We stopped Turni at issue 91. I specifically said that there was no need to make the stop ‘ceremonial’, and it was not. We published issue 91 on Aug 08, 2022, and then we didn’t. The good news about not making it ceremonial is the fact that we can start it again at any time without any explanation. So I am writing the editorial of issue 92 without any explanation. Deal with it.
Writing this column comes naturally to me. I don’t have to think. I open a text editor and start writing at any time with or without interruption. I wish I could do everything else in life with this ease, but I can’t. Please do not ask me why, as I do not know. There is a famous volcano in Hawaii called Mauna Loa. Last time it erupted was 1984. For nor reason at all, and without any precursor it started to erupt again on Nov 27, 2022. No one knows why, it just did.
This column and space existed to encourage people of this community to write regularly. Writing is a habit. You don’t write when you like it, I mean you can, that is easy. What makes it special to me when I write when I don’t like it. In team play, champion teams play well enough on their bad days, that is what makes them champions. Any team can play well on their good days. What I was observing among people is that writing in this space has become a burden for some of us. That is not an acceptable outcome. Writing in this space is voluntary. My personal stance has always been, if there is one piece for this ‘magazine’ we will publish it. If there is zero piece, we will not publish it. It is as simple as that. Times have changed, but still today the stance of this magazine remains the same.
Lately, there are a few individuals who are publishing more regularly. I am noticing that. The fact that I am silent doesn’t mean I am blind or I have stopped noticing. I appreciate the increased writing frequency by some. While I appreciate that, the engagement remains low for most. Without engagement the only thing you can potentially do is farming, and it is not an enjoyable experience, even if you can. If your ideas do not bounce off others, then it is no fun for you and quickly the task becomes a burden.
We are a relatively small community. This upcoming holiday season we must adhere to each other and improve our engagement. This is the end of the year, so ideally individual workload should lighten up in the next few days-weeks. This is the ideal time to shape up what the future direction of this magazine or this community will be. It is your job to set it up and act accordingly.
-- by Head Clark
What is that one special trait that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Makes us, Humans, great? Is it our capacity to love? Knowing full well that this precious commodity might not find its rightful place? The unassailable courage we show in front of grave danger? While knowing full well that the doom ahead is nothing but assured? Or is it our capacity for violence? Waging wars of mass destruction and spilling blood? If you do not know the answer, let me tell you, It is hope. It has always been hope. The one unique characteristic that enables us to survive and face odds that are not in our favor.
BDC, our tiny home on WEB3, has gone beyond being a small community to become something larger. When we call it home, it no longer remains a small word we throw around when spewing out motivational pep talks. It now actually raises a sense of family, a sense of brotherhood. I might be wrong when saying all these, but like always, I "Hope" them to be true, "Hope" it is a mutually shared sentiment amongst all the members of this family.
So, in cheap yet grand "Optimus Prime's speech of a leader's" style, I call on all our members. If you think of us, as us, as part of a family, it is time to start picking up responsibilities. It is time to erase all the mud stains we have on our name. We have been called scammers, spammers, and farmers in the past for the actions of a few. Those labels still haunt us. Are we though? Are we all that they say? I Hope not. Because all I can do is hope that you guys, whom I courageously dare to call my family, will have my back.
Do you guys remember the promises made in front of the vast sea only a year back? It is time to deliver on those promises. I understand that we have drifted away further into the sea and have been left alone. I apologize for forcing you guys into solitude. I am here now with open arms for my brothers. You know who you are.
It is time.
