THE MASQUERADER

Once while taking a stroll along a wide elegant boulevard, with parades full of long arching palm trees, and rattling footsteps, I came across a pair of shiny little feet scurrying past me. Seeing my eyes following his, he stopped, reckoning me with an ethereal smile.

A bright young lad he was, with roseate lips, chubby cheeks and sparkling eyes. Yet something was amiss. I drew him closer, only to see a mask that had firmly clung to his face. Intrigued as I was, I politely asked him, “Why have you put on this mask, dear?”

And as if annoyed by the question, the boy ran away, irritated, wild and confused. The only response I could think of then was to chase him. As I drew closer to him, I pulled him by his arms and unmasked him by force. And there, standing in front of me, was an innocent boy, with eyes deep red, cheeks drooped, as if burdened, lips dry and stiff, as if they have missed a smile for too long. Desperately trying to fight back his tears, his sublime face struggled for a smile, though fake. He turned his head back and eventually failed to control his sob.

Tears trickled down his cheeks making me more impatient. The boy refused to say anything until my persistence wedged him to blurt out only a few, but important, words…“I lost my Éclairs Chocolate”.

Just a chocolate! I stood astound. Such hue and cry for a toffee not worth even a rupee! Immediately I drew out the Cadbury’s, that I had packed for office, from my bag and offered it to him. Like a stinging snake, the boy retaliated at my offer for the replacement and ran away, crying louder and stranger. “This is why I wear the mask”, he screamed and vanished.

I spent the whole day pondering over what had happened to the boy. What was with that mask, anyway? Why wouldn’t the boy be happy when he got a whole Cadbury’s for his lost plain Éclairs? Of course he wouldn’t, not if what he lost was much more than just a piece of cocoa and caramel. I felt the chocolate wasn’t something he just liked, he loved it.

May be he had gone through a great deal to get the chocolate that fascinated him so much. Maybe that was the only thing he felt bonded to. Maybe he was too attached to it to let it go; in a way that mature and practical senses like ours often overlook. And with its loss, the boy lost his desires, passion, self-confidence, and trust on his close-ones and others; even his heart and soul, that longed so much for the trivial chocolate, seem to weep at the loss. It now left within him a void, a vacuum such that no replacement was voluminous enough to fill in.

It did seem a little weird to me at first. But isn’t it true? Looking from the boy’s perspective, yes, it is. I feel that it is pretty natural. Each one of us has such a kid in us. Every living being- be it a human or an animal, craves for something that might look trivial to others, but holds utmost importance with respect to one’s desire and passion; that one’s heart yearns to get at any cost; that if lost, creates a turmoil of emotions within oneself. It’s not the object that matters, but the essence of it in one’s life that changes the meaning of its mere existence.

It’s true that if I were the little boy, my chocolate would be just something as relevant to my desires and my needs as was the chocolate to the young boy. And just like the casual sympathy, that passers-by, like me, showered upon him made him feel more sorrow-full, sad and resilient, it would have made me react too, in a more violent manner or otherwise.

It makes perfect sense now. Probably he wore that mask so that no one must know he was weeping inside. He felt more comfortable being lonely and sad than being sympathized by others who have least idea of what he is going through.

All on a sudden, my eyes opened with a screeching noise. Oh! The desk-phone was ringing. It brought me back to the same old boring dingy room where papers had been piled up for rework and the computer system glared at me like I was some extra-terrestrial object. “It must be my boss”. As I answered it, the ‘HELLO’ echoed from everywhere. Suddenly I was transformed into a speckle tumbling down through what seemed like a long vertical tunnel, and everything passing by me lightening fast. As the tunnel ended, a strong bang on my head jolted me awake, or half-awake, I must say. I scurried to stop the screaming alarm clock. Oh! I had been dreaming all this time. It was time for work, so I shut the impatient alarm, got into my flip-flop, and moved towards the restroom to freshen up, picking up the ‘Smiling Mask’ on the way that lay on the bed, smirking silently at me, and hid myself behind its fake smile.

