MY amateurish attempts to put on the mask of an intellectual turned into a practical Joke. During the period of the last cyclone warning. I demonstrated the cyclone model to the family with the help of a mosquito coil. Moved the coil slowly over a large wall map of Bangladesh, the spirals and the centre of the coil depicted the progress of the cyclone, and the change in the wind direction from clockwise to anti clockwise as the eye (calm and windless) passed over an area.

After the weather had subsided. in a flash of misguided inspiration I placed the mosquito coil on a nail on the drawing-room wall. The effect was novel, surrounded by other works of art' (an international foot-and-mouth painting, a scroll from Beijing: a 3-D claywork of a cat waiting for the master at the door slightly ajar....). Impishly I awaited the next batch of guests.

Curiosity might have killed the proverbial cat, but the hanging coil turned the guests on. and acted as an ice-breaker. When the inevitable, question cropped up. I offered the explanation with a solemn face.

The coil. 1 submitted, gave a general idea about our country and the people. The first image was of the mosquitoes, impervious to the political change of Mayors, ana the UNDP townplanning devolution exercises. The second image visualised Bangladesh as a cyclonic zone. The third depicted the Bengali way of brain storming. On the insistence of the family, a fourth image was added — the Juicy and delectable Jilapi. the coiled power energy delicacy of Bangladesh.

After this opening bait, the host could relax, as the debate warmed up, and the ginni (the wife) could disappear for a while to look after the refreshments. As the majority of the guests are old-timers. I have to lubricate the flowing tongue and stretch the thinking cap. Our minds are as unpredictable as the progress and behaviour of the cyclone.

The speed and direction (of the mind) are changing all the time, and it becomes a problem to keep track of the mental warning signals, in addition- to the track of the cyclonic mind. If there were to be a comparison

between the weatherman and the politician, the bet would be about even, with the difference that while one earns his living with inaccurate forecasts most of the time, the other lives off the earning.... Since the predictions are wide off the mark, the communication gap cannot be narrowed.

The thinking process also matches the wandering and changing course of our deltaic rivers, with all the characteristics of Jowar-bhata (the tides) and the sand banks. Or take the creepers in our tropical jungles and the back gardens. Luxuriant overgrowth. Not a term as disparaging as the waterless desert: but someone has to remove the weeds, before the light can shine through. The tiger has his stripes, the leopard his spots, and the politician his m-coil mind for the bait and the bite.

Since we always seem to have plenty of time in hand to encourage the devil, seldom are the deals straight. It is not straight like the tight-cut Jeans; but it is more like the spiraled saree. There is a tendency to spiral towards the centre; spraying fertiliser along the way.

Without a living wage, one has to wage wars for a decent living, revelling in queer skirmishes. The tender of the heart tend not to be harsh on the sources of supplementary income. After all. our Taka has started floating. It will take some time to settle down: as would the floating lives of yesterdays and todays, with no bright tomorrow in sight. The eye of poverty is on the Present.

Liberated from the age of leisure and hurled into the world of competition, our pilgrim of fortune finds the tran-sitioh difficult from the winding path of the garden to the high-speed super highway of open-market. The politicianpilgrim. armed with a solitary ek-tara (local single-string guitar). tries to jazz up the sleepy electorate, but succeeds only in turning the break-dance into betaal (detuned) actions such as hartals.

Mount a mosquito coil on your drawing room wall and contemplate on the next cyclone to be unleashed by our netas (leaders). Perhaps not — none can predict the rough weather.