Random Thoughts of a Chaotic Being

Volunteer Our Story

2012-01-29T12:19:00.001-05:00

In every bazaar, in various avatars, I see, I hear our story.
They sell, enact in streets & houses everywhere our story.

I have long forgotten the specific words you said.
But in gossip, in surreal phrasings I volunteer our story.

A spicy beginning, raunchy moments with musical interludes;
even to the climax, Bollywoodish seemed our affair, our story.

Quite a pang I feel when people talk about broken-hearts.
Just for variety’s sake, could have been singular our story.

‘No resemblance to living or dead’, I claim, my dearest.
On the page, I let my impartial memory steer our story.

Promise of secrecy was sacrosanct, my idol I worshipped you!
But it was my silent veneer that let the society infer our story.

Does the time travel on a Hindu bicycle: birth, rebirth, birth, rebirth?
Don’t you get bored, O Ishwar, repeating each year, our story?

Maugham’s Mildred, Dicken’s Estella, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina -
How come all the writers know the heroines insincere, our story?

Are even nations like men who make friends, foes, are born to die?
Are even nations cursed, ordained to share our fate severe, our story?

As a detached outsider, it is easy to see my voyage was doomed.
Looking back, I myself wonder, why did I engineer our story?

No disasters, animosities, no catacombs, bastards lurk in our story.
Why is Vivek writing ghazals? Has he begun to revere our story?

The poem first appeared in Indian Review, Jan 2012

Naked Translated World

2012-01-26T08:36:00.001-05:00

Your body flows over mine, like the Ganga over the Himalayas.
Your splash against the roots of my precepts,
and erode my pristine ego, to have your own way.

The vistas of your flesh are like the fields of freshly harvested corn.
The remnant stalks curse my every step,
and when I tread over you, I move, as if, on a maze of thorns.

As I bite, every apple in your tissue moans.
My hunger hunts for the exotic animals
that run wild in your voluptuous terrains.

You urge me on like Krishna, rousing,
driving me to battles where the Pandavas of desire
chase the Kauravas of custom into endless duels.

Your bones turn into embers. I encounter a fire
that smolders me. Your embraced body
crumbles like ash. I wake up anointed by your smell.

Naked, you are like acres of sarson blossoms on the banks of Beas.
Naked, you are like Santoor symphonies motioned by Sharma's caresses.
Naked, you are like Leh and Spiti, valleys and hills, raw beauty, untouched.

Notes: * Pandavas and Kaurava’s were the brothers at war in the epic Mahabharata. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. In Bhagavada Gita, he explains the importance of action (karma) and duty (dharma) to Arjuna (one of the Pandavas). By doing to, he motivates Arjuna to go to the war, and do his duty, even it involves the death of his own kin, friends and teachers. Sarson refers to mustard flowers, Beas is a river in Punjab. Shiv Kumar Sharma plays the instrument Santoor.

First published in Nefarious Ballerina (Print edition).

Books read in 2012

2012-01-02T06:35:00.001-05:00

Read in 2012 (15 = 9 + 6; NF 1)

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS -- FICTION (1): (Tin Drum by Gunter Grass)

NOVEL / FICTION IN ENGLISH (3): Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Seize the Day by Saul Bellow, (Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome),

NON-FICTION (1): (Baburnama) .

ENGLISH POETRY (2): A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud (trans by Louis Varese) , The Conference of the Birds by Attar (translated by Dick Davis).

Hindi / Urdu / Punjabi (5 = 3+2; 0): Abhishapt by Yashpal, Ek Chaadar Maili si by Rajendra Singh Bedi, Meghadoot by Kalidasa

Badlon ka Salaam Leta Hun by Gopaldas Neeraj, Yashodhra by Maithalisharan Gupt,

Sanskrit (0+2): Chanakyaneeti, Meghadootam,

PHILOSOPHY / RELIGION / MYTHOLOGY (1+0+0): (Vasistha's Yoga translated by Swami Venkatesananda), .

MAHABHARATA (by Mahrishi Ved Vyas; tr. by Kisari Mohun Ganguly) (0/18):

POPULAR SCIENCE / ECONOMICS (-): .

Don’t go counting your steps

2011-12-22T22:29:00.002-05:00

Don’t go like a spent monsoon cloud. Stay!

Clear turmeric stains from this table. Drink

your ginger tea. Ma bought this bone china cup

from the Chandni Chowk of her youth

for my dowry half-a-century ago.

Remember, once you were nine and I was six.

Don’t go with bushels of unsaid over your head.

Remember how you carried ten pitchers a day

from the river to home, without spilling a drop.

The neighbors cursed their daughters for managing

only three spilled pitchers each.

Present is too imperfect. Let it recede

into memory where, like your husband’s beard,

it will acquire a fragrant smoothness that his snoring

nearness never kept.

Don’t go counting your steps. Your trek will turn sublime,

if you forget what you leave behind.

First published in Muse India, Fall 2011

When vegetables went on a strike

2011-11-13T09:32:00.001-05:00

When vegetables went on a strike

(To Vishnu Sharma, creator of Panchatantra

& his disciples: Aesop, Fontaine and Borges)

Using kickbacks and foxy, crowy, mousy, doggy diplomacy

the chicken, goats, lambs and meat-producing cattle union

got a bill passed, which institutes special culinary laws

prohibiting the use of "only vegetables" in any dish.

"The dying wish of every meaty-bone, fattened comrade

is to go glamorously on a gourmet plate.

It is said that the soul of a brother is never at ease

if its meat is not eaten, or eaten with too much peas."

"But think of a purely vegetarian platter! We'd live rather than die.

Its insulting to be overlooked, while the lowest caste of the living get picked!

If the absence of a bloody sacrifice attracts diners to their vegi-curries,

our corporate propagandists must spread 'lack of protein' worries.”

All the vegetarian cattle expressed their support for this move,

"We must be the priority, as long as the roots move less than the hoofs."

Parleys were held, dynamics of proteins was discussed in conferences,

slogans of "Meat is good, Good is meat" appeared as research inferences.

Imagine the politics of taste. Odysseus rose to praise the roasts,

and toasts were styled and rhymed like Goddess Kali's prayer,

Buddhist non-violence was asked to abdicate power over platters

and tandoori ovens were worshipped the world over.

Then okra, cauliflower, cabbage, gourd and pumpkin began

a nationwide campaign for the vegetarian nation.

They were soon joined in by the Culinary Institute for Cole Slaw,

Salad is Sensuous Association (SISA) and the ghost of GB Shaw.

"Nature gave humans neither claws nor canine teeth,

and their stomach is not designed to live on just meat,

without roughage or fiber, the toilets will go out of use,

and constipated ideas cannot be rescued by any Muse.'

Fruits and flowers decided to stay away from these protests,

and near-extinction, carnivorous beasts tried to get some press.

Then hens and sheep met the representatives from the sea,

while the fish supported them, shrimps and crabs sought amnesty.

Then the cereals called a strike – bandh: "We too feel repressed,

always on the plate, but never as the main dish,

we are like the MPs without the ministerial office."

Some vegan voices chimed in, but these were soon suppressed.

Then peppers, zucchini, asparagus, lettuce, shifted camps,

announced: "We no longer support the vege-tramps.

Bah! Who eats okra or beans or cabbage or gourd or pumpkin,

except the penniless pagans with non-Western idioms of sin?"

Mushrooms underwent an existential angst. "We are rooted, but color

of our skin is our undoing. We can hallucinate the best of men,

but we fail to synthesize food from sunlight. Everything decays or

is eaten, by humans or us. But we are the devourers more ubiquitous."

Then potatoes, yes potatoes, and tomatoes, yes them tomatoes,

organized with chillis, basil, spices, oil-producing plants and nuts,

a hyperspace of boycott, a non-alignment movement, the middle guts

of truly wise, arguing no matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife.

The slogan "No matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife"

soon rose as a gloat from every living thing. As the lament spread,

death became a living threat, and chicken and cattle sighed,

"We wanted a vain status – a vice! Its better to just survive."

Only a sage with divyadrishti and vivek could follow this talk.

