Saturday, February 12, 2005
Some of my favorite poems!
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
***************************
Where The Mind is Without Fear
by Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
****************************
Leisure
by W. H. Davis
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
**************************************
How do I love thee?
by Elizabeth Berret Browning
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
(Voted world's best love poem!)
*****************************************
If
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
Black, Bachchan, Bhansali, Raani and Beauty!
Bhansali must be specially gifted to direct such a movie. I would not venture to write paragraphs full of adulation, or seek shortcomings in the movie, but I might suggest to you that you must watch this movie for the following reasons:
1) Hellen Keller is a legend in her own right. Perhaps this movie explores certain aspects of her life, and the life of millions who cannot hear or see. Most of us are living like deaf, mute and blind, impervious to the sounds of conscience to do something, ignorant of challenges that people face every moment of their life, unconscious of possibilities and in many respects, we are lame, toothless, tongueless creatures! Its not easy to see what is wrong with yourself and your life. If shortcomings exist, one needs to fight them and rise above them. The movie has this undercurrent, and hence is inspirational.
2) Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Cinema is art in motion, poetry and painting on screen with music in the background. As always, the art and science of movie-making finds the insightful and dreamy, but wise heart and head of Bhansali. The man really loves his craft!
3) Its different. Its songless but still lyrical. Its danceless, but has foot and arm movements that will sway your emotions. It lacks the usual melodrama, tears flow out slowly, silently, on their own. It has moments where you foster delicate smile that springs not from the corner of your eyes but from the sigh in your throat.
4) This movie shows and demands a certain degree of respect and sensibility from the audience. It is not made for giggles, it is not designed for fun, it is not directed to set box-office on fire. It might win accolades that come with doing something well. It is elitist, and elitism is good at times.
5) Actors have done a great job. For a difficult job of this scale, Ayesha, the little girl has acted really well. Rani, Bachchan and everyone who shares screen space with them have made an effort to perform as well as possible.
Maybe things could have been done differently, maybe they can be done better, but Black, in the way it has been done now is BEAUTIFUL, touching and worth watching!
Cheers to Bhansali!
1) Hellen Keller is a legend in her own right. Perhaps this movie explores certain aspects of her life, and the life of millions who cannot hear or see. Most of us are living like deaf, mute and blind, impervious to the sounds of conscience to do something, ignorant of challenges that people face every moment of their life, unconscious of possibilities and in many respects, we are lame, toothless, tongueless creatures! Its not easy to see what is wrong with yourself and your life. If shortcomings exist, one needs to fight them and rise above them. The movie has this undercurrent, and hence is inspirational.
2) Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Cinema is art in motion, poetry and painting on screen with music in the background. As always, the art and science of movie-making finds the insightful and dreamy, but wise heart and head of Bhansali. The man really loves his craft!
3) Its different. Its songless but still lyrical. Its danceless, but has foot and arm movements that will sway your emotions. It lacks the usual melodrama, tears flow out slowly, silently, on their own. It has moments where you foster delicate smile that springs not from the corner of your eyes but from the sigh in your throat.
4) This movie shows and demands a certain degree of respect and sensibility from the audience. It is not made for giggles, it is not designed for fun, it is not directed to set box-office on fire. It might win accolades that come with doing something well. It is elitist, and elitism is good at times.
5) Actors have done a great job. For a difficult job of this scale, Ayesha, the little girl has acted really well. Rani, Bachchan and everyone who shares screen space with them have made an effort to perform as well as possible.
Maybe things could have been done differently, maybe they can be done better, but Black, in the way it has been done now is BEAUTIFUL, touching and worth watching!
Cheers to Bhansali!
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Catharisis! (from the unpublished novel)
To be born again, to wake up and be purged of all memories associated with her, to alter the past so well as to make it free of all that went wrong, to the extent that any inking of lost love, unrequited feelings would become a foregone conclusion - he wished so. He wished it so much that he spent hours thinking about the possible methods of doing so. Only if our heads and hearts were a bunch of electrical circuitry in computers, where with a press of a button, every undesirable file or folder or history is easily erased. Or perhaps if there was a real method of acquiring amnesia, say by eating wild berries as he was told in his childhood or by smelling fumes of mercury. A more dramatic way was recently shown in the "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind", though the most melodramatic ones have been repeatedly shown in Bollywood flicks. Bollywood flicks, though, have some movies, where the person remembers a history of his previous life too. He shuddered at the very notion of having the miseries of past life coming to haunt him when he was already bogged down by his present state of affairs. A friend once suggested getting stoned could induce temporary relief, but he was too sane to exhange hallucinations with his hopelessness.
