Maternal Aunts (Mousi’s) Of Mahabharata

This is the Part II and continuation of series Relationships In Mahabharata. Please go through the Part I of this series before reading this article.

After defining all the Mamu’s of Mahabharat we will define all the Mousi’s which is the Hindi Language word for Maternal Aunt (Sister of Someone’s Mother). This falls under recursion relation which means for any two sisters they will became Maternal Aunt of other sister’s children. Its ok this seems too complicated, you will figure this out while reading this article itself.

S.No	Mousi	Of	Details
1.	Amba	Pandu, Dhritarasthra	She was taken by force along with her sisters Ambika and Ambalika from their Swayamvara by Bhisma to marry Vichitravirya.  Vichtravirya married only her sisters. Ambika and Ambalika is the Mother of Dhritarastra and Pandu respectively.
2.	Shikhandini	Upapandavas	Shikhandini was born originally as girl to king Dhrupad and was sister of Droupadi. She was reincarnation of Amba borned to kill Bhisma. She performed austerities in the forest and was transformed into a male named Shikhandi (शिखंडी) which caused the death of Bhisma.
3.	Ambika	Pandu	As mentioned above Amba, Ambika and Ambalika were biological sisters and Pandu been borned from Ambalika so that makes Ambika as his Maternal Aunt. The relationship got complicated when both the sisters got married to Vichtravirya, and Pandu and Dhritarastra actually are son of Ved Vyasa and born through Niyoga.
4.	Ambalika	Dhritarasthra	It’s like same as above. Ambika is the mother of Dhritarastra and that makes Ambalika his Maternal Aunt.
5.	Kunti	Shishupal (शिशुपाल)	Kunti and Srutakriti are sisters. Whereas Kunti becomes foster daughter of king Kunti Bhoja  and Srutakirti stays with their biological father Shurasena. Srutakriti married Damaghosh and they had only son named Shishupal. This relation makes Kunti as Maternal Aunt of Shishupal
6.	Srutakriti	Yudhistira, Bhima, Arjuna and Karna	Similarly Kunti married Pandu and their three sons among five are born from Kunti. Also Karna born from Kunti before marriage. The relationship mentioned in last point makes Strutakriti Maternal Aunt or Mousi of Yudhistira, Bhima, Arjuna and Karna
7.	Draupadi	Kshatradeva	Srikhandini’s sister Draupadi who is common wife of Panadavas and the mother of Upandavas is also Maternal Aunt of Srikhandini’s Son Kshatradeva.

Prev: Maternal Uncles (Mamu’s) Of Mahabharata Next: Paternal Uncles Of Mahabharata

©Tapas Majumdar

Maternal Uncles (Mamu’s) Of Mahabharata

This is the part one of the series Relationships In Mahabharata. In this part we will list down all Mamu's of Mahabharata. Mamu or Mama or Mamashree, is the Hindi (Indian Language) word for maternal uncle (The brother of one’s mother). Mahabharata the Epic Hindu Mythology seems to have too many characters. Among those most of the critical characters turned out to be Mamu of some or the other characters. If you go through the entire Mahabharata you may found there are lot more Mamus (Maternal Uncles) than Chachus(Paternal Uncles), Mousis (Maternal Aunt’s) or Bua’s(Paternal Aunt’s). It’s quite fascinating that most of the characters in Mahabharata are created based on maternal relations which make many of the Mamu’s as central characters of that epic. I had listed below all Mamu’s (Maternal Uncles) found in entire Mahabharata. Let me know if I had missed anyone. I will start with the most famous Mamu’s or the way they have explicitly mentioned as Mamu/Mama/Mama Shri in Mahabharata and then to the implicit ones.

