Circle Of Friends

I was born in 1983….wooohhh..i feel like a dinosaur now…when we grew up we were very familiar with an author called Maeve Binchy who wrote beautiful novels( but not mushy..i really hate love stories..the mills & boons ones) set in Dublin, Ireland. She still writes and I hope the young adults read them. One of her most famous works is Circle of Friends..which even got made into a successful film…don’t remember the starcast..excuse an old woman who does not remember and too lazy to google it.

I am not here to write a critique of that piece of literature.This is an ode to my circle of friends. The ecstasy, agony, jealousy, celebration which bind the circle or break it.

Friends are like diamonds…they are forever, they become addictive, and once they fall apart even the best craftsman can’t put them back without deforming the original beauty even if it’s minuscule. In today’s time friendship has become easy. It’s just a friend request away. Old acquaintances become new friends and the old friends suffer the new acquaintances. Yes I said suffer because these old friends might not be comfortable with the public display of friendship because to many true friendship is very very personal and they drift apart. In the virtual world finding a good friend is very rare because when the window to friendship is limited to a electronic connection only, the karmic connection might not happen. But yes, sometimes out of nowhere a true connection does happen more with one’s own spiritual twin on the other side of the virtual window leading to a beautiful introspection and discovery. These are not to be lost but treasured.

We are told that it is the childhood friends who the best friends because they are formed completely on a non-selfish platform. True. But it’s not always one’s fault that the childhood friend you should have met in your childhood comes to find you only when you are 22. Then share the separate childhood and grow, evolve with each other .Grow old together instead of just growing up. Very few people in the world would shelter you against the evil without declaring so, very few will cry with you when you cry and very few will support you when you need a shoulder and often it is not your partner but your matured friend. Today friends who start out together in the process of growing up due to competition and comparison lose their innocence of friendship. The so called best-pal of school is made to look upon the person to beat in studies and even in extra-curriculum activities. With age, adolescence, changing environment friends change, their need for a specific friendship change. Friendship is suddenly formed on the basis of who is more useful to us. But when you have a friction of a second to look back, this was not how it was supposed to be right? This was one relationship which was supposed to be simple and without compromises on both sides. You find yourself with loads of great acquaintance but no real friends. Reason ?Real friendship never ceases to be so inspite of ups and downs, highs and lows,
So when you meet a person who is stable, grown up and settled while you are the same is not a threat but a boon. Lucky are the ones who find each other in the second phase of youth because together they ward off each other’s evils, bring in luck for each other, spread love, laughter , cheer and share that roadside tea when they can’t afford that big cappuccino at a fashionable coffee shop at month end. Years later these are the friends who in crowded room of unknown people can spread familiarity cause they know each other so well that all fears of unknown subside when they are together.

Circle of friends need not be a big circle . It can be a straight line between just two people with many tally marks and broad grins. When I read the books eons ago it was just a work of fiction. It was only when I found mine that I believed in it.
You become a better person when you meet this one person who makes you feel safe, secured and never judges you and always tells you life is beautiful.

When you meet do not matter in friendship, what matters is that you have met. And don’t ever let go when you have founded you. It is the biggest solitaire you can possibly show off.

The missing childhood

We grown ups are really odd. Really really odd. What children can do with absolute simplicity and ease we complicate with false pride and philosophies. At 27 , read The Little Prince all over again after 5 years and felt very sad. As sad as you feel when you have to leave school and start taking baby steps into the big bad world.

St. Exupery, hats off to you. You did for mankind no other author can do. Wrote a book for children which astonishes them, make a grown up feel more responsible. It’s a book which invokes different emotions at different stages of life. Why am I sad then? I should feel euphoric at re-discovering the genius. But no, I feel clouded because I cant feel like a child anymore. More so, children today don’t behave like children anymore. They are growing up too fast and the more they get the more they become detached from the sticky, gooey threads of life which used to make childhood so much more fun.

