Yet another Durga Puja...

It is 'Durga Puja" time and I am perfectly aware that a certain cty in India called Kolkata is abuzz with activity liek people and relatives flocking in to their homes for this special time fo the year and friends and relatives going out together Pandal hopping and gorging on the most exquisite cuisines Kolkata has to offer. And all the cosy corners of the dimly lit restaurant will be filled with couples enjoying the exotic romanticism of darkness with the faint sound of the party time outside floating through the windows. Lovers finding their cosy proximity in this crowd of human race as if the rest of the universe didn't exist. The time when love is in the air in that city and people just find this extreme party atmosphere of sound and light the right time to take their beloved for a trip and probably the opportune moment to speak their heart out while the rest of the world is busy with the Puja.

Of course I have no personal experience of whatever I wrote above but is a mix of what I imagine of what beautiful things exist in this world that I haven't seen and what I have heard from other people. I haven't ever enjoyed any Durga Puja in Kolkata in the true sense of the term like going out with friends etc and freaking out. It is supposedly a great experience that my life seems to have denied me and that seems to feature on the top of my to-do list with my lady love (if ever she starts existing in my life)

Last year during the Pujas I was in CMI (Chennai Mathematical Institute) (www.cmi.ac.in) struggling with a myriad of examinations and I wrote this blog:

http://figments-of-the-mind.blogspot.com/2007/10/yet-another-durga-puja.html

An year later I am a student of TIFR and still struggling with a million examinations and subjects that I hate to the bottom of my heart (Electronics!) and trying to ensure my academic existence. Somehow life has been pretty much stagnant and essentially noting has changed.

I still continue to be the slave of the Indian education system which refuses to give me any freedom or facility that I ask for and it seems to continue to strangle me and subjugate me to the state of an invertebrate. Somehow I just still manage to keep myself alive and write few blogs as my probably my only display of life.

As life probably is bursting with colour and sound and light in Kolkata, I take my lonely walks along the TIFR sea-beach in the opalescent evenings gazing at the relentless ocean which never ceases to lash at the shores. I stare blankly at the mysterious play of colours on the sky above the Arabian sea and a single word emanates from somewhere inside me "Why?" .... I don't know what I am asking but it is a question whose answer I seek. So many "Why?"s that seem to flock together and I see the sun set reflecting back to me the same number of questions as I had asked yesterday.

I don't know why I ask "Why?". I don't know why I don't feel a million things that million other people around me respond to. Seems this devilish education system has made a million things irrelevant in my life which others respond to..It has somehow surgically cutout so may possible dimensions of life and reduced me to a state where I lose the freedom to individuality and any attempt at doing so is a crime liable to be severely punished.