শুধু দুটি ছবি রেখে যাই...

আজ আর বেশী কথা নয়। শুধু দুটি ছবি রেখে যাই।
প্রথমটি আমার হাইস্কুলের; ইছাপুর নর্থল্যান্ড হাই স্কুল (উঃ মাঃ) -- শেষেরটি ক্যালানিবাচক অব্যয় না।

/\ Ichhapur Northland High School (H.S.)

দ্বিতীয়টি আমার প্রাইমারী স্কুলের; রাজেন্দ্র বিদ্যা মন্দির।

/\ Rajendra Vidya Mandir
Debitala Road, Ichhapur

Soothe & Calm

In a silent night I opened the window of my room to get a feel of wintry chill all over my face. When the vast blackness of the outside world gradually fades in a blur, I reminded you. The outlines of the distant figures can be seen in the faint light of the stars. It is a dark night of new moon. The sky is black as nothing. The distant lampposts are also absent in their usual duty. There is a pond just behind my room. When I open my window, I come face to face of my shadow in the pond. Some fishes are playing in the previously still water. There is a calm but far less than the one I get when I be with you…

RAHMAN

by Joydip Datta

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The previous issues have been included in this post because they needed to be modified a bit. This post thus contains the full story till today.

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Sometimes time flow so stupidly you often fail to realize that it is actually flowing. You have engaged yourself in some stuff which now seems stupid and baseless. Thinking of the past days of glory... Rahman was lying idle... yet another day of no-output “Yet another day towards the complete bullshit that is going to come.”

Rahman knows very well that the money he has got from the old lady will end soon. And she is not very keen on spending this money either. It pains him a lot to use the money got from a dying lady. When he helped her in drinking water he had no idea of using this courtesy later in life. He also promised her the due funeral (which he kept) but accepting money in return... was a sin. But when the lady said that, "You seem a good boy to me. See, I have this tiny amount of money. But it has no use for me. You keep it dear... You require it more." And she died.

When Rahman was done with the funeral task, he first thought he won't use the money the lady gave him. Somewhere it was pinching. To use the money got in return of putting water in the mouth of a dying lady was strictly unacceptable. But as time passed and his resources were ended, he thought, "Ok... I will not spend the money... but I can borrow a little amount. Dear, when you are hungry, everything else gets less priority than food itself. And the tradition of borrowing continued. And today, that money too was near its end.

What will Rahman do now?

* * *

Rahman was thinking all these stuff while doing his evening namaz. When the namaz was over, he was again angry with himself. While doing a namaz, full concentration should be on Allah. But he was thinking these material problems! He is surely a bad Muslim. He pinched himself again and again for this. His bad mood got worse.

After a while, again the material problems surrounded him. Oh my God! He can at most manage some food for the next morning only. What will he do after that? What will he eat?

With these thoughts that never come to a conclusion, Rahman slowly felt asleep. Rahman was sleeping. Suddenly he saw a man. Dressed like a common farmer. He saw the man working in a coarse field with an axe. When the man saw him he said, "Rahman, you are a very nice child. Just know one thing. If you know your path and can gather enough conviction to keep on walking the path then the energy will eventually come to you. " saying this, the man hit the rough soil hard with his axe. And within the next split second, the coarse field was gone. Instead, there was the eye soothing greenery of a paddy field.

Rahman wake up. He was full with confusion. Who was this man? Was he his father? Rahman had never seen his father before. He has been told that his father died before his birth in a road accident. He was walking drunk when a truck ran over him. Rahman's idea over his father was not that bright. His father was a regular drinker. And if he didn't die in that accident, he would die out of liver failure. That man he saw last night had a kind of glow emerging from him. No. He can not be his father.

Rahman was thinking under the dizzy for quite a long time. Then he tried to get up. He needed to move on… and get somewhere meaningful. The dream was still ringing in his head. The farmer, the green paddy field, the golden axe was still vivid in his eyes. But enough of this lazy dream, he thought. The time was to do something.

But as he tried to get up, he could not. His whole body ached. His head span and Rahman realized that he had fever. “A bit strong one” he thought. He lied down at the same place where he was sitting for a while. And he fell asleep for once again.

There was the paddy field and the farmer too; smiling proudly with his golden axe in hand. Grinning to him the farmer said, “And I will guide you in your path of quest. But it is up to you to find out the markers I provide. Never be afraid my dear. The path will be troublesome. But believe me, that trouble is worthy of it. Just stay noble by heart, and you will succeed. And one last thing, do not get too much upset in seeming me in this way. True religion does not depend on strange rituals.”

Rahman saw it was raining in the field; a heavy rain that made the farmer not visible. And when the rain stopped, the farmer was gone and in the whole field was golden glee of mature grains.

* * *

He woke up for the second time. He was feeling a lot better. In fact, his whole body was experiencing a comfort he never felt before. His fever was gone. By that time it was almost noon. He stood up to get to the nearby food stall to get some food with the last few paisa of the old woman. After eating, when he went to pay the vendor he saw something unusual. He had 3 rupees left. One two rupees coin and a one rupee coin was his last possession. The boiled egg was of rupees two. But there was something very strange with the one rupee. On tail side it was very normal but on head side instead of the national emblem, there was an arrow.

He came back to the lone rock on which he was sitting earlier. He was still puzzled over the dreams. Was He God? Or was just a nonsense outcome of a troubled brain? Did that meant anything or was just gibberish? Who was the man? Was he his father? Or was an incarnation? What he meant by quest? Rahman was surely not in a quest. Every quest has a particular aim… a particular destination. And the very lack of aim and destination was the tragedy of Rahman’s life.

