...So you might say....

----


So you might say...

So you might say
how you made my Decembers worthwhile
memorable, wherever I go, in the swirling snows or cuddling waves
In them all reminding me of you

So you might say
That you are gone now, I must, should move on,
I try, but with a beard and tired legs dragging my body,
It all seems so unnecessary and unwanted to me

So you might say
this is all i wanted, foreign shores away from home,
vanity of knowledge, a fool i have been,
I admit, now I know,I wanted your love alone

So you might say
like mother, when she bid me farewell
If i could do it there all alone, my confidence
a powder now, melting under sun, next day after a frosty one

So you might say
I will be an academic soon, if five years in a life time is soon enough,
What do i teach to my students, I am a student myself,
perplexed with the world around me, always, forever.

So you might say
Do i deserve your mercy then, after you have meted out justice,
and yet what else do i beg from you, feeling hollow
yearning for some desperate sand to fill the cavities within

So you might say
now i know the uselessness of living, and yet continue to live,
loving life a bit too much, these days a little restrained,
the latest training you are giving me, with a lil discipline too

So you keep on saying, and i hear,
You keep on smiling, and i cry,
You stay silent, and i thump your breasts for some words,
In the end, so you might say, whats next, i dont know, do you?

----

..the Man thinking, or the Thinking man....

The Man Thinking or The Thinking Man

Sometimes i wish was not a thinking man,
or even the man thinking, standing still,
the stone sculpture, blazed by the heat
ravaged by the cold, no inkling of a movement

Each element of my existence craves for the residence
in this moment, live in the air, smell,
views go by in this second never to return
The heart pains as silently like rocks pounded by waves

Who am I, Why am I the I here,
Oh, the world today is inverse of all i have lived till date,
They say men are flexible, to me men seem like space-ibles,
hanging in space, observing humanity in its own exile from a distance

There, still the man thinking or the thinking man,
nerves taught tonight, bleeding, crying till the edge of my eyes,
no drops well out, tucked in an exile even a pendulum swinging,
knows better, I dont, if I am the Man thinking, or the thinking Man..



~exams are just a few days away. Its colllldd here. I study to the best of my abilities, while beyond that i watch tender disconsolate tears-causing movies like Dr Zhivago, or Il Postino.

...the long haul in loosing myself.......

it has been sometime since something has been written in these corners..just dont know why, i feel like writing a poem, and yet find myself so crippled to write one..

Maybe this is just the start, i dont know if of the beginning!

A change process that i dont know if it is for good or for bad.

Talking to the phd student, who defended last week, chaired by my advisor, it really for the first time ever, dawned on me ..about the long haul i am in...

Let us not put any time frames to this..
Let me just be dedicated and sincere and integrity personified and hope that the script takes charge of everything else..

In a nutshell, let me be good, be in total surrender with my research, and hope that all that has happened in life, has been for this new experience indeed!

Do i realise it, that after all of this last decade of studies, and working, this one, the PhD experience, is something is so afresh and totally new for me.

Am i prepared for it, i dont know just as yet, but one thing is for sure, i will try, try with my inner natural self, and what i have learnt from life in these years to give it a chance..

How many times in life do we give life a chance...Never, i guess! How about then giving this opportunity, despite the long hauls a deserved chance then....

Just dont know, if i should console myself, if i should steel up myself, if i should organise and discipline myself, or if i should be just a good student, and hope that the teacher takes care of the rest.....

Strange are the days in these last few days of 2005, last year same time, the efforts of mine, to start a life with somebody vanished..This year it seems it is the part of other life of mine to dissappear too...

Finding me, ever since now will be ever so difficult from now on...But if thats the wish, let that be so...

~amen...


i've come far enough
not to see my yesterday, nor feel my yesternight,
though the ghost of loneliness
knocks my door for one pending final fight

each breath i take
each step i release
i dissolve, i disappear, i vanish,
each moment i try to hold, begins to cease

days of dry april dance
to the tango of my victory
as night falls on tiptoe and the sea moans
i become the defeat, i become the story

among this sand of sparkle -
shaped by the sun, smoothened by the sea -
i'm dissolved somewhere, like smoke in the sky
for one weaned moment of my life, find me...

`anonymous..

....on Learning again....

This time from a lovely extract i read from somebody's page. It pleases me to find that he is an Indian, heading one of the most prized and respected, exploratory research institutes in the world, in the university i study in...But what most pleases me, is the way he puts it...the way it inspires me, in this honest confession, the dedication one puts in, to be a learner in life...beyond being involved with thoughts of whether one is an Indian or not, doing cutting edge work or not....

here it goes then....


Learning is a pleasure that has no equal. My commitment to an academic career stems from its potential for a lifetime of learning and intellectual renewal. I find that teaching is a form of learning for oneself, and thus a natural complement to research. Putting my thoughts together for a lecture forces me to revisit long-held assumptions and to ask, "Would I believe this if I were a student?" It guides me to consider a topic as it would appear to a bright and inquisitive mind, untainted by preconceived notions. This often leads me to a deeper understanding of what I am trying to teach, and on occasion to unexpected insights in research.

Research, writing, and teaching are all integral components of learning. Of these, teaching is the most rewarding in the immediacy of its feedback. To see a tightly-knit brow in class relax as understanding dawns is a prize that awaits every teacher. Suddenly, all the hours of preparation and all the frustrating attempts to integrate diverse pieces of information into a coherent whole become worthwhile.

The intellectual companionship offered by bright and eager students is one of the joys of an academic life. As their teacher, one is in a privileged position -- to be the first to open new doors and lead them to vistas of knowledge that they did not know existed. No matter how many times I have taught the same course, I remind myself that this is the first time for them. Every class, in its own distinct and unique way, has been a reward for me. I look forward to many, many more rich rewards from future classes.


: Mahadev Satyanarayanan, at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~scsfacts/satya.html

..Learning and unlearning......

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security.



And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,


And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,


And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.


After a while you learn...
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.


So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.


And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth...

And you learn and learn...

With every good-bye you learn

~Jose Louis Borges....


the last 5 days were momentous for me.

met old friends, but now new in their changed attires.
saw them, slowly, getting naked, and getting back to their old selves.
felt for a woman, again, but find myself changed too, in the control i have started exercising in life. and i wonder, how wholesomely i have started seeing things..that is the value of experience, must say...beware though, u must not fall prey to being too learned at the same time, when will there be an end to learning..

blazed through north america, from cleveland to buffalo and niagra, the expansive highways, and the rivers in the terrains.

in the suv, the moments of learning and unlearning too..

ever since last evening watched too fabulous french movies...some select thoughts from them, goddard's breathless and 'nina takes a lover'..

"If i were to choose between grief and nothingness, i would choose grief, what would you"...

"I dont know which is the greater sin, making a lover feel that you dont need her anymore, or the sin she commits, when knowing you dont need her anymore, she goes to find a new lover.."

"I dont know if i am unhappy because i am not free, or i am not free because i am unhappy".


..now am back to my mother's lap. my research life, my pittsburgh.

falling in love with u, dear old city, a pity, pitt dearest, that some day i will leave you too! my other mother is waiting patiently for me...

~cares, the child...

..In the great open dome, with no one to tell........

let's see, how attending the book reading session of a pulitzer prize winner can be.
attending, ted kooser's talk here in the univ, here is a lovely poem. just about apt to capture my moods...


After Years


Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea.

An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant.

At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.




~amen,again.

....I talked about death today..again ..

and it was so vivid still.. wish i could have more words, or was at home to cry a little. nothing like that. its a desperate world. a despairing world.

First Love


They say
the first love's most important.
That's very romantic,
but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.

My hands never tremble
when I stumble on silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string
— not even ribbon.

Our only meeting after years:
two chairs chatting
at a chilly table.

Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

Yet just exactly as it is,
it does what the others still can't manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.


isnt that lovely, by Wislawa Szymborska, a polish poet, i must taste more of her poems.

~betweenasighandadespair...

Aamerika.

i have now faced the question, umpteenth number of times. i tried a passionate answer in the beginning. tried a reasoned out answer later on. I think soon, i will stay mum too, irritating the questioner in the process.

But, till then, here is a Taslima poem. sums up why i must, will, the force willing, return back, one day..

