The Nihilist

Human personalities are built on beliefs & experiences. When a baby is growing up, he hardly has any experiences. So he relies on the beliefs instilled into him by the people around. But as he gradually experiences life over the years, some of these beliefs get modified, distorted or even utterly removed. He questions them,  criticizes them, bends them to their limits, until he can see the juice inside.

There is a saying, that a beggar cannot be a hermit par se, as he had nothing to leave behind. It requires the strength of leaving behind kingdoms of power, wealth and fame to attain the state of The Buddha. Similarly, it takes a huge strength of mind to leave behind all of these acquired thoughts to be like  a baby, born without any conscience, any belief, any morality. Like a mother, he must bear the tearing agony of giving Birth - of Himself and cut the umbilical chord of his previous self created out of others' thoughts. He must start with Nothingness, then be Full and to learn to let go all of it to embrace Nothingness again : to become The Man of Experience, The Nihilist.

When in fear, when in despair, when in joy, a man requires to cling onto something, a security that assures them a hope of redemption. A person, a god or even a belief. The Nihilists remain utterly alone, in the soul-sucking Black Hole of misery. Drowning in the spiral of his thoughts, the only thing that he can hope for is channelizing it. Creativity is the only thing, that can put a carpet on all the blood of his soul. The excruciating pain comes out of his creations, where the joy of giving birth immerses all his senses and gives a shape to his abstract thoughts. A sculpture where he puts all the truths- uninhibited, uncensored. It is the shape of his soul at that point of space-time.

The Nihilist is utterly confused. His mind fleets over thoughts, conceptions and theories. As no two experience is exactly the same, his theories evolve in every moment of his existence. But he is a human, he has his emotions, and at the same time he denies them, he denies all of them. The confused soul lives a life of two people, burning himself and everybody around. He burns in the fire of his experiences & thoughts. In his world of void, there is to water to pour over his burns, no words that can soothe him, because what he needs is - to experience it through his senses.

But, it is this Hellish Fire that defines him. It is this fire that burns him only to keep control. The mind would implode, as there is nothing within to support the gravity of his Being. Floating on the fine line between void & completeness, the Nihilist draws nectar from both these worlds and keeps the fire raging.

This is the story of a Nihilist.

The Wandering Mind

The mind works in a funny way.

It can never accept what comes easy-

It always looks for a journey

And keeps its gears greasy.

Wandering from place to place,

The mind is like a vagabond-

It travels unattached and free-

Never can stay for too long.

T'is never satisfied with a simple answer.

It looks for a story, with twists and turns-

A simple answer is hard to take,

It always hopes for more and refuses to learn!

The fuel of the mind is Hope,

That is what gives it life.

Hope defines it, and Hope drives it-

While slowly thrusting in the knife. 

The mind is like a flowing river-

Past all obstacles.

It makes its path the way it wants

Ignoring all cautions.

It chokes like a canyon, cuts deep inside,

And it gathers, creating a lake-

But at the end, it never stays

Goes forward like a snake.

It hisses as it passes,

It leaves marks of joy & pain-

The mind never stops to take lessons

From what it has lost or gained.

The mind only hopes for a fresh start,

Everytime it moves on-

Shattering all logic and memories,

It hopes for a new dawn.

When life ends, the mind makes a stage

Where all the actors come on-

The end is all set for a flashback

To get applause and then again move on. 

The mind works in a funny way...

Have I gone too Far...

As I stare out of the branded glass panels

From the cozy confines of my plush office

On the third floor of the city’s most luxurious address

On this beautiful sunny afternoon

I see a different world.

Young lovers lost in their own world,

Holding hands, laughing and whispering sweet nothings

Little kids, dragging their parents or being dragged by them

Crying or laughing, animated in their expressions

I see groups of young giggling girls

Carrying loads of shopping bags

Which I am sure would be heavier than their slender frames

Old wrinkled faces, walking with a stick

Yet wearing their best smiles

And I search myself in them.

I don’t belong to any of them

I am here, secured in the life I built for myself

Busy and rich, 'Successful' could be the adjective.

Was it all worth it, I ask myself

The parents I didn’t have the time to care for

The friends I never appreciated

The wife I lost to someone else

The child I never saw growing up

The hours I spent working on Christmas nights

Amongst deserted cubicles

The years of easy fun I spent in meetings and demos

I wonder, did I pay a price too high

To win this mindless race.

Have i gone too far to deserve a second chance

To see a new sunrise, even as I near sunset

To shatter these branded panels and breathe afresh

To pick up the precious moments I lost on my way.

- Rohini Karmakar, CSP Testing, Cognizant

Photography & Me

There are some things in life that you can never do, but still you wish in your dreams. Time Travel is perhaps among the most popular of them. All of us, we have some moments that we always want to go back to. It may be the golden school days, wild college days, or simply surrender yourself to the cool breeze of the beach you visited recently.

However, though science has not invented enough to make this practically feasible, but it has been successful to push the muscle that matters most, the Brain. I call the Camera nothing less than a Time Machine. It gives us the incredible power of capturing a moment with a click and re-visiting the same in years to come.

