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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Books read in 2011

Read in 2011 (91 = 55 + 36; NF 19) 

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS -- FICTION (17): (Ramayana by William Buck), Shankuntala by Kalidasa (translated by Arthur W. Ryder), (Mrichchakatika), Palace Walk by Naquib Mahfouz, Possessed by Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett), The Charterhouse of Parma by Strendahl, If on a Winter Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, Arabian Nights, The Tale of the Unknown Island by Jose Saramago (translated by Margaret Jull Costa), Cain by Jose Saramago, Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola, (Confessions by Saint Augustine), Children of Gebelwaki by Naquib Mahfouz, Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac, (The Trial by Franz Kafka), The Wife and other stories by Anton Chekov, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

NOVEL / FICTION IN ENGLISH (16): Europeans by Henry James, Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell, Boy  by Roald Dahl, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Dork by Sidin Vadukut, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe, Chef  by Jaspreet Singh, Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tuttola, Rain and Other Southern Sea Stories by W. S. Maugham, Fox by D. H. Lawrence, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass, Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Life's Handicap by Rudyard Kipling.

NON-FICTION (8): Hindoo Holiday by J. R. Ackerley, Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie, (November Boughs by Walt Witman), The Agricola and The Germania by Tacitus, (Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter), Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays by Chinua Achebe, Travels of Marco Polo.

ENGLISH POETRY (28): Birdsong by Rumi (translated by  Coleman Barks), Meghaduta by Kalidasa (translated by Arthur W. Ryder), Aeneid by Virgil (translated by C Day Lewis), Gilgamesh (translated by David Ferry), Dropping the bow: Poems from Ancient India  by Andrew Schelling, Ritusamhaar by Kalidasa (translated by Chandra Raman), Red Suitcase by Naomi Shihab Nye, One Handed Basket Weaving by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks), Intimations by Anna Akhmatova, The Pupil by WS Merwin, Possibility of Being  by Rainer Maria Rilke, The Theban Plays by Sophocles (translated by EF Watling), Poems of Nizam Hikmet (trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk Blasing), Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith, Collected Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky, The Bacchae, Medea and Hippolytus by Euripides (translated by Phillip Vellacot), Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar, Tulip in the Desert: A Selection of the Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (translated and edited by Mustansir Mir), Don Juan by Lord Byron, Songs of Kabir (translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra), Here there was once a Country by Venus Khoury-Ghata (trans. by Marilyn Hacker), The River of Heaven: The Haiku Poetry of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki (translated by Robert Aitken), Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland, The Garden of Heaven: Poems of Hafiz by Hafiz (trans. by Getrude Bell), Shikwa aur Jawab-i-Shikwa by Mohammad Iqbal (trans. by Khushwant Singh).

Hindi / Urdu / Sanskrit/ Punjabi (3+7): Gaban by Munshi Premchand Pratinidhi Kavitayein & Meri Shresht Kavitayen  by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Rashmirathi &; Urvashi by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Raghuvansh by Kalidasa (Hindi prose translation), Madhushala and Kya Bhoolon Kya Yaad Karun by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Iqbal ki kavitayein, Umar Khayyam ki Rubaiyan by Harivansh Rai Bachchan,

PHILOSOPHY / RELIGION / MYTHOLOGY  (0+1+6): A Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, King Jesus  by Robert Graves, (Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda), Exhortation to the Greeks (trans. W. Wilson), The Rich Man's Salvation (trans. P. M. Barnardand To the newly baptized (a fragment) (trans. J. Patrick) by Clement of Alexandria, The Panchatantra (trans by Patrick Olivelle).

MAHABHARATA (by Mahrishi Ved Vyas; tr. by Kisari Mohun Ganguly) (0/18): 

POPULAR SCIENCE / ECONOMICS (5): (In the blink of an eye by Andrew Parker), The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner, (Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton), Economics Explained by Robert L. Heilbroner and Lester Thurow, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas.



Favorite reads of the year (Fiction / Novels /Short Stories/ Non-fiction)
1) Palace Walk and Children of Gebelwaki by Naquib Mahfouz
2) Possessed by Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)
3) Arabian Nights
4)  Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell  
5) Rain and Other Southern Sea Stories by W. S. Maugham
6) Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie and  

7)  Poems of Nizam Hikmet (trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk Blasing)
8) Pratinidhi Kavitayein, Meri Shresht Kavitayen, Madhushala, Kya Bhoolon Kya Yaad Karun  
     and Umar Khayyam ki Rubaiyan by Harivansh Rai Bachchan,
9) Rashmirathi & Urvashi by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, 
10)  The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
11) Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays by Chinua Achebe
12) Life's Handicap by Rudyard Kipling 

(If I am through more  than 50% of the book, it goes into 2010 category, otherwise, it appears in the next year. See here for the books read in 2010, with the selection of favorite ten!)

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Hindi Kavita: Dilli



दिल्ली 

फिर के आये जहाँ फिर आये कहाँ दिल्ली,
तुझसे दिल लगाये वो जाये कहाँ दिल्ली?