~happychildren'sday,gladiremembered.

...Discipline...myself...should i...should i not...

I do remember one thing.
It took hours and hours,
But by the time I was done with it,
I was so involved,
I didn't know what to think.
I carried it around with me for days and days,
Playing little games,
Like not looking at it for a whole day,
And then looking at it,
To see if I still liked it.
I did!



debating hard, but its high time i answer this question..it is. and then, what would be my definition of discipline too..thats an important element as well...

heres a short extract from a nice little song.

i hope the next time i write out something, i will be able to get an answer to the above dilemma.

~amen.

..Aami Brishti Dekhechi....

aami brishti dekhechi
brishti r chobi ekechi..
aami rod e pure ghure ghure
onek kendechi..

amaar akaash kushum shopno
dekhar, khela thameni
shudhu tumi chole jaabe,
aami shopneo bhabini..

chaarte deyaal maanei noyto ghor..
nijer ghore onek manush por..

tokhon ki she jaane maanush
haay je khuje bachaar maane

bhaapsha chokhe dekhaa r ei shohor.

aami bhenge chure, abaar shuru korechi
abaar paoa r ashaay ghure morechi...

aami onek here giyeo, haarta shikaar korini
shudhu tomay haraabo, aami shopneo bhabini..

aami brishti dekhechi
brishti r chobi ekechi..
aami rod e pure ghure ghure
onek kendechi..

hariye geche, tortaja shomoy
hariye jete, kore ni amaar bhoy,
tokhon kisher jaane, msnudh
hoy je khuje bacha r maane

jhaapsha chokhe dekhaa ei shohor..

aami onek srot e boye giye,
onek thokechi,
aami aagun theke, theke shikhe,
aami onek purechi

aami onek koshte onek kicchu
dite shikhechi,
shudhu tomaay bidaay dite hobe,
shopne o bhabini...

aami brishti dekhechi
aami brishti dekhechi
aami brishti dekhechi
aami brishti dekhechi
aami brishti dekhechi
......

...Moder Gorob...Moder aasha...Aa Mori Bangla Bhasha...

courtesy, sharique made my first bengali friend here in pittsburgh. and hey-ho, what sweetness is in that language speaking with somebody who is equivalently sweet too in his tonalities..

Navid, from Bangladesh is a very sweet guy...he reminds me of goodness, bhatiyaalis, bangla r maath, nodi, all that is so surreal in life.

He plays the guitar..must sit with him for a music session...

and he reminds me of Purano Shei Din er Kotha...the talks of old days..

Moder Gorob Moder Aasha Aa mori Bangla Bhasha....Our pride, our hope, we die for you my bangla language...

~mymindtravelstokolkatanow....

...."Shaking hands with God"...

" In a way...it's a struggle to be human. I mean, if you really look at it, we wake up every morning to an alien environment. Certainly not the environment man was created in. Its a busy, throbbing, hustling, buzzing, spinning, crazy, alien environment. And the struggle for me, within that, is to try and be human, to try and do human things, to try and remember what we were born with. So to me, it is very much a struggle to be human, not so much a human struggle to do something else, but a struggle just to feel...human."

~Lee Stringer

"More and more these days i find that people want to boil things down to something simple, something you can grab in a second. I also see that today people are very result oriented. We won't do anything just because it's the right thing to do, or for the sake of art, or for the sake of anything unless we can prove that down the road x y, or z is going to happen. I guess in that kind of environment it is difficult for what we call literature to exist because a book is not all that practical a thing in the short term. It's probably infinitely practical in the long term. But you're not going to pick my novel off the shelf and learn how to scramble eggs tomorrow. So in that context, writing is a struggle to preserve our right to be not so practical..."

~Lee again, i love this bit.

"You know, man tries to be a sociologist all the time, but the truth is, you know, if you look around, we really suck at it. So i don't know if there is anything to be done about it - say for example, homelessness. What? Eliminate it? Move these people ? Get them out of your faces? Feed everybody?
I dont know what's to be done about it, except to find what your relationship is to it. I think that's the only work.
Not to eliminate what offends our sense of what should be, or who we are. Just to find a relationship to it. Just, when you pass somebody on the street: 'what is your relationship to that person?
I mean, how as human beings do we relate to one another? Anything beyond that is bullshit."

~surreal, Lee!



" People will continue to write novels, or maybe short stories, because they discover that they are treating their own neuroses. And i have said, about the practice of arts, be it painting, music, dance, literature, or whatever - is not a way to make money, or become famous. It's a way to make your soul grow. So you should do it anyway. "

~lee is god.

"When it comes to justice, the kind that gets you locked up is different from the kind you find inside. Personally, i would like to see all judges and district attorneys made to do time. Not for the crimes they commit from the bench. For they commit those out of ignorance. Which is precisely why, time in prison should be a part of their qualifications. So they might come to know what they dont know they dont know. Let them sit faceless and despised in the holding cells, let them be run through the wringer of their process until the wind has been wrung out of their self-righteousness. And let them stumble on the wisdom every two-bit con knows instinctively, that real justice is always poetic.

~Kurt Vonnegut.

Finally...Lee Stringer is just really divine.


"You want tips on writing, sure...well, you know, i had a lot of fun bumping into...its a joy of discovery for me. I kind of would not like to know what i am doing. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how i am going to fill up those pages, and then, convinced that i am not going to figure it out, bingo! something happens. It's like shaking hands with God."


it is...it is...

~amen...


(the above extracts, from "Like Shaking Hands with God - a Conversation about writing, between Kurt Vonnegut, and Lee Stringer" - more coming up)

...smart COOKIE....

somebody thinks, i am a smart cookie! somebody else thought i am a 'bastard!
now if those cliches are the day's earnings, after a sad micro test..
let me sleep..

~amen.

..?...

I remember at times
How irresponsible I have

Become. no ruling passion
Obsesses me, although passions

Are what I play among.
I'll know the library in a city

Before I'll know there is a slum.
I could wish the weight of

Learning would bring me down
To where things are done.

~quoted at the stats class, i am taking this sem.

....Nakedness....

wee hours in the morning
he stands naked

sun rises
birds drift into work

glass pane, misty
outsides, blurry

eyes are sharp,
wet, looking beyond the hills,

rising sun,
speckless sky,

flowering dawn lights
keeps standing naked

looks back, finds her in bed
turns, for her, sad smiles from the hills

pain, shearing, ruthless

eyes sharp,
wet, focussed, encaged,

accepting nakedness...

....Looking at Hope in the face....

“In those faces—obtuse and obstinate, gross and brutal, like those the great Spanish painters, without the least touch of complacency and with an almost flesh-and-blood realism, have left us—there was something like a desperate hopefulness, something very concrete and at the same time universal. Since then I have never seen the same expression on any face. . . . The memory will never leave me. Anyone who has looked Hope in the face will never forget it. He will search for it everywhere he goes.”



`Octavio Paz in 'The Labyrinth of Solitude'...

so true and amazingly captured...it feels satisfying and peaceful to read good writing, even if u cant ever write that satisfyingly enough..ever!!!..

~saludos 2 the true writers...

...Candles for Reds and Keta..

Candles
--------
The days of our future stand in front of us
like a row of little lit candles --
golden, warm, and lively little candles.

The days past remain behind us,
a mournful line of extinguished candles;
the ones nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.

I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lit candles.

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.

~Cavafy@hisbest


reds and keta were at home.
friday and saturday.
they were, we were together after 4 long years.
we have quietened, celebrating reds' b'day with no usual gusto..
reds is looking with all pure innocence to his marriage, keta seems lost and for a bad change, not like his risk prone usual self.
and if u thought, how these two, were some of the most, good and boisterous souls back in college.

life, its candles, and what it has done to them..just a short prayer for them today.

may the force love and bless u.

`aquietchild.

...Mother says, you write well..

Mother says, you write well
Each time i read, i cry,
I find you and no one else
to be my best friend, in this lonely world

The first time i ever wrote,
the yellow pages in the diary,
you and dad were away, leaving
me and sis with granny and granpa

I was afraid, where were you going,
Will you return, When, Please do, i pleaded,
And in that week of absence, i wrote,
of blue skies and the black crow in our terrace,

Now I try, I am old,
My memory fails me of the lines,
the day has stayed, and the faceless diary
those pages, the black ink

which flowed, you saw,
and you cried.