Divyadrishti: transcelestial vision & vivek: transcelebral acumen --

acquired by study, right karma & yoga, enriched the Sage

with knowledge of those idioms and ideas that never hit the page.

The Sage addressed all living species with his trans-celestial powers,

"All die, all disappear, but we all carry the seed of immortality within,

that life-force creates more like us. Every seed is first just pollen – dust,

all creatures begin as eggs or babies. Live fully now, that is all there is."

The toady, mousy, cattle crowed in unison, "O holy person,

we know this, "No matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife,

and know this how can we live fully now? Tell us what awaits us,

in our after-knife? What does live fully now mean? Ah is life only strife?"

Every capillary of the plants, every veins and every mane of animals dilated

each organism initiated the biochemical mechanisms for absorbing information,

the Sage composed with practiced slowness, to match the kinetics of osmosis,

and after the living world subconsciously prepared itself, the fasting Sage stated:

"All atoms and molecules, kindness and ridicule, and every emotion, insult,

ionic content, electrostatics, life functions, the chaotic loves, instinctive antics,

the nonlinear dynamics of sex, the philosophy of universal acts and results

are dictated by misunderstood religion and science. But forget what I just said.

Now listen: To live fully now is our manifest destiny, to die is to bring closure,

what value would breath, beauty, food, babies hold for us, if nobody died?

If nobody ever aged, why would we value what stages and seasons we see?

if nothing changed, our existence would be gargoyle-like wait for eternity!

Everything reruns, in new rhythms, in new colors, before changed eyes.

The audit of a good or bad life, is neither made on earth nor in skies.

The answers are within, the force & the source is within, Tat tvam asi: Thou art that."

All living beings heard his words, few understood, but all concurred, "Knife is good".

First published in MUSE INDIA, Issue 39, Sept-Oct 2011

Flotsam

2011-09-25T11:05:00.000-04:00

Flotsam

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship
seeking sailors left behind by wreckages.
My journeys end in unknown ports.
I trust your knowledge of stars, of drifts,
of the birds that bring luck, of rocky shores.
I know you can rescue me.

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship,
the sky is endless blue, direction-less,
the waves only know the harmonics
of nausea, the ocean is an unguided
atheist, and the winds are false promises
that can only lead astray.

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship -
a ghost at sea, a sailing monument, a tomb,
a message to future, a trove of memories,
and I suspect that I will be ecstatic
if the pirates pillage me. Without you, I float
like inarticulate thoughts.

First published in MYTHIUM, No. 3, 2011

You Are A Festival

2011-09-19T08:51:00.000-04:00

You are a Festival

colors of Holi, gulaal, sindhoor,
splashed hues of bhang-like joy,
decorated like Diwali, your eyes,
your bangles, your earrings, sparkle like diye,
you waft into a room like the fragrances of Basant Panchmi,
and day-dreaming kites sashay in the breeze of your chatter

like Christmas gifts I unravel you,
and gasp each time, surprised anew,
I turn towards you on every Id
and thank Allah as you thank Ishwar on Teez, on Karwachauth,

like Krishna, when surrounded by gopiyan,
I sing and dance to your name –

my Radha. My Sita – I yearn for you.
Every separation is an exile
and I battle demons and Ravana of the worldly tasks,
blazing my way to your door with the Dussera glory;

when I meet you, it is like Bihu, Sakranti, Navratri, Lohri , Onam;
Bhangra, Garba, Raas throb in my steps,
and my songs, composed in your praise,
resound like Sanskrit chants, hymns,
poured with milk, honey and ghee - panch amrit,
over the Shiva-linga by the fasting believers.

I know that my baraat will arrive at your door one day,
with the same ardor that Durga Pooja and Ganesh Chaturthi
bring to the streets of Calcutta and Mumbai.

You are a festival
and I celebrate you each day.

Notes: Festivals: Holi, Diwali, Id, Dussera, Bihu, Sakranti, Lohri, Navratri, Lohri, Onam, Durga Pooja, Ganesh Chaturthi mentioned here are all associated with myths and rituals, that vary with region and language.

Bhangra in Punjab and Garba and Raas in Gujarat are popular folk dances.

Teez and Karwachauth are difficult fasts, carried out by wives, once a year (even a sip of water is prohibited). On these days, wives pray for the longevity and well being of their husbands.

Baraat is the retinue of the groom that goes to the door of the bride for wedding ceremony.

First published in Mythium, No. 3, 2011

Poems of Nazim Hikmet

2011-09-16T10:40:00.002-04:00

Poems of Nazim Hikmet (translated from Turkish by Randy Blasing and Multu Konuk, 2nd edition, Persea Books / New York)

Poets like Nazim Hikmet have a deep understanding of human feelings, failings, optimism, dreams, desires and contradictions. Poets like Nazim Hikmet know their words can rend a heart as easily as they can mend a heart. Poets like Nazim Hikmet appear rarely on earth, and when they do, their songs conjoin the undying spirit of humanity as eternal echoes of their rhymes and times. A collection of hundred poems appears in a translation here and for readers like me who must rely solely on translation, the poems present flavors, sights and a sensibility that fill our hearts with a mixture of sorrow, serenity, loss and hope. The ability to create hope in a reader or a feeling of serenity is indeed a testament to the power, generosity and depth of the poet for he manages to do so, even though he spent thirteen years of his life in jail and thirteen more in exile. Only great souls can bring out humane words after living through hardships and bitterness, and bunch them into words as melodious as of Hikmet.

His biography can be deciphered by reading some of his own poems. He wrote (It's This Way): "It's this way: / being captured is beside the point, / the point is not to surrender." In a Rubaiyat, he said: "Between us just a difference of degree -- / that's how it is my canary: / you an unthinking bird, with wings, / and me with hands, a man who thinks..." and in another rubaiyat he wrote: "Me, one man, the Turkish poet / Nazim Hikmet / I'm faith from head to toe --/ from head to toe, struggle and hope ..." and of course, the best rubaiyat: "I don't mean to boast, but I've shot / through ten years of bondage like a bullet. / And putting aside the pain in my liver, / my heart's the same heart, my head still the same head..." In another place, he writes (Angina Pectroris): "I look at the night through the bars, / and despite the weight on my chest / my heart still beats with the most distant stars."

The poems in this collection are arranged chronologically. The poems written before 1945 or so (first third of the book) are perhaps not as moving or as potent as the poems in the remaining two-third of the book. In Hikmet's case, one can see the sapling young bard turns into a banyan-like mature poet after weathering a succession of historical storms, personal winters and amorous torrents of springs. Hikmet poems talk about melons and pomegranate seeds, Istanbul and Bosphorus, Berlin and Moscow, Marxism and solitary confinement, son and wife he cannot meet as he lives in exile, wife waiting at home while he sits in prison day after day keeping himself alive with songs. When Hikmet talks about freedom or blue skies or hope or hunger and cold felt by his people or death without meeting his beloved or change or love, when he talks of the same cliches at we all poets are moved by and use in our verses, the wordplay is an incidental embellishment to a deeper song of the human spirit he symbolizes within the poems and we aspire to, as readers. Hikmet uses as his source a stream of experiences and feelings which uncommon as they are, provide him with a connection with universal, and sip after sip from his every poem (especially later poems) brings to us through sounds and translated sense a recognition of what lies outside the cage of our own personal limitations or sensibilities.

I can provide only glimpses from his repertoire. He wrote (Separation): "finer than silk thread sharper than a sword / separation is a bridge between us / even when we sit knee to knee" in a series of poems written in 1945, when he was in prison, he writes:"Today, not broken and sad -- / no way! -- / today Nazim Hikmet's woman must be beautiful/ like a rebel flag..." Or a Rubaiyat: "My love's image in the mirror had its say: / 'She's not real -- I am,' it said to me one day. / I struck, the mirror broke, her image disappeared / but, thank goodness, my love stayed in her place..." We can say he passed a comment on the strength of his will, that kept his quill overflowing with love for humanity and Turkey when we said (From Sofia): "Exile is not an easy art to master..."