एक लत है, हर कश में जहर भरती है, 
पर चेहरे से हटाये कैसे धुंध-धुंआ दिल्ली ?

धमनियों में रेंगते हुए जीवाणु हैं या विषाणु हैं?
करोड़ों धर्मी-अधर्मी बसाए कैसे यहाँ दिल्ली?

होकर खाख फ़िर शाख, फ़िर ईमारत बना देती है,
कैसे बेबसी भुला बीहड़ में उगाये गुलिस्तान दिल्ली?

हर युग में प्यासा फिरा कोई ग़ालिब, मीर तेरी गली,
क्यूँ अमृत या मह न पिलाए, यमुना, धौला कुआं दिल्ली?

जहाँ अहम् से ऊंचा क़ुतुब मीनार, खून-सा लाल किला है,   
वहीँ कैसे पीरों, मीरों, फकीरों को दिलाये जुबान दिल्ली?

ठोकरों के हिस्से में भी इतिहास के जहाँ रोड़े है,
कल की कोखों में कैसे कमल-कल्पना पनापाये वहाँ दिल्ली ?

वेश्याओं की पान्जेबों में कितनी गृहस्थियाँ खनके,
क्यूँ आताताइयों के आगे घुटने टिकाये बेजुबान दिल्ली? 

चांदनी चौक से शौक शुरू कर, और जा जमुना पुल पार,
घाम-गाँव गँवा आशाएं रिक्शा में घुमाएं शहंशाह दिल्ली!

अदना है तो अदब देख, सरगना है तो लहू का सबक देख,
हर हुक्के में अदा या विपदा का फलसफा सुलगाये वेवफा दिल्ली |

भूखा रहा न कोई यहाँ, ना यहाँ भर पेट भी कोई खा पाया है,
हसरतें ज़र्रे-ज़र्रे में बड़ी-छोटी छुपाये लुभाए जानेजहाँ दिल्ली |

मुल्क की मल्लिका है, पर क्यूँ दागी, अभागी है, धोखेबाज़ है?
क्यूँ विरासत की सियासत से हुई है बेदर्दी, बेईमान दिल्ली?

अर्जी पढ़ मेरी, एक सूफी सुर में सुरूर में फिर खुद को डूबा,
भूल जा कि है तेरी खूनी हिन्दू-मुसलमानी दास्ताँ दिल्ली | 

किस तरकीब से जागेगी तेरे जहन में पाकीज़ा प्रेम की धुनी?
और कितनी मस्जिदें, दरगाहें, मंदिर, बनायें तेरे यहाँ दिल्ली?

विवेक से पूछो तो कहता है तेरे मिट-मिट के उठ जाने में सबक है,
यूँ तलवार, अहंकार माटी में मिलाये-उगाये तुझसा कोई कहाँ दिल्ली ?

Friday, December 24, 2010

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel opens with a line "Henry's second novel, written, like his first, under a pen name had done well". The prophecy, in the terms of sales receipts and author advance, may hold true for the author of the celebrated, award winning Life of Pi. But in this review, we'll examine if this novella would enter a reader's world as "had done well" and since the author banks on our familiarity with Life of Pi, we'll like to know if both books can be placed on the same bookshelf? To read every book as a stand alone piece of work is always my attempt as a reader. The pleasure in reading multiple books from great writers lies in the possibility of entering a different world through every successive novel. The great pleasure in writing lies in chartering characters and casting scenes that live on the page irrespective of what you had created once or will create later in life. Yet in equal measure, we love books when they evoke or stir emotion and intellect through images and words. Yann Martel has skills with words, many pages reaffirm his ability in weaving pretty sentences, but as far as the story goes, Martel fails to deliver a masterpiece expected from his desk. 

Life of Pi is a delightful read, as the voyage of a boy with three animals, including a tiger, presents endless situations and scenes that surprise, scare, excite, amuse, educate us. Animals play an important part in Beatrice and Virgil as well, but the mere presence of animals in a story does not always make the allegories effective. In search for a story that would be as gripping as his former novel, Yann Martel wanders into a taxidermist's shop, and creates a feature full of stuffed animals and stinted humans. The holocaust angle in the story is perhaps the weakest plot device used by the author, for it leaves the reader dissatisfied with the whole series of events and dialogues chartered in the book. In the first chapter, the author shows the protagonist (who is an author too) grappling with the idea of writing about holocaust "in a non-literal and compact way." Later, when publishers wish to know what the book is all about, the protagonist says: "My book is about representations of the Holocaust. The event is gone; we are left with stories about it. My book is about a new choice of stories." Perhaps Martel's protagonist expresses the author's own intentions quite well, and while one cannot doubt the intentions of the novelist here, the final piece lacks the harmony and humanity he wished to capture and portray. Martel within the novel as well as as an author raises the expectations that he fails to meet! Sorry Yann, I will quote by paraphrasing from your book again: "as it stands now the novel lacks drive and unity."

