Run ! Boy Run !!

Yesterday morning, in my hotel room in Kolkata, as I switched the TV on, the coverage of Mumbai Marathon was being telecasted. Around 25 thousands of participants were there and some of them were to participate in 42 kms. of full marathon. Others were to participate in other partial categories of the marathon. The disabled persons, children as well as senior citizens everyone were participating. The professional runners were rhythmic in their running steps, sweating and running like machines. Some of the slow runners were encouraged by the clapping of the onlookers. As I see people clapping and runners getting faster due to encouragement, my eyes started fainting on the TV screen and a vast green playgrounds of a school started appearing before my eyes and a slim boy running uncounted times around it.A serious Joke:
14 years ago there lived a boy in the Navodaya school hostel. The mornings were as usual as every day. As soon the boys were ready wearing the P.E.T. dress and they have tied their shoe strings firmly, a long whistle was heard coming from the foggy playgrounds. Everyone ran towards the whistle for the morning Physical Education Trainings (P.E.T.) and whoever was left in rooms used to reach at the grounds by the third whistle. In those cold months, the temperature was enough low to put the hands inside the pant pocket. But unwillingly no one could do that because of the fear of being poked fun by the P.E.T. sir, Mr. Amarendra Singh. It was mandatory to run a full round of the playground before physical exercises. Some girls never completed the full round and of course there were some boys too fall in the same category. But most of the students used to complete the round. This boy also used to run one round and occasionally two rounds. That day as soon the physical exercises finished there was an announcement by the P.E.T. sir. It was about the inter school sports meet among the Navodaya Vidylayas of the nearby districts which is popularly known as cluster meet. So the football team and volleyball team member were enthusiastic about the event. This boy could not get selected for any of the school games team. Despite having a strong will power and deprived of the participation in any event this slim boy was searching for the possibilities near to him. So sir was today going to try the athletics team member. There were events of 100m to 800 meters in running category.

After short races trials were completed formally, there came the event of 800 meter trials. The willing participants stood in the starting line. A running of 800 meters were the two rounds of the 400 track made around the playground. Jokingly this boy stood 15 meters ahead of the other participants J . Naturally everyone resisted his position of starting. But the considerate P.E.T. sir asked the boy if he really want to race and he got a positive reply. But sir did not resist his position of starting and he convinced the other runners that let him allow running from his position and he will not be counted in the result of the race. So everybody was ready to run.

On your marks! Get Set! Go!!
The race started, and the boy also ran. He has got a false feeling of being ahead of others and he was enjoying this feeling while running. In long race 15 meters gap is a big difference. He was trying hard to maintain the distance and he maintained it in the first lap. As the first lap was going to finish and second was going to start, everyone reached the point where the race have started and where all the students were standing clapping the hands , few friends of the boy and P.E.T. sir encouraged the boy to keep it up. But running the 400 meters at such a high speed was his first experience, he has lost most of his energy but still a second lap was there. The clapping and encouragement revitalized the remaining energy. He continued the second lap and as he was in the midway of the second lap the leg muscles were aching badly, mouth was wide open gasping air, a peculiar pain in the chest and stomach started and throat became completely dry. And the lead he got from the last gap was going to disappear. In the last remaining 25 meters of the race Anil Hembrum, the tribal big guy was going to overtake him. Anil’s big strong leaps succeeded to overtake him. Seeing Anil running he tried to run parallel to him. He did not thought of the other star runners of the school behind him. His legs were out of his control while running now. He can see jumping and encouraging guys at the finishing line. He was trying more than his capacity but by the time another guy, Rabbani again crossed him before reaching the finish line.
He stood third but useless! His labour went in vain! It was the precondition before that race that his position will not be counted. He did not claim any thing but he was almost collapsed with tired, aching legs and a pain in stomach. But the day envisaged the rise of an athlete. He had tasted something and this sweet taste of the false success eased out the pain in his body.

Real Race:
Once an experimenter gets the taste of the narcotics first time as trial basis, next time he will not try to experimental basis, he will try to get the same taste seriously at any cost. False winning may be the similar kind of pleasure for him. Next day at the test trials he stood in the same line along with the other participants and P.E.T. sir was surprised to see his courage and appreciated the effort.
Stand on marks! Get Set! Go!!
So this time it was a difficult startup. So today’s result was that he was second from the last. This was his real position in school 800 meters team! But dissatisfied he wanted to get the same position as he got the previous day.
Unlike today, his physique was too slim to compete in such races. He had a burning desire to win. And from that day evening the running tracks were his companion .He used to take 6 to 10 rounds of the ground in evening and 4 or more in morning. His aching calf muscles were not paining any more now but despite being thin, the calf and thighs were getting stronger after daily practice. His diet has increased and in classrooms too some planning were done by his head about the track. He still used to take part in the daily trials and one day he stood third again but now he was real third. So his belief in himself was getting stronger.

