Because Autumn Came By...

When autumn came by and trees uncloaked
Their wasted reds and browns
Windswept lives were blown away
Into shadowy sundowns

Bright sunshine smiles were memories now
Captured in yellow photographs
The air of mirth sounded from the past
From frames of frozen laughs

And when the autumn died away
And the winter melted too
The sun dawned on an early spring
The colors bloomed anew

The joyous laughter,the chatter, the chirp
The winds of hope again blew
But I was gone with that last autumn
And gone so were you...

Hail Hypnos!

Last week I was in a particular training session at work that went hopelessly slow for me. It really wasn’t the speaker or the content. But I have a problem with sessions happening at 3 pm when you’ve just finished a long lunch and then have to sit cramped in a room with the lights switched off and stare at a slides flipping on after the other on the projection screen for 2 hours! That’s a big ask really!

Despite the lure of a quick siesta, I was a little surprised at me and also a little pleased! All my life I have been an ‘I-can’t sleep-in-lectures’ person. Given that there were very few that I attended post my school days (I attended very little there too and my classmates will vouch for it!), that was not saying much.

But nevertheless sleeping with a room full of people around me, with a lecturer struggling to capture attention – resorting to several means from raising their voice to throwing chalks at people snoring away - , I could just never doze off. Yes I doodled, day-dreamed, disturbed all the sleeping people around me… I managed loads of yawns, but the damned sleep would just not come!

I was envious at times of a few people who could exceed expectations when it came to sleeping. ‘Shru’ was one of them. Oh! Shru could sleep in peace even if her house were on fire! And she brought those talents to the classroom as well - to our Math lecture in engineering college one time, to be precise. Our Math Prof. was dead serious about his lectures and gave Shru an equally deadly stare and a grunt as permission to enter the classroom when she walked in a good 15 mins late into class.

I was sitting somewhere in the middle row in our amphitheater-style classroom. Shru spotted me and hobbled her way into the row and seat behind me, tripping over a few feet in the process. The owners of those feet shifted noisily and moved their belongings around, resulting in a few seconds of murmur. I looked around and Shru quickly whispered ‘I over slept’. Math Prof. liked that not. The stare came on again!

The next part happened so quickly that no one really understood what got into Shru. There was a loud ‘thunk’, a small squeal followed by some highly audible “Oh Shit!”s and “Oh ****”s. Suddenly people were looking around, craning their necks, standing up even for a better view of the scene. And the scene was this – Shru was under the desk!!

Yeah… She had an explanation for it and something to blame - the unique seats in the classroom. The seats needed to be pulled down into the horizontal position before you sat on them. There was a catch to it – the seats were mounted on springs and if you released a seat, it would spring right back up again. We normally held it down with one hand while we turned around and sat on it. It was an easy enough maneuver that Shru messed up that day much to everyone’s amusement!

When she was finally lifted and settled down on the seat, I wanted to turn around and say – ‘No Shru, You’re not sleepy… you’re drunk!’ But the words were stuck in my throat, because stare had turned into glare when I looked at our Prof. The noise died down. Silent looks and smirks did not. Prof. mumbled under his breath and went back to differential equations.

Everything looked good (for the Prof. that is) for the next 15 mins. Then all of a sudden, even as I was looking at him, he snapped the chalk into 2, tossed a broken piece in his hand a couple a times dramatically and with one fluid motion of a practiced man - he threw the chalk – AT ME!! Eyes widened, I let out a loud gasp and ducked and the chalk found its target. I turned around and saw Shru sitting there – red faced and red eyed. Oh yes! She had dozed off! In the midst of all the adverse circumstances! How?

It was fodder for a good laugh for days! But the truth is I could never achieve what she did! There were lectures I’ve attended when I desperately wanted to drop asleep (or drop dead at times). But I guess I was just not blessed enough.

College lectures are firmly in the past for more than two years, and its only now that I’ve begun to discover the pleasures of ‘lecture-induced-sleep’. Better late than never right? And Shru if you saw me battling it out with Hypnos (yes there really is a God of Sleep!) these days, you’d be proud of me too!