আজ কতদিন পর তূর্ণির জন্য লিখতে বসলাম হিসেব নেই। ছোটবেলায় স্কুলের ম্যাগাজিনে প্রতিনিয়ত লেখা হত। তাও আবার যেই সেই লেখা নয়, পুরো স্কুল জুড়ে একটা আমেজ আমেজ ভাব শুরু হয়ে যেত বার্ষিক ম্যাগাজিনের নোটিশ পাওয়া মাত্র। আমাদের বার্ষিক ম্যাগাজিন টা প্রকাশিত হত পহেলা বৈশাখ এর দিন। স্কুল এর এমন কোন স্টুডেন্ট ছিল না যার বাসায় এই ম্যাগাজিনটা পড়া হত না। সবার ভাই বোন (আমাদের স্কুলে পড়ুক বা নাই পড়ুক), বাবা মা মোটামোটি সবারই একটা আগ্রহ থাকতো এই ম্যাগাজিনটার প্রতি। আমাদের লেখক দের মাঝে ও একটা বাড়তি তাড়না কাজ করত। লেখালেখি জমা দেওয়ার কাজ শীতের মৌসুমেই শেষ করে ফেলতে হত, সারা স্কুলের শত শত শিক্ষার্থীদের লেখা থেকে বাছাই, প্রুফ রিডিং, ছাপানোর কাজে বেশ সময় লেগে যেত তাই। তাই লেখালেখি সব শীতকালেই করা হত।
সেই থেকেই শীতকালে লেখালেখির প্রতি আমার একটা অস্বাভাবিক দুর্বলতা কাজ করে। শীতের আমেজটা আমার কাছে খুব কাছের, খুব আপন মনে হয়। স্কুল জীবনে লেখালেখির প্রতি তীব্র ঝোঁক ছিল। শীতকাল এবং লেখালেখি আমার শৈশবে কৈশোরে এপ্রোতপ্রোতভাবে জড়িত হয়ে যায় বোধহয় এই ম্যাগাজিনে লেখালেখি থেকেই। এর সাথে প্রচুর বাংলা বই ও পড়তাম তখন। ইংলিশ মিডিয়ামে পড়ার সুবাদে ইংরেজি বই এর উপর মোটামোটি ভালোই দখল ছিল ছোটবেলা থেকে। কিন্তু বাংলা বই এ বাঙালি লেখকদের যে একটা ভাইব থাকতো, সেটা ইংরেজি বইয়ে ওই বয়সে খুব কমই পেতাম । হয়তো সে কারণেই "ইংলিশ মিডিয়াম এর ছাত্র, তুমি বাংলা কী বোঝো" এই ডায়ালগ টা আমার উপর কপচায়ে শান্তি পেত না আমার "শুভাকাঙ্খীরা।"
তো যা বলছিলাম, আমাদের বাঙালি লেখকদের লেখায় শীতকালে একটি উষ্ণ শাল গায়ে জড়িয়ে নেওয়াটা এতটাই সুন্দর ভাবে ফুটিয়ে তোলা হতো, এটা আসলে ওই টিনেজ বয়সে যে না অনুভব করেছে, তাঁকে বোঝানো অসম্ভব। গায়ে শাল জড়িয়ে ফেলুদার চারমিনার টানা, অথবা শাল মুড়িয়ে হুমায়ুন আহমেদের বাগানে বসে হিমু অথবা প্রেমের উপন্যাসের শব্দ চয়ন, কিংবা প্রচন্ড শীতের রাতে মিসির আলীর বারান্দায় বসে বই পড়া। শীতকাল ও সাহিত্যকে যেমন আলিশানভাবে তুলে ধরতে চেয়েছেন আমাদের সাহিত্যিকরা, আমি মনে হয় ঠিক সেইরকম ভাবেই আমেজটা উপভোগ ও উপলব্ধি করে এসেছি সেই ছোটবেলা থেকেই।
প্রচন্ড হাড়কাঁপানো শীতে শাল জড়িয়ে সাহিত্য চর্চার সব আয়োজন এই শীতের জন্য করে রেখেছি। কালো কাশ্মীরি শালটি গায়ে জড়িয়ে লেখালেখি না করলেও, বইটা অবশ্যই পড়া হবে।
শীতের আমেজ শহরে সবে নামতে শুরু করেছে। দিনের বেলা ফ্যান বন্ধ করে তূর্ণির জন্য লিখতে বসে সেই শৈশব কৈশোরের স্মৃতি গুলো যেন ফিরে ফিরে আসতে শুরু করেছে। জানি যদিও সেই শৈশবে আর ফিরে যাওয়া হবে না, তবু কোন এক কুয়াশা মাখা ভোরে, সূর্যের উষ্ণতা ভেঙে আসার আগে হয়তো ধোঁয়া ওঠা চায়ের কাপ হাতে শাল মুড়িয়ে আবার সেই কৈশোরের লেখালেখিতে ফিরে যাবো।
It has been such a long time since I have followed a strict routine. Even though it has its perks, there also reside some disadvantages. Freedom is what we all seek the most! May that be financial, relationship, or friendship. For which all the struggles and the hassles that we go through in our life. But it seems our real life is much more complex than we could have ever thought of.
I love being independent! Living life with my rules. But this mirage slowly starts to fade after a certain amount of time. At the end of the day, the hustling mode gets to trigger, and we are back on the track of making thyself work harder and smarter to reach the top.
Sacrificing a couple of months/years to secure the better days ahead makes sense, which is why focusing on a strict schedule to make the time worthwhile—escalating the will to make progress in areas where I have no expertise—polishing the skills to make things better—improving thyself to be a better person in the coming days. Although I hate to admit it, rules and routines do help a person reach their goal smoothly, rather than those people who do go on blindly without a target or aim in life. Yes, sometimes miracles happen! But that is quite rare.
