Favorite songs from old Bengali movies

I just wanted to share some of my most loved songs from old Bengali movies. They use terms like "golden" and "evergreen"...while those are nice ways to describe them, I think the best thing to say for these songs is that it brings you close to home...

Most romantic song - There's a tie in here between এই রাত তোমার আমার (ei raat tomar amar) and এই পথ যদি না শেষ হয় (ei poth jodi na sesh hoy). The first one has a melody which is extremely soothing and Hemanta's voice is just awesome! The second song is probably the best portrayal of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, the greatest couple ever in Bengali movies.

Funniest song - শিং নেই তবু নাম তার সিংহ (shing nei tobu naame tar shingho). I think this was Kishore Kumar at his truest self... the happy-go-lucky crazy guy with an expression that makes even the grumpiest man forget all his worries and smile.

Lively/youthful song - সব খেলার সেরা বাঙালির তুমি ফুটবল (sob khelar sera bangalir tumi football). Not just the music is great, but this song is about football (soccer) which is probably one of Bengals' most loved things. It talks about the arch rivals Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, the two football clubs of Calcutta which have kept the argument of which team is better continuing for ages.

Spring

From when I started writing essays on seasons, I have found that summer and winter are not really portrayed in a nice way. Spring is the most "well marketed" season in the entire world. With new flowers and birds, the days getting longer after the dull dreary bleak gray winter evenings, I see why people love this season. There is a human tendency to love and be drawn towards sunshine and even the most lazy ones too go out in the open when the weather is nice. I feel an incredible urge to pot new plants and dream of huge extensive kitchen and herb gardens. It feels good.

Last weekend was one of those "perfect spring" days that I have seen. The sky was BLUE without a single piece of cloud, cherry blossoms are all over and daffodils, hyacinths, grape hyacinths and all are blooming in every house. My daffodils seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. I totally forgot about them, but their bulbs were hale and hearty under the soil and came right up when the time was good. My tulips have also started to show little buds. I am sure within a week they should bloom too.

Arnab has finally started to tend to the lawn. I am hoping his "patch test" will be successful and that the entire lawn would look better. Earthworms have also taken it up on themselves to care for my plants. I don't like to see them when I am digging holes to plant the saplings, but once I am not near that, all earthworms are welcome to come stay in the soil :) 

Rosemary is the only herb that can be planted outside before the last day of frost, so I got one of them out now. I am waiting for end spring to plant cilantro and catnip outside. Same for tomato and eggplant. I have a dream of having proper home grown veggies (not the tiny tomatoes I had last season).

The best thing is when you sit outside in the afternoon and see the flowers in bright sunshine, little birds flying to the from the bird feeder, chirping and calling their friends. When the sun is warm but under the shade you can feel the cool breeze and look up to the azure dome...

All I now need is a hammock and I should be all set for spring and summer in the Pacific North West!

My take away from Bebe's training

Wikipedia says training dogs to perform specific tasks dates back to the Roman era and I can well understand why. You will know too if you have met a well trained dog. I am not talking about those who take part in dog shows or can show off tricks, I mean those ones you come across everyday in regular families who are happy and obedient. Just like human kids, if you train them right, they will come out right, otherwise they'll be a classic example of "garbage in, garbage out".

Bebe on her way to "school"

Bebe is a very intelligent dog. Even though she is not purebred, she is a fast learner and a smart girl. When we first got her, it looked like she would be a shy gentle little girl, but the Seattle Humane Society volunteers predicted quite correctly when they said she has a heart of gold and if any family can bring out her confident side, they'll get a faithful companion for life. I am happy that now we do get to see her confident side. Arnab has high hopes for his daughter, he wants her to get certified as a "good canine citizen". So we started her off with some basic dog manners classes. That is where I got to learn a lot of new things too.

