Cocktail

Issue of February 2013

From the editors desk

Its February and its the moth of LOVE; rose day, hug day, kiss day, Valentines Day and many others. So we came up with an idea. We thought of penning down your thoughts in your very own COCKTAIL. Yes, this issue of Cocktail is themed on love and betrayal, to be loved and not to be loved, the meaning of love and happiness... We wish you would be enjoying reading through the magazine...

Cocktail Team

Contents

My True Valentine...By Rini Ghosh Love Ka Panchnama.....................................................By Pritam Sen Happiness..By Debobroto Dutta Love Aj Kaal!!!!..............................................................By Pritam Sen Desires....By Mousumi Pal Addaholism...By Payel Sinha Chowdhury We!...................................................................................By Arindam Dhal Seasons...By Mousumi Pal Through our eyes, the visual acoustics (Photographs)

(You may scroll down to the desired page or may click on the links to directly go to the articles)

My True Valentine
In the past few years 14th Feb has grown in verve and enthusiasm to become one of the most important and significant occasion for the Indian youth. Strangely, people nowadays forget birthdays, anniversaries and some of the most important dates of their life but celebrate 14 th Feb with pomp. May be this is the only way to make up for those pent up moments to their near and dear ones or just another way to live up to the hype. At the same time many are of a different genre of thoughts saying 14th Feb is just a western faux commercialized in India to earn a windfall profit every year. The origin of this holiday for the expression of love really isn't romantic at all, at least not in the traditional sense. Valentine was a Roman Priest at a time (probably 269 AD) when there was an emperor called Claudias who persecuted the church at that time. He also had an edict that barred the marriage of young people. This was based on the hypothesis that unmarried soldiers fought better than married soldiers because married soldiers might be afraid of what might happen to their families if they died. The idea of encouraging them to marry within the Christian church was what Valentine had wanted and he secretly married them because of the edict. As a result he was condemned to death by the Emperor. One of the men who was to judge him in line with the Roman law at the time was a man called Asterius, whose daughter was blind. Valentine was supposed to have prayed with and healed the young girl with such astonishing effect that Asterius himself became Christian. The story goes that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius' daughter. He inspired today's romantic missives by signing it, "from your Valentine." From that day onwards it was celebrated as Valentines Day or a day dedicated to a beautiful sacred emotion called Love. I, on the other hand, have a different view about this day and would like to share it with you. I still remember the day when I was made aware for the First time that there is a Day called Valentines Day and it is celebrated on 14th Feb. On this day, all the boys shower their adored valentines with chocolates, flower and cards. It was in the year 1998 when I started my initial days in High school after getting promoted to class VI. One fine day i.e. on 14 th Feb I went to school and found all the girls in my class are busy exchanging handmade cards, candies and many other small gifts with the boys. Their twinkling eyes emoted loads of happiness and excitement which I could not make out at that moment. I was quite awestruck by the whole phenomenon that was happening around me. Suddenly I started recollecting the hush-hush discussions of my fellow mates which I didnt pay much attention before. After some time I had a rough idea about Valentines Day and was equally disappointed for not receiving any such lucrative gifts as my friends. As the day was coming to an end I felt more and more dejected and pacified. The situation got worse when the other girls started showing their days collection of presents and asking me about mine. When they found out that I got none, their sympathetic condolences made me more miserable. At that stage my childish innocence was hurt and I was on the verge of tears. I controlled it with great effort till the time I came back home from school.

My mother who always has this remarkable habit of reading all my thoughts immaculately, seemed to have understood something was wrong. I burst out this time narrating the whole affair that took place in school. I remember telling her Ma, am I so bad that none of my friends felt like gifting me a rose at least. Tears were rolling down my cheeks incessantly while mother tried to sober me down. In the evening, I sat down as usual to do my homework though I couldnt forget the days proceeds easily. After some time at around six o clock mother came back from her evening walk with five beautiful roses and kept it on my table saying, Wanted to buy 10 roses for my most beautiful little friend and valentine but the roses have suddenly become very expensive today so could manage only 5!! I was super delighted to see those beautiful roses that I hardly paid attention to her words and completely jumped on her for a bear hug. To this day I cherish that special moment and celebrate every Valentines Day with Ma. From next year onwards, miraculously I too started receiving my share of valentine day gifts but never can I forget my first valentine, my mother. She really taught me an important lesson on that day. Love is such an emotion which has no boundaries. It has the great power to create and heal. One can share this day of love with their loved ones as anyone can be THE SPECIAL ONE. My mother will always remain the most special valentine in my life.

