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Showing posts from June, 2013

Don't worry! Everything is normal

I received a phone call a few days back. The caller described how he has taken a new house on rent in the city he has shifted to. How the preparations were in full swing in the house for arrival of his wife and their only child. How he look forward to the reunion! All normal conversation between two erstwhile neighbors. Only this time it was raising my heart-beat. It was worrying me to no end that the "wife" in question would have to go and stay with this man. The man who was bragging about reunion of family, is a violent man. He called to boast that all my efforts to ensure peace for his wife fell flat. This man who verbally and physically abuses his wife and quite unabashed about it, scares the hell out of me too. Yes. I get scared. The one who is generally referred to as "the tigress" of the family and the neighborhood gets actually scared in the heart of heart. I become scared because I know how low these men can stoop and I also know that I am no match in that

The forever unfulfilled rights and beginning of the "responsibility" tamasha!

Have you heard this buzz of citizens' responsibility recently in the development sector? Take a careful look at who are ones who talk about them. Who are these people? Which strata of the society they come from? And you may be left wondering why these well-paid, well-fed ( and in my true foot in mouth style, not necessarily well bred, in terms of social manners) people who demolish rights at every opportune/inopportune moment love to talk about responsibility! I grew up in Bengal in the 1980s. Group Theater movement was still very strong at that time. It was actually stronger in suburban areas and industrial townships than in the sahar Kolkata (Calcutta that time). A group named Smarak from Durgapur steel township  was fortunate enough to be mentored by an extremely talented play-write and director named Gopal Das. One of his critically acclaimed play was named, Rakkhos (The demon). In this play, troopers of a circus sang a song "jader roj roj table e sajano thake asto m