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Hindi Kavita: dost lai


दोस्त लई

तू फ़िक्र कोई न करियो दोस्त, न घबराइयो न डरियो दोस्त,
उम्र दा मामला है, तू जलदबाज़ी में कदम न धरियो दोस्त |

दूर से कुछ और लगती है, करीब से देखो कुछ और निकलती है,
यह माया से भरी गलियां हैं, तू आँखें खुल्ली रखियो दोस्त |

पिच्छे क्या छुटया, क्या करना? तू तेरे आँखें आगे देखें, तू आगे बड़ना,
किवाड़ जो बंद कर आया, उनके चौखट पे सर न पटकियो दोस्त |

हुआ कुछ भी न गर साल, चार साल, या लात, हड्डी, पसली टूटी,
घाव भर जानगे, फसलां उग जानगी, तू क्लेश न करियो दोस्त |

चाव कर कितना भी, जो पाया-गंवाया यहीं रह जाना है,
तू लकड़-पत्थर-लश्कारे लई, कर्म फोड़, जन्मां दा ह्रास न कर बैठियो दोस्त |

चिल्लर लेकर चलने वाले बैठे हैं भिखारी गली-गली, भ्रष्टाचारी महल-महल,   
तू मयंक है, कौवा नहीं हंस है, तू अम्बर की ऊँचाइयाँ पर रहियो दोस्त |

बंद कर मुट्ठी, दे सर पे चोट, जान है अर्थ क्या, व्यर्थ क्या, सिद्दार्थ क्या,
कर ईमान बुलंद, उठ कर आँख खुली, हौंसले और विवेक दा दामन न छडियो दोस्त |

(Written in a very colloquial tone, perhaps in the tone and style of conversations in my Chandigarh hostel: while listening to the audio, imagine two friends sitting in a room, and one giving advice to the other.)

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Breadwinner

Down the hill, over pebbles and rocks,
we chase after him, he after the stream,
and rush into an old stone-slate hut.

Out comes the gush of his laughter.
We are panting a chorus now. Our hands
on our knees, and cheeks, city-red.

Now he, my father, is a little boy
flaunting his 'phoren' toy, while we, 
twenty-first-century camera kids,
witness the wooden chakra,
and the chant of the millstones. 

He unites with his fourteen-year-old
fatherless self, carrying a sack of wheat 
or corn for three miles. His voice 
cues our lips into smiles, till
dew descends into my eyes
wishing to embrace 
his fifty-year-old feet.

He has shouldered three 
generations—his mother, 
siblings, our mama and us,
and he is still humming like the stream,
like the grindstone. 

                           He is the wheat,
the watermill, the roti in my mouth.


Previously published in The Cortland Review, with Audio

Saturday, December 04, 2010

Devout your lips

Trek through ravines, deserts, hills to scout your lips,
Or compose one song, you'd wish, was about your lips.

I'll believe any book, bow to any deity, become an atheist.
If you let me taste, just once, devout your lips.

Forgo father's religion, mother's language, brother's territory,
if you swim upstream for me, like a trout your lips.

Make armies kneel, poets duel, turn a boor into Kalidas,
Enchant Gods, who take avatars to admire you pout your lips.

You're like an idol, like a corpse... and we lament for you,
Let our festivities begin. Let a smile mount your lips.

Jehangiri flowers – your upper lip, chocolate jelly fish – lower lip,
Seasons, rebirths, music, love, the good and evil bout – your lips.

If I lust for you, let me lust O Menaka, O Urvashi for your Estella heart,
I'll rather exhaust my divinity, turn into a human, than doubt your lips.

My culture disapproves of my verses that unveil your kaamuk lips,
I praise like the Sufis. How can anyone suggest that I tout your lips?

Your search, my anguish, our earthly anxieties will all disappear,
If on hearing Vivek's words, songs, amor, OM, Amen spout your lips.


**
Appeared first in Nefarious Bellarina Issue 4.3

Monday, October 25, 2010

Choicest wife for a North Indian Son

Choicest wife for a North Indian Son

Ma, find me a cherub-face woman, a wife with tongue, with cheek,
neither anorexic nor geek, whose gift is to cook and eat
three aaloo paranthas, while I feast on six.

I don't like the skins stretched tight on bones,
those puckered jowls, like empty bowls,
interest me not. For me a woman is hot
when she has neither too less nor too much makhan-butter
under her skin. Ma my liking begins when hips
are strong for carrying pots of water like in medieval
paintings, and there's a sideways swing, in her walking.

Ma, find me a tamatar-face woman, whose hobby is to stitch
loose-fitting Punjabi salwar-suit, and vaddi joy in wearing it.

Ma, our family must not have a bahu without a pallu,
for you know, I am a man who does not display
his wealth in open, and I like my woman to know it
that sachchi beauty lies within, and you mustn't show it.
It is no easy matter,  the pallu-less lack character,
(all my friends and countryman say so). I am not picky Ma,
about she wants, eats or wears, but the world has tongue and ears
and you only tell me Ma, who wants it to end in shame and tears?

Ma, find me a plum-aalobukhara woman, a wife with cheeks and chin,
neither moti nor thin, one with happy grin, with a bite in her beak,
and yet koel melodious, may honey drip off her lips.

