy, right? This is when my friend DV suggested the name "The Hundred Club".

Given that it is a difficult journey to SHED (Separate the treasures, Heave the trash, Embrace your identity from within and Drive yourself forward - yeah yeah, I know, Baloney and Marshmallow Clouds raining M&M Candies), I am gonna use the safety net of not being obsessive compulsive about whether it's a hundred items or objects. My housecatty self finds it challenging to even start thinking about making a comprehensive list of the things that I happen to possess but give it a try I must.

Writing all this wearing my newly acquired tweety-colored life-saver jacket and jungle green hat. My life is the biggest consistency challenge I have ever known.

Chupa Chups

I am kind of worried at this moment because I guess the neighbors are gonna complain to my dragon of a landlady about the Floridian hurricane that's been blowing through my lungs since Saturday. I don't blame them. I have been wearing my sound-block headphones most of this time.

Did you know that the logo of Chupa Chups was designed by Salvador Dali? I didn't, well at least before Saturday morning. Oh Yeah! Grad school Saturday mornings - how I love thee! Wake up hung over and being a nerd for weird and useless facts, google Chupa Chups. Am I great or AM I GREAT!!! All my future girlfriends should hurry up and meet me now.

Talking about meeting people, the last week was somehow all about connecting to bloggers, for REALZ. And also about handing out relationship advice like relief packages after flood - thrown from the army choppers so that you get a packet of milk powder and soy granules and are left to figure out how to save your soul with those.  HAHAHAHA! Ha Ha hrmph.. I guess after having an eight hundred dollars weekend stand and another eight hundred dollars break-up tour, it really qualifies me to talk about relationships, or not. Take your pick and let me know if you need some nerdy help to go around town.

KTHNXBAI.... Oh and I guess you already know why Dali's mustache is the way it is? 

Wine and Cheese with No Cheese

Me and my unbearable cuteness are back again with one little piece of sunshine: if you are a childhood cancer survivor then you don't have to worry about having an ADHD too, says the virtuous Science Blog. Yay for small comforts! It's almost at par with going to get the wisdom teeth removed and ending up with Tingling tongue. If there's no sensation, how can there be pain, am I right or am I RIGHT?!

You should already know that I am sick of bigots. But I guess I am more sick of hypocrites who don't want to show that they are bigots. I mean come on! Grow some balls or ovaries whichever you lack and say that you hate faggots and think that they are stupid or natural aberrations and at most should be subjected to fleeting experimentations. Gawd, sometimes people make me real mad. But of course tonight was different.

We had a Wine and Cheese party today and there was no cheese coz there were no babies in there. We were supposed to marinate our livers in liquor and find a Professor to talk shit about and also let them know the deepest darkest shitty thing about yourself so that it goes onto the Departmental Anthology of Shenanigans. So, I had to disclose that my Prof-buddy-for-tonight went dancing on the tables in a shack with twenty-five other people and only now I realized that I forgot to ask if she was wearing a skirt. Women are such a mystery! Of course I myself lead such an exemplary life that my contribution to the said anthology should never be disclosed.

Then I came home all chirpy and humming and my surrogate mother very kindly let me know that she dreamed about me getting arrested. She is one deadly foreteller as in if she tells you she saw you dying, then you should calmly put the phone down and order your coffin online, lie down, cover yourself with a white sheet and just wait. Also, if you are used to living in a pants-optional bachelor suite like I do, then you better be dressed for the occasion. So I am kinda wondering whether I should go get the police before they come and discover my shapely adorable legs. Such a fix!

Aftermath

I am alive but positively crappy. We got a bronze. I had a slight accident going on the morning of the finals involving a lot of boiling water, broken glass and what nots. Without making a lot of frills, let's just say that I feel like crap right now. All I want is to be able to lie down on my tummy because I am a hurt hurt puppy and hurt puppies need to sleep. I will post some photos of us paddling if I get any.

Winner winner chicken dinner

I am back, bitches. I may or may not have also bottled up the wimp, emo genie for the time being which may or may not mean that I won't bother you with emotional overkill for some time now. Yeah yeah, I know what this crap is all about, but you got to realize that lolcatty as I am, even I Has Emotions!!! So, glad that we got that over with. Hrrrmph! Now to business!