Spotlights

Watch your step, watch your words
Watch your actions, watch yours thoughts
Watch what you say and watch what you do
You've got a spotlight shining down on you!

Don’t drop your watch lest you betray a chance
You might be caught with a misjudged glance
And things might just get worse anew
Remember you've got a spotlight shining down on you!

The world is watching through a million eyes
Eyes that are waiting to catch you in a trice
Eyes that nag, and reprimand too
As you live with the spotlight shining down on you!

Its pins you down with its glare
Puts you through a grindstone, to see how you fare
Robs the spring in your step, the smile in you eyes too
The loathsome spotlight beaming down on you!

With the best mask over your face drawn
With your facade of pretence you go on
Silencing your mind, quieting your heart too
You've got to be cautious - the spotlight's on you!

All day long you wait for the show to end
Gripped with anxiety, cold with fear, with dread
In the heart of your dreams, you may be spared, that’s true
But with every new day its back - that spotlight shining down on you!

Eternity

What wouldn't I give
To free me from your grip
What wouldn't I give
To stop your soaring flight
What wouldn't I give
To stay your slipping grains of sand
What wouldn't I give to hold onto that,
Which won’t ever come back?

Running by when I looked away
Unswerving when I urged you on
Unrelenting, unyielding
Defying my every word

I fought you not
Bowing to your every demand
Over an over again, dragged in your wake
Treading paths you wished me to take

I've come this far
I wish now to live
This paradise I’ve found
I refuse to part
With all this that I own
I refuse to leave this me behind
I refuse to walk you all alone

A few moments is all I beg
To look back at a life I forsake
Be gracious, Time, I need you now
Don’t rush me along, I wish to wait

Like a giant clock ticking far away
It heeds not my plea
It’s pushed me all along
I’ve struggled to break free

But today I can hear its voice
The voice of Time now speaks to me
I care not where it echos from
Only question its purpose to be

“There’s a part of me in everyone" it says,
"I’m urging them along their way
This that you call your own
None of it is here to stay
For everyone is in search
Of that what is meant to be
Everything here
Is looking for its destiny

I’m that destiny you came with
The life that’s kept you going
Your only companion forever
I won’t bind you down…
I’ll set you free…”

Unleashed

How often have you got the chance
To take a leap head first
To close your eyes, to hold your breath
To make the dive you must

How often have you stood the gaze
Of critical, judgmental eyes?
How often have you been able to
Stand up and prove them otherwise?

How often have stood a challenge
Knowing well you could disappoint?
Anxious to see yourself through
Yet wanting to make a point?

How often have you looked over the edge
And known in your heart you could fly
Believed you wouldn't hit the bottom
If only you would try...

Have often have you surrendered to instincts
And seen yourself flare
How often have you let your faith rule
How often did you dare?

Take that plunge, And once you do
You'll fare better than you wished
You'll have wings unfurl in you
You'll find yourself unleashed!

A big fat situation!

On my blog here, it’s not important what I look like. But I have to say this - that part of life which has measurements involved has been tragic with me!

I was stick thin once upon a time way back during my school days. And was still containing the kilos in college. And now after 2 and half years of sitting on my bike/in my car to work, sitting at my desk at work all morning, sitting in the canteen for lunch, sitting at my desk all evening, sitting in front of the TV/laptop at night… I’m Fat! Period.

We don’t want to get into how or why or what now? I’m always getting plenty of advice without having to ask for it anyway. The point of my post is about how life changes for someone who puts on too much weight in too small a time.

Firstly there are the comments you attract. Most people (provided they recognize you with the extra kilos) can’t hide the shocked expression and blurt out things that they seem to think will convey the message without causing much damage.

If the people in question aged around 40+: “Oh! You've gained in health!”
Somewhere near 40: “You must start exercising”
Anywhere between 15-30: “You’ve put on!” (a seconds thought) ”You are looking good though”
Below 15: Anything they say goes like “Aunty, blah blah blah”.

