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...

Lately I've been trying to fill up my days since you're gone....

Have opened my doors of life again. To people and women. Trying to get back to myself, the one of yore, who feared not to get weak, or shed a tear or two.

Will the arms of hope surround me?
Will time be a fairweather friend?
Should I call out to angels,
Or just drink myself sober again?
I can't hide, it's true.

Bricks however are all that remain. The soft mud the clay has dissappeared...and i am still looking for you. Many a times i feel like leaving it all, shedding it all, and giving you a ring. Apologise, apologise and apologise and apologise more if any actions of mine hurt you. To say to you, that i will be with you, unconditionally, you give me nothing and still you will find me there around you.

I would have done it, you know what, if you are reading this piece. But i cant. I just dont want to create any ruffles in your life. Just get easy, drive at a constant pace down the highway, no acceleration, no decceleration, you deserve it for your years of stolid showing, glancing past dishonest men, and praying that perhaps landing with a honest one in the end as a husband.

The speed of love is blinding,
And I didn't know how to hold on.
My mind won't clear.
I'm out of tears.
My heart's got no room left inside.

Are you reading this Mimosa? Just dont know and so easy isnt it. I hope you do since you do know my address of this blog. However i do know you are forgetful enough to have erased it from your memory. To have completely removed me from your life when you took the flight or train out of mumbai to your now new city. The city which you often told me gave you your love, the city where you are completely at peace. May you find loads of that dearest....

For me, well my days of leaving this place are dawning. About 29 days more to go, yday i also got my train booked. Travelling back to cal, on a train should be good. When was the last time i did a long journey on Indian railways. I infact also have thought about listening to select tracks as the trains poo-poos its way outside of Mumbai.

The city, which gave me a lot. A lot indeed. So what some of it was painful and resulted in a learning in the end. So what i shall leave having unmasked people's faces, in the process of loosing some good close ones whom i had thought to be close to me. They never were, now they never will be.

Mumbai is casting its parting cover on me and the feel of it is warm and soggy, i am getting drenched a time should come when i can shed a tear or two perhaps as well.

I have started looking for you, or shoud i say your shades again. But thats life, neither could you stop, or stopped, neither can i, i wont. Have just a few questions to end this one with...

How many dreams will end?
How long can I pretend?
How many times will love pass me by,
Until I find you again?


And let me say, to you...I pray you read this...
I still burn for you.
Your memory just won't let me go.
I'd hold you tighter,
Closer than ever before.
No flame would burn brighter,
If I could touch you once more,
Hold you once more!


Lately I've been trying to fill up my days since you're gone....will you pray for me that i do get somebody...

Syrian and Serene - Mariam....

Dressed in blue checks, voice sombre wearing a gold dial watch, she came..
saying that she was a syrian christian, but i found her serene indeed..
closed though to her inner feelings..
she reads thriller and killer books
talks little listens more, judges and evaluates, a person
to her today i would dedicate these few lines too....
written hurriedly, but in no way just to fill up space
but to give her deserved space in my world.


For Mariam a poem.


Intensity,
Dean Koontz

Hope is the destination that we seek.
Love is the road that leads to hope.
Courage is the motor that drives us.
We travel out of darkness into faith.

on the Old Mumbai Trail and Malwani Fish...n prayers for Gayatri

Gayatri completed her masters in '89. She is a Maharashtrian. Avid Mumbaikar. Today she took me on an old mumbai trail. I just loved the choice of malvani food she opened me up to.

Surmai and mandivili. Bombil and kokam juice. For just Rs 120 we ate sumptuously.

Gayatri is forgetful on the road. She could easily be trashed in by a car. She had a brain surgery some years back. About the same time when her brother and sister now living in Americas, got her broadband connection at home.

Much like me, she used the net to download a host of music, to my delight too, a lot of hindustani classical music. Those are her constant companions. She says, she used to frequent concerts with siblings around. Now, just once in a while, you need good company, to go more frequently dont you. I agree you do.

She buys some authentic Maharashtrian sweets too. She says these are stuff you would find in a Brahmin's house in this part of the country. Maharashtrian brahmins. We come back. Me absolutely doting on the fish and her delightful company. And the fact that i had lost my wallet and she very graciously offering me to treat me to the luncheon.

Gayatri stays in the old part of mumbai. She says her building might be brought down. They might have to shift - they - she and her parents. Her forehead is blank. Knowing her, i know it should not have been. I can see the now dissappeared sindur.