And i write now too,
you cry, still, but at a distance
unbridgable beyond time or furlongs,
Who am i, no longer the same i

Writing and reading out to you,
and you, no longer the same you,
listening and crying, as i went into your lap,
our eyes moistened in our own worlds

That world, gone, the eyes, now dry,
Who lost it, me, you?
the question perplexes me,
Much like this living does

Writing,
to loose you instead,
this gain and loss
could we have done better

and Mother...you still say,
I write well, each time you read,
you cry, You find me to be your
only friend, in this lonely world.

...Love economics and Horse-riding..

"I want to be the world's best economist, the world's best horseman, and the world's best lover. I think i have been successful in two of them, and i will leave for you to judge, which one eluded me!"

~Joseph Schumpeter...

now, what could be the connection between love, economics and horseriding, does Rodin's Kiss has any answer?

google, thinks so, since thats the classiest pic i got to upload here, with an image search on "love and economics"...huh! whos the rider, and if thats love, wheres the economics?


food for thought, but came across this as mentioned by professor hounshell today in class. with reference to schumpeter's crazy and esoteric, 1929, seminal paper on the 'instability of capitalism', which was an assigned reading in the course.


thats what i call, the attribute u need, to create chaos in people's minds.

i like that, really i do...let me get back to find a connection!

Time's..Surreptitious Snowing..

" Physics taught me that time held you captive, but it also made you free."

~Jayanta Mahapatra at an interview in Hindu read over the weekend.

i am still trying to understand the real import of those words. we live in a 3 dimension world. x y z but what about time, and our incessant efforts to capture the 't' element of life..what a travesty we make thus, of our lives, trying to understand 't'...for as perhaps Mahapatra is so right, once u understand 't' - time, and bow in deference to the endowments it gives us all, the capturing with its 'here and now' and the setting free with its 'past and future' -- u will have moved into a next level of realisation, i suppose.

it snowed surreptitiously today early morning. people who are locals here would perhaps laugh reading this i guess, but i cannot not believe my eyes. it did, the very quick, the most initial, of winter snows. the soft, illusory morning flakes falling for a minute or two, and u look at them, and wonder, how many around u share that same experience. that of time's surreptitious snowing!!

its getting colder here, and colder still it shall grow, i am being told. the skies are all clad in clouds, people, along with me are thirsting for some sunshine, but ever increasingly so, in the next few months, the sunnier days of life will become rarer.

i still remember the first winters in roorkee, it was cold there too, by indian standards, there was a bonfire, and how people celebrated their first winters out of home, in their undergraduation, amidst college bonfires, with a newfound sense of being set free from the strictures of home...

yet so far into their lives, the same people, in their careers aspire to settle down finally...it is as if the forests were enough, now i need a shelter..kind of an admission..

for me, i still love being a traveller in a forest... and as i attempt to understand more of time...and make merry here with surreptitious snowing...heres some Lorca to end with...

"The reaper is reaping the wheat
From my balcony i feel it.
If i die, leave the balcony open."

...peaceful & lost ...in an Hourglass..

"My life has become just like an hourglass; the moments fall one by one and pile up until the night arrives. At night you have to turn this hourglass over so you can measure the time. Then once again, the sands fall, in the darkness, grain by grain, moment by moment. It seems a balance has been found between this sleeping, these nightmares, and the nightly trips of my soul, and that i no longer continue my days without them. As if i am leading a double life."

--from 'Hourglass' by Mahasti Shahrokhi in "Another Sea, Another Shore - Persian Stories of Migration"...


Aami potha bhola ek pothik eshechi
shondhya belar chameli go, shokal belar mollika
amaay cheno ki
aami poth bhola ek pothik eshechi...

I am the lost traveller who has come
the evening's chameli, or the mornings' mollika
do you recognise me?
i am that lost traveller who has finally come.


dipayan came, it was a lovely time, walking through the alleys of good old dn road building of times mumbai, sitting here in far off pittsburgh.
it had been raining last 4 days, which meant taking walks in pittsburgh-ho was a fascinating experience.
the winds chilled us, the fall leaves captured us, and we, the lost travellers dwelled on life and its trappings.

he has left today morning, i am back to my assignment-ish life. loads to be done. am supposed to be studying, but all that i am doing is listening to some robindroshongeet..

what charm and peace there is being a lost traveller!

~letmesleep.

Dew drops on Inaba ...

that is all the world is about...i realised this while walking to school, today morning. a couple of wild flowers just outside my house, had been bathed in the night's mist...a torrent of poetry n memories submerged me subsequently...

..remembered an exquisite piece, she showed me from her scratch paper...

i met her, during this last summer north east trip. a bengali married lady, living in shillong, husband and wife, a sensitive writer duo..

and what a lovely collection of haiku poetry she had with her college scratch book...

i upload the one i remembered first and some others subsequently...there are boring stuff of life to report with, but i like it this way, the coming back of good times of past, in all goodness and fading sadness...full of the poetry of life...

~amen..


--
"The world a dewdrop,
though it is only a dewdrop,
even so, even so.."


"If it rains
come with your umbrella
midnight moon.."


"Even the moon each time it rises,
is young,
What will become
of my body so full
of years..."


"when the thousand birds
twitter in spring
all things are renewed
I alone grow old.."


"Was it I that went to sleep
thinking of him
that he came in my dreams?
Had i known it was a dream
I should not have dreamt.."


"Autumn wind
everything i see
is haiku..."

"I must depart now
But like the pine
at the peak of Inaba
Should i hear you pine for me
I shall return to you.."

--

life is one long blurrrr.....

for PhD students, there u go, find urself in that picture...
...so true..ricky says this in class...ricky, my microeconomics prof, real name, doesnt matter, he seems so much like ricky ponting to me...:)