The school team:
Being a participant of the cluster meet meant availing facilities like relaxation in attending classes, double protein diet in mess and extraordinary participant feelings among the other friends and many management works.
So on the final selection day as the race started and there were more participants than the other normal days of trials. Some of them really did good practice along with him. So as the final selection race started, he again made his favorite leading gap and maintained it until last 100 meters. Although the runner’s feet don’t remain in his/her own control in the times of running the last moments. The strong will power, confidence and tricks of bending body forward works out. For him too it worked out and he came second and Rabbani third by a difference of one second. So he was feeling much happy now with heavy breathing and still jogging. The P.E.T. sir was the happiest person like the other friends of the J.P.House to which he belonged. He was the part of the school athletics team now, which he dreamt 15 days ago.

Practice! Sleep and Diet!

Text books were given rest until the clusters meet finish.

Clusters meet Day:
His school was the hosts of the clusters meet this time, so he already had various tasks other than practicing like to arranging various things for the participating guest schools. On the day of his event in morning he participated less in the management works and took a normal breakfast. But he could not sleep well in the night, he saw himself running and flying on the ground in dream. He became little annoyed with this dream. An unknown fear had entered his mind.

The event of 800 meters started around 10’o clock. Selection of tracks are done after lottery and he was given the last track which one have to run for the first 400 meters only then only everyone can come to the first common lap. No problem! He was calm and he swallowed water and started off to his track. The whole school is there and the event’s guest is Sengar Sir, his favorite teacher.
The participants from other schools were bigger and stronger than him and some of them looking fierce too, some had already started jogging and some were doing exercise and some were wearing nice spiky shoes and he did not had such shoes. Any way he had to run today.

On your marks! Get Set! GO!! And Firing was done concurrently.
He has started with a better speed today. The last lap has some psychological disadvantages of going wider laps. But he was covering the track as soon as he can complete. But as soon the second lap started a boy from some other school was coming first with amazing speed. But Anil, the best runner of his school took over that other guest runner. On seeing Anil overtaking that guest runner he also overtook him. To succeed is hard and maintaining success is harder. It was more difficult to maintain the speed above the guest runner. The friends were shouting loudly which can be heard. The juniors’ class students were shouting “Bhaiya – Bhaiya” and surely they might be praying to God. His heavy breaths seemed to collapse the lungs and jaws stuck wide open and the last leap fall on the finishing line but alas the guest boy have already put his leap just before him. And result was Anil first, the guest boy second and he third. So host school won two medals in the same event. The winners were carried on shoulders by the friends and he was feeling stronger than all the big boys participated there. Incidentally the place where the medal giving ceremony was organized was the same place where he jokingly started the race ahead 15 meters of others! Accolades started pouring in. Sengar sir was happy like P.E.T. sir .He was so surprised and complemented “Hey you can run I am very much happy today”. He was putting the bronze medal of sports meet 800 meter event around the neck of his favorite scientific model making boy. Now the boy was feeling more confident among his friends.
And in the next house elections he was selected as he vice captain of the house. And participation in the state level event was the next milestone he reached in the same year.

He is still running today but on a different track. Run! Boy! Run!!

The real life firewalls

Everywhere apart from the computer life, I can see a firewall in every second of the life. The firewall becomes inevitable to lead the life. But what makes me concerned that where does it exist and why does it exist.
The situation becomes difficult when two or more firewalls are to be constructed on the same place.
Approximately one year ago during a chat in yahoo the other person was probable some girl from Philippines. During the chat about painting and hobbies once I called her dear, a sudden reply came about this word that why I called her dear since she is not my girlfriend or relative. I was shocked. I have a general tendency to call anyone dear without thinking of the sex or age of the person.
So a firewall was being constructed there. I gave my clarification to her that you are like my other friends or relatives or any one else on the earth to whom I love and being a girlfriend is a far away thing. She accepted my feelings and still she is on my contact list. Even being firm on my principle I fear to call anyone dear, I have formed a firewall around me during chats.
Yes, why the love word is used here should not be a question.
Although it does not take more than 10 minutes to be accommodated with a new place or person may be it’s due to my inherited nature. I can be like a family member within 24 hour in any family I enter as a guest or friend.
But when I see reservation regarding the distance being formed, I can feel a firewall. But many a times these firewall I have succeeded to put water and vanish. But I think why I fail to see the firewall around people? And how many firewalls I have to form more as the life goes on?

