The Places in my Head...

Everyone has them...

They maybe the tinniest cobwebbed corner of the college library looked upon by grave faced ancient books or an entire riverside on a sparkling clear bright eyed december morning.

They are The Places in your head...

Places that made you who you are today in some undefinable manner...
Places that instantly takes you back in time to simpler happier days...

They are your resort of peace...they are your happy memories...they are the shared smile when you chance upon a vanished friend...

Here goes some of mine :)

1] THE CHANDANNAGORE STRAND

This just have to be the most beautiful place on the bank of the Hooghly...immortalised in the school anthem of my alma mater...

"Here in Western Bengal set, snug on the Hooghly side
Stands with mother's arms around us
The school that is our joy and pride
Hurray!!!"

It's the place where Enid Blyton entralled yet another young mind, the place where another bunch of giggly school girls celebrated their win in the Annual Sports Meet with Bhelpuri and Puchka, the place where adolescent love wrote an utterly miserable first love letter hehe...ie before the dawn of sms age...




2] MY SCHOOL



It would be blasphemous to try and describe SJC...and what it meant to me and to every SJCians down the ages :)
So I won't even try!

3] THE SACRED HEART CHURCH, CHANDANNAGORE AND THE SCHOOL CHAPEL

Hmmmm...this one's tricky

'cause have never been much of a believer...

I swing from doubting on the best of days to agnostic on the worst

But well none of these two has got anything to do with religion...

And have everything to do with memories :)

I just love the sound of them church bells...they are the sound of my very own Christmas Past, the feel of the warm blue school cardigan and the wet morning frost on my hair...they are the Christmas of my childhood...they are the kaleidoscopic pattern thrown by stained glass windows on white walls on a peaceful first friday afternoon prayer meet

4] THE SCHOOL BASKETBALL COURT

Haha they hark back to my athletic days....the days I could kick your ass for the Interhouse Basketball Championship Meet ;)

The days I bunked my trignometry classes like fun to play ball!!!

5] THE SCHOOL LIBRARY

It's the place where I fell in love for the first time...

I meant with them books!!!

Hehe...why? what did you think?!!!!

6] COLLEGE STREET

College Street!!!

It's one of those places that define an entire breed...the breed known as the "intellectual bengali"

You have to be experience it to know it :)

From the quaint little second hand book stores to the Calcutta University, the Indian Coffee House to the College Square, The prestigious Presidency College to the oldest Medical College in Asia, this single street has history engraved on every single pebble...it has seen it all happen, from the whispered secret plans of some of the country's foremost freedom fighters to the whispered endearments of college sweethearts ;)

It's living, talking, breathing academia baby! :D

It's my first stethoscope, its my second hand Harry Potter books, its my 2am chai break from night emergency duty, its my silly laughter in the friendliest company, its the most fun I ever had on any single street!!! :)

7] CALCUTTA MEDICAL COLLEGE AND HOSPITAL

How do I define College life?!!!

Correction

Question is need I?!!! ;)

8] THE ANATOMY HALL AND MUSEUM

It's the sight of my first cadaver

It's the realisation "Oh Shit! Am actually gonna be a doctor!!!"

It's the first ragging session :D

It's my first ummmm...well you know ;)

And if you don't then well AM NOT TELLING haha :P

9] THE EDEN HOSPITAL

It's my Gynae and Obs rotation

It's the end of internship year

It's the end of an era :'(

:)

10] PARK STREET

It's my plus two years,

It's the start of my "Calcutta Years"

It's Music World after playing truant at Loreto House :D

It's One Step Up and my first glass of red wine ;)

It's my first job...as in an actual job!!!

Life's sequestered in all these places

Memories abound...

They tell me where I come from

Long after I am gone :)

These places in my head makes me who I am today!!!

Past, Present and Future TENSE!!!