This other day we were lolling on the upstairs couches of Remedy and discussing the paintings and stuff that adorn the walls. There was a painting of an angry chicken right across me. Only this was not so simple as an angry chicken. This was an angry, pink- yes, Pink - chicken with boobs and a black egg that substitutes for its wings. Care to explain?! Anyway, it is always a blessing to be with people who have the similar sense of humor and more so when your mind is getting blown by pink, snarky chickens that may or may not have miscarried an egg! And when these same people aka Ramona leaves this crazy painting in my office as a parting gift, I honestly don't know how I am going to handle the daily mindcrack from looking at the Chicken for the rest of my life.

Speaking of my life, I guess you guys should know another factoid which would explain why I am not posting a pic of the said Chicken mindcrack right now. I am doing a major in Housecatting and haven't left the house in two days after my surrogate parents left for Orlando except for a brief errand. Also, I am loathe to change out of my love-logbook pjs and I would appreciate if you guys remember to cremate me in those when I finally keel over. So, thanks for bearing with the shits. I will be back soon with the promised booty!

Blame the Ketchup Girl for this one

So you KG, you wanted a list of stuff that I want to do? However, as you know there is a gap between what Chhayanat wants and what Chhayanat gets. By the same logic, there's another gap between what KG wants and what KG gets. And which guy does exactly the opposite of what she is told? This guy! So may be not a list but something like a blob which may or may not look like my grocery reminders is due.

This is a bit different than the list of resolutions that get made every day and then get tossed around till the much elusive cleaning day comes and lo bingo! You know what happens to those. If you remember the famous poem by Dame Kobita Sinha - "Apoman er Jonyo Phire Asi", that is, "I Come Back for I Crave Your Insults" then you should know that at this point my biggest wish is to step down the sado-masochist ladder a notch and make it a little easier for myself. I wish to find better cuisine than fingernails coz I have been told to grow blubbers to survive the winter here. So may be one day I'd sit in a restaurant chair and pick up my fat overflowing from the seats onto the aisle to let the hot waitress pass but chances of that are pretty slim as of now. Econ guys talk a lot about counter-factuals. You could almost say that this wish has something to do with the fact that I am quite clueless should the said waitress pass by and there is nothing in the way to trip her up. I was also thinking that if I keep eating my nails and then may be a finger or two then is it possible to end up like that snake that was eating itself? I mean not all of these are really things that I want to do but I am writing in a stream of fucking consciousness kind of way and probably consciousness is big time fucked already. BTW, this snake and hogging talk reminded me that I want to get high on snoose and break one of my reader's boring "quasi-marriage" and rescue her from the extremely good-natured, heart-of-gold boyfriend on my next trip to California. So that kind of debauchery is what I wish for. Finally (as this should be wrapped up before I get further inebriated and start disclosing the stories of my weird affairs), you and I should set up a date for La Tomatina coz I can't think of taking a girl to anything but a tomato throwing fest if she calls herself The Ketchup Girl. So start packing and give me a shout when you're ready! In the meantime, I will continue to be Awesome.

Talking Talkies

It makes me mad when non-Indians watch the movies like City of Joy and think that Calcutta is only about poverty and oppression of poor and illiterates in the hands of people who are rich and baloneys like that. But something which I refuse to call a movie made me Squirm, Gnaw the remainder nails and cry out loud for heaven's sake, Get up and jump in white-hot rage in front of the computer, Remember the landlady and her warnings and come back and sit to watch, Rinse and Repeat. As it is, my gaydar has gone totally haywire after coming to Edmonton. People here simply have gone and fucked the gay dress-codes and stuff three times over. These days I pass women in the streets with coupla piercings in the lip and flat shoes and shorn hair and whatnots and every single time it takes me about three-quarters of a second to find the men tagging along. It's just so easy that I almost believed that Edmonton is after all a straight haven and then I met a bunch of ladies who I'd swear to have passed on as the straightest of them all and they are not! In any case, unless I see someone to be actually dancing to a Madonna number clad in rainbow silk underoos And I happen to be in possession of all my faculties, I refuse to believe that they are not the straightest ramrods around town. Okay enough venting. Now to more venting, actually.

