Easter Sunday: Past, Present....Future?

Happy Easter.

And for Easter there shall be a post - it cannot be helped. And maybe even a poem link - that too cannot be helped.

Some years ago, 7 to be precise, on Easter Sunday a friend of mine Beth and I went over to a place - which at that point seemed to be at least 47 miles away from Lafayette. It's not that far off. It's probably 20 miles possibly from the other side of the river. A place called Wild Cat Creek. We got there very, very early in the morning and it was a mild spring day - a little cold possibly but only that tingle of a cold that comes with early dawn. We went there armed with huge cups of gas-station coffee and a doughnut each and some books in our bags. It's a quiet place, that place. A little creek flows through and on the other side there were the dark green sylvan woods. I had to splash around in the creek at some point but the waters were icy and cold and I hopped around in them still and then had to get out without venturing too far. Dense green - the woods stood on the other side, and I was about to say with a cabin that could be seen hidden by the leaves. But that's not true. I had imagined a cabin there. While sitting on the side of the creek I kept telling Beth that if I could I'd build a cabin and live there on that side and do not much else. I'd have to make sure that the cabin had good plumbing - that's all. I'd cross the creek and go to town to get groceries every ten days or so and I'd do not much else but live in the cabin, which I could see very clearly, and have a private sign to keep all trespassers out because, I think, Beth might have said what if people came to visit. And so there we sat, drank coffee, had our mighty doughnuts. Beth read. I don't know what I did very well but at some point I fell into a deep, deep sleep right next to the creek. I woke up to feel my face crusty and Beth when she looked at me burst out laughing. Beth is normally a quiet person but when she laughs, she laughs. And she did. My face had gotten sunburnt. For it was close to noon and I had been sleeping with my face facing the sun.

We spent some more time there. I don't know what we did or whether we spoke much or at all or whether Beth read her book and I scribbled in a diary or read or not but it was what it was. And later on we'd gone and had some sandwiches for lunch. The evening before we'd gone to a church around the corner from where I now live. The evening service hadn't begun, which was good because I'd just wanted to sit quietly and not listen to anyone speaking. Just look around and look at Jesus Christ on the Cross and so that's what I did. And I didn't want to ask for anything but I kept asking him to give me the courage on Easter Sunday. That was all. Although I kept thinking later that I'd told Christ that He must let things work out for the better right then and there. We sat there, Beth and I, for a long while. I had my own lack of thoughts but there were swiveling bursts around in my mind...I wanted to feel peaceful. I wanted to feel calm. I wanted to feel certainty. But none of that happened, I don't think. I kept sending Christ some happy messages though hoping that he was doing well no matter where He was. How on earth do human beings so matter-of-fact-ly nail someone to the Cross and so many of them and him too? It was 'round the same time that I was still reading The Last Temptation of Christ I remember and having a very difficult time...anyhow, we sat there and then got up and had a young priest come over and smiling with quiet restraint he told both Beth and me to come over to Mass later on or on Sunday. I think I may have answered or grunted or smiled.

It's an Easter weekend which always crops up in my mind now and again....and later sometimes during the year I felt bad not because things didn't work out for the better right away but I honestly thought that Christ, of all people, hadn't heard my prayer. But how could He not? But it wasn't that He hadn't heard....maybe He had heard a little too clearly - who knows. And at some point there was that song playing in my dorm room that year - Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.
_____

Yesterday, some twenty minutes or so past noon, I stomped out for a walk to a place I'm rather fond of. I'm glad I live in this town with a river so close. It's Spring now and we've been having a lot of rain lately and so the river is in flood and looks different every other day. A place now and then glistens, invitingly. So sometimes trails are found. Sometimes slightly hidden paths are explored with a grin sometimes and sometimes with curiosity and sometimes even hesitatingly. Yester' a new direction was taken up. And rises into vision?...

I'd lived near - right near the river for about a year - some years ago - and I'd never taken so many trips to it. I'd never looked much. I liked it. I felt it but didn't let anything seep in too much. The river yesterday had flooded and submerged the path that runs on the opposite direction to my normal route. I got to the point where the path had gone down under and I wished yet again that I had a working camera. But no camera and so hard luck. I turned back and then noticed that they'd built a proper deck for the canoes and the water boats belonging to the Purdue crew team. I walked out on the wooden planks. Some of them seemed to sway gently - probably my imagination - but out I went to the very edge and looked and looked and loved and grinned even though my heart felt the pangs but a different one from last year....I searched for a cigarette but I'd forgotten my pack! Ack! No point in sitting for too long without a cigarette...when lo and behold - a half cigarette emerged from one of the pockets of my bag. A silent smoke, some more shared half-smiles while looking out into the river and then a quick order: Time to get up and walking. And so I leapt up. I turned around running along lightly along the wooden plank I saw a young boy and girl standing near the deck towards the shoreline...they were waiting there with half-wondering looks on their faces. They grinned. I grinned. I realised then that they'd probably been waiting there waiting for me to head back from the far end of the deck before they went there. You know...it's one of those things. Giving folks some private space even on public land because one doesn't want to intrude. I was grateful rather...

Off to buy cigarettes it was and a trip down into the campus area, and near a middle-eastern restaurant, the pleasant and polite elderly owner was bellowing pleasantly at his sister-in-law's very young kid who was running around in the car park, "Miriam! Miriam! Go back inside. Go back inside." I looked up and he smiled his usual smile at me with the, "How are you?" greeting. He doesn't take no answer. An answer must be provided and so he waits. I nodded and smiled and finally replied and raised the question myself...which was fine actually considering nobody was hurriedly walking around building corners.

In the eve' there was another walking trip and I re-visited The Church, which now rests around my corner, for the first time since that Easter. But evening mass was already on the run and so I waited near the door. It was dark though inside the Church. Only a flickering candle could be seen and I couldn't make out Jesus on the Cross very clearly - only the form. I stood where I was and heard a hymn which I hadn't heard before and it was joyously sung. I waited for a little longer but then a young woman was reading out so badly from a section on Moses that I grimaced and turned around. She really should have practiced reading well. A flat monotone and stumbles over words are not somethings particularly inspiring on Easter Saturday. I wandered a bit around the Church. There was a statue of Mary. A calm statue it was and she was looking not towards the gazer but her gaze was lowered. It was a peaceful statue somehow. And there were three crosses of different heights draped with white cloth. I don't know what the three crosses really symbolized - maybe the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost? - but those three also seemed to fit there somehow even though the space around where I wandered was dark with only the fading natural light making its way in through the glass doors. There was not much else to see there and no other rooms to wander around and so off I went off for my second walk for the day.

I chant still. For every waking moment - I chant while doing whatever it is that I'm doing. I stare too much though, I still think. Stare away into space in front of me. Some shard here is much too precious in life and it is not a matter that brooks much detachment although restraint and balance are indeed matters that require much practice and failing and learning and practice and failing and hopefully some amount of actual practice bit by bit. I try. I do. And I'll try harder - that's an unfailing promise. Some weeks ago - maybe a month it was - it was near a particular stretch of the river that I read in peace a piece on The Buddha's words...who knows what is to be? One can but say Que sera sera...I guess with a half-grin and whatever else within while pausing for a bit to let the present be.

It's Easter and so a poem that once again, yes, my friend on the right sent me many years ago is something that I'm putting up here. Thank you. Maybe some who haven't come across it before might feel the same or similar throbbing within and the pins and needles like icicles on the out upon reading it - and those who already have might like re-visiting it. The poem is appropriately titled Easter, and is well, about the Resurrection. (I had earlier mistaken the poem to be titled Resurrection) and is by John Niehardt. A couple of his other poems that I bond with are 'April, The Maiden' and 'L'Envoi'....

God bless....

Once more the northbound wonder
Brings back the goose and crane,
Prophetic sounds of thunder
Apostles of the rain.

In many a battling river
The broken gorges boom,
behold the Mighty Giver
Emerges from the Tomb!

Now robins chant the story
Of how the wintry sward
Is litten with the glory
Of the angel of the Lord.

His countenance is lightning
And still his robe is snow
As when dawn was bright'ning
Two thousand years ago.

O who can be a stranger
To what has come to pass?
The pity of the Manger
Is mighty in the grass -

Undaunted by Decembers
the sap is faithful yet:
the giving earth remembers
And only men forget.

A Book Post but can that be?

