..?...

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....