Category: Novels/Fictional Writing

Introducing My Patreon Page

“Ponkti” (পঙক্তি) is not my last name, it is actually my nickname. I just kept it as my last for various personal reasons and one of them is to show that I am a Bengali for those who can recognize.
Just like any proud Bengali parents, my dad nicknamed me Ponkti when I was born, which simply means “lines or quotes of poems”. Bengali people are into literature and poetry. Most of them love giving their children some poetic fancy names.
Fast forward, all these years I became quite the opposite of a poet-an an electrical and electronics engineer. Even in my leisure, I live and breathe everything related to technology and startups, and frequently love to talk about Jungian Cognitive Functions.
I am active on Quora, Medium, and my own personal WordPress blog.
My personal blog is where I write casually about whatever I want without any strings attached. I have been blogging since 2014. I have also been picked as Quora’s one of the top writers in 2018 (for God knows why), and even in real life, I have always been praised for my thoughts, writing, and speech.
Engineers (can and) do write well as well. I do my little part to break that stereotype each day.
I have decided to add a Patreon page for exclusively curated content for my paying viewers.
On a weekly basis, I plan to provide poetic words, short stories, personal opinions, video clips, and even more which might help you uplift yourself a little bit, or push you to think differently about a topic.
I encourage you to be my Patreon and even ask me for types of writings/content you wish to see here.
I can also become audacious once in a while to share some Bengali posts with my Bengali followers. I write on Bengali Quora too but note that my English is better than my Bengali.
I am very busy in real life, but I will try my level best to keep your Patreon experience with me as special as possible.
Thanks a lot for reading.
Just for $10 a month now you get access to posts that won’t be posted here.

Be a Patron today (follow the link below):

https://www.patreon.com/tasniaponkti

The Man And His Mysterious Kitten

This is a fictional story and has the potential to be part of a bigger story.

hello kitty

There is a very beautiful fluffy big-eyed white kitten sitting quietly on the cabinet right next to John’s office desk staring at him. She is dressed as the hello kitty. John just arrived in his room at 7:00 am. He usually gets here before everybody else. He is surprised to see this cat. Where did she come from so early in the morning? John has a soft corner for kittens. He picked the kitty up in his arms and found a typed up note which said:

” A gift for you, from someone from your past.”

This must have been a prank. John does not like drama. Is it possible that his wife is testing John, whether he has a past or not? His coworkers are not really prankster-type.

John tried to put the cat down on the table, but the cat just hung on to his shirt buttons with her little paws. John hugged her again and the cat seemed very content. John sat on his chair with the kitty in his arms. He kept thinking, “Who could it be? I hope Karen(supervisor) doesn’t see this cat.” He then thought, “What if Karen herself brought it for him? But why would she do that?” He got up with the kitten earnestly hugging his kneck, to check on Karen’s room. Karen did not arrive just yet.

Even though the office starts at 7:15 am, most people come around 7:45 am to 8:00 am and some leave the office very late. John lives very close to walking distance. He thought about taking the kitty home and coming back. His wife is at work too. But what if someone lost the kitten? But who brings a cat in the office? This kitten seems really well-groomed. It cannot be a stray cat. As if someone put a lot of thought into it and he or she knows that John will like the cat.

He gently placed the kitten down on his table and she snuggled near the keyboard. Aww! It’s so cute! Where should John inquire about the cat? What if someone claims it?

John texted his wife, “I found a kitten on my desk. Are you playing a prank on me? It says this is a gift from the past.” His wife probably left for office. She will drop their toddler to the day-care before heading to the office. So it will take some time for her to reply.

He thought, “If I take the kitty home, where will I place it? Is she potty trained? Is she hungry?”

It is 7:30 am already. Nobody came to the office yet. It is strange. All the cubicles nearby are still empty. Is everyone playing pranks with John?

He picked the cat up, drove to Walmart, bought a bag of cat food, two bowls, litter box and drove home which is across the street to Walmart. He put out two bowls in his hobby room: filled one with water, another with food. He moved his hobby stuff from the table to the top of the cupboards so that the kitten could not climb on the table and knock things off. He locked the room and drove back to the office.

