Ritendra's Blog

Most of us start believing that the position on our business card is our identity. We often feel proud to tell old friends and new acquaintances that we are this manager and that executive. The pretence identity affects you internally and you identify with your work role. All this goes very well until you leave your present job. Then suddenly you find that you are no longer such n such and you feel like a nobody. But suppose you do an activity like gardening and identify yourself as a gardener then no matter if one day you are the Managing Director or a peon, you will feel no different. In an interview the award winning novelist Amitav Ghosh, told the interviewer that he grows chillies in his Goa farm and thinks of himself as a farmer. It is always a good idea to keep yourself in a zone where nothing can touch your sanity. If you build an identity that is different from the work you do to earn a living, then you still be that identity once you leave work. Sometimes you can keep your ...

From the middle of May 2017, we are seeing girls in their school uniform throwing stones at Jammu and Kashmir state police (own cousins) and Central reserve Police Force personnel. This is the first time uniform vs. uniform can be seen. More shocking is the fact that girls are throwing stones. Why are they throwing stones? They want Azadi (freedom) from India. They shout “Go India Go back”. Let us for once we forget the fact that India is one of the five world powers, and such absurd slogans will die as naturally as Charu Mazumder’s slogans had died in the hills of Naxalbari and the narrow stingy bylanes of Calcutta. What they are asking is separation from the most unique Republic, the most heterogeneous mix of races and culture, where no one particular race has hegemonic power, unlike in Pakistan, where the Urdu-speaking Punjabi elites completely rule the other ethnic groups. They are demanding separation from that culture that has from the start of civilisation advocated equal rights...

Ghagorburi temple near Asansol-Raniganj is the temple I have found most spiritual. Actually, I have seen the human manifestation of the child deity with my own eyes. In 2015, when I had left the Lecturer job at rani Birla Girls' College and was appearing for some Govt exams, some voices inside me was telling to give something for the brothers and sisters who sit outside the temple. First time (in 2011) I went there I gave them a few 10 rupee notes, when the last one asked, I did not give him any because I was offended by his tone. It was my stupidity to expect a polished manner of asking money from an uneducated poor man. Within 10 km our car had a puncture. We were going to our masis  house at Burdwan. My masis  (mother's sister) youngest daughter made some mocking sound about Ghagorburi and within 1 week she fell at Howrah station and hurt her leg badly. Last Durga Puja, I was able to give few new sarees to the people sitting outside the temple. I believe my new job at OUP a...

It is said Puri Dhaam is the only dhaam of Kali Yug. It is one of the four most important places (dhaams) of worship for a Hindu. The other three being Dwarka, Badrinath and Rameshwaram. Puri dhaam is called the only dhaam of kali Yug - The myth goes like this -  kali Yug started after the day Lord Krishna died. he was killed by a hunter with a blue stone, mistaking him for a deer. that blue stone was later swallowed by a fish and later it was found by a man. So Puri is also known as Neelachal and Lord Jagannath is also called Neel Madhav. That brilliance of that blue stone that brought this kali Jug cannot be witnessed by the human eye, so Neel Madhav asked the brahmin to worship it as Jagannath, Balaram, Subhadra and Chakra. I have been to Puri 2-3times before. Last time I went there was in 2004-2005 with my parents, brother, thakuma (grandmother) and my boro masi and mesomosai along with two of my father's colleague (Saha kaku and Chandan kaku) an...