Ma I don't like the soft lip, I want to hear it, clanging loud and free speech,
if she is not frank, there's kachra in her think-tank. For if she reads essays
by feminists, and thinks our family as male-violent, keeps her anger latent,
she will famish from within. My woman must express, blast music speakers with her voice,
for if she visits a restaurant or a shop, every customer ought to sense and know it.
Ma I want my woman to curse, when others commit errors,
and I want her to rehearse heeran-ballads at all hours. 

I am sitting on empty ground Ma, I want her to make it a playground Ma.

Ma I desire a wife, not intellectual strife, not daily gripe, only ripe
with the juice of life. I don't care for her grades Ma, nor for twenty-four waist Ma.
There is no haste, take your time Ma, but remember, I am turning twenty-nine Ma.

Age is not a issue, caste no issue, Ma, but she must have some height Ma,
A four feet, seven inches wife, with a six feet tall hunk, doesn't look right Ma.
Also check that she has no boyfriends, medical tantrums, no eloping plans,
no divorces in her family's past, no crime in eleven generations, no genetic defects,
her birth-chart should be right Ma, (Lila's love-marriage-waala husband died Ma).
Finally Ma: She must respect the elders & rituals in all weathers, cook aaloo-gobhi and tarka daal,
have no stoop, no eye defects: sohni kudi, te sohna-face, with enough cheek and thirty-two teeth,
and just the right combination of head, heart and makhan on less than six number-size feet.

Notes: aaloo - potato, aaloo-parantha - fried, oily roti with stuffing of aaloo,
tamatar - Tomato, vaddi: big or enormous, pallu- veil, (chunni); bahu - daughter in law
aaloobukhara is plumlike fruit; sachchi - true, moti- fat, kachra -trash
aaloo-gobhi - cauliflower-potato, tarka daal : a lentil dish, spiced in a certain way.
Sohni- pretty (also a legendry beauty, Sohni-Mahiwal fame) sohna- pretty....
Sohni kudi te sohna face: pretty girl with a pretty face;  makhan: butter

Published first in Mastodon Dentist*; dedicated to my single friends!
* The published version has fewer words in Punjabi, the original version is full of them, and the original version is copied here.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

I must

I must
              - “koyle ki khan se hi hira nikalta hai”*
              - For Africa, the lost Eden of our common ancestors

I know / my words, / like embers, / will turn to dust,
and yet I burn,/ for dazzle I must.

My black skin hides within, / an anger, / a fire,
even when reduced to ash, / smolder / I must.

Do not play with me, / I'll soil your hands too,
I was raised in darkness, / dye everything black I must.

My tongue moves in hearth, / my voice is loudest on pyre,
to show what I really am, / martyr myself / I must.

A piece, my own, glittered,/ a piece caught your fancy,
a piece sells for millions, / for pennies / sell / I must.

I am amorphous you say, / its my way of existence you condemn,
to be a John of Arc again, / perform on stake / I must.

I've no spark within me, / sans spark I'm a stone,
such is Vivek’s destiny, / to live, / first die / I must.

Note*: Allusion to common Hindi saying: Diamond comes from the same mine as coal.

Published first online: Poets for Living Waters.

Friday, October 22, 2010

A Missive to Ancestors, about Oil Spills in Nigeria and Gulf of Mexico

A Missive to Ancestors, about Oil Spills in Nigeria and Gulf of Mexico

Tell us again Conrad, that saga of my wanton ancestors.
Let my grandsons know, we were like our rotten ancestors.

I have joined the tribe of world-wide-web philosophers,
We formulate the myths for our forgotten ancestors.

Like callous children, we let you deal with your disasters,
O Africa, the lost Eden of our common ancestors.

See the dead birds floating in gulfs and deltas: Oil color!
We exhibit as artists our devotion ancestors.

Oil, blood, river, mud, to hanker after fistful of crud.
Its human destiny to imitate your passion, ancestors. 

Why cry over spilled oil, why blame a naughty child?
To waste the nature's gifts is our tradition ancestors. 

Send us Agastya again, to drink dry these polluted seas,
Again with Bhagirathi, we must refill our ocean ancestors. 

What underlies your concern in Nigeria or Gulf of Mexico?
Why is to profit forever motive of our action ancestors?

Face the mirror Vivek! You're not a flotsam. Do something.
Overcome the grime with grit, like the best of our ashen ancestors. 


*Vivek: Samskrit word for wakeful discrimination between right and wrong, proper and improper, evanescent and eternal.

PUBLISHED first online at Poets for Living Waters

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Bottoms-up Girl

On a bar stool, sits a contortionist,
raises her left leg, her shoes and eyes,
are brandished before my face.

In this drunk circus, I am a clown-lion
while eyes around us, applaud her poise.

Her leg dances down, and then she arches
her back in a practiced invitation.

In my dark beer, bubbles rise into a mist
of expectation, but I am a reluctant sensualist.
She is a bottoms-up girl and I drink in slow sips.

We rehearse our act of evolving artifice,
she shows the ductility of her right hips and knees,
I fudge lines of the drunk poets of the East.

