Those childhood evenings of mine

It's an evening of a weekend. I am leaning over the head board of the bed in the room on the second floor of our ancestral house at Sealdah. My dad's friends and their families have come. Someone is playing harmonium, accompanied by "tabla" and "nal" whereas somebody is busy shaking the malacas to the beats. Masala "mudi"(puffed rice) has been served as snacks and my dad is singing. The types of songs range from those by Sachin Deb Barman to Mrinal Chakraborty, Tagore's songs to Nazrul Islam's, that of Ramkumar Chattopadhyay's to Nidhu Babu's "tappa"(a form of Bengali music) and from Harry Belafonte's Jamaica Farewell to Goanish "Kaibaroto Kumro Muzo Maima Kadilo" - a typical Bengali "adda".
This was a very common picture when I was in my primary school days. Sometimes I used to enjoy those evenings and sometimes I felt bored. But subcounsciously and unknowingly the memories of those childhood evenings of mine occupied an underlying space in my heart and soul which I had never realised this way before.
Yesterday I went to watch Guzaarish. In the last scene of the movie which was the day before Hrithik was supposed to die a Goanis song was sung in chorus. And I felt something! Something just flashed like a retrospective! Oh my God,it's the same song "Kaibaroto Kumro Muzo Maima Kadilo" that I used to hear my dad singing decades back in those old childhood evenings of mine. I felt strange. I felt sad. But I felt contented! I started missing my dad, I started missing my childhood all of a sudden, all over again. I sensed a strong, peculiar, different, usual but a lost connection with those long passed happy childhood evenings of mine. I couldn't believe that I still remember the song. I still have not forgotten even a trivial thing like the origin of it which years back my dad must had told me and I listened to it giving least importance like any other usual knowledge shared by parents! My heart got filled with the warmth and the sweetness of those golden childhood evenings of mine. Every moment of it suddenly has become so live, so fresh, so pure , so naive that I can still see my dad singing the song in one of those old lost happy childhood evenings of mine...

A Proud Indian

I pledge all Indians my sisters.
But I don't bother to feel comfy
in my abutting state.
And I boast to be a proud Indian!

I go abroad for vacation.
But I don't care to excavate
the inherent asset of my homeland.
And I boast to be a proud Indian!

I admire and adopt other's culture.
But I don't feel the shame
to neglect my own heritage.
And I boast to be a proud Indian!

I curse the system of my country.
But I don't feel the urge
to change the pattern.
And I boast to be a proud Indian!

Years pass by.
Independence day comes and goes.
I celebrate it like one more holiday.
And I still boast to be a proud Indian!!!

The Loneliness Is Mine

It's more than two years now
when I left you for the first time,
it was I who moved on
yet the loneliness was mine!

I miss the sprightliness of yours,
I miss your chastity,
I miss the restlessness of yours,
I miss your originality,
yet I moved on
and the loneliness was mine!

You gave me the best of your love,
you taught me to take it easy,
you kept me alive,
you fetched my lying eyes honesty,
yet I moved on.
But I can't tell you why
the loneliness was mine!

I know you want to walk me home,
but I am a big big girl now,
I know you want to take me to your heart again,
but I will have to move on.
And
the loneliness will be mine,
Oh Calcutta!
the loneliness will be mine!

Liking what you do is Happiness

Blogging for the first time with a topic like this is not that usual but this idea or fact or whatever you may call it has always made me think - Liking what you do is Happiness, Doing what you like is Freedom.
I believe I am happy, oops, happier than the happiest person in the world. But I don't know whether it's because I love what I do or I do what I like. If the former is true then happiness sounds to be nothing but compromise.
From the childhood, we grow up to make our dreams of standing on our feet come true, we grow up wishing that one day will come when we will do whatever we like and none will stop us and our lives will be full of happiness. Now, being grown ups we see a world too different from those our young minds used to hallucinate. Here we no more feel happy, we don't feel anything. Instead we define everything and then we decide whether we are living up to the definition!
Always doing whatever I like has brought me happiness. May be at times it seems to the world what I love to do is not only just freedom but misuse of it which sounds absolutely fine to me if it paves the path of happiness, after all we are striving to live with the objective of being happy, that's what everyone wants from life, a continuous and genuine happiness. But obviously this happiness in no way should cost anything possibility of which is there when one is too free to enjoy one's freedom. On the other extreme we can't be as happy as we make our minds to be. But the hard truth is that happiness comes from the simple harmony between the man and the life he leads to make it successful which success is not the key to happiness whereas the other way round happiness is the key to success and one will be successful if he likes what he does, finds the pleasure in it. So the question remains unanswered - Liking what you do is happiness or doing what you like is???