Complete Bengali with Two Audio CDs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself Language)

It's easy to teach yourself Bengali!
Complete Bengali: A Teach Yourself Guide provides you with a clear and comprehensive approach to Bengali, so you can progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking, and writing Bengali with confidence.
Within each of the 24 thematic chapters, important language structures are introduced through life-like dialogues. You'll learn grammar in a gradual manner so you won't be overwhelmed by this tricky subject. Exercises accompany the texts and reinforce learning in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This program also features current cultural information boxes that reflect recent changes in society. The accompanying audio CDs contain all dialogues that appear in the course book, recorded by native speakers.
Features:
One and five-minute introductions to key principles to get you started
Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience
Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress
Extra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of the basics of the language

Gaaye Holud or the Haldi Ceremony.
The young bride to be is traditionally bathed with a paste of turmeric, sandalwood, oil and milk (to ensure, I guess, a golden glowing complexion for the wedding!).
Nowadays the gaaye-holud or the smearing of turmeric to the body is more or less symbolic. The married women of the house as in older days first bless the young bride to be with the Boron Daala, wishing her health, wealth and happiness. Then the married women or the "Eyo"s begin the haldi ceremony with dabbing the turmeric on the bride. After this is done more or less to everyone's satisfaction, the real fun begins when all the women - married or unmarried have fun with smearing the pungent paste on each other!
Like I mentioned, it's more symbolic nowadays and instead of following this up with a time consuming bath with sandal and milk, soap and water suffices and is followed with the all obliterating makeover and bridal makeup at the parlour!!

This is a photo of a typical authentic Bengali meal. It comprises of couple of vegetable fries, Daal (lentils), fish fry or a fish curry and sweet dish. The details of each item can be found on the notes.

The food has been served on silver utensils.

"The film begins with the news of car accident suffered by Siddhartha when he was driving back home alone, after a late night. Arati mother of Siddhartha Mishra rushes to Kolkata by the first available flight. She is received by Sahana, Siddhartha's young colleague in the creative department and dropped off to her son's flat. The place is empty, which Siddhartha has apparently adopted as a pet. Arati, though obviously in a state of shock, she has no one to share her grief with; her estranged husband is not reachable on the phone. It is only when Arati drops in to Siddhartha's office to collect his belongings and to get a feel of the place where her son had made such a mark, that she picks up hints of a same - sex relationship between Siddhartha and his immediate boss, Arnab. The latter refuses to hand over Sid's belongings straight away, and Arati walks out in a huff. Now, Arati's incipient homophobia comes into play. She immediately gets into a tizzy and goes into denial mode. She was close to her son. He wouldn't hid esuch a thing from his mother. She argues with Shahana about all the girls who used to chase him in Delhi, Shahana confesses that she too had a crush on him. In her desperation to prove that Sid was really straight, she even calls Shahana up at night to announce that she found a packet of condoms in his cabinet, which she thinks is ultimate proof of his heterosexuality! (Proving how native and ignorant even educated people an be) Matters reach a head when Arati has a full - scale blow - up with Arnab, accusing him to having seduced her son. Later, she feels a deep sense of empathy with Arnab when she realizes how deeply he is suffering too. Shahana to feels a deep sense of loss; so much so that she decided to switch to another job and distance herself from her old workplace, so replete with memories of the dear departed.