Maybe Hikmet was in solitary confinement or in prison or lived as an exile for years, but his poems are usually set where his heart truly is: either outside the confining walls, back in the streets where his imagination walks uninhibited and unrecognized. Indeed most of us being prisoners of our ambition, exiles made so by our own desires, can identify with a poet whose personal life itself becomes a metaphor for so many feelings that are suppressed or strengthened by our own deeds, thoughts and desires. Hikmet seeks neither pity nor praise, neither power nor reverence, tries to be no martyr or reformer, but his every poems seeks for people love, joy, peace, liberty, justice and above all empathy. In his lifetime he says in his poems he touched the two extremes of poverty and riches, insults and solitary confinement as well as international travel and recognition, hunger for a simple morsel as well as the flavors of choicest delicacies. He also died as a poet whose poems were translated into forty languages, whose books in translation were found in shelves in many countries and yet they were banned in his own country. In a poem (You're) he said:

"You're

You're my bondage and my freedom,

my flesh burning like a naked summer night,

you're my country.

Hazel eyes marbled green,

you're awesome, beautiful and brave,

you're my desire always just out of reach."

The opposites, the contradictions meet in Hikmet like parallel rays of light meet at in a distant star. His skill as a poet and his life as a person, have made him into one of the brightest stars of Turkish and twentieth century world literature. He will forever be a guiding light for many people across the globe. Like Darwish of Palestine, Hikmet never surrenders his faith in humanity, and indeed after reading this collection by him my feel that as long as poets like him continue to arrive to sing, we can hope for and progress towards a better and just world. His poems (the lines quoted below are from 'Message') will continue to speak to us, for now and forever:

"My fellow

patients,

you'll get well.

The aches and pains will cease.

Ease will come

softly, like a warm summer evening

descending from heavy green branches."

Book Review: Chef by Jaspreet Singh

2011-09-16T07:49:00.002-04:00

Chef by Jaspreet Singh is a lyrical novel, set in 1990s, expressed through the landscape of memory of Kirpal Singh or Kip. The shortened hip name Kip is a name he acquires after joining as an assistant to a chef in the army general's house in Kashmir. The body of Kip's father lies somewhere in the Siachin glacier, which Kip eventually visits at a crucial juncture in the story. When Kip first arrives in Kashmir, the memory of his father who was a decorated soldier/ officer in the army invades his conversations and interactions with armymen around him. The Sikh recruit, Kip, learns to cook local, national and international dishes from Kishen, who had trained in various embassies in Delhi to acquire the skill to blend flavors and prepare delicacies. The mentor Kishen, also a Sikh, extends his scope far beyond culinary arts, for he provokes Kip to think about women, about Muslims in Kashmir, about battlefields where soldiers like Kip's father die each day while "civilians" go on living unperturbed by the bloody reality at the troubled border between India and Pakistan. While Kip is the main character and the narrative emerges from his memory, it is Kishen who makes the eyeballs of a reader throb with emotion of every kind.

The army general has a motherless daughter who grows up in the shadows of the house, while the father is busy administrating Kashmir. While their personal fates are important elements of the novel, for Kip one presents his boss, the other who grows into a poetess, a foster daughter. Kashmir was once central to Hindu imagination, for many celebrated scholars emerged from Kashmiri Pandits, and in the last twenty years, (and a few hundred years leading to it), the Pandits and other Hindus were driven out from the peaceful land of their ancestors. In the new Kashmir, remain only the army and the Muslims. The Muslims who are half-unhappy with the military-dominated presence of the rest of India, are half-sympathetic to cause of freedom expressed by their leaders or youth for various selfish or selfless reasons, are perhaps half-motivated by propaganda from across the border, half-raged by the apathy from the rest of India, are being stifled by conflict, dwarfed by the unreasonable expectations of two nations. In this land of contradictions and conflict, Kip cooks curries with a military precision and churns dish after dish using Kishen's recipes. While the kitchen keeps him occupied for most of the time, it is his trips outside the kitchen that take the story forward.

Kip learns Kashmiri, and is called upon to talk to a infiltrator, a Muslim woman from across the border who ends up in India, washed to the shore of a river after her failed suicide. Till her emergence, Kip stayed secure in his anger and hatred for the enemy. But now a frail woman was the enemy, and her emergence upset his preconceived notions. In a jarring, haunting narrative, that one experiences while reading rest of the novel, (but cannot capture in a review of the novel), Jaspreet Singh creates a compelling masterpiece where love, scars, disillusion, hope, loss and compassion compete for space on every page. Sadness settles on a reader as the story unfolds, but the lyrical writing and an attachment to Kip's memory and fate, carries the reader into a somber night, not restless, not restful, just somber.

A good debut, a good read...

A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers

2011-08-28T19:10:00.002-04:00

A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers

Sometimes I think our family of astrologers tricked

me into choices I have made all my life.

Astrologers said: "The nav-grah, nine planets would align

to make your tasks harder. But if you make the effort

Vrihaspati, Jupiter, the guru of gods, would delight

in imparting you knowledge. But like in the Puranic times,

the demoniac influences would attack you or try to seduce

you into failures. But if you keep meat off your plate,

drink no wine and fast at least once per fortnight,

you could lessen the severity of blow,

and become a world-famous engineer".

I was forewarned: "The fame will come late,

after a long hiatus, or wait,

that too when Surya or Sun rises

with an intent to set your world straight,

But till then it will be Mars or Mangal,

the blood-bathed planet's rule.

Mars bestows only anger, and scars

through accidents involving water or fire."

Ma said drive no motorized vehicles

till the age of twenty-three. Her argument:

The engines have to be ignited, and there is no smoke

without a fire somewhere.

I battled Mangal with a magic stone,

set in silver ring, and fasted on Mangalvar, Tuesday,

seeking Hanuman's aid to keep accidents at bay.

Hanuman's skill at battling the bad-blooded

demons is celebrated in Ramayana, in Tulsi's Chalisa.

Ask any Indian who drives or walks alone at night,

how many times does he recite,

those lines from sixteenth century?

I was told, after Mangal's reign ends,

only the page would see my rage.

"But Soma or Moon will follow and bring

moody states and hazy visions, implying

unrequited love, or spectacles".

Possibly the latter, said my mother,

from the stress on eyes from excess reading

spectacles are a Borgesian after-effect,

that shows a scholar's good-breeding.

"If the father's influence wins", astrologers noted,

"Sahib's chair would be a fitting career,

but satellite inclinations for writing and music

seem unrelenting. But as shalokas, hymns

are musical poems, maybe a spiritual journey

will unfold, as is befitting for a son of a Brahmin family.

Unconventional comparisons with other birth charts show

leadership as a celibate Guru or a great King are possible."

But my mother insisted I'll marry (a girl of her choice),

like my grandpa before me, I'll also worship the devi:

female divinity. She ignored me when I protested

that democracy has no kings.

Ma kept fasts for my sake,

made me touch clothes, lentils, rice, wheat,

sugar, iron, stale roti and stale bread, coins

before she gave away these as alms.

Though she prayed for an excess of my success,

she thought the Himalayan house would be my only address.

She somehow forgot that the counting

(they refer to the astrology as ganana or counting),

suggested a prowess in science and engineering.

The astrologers foresaw higher education

and training in foreign languages and alien countries.

As a child, I could not visualize my future

beyond a Sahib's kursi (bureaucrat's chair).

There was no writer or poet or engineer in our family,

no traveler, none who visited the distant territories,

I saw only Sahib's kursi as possibility and my youth revolted

against the Sahib-like life of hypocrisy. I set out Westward,

holding an admission card, seeking an undecided destiny.

Now I think my family's astrologers dealt lies

to trick me into a role-play, I think of as my life.

Since success was said to be scripted,

gods and numerics were working to ensure it.

Unless I botched up my lines or missed my cue,

I was to get rewards, and become world-famous too.

"You must focus on the effort, karma, necessary

to deserve the rewards your are destined to get",

is how my Ma always put it every year

when a varsh-fal (annual prediction chart) arrived

ever compiled, to keep the prophecies updated and alive.

As predicted or so it seemed, at twenty-seven, I turned

"charming" for the feminine eyes, or perhaps the prophesy

gave this lover-boy the confidence to prove the astrologers right.

