Wednesday 26 February 2014

Sau saal pehle ..............


Babu Narendra Chandra Dutta was a lawyer from Comilla (erstwhile Bengal, now in Bangladesh) . His early childhood was spent in penury. Later he built up a good practice and became a wealthy man. In 1914, Dutta founded the Comilla Banking Corporation. He started the bank with a declared capital of 4,000 rupees and raised another 2,500 rupees. In order to raise the capital he sold his own house for 1,500 rupees. Initially he drew a monthly remuneration of eight rupees from the bank.

Comilla Bank, as it was popularly known had substantial investments in the tea industry. Loans were issued to prospective investors in the tea industry for buying tea plantations and related properties.

Comilla Bank was was merged with three other banks, all based from Bengal in 1950 and United Bank of India was formed. It was again nationalized later in 1969 This is a piece of history. Maybe no one will be interested .



Who knows ……. The way things are happening, United Bank of India itself may also become a piece of history very soon.

Sunday 16 February 2014

Future foretold

As I sit patiently in front of him ,
once again, with my outstretched hand.
And once again, I feel the sense of doom
under the weight of barren expectations
of a lifetime, as I wait patiently now.
To have my future foretold.
So I sit there patiently in front of the silent man
his face masked in all seriousness as he peers
through a thick lens on the palms of my hands.
I wait patiently for him to announce
the results of his examination and perhaps,
his prescription to change the course of my life.
The silent man reading my fatelines perhaps
knows fully well , as I too do , that the game
is alll fixed in reality, but nevertheless ,
we all have to play and keep on playing.
I don't know my past, my present is so uncertain.
But when I was born , these lines were there
as I tried to grab all the luck of my portion
in my small fists and make my way in this world.
At that moment somewhere else , far away,
was that an unknown  star that shined
or was it a comet that hurtled to its end.

Wednesday 12 February 2014

12.02.2014

I will rather be the pain
to make you remember me
now and then.
Had I been the wound
it would have healed long back
and remained like a scar.
Since the winter solstice on Dec 21st the days have lengthened a lot . About 6.30 p.m. now but the the Sun is still on. It will be setting in a few minutes .Actually got the chance to watch the sunset after many days. Lovely feeling of spring is in the air

Friday 7 February 2014

Samadhi of a Godman. ........ once again .

Samadhi of a Godman. ........ once again .

Organised religions have always been a tool to fool the gullible and the perpetuate the most heinous forms of crimes on the masses. All organised religions are forms of bondages which take people away from the God and make them believers of some human with extraordinary powers. One such case that comes to fore with the recent controversy over a self styled godman Ashutosh Maharaj who is, for all practical purpose dead but his supporters claim that he is in a Samadhi.

Those who follow Godmen are actually have nothing to do with with God. By worshipping a human and turning him or her into a deity , they are actually following magicians and hypnotists. But still people flock to these charlatans which can be explained by the spiritual hollowness and the need to fall back on an emotional crutch. This is more like the addiction to cigarettes, which I have . And mind it , that's a vice.

But no doubt it is a sense of deja' vu that I feel when I read or watch the news about this strange incident of a dead man being preserved in a freezer. Reminds me of a similar incident 20 years back . In 1993 after the death of Baba Balak Bramhachari in Kolkata his supporters laid siege with his body, refusing to cremate it with the excuse that the Baba was in a deep trance.

At that time Subhas Chakraborty ,the maverick CPM leader and minister , under the instructions of Jyoti Basu ,then CM of WB successfully carried out a bloodless operation and freed the dead body from the custody of his followers along with the state administration. He was applauded all around for his leadership in defusing a tight situation and rightly so.

Let us now wait and watch when the dead body of this so called Godman is removed .