~ilikethatobservation, as if i am observing an electrocardiogram ofa heartpatient..
~~suddenly i am reminded of so many days back into the past, and dadu's ECG reports, and nath kaku taking them...
~~~dipayan is coming from wharton tmrw, really want to mostify with him....but then yeh waqt bhi fatak se guzar jaayega...

Friends of lunar eclipse..

in these days of internet, i get to know that today is lunar eclipse from somebody across the seven seas. she says, she feels like crying. how easy i think, it is to substitute life's roads not taken, with a whimper or a cry..

i have had no substantial effects as an outcome of that encounter. am i dying, or is it a function of dead feeling cells. perhaps sister darling would have to do some research on that! :) ..and this amazes me, for she thinks, despite everything, i am still so gentle to her! i like it that way dear, ki hobe, one life, one love, and one living isnt it....

perhaps gentility is a function of that eclipse. just like the moon, who stays mostly under the shadow of the sun, i have reconciled myself to a life in the nights, beyond the stars and with my friend ...life..

i know though that from morning, i have been yearning to sing this song...jeebono moron er shimana charaye, a robindro shongeet, tagore song, which starts like, beyond the limits of life and death...and it continues..


i attempt to translate here:

--
Hello my Friend, you stand for me,
beyond the limits of life and death

This heart of mine in your solitude's sky
is clad in the lights of your exalted throne

I dont know, in what deep faith and hope
I stare at you, unflustered, stretching
my arms, trying to touch and embrace you

And then, your silent night has spread its legs
on me, covering me with your hair of darkness

What song, today, have you ushered on me?
flooding the skies, inundating me as they flow down from your beena

The world looses itself in this music's war
I loose myself in the pain of your song...

Hello my Friend, you stand for me,
you stand for me beyond the limits of life and death..
--



its brilliant that the lyrics exist on the web. time for classes and life on earth to continue.

`bondhuheyamaarroyechodaraye...

Give me some Fire !!!

Give me some fire,
i want to burn all things dirty,
when you ask me, if i am a jew,
i am a human being, heck with jew or non - jew

give me some fire,
i want to burn all things dirty,
when you think i am making a fool of you,
i am not, the world might, heck with the world

give me some fire,
i want to burn all things past,
things done and undone,
re-live a life with purity, clarity and conviction

give me some fire,
and i want to show you how,
if you have it in your hand, you can, despite
previous rains, still immolate the world

give me some fire,
together we will annihilate ourselves,
taking birth into a new life and world,
living in love and no emnity

give me some fire,
i want to burn all things dirty,
i feared you, was afraid of you when i was small,
now i need you to engulf me...

come give me some fire!!!

Smiles and Tears

Smiles and Tears...
--

Some smiles are soaked in tears,
so much, that when you hear them,
you feel like sharing the soaking too,
you fail, feeling incapacitated of not being able to

You smiled at me, that evening,
after a long trudge, a faint smile,
which grew in warmth, like the early morning sun,
the dawn flows in, but no, you could not hide your tears

Much like i could see yours, when you yelled,
while smiling, and crying, oozing out drops,
from your eyes all at the same time, under the blazing sun,
basking your walk, million miles from home

Dont, i wish i could say, fake your pain
and sorrow, or ask me with a concerned smile,
if i have taken care of myself,
after a busy day, who cares,
if you are being taken care of!

Beyond you taking care of yourself,
and all the liabilities of the world,
a little freeer, and wee bit lighter i know,
you wish you could just be..

I am sorry, i try, but i find no answer,
no way to help you or my friend,
who smiles too, all the time,
with or without me, getting tired,

and sometimes then, when i catch him,
he looks at me, still sporting a smile,
saying to me, faintly, but i can hear,
how some smiles are always soaked in tears.
--

~wrotesomething, tearful voices of yester year smiles, haunt me today.

...of Death, Prizes and Poetry.....

I intend to make my blogspace more interesting. Till date, i have been very personal in my writings. Its time to open out and throw in thoughts about observations around the world - in my own possible way.

Here i start then.

Preliminary thoughts especially pertain to this year's Nobel _ Literature and Booker _ Prize winner. Harold Pinter and John Banville. How far i wonder did they really care about these prizes, now that they have got it, and even when they created their works !

I am also intrigued by one more thing. Around this time of the year, every year, every whos who i read in the papers become a critique - should X have got it or should Y. Was the institution right, and correct n perfect, in capturing the essence of the individual's brilliance... Her or his creativity...Is that an absolute necessity, to quantify and rate and prize brilliance and how people give vent to their expressions with ratings and comments! Leave them, read them, absorb them, and possibly try to imbibe fractions of them in your daily living.

Shed your mechanical selves, express yourself, hearing me, all of you around!




~notsoquietachildtoday:)


--

Here are some good thoughts from the web related to Pinter and Banville. One interesting facet, i am sure somebody will soon write about it, is that this time, the Booker and Nobel has gone to the United Kingdom (that region Ireland included)...is British literature coming into prominence again...i love it though, remember progga gifting me that Nick Hornby book, driving me complete nuts in Bombay..i guess she would be really happy looking at all this, given her strong liking for everything British in literature!

so while i cannot congratulate anybody else right now, not the least Banville or British, :) let me say cheers to you progga for you and your literary tastes...

enough of gyanbaaji...now some real stuff!!





Pinter speak right now...
----


" If I write about a lamp, I apply myself to the demands of that lamp. If I write about a flower, I apply myself to the demands of that flower.

In most cases, the flower has singular properties as opposed to the lamp...Flower, lamp, tinopener, tree..tend to take alteration from a different climate and circumstance and I must necessarily attend to that singular change with the same devotion and allowance. I do not intend to impose or distort for the sake of an ostensible "harmony" of approach.

What you want from my writing is not self-expression, but self-confession, and you're not going to get it. You want me to open wide my doors ( possibly from a "moral") standpoint. That is neither my inclination, nor, more important, my purpose."

Poetry by Pinter, as he struggles against cancer, feel black..these days...he writes..


"Sometimes, in poems, I am only dimly conscious of the grounds of my activity, and the work proceeds to its own law and discipline, with me as a go-between, as it were. But as you say, if not conscious, so much the better"


(I love the italicised lines, leaves a lot of room for thoughts, i wish he had enunciated on what then is his purpose out of writing..got to catch up with the book, Pinter: The Playwright, Martin Esslin, Methuen, London 1970, from which the above extracts have been taken).


N finally some poems...
--
Poem, 1981

The lights glow.
What will happen next?

Night has fallen.
The rain stops.
What will happen next?

Night will deepen.
He does not know
What I will say to him.

When he has gone
I'll have a word in his ear
And say what I was about to say
At the meeting about to happen
Which has now taken place.

But he said nothing
At the meeting about to take place.
It is only now that he turns and smiles
And whispers:
'I do not know
What will happen next.'

--

God, 1993

God looked into his secret heart
to find a word
To bless the living throng below.

But look and look as he might do
And begging ghosts to live again
But hearing no song in that room
He found with harshly burning pain
He had no blessing to bestow.
---

Cancer Cells, 2002

"Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die".
(Nurse, Royal Marsden Hospital)

They have forgotten how to die
And so extend their killing life.

I and my tumour dearly fight.
Let's hope a double death is out.

I need to see my tumour dead
A tumour which forgets to die
But plans to murder me instead.

But I remember how to die
Though all my witnesses are dead.
But I remember what they said
Of tumours which would render them
As blind and dumb as they had been
Before the birth of that disease
Which brought the tumour into play.

The black cells will dry up and die
Or sing with joy and have their way.
They breed so quietly night and day,
You never know, they never say.

---


Cancer ...that disease which gobbled up dadubhai - death he or she might be lurking around!!!

I am sorry Maa...

tumi phone korechile.
aami kothay 'poth harano pothik' er moton ghure berachilam.
jaani tomar amaar jonno khub mon kharap korche.
jaani tumi chaao i get the love of my life.
jani the women u check out hence are for my good.
tobu kothay jeno aamra eke opor er onek door e chole gechi.
icche kore shotti bolte, phone kore tomar kaache khoma chaite...but khoma chaibo, aami aami hobo, aar tarpore tumi amaar jonno bhishon bhabhe mon kharap korbe...shedin tumi bolle, 'chutte chole jete icche korche', amaar o tokhon 'chutte chole jete icche korbe tomar kaache'...i wont be able to maa..but i promise...
kotha dicchi..aami tomar kaache fire aashbo...kaaron ...tumi amaar ekmatro shotti. my only truth.
amaay khoma koro..


--
I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls.

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.
--


~kathy's song, paul simon.

The Telapiya Kinds...

Anaximander, i remember having heard it once in a lecture, and also on some link, said that, "men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land."

today is my day of Jhaal Jhaal Telpiya r jhol, mushur daal and gorom gorom shaada bhaat...

in essence eating up people who r irking me, though they have probably long left their fishian-piscean identities...:)))

ahaaa..

Hoy Naa...Can Not. Period. Daari, koma Fullstop |

ei naa hole shobhab kobi..the habitual poet...

Saludos Shubhash babu..

