thaumaturgist

People have different things they find cool, live-in relationships, computer hackers, fight club, catch 22, Playstation 3--- to me the very definition of cool is New York city I have spent exactly 3 days of my 25 years in New York city. Once when I was 15 and once when I was 24. I remember one of our Value Education classes in 10th std. where our teacher told us to talk about our five dream destinations. I remember jotting down NYC as one of the places. I don't remember what had me started in the first place, I only remember my writing it down on a piece of paper completely oblivious of the fact that my dream was about to be realized in a few months. Sometimes good things come of bad deeds-- My mom and I were flown to my uncle's after the final exams. He took us on a trip from Niagara to DC to Orlando. On the way we stopped at my mom's close friend's house in Princeton, NJ. I was feeling awful for being so close to New york and yet not having the chance to see it. My un

I liked pujo because I like getting gifts, especially nice clothes. I remember a couple of pandal hopping experiences as a kid, that were all-night affairs. I don’t remember particularly enjoying them because pandal decoration and lightworks were elusive topics, I never liked crowded places and used to get very sleepy. We used to make a customary trip to an old neighbourhood, where my grandmother was staying at the time, every Ashtami. We stood in long queues for bhog lunches, which I remember enjoying- not the wait but the lunch :) Slowly that was also cancelled out as my grandmother had started living with us or it was too much of a trouble driving all the way to north Calcutta on a pujo -day. To be frank, I think we started not identifying with the people living there and a lot of the people we knew had either passed away or moved to a different place. I also remember one year we drove to Puri. That was a very enjoyable trip and the Oriya protimas were amusingly cute

We were very young almost 13 years ago when Hira-da joined as our driver. He was assigned to dad by Hyderabad Industries ltd. when he joined that company. Soon he became the best driver we had had. He knew roads and by-lanes and gullies in every part of calcutta. We discovered that he even had a photographic memory. He remembered someone's house we went to months ago and we only had to tell him ,"hirada, do you remember that place we went to the other day? you know in so and so area?... yes yes she is my aunt, yes, please take us there." We could sit in the car looking out the window, not worried about giving direction because we knew we didn't have to. With time he became more than our driver, he was trusted to help our grandparents in case we went on vacation. When ma left for the US, he had to take over a lot of her duties, like paying bills, helping the grannies with their bank work or taking them to relative's places. When dad was away at work he even had to