Shillong dear Shillong

As soon as we were done with our exams we rushed 

 outside to congratulate each other and of course big

 hugs were exchanged, in the midst of all that I 

happened to have overheard my classmates 

conversation .  one said ‘what plans after school …. Any 

thought of studying in shillong ‘and the other one replied 

"anywhere but not shillong” !

I Am sure this is something my Shillong folks can relate 

to more than others .  the other day after overhearing 

their conversation I was taken aback by peoples thought 

about Shillong , do they even know what  ‘Shillong” is ! I 

know most people have this concept that , after they are 

out from here perhaps to complete high school or college 

THAT  they will have a better life perhaps a more 

sensible one  too !

Yes true maybe Shillong can’t offer you with that 

exposure and advance life , but folks this is the place 

that has nurtured you since you were a child and 

suddenly you grow up to have a complete different 

opinion calling it backward and primitive doesn’t your 

conscience stop you from doing so …. I wonder!.

I see people updating statuses in facebook as , “can’t wait to get out of here” or ‘I am tired of Shillong” seriously !!! those people should get a reality check done , they actually “predict” that life outside is better someplace where  they can bask them self and feel absolutely wonderful about themselves.

 I Wonder if they will ever come out of their delusion 

  

And as for how true this fact is about Shillong, ask the 

people who are living outside , they will tell you , how ‘

blissfully’ they are basking  themselves !

SIGH ! At the end of the day , learning to appreciate 

things is the most important trait one should have rather 

than being ignorant to the blessings that God has 

already given you .Shillong is a wonderful place 

sometimes even words fall short to describe this small 

town life which is so blissfull in its own little way and 

those people who think it’s a waste of time , I pity them 

for not having their senses right .

this view is worth living for 

we live we die and then .. ?

So , alone I sat in my not so exciting room wondering what to fidget with., I waited and waited and finally my eyes laid upon Mitch Alboms’s ‘The five people you meet in heaven ‘ , lying aloof with dust settled on it , from time immemorial it has always been lying there in my father’s shelf and yet had never quite caught my attension .I bet the title make’s you curious it certainly made me curious too and within no time I was already turning its pages. Mitch Albom , it was my first book of his . To be honest I did not quite like his language , was too short and straightforward , but to contrast it with his simple writing he wrote a book that will get you thinking about life , or to be more precise the life after death .

 Certainly many of us believe that life after death is followed by testimony and then conventionally followed by either heaven or hell . well, some might have their own theories too , but Mitch believed in something else he saw life as a passing phase which at present really doesn’t quite make sense because the answer is waiting for all of us what life was really all about and each one of us have a different answer and reasons to live and that’s what made Mitch write this book, as he said ‘there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind’. He specially emphasized on the word ‘strangers’ , according to him we all are a part of one big family and a person who might me a Stanger to you today might be the reason for whom your alive tomorrow. 

He has actually given a deeper meaning to the ‘strangers’ who surround our lives every day In the story the main protagonist who dies a brutal death , goes through the journey of heaven which he too thought of it as quite a different place somewhere where he would get peace and boundless joy , yes peace did come to him but not in the form of leisure but in the form of reasons and answers , by those ‘strangers’ whom he too never knew, never loved and never bothered but lastly it was them that made him realize the reason for his existence and that’s how peace came to him.

 It was’SNT quite a book that I would say ‘you haven’t lived if you haven’t read that” but yes if your actually bored reading your vampire books and frivolous love stories you might just want to try something that Mitch’s got to offer.

            
THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSE
Calcutta chromosome ! lets say the first thoughtthat comes to ones mind is ‘ is it about the loud bengalis ?”
Perhaps it must have got to do something with the people living there and lets say most of us would actually not have a second thought about reading it if it was by some other not so popular writer well I too felt the same, but believing amitav ghosh and best of literature that he produced I gave it a try .
And this is exactly what I take back from it `~fever~ delirium~ discovery .. the book rightfully speaks of what it shows .
It begins in Antars dingy room in hiz house in Egypt from hiz office machine AVA which blinks a burnt photo id of a man which later is reveled as Murugan , it clearly flashed below hiz monitor under the photo ‘subject missing since august 21,1995 ‘.
Malaria , very few people would actually want to read a book completely based on a subject so scientific and educational.. people like books which have an irony to hold on too and at the same time which has some intensity added with some cold intelligence … In this book amitav has kept ‘malaria’ as the bottom line and has beautifully weaved a complete story over it .
He has navigated through time and has intercepted genres to present a unique tale from present to future how each one of the characters have affected each others life .
From Ronald “s labrotory (the person to WRITE A complete theroty on the cure of malaria ) in 1898 to Antars house after many years a great deal happened which has not only to do with science,but history , superstition, and lastly the religious cults with their beliefs. It surely will bring a chill down your spine .
He mentions how a completely revolutionary discovery of the cure of malaria on one hand and how reincarnation on the other hand have benefitted from eachother . people like magala , an uneducated but witty women picked by a British scientist from the most irrelevant places of all .. sealdeh station ,to help him with the lab work she acknowledges her own self to discover ways of reincarnation into another body . the other character Murugun who probably acts as the narattor throughout the story   and is  insearch of something quite unusual ‘the calcutta chromosome ‘ ..will he succeed in his quest … the answer which is revelaed at the end makes u wonder does logic really rule our lives or has life got a deepr meaning maybe which cannot be justified by logic and reasons .
DECEPTIVE IT SOUNDS AT FIRST BUT when the story ends it actually haunts you to believe that maybe mangala was not just an ordinary women and maybe superstition aren’t so trivial after all .


GHosh deliberately frolics with the readers curiosity to what later it revels to be an absolutely chilly ending .The book surely haunted me long after it ended and I think it was just absolutely worth reading it.