Warning: Sappy Post

What's the difference between being content and being happy?

Can someone be happy without being in a relationship (the intimate kind)?

People-dependent happiness is risky, so for those of you (or us) who like to be risk averse, is it best to not rely on people at all?

Would that mean that I don't care?

Should we move on with life when life gets better, and wait out the bad times? Or do we do what we need to do, or what we think we need to do while we're waiting?

A friend said to me y'day: Life is a bitch. And then it's over. To me, that sounds a bit too negative. I am still hoping that my life would be perfect one day. I'm not sitting around waiting for it, and my life isn't completely in the gutter. Actually, there are some good things going on. So the question is, should I just settle and be happy with this? Provided that I -am- happy with this, does this mean I will not reach higher levels of happiness? What is happiness, anyway?

Okay I told you this would be sappy, or what I consider sappy. And they're mostly rhetorical questions to which I already know the answers (other than the q about happiness, anyone who knows what happiness is, let me know). Which reminds me, I read a definition of rhetorics the other day which is different from what we know to be rhetorical, and with that I shall end this post: persuasive discourse within and between interpretive communities.

Haha, I know, and I'm sorry.

3 holes and 1 love (or maybe 2)

My new love is for: binders. I live by them. Okay, not completely, but close enough. Without binders I would have been in complete disarray. But what I'm still missing is a 3-hole-puncher. They have this gorgeous one at the labs. All you have to do is plug the machine in to the wall (yes, it's electronic!), stick your pile of papers into a slit and hit a button. That is all. How I wish someone would gift me one of those things. Well, actually I can just buy one of those. I'm sure it's cheap on Amazon or something.

I also realized something quite profound. And that is I'm afraid of water bodies. I never used to be. Funnier still is that I realized this when looking at the world on google maps. YES, I know it's dumb, thank you very much. But I had to quickly close it, when the oceans came into view. At first, I didn't like the look of the Hudson River as I tried to follow its path to see where it leads to. And then when I zoomed out, the entire world came into view. It was when I moved continents, that I had to quickly close out. All that blue was suffocating me. Too bad blue's my favorite color. I guess not so much anymore. But I still like blue shirts. Generic taste, I have. But I look good in blue. Or so I like to believe. Reds too. But everyone looks good in red. My best friend in college used to claim I looked good in purple. Purple! I don't know anyone who actually looks good in purple. And if they do look good in purple, it has nothing to do with purple. Red, I think, changes you. So does brown, but in a bad way. I own a brown clingy tshirt which I like, but I look browner in it. It's like white people wearing white - they look too uniform to look good. Especially when they have straw blonde hair. And wear white pants with it.

I also love calculators. I'm glad they were invented. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I know someone who's failing undergrad math, which I would have thought is difficult to do at this age, but no, it's not. In fact it's harder. And I say that only because I'm done with it. If I weren't, I'd probably be too proud to admit that undergrad is difficult business.

Bush and Dick, Sitting on a Tree

If I were a girl, I would never sleep with Cheney. For one, he's White. And White men look good only in the dark. And secondly, every time he opens his mouth I feel like stuffing it with shit. Pure, deshi, brown shit. It would do him some good, I reckon. Not that I want any good to happen to him (not to curse him with bad luck for the rest of his life). And my latest outburst comes because he disagrees with Bush. Yes, you read right, no need to go back and read that sentence again. Let me explain. How many of you remember Libby? No one? How about the guy who was convicted of blowing the cover of a CIA agent whose husband was anti Iraq war? Yes, I thought so. Well, as it turns out, Cheney Shaheb wanted dodo headed Bush to pardon him during his last days in office. Why? Because Libby was Cheney's Chief of Staff. But Bush didn't. Yes, I know. Even I was surprised. However, get this: Cheney still dissapproves of G-Bay withdrawals and humane treatment of terrorist suspects, just like Bush. What a Dick, you say? So did his mother. The day he was born.

What I fail to understand is, though, how could America put Dick and Bush in the White House? Just that combination of names should've been enough to vote them out, I would think. But, oh well.

And that relationship advice? Coming up shortly. Can you tell I'm procastinating?

