NY/NJ Bengali

Cartoon of the Week 13: Prediction

Many of us are strong believers in astrology and other similar practices like palmistry, tarot cards etc. etc. that claim to predict one’s future. A huge industry runs on servicing such people and also provides employment to millions. The television and other media advertisements of such sooth sayers and fortune tellers prove that they earn enough money to invest in these marketing campaigns. The precious and semi-precious gem stone market in India depends on the belief that the negative influence of the planets and stars can be countered by wearing a specific kind of gem stone that can cost thousands of rupees. Continue reading Cartoon of the Week 13: Prediction…

BSL : Bangla as a Second Language

I had often been requested to write plays for our children. With our kids in mind, few years ago I wrote a play titled BSL or Bangla as a Second Language. BSL is a hilarious short play for children (pre-teens, teens, young adults) of Bengali origin. Neil, Nick, Jay and Seema live in USA. But like all children of Bengali speaking parents, they are being forced to learn Bengali (or Bangla) against their will. Neil, the most innovative and smart kid he is, invents a device that can make one learn Bangla (or any other language) in seconds. Nick agrees to be the first guinea pig for the trials of this machine and the results are - quite unexpected to say the least. Continue reading BSL : Bangla as a Second Language…

Cartoon of the week 12: Culture Shock

The other day I was at the Union County College (UCC) to participate in a seminar/talk about immigrant issues as portrayed in works of art and literature. The topic emerged from the works of Jhumpa Lahiri, since her two books, “Interpreter of Maladies” and “The Namesake”, are being selected as the college novels for the 2008-2009 term. After my talk, few of us were chatting regarding how we deal with cultural differences in our everyday life in this country. Each of us were narrating some incidents in our life and in connection to “The Namesake” we were talking about the significance of names in different cultures, how we address each other, and how they are being interpreted. Continue reading Cartoon of the week 12: Culture Shock…

OBAMA WINS

November 4, 2008 will go down as one of the greatest days in America’s history. Today, the Americans rose up to a new hope, to look forward to the change promised by their President elect Barack Obama. Barriers of prejudice has been shattered and the impossible has been made possible. The entire world, along with the Americans, is looking towards the new leader with the hope that America will once again prove to be the great land of opportunity, a country that lends its helping hand to all in need, and a country that inspires everybody around the globe. The following two pictures illustrate how much hope the World has on this new leader.
An Indian artist (in Ahmedabad) makes a painting of American president elect Barack Obama and Mahatma Gandhi to mark the victory of Obama (photo courtesy AP Photo/Ajit Solanki). It is interesting to see how people are relating Obama to Mahatma Gandhi - through civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.

In Puri (Orrisa, India) a sand sculpture congratulating US president-elect Barack Obama by the Indian sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik on a beach has become a major attraction (Photo courtsey AFP/Sanjib Mukherjee). These photos clearly indicate that the World (and India) is hoping that Obama will be able to bring in lasting peace by keeping his promise of working with the countries of the world.

Let’s all stand behind this charismatic leader and help him build a new future for all of us.

Cartoon of the Week 11: Sheer Pleasure

Barack Obama: Son-in-Law

by AMITAVA SEN

It is hard to be in a party these days without entering in to a conversation about the presidential election. My Bengali friends are frenzied and crazed about the prospect of Barack Obama getting elected our president. They are incredulous about the fact that they are living in the same planet and at the same age as The One. It’s like the second comings of Jesus Christ, Gautama Budhha and Lord Krishna, all combined together. Throw in Elvis Presley and a sprinkle of Karl Marx in the mixture. Barack Obama, we are sure is going to set every thing right on January 21, 2009 and in the process make us all millionaires with his tax cut. Talk about world peace? We are going to dinner with Iran, Al Qaeda and Taliban, our buddies and we will all live happily ever after in peace. Dow is going to touch 20,000 in weeks, our 401(K) reverting to its full glory and all those crooks in Wall Street will be sent to gallows. Continue reading Barack Obama: Son-in-Law…

Cartoon of the Week 10: The Power of Salt

In the famous Bengali play “Alibaba” by Khirodprasad Bidyabinod, when the righteous dacoit chief came as a guest to Alibaba’s home - he mentioned about one diet restriction that he had - he doesn’t eat salt. Obviously his salt restriction was not because of hypertension or any other nephrological disease that he might have had (the playwright did not give any clues except that he was quite hot tempered). He didn’t want Alibaba to serve him any salty food because then he would have had to pay for his salt indebtedness. He would no longer be able to kill Alibaba and his family and loot back his wealth. He could never be a “Namak Haram”! Such is the power of salt. This mythological power of salt has been used as a test of ones righteousness. If you ever ingest salt served by somebody, you should always sing his praise - in Bengali we say “Noon khai jaar - Goon gai taar!” But these days we hardly obey such silly dictum. Continue reading Cartoon of the Week 10: The Power of Salt…

Chandrayaan-1 Lifts Off

Last night (Tuesday Oct 21, 9.52pm US Eastern time) I watched with awe when the giant PSLV rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space center in Shriharikota, India, carrying with it India’s pride - the Chadrayaan-1 unmanned lunar mission. Largely ignored by the US media, the Chandrayaan-1 mission may not be of much interest to the US population but it is a giant step for India to prove to the world that India can do whatever it puts its mind to. With the success of this mission, India will join the select group of countries who have made lunar missions. Many are asking for the economic justification of such an expensive adventure. When the majority of Indians are lacking the basic necessities of life, scientific extravaganza like a “Lunar mission” is seen as nothing but sheer luxury. The nuclear exercise at least had some tangible benefits in the defense and energy sector. What benefits are we expecting by sending a box full of instruments to the moon? Are we sending a space craft to the moon only because “it is there”? Or is it because we want to stake a claim on a new frontier by planting the tri-color just as we did in Antartica? Continue reading Chandrayaan-1 Lifts Off…

Cartoon of the Week 9: Are we Missing Something?

From the recent comments and postings on this and other blogs and from the “addas” at various Bijoya Sammilani parties, I keep on getting a constant message - maybe we are missing the good old style Durga Puja as it used to happen in this part of the world. We all can agree on one thing that back home, the Bijoya Dashami was one of the saddest day of the year. No amount of “Naru”, “Laddu” or “Ghugni” could sweep away the sadness. But when we came to this country, we discovered that Durga Puja does not have to end on one specific day. Continue reading Cartoon of the Week 9: Are we Missing Something?…

Twitter - The Latest Craze in Micro-blogging

In today’s world of minuscule attention span, writing and reading long blog articles are sure to lose popularity. After all the “text messaging” generation does not want to spend hours reading long drawn blog essays. Hence “micro-blogging” is the rave of the day and undoubtedly, the king of micro blogging is “Twitter”. The world blog comes from “Web Logs”, which implies that blogs are essentially online logs of the blogger ramblings, sort of like a diary or online journal. Twitter does just that, it allows users to write snippets (140 characters or less) of any message that you want to share with your friends of the world, and they get logged onto your home page. But the story does not end here. If you have a bunch of friends who are interested in you, who want to know what you are up to, who would like to “follow you”, they can link up with your “Tweets” and receive an update whenever you post something through tweeter. Check out my tweeter page http://twitter.com/bhawmik to figure out what I am talking about. For example, if you’d like to follow me, just click the link “follow”. You will of course have to sign up with Twitter before you can follow somebody. People who are familiar with Orkut scrapping or Facebook wall writing or status update should get the idea, except on Twitter you are doing a one-to-many messaging, rather than one-on-one with global access.
Continue reading Twitter - The Latest Craze in Micro-blogging…