 

 

How Often...

How often does it happen that you really start liking somebody? I mean after all that looks-good, talks-good stuff. When u start loving everything and anything she does, from how she caresses her silky hair and how she smiles hitting directly on your heart to even how she opens a door or dries her hands after a wash. You start believing that there is no grander way to do things. You wish you could be with that better half of you all the time. Just look at those sweet lips whose movement is so perfect, it generates the most pleasing sound in the universe, all the time, those eyes in which you see the universe, and in a much pleasant way, those earrings blessed with their position, so close to her face and that lovely sweet pendant that does nothing more than make you adore her so very much. You feel so sublime when that smile of hers greets you.  Her beauty surpasses everything god’s ever created. You can’t take your gaze off her no matter how hard you try. The world comes to a halt when you are with her. You turn colorblind and the whole world blurs out. You can keep listening to her for days together, and not say a thing, because that disturbs her voice. You like it when she hums, and love it when she sings. All you want to do is be with her, do nothing, just be with her. There is something about her company that you dread separation. You envy her shadow, wishing you could be so near to her all the time. You don’t need to find time to miss her, you miss her all the time. And the only thing you know of is she and just she. Feels like she completes you, all that you ever wanted, and you stop wishing for anything more. You can forsake anything and everything for her. All you want to see is her happy. And when you are not with her, you start seeing her in every other person you come across, you just wish she were by your side, or maybe called you on your phone. Every second without her feels like an hour.  And nothing pains more than the separation.

How often has it happened to you?

Me, u ask??? Once..

~~ S i D ~~ 

The POINTless POINTS !

“Hurray, I’m off for POINTS training, it’s gonna be fun”, was the very first thing I said when I had my movement letter in hand. For the non-DRDians, POINTS(acronym for POst Induction Training School) is supposed to be a 5-month long “enlightenment” course for the inglorious ignorant nerds that join this premiere institute of science and technology and research as scientists, or atleast so are they called. The future could-be/would-be pioneers of defence tactics and strategies are supposed to be trained here with classroom lectures detailing various aspects of defence research being handled (or made stagnant) by the organization. Scientists are supposed to learn about ships, missiles, fighters, weapons, explosives and radars, and then use it @ work. Sounds techie, geeky and top classified data? Remember I said “supposedly” ?

Getting back to reality, POINTS is best defined as “5 months of sarkari paid vacations”. It is aptly termed as the most fun-filled part of being in DRDO. Five months of no-tension, no-responsibility life with full and sufficient pay! We B-Techers like to call it the 9^th semester. It all seems like college continued; wake up just 5 minutes before class, continue the sleep during the lectures, comment on lecturers and subsequently run after them for their notes, bunk after lunch and make professional proxy groups. Has been more than 20 working days now, and not a day has been completely lectured in and not a single class has started on time. Fortunately they end before time! They name a 50-paged copy-paste report as a group task and a slightly larger, generally unrelated, congregation of technical terms, borrowed from a previous such object, as a project. With studies seemingly the least important aspect of POINTS, we are stuck with no option but to rote movies and series on our blessed personal idiot boxes that come these days in so nice packages. 

The course, “POINT School”, continues for a period of 5 months, over which the Govt. of India spends slightly less than 1.8 lakhs per student. With a strength of aound 200, this amounts to 3.6 crores, which is but a huge amount. The system definitely needs a revamp and a complete inside-out survey. Maybe that’s why, this batch of ours is the last in the history of POINTS. After all, why wouldn’t the Govt. want to save money!! Lolz

      

          Love,

                   ~~ S i D ~~

Group A Class 1 Technical Gazetted Officer

           Now, blissfully ignorant

*composed sometime around the first days of June, 2010. the scenario changed a lot later.