Twix and Arizona Iced Tea

I would never write about relationships - that's just not my forte - but I'm compelled to right now, because I am at a loss. I've managed to argue and rant about everything (well, almost) my entire life but this is where I get stuck. Not because I don't have experience, but but because my experiences are so divergent that I cannot compare and contrast. And I never have. No, never. I don't compare current partners with former ones. In any way. What's gone is gone, and it's better that way - that is what I believe in. Not that many people believe me. And those who do probably do it to shut me up. But that's how it is. So between munching on Twix (yes, the chocolate bar and no, I'm not a girl), and gulping down cheap Arizona Iced Tea (the half mango - half tea stuff isn't bad, really) I'm trying to find out what the converging and diverging issues are of those who lost jobs during the mass shutdown of steel mills during Roosevelts' regime, or was it Reagan? One of the Republicans. So now you know I'm really not paying attention to what I'm reading.

And I just remembered - I have a bunch of things to do, things that I had completely forgotten about. So my take on relationships (which I was being compelled to write about) has to wait. Let me grab another chocolate bar, first. So much for compulsions.

TypeCasted

In previous posts I had discussed the Bengali fixation on being fair (and thus lovely) and how the advent of white makeup in addition to Filipino magic hands (that promise to make people white in exchange for large sums of cash) is nothing short of a miracle in the minds of those who adore the color white. What I had not talked about (at all) is the opposite of that. Those who claim 'kaloi holo jogoter alo' is probably just as freaky as the White wannabes, wouldn't you say? While it's perfectly normal to have a preference, I see no reason why we must add reason and logic to it. It's like love. Do we decide to love someone? Or does it happen on its own and then we add reason and logic to it? I believe it's the latter. Why else do we so often fall for the wrong people? If logic had anything to do with it, we probably wouldn't have. The natural outcome of a decision based on reason is supposed to be a positive one, they tell us. I doubt they're completely wrong.

Another thing I've been thinking about lately (not too hard, don't worry): do we all have a 'type' of person we fall in love with? This guy I know have dated a lot of horizontally gifted women - not to mean they're not attractive, because they are, but they all had this one characteristic in common. Maybe there were others, but I don't know them well enough to spot it. So would it be safe to assume that he only likes this one type of women? Or is it all a coincidence? I don't think I'll ever know. My own experience with the opposite gender tells me that there is no 'type' but I never actively selected the people I dated - I've said yes/no to people who approached me. So my experience would show that I have not attracted the same types of people but it says nothing about what my type is. And hence the question, do I have a type?

So my question is: do YOU have a type?

'My penis has been stolen by a witch'

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Suicidal at Niagara and other stories

Jackpot News, March 12: In an exclusive interview with WTF, the unidentified man who jumped into the Niagara Falls claims that it was NOT a suicide attempt, he was merely practicing for the triathlon that he will be competing in April. Does the triathlon involve jumping into a water fall? No, but it requires a 5mile swim which begins with a swift dive from a 10m diving board, we found out. This man from Ontario county claim that the Niagara Falls is the closest swimming pool to his house. So was this his first attempt? How did he manage to spend 45 minutes in the near freezing water while managing to avoid the whirlpool that is the Niagara? "Yoga", he said. So Yoga it is.

Relatedly, an unidentified man who jumped into the Dhanmondi Lake too claims that it was NOT a suicide attempt. What else would he be doing in a water body in which even fishes die, you ask? He claims, he was taking a bath. However, he was retrieved from the lake by a group of slum kids who pulled him out thinking that he was a big fish. We at WTF are wondering if Danny Boyle would be interested in that story. Go Dan! Here's another chance at the Oscars!

blocked

Is my nose. Well, no. I don't know why I just wrote that. It's actually my mind. Perhaps it's the exhilaration of writing in another blog, which is actually someone else's. It's almost like writing personal emails from someone else's email account, but still using my own name. It's like the pleasure of having access of someone else's private information, which is often by surreptitious means, but this one's legit so it's not as much fun (c'mon admit it, reading other people's mail is fun. Or I'm just a closet voyeur) but it still feels kind of weird. Because when it's a surreptitious act, you at least pretend that you haven't done it - even to yourself, sometimes. But when it's legit, I guess you just don't know what to feel, and can't process what you're feeling.

And after taking pot shots at people who write just for the sake of writing, or who just write descriptions without interpretive comments, or even just about themselves I'm not doing such a great job myself. And I am pretty much just writing about myself. Does that make me a closet hypocrit? Well, not closet anymore since this is a public forum.