S.No	Mamu	Of	Details
1.	Kaṁsa' or Kansa (कंस)	Krishna	Kaṁsa' or Kansa is the brother of Devaki, who is married to Vasudeva. Their eighth son Krishna who later killed his Maternal uncle Kansa is the story well known. Kansa can be considered Mamu of Balarama (बलराम) too who is elder brother of Krishna (Seventh son of Vasudev and Devaki) but before birth he got transferred to the womb of Rohini, another wife of Vasudeva. So by birth Balrama is not nephew of Kamsa.
2.	Shakuni (शकुनि)	Kaurava (कौरव)	Shakuni is the Brother of Gandhari, and son of King of Gandhar, Suvala. Gandhari, is married to Dhritarashtra and has 100 Son and 1 Daughter and they collectively called as Kaurava’s. The main characters of Kaurava’s are Duryodhan, Dushashan, Vikarna and Daughter Dushala. It seems remaining 97 Kaurava’s don’t have any substantial role in Mahabharata. Kurava’s especially Duryodhana and Dushashana are very close to Shakuni. Mamu Shakuni was one of the main villains in Mahabharata and one of the key people that caused the Mahabharata war.
3.	Vasudeva (वसुदेव)	Yudhistira, Bhima and Arjuna	Kunti was biological daughter of Shurashena, and also sister of Vasudeva, who is father of Krishna and Balrama. Kunti was first wife of King Pandu and has three sons Yudhistira, Bhima and Arjuna. This relation makes Vasudeva as Maternal Uncle of Yudhistira, Bhima and Arjuna. Before Kunti married to Pandu, she bore Karna to Surya (The Sun), which makes Vasudeva as mama of Karna too.
4.	Shalya(शल्‍य)	Nakula and Shadeva	King Pandu had two wifes one is Kunti and second one is Madri. Shalya was the brother of Madri. Madri was mother of Nakula and Sahadeva. All five sons of Pandu are collectively known as Pandavs. In Mahabharata war Shalya was tricked by Shakuni and Duryodhana to fight against Pandav’s or specifically Nakula and Shadeva. He became commander of Kaurava army on last day of the war and mentioned in Mahabharata as Shalya Parva. Yudhistira Killed him during the war.
5.	Vasudeva (वसुदेव)	Shishupal (शिशुपाल)	Shishupal was son of Srutakriti, who is another sister of Vasudeva. This relation makes Vasudeva his maternal uncle. Like Pandava’s, Shishupal was also a cousin to Krishna but he consider Krishna implacable foe, because Krishna had carried off Rukmini, his intended wife. Krishna had promised Sishupal’s mother that he will only forgive his 100 sins. After Sishupal’s 100th sin Krishna strikes off Shishupala's head with his discus, Sudarshana Chakra.
6.	Balrama and Krishna	Abhimanyu (अभिमन्यु)	Abhimanyu was son of Subhadra and Arjun. Subhadra is Daughter of Vasudeva. In other words sister of Balrama and Krishna. This makes them maternal uncle of Abhimanyu. On 13th Day of Mahabharata war Abhimanyu broke the circular formation (Chakravyuh) Set by guru Drona to Capture King Yudhistira. Abhimanyu saved Yudhistira by entering into the chakravyuh without knowing how to come out of it and lost his life. He learnt about the entering inside the chakravyuh when he was in his mother’s womb.
7.	Kripacharya	Ashwatthama (अश्वत्थामा)	Kripa also known as Kripacharya was the Raaj Guru (Royal Teacher) of Hastinapur and was the Guru (Teacher) of both Kauravas and Panadavas before Drona (द्रोण) became their Guru (Teacher). Dronacharya (Drona + Acharya {Teacher}) Married Kripa’s sister Kripi. Their Son Aswathama is also immortal like his Mama Kripacharya. On the last night of Mahabharata war Ashwatthama along with Kripacharya Killed Upapandava’s, Dristyadyumna and Srikhandini in their sleep and he had been cursed by Krishna for this misdeed.
8.	Hidimb (हिडिम्‍ब)	Ghatotkacha (घटोत्कच)	Pandavas escaped from the Lakshagraha plot by Shakuni and reached a dense forest. At night Tired and exhausted, they all fell asleep except Bhima who kept a watch. Hidimb and his sister, Hidimbi (हिडिंबी) were tempted at the sight of the Pandavas and wished to feast on them. For this purpose, Hidimbi changed herself into a beautiful woman and brought them near Hidimba. However, Hidimb came into conflict with Bhima and a great fight took place between Hidimb and Bhima which resulted in Hidimb getting killed. Bhima Married Hidimbi and Ghatotkacha born from tha marriage. As the brother of Hidimbi he is the maternal uncle of Ghatotkacha.
9.	Dhrishtadyumna (धृष्टद्युम्न)	Upapandavas	Draupadi was married to all five Pandavas. Upapandavas are the five sons born to Draupadi from each of the five Pandavas. They are Shrutavindhya, Sutasoma, Srutakarman, Satanika and Srutasena. Draupadi was born from fire and so is Dhrishtadyumna from the same Yagna(Ritual). All five of them were killed by Ashwathama thinking them as Pandavas on the night of the last day of the war