"To love another person is to see the face of God." -Les Miserables

Sweet & Sour

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Love Ka Panchnama
Most of us have been brought up in a culture that nurtures us to share our lives with others. We are taught to follow elders, respect them; they love us and grow us only to anticipate a day wed repeat the act. The societal ideology may contrive many theories to brace such an epilogue but nature doesnt. Let us try to delve a bit more to compare the stark anomalies that make the two theories so divergent in nature. The parental care that makes our journey in the beginning so easy carries a great importance. They guide us on how to eat, sleep, drink, talk, behave and every possible other function we can imagine. This grows a sense of belongingness and affection in us. We start to believe in a sense of altruistic propensity towards them. This is how we grow close to them. Thus love might seem to arrive from the disposition that literally blocks our view to see further. However nature has a different say here. It is defined that the class selected and evolved sustained over time; the class that couldnt, evaporated. The nature always enumerates the cost benefit behind each of its functions. It ensures that every species should pass their coding to the next. Once the coding is passed the biological presence doesnt interrupt the natural cycle. The tendency to spread the coding in as many numbers as possible made us skewed to polygamy. Similarly as we grow with every passing year, our dependence over our children invariably rise. We start expecting to be back to our 2nd phase of life predominately as we see our children to grow up. As the expectation rises naturally the question starts to brewing up as to what love means in actuality. Nature doesnt define love the way an human being does. Love is believed to be a cost benefit relationship, a symbiotic one where both the participants exchange their tangible belongings to attain desired outcome. Once the objective is attained we contrive the next objective and move to discover the outline. So love is always a flimsy affair. The nature of love may differ in its actual form but the essence doesnt differ to a great extent. Love remains to be an unfolded mystery.

"True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen." -La Rochefoucauld

Sweet & Sour

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Happiness
What is the purpose of life? The direct answer is to become happy. Whatever country or society we live in, we all have the same deep desire; i.e to become happy. In our daily life, we constantly experience happiness and unhappiness, but we are still quiet ignorant as to what happiness is, particularly for a woman. When she first thought of happiness, she saw it as falling into love, become financially strong or have bungalows and cars. But looking at friends who were married, she realized that marriage didnt necessarily guarantee happiness. She saw a couple who had been passionately in love, but soon started suffering from discord after their wedding. She saw people with big bungalows and cars but also found that none having time to sit together for a family dinner. She saw that happiness for anyoneman or womandoes not come simply from having a formal education, from wealth or from marriage. It begins with having the strength to confront and conquer ones own weaknesses. Only then does it become possible to lead a truly happy life and enjoy a successful marriage. It only exists within our state of life right now, here in the present, as we face the challenges of daily life. Happiness is not a life without problems, but rather the strength to overcome the problems that come our way. There is no such thing as a problem-free life; difficulties are unavoidable. But how we experience and react to our problems depends on us. One fine day she told me, now I can say with confidence that happiness doesnt exist in past or in the future. True happiness is to be found within, in the state of our hearts. It does not exist on the far side of some distant mountains. It is within you, yourself. However much you try, you can never run away from yourself. And if you are weak, suffering will follow you wherever you go. You will never find happiness if you dont challenge your weaknesses and change yourself from within. Experience of life teaches us that we are each responsible for our own happiness or unhappiness. Our vitalitythe amount of energy or life-force we haveis in fact the single most important factor in determining whether or not we are happy. Talking to many different scholars from different spheres of lives, what I understood is happiness is to be found in the dynamism and energy of your own life as you struggle to overcome one obstacle after another. This is why I believe that a person who is active and free from fear is truly happy. The challenges we face in life can be compared to a tall mountain, rising before a mountain climber. For someone who has not trained properly, whose muscles and reflexes are weak and slow, every inch of the climb will be filled with terror and pain. The exact same climb, however,