If you ever come across a movie called When Kiran met Karen, my advice is to: a) Remember that a Cabbage is a Cabbage is a Punjabi, b) You have the right to be mildly but consciously racist if that saves your life, two hours and fucking peace of mind and hence c) Remind yourself why Punjabis are called "Cabbage" and ask d) Since when they became good at film-making and art in general, e) More so, since when they became experts to handle "lgbt-tinged" "desi-amru affair" "movies". Gosh I feel like putting every single word in quotes after spending those gut-wrenching two hours which almost gave me a brain aneurysm.  

Short story shorter: "famous" bollywood actress Kiran mouths uber brainless fucking answers to fuckitty-fucking shitty questions in a press-conference, loses her temper when someone asks (nice fella, I quite liked him) something about how come her suicide attempt failed or something in that vain, tells the press to go fuck their grandmothers, rushes out, starts arguing over a hailed cab with some random journalist woman named Karen and ultimately shares the ride, spends the night with her boyfriend in a west-end country house in NYC, boyfriend suggests an interview with the journalist woman who's supposedly well-known and leaves, interview leads to "a connection" between these women (sorry I can't help these quotes), Kiran cries after "sex", Karen leaves without saying bye (or Bi, suit yourself), boyfriend comes back, Kiran breaks up with him and leaves for hotel, much photo-burning and ring-throwing ensues, next morning newspaper headline says Bollywood Actress Busted with another Woman in Bed! Big Shensheshan!! Apparently journalist was hired by the BF to stage this whole thing to destroy Kiran's career which was coming between their immortal Luv! At this point I was choking. 

Frankly, everything said and done, whoever it was that thought that the woman casting for Kiran was fit to be called a "famous bollywood actress" had their eyes dipped in a bucket of shitload. I like my women pretty and don't give me duds, thank you. Why, I am better-looking than her which should tell you actually! On second thought, you guys better watch the movie. Why should I suffer alone?

P. S. : The director/cabbage has dedicated the atrocity to her mother. I don't know if she has been duly disowned after that. 

On old TVs and other serious shit

Alright! So how do you guys spend your weekends? Don't think I am a nerd but I spent the rest of yesterday after the match curling up in my bed, watching videos on how to use a chef's knife properly and in general a lot of videos on knives. Why? Because I heart good knives and also my surrogate parents were out having fun with fussball and what-nots and that obviously meant that I had to hold back my long-distance shenanigans for some time. Now my surrogate mother is obviously something special coz she is three months older than me and the fact that she has taken up being my surrogate mother makes me the closest case to Immaculate Conception. Or, is it the Anunciation? In any case the point is that she is generally full of grace, divine or otherwise. At least I used to think so, till last night. 

You guys remember those box-televisions that came with four legs and looked like cabinets - in one of which a poet-couple used to store their undies when the TV itself ceased to work? As it turns out, my surrogate mother once had one such TV fall on her head. (As an aside , this reminded me of a close friend of mine who once had a Godrej lock fall on her head which made her miss one session of weekly debaucheries with us but let that story be told some other time).  Also they used to have a fridge the door of which had to be tied with coir rope.  It may or may not be the reason that she sometimes acts weird around appliances. On the other hand, I grew up with having a TV in our place that used to go mute every three minutes and then someone would have to mildly knock on its sides, slap and then progressively hit it all over to get back any sound. Initially this hit-man used to be me but then watching TV became such a strenuous physical exercise that I quit. This probably explains why TV still holds no charm for me but this post is not about that. 

After my hours-long training on what constitutes a good knife and what is junk, I went on to video-chat with my surrogate mother and informed that most of her knives are junk and the one that she uses most can or should be ideally used for slicing bread only. At this point she suddenly went batshit-crazy and threatened to cut off certain vital organs (if I had one of those stuff that starts with an N and rhymes with the Korean for asshole, remember? I knew it's unforgettable!!!) with that said bread knife!!!! I mean how much more kinky a "divine grace" can get I ask you! It was hysteric.. and then I realized that Surrogate Mother has the initials S.M. Reminds you of something or I am the most kinky psycho around here who's about to get her nonexistent dick cut off with a bread knife? Huh?!