If you've read Joruri Khobor at all, you'll know that Tokai (i.e. I) was evacuated. Thank you, Shakib Bhai for providing me with temporary shelter. Much obliged, I am. Because there are tons of shredded paper on the streets, especially near Hawa Bhobon, I am seriously busy trying to collect all I can (read hoard), but I will need a refuge at the end of the day and this porch will work very well, thank you. Hopefully, even better than the garbage bin in which I used to live. Because Tokais don't sign contracts, no deals have been signed. So I'm here till I have to evacuate again.

padams, jimmy padams

This one's for the cricket fans. And not just any cricket fans, but the ones who actually follow the game in its longer format aka Test Match Cricket. I'm a HUGE cricket fan. Those who know me know this well. The one song of my band that gets regular radio play is "Cholo Bangladesh" which i was inspired to compose when Bangladesh beat Pakistan in the 1999 Cricket World Cup. 

I was introduced to the world of cricket pretty late in my life. I was 20, in my 2nd year of college, and i had a lot of free time on my hands as all my friends had gone to study abroad. I decided to invest a lot of my free time in watching cricket. It started with the 1996 world cup, which was spectacular for the wonderful aggressive cricket played by Sri Lanka, and then in 1998 i started playing the game myself. I had left the stage behind where i could get coaching and play any serious league so i settled for playing with my cousins and my new friends in Bangladesh. 

Pretty soon we had a healthy cricketing life. Every weekend we were at the field batting and bowling. It didn't matter that i couldn't bat or bowl, what mattered was that i gave it my all. And slowly and surely, i started learning the art of the game. I was never one of those dashing batsmen. I think there are only 3 innings (test and 1-day combined) when i successfully flashed my blade. Otherwise i was the slow and steady type. Very little talent but lots of heart. And so i always loved following the players in international cricket who were also great strugglers. And Jimmy Adams, left-handed batsman and former Captain of the West Indies, struggled with the best of them. 

The recent Test series between England And West Indies has degenerated into a run fest on flat and insipid wickets. A far cry from the bouncy and hard pitches of the West Indies of old. But the West Indies team boasts the great Shivnarine Chanderpaul and the newcomer Brian Nash, whose playing styles suited the flat pitches perfectly. Brian Nash has the distinction of being a struggler and he's the only white player in the WI team. Being a minority, he immediately got my attention. And then i saw him struggle and i fell in love with him. Shiv Chanderpaul is not really a struggler. He has all the shots in the book, some which are not, and yet he has this slow and plodding playing style in test matches that makes it look like he is struggling to find runs. All this struggle reminded me of Jimmy Adams and one particular innings Jimmy played against Pakistan when he was captain. 

Jimmy was never a great talent. He was a hard worker. He scored a lot of runs when he originally debuted but soon lost his form and was dropped. But then WI lost all its talent and that created an opportunity for Adams to come back. Come back he did, and after Lara gave up his captaincy he took over. We knew he was not the savior of WI cricket. He knew it too. But i always felt he had a lot of heart and i thought at that moment in time he was the best man for the job. So i wholeheartedly supported his captaincy, through all the defeats and the few victories he managed. And the one moment i will always remember was his celebration after he scored a hard-fought 50 against Pakistan in a test in WI. 

I don't remember details of that match. All i remember is that Wavel Hinds batted magnificently and WI won the series 1-0. All the pitches were flat because they were scared of akram and akhter. Plus Pakistan had really good spinners as well. And WI had no one. So flat track it was. But even so, Akram and Akhter bowled with fire and Adams struggled. Really struggled. And managed to score a 50 in one of the matches. He took off his helmet and ran around the pitch as if he had scored a triple century. He had a huge grin on his face and he was the happiest man alive at that moment. That moment was was burned into my memory and also into the memory of my friends who watched it. And today i discovered it was a moment that others noted as well. For today i brought up the Adams 50 run celebration and this junior friend of mine immediately said "the one against Pakistan" and then we both burst out laughing. 

Well i hope you remember that particular moment, you who are reading this. It was a moment that captured the innocent happiness of a man who fought and struggled hard all his life to do what he loves doing. and in that moment of triumph, it didn't matter that it was a minor milestone. All that mattered was that he had reached a milestone and he was happy for himself and his team that his effort had paid off. 

