Life, post-bonus, looks distinctly good ... financially, at least.

May be that is a very materialistic way of looking at life - a lot different from how it used to be even a decade back. But then, 10 years back I never thought I'd own shares in a multinational.

Had been to the land of hookers and pimps (Thailand - which has cities like Bang-kok and Phuk-et) last week. Have been busy telling friends and colleagues that a good Bengali only watches from a distance, and fantasizes ... nothing more.

But shocking to see the extent of cleanliness that exists in Thailand. Parts of Bangkok and Pattaya can be passed off as any western city. And only two decades back the country was as backward economically as any other large Indian city.

The pics: a) the Irish pub where we used to go for our grub in Pattaya; b) the private beach from our hotel.

I am decidedly happy !!

After screwing around with the website for the last two years, the newspaper where I worked last - and for a better of my journalist career - finally has some of my old articles up in the archive .... some 136 of them.

Ok, not many but at least some exist .... and it feels great to re-live the past.

Medical Miracle

I have been reading in some blogs comments that Bengalis have had so little to cheer about over the last few decades - except for Tagore and Ray and more recently one Ganguly.

Perhaps it's time to add one more to that list - Mamata Banerjee!!

The lady decides to go on a fast for the most ludicrous of reasons, after creating a nuisance through a series of bandhs and associated tamasha and holding the entire state to ranson.

Incredibly now, she's into her 24th day of fasting!!! Who's ever heard of that!! She came on national television to claim that these days people who go on a fast rely on energy liquids and stuff, something she has desisted from.

Surely she is a medical miracle. The body, though mostly draped with a shawl, shows no apparent visible signs of a person who is on a fast for over 3 weeks. Her famous triceps remain as muscular as they 23 days back. Her voice, slightly soft at the start of the TV interview, was back to the usual high decibels we associate her with within 30 secs. And she's not scared of death.

This is just enviable - for someone who used to benchpress 150 lbs at one time, just a 3-day viral attack had made me lose 5 kilos 2 months back!!! So how does she do it??

Whichever photographer manages to get her taking food on the sly, it would be the break of a lifetime!!!

After a year and a half of baby-sitting, the wife is finally going back to work. To being a journalist. And to doing what I did for a better part of my working life.

And all this just when I had thought I had totally got journalism out of my system.

The new ME

Life has come a full circle in the last three years.

It has changed in the manner I never ever imagined it would. There has been periods of frustration in between, as it would for anyone who wakes up one morning and decides to change his profession totally disillusioned. I have often wondered whether I've done the right thing - pondered from time to time whether I should go back, and indeed have been offered to go back to doing what I had been for the past decade quite a few times by friends, family and former bosses.

I didn't. In restrospect, it has been a good decision. Actually, it has been a GREAT decision!

I no longer live in that well (kupomonduk, as they say in Bengali) I was in, and my perspective and attitude towards life and work has metamorphosed completely. And for the good. In short, I feel like I am a new person.

Hence, the new blog.

PS: I don't know yet whether work pressure and responsibilities (and promises of more from April) will allow me to be a regular here, but it is yet another attempt.