thaumaturgist

While attending classes of Social Geography of India, in the 3rd sem of my MA degree, I remember our lecturer describing India as a Salad bowl. Now Melting Pot I'd heard but Salad Bowl was a completely different take, meaning that all our individual cultures and beliefs remained in tact while there was still a lot of mixing. I agree with it mostly, because we still do try to differentiate between ourselves and the 'others', Bengalis and Tamils and Gujratis, so on and so forth; yet there is so much of who we are and what we do that are similar. After all this is what makes us Indian. Not getting into the subject of the adoption of 'western' cultural practices, I'll just talk about my experience of being Indian. I am a born and bred Calcuttan (this is from the time when Kolkata was still Calcutta), that is West Bengal in East India, although my ancestors are from East Bengal(now Bangladesh); That is too many identities all at once as I like eating my aloo posto (...

Many of us who live outside our motherlands study at universities abroad, mainly the USA and UK, and Germany is also a popular destination for engineers and Mathematicians. Very often than not we need a certificate of knowledge of English Language in the forms of TOEFL or IELTS to pursue education in these countries. I have never given much thought to this procedure as I understand that English is after all the 1st language in US and UK and it is their mother tongue. But recently while searching for programs in German Universities I realized that most courses are taught in German, therefore to study them you need certificate of knowledge of German Language and for the courses taught in English you need a TOEFL or IELTS certification; it suddenly struck me that we (especially Indians)do such injustice to ourselves India is one of the very few countries that has a very strong background of English language knowledge in spite of it not being OUR mother tongue. Some of us actually speak be...

It's been a pleasant week the last one.. got over with my A1.1 level of my german course and got a certificate as well, Anirban took me out for dinner in the weekend to a nice South African restaurant "capetown's" and I had a damn good alcohol loaded cocktail that made my evening!! Since my India trip in october I havent had a carefree casual evening out like this one... it was rejuvenating and I have my spirits high again. I have been watching some 1940s and 50s classics and I must say its been a while since simple but interesting movies have been made. This kind of humour, thrills or romance have been missing in almost all the movies of this era. Now every movie must have innumerable number of twists and psychotic behaviours to make a thriller or cheap thrills and baked faces for the horror genres and loads of flimsy clothing, heaving cleavages and salivating "heroes" as Romance! Let me remind you dear directors, that a quiet backdrop and shadow play is sc...

I had written a post on Slumdog Millionaire a couple of weeks ago... criticizing the movie and the unnecessary politics behind its hype. I deleted it because I have changed my mind. I still maintain my stand for the fact that dev patel and Anil kapoor were totally worthless in the film! And there were a number of loop holes in the screen play. But over all the movie is interesting and it does touch up on real issues that we tend to get defensive about when the colonial gaze hovers over us (still)... Atleast if this can make the people of India conscious enough to do something, anything about it.. the movie is well worth it! As for Danny Boyle I dont like him still!