ChinmayC Blog

  There should absolutely be no doubt that our intention here is not to discuss or re-review the all-time epic movie ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991). However, we still hope to derive some brownie points from the movie title about our proposed speculation on the phenomena of the silences of any kind—wholly related to the animal world. Now, this ‘silence’ of the ‘lambs’ is very clear in its obvious manifestation of a paralyzing terrifyingly petrifying fear of the profoundest kind, because the lambs are basically defenseless animals having no effective systems to ward off the free-flowing predators. They have no other option but to remain silent which is not so often of the discreet or non-discreet variety, because, again, they have no other practical choice. Unless, of course, should some marauding defenders appear in great numbers to fight for the rights of the lambs.   As our fully intended title suggests, it’s about the silence of any other species of animals except ...

Don’t confuse the ‘data’ in its statistical implications, here it means ‘giver’ (as per some Indian languages) or rather a ‘service provider’—the latter being the most suitable one for our purpose. Because this story refers to a DTH service provider; a service provider that is believed to have legendary origins as far as its services in a range of arenas is concerned. And this story is as told to me by a friend, and I’ve still kept it in first person, meaning him, the narrator.                                                                                    * One fine morning as I switched on my modest television set I got setup for an unpleasant surprise, literally out of the blue! The message from the service provider, the Dataslay, got fixated at the baseline of the scree...

After being crowned with the ODI World Champions title in 2019 England today has completed the global white-ball supremacy by defeating Pakistan by 5 wickets in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Final in Melbourne . Pakistan has almost done an India just managing to post a meagre target of 138 and consuming 15 overs to score 100 runs after being put into bat by England like in the semi-final against India; but the target came to be even less than India's 169 thanks to Hardik Pandya . However, their famous pace bowlers gave England a hard time and but for the resurgent Shaheen Afridi 's injury who was unable to fully bowl the last two overs of his quota the match could've gone down the wire at the death.  Like India, Pakistan openers failed once again to build the momentum and other Pak batsmen stumbled along, scoring a pitiful 18 runs in the last four death overs. But again, unlike India, they attacked England batsmen from the first over putting up two slips and not at a...

Many years back I wrote a piece titled 'Populated Movies' that was later included in my first book ' Laugh and Let Laugh ' in 2017. In that piece I argued that since India is an overpopulated country with high unemployment rates the creative art forms do adjust to that reality by trying to generate maximum employment opportunities in their projects. For example the goons in a mainstream Hindi movie: whereas just one bullet through the head by one villain is enough to kill the hero or the protagonist, the chief antagonist or the main villain sends an army of goons armed with an assortment of weapons for the job. I argued that this is done with a view to generate more employment. But I was mistaken, and so I just want to admit this here.  My argument got almost fatally shot after I watched all the three movies of the 'John Wick Franchise' (2014 onward). I failed to keep count, but hundreds of hapless goons got killed in each of the movies at the hands of the '...

That evening in end-July a Bangla family friend came to our house in Kolkata profusely sweating and drenched in it from head to foot. However he was carrying with him a packet of smoking hot beguni (Brinjal fritters) and Chops (Cutlet fritters). Before he could cool himself enough under the full-speed ceiling fan he commanded us to partake of the items before those cooled off! And yes, we had those gobbled up quick in extraordinary gourmet delight and also supported by hot steaming cups of tea! Well, in our traditional belief that ‘heat neutralizes heat’, particularly when the heat (like May) is oppressively humid (like monsoon)! This dictum is of the utmost importance now, because the supposedly wettest months of the South West Monsoon, June and July, have gone with absolutely no rains in South Bangla and Kolkata city. In fact, the month of July has proved to be the driest July in history in the Eastern and North Eastern regions of the country. And into August now, there’s hardly any...

