The Unveiling of Venus

A leather case.

Chisels.

Rules.

Mallets.

Pencil butts.

Plaster.

Knives.

Cases.

Sandpapers.

Clink. Clink. Clob. 

4.3 inches.

34 degrees inclination.

2.8 inches radius of curvature.

5 feet elevation.


And at last, Venus was unveiled.

Money

For Everything Else

I may not have money. 

I may not have a dime, a penny, an anna to my name.

I will still own - 

My body, 

My beliefs,
My dreams,

My rights,

My self.

Because there will always be things that money can't buy.

Dream

I Have a Dream

I'm one of those notorious link-hunters and not very surprisingly, one day I found myself reading about a technique called 'lucid dreaming'. Control your dreaming, it said, by following these easy instructions.

Well, if I could control what I dreamed about, it wouldn't be even half as interesting. 

Reflect

Through the Looking Glass

What if the sky was actually a mirror and of the thousands of twinkles up there, one was the reflection of Earth?

What if a mirror wanted to see what it looked like?

What if you had never seen yourself, would you ever recognize your reflection?

What if you looked into his eyes and didn't find yourself reflect back?

Journey

Just a little Chinar leaf the tree had let gone, fell like a teardrop at their goodbye.

Over the roofs, the multicoloured heads of caps and scarves, over the houseboats and the stone bridges on the river it flew.

Urged and pushed and led away by rain, storm and hail it slipped, slid and fought its way through.

Roam it did, among men and beasts, in curious places and haunted hills, with dust and dirt, sun and breeze.

Never, neither for once nor for ever did it lie motionless, and sigh its uncountable regrets and - no!

End? What end? It knew end was far and never thought of what could, or could not, would, or would not happen... or not happen, in the end or not the end...

Years, maybe they were just moments later it fell into a cackling stream who asked -

"Where do you want to go?" 

The little Chinar leaf said, simply - 

"On."

Colours

My Name is Red

Laal. Rojo. Rot.

They all mean the same thing. But if you don't know what they are, you can never understand them. Because the hardest things to describe in the world are colours.

Have you ever tried explaining to someone what 'red' is? Yes, it's a colour. But how do you define it? It has no length, no breath, no volume, no mass or any dimension whatsoever. How can you know that 'red' is not the same as 'white' or 'black' or 'purple'? 

To a communist, red is revolution.

To an anarchist, red is violence.

To a romantic, red is love.

To a doctor, red is hemoglobin.

To a celebrity, red is the fame.

To a bull, red is wrath.

To an octopus, red is danger.

To a kid, red is his favourite crayon in the box.

To me, red is all this and more. Red is when I am alive.




P.S. My favourite colour is blue. And I HATE pink. 

Shopping

Wedding Sales

Is there special discounts for people who shop for weddings? Something like a end-of-season sale or a stock-clearance sale? With five weddings to my witness (all my cousins mysteriously decided to get married in quick annual succession), I can safely vouch that an immense load of things (necessary and not) are bought. Also, the bride-to-be's favorite part of her wedding is the shopping.

In a Big Fat Bengali wedding, you will end up shopping for some really random but obvious stuff. The respective families buy an absolute array of items for each other. Cosmetics. Clothes. Underwear (!) Toiletries. Wrist watches. Crockery. Travel bags to fit all of that in.

Honestly, the shopping really isn't half as exciting as they claim. Take for example, shopping for clothes for the bride and groom and both the families. One for the mother-in-law. One for the father-in-law. One for the auntie who is the father-in-law's sister. One for the auntie who is the mother-in-law's sister. One for the uncle who is the father-in-law's brother and another who is the mother-in-law's brother. And you're in a real soup if there happen to be multiple brothers and sisters. 

I'm not even going into the picking and choosing. Let's just say, I've spent more than enough fruitless ventures into innumerable malls, shops and kiosks to know better.

Yet I fail to grasp this strange obsession of brides-to-be with shopping. You'd think they have taken the "shop till you drop" motto too seriously. Countless hours of bickering, hankering, sweating, walking and a good few blisters later, the smiles of glee on the shoppers' faces can easily compare with the smile of a fat kid about to jump into a huge slice of mud pie cake. Well, at least there have been other (worse) times I've lost my faith on humanity.

To a New Beginning

Me and my special someone were having a bit of a dragging whiny fight over many apparent and non-apparent reasons. Now that they have been resolved, I have come up with this project  we do together where he suggests a word each day and I write a post on it, duration not yet known to either of us. I also don't know how this will work out, but I think the idea is pretty interesting; it should provoke my imagination and creativity. It will help us bridge the gap that has formed. So from tomorrow, one post on a new word each day.