Quiz Show

Last night I was watching a popular Bengali quiz show on television. And each time the celebrity host shot a question to a certain participant he made a face as if the answer was there, waiting to pop out, and yet it was so not there. While his competitors around jumped with excitement already sure of the answer.

But this particular participant, too, became restless with zeal, dead sure of the answer, once a different question was asked to one of his competitors.

And I wondered…his competitor knew his answer and he knew his. I know your answers and probably you know mine. We almost always know each other’s answers but seldom our own. Guess that’s one of life's oldest tricks!

BILLING QUEUE

A day before I was in a small departmental store. I dutifully picked up whatever I had to buy and added myself onto an already long billing queue. Getting bored since the line was moving slowly I started looking here and there. My eyes hooked onto a huge mirror kept right beside the billing counter. It reflected almost the entire billing queue.

And this is what I saw in the mirror:

Each one of us in the queue, it seemed, had hand picked our own dreams and then were waiting with a hint of impatience to reach the counter of destiny hoping the self chosen dreams that we were holding onto so tightly would soon be handed over to us within the packet of reality since making oneself a part of the billing queue simply meant we all were ready to pay the marked price.

SPEED BREAKERS

Last week I was travelling in a car with a friend. We were constantly bantering. But our faces transformed into a temporary sad emoticon when the car hit a steep speed-breaker. By the time we relaxed there was another steep speed-breaker. And from then on my friend didn’t talk to me. He drove slowly and carefully all the way expecting a third speed-breaker…which never came. From a joyous drive it became a quiet one.

And I thought how the steep speed breakers suddenly started controlling us and our behaviour. The brewing anticipation of a third speed-breaker didn’t allow us to relax and also, to an extent, altered us for the rest of the journey. And thus made us forgo all the happy talks which we would have done had the control-shift not happened.

Novo's Eleven!

Now that the FIFA World Cup '10 has ended I thought of compiling my own eleven in a 4-4-2 formation! Here they are:

1.) CHARACTER – Goal Keeper.

2.) ZEAL – Centre Back One.

3.) FOCUS – Centre Back Two

4.) EGO – Full Back Right.

5.) ATTITUDE - Full Back Left.

6.) BRAVADO - Centre Mid-field One.

7.) INTEGRITY - Center Mid-field Two.

8.) DISCIPLINE - Side Mid-field One.

9.) HUNGER - Side Mid-field Two.

10.) LOVE - Center Forward One.

11.) COMPASSION - Center Forward Two.

ATBF - A CLARIFICATION

From the time my debut novel 'A Thing Beyond Forever' came out I have been receiving mails in which people have put forward their feedback...but one question that continues to remain common in those feedback is why did I kill Radhika? Well, I never gave a genuine reason to anybody for that but deep inside hoped they cultivated it themselves...but now I guess its high time I present the clarification...

Here it goes:

The issue arises when we take Radhika's suicide in a literal sense. I only want to ask one thing: Can't it be a metaphorical suicide...? Can't it simply signify the death of Radhika's resolve (bordering on idealism) to love Raen forever and not substitute him with anybody?

What if I tell you from the point she thought of jumping from the terrace the story takes a 'delusional' turn where Radhika is only imagining what will happen if she 'really' jumps ... and the last scene where she hallucinates making love with Raen for one last time is her farewell to Raen and all his emotional gifts to her. She imagines it all while standing on the terrace perhaps realizing for the first time that her life deserved a second chance with Sunil and thus, may be ... just may be she didn't ACTUALLY jump off the terrace ... Now, what did she do afterwards if she really didn't jump?

I deliberately kept the ending a little vague and open because I wanted my readers to interpret the ending on the basis of their own cognition and not thrust something concrete on them from my side...hence I didn't dig into 'what Radhika did afterwards' in the novel.

And with the Epilogue I am not saying Radhika is born again - sorry, no 'Bollywood' here - it just-simply-only signifies that a 'story' is born somewhere in the form of Elizabeth Heather Ferguson and that she too would have to, at some point of time, swim in this mysterious ocean of Love and Attraction the way Radhika did ... the way we all do in our own lives...

Whether one agrees or not with this explanation is not the point here. I have presented my real thoughts behind the ending that happened to me while I was writing it. Everybody has the right to agree or disagree. And my regards for both. The point here is sometimes in stories, like in life, there's MORE than our eyes tell us and MUCH MORE than the words frame. Of course you might ask where have I written all that in the book but I would humbly confess I, as an author, don't like to spoon-feed my readers for I respect them.

Thank you for your time.

NOTE: This is only for people who have read the novel. Comments for this post WON'T be published. My apologies. Also, I love questions :) ... so in case of any residual query please feel free to email me: novosphere@gmail.com

And, Cut!

I was writing a film script and while I was switching between scenes a thought thundered in my mind. Success is a CLOSE UP. Nobody cares to see anything else apart from the sudden glittering spark in your face. And failure is a LONG SHOT. Every bit offers itself for a subjective analysis. And the funny part is one can cheat a ‘close up’ but it’s difficult to cheat a ‘long shot’.

Also, I realized the ever so eluding entity we call life is basically a summation of those eager and at times scary expectations we promise ourselves knowing the ‘Cut’ (from ‘close up to a ‘long shot’ or vice versa) might happen…anytime.

By: NovoneeL ChakrabortY

KNOTS

Stuffing all the jewelleries inside a bag the thief hurled a rope out of the window and began to move down slowly. Within half a minute his feet touched the ground and in a trice he disappeared into the darkness.

The entire scene was witnessed by a young man who, sitting by the window of a flat in the opposite building and smoking pensively, was having his own private moment of introspection. The sudden sight of the thief made him sit up on his chair. His first instinct was to scream and awake everyone but something made him forgo the temptation. He observed the rope…full of tight knots at regular intervals…much like his own life…and the purpose?

To help the thief climb up…!

By: NovoneeL ChakrabortY