Now I am marrying for love, which was not revealed early,

but I am told, no arranged marriage was prophesied for me.

At the astrologically correct time, humans, Gods,

gandharavas, ghosts, ancestors, souls, stars, planets,

will supervise my wedding. Invisible blessings,

as celestial flowers, will tumble from the skies,

and we will unite before the holy fire, Agni,

for at least seven lives.

Years back, on returning to Atlanta from a trip

to my Himalayan abode, I told Thomas Lux:

"When I asked an astrologer about my writing,

he squirmed and said: 'focus on engineering',

your chart says you'll write, but no planetary

alignments will ever conspire to make you a Rushdie."

Gurudev Lux smiled, and said, "That dimwit!

That’s great! Why would you be a Rushdie?

The guy is a fiction-writer, and you're a poet.

A poet you will forever be, with or without prophecy.

Trust me, if we publish a chapbook of your poems,

you will mint more money than me."

One prophesy is always necessary to kill another.

It seems many grand schemes are in place

so my undercover motivation stays.

For example, when I was born Ma's uncle prophesized:

"Trains are destined to bear his name".

But after brooding over polymers, beetles,

breath figures, drops, gels and nanoparticles,

after writing verses in Hindi and English,

my doctoral thesis and research articles, I fear

errors in the calculations of the astrologers,

or unexpected, uncharted celestial events,

like demotion of Pluto as a planet,

or improbabilities embedded in the string theory,

have tempered with my biography,

I falling short of the life as it was ever expected

or predicted or prophesized for me.

When I seek engineering or physics problems,

I find myself wallowing in precincts

of the known, echoing established findings.

When I try to translate Hindi poems,

or describe my childhood in my writings,

I see how the words in English are trapped

in their own cultural labyrinths,

and editors fail to see puns in my half-rhymes.

Old, young, fat, thin, bald, bespectacled men

who know nothing about GPAs, test-scores,

academic politics or scientific publications,

pore over my janam-patri, birth-chart,

to provide self-similar prophesies.

I know that these calculations by different priests

are based on the initial values or positions

of constellations at the moment of my birth.

I know using the same differential or algebraic equations,

gives consistent results and since even the Hindu planets

follow a near-eternal rhythm, there is no reason to expect

different answers from astrologers of different sects.

But the astrologers themselves insist that interpretation

is the litmus test to distinguish a master from a dilettante

Any computer, monkey, politician, or even an MBA

can compute the odds, any experimentalist or journalist

can collect the data, but seeing what lies beyond the literal

or lateral or within or beyond the miasma or the mist,

requires a mystic, psychic, scientific vision.

Only the spiritually advanced, chosen selves possess it.

I think our destiny is shaped by the limits

we set aside. Our destinations,

aspirations tug us, we drift towards

what is described as the grandest acts.

Not destined to have a simple life of hyacinths,

I grit my teeth and then I wait for the galaxies

to complete their motions. I know Gita says,

I control only my actions, "karmaneva adhikaraste,

mahafaleshu kadachana," not the ultimate fruit. I strive

to reconcile with whatever the life brings, and I hum:

To savor the madhu (nectar / honey) as earthlings,

develop a palate for the rich flavors of bee-stings.

Many say that Rama, Krishna, Moses and Jesus

turned divine through their words and actions,

a 'divine will' was through them realized,

but maybe they too acted heroically

to fulfill their destinies . . . prophesied?

First published in The Whirlwind Review, Issue 1, 2011.

Published here in a new, revised version.

Anthology of published works (English)

2011-08-24T11:16:00.004-04:00

‣Poetry (Dec 2007): “Letter to the Editor” Read here
‣The Cortland Review (Feb 2008): “Your Face” * Read or listen here
‣New Verse News: “Half-Happy with India Turning into a Trillion Dollar Economy” (Nominated for Pushcart Prize) Read here; “Mumbai Burns” and “Beaten but not Bruised”
‣Atlanta Review (Spring 2009): “Maghi Tyohaar: The Goat Festival” ** (Reposted here)
‣Kartika Review (Summer 2009): “Coke Story” ** (Read here)
‣Bateau (Spring 2009): “My Verses” *
‣The Cortland Review (2009) Read or listen: “Breadwinner” **
‣Nilab (July 2010): “Introspective Desi” ** (Reposted here)
‣Mythium (Summer 2011): “Twenty-first Century Incarnation of the Snake God” **, “Lotuses of Misquotes”, “Vedanta” **, “Flotsam”, “You’re a Festival”
‣Nefarious Bellarina (Fall 2010 & Spring 2011): “Naked Translated World”, “Punjabi English”, “Bottoms-up Girl”(Read here) and “Devout your Lips”* (Read here)
‣Poets for Living Waters (Fall 2010): “Missive to Ancestors” * and “I must”.* (Read here)
‣Breakwater Review (Fall 2010): “Fatherless” ** (Read at my blogsite)
‣Mastodon Dentist (Fall 2010): “Choicest Wife for a North Indian Son” (Reposted here)
‣Muse India (March 2011): Commit to Amnesia my Name*, 1990**, Eclipsing the myths and discovering America**, Saffron, Gifted Loneliness*, Dinkar’s Fist and Lexicon of God*. (Read at Muse India)
‣A Handful of Dust (June 2011): “Explosive Droplets” (Read here as a repost)

‣The Whirlwind Review (August 2011): “A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers” (Read here as a repost)

*Ghazal in English (9)
** Village poems (9)

Vedanta

2011-08-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

I'll assemble my body and walk again,

forge hums and OMs and talk again.
I'll rust, wafer by wafer, fall again,
be mined and minted tall again.

From egg-shells to trash to soil,
from sperm to womb to ash again.
As a priest, as yeast, as a beast, I toil
to make bread, to feed, to be fed again.

I'm a self, a body, a soul, a mind again,
a circus of senses, then divine again.
I'm an act, a thought, a desire again,
then blood or a flower on vine again.

If I am lost, I return to try again.
Forever reinvented, to die again.

First published in MYTHIUM, 2011

Dakaar Tak Nahin Maarte (डकार तक नहीं मारते)

2011-08-16T07:16:00.000-04:00

डकार तक नहीं मारते

डकार तक नहीं मारते यह नेतागण, इनके फन फैले हैं इतने कि जनता

डरती, मरती, बस भारती जाती है इनके प्यालों में रक्त और धन,

पुरखे कहते थे, यथा राजा, तथा प्रजा, पर उनको क्या था पता,
कि हम अपनों में से हमेशा रावण और हरिन्यकश्यप चुन-चुन कर,

बिठाएँगे सत्ता के महत्वपूर्ण आसनों पर|

पर डकार तक नहीं मारते, जबकि भोपाल झुलसे जाते हैं, बिखरे जाते हैं,

अब राजा भोज कि नगरी में जाओ, तो वैसे भी कहाँ धर्म, कर्म से रहा मोह है,
या तो हर कोई नेवला है, या सर्प, या गोह, या मात्र मूषक है, हाँ चूहा है,

हाँ चूहों की भरमार है, इन चूहों को बस झूठन, सड़न, छिटपुट से प्यार है,

और मरते हैं चूहों की मौत तो मरते हैं, पर क्यूँ विषहीन, विकृत नागों के आहार बनते हैं?

अपने जने हैं यह नेता सभी, जो डकार भी नहीं मारते,

और बस निगलते जा रहे हैं, नदियाँ, सडकें, पशु-आहार, धातुएं, फसलें, कंचन,

और हम हैं कि बैठे हैं धरे हाथ पर हाथ, किसी अवतार के लिए आतुर,

किसी महापुरुष की पीठ पर बैठकर, उस गांधी की मूर्तियाँ बना कर

पंछियों की बीट से सजा-सजा कर अपना सच्ची कृतज्ञता दिखाने को आतुर |

(यह एक लम्बी कविता श्रृंखला की एक कड़ी है |)

(Posted in support of the anti-corruption campaign in India...)

Lotuses of Misquotes

2011-08-10T06:23:00.000-04:00

Lotuses of misquotes prosper in my head
I am a freethinker, slave to no fact.
For such faith, those calligraphers bled.

