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Showing posts from February, 2012

Passu-The Metamorphosis

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Before Passang Tshering became Passu the Pen Lord, and before he became a teacher and before he attracted millions of readers, he was a naughty boy. Believe me he was more than the average Denise the Menace; an outrageous wild energy ever ready to do anything, especially beat you up. He was neither a gang leader nor the school boss but within our own age group he was someone you didn’t want to mess with unless you had the protection of a bigger boy. My most vivid memory of his past is when he fought a girl when we were in class seven. After the fight he looked like a man who wrestled a wild cat. One of my friends fought him twice and both the times Passu gave him a good beating, the final fight sealing their deal as Passu being the tougher one with my friend’s nose bleeding. How I wished my friend would win, make him cry like a little girl. Passu was then Pasa Tsheri, the notorious. His cheeks were rosy on his fair face and it had naughty written all over it. To sum up he

Kolkata

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Courtesy Google Image The traffic is wild, it is synonymous to chaos. It amazes me thinking about how the automobiles manage to go about without crashing into each other. I hear the city like a big monster, groaning and roaring with unrelenting hunger. It calls more lives with promises of livelihood but hardly do most know that this city is no different from a jungle and survival is a daunting challenge, yet many are drawn to its lights like the moths from the dark. Billboards hang huge as testimonies to the capitalist world that India today is very much symbolic of. One particular commercial caught my attention, a huge billboard about a paint brand, the commercial proudly displayed a house beautifully painted and protected from all elements of weather. The irony however was that the house below the billboard and most buildings around were dull and weather-beaten. Some people don’t hesitate to urinate in front of a shopping mall while many shoppers go in and out. I saw