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Late Musings Of A Lazy Author

Sabarna Roy is a trained Civil Engineer and graduated with a First Class Honours Civil Engineering Degree from Jadavpur University in 1988. He is presently working as Senior Vice President and is in the 26th year of his employment with Electrosteel Group.

Sabarna Roy is an author of critically acclaimed bestselling literary fiction of seven published books. They are: Pentacles; Frosted Glass; Abyss; Winter Poems; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020, and Fractured Mosaic.

Sabarna Roy has two technical books to his name, titled: (i) Articles on Ductile Iron Pipelines and Framework Agreement Methodology, and (ii) Technological Trends in Water Sector for a Sustainable Solution.

He has been awarded the Literoma Laureate Award in 2019, Literoma Star Achiever Award 2020, Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018 won the best book of the year 2019, the A List Award for excellence in fiction by the NewsX Media House, Certificate for The Real Super Heroes for spreading a spirit of positivity and hope during the COVID-19 Pandemic from Forever Star India Award 2020, and the Certificate for Participation in the Indo Russian Friendship Celebration 2020, the Literoma Golden Star Award 2020: Lifetime Achievement, and the Certificate of Appreciation for featuring in the Hall of Fame of Literoma International Symposium on Literature & Festival 2020, and the Times Eminent Writer of the Year award by The Times of India Group in Kolkata in February 2021.

Sabarna is one of the winners of the Champions of Change 2020 Award given out by Interactive Forum on Indian Economy supported by Government of India.

Sabarna is one of the recipients of Economic Times News Makers 2021 (Eastern Region), Top 10 Most Influential Business Leaders of 2021 given out by Business World and ANI in association with the Indian Alert and Times Excellence Award 2021 in Indian Literature given out by the Times Group, and Professional Excellence Award in the Aqua Excellence Award 2021 given out by the Aqua Foundation.

Sabarna, by the end of this year, is coming up with his 8th literary work: A Marriage, An Affair, and A Friendship, and his third technical book, titled: Emerging Environmental Technologies and Policies.

  1. Every person that I know craves for appreciation. Some people silently. Some people loudly. I have always thought I have not been as much appreciated in life as much as I should have been or I should be. Although, some people think I have been pampered since my early childhood and that I sulk, is proof enough that I am a pampered brat. To be frank, I have been in-confident with my first 4 books. As such, I never was a part of owning these books when it came to marketing and branding to the utter dismay of my publisher. With my new book, I have started taking baby steps. I have/am received/receiving some appreciation. Well, it does make me happy. I have also received some positive criticism and suggestions.

Whenever, it comes to appreciation, what comes to my mind is the assessment of my illiterate paternal grandmother, who cared for me a bit more than my mother, about me. She was not even my biological grandmother. She was a widow who was essentially a caretaker of my grandfather when he was terribly ill with Diabetes II. After my grandfather died she carried on in my paternal house and earned the respect of the status my grandmother would have got. This was possible because of the equitable ethics that baba practiced. Her care for me was deeply holistic and dense. She saw me through all the illnesses I suffered until the age she was alive. Her attachment to me and my attachment to her are indescribable. Something beyond words. She was deeply patriarchal although submissive herself. She was greedy for petty cash. She would exaggerate anything that would create an effect. She was ritualistic and deeply religious and an ardent follower of Krishna.

She appreciated me openly. She always said: My oldest grandson has the heart of the kindest king! Ask from him anything; he would give! She would completely embarrass me among a crowd of strangers. I would curtly ask her to keep her mouth shut. She always touched me when she appreciated me.

I am at an age when I have understood: technical strategy and literary books are often appreciated on kind days; rarely, your heart. So, in a sense, I feel a deep sense of gratitude towards this woman today. It is true I am neither kind; nor I am a king and nor do I have any kingdom.

But people do not appreciate you for who you are rather because who they are.

2. In my late youth I saw her for the first time on a train. Immediately thereafter I started conjuring an indescribable companionship with her. I chased her for years. Later I came to know she is a happy mother of two bonny sons. She would not give me any attention for she had a secret lover too.

3. His father vanished all of a sudden. I had a strong suspicion, this man had something to do with this vanishing act. He lived with his father and after his father had vanished he lived alone in a palatial house. I started following every activity of his and also sneaked into his house once or twice. But I did not find anything irregular. One thing, however, struck me as odd. In spite that this man seemed to have inherited a lot of wealth he became restless and melancholic over the years.

4. Rahul lives the life of a hermit in Hrishikesh nowadays. In the winters when I had gone to meet him, he told me something patting my back, which struck me instantly: There comes a time in the life of a man when you will not be able to restart your life again and that is when it dawns on you that this is the beginning of the end!

5. I knew a homeless prince. He used to give voice to the weak and the disabled. Then one day he lost his voice. He brooded and pondered: whether he had overutilised his voice!

6. In Fallen Man, I made Rahul – my protagonist – to retreat into the mountains with his old mother, having been defeated in life in a growing metropolis.

It was a childhood dream I nurtured in my soul that when I would grow old enough I would live with my mother alone in a high mountain.

But then life has very different things in store for you!

You become a different man as you grow up and confuse yourself with the choices that life offers you.

7. The two faces that I find most beautiful and endearing are that of my son [Bholu] and my daughter [Tista]. Whenever I am gloomy or given to melancholy I reconstruct these faces in my mind’s movie screen according to the mood I want them to be in. I am an atheist. But I believe in one Lord – Bholu, and one Lordess – Tista. I do not pray. Never. But yes sometimes in severe crisis maybe. But to no other god other than my Lord and Lordess. This is a secret I am confessing for the first time in my life.

8. Today in the late afternoon I flew from the west to the east. As the late afternoon rolled into a mysterious dusk I could view a ring of deep darkness settling on the western horizon and a ring of bright orange-ish light glowing out of the eastern horizon and a wonderfully overcast grey sky with scattered fountains of light. For a few moments I was perplexed by the dialectical landscape of light- ceasing every second – and darkness – creeping in like a black hood. Slowly another night progressed inside our lives surrounding my airplane cutting across the hanging curtains of hazy clouds below. Repetition of the diurnal matrix never stops arousing my curiosity every dusk and dawn. There have been instances in my life when I have confused a happy dusk with a happy dawn and a pensive dawn with a pensive dusk. Time flows like a silent river of unknown melancholia. Life goes on … will the mountains break … will the glaciers break … will the nations break … will the mausoleums break … will the cemeteries break … will my chest break … from the relentless repetitions of life!

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