Day `haven't-count-for-a-while:' Congratulations! You Won!

All the emails congratulate me, turn out to be spam.
I love you spammers, you keep me going.

Something old, something new, Something borrowed, something blue

Two years ago this day, I got married.

It was a ... hmm... a normal day. Everything about it was normal.
I wore a beautiful shari and was not looking my best (sigh), I never look my best when I want to.
Anyway, our house was full with our relatives and my mom was very tensed (as usual :D).
Then Reza (my husband) with his family came at 7 pm, and the electricity went off. That made my mom more tensed, why does the electricity go off every time Reza comes? Does it mean all the "lights" of her daughter's life will go off after the marriage?
Actually, at that time electricity used to go off at 7pm EVERYDAY! But who'd remind her that!

The Kazi came to me to sign the contract. He started saying (very loudly), "ঠাকুরগাঁও নিবাসী জনাব [my father-in-law] এর পুত্র মো আলিমুর রেজা এর পক্ষ হইতে [at this point I started laughing] মোহাম্মদী শরীয়ত মোতাবেক আপনি ঢাকা জেলা নিবাসী জনাব [my father] এর কননা সাদিয়া আফরোজকে বিবাহের প্রস্তাব করিতেসি. আপনি এই বিবাহে সম্মতি থাকিলে আপনের উকিলের মাধ্যমে বলেন Alhumdullillah." (Son of [my father-in-law] is proposing to marry you, daughter of [my dad]. Say Alhumdullillah if you accept the proposal.)

I was trying my best not to laugh. Everyone around me was so serious and expecting me to cry, they would feel weird if they saw me laughing. It was really puzzling, too. In all bengali movies, I heard people say "Kobul" (I agree) three times when they get married, but now I have to say "Alhumdullillah?" Do I have to say both Kobul and Alhumdullillah? Anyway, I said Alhumdullillah once and then signed the contract. Someone from the back said he didn't hear me saying Alhumdullillah, so the Kazi asked me to say it louder. I almost screamed "Alhumdullillah" and this time couldn't suppress my laugh.

Then the Kazi went to Reza and took his sign on the contract. And we got married !!! Just like that! I was still confused if that was all. So I asked my uncle, "Is that all? Am I married now?" I don't know what was wrong with my question or the way I asked it, he started laughing and kept telling everyone my peculiar question. And I was thinking, like 5 days ago, my family was so hush hush about our relationship and we were not allowed to hold hands or go out together and now everything is "legal" and permitted? Who made these rules??? Thanks God, I'm not marrying a stranger.

It took me a while to get used to the fact that we are married and it's OKAY to live with him. There were thousands of moments when I felt "Oh my god, if my mom catches me with Reza now, she is going to get very angry!" and then I remembered "Oh I'm married now!"

I wanted to finish this post with something cool. But I'm pretty slow in coming up with wonderful witty things, so let me finish with whatever in my mind right now.
Marriage is such a huge thing in our society, specially for girls, I never understood why. My parents never allowed my going out alone or hanging out with friends for long and they used to say, "Do all these after you are married." "You can go on tours with your husband." I've seen same things being told to many (all!) bengali girls along with other bullshits like "You can make your hair short if your husband likes, keep it longer till you get married." "You should put on make-ups and wear gold jewelry  after you get married, doing all these before marriage are not signs of a good girl." "Don't make a habit of spending money, what if your future husband doesn't like it?" "Don't be a dancer or singer, your future husband might not like it." "You shouldn't stay out in the sun too much, guys might not choose you to marry if your complexion is dark." As if a girl's life is going to start only after she gets married. And she has to shape herself so that society thinks she is going to be a "good" bride. Is a guy growing up shaping himself so that he can be a "good" husband? Society fills up our head with these fairy tales about a prince who marries a beautiful poor girl and makes her a queen. Is there any fairy tale about a queen marrying a poor boy and making him just her husband? There are many in real life but not in fairy tales. And also every time these stories are about "someone else will come to your life and make you happy," why don't they teach us that no one can make you happy unless you learn to make yourself happy?