We didnt broach on that subject. Further on. Except a short sentence by her somewhere. Saying that, it happens in life, when u give it your all trying to understand a person, and then feel tired and have nothing more to give ..I nod. I have smelled that giving bit. Maybe not in entirety. But still smelled it for sure.

However, Gayatri is very peculiarly unemotional. She talks of lovely things of life with a nonchalance that i cannot understand. I know though there was a passionate she that is far tucked away in history. The history which saw her perhaps giving her love to somebody. History which saw her getting in an admission in the same school as me, albeit in a different programme. Didnt she need it more than me! I wonder. How blessed i am that i can walk on and she could not. Her surgery might be same as my walks...making me forget my memories.

Gayatri is my colleague at ET. Her memories with her brain surgery might have faded into the darkness of the human mind. Their artifacts still strewn here and there, surface as her emotional nonchalance.

Today she took me on the old Mumbai trail. In understated fish eateries, i am told she loves eating and making people eat new kinds of dishes. She loves Mumbai.

And i..i just bow to her today...for her spirit of existence. The child's bow -- to the Lady on the Mumbai Trail.....

I am nobody to judge/decide but i pray that god, the unknown force, gives her peace and joy, as much as she gave me ....today.

Everybody Knows...

oshadharon..awesome!!


Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

The advent of a Television.

Consider yourself part of a family. Which occupies roughly 10-12 hours of your day each day in the year. Which makes up for a huge part of your associations around the life that you lead. Which gives the requisite branding for finding the ideal bride in life!

Such is the family of my workplace - ETIG -- let me not enunciate what the acronym stand for but come straight to the three worder - which perhaps sums up its ethos - that of 'trends analysis and foresight'.

I am nobody to take a call on what trends my workplace catches for the newspaper for which it is the research house. I am nobody also to comment on the robustness or newness of the analysis that ETIG does and neither am i anybody to comment on the foresight of people who make up ETIG - in colloquial english - my colleagues who come and go and some of them have parked themselves here - it seems for an eternity.

ETIG does offer some lovely safety and security in this big bad world.

But today i am writing not about anything else but the Advent of a Television. That in ETIG's quarters.

My previous mates who have all now left used to debate that perhaps we should have a TV around us. Like say other sections within the newspaper has. They were more boisterous, a more lively gang of people, ready to take on life in its spirit. Perhaps they never needed a TV to pep themselves up.

So hypothesis and analysis no 1. Kudos to the management for understanding the fibre of people and getting the TV at the right time.


Beyond that a TV also might have future ramifications. My current roommate who works with one of the world's foremost banks, says they too have a TV. The job of that box, idiot or otherwise i am staying silent on, is to entertain them with business news, and snippets of things (read cricket in India) happening around the world, live, deferred live, or scheduled to happen in future.

So in effect a TV is meant for them to forget the fact that their job means data entry which sometimes bugs them on a sunday, but never can, in the presence of the TV during weekdays. After all they might have a Tendulkar sixer to entertain them as their fingers constantly work on the keyboard to enter a huge array of numbers.

Hypothesis No 2 - Hence perhaps ETIG is moving to that domain, of being a bank's research house kind of an entity, maintaining huge loads of data. I dont know if i am fit for this kind of a movement, working in that kind of a setting. All that i can say is that for life i shall be scary of excel sheets. And perhaps hence, thank god, the TV comes, ETIG moves to that direction, and i move on with life too.


Finally, a TV also means the prestige of the section getting some sort of an elevation. Perhaps my mates, previous ones, no one around these days, would have loved this kind of an elevation, which i am not sure if it is more real or more comic, or more just for showing's sake. Whatever, good for ETIG the place to which i have developed some kind of an emotional bonding.


Now this writing is getting drab i know, and i must move on beyond hypotheses.

Here i dont have anything to say. Much. The only known addiction to a TV is the one i remember having with my sister long time back. When i was in school perhaps, we two used to crounge together in front of the box at around 10 in the night -- much to the consternation of my parents. And there the favourite series of ours used to come - 'The Truth Lies Out There' -- X Files...


Does the Truth lie out there, or in the TV set which glued us in during those formative ages?

Is there any truth at large in this world?

What is truth, is there a personal truth or an universal truth?

How is veracity/falseity different from similar to reality/perception?


That is what the advent of the Television brings me an end to. Questions for life perhaps. To which there is, i know, no definite, no obvious answer....

Amen..


`thechild.

