LOVE IS A POISON - MARRIAGE AD

সর্বভূতেষু ... সবাই ভূত

Suffering from hallucination

VIOLENT DUSSEHRA

Violent Dussehra TODAY - FAST-MOVING train mowing down hundreds standing on the railway track and watching Dussehra celebrations ("victory of good over evil") in Amritsar attended by the Chief Guest BJP politician Mrs. Navjot Kaur Sidhu (wife of Punjab Congress Party Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu) - an ominous portent of things to come?

Kishalay Sinha [G]

October 19, 2018

Vijaya Dashami (10th day of "Durga Puja" celebrations) विजया दशमी বিজয়া দশমী

F.

***

RAVAN KILLED

The guy who played "Ravan" in the above-mentioned Dussehra SHOW in Amritsar WAS ALSO CRUSHED TO DEATH by the fast-moving killer Express train. (This is not a laughing matter.)

***

BJP [Bhartiya Janta Party] and Congress [Indian National Congress] parties are incompatible IN THEORY but compatible IN PRACTICE, as strikingly illustrated by Navjot Kaur Sidhu of BJP (Kaur indicates a married  Punjabi female), wife of Navjot Singh Sidhu of Congress party. (Navjot Kaur Sidhu is reported to have LEFT the site in a hurry, which is reminiscent of Navjot Singh Sidhu who I think escaped in a hurry after getting involved in a case of violent road rage when he MURDERED a man by beating him VIOLENTLY with his cricket bat, though he later had to go through a murder trial; he later joined politics and became an MP - Member of Parliament - though he hardly attended Parliament and instead spent most of his time attending TV comedy shows; he is now a Minister in Punjab.)

LOVE IS A POISON

I noticed, however, that one person did not applaud, only smiled. Madame Guimet.

I could go on lying - I'd done it my entire life, and I could lie about anything, except for what Madame Guimet already knew.

"I have some advice for you," said Madame Guimet [pronounced Gourmet?]. "My first piece of advice is the hardest. Never fall in love. Love is a poison. Once you fall in love, you lose control over your life - your heart and mind belong to someone else. Your existence is threatened. You start to do everything to hold on to your loved one and lose all sense of danger. Love, that inexplicable and dangerous thing, sweeps everything you are from the face of the earth and, in its place, leaves only what your beloved wants you to be."

I remembered the look in the eyes of Andreas's wife before she shot herself.

"People say life is not that complicated, but life is VERY complicated. What's SIMPLE is wanting an ice cream, a doll, or to win a game of petanque [an easy game]. SIMPLE is wanting to be famous, but staying that way for more than a month or a year is what is hard. SIMPLE is wanting a man with all your heart, but that becomes impossible and complicated when that man is married with children and wouldn't leave his family for anything in this world."

She took a long pause. Her eyes filled with tears, and I realized she was speaking from experience.

"When a woman or a man is abandoned by the person they love, they are focused on their own pain. No one stops to wonder what is happening to the other person. Might they also be suffering, having left behind their own heart to stay with their families because of society? Every night they must lie in their beds, unable to sleep, confused and lost, wondering if they made the wrong decision. Other times, they feel certain it was their duty to protect their families and children. But the more the moment of separation grows distant, the more their memories turn into a longing for that paradise lost.

"The other person can no longer help himself. He becomes distant. There's no wind strong enough to make the boat change direction; it stays in the harbor among still waters. Everyone suffers; those who leave, those who stay, and their families and children. But no one can do anything."

(From Paulo Coelho: "THE SPY", A Novel, Vintage/Penguin Random House India, Translated from the Portuguese by Zoe Perry)

Moving... psychological realism.

Kishalay Sinha [G]

***

Yes, I was a prostitute. Yes, I was a liar, one so compulsive and out of control that I often forgot what I'd said and had to expend great mental energy to cover my blunders.

All the men I've known have given me joy, jewelry, or a place in society, and I've never regretted knowing them - all except the first, the school principal, who raped me when I was sixteen.

He called me into his office, locked the door, then placed his hand between my legs and began to masturbate. At first I tried to escape, saying, gently, that this wasn't the time or place. But he said nothing. He pushed aside some papers on his desk, laid me on my stomach, and penetrated me all in one go, as if he were scared that someone might enter the room and see us.

My mother had taught me that "intimacy" with a man should take place only when there is love, and when that love is for life. I left his office confused and frightened, determined not to tell anyone what had happened, until another girl brought it up when we were talking in a group. From what I could tell, it had already happened to two of them, but to whom could we complain? We risked being expelled from school and sent back home, unable to explain the reason. So we were forced to keep quiet. My solace was knowing I wasn't the only one.

From that experience, I began to associate sex with something mechanical, something that had nothing to do with love.

If it weren't for dance and for an officer named Andreas, my years in Indonesia would have been a never-ending nightmare.

Andreas shared that, one night, Rudolf said in a moment of alcoholic candor:

"I'm afraid of Margarethra. Have you noticed how the other officers look at her? She could leave me at any moment."

It was this sick logic that made him grow even worse. He called me a whore because I wasn't a virgin when I met him. He wanted to know the details of every man he imagined I'd once had. Sobbing, I told him the story of the principal in his office. Sometimes he beat me, saying I was lying, and other times he masturbated and demanded more details. He went so far as to send a servant with me to buy something that looked like the school uniform I'd worn when he met me. Whenever he was possessed by some unknown demon, he'd order me to wear it. He took the most pleasure from re-enacting the rape scene; he would lay me down on the desk and penetrate me violently as I cried out, so all the servants could hear and assume that I loved it.

Sometimes I had to behave like a good little girl, who endured the rape; other times he made me scream for him to be more violent, like I was a whore and liked it.

Gradually I lost sight of who I was.

(From Paulo Coelho: "THE SPY", A Novel, Vintage/Penguin Random House India, Translated from the Portuguese by Zoe Perry)

The above passages remind Me of the "ME TOO MOVEMENT".

Kishalay Sinha [G]

***

MARRIAGE AD

One day, out of boredom, I began reading the classified ads in the newspaper of a neighboring town. And there it was: Rudolf MacLeod, an officer in the Dutch army of Scottish descent, currently stationed in Indonesia, seeks young bride to get married and live abroad.

There was my salvation! Officer. Indonesia. Strange seas and exotic worlds. Enough of conservative, Calvinist Holland, full of prejudice and boredom. I answered the ad, enclosing the best and most sensual picture I had. Little did I know that the ad had been placed as a joke by one of the captain's friends. My letter would be the last of sixteen to arrive.

He came to meet me dressed as if he were going to war: in full uniform, with a sword hanging to the left, and his long whiskers coated in pomade, which somewhat hid his ugliness and lack of manners.

At our first meeting, we talked about trivial matters. I prayed for him to return, and my prayers were answered; a week later he was back, to the envy of my girlfriends and the despair of the school principal, who possibly still dreamed of another day like the one before. I noticed Rudolf smelled like alcohol, but did not pay it much mind. He was likely nervous in my presence, me a young woman who, according to all my friends, was the most beautiful in the class.

He asked me to marry him on our third and final meeting. Indonesia. Army captain. Voyages to far-away places. What more could a young woman want from life?

"You're going to marry a man twenty-one years your senior? Does he know you're no longer a virgin?" asked one of the girls who had the same experience with the school principal.

I didn't answer. I returned home, he respectfully asked my family for my friend, and they took a loan from the neighbors for the trousseau. We were married three months after reading the ad.

(From Paulo Coelho: "THE SPY", A Novel, Vintage/Penguin Random House India, Translated from the Portuguese by Zoe Perry)