At the end of the day, that's all that matters. So here's to you Jimmy Adams! We remember you fondly!

Respect

25th February 2009 -- as brutal and as important a date as any other in our short and bloody history. BDR men going rogue, Army on the warpath, the civilian government caught flatfooted in the worst form of crisis. A lot has been said about all this, a lot has been written. But a lot is still left to be said. The investigation is going on, the head culprits still at large. The role of NSI and DGFI and other intelligence bodies in the nation still murky. Everything is murky. Nothing is clear. Everything is a shade of gray. 

Or is it?

One thing does stand out from that awful awful day. One thing and one thing only. The discipline and strength of character of the Army. The nation has already done the official mourning. But i agree with Film Director Faruqui who has said that the entire nation owes an apology to the army for thinking ill of them on the 25th. The media influenced the entire country to believe that the army men treated the BDR men badly, so badly that they couldn't take it anymore. And as usual, we immediately felt for the underdogs. It wasn't until 2 days later when all the dead bodies started floating up when we all realized the extent of the treachery, the butchery and the horror perpetrated by the BDR. 

And so we have the Hasina tapes on the Internet. Where the army shouts at our PM and accuses her. I thought they were surprisingly well controlled. And i thought Hasina handled herself rather well. Because the army had every reason to feel aggrieved. While the government tried to reach a solution that would entail minimum bloodshed, the BDR men went on a killing spree. Their victims - the army officers stationed inside the camp. And yet, and yet the army maintained its discipline. They respected the will of the elected government. They gave meaning to honor and sacrifice. 

In the end, their honor and sacrifice will not bring back the dead. Will not console the families of the dead. will not lessen their feeling of guilt. Guilt at standing by and doing nothing while their brothers were being slaughtered. But that was the need of the hour. That was the choice, the dreaded decision, the devil's alternative. For the nation to survive, the army sacrificed their own. 

And in the process earned a nation's undying respect. 

(picture copyright 300)

Women's Day Celebrations by Bangladesh Islamic Party

March 8, BDNEWS420: The Bangladesh Islamic Party celebrated International Women's Day today, March 8, as the number of women on the streets reduced due to the recent mutiny that killed many Army personnel and some civilians.

'This is an achievement that we are proud of. Keeping the women off the streets is the first crucial step in bringing law and order to this nation of ours,' said spokesperson Mirza Alim.

When reminded that it was not their credit, and it was in fact an indication of the lack of law and order in the country, Alim said, 'Do not talk about what you do not know. Women are the cause of all problems in this world. If we did not have women police guarding the intersection of Satmasjid Road and Dhanmondi Road 27, we would not have had this crisis upon us. Please do not make comments that can destabilize our country for which we have fought for for the last few years.'

We at WTF, happy that Mr. Alim thought that we were strong enough to destabilize the country, left him alone as he pretended to count the tasbih. We, of course, don't know what exactly he was counting.

( Mirza Alim, on the account that photographs are not halal, refused to let our cameraman in. He even threatened to break his camera if he tried to take a picture. We wanted to do a sketch, but then decided against it. He's not much to look at, so why bother?)

A Red Box with a Blue Ribbon

That is what I got on Valentine's Day this year. The box was painted red. With a permanent marker (the pungent smell of a marker is probably as permanent as the ink). And the blue ribbon was a strip of cloth torn out of something else. I didn't want to dwell on what it could be. Letting my imagination run wild is often a bad idea. Especially since I live on my own. With a window that overlooks midnight blue from 6pm onwards. Not that I mind the color, I think it's lovely. In fact I look great in the almost midnight blue sweater that a friend gave to me last week. I love her to bits. And her little baby is a little pillow with the most adorable chubby cheeks. (Note: I did not say the most adorable chubby cheeks EVER, like some people invariably does).

Getting back to the box, it didn't have a name tag, nor was I completely sure it was intended for me. But it was left in front of my door. What else could I do but take it, right? I thought so too. And when I opened the box, I realized two things: 1) that I really shouldn't have opened it, and 2) it was intended for me.







And that is how the short story In my shoes jumps into the narration of a small but significant aspect of a girl's predicament about life and men. The things she finds in that box takes her back to different parts of her personal history that had once appeared to be unrelated and unimportant. The objects in the box, when placed together, reveal how they are all tied together.

(In my shoes is still in its editing stages, but the author allowed us a sneak preview!)