Mridu and I

Today in the morning, when someone opened the main gate and my sister Pinki went there exclaiming “Babu”. My face gleamed with joy. So a Dennis the menace arrived here. And this Dennis is my Mridu, my nephew (Didi’s only son). They came by the morning train which today reached in time. Now he is two and half years old and enough honest to recall me. This time he came here after 3 months. And he can speak some kind of Bhongali language, which seems to be a mixture of Bhojpuri and Bengali. His parents reside at Ara (Bihar). He has learnt more Bhojpuri from the neighbour’s kids than Bengali. We were just laughing at his activities and language. He found out all of his toys at our home which he used to play with, during his stay here for 10 months. He was in our care when didi was at BHU. Now today his toy tube-well (hand-pump) has non-ending supply of water to serve everyone in the home. So everyone took more than 10 glasses of water (air) from his tube-well. For me I could not count the number of glasses. Being a cold season I was inside the quilt to play hide and seek with him.
So if you tell I am childish some time, I honestly accept it. And his childish plays and pious attitude reminds me something. I think if Mridu will grow, will he remain same kid for me or matured one to talk in a reserved manner? Will he play with me in the same way? This kind of thinking strengthens my attitude towards my elders for whom I used to be the same kid. So if I expect Mridu to be same innocent for me after 20 years, don’t my elders expect same for me? So I am still childish with my grandma, who is luckily at our home these days. I am mamma’s boy, it’s only because I am still a Mridu for them. The elders in front of whom, I learnt to creep and due to their upbringing only I am here with their blessings. I accept the missing innocence in myself but I am still a Mridu.

(Un)Developed Browser Technologies

Are you using a good browser, if yes what is it’s name?
I am asking this because:
The technology is evolving leaps and bounds. The machine and software improves overnight. One technology is complementing as well as supplementing the others.
The software versions are improving. Improvements are in the sense of more facilities and less bugs.
For example Internet explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator (NN) and few others popular web browsers are still trying to upgrade their versions to make them more user friendly. No doubt NN is more powerful browser and on the other hand IE is the more popular and Mozilla is sidelined despite goodness. Today some developer is using a technology the overnight it’s adopted by the others. If one supports frame other tries to trap it. The need of JavaScript support was a reason of frequent updating of the respective browsers. Again CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) appeared to make the presentation of the material stylish. But it is still bad enough for Microsoft‘s soft guys (of course girls too) to parse the CSS code successfully for their IE’s latest version. One can easily tell that the appearance of the same web page changes as the browser changes. If we start thinking from the view of the developers of these browsers, there is various needs of so many compatibilities like JavaScript, CSS, JVM, graphics, screen types, Operating System and Resolutions of different monitors, etc. Each one changing frequently and more additions of add-ins come and the browser has to be compatible with each thing successfully. And once it is developed it must be available in freely J downloadable form. The situation becomes hard for so called soft personals developing it. Foxfire (a Mozilla based browser) supporters wait till the version number increases from 1.0 to some bigger floating point number. After all crossing hurdles at first attempt is not expected by any browser (even the cleverest Fox). Beware of a Thunderbird (e-mail application) which is flying above it. It may attack your “Outlook”ing e-mail application birds to vanish. But there is no harm to experiment it in parallel.
Last days I felt the need of the general consciousness about the browsers when Unicode characters failed to display properly and CSS was working weirdly in the IE and same was correct in NN.
So to make a general consensus about the browsers what we (bloggers) are using please let me know what type of browser you are using. Please invest one more minute ( Already your few minutes got wasted reading this blog) of your precious time for telling me This survey is being done on the “global readers” of mine and all of them can be counted on fingers :-). Okay we may shift to other browser from one which we are using but why can’t we improve our visibility after using better browser based on the comparison. Your piece of information will be useful for all of us in future too.

When good Blogs fails to express!