Creating content in HIVE has been one of the habits that I do not want to change. I would like to keep it going. A few reasons are that it helps me keep connected with my audiences. It allows growth in my HIVE account. It helps me to curate and search for quality authors, and those people inspire me to write. Nothing happens overnight. All those success stories do not happen in a day. So, for me, I am just taking it slow and working on making it to the top.
Who feeds on fear? A common answer would be those fictional characters we see in gothic movies, i.e., that spooky clown in the birthday party or deceased souls who come back from another dimension to haunt us for eternity.
All fictional. Nothing to be afraid of, right?
But there is a group of entities, all belonging to this mortal realm, constantly feeding themselves on our fear. They are none but the person living around us in this society. The fear of failure, the fear of missing out, the fear of getting involved in unwanted hassle, the fear of “what people would say”— and we are vulnerable in situations like this as we are ignorant; we are keeping our conscience blind to go with the flow even if it’s parasitic.
Enlightened minds can separate fraud from legit. But when we are drowned in ignorance, the mind hides in darkness. Education, whether in institutional form or through experience, stables our minds. No one can take anything away from you when you know what’s rightfully yours. An educated mind can protest, fight, and claim what they are entitled to.
But a person lost in ignorance can barely understand who he is— a perfect opportunity for fraudsters around us to suck the life out of him. And it’s happening as it happened thousand years ago, from the beginning of humankind. Fooling people is one of the oldest habits mankind is still practicing, and it never gets old.
Even today, when we go above and beyond to explore things and discover the undiscovered, a large portion of the global population is being exploited in the name of progress. Many of us are already aware of what’s happening around us, but still, we do not speak a word.
The reason?
We are too fearful of upholding the truth. The fear of losing life and the fear of losing the dearest ones are holding us back from protesting the unjust. Meanwhile, those monsters are getting more powerful every day by feeding on our fear, growing invincible as youngsters constantly live in the realm of fearfulness.
But for how long? Nobody knows. However, we must not forget that when the coin flips, fate flips too.
Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash
“I will never be able to smile again.” that’s what he had said after losing the person closest to him. He spoke the same thing after a week, even after a month. What happens after six months? Same, he smiles barely but not like the one he used to do before. This one doesn’t come from the heart. It looks like a fake one just to fit in the surrounding atmosphere. Yeap, most probably, he forgot how to smile that comes from the core of our heart.
It’s been a year, time to move on, he didn’t say that, but the time did. At a gathering of friends, he finally made a joke straight from the heart. His laughter was so loud that it was clear how far he had moved on compared to last year. The next moment, he became silent. Maybe he noticed the change too. He walked out for a moment to be alone, took a deep breath, and understood it was high time to move on because the time was ticking on and on, won’t wait for him. So he joined the tide of time again.
Grief... it's a complex emotion we humans have our own ways of dealing with.
Lately, I've been dealing with a lot of grief myself. Some of which are mine; with its slightly muted haze around the edges as I always tend to block out emotions that are difficult to handle. And some of which are from others. And seeing, living through the grief of these people, it’s like seeing life in a movie, with different perspectives and emotions altogether.
One of my older relatives, my aunt to be exact is, most probably at the end of her line. Death might have just spread its arm and embraced her as I write this, and I fear she might not live to see the light of the day tomorrow. Through all this, the most atrocious feeling that I’m finding tough to deal with is that even though I want nothing more than to stop what is happening, there is nothing I can do.
While she breathes in the air from oxygen tanks in the ICU, my family gasp for air outside of the room, tear-stricken faces and hammered lungs fighting to breathe another day just for her, watching, praying for her to come back. Bribing god with good omens and obedience, trying to win over mercy.
My own mother is among them. And strangely, I'm not all that concerned about her.
You see, she is a professional crier, and I'm not saying it in a mocking tone. I love that about her, almost envy it. Because criers, they let their emotions out with every droplet of sodium that leaks through their eyes. There are no bottled-up emotions or hidden sorrow. They embrace their grief with open arms and then wave it goodbye like a gentle lover. They know how to soothe it, how to heal it and how to set it free.
Who I'm worried about, stands on the opposite side of the spectrum.
These people, with blinding smiles on their faces and optimism on their tongues, tend to look the other way when grief lurks in. It's not that they are ignorant. They know exactly what is coming, but they shy away from it, in hopes that it might make the pain, when it hits, just a tad bit less. Others call them aloof and carefree because of their ways, sometimes even heartless, when what goes on inside them is another story altogether.
