What'sapp Selections 1

What'sapp has revolutionized my life. It allows me to look, observe, feel and encapsulate in words. There is freedom, liberation and music in that. Rhythm. Joy. I started my blog today. A young Media Studie's student (a student of a student of mine) helped me out. I could have never done it on my own--someone had once commented 'Sreemati is technically challenged':) True. To launch myself I am simply uploading certain spontaneous writing and 'feeling' moments. The range is eclectic and random.  Starts with a message to my music teacher Sri Chayan Mukhuty of how I once saw white flowers in a musical swara. 

Then there are hurried impromptu whatsapp inputs as to how a class VIII student may write an essay on the virtues of Reading! Sent to a friend named Anita. 

Another one about birds to my cousin Mithoo in America who sent me a short video on a seagull. I write to her about the Kokil in Basanta Kaal. 

I wanted to start. So there we are...:)

Dear Chayan da i get visions when i sing. I just saw a heap of bel flowers with a beautiful golden hue inside. The potential of light and glory in white...

Faintly hued in a golden light

To Malabika Sarkar before reading a paper on Ritwik Ghatak:

Like his art, his life was dramatic. Honoring Ritwik says something about Bengalis. Their need to revisit their cultural heroes. We see how traditions and myths are created.

For Anita

Reading books is fast becoming an outmoded form of learning and gaining knowledge. With the internet revolution and with the heavy emphasis in digitalized forms of knowledge, books are becoming more ornamental than necessary

However, books are like persons and one grows with them.

However books are like persons. Books that we read when we are very young, may carry traces of a grandmother's smile or twinkling eyes

When i grow older, i may move on to more serious reading, reading that challenges my understanding and intelligence, but one day my eyes may suddenly alight on that book of fairy tales my grandmother would read me, and i might want to turn its leaves, because my grandmother's smell would come back to me.

So books have a way of building family traditions. A simple book of fairy tales may become a link between mother, daughter and granddaughter.

May be its the same book that all three generations read. It might give the granddaughter a chance to assess the kind of printing and illustrations that were done during her grandmother's time or her mother's. Thus books nudge the mind to think about many things.

There is a magical connection between the printed word and one's mind. A sensuous connection, like a tantalizing smell or beautiful colour. The brain that likes images of the world, particularly, responds to the printed word, which is like a picture.

There is a ' romance ' in the printed word. Mysterious, beckoning, challenging. Books bring that out better than digital media, simply because they have a shape and size and one can feel the printed paper. Something complex, miraculous ang magical takes place between the eyes, the brain, the intellect, the ears ( if one is reading from a book to a child) and the printed page, that may be a relationship of a lifetime!

Very famous Renaissance scholar, Erasmus, once said, when i have money, i first buy books. If there is any left over, then i buy food!

I would check if it is Erasmus, Anita. I could be wrong. But someone as great and a Renaissance scholar, said that.

To my cousin Mithoo on her sending me a video of a seagull:

Beautiful Mithu. Beautiful. Two of us in two geographical locations, listening to bird calls. To me as beautiful and as melodious and enchanting as the best of human voices singing. The kokil calls persistently as I write. Ei Ei Ei. Ki korchish. Ami Gaan gaichi to. Shunbi na? Jog Dibi na? ' amare Tumi ashesh korechho', bole pakhi. Pakhi niye likhte khub ichhe kore. Kokil je Ki akul bhabe, je Ki poignantly modhur bhabe giye cholecche, toke Ki Bolbo. I feel like stopping everything and listen to the bird. Particularly loud and resonant and close today. After I cut down the shiuli tree for Priya s weds, fewer birds have come visiting this year. I miss them. So much. So very much. The kokils giving is so unbounded, so overflowing, so absolute. Hisheb korte shekha ni pakhi. Amader moto. Ar Amader moddhye jara hisheb kore na tader durgotir obdhi Nei. Mohe rang do lal from bajirao mastani is a fabulous song. Shuney nish. Song has been a revelation to me. Bangla serial e er ekta sanashkaran achhe. Kothao khunje pai ni. Hathat Hindi line ta ekbar gaye uthlo keu. I tracked this incredible original version.