Now her body is the rhythm of chatter about us,
now the orgasm of the brewed thoughts unites us,
and then she faints, as her boyfriend surprises her.

I recognize the man, my childhood friend, who insists,
in his fiancée he sees a wife -- envy of traditionalists.

I toast to him; avow, 'she's not in my arch-type'.
As they leave, she winks. I stammer a good-bye.

I repeat, as I grapple with my phantasmal crisis:
'She is a bottoms-up girl, and I drink in slow sips.'


Repost; Published earlier in Nefarious Bellarina

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Multitasking (Poetry & Science) and quote in/for a Rediff article

Dear Readers,

A few days back a fellow writer asked me about multitasking, and today rediff.com carries excerpts from my response under the title: Moonlighting: How to make it work for YOU

Here is my full response (that may be useful as a note to self when I will find this duality in my existence overwhelming, for now I believe I am both a particle and a wave):



"
We live once, go from childhood to youth to middle age to old age is one sequence, or quite sensibly, in the sequence of four ashramas of ancient India. But we cannot always do things sequentially, and if we must follow our dreams and desires, we have to do multiple tasks. A working woman lives as a wife and a mother, while working men are also fathers or husbands. I believe multitasking comes spontaneously to some extent, but as tasks becoming tedious or tremendous, the will to do multiple things will come from the will to hold on to a love, an ideal, an idea or a myth about yourself. I am a scientist for ninety percent of my waking hours, but the poet/writer within who gets less than ten hours per week by choice, sustains my inner self. I am a scientist for I love to understand the world/ universe around me, the curiosity drives me, and the possibility of creating something new, inventing, the faith that I can discover something, meet the unknown and name it, tame it, keeps me engaged. The strange coincidence is that poetry includes the same sense of discovery, curiosity, creativity and skill. Both science and arts require devotion, skill, patience and practice, to bring the seed of talent to flower and fruit. Like in life, where we through away the chaff, and keep only the grain, success chooses its keepers quite strictly. No body likes a bridge that will fall under its own weight, or a poem that is worded without proper attention to rhyme and reason. The only means of doing multitasking then is by involving your most honest abilities and trained instincts in extra work that is intellectually, spiritually or economically necessary, or as Mahabharata says it, the four drivers being Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. But if you open many fronts in a war, it may not be possible to expect the best returns on all fronts at the same time, and the General, ‘the person and his mind’, must be at one place at one time. The will sustains us, strategy ensures that we get to different fronts in time for proper assault, and yet, this does put a considerable strain on the self. If you are like me, if you burn both sides of the candle, you burn more and you burn faster. But: “I know my words, like embers, with turn to dust/ and yet I burn, for dazzle I must.”
"

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Antim (Hindi Kavita) अंतिम

अंतिम
     -- इंदु मैम के प्रति 
      --विवेक शर्मा 


आलंकृत करूँ किस आशा से जीवन को?
मृत्यु ले गयी छीन मुझसे एक और प्रियजन को ||

परिचय क्यूँ पूछते हो उस स्मृति का?
कुछ वर्ष ही रहता है स्मरण आकृति का |
यश बस रहता है पुण्य प्रवृति का,
संस्कारों से युक्त संतति का,
जागृत कर सैंकड़ों विद्यार्थियों की ज्ञान-लगन को,
अमर नाम कर, मोक्ष पा गयी, त्याग कर तपोवन वो || 

एक अध्यापिका थी, मेरे लिए माता-पिता थी,
धैर्य से भरी रही, हम बच्चों के प्रति खरी रही,
"आओ तुम्हें चाँद पे ले जाएँ" गीत गाती थी,
हमारी बचकानी बातों पर मंद-मंद मुस्काती थी,
देकर दिशा करके मेरे बचपन के आराधन को,
चली गयी छोड़ संसार को, कर गयी पलायन वो ||

अर्पित करूंगा  अश्रु नहीं, पुष्प नहीं, बस प्रण एक
शिक्षा के क्षेत्र में कहूँगा पुस्तक से है प्रेरणा श्रेष्ट,
रटकर पुस्तकें कहाँ से पोथियाँ पढ़-पढ़ ज्ञानी उभरते है?
संस्कृति के सभी सुजन संस्कार, सत्संग, सुरुचि से निखरते हैं,
देकर दीक्षा, शिक्षा, संसाधन हमारे सुखद भविष्य के सृजन को,
जीवंत रहेगी सदा बनके एक सद्भावना, स्नेह का स्मरण वो ||

(PS: Mrs Indu Singla was one of the most well-regarded and beloved teachers at my alma mater, St. Mary's Convent School Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh. She taught me history and more importantly the value of compassion in a teacher.)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A-vivek of N-arundhati

A-vivek of N-Arundhati
                                    (Inspired by: “Walking with Comrades by Arundhati Roy/                 
                                     http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738”)

When Narundhati treks through the jungles as a guest of Maoists, her biases
ignore the blisters on her city feet. The mosquitoes that relish blood, heedless
to the age of their victims, serenade to her, in a 'thousand star hotel'.
What Narundhati says is part fact, the part where she describes guns
and explosives in a region termed Pakistan by leaders and policemen --
a Pakistan within India where followers of Mao seek a bloody revolution!