10.	Kichak or Kichaka	Uttar (उत्तर)  and Uttara (उत्तरा)	Kichak was the army commander of Matsya, the kingdom ruled by Virata (विराट). Kichak was brother of Sudeshna. Sudeshna was the queen of the Matsya Kindom. Virata and Sudeshna had One Son named Uttar (उत्तर) and Daughter Named Uttara (उत्तरा). Some version of Mahabharat mentioned about 4 son of Virata including Uttar. Name of the remaining sons are Shveta, Satanika and Shankha, so Keechaka was maternal uncle of those too. During the 13th year incognito period of the 13 year exile, Pandavas stayed at Matsya or Virata kingdom. Bheema killed Keechaka due to his lust for Draupadi.
11.	Uttar (उत्तर)	Parikshit (परिक्षित्)	Daughter of Virata, Uttara got Married to Abhimanyu (Son of Arjuna). Their Son Parkshit succeded Yudhisthira to the throne of Hastinapur. Like Ghatotkach, Parikshit never able to see his Maternal Uncle Uttar as He died before his birth. All sons of Virata died on very first day of the war. Along with Uttar Shveta, Satanika and Shankha are also Mamu of Parikshit.
12.	Vitararaja	Ved Vyasa, Chitrangada, Vichityaverya	The birth story of Satyavati (सत्यवती) mentioned that she had twin brother who created the Matsya Kingdom. She is the mother of Ved Vyasa who wrote Mahabharata and also of Chitrangada and Vichityaverya from King Shantanu. Satyavati was great grandmother of Kauravas and Pandavas. Her desire that only her blood will rule the kingdom actually triggers Mahabharata. There is no mention of the name of her brother in whole Mahabharata. The name given here is from different version of Mahabharata telling the same story. Please suggest if you find the correct name of Maternal Uncle Vitararaja.
13.	Kauravas (कौरव)	Suratha	Kauravas (कौरव) which includes Duryodhana, Dushashana, Vikarna has in total 100 brothers with only Sister named Dushala. She got Married to Jayadratha, the king of Sindhu. They had a Son named Suratha. During the war, Arjuna hears of his son Abhimanyu’s death due to Jayadradha and vows to kill Jayadradha before the next day's sunset. This is achieved by the help of Krishna. After the war, Yudhishtira, takes out an Ashwamedha Yagya (Horse Sacrifice Ritual) wherein Arjuna follows a sacrificial horse with his army. The horse enters the Sindhu territory. Dussala's son Suradha, who was ruling this land, dies of fright on knowing about the approaching army along with Arjuna.
14.	Rukmi	Pradyumna and his 9 Brothers	Rukmini was wife of Krishna and also sister of Rukmi.  Rukmi planned to forcefully marry her Sister to Shishupal (शिशुपाल) but Rukmini was in love with Krishna so asked him for help her run away from this marriage. Krishna with the help of Arjuna, eloped with Rukmini and Married her. During this incident Krishna was about to kill Rukmi but Rukmini asked him to spare her brother’s life. So Krishna clean shaved Rukmi’s head as humiliation. After this incident Rukmi was never in good terms with Krishna and Rukmini. Rukmi and his kingdom did not participate in Kurukshetra/Mahabharata war. The first son of Queen Rukmini was Pradyumna, and also born of her were Charudeshna, Sudeshna, Charudeha, Sucharu, Charugupta, Bhadracharu,  Charuchandra, Vicharu, and Charu. Pradyumna was the crown prince of Dwaraka
15.	Dhristaketu	Narimitra	This is very lesser known story that Dristaketu and Karenumati were children of Shishupal (शिशुपाल). Karenumati was wedded to Nakula (One Of The Panadava) and Narimitra is there son. Dhristaketu was an army-general in the army of Pandavas in Kurukshetra/Mahabharata War. Dhristaketu also was slain in battle by Drona. Sarabha is another son of Sishupal so he is Maternal Uncle of Narimitra too.
16.	Dhrishtadyumna (धृष्टद्युम्न)	Kshatradeva	Dhrishtadyumna’s other sister Shrikhandini had a son named Kshatradeva. Nothing much has been written about Kshatradeva in Mahabharata. Shirikhandini and Dhrishtadyumna got killed by Ashwathama on last night of the war.
17.	No Name	Iravan	Ulūpī or Uloopi was one of the Arjuna’s wives. During his exile when Arjuna was in east part of India, the widow Naga princess Uloopi became infatuated with him. Ulūpī induced an unwilling Arjuna to take her for a wife. She was the mother of Iravan. Iravan grew up in Nagaloka, protected by his mother, but was rejected by his maternal uncle because of the latter's hatred of Arjuna. In some version of Mahabharata the person who rejected Iravan was Uloopi’s first husband brother, but none of the version specified any name to that person or character. I am considering him as another unnamed Mamu similar to the Mamu of Ved Vyasa as mentioned above.