Resignation Letter.

My resignation from my first self-chosen assignment in this world. Beyond many such perhaps which shall come in years - here i upload it for future reference's sake.





To
Mr Ajay Jindal
Head, ET Intelligence Group,
The Economic Times,
The Times of India Group

Dated: 1st of April 2005.


Subject: Resignation as on 1st of April 2005.

Dear Sir,

I wish to submit my resignation from my current job as the deputy manager, at the ET Intelligence Group of The Economic Times.

My experience with ETIG, The Economic Times and The Times of India Group has been one of learning and valuable exposures. I am sure they will stand me in great stead for my future endeavors. I am thankful to you for all of that opportunity given to be a part of the legacy of this organisation.

Since I wish to pursue my higher studies starting from end of August 2005 I would request you to kindly grant me a shorter notice period of 2 months – than the stipulated 3 months as specified on my contract. I would hence like to terminate my services here starting from 1st of June, 2005.

I believe that within that period I shall also be able to delegate my responsibilities and ongoing projects to the able hand of my colleagues.

Expecting your cooperation, and thanking you for your kind attention.

With Warm Regards,


Chirantan Chatterjee
Deputy Manager, ETIG, The Economic Times,
Employee ID – 6728
Payroll ID – 00012686.
Joining Date in the Organisation: June’02 2003.


Copy to:
a. Mr Rajrishi Singhal, The Economic Times
b. Mr Arun Anant, The Economic Times.

the Heart/Mind matrix on April 1st 2005.

It was June 2nd 2003 when i the dreamy kid joined my current job as a writer. A business writer, they say. A business researcher, some others. Analysts some others still. It has been one of love and longing that has lasted and shall always remain.

Came 1st of April 2005. And i resigned. A plain simple letter talking of me bidding goodbyye and thanking one and everybody for all the experience i had been given to be a part of.


I am still not out of Mumbai - first week of June i should be. But its interesting to note how the Force designed things for me. I never wanted it to happen this way. But the force wanted it perhaps. For all the foolery the world played around with this child fool, he had designed April 1st 2005.

31st May is my release date. 2nd of June i complete 2nd year here. Yes i had been a fool. Not in believing people, each one of them. But in being unabashed in believing people. I guess with a little bit of circumspection one can bring the best out of even the baddest of people. Thats not foolery, thats wisedom.

More than that, people do matter but only to a certain extent. More than that its always you with yourself. Your mind with your mind. Your mind against your heart. Your heart against your heart. And your heart against your mind. One could so easily design a 2/2 matrix to explain the situation.

and the cost, benefits in each of the cells too.

There is no particular reason why i write it today.

Am i kicked that i did it on April 1st. I think only a lil bit, that much, which really doesnt matter to me.

Am i kicked that i am moving on. For a doctoral life probably, the force/god willing, else for something else that i know not as of now. Maybe maybe not. But tis certainly does feel light! feathery arent those the touches that moves the maestros fingers on the piano....the pianist with his piano..thats the feeling with me now..


Am i kicked that i am sad and dreamy again of changing the world and its people! not really, i know in a lifetime, this child can never do that. ANd i know i will be left alone in a lifetime with myself trying still to do that. But that essentially is my life.

Fighting with a heart. Which says you can change the world. The mind boxing back saying you cant, think of you, yourself and how best you can serve yourself in the situation.

Can somebody help me in doing a cost benefit analysis to this heart-mind matrix! Circa 2005.


no poems, today dear. no music, dear. just plain old writing and your feathery fingers on the keyboard.


`amen-thechild.

There is Just One Word - One Action -- that i need now.

A rip van winkle sleep. To refresh me of my pasts, to forgive myself and others of doings wrong and right, to be ashamed of myself for my impurities of mind, thoughts, action, and make amends for it by starting again on a pure life. To start again, stooping, rising up, like the ragpicker to dream about life...not with the eyes of children, the people around, or elders..bt that of a sage in marvel and meditation of life.

I need to be love and cherish peace - foregoing violence.
I need to relax.
I need to go back to my college first years in roorkee and the me of myself then!
I need to DISCOVER MYSELF.



Yes its about time i wrote something. But before that heres to the Ragpicker's dreams...Mr Knopfler i bow before u.

`thechild.