Well, don't assume that I have learned to "sit" or "stay" alongwith Bebe, but given my zero experience with dogs, almost everything I saw there was an experience in itself. Before we went there, I asked Arnab what he thinks about being in an auditorium with ten dogs. Then I added, actually ten untrained dogs! They were barking, lunging at one another, tugging at their leashes and what not at first, but then slowly we started to see a difference. The bold ones were not dominating that much and the shy ones were being more confident. Last week when they had formal dog-to-dog introductions, I was amazed to see the most unruly (and probably the biggest one) to be happily sniffing the nose of a shy one. He was wagging his tail all along. There is a purebred beagle in the class who is a serious and intelligent dog, who always does the right things when he is told to. Another one is a small but gentle little fellow who may not be very smart but is a hard worker. Then there is Bebe, smart but with a strong will. She can do things perfectly but might just want to chase another chihuahua when she is told to sit and stay. Also she is more motivated by cheese than by anything else. :) There are some very yappy tiny chihuahuas whose only goal in life seems to disobey commands and shout. But they are tugging less on their leashes now.

What I have found out is that raising a well behaved dog can be challenging as raising a well behaved kid. You have to be patient...very patient and you always have to do the right things consistently. This "consistency" is a key word. If you, depending on your mood, let the dog jump on to you and the next day scold him for the very same action, you would never be able to teach the dog how you want him to behave. It gives you the responsibility to act properly and consistently. Behave with patience and you'll get a well behaved canine who would never run into dangerous situations nor would let you down ever. An American Kennel Club (AKC) certified "good citizen" is a great dog to have. You can volunteer with such a dog and help bring comfort to many who can no longer afford to keep a fur friend. Most importantly, you will feel good that you helped bring up one dog who is a great addition to the society.

Nostalgia and comfort food (music, movies and more)

I think comfort food has got more to do with nostalgia than with anything else. Comfort foods are almost always traditional to that culture, the food people grew up eating, the ones that are easy to prepare and bring back fond memories of the family kitchen and warmth of a family meal. As much as I love fish, it is funny that my best loved comfort food does not include fish. It is warm steamed rice mixed with boiled eggs, boiled potatoes and clarified butter. A bowl of hearty chicken soup would come second and the ubiquitous "Maggi" (instant noodles) would come a close third. I am deeply indebted to Maggi for saving me from starving on great many evenings when I was a student. I think warm dishes are more common comfort foods than cold ones. It gives me the same feeling as getting home from work on a Friday, taking a long hot shower and getting under warm blankets (with a nice story book). Isn't that a fuzzy feeling?

Just like comfort food, I have comfort music and movies too. Here also nostalgia plays a big role. A sudden encounter with a Kishore Kumar song on YouTube or watching a Felu-da movie would give me a better glimpse of home than talking to an unknown Indian. Those things that we relate our childhood memories to are the ones that give a comforting feeling when we are sad, sick or simply need a break.

This is one of my most favorite songs ever!

Stop me before I volunteer (again)

Introverts have been writing articles after articles in trying to explain why that personality trait is good and that people shouldn't confuse introverts with shy people. In the Jung test too you'd find a number of famous thinkers who are introverts. Arnab being of that group explained to me why you need to be an introvert to be a thinker - "you need to not talk while you think. Simple!"... Yes, I understand. But the thing is while introverts were thinking of stuff, extroverts were actually talking to people and getting thinks done! Hehe, just joking... :D Well, we need both kinds of people (example: Arnab and I) to balance the world, but what I am trying to say here is that life is not easy for extroverts either.

When I was small, I was a branded chatterbox. I talked too much...in school teachers complained that I disrupted the class. My art teacher couldn't think of any ways to make me keep shut while I scribbled on paper. "Keep quiet" was perhaps the most common thing I heard at that time. Followed by that were explanations why talking too much hampers my concentration and as a result my studies. Another big thing was why I always jump up and start fights with the least provocation, why I am always on the front to argue with people, "why you?" was another common thing I was asked. To be very honest, I didn't pay attention to either and made complete use of "through one ear and out the other" when I felt arguments would be a waste of energy.

Now when I think back I find that it is my type A personality that is to be blamed. I can't help it, I am made that way. Once out of the stereotypical role of a student who always patiently sits in class (the chalk-and-talk classes I mean) without asking anything or a young woman who should not be heard, I started to feel more comfortable in the big world as now I can be "myself". There are so many things to be done in the world and we have so little time that I don't want to waste that by not being proactive. Be it claiming to fix a defect or to volunteer for the animal shelter, just count me in! Why I was saying that life is tough for the extroverts? Because they tend to take up a lot of responsibility and then have to handle them all. Also, type A people are bubbling with energy and they don't like damp blankets, but they still have to motivate those damp blankets. Type A people get very upset when things don't work out they way they planned (I do, very much) so that's another reason why they have to stay motivated all along in spite of all these stupid things.