Next - Maternal Aunts (Mousi's) Of Mahabharata

©Tapas Majumdar

Relationships In Mahabharata

In the Hindu Epic or Mythology Mahabharata, all the characters are interwoven to each other and some of the characters are in direct blood relationship to some or many other characters. So if we ignore direct blood relationships like brother, sister and parents then the relationship remains are of Uncle and Aunts of Mahabharata. If you elaborate the relationships then you will found someone will be either Maternal or Paternal Uncle or Aunt of another important or less important character. In Indian language Maternal Uncles are called Mama/Mamu/Mamashree similarly Maternal Aunts as Mousi, Paternal Uncles as Tau/Tat Shree/Bade Papa/Kaka/Chacha etc. and Paternal Aunts as Bua. So here is a series to elaborate characters of Mahabharata in terms of the relationship they hold to some other characters as Mamu, Chachu, Mousi or Bua. I had specified the relationships here in three columns. The relationships are mentioned in one column and in next column it defines with whom that particular relationship is and basic character and/or relationship details specified in last columns. To read this list e.g. Kansa is Mamu of Krishna and the detail of the character or relationship between Kansa and Krishna will be provided in last column.

I had focused more on the relationship rather than the details of that relationship. It’s not possible to elaborate complete details of the characters in Mahabharata in short so just restricted to the minimum necessary details to elaborate the relationship and or the character(s). To learn more about any specific characters you may need to go through Mahabharata in detail. I also ignored all the characters from generations before King Shantanu as they don’t have any role play except the blood lineage. So King Bharat, Kuru etc. are not part of this relationship analysis.

I will start the part one of this series with the kind of relationships which turned out to be the heart of Mahabharata in every aspect i.e. Maternal Uncles or Mamu’s of Mahabharata.

Part I - Maternal Uncles (Mamu’s) Of Mahabharata
Part II - Maternal Aunts (Mousi's) Of Mahabharata
Part III - Paternal Uncles Of Mahabharata
Part IV - Paternal Aunts (Bua's) Of Mahabharata
Part V - Mahabharata Blood Relationships - The Complete Picture

©Tapas Majumdar

My Unquotable Quotes

Why most of the quotes that exist are positive or morale boosters only?  Peoples who are down and out need something apart from their own inner self to feel good and be positive. Hence almost all quotes you find will be positive in nature to boost your morale. These quotes mentioned below are unquotable. Why? It’s not due to copyright reasons but due to the negative nature of these quotes (you can share these quotes without violating the copyright), while sharing you may find more brick backs than bouquets. That’s where following copyright against each quote will help. Yes, these quotes are original and framed by me to challenge the most popular belief of quotes that it should always be positive else it’s not a quote.

Are these quotes going to give you any feel good factor like other quotes? For me yes, it worked during various negative phases of my life. How? Before answer that question let me ask you a question, why we feel good when we read positive quotes? There may be different reasons to explain this. One of the reasons will be the negativity among ourselves, which get neutralize by any positive quote. While as per mathematics multiplying two negative makes it positive (negative you with negative quotes).  So while reading if you start feeling the quotes are actually positive rather than negative, then it’s just that kind of effect ;)

Techie Quotes

When I connected to my Inner Self and Queried/Searched “What you want to do in your Life” it returned as “Your Search -- What you want to do in your Life -- does not retuned any results”. I am damn sure in my childhood days it used to return me at least few matches found.

When I connected to my Inner Self and Queried/Searched “What you want to do in your Life” it returned with message “HTTP ERROR 500: exception: The Inner Self encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request” and with long untraceable stack trace.

When I connected to my Inner Self and Queried/Searched “What you want to do in your Life” it returned with “404 Inner Self Not found” and there is no proper instructions of where to find it.

When I try to connect my Inner Self …It returned “Cannot connect to your Inner self, please check your connection or make sure you are plugged in or contact our support number 4355-669-463 (Hell-oMy-God)”.

Philosophical Quotes

When someone say after every bad phase there will be good phase, they are wrong. Actually after every Bad Phase there will never be any good phases it will always be either Very Bad Phase or More Bad Phases unless you change your perception about the definition of your Bad Phase.

Never blame any person for all the bad things happened or happening in your life. Every time you blame someone for something bad happened to you. You are taking that person close to become  the God of your life because god is the one whom we blame if something goes wrong and you are blaming the person in place of god, so treating that person as god.

Never blame god for all the bad things happened or happening in your life. It’s been told that god is omnipotent, so according to that logic blaming god is like blaming everything surrounding you, including yourself.