A kindle to read a book may be cool, but it does not give the high smelling the new pages of a book does, it does not give the thrill to read a book hiding from the teacher’s eyes in a serious maths class. And this cool kindle does not even stand a chance in front of an X-BOX or a PS( 1, 2..etc). Children nowadays are becoming adults too soon, scientifically because they see far too many serious adjustment issues played in front of their still innocent eyes. Busy parents, a curt baby sitter, lots of homework, scheduled extra-curricular and cartoon channels on TV make for a very busy and matured life which do not anymore make space for Noddy, Peanuts, Cindrella. The lucky few still know them. In a few years they will be history like our national animal.

But it’s not the child’s fault. The parents should the lives of children easier. Time heals. And giving your child time does not give the chance to wounds. The important things of life are invisible. They are intangible. Only to be felt by extra sensory perception and passed on.

A child should not be made lonely in this world. It should be reared like a flower. As precious as the little prince’s only flower. Or else they fade away.

So the seed only if you can water it well.

Feluda. Pradosh Chandra Mitter. A name all Bengalis adore, many generations have grown up with, kids adore…even to this day. Thanks to translations even non-Bengalis and so called Bongs who are ashamed to acknowledge their mother tongue now are no strangers to this brilliant, thinking, astonishingly real detective created by the great Satyajit Ray. Feluda, inspired by Sherlock Holmes, is an inspiration to many for his focused brain, fitness quotient( his fitness regime would put even the 6 pack brigade to shame) and knowledge bank.

When Feluda came alive on screen, the adrenaline rush to solve the known case with Shoumitra Chatterjee Feluda, directed by Ray was no less fun than reading the book( some may say it was in fact more!)And the magic was rewound with Joy Baba Felunath( case of the Elephant God). Not only Feluda but his amazing sidekick Topshe who idolized him, took pride in being his satellite ,learnt from him without being an overbearing over inquisitive irritating companinion and friend Jatayu the less knowlegable but highly imaginative, genuine and genius in his own way became etched in history as 3 of the most loved characters of Bengali literature.As did Shoumitra Chatterjee, Siddharta and Santosh Dutta.

Then came the age of new Feluda. Recreated by Sandip Ray, son of the legendary Ray and reportrayed by Sabyasachi undoubtedly one of the better actors in Tollywood. Things were fine till we came to Jatayu. No one just no one could replace Santosh Datta’s adorable Jatayu . as Ray as pointed out in Nayan Rahasya , Jatayu is not a joker. He does things in a way or speaks in a way which brings a smile but he is not a Mr. Bean. This is where is find Bibhu Bhattacharya impossibly joker-like. He tries too hard to make you laugh. For god’s sake, JAtayu was an author give him his due respect. And the new Topshe seems more upbeat about the new cases than feluda. He mouths all the imp lines, explains all the crucial clues and overall gives a feeling of an overgrown bat. Now we come to Feluda himself. Till the point he was a contstantly thinking actor remembering the laurels of the earlier Feluda he was fine. But as he became accepeted, he became condescending and complacent. So gone were the expressions from the eyes which used to speak volumes instead he actually started speaking volumes. Gone were his fit days and now he sports XL shirts with a neat little paunch. Gone were the sarcastic caustic comments which made us smile ruefully instead he became an extremely dull eyebrow always perched on the third floor generic detective. He could have been just any detective but he is not feluda. Not anymore.

Now we come to the root of the problems. Sabyasachi can become thinner, his actions could be changed but what about the man behind the camera who hold the reigns?? Why did he need to give Lalmohan a green Santro first and then a bluish green Indica?? If the logic is that Jatayu is a rich man and no rich man drives an ambassador any more then give him a mobile phone God damn it and Feluda too. In his last 3 movies Feluda has been living on borrowed mobiles. You cant be so contradictory. And as an avid Feluda lover it was a nightmare to see the amazing Tintoretor Jishu being translated into an action movie wherein Feluda had no role to play. Sandip Ray changed the most imp sequences of the film( may be because Tota looked better in action scenes)and made a Feluda which looked like B-grade Tarantino adaptation.

Request you Mr. Ray Jr. if you ever read this blog, read your father’s masterpieces again before making a movie. Let’s excuse you one last time thinking that may be you were depending on your memory. Or else you will surely never see a hitlist again!!

Joy Baba Felunath!!!