Introverts and type B people are good, they are easy going relaxed people who enjoy things in a slow pace. They are never agitated, they can easily unwind and relax. But I am happy to be a type A. The life I am leading now is giving me every opportunity to be what I always wanted to be - the person that I am! I can meet new people, talk to them and learn cool stuff, look at things from different perspectives, try my hand at new skills, speak my mind (argue if needed), think and provide solutions both at work and home, volunteer for causes I support and just talk non-sense and laugh when I want to for the most silly reasons ever!

I am grateful for what I am... :)

Antiquity

Jerome has said the ultimate thing about antiquity. I don't have anything better than that, nor can I add anything to what he has already said:

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago.  I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes.  The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.
Will it be the same in the future?  Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before?  Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?  Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?

[Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?pageno=39&fk_files=1881315]

Year 2000 and odd!!! How funny it seems today, but whatever Jerome said is so very true. Arnab got a 1955 Kodak camera last weekend and we were marvelling over it. What would those people who actually used these cameras say about our recent DSLRs? Those people who had telephones without dials and had to ask a telephone operator to connect them to somewhere? Will they look at my BlackBerry Z10 with wide eyes? How funny that we can't even imagine our lives without stuff which were non-existent just a few decades back.

Going to the other end of the scale, how would this very Z10 model look after fifty years? I think teenagers or college students would say, "haha, look at that! You had to actually drag the text and flip it on to the email! Poor millennial people, they had to live with that?" The antiques of today are the cheap trifles of yesterday and the most marveled at new invention of today will become an article, may be cherished but totally unused when tomorrow dawns....

Just a thought... we humans live in our little bubbles of space and time and think how smart we are. Yes, we are smart, but we show off a lot more than what we actually are :)

Teenage

"Half wit poems, stories wild, April letters warm and cold, diaries of a willful child"... this is a line from one of my most favorite poems ever. And the poem is from a very favorite story too. Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" and "Good wives" are not just good reads, but also I would say, kind of a companion for girls. Even though the plot ages for more than two hundred years, I still think of the four sisters and especially Jo as a friend I had from my growing up days. Simple things that girls go through, yearning for nice clothes, wanting to go for a dance, massacres in the kitchen, simple longings, pleasures and pains of growing up, bittersweet incidents of first love and the inevitable heartaches that follow... are all so real in the book and all so similar to what I have gone through that I can't help not loving it!

Just like Jo's trunk where her name was carved on the lid by a boyish hand, my old cupboards and cabinets also contain wild stories (with plots copied from Saradindu's historical novels or any story that was my latest favorite at that time) and totally half wit stories too, not to mention the poems...well, I haven't written too many poems either in my life. I have read some of my old diaries last time when I was at home and how I laughed! In eighth grade we bid farewell to some friends for we would be separated into different sections and that farewell seemed such a sorrowful affair! Now I can't remember when I last saw them but sorry to say I don't miss them at all! Then there was the obvious part of "first love"s... I very well remember which boy in our class liked which girl. That was still the time when as a rule girls hated boys. It was considered bad if you let boys give you gifts and all without telling them that - "you know what? We don't like this." The boys kept on saying how much they love the girls and how they will suffer if those girls don't love them back. Those "boys and girls" are almost all on my Facebook but they are all happily married to different people, some even have kids of their own!

Oh how I love my teenage days! Yes I know I have done quite a lot of foolish stuff at that time but those were the days when my personality slowly started to take on its own course. I threw tantrums, I fell for cricketers (well, I was too tomboyish anyway) and movie stars and that was the time when friends started to play a big role in my life. It is not bad that we argue with parents and take sides with friends. That is the first step we take outside the walls of our families. Friends are the first people of that outside world.

Teenage days are the stepping stones of life. Things may not work smoothly, but that's how life teaches us new things. Every phase of life is so important that missing out on one would leave a gap in the experiences of life. I so cherish my foolish teenage days...and I am so happy that those memories make me smile :)