It is 8:30 am now. By now most people are here. He saw his supervisor passing by. John out of his guilt told her even though he was not asked, “I came early just like all the other days, but had an emergency. So I had to run back home.”- to which Karen gave a fake smile like she understood and cared.

He still has not asked anyone yet about the mysterious cat. All this means that he already liked and accepted the kitten and he does not wish to lose her.

Read Next: Dream Architect

অন্য ভুবন – পর্ব ১

এটি একটি কাল্পনিক গল্প। এর সব চরিত্র ও ঘটনা কাল্পনিক। যদি বাস্তবের কোন কিছুর সাথে মিল  খুঁজে পাওয়া যায় তবে তা নিছক কাকতাল মাত্র। 

আমি আমার বান্ধবী এবং মানুষিক চিকিৎসা বিশেষজ্ঞ ড. জেসিকা হ্যানের অফিসে আমার সেশনে বসে আছি। আমার মেডিকেল টেস্ট রিপোর্ট গুলো দেখে ও বলল, “সব কিছুই তো নরমাল মনে হচ্ছে। আমি কোন হরমনাল ইম্ব্যালান্সও রিপোর্টে দেখছিনা।  এমনকি সেরেটনিন, ডোপামিন লেভেলও স্বাভাবিক। তোমার আসলে কাজের চাপে এবং অফিস পলিটিক্সের কারণে অডিটরি এবং ভিসুয়াল হালুসিনেশন হচ্ছে বলে মনে হয়।”

আমি না সূচক মাথা নাড়লাম। ও বলল, “এধরনের ঘটনা আগে কখন হয়েছে?”

আমি উত্তর দিলাম, “না”।

জেসিকা বলল, ” তোমার অবচেতন মস্তিস্ক তোমাকে বিরতি নিতে বলছে। তুমি এখনকার কাজটা ছেঁড়ে দাও, নতুবা তোমাকে এই চাকরি শেষ করে ফেলবে।”

আমি বললাম: “আমি তোমাকে বোঝাতে পারবনা। আমি চেষ্টা করছি ছেঁড়ে দেয়ার কিন্তু পারছিনা। আমার মনে হয় খুব শিগগিরি আমাকে চাকরি থেকে বাতিল করা হবে। অনেক দেরি হয়ে গেছে। আমার মনে হয় তা হতে দেয়াই ভাল। চাকরি থেকে ফায়ার হয়া সমস্যা নয়। আমার সুপারভাইসর আমার রেপুটেশন এবং আমার ক্যারিয়ার চিরতরে নষ্ট করার চেষ্টা করছে। আসিফ শুধু আমাকে সাবধান করছে যে এরকম টা হবে, আগেই প্রস্তুতি নেয়া ভালো।”

জেসিকা ঃ ” তোমার এক্স-বয়ফ্রেনড তো হয় হারিয়ে গেছে নয়ত মারা গেছে তোমার দেশে। সে কিভাবে যুক্তরাষ্ট্রে তোমার ক্যালিফরনিয়ার এপার্টমেন্টে দেখা দিবে? তুমি হালুসিনেশনের কারণে ওকে মাঝে মাঝে দেখতে পাও। তোমার করমস্থল খুবই টকসিক তোমার মানুষিক এবং শারীরিক স্বাস্থ্যের জন্য। আমি তোমার পরিবারের লোকজনের  পুরো হেলথ হিস্ট্রি জানতে চাই। যেহেতু তুমি মেয়ে তাই তোমার আর  তোমার প্যাটারনাল  ডিএনএ রেসালট দরকার। আমাকে এটা বুঝতে সাহায্য করবে  যে তোমার কোন স্কিযফ্রেনিক জীন আছে কিনা। এধরনের সিম্পটম অনেক সময় ফামিলিতে রান করে। সাধারণত স্কিযফ্রেনিয়ায় অডিটরি হালুসিনেশন হয়, তোমারটা মনে হয় স্পেশাল কেস।”