Rabbitty Tale

Sorry about the silence. Were you guys waiting for a post anyway? Alright I don't really want to know the answer to that. I am at this moment extremely happy which is making me excited like I could stay up all night on one hand and also relieved like I could curl up and go to sleep this minute on the other. After nine days, I have the wi-fi working in my place and this means no more lugging the laptop down two kilometers to Remedy to stay connected. I am a lazy bum and I do dragon boating and go to the gym twice a week and I hope you don't ask anything more from a house-cat. Also did I mention how DIVINE it feels to be online laying on bed?!

I know I should post some pictures here because Edmonton is at its best these days and the river valley is simply looking gorgeous. Again my house-catty self was preventing me from going out and taking pics. So to pretend that I am better than myself, I went out and met a dog named Coconut and a bunny with a personality disorder (let's just call her Chandrakanta) which behaved and/or looked like a headmistress in my junior high school. I was having a blast from the past when it (or, she) kept looking at me like this as if I was playing in the sand even after recess forgetting my hair-band, shoelaces and manners and was begging for a detention:

But then she started to fidget and nibble grass and scratching her ears with her paws- all kinds of rabbitty stuff that headmistresses won't or shouldn't do in front of students who anyway fail to see the seriousness that headmistress-dom is all about. At this point I lost interest, said HAAARRRRR and she ran for life. I wish I could do that when I was in junior high. 

Happy Canada Day

Yesterday after posting I got out of Remedy with a decent intention of going home and realized that thousands of people were walking past me towards the river as if in a zombie walk. Only there were no zombies. It was fireworks time for Canada Day! I had spent the July 4th last year in Ormond Beach and saw fireworks that went on for an hour but we were then fooling around in an almost empty beach and the thing was happening in a distance.  But yesterday was a horse of a completely different color. I was at the top of the bridge across the Saskatchewan River and they were booming and bursting right in front, so close that you could reach out and touch one as they kept bursting into lights. Quite nice. After that I walked all the way home with people all around cheering, hooting ,begging for small change and smoke and lolling around in parking lots completely drunk and it felt like the Pujo-crowd in Kolkata. A grad student went home, looked out on Whyte and all those people from her fifth-floor window, ate milk-cereal and dalmut and went to sleep after finishing Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent.

Retribution is a bitch

Um okay, let's first start with the new achievements of Awkward! Came to the computer lab, turned on my comp and KABOOM! I could have poked a Banshee in the eye with tiger nails with as much effect and lot less effort. The CPU was protesting in a voice that almost reminded me of the stick-thin SUCI women activists lying in front of the minibuses and shouting their head off in protest of almost anything under the sun. I was freaking out and when other people started freaking out as well , we called out to our resident tech buddy for help. He came and guess what! Two slaps and violent shaking later, the comp went quite like a sleeping baby. Everything went back to normal pretty soon except my ears which had taken the color of beetroot and took sometime to drain all that extra red.

Later today, I was trying out a shirt in some random shop and a toddler crawled in, sat in my cubicle while I was still changing and we had a really philosophical conversation about what's the right thing to do in life (aka the conflict between what one wants to do and what one's mom asks to do) between us for about four minutes. He was soon convinced that I was not his mom and he needed to go to mom. With that as the marching order I don't know if he crawled out and went into somebody else's cubicle. I thanked god that at least we were not in a public bathroom peeing. That would be a bit too much. I guess this was just a reminder that the glaring-at-kid karma can jump up and bite in the ass.

On my way back, I sat on the bus sandwiched between three couples that were kissing and making out as if it was their last day on planet earth. Gosh it was awkward. PDA is fine by me as long as you are not eating up your partner's facial parts in crowded buses without table manners. And then I re-learned the truth about straight women : here. Enough for a day, right? Right??

Let her ride!!!

