He had the courage of speaking out against corruption. The guts of challenging the powerful, corrupted people. So they chased him and killed him. If it was in some Western country I would have been hopeful that he will get his justice in Court. Can I hope the same here in
I will wait for the day when the blood of these martyrs will result in punishing the evil-doers. Or better, their blood shall not be shed at all. The law will do its job and evil doers wont dare to flourish that much..
There was a time when I fed puffed rice to a bunch of squirrels. These tiny creatures were a lot of fun. I truly loved feeding them.
It started out of pity and soon became an enchanting habit. They used to wait for me or my brother to give them food. They ignored the rest of the people of the household. The very moment they saw any one of us two coming out to the verandah they used to inform us of their hunger by scurrying down from the trees. Ignoring them resulted in their invading our rooms.
While feeding them two birds became my bravest guests. A doyel and a water bird, we call them pankouri in Bengali. These are small, black coloured birds with long legs and they eat fishes and water insects or creatures. This bird’s courage was beyond words. I used two rooms. The room attached to verandah was my bedroom and the inner room was my kitchen. If his (or her) food was not served on time he used to invade my inner room, after crossing the outer room. It was amusing, touching and a little scary. Human beings should never be trusted that much.
The second one was a piece of courage too. I love gardening, I am not even a mediocre gardener but I love to work in garden. So I used to spend hours in garden, tilling the soil or cleaning of weeds, he used to be my almost constant companion, sitting squarely a few inches apart from me, waiting eagerly for any insect to jump out of the weeds or ground.
Wherever I go, whatever I do I will never forget these two birds.
I am almost nonchalant about summer. As long as the power cuts are not driving me crazy. I don’t get much exasperated by heat. If I can stay away from roads of Kolkata and its buses I can happily suffer summer.
To me summer means my childhood days, the strict instructions from adults to not venture out in sun, to avoid sunstroke. We just waited for mom to fall asleep, and then were out in the garden. Sometimes stuffing ourselves with pickles, tamarinds or fruits from trees and sometimes running barefoot on the burning pavement to catch the kulfiwala.. the ice-cream man.
Summer noon in UP meant absolute silence, it was so hot that even birds did not made sound, sometimes a crow cawed breaking the silence, that’s all. The only sound we could hear in those three or four hours was the bells of the kulfiwala, braving the summer sun for livelihood.
The summer of west
I was born in UP and lived outside
I shifted to the greenest district of West Bengal. Burdwan district is the greenest district of west
My home had a garden in frontage, quite a big one, with trees and shrubs of all size and shape. Before joining a job going out in rain is an optional matter, so I relished monsoon or rain fall for quite a long span of time. It was a real joy to watch rain pouring down on the trees and bushes, cleaning them up and leaving them sparkling.
When the rain was over the drops of water still sparkled on the leaves and bushes, just like small drops of pearl.
Rain is a really enjoyable thing if it lasts for a reasonable time-span and you don’t have to go out in it. Or the clogged water of street drains doesn’t enter your house. The greatest agony of a huge proportion of Kolkata residents.
Ever since my childhood I have had pets at my home. Of all types and species I guess, except reptiles and illegal ones. Name them, and we had them cow, birds, cats, monkey, cats, dogs, fishes, rabbits.
If you have a spacious house and someone to care for them pets can be great thing. But one should never have pets unless one really cares about them and is capable of taking care of them.
My cherished ones were a spitz Misha, a cat Cato, budgerigars and rabbits. Though I have voluntarily taken care of the pets of other family members but these four were my pet ones.
Misha was a very important part of my life. She needs special description so I will just leave her with saying that my family members used to call her my daughter.
Cato, I rescued him from drain, he became a darling part of my life. Then just like tomcats he left us. He later came back once or twice but was scared of us then and did not stay. It was a great fun to have him around.
The budgerigars were very cute but I was happy when they broke free.
The rabbits were the cutest pets I guess. We bought a pair and soon our home had quite an ample number of their offspring. They dug their own holes in the garden and lived there. But we had to keep an eye on them, the moment we realized that the mother was pregnant we had to trick her to the cage so she could have her babies there safely. The first time she had her babies in the hole was horrible. It was lucky that we saw them in the drain, red ants have attacked those tiny things before their eyes were opened, we had to pull those ants out and place them in the cage with their mother. After that we kept a watch that she does not bring forth her babies in the hole. It was a great joy to see those tiny bundles of fur.
I really think that every spacious household which can spare some time should have some pet. They make our lives complete.
I really don’t like caged birds. I have once bought a cage full of budgerigars and after that I decided I will never keep a bird in cage.
Budgerigars are fabulous looking birds, they look like miniature parrots with different colour, completely different from parrots, their main colours are white, sky blue, turmeric yellow, lemon yellow and green. They have to be kept in cages which will give them a little place to fly, if you hang some appropriate earthen pots inside their cages they breed in captivity.
I have kept their cage in a verandah attached to our kitchen, which descended on the courtyard. Flocks of parrots always came to my home, always trying to build their nests in the mammoth sized drain pipes which released the rain water from roof.
It really was tormenting to see the budgerigars clinging to the net and crying in response to their cries. I was really happy when they flew away one by one (of course without my knowledge) after breaking the net of their cage by their sharp beaks. I never bought birds again.
