Subhajit

Today, I ideally should have been at one place, or to be more specific with one person. Because it is his day today.  In the last 6 years since that person has arrived in this world, I/we found it both amusing & nightmarish raising him. Though, in the real sense of it, it is the mothers who raise the kids. Fathers can complain all they want why kids are closer to their mothers, but they choose the right person, for reasons which are right too. Let's not digress.  Every year, in his birthday, we made sure all the necessary checklist is ticked off. It was difficult to celebrate 2 birthdays during lockdowns (1 during complete shutdown), but we somehow managed, more importantly he was happy with whatever little arrangements were made. I was surprised and happy seeing him not complaining. May be that's how kids are, happy with whatever they get, may be that's how we all should be. Easier said than practiced, right? 6 years have passed in a flash. I already want him to not g...

Last year, the one everyone thought is post-Covid, didn't exactly turn out to be one. People still suffered from the Wuhan virus. The job market did not recover as much as it was expected. Now, in June 2022, we are probably, I repeat - probably, seeing the last leg of this Chinese virus. It appeared twice inside my body, even after me being the most mask-compliant person in my circle. Everyone in the home has gone through the virus once. Mother suffered the most, being the only one who had to be admitted in the hospital. Symptoms started from the last week of July 2021, went from bad to worse in the first week of August. Along with her, father and younger brother were detected positive too. When I was WhatsApped her reports of lungs CT scan amongst other half a dozen reports, I had to book a flight close to midnight for the next morning. I reached home, had some water, picked up the vehicle keys and went to a Pulmonologist to get his feedback. Admitted her the same day evening. The...

Most of us are lonely. The bigger the city, the larger the designation, the wider the social network - the more and more we are lonely. This loneliness is killing us all from inside, day by day, while we put up a facade on the outside. This is my experience from watching myself and people around me for years. I was attributing some other reasons to it all these years except this one thing - loneliness. There was a phase I was missing my home, parents and my brother when I left home at 21. Then came a phase where my work schedule, colleagues, never ending deadlines and meetings made me feel I am occupied. Occupied to an extent, I forgot to live my life the way it should have been lived. Because I was made to believe that promotions, after office hangouts, networking and everything with some end result was what life is all about. I lived that life for years, diligently, with all earnestness. It rewarded me in the form of promotion, money, artificial human beings around and a bunch of bel...

Once while crying out in pain because hot water fell on him (he was 3 or 4 that time), I was concerned for the first couple of hours and then started laughing and giggling at him, something that sounds very insensitive, but I always thought I can act like anything with my brother, younger brother. He has grown enough to be doing everything, but I still behave like an elder brother. Some avoidable big brother behaviour and loads of protective elements - is how I can describe my relationship with him. Delhi, 2002/03 In all these years of growing up together (literally together), we have seen each other in every step of our lives. From updating each other on big purchases, especially when it comes to gadgets to what needs to be ordered for dinner, we discuss quite some stuff. At the same time, we do not discuss a hell lot of things as well, most prominently - the difficult situations (read emotions). Except for a period of 5 years when I left home till he joined me back, we have always st...

(Photo Credit - Getty Images) You got big shoes to fill in, if you hail from the lands of Garner, Greenidge, Haynes, Marshall & Sobers. Contrast to the Caribbean aggression, Jason Holder is a calm & quiet character. At the age of 23, when he was barely recognised as a future talent, the selection Panel headed by Sir Clive Lloyd appointed him West Indies' ODI captain in 2014. A year later, he took over the Test team too, indicating how much the WICB and men in the know believed in this man. In the history of Cricket, only extreme world situations have forced Cricket to stop in the past. The most recent being the Pandemic of 2020. Cricket came to a halt for over 4 months worldwide. Cricket enthusiasts would know what it means to lose 4 months of International Cricket for a player. Jason Holder kept growing through the multiple defeats as well as few shining in his first 3 years of captaincy. When he took over, the West Indies team had many senior players including Chris Gayle...

(Image Source : Google) Recently, while going through articles on how Swiggy & Zomato will see marginal growth in their business after hiking tariffs (from membership costs to packaging to surge fees). But what amused me is that a large number of people are literally dissing these ventures. Some common outbursts/keywords are: Start-up bubble will burst They will lose business if they do not give discounts Their future is dark if they stop freebies Such companies are not innovations, because we always knew eateries around us, so no big deal Let's take one point at a time. 1. There is nothing like a start-up bubble, there are some great start-ups which have made a positive impact on society. But there are also many who burn investors money & vanish. Mr. Ratan Tata, a regular investor in numerous start-ups, spoke only yesterday that startups that burn investor money and disappear won't get a second chance. Remember, not just a start-up, any organization which is badly mana...