I haven’t written anything that can fill a blog-post and I haven’t written anything that I think can fill a blog-post without considerably alarming me some days or hours later and so I am scribbling usefully elsewhere. Yet I found the below, which I think can fill in as a blog-post. I have no recollection of writing it but didn’t mind re-reading it. From the time-line seems it was written sometime in January 2009 or maybe very late November 2008 maybe, although I can bet on neither. It seems it was written in February 2009 actually. Also, it seems I had an “exciting” time while writing a paper….so maybe such things are possible for some selves.

*******

I think it's time for another whimsical post. I haven't written anything over here in ages – partly because I haven't been able to concentrate on one single theme and carry it along till it's done. The previous post ended up being a little too self-centred than I had intended. There was another post that I had started writing and it was called “Many Hours Later”. I saved it as a draft, and there seemed to be precious little point going back to it for the “Many hours later” slowly became many, many hours and then days and it hardly makes any sense to put it up anymore. Although if truth be told that post, which never got put up and some other bits and pieces fit together to form a last minute paper in the previous semester, which I had an exciting time writing within the space of an eve’, so much so that I promised myself that I would polish it and send it off to some journal – but I haven't done anything of that sort.

So I must write now. Why I must is a road that is best not traveled along for now....

I'd been reading a book awhile ago that Guha had picked out from our public library some weeks ago. Neither one of us had heard of the author or the title, but Guha being so fascinated with fantasy picked it out of the fantasy section while I had been sitting cross-legged in the spirituality section (I never learn), first gaping at the books and wondering which one to pull out from the rack (thankfully enough all the books on Buddhism are on the lowest rack), and was then flicking through one of Dalai Lama's books when Guha came over and said “Look at what I found.” So saying he showed me the book, and said “It's either going to be a really good read or a terribly bad one.” I nodded. For reading the blurb, it seemed that the book had to do with an imagined history of the world, where the western world is wiped out pretty much completely by the plague while the civilizations in India and China flourish, as do the religions of Buddhism and Islam. The book seemed to cover an impressive period of time and it seemed that most of the book was based either in China or in India or both….

Once we came home with our goodies, Guha very kindly offered to let me read the book first because I was eying it wistfully. I immediately liked the author's style of narrating his tale, and he had a tale to tell, and it indeed was historical fiction, where he pretty much introduces the primary characters right at the onset (Temur makes an appearance and dies within the first ten pages or so). I bonded with the characters from the get-go, and they were very well-formed, and I could identify with them. There was a sense of grandeur and godforsaken loneliness as I traveled alongwith the primary character for pages when he was all by himself and when he didn't know whether he was alive or dead because he is within a landscape where all human beings have been wiped out by the plague...but then the author thankfully enough didn't just keep us hanging on near the borders of the twilight zone. Pretty soon yet another one of the primary characters enters the scene...the route of travel is rather vague in my head (that's not just because of my memory but it's also because the map he shows is all skewed)...but they do indeed travel a fair bit through Europe, and across the seas; the two primary characters are sold twice over as slaves, and finally after a particular gruesome incident they end up in China, where one of the primary characters – the younger of the two, has as his single mission to kill off the Chinese emperor. By this time of course I was absolutely hooked onto the book. I knew that my little sense of history was going to be forever warped, and had been ruing over the fact that I remembered so little of world history anyway (although I had loved it in school and in high-school, and one of the subjects along with geography…and weird, physics actually, I think, that I never flunked in), and even though I didn't recognize many of the names (some historical figures keep appearing and then disappearing through the course of the book) – none of that mattered. I was gripped by the tension and the sheer madness of this young black boy (who was the one who was put through something utterly gruesome) who was going to kill off the Chinese Emperor, and it seemed vitally important (!) that he do so, and I couldn't help siding with him and the other primary character who no matter what his inhibitions, had given his absolute trust to the boy, and therefore knew of the mad boy's plans, and was therefore an accessory. So there I was thinking “Oh, my God he's going to pull it off...! He’s going to murder the Emperor! How on earth…!” “…but what's going to happen after this...where are they going to go? What are they going to do? How are they going to get out afterwards?” When galuph! Both of the primary characters die all of a sudden even before I could figure out what was going on...they just die.

Of course I was taken aback. In fact to say I was taken aback doesn’t even begin to describe my emotional state. Sometimes while reading I have to stop. I need to pause. This was not a pause that came about. It was not a moment to let the events unfurl or to let the ideas seep or to let the thoughts collect through my slow mind. No. This was just a rude shock to the system. What was the writer doing? Why was he being so inconsiderate? The book has hardly begun and the two characters are now dead. And I, the reader, had gotten attached to them – need I remind him?...If these two characters were no more then was I supposed to still keep reading?...Anyhow, feeling quite frazzled and grumbling somewhat I got on with the reading…

And this is where the book got mightily interesting, even more interesting than I thought possible. It turns out that these two end up in the bardo. Now I remember reading The Tibetan book of Living and Dying (which is another story for some other day but I can tell you that it got me worried) some four years ago or so (which is another story)....but I don't remember too much about it. I remembered the bit about the bardos, and the stages that one goes through – so I knew what the author was talking about but I didn't quite expect what he threw out at me. Well there they were, the two characters. The older the more patient and quieter and the more balanced one explains to the younger boy how they are a part and have always been a part of the same jati. He scolds the boy and says that the reason that they keep losing him over and over again is because this boy simply refuses to remember or recognize his jati members when he sees them on earth. But the older man is gentle too, and he tells the young boy that he will take him through the different levels of the bardo, and that eventually both of them alongwith the other jati members will pop out into the real world. The boy is willing, unwilling, willing, unwilling, dithering and dallying although he is an exceptionally remarkable character, and at the final moment when they are being thrown out into the real world again – the boy runs away from his jati members because he finds a safe and secure spot (or so he thinks!) within the bardo. Bang. Boom. He's reborn as a tiger prowling – that’s his first memory. That’s his first impression. That’s his first remembrance – that’s where we pick him up...the other primary character does of course meet him...but that's another story.

I won't go through the whole book of course. Telling everyone what happens in every stage. Narrating the whole story from top to bottom. But I will go on with this post.

******

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) enough, that’s where the post ended. It didn’t go on. I didn’t go on with the post. What I was planning to write about for “the rest of the post” I have not the faintest inkling (it may have been to do with the bardos and the meeting and connecting with one's kinsmen). I chanced upon this bit by accident while searching for some soft-copy of an old document transferred from an old, hand-me-down and rather sturdy if somewhat whimsical computer, which croaked its last some years ago. I’d thought the document was something else when I saw the title, which simply said “The years”. I wish I’d had the patience to have written a bit more of the book. Bits of the book sail or fly by every now and again but I remember not much of it and it wasn’t actually the sort of book that one reads through twice….I can’t exactly pin-point the reasons. But yes, the tale does trail over into India…It really is a book worth a read, I think (although I'd have to read it again to figure out whether it should have a place on one's book-shelf). If people can locate it, I think they’d have an interesting time, maybe? It’s called, yes. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. I have rustled through some of his other books while sauntering through the local library space but none of his other books seem or sound half as captivating.

So there's the Meaning

I think this deserves a post all for itself: for one thing, I don't know whether anyone will have the patience and/or time to travel all the way through that interminably long blog-post. But that last poem I talked about in the never-ending blog-post (even I am alarmed at its length): the meaning and sense flooded into me on the 7th, right before I lit the last fag for the night. There was a somewhat perplexed and half-humorous fimh saying, "Don't you really understand the poem?...How can you not understand the poem?" and I said in my perplexed voice, "No, it's embarrassing...and it's not even about agreeing or disagreeing with what Graves is gravely saying...I just don't get it." Well not so many words were used through the course of the conversation. And then suddenly the meaning flooded in. There was a fair bit of laughter too, if I remember right, before I felt quite sombre for a fair bit. Now I can't believe that I didn't understand the poem for this long and after really trying to understand and now all of a sudden the meaning floods in/is given to me through the single rain-drop of an innocuous question. I think it's bemusing to have the meaning of the poem that has perplexed one for more than 8 years to suddenly be given to one. In this sense I have to say it was like one of those zen poems, at least for me. If I were feeling very buoyant and/or cheeky I would have said that maybe it's a reminder of the grace "Ask and ye shall receive"...but I'm not feeling that non-perplexed...but I certainly feel and express nameless gratitude and love for the grace and even though I understand close to nothing, which has nothing to do with being modest or humble.

P.S: Needless to say, now that I actually understand the poem - I do not agree with the poem, and for multiple reasons too!