I was making iced tea in the microwave for Sr. Gregory who had come to visit me on her first decade inspection of passed out students to see how I was faring in life after clearing school. She was asking me to spell TREMENDOUS and to use it in a sentence such that it meant the same whether you read the sentence forwards or backwards and to do the Sarvangasana while I was at it. I kept trying to put my legs up in the air while I tried to rationalise why there were so many men and just not a man in TREMENDOUS but I kept fumbling at both cause my newly acquired fringes kept falling over my eyes and the iced tea kept evaporating and needed condensing so that the condensate could be served to my honourable guest with just the right sized pinch of garlic salt. She was getting increasingly irritated at my clumsy flumbling manner and kept scowling while she quizzed me on how to eat soup and how to differentiate between the soup spoon and the dessert spoon . I was crying by this time cause for the life of me I couldn't remember whether the tines of the fork faced downwards or upwards while a "well brought up young lady" closed her meal at a formal dinner and the ghost of a dead lizard was laughing at me while it flew across the room in perfect Brownian motion much to the delight of my basketball coach from senior school who was running after it busily taking notes and Sr. Gregory was yelling at me as to how I was going to flunk Orthopedics cause I was a silly dolt who didnt know how many men there were in TREMENDOUS.

I jerked up bolt upright sending my alarm clock flying across the room. It was 3.47am, the lights were on and the tv playing on mute and I was running a temperature. There are times in life when you know you are ****ed and only a miracle can save you and well, when Sr. Gregory is who you are dreaming of I think its that time!!! :'(

Indifference...

Lately it's been one of those times when I just can't be bothered...you can tell me I am dead and all I'll tell you is "Ah well". Apathy is a funny feeling... its like being in a womb, you are all there and yet you are not...

Indifference is the essence of inhumanity they say but then who are they to be the authority on anything?!!!

Atleast this way I can be dead and not give a damn...that's the whole point of being dead isn't it?!!!

But then you can't stay in a womb forever, you have to be born...

And you cant be dead if you still know the difference it makes from being alive...

Like I said its a funny feeling :)

MENDING WALL...

All of us at some point of time or the other have sat at a wooden desk in a well lit airy classroom on a balmy summer afternoon listening to the english teacher drone out the lines :::

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it"

from one of Robert Frost's memorable poems "Mending Wall"

Some of us would have taken down notes

Some of us would have stared hard

Some of us would have yawned

as the teacher went on to say "And the carry home message is : GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBOURS"

I was one of those students that just couldn't resist taking down anything and everything the teacher said.

My texts would be all covered up by my scribbled cramped writings until it became difficult to decipher even the printed lines.

I was also the kind who would jump up at the prospect of writing a critical analysis of ::: "Good fences make good neighbours : The Truth?"

So it happened such that I came back home, sat at my desk in the confines of my room, chewed my pencil some , tried to decipher all the notes I had taken down and finally penned down a rather fetching analysis that brought me an "A" to no one's surprise.

Yawn

YaWn

YAWN

So what on earth is there to blog about all that past stuff right now you might say?

What indeed?!!

Well, I don't remember what I had written in that analysis now but what I do remember is that it wasn't anything I really really understood or agreed with.

It was simply Frost as interpretted by my english teacher of 8th or 9th grade, [ I have forgotten which grade we had the poem in ] just copied out verbatim in some flowery lines that I was and still am very very good at cooking up

However, almost a decade has now swept past since that particular summer afternoon and am a bit " more wiser" now or so they will have me believe simply 'cause my pimples have long since dissappeared and now it hurts to do cartwheels but I think I understand Frost a bit more now than when I had so audaciously critically analysed him in the first place.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THY SELF
BUT DO NOT LOWER THY FENCE!!! :-)

Fences are there for a reason

Although you maybe an apple orchard and your neighbour all pine

And sure, apples may not "eat" pine cones

But sure they do not make much of a mixed fruit salad either

Now do they????

So to quote Frost again :::

"And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us as we go

To each the boulders that have fallen to each"

I understand him now

Atleast till these lines

But as I read on I come to a few more that says :::

" Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out

And to whom I was likely to give offence

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

That wants it down. "

And I pause

My brows are wrinkled again

I wish I had my 8th/9th grade notes to look up what my english teacher had said

'cause I still don't understand these lines

But Hey!

There's hope for me yet

'cause someday I won't be able to cartwheel ever again :-)