There isn't a scripture, I haven't read,
or furnished with the awe of Abstract,
Lotuses of misquotes prosper in my head.

I taste divinity always in my bread,
but I never make claims to any sect,
For such faith, those calligraphers bled.

What are virgins, wine, joys after I am dead?
For a better rebirth, undergo every act...
Lotuses of misquotes prosper in my head.

I can't just echo what politicans, scientists said,
In doubt is more glory than is in any tact.
For such faith, those calligraphers bled.

Abandon your axioms, judge me by the unsaid,
I am All, Nothing, to be defended or attacked.
Lotuses of misquotes prosper in my head.
For such faith, those calligraphers bled.

First PUBLISHED in MYTHIUM No. 3 2010/2011

Twenty-first Century Incarnation of the Snake God

2011-08-09T23:56:00.001-04:00

Twenty-first Century Incarnation of the Snake God

- For Chard DeNiord

When I call home in India, Ma answers the phone,

while Pa waits for his turn, except when stories

compel his voice to rise over hers.

His happy notes overwhelm her irritation,

and I feel like a child on his shoulders,

as he narrates events in his baritone.

“Son, your Daadi commands you to fly

down to meet the Snake God

who has incarnated in our-village.”

I hear my mother grumble –

“as if, your son has nothing better to do!”

My father chuckles, “You be quiet,

our son needs to be reminded of his roots.”

He begins afresh in a Ramlila voice:

“Son, a few days back, a snake

shivering in the December dawn,

crawled out into sunshine.

I hope you remember your biology,

snakes are cold blooded animals.

Your uncle, my distant cousin, Ramdev, saw it.

(Speedier narration) O he rushed to the kitchen

and got a bamboo basket

and before snake could blink,

trapped it.

Then a rumor spread that Naagraj,

the Snake God, first appeared in his ‘divya-swapan‘ divine-dream,

now ‘saakshaat’, ‘in person’.

The news percolated to newspapers.

Can you believe it, about fifty thousand people

are visiting that site every day? Your mother doesn’t see it,

but this is the biggest event in the history of our village.”

My mother takes offense. The telephone conveys her sarcasm.

“Son, it is good that you studied in the city away from the village.

The way your father gets excited about trifles would have drained

your scientific curiosity to dregs.”

My father laughs out loud, and my mother too is amused.

“See how happy he is, while his villagers make fools of themselves.”

My father, taking a solemn tone, says, “See son, it is happenings

like these which show you the power of faith.

Your daadi has been singing and dancing for the last week.

All our relatives have visited the shrine, and are urging

us to do the same. You should call up your grandma, hear her say,

‘It is a miracle, a modern-age miracle. Kalyug ka chamatkar!

The Naagraj himself! Miracle!”

My mother snatches the phone again, while I hear

my father’s laughter. “My son, see how your father

mocks them. But when his mother calls,

he is a gentleman and agrees it is a miracle.

He is going to the village tomorrow.

He says, the villagers would otherwise

think of him as an atheist, and of course

his mother would admonish him for life.”

My father’s voice resounds again now,

“Son, I am happy that my Ma is in good humor.

Her faith in miracle is giving her so much joy.

I don’t believe in it, but I respect my Ma’s feelings.”

“It was like a true fair,” he writes on return.

“You can think of it as an endless party.

Devotees, villagers are dancing on songs: Bhajans,

and everyone is immersed in praises of the Lord.

About forty makeshift shops have come up.

Jalebi, laddu, chai is being made, consumed,

there are shops selling red and green bangles,

tie-dyed chunni, suits and dhotis and what not.

In just ten days, Ramdev has made over a million rupees.

There are cloth merchants selling Shiva T-shirts,

jewelers toiling to meet the huge demand for earrings,

pendants, noserings, shaped like the snake, the Naagraj.

There are women, who have lost their self-control,

and they are swaying their hair, round and round.

The villagers are all assembled, food is being

cooked and served. Everything is so organized.”

My sister calls me up, about a week later.

“Papa must have told you the Snake God story.

As you know, he narrates it to everyone so dramatically.

Everyone laughs, and he laughs the loudest.

O Bhai, Daadi wanted me to come to the village too.

I told her, I have examinations and I need to study.

You know then she tried to reason that with God’s blessing

I’d get better results, with lesser preparation.

The snake died. What did you expect?

They were continuously feeding him, breathing over him.

Some brilliant soul put heaters around him, to keep

him warm, and maybe due to heat or age or food, he just died.

O Bhai, the story doesn’t end here. A rumor spread that the Snake God

was killed by some devil. So they gave a proper funeral to the snake,

and announced a temple will be built at the site where he appeared.

Arrgh! When will our villagers let go of their superstitions?”

About six months later, I visit my village.

My Grandma truly believes it was a miracle.

I quiz her, “What if, it was a simple snake and Ramdev uncle

just cooked up a story to make money.”

“What are you saying, grandson?” She says. “Even your

father came here and paid his tribute to the Naagraj.

Howsoever many years may you spend in the university,

never underestimate the judgment of your Daadi.

The Naagraj “were” your height, “their” skin black as night, forked tongue.

“They” coiled up, just like Shiva’s Naagraj. I had a fever that

disappeared on seeing “them”. Your father’s paternal aunt’s

grandson recovered from jaundice within a week.”

“Don’t bring your American nonsense here grandson.”

She dismisses my knowledge as vanity, asks Naagraj for charity.

At the site, she hands me a ten rupee note and I go forward

and kneel to pray. Afterwards my Daadi blesses me and nods.

First published in MYTHIUM, No.3, 2010-2011

The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner

2011-07-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner presents ideas of Adam Smith, Parson Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter, among others, with clarity and brevity. The book educates you about the historical development of the subject of economics with a very readable, quotable and imitable prose. Heilbroner takes the readers on a remarkable journey from the islands of unformed ideas to an understanding of economic realities of preceding generations. Once the knowledge of relevant forms and forces underlying different societies is shown together with methods of production, consumption and taxation; the seeker is introduced to various modes of thinking about profit, loss, welfare, capital, labor, supply, demand, stock and imperialism.

The greatest thinkers (limited to Western/economic thinkers of the last three centuries) were people of flesh and blood, and in general most scientific (/and economic) texts ignore the persona behind the idea, principle or axiom. Every philosopher who has contributed to the unraveling of the mystery cult of market where profit is a virtue is revisited and celebrated as a prophet in The Worldly Philosophers. Prophets, not soothsayers, bring insight into existing situations/problems by providing perspectives that are either not available before them or are not pronounced with the same authority or clarity. Yet not all philosophers are ready for the realities of the world, just as not all the societies are mature or conducive for arrival and survival of their philosophers. The last ones are nevertheless worth being aware of, and the book introduces a remarkable cast of such characters as well.

Reading the book makes one realize that a few fundamental questions remain unanswered in the field of economics: What is good and bad (in terms of choices, decisions, profit: personal vs labor force vs society? Where does the profit arise from: is it always causing injury to someone somewhere? Are market forces ever seeking profits for a marginal few? Can capitalism survive the contradictions brought about by rational or irrational self-interest versus welfare of humanity or society? Does capitalism always lead to imperialism, the nineteenth century version or the new one where multinational companies play a similar role? Is the customer always the king or is it only a ploy to rob the customer of his rightful profits? Can socialism exist unless many of the economic problems are first solved so that there is enough labor and enough work and enough food in the system? Will technocrats take over the world one day (or should they)? Does a perfect economic system exist only as a utopia?

The book emphasizes how the current economic system is in fact only a century or so old, and is ever evolving, increasing in complexity, and when it comes to the distribution of wealth, the present times are no different in the West than were the days of the mediaeval Europe. We are forced to examine our notions of progress, property and propriety, and we are forced to admit that we have evolved varied ways of exploitation of masses and resources for achieving gains for a select few. Yet by its very nature, such a book provides an example of why intellectuals, why philosophers, why scholars are so central to directing and controlling human activity. In the clamor for justice in distribution of wealth we sometimes forget that we humans value things differently in different times, and equality and justice require equal opportunity for receiving any reward (material or spiritual). Perhaps we need a new worldly philosopher who will inspire a mode of production and distribution that allows education and opportunity to everyone when they are growing up, care and medicine to all old people after their share of tasks are done and sensible distribution of necessities to enable humans to live with honor, dignity, honesty and health. Before such a philosopher takes the center stage, he or she will find this book as a useful guide to the lives and works of thinkers before him/her, and I am sure he/she will nod and say, reading this made damn good economic sense!

