ChinmayC Blog

His house was less than hundred meters from ours and in the same lane, that is to say, in the immediate neighborhood, and therefore, he could pass as one of our neighbours in the strictest sense. However, our relations with him hadn’t been as good neighbours, it was a doctor-patient relationship . Per our information he rented this flat for his practice while his family lived in the parental house in a nearby locality. Unless in an emergency, he went back to his family every night. At times, his wife and son came over to live with him. The flat is a one-bedroom affair: a small lobby greets you in from the main door and as you turn to your right to enter his little chamber you find straight ahead the kitchen slab which looks hardly ever used staring at you while the room on your left you’re sure is the bedroom; as you pass the door of the chamber you find a few chairs and a table propped up against the wall on your right and in front is the interior of the room containing the doctor’s p...

Breakfast at the dining table. Two ladies are talking in a rapt engagement. They've finished breakfast and the teas, but perhaps the interesting subject of their conversation keeps them engaged still. The younger lady belongs to the host family while the elder lady happens to be a surprise guest. At this moment the younger lady is describing something animatedly. The elder lady listens resting her hands on the table and bending forward to the other lady. Suddenly, a tiny droplet of the younger lady's saliva shoots out and unfortunately, lands directly on the listening lady's right forearm. She, still in the act of listening, looks mournfully at the droplet, but is too courteous lest it draws the other lady's attention and make the whole innocuous happening unnecessarily embarassing. It is not at all known though if the talking lady notices it or misses it, she as innocent as the other lady.  There has to be a bit of squirming inside the affected lady's mind, obvious...

The cameras involved in the coverage are extremely sensitive and emotive. They capture all emotions of the spectators. When a wicket of a certain team falls its supporters look as if they'll drop dead in grief, but the moment they see themselves in the big screens they burst into uncontrollable cheers! So much for IPL loyalties.  😀😀😀 Several times during a match the umpire raises his hand and points a finger very emphatically to his watch. The gullible might feel that it reminds them for how long they've been couch potatoes. No! It's a reminder of a very strategic kind like that of Putin, Biden and the like. For the knowing watchers it could be a signal for a tea or drinks or snack-chaat strategy. So much for strategies.  😀😀😀 The phenomena called The Cheerleaders have not been seen in the three editions, due credit to the Pandemic. With crowds allowed in this edition they could very well have been imported. However, the bio-bubble involved in the cheering process coul...

In his book “THE CHEERLESS CHAUFFEUR…”, Chinmay Chakravarty captures the different facets of the lives of middle-class Indians through 34 short stories. The humorous title of each story is indicative of the subtle and wry humor characteristic of the writer. Each story is a throwback on issues dominant in the India of the 1980s and 1990s . During that period technology was transforming lives in metropolitan cities. However, the social norms continued to remain mired in the India of 1970s.   The stories “ THE RAIN DRENCH ”, “YOU ARE INVITED (1 & 2)” are reflective of the hesitancy that came in the way of free interaction between men and women in the public. The 1970s was also the period when you had “leaders discussing poverty with glasses of expensive wine in air-conditioned rooms”. Many of the avowed radicals during their student days “left the left” in the 1980s (“A CIVILIZATION”).   It was also the era of shortages with “dirty-rich people in dirty-costly apparels w...

It was many years ago, we were not exactly little ones then, we were about high school leaving age: myself and my younger brother. Thanks to our father’s ways we used to be sent to our native village absolutely alone since our primary school age; he used to request the government transport service bus conductor to look after us and to put us in a bus going to our village after arriving at the major preceding bus stations. All the time nothing adverse had happened, and therefore, we were quite used to travel alone or the both of us brothers. It is not at all necessary to identify the state, towns or localities; suffice it’d be that it was somewhere in India a long time back.   We boarded the bus at around eight o’clock in the morning after taking a light breakfast at home, from the then home city we were living in, heading for our native village to spend our summer holidays. Our journey was to take at least 8/9 hours which was to deposit us first in the preceding major station fro...

Mood changes or mood swings affect every living being of the world including animals and in some cases lifeless objects too. The latter assertion may surprise many, but there are numerous instances in this regard that will be taken up as we rather moodily move along. At the very start of this month, that is August 2021, I lost my mood to write anything and everything—that is to say my mood changed—and I don’t know why. There are, as everyone knows, numerous possible reasons for this: one may feel lazy and pass time in reading rather than writing that demands more application and concentration; one may feel depressed for no reason; one may be disturbed due to happenings that relate to other people or external factors; one may be ill or under particular medicines with side effects and in the case of illness there is a vicious circle of physical illness leading to mental illness and then both affecting one another as it goes on; hormone imbalances which are a bit serious causing mood swin...

From January of the year called 2020 onwards we had been constantly getting reports of the havoc created by the SARS-Cov-2 or the COVID-19 virus in various pockets of China. From February of the same year stray cases were being reported from some parts of India and from the month of March cases were on an unmistakable rise, particularly in the states of Kerala and Maharashtra. We were also hearing about the dangerous spread in several European countries, and we even saw on television how normal ebullient parts of countries like Italy and Spain were looking like ghost cities because of the lockdown. But somehow, at that point of time neither the Indian authorities nor the public took it seriously and perhaps was not aware of the incredibly fast human-to-human transmission that the virus was capable of. Not surprising at all, because even the World Health Organization did not know much at that time. Lockdown was also a novel concept for us and many thought that lockdown was not a realist...

  Photo: sandesh.com While there has been a global race among nations for the production of the first effective COVID-19 vaccine India perhaps becomes the first nation to politicize the vaccine that is still a long way off. Yes, COVID-19 pandemic may kindly take note. There has been a lot of ‘finance’ involved in it and so the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a way, had to figure in this. Releasing the BJP Manifesto for the three-phase Bihar assembly elections starting October 28, her party promised to distribute the would-be COVID-19 vaccine absolutely free to all citizens of the state. However, it was not clarified about that segment of the state’s citizens who would not perhaps vote for the party’s alliance as to how to exclude or list them out. Apart from this the Finance Minister further justified her presence by promising around 1.9 million new jobs for Bihar.   The directly political populism of ‘vote for vaccine’ has, obviously, attracted a series of all...

At most times during the last few months it gets unbearable for the humans. From where the heck this unique virus has sprung up and why? First part of the question is answered easily enough: it is a novel strain of the existing Coronavirus and it has proved to be highly contagious, concentrating or rather specializing on human-human transmission. As to the ‘why’ it is very complicated, and correct answers could never ever be found. Before thinking about that part let’s get into another ‘why’. Why has it chosen the most crucial parts of the human anatomy—the Face, with its constituent profiles of the mouth and the nostrils, and the pair of hands that obeys all the basic commands of the humans? It is said that excess or too much of anything is bad for well-being and health. Therefore, as to the ‘why’ explanation it can be said that, basically, the virus aims at teaching humankind a terrible lesson for all their misdeeds, particularly in the past, perhaps, two centuries. That it has chos...