Quoting Chekov

It's like what Brando said: One cannot improve upon Shakespeare (or Tennessee Williams for that matter). I guess, the same goes with Chekov! I won't dare to add my comments on what Chekov said.

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The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you're angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you're asked.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

Solomon made a big mistake when he asked for wisdom.

Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? Before God or, perhaps, before the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not before people. Among people, one must be conscious of one's dignity.

Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?

It's not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.

Common hypocrites pass themselves off as doves; political and literary hypocrites pose as eagles. But don't be fooled by their eagle-like appearance. These are not eagles, but rats or dogs.

There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.

I've thought about how, were we to suddenly receive the freedom about which we talk so much when we spar with one another, we would not know what to do with it at first. We would expend it on denouncing one another in the newspapers for spying, for love of the ruble, we would frighten society with protestations that we have no people, no science, no literature, nothing at all!

Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.

In The Shadow of the Saints

I got acquainted with the name of Vir Sanghvi when I started reading the magazine entitled Sunday back in 1993. He was the editor of the magazine then, and once wrote an article about the rights of smokers. In it, he clearly mentioned that though himself a non-smoker, he stood for the rights of the smokers and felt that the smokers had a right to smoke if they chose so. I was so impressed with his fairness and balanced view that, for quite a few years after that, I suggested my friends to read his writings.

I never heard the name of Allen Ginsberg until Time magazine carried his obituary in 1997. After that I read his Howl, came to know about his activism during the civil rights movement, have seen his pictire with a young Bob Dylan in Alabama after the burning of 3 black girls in a church there, and read a beautiful tribute by Johnny Depp about Ginsberg and other "bastards" of the beat generation.

Since 1993, Vir Snaghvi has gone a long way: leaving Sunday and shifting to Delhi, talking like a businessman on behanlf of the Hindustan Times group, writing columns praising Amitabh Bachchan and then writing about recipes.

Ginsberg, on the other hand, has got not much chance to change, being dead all the while.

However, since 1993, I have witnessed many saints, who are extremely judgemental of others and who thinks all other people are sinners because those people do things that the saints do not!

This reminds me of Ginsberg's poem, Footnote to Howl, reproduced below.

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Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!
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Sources: http://www.poemhunter.com

How Fucked Up is My Valley! (An Apology To A River)

Anyone who has read works by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is bound to notice his fascination with the Magdalena river, which he referes to as the Grand Magdalena River.Gabo also mentions that, as a student, he had to take eleven boat trips over the Madgalena river to and from Bogota, a city in which he always felt an outsider. The Grand Magdalena River is 1200 kms long.

I come from a place through which a 2900 km long river flows. As an undergraduate student, doing my studies in a college just across the river, and being in the company of a friend who grew up in the banks of this river, I was introduced by him to the beauty of Brahmapurtra, and the love affair continues, notwithstanding the fact that Brahmaputra (Son of Brahma) is male!

And yet, not many people outside ever knows about this river. But then whom to blame? None except ourselves. We fucked the whole valley up so badly, that sometimes one wishes that the whole thing did not exist at all in the first place!

The valley, which was once known for tea, natural beauty and one-horned rhinocerous, is now known for terrorism (or revolution, if you like, please!), extortion, lawlessness, complete absense of progress and above all "bandh".

If someone from outside India reads this blog, he/she perhaps won't probably know what a "bandh" is! A "bandh" is, in simple terms, a declaration of strike by some organization, which provides all the people of the state with an opportunity to avoid going to work for a day (or two or three or more). Usually, most second fridays of a month , somehow or other, has a call for som kind of bandh. As far as my knowledge goes, my state celebrated 67 bandhs during the calendar year! Holy mother of God!

All these is a product of unlimited power in the hands of students and student politics. This is a state where University students decide when their classes as well as examiniations will be held.

(On a sidenote, this reminds me of VM Khanna who, when once we bunked our classes en-masse, said to us, "If it were a few years ago, I would have delivered my lecture to the walls or the blackboard and then made sure that none of you could get a double-digit score. This is my last year of teaching and so, I decided not to teach an emply class." VMK was not boasting; people used to dance if they got 10 out of 50 in his paper -- while they compianed about other papers if they got 35 out of 50 -- because they expected only 5 and not 10, to begin with!)

My remote state never had any heavy industries or anything. Repeated and destructive flooding of the Brahmaputra river each year since the 1950 big earthquake make sure that the roads are never good. Above that, extreme bureacracy and very corrupt executive and legislature make sure that there is no scope for any infrastructure or anything!

And then along came the student movements. Some of them wanted to flush all the illegal Bangladeshis out; some of them, on a later day, would have to live permanently in Bangladesh and so would choose others instead as the bad guys.

But the sum total of all is this that my valley is so fucked up that the only comparison that we have been able to draw during the last decade or so for my state is with Bihar, the most backward of all states! Politicians back home often say, "We are better off."; what they don't say is: "We are better off than ONLY Bihar."

I don't think that I need to say anything more as to why nobody in the state gives a fuck about Brahmaputra, and why nobody outside the state even knows about it! And we claim ourselves to be the descendants of the Aryans, a people who made their river, their Mother Goddess, the Goddess of Wisdom, Saraswati.

(Thus, like the Fox 11 ad where they say, "What? You expected harmony", I may also say, And what, you expected wisdom.").

This also perhaps proves that all Hindu Gods are dead, because otherwise Brahmaputra would have dried up in shame by now!

And so, like the people of Macondo, the people of my valley is a race comdemned to many thousand years of solitude, who, I sincerely expect, would not have another opportunity on earth; they simply do not deserve that!

On God, Guru, Hinduism, Saraswati and Wisdom

On God, Guru, Hinduism, Saraswati and Wisdom...Sounds like a load of crap (like most intellectuals give!), right? No, you are wrong, primariry because I'm NOT an intellectual, but also because when I say, you are wrong, you are wrong! This is the blog of the wisest person