will be a thrilling journey for someone who is prepared whose legs and arms have been strengthened by constant training. With each step forward and up, beautiful new views will come into sight. My teacher used to talk about two kinds of happinessrelative and absolute happiness. Relative happiness is happiness that depends on things outside us, that is friends and family, surroundings, the size of our home or family income. This is what we feel when a desire is fulfilled, or when something we have longed for is obtained. While, the happiness, such things bring us is certainly real, the fact is that none of this lasts forever. Things change. People change. This kind of happiness shatters easily when external conditions alter. This kind of happiness is also based on comparison with others. We may feel this kind of happiness at having a newer or bigger home than our neighbours. But that feeling turns to misery the moment they start making new additions to theirs! Absolute happiness, on the other hand, is something we must find within. It means establishing a state of life in which we are never defeated by trials, and where just being alive is a source of great joy. This persists no matter what we might be lacking, or what might happen around us. A deep sense of joy is something that can only exist in the innermost reaches of our life, and which cannot be destroyed by any external forces. It is eternal and inexhaustible. This kind of satisfaction is to be found in consistent and repeated effort, so that we can say, Today, again, I did my very best. Today, again, I have no regrets. Today, again, I won. The accumulated result of such efforts is a life of great victory. What we should compare is not ourselves against others. We should compare who we are today against who we were yesterday, who we are today against who we will be tomorrow. While this may seem simple and obvious, true happiness is found in a life of constant advancement. And, the same worries that could have made us miserable can actually be a source of growth when we approach them with courage and wisdom. Hence to conclude on my understanding on happiness, I would like to quote few lines of my mentor; he says; Worth is not found in Joy alone. Nor is success the only valuable outcome. Suffering is the mother of realization, worries and failures so long as we are not defeated by them; we become the raw material with which to construct everlasting happiness.

Very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love." -Stendhal

Sweet & Sour

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Love Aj Kaal!!!!
A recent survey by a leading consulting body reveals the cases of divorce has been observed to go up significantly for last two years in India. The number of cases registered in court constitutes quite a larger segment of the whole. A question naturally takes shape as we dig more and more to dismantle such astounding trends. The socio economic change has certainly left our society to face such uncanny scenario than any anything else. Love lust and betrayal have never been discussed in length. As we keep a close eye on the changes the society have seen we discover more cases of unfaithfulness & betrayals. Love is now frequent, abrupt, and subtle. Love has become countless emotions of frequent shallow realization, a long stretch of indefinite journey. We have been indebted to many ideas to know what love means to us. Gita, Koran, Bible define love almost in the similar way. Many say love is an ultimate form of devotion, a process of alignment of the body with soul. When a soul drives a flow of continuous emotional sense to connect with another it is believed to be the essence of love.

It started to transform lately as love evolved. The psychological dependence in love is manifested through physical exchange of energy only. Access to multiple acceptors has significantly pushed the percentage. Biologically every living organism looks to maximize its presence in the nature. Human being an integral part of it invariably falls in the trap. The nature of love didnt change overnight. It took time to accomplish such a transition.

The Indian culture has always been very sure of how it indoctrinates all of us on how love should be defined. Love happened to be a state of an illicit affiliation across the population. Love marriages were infrequent. The process relied on a technique of choosing partners by parents or by relatives which hardly had any factual justification. It is believed that India pioneered the concept of love making with different postures and techniques. Kissing in mouth is also believed to be practiced first in India. But talking about sex still remains a taboo for us. We were compelled to illustrate love only to be process of emotional manifestation of affection. The ideas must have transformed over the years but it is still not clear as to why we always make an effort to hush up while talking about physical proximity.

The sixty four arts of sex have been discussed extensively many times earlier. But it had never been discussed to raise awareness. Weve tried to mask it in the name religion cast or creed. Weve been made to believe that talking about sexual interest is highly deleterious to the protocols of societal orderliness. The transformation of the ideology of love and sex gets the biggest thumbs down here.

The transformation is a continuous process. Love might have been defined in various ways but the essence of it remains unchanged no matter how much effort we put in to cloak it completely.

"The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time." -Lawrence Durrell

Desires

Addaholism
If you happen to live in Kolkata and have not got yourself trapped in the so-called adda, you are probably as good as Hrithik Roshan with the cricket bat. When two pedestrians meet on their way, they speak something just like the two ants meet in the long queue, do not matter if they are known to each other or not. A question is thrown to xbabu with a typical bazaar-bag without having any intention to go elsewhere and the adda begins with the prize height of all items and it may be ended at Brazilian football. It is commonly seen when you are at a market place in the morning or any park or playground in the evening. adda is the fabulous happening for all age groups, only the topics differs. Earlier Coffee House was the adda prone zone of highly intellectual and educated people. The topics of those people were really precious and there were many things to learn there from. College goers of that time always visited Coffee House to earn knowledge besides the bookish, from those peoples conversation. Reputed persons, viz. Manna De, Pulak Banerjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Sunil Ganguly, Aparna Sen, Shubhendu Chatterjee, Samaresh Bose, Buddha Prasad Sengupta, Sambhunath Banerjee and many others. Now it is a craze that the teenagers, after their colleges get over, will visit Coffee House atleast once to spend their time to discuss on not so decent topics with the friends. For them this is only adda. They are not interested to listen to the conservation of others, which will really be beneficial for them. Actually adda just means to ridicule the other persons, to all the youngsters. For them adda zones are college canteens, balcony, terrace or sometimes in the class if the teacher is yet to come. We repeatedly claim us as modern and we follow the Western Culture. But still the cyber cafe of internet chatting has not been able to take the place of adda corners also help the students / teenagers to be aware of the current affairs and to collect opinions of others at the same age group. It is not at all limited to the boundary of school or colleges or benches of park because it also means a lot for the members of the family. From my childhood I get acquainted to the joint family where we could be able to find the group of different ages. The adda is not only limited to the room but it is also continued in the stairs creating a traffic jam in the house itself. I really feel that we all are addaholic and it is impossible to get rid of this habit. Actually, none will try to give up this habit. In any of the family occasions, our family numbers will sit for the dinner or lunch wherever it is, in the last batch and they will need at least an hour to get up from their seats after completing lunch or dinner.