Explosive Droplets

2011-06-24T06:53:00.000-04:00

Published first in A Handful of Dust, June 2011

(Hindi Kavita) Anth Mein Tera Kaun Hoga / (with translation) In the end, who shall be your own?

2011-06-10T08:51:00.003-04:00

अंत में तेरा कौन होगा?

न प्रीति के प्रसंग होंगे,
न कामना के स्वाद, अंग होंगे,
आराधन, अश्रु नहीं सहारे होंगे,
स्वजन नहीं किनारे होंगे,
न सुरमई सुखद छंद होगा,
न चपल मन का द्वन्द होगा,
जब वृहद् अहम् गौण होगा,
अंत में तेरा कौन होगा ?

(Recited in Annual Harvard Poetry Reading 2011)

The poem has been with me for more than a decade now, and only one question, two lines have remained unchanged "anth mein tera kaun hoga?/ kashubdh prabudh maun hoga" (In the end who shall be your own/ profound, perplexed silence... (will be your own). I read only one stanza in the India Poetry reading at Harvard and I have posted that verse here. The question itself can be only loosely translated and the poem itself is written in Hindi, as it aspires for an Indian's interpretation.

In English, most of the words are Abrahamnic in their connotation, and often when I seek a Brahminic, a Hindu interpretation, of my own works or of the poetry by Rabindranath Tagore, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Kabir, Tulsidas and my favorite Indian poets, English translations/connotations are inadequate. For example, 'Mana' is often translated as mind, but the word mind is so limited in its meaning. 'Mana' in an Indian sense is a powerful existence that creates and destroys the finite and the infinite, the Hindu Gods exist as Mana creates or perceives them, we act as Mana directs our actions, and Mana lives on even though bodies, cities, civilizations perish. It is the Mana where dualities duel/ debate/ argue ("dvand"). The Mana embraces the dvand, the dualities: material and spiritual, divine and human, Shakti and shiva, Purush and Prakriti, a particle and a wave, matter and mind, the finite atom and the infinite, truth and translation, inspiration and creation, love and illusion, Maya and Satya. In fact, Vivek is the ability to distinguish between the different, divergent, dueling aspects of dualities, and when I use the word in Hindi/Sanskrit, the word itself represents deeper connotations that connect to the debates ( and currents and counter-currents or to the "dvand" we humans have experienced throughout our known and unknown history. In English, Vivek is a just a name, and when words become just nouns without meaning, words loose their correspondence with resonance that is essential for realizing their true meaning, their 'artha', their 'siddhartha'.

In the end, who shall be your own?

No anecdotes of passion,
No organs or flavors of desire,
No solace from tears or prayers,
No beloved on the shores,
No musical joyous verses,
No duels of astir mind,
When the grand ego will be gone,
In the end, who shall be your own?

Harvard hosts Annual India Poetry Reading, 2011

2011-06-10T08:24:00.002-04:00

(Published first in lokvani with photographs provided by Sejad Kamal ji)

First there was silence, then emerged a sound, the sound became part of a word, the word then searched and searched till it found a meaning, the meaning became the unspoken baggage of the sound, then a poet picked sound after sound, set it to a rhythm, with all the baggage of spoken and unspoken meaning, and out came a poem. Words are material objects, words live on paper, words are printed and written, but sound is just a vibration and poem is neither the meaning nor the vibration, or perhaps it is both and more.

On 14th May, 2011, Harvard University’s Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies organized the Fifteenth Annual India Poetry Reading. The theme this year was ‘Spirituality,’ which probably is the stated and unstated essence of every poem, the "more" every poem carries within it. The event, held a week after Rabindranath Tagore's 150th birthday, included several recitals of his poems. The confluence of various spiritual quests that is resonant in Tagore's verses arises from, and perpetuates, an endless tradition of poetry, and in this event, we celebrated the continuation of that quest.

Achyut Adhikary from Nepal opened with an invocation titled "Rise". It was a call to all to write and express thoughts and emotions, and then the event commenced. Ravi Shankar was the visiting guest to the event and presented poems from his latest, award-winning collection "Deepening Groove". Ravi is an American poet whose childhood sojourns to India provide inspiration for several lyrical lines that acknowledge a regard for the ancestors who loved and lived in a world quite different from his own. By conjuring sounds, smells, colors from nature and arranging them in verses about human aspirations, ideas, emotions and thoughts, Ravi’s poems sing to the spirit, while the body is in the act of hearing, feeling, smelling, seeing and even forgetting itself.

Poets representing seven languages – citizens and exiles of different traditions, brought up in different landscapes of belief – then followed in quick succession. After Jamunabai Prakash read a poem in English titled "Free of Form", Rosie Kamal presented Sufia Kamal's "Listen O God" in a translation by Kabir Chaudhary. Through the recital, Rosie paid homage to her mother-in-law Sufia Kamal, an eminent Bengali poet from Bangladesh, whose hundredth birth anniversary is only a month away. Thereafter Vivek Sharma recited a poem in Hindi titled: "Anth Mein Tera Kaun Hoga?"/ "In The End Who Shall You Call Your Own", and followed up with an Anglicized Ghazal titled "Lexicon of the God." Hema Pant recited "Microscope" (Hindi) by Subash Gogate. Julie Batten read two poems next, and in a highly evocative poem, "Born to Dance", she merged the sorrowful narrative of massacre of Royal dancers in Cambodia by the Pol Pot regime with the human quest for beauty and art. Ola Mackiewicz from Brown University read a short poem "Into the void" narrating the journey in life.

Sajed Kamal recited self-composed "Dance Shiva Dance" next, followed by "Dust Temple" by Rabindranath Tagore. Maya De also paid tribute to Tagore by reciting two poems written in his honor in Bengali. This was followed by a Bengali verse "Chinno Bastra" by Alok De. The winds then left Bengal and musical notes of Gujarat emerged in voices and verses read by Pallavi Gandhi and Bharat Dave, who recited "Saundryanu Gaanu" by Makarand Dave and "Halvad Taari Yaadon Aneri" by Bipin Shukla respectively. Jayent Dave followed up with a self-composed poem "Vedana" in Gujarati. Vedana, sometimes translated as suffering, is a deep emotion that itself arises when a person transcends his own ego, his own self.

The next poem "Buddha" was recited by Shantamma Prakash in Malayalam. As she recited a poem committed to memory in her high school days, the resonant notes throbbed quite like the chanting of Sanskrit hymns. The next composition, Arun Chaudhari's "Preet Jagao", was a poem in Bhakti tradition, sung like a Bhajan, designed for Satsang (literal meaning good company; refers to coming together of many people to sing and celebrate their chosen divinities or to a gathering like this one was!). Chandrakant Shah who recited next turned "Blue Jeans" into his chosen divinity. As the poem unfolds, you hear a poet’s wholehearted praise and dedication to blue jeans, as if blue jeans are the best manifestation of divine form and function. Pramod Thaker then read six "chappas" from his translations of Gujarati Bhakati/Sufi poems by Akha. Like Kabir, Akha's verses contain spiritual nuggets brought forth in lyrical language of common people, and the nuggets are served wrapped in examples that stick your tongue to remind of you of the taste and the treat. Ameeta Kaul read two poems on the theme "Spiritual Questions of our Times." They explored the harmony of beliefs uniting the faiths and the humanity.

Bijoy Misra then closed with a soulful rendition of a poem in Oriya, titled "Mana" or mind, where through the poem he evoked and echoed the ancient philosophical Indian thought about 'maNa/mind' as the creator of universe, conscious as well as unconscious, earthly as well as divine. Ruth Hill, the symbol of oral traditions in American culture, had the last word at the event. Ruth has been a regular participant in this annual gathering. Ruth recalled that her late husband Brother Blue, who was also a regular participant, was still in the audience and enjoying the words though he physically passed away two years ago. It was a spiritual conclusion to the poetry offerings.