Never blame yourself for all the bad things happened or happening in your life. Every time you blame yourself the burden of blame will be piled up onto you only and one day it will be so much that either the burden of blames will hold you back forever or quantity of blames will blind your thought process forever.

Complacency/Laziness Quotes

Complacency can kill you. How? A complacent person is riding on a super-fast train which is heading nowhere and surely will met with an accident because you will find yourself complacent enough to pull that chain.

I must confess today that I am a murderer and a serial Killer. This is what I do every day.  This is my Hobby and Profession. Yes, I Kill time every day, every moment. The more I kill the more I become perfectionist in my profession of Killing Time.

Strong Statement Quote

Do not throw thorns toward me; I have a bad habit of turning them into roses.

©Tapas Majumdar

Digital Reincarnation

I met a boy recently who can remember his twitter id and password from his past birth!!! So he logs in to his same old twitter account that he created in his last birth and can tweets about his current life.

How this is possible? Now the question is why this is Not possible? We have seen numerous movies or read uncountable stories where some person can remember things from his past life. Also there are numerous articles, mythologies and true stories exist which can justify about reincarnation. We all have photogenic memories and somehow for rare peoples some of those memories got carried over to next birth. So what if, the imprints of memory from past birth are not photogenic but alphabetic or numeric (e.g. User id and password of twitter account from current birth, that’s all it takes to re-tweet in next birth).

I am not a specialist in this field but what I have understood from “Remembering past birth events” theory is that some memory got stuck deep inside your soul and gets carried forward to your next birth. The data that got feed to your soul, do happen through your subconscious memory and something can pass to subconscious memory via many ways and one of the ways is through repetitive and daily usage of the same stuff.  So if you are a Facebook or twitter or any other social networking addicts, then you probably login to those applications every day multiple times and possibility of your user id and password goes to subconscious mind without your knowledge and then to your soul or further carried forward to next birth. It may sound ridiculous but if this hypothesis holds true and you turned out to be a Facebook/Twitter addict in this life, then there are possibilities that you remember your Facebook or Twitter login in next birth too. So in other words your account details may go inside your subconscious mind but will you able to recall it in next birth is unknown.

I always find news feeds from all of my friends in Facebook are more interesting than the news feeds shown by any premium news channel s (e.g. CNN, BBC, ABP, Aaj Tak etc...) or sometime combination of all those news channel’s feeds. To read all the daily news feeds in my Facebook page then like or put comments to some of those feeds is a tedious work in itself. So I thought of automate this process and to create a tool named “Likonator”. The purpose of this tool will be to “Like” the news feeds from my friends in my Facebook page. I thought of the name “Likonator” from my 7 year old Son’s favorite cartoon show “Phineas and Ferb” which I watch with him on regular basis. For those who never watched this show, this name is given based on the character named “Dr. Doofenshmirtz” where all his inventions ends with “onator”. Is that tool being already developed or not is a different story altogether but my point here is, this kind of tool will work way beyond my existence or anyone else existence in this world. In other words, automating the like process in Facebook on my friend’s news feeds will go long way. I can even like a friend’s post in Facebook after my death is a kind of digital life without being born again.  Sort of being ghost to this world while enjoying all facilities of heaven (or hell, depends on karmic index though).

Actually, I do not believe in reincarnation but connecting socially beyond your life is possible as off today as mentioned in this very nice article @ kenmorico.com. Go through the policies and you can find there are ways you can tweet or automate Facebook behavior too which can be used beyond anyone’s death.

Now what if, you don’t use or don't want to use any digital media to automate your twitter or Facebook behaviors. Even if you automate your Tweets or Facebook this will not falls under digital reincarnation as you are not able to use this in your next birth (In case you born again). It will continue to work for your last birth only or in other words help you alive digitally forever. So I don’t think this kind of automation can be termed as Digital Reincarnation.

So what is Digital Reincarnation? It is hypothetical as mentioned above and will work only if, you are able to remember your twitter id and password (or of any application) from your past birth even after you got reincarnated. So courtesy to the bad hypothesis of alphabetic and numeric memory transfer to next birth will only cause true digital reincarnation, even if you have used digital automation in this birth.  So if you are digitally reincarnated then you don’t need to use the services of applications like “Yes That Can Be My Next Tweet” as mentioned in that article, because you can revive your own past ids in your new birth. In case you want to keep yourself digitally alive then take help of these services.

In ideal scenario my personal preference will always be to take chances and use the natural reincarnation (If at all that happens) to create the digital reincarnation.  We already have technology of digital life beyond death hopefully someday technology will advance in the area of digital life beyond births.