(Image Source : Google) Watching movies together have been one of three things I have been used to do since childhood with my family, other two being watching Cricket and having food. If I stretch my memories, I could go back to movies like Anari (1993). For the next several years, we four in the family used to go to a theatre on the bike ably driven by father to the nearest Ganesh Talkies in a small town in Odisha. Then the access to VCRs reduced theatre visit by family but the movie bug always remained. Then I started going to the theatre with friends. I picked all kinds of movies, but the choices were not much. Smaller movies never made it to all parts of the country in the early 2000s. But I was keen on watching the non-mainstream movies. Hence, movies like Dil Chahta, Lakshya, Swades, Rang De Basanti & Munnabhai series were few movies which was a marriage between commerce and content. Then I entered the phase where I was exposed to World Cinema (mostly English,...

Alarm. Wake up. Brush your sorrows. Shave off your sleep. Prepare yourself for the commute. Run, scamper and reach on time. So you reached on time, that is like half the brownie points scored. Is it similar to half the battle won? Hell no. Absolutely not. The battle only begins after after you feel like clearing a big milestone, punching in on time that is. Then begins the real stuff. Some folks literally live for it, they just love the drama that unfolds, by them or because of them. Because that is all that they have, that is all that they know. The social and family life is non-existent for them, for there is no room for antics there. No friend of yours would like to see your artificial self after office hours. No one has time or patience for that. We meet people who can be honest with after a day of putting a mask on. Okay, let us move on from the morning punch, you know how it sounds. It actually is a punch on all our faces. We now enter our desks, that is our little go-...

On the midnight of 2nd of April 2011, I wrote this piece . What followed the next day was known to all, as they say, it went into the history books. Gambhir played a superb innings and Dhoni finished the match. Today, 8 years later, while I type this, Federer is one set down against Nishikori at the Wimbledon. But I am not sad for him, even after being a fan of him since more than a decade and half. Because something bigger has happened. I left office, still unable to process what had just happened. I entered the Metro Train, then the local train, trying to see of others around me are equally sad. But I was not able to guess anything. May be, I was not in that state of mind to judge anyone. 1992 was when I started understanding and watching Cricket. And as a kid, who grew up in the 90s, I am familiar with the heartbreaks that the Indian team gifted us, time and again. It was just one man in the team performing while rest were resting on his shoulders. As if 1996 was not enough, we...

"I do not like travelling, I do not like noise, Italian food, crowd, crabs, honking, spontaneous plans at midnight, people on social media, selfies, people getting married." "What do you like?" "I like mountains, chocolates, bikes, beaches, Mughlai Chicken, the smell of coffee, picking up a nice shirt to wear in the morning and I like you." The conversations between June & Sydney never stopped. They meet to talk and talk about almost everything under the sun. They were friends, more than friends and less than what people usually loved to term them as. They never cared what others thought, except for the times when they had to lie, a rare for them. Life has changed quite a lot between them in all these years, ten to be precise. They studied together, started working together and then moved cities, separately. But the chemistry never died. They always started from where they have left. It has been close to a year they are in the same city a...

Not that I am complaining, but seeking some time with the people I know is the only take away I look forward to. When I seek time, I seek happiness, nothing more or nothing less. Being an introvert till date, I have to fight my fears for public speaking which I have to do regularly. I also find it very difficult to say 'no' to someone. I feel equally arduous to start a conversation even though my profession requires me to ask questions to people I have never met as if I have a right to know everything about them. But those who know me closely, often complain that I speak too much, sometimes without allowing them to complete their stories. I change into an extreme extrovert from in no time at all. Anomaly, isn't it?  I have never breached the privacy of anyone while seeking some time from them. Friends are an integral part of my life and I devote quite sometime for them. In the growing up years, my family was not quite in favor of the time my friends used to consume fro...

What has happened to us? Especially, in last few years where technology has barged into our lives and has made a permanent place. We have messed up few of our habits, from not speaking to someone and staying glued to our mobile handsets to writing a language which this particular planet, which we call Earth, has never invented. Sample the below conversation. “R u k?” “Ys, m k” “Nyc... Hw is evr1 @ home” “Kul…... It is bn long we met” “Ryt ya, lets meet ya” “Bt u stay buzy alwys, no tyme fr frndzzzzzz” “U r also buzy-types. Neva free…….” “Anywys, lets catch ths weeknd.” “BTW, wen u cum, get ma buk” “K bye. Gn” “C ya. Gnsdtc” Before we even start talking about what we just witnessed above, what will be more surprising is that most of us read it almost everyday and have become normal with it, while many of us picked it up as well. Because we feel that till the time we can read and understand something, what is the need to be correct (not even perfect) a...