And it shows through the little cracks that come with the facade they pull. Like a small tremble of hand while taking something. Unfocused tired eyes that try to hide behind smiles. You see them talk for hours at length, just so they are not left with their mind. And when the lights out and everyone goes to sleep, you see them sitting down on a chair with their lights on, looking lost and... Broken.
And I get them. It's not easy, to let go of the person you spent over sixty years with. It's not easy, taking in the fact that this time she might be gone for good, Leaving you alone in this cold empty world. The mare thought that there would be no one there to hear your mindless rambles, no one there to bicker and fight with over simple things, no one there who would grab onto your hand tightly when nights became tough, it’s no less painful than a knife to the heart.
I'm worried about these people. They smile with their eyes as they die with their loved ones. They stay with their grief and keep it around like a friend to nurse on cold empty nights, alone. And in the end, it’s the grief that ends up taking their lives as well.
Stay
Because you know what leaving looks like
The parking lot that became a graveyard overnight
Stay
Because you remember the waiting,
waiting for the sun to come up,
waiting for your breath to give up,
waiting for the phone calls to stop being answered,
waiting for your bones to let go of the chill that is more faithful than time.
Stay
Because you remember the cold sidewalks on December,
the even colder stares when your humanity tears down the middle,
the winter gravel lying underneath a deathlike embrace
And you kept asking god,
Why he continously sends you back
for yet another taste.
Stay
Because summer dosen't have to smell like dope melting on plastic bag,
the lemonade doesn't have to linger like an Eden
Like it's something you weren't meant to have.
Home doesn't have to feel like a ghost story
every time you walk through the door
With your parents wondering if this is the last they'll see of you
with your feet still touching the floor.
Stay
Because you've buried all of your friends
and you wonder which time will be the last time,
which touch of laughter will fade like the wind
when the kindergarten circle
becomes the crackhouse,
and you always whisper,
He used to have a smile that lit this town up.
Stay
Because his mother showed you the place where he died,
and we've all had floors that have stories
of how one turned into red and blue lights,
some just never got the chance to tell the story of how they survived.
Now his mother hands you his clothing
and you see how a family died,
Overnight.
Stay
Because sobriety might fucking burn,
but it's not a hopeless grave.
Because somehow the story of how you put a needle in your vein
for five years
became a story without shame.
Stay
Because that fire that came back into your eyes
is found every time you don't get high
And one day the struggle that once had hands around your throat,
for your life
Became the most significant way to touch someone's life.
Stay
Because you survived.
“Ten little Indians went out to dine….”
As haunting as this rhyme is, the film is quite interesting if I say so myself. It’s been a while since I wrote a film review, and I feel a little rusty. Regardless of whether I have written or not, it certainly hasn’t stopped me from watching a few films. There’s a certain charm in old black-and-white films as I feel they’re more focused on the story. As much as it sometimes feels superfluous with not-so-neat tricks, the stories often compensate well enough. Murder mysteries, quite frankly, fascinate me. And Then There Were None (1945) is one of the films I have watched recently, and due to a few slip-ups, I haven’t quite enjoyed the film as much as I had hoped.
The film starts with ten people who were shipped off to a remote island as they were invited by a mysterious person named Mr. Owen to spend the weekend on the said island. Soon the guests realized they were there to pay for the crimes they committed and got away unscathed. What eventually happened to them and the mystery of the recluse Mr. Owen, is what the film is about.
I have only watched one other film directed by Rene Clair before, so I may only be able to say a little about his works based on just two films. But as far as this particular film is concerned, I think an Agatha Christie mystery would not have disappointed me. I also realized that back then, it would have been quite difficult to see people vanish right in front of you, and you have to look the other way for a second before they disappeared and reappeared. Sometimes distractions were used just so that certain events could take place. Even though the story is quite fascinating, the film hasn’t quite lived up to the mark. The most interesting thing about the whole film was the rhyme - it was brooding and dark, shrouded in a layer of childhood fun.
As I had said before, due to the technological cessation back then, I found it slightly challenging actually to enjoy the film. I’m not yet sure if it’s my being in this era that has stopped me from liking cinema or if it is the film itself. But I do enjoy old movies, so I’m still unsure about my feelings and opinions toward the film. I remember watching Murder She Said last year - another black-and-white Christie mystery - and I actually enjoyed it a great deal. It’s not fair to the films if you’re unsure about what you feel toward them, but I can hardly be held responsible for it. What put me off even more was the big reveal and the ending. I believe if these few slip-ups weren’t so obvious, I might have liked the film a lot - but now I’m leaning toward a more 5 out of 10 rating feeling.
