News update 1: I am one year older today. As to how old I am, you should never ask a thirty-four year old guy his age.
News update 2: I will be in India (New Delhi and Kolkata) in the month of March from the 1st to the 29th [dates finalized]. Tentative book reading dates are the 6th of March (New Delhi) and the 20th of March (Kolkata). Hope to meet a lot of you there.
News update 3: This is still not the cover. Just something I made to pass the time.
Have a happy new year everyone.
It was in 1984. I was sitting in front of the TV when the pre-Grammy awards program came on. In pre-MTV days, state-controlled Doordarshan had almost no Western pop/rock programming except some horrible Europop that acted as fillers.
So I had absolutely no idea as to what I was going to see. I did not even know what the Grammies were. Good Bengali boys were supposed to listen to Rabindrasangeet and not even think about the devil’s music.
And then I saw him.
I did not know his name. I neither understood the lyrics. Even if I did, I doubt whether as a seven year old I would have understood a song about an illegitimate child.
But I was blown away. By the man in the video. The tip-toe stand, the twirl, the way he moved his jacket. The walk. The beat. And the pavement glowing as he put his foot on it.
Who was this mystery man?
My maternal uncle (mama) had just come back from the US. He had a wondrous cassette player and a few cassettes. One of them was “Thriller”. It was then, over endless loops of that album, that I fell in love with what we then called “Western fast” music (as opposed to the slow Beethoven).
And I also fell in love with the man whose album it was. A man whose name I, and my generation,will never forget.
Michael Jackson.
In the spirit of this silly day dedicated to St. Valentine, I copy the viral “25 random things about me” note from Facebook.
1. I do not like driving. My official “oh ho” reason for that is when I was 8 years old, I was involved in a bus accident that killed the people I was with and I escaped death by falling between dead bodies. For which I have an excessive fear of dying on the road. Now you are free to believe that reason. Or just call it an excuse.
2. I studied in Presidency College for one day in the Economics department. I guess I was trying to follow my father’s footsteps. Didn’t last long.
Continue reading ‘The 25 Things About Me You Were Better Off Not Knowing’
You know that there is something inherently wrong with the world.
No not when a man is electrocuted and beaten to death for refusing to buy a birthday present for the Queen of the downtrodden or when suicide bombing becomes a business in Pakistan.
That’s expected.
You know there is something wrong in the world when Santa Claus gets postal, takes a gun and starts killing people.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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