ChinmayC Blog

Late Ramen Sarma Death strikes its victims in varying forms. Sometimes it takes one unawares. Sometimes it makes one embrace death second by second. It's not known why a particular kind of person deserves a certain kind of death. It stalks, always; be it in terms of diseases, accidents or any natural or unnatural causes. When I lost the youngest of my beloved maternal uncles that was a kind of an experience I was desperate to share with all. He had only minor ailments like pain in the legs, of course, apart from well-controlled diabetes and moderate blood pressure. Ramen Sarma worked as public prosecutor in the district court. He was always a cheerful person and cracked jokes or mimicked funny lines at every encounter we had. He had been my all time favorite since childhood days. He was a happy-go-lucky one. He never bothered about what to eat or what not to eat and spent more than his salary-always. He was a renowned stage actor and also acted in a few Assamese feature films. It w...

Late Anjali Barua (Biju Baideo) She was preparing for the marriage of her youngest son to be held within a few days. That day was really hectic. She visited nearly fifty households around the city and extended personal invitations to them. She reached home just before eight in the night. She was not at all aware that the stalker had entirely different designs ready for her. A unique plan at that. She was a bubbly girl from childhood days and was immensely popular. She was also a talented singer. Though she did not pursue it to professional levels she never left it either-continuing to perform in private sessions and family functions. She got married to a business stalwart and immediately set about putting her new home in perfect order. Her home was always abuzz with guests and relatives from all sides and of all connections. The one storied bungalow was lovingly named 'canteen' by many due its staggering hospitality at any time of the day or night. Slowly she got into the busin...

The way death claims its victims is as normal as it is unique. One wonders who writes the scripts for some of the victims who perish without knowing why. These scripts are always most inhumanly creative, cruel beyond imagination and most horrendously instantaneous. True, one would never know the when-how-where of one’s last earthly activity, but one has the right to know at least why there is discrimination in the scripts, and this question we had raised earlier also. Of course, the answers would never come. The youngest member of the family had all the right to be excited at the coming event. It was too early for him to get unduly concerned about the ways of the eternal stalker named death. His earthly existence began just about six years ago, and every small or big pleasure entertained him thoroughly. And this time it was big. His father was planning to buy a car. He was doing the countdown one month in advance making or revising future plans every single day. Why him, no one in the...

Power supply in the state of Assam presently cannot just be said as erratic, it is atrocious. It cannot just be said as load shedding, because in load shedding there is a method. This is madness that has no method. It is raging across the state, although more tellingly in lower and central Assam where rains have been scanty over the last two months and people are faced with oppressively humid heat conditions. The sky remains cloudy and no rain falls eventually, not even welcome winds blow across. If you are inside you sweat on with a severe kind of consistency. If you are out you are almost roasted alive. Those who can afford an inverter still sweat at the thought of how to charge that relief-giving unit, because for that you need power. Evenings are even worse because gleeful swarms of mosquitos add to your dark sticky woes. Small time operators who depend on their desktops for the daily bread are finding it hard to survive. Power supply comes for five minutes and goes nuts for 2-3 h...

He was probably the most famous Sikh comedian ever in Indian Television and movies. He gave us a taste of a comedy show in the early years of National Network telecasts in Doordarshan. That time Doordarshan was the only television media and we were used to watching foreign comedy shows. But this brilliant comedian-writer-director enthralled us with indigenous doses of humor, wit, satire and fun in his comedy shows for the first time in Indian television. Jaspal Bhatti, the innocuous looking Sardar with a disarming smile whose one dialogue is enough to make you laugh out.   And his insightful storytelling was capable of making you cry too.  Jaspal Bhatti made his appearance in Doordarshan in the eighties with his TV Series Ulta Pulta and Flop Show . The shows were instant hits and he became a household name in India. His actor-wife Savita Bhatti appeared with him all the way and they were inseparable and one of the most loved couples. Later in the nineties when other channels...

You have to drive around in this city of Mumbai , particularly after nine in the evening, to witness rampant breaking of traffic signals. And the unabashed leader in this would be the Brihan Mumbai (Greater Mumbai) Electric Supply and Transport ( BEST ) Undertaking or Corporation—the state-run city bus monopoly service since 1947. If you are a strictly law-abiding citizen driving your car you will wait patiently till the red signal turns into green, But you are likely to be stunned by BEST buses zooming past you in gay disregard of rules. Once that happens there will be instant followers and if you still insist on observing rules you will be rudely honked out the way making you break signals howsoever loath it is to you! Not only that, the bus drivers often tend to forget the actual size of their vehicle in trying to squeeze through giving you the shivers. To make matter worse for you, they also give you the left indicator light if they want to turn right! As is their habit, if they co...

Yesterday evening I just alighted from the bus and was heading for the egg shop using the pavement. All of a sudden I heard a peculiar sound and my right arm went numb up to the finger tips. I couldn't even move it. I looked around uncertainly to know what happened--was it a bullet or someone hit me or was it a bomb and all. One shopkeeper then told me that nobody did anything. A stone bigger than the cricket ball just shot off from under the wheels a running truck and hit my right arm. I then saw the stone lying by the side of the road. I wondered aloud. My God, it hit me with such force I failed to imagine could happen. I proceeded towards my destination and bought my eggs. Then the pain came on and I felt dizzy. I decided to sit down inside the shop and shopkeeper was very helpful. He took my mobile and called my wife there. As I took the tetanus injection and prescribed medicines at the nearest clinic I thought about what could have happened. If the hit was just one foot above...