I went dragon-boating last evening and came back with a sore back, a black and blue thumb and soaring spirits. So the next time you see someone walking stiff as a log, holding her multi-colored hand at an awkward angle and with flamboyantly dissimilar whiskers, that would be this bird. Anyway, the river valley is surprisingly near where I live and I have practically just found it out and needless to say, would  be going back with my camera soon. It was interesting to push myself do something I have never done and had  never even heard about before I came here. Just hoping that I learn enough and fast to keep up with the rest of the team and not ruin their chances of winning the trophy again this year. While I splashed half of the river onto the exceedingly polite paddler behind me, it was fun to learn the boating lingo. For those of you who expected something X-rated from the title, "let her ride" means "stop paddling" or in other words "you may breathe now". Not so exciting read but puts a life back into you.

Bottom line: "Dragon-Boating aka Furious Paddling and Splashing Self and Fellows - Curing Broken Hearts with Sore Backs circa 2010" coming at your nearest theater... SOON, SOON, SOON!!!!!

Live and let live, Kepe-Mama and some other shit

Whenever I am pressed for time and all that shit, I feel like stopping everything else and start blogging. Give me nothing to do for days and you won't see a tiny dandruff-flake sized post. To which simile I say Ew.

I was up since god-awful 6.30 because my throat and ears hurt like I had tried to swallow the shards of someone's broken dreams. I have simply no idea what to do with myself before its at least 8 and less when I am up after discovering cacti growing inside my ears. The thing is I detest paying visits to the doc unless I am absolutely on the death bed and there is no other alternative. I mean, NONE. The simple sermon that is engraved in my headboard is something like this:

Go see a doc coz the docs have a right to live.
Get those pills coz the chemists also have a right to live.
Throw those pills away, hold yourself and rock gently on your bed coz you have a right to live.

Well, that's a lie. I don't have headboard. And even if I had, they would probably hang me for vandalism. But, seriously. If I ever have a tattoo, I am going to have that thing tattooed in indelible golden letters pretty much in the same part of anatomy where a certain favorite professor of mine (Uncle Kepe for the initiated) supposedly have a tattoo of The Envelope Theorem. Or, was it Differentiate? I forgot which. May be both.

So apart from the minor detail that I still don't have any insurance for a few more days even if I lugged myself to downtown today to get hopefully the final paper-pushing done, this is pretty much THE reason why I haven't been to the docs to save their lives. But it's nothing that Ramdev and I can't handle if we tried together. And, finally talking of Ramdev, if you Google "Ramdev Fun Facts", out pops the page where he claims that yoga cures "the gay disease". I am touched to see that Google has such a sense of humor.

More random stuff then...

Um, okay, not the last one yet I guess.

For years, my once-boss has been writing "teh" in place of "the" and only today it struck me that all this while she was LOLspeaking and I didn't notice!

You guys remember my cat-fetish? And also the fact that I was a puppy? Good. Then today I just became re-christened as Mowgli and guess what? There's something called a Mowgli Syndrome. The people who become trapped between the animal and the human world are Mowgli's. For realsies! Watch out coz I might swing on that nearest tree branch of yours in my leopard-print underoos and come and say hello!

I guess there won't be many more Nyara updates coz I think he has finally taken the hint. I will find you all lovely people someone else, more interesting. That would be no trouble really because in any way I am up at one in the morning -
(a) eating nuts (that is, a hard-shelled fruit of some plants, not how Confucious defined it: Man who stick dick in peanut butter jar is fucking nuts),
(b) secretly dreading the point where I would actually need to sleep and for that have to clear my bed of the shitloads of notes and books that I didn't touch all weekend,
(c) Google-ing Mowgli and Nuts so that it makes a blog post.

So, you are welcome.

I guess that would be it, for now. Traala..

Seeking Remedy...

Okay, a few things.

The only time I talk these days is when I am sitting in the ENR class and literally squirming with impatience because it means three hours of confinement, twice a week and all these pain while I am not learning new stuff. At least, so far. Sometimes I just try to keep shut coz no one likes a show-off but most of the times I just have to speak because otherwise I will just go crazy. I hope the professor doesn't mind but if he does then the damage has been done already.