A vote of thanks was then offered by Bijoy Misra to the participants and the volunteers, particularly to Gregory Miller, staff employee at Harvard University who has helped with the logistics for the event every year since its inception.

As the event came to the close, poets of different chimes walked out with their varied rhymes. The stirrings that brought us all together run deeper than the physical and metaphysical distances that separate us migrants from India or Indians in India from people of different languages, states or religions. Only by exchanging words, no matter what our languages, will we begin to transcend our distances, and approach the plane of spirituality where humans as poems find their true resonance.

The annual opportunity to celebrate the diversity of Indian voices was created by special efforts of Bijoy Misra and the Department of Sanksrit and Indian Studies, and will present itself again next year. Chandrakanth Shah announced the formation of the South Asian Poetry of New England (SAPNE), a group which will meet every quarter to bring together people of like interests. The event brought to a conclusion the offerings of the Outreach Committee for the 2010-2011 academic year and the next season will commence with a lecture in November 2011.

PS: Being one of the youngest writers in the crowd meant that in typical Indian fashion the job of compiling the report was passed on to me and since I had no notes to reply upon, I might have missed details, etc...

Procrastinating in The Lab on a Saturday Evening

2011-06-10T07:59:00.001-04:00

Whose labs these are I'm sure I know,
His house is in the suburbia though.
He will not see me stopping here,
Or watch his labs fill up with smoke.

My dimensionless self must think it queer,
To chose not a party-school somewhere.
I haunt the labs, not a touristy lake,
On the sexiest evening of the year.

I gives my laptop keys a shake,
To check if I am still awake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of janitors & parties at a faraway lake.

Yawn! These labs are lovely, dark and deep,
Yawn! And I have relentless deadlines to meet,
piles, higher and deeper to finish before I sleep,
piles, higher and deeper... no finish... I sleep...

(In the name of graduatestudentkind, with due apologies to Robert Frost and his horse, woods and snow;
with conviction that imitation, with apt citation and an effort of rewriting lines in your own words, is the surest way of academic flattery, composed by Vivek Sharma, June 2011, inspired partly by phdcomics!)

Kavi-speak: Poetry contests, science awards, scholars & fairness

2011-06-03T08:26:00.003-04:00

There are far too many card-carrying poets, scientists, singers, artists; so many that we run like roaches fighting battles over little corners to claim tidbits of glory. I know only a handful of us will matter when we are gone, I will be happy if I am able to produce one poem, one scientific article, one story that would live-on after all my friends and all other traces of me are gone. Time is the only true test of talent, and yes many saplings never grow into the trees they promise to be, but in time, we will neither remember the number of saplings nor who planted them or crushed them, but only the flavor of the fruit (perhaps). Yes, I will like to win a poetry contest, a science award; yes I will like it to be fair; yes I will like to get degrees for free after I have done my share of work and shown my share of intellectual growth and yes I will like to get jobs that value my learning more than my degrees or where I obtained them from; yes I will like to be part of a collective that publishes great scientific/artistic/scholarly material; yes I expect fairness from science, poetry and humanity; yes I am an outlier in most rooms I choose to sit in... yes I know that most of the human enterprises are corrupted by human failings and fallings, and so the only thing I revere, respect, clap for is the rare human who rises beyond human foibles, follies and trifles. But I get to clap very rarely!

I subscribe to the idea that true scholars are a rare breed. We can only soar as far as our ability and imagination allows us. Perhaps the true seekers of knowledge, wisdom, poetry, truth, beauty will always find a way to reach their ...goal, in spite of critics and competition (or lack of competition). And yes, the ancients say, the path is tortuous/ sharper than the razor's edge (paraphrasing a shaloka from Katha Upanishad &/or a line from Amir Khusrao)... The greatest mistake of our times is the assumption that scholarship can be acquired through college/university degrees and by the virtue of being employed as a critic or a teacher or a writer or a professor or an editor. Many people stand tall in their lifetimes on basis of such fallible assumptions, and after they are gone, their traces disappear from the very pedestals they once graced. Poetry, its writers and readers, will outlive, as always, all the critics, criticisms, politics, and even the languages themselves. I hope and believe the true keepers, seekers, lovers of poetry in every era can/will see beyond the noise, rabble, gibberish... Similarly the only true measure of a scientist is his or her science. In spite of ancestries and nexuses that aid in scientific publishing or in winning awards or in obtaining faculty positions; a thousand slips and a million errors, honest or cleverly-cloaked mistakes and chance or chosen misunderstandings and jungle-like, rabble-rousing, selfish politics that decides who gets what often; the faults of the system that wants to turn every graduate student or a post-doc into a coal-miner, supervised by a professor who works in a similar dark coal-mine half the time and in the other half of the time thinks his/her life is better as he/she has put the coal-mine behind him/her (almost): I believe in spite of an endless list of shortcomings, follies, deceits, conceits, failures, pretenders, in spite of every obstacle, in the end, the experimental fact and theoretical construct that is true, scientifically coherent/cogent/correct and aesthetically pure/pleasing/'close to perfection' will prevail. Maybe the progenitor of the idea will not see its success in his/her lifetime, maybe a pretender will get the credit, maybe the idealist will die poor and disillusioned, but I believe for every million-failed recognitions, there are a few right ones, well-deserved and well-chosen ones. I clap for them!

There are only a handful of American poets who have risen internationally to the level of timeless popularity as Darwish or Neruda or Tagore or Yeats were able to... I am not moved by the poetry written by most of the award-winning poets of the US and elsewhere. Specially US where the publishing, awarding of degrees and awards is systematized; elsewhere the title 'poet' is still synonymous with jobless or writing poetry is not a skill that earns you a penny unless you have risen to a popular appeal which often results in great peril and punishment, less often in a comfortable life. I can easily get killed in India or Middle-East or Africa for writing a line that stand out or stands for or against something, and hence maybe when I write, my life depends on my words or I am writing my life off for I chose the Word above whatever follows the pronouncement! Perhaps a constrained society needs poetry more and perhaps it receives poetry at a greater risk to the writer or the reader, perhaps a freer one allows poetic expression and must to be celebrated for providing greater possibilities, and perhaps great poets live in societies that they create within their inner world more than the world outside, so where they live matters not. There are almost no rock-stars like Einstein ushered on to the world-stage these days. Noble prize winners have their day of reckoning, other award winners get nods from their own select clubs and perhaps some honest recognition there, but again I am not necessarily impressed with a person just because the resume shows a fellowship, a prize, a recognition. There is enough politics in academia, science and art to ensure that nearly every award is issued with a few nods and far too many frowns. Every age and every country has one good poet, one good scientist for every thousand irrelevant ones; maybe in our times, one for every ten thousand bad ones. So yes, most of the poetry is poetry only in the name, most of the published science is science only in the name and would qualify as gibberish if we were to judge it honestly. But there is some science, some poetry that is truly remarkable, and when I see that, I forget everything else -- all despair, aches, tiredness, travails, journeys, searches, hurts, sweat, politics, pettiness, past. When I see that lotus blossom appear, I break into a spontaneous cheer, and the clapping is at that moment the rhythm of my every breath...

(PS: many of the ideas expressed here emerged as comments on articles in Huffington Post by Anis Shivani and some lines echo my thoughts expressed during discussions with friends like Marc-Antoine Fardin, Mayank Kumar, Renato Dopotelodico, Matija Črne and Bavand Keshavarz to name a few)

Kavi-speak: Indian English is the Real Cheez!

2011-05-30T11:07:00.001-04:00

Indian English is the real Cheez!

The word Chizzi held the same joy for me as a kid growing up in India that the word candy or chocolate probably held (or holds) for an American kid. Cheez is a common word in Hindi, (pronounced as chee-jz) and refers to a thing, sometimes to a special treat, (sometimes even to a hottie). Chizzi usually referred to candy or some Indian sweet/dessert like burfi, and still is a word used in my village in the Himalayas. It so happens (says Rushdie in a similar essay on etymology) that the word cheez is derived from the English word cheese. The eighteenth century Indians observed that Europeans (probably French) reserved a relish for cheese unmatched by other food items. Somehow we adopted the word and started referring to special things as cheez, mispronouncing it adequately, to make it sound desi (Indian).