When she quotes a Harvard returned politician or a Naxal leader verbatim, she stays partly
in right, stating their high-headed thoughts about cost of progress and freedom at midnight.
I root for her when she describes the plight of farmers, counterfeited by a green revolution,
or when derides the blind march into globalization or the abject immorality of the corrupt.
When Narundhati asks if a fact is a fact in her fiction, or if our judgment of Maoists is right,
or suggests that India need 'feral poetry', she is enchanted by her wordplay. Her fiction
writer’s instincts laud her, as she pens lines lyrically in a cinematic setting to die for (not in)
and her protagonists are Davids fighting a 'higher caste, fascist' Goliath-state.
In episodes that trek her journey with lilting rhythms, every typed word is paid for, is wanted
by a popular magazine, and she anticipates the applause she will get from the Eastern left,
and the Western right. 
                                                          
She is partly right when she describes how CIA's jihad
of late eighties in Afghanistan finished off Russian communism and spawned
Taliban style communalism in Afghan & Indian territory, bringing Kashmir its tensions
(and some intellectuals their liberal pretensions). She appears partly bright
when she describes the rise of Hindutva as a political force in that nineties disquiet.
Since her writing is tight, she urges connotations to bare themselves and subtleties
of diction in this colonial language, appeased by her 'hysterical rhetoric', look like ecstatic,
climactic arguments, but what interests me always is what escapes her,
or what she omits or leaves out.
Like Kashmiri Pandits, who don't feature in her computation of what went wrong in 1988-
89, though historically speaking, those lands belonged to those hundreds of thousands:
now refugees in their own country, driven out by 'Azadi guns'.
When she forgets is that in this Indian Palestine, the oppressed is the Hindu, whose homeland,
memory of forefathers is being wiped out, and there is no Darwish to sing of this loss!
But her reading of the historic is undone by her histrionics. She ignores
what she dislikes, and in her surreal imagination, Gandhian protest is a vice.

Hinduism, which gives her name, but deserves only her distaste, is the problem she must cite.
Her unintelligent comments about Kashmir or Taj Mumbai siege (as Rushdie called them),
her howl: "justice or civil war" reflect she’s Narundhati: yet her prestige persists in spite of her sleights,
for a country she calls a Nazi-like police state                                                                                                

by tolerating her, belies the atrocities she cites:
while she sees only death and shadow lurk on our stage
Isn't she surprised, why she is still unscathed and alive?
Truth is seldom as black or white, but my stanzas seem stunted for I am imitating Narundhati's style.

See I am stumped by her contradictions, though as an Indian, I am deemed capable of reconciling
the opposites. Narundhati, the embedded journalist, describes rapes, arson, murder by police as malice,
yet urges us to sympathize with Maoists who count mutilated corpses as a prize.

Years back, on the shores of Narmada, she cried hoarse with non-violent protesters,
"Narmada bachao, bachao" "Narmada bachao, bachao"
and now in Maoists camps, she despises those methods.
"Lal salaam comrade! Guns uthao, uthao"
She cites Charu's and Mao's affection for gore, and tells us, in her Delhi accent...
O don't be a bore,
look at these tribals dancing, look at their songs and folklore...
who'd think they have killed a score.

When she writes, "I tell them Delhi is a cruel city that neither knows nor cares about them,"
she forgets that the Indian city destroyed the most number of times, never though by pacifists,
is the city of Hindu memories, of Ghalib, Mir and Sufis, of Sikhs and seekers of many faiths,
but our city-girl thinks cities as contraband
and like Mumbai, her 'karmabhoomi' is ostracized from her skies.
Likewise, millions of children born into consumer cultures, are vultures
as per her writing, which insists world markets are ulcers, progress = prosecution,
pro-Hindu idealism = fascism, police = thieves/rapists, leaders = hate-mongers. If her arithmetic of India,
America, World is really that simplistic, and caustic, I wonder, what qualifies her to be a critic?




As a teenager, I volunteered one summer for teaching the slum children in Delhi. As a reward
for my sincerity, I was led into a small, unlit room one afternoon, to talk to a high-ranking Maoist.
"We must rid our nation of these intellectuals, professors, politicians, landowners, high castes,
scientists, and wipe out the rich.
                                                       Blood is the only water than can wash the strains of anguish
that distinguish my people," he said. He quoted Marx, Majumdar, French revolution, Russians, Mao.
I looked like an ancient cow quoting Gandhian or Buddhist or Hindu philosophy,
and the forgotten principle of Christian non-resistance: of turning the other cheek.