Hoy Naa
--

Kobita Chai ? Maaf Korben,
Hoy naa.

Kolom ta thik kol noy to,
kobi rao noy,
daan rer thik moyna,
Hoy naa.

Aapni Moshai
Pet chire chaan Mukto
Jaanen to naa ki jontrona
muchre othe patay patay
jokhon chaapen ekti kore mukto.

Kobita Chai? Maaf Korben
Dhrishtota Ei
Aapni Chaan Goyna

Hoy naa, Taai...
Hoy naa..
-- Shubhash Gongopadhyay.


And a lovely line from the book "Lennon Remembers"....

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I repeat. God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

Lennon n n on on...i wish you were reading this lennoness...u would have loved it...

`:)

Let me be your home...

I Know, You Walk
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I walk so often, late, along the streets,
Lower my gaze, and hurry, full of dread,

Suddenly, silently, you still might rise
And I would have to gaze on all your grief

With my own eyes,
While you demand your happiness, that's dead.

I know, you walk beyond me, every night,
With a coy footfall, in a wretched dress

And walk for money, looking miserable!
Your shoes gather God knows what ugly mess,

The wind plays in your hair with lewd delight---
You walk, and walk, and find no home at all.

--herman hesse, obstinate child, i am, still preserving the small letters:)

~prayersforyou.

Poems from Pittsburgh....

wrote something..

--
Distances
--
I don’t understand distances
but i feel them, much like
i feel pain and sorrow
congestion or loneliness.

Pain is excruciating,
sorrow catches your eye,
congestion debilitates
loneliness much like distances
but perhaps not so alike -- are inexplicable

You look at the clock and think
what would she be doing now,
in some other part of the globe
You are awake in the middle of a day
She in her sleep , resting from a world of constant running

Let her sleep, you tell yourself,
and then you turn, to find ‘distances’ waving behind you
You realise how the biological clocks have inverted,
why the routines are now walking the opposite paths
And how, much like, when pain, sorrow and congestion waves,
you resign, you give up here too,
having failed to understand distances.
--

Amar kicchu kotha chilo...

I had some thing to say to you..

Amaar kicchu kotha chilo..
Tomay bola r kebol tomay..

Jeina aami thoont nerechi..
Shei kotha ta toliye gelo...

Ei shomoy er shobdo tolay..

Kicchu i to aar jaay naa shona
Kaar kotha ke bujhbe bola

Bujhte hole kotha r mone
Chena poth er baaire chole

Mon tomar buk er agoon kholo..

Mon re..

Amaar kicchu kotha chilo..
Tomay bola r kebol tomay..

Jeina aami thoont nerechi..
Shei kotha ta toliye gelo...

Ei shomoy er shobdo tolay..

Ekhon naaki shobdo gulo..
Ek muhurte shagor peroy..

Ekhon naaki jontro gulo...
Epar theke amaar kotha

Tomar paare pouchiye dey..

Tobu kicchu jaay naa bola...
Shobdo khelay tobu faanki..

Kotha r peethe kotha shajai..
Aamra ekhon ekla thaki, aamra ekhon ekla thaaki..

Tomar amaar Klanto deho..
Shobde kothay bharakranto..

Koto rokom kotha bola..
Bolte bolte cholte cholte..

Pouche gechi..
E Kon praanto??


Hoyto tumi paashei aacho..
tobu tomay chunte ki paai..

Tomar buk e betha chilo..
kemon kore kotha diye..

Shei betha te angul bolai.

Bolte Hole notun kotha..
Chena pothe r baire cholo..

Ondhokar e jay naa dekha..
tobu tumi haathre cholo..

Tomar buk er agoon kholo..

Mon re..

Amaar kicchu kotha chilo....


--Moushumi Bhowmik...

the dream was nice..i was in some such place called 'habibibura'...i saw fulmashi, bon, maa and baba all agog in getting me settled..i just the confused participant in that hecticness..

saurabh came home, the sound broke my sleep..eyes open i knew i was not in habibura but in pittsburgh, united states...yes many many miles from habibibura or ever durgapur where maa baba and bon must be..

I dont know why i suddenly saw fulmashi in my dreams..that valiant lady, that obstinate lady, who gave it up all, thinking it was true love, and now, lives with an ever bitter and biting realisation, that it was not so..that she was being utilised and still so...i salute her, from where i am, shes my maa durga of today, in 2005, who struggles in life with a growing daughter and a recalcitrant husband whom she thought, when she was in love, was her true lover...today, that person is just but a man, who has broken through her, perhaps so many times, to her severe unwillinness so many times..

statistics exams after microeconomics was horrible...i was experimenting a new approach of life, where i study hard about a subject, but i still attend other stuff just leading to the time before the exams, the seminar of today in this case...i was checking if that helped me to get a control on my tension about exams, a trait i have inculcated ever since childhood..

be it what may, the performance was miserable..i realise, i have study stats on my own, the professor is miserable with a strange woody sense of humour for his students, and i also realise, there is so much more to life, than stats or microeconomics, and their exams, even their knowing of all of them, or research per se...i lead a cocooned life till date here, i have got to unfurl myself slowly, to allow my words, my kotha, get absorbed and swamped by this living...

and in that effort i had mailed Professor Stile last night, hes a famous playwright, here at my unviersity, having written for a few hollywood movies...he had a strange straight reply, i dont work with writers who dont write in Capital Letters...


I used to think i write well, i dwell within the strange concocted demands of my last world, in journalism, my present world, research, and a world i have always thought i could be good at....my writing it has become a non-existent "mysterious mistress"....I want it back...desperately...


and there you go the final thoughts, a few nice acronyms i am learning here, my professors and a large part of the research community uses this word, 'thought experiment'...and then there was this visiting prof from columbia, who used this word, 'hauntingly reminiscent' with indeed some 'haunting' rhyme...and the other day while reading the essay of a future phd aspirant, i came across the word, the 'mysterious mistress' -- knowledge -- what he thought to be so..

I do love writing, but i hate people making pretensions with it...each of those words seem like that...and today i am reduced to a writings of no capitals in my writings...

I must get back to my capitals!!! not the capitals i know of through journalism, so what ET days come back to me, almost every moment...but the Capitals i know i was born with...the original ones, when i wrote my first words.....my first poems staying with dadu thakuma...long back..in that scratchy diary of mine...

It must have evaporated by now, but i am here, why should my capitals too!!!

~amar kicchu kotha chilo, i had something to say....

Nevertheless...(I'm in love with you)....

Maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong
Maybe I'm weak or maybe I'm strong
But nevertheless, I'm in love with you.

Maybe I'll win, maybe I'll lose
Maybe I'm in for cryin' the blues
But nevertheless, I'm in love with you.

Somehow I know at a glance
The terrible chances I'm taking
Fine at the start then left
With a heart that is breaking.
Maybe I'll live a life of regret
And maybe I'll give much more than I get
But nevertheless I'm in love with you.

Somehow I know at a glance
The terrible chances I-I'm taking
Fine at the start then left
With a heart that is breaking.
Maybe I'll live a life of regret
And maybe I'll give much more than I get
But nevertheless, I'm in love with you...

~missing you, just need a glance of you, nothing more, thats it!

A tale of the Ragged Mountains...thats what a link says is my story

You're "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains."
You're very imaginitive and unique, just like
this story. You may seem to daydream alot,
making it a little hard to keep up with
eveything, but you make things interesting.
Read your story at:

Which" of Poe's short stories are you? (Seven Results)
brought to you by


Life of my life,
what you loved I sing.
If you're near, if you're listening,
think of me now in the evening
shadow in shadows, hear me sing.

Life of my life, I can't be still.
What is a story we never tell?
How can you find me unless I call?
Life of my life, I haven't changed,
not turned aside and not estranged.

Come to me as the shadows grow long,
come, life of my life, if you know the song
you used to know, if you know my name.
I and the song are still the same.

Beyond time or place I keep the faith.
Follow a path or follow no path,
never fearing the night, the wind,
call to me, come to me, now at the end,

....walk with me, life of my life, my friend.


~Gabriela Mistral

forgive me, embrace me..where is my lap for a night's sleep .....

Mira, Miroslava writes back, saying she enjoyed the talk too..and hopes to meet again at the coffee corner..

I write back. "I have a test. As i debate, now, if i should say, 'why only at the coffee corner', let me give you back two emoticons, in return to your one. :)) there, they go," i said.

My roomie, whos into his east-european, this time a hungarian lady and associated escapades...believes thats not the right way...

He thinks i should have said, "Sure, at the coffee corner." Meet her at the coffee corner, and then say, "how about shifting the coffee corner to star-bucks!"..

somehow i like that approach...but yet, this approach, of creating a 'shift' seems so naive to me. Morning i was thinking, how my far younger sisters and brothers would now be having their adolescent days, ogling at boys and girls...Sometimes i feel, i am still the child with them...

But the bus-seat, makes me realise i am no longer. Down, now, at 11 in the night in my department i find an intriguing fair-skinned lady..i can gauge from her eyes, she 'needs' 'it'.

I smoke outside, find her standing alone, not forlorn, but expectant of a life happening..No imaginations there, surely, as she stares starkly at the Chinese student duo smooching at the escort stoppage.

Oh, yes, surely she needs it...shes in my department, nothing stops me....tomorrow i have my statistics mid term....i must not fall in the trap of marks, but aspire for understanding and concepts, so says a friend....and another says, i must keep good grades, they bail you out during hard times....and even if its for knowledge, i ask myself, would the multinomial, conditional or marginal probablity density function ever help....doesnt life happen all in a 'blink'!!!! sans all those theories of love n hatred...