A long time thread of a few Poems

I re-read the following through last night, and I was wondering whether to delete the post: it's one mile-long self-obsessed post to write about a handful of poems, and I'm no poet. Anyhow, it's one of the few things that found it's way here and so it'll stay, I guess. At least I changed the title: now it sounds like an honest description for it's not a long poem post but a very long time-thread about a few poems and Julius Caesar pushed its way in...nothing I could do about it. I have made some edits too and I've gone and re-read some of the poems (I had made a mistake about how many soldiers there had been in the Light Brigade and had forgotten the poem's title - most fervent apologies. I also added a joke from the net...). 7/4/2011

I've been wondering what to write about today since I have some time. Many thoughts have come in ....but then I've been thinking of poems for some strange or not so strange reason through the flurry of academic writing that has kept me absorbed in a strange and unusual way for a couple of weeks.

Now poems. Okay. One of the first poems I remember memorizing as a kid of Class II was Home They Brought her Warrior Dead by Walter M. Scott...(No! Tennyson. Tennyson. Lord Alfred Tennyson - gulp. I just about checked days after the 7th). I don't know why I had memorized the poem but it had something to do with school, and I had chosen that poem to recite. We had a fair bit of nice intra-class competitions back then. The poem had made perfect sense to me too, which is what I find rather alarming now. I remember there was a girl, a kind and well-read neighbour, who was probably in high-school back then, and I recited the poem in front of her (so that she could tell me whether I was reciting it right) and while reciting the whole poem in a very sombre tone for the last line "sweet my child, I live for thee!" I had smiled very widely and had at some point thrown my arms around her and she, even though she may have been perplexed, had smiled too. Now the poem when I'm reminded of it (I certainly cannot recite it any longer - I don't remember all the words all the way through) gives me the nightmares, even though right until college I could "see" the sense in it.

There were some other poems in Class II from a Bengali text-book on Vivekananda. I liked the poems: four liner poems which were as clear as day. Remember nothing from them now although one had to do with "saptarshi..." and Vivekananda...

Not to boast - but I could memorize poems when I was a child without any problems. I remember that bit quite clearly. I had to read them through a couple of times and then I really could rattle them off. I must have been a different human being back then (and then from Class VI, my memory started degenerating and rather rapidly...). I remember being scolded too as a kid, once, for not having memorized a poem and so I simply said it out-loud and so that was that. Next came Abou Ben Adham in Class III. I recently got to know (during the writing of the previous post actually) that that poem too is by Leigh Hunt. There were four girls who were practicing for a school performance, and they had been reciting the poem for rehearsals in class everyday. One day I realised I knew the poem myself after listening to them so many times and so I went up to the teacher (who really made no bones about how much she disliked me) and told her that I knew the poem and could I please be in the performance. I rattled it off with a couple of mistakes and to her credit she put me in the play-cum-recital immediately. I was pleased but the poem itself has always perplexed me. Why hadn't Abou Ben Adham's name been on the list in the first place...I never quite got that.

(*Got to read on the net (7/4/2011) that upon the question being raised in an audience: "Why indeed did Abou Ben Adham's name lead all the rest?" Asimov, from the audience, raised his hand, waved it wildly and yelled, "Alphabetical list! Alphabetical List!")

I won't go through the entire list of poems that I learnt but actually there weren't too many...But I remember in class-IV I had an odd book of poems I had gotten from Pondicherry (a couple of years before that). It had this strange assortment of poems. One was called Father Neptune and his Daughters (it felt like it should be a song and I could never recite it for in my head I used to sing it)...and other poems too (the one about children being born on different days and the sort of temperaments that they would have...and so the liner "Thursday's child shows in his eyes that he would soon be very wise" made me quite quietly smug for I had been born minutes past midnight on Thursday, I had been told)...but I don't remember any of the others and neither do I remember the poets. For the next five years for elocution whenever we had to recite a poem - I had my favourites and I used to read poems - funnily enough. There was an old I.C.S.E copy of the Panorama, with many fine poems and I liked reading quite a few of them. I learnt almost all of them in Class V. There was O, Captain, My Captain, A Solitary Reaper and ...Into the Valley of Dead rode the six hundred... The last and the second of the lot I used as my arsenal for elocution exams all throughout my school days when I hadn't prepared anything specifically (which used to happen ever so often and not always with any good reason).

In Class VII, I remember for some reason not remembered I learnt one of Mark Antony's famous pieces...Not the ultra famous one but the one that begins, "O, pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth..." A friend who had the whole Shakespeare collection, if I remember right, selected that piece. I knew nothing of Shakespeare back then or nothing that would fill up more than half a page anyway. I had been quite absorbed in learning that piece though...and was quite solemn too about the whole process but all of that was spoilt with the belligerent yells of either my brother or my friend or maybe both - I forget whose - which let me know that I was pronouncing "butcher" wrong. "Buh-cher!" What's buh-cher?! You're boochering the word!" Showing me a dictionary didn't make any sense because I didn't know how to figure out the pronunciation...but I relented and said the word the way it was supposed to be said (never been able to make peace with it) and all was well (I know I learnt the butcher, the baker and candle-stick maker poem way, way back...only nobody had heard me say it out-loud, I guess...).

In class V, at some point I remember I wrote a very nice poem - even though I say so myself. It was about a playground...and a happy and content and delighted playground it was too, at the beginning at any rate, because there were lots of children who used to come and play there, and there was a merry-go-round and a couple of swings and a slide and some grass and a sand-pit....but then there was doom and the sad playground contemplates upon how none of the children come by any longer....the poem remains no more (and after a bad experience here and there not a single other person knew or cared of what I wrote and stored back then) but the thoughts of that poem remain with me. Another poem begun at the same time never got to the end. It was about meeting a gypsy-man (shows the very hard impression that Enid Blyton had hammered into me with her books and stories...never having met a gypsy-man in my life...) and it rhymed and all and it was about the gypsy man and how he had come in a caravan and how he had deep eyes (don't remember whether he wore a ring in his ear...), and had a delicious secret....and he almost told me about it....but the thing is I couldn't ever finish the poem. I couldn't think of a secret and the poem with the dialogues kept going back and forth and so on and then there was nothing I could think of even when I was scratching my head and so I stopped. That note-book/diary was there for a long time and the half-finished poem kept taunting me, teasing me and just plain annoying me. Why didn't he just tell me what it was and get on with things!

In Class VIII, A Slave's Dream joined the three other poems that I had in my mind although by that time O Captain had fallen from his pedestal....why did the captain have to die for heaven's sake and it had joined, for different reasons, the other poem (which a girl in class would recite with much passion and I had heard her recite it in Class V for the first time and she had also won the first prize in the recitation competition), "The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled..." Fine, it's all about following orders but that seemed a little too extreme...although strangely enough "The Valley of Death" poem (The Charge of the Light Brigade) always, always brought the shivers, made me feel like I was in the middle of a battle zone where I had to keep going, and the poem has kept me hooked even after so many years. While reading George Orwell's collection titled "Unpleasant essays" some/many months ago, a liner in one of his hilarious essays brought back the poem to my head...

No more poems were learnt while in school although I think I remember learning Ulysses at some point and the memory of that line about the "arch" sort of shimmers in my head every now and again. In Classes IX and X we had Julius Caesar and I realised that all I needed to do was read through the Acts and the Scenes as though I were each of the characters. I'd do that twice through right before the exams and I could remember everything and although I did read the whole play (in fact that is the only whole unabridged Shakespeare play that I've read apart from The Merchant of Venice...it shames me to say this but it's better admitting to the truth. I keep thinking I'll read Hamlet and Macbeth at least and I have them now at home...but I never get around to reading them...) that double-reading before exams was what I enjoyed the most - funnily enough. I could never do the "enacting" at other times....I tried once but I sounded fake. One of the reasons I was sad that I couldn't go in for the Delhi Board for my +2 (instead of the West Bengal Board) was because I couldn't read/enact The Merchant of Venice the same way and I never have been. In Classes XI and XII there was Lucy - which always brought in two dominant double emotions (among others) of "ah-sigh" and "deep (minus expletive) annoyance"...and The Ancient Mariner, which haunted me and gave me the goosebumps and made me dream strange dreams for the longest time. I was in that man's skin...under his skin and some vaguely remembered liners haunt me still...and I'll never forget what an albatross means...it's not just any bird and it will never be just a bird for me. There was a bit from Paradise Lost as well but that is not something I very clearly remember partly because of yet another pronunciation gaffe I made with a friend over the phone while we were discussing the poem. It was to do with the word "Whilst"....I pronounced it as a soft "whistle" and her cackles of loud laughter and her explosions are all that I carry with me from that poem although I know for a fact that the some liners we had had had made an impression on my mind till that moment.