I made another mistake today and that was checking the price of the air-tickets to Kolkata. That was when it got hammered in as to how god-forsaken this place is. And its so far from everything else that even if I get to go someplace, I will be a fucked up pauper.

Sorry if this post joins the list of dark ones of which there are so many these days. But funny things have stopped happening it seems. I am writing this sitting in Remedy Cafe which is another version of Indian Coffee House, College Street or at least the Jadavpur one - which did nothing to improve my mood.

Dandelion again!

Gadhesh has settled down at his new place and I hope is enjoying himself and the attention of his three human pets at this moment.. better than a single grumpy one who mostly slept or used to be out. Here's a photo of him on a particularly special day before the move when he was not feeling so camera-shy:

And guess what people! We repeated Dandelion this time with a bigger team and it was GREAT! We ate till we felt like pythons gorged on spotted deers and then went out to investigate their garden when I realized that I don't remember anything of the high school botany. (Actually, I don't recall anything but the supreme debaucheries that were high school for me but that's another story for another day.) So here's a piece of Dandelion for you.

The Prodigal Returns

Three tired souls and a few hours of frantic sorting and trash-bagging later I moved and then survived one tiny computer crash before I started writing this post like a wannabe-responsible blogger. Like everything else, I didn't entirely plan for it to happen today but at least I have made my first move and finally has turned back into a resident at my surrogate parents' house which proves extraordinary forbearance on their part I am sure. The last thing I did today was to sort through twelve courses worth of material and decide what I absolutely need. Couple that with sardonic chuckles and throwing off of seminal papers onto the rubbish pile and the resulting threesome is what you can call the irony of grad school.

In other news, it was fucking mind-blowing to notice how many Indian and especially Bengali nicknames are loaded with sexual connotations and are often just variations of the words for boobs, dicks and balls. That's RIGHT! When grad students that are fuckillion years old get together, they talk apples and nuts. 

Finally, I did something all the while feeling it was gonna be an uber calamity: I (happened to) urban-dick Manicorn. There are five definitions in case you wanna check but for this one time I am too mortified to share beyond the most upvoted one.

Manicorn : a mythical male creature who is successful (read: pursuing his passion and can pay his electric bills/rent), funny, chivalrous, masculine (read: not chauvinistic), adventurous, artistic (read: not suicidal).

Game,  Set and Match - Dudette!.

Resident Poet Issue

(Man, that puns in so many different ways...)


I have found two things to share with the bongs, presuming I don't know enough of either Bengali or English to translate these pages: 


1. Kaurab for those enthusiasts of Bengali little magazines, who think that visiting the Montmartre pavilion in the Kolkata Book Fair is kind of integral to the idea of this entire Bong-connection thingy and nostalgic what-nots. Personally I have been rendered choke-full of the various patrons of little and big magazines in and around the city - poets and artists who want to hit it big, poets and artists who think its against their entire life's principle to try to hit it big, poets who worry about whether its a fair thing to break up with girlfriends with disabilities, stone-broke writers who spend their entire miserable savings to publish the first book, artists who break up with the incumbent girl/boy friends every month and still get back together, poets who cut off the nicest of braids and tonsure their heads to protest against the typical standards of beauty held by the Bengali slash Indian males and so on. You get the idea. One of them wrote me my first ever letter when I was three and asked me if I could get some details about a book "Jalpai Kaath-er Esraaj" (loosely, The Olive-Wood Guitar) from my father when we are not too busy with our respective preoccupations and please let her know. I prized the blue inland-letter and probably still have it somewhere back home. And then there is the thoracic surgeon-turned poet who called me Misibaba, introduced me to my first scotch (on the rocks, baby!) and kindly divulged the secrets of getting the best doped slash Bhang-ed Kulfi in town. So you kind of see that they remain somewhat the necessary evils of my life but nevertheless this post would not see the daylight if I was still living among them. 


2. I knew that the resident poet publishes hugely on Kaurab but this is the only thing I found online: Bondhu (Friend). 


Up for comments.