আমি আর কিছুই বললাম না। দীর্ঘনিঃশ্বাস ফেললাম শুধু।

আমি এর পর যাই বলি তাই অযৌক্তিক মনে হবে। যদিও ডাক্তারের কাছে কিছু লুকাতে নেই। আমি ইঞ্জিনিয়ার হয়ে যদি এসব বিশ্বাস করি, তাহলে জেসিকা মনে করতে পারে আমি চাকরীর ব্যাপারটা নিয়েও বানোয়াট কথা বলেছি।

জেসিকা যোগ করলঃ ” তোমার প্রাইমারি ফিযিশিয়ানের কাছ থেকে আমি তোমার টেস্ট রিপোর্ট নিলাম। এখানে তো তোমার ভিটামিন ডি ডেফিশিয়ান্সি ছাড়া প্রায় সবই স্বাভাবিক। তুমি সত্যি কোন হালুসিনেশন রিক্রিয়েটিং ড্রাগ নিচ্ছ নাতো? আমি তোমাকে নিউরোট্রান্সমিটার ডোপামিন কে ঠিক মাত্রায় রাখার জন্য মেডিসিন দিতে পারি। কিন্তু নিশ্চিত না হয়ে দেবনা। তোমাকে দেখে সুস্থ মনে হয়। তোমার হেলথি লাইফ স্টাইল টা তুমি মেইনটেইন কর, ছেড়ে দিয় না। তোমার ঘটনার কোন লজিকাল ব্যখ্যা আমি খুঁজে পাচ্ছিনা। তোমার সাথে আগামি সপ্তাহে আবার দেখা হবে।”

আমি হ্যাঁ সূচক মাথা নেড়ে উঠলাম।

চলবে …

পরের পর্বের জন্য এই ব্লগে সাবস্ক্রাইব করতে ভুলবেননা। এই ব্লগের পাতায় নিয়মিত চোখ রাখুন…

 

 

Martian Tabloid (Game of Thrones)

Read: A Date Night in Mars

Lana and Kee are riding a dragon together. What a terrific view of the landscape from up here. The dragon is flying with full force over the green mountains and sometimes even flipping in the air just like a fighter jet.

Lana is controlling the dragon. Kee asks as loudly as he can, “So what’s the point of flipping the dragon?”

Lana shouts back, “Haha… I just thought you might like it.”

Kee screams, “Ah! I was almost falling off…”

Kee adds, “Don’t burn anything Dany!”

They were heading towards Kings’ Landing.  Kee and Lana played Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen respectively.

Lana’s phone rings. She needs to go back to work. She takes out the wifi/Bluetooth enabled virtual reality gear from her head which connects through the bio-chip in her head.

Kee says, “Oh! no. You have to go now?”

Both of them step outside the game room. The red Martian landscape is seen from the glass windows. The virtual game that they were playing is made after a famous 21st-century television series from earth named Game of Thrones.

Virtual reality is a day-to-day thing now. People used to watch games and movies. Now they have become parts of it.

A lot of things are virtual now including virtual dating and hookups. People live longer now, there is no need to increase the population. Human babies are born in labs out of test-tube embryos from parents they don’t know. There is no need for traditional marriages, having kids and raising a family.

Plus, simulation is better than reality anyway. Everyone is a pro in simulation. There is no need to be a physical expert in anything. It’s mostly in the brain anyway.

To be continued….

A Date Night On Mars

A Date Night-

Lana is sitting next to a giant oval-shaped window in a cafe called “Cafe Blue Moon”. She asks Kee, her boyfriend, in her thoughts (through her implanted bio-cell chip) how long Kee will take to come. While waiting for him, she is looking at the vast Martian reddish landscape with a bright greenish tint of the artificial earthlike atmosphere layer created from the nearby ozone-house.

She had a chance to go back to visit Earth a few years ago. Earth is not the same anymore. Even with all the damage that human species caused to Mother Earth, she is still far better than Mars in Lana’s opinion. Although quite extreme and unpredictable, Earth still has a breathable atmosphere for humans. Lana is nostalgic about the moonlit night experience she had while staring at the present otherworldly scenery. It was the first time she stepped outside on Earth’s surface without a special suit and an ozonic helmet. She breathed fresh air for the first time in her life, but was informed it is not fresh anymore, still, it reminded her as if she is home. Now she is telling herself, “Cafe Blue Moon what an ironic name for a cafe on Mars!”