Then your close friends pick out the choicest of nick names, and call you every one of those (with a whole lot of love so that you can’t even mind the names). I get called Fatty and Golu and everything else you can think of to go well with the chubby cheeks.

But the worst part (especially if you’re a girl) is that shopping becomes a nightmare. It’s bad enough that you have to go around a store, looking at all the gorgeous looking skinny gals, in skinny clothes. Focusing on ‘What I need to buy’ becomes so difficult given that you are constantly thinking about ‘What I could have bought if only I had a few kilos less on me’!

Getting fat in a short time also means that a lot of times you don’t feel as fat as you look. Sounds complicated? Picture this.

I’m at a store with clothes arranged in neat stacks (SIZE WISE!). You stand at the head of the row and see a whole lot of skinny looking gals standing at the racks that say ‘XS’ / ‘S’. A similar number of gals stand bunched up near the next one which reads ‘M’. And then beyond that is a rack that says ‘L’. It’s got one of the largest remaining piles of clothes, because no-one is touching them. I know that’s exactly my destination. I’m dragging my feet to it. Its little comfort that there’s another shelf at the far end that says ‘XL’ because everybody seems to be ignoring it! (You’d think no one wants to be caught dead buying something off those shelves!)

Somewhere halfway through the walk down that aisle, I lose courage I start looking at the clothing that’s being sold under ‘M’. And Voila! I pick out one and I think (I really honestly do think) that I can fit into it! I pick out a few more, hold them in front of me and I now I’m certain that I can get into these! I take some to the trail room only to have reality dawn on me. I throw those ‘M’ tagged clothes into a corner. Stomp off to the ‘L’ rack. Pick out something and BUY it without really trying it out.

Shopping done! Torture over!

If being tagged with the ‘LARGE’ label on clothes is bad, nothing gets worse than what my employer is doing to my psych these days. For those who are just beginning to disbelieve me at this point .. There’s a simple explanation for it.

My Name: Bidisha Ghosh
My Full name (with Dad’s name in between): Bidisha L Ghosh
My Company’s way of maintaining the name: Ghosh Bidisha L
The display they put up on my desk:
-------------------
Ghosh Bidisha
L
-------------------

Can the ordeal end? Fat chance, I'd say!

Whats it with the name?

Several days of thought, discussions with people who conclusively proclaimed that I was incapable of ever making up my mind, dissection of every clever idea that some very clever people in my life came up with, fretting over the draught of inspiration in my head – this is what I finally dig out and zero in on – MOSAIC.

Mosaic is supposed to be about everything that counts in my life. It’s about everyone who’s walked in and out of it. It’s about all those who’ve stayed.

Mosaic is essentially the mesh of thoughts that sprout in my mind everyday, some rooting themselves in deep, some struggling to be freed from their confinement, some blooming into big things, some biding their time, some never finding a way out.

So a dozen people will turn around to tell me I could have done better with the name. Maybe… But Mosaic was stuck in my brain way before I thought it could play a role on my blog here.

Mosaic is one of the first poems I ever wrote. :)

It was written under some serious pressure to churn out something for my college magazine. I was given the title; all I had to do was pen a few verses that fit in. (“Look at it this way - you know what to write about! Half the job is done!”) Two hours away from the deadline to turn this in, I had little choice but to say – ‘Go for it girl!’ and put down absolutely whatever cropped up in my mind. And Mosaic was written – amateurish, too much of rhyme, too much of color (literally). Maybe it was all wrong… but it was a beginning nevertheless. A beginning I was too glad to have made!

When I had spent a good week looking for something to call my blog, an overworked (and terribly tired) brain surfaced this piece of memory once more! And no other name sounded more apt any longer!

And so that’s how ‘Mosaic’ is back again!

What luck and inspiration (and maybe some color?) it brings to my posts here, remains to be seen. But right now, “Half the job is done guys!” ;)