Good thinkers are having great quantity of grey matters in their brain. They have a very good logic too in their brain. They are prompt to reply and tell a lot of things to prove their point. And there are bloggers who are good thinkers. But everything turns useless when his fellow readers fail to understand his writings. This is not because his blogs have worthless topics the content is fine but they lack the expression capacities. The reasons can be stated as the “direct link” between the complex circuitry in their brain and the blog they write. Complexity of their brain gets directly reflected in the blogs. The flow of the thoughts exists, but they sometime form the uncertain Tsunami waves going to many directions without any productivity. These waves of thought at last may hit the coast of disclaimer or the blogger will use some adjective for own brain. The lexicon is surely an asset for such blogs but the words used, is again useless when people are not able to interpret their contextual meaning. The matter becomes ambiguous too when it mixes with long sentences.
I had made one painting on Tsunami and one of the comments was for more clarity. My Turing Machine (my blog) accepted that and I tried it in my next painting. Each brain is unique in ideas but until we are able to express them successfully the medium of communication fails.
And many of the blogs I see fall in this category. Unlike earlier, now I may not get trapped in these complex blogs. But fact is like majority of the readers, I like to read the blogs, which are lucid to read and transparent. The blogs which tell many things at the same time are good and the blogs which tell one thing clearly at a time are better. It’s about not to mix up the complexity of the thoughts with the simplicity of the medium of expression. Such that it will not require any more clarification on the same blog after the comments starts appearing on the blogs.

Disclaimers and Blogs

Movies start with disclaimers. Software is installed after accepting disclaimers. Newspapers and such media different have disclaimers on the published material. To me in these contexts the uses of disclaimers are justifiable. But it’s difficult to digest the frequent disclaimers in the blogs. To prove it I wouldn’t put any disclaimer here.
My blogs are my personal diary, magazine, or to be book like any other blogs. It contains the authentic text or drawing from my pen/brush to express myself freely on the free space available to me. The contained obtained from other sources are given proper credit before presenting. The personal expressions should be given ample opportunity to be expressed. These blogs have great potential to give/take the direction in which we think leading towards an unseen perfection. If my blogs hurt you or pleases you let it happen. My thoughts are clear and comes my heart .I need not write disclaimers to make is more clear and appreciable.
Let’s hurt each other. Let’s please each other. Let’s ventilate and share our thoughts with a rare use of disclaimers. This is needed for better communication of course after choosing better words at our discretion and the readers must be open minded to accept the diversity of thoughts.
Any comments ?

Kamalahasan Speaks – and I like that

In a column, Kamalahasan spoke of himself in the Telegraph- ETC, 31st Dec, 2004 issue. I would like to share it with you .

On self: I am first a fan of Kamalahasan. You must appreciate what you are doing. Tell me, when do you become a respectable person in society? When you start respecting yourself .That is when you take care of yourself. That is when you comb your hair, groom yourself and cleanse your body. You do all this because you respect yourself. You may not wear a dress because you may not look good in that. My being a fan of Kamalahasan is also like that.

On criticism: I might even agree with the person if it is sensible criticism. There are some people who criticize because they have to do to. Icon-bashing is the greatest of all sport. I can spot that at once.

On Performance: Very easy. If you kept criticizing yourself, the zenith of it is suicide , You hate yourself so much that you are you are ready to kill it . Yes, I said ‘it’ and not him or me. So criticism is easy. Some people suffer from it because they don’t know when to stop criticising. It is like eating sweets. You must stop when to stop.

On filmmaking: No profession is as versatile as this one. If you ask me how many days I work in a week, I would reply I don’t work. It has been nearly 20 years since I worked. Acting ceases to be work because I enjoy it. But it feels like working when I do bad work, especially when I know it is bad …. I am a fan of cinema. I am so fortunate that it also happens to be my chosen profession. That happens very rarely.

Cool Vs. Cold Buddies

The unconventional trends regarding the dresses, behavior and languages get noticed easily and become objects of criticism by conventionally called cold (not cool) persons. The “cool” persons along with their cronies follow some unconventional trends due to influence of other cultures as experiments or to set themselves apart from the crowd. But sometimes these un-conventions become trend in long run. Dupattaless salwar suits and fitting jeans dresses were not very much popular with our parents or grand parents. Now in the 21st century it does not matter at all when the girls are wearing T-shirts and jeans. It is acceptable now. The accent of talking has also changed. In this cyber-era salutations are summarized by Hi – Hello. The sense of elder – younger is a rare thing. I think we are just the conventional resistors towards the non-conventions, which is taking place in the dress code as well as language. The transformers follow the non – conventions. We have accepted changes in some of the dresses and language compared to the past generations. We are fitting the measurements not measurable by them. So shouldn’t we be prepared to see more transformations in near future in our kids and grand-kids influenced by the powerful media and western culture and which will be beyond our control?