---When Jack Frost came for Christmas
With a brass monkey date
The rail-king and the scarecrow
Hopped a Florida freight
And they blew on their paper cups
And stared through the steam
Then they drank half a bottle
Of Ragpicker's Dream where

The whiskey keeps following
Cold pitchers of beer
Me and my associate
Like the clientele here get
The onions and the 'taters
Rib-eyes on the grill
Toothpicks and luckies
And a coffee refill as

The rail-king lay rocking
He was leaving the ground
Then he was flying like Santa Claus
Over the town where
He came to the window
Of a house by a stream
It was a family Christmas
In the Ragpicker's Dream there

Were kids at the table
All aglow in the light
Music in the wintertime
Sure carries at night there
Was turkey and gravy
Pie and ice cream
And gifts for each and everyone
In the Ragpicker's Dream where

The red-eye keeps tumbling
In our glasses of beer
Me and my associate
Like the service in here there's
A ten for your trouble
You have beautiful hair
Make the last one two doubles
It's a cold one out there where

The scarecrow and the rail-king
Have started to dance
But a nightstick and a billyclub
Won't give peace a chance here
I think they went thataways
Your song and dance team
Heading home for the holidays
With the Ragpicker's Dream on

His knees like a fighter
The rail-riding king
Like a sack of potatoes
Like a bull in the ring where
The scarecrow falls over
With a tear in the seam
Home for the rover
In the Ragpicker's Dream where

The red-eye keeps tumbling
Like tears in our beer
Me and my associate
Like the ambience here where
They cornered two castaways
In a white flashlight beam
Merry Christmas and happy days
In the Ragpicker's Dream

Moitrayee.

That is a name which has carved magic in my life. Three women i know have had the same name. Sometimes accidentally given. Sometimes actually and at other times given to women as the muse of my closest friends.


She did tell me once that her maa and baba had given her that name. Just hanging there in between a short and long name. Smelling of sweetness and intoxication. Just like her hair perhaps which went dishevelled after a rather hectic day. Moitrayee for her stood for a name which she had given up for a shorter -- not personally likeable version by me. What kind of a name was the next one i wondered replacing such a exquisitely carved out name for a girl child? I wondered then..i wonder still now.

And she...she i exchanged a glance long back and i dont know what struck. Maybe thats what they call eyes meeting eyes and luckily allowing no constraints of the world to come in between that meeting. We used to write and fight to each other and she used to talk about her loves gone by and me mine too, i just pray she is happy some day with the person she loves or would like loving. As for whether she will ever come back to me, talk to me, as i sit on the beaches on a dark night, singing a robindroshongeet. Well i dont expect..i shouldnt expect...for after all isnt that what the reader's digest epithet goes 'life is like that'.:)

Moitrayee -- Aaj Jyostna Raat e shobai geche bone..what a song by tagore, kobiguru in my mother tongue, robindranath tagore to the world...that was the song my friend's maa and bon were singing, she herself singing a Bihu song to make my closest of friend fall in love with her...that in a jungle of Assam on a fullmoon night. She has vanished and he has moved on in life, refuted by the woman she fell for completely in reality, and then accepted by the childhood friend of his...Yet he persists with the same password on his computer...Moitreyee..this time with an e...an E for the virtual love or perhaps the real love that one gives away while life takes its one carved out courses.

that is all that i can write now about the moitrayees i know in life now..may u all be happy and peaceful with ur lives wherever u r!

amen.

`thechild

Happy Birthday -- to the one -- I know -- as you walk.

Its crazy. That i still have forgiven you. And wish you had been around or that i could have sent you a birthday wish. Never mind...Happy Birthday dear, heres a poem to your name by Herman Hesse.

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

the sky is indeed a hazy shade of winter !!!!

Time, time, time
See what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the Salvation Army band
Down by the riverside
It's bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang onto your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around
The grass is high
The fields are ripe
It's the springtime of my life

Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any conveient time?
Funny how my memory skips
While looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime
I look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Look around
Leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground

"Some moments for eternity"

When all that i have is cherished memories..here are a few jottings of situations from the past.
`thechild.

 Her face looking up, spectacles on, as If at me in the photograph – I wish I had not torn and thrown it off.
 Her bubbling n jumping down the stairs and coming and shelling across a sweet ‘hi’.
 Like a bolt she coming and embracing me.
 I sit at the sea shore and run my fingers through her hair – she’s just silent leaning on my shoulders – and making that soft whimpering sound a little baby makes just born.
 She calling me paagla Shakespeare or me calling her mimosa pudica.
 Waiting for the train in the station – she stands forlorn in the ocean of humanity – sees me, clasps her lips and gives that sweetest smile of a millennium.
 Or she demanding to know ‘where am I’ when I am not around her.
 I see her curled up hair – fight with her hands and she slowly budges in – we don’t finally melt though
 Yep, she’s married, I pray she is happy, and I, still single, happy as well

PC and Tiruvalluvar....