So if my hypothesis holds true by any means, it will create another angle to reincarnation stories where some boy will able to use same digital ID’s even in his next birth and unlock mysteries, revenge or love stories J Let me know if this hypothesis has any slightest feasibility apart from imaginations or if you have any better idea about this.

Till then I can imagine a scenario where I am able to know when will be the end of time for this birth, and accordingly I will put my last tweet like what character of Arnold said in his movie "The Terminator"

“I will be back” ............

And when I will born in my next life and after few years in that next birth when I am capable of writing or using digital media again will do my next tweet as

“Yes, I am back” J

Disclaimer: Beware (and also welcome if you blame me) – In case I have inspired someone’s imagination to write bad reincarnation story or bad movie scripts based on reincarnation....and this time digital reincarnation

©Tapas Majumdar

The Lost Memorandum – Part 2

It seems my blog writing can be correlated to the happening of any Olympic Games, Soccer or Cricket World Cup games. The only difference between those games and my writing is that they happen once every four years and it seems I write blogs once every three years. Actually, I do have written blogs in these past 3 years but never published them. So I actually did half of the commitment I mentioned last time.


This wait of 3 years to publish another blog is not intentional. I was just too complacent to publish something and the time just has flown. When I had published the Part - 1 on this topic, I never thought I will write Part -2 on the same topic again due to time lapse in writing blogs. As I mentioned in my last post on this topic, we collect and store everything in our memory as time frames. So what I achieved as memory in these past 3 years? Someone wrote about these time-frames in a brilliant way; life is all about writing books and every year that passed is a complete chapter of that book.


So how the last 3 chapters of my book look like? Or rather how my chapters look like when I opened this Blog Spot account way back in 2006 to find out what this blogging is all about by test writing my first blog (Picture Blog)? Coincidentally that blog was also all about Memories. So how 7 chapters of my book called life look like? Are there any achievements, failures, gains, or losses revealed in these chapters? If the life is an interesting story, are the chapters from past years revealed any suspense, plots, subplots, or twists?


There are too many questions and if you dig down in those memory lanes or chapters as I mentioned here, you may also find too many answers. So it will be all about how deeply you want to study those chapters. The major events that happened in those chapters will come to you first, maybe least of efforts and if you have the time then you can dig down to the granular level to find out what happened in those years, months, or days. Once you realize you have this kind of spare time then either you may start to imagine changing those events or your mind will start finding out the possibility of “what if this would have happened differently?” or both. So the point is do you want to invest time in this kind of activity? And why you want to invest time in these activities which will result in nothing. As to how harsh it may sound or how hard you may try you cannot change those chapters of your life.


Many peoples who inspired us to ask not to live in the past. Do that means never reveal those past memories again? Is it humanly possible to delete all those past memories permanently or burn out those chapters the moment it passed by? Many people may say different things, I believe no. Tell me; is it possible to behave like a person with sort time memory loss or total memory loss just to pretend nothing ever happened before today? And if you have a really good memory then the task of forgetting the past will be much difficult. Memories will always be there and the sole purpose of those memories is to give you experience. It’s that memory which helps you to make decisions in the present which will make your future. Memories may not be of your own experience it can be of someone else you have encountered or read about. Reveal the memory from the past when it’s really needed not when you have spare time to think about your past. In other words, learn from the past and move on and learning is incomplete if you can’t keep things from past in your head. 

We all know if the present demands a situation and we have a memory footprint of handling similar situations it will automatically show up, you may not need to work hard to retrieve that. My suggestion is not to work hard in retrieving memory. Occasional fun in retrieving past while with friends may be fine but if you put the practice of not retrieving memory now and then, you may find during those discussions from past are long lost inside your head and retrieval are resulting in faint or no outcomes that’s what is called the removal of unnecessary memories. It’s all about practice and a difficult one to follow and can only be achieved by keeping yourself in the state of the present. So let’s see if there will be any Part-3 on this topic, or I will be able to avoid it by publishing blogs on a regular basis. Till that time, tell me in the comments below what your chapters reveal about your life story.