While thinking these, Rahman was tossing with the coin absentmindedly. But then another strange thing happened. Perhaps it was a day of strange things. With utter astonishment, Rahman discovered a pattern when he tossed the coin. The result was always the same… a head. And more than that, the arrow was pointing the same direction every time the coin was tossed. And the direction was pointing the road beside.

“…I will guide you in your path of quest. But it is up to you to find out the markers I provide…” was it a marker? Rahman thought. Was it pointing the path to pursue the quest? Shall Rahman follow the direction the coin was showing?

Rahman did not have any option.

He did not have any path to follow. He was a perfect vagabond. In fact he was grateful to the coin for showing him at least one way go. At least he will not have to ramble in the streets. At least he is getting a mission in life, an aim and a reason to live.

Yes, he will follow the path the coin was showing.

* * *

When he reached the road, Rahman tossed again. To his relief, the coin pointed along the road. It would surely be worse if he had to follow the coin through bushes. Road are always better for walking.

And Rahman walked for the whole day. He tossed the coin to be sure about the direction in every few minutes and the coin always told him to move forward through the same path. He walked, walked and walked. Glad to be in a cause after so many days of rambling here and there. But as he was walking and the day was moving towards dusk, Rahman felt hungry. And as Rahman felt more and more hungry, the urge for quenching the hunger felt more important for him than pursuing a seemingly foolish quest and following a seemingly bogus coin.

When he stopped at a small tea shop beside the road, it was already evening. The visibility was reduced as the sun sat half an hour ago. The tea shop was shabby. The inside of the shop was shadowy. The shop was selling tea, toast, bread etc. As expected in a lone shop in a deserted place, the shop was empty. Only the middle aged shopkeeper woman and an aged person were sitting inside. There were biscuits in glass jars at the front of the oven. On the oven, tea was steaming in a old bowl. The bowl was black outside. The breads were piled on one side of the oven.

Rahman reached the shop. He could only afford one half breads with the one rupee left. But as he was going to pay the woman with the one rupee, the woman responded, “Son, First stop people do not take money from the sacred walkers.” Rahman could not get the meaning. He was too amazed to ask what she meant. The woman said, “Take this bread son.”

As Rahman was leaving the shop, he heard the woman saying to the aged man “Saw him? He is the chosen one.”

Rahman’s ear drums were buzzing. What were these things? What is meant by sacred walkers? What was the meaning of the chosen one? Totally puzzled Rahman stood in front of the shop and tossed the coin again. This time the coin landed vertically.

(May be continued)

শেষমেশ

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এতমাস পরে
পড়ে থাকল শুধু কিছু চেষ্টা।
মিল হওয়ার
খাপ খাওয়ার।।

আর কিছু নেই হাতে।
আছে শুধু চেষ্টার খতিয়ান।

আর কিছু তুলনা...

আমি কি করেছি আর ও কি করেছে...
আমি এটা করেছি তা সত্বেও ও এটা করেছে!
আমি এত করেছি আর ও কি করেছে!
আমার জন্য ও কি করেছে?

আমি চেষ্টা করেছি
চেষ্টা করেগেছি...

মিল হওয়ার
খাপ খাওয়ার।

আমি ওর জন্য কি করেছি?

Taare Zameen Par

“Art is nothing but the expression of your emotion” said Ram Shankar Nikumbh. And from the very beginning we are told to suppress our emotions and do our work. Don’t do what you like to do. Just do what is more fruitful. From the very childhood, we all are puzzled inside a rat race. A never ending competition… where only the first one wins. A kind of maze… parents, relatives, teacher show us the way in. but they themselves don’t know the way out. We all are told to follow a simple rule: study-exam-study-exam and perhaps no learning. “Everybody wants numero uno in their home. And at the end of the game you should be either a doctor or an engineer or else in management.” The core of the story is simple… you should do whatever it takes to be a money earning machine. You should do something that pays you buck. What you are doing is not important. What is important is how much it pays back.

And this game starts right from the childhood. We are told to suppress all those abilities just because the deciders think that they are not that much fruitful. And as we grow up, this idea is well inside our brain. We become a robot who does only those things which it is supposed to do. Other things are simply wastage of time. And when we ourselves become parents we do whatever it takes to enroll the names of our children in this same never ending rat race in which we, ourselves are running, running and running.

This is not a review kind of thing of TZP. But I would like to share the story in a very short way (rather copy pasted it from Wikipedia):

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class.

When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a boarding school to ‘be disciplined’. Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.

One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of ‘how things are done’ by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiasm, all except Ishaan. Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is very unhappy, and he sets out to discover why. He meets his parents and comes to know about Ishaan's problems of dyslexia and his wonderful world of imagination. He sets out to help Ishaan at any cost. Finally his dream comes true when Ishaan stands out as an Art Scholar and also passes out his annual exams in school. At last Ishaan thanks his teacher Ram for helping him out to create his own world.

We all suffer from more or less the same trouble in the childhood. We can not do as our heart says. Many of us liked drawing, singing or other stuffs. But they have been forced to suppress them to carry on works. And these things don’t stop when we grow up. The difference is when we are young we can fight with teachers or parents to pursue our own liking. But when we grow up, we can not fight anymore because in that case we have to fight with ourselves. We have become a robot who only works and earns and flagellates whenever he doesn’t seem to be working.

Taare Zameen Par is one film that not only entertains you but enlightens you.