..?...

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.