May be they do, may be we need to grow up to realize the true meanings of those stories.

After my two years of married life, I think marriage is a wonderful experience that makes us grow up in many ways and teaches us to appreciate life. So, cheers to the constitution of marriage and cheers to whoever established this rule.

more poems

its like 10 inches snow outside and i'm in the mood of reading poems again :D
read the full version here.

তোমার আমার মাঝখানেতে

     একটি বহে নদী ,

দুই তটেরে একই গান সে

     শোনায় নিরবধি ।

Khonek dekha by Rabindranath Tagor

যেমন ঢাকা ছিলে তুমি

         তেমনি রইলে ঢাকা ,

তোমার কাছে যেমন ছিনু

          তেমনি রইনু ফাঁকা !

          তবে কিসের তরে        

          থামলে লীলাভরে

যেতে যেতে পাড়ার পথে

           কলস লয়ে কাঁখে ?

একটুখানি ফিরে কেন

           দেখলে ঘোমটা - ফাঁকে ?

if you are interested, read the full poem here

check ur reaction

check ur reaction here

all u have to do is to dart the fleeing sheeps among a flock & ur reaction will be calculated according to how fast u can dart them.
& then u'll be rated as any of the 5 category- a (forgot the adjective) chitah,rocketing rabbit,bobbing bobcat,ambling armadillo and sluggish snail.

i was the bobbing bobcat ...:)
enjoy.

Professor of Happiness

Offffffffffff ........for me starting something is the most ,what to say , dilemmatic,problematic, hair-tearing situation. Once i start it ,i can finish ... but before starting ,offfffffff ,i spend hours in absolute zombie state ,thinking and ruminating and thinking over.
Is that happen to everyone or just me?

Ok , today's story was about book dedication. its the first thing i read in any book. & its the only thing i consider when i buy a book of any unknown writer. So now here is a sweet dedication that i bumped into -

Our 6 year old son David felt mighty big when he was graduated from Kindergarten. I asked him what he plans to be when he finished growing up. David looked at me intently for a moment and then answered,” Dad , I want to be a professor.”

“A Professor? A professor of what ?” I asked .
“ Well, Dad,” he replied,” I think I want to be a Professor of Happiness.”

A Professor of Happiness ! That’s a pretty wonderful ambition , don’t you think?

To David , then a fine boy with a grand goal , and to his mother , this book is dedicated.

... we all honor heros for different reasons.

sometimes for their bravery,
sometimes for their daring,
sometimes for their goodness ...

But mostly, we honor heros because at one point or another - we all dream of being rescued.

Of course, if the right hero doesn't come along, sometimes we just have to rescue ourselves. :)


[from desperate housewife]

sCriBbles

two days ago i took a personality(??) test, And 1st line of the result was

"U flit from flower to flower"

and u know what - it's true. i have no idea how the analyst come up with this. I really do this - mentally & physically too (i used to walk in my sleep & go from one room to another)

by the way , that was not the topic on my mind when I started writing this blog (see ! my flit-ing nature!). Once upon a time (i can't remember when) i had a hobby of keeping interesting paper cuttings ... & this is the most amazing one. wish i could see this baby!

Hi, it's me

Hey all,
hatti matim tim is my favourite nursery rhyme
that's why i named my blog after this.

Hatti Matim Tim
Ami mathe pari dim
Though I have no khara shing
But I believe I'm the hatti matim tim.

Can anyone please tell me who wrote this?

-----------------------------------------------
Many non-bengali speakers asked me what my blog name means.
One guy guessed "Amy ditched Mathew for a dime"(OMG!)
Hatti matim tim is a 4-line Bengali nursery rhyme. Hatti matim tim is an imaginary animal in Bengali folklore, kind of like Unicorn. It has two straight horns and lays eggs in open field. "Ami mathe pari dim" means "I lay eggs in open field." In Bengali, "laying eggs in a field" means "doing nothing" or "wasting time."
So my blog name means "I am an imaginary animal and this blog is one place where I waste most of my time."