Our finance minister seems to be a keen follower of Saint Tiruvalluvar in his budget speeches. I am a keen follower of Pc. and Thus Saint Tiruvalluvar was the subject of my net research. here is the ancient poet on the Characteristics of a Good Wife.

The Good Wife


Verse 51
She is the helpful wife who possesses the fullness of
Household culture and spends within her husband's means.

Verse 52
The fullest family life remains empty
If the wife lacks the lofty culture of the home.

Verse 53
What does a man lack if his wife is worthy?
And what does he possess if she is lacking worth?

Verse 54
What is more majestic than a women
Who preserves the prodigious strength of chastity?

Verse 55
Even the rains will fall at her command
Who upon rising worships not God, but her husband.

Verse 56
A woman is one who vigilantly guards herself,
Cares for her husband and protects their unblemished reputation.

Verse 57
Why do guardians protect women by confinement?
Her own resolute chastity is a women's paramount protection.

Verse 58
A women deeply devoted to the man who wed her
Will be worthy of great rewards in the world where Gods delight

Verse 59
Unless the wife pursues praiseworthy purity,
The husband cannot prance like a proud lion before his critics.

Verse 60
A worthy wife is the blessing of a home,
And good children are its precious ornament.

Finance Minister's fascination with Saint Tiruvalluvar

In his budget speech endings led me to do some net research on the saint. This is what i got about the Saint writing on "The Good Wife"...well i dont know if all this is fair...bt for future reference let this be uploaded.
:)) laughing to myself...hahahahaha


The Good Wife


Verse 51

She is the helpful wife who possesses the fullness of
Household culture and spends within her husband's means.

Verse 52

The fullest family life remains empty
If the wife lacks the lofty culture of the home.

Verse 53

What does a man lack if his wife is worthy?
And what does he possess if she is lacking worth?

Verse 54

What is more majestic than a women
Who preserves the prodigious strength of chastity?

Verse 55

Even the rains will fall at her command
Who upon rising worships not God, but her husband.

Verse 56

A woman is one who vigilantly guards herself,
Cares for her husband and protects their unblemished reputation.

Verse 57

Why do guardians protect women by confinement?
Her own resolute chastity is a women's paramount protection.

Verse 58

A women deeply devoted to the man who wed her
Will be worthy of great rewards in the world where Gods delight

Verse 59

Unless the wife pursues praiseworthy purity,
The husband cannot prance like a proud lion before his critics.

Verse 60

A worthy wife is the blessing of a home,
And good children are its precious ornament.

Instants

A poem by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed,
I'll be more full - than I am now,
In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygenic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary
ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives -
each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,

If you don't know - thats what life is made of,
Don't lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umberella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till
the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live - but now I am 85,
- and I know that I am dying ...

Teaching myself...

What..i dont know...bt then teachings are necessary to calm the urging soul. the never satisfied soul. the incessantly craving soul. And yet teachings are necessary to teach that teachings themselves are redundant.


It was the day after the Purnima last night...Maa said it was shuklopokhsha...To describe the moon i will take the privilege of a few words. A slight bloating of the roundedness of shape, a few black marks getting more apparent on its surface..maybe because the moon with one day after the full moon was a trifle less brilliant.

That moon reminded me of my last fourteen months. There was no pain in that remembrance but surprise that i remembered so many incidents in life inside and outside of the soul. That my filtering mechanisms made me remember all of them with a kind of fondness made me feel good.

And then bhatta played Rim Jhim Gire Sawan....

Maa called and i ..the child replied.

Everytime she calls i have no answers to the question. A question which maa crops up for me ever so incessantly. And i know its a question i face but i hide from since i have no answers to suitably reply it with.

When do i get back home? What home? i sometimes wonder. Maybe the lap of maa is my only home in whichever part of the world.

The week has been terrible. But then life at large is terrible too isnt it hahahahah:)

The work content is going down gutters.
Trying for jobs i feel so un-enthused about life because i believe that everything else is as much a hypocrisy as the one i am currently doing. How do i show a greater interest to embroil myself in this network of hypocrisy.
And then the hope to pursue knowledge has started dimming the first of rejections has started flowing in. From Purdue that too a university which i thought should be convertible.