There were some Bengali poems and some songs that I learnt through the same point in time and some liners were learnt later....but about that - well let that be.

And then through the college years and through my Master's in India and for two years in between when I got myself stuck in my Bachelor's for longer than I thought I would - there was not a single poem I read or learnt or memorized. Absolutely none. Between 18 to almost 27, I read no poems...well actually, come to think of it, I'm reminded that I read a couple of Tagore's poems and then later on, close to 27 I did start reading poems - with new curiosity, however tentatively - but that's another story. Poems worry me - much like jokes - I always wonder worryingly whether I'll be able to understand them (and feel relieved and sometimes just rested when I do) but the thing that really saddens me is that even the few poems I like/understand (which can't be more than a handful) do not remain in memory.

In conclusion for this post: Some weeks ago while browsing the net, I chanced upon something that clicked. I have no idea about anything else or indeed who Fulke Greville is or what he was thinking - and I haven't looked at google at all for writing this post- but the poem liner makes sense...

I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft.

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (England 1554-1628)

All I know is that I understand it as I understand three of Dickinson's (and more than 9/10th of her poetry I do not understand) poems,

Much madness is the divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense is the starkest madness.

Or the other one, which the friend whose blogs appear on the right had as a quote in a piece on poetry that he had written, and had sent to me,

This world is not conclusion

A Spirit stands beyond

Invisible - as music - but positive - as sound...

To guess it puzzles scholars

To gain it men have borne

contempt of generations, and - crucifixion shown....

And the other one (- other bit actually fits in the middle of the previous one....pointless now to provide an explanation), which I love too, which appears in the post on music on the same friend's blog on the right:

It beckons and it baffles

philosophy - don't know

and through a riddle, at the end, sagacity must go...

while this other one, which once again, I came across for the first time in a piece (which read like a poem of sorts - sort of timeless inspite of the angst - which one could clearly and closely identify with) written by the, yes, same friend (well - what can I do?!) , makes no sense to me.

Love at first sight, some say,

Misnaming the helplessness of twinn'd souls

'gainst the huge tug of procreation!

I've pondered on this one, scratched my head, pondered some more, thought/imagined that I "got" it...and for more than 8 years now but I don't get anything about it. Maybe it's like an abstruse zen poem or something. It baffles.

Anyway, so much for this post. Night-time, night-cap, and cigarettes et al beckon.

Leigh Hunt's Poem and Time

I didn't know about this poem till last year, I think it was (or maybe the year before that?...), till the friend whose blogs appear on the right told me about it.

I started feeling rather jubilant about the poem after reading it the right way and I can't help let out a wry grin and a happy one as well (unless I'm staring away....) because I feel like both Jenny and Leigh Hunt...if that makes sense.

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,   

Jumping from the chair she sat in; 

Time, you thief, who love to get   

Sweets into your list, put that in! 

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,   

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me, 

Say I'm growing old, but add,   

Jenny kiss'd me. 

The poem suddenly came back to me even though it's been wandering around in my head for a while. I think some memories do seem utterly priceless - within the space and the time of the now - even when one is staring away at the computer screen and thinking and worrying and blinking about writing what has to be written as work and hoping that it sounds as it's meant to even while knowing that it has to, and about the other...I found out today that Holi is around the corner...and here I was wondering whether the Bengali New Year was about to be coming around this month!

Spring Break is on the run and my sense of time has gotten somewhat messy. We have also sprung forward by an hour since Sunday but I obmutaciously refuse to set my clock straight. The only clock in the house which reads the right time is the computer clock!

Space: A Space

Spaces affect me in a peculiar way. Inhabiting a bit of closed space for too long and letting my mind travel in and out and back again makes me feel that that bit of space that I inhabit is not entirely real nor unreal and time honestly does become fuzzy. However this is not a rambling piece on space and time.

For almost a year I've been wanting to re-paint my bathroom. I know not whether it is kosher to talk about one's bathroom on a public blog but it is a western bathroom with a propah shower stall and all other regular amenities and my bathroom is a curious space where time and space and imagination and reality have collided on multiple occasions, and very often I sit (on the cool and sometimes warm tiled floor), think, talk within, read, drink drinks of various flavours and hues, smoke and listen to music. And so my bathroom has been a rather special space for me and I spend time there.

On Saturday while sitting there and looking at the questions to put in for an exam I was gripped by the intense need to paint it and I finally got around to painting it and all through the night. I had a big tub of white paint and some small jars of coloured paints. The tub of white paint had become leather-rubber - having spent the better part of last year in the cold storage room which houses odds and ends and the dryer. I waited for it to resemble paint but since it failed to become a miracle I set out to buy some white paint and I did (alongwith a quart of red paint). And then in the night there were three walls all painted and done and the ceiling as well, and in close to an hour. But then a single shelf, the door, and the archway (yes, my bathroom has an archway - a rectangular archway...) took almost four hours (I'm telling you - something funny happens with time in that space). I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the clock. But being adamant and stubborn sometimes has its benefits. No sleeping till the bathroom was painted and cleared of all junk that it has been housing because I've been storing it. As I looked at the archway I got out the new red quart of paint (which had a fancy name to it: Liquorice. The white tub simply said, "Frost"), and so the archway - parts of it were slapped and coated with a vivid red. Another coat of paint was applied to the walls and all, and a fair spray mists and streaks of paint I realised later had flew onto my head while doing the ceiling (which thank heavens was low enough for me to just about reach with the extended roller brush). That done the bathroom was scrubbed down clean and the junk removed. (A bit of fine-tuning with colour and space is what remains, which I will attend to in bits.) Later on in the morning I lit lots of small and medium candles and was feeling quite pleased...it now dazzles. That space. But there's still something funny that happens there. Something with space and time and God-knows-what-else...

Blossoms after separation

It's strange how Guha's car (passed on to him by his sister, which he signed over to me) has been steadily wasting away ever since he's gone over to Rockville. First (fu-h-st) it wouldn't start one day right outside Gerry's. I'd gone in to get my morning coffee before going over to teach. It simply wouldn't start. I turned the ignition key but a loud ponderous silence met my ears. I turned the key again and was met with the same. I wasn't in a mood to hear the weighty silent thoughts of Blossoms right then. Thankfully enough, I saw the trolley turning the corner and so I leapt out of Blossoms with my bag and key and coffee along with my packet of cigarettes and ran over to the bus-stop and flagged down the trolley. I called Gerry as soon as I was on the bus and let him know and he said, "I saw you. Good work there." I returned from the class and Kim (my neighbour) was there. He came out with me. Got into the car, turned the ignition key and Blossoms brrr-ed into action. I was puzzled and Kim gave me a look which seemed to say, "now what were you saying about the car not starting?"

After that I started taking the trolley in the mornings (and stopped doing that after a week or so and started walking to and fro). I still used Blossoms for groceries. That was nailed in the head when one day, Sean, another neighbour, informed me that one of the window's had been shattered. It was some sort of an accident, I guess. So one window went missing. I tried taking Blossoms out one evening (minus the shattered window) when the car door got stuck. It simply wouldn't close shut. The lock was tweaked and that was that. There was nothing I could do. I put the plastic sheet back in place and went off walking and bought a movie from Borders, My Cousin Vinny, had a nice cold sandwich by myself while grinning in glee and walked back home.

Now I'm not sure what state Blossoms is in. I've been worried that she'll be losing bits and parts of herself with every passing week. However, my very quiet nice neighbour and his nice wife (Senthil and Madhu) also wish to go grocery shopping today. Hopefully Blossoms will be in fine fettle today and not in her state of silent sepearation. Let's see.

P.S: I'm happy to report that Blossoms is doing perfectly fine. She happily "brr-ed" along yesterday. And did not give me the silent treatment nor does anything else seemed to have happened to her. She's behaving herself well in front of strangers and other friends.