Back Story –

It is 2233 now, 200 years since humans first made a manned journey to Mars. Lana and Kee are middle-class Martian people, but their ancestors were privileged earthlings who left Earth in the face of catastrophe. She read from the diaries of her great grandparents that it took human civilization many years to make a major leap from landing on earth’s moon to step foot on Mars, and eventually colonizing Mars through a lot of trial and error. There were a lot of socio-political and economic obstacles against this great step of human evolution. Some people even mocked at this idea, saying, why do we need to spend money to die on Mars when there are so many real problems we should fix on our earth? But by 2050 things had gone so out of hand that now rich people were spending money to relocate to Mars, to escape away from the horror of wars and terror. Some people till this date blame the oil industry behind the demise of our beloved earth. They say the oil industry is a key player behind the environmental disaster, politics, wars, terror, greed and the major cause of keeping the advanced energy-saving and space-based technology away from the general public for a long time. There are still a few under-privileged humans left on Earth who are trying to survive in harsh, extreme weather without much help from technology.

When Lana landed on Earth with her crew, from far away she was observing some people riding horses and wearing a primitive outfit made from animal skin. She read in the history book, that is how human civilization started and that is where earthlings are left to be now!

By the year 2100, a large number of people from Earth permanently left for Mars and some for other inhabitable planets. But Lana thinks the power play of human species never stopped. There is still a social division based on economic status. People who belong to the wealthy and privileged upper class are trying to colonize the Earth-like planets in nearest neighborhood galaxies. This is not a recent breakthrough. In fact, it has been going around for a while, in parallel with the struggle of artificially making Mars-like planets habitable.  The people in power want to control who takes the journey to the special habitable planets. They have already sent selected people to spaceships, putting them to sleep in cryogenic hibernation. There are only rumored stories on how far these spaceships have gone. But these are classified projects that are beyond the reach of people like Lana and Kee. Some say, Martian humans, have mastered the technology of artificial warm whole and anti-matter propulsion systems a long time ago and has already put it into use to travel to very far places in the universe. Again, there is no way to verify this by middle-class Martians, this might be another rumor. Lana thinks that history is repeating itself, that instead of making all innovation and knowledge accessible to the general public, the upper class is controlling it for their own selfish agenda.

Every human baby born by now on Mars is genetically engineered and people’s life expectancy, thus has increased dramatically eliminating all possible hereditary diseases. Some WiFi enabled bio-chips are installed in their bodies which help them to communicate through their mind without using any words. They can search for any information in their head and they can also create holographic virtual screens to project information through their body parts. This widespread technology uses human’s coherent thoughts to do things that early computers or cell phones would do. Because of all these bio-implants, people argue that they are not fully human anymore. They are artificial human beings, previously termed cyborgs. The physical, demographic and capability of each individual is controlled by the authority- creating differences or diversity among people.

The sophisticated AI  industry has changed the game of the private transportation industry completely, while public transportation is a majorly Hyperloop technology-based. All private/individual transportation modes are fully autonomous. Whenever a person calls his or her mode of transportation in the head, it appears at convenient locations and it reads fingerprints of the owner to get started for the journey. It is almost like owning autonomous horses who can also switch gears to fly. Some of this technology was already developed on earth, human species just have taken it with them in outer space and have been modifying it ever since.

Back at the present moment-

Lana and Kee, unlike the current Martian youngsters, are very romantic. They love to read about the world’s and human civilization’s ancient history, poetry, literature and like to enjoy old classic films together. They often do things to create the old world charms and romanticism.

Lana is just about to ask one more time, what is happening to Kee? Although Kee can easily reply through his telepathic concepts, he decided to do something different. He sent a robotic bird with an envelope to Lana. When Lana opened the envelope, a holographic screen came out of it and it reads in Kee’s voice, “Something important came up at the last minute sweetie! I cannot come today. I am sorry… I love you.”

(©This blog post is not for reproduction without permission)

Photo courtesy: SpaceX Envisions Building a City on Mars. Seriously.

Read Next: Martian Tabloid (Game of Thrones)

Also, read:

Space Dream!