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I ordered some books on flipkart last night.

1. The latest novel from Chetan Bhagat – 2 States: The Story of My Marriage – which is a story of love blooming in 2 young hearts from 2 different states and their struggle to get married. Once again it is priced at Rs. 95, but I got it at a heavily discounted (32%) price of Rs. 65!
2. Anuja Chauhan’s Zoya Factor – this was in my to-read list after a friend mentioned it esp. the use of ‘Indian English’ in the book.
3. Milton’s Paradise Lost – this one I wanted to read since a long time back but never really ended up doing so.

All of these for Rs. 384!

Sex is the celebration of highest human values from Ayn Rand’s philosophical viewpoint. Sex should be seen in the light of broader ethical and psychological theories introduced by Rand in Atlas Shrugged. It is not a mere animal instinct. It is not an act of depravity. People who have no purpose in life finds sex meaningless. Sex is a phsyical response to intellectual and spiritual values, a real concrete expression that could otherwise be felt only in the abstract.

I have set up the website for an orphanage which is located in Siliguri, the same town where I am doing my medical course. The North Bengal Orphanage or Uttar Banga Anath Ashram (as it is called in Bengali) is a flicker of hope amidst darkness. In a time when female child trafficking is rampant in our state, this orphanage takes in only girl children. The founder Uma Mallick, who is no less than a magician, does the impossible task of running the ashram despite very limited resources. Thanks to her indomitable spirit and a help from a handful of well-wishers, the 28 little girls there get basic education and a proper diet. But the children could really do with a lot more. One of their well-wishers, Dr. Anjan Kr. Das, an ex-professor from my college, felt the need for an online medium to garner help and support for the ashram. On Anjan sir’s request and also out of my eagerness to do something for the nobel cause, I have set up the website http://uttarbangaanathashram.org. I am a volunteer of the ongoing Mozilla Service Week and I’m glad I actually spent my pledged hours doing something for the society. I really hope the online community will come forward and donate something to the orphanage.

The weather for the past few days is fantastic, a little warm in the day though! Oddly enuf, this weather is making me feel nostalgic n what not… as if i am transported back into time… I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I think it is that exact North Bengal weather when you feel there is a tinge of sadness in the air…. time has become slow n i m caught in a time warp it seems. I’m sad but want to live in that moment a bit longer… melancholy is da right word 🙂

Reposted on Bong Buzz.

After a long wait and much anticipation, the Linux version of Avro is finally here! This truly makes Avro a cross-platform solution to write Bangla.

Read the official post on OmicronLab forum.

During my stay in Kolkata last week, the weather was pretty cool and it rained quite a bit. Last Saturday, 2 friends and I went on a long drive along the Kona expressway in the night. It started raining. We had to slow down a bit, the cool blasts of wind was something to cheer about though. The rain-washed halogen-lit roads looked sparkling too! Before hitting the highways, we spent a long time chilling at Golpark CCD. The coffee kept us awake!

Last month I wrote about the books I have been reading recently. I forgot to mention one though. The Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

It is an epic tale and the first part of what is going to be a trilogy, called The Ibis trilogy, named after the ship Ibis which has set sail across the Indian Ocean. On board the Ibis are a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman, who soon come to discover that their destinies are strangely tied together.

To read Sea of Poppies was a real treat and as it came to an end, I wished it din’t! It is colonial India brought alive with all its richness and variety. I am eagerly waiting for the next two parts.

The Ibis Trilogy has its own website with all the informations and trivia the reader could ask for. From the reading guide on the site I found this list of further reading –

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Out of these I have read the first two. Plan to read Midnight’s Children some of these days.

After much speculation about its fate, the circular finally came and interns and housestaffs will now get the hiked salary as proposed before.

Well the poll results are out and guess what I kind of knew that UPA was going to return to power. Not because the media was on their side. Good governance, that says it all. It was positive votes in favour of UPA. Please read the poll results analysis I wrote just as the results came out.

In West Bengal it was a completely different story though. As people break out in joyous frenzy after the terrible rout of the ruling party of our state, this is a link worth checking out – Raja Khaye Byang Bhaja.