alice's peephole

Every few years something happens in our lives that makes us lose hope completely. And I don’t mean something like a Lance Armstrong drug scam story – this is something that wrenches our heart apart. Something that you hold so dear suddenly disappears in a cloud of black smoke. You realize it was never even yours to hold. You were the fool, to think you belonged, that you owned it. That it was yours. You come home, looking for solace, and you find it. But you have failed in the outside world. You forget all the great things lined up for you – with a shadow looming like a raincloud over everything you touch. As the candle is snubbed out, you are left groping in the darkness, for hope. In my teen years I had no doubts about how to handle this - a good amount of self-pitying punk music, crying and leaning shamelessly on friends for support. I guess I wallowed, and that worked. Everything seems so different a few years later. Music doesn’t seem to help the case, there’s only

It was the only time of the year when exams were not important to my parents. As soon as the answer paper was submitted, I’d run to the ‘Main Gate’ of my school, and wait to be picked up by my parents and be taken to Congress Bhavan. After the customary respects were paid to Ma, I would be left free to wander around the ‘Pujo Pandal’ and look for my friends. Some days there were drawing or essay contests.  Atleast one morning was spent sitting on the edge of the stage and distributing ‘Proshad’ to people, or if your luck ran dry, you could be roped in for behind the scenes work like helping to assemble the 3 or so fruits and a Padha for the Proshad.   Lunchtime was heralded by the youngsters (I was still in the kids category) pushing aside the scattered chairs to make way for the long rows of tables and chairs, on which batches and batches of Bangalis would be fed. This was the cue to run to the kitchen area to volunteer for the days Poribeshon. The pecking order for Poribeshon

A wise person once told me that it’s important to spread confusion, not to eliminate it. That’s why I decided to write this post, instead of doing some real investigation about what’s confusing me. Happiness is confusing. And a little scary. Especially when you can’t pinpoint the exact source, and the shelf life is longer than a few beer infested hours, you begin to wonder what’s brought on this unfamiliar feeling – where even the bitch of a ride to work doesn’t get you down. And you spend the entire day staring at a beat up old computer screen doing something not very phenomenal, go home to an empty house and eat a vegetarian dinner alone in front of a non flat screen TV watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy. And still feel optimistic while climbing into bed. And though my state doesn’t quantify as ‘euphoric’, I’m still pretty worried about this needless, causeless positivity. It’s most unlike me. I’m someone who loves to fret – about the future, and getting fat, and losing my

One day I decided I was being ill-treated, and I decided to do something about it. So I opened my front door, announced to anyone within hearing distance my decision to run away from home, and stepped out into the big bad world. I reached my Society’s gate, and was confronted by a dilemma. What if I ran left, and my dad right, and then he couldn’t ‘catch’ me? So I stopped and quickly changed tactics. I started bawling loudly and was soon gathered into the comforting embrace of my father. I don’t remember what my primary motive was, and whether I had achieved it, but I know I felt warn and loved and all was right with the world again. Another day not too long ago at work, I messed up. So I resorted to my age old ally in times of duress and dashed to the bathroom to have a good cry. But I had to keep my voice down, and sneak out when I was done. I also had to creep out like a jewel thief, wash my face subtly and saunter back to my desk and pretend like I had gone out to whisper sweet

I’ve been reading since I discovered my brother’s Noddy Books and Enid Blyton. After I was done with that I was lucky enough to be introduced to the caustic British humour of P.G.Wodehouse. Some books like 3 Men in a Boat, made me bend over with laughter, while simultaneously gaping in open mouthed awe at the use of the language. But after I was done with these, there came a lull in the books I read. For a few years I found nothing I read held my interest, with (popular) authors like Agatha Christie & Sidney Sheldon leaving me unenthused and uninitiated into the world of ‘grown-up’ reading. Luckily, this phase lasted for only a few years, and this blog is about the books I’ve read since then. I’ve wanted to write this for a long time, but I am always intimidated and overwhelmed by the authors that I would be writing about. I have no literary background, and everything that I say here will boil down to the fact that it is my personal, amateurish, uneducated view. But since it

3 parties are involved in the staging of an IPL match : The BCCI – IPL, the State Association and the Franchise. The State Association (Maharashtra Cricket Association) had hired us for Venue Management, while IMG had been hired by BCCI – IPL to execute the event. The Franchise  (Sahara Pune Warriors) had a plethora of agencies to do their bidding. Because the 9 th and final match at the Subroto Roy Sahara Stadium was a playoff match, the dynamics completely changed. The Franchise is thrown out of the equation, and their responsibilities are divided between the SA and BCCI. One of the major changes that takes place is the re-branding of the stadium. The stadium was stripped of anything with the Sahara logo, and replaced with IPL branding. While this was not really our responsibility, we did take pleasure in yanking down, with great gusto all that was Sahara’s and with it removed our frustration of the past few weeks. While most of it was easy to deal with, there was one

It was my greatest fear that the stadium lights would go out – plunging the ground into darkness and basically broadcasting this (power) failure to the entire world. I can now safely say that this did not happen. Unfortunately, everything else did. Among the many bombs that had been casually tossed around the South-East basement offices, the first that exploded was the one where a last minute ‘request’ was made to provide baggage handlers to carry the players’ luggage. Seeing the stretch on manpower, my tomboyish, feminist colleague immediately offered to lend a hand. I, failing to come up with a quick excuse, found myself accompanying her in stumbling around under the weight of the heavy kit bags – the sizes of which were comparable only to the size of the heads of their owners. Now I am not one to shy away from attention, but the sudden deluge of comments and flashes from cameras disconcerted even me. I looked out from under the bag to see shocked faces all around me. Some of th

If I was a gossip columnist, I would be able to water this down/ spice this up for public consumption. If I were famous, I’d write this like an autobiography. Since I am just one of many who are working to organize the Indian Premier League 2012, I really don’t know what to call this one. It’s definitely not the bird’s eye view of things at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium. Maybe it’s the worm’s eye view – the one that didn’t get eaten by the bird anyway. And it’s a not- so-brief narration of the ground realities. Pun intended. When I first saw the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium, hereby referred to as ‘the Stadium’, it was just a work in progress. No, I’m totally lying, it was breathtaking. The imposing structure could be seen from miles away. What was less impressive however, was the teeth-rattling, nerve-shredding village road that led up to it. Gahunje village, the postal address of the Stadium, could be approached through aforementioned road, which wound through Mamurdi village. One