With apologies to Matthew Arnold

I begin this blog with my apologies to the poet Matthew Arnold. No this is not about his immortal creation The Scholar Gypsy. Instead, it is a nickname I picked up back at my university (more on that later), and so this is one more boring blog about someone ordinary — me.

Having lived on this planet for nearly three decades now, I guess I'm an earthling who's also one of a Blue Billion. I was born in a cosmopolitan town my parents called home near the east Indian city of Calcutta, home to football, adda, bandhs, College Street, Coffee House, Ray, Mother Teresa and Howrah Bridge (not always in that order).
Ours was a town, which later became a city, but one with big dreams and high expectations. Practically everybody who lived their (and their cousins twice removed) were engineers or doctors. Most of my schoolmates are either engineers or MBAs or both and a handful are doctors. But I grew up to be none of the above. So, I'm a loser by the "standards" we grew up with. Or am I? Let me answer that later.
My dad, a doctor by profession, joined the local steel plant's hospital after his studies, giving in to "family pressures" and giving up his dreams of an academic career or one as an army medic. He had lived in the remotest parts of north India by the time he was 14, thanks to my grandfather being an engineer with the railways. His life in the jungles had taught him a lot — he was a champion trekker and knew more than most boy scouts his age did. And he also knew how to handle guns — in fact he was quite a crack shot. My grandfather, who I never met, also hunted tigers — not for sport, but as a necessity, when they turned man-eaters!
My mum came to this town after marriage — the pampered eldest child of well-off parents, after growing up all over the country. Because she had always been a big city girl, the somewhat serene surroundings of the town then were probably soothing for her, but I guess she was never cut out to be a typical housewife.
Both their families hailed from the present Bangladesh, and though they were never really refugees, thanks to their feudal backgrounds (the genteel class usually had a summer house in Calcutta or some other part of Bengal), they were kind of rootless.
These two people adopted the town as their own and the town rewarded them with respect and affection. Thus was born a family, with servant and dog, where my sister, the gentle elder child, arrived to the joy of my maternal grandparents (the only and best set of grandparents I've ever had) and assorted aunts and uncles. I guess its a great feeling to become an uncle or aunt at the ripe old age of eight, sadly I encountered the feeling much later in life.
But the joy was short-lived. A certain year the rain gods (and the man-made ones) decided to play havoc with the lives of thousands just before the Pujas, Bengal's biggest annual festival. Well, I had arrived, with the sound and fury of nature heralding this momentous event. And thanks to the portent signs during my birth, I'm all sound (heard someone drop a metal tiffin-case in a silent office? well thats me) and fury (not always, but a few smashed wireless phones and remote controls bear testimony to an otherwise "cool and collected" persona).

I guess this part is boring enough. I'm too bored (and sleepy) to continue. But I will, promise. Even if its only me and my extended family who's reading this blog. 'nuff said.
May the force be with you.