and blink!!! I yearn for some good music...bangla, or otherwise..i yearn for a good poem....bangla, english, urdu or otherwise....

I am impatient...lifes a 'f'ing joke...and yes it is, i dont feel an iota of sadness in using an obscenity here....

strange, how times change, change people, situations, life per se...


where's the respite!!!!!!

`amen..sorry sweetheart, i didnt mean to treat u with the 'f' word so early in life....forgive me....

sidetalks 2 soccer 2 Miroslava, and name concoctions...

this is perhaps not the best time to upload a post.
with exams around the corner, and quite some assignments, this could have been put off at a more opportune date..
yet just cant resist looking at myself, spending durgapujo'05 in an alien land, with small tit-bits of experiences...

where do i start?

perhaps at side talks...i find it funny how i have moved in side talks and its' expertise in life...during engineering it used to be essentially, nothing of consequence, apart from naive aspirations...during mba, it used to be about a good job, occasionally about concepts in economics, or girls around calcutta! :) the topic changed during job time in Mumbai, talk of stock markets, business, ideas for stories, bitching about political and non-political bosses or at the least perhaps social life in discs or friendly gathering...

now, i end side-talking with people on their football teams...the nations' football teams, be it guillermo's argentinian national side and riquelme, or miroslava's bulgarian national side and stoichkov's free-kick skills...

its strange, but football provides me the littlest of opportunities to know a country..to know women, good looking and seemingly nice-natured ones, like Mira, or thats what she says is her nickname from Miroslava..i like that name, her calmness, her poise in handling routine stuff, like the coffee machinery at the school, though perhaps as with all dead ends till date in life...this shall also end in a big 'nothing'.

but i do know, i would love to have a 'mira' by my side now...the mira in women...in whatever way she manifests herself in the opposite sexes, from wherever they are, east european countries...or from latin america - chile or mexico...

talking of that, irene, my italian colleague, calls me 'chiran'...god, what a playing with my name...under what circumstances did my parents named me thus, i sometimes wonder...the name has caught on the imagination with whosoever i interact.....from chittaranjan, or chiranjan, to chiru, or chiruchat, chiruda, an obnoxious calling as if i am some god or something, or now as irene calls me chiran...strange, but i like the last name...

possibly cos, its giving me a new identity, the way a single indian guy, supposedly eligible for girls, at 26, in an alien land is being looked at by an italian lady, with a 5 letter, two syllablic name...


and they said, whats in a name...lots - is it not apparent from the above, the evolutionary sidetalks, miras or irene's chirans....

till laters...

`amen.

time for a good link, on whats in a name, tea, and western classical music.....

http://www.teamuse.com/article_030301.html and a good hindi poem from a person's orkut blog...


Chaak jigar ke see lete hain,
Jaise bhi ho jee lete hain;
Dard mile to seh lete hain,
Ashq mile to pee lete hain;

Bezaari ke andhiyaare hain,
Jeene waale jee lete hain;
Hum to hain un phoolo jaise,
Jo kaanto mein jee lete hain;

Chaak jigar ke see lete hain,
Jaise bhi ho jee lete hain....

kids and kisses at last!!!

more than a year after starting a blog, i have been hit!!

hit by the subject of the blog - name, children....

and how they have come...through racial statements, through unspoken wave of hands, and even through a short story.

the jews, it seems, here in pittsburgh, and also in united states, have created an insular world for themselves. the native americans, dont like them, yet cant throw them, despite how they have been outsmarted by the clever jews in many aspects of living -- from business success to ivy league admissions -- this land has a huge respect for education -- and their creme-de-la-creme outputs -- the ivy leagues...

jews from what i hear, from people thus abound everywhere, with their own shabbaths, and koshers and their synagogues be in their religious dispositions, or their striped skirt small girls and hat-wearing small boys going to school..

yehudi, one such small boy, i made friendship with few days back on the road, while waiting for a friend to come down from his apartment..in the course of the military salutes and the little handshakes, i learnt yehudi knows perhaps about the world much more than an average kid would ever know...to the extent, when i talked to him of india and indians, he said he knew them for they were blacks!!! a racial learning perhaps he has been indoctrinated with by his jew parents...i feared then, what a folly this world is upto, training this small little innocent child, with the vulgar intricacies of an adult life....i despaired more, knowing later from a lady, who came and picked him up, jewish herself, who commented on how, yehudi's jewish parents are brilliant individual themselves...but not so caring parents perhaps...having left the kid to loiter around the road near the synagogue...yehudi left me, and i left yehudi without being able to tell him, that 'bro its not the way you know the world...the world has its gardens and flowers too...i wish i could show your parents and you ...how it is actually...'

but yehudi is not the only kid with whom i made verbal friendship with...i dont know the name of this kid, passing my block and apartment just know...with his hat, and guided by his dad, the beard wielding, black suit wearing, jew you can catch so often on the streets of pittsburgh and america i think....he waved at me, his father waved at me, i was smoking...the skies were mellow n gloomy, but that small little kid, with his tender innocent smile, and his wonder-struck eyes looking at me...made my day...a day when i spend my first pujos so far away from home....for the first time ever in some time now...

and those two small little children...i dedicate my blog to you both...after a long long time i found you...having searched for you, through so many alleys of life, so many contours of living...and despairing to strike friendship with you...i wish i had the versatility to pen a little poem for you both, right now...it's not there anymore, as prolifically, -as it used to be...but still i will dedicate this lovely little piece...for you both...below..

do take lots of my kisses, u small little ones...with you ...ALWAYS...


After a Kiss - Marjan Riahi

----
I said to him, what would you do if you wanted to give me your heart? He said, I would kiss you, and he kissed me without hesitation. Even the man i was in love with did'nt have such affection. I could not understand how such a big thought had come from the curly head of that sweet four-year-old.

Departure began when i thought of the kiss, and found an old set of keys that could'nt open any door. Because of those keys, i had to go through the metal detector twice.

I didnt expect so many people to come and see me off. My kisses were just to be dutiful;the kisses i received spoke volumes. My aunt's kiss was saying that all her wonderful words came from the bottom of her heart, my cousin's - was saying that she hoped to goodness she would never see my face again. My older sister's kiss was full of hopes of marriage, as if i could find a great husband in a few hours. My sister-in-law's kiss was full of special effort, and a sickening magnanimity, that was meant to show that grave family problems, were less than they seemed.

My best friend's kiss revived the memory of a year in political prison. That year had happened ten years ago. The moment i wanted to say goodbye to my prison mate and kiss her, she just shrugged her shoulders. Kissing ? What for ? Not kissing was a sign of strength.

My brother's kiss was not a kiss at all; it was a smooch. Something that needed a lot of work to become a kiss. It smelled of cigarettes and old paper money. A smooch that wanted me to pay attention to my passport, and money, and documents. A smooch that wanted me not to let go of my purse for a single minute. A smooch that wanted me not to trust anybody and to call him as soon as i arrived.

My niece's kiss was full of the wishes of a seventeen-year-old and maybe they could be realised through me. Her kiss was depressed by wearing a long dress and headscarf every day and wanted to ride a bicycle under a under a sun that caressed her hair.

I dont know which kiss was lost now that i am sitting in this airplane seat.

We were playing hearts. I said everyone should give whatever they have in their hearts. One of the kids took from his pocket a paper boat he had painted himself. Another a few pistachios stacked inside one another, and a third a few scraps of a paper tissue. Kids' hearts were always in their pockets. I always filled my pockets with chocolates filled with hazelnuts, and the kids loved those chocolates so much that i always ended up being short on hearts and had to divide them.

Then it was time for them to sleep, then time to wake up. Then they kissed me and left, and whoever kissed me the most showed off more.

I could'nt kiss my mother. We just hugged. My father's kiss landed on my face like the droppings of a dirty animal. He was not a bad man; he never did anything wrong. He never did anything.

On the eve of departure, the man i was in love with wanted to kiss me. We brought our faces close to each other. I felt his breathing on my face. His cell phone rang and he forgot what he had brought his face close for.

A kiss only transfers microbes. Every New Year's Day i kept saying that and pretending i had a cold so i could keep myself away from all those different kisses and then pieces of my life stuck together like a dream without an interpretation.

The sky behind the plan window curves and reaches the ground. I have not started yet, but many things have already ended. This curved sky is exactly what i want to buy with a kiss. A kiss connects me.

The key chain is at the bottom of my pocket and a four-year-old boy with a head full of curly hair has taught me the proper way to play the game of hearts.

My passport is stamped. They press the stamp down on the page as if it is an endless kiss.
---

my life is a flight, and i lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion

--Borges and I--