That is the uncertainty of life. That again is the proof of my thoughts and intuitions falling short of the Force at Large's intuitions and thoughts. how foolish am not i that i despite all the disprovings still think that i think in the right direction?

Thus i end. Contradicting myself..for as whitman so rightly says 'i am large and i contain multitudes'...

I must teach myself to know the futility of teaching.
Love to know the futility of loving.
Write to know the uselessness of words
Cry to realise the mistiming of tears
Smile to ponder later about their non-necessities.
And yet continue to teach myself.


I am i think my own teacher, maa says rightly and my own student too.

Maa u r great.

`thechild

I Sit and i Look out....

last evening i was taking a night stroll. outside saw a beggar women being shoved out from the road for it was obstructing cars n posh passerbys of the area where i live in. i wanted to bring her to home and give her a night's shelter. i could not do anything for her. the pain in me a result of all my society's enchaining was excruciating. under normal circumstances i come back n write. bt writing that pt of time seemed like an escape route. in a nutshell i could do nothing. this walt whitman poem was all that shared my feelings.




I Sit And Look Out- by Walt Whitman.


I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid--I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

God bless all clowns.....

God bless all clowns
Who star in the world with laughter
Who ring the rafters with flying jest
Who make the world spin merry on its way
And somehow add more beauty to each day.

God bless all clowns
So poor the world would be
Lacking their piquant touch, hilarity,
The belly laughs, the ringing lovely mirth
That makes a friendly place of this earth.

God bless all clowns -
Give them a long good life.
Make bright their way - they're a race apart!
Alchemists most, who turn their heart's pain
Into a dazzling jest to lift the heart.
God bless all clowns.

"Please Dont Laugh"....

a lovely poem by J C Ashby...rather an accidental discovery....bt how aptly it fits into the theme of my thoughts at large in life.


"Please Dont Laugh"


I have given up trying to be grown up
And Spend my time in adolescent joys:
Finally thrown my 'I am Jesus' face off
And gone out to the boozer with the boys.


One time i took my stand a little distant
Listened to their jokes and felt superior
Quivered at the mention of a pair of tits;
Coloured from my toe to my posterior


For many years i looked round for a model
And two or three times thought i had found one,
But when i tried to pin them down to study,
A boy remained, i found the man had gone.


The first one had a pride that stank like mine did
The second had a nibble with a tart,
The third one curried favour with the wealthy,
The fourth, poor sod, became obsessed with art.


One more said that he would pin his faith in love
To rid the world of adolescent strife,
But quickly called me outside for a punch-up
When some kind neighbour said I'd jumped his wife.


My mother thought the world was growing rotten,
That God would take his loved ones for His own
Perhaps that's why i sometimes feel so lonely
Playing blues records on the gramophone.


Last week i went out walking in the country
And heard the turtle dove call from a tree,
I didnt stop to listen to his love-song
I knew he wasn't singing it to me.

As i came home i had to pass a cripple
I thought i ought to smile as i went by,
'Now there's someone that you should try and love son,'
I walked straight past, I couldn't meet her eye.


A candidate for office came to our house
'Just look and see sir what my party's done,'
I pointed to a block of flats like barracks
And trees that stood there weeping for the sun.



Kind Dr Best's the one who'll cure my sickness
In his still waiting-room i sit and pray,
He'll give me Soneryl to help the night on
And heart-shaped Drinamyl to cheer the day.



So farewell to the purple-headed mountain,
The family house, the rive running by,
Exotic over-ripe fruits in the winter,
The Atom bomb that lightens up the sky.


O Father will you cross my brow with water
And place my tired hands upon my chest,
Remove my testicles and their appendage
And teach me how to love with what is left.

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
~ Gautam Buddha

" Southern Florida, way down at the bottom of the country, jutting off into the ocean, is a place where people come when things don't work out elsewhere. A lot of times, people do start anew. The miles of identical strip malls, the seasonless years, the ocean and the palm trees, and the swampland seem to serve as a balm for souls that can't find quietude elsewhere. But just as often, instead of starting over, people simply fill their lives with bluster."


" It's easy to obsess about what might have happened when there are only two possible outcomes. But when you're not exactly sure what futures you're choosing between, whatever path you end up on finally feels inevitable. "


--- Two lovely sections from an article sent by devi on http://slate.msn.com/id/2111510/