I tried to decipher why I was an enemy. "You represent the worst of elitists, Sharma;
studying in a fancy engineering college, Convent educated, Brahmin, or course you’re a fascist".
My distinct unease told me I was condemned by the prejudice of this self-appointed jurist!
I lacked potent phrases to debate with him, so I described how I had toiled hard all my life
under extreme family pressure and my success was fruition of the daily, honest sweat
of my parents who had risen from Himalayan poverty, which doesn't ask your caste
when it affects you, though employers cite it when they reject you.
"Many innocents must die too. The fire of sacrifice, the Goddess
calls for a bloody revolution."
                                                
                                                  That three hour meeting still baffles me. I am at loss for words,
it hurts. For him, Chinese excesses or Stalin's policies are justified. The morbid horror of it,
rages within me, and as I devour literature from all times -- Tale of two cities, If this is a Man,
Doctor Zhivago, Train to Pakistan or Manto's stories -- I realize every activism and ideal
that strives to reverse biases, by justifying repressive policies and atrocities of present day
in the light of past excesses, rationalizes exactly what it criticizes. War begets war, lust, lust,
hate spawns hate. I agree markets lack compassion and conscience, but collectives can be callous
as well, Dickensian crowds can turn into mobs and guillotine,
and Achebe’s tribals are capable of being innocuous or fascist!
If only we had the right acumen, we would triumph over ourselves and turn human,
but we lay down a landmine, we turn our holy lands into Palestine, we outline
new charters of hate, wiping Jews or Tutsis or Hindus or Red Indians or Muslims
or Cambodians, or Tibetians or Armenians, priests and pilgrims, ultra-rich and urchin,
wiping whole generations off our slate!  




I don't know why Narundhati's mother thinks India needs a revolution, or why
Narundhati listens to grasshoppers and they speak her mind, about 'democracy
as a demon-crazy'. I lived in Chekovian villages, in beat-up small towns,
in places where people don't worry about abstract isms and nouns,
rather stick to their daily needs, banal fancies and follies, ageless celebrations and strife.
We are the poor or middle classes, our daily living supplies more solace and sorrow to our lives
than the craving rich can conceptualize.


When I read dream-like sequences of rural, joyful life, I realize,
even Tolstoys can lack the facts, and that ignorance leads to lies.
See the Soviet history, witness its birth, youth and demise!
Yes Naom Chomsky's is a learned man, and Howard Zinn knew his People’s history,
but when N-Arundhati talks their language, she lacks their informed gallantry,
their reverence for their national ideals, their ability to denounce propaganda, backed with facts.
Not every ape is a Hanuman, for it takes a lot of spirit, guts, grime and gyaan.
To be a Zola, rather than a bhola, requires more than a kurta and a jhola!

In Narundhati's analysis of India: there is a civil war-like situation
between Muslims and Hindus, tribals and corporations, Maoists and state machinery,
dam builders and those displace by dams. And of course, Narundhati is the liberal star
smug, satiated, saturated by her own self-defined idioms of calamity and causality.
Her writing shows, how she deifies the episodes of carnage, and her urge is to disgrace
the land on which she stays. In her prose, terrorists get rationalized, and as she breaks
into outbursts, aimed at foreign readers, buyers of her books, admirer of her looks,
who lap up what she writes, especially her calling much maligned Hindus -- fascists,
or thinking of Kashmir as Palestine or her support for bloody revolutions. Half-truths are half-lies,
and my lament is... many trust her, and thrust biased policies on Indians using her near-sights.
Her rhetoric: 'Mumbai people asked for it, people who are neither in government, nor rich,
nor Maoists asked for it, Kashmiri Pandits asked for it, Hindus & Sikhs killed in past centuries
asked for it, the children of twenty-first century asked for it, Americans killed in 9/11 asked for it,
the races and regions continuously misrepresented by colonial mentality Orientalists like her
asked for it, asked for it, asked for it".


Why Suyodhan is called Duryodhan, why my write-up is full of A-Vivek, and why N-Arundhati,
who I support for her activism on many issues, is the locus of my ardent criticism?
While Narundhati has a Booker and I haven't even won a cooker, I still am an argumentative
Indian, as Amartya Sen would call me. Trust me, it takes more than a token speech to appall me.
Tell me, if I can be considered discreet if in my words, there is no middle ground, no layers, no gray.
Too much talk, and too little thought, too much debate, that too without consulting the proletariat!
Too many victims, too little praise, too much rhetoric, without perspective of the current or the historic!
Anger is easy, but solutions are harder, and in India, where bureaucratic cobwebs usher
answers at the pace of a lazy snail and facts are files buried in dust or disgust somewhere:
her urging us to burn down our the storehouse and file-keepers too leads us nowhere.

My voice falters in any discourse. My lament: I am innocent. If I cite Hindu philosophy,
I am labeled fundamentalist; if Islamic, labeled terrorist; if Jewish, Zionist. If I state
my thoughts, my name says I am a Brahmin, also my education was in Catholic school.
I am my father's son, so related to the government. I live in United States, so I represent the empire.
I am a poet means I am fanciful; an engineer, which implies I limp in humanities,
and by the sheer luck of being the son of a honest man, and a scientist, after a lifetime of toil,
I am still struggling to earn a foothold on our soil. But while I cannot even represent
my own self, how and why does a Narundhati triumph as a correspondent?
If Maoists win their mineral-rich forests, Kashmir gains independence, minorities and castes vanish,
will we reach the state of param-sukh: absolute solace and prosperity, will it be end of our anguish?
If democracy isn't right for us, how do we know unlike in Russian heydays, comrades will fight for us?
Why don't you forsake it Vivek? You don't know what you don't know. Half-truth only parasites on us!




