Bartrend Dutta

With a name like Bartrend Dutta, it was obvious that his clique would have interesting nicknames for him. 'Bartender', 'Bart' were the popular ones amongst other distortions that people had thought for his name. Dutta never make a fuss about the same. Infact, he felt lost and sometimes unloved when, for days together his buddies wouldn't gather below his window and yell "BARTENDER!" to call him for a game of cricket.

"What's in a name?", his mother remarked once in a conversation with Mrs. Sood, when she posed a query on the meaning of Bartrend. "Names are a mere identification" said Mrs. Dutta, as her eyebrows give a slight raise so as to highlight the word 'identification'.

So much about the name, but what about the other details of his personality? Bartrend had a calm demeanour, calm only because he did not communicate his tides of chaos and stress to most people. Otherwise, he was pretty much like his peers- stumbling all the way with the process of 'growing up'. His eyes were beautiful, and most girls would agree. They were doe-shaped and perfectly concluded into the shape of a line which appeared when he laughed. There was nothing extraordinary about his voice, his looks or his gait. He was safely classified as normal and much to his relief.

His nature highlighted the tinge of love and forgiveness he held which was more apparent to the others, than he could have possibly expressed. In the fast-paced life, he was but another individual in the crowd grappling to reach that high rung in the ladder, where there was a breath of fresh air and down below a view of million heads bobbing up and down restive with their struggle. He was a nobody, and he was comfortable in the blankness of that anonymity. It gave him room for experimenting with success and failure...

There was a spark of creativity in him, but only to the extent of being sort of futile and untamed. If that were to be channelised into something concrete, he'd fret and spot an opportunity for a quick exit. His ingenuity needed no structure, no outcome. It existed for its own sake.

Bartrend involved himself in various activities, be it sports during school and college days or getting down to learning a musical instrument or a new language. Such an array of exposure, surely did its bit in developing his personality. He could hold an audience's attention with his speech; sometimes his antics. His sense of humour was unpredictable, though it was never labelled as 'humour' but he managed to distort ideas well enough to generate a slight jest.

His irritability, usually when he felt hungry, tired and sleepy all at once was something his family members had gotten used to. But there was no presence of anger as such in him, which didn't mean that there was a certain understanding as a substitute. It was just a tendency not to dwell too long on certain things..

Bartrend Dutta's life was distinct, and quite visibly so. A few of us, actually wrote about him on our blogs, and why not...his presence was to be shared if not literally, then atleast virtually.