As a child, almost everyone gets fascinated by this machine. I was gifted a basic point-and-shoot camera when I was as young as 8. Gradually I took up interest in the subject, read some books, borrowed and bought better cameras whenever opportunities came. With a little bit of appreciation from the people around, this sparked a Fire and I became a shutterbug. I think almost everybody who still holds a camera has gone through these phases.

However, recently something happened that made me different. 

I was in a national reserve forest with eyes prying to catch the sight of a wild animal. After a long and patient wait, it did appear for an instant. But suddenly I realized that I have lost of sight! 

I did capture that instant with the lens of my camera, but I did not see it with my own eyes. The moment came & went away. And there I was, holding the proof of the moment, which I never really experienced!

It struck to me, be it pandal-hopping during the Durga Puja in Kolkata, or be it jungle safari, I was so obsessed with capturing the Moment, that I never really lived them. As if, I was very thirsty, but instead of drinking the water, I was busy accumulating it. And when I tried to take a sip, I discovered that the mug was like a mesh and all the water has seeped away, leaving me thirsty, over-worked and stupid.

After that, I stopped shooting pictures altogether. I live all the moments that come to me, and as Ol' Nature wants, I remember the moments that really means a lot to me and forget the rest! :)

Suits well to a lazy person like me I guess. ;)

New Bengal : A Vision

Today was a historic day for Bengal. After 34 years of continuous rule, the people of Bengal chose to dethrone CPM. This outcome has overjoyed many, saddened many, but most importantly this has jerked all the parties about the political sensitivity of the people. People are no longer just satisfied with the content of the pre-election manifestos, but they want work to be done, and they're pretty serious about it.

As for a majority class of middle-class people, they are very cautious. Neither too optimistic, nor very pessimistic. They want to give others a chance to play the game, rather than just letting them shout from the boundary-lines. It is very reassuring to see this attitude of the general public that they are ready even to compromise with their decade-old perceptions in the hope for a better tomorrow.

For the evolution of a species, change is inevitable, without which it loses its capability to strive in this world, where with time it becomes more and more difficult to exist. Some changes come automatically, some need a trigger, and some active actions. But, just as water flows freely from a higher altitude to a lower one, situations when left to themselves turns bad to worse. It always needs a positive force to push the things up.

Today, Bengal is in the doorstep of a big change. It is now in our hands where we want it to go. If TMC gets complacent of its formidable victory and takes too long to stop partying and start working, it's run will be cut short prematurely. It is important for them to take a proper grip of the steering, oil the rusty machinery and provide the necessary fuel & then ignite the spark. No doubt it will be a tedious, hard and long process, but every minute of effort will count in the long term. If Bengal can entrust a party for 3 decades, I'm sure (or at least hopeful) that they will have enough patience to wait for the reformed Bengal Machine to move.

However, as always, the chances of failure is very high. TMC can get busy gobbling up the Pie, forgetting that the original reason for their victory was not that most people wanted TMC to win, but many just wanted CPM to go. Only TMC gave a threat to the existence of CPM, hence they won easily, banking on the super-brand Mamata Banerjee, whose primary goal was to oust the ruling party at any cost. Throughout her political career, she has operated in the most challenging situations, and considered attack as the best defense. At every opportunity, she has made sure that CPM was duly embarrassed, punished and the whole act get well publicized. I admire her single-minded approach, persistence to the fighting spirit and also most of her strategies. A true warrior she is. But the problem is, a whole kingdom cannot be run only by the King in the smallest details. It needs a good team, intelligent strategists and some wise people. This is where TMC can face the biggest challenge.

Comparatively a new party, a conglomerate of floating politicians, intellectuals, popular figures and muscle-men, it is still lacking in the gluons that will hold the nucleus together. Party-men will have to temporarily forget about the party's sole welfare and think about the public to take some positive steps to keep them interested. They need to deliver short-term, plan for the long-term and always keep an eye on the clock, which always keeps ticking.

Other than this, there is an imminent possibility of a strong destructive opposition from CPM. Unlike a good opposition which criticizes for the betterment of the State and encounter probable injurious actions, a bad opposition can stop positive executions too and create a situation of a deadlock, where the public suffers eventually. TMC haven't been a very good opposition in this respect, and undertook many actions only to increase the count in their vote bank. On the other hand, CPM already having a strong base in the state, it won't require as much effort to win the counts back. It can cash-in heavily on every minute mistake that TMC in power may make. Here the challenge becomes even more difficult for the new ruling party. And I'm sure whenever CPM gets the next chance in administration, they will be very keen to deliver, which is the only guaranteed positive outcome of their defeat.

Like many people in Bengal, I dont really care who sits on the chair. I just want to see my state wake up from the long slumber, shake-off her chains and start to rise.

The idea of a party gulping the whole of Bengal is now fragile. People are now so sensitive that the balance can tilt any side, any time. Only sweet words will no more suffice to fill the Bengal Cerebrum, which has already accepted change as a part of Life. Now the question is, whether the parties accept it too.