The Sunderbans - Paradise Preserved

So, this was a family trip after a long time, probably the last time we had a family trip was back when I was in Class 10th (yes, like a typical Indian child, I count my life not in years, but in Classes) to Rajasthan, that too was without dada (for the uninitiated to Bengali, it means brother). So, it was after a long while that we were all free at the same time of the year, and I suggested the Sunderbans to my father when he asked me about whether I'd like to go to Sikkim (no offence to Sikkim, but I'd just been to Dalhousie, a hill station, recently).

So, we went on a Government-owned cruise boat. As with everything that has the word "Government" associated with it, dada and I did not have many expectations out of this ship, the Sarbajaya. But we were fairly surprised. The ship was small, by among the much smaller fishing boats and day-only cruises, it was quite large. The lower deck looked like a railway compartment, and the toilets were small, but clean (that, of course, was the biggest relief). The upper deck was done like a small restaurant.

Of course, we had to travel 3 hours by bus to reach the place where we went up on the cruise, Sonakhali. The bus journey was particularly painful, and by the time I reached Sonakhali, my enthusiasm for the cruise had been lost already. And then the cruise started on the river. The first few moments were sheer joy - the cold wind kissing my skin, and soon we entered the "core" area of the Sunderbans (basically, uninhabited land). Dada had expected the Sunderbans to be marshy, but it really felt like a huge ocean and big islands in the ocean. The islands, of course, were fully of dense mangrove forests. Oh, that reminds me - Sunderbans is named after the Sundari (Mangrove) tree.

We stopped at a watch tower in the evening. People were searching for tigers, but I always knew that on such trips, searching for tigers is like searching for toothpicks in a desert. Some people got too excited, calling crab holes as tiger footprints. So, we all went back to the cruise. By seven at night, it was dead cold, the wind was as cold as it gets in Delhi, and I was on the upper deck, sitting in the cold wind (mainly because I was having breathing issues in the lower deck). We stopped at another watch tower for the night, and after a rather good dinner, we slept on board, while the ship was anchored.

Early next morning, we visited two watch towers. In the first one, we saw a rather shy crocodile. Now, tigers I knew we wouldn't see, but I was really hoping for a few crocs on the river, but what we could see were just eyes and a snout. That, my friends, is what disappointment is. This morning, we were going near this German family. They didn't understand English, and despite doing a diploma course in the language (which I usually don't attend), I couldn't understand German. It was only later in the day when the little girls were practicing their numbers did I realise that they were speaking German. There was also another European couple (probably French or Polish), but I barely interacted with them. And in this way, about two dozen tiger-hoping-but-disappointed humans came back at around noon.

So, it was twenty four hours on the sea (yes, the river was as broad as a sea. At times, the eye couldn't even see the other bank). At first, to be back on land was a bitter-sweet feeling. Yes, I wanted to be back all the while, but finally when getting down, it felt like a transition from peace to the noise of human existence. The Sunderbans are still dense, still beautiful and enigmatic. By the time my mind was getting used to that kind of peace, it was all over. And now it is back to the rigmarole of college-life-exams. How I wish there was a middle path between the two. Probably that is there for me to discover.

So, all in all, the Sunderbans is a place worth visiting once in a lifetime. Of course, no big bangs on this trip, just the whole experience of a river cruise (you can also, of course, go on the luxury cruises that cost about 20 thousand per person). How highly would I rate this trip? Decent, not as good as a history-rich Rajasthan sounds to a history buff like me, but its as close to undisturbed forests as you get. You obviously don't get into the forests, and that kind of adds to the entire enigma of the forests. Probably there was a free royal bengal tiger lurking just 10-odd metres from you. You'll never know. And like so many things in life, some questions are better left unanswered.

Why Facebook No Longer Works

Facebook's importance in my life cannot be understated. For four months of my life after the boards, facebook was my only interaction point with the outside world. I've met so many of my lost friends on facebook and this beautiful technology has allowed me to meet up with them. It is a good way to keep in touch, for sure.

But nowadays, every time I come on facebook, there is a certain morbidity I feel. It feels like "this isn't the true world, what am I doing here?". It all feels very superficial - to look at friends' photos, to comment below that. I mean, talking to people personally seems so much better - communication can then be free.

Have I changed? Has life around me changed? Why does facebook, the site that sustained me for 4 months - and the site on which I had become a permanent feature, not look so interesting anymore? Well, because now I enjoy being physically with my friends, talking to them personally, hanging out with them. Facebook doesn't allow me to do that, doesn't allow me to go to Kamla with them, have food with them.

But is facebook all useless now? Of course not. I can still meet new people here, and facebook still remains a good starting point for a friendship. And it is still a good place to keep your friends updated about what is happening in your life. So, for the past and for the future, I'm still sticking to my old flame, facebook.

Lonely at the Top

So, here comes another one of my seemingly endless self-obsessed, self-praising and self-deprecating posts. But this one is going to be more general, I promise (at least when compared to the ones that came before).

So, here it goes. For so many years now, in school and outside, I've been chasing success like a hungry hyena. I've made sacrifices on the way, like every other person does, and I've not really let emotions ever sway me. In class 9th, I used to study 10-12 hours - utilise every moment of my life to study. And finally, after so many years of chasing, I was at the pinnacle of my success when I topped the Class 12th board exams in Delhi.

But then I looked back, and I realised that i had given up too much. Primary among them that I had given up on a lot of socialising. True, I'm not really your typical social person, but I could have become social - I could have FORCED MYSELF to become social. But I didn't - because what I aimed at that moment did not require me to be social. I kind of ignored my family life. I was so engrossed in the pursuit of academic excellence that I forgot to make my parents feel special. I forgot to tell them how much they matter to me. I forgot to celebrate their little joys and sorrows.

Basically, I forgot how to live life. I'd turned myself into an emotionally unmovable block of stone. And perhaps that is what many of us end up doing. We chase something so blindly, that we forget everything around us. Its like Arjuna and the fish's eye. The fish eye becomes more important to us. And why? Do the goals in life deserve the attention we give them?

Then i came to Stephen's. For the first few weeks, I was, yes, the "Delhi Topper", the quintessential nerd whom everybody respects and loathes at the same time. But then some people made me realise my insufficiencies. They showed me that, in life, to be successful is a different ballgame than to be successful in school.

I've given up a lot to be where I am, yes ... but now that I am in college, I want to do everything that I have not done till now. I want to go around watching movies, I want to wile away my time chatting to people, I want to be myself - dance in my crooked ways, go to college without bathing. Everything I did not do, I want to do now.