Chicken Cooker

Today I cooked chicken.  Since my wife gone to India I am trying my hands on to various unexplored areas. Before any of your dirty minds start finding hidden meaning to it I want to clarify that I only meant to say unexplored areas of cooking because I usually not cook when she is here with me. This miracle started happening during one of the phone conversations with my wife where she told me the recipe over the phone and also pumped me up so much and induced lots of confidence into me about cooking chicken.  With full of confidence I bought the chicken pieces home and then realize it’s better and easy to eat outside so given those chicken pieces some break inside refrigerator.  After three days I realize it’s not fair to those chicken pieces that lost their lives with a hope that someone will eat them soon and give them the passage of reincarnation or next birth. Before you find any greatness in my thought I want to admit that actually I want to return those chicken pieces back from where I bought (Which is a good facility over here) but thought what would be the person in counter will thought about me when I will return a edible item after 3 days. That’s it I decided I am going to cook chicken what so ever it may take (anyway I am the only person who is going to eat that too). I am kind of person who if decides something will always try to accomplish that (if there is no other options available). I got my forced motivation but forgot the recipe what my wife told me 3 days back and during that time of motivation its past midnight at India and I can’t call her to verify what so ever I remembered. I believe in where is will there is a way…eureka… I know how to cook egg curry (based on another experiment I had some time back) and I believe only eggs needs to be replaced by chicken. Anyway eggs and chicken are also biologically related.  If you are still wondering how I am going to cook this for the first time in my life then it’s wrong. I did it rather we did it for the first time about 11 years ago during my PG college days.

During my PG days we didn’t opt for any hostel and I with four other batch mates share an apartment where we have all facilities to cook. Once when I am with one of my roommate (roommate #1) spending time during semester break and one fine day we realize that we should do something good in our life. The first thing came to our mind after that is to cook chicken by our own. We both never bought chicken or never bother to find out any of the process involved in cooking when we were at home but we do share the same taste of testing tasty chicken. So we gone together on same bicycle to chicken shop and asked for chicken and the shop owner asked us a simple question, how much? That confused us a lot because we don’t know how much will be sufficient enough for our appetite of one meal. So we both agreed on 3 Kg but when the butcher is taking the chickens out of the cage we thought it’s not enough for two of us so we ordered 4 Kg. It’s only when we got the raw chicken pieces in hand we realized we made a mistake. For all readers who are confused like the way we are at that time 5 kg of chicken is more than sufficient for at least 25 peoples, so you can calculate. We now have the chicken but we don’t have cooking utensil to fit all the pieces and cook. Suddenly an idea strikes in my mind, in Kolkata during my childhood days I noticed during any Marriage, Caterer’s usually carry cooked chicken in Aluminum buckets to serve on plates of all guests who are having lunch or dinner at that time. If they can serve cooked chicken in bucket then why can’t we cook chicken itself in bucket? The idea suits the purpose and we prepared masala (Paste of ginger, garlic, cumin powder etc.) with lots of oil and also fried onion in separate pan and once the preparation is ready we transferred everything to a large iron bucket we had with us. Then we mixed all the chicken pieces in that preparation and then only my friend realized we skipped the step of cleaning of raw chicken piece and asked me if I had washed those raw pieces or not. It was a question intended for me and I don’t know the answer if there is any need for that and he knows the answer we should generate the need. The next step was to remove all the already marinated chicken pieces from the bucket and wash it to the best way we can. When you have the full enthusiasm you don’t feel bad of repeating the same process of creation of preparation all over again after the wash. You only feel bad when you realize after all these steps that how we are going to cook chicken inside a bucket. We cannot put the bucket onto gas stove to cook and also we can’t eat raw marinated chicken with lots of vegetable oils in it. As said before where is will there is a way…eureka…it strikes almost same time to both of our mind that we had an immersion rod (which we use to boil water for bath during winter) will serve the purpose of cooking like gas stove (only difference stove cooks from outside the utensil and it will cook from inside the bucket). It feels like we crossed the final hurdle and by adjusting the oil level in bucket and with some water our chicken started getting cooked with immersion rod. We do made some adjustments in the middle of cooking because suddenly we realized there is no salt or turmeric in it.

Finally it’s become ready to eat but then only I realized I was wrong about the final hurdle. There is so much chicken under thick layer of oil because while cooking chicken release their own fat in form of oil and we don’t know about that and had put oils like anything based on idea that so many pieces need good amount of oil to cook otherwise base of utensil may get burnt. Now we reached a stage where eating is the only option left and by cautiously removing only the chicken pieces on to our plates and also maintain the oil level inside the bucket we can achieve that too. Initially we thought of making the chicken curry with rice but as it finally turned out as “so many chickens” OIL curry that we dropped the idea of rice and only ate chicken. While eating we keep on saying to each other many a times that it cooked so nice but in heart we know how good it is. To finish all the pieces we had to eat till we drop and in that process we had to first drop our pants because we felt it’s too tight for the tummy and then shirt as chicken already started generated lots of heat inside the body at dry summer. Finally we reached to a stage where we can’t eat, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t sit, can’t move and can’t sleep. We two roommates in our undergarments had to lie down on floor wherever we are eating along with our own plates and the bucket of cooking oil with chicken in the middle. Mind is still functioning and curious about what we should do to the remaining 150 pieces (at least) of chicken lying deep inside the oil in bucket. We don’t have a refrigerator and its summer time so we can’t keep it for next day. I can’t remember how much time we were lying down on that place but gradually recovered to a stage where we can talk, can walk, can sit, can move or can sleep too but can’t eat. As we don’t want to throw out the remaining food the only option left to finish this out by finding out friend(s) or people(s) like us who can eat chicken and due to current semester break and hot summer it’s not easy to find any of them.

