URB Scribbles

Having said whatever I said in Crisis of Existence , the bitter truth of life however remains that economic stability and sustenance is to a great extent – if not to entire extent – the ultimate benchmark of success for the times we live in. Till the moment you do not ensure stable cash inflow from the activity that you prefer doing, it mostly is a passion and not a profession. To understand the fact better, try showing your wallet to your parents, narrating to them how happy you actually are after having made that small amount of money out of blogging.  Sad, but the ultimate truth here is that till the time you are not good enough to make considerable money out of your aspirations they are absolutely of no good for the people who you need to prove yourself to. And hence you are obvious to face immense friction from them when you perform irregularly in your present position which no matter how much insignificant you consider to be. Say for instance, if you fail to sc...

Have you been in this perpetual crisis of existence, absolutely clueless about who you are and what you want to be while realizing that the world around is a myth, a homogenous force conspiring each moment to slow you down? Do you aspire to be a fashion blogger in the morning but want to be a calligrapher by the evening while actually doing something presently that you consider is absolutely less or unchallenging? Have you been wanting to rebel so as to take a reverse or an alternate walk through the trajectory of progress set by the world but are absolutely weak and fragile to do it?   Are you in return being shown ruthlessly down by the people around you that sometimes out of concern and sometimes otherwise put you in a sense of self-doubt? I am sure many of you are. Who knows more than you of the friction generated in the process of uprooting yourself from the last year of your high school where you presently are and planting yourself somewhere in the world that y...

Dear Readers Thank you for the love that you shower. Apologies for being unable to bring stories to you of late.  Starting a new series of stories covering my recent trip to Uttar Pradesh with this first chapter that shares the first leg of the journey. This November, circumstances so occurred that I got an opportunity to visit Uttar Pradesh. Although very mundane and dismal it appears as a destination in plain sight, nevertheless what lies within is anything but mundane. Of course UP does not figure in the ‘to be there’ list of the backpack, ruff and tuff travelers of our times. The lot that finds solace at sightings as exotic as snowy mountains and Oriental demography and loves lingering around in roof top cafes waiting for the sun to set, I tell you shall rarely connect with UP. My experience in UP is less fit to be told or shared and more apt to be lived in and felt. My quest of UP begun with a morning train from Hazrat Nizamudin Railway Station ...

A man of modest bearing, Om Narayan hails from Bihar. Growing up without either of his parents around and with his differently abled left hand, Om is a self-made man. He was to marry this lady back in his village, who, anticipating fiscal uncertainties accruing to his hand, abandoned him weeks before the knot could be tied. Disoriented and alienated, Om decided to escape the humiliation by leaving behind the punishing topography of the northern Indian cow-belt altogether. Heading upwards till he reached his elder sister’s at Dharamshala some eight years back, Om decided to never look back. Void of the warmth of parental love, lack of agricultural land, humiliation and imposed solitude made escape the only path for Om. Struggling with the cursing eye of time, Om sailed through to finally see the day as a successful entrepreneur weaving a crispy tapestry at 7000 feet above sea level. Holding on to a cane basket, a blue plastic bucket and a never ending supply of self de...

Brick by brick and stone by stone, O poor comrade you bring it up! Under the pulsing sun, you drop your sweat and a pinch of blood, to paint it red. With the moist of fallacious dreams in your gloomy eyes, you paint it blue. Hanging to the scaffolding you polish the pane, until it reflects your grief and pain.  You make it shine with your humble skin Once it is up you are nowhere to be seen…                                                                         Uddipta Ranjan If you like what you read kindly SUBSCRIBE for more. Thank you for coming back, keep doing it to inspire URBScr...

It is interesting how some episodes throughout the journey of life become permanent milestones in our memories. No matter how far the roads take us, we still remember those points where we stumbled upon either with opportunities or with challenges. One such episode in my journey was the first metro ride. Given the first metro ride being paradoxically both an opportunity as well a challenge for me, there is absolutely no way I can get over the memory of it soon. It was an opportunity, for I was to come face-to-face with the realm of the New and the never-experienced-before; while at same time it was the challenge to be accepted and embraced by the New and the unknown. From the first hesitant step and the backward jerk on the electric escalator to deliberately escaping suffocating metro rides, life has seen much by now. From tapping on the token receiver at the exit where it was actually to be dipped, to the Paytm rechar...

The air quality in India has been nose-diving fast, especially in its cities. Various causes come together to make the impact multiply and the issue has come to haunt the common consciousness around this time of the year for past several years. Suffocating evenings and breath taking (not to be mistaken with breathtaking) mornings after the Diwali night has come to be the most explicit of all factors leading alarm bells to ring across conscious circles. There has been a concerted debate coming up around the use of firecrackers on Diwali for past several years. This year’s Diwali approaches near, dragging with it the debate yet again. Various factions of concerned folks, like all previous years, have glued to their computers to send out their intellectual dispatches from both sides of the debate. Some propose a complete ban on use of firecrackers, considering it a good way to save the Mother Earth, while contributing their respective daily share of endless pollutants to th...