***********************
Catharisis: ah! that is what he figured was needed. Harsh measures suggested themselves. He immersed himself into the detailed effort of making every chore an effort towards achieving perfection. The daily chores that were second nature to him, now were turned into noble acts towards acquiring perfection, clarity of thought, delightful purity of toil, acts of conscious efforts towards achieving a perfect state of being in harmony with the world, and in peace with himself! Soon he discovered how hard it was to pay continuous attention to trivialities, and went to the other extreme by starting to neglect everything. It was during this period of turmoil that Shashi walked into his life. She entered quietly, for he was too busy with nothing in particular to notice her or anyone. She came in noiselessly, dusted off the nooks of his heart that had become smelly and stuffy with the months of neglect, opened the windows of his mind that he had closed mourning for the loss of love and the loss of his old self, she opened the windows and let in fresh wind of her sparking laughter. Shashi woke him up from his months of abstraction, months in which he thought about Kavita as relentlessly as he wanted to avoid thinking about her. Shashi groomed him afresh, brought twinkle back to his eyes, charm into his words, and even before Kalpit knew it, he found himself glowing in the radiance of Shashi's attention.
****************************
{I guess I can post conversations sometime. This novel will probably never get finished, for it is too melodramatic, too much Mills and Boons while the other two are both more energetic, have more comedy, and read better: maybe I will finish them in this lifetime, and maybe one of these days you would pick them off the shelf. Well, I am sure you can see why I call myself a dreamer!!}
***********************
Catharisis: ah! that is what he figured was needed. Harsh measures suggested themselves. He immersed himself into the detailed effort of making every chore an effort towards achieving perfection. The daily chores that were second nature to him, now were turned into noble acts towards acquiring perfection, clarity of thought, delightful purity of toil, acts of conscious efforts towards achieving a perfect state of being in harmony with the world, and in peace with himself! Soon he discovered how hard it was to pay continuous attention to trivialities, and went to the other extreme by starting to neglect everything. It was during this period of turmoil that Shashi walked into his life. She entered quietly, for he was too busy with nothing in particular to notice her or anyone. She came in noiselessly, dusted off the nooks of his heart that had become smelly and stuffy with the months of neglect, opened the windows of his mind that he had closed mourning for the loss of love and the loss of his old self, she opened the windows and let in fresh wind of her sparking laughter. Shashi woke him up from his months of abstraction, months in which he thought about Kavita as relentlessly as he wanted to avoid thinking about her. Shashi groomed him afresh, brought twinkle back to his eyes, charm into his words, and even before Kalpit knew it, he found himself glowing in the radiance of Shashi's attention.
****************************
{I guess I can post conversations sometime. This novel will probably never get finished, for it is too melodramatic, too much Mills and Boons while the other two are both more energetic, have more comedy, and read better: maybe I will finish them in this lifetime, and maybe one of these days you would pick them off the shelf. Well, I am sure you can see why I call myself a dreamer!!}
The wagging tongues!
The wagging tongues, the gossip machines
The wombs of rumour, the lying spleens
An ode to your charms, inspired by your speech
Ah! What all unimagined is not within your reach!
As you toil hard to produce new chatter,
And spiritually disassociate mind from matter
What brilliant wit, what wry smile, makes your day
In somebody's absence, what tricks your whispers play!
Ah! You judges, you keepers of faith and morality
Ah! From mediocrity, you derivers of authority
Ah! You scorpions that carry venom in tail to sting
Ah! What torments your good-natured commments bring!
May you be trapped in your own complications
The underhanded meanness of your conversations
May your tongues be as twisted as your imagination
And may you suffer worse than your caused consternation!
May your venom feed on your own mortal soul
May your own life stray into sagas of incontrol
May your crap be the crop you need to feed on
And in the end, you be the only one to bleed on!
The wagging tongues, the gossip machines
May chaos permeate into your daily routines
May you live to regret all that was said and done
And for friends and foes, you never have anyone!
PS: It can be quite therapeutic, to shout out your anger in verse
Maybe the the poetry is bad, trust me wagging tongues are worse!
The wombs of rumour, the lying spleens
An ode to your charms, inspired by your speech
Ah! What all unimagined is not within your reach!
As you toil hard to produce new chatter,
And spiritually disassociate mind from matter
What brilliant wit, what wry smile, makes your day
In somebody's absence, what tricks your whispers play!
Ah! You judges, you keepers of faith and morality
Ah! From mediocrity, you derivers of authority
Ah! You scorpions that carry venom in tail to sting
Ah! What torments your good-natured commments bring!
May you be trapped in your own complications
The underhanded meanness of your conversations
May your tongues be as twisted as your imagination
And may you suffer worse than your caused consternation!
May your venom feed on your own mortal soul
May your own life stray into sagas of incontrol
May your crap be the crop you need to feed on
And in the end, you be the only one to bleed on!
The wagging tongues, the gossip machines
May chaos permeate into your daily routines
May you live to regret all that was said and done
And for friends and foes, you never have anyone!
PS: It can be quite therapeutic, to shout out your anger in verse
Maybe the the poetry is bad, trust me wagging tongues are worse!
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Vikram Seth's All you who sleep tonight and more!
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
---Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth is one of my favorite authors. I have read almost everything he has published, and found all his writings masterpieces of his remarkable ability as a poet, storyteller, and as a person who understands and decribes pain and passion really, really well. You may look at the list of his books at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/O3SH7Z2REQLJ/104-1868278-9044732! As you might gather, "All you who sleep tonight" is a wonderful verse! It is also the title of a collection of poems.