(One of a few short stories written by Argentinian author, Jose Louise Borges..)

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk throughthe streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to lookat the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges fromthe mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. Ilike hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and theprose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way, that turns theminto the attributes of an actor.

It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, letmyself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literaturejustifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some validpages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to noone, not even to him, but rather to the language and to the tradition. Besides, I amdestined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive inhim.

Little by litte...i am giving over everything to him, though i am quite aware of hisperverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all thingslong to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and thetiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not myself (if it is true that i amsomeone), but i recognise myself less in his books than in many others or in thelaborious strumming of a guitar.

Years ago, i tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of thesuburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges nowand I shall have to imagine other things.

Thus my life is a flight, and i lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion,or to him.I do not know which of us has written this page.

--translated by James E Irby.

The Religion of the Setting Sun....

I guess, evenings have no religion, and neither does the setting sun...they are of the same character, they worship they same idols, in whichever part of the globe you reside in.

And in the setting, evenings in the drowning sun bring in an element of loneliness, a feeling of retrospection. "the day is over, the weekend or perhaps the nights if its a weekday, beckons. its time to wind up and head back home."

Such is the time, when now about a fortnight since i have been here, i start to write a post, long time after i have done anything such for quite some time now.

And as ever i will stick to those moments which have struck my heart at its deepest core, those moments which i know will come back to me, in life, since they have left their fingerprints on my soft muddy heart.

Here are some such ever since:

~ The landing at the JFK airport, and just before that, for a couple of hours, crossing the Atlantic, it dawned on me suddenly and surely that i am far away from home at all, and at last. I dont know if that was a result of any aspiration or a general script my life is following, but for that moment when the wheels of the Air India flight touched this country's land, i felt like crying out, for people i left back home, the corners left alone in their loneliness, the streets i left looking at me, as i left them all and boarded this climb up onto the sky to head here, the land of as many are saying to me, 'milk and honey'.

~The next stop, and this one, continues for a sometime, comes through the realisation that most things in this country are just the opposite of how i am used till date in life. The switches turn down, puts off the light, the lanes walking on the right is the rule and so for the vehicles, the door knobs turned clockwise opens into the room and many such small things...as i get an embracing into these rules of life here, i fear that going back, i might again some time in getting back to life in my home country's ways...i fear that perhaps this land will give me my heart back, and as chandru told me in calcutta, will i again be left rueing the fact that i left my home and went back from where my heart is. ...i dont know...i really dont know, but how i wish i did...

~landing at JFK - the John F Kennedy airport, was an experience in itself. It might not be too immaturish to comment on it this way, but despite my little experience of Mumbai's chaos, JFK came in with its stamp of dominance. The innumerable other airlines stacked out one after one at the landing area...the faces, this was one huge veritable mix of cultures and nations...i knew, then there, despite whatever i have faced till date, life is going to be different from here on...

~I cant forget her, and if i do, i would not be able to thank her for what she did. I dont know her name, Nafisa, let me call her that for the time being. She was the Pakistani lady manning one of the counters at the La Guardia airport from where i was supposed to take my flight to pittsburgh from new york. And while i scruffed around as to how to call in my mashimoni and friend saurav, from nyork to tell them of my schedules of arrival, it was Nafisa who lent her mobile, allowing me to make a call to my friend for scheduling the pick up. Thanks dear, i pray may god bring a lot of smiles to your faces...so far away from home..

~I ride in a small cocker kind of a plane from n-york and arrive at pittsburgh, see saurav, this friend of mine, of which i dont know how i will really speak of in how much glowing terms...see him in the airport with mashimoni and meshomoshai and dolondi...and go through a complete blackout. Till date, life was like, where am i, and then the moment i saw them, there am i was the feeling...a complete abject surrender i guess...

~My friend L or that is an obscene nickname for his real name Anant, told me, and so truly, that 'you always remember your first journey'. The faces you meet, the experiences you have, the feelings and turmoil you go through in your mind and heart...So true, so real.....as one can perhaps guess from the above, summarised, yet lengthy delineation, that it indeed was so...

~Next few days start a series of meeting new people around in campus, and in pittsburgh..people and friends like saurav and shalini, himanshu and abhishek, people whom i knew sketchily and this ride of mine made me know them better and the good souls hidden behind them....know of my professors, ashish and rahul and stephen and david, and lowell what an infectious microeconomics character he is, and george the sleepy stats prof who dons a garb of poetry and philosophy but in my eyes, he rather had not done so....and then my fellow students in the various stages of graduate student life....starting from anand, irene, samita, gaurav, surendra, vipul, sameer, claudia, leonardo, dan and bin and nakemura, oh.,..what a rhyme in those names....offcourse how can i forget the stray spic macay meeting too...abr, saudamini, srinivas, and other such....

~let me not forget my roommate now, saurabh, seems a good simple guy....lets c how he finally turns up to be.


~ what else to chronicle on, there are stuff i could chronicle on the university campus, but i suppose i have gotten used to facilities and campuses in life, so they dont come as any surprise to me...but i love the fact that there are a plethora of libraries in this small city and as a student u have access to each one of them...some day soon, having made a round of the pittsburgh arts and culture scene i will try to come up with another post as well...

~as of now, courses are good, research i am still not sure of if i am in the rights hands of the right professor...i will let that be where it is...getting a lil tired...

ah, now i got it...the religion of the setting sun, the drowning days, and the impending evenings....tired eyes, a feeling of reclinement i guess..which prays only one sentences in its heart i believe...'give me some rest and soft sleep'....


tk care, love, i will be back..and offcourse how can i not leave a poem for you..till i am back again..

`thechild..



Long Dead

I know no feeling
no pain nor joy
what happiness I find
I will destroy...

It gives me no future
leaves me no past
eating my love for life
and mine will not last...

Longtime ago when
my mind could spin
to think, love & inspire
dreams much too long-win..

Dead to all in many ways
can't see nor hear
facilities far too far gone
for far to many years...

Now Tears In Rain

Entropy - A Book full of Pictures

----
Greed's all gone now, there's no question
And I can see you push your hair behind your ears
Regain your balance
Doesn't matter where she is tonight
Or with whoever she spends her time
If these arms were meant to hold her
They were never meant to hold her so tight
For the love of that girl
Greed's all gone now, the panic subsides
When I could run, pulling arms to love her
Try to put myself on on the inside
For the love of that girl
Tears swell, you don't know why
For the love of that girl
They never fall, they can never run dry
For the love of that girl
Promise is never over, never questioned it needed reply
But she could breathe deep into my neck
Let me know I'm just on the outside
---
I just took an evening stroll today in the university campus. U remember how in school we all used to enter new classes each year-- none knew each other -- and yet each knew each other too. By the very fact that we were classmates - that we studied in the same sections of our school classes.

So it felt in the evening as i strolled around. There was a difference though. I had nobody here to go back to after the walk, so i came back to my dept office and started writing you this email. I could have written something to my sister or to my maa, but at this moment i am ruthlessly alone, and am sure i rather not share what goes through my mind with anybody - except with you - perhaps because you know me and yet dont own me, i feel secure with u!
You will understand it. You would have loved to walk with me today evening. Be excited chirping around, give me the motherly touch i aspired for in the evening sunset.

Its beautiful here, the city or should i call it town - pittsburgh by american standards is located at the confluence of three rivers, and is surrounded by the hills. I am being told winter is always bitter, but who cares of winter if one is already in love, after having coped with a more bitter mind! :)

There are departmental halls here, called baker, porter, mine - hamburg, etc - all results of endowments of rich americans, huge buildings housing the latest of research. Each of them in their structure seem like buildings from the past, just like the dn road building. which has seen many bloodshed many tears and many faces over years, and stands tall despite all that time takes away from us. Did i almost see a mirror in those concrete tall structures - showing me my face!