Amazing Grace

Some days ago - a couple or maybe more I was marching down to Panera - a bakery chain, which lies across the river. I had my cloth bag and it's been a strange winter but it wasn't particularly cold but I had my (fairly new) white coat (which Guha nagged me to get and then simply bought) and a (fairly new) black hat on (which for those readers who may have come across the book series, made me look a little like Paddington Bear...at least I'm quite convinced that I looked like a "Detective Paddington Bear"). I was walking and marching along when all of a sudden a cycle whizzed by me on the side-walk and something I saw landed right on my right. I was somewhat vaguely startled out of my happy blob of a reverie to see that a grey-blue baseball cap was lying on the ground. I picked it up and there was a breathless little voice saying, "Oh, thank you, thank you." I turned around and I saw this bright, bright very young boy who was reaching out his hand for his cap. I handed it to him and said, "Jesus Christ I was terrified there for a second that you'd crashed somewhere." He gave me a brilliant smile with his eyes glistening, and I very beatifically blessed him. I don't know whether bear look-alikes are allowed to bless - but I went on ahead for my evening jaunt feeling quite serene.

That's that for the post today.

P.S: I went outside for a bit. The sun is here...the mushy ice is slowly melting...Spring is bouncing around in the air and The Cross on the Church (Immaculate Conception) steeple around the corner was all shining and just 'there'!....Hmm.

Hmmm...

Funny-funny: with all my memory for odd dates, which stick to me even when I apparently forget - I completely lost my sense of time - today is Valentine's Day. Should I say 'Yippee'?

Well I'll go ahead and say, "Happy Valentine's Day" and make wishes all the same. No harm in that.

Here's a song link and another one by The Beatles, which I've loved for a fairly long time - ever since we were in school...and some of us would get together and sing it quite lustily too, back in those days. A couple of young folks or more? might like it, me thinks (if they haven't heard 'em already, that is).

Riding on the Bus

I take the bus back and forth these days. Yesterday something pricelessly sweet happened. Normally I glint and glare and keep a dead-pan expression on my face although I do greet the bus-driver and he greets me with a cheery hello and so on. And as far as I have observed (and Guha when he was here is the one who got me communicating with bus-drivers although I can never be quite as garrulous as he used to be) - the greetings are genuine. One bus-driver indeed had remarked that it was always a pleasure to see Guha or me because we always smiled and said 'hello, how are you doing?' The young bus-driver who told me so was a young girl herself (younger than I am for sure) and she was so breathless when she told me the same and more - about how rude some of the passengers were - I would have tried giving her a warm hug if I could have.

Anyway, yesterday I was somewhat distracted while on the bus. Thinking about this and that although I had noticed that it was a "toddler day". So these very young children are taken to the public library some days of the week by, what I think, are basically rather elderly and somewhat portly old women. Who takes care of whom, is a good question. They're a lovely bunch - that's for sure but most of the times I simply glance and look away. Yesterday was no different at the beginning. I was lost in my thoughts and at some point the bus came to a halt in front of the public library. At some point jostled out of my thoughts I looked up to hear one of the elderly women trying to tell one of the little girls to keep walking. Now something needs to be said. The bus was completely empty apart from the three women, the brood of little children and me. And the bus has some stairs towards the back. When I looked up a strange sight greeted my eyes. There were these young children all standing like darling little lambs. Right at the front of this standing queue was a little girl dressed in pink pants and a pink jersey and she was just standing there, waiting. The rest of the kids were also just standing there. The elderly women were unable to move ahead of the kids. There was no space and no amount of coaxing the little girl had gotten her to budge and walk on through the length of the bus. I smiled in my head very broadly. It was like they were little children for sure....but like little lambs. I got up from my seat without thinking and smiling at the little girl in pink, I took her hand and said, "Come along. Come along. Keep walking and you'll see that the rest of them will be following you." And she let me take her little hand in mine and sure enough the entire brood of little kids started following the girl and me. The bus-driver was so grateful that I felt terribly embarrassed. I got off the bus and picked up the tiny tot and put her on the sidewalk and all the other kids followed (and no, I didn't pick up each kid and deposit her (they were all little girls yester') onto the sidewalk! That would have been most time-consuming and quite unnecessary. They were very, very young - maybe 4/5 but were all quite capable of getting off from a bus, thank you!). The sidewalk was a tad slippery and so I kept a watch on the kids. And of course the three women were gushing their kind thanks and I was smiling gently and feeling terribly embarrassed or a bit at any rate but saying, "Oh, it was my pleasure. Really." The bus-driver thanked me again and once before I got off the bus and I grinned cheerily and got off. Back to thinking furiously and reading and pondering on other matters but it was a lovely little incident that filled my heart for those moments for me....

I remember a friend telling me that I could write about life here but I didn't know what to write about....this seems to be something lovely enough...

That's the post for today.

On comments and reviews and accents?

This post would fit better on my other blog....but I've become reticent on that blog for different reasons and so I'll fit this here.

I've received a variety of comments and reviews on my ability and competence as an instructor. Some of the comments are funny and some are strange and some are just mean (she's a racist!) and some although seemingly mean I can recognize the facts in them (she writes on the board and I don't know what the arrows and arrows and more arrows mean...strangely enough the arrows and the writing have also made sense to some students; she gets flustered in class and talks about too many things and goes off on tangents).

However one comment is so funny and delightful - I have decided to share it. I laughed when I read it. I have got all sorts of comments about my accent: where do you come from? Where did you do your schooling? You have a different accent...I personally think I've got a mongrel accent. I can modulate it a bit when I'm careful and when I'm teaching but it lapses sometimes into a hotchpotch of an accent which it is anyway.

Anyway, one student: a very sweet young boy with a very disarming smile had written words to the effect of, ....has got a lovely accent. Her accent reminds me of Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music" !!!! Very embarrassed I was indeed.

I could write a mile long post here but I'll get going for now.

The bird bunch and the cat

It's definitely the middle of winter here and a very strange winter it's been but there's something stranger....there have been six or seven black birds that have been flying onto my porch for the last couple of days. I have no idea why....did they imagine that Spring had arrived?

It's the same bunch of birds (I hope it's the same bunch) that's been visiting my porch for the last couple of days. There is a stray cat who lives on the porch (a cat - whom Guha christened 'Minimus' - who still assumes that I'm going to catch him and turn him into a winter muffler; he sometimes forgets and approaches my extended fingers but then runs away; I don't know whether both of us are a little scared of each other because sometimes I am a little worried that he's going to bite my fingers off....and sometimes he'll be engaging in some form of communication - with longing looks and all exchanged across the window - with my two cats who live inside; sometimes he miaows for them when they are elsewhere; and then sometimes he'll be miaowwing furiously even when he has his food and water and both Barty and Max are sitting near the window - I know he's being a "cat" then; I rush outside still - like the human fool I am - and then he'll go scampering under the couch and sit there very comfortably and look at me; so I'll be sitting on my haunches and he'll be sitting there looking immensely pleased with himself and honouring me with a kind look every now and again but he'll not come anywhere near me; so I'll be yakking for a bit while sitting on my haunches; he has no intentions of coming any closer but he sometimes has an almost smug look alongwith a sort of forlorn look - the little dear - which seems to say, "aha. I got you to come out and sit with me." He looks perfectly content and after a while I go back in). The first day I saw the bunch of birds swooping down I thought I was seeing things until Barty (my cat) started chittering and chattering the way cats do when they see birds. I looked and they went for the little stray cat's bowl of food...at least I think that's what they did after chattering amongst themselves. So out I went and put some more cat food into a plate. The plate of food was gone in the eve' - so I'm assuming the birds had their fill. They came down again just some moments ago. They look a little confused...as much as I can make out and somewhat ruffled too - going by their feathers. I don't know whether they are rattled but I believe they might be for one of the birds with its feathers sticking out suddenly pecked the other one whose feathers are also sticking out and the second one pecked the other one back for no reason that I could see; it all seemed quite unnecessary - and rather rude - although I don't know whether they were exchanging fond gestures....

But what are the birds doing here in the middle of winter? Guha, the vet, has let me know that I should give them some moong dal and rice - and so I've put both on a plate out on the porch.

Two Cats...

.....Spotty on the prowl when it was warmer and he was feeling better....