Here are a few others that I shamelessly copied from some websites. The best link about every post-colonial Indian author including Seth is http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Seth.html!
Best book: The Golden Gate: if you have not read it yet, find a copy now!
Condition
I have to speak - I must ! - I should - I ought . . .
I'd tell you how I love you if I thought
The world would end tomorrow afternoon.
But short of that . . . we'll it might be too soon.
Prandial Plaint
My love , I love your breasts, I love your nose
I love your accent and I love your toes
I'm your slave. One word and I obey
But please don't slurp your coffee in that way.
Sit
Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.
Catch more poems at
http://members.tripod.com/~SundeepDougal/vikram.html
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
---Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth is one of my favorite authors. I have read almost everything he has published, and found all his writings masterpieces of his remarkable ability as a poet, storyteller, and as a person who understands and decribes pain and passion really, really well. You may look at the list of his books at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/O3SH7Z2REQLJ/104-1868278-9044732! As you might gather, "All you who sleep tonight" is a wonderful verse! It is also the title of a collection of poems.
Here are a few others that I shamelessly copied from some websites. The best link about every post-colonial Indian author including Seth is http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Seth.html!
Best book: The Golden Gate: if you have not read it yet, find a copy now!
Condition
I have to speak - I must ! - I should - I ought . . .
I'd tell you how I love you if I thought
The world would end tomorrow afternoon.
But short of that . . . we'll it might be too soon.
Prandial Plaint
My love , I love your breasts, I love your nose
I love your accent and I love your toes
I'm your slave. One word and I obey
But please don't slurp your coffee in that way.
Sit
Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.
Catch more poems at
http://members.tripod.com/~SundeepDougal/vikram.html
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Mujhe tum nazar se: Mehdi Hasan!
Thanks to a new friend, I discovered the following incredible Ghazal by Mehdi Hasan!
I might put up a translated version in English later! It is almost impossible to translate poetry, but there are emotions that transcend language. Atleast those emotions can be captured in translation.
Mujhe tum nazar se
Giraa toe rahe ho
Mujhe tum kabhi bhi
Bhulaa na sakoge!
Na jaane mujhe kyun
Yakeen ho chala hai
Mere pyar ko tum
Mitaa na sakoge!
Meri yaad hogi
Jidhar jaoge tum
Kabhi nagma banke
Kabhi banke aansoo
Tadapta mujhe har
Taraf paoge tum
Shama joe jalayi hai
Meri wafaa ne
Bujhaana bhi chaaho
Bujhaa na sakoge!
Kabhi naam baaton mein
Aaya joe mera
Toe bechaain ho ho ke
Dil thaam loge
Nigaaho mein chayega
Joe gum ka andhera
Kissi ne joe poochaa
Sabab aansu-o ka
Bataana bhi chaho
Toe bataa na sakoge!
I might put up a translated version in English later! It is almost impossible to translate poetry, but there are emotions that transcend language. Atleast those emotions can be captured in translation.
Mujhe tum nazar se
Giraa toe rahe ho
Mujhe tum kabhi bhi
Bhulaa na sakoge!
Na jaane mujhe kyun
Yakeen ho chala hai
Mere pyar ko tum
Mitaa na sakoge!
Meri yaad hogi
Jidhar jaoge tum
Kabhi nagma banke
Kabhi banke aansoo
Tadapta mujhe har
Taraf paoge tum
Shama joe jalayi hai
Meri wafaa ne
Bujhaana bhi chaaho
Bujhaa na sakoge!
Kabhi naam baaton mein
Aaya joe mera
Toe bechaain ho ho ke
Dil thaam loge
Nigaaho mein chayega
Joe gum ka andhera
Kissi ne joe poochaa
Sabab aansu-o ka
Bataana bhi chaho
Toe bataa na sakoge!
Page 3, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sandhya and all that!
Page 3! It is an interesting, engrossing take on the celebrities that occupy the Page 3 of our increasingly gossipy newspapers. Konkona Sen Sharma, Sandhya and Atul are just brilliant, and the movie manages to bring to light the real and dark shades of the glamorized characters of the hoi polloi of our society. It presents a good montage of Page 3 events in the beginning. The characters are shown to mature as the movie progresses, and people find all sort of ways to reach their aspired goals. Introspective at times, the director takes time to mock the charades of Bollywood stars, cricketers, politicians and administration.
I loved the movie, the concept, the characters. The movie is not perfect, but has enough meat in it to becomes a post-modern classic for people who like movies that go beyond the usual Bollywood recipies. The songs by Lata greatly enhance the emotional appeal of the scenes where they appear in background.
I loved the movie, the concept, the characters. The movie is not perfect, but has enough meat in it to becomes a post-modern classic for people who like movies that go beyond the usual Bollywood recipies. The songs by Lata greatly enhance the emotional appeal of the scenes where they appear in background.
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