NOTE
1. (A-vivek: Absence or lack of the ability to determine what is right and wrong, fact and fiction, fair and unfair, sacrosanct and rubbish, ephemeral and eternal. Arundhati was Vasistha’s wife, and name of a vine; but it also means ‘kundalini‘ or supernatural facility, and N-Arundhati therefore is a negation of the Arundhati; i.e. lack of faculty to look at the factual and at the intellectual, and since Arundhati is associated with fidelity, N-Arundhati also has lack of fidelity as a meaning).
2. Arundhati Roy gave a lecture tour after the article in Outlook, and my poem was written after hearing a lecture at MIT, where it was clear that her content and concern were, for most part, motivated by grabbing attention.
3. The poem like this one is considered politically motivated by most poetry journals. Most newspapers cannot publish it for my own political affiliations are unknown, and I come with no recommendations.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Beaten but not bruised / For Black Stars in 2010

I am here to say what score-lines, statistics will not  show, not say
on July 2, 2010, the Black Stars played as a pack of tigers on attack,
like disciplined Ashanti warriors, covered the battleground with shots
not one of which was let out without a soaring roar from a spirit
that will not cower, that will not submit. With the honor

that swells and raises every supporter's fist,
I declare you Ghana, the beloved at the tryst,
with your sweeping runs, you earned inch
after inch, and your rousing extra-time play
was almost like a masterpiece from an artist.

Almost!

But greatness, when it begins in men and women, transcends
the moment when they acquire it. Enlightenment stays with us,
the dream and its expense remains in us, and Black stars, that ability,
that gift you claimed in your veins, will win you the moon if you aspire it.

When the men take the ground, run around, like children chasing
a ball, many pen-paper-men ask, is it a worthy task
for the best built bodies? How will the empty stomach celebrate,
or the living conditions change, if the poorest nations win
in a match of kicks and tricks this season?

The gambit of hope, of advancing no inheritance, just skill,
with team-play, by action, and sheer faith to fight:
the excellence on field parallels the best of human qualities...
In the houses where cooking produces just ashes of despair,
healing hymns and rhymes of sport show you if you have the flair,
you can be a famed gladiator in the rich-man's dreamlands.  

Chinua says, things fall apart, yes, they do, but like autumn
sheds leaves, seed to start afresh in spring, the bruised
will heal. Gyan! Why you missed one you mustn't ask,
the bar of expectation was too low for your task,
but there won't be such a surprise again,
when the Black Stars will strike again.

Gita says: "You control only actions, but not the results,
even if the results are adverse, continue your actions."
Since the victory is in action, irrespective of the result,
Fold your jerseys bathed in your golden sweat, kiss your boots
and accept a bow from fans who cheer across the world for you.

There will a day Ghana when no hand, no bells and whistle,
no intervention, human or divine, will stand to stop you.

Monday, June 21, 2010

The foot, the ball, the goal, and India

Indian sports is run by politicians and coaches who believe that the only victory in sport is their election or selection for a paycheck. The unstated goal, for example, of football teams and everyone associated with their upkeep and sleep is to feed all involved, with minimal activity. The day India plays in the World Cup will be the day after two decade long effort to: a) spend money for what it is intended for, b) restrict the role of the off-the-field players, for example, the politicians who are in business of sport federations must self-annihilate or get the boot they deserve (and not another golden boot) c) clear fields of pebbles, rocks, garbage, dogs, cows, peddlers, unnamed/undocumented encroachments d) provide payment and respect for performers in the game and off the field. Indian cricket, with all its grandiose ailments has shown us, that it is possible to get Indians excited about a sport, we love our sporting heroes more than Bollywood heroes as long as they don't flop too often on the ground (and off it), there is no dearth of pockets to foot the bill, and crowds will come if they know that skill will be on display and entertainment will be on menu that day.

I think the following people and organizations must do their bit to inspire us into playing football and other worldly sports: 1) Swami Ramdev, whose following is large. Yoga is great, but some antics on a football field or in a track and field camp, will only help the general health and stamina of his followers (and their sons and daughters). 2) Schoolteachers and parents, who can provide avenues in sports for teaching their wards discipline, alertness, activity, self-worth and teamwork; education without physical labor is no education. 3) Organizations like RSS and Ramlila committees which have large following, Madrassas, Churches, Temple committees can take up voluntary role in organizing sporting and other events to promote the values they wish to propagate only through loudspeakers. At least put teams together to clean out the garbage dumps, especially from the grounds deemed holy and places deemed worthy of pilgrimage. 4) BCCI and IPL, for they have the money, infrastructure and large number of people required to adopt two sports and run "voluntary but disciplined" initiatives for bringing India to a competitive level in them. I recommend Hockey and Football, and if BCCI can pitch in 1% of its profits for Hockey, 1% for Football, and 2% of the time officials spend in backbiting and backscratching, we will be in great shape for the 2030 world cup!