Many years ago when I was living in Calcutta at my parents' apartment I was running up the stairs when I spotted an abandoned cat and my breath went out. It was a kitten. Curled up and sleeping on the window-sill with the pale light from the sun streaming onto it. It was twitching its nostrils every once in a while and if anyone has seen a kitten sleeping they'll know what I mean when I say that this kitten was really curled up with its head tucked under a paw. It was this spotted little ball. Black and white. More white than black. I brought my fingers close to it. It didn't budge. I stroked it. And it grunted (not purred) a soft grunt. I went up the four steps, rushed inside the house. Went to the fridge, got some milk, warmed it a bit, got some bread and dunked it into the milk - put it all in a bowl and ran out again. The kitten was still there. And at some point he (I don't know whether it was a he - I think it was a he) woke up, blinked and looked a little dazed. It let out a yawn that made its head disappear. I placed the milk bowl in front of his face and put my finger into it, brought it near his mouth, and he licked my finger. He was a bright kitten for he soon lapped up his meal and looked at me with a mighty satisfied expression on his face. I couldn't take him home although I would have if I'd had a place of my own. Later on in the day or maybe the next, he came miawowing piteously over to the door. I petted him and he brushed along my leg. I gave him a bowl of milk and bread and he lapped it up. But that was the last bowl I ever did give him. I never saw him again.

The year before last - there was an abandoned cat. For the better part of the year the cat had been abandoned by a girl whom if I see again I will not waste my time exchanging pleasantries. The cat was black and white. More white than black and for most of the time he wandered around the terrace trimmings (as only cats can) and perched itself near the edge of the terrace, looking up and down and miaowwing. It would try getting into the apartment that had been his home before he was kicked out by the girl who had decided to move houses and leave him behind. For a good couple of months I didn't realise what was going on till Kim, our neighbour, pointed out that the Black-and white tabby had indeed been abandoned. We started keeping some food and water outisde and the white and black tabby was not unhappy with the food but was always more delighted with some attention. It was summer, I think, at that point. So he would lap up some milk too but the thing he loved best was being cuddled. He would settle on your lap and sit and try and sniff your face and roll over and sometimes he would just sit in companionable silence and we (Kim Guha, and I) wondered about and barked at the absent girl who could have abandoned the cat. I named him "Spotty" (I'm not very good with names and the uninspired name fairly stuck to the cat). Sometimes I'd watch him and he'd go prancing across the road (although he never quite really pranced - he seemed to be a rather dignified cat...but I guess dignified cats too have their moments); sometimes he'd very silently approach squirrels, and believe it or not he never did pounce on a squirrel but simply chased them up a tree. And sometimes he was cranky....loving but quite cranky and while he did give Guha a hefty nip one day - I got a hiss and a sharp bite on one occasion...but there was a reason. When one has a growing tumour, which eventually grows to the size of a golf ball by the time it's discovered, I don't think one is feeling particularly good inside and most likely does not want to be petted on its head...

He wasn't well and that came to light in Fall and especially through winter. He was fairly wasting away and was looking scraggly and wasn't always able to groom himself but we didn't know what was wrong with him back then. He would always come and sit on your lap and get petted and comforted and comforting the one who'd be comforting him, and by then there was no hissing nor biting although sometimes I swear he had a rather sad look in his eyes...(there's much I could write about that magnificent cat but only some of it can I write about here). He wouldn't come out of his make-shift house for the food. He would sit there looking at it. Yet if Guha or I went out, he'd leap out of his little house and settle on our laps. There were some days though that I felt like I couldn't go out and sit with him....I don't know how to put this in. It felt like a bloody wrench leaving him and coming back inside. And Spotty would so firmly be sitting there and sometimes he'd fall asleep on your lap...all curled up.

This and that transpired. He was treated by our very kind vet. One of my professor's gave him a home since Guha and I could not take him in (Oh, and I was mad about that but there's no point in being mad about some things....As Guha reasonably pointed out with two little/big cats of our own we couldn't bring in a cat with mood swings...). But just before Christmas Day, I knew. I was visiting Spotty (Spotster) at the vet regularly where he was kept for observation and when all the tests came back negative and my vet told me that I could take him with me...I was there looking and talking with Spotty, and I knew.

He did have a home for a week or so (the exact dates, I have now forgotten). My professor named him "Soccer-Ball" (much more appropriate...although he was all skin and bones mostly...). He slept in the warmth and found some lap to settle on or found someone in the house to cuddle up to. My professor had grown very fond of him too. And yet I knew. And sure enough three days after I went over to meet him one Friday, my professor sent an e-mail. Guha and I went over. We took Spotty over to the vet one last time. And our vet ran some final tests and for most of the time the brave cat sat on my lap somewhat disconsolate but unprotesting looking incredibly fragile - and with the smell of death hanging around him even as I held him close....and when the results came in we didn't flinch when our vet said that it would be better if Spotty were euthanized for he had bone cancer. Our vet did it of course. Told us exactly what would happen and Justin - one of the assistants who was there as well - comforted the little cat as well. I kept patting Spotty on the head and stroking him. Spotty put up a fight though. He didn't go down without letting out one nice loud miaow. I stroked him on the head, called out to God, and by then he was gone.

Guha wrapped him up after some minutes in one of my old grey sweatshirts, which I'd had for a long time...and he was cremated along with that old grey sweatshirt.

And so there went another black and white tabby. There are lots of memories I have of Spotty - but these will do for the nonce. I'm glad though...that I was there when I put him down. That's one thing I am glad about.

Two disconnected bits

The School newspaper, The Exponent, used to carry really bad cartoons but it's one of those things that I always read and groaned over whenever I read the paper. However, today's newspaper carried one by a new cartoonist. (When I read the paper I also read the astrology section and nod my head or shake my head or wonder or worry - not very seriously, but still. I can't help it: I was one of those Linda Goodman fans when we were growing up in school. I had also been a Cheiro fan and read lots of palms through my college days and university days [nobody threw gold coins my way though I did get some delighted "How did you know that?" to my delight as well back then...] and even now I can't help trying to look at people's palms if I can...so if there were a palmistry section - I would have read that as well).

To get back. Today's cartoon tickled my funny bone. The Cartoon Title is: Why We Can't Have Nice Things by Ellie Broughton

One college kid says: Oh, no. My horoscope says today is a bad day for me. I can't take two in a row.

The second kid, with a wry look, says: You've gotta stop procrastinating. That's yesterday's paper.

(*Very often I've looked at the previous day's paper and said the same thing. "Insipid day yesterday and today. Great. But wait. That sounds like what I read yesterday. Ohhhh......"*)

Completely disconnected tale (even my batty head can't come up with however remote a connection):

Two phone calls in a row today: one made to the shuttle service that runs between Chicago and Purdue and one received from the cell phone company for a bill payment.

I talk for five minutes on each call, with the respective woman in charge, and at the end of both calls I thank them and I'm thanked in turn with a very cheery, "Thank you Sir."

!

New Year List

Happy New Year to those who read my blog.

I have been inspired to put up a list of my New Year's resolution. Not having made one in God-knows-how-many-years - it will be very short. I have to thank Pupu for this exercise. So Pupu, when you're reading this, many thanks (I had thought I was too old for this exercise...).

1. I have decided to stop being snooty and send in a paper for the sociological conference for this year, and if the paper gets accepted I'll present a paper within the section of Sociology of Education (including a bit about values, beliefs, and morals). Never done that before and I'm having a good time so far getting my notes in order and refreshing the most important bits before I start looking into what the sociologists have been saying.

2. I have decided not to do anything but laugh about the fact that the venue for the conference this year is in Las Vegas (one of the very, very few places that I'd very loudly said, I will never visit). This does require a point to itself. For if I manage to make it, there will be some poetic justice to it!

3. I am going to get my degree some time this year. Maybe it's the Concorde fallacy. But I've spent too long trying to get a mere degree and making it into a mountain. (That's what I'd done for my undergrad degree too - come to think of it!)

4. I'll also continue to write on the side, send something to the literary competitions this year around and not worry too much about whether it is grand or great enough; try and be sane in my responses towards things that cannot be changed and about things from my imagination, and try and change the bit that I can; brood & obsess less too but not stop thinking or reflecting; keep the sense of humour alive (with some help); laugh some; share some laughs; nurture my sense of empathy; be a little more disciplined and a little more organized and a little less lazy, a little less fearful, and give back something positive to the people and beings around - essentially be a bit "sharing, giving, and loving" - and especially towards those I claim to care for and love.

5. I'll also have fun while teaching in my last semester here at the university while also teaching to the best of my abilities.

6. I'll exercise and walk regularly instead of doing both in erratic starts and fits.

7. I'll save more than I do and get a proper job - however humble.

8. Talk with the few people I do and not complain too much; be a patient and mindful listener and thank God every day that they put up with me.

9. Hope and work towards seeing that the points on my list are being fulfilled bit by bit; dream a bit too and share some dreams!