“Hello! Is this Mr. ----?” “Yes, speaking.” “Sir, I’m calling from the Khatak Life Insurance Company…!” “Oh, welcome back! So, you’re giving me a job again, right?” “Well Sir…it’ll be a part-time job…!” “How much salary would you be giving me per month?” “Well…err…Sir! First you’ll have to come to our branch to discuss it over!” “Nah, my dear lady! I won’t come again to any branch of yours. Since you know everything about me please send me the appointment letter!” “Hmm…mmm…um…ugh…ooh…!” “Enjoy your day!” (Cuts the line … Khatak!)   *   “Hello Sir! I’m -----, calling from Khatak Bank. Can I have a minute with you please?” “About what?” “We’re giving you a credit card with a lot of benefits, specially designed for you…!” “So, nowadays you’ve started issuing credit cards to granddads too!” “Pardon Sir?” “What pardon? I know a bit about how you get our phone numbers. Now, once you get my number you have to be knowing a bit about my user profile too, no?” “Your p...

Such in-a-soup stories need to be told, because they mostly are about all those faceless people who normally have no voice. It doesn’t matter if the stories were my personal ones or somebody else’s. As you must be aware a writer or a storyteller has the choice of being the narrator in the first person or in the third person, and in post-modern storytelling even in the second person. Well, right? As you also must’ve been aware all the time that several essential services like banking were spared during the pandemic lockdowns, and as far as services at the bank branches are concerned the pandemic hit them real hard with thousands of their staff members getting the infection leading to manpower shortages which was really unfortunate. However, the pandemic had a definitive role in making online transactions a way of life, forcing even the traditionally manual-obsessed customers go for online activities. Therefore, when I discovered a bank failing even in that minimum of online presence I h...

As the saying goes ‘age is just a number’, and in some cases it is high and in other cases low. The number doesn’t necessarily have something significant to do with the mind associated inevitably with it. If we go further from year to days the numbers become even more like simple numbers. Like when we say 10 years it seems to be a very long time—a decade as you’d normally like to refer to; but if we break it in number of days it’s just 3650 days or less. However, high numbers do signify body ageing which is biological and cannot be avoided, and unfortunately, ageing is taken by others with ‘low numbers’ in a negative way. The moment people cross the number 60 they are called ‘old guys’, and when someone dies in the range between 75 and above the others say that ‘the old guy has lived enough’. Lifestyle immoderation and inherited or accidentally acquired diseases do make the process of ageing faster and painful in some. But in any case, the mind can still play a vital role.   The ...

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory of ‘Id, Ego and Superego’ the Id trait of a personality was present in the first primitive humans, but not as a part of the brain; in fact, the Freudian tripartite components had nothing to do with the grey cells. The Id trait includes the basic survival, sexual and aggressive instincts/impulses, and it acts unconsciously. Over the centuries the primitive humans started living in communities and societies, and at that time the Ego trait became important as a conscious part of a personality able to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ acts in terms of good or harm such acts could cause to the others. With more maturity the Superego trait had emerged as the ethical ‘conscience’ of human beings, always sending correcting messages to Ego whenever the Id trait overpowered it. Freud indicated that any imbalances in these three traits are bound to lead to personality disorders, like if the Id impulses totally dominate the personality that human being tur...

It just happened that I watched two movies from Hollywood and Bollywood respectively, back-to-back, and was amazed to find both movies singing paeans in praise of the antiheros, depicting their deeds in an unabashedly graphic way and even justifying it by highlighting a few ‘humanitarian’ qualities in their characters. Both movies are nearly 3-hour long, and yet not having a dull moment; both are marked by their relative reliance on machismo, black comedy and violence. The first movie, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013) directed by renowned new-era Hollywood filmmaker Martin Scorsese, I happened to watch by chance as it was available on Amazon Prime Video and also due to the fact that I greatly enjoyed the director’s two films, ‘The Departed’ (2006) and ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) recently, those two movies being part of Scorsese’s successful collaboration with the ‘Titanic’ (1997) sensation Leonardo DiCaprio which yielded four critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies so far. ...