English is full of words from Indian languages that appear in their new "avatar" with new pronunciations and connotations. While we Indians have worshipped the humanized avatars of God Vishnu for thousands of years, the internet has created impersonal avatars of us humans, and most of these new-age avatars are not worth worshipping. But one of the avatars of the Indian God, Jagannath (literal meaning: Lord of the World) is so powerful we have a word juggernaut coined after him. Up until seventeenth century, India contributed nearly a third of world's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and China contributed a similar share. No wonder then that the word cash has its origins in Sanskrit karsh, a weight equal to 1/4000th of a gram of gold or silver. In Arabian Nights, or in the plays by Sophocles (who wrote three tragedies around the life of King Oedipus) as well as in many other ancient texts, India finds mention time and again for its gold and other riches. After coming to USA, I learned that food cooked with gravy is called an Indian curry: in North and South India, the word curry has specific meanings that are lost in translation.

Words travel across cultures more easily than humans do, and certainly if you speak any languages other than English, you will compile a similar long-list of borrowed words. To say Indian English is the real cheez though is to also recognize that English speaking/reading Indians exceed the combined strength of English speakers in the United Kingdom and the United States. By our sheer number, Indians may well begun to own the English language, and maybe some old Indian words (and associated cultural heritage) will then return to us. For example, pajama was a common garment in India (and I hear also in our sister nation of Persia or Iran), before the British trousers triumphed over it. Now pyjamas have returned and are sold in their expensive avatars in India! Bungalow used to be a house made in Bangla (Bengali) style; modern Indians make bungalows thinking they are building houses that are in some western, 'modern' style. To tie in Hindi is bandhna and in English, we end up with the fashionable bandana. As a child I would find khaat in villages, sometimes khatiya, but now everyone uses beds, though cot is now an established word in the English language.

When Indian exported Panchtantra fables that inspired Aesop and later La Fontaine to compose their own versions, we helped to create the word jackal, a derivative of Sanskrit shringaal. The word mugger (who attacks stealthily) is derived from Sanskrit word for crocodile, makar and probably the fables caried this word across too. When you hear about mugging next time, think of a crocodile. Yes, even the jungle out there is from Hindi/Srinkrit word. Lac and lacquer both come from Hindi laakh (Sanskrit laksh), and we Indians import lacquer paints these days. The rock band Nirvana used a common word from Indian philosophy/ religions that means "blowing out" (in sense of becoming absolutely free from cycle of life and death; for example, Buddha got Nirvana). Unfortunately, the Sanskrit words Arya and Swastika have become associated with Nazis (who used both words sacrilegiously: the explanation itself requires another article). One day, we Indians will reclaim these two words in English language, make them shed their worst Western connotations and restore their original meanings of "urbane" and "associated with good". My favorite anglicized word is Shampoo, which comes from the Hindi word champu (Sanskrit champna meaning kneading). We Indians make fun of friends who use excessive hair-oil by calling them champu teli, the phrase that could mean "shampoo-oily" or maybe "shampooed oil-maker". Many Indians who use shampoo believing it is a new age cheez would be bemused by this etymology, but will remember kneading while shampooing. Let me end this short piece on another sweet note. While I enjoyed chizzi, which was not cheesy, my friends in US and UK ate candy, which comes from the word khand that means sugar in Sanskrit.

(Inspired by Borges & Ved Vyas)

Kavi-speak: On arranging a poet's work chronologically

2011-05-27T09:18:00.000-04:00

A writer's inner world is often different from the outside world, and poems bring forth only clues from that inner world. The inner world is influenced by the events in the outside world, but the influence can be quite limited if the poet choses to fashion an inner world that is the most comforting for his self, maybe the most inspiring for his creativity. A poem is a snapshot of a shadow, and to judge a person or his times or influences from that snapshot of a shadow is quite an imaginative task. A poet writes of separation though his beloved sleep next to him, and of embraces when there is no hope to meet the beloved, and sometimes it matters not if the neighborhood is rioting or if the outside world is falling apart.

As a poet ages, he understands the meaning of words better for the meaning now echoes a larger variety of sentiments, experiences and knowledge acquired through reading / living/ writing. But the poems themselves are a string of apt jewels or flowers, and the poems strung with proper jewels or flowers can be great even if they were strung together by a novice. A wiser, older poet might know the value of spending more energy or care in stringing more potent verses, but intention and ability of a poet are not enough to get the best work written. I suppose all poets live in this fear that they might never write a poem better than their favorite last one (or the favored last one); or they might not survive long enough to write the verses that have inevitability, originality, music and meaning to become immortalized in their language and even better, human history & literature.

(In response to a discussion about the value in arranging works of Mir Taqi Mir chronologically.)

De adhron ka poorn smarpan / दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण

2011-05-22T10:24:00.003-04:00

दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण
- विवेक शर्मा |

संकोच की हर सांझ बीती, अतृप्त रही, एकाकी रही,

तृष्णा में घाट गयी और मटकी न भर पाई कभी,

पदचापों का संगीत सुना, केवल स्वर न सुलझा पाई,

कामनाएं अंतर्मन में उभरी, पर वहम हुआ, भय रहा,

कर आई हूँ निश्चय, आज जयघोष पायेगा मेरा अराधन,

आज न कोई अंकुश लगा, दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण |

सीमाओं में रही आजीवन, सागर को खोजती फिरी,

रीतियों की सूची को रट कर, प्रीति दबाती रही,

गुपचुप श्रृंगार किया, अंग-अंग का सौंदर्य निहारा,

भ्रमर ही न मधुपान-पिपासु, पुष्प भी परम रसिक है,

मेरे पुष्पित अंग-अंग का कर चूम-चूम कर अभिनन्दन,

आज न कोई अंकुश लगा, दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण |

कटाक्ष की बाधा, कुटुंब के बंधन, प्रतिदिन के आकर्षण-क्रंदन,

तपस्वी की राह चली, सब बंधन त्याग, मैं विमुक्त होकर,

जानती हूँ देव मिलेगा सर्वस्व तज, अहम् की आहुति देकर,

परित्याग आई भ्रान्ति, भ्रम, भय, संशय, संयम, संकोच,

अराध्य की पूर्ण स्तुति हेतु कर रही हूँ आत्मसमर्पण ,

आज न कोई अंकुश लगा, दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण |

आत्मघाती पतंगे उड़-उड़ कर क्यूँ ज्योति का आहार बनें?

विद्रोह करुँगी मैं -- क्यूँ मेरी कामनाएं मंझधार में डूबें, मिटें?

चिरकाल से भारत में प्रेम पिपासा ही नहीं, मधुपान भी है,

यहाँ संयमी की क्षुधा का ही नहीं, सम्भोग का सम्मान भी है,

प्रणय-प्रेम आधार बना ही तो हुआ श्रृष्टि का सृजन,

आज न कोई अंकुश लगा, दे अधरों का पूर्ण समर्पण |

मार्च 2011

Introspective Desi

2011-05-17T17:39:00.005-04:00

Sometimes I feel like the villagers, who after days
of physical exertion, after hours of underfed labor,
find a famine, filling their fields
with a harvest of hunger and death.


I find myself abandoning those fields of hope,
moving to a distant city, to a sidewalk life,
say a rickshaw job,
cycling for shelter and bread.

Sometimes I dream that I will buy the houses I build
working as a temporary hire, a daily-wage laborer,
carrying on my head cement and bricks,
sweating for walls and roof of others.

I see myself eating expensive entrees
not just serving them, wearing the clothes I tailor-make,
being chauffeured, and not struggling with traffic
of sleep, that jams my travel to riches.

Sometimes I hear sweet nothings whispered
by TV-show dolls, who look plain in nakedness.

Often times I feel like a four year old son of a slum
outside a shop window. I confide in a mannequin,
if I had clothes like it has
I won't sit still the whole day.

First published in Nilab