10. I'll pray in earnestness, and with love.

There's my list at 35. I think I must have made my last list at least 20 years ago.

Happy New Year once again. Good luck, joy and peace.

P.S: Reading and listening to music don't appear on the list for more-or-less obvious (but not identical) reasons. I was reminded some days ago, from my old diary, about a poem that had caught my attention because I'd come across it in a book-chapter: Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost. Knowing my memory I'd very carefully written down the last four lines of the poem hoping that I'd reflect upon them at a later point. So maybe I'll try reading some more poems as well this year?...

So what do I expect?

Sometimes one can be rather mystified on days when one really gets going with the walking and the thinking...it is not an unpleasant thing even though one wishes that one could solve some of the puzzles and say, 'a-ha', and then go and share them with some folks (without sounding like an unhinged bat). Without sharing some of life's puzzles there's absolutely no meaning in the 'a-ha' moment.

It's been said that one must expect nothing. Not goodness nor kindness nor commiseration nor gratitude nor respect nor praise nor rewards, and certainly not - God forbid - love in life. I'm sure this makes absolute sense at some level and if nothing else one can be assured that if one doesn't expect anything one will never wonder, even if one is a fairly average person, about some of the things that pass for sanity and one will very rarely wonder whether one is growing silently but surely madder and slower and stupider with every passing day and for sure one will never be saddened or hurt or feel lost or lonely or disappointed or restless. But as a friend once said in a different context, I can intellectually accept this but emotionally I resist. I know that one must expect nothing when living in the world and when I think of it (as I do) I think that it is but a stroke of luck or karma (or something else?) that I have, for the time being, cigarettes to smoke, enough to eat, clean water, a roof over my head, and functioning limbs and physical organs and a temporary job that lets me pay the bills - so how can I expect for more?

But if truth be told: after accepting or at least resigning oneself to the idea that one is more or less an average person - with seemingly common desires and tries as honestly as possible to do minimum harm - it seems impossible to expect nothing.

For one thing, there are some very mundane expectations. One realises at some point that the very least that one expects (and sometimes with no feeling attached to the expectation and sometimes with great annoyance and sometimes with liquid joy and sometimes with a matter-of-factness and sometimes with a listlessness) is to wake up the next day when one falls asleep at night even though one does know that one will die one day. Bizarre example it may well be but how many everyday expectations then are simply hidden and how many are we blind to simply because we don't really think about such matters? We don't expect to suddenly be in the middle of a violent war. We don't expect to be brutalized. We don't expect to get into an accident and be maimed for life. We don't expect to lose the ones we love...regular middle-class people don't expect to go hungry at night and don't expect to be without clean water and don't expect to not have a place to sleep at night. And all of these are expectations, and rather big ones too. And these just barely skim the surface of our pot of expectations. We know very well (or at least some people do) that things might change in the snap of a finger and we know that for countless people and lives these things are real but we are able to, for the most part, not think about the same happening in our own lives (which includes the lives we love). In short - we don't expect such things to descend on our heads.

It is also true that some people worry and some people brood and some people go mad when they start keeping a tab on even the very basic expectations that we carry around like an invisible cloak...yet other people wonder and worry and brood and enter God-knows what dark chambers and are still able to maintain their wits about them, and some of us pay no attention because maybe not questioning the basic expectations is the way to get on with this and lead at least a somewhat normal life, and the only times that we sometimes realise that we hold certain expectations is when some of our expectations are violated, and this can happen at the real and at the surreal level.

And to make a leap but not an unreasonable leap - we also expect some things from our own selves (we expect to be honest, we expect to be civil unless otherwise provoked, we expect to enjoy meeting some people, we expect to work well, we expect to be punctual, we expect to love some people and to be annoyed by others...). And one also expects certain somethings from others (similar things actually: we expect other people too to be basically honest, we expect them not to be gratuitously rude, we expect them too to be punctual for meetings, we expect some people to love us and some others to be annoyed by us...).

We expect some things from, of, and for ourselves and we expect some things for, of, and from others and we even expect others to expect some things from us. And the specific expectations may differ depending upon the relationship we share with the specific others.

So what is it that I've had to accept (and somewhat reluctantly)? Do we expect certain things in life? Yes, we do. Do we expect certain things from others? Yes, we do. Does the expectation itself mean that it will be granted? No, that it certainly does not. But as one writer said, one should learn to expect the unexpected ! - and that goes for the good, bad, and beautiful.

I have not been able to understand the ebbs and flows and the turning of tides in the lives of creatures great and small even though I have been affected by their mysteries. In some other age and time I may have gone around singing around the countryside, and have people chasing me out with stones. Sometimes, in rare moments and in flashes, the nature of life has made perfect sense. God only knows why. I know this only in terms of recollecting the feeling. The feeling came and it passed leaving only a couple of remembered points, and those are the points which glowed harder. Yet the points themselves expect me to act upon them. It's one thing to gaze upon mysteries and these odd points and be utterly fascinated and captivated by them and it would be fine if I were satisfied doing just that (while my monthly bills magically paid themselves or if I could live in a barrel or a tub, eat, and drink what I could find with no other requirements needed nor wanted among other important things!) but I am expected to act upon the bit of knowing that stays. I expect it of myself.

And I think that almost all (if not all) human beings have this sense at some points: a knowing, and a knowing that is peculiar to each human being and a knowing that is unique to a particular human being, and a knowing which is related to (a) do-able expectation(s). And there are do-able expectations although difficult ones that float through or appear as dots. Whether one will fulfill these expectations is a different matter. One cannot predict the future and sometimes by the time one gets to untangle the mess from the meaning one seems to have less and less time left - but one still can't give up without doing one's best. It's one thing to never know what one expects of oneself but to know and then to say that there's nothing to be done about it is somewhat imbecilic.

One can't even say, "I was completely ignorant". One has to stand up on Judgment Day and say after the first round of questions, "I'm sorry Your Honour but I knew a bit but was too lazy and too despairing and kept thinking that time was running out by the time I was 16, so I didn't ever want to try and do the bit of good that I could have. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to impress you by being truthful - since You know all there is to know. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. No, Your Honour I'm not giving you excuses. I'm actually trying to explain what happened. No, Your Honour I realise this is not a confession box. I thought I was on the right track...Yes, Your Honour, I realise I did do a lot of navel gazing. Yes, Your Honour I wasted time even when I knew that I wasn't meant to. Yes, Your Honour I kept wanting to keep my cake and eat it too even when I had the suspicion that that is what I was doing. Yes, Your Honour, I did get very tired sometimes. No, Your Honour I didn't think that I had created the world - oh well, Yes, sometimes I thought I might be able to until I realised I was hopelessly incapable of even fixing the whole world - leave alone creating one - even if I were given the power. Yes, Your Honour I did think I had a role nonetheless. No Your Honour I didn't do everything I could. No, You're absolutely right Your Honour I didn't do my best and give my best...Yes, of course Your Honour You're never wrong..."

So there is this obmutacious expectation which lingers...

30th December, 2010

December 1st

Today is the 1st of December. And since somebody reminded me that the first decade of the new century (and millennium) is about to come to an end...I might as well add: Today is the first day of the last month of the last year of the first decade of the twenty-first century and the second millennium, and I can look up and thank God for a working sewage system in the place I live...among other things.

And to be less facetious: it snowed today, and I couldn't help but smile and smile and smile some more in spite of thinking that it was a little mad to feel so ridiculously happy.....

P.S: Today is the 4th and the silent snow is really coming down. I would have taken a photo or two if I had a working camera. It doesn't look real and it doesn't feel real and when I'd gone outside early in the morning it didn't sound real....

Silence and Solitude...

The first time I heard of this word was when I was in Class IV. Solitude. It was a three word moral science exercise - silence, solitude and prayer - and I still remember how quiet I felt inside while doing the exercise. Among other images - I see the tops of very tall trees swaying in the wind and their green leaves are silently swishing...there is a forest. An image of tall trees in a forest. That's one of the things I see when I hear or contemplate upon the word solitude.

I find it both gratifying and disconcerting that so much now is being made of silence and solitude. I haven't looked lately but I'm sure even social scientists are talking about the benefits of solitude and silence and "being alone" and I'm quite sure that we'll be reading a fancy article in Science or Nature one day, not too far off into the future, extolling the virtues of silence and solitude.