At a section called the 'Cut' a huge field - lawn kind of a thing there were disparate scenes - people sitting on the park and working on a laptop - perhaps on the latest of nanotechnology, and a group of boys and girls playing football together. The departmental store within the university is called 'Entropy'. I have fallen in love with that name. How apt!

My flight was good. In material terms though. I felt helpless in front of maa who asked me like a child, 'tui ki kore okhane thakbi - how will u stay there' and burst into tears...and baba who took the trolley from my hand as if it was not me but he who was going for his doctorate and my courageous little - self professed practical sister who despite tears could not hide anything from my eyes of her moist vision. The door closed and i was off from dumdum airport. stopped at mumbai - at taoji's place for a couple of hours and then again travelled to end up in the air india flight early morning leaving mumbai.

I am used to flights but this one terrified me a little - international 747 boeings have a few cabins you might know -- with the 3-4-3 arrangement or the the 2-3-2 arrangement. in any case those cabins up in the air for all those hours, i was thinking just like as if this was auschtwitz -- me being deported to the concentration camps - albeit on air.

rest was uneventful. i mean there were stuff but i pretty much coped with them with nonchalance except my changing of my watch everytime we switched time zones. the next jolt of feeling came at jfk, as the wheels touched i wished i could burst out for being SOOOOO far away from home. the Hugeness overwhelmed and made me forget my tears though!!! that's how it always is - the mind coming in to take control of the heart -- why dont i cry out some time i wonder!!!

it all ended up in my roorkee mate here and my mashis coming to pick me at the airport - baaki it was mundane stuff. the routine this n that n trinkets one does with relatives n friends - and watching them in disbelief, later in acceptance, and finally in future perhaps shall be in conversion - picking up accents and behaving as if this was their country. Why do we need a country for ourselves!

so in the end that's the story. i am trying hard to get back to my inundated emotional self. ban nahin paa raha hain. ek degree of control aa gaya hain. after all the bleeding and crying lifes again on a concrete road -- freeway zooming....

can u gimme a good lil brush on my hair for a peaceful night's sleep..
`thequietchild.


A Book Full of Pictures
Father studied theology through the mail
And this was exam time.
Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book
Full of pictures. Night fell.
My hands grew cold touching the faces
Of dead kings and queens.
There was a black raincoat
in the upstairs bedroom
Swaying from the ceiling,
But what was it doing there?
Mother's long needles made quick crosses.
They were black
Like the inside of my head just then.
The pages I turned sounded like wings.
"The soul is a bird," he once said.
In my book full of pictures
A battle raged: lances and swords
Made a kind of wintry forest
With my heart spiked and bleeding in its branches.

its time for an august moonrise.

leaving home in durgapur tomorrow the 1st of august -- 12th with god's wishes and blessings and parents love and sister's tears i leave...
its time for an august moonrise.

August Moonrise


The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,

And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,

And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;

If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.

Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me

These days i feel like a 'fish trapped inside the wind'...

You ask me what the lobster is weaving down there with its golden feet,
I tell you, the ocean knows this
You say who is the acedia waiting for in its transparent bell,
I tell you its waiting for time, like you
You say who does the macrocystis algae hug in its arms?
Study it. Study it at a certain hour and in a certain sea I know

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhale
and I respond by describing to you how the sea unicorn
with a harpoon in it, dies
Inquire about the kingfisher's feathers
which tremble in the purest springs of the southern shores

I want to tell you that the ocean knows this,
That life, in its jewel boxes, is endless as the sand,
impossible to count, pure
And the time among the blood colored grapes
has made the petal hard and shiny,

Filled the jellyfish with light, untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
From a horn of plenty made of infinite mother of pearl
I'm nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes,
Dead in the darkness', of fingers accustomed to the triangle,
Longitudes in the timid globe of an orange
I walked around like you investigating the endless star
And in my net during the night I woke up naked

The only thing caught, a fish, trapped inside the wind


From The Enigmas by Pablo Neruda

A poem..Shabby One..after a long time..

this one is almost like a morning erotica..who can say where the mind's gone where the heart's gone...only time!!


Giving me Company -- Between Dawn and Sunrise-------------------------------------------

Just before dawn, with the single crow or the howling dog
My open eyes and ears would have mistaken it
for any time of the day, had it not been
for that lone twitching bird giving me company

The sun not yet risen, the moon still not faded,
the sky clad in the same colour of white and ash and pale blue
In which clouds cast a loom visiting places early monsoon
Today it was you in a saree - the same hue the same shades

Calling me taking me somewhere in between my dreams
and open awakenings And though i could not see you,
but just your sad eyes and black hair,
I did not stop myself .

My mouth moved first around your neck and ears
it crawled into the chin as you stroked the hair
of a thirsty child seeking your refuge, and while nobody or nothing stopped us,
at ur nipples u spurted blood and milk

I moved my tongue it grazing down
ur open stomach towards ur navels -- you sighed
as i made small circles around its darkness
your saree carefully astray, laid aside, you and me still not fully naked.

Did that matter as u called me up by now,
the same name, the same voice, urging me,
my mouth, to come up, between your ridge up across your chin
just around your lips for the final touch of moss and thirst

The sun had risen, joined in those single howlings and screechings,
of the dog and the crow by many others of their ilk
but that single twitching bird,
giving me company till now, had gone, nowhere to be seen.

An Unknown Poem

My Stubbled Fields Are Silent
My stubbled fields are silent -- sea gull, why do
you cry in pain?
Yea, I've sung a song of threshing time and the
golden swell,
Of the thresher who shall come,
Of the tiller-man gone out to plough,
Of the sun that strikes him, a bright crown of light.

Yea, I've begun a song of calm -- whose shadow
has darkness cast,
Fly sea gull, white of wing -- would you see my
brother at sea,
Descend to the mast and say: Harvest-time is
nearly done.

In my fields the dirt-clods cry,
And I shall sow in them once more --
This time, too, this time again, sad will be this
song of mine.

-- Author Unknown.

2 the bee in Avani...

The Bee Box

In this small box, my love,
you'll not find a ring, but instead,
a brave little bee.
He'll be dead by morn,
having given his life defending his flowers
against me.
I felt his sting while picking the small,
purple pansies growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting, more for him than me,
knowing full well the price he paid for my small pain.
And I allowed him his victory,
leaving his flowers as a memory,
and brought you instead this brave little bee,
who proves there is love even in the smallest of things

- amen.

"Senorita with a Necklace of Tears"

Ohhh...what a thrill and joy in discovering a song which is sung for me...the loveliest way to end a week...
amen...to this song by paul simon...


Senorita with a Necklace of Tears
---
I have a wisdom tooth
Inside my crowed face
I have a friend who is born again
Found his savior's grace
I was born before my father
And my children before me
We are born and born again
Like the waves in the sea
That's the way it's always been
And that's how I want it to be

Nothing but good news
There is a frog in South America
Whose venom is a cure
For all the suffering that mankind
Must endure
More powerful than morphine
And soothing as the rain
A frog in South America
Has the antidote to pain
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it

Some people never say no
Some people never complain
Some folks have no idea
And others will never explain
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be

If I could play all the memories
In the neck of my guitar
I'd write a song called
"Se?orita with a necklace of tears"
And every tear a sin I'd committed
Oh these many years
That's who I was
That's the way it's always been

Some people always want more
Some people are what they lack
Some folks open a door
Walk away and never look back
I don't want to be a judge
And I don't want to be a jury
I know who I am
Lord knows who I will be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be
----

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

~Robert Frost.

The Rose.....

I can see you mother earth how you cried when the rain treated you casually,
And vanished from your world after hours of walking together and years of sharing jokes

I can see you mother earth you erecting a wall around yourself,
And changed yourself from the bubbly girl to one more serious and not-wanting of friends

I can see you mother earth how you have still not been able to come across it all,
the way everything ended, the way you gave it all, and somebody treated it like a rag,

I can see you mother earth that perhaps you cry inside, and wish
the tear drop finds its deserved place under the sun,

I can see you mother earth that you have been a rose, now wilting under the sun
And how desperately you yearn for some moisture, to soften your burning core

I am nobody but perhaps the wind, who sweeps your surface, eroding layer by layer
hoping to reach your core, just to reach the tear-drop, not to own it, not to flood it,
But just to hold it with me and carry it along as i blow along in a prayer...