Intersection of all the layers of adda is, if a gossip is initiated in the name of the topic, then it is an about turn to another direction. All Bengalis feel proud thinking themselves as the inventor of this typical adda But Satyajit Roy told in his film Agantuk with the dialogue given by Utpal Dutt that, thousands of years ago the adda was invented in Greece at Athense Parta, as Platos Academica was the Philosophers, Scientists etc gathered and discussed for the improvement and development of the society. Actually, addas of those days and recent times have hell and heaven differences in the heights of standards. It is totally a false proud which is reclaimed by the Bengalis. It should be cared by them, the adda means not refusal of awareness or not taking any matter seriously. Todays adda means only wastage of valuable time. So CALCUTTANSOOPS!! SORRY!! KOLKATANS think once again!

"There is no remedy for love but to love more." -Thoreau

WE!

Seasons
Winter of 2008 The roses are red, the ocean is blue, O my darling, I love you. Its a dream world. Life doesnt seem to be any better than a bed of roses. Its magic. Its no longer me but its together we. SHE was happy.

Summer of 2010 Smudged kajal. Dried tears. Choked throat. A tired soul. A broken heart. A left alone SHE. Yes, the summer of 2010 showered her with all those experiences. It still seems to be a matter of yesterday. A blink of an eye and all her dreams shattered. The trust was ripped apart. The promises were forgotten. The event unfolded itself unexpectedly and all of a sudden. With no prior intimation. She was not happy but pretended to be. Spring of 2013 Long hours in office. Partying with family. Weekend tours with friends. Music. Adventure. But still a lonely SHE. Yes, the loneliness has stayed back since then. Its the third year and she is still getting over it. Slowly, at a snails pace. It is difficult and it does sometimes seem impossible. It is really not possible to shift+delete all memories of your first love, first date, first kiss. When you know it was so pure and so unconditional. You tend to remember the movies seen together, the shared pani-puris, the mid-night drives, getting drenched in rain together, the birthdays, the anniversaries, the stupid fights, the breakup warnings and finally the BETRAYAL. Quoting a well-wisher, A romantic relation is a completely different ball-game altogether. Its like a magic. All other relations may be of equal value, but a romantic relation has a direct link with your heart. A loss in any A, B, C, D relation may have a temporary effect on you. But a loss

in a true romantic relation is a loss for life. A vacuum is created which is difficult to fill. Its a black hole. Its a paradox that over the years she has also understood that these are experiences that help one to grow as a person mentally and may be spiritually too. It helps to act as a healer for somebody else in need. (Even she was lucky to get a healer). Sometimes negative experiences are of utmost importance to get positive learning. She still does love herself, her life and wouldnt probably want any bit of it to be different had she been given the option to edit it as per self choice. Although, it may happen that in an Autumn of 2019 (hypothetically), she would be busy playing ludo with her kids and somewhere deep inside, still A lonely SHE would be lost in the memories of Winter of 2008.

"Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." -St. Augustine

Through our eyes, the visual acoustics

Dear Readers, We really thank you for the kind of response and the encouragement that we got from your side. We wish to get the same in future too. Our next issue is set to come out in next month, March13. We invite suggestions from our readers on ways to improve Cocktail. Please put in your thoughts as to what other areas you would like us to feature in the coming issues. In addition to this we also request all our dear readers to contribute with your articles, poems, photographs and all that you wish to share on this forum and make Cocktail a success. We would really appreciate to receive your mails, sent at [email protected].

Cocktail Team

"I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love." -Henry Ward Beecher