I'm all for silence and solitude, and so it's not that I find the value placed on them as odd. What I find odd is people talking about them. And of course I am too. When we have to start talking about some things as being valuable and as being essential and when we have to harp on their value not by re-affirming their value but to state that such-and-such has value to begin with - I start wondering whether their value has already been sullied and how it is that such invaluable aspects of life started losing their significance. I've been deeply curious about values and the things that humans and different humans value (but about that another day) and I'm back to wondering how some parts of life can be made to be seen as being valuable. If a human being has never really been alone or has hated being alone or has been deeply distressed by the experience or has found it discomfiting or unbearable or useless or mind-numbing - I wonder whether there's anything anyone can do or say to make the person suddenly see silence and solitude as being valuable.

While I'm on the topic maybe I'll ramble a bit about how I see silence and solitude. This is biased. I can't talk here about the millions who cannot afford silence or solitude because they are busy everyday trying to get food and water and basic amenities or are merely trying to exist because of terrible life-circumstances. That would be a different question requiring a space of its own. But there are people who even though they have the possibility of engaging in quiet moments, don't want to be alone....not that being alone or the ability of being alone automatically makes someone superior or better or deserving of praise but even that is something to think about.

One may argue as I often do (with myself) that being alone can be a precious experience only if a person has certain likes which go well with the experience of being alone. Reading - unless one is reading out aloud to somebody else (which has a time and a place, and that too only if one can read well!) must be done alone. Related to reading, I do have some reservations and some strange musings....but about those, another day.

Painting is something I used to engage in quite often at one point. Now, almost never. If I were an artist with some skill (not too much - only some) then maybe it may have been like writing but as it stands I cannot paint much and if I am able to paint something that looks like what it's supposed to - it's more often due to sheer luck than any aspect of skill or talent or ability. Yet when one does paint, and this is about great artists and sculptors - from the bits and pieces that I've read about them - they liked and indeed required solitude in order to work; and even people who paint well but are not great and/or famous artists like the time spent alone with their easel, paint-brush, paper and colour palette.

I've noticed that I cannot read as I would like to nor paint (as haphazardly as I do) unless I'm non-fidgety inside. There has to be some semblance of a non-chaotic mind and non-chaotic innards to be able to focus in order to read a piece of writing as it is meant to be read. But there is something not quite black or white about the whole process - at least insofar as reading is concerned. For sometimes I search for a piece of writing - an essay, a story, a book - because my mind is blowing around aimlessly or very purposefully but without any release or relief, and reading the half-remembered piece provides some clarity. Sometimes coming across a piece of writing at the right time somehow pacifies the mind in giving it a fruitful path to pursue rather than just letting it toss and turn on nothing. It may be a delusion of calmness that is evoked and the fruitful path sometimes may not turn out to be very fruitful. Nonetheless there is something that happens that makes one feel less fratchy and somewhat less hopeless inside. Sometimes one chances upon an amusing piece and one is able to laugh, and so laughing one may realise that one is taking oneself too seriously. At other moments one may be able to read something which simply and eloquently speaks to one like a blood-and-bones human being responding to a question....and sometimes it's impossible to read. It really is.

Then there's listening to music. Different kinds of music can be listened to when there is company but sometimes I cannot listen and do not want to listen to certain pieces when there is company. Some pieces must be heard alone sometimes. I'm not dismissing the possibility of experiencing the fullness of music in company - but in most instances and on an average - I'd say listening to music too is something best done on one's own. I don't play a musical instrument - but people who do, whether gifted or semi-gifted, like playing on their own to themselves. I've seen that in one close friend. He used to play his violin whether or not anybody was around, and he didn't like being bothered when he was playing. Musicians might like and even love playing for others but if nobody's around, that's perfectly fine...and even when musicians play with people around - they seem to not really notice. I'm not talking about noisy rock musicians, here.

Then there is walking around a forest (provided there is a relatively safe, quiet forest or a wooded area or some trails where one can go for a walk). Sometimes one needs to go on one's own, by oneself. Walking briskly, taking one's time, listening to the trees rustle, hearing the river or the stream for a long time before actually going and sitting near it or sticking one's toes into it...listening to the mighty babble of birds (which I would be hard-pressed to identify when I'm by myself) and the trees swishing and swaying - trees that one can hear in fall and in summer with the wind - even before one sees them. Can be lovely with the right company. That is true. It can be sometimes. But I cannot bear walking with people who insist on talking nineteen to the dozen at the top of their lungs when they're walking with me through a forest. The voices bear down on my head like a helmet. I think I'm an auditory person - maybe that could be the reason - and while I'm quite sure that I'm hard of hearing I also have sensitive ear-drums and auditory nerves (which is why I've entirely stopped singing to myself), so while a walk through the woods may be a lovely or a joyous or a beautiful experience with the right sort of company - whether real or imagined - the walk is completely spoiled and soiled with company that yaks.

Now all of these above mentioned activities and some more - like going to an art gallery or going to hear live music or going around a city to visit historical sites or a temple or a cathedral or a monastery, or the mountains or a book-shop or a library or a quiet sea-beach or even having a quiet meal...and other activities - like gardening, carpentry, cooking, and so on can be potentially very fulfilling in select company, although some people really do enjoy doing some activities on their own and by themselves. There is also a time and a place for silence even when in company...there is the aspect of companionable silence. There is a stillness. Although these days, companionable silence and stillness probably means five people sitting around the table with everyone fiddling with his or her phone and sending text messages to god-knows-whom.

Thinking, for the most part, is a personal activity requiring one to exert one's own mind and to gather one's own thoughts and to be with oneself. Introspecting, reflecting, looking over, and wondering have to be done on one's own with one's own mind. One can argue with other people later. One can ask other people later. One can have conversations and discussions later....yet there is a time and a place where one has to sit with one's own thoughts, one's own images, one's own consciousness (or lack of the same), one's voice/many voices, one's own acts of omission and commission...one can argue with one's many selves or just sit and be with oneself or be appalled with oneself or be very confuzzled or be quiet but the activity has to be done in comparative silence, and there is no substitute for this sort of thinking. And it has to be done - for better or for worse. In sickness and in health till death comes in and takes one away. Maybe there will be no enlightenment at all and at no level. Maybe there will be less and less that becomes clear. Maybe one will stubbornly hold fast to one's tiny bit of light and know nothing more. Maybe one will be no better than what one has been or maybe one will be the same. Maybe one will be a better and balanced human being, slowly and steadily and gradually. Maybe one will, at least, not forget what one needs to remember. Or maybe one will die a dolt. Who knows....but it's still something that has to be done, and done alone. And I know how difficult it is to be silent inside. It's a madhouse in there. One can hardly listen to what's important because of the mindless, senseless, idiotic chatter.

I can't talk much about meditation. I have tried it many times over but there is very little I understand about meditation. I don't know whether I am doing it right or what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm assuming that it's something one has to do by oneself and on own's own and in silence...

What else? There's writing. One can show the written bit to another later. One can ask for a response later. One can push it into someone's face later. One can be embarassed about showing it to anyone...but when one is writing - that is what one is doing. There really are no other thoughts, no other feelings, no other anythings really. Painting for me is always a matter of being able to gift the hopefully recognisable and not-too-bad finished product to someone else. Writing however is not done with the solitary intention of sharing every bit of the written word. Maybe if I could write fiction....I'm quite sure I would have loved sharing the tales but most often when I write what I do, even when I'm writing for no clear reason but that I need to write, I have a strangely fulfilling time. While writing one lives in another world and in another state-of-being for those moments. One is quite alone and not even with oneself and somewhat disembodied. Maybe that's the reason that one sometimes experiences an equally intense need to communicate with some human being with whom one can relate to after something is written.

I am quite convinced that somewhere inside one always knows what one is...it's a matter of following the course if one can and if one has the motivation and the drive and the discipline to do what one is. As I keep reading the experiences of those writers whose writings I enjoy reading I am still surprised and somewhat alarmed to note how prolific and at how disciplined they were in their work (i.e. writing) habits by their late teens. That's when I raise my eyebrows at myself. My interesting seeds never got planted and now they have, as somebody once prophetically and rather poetically predicted, been blown away by the wind or have been pecked at by the birds. It's true. If one doesn't follow an idea for whatever reasons - it really does disintegrate at some point. But I digress...

Then of course there is dying. I don't know too much about the experience of death but I'm assuming one dies alone. I hope one isn't lonely while dying but it's something one does alone.

I know I've missed listing all the different sorts of activities that people engage in when alone but others are most likely to have their own lists...

The loneliness and meaninglessness that one experiences are other matters.