*this are solely the author's personal views and the data may not be correct and relevant

My Sukhoi Dream

Sitting in front of the officer’s mess here at 2^nd wing IAF, Pune and the twinjet multirole 4^th generation Su-30s roaring miles above my head with their majestic afterburners engaged, I start reliving my childhood dreams of fighter planes and how my fancies have been fulfilled now.

I remember precisely how some years ago, when I had first learnt about fighter aircrafts and had seen some videos on TV, I had become a fighter-maniac. My notebooks and copies had stickers of fighter planes, whom I knew by their color not their name. I remember the way I used to fold my fingers on my right hand to resemble a fighter and used to pop it out of the window of buses, cars and trains and used to imagine myself as the pilot performing crazy maneuvers. It is not the past, as even today I cannot resist myself from the temptation of doing the same whenever I have a window seat. The missiles, the bombs and the gun turret always fascinated me. And TV serials like Talespin worsened my temptations. I perfectly remember the first time I had been to an airport and had seen an Indian Airlines flight take off, and had cherished the thunderous roar it made. I imagined myself as the pilot when I was sitting on my papa’s bike and the handle bar as the throttle lever. But as I grew up, and as how I behave became so important, I gave up all finger folding and stuff that made me look immature. But my fancy never died.

And today I feel like I have realized my fancy. I can never be able to fly a fighter but atleast I could go near it, touch it, feel it and grace it. As I saw a majestic beautiful gracious Su-30 take off 200 meters from me, so many thoughts flashed through. My stickers, my drawings, the black one(now F-16), the grey one(now MiG), my folded fingers, my dad’s bike’s handle and my fancies. Then I realized how lucky I am. It was as if destiny. Getting placed into DRDO, despite the odds, the trouble during my initial joining, and a then disappointing posting into a mechanical lab and a even worse attachment to a base at my resident town ruining all plans of a paid trip to a nice new place. But all the time it was luck trying to bring me as close to my fancies as possible.

Luck got me into DRDO, as the only one out of 29 other deserving candidates and got me posted into a lab that works on engines for fighter planes. She got me attached to the most advanced wing of IAF housing over 60 Su-30s. She arranged an air-show for me on my very second day. And what more, she got me an officer who readily allowed us to sit in the cockpit and actually hold the throttle lever, the ultimate realization of my fancy. As the plane took off with a roaring thunder, I could not stop but thank God and luck for providing me with such a graceful opportunity. Not everyone gets to see a Su-30 take off and how few are fortunate enough to sit in its cockpit. Those 10 minutes when the plane showed aerobatics were like bliss for me. I was in a different world altogether. Never ever had I been so thankful to God. Never before had I been so satisfied, fulfilled and happy. As the plane pitched and rolled, tears filled my eyes. Thank you so much God; today’s been the best day of my life!

We Did It Yet Again!

Striking another deadly blow to all those "Mr. Know-It-All"s (offences meant) who considered Odisha to be a state of drought and poverty, the Prince Dance Group has shown ultimately what hidden and precious talents my Odisha has got. Hailing from a small town of Behrampur, with no professional training or a trainer and without any funding, a group of unskilled daily laborers, all economically backward or physically challenged, performed so well in the reality show India's Got Talent aired on Colors that the whole of the country was stirred to vote them to victory, let alone we Odiyas. The meticulous choreography they used, the strict discipline they exhibited and the splendid make-up they wore, even professionals lack these at times!

Time and again the Odiya have shown their excellence in art and culture. Starting with the world-acclaimed sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik to the lady lawyer who successfully conquered Mt. Everest, Kalpana Das and the captain of the national team of our national game, Dillip Tirkey to the chess Women International Master, Padmini Rout.(Please curse your poor GK if you dont happen to know these names, or use google and switch to a better news channel at home!), the Odiya have always kept up the name of our country worldwide.

So the next time you make any racist comment on my Odisha or we Odiya, please remember this blog-post of mine!

..Bande Utkala Janani...