We travelled to various apartments of other batch mates or friends and tried to convince them with this story of very tasty chicken we cooked at our place and end it with the point that there are still few pieces left and we may give it to someone or throw it to street dogs. It seems for us we first decide to create a product; we created it without any plan and then extensively tested it and now marketing it to people for selling that product. Luckily chicken is brand which every non vegetarian likes so we stopped advertising our product and started advertising the bigger picture of brand chicken. And it worked, suddenly we found 5 peoples (friends, friend’s friend and there friend) who willingly said why dog, what we are here for. So we got 5 young hungry people with good appetite and that turned out as sufficient enough to show those poor chicken pieces some respect. Along with the help we received from them, now we got 5 peoples in our room lying in their undergarments along with their respective plates with bucket of cooking oil in the middle.

Hence after so many years when I cooked chicken I took one chicken leg piece in my hand and raise a toast for my beloved friend and all the hard work we did to do something good in life. I am sure he will be really happy to know that the chicken cleaner had now become chicken cooker J

Disclaimer: This is a complete true story mixed with fiction and imagination. ©Tapas Majumdar

The Lost Memorandum

Ohh...wow...It's been three years I haven't put anything in my blog. When somehow I am able to log in to this account today and found date of my last post is mentioned as November 2007. I am not a writer material but do love to write down or copy up some crap whenever possible. I was not a frequent blogger even during days of my last post but when I used to log in to this account I usually thought or found something beforehand and want to post it over here. This time when I am able to remember I do had Blogger account I thought of a different story and came to write that up. Alas! after seeing this gap I started writing this post without any predefined thoughts like in all of my previous posts. This time lapse between my two posts definitely keep me wondering how time flown so fast. There are so many interesting and not so interesting things happened between these two posts. How life changed and also felt it actually does not changed at all. I can feel or touch every memorable moments at the blink of my eyes but in the next moment do realize you can only recollect those moments but you can never feel or touch them. All Cris cross of thoughts about the time that past in these three years is bubbling inside my mind. It's a human tendency to flip back to time and compare between the time when we found some memorandum from past. This behavior does proved me as Human although I never had any doubt about that. All of my behaviours since my birth are kind of normal human being. Yes, my behaviour did varied some days from below average to above average but never reached the negative or inhuman mark. Hope I will never touched that mark in future but this post is not about humanity its about uncertainty we face for the future and when it change to past it becomes so certain. This post is also about how me as human love to and excite about time frames. Time frames? yes, when we nurture in past we remember or rather love to remember incidents by time frames like How was the time when we are in High School or College or in Previous company etc. All memories good or bad have time frames.When you recall then memory time frames may be smaller or larger based on your mood and situations but you will not able to mix those time frames. Like you can not mix up your childhood memories and college memories because when you are in your childhood you can't be in college. In other words life as memory is like a Sequential tape backup which is stored in Random Access Memory(RAM). Where as this is not feasible in actual computer scenarios which is consider closest and sometime powerful than human mind. Also, unlike actual computer RAM this does not switch off when you switch off (Sleep) at day or night. This RAM will only reset or flush out all memories when you will permanently switched off (RAM RAM satya hai). I have seen in movies some people do carry over those backups in RAM to next birth too (May be some bug in RAM) but lets not talk about this now. The backup and restore in memory varies from person to person like for me the last memory I had is of when I was 3 Years old. So even if someone shows my own photograph from Zero years till last memory days I am not able to recognize myself and thought it might be my brother's photograph or anyone else. I do wonder what will happen when I will go old do I still able to remember as my last memory was up to 3 years old. The memory backup will definitely going to put lot of things what so ever happens in future. Till what point I will able to restore at that time will be the only concern. It's good that finally I had written this blog not for you as a Reader but for me as Writer because in any case if I can read in my old age then I will able to know that in November 2010 my last memory restore was till 3 years of age. As I mentioned earlier I love to write crap so hope will not write my next post after another three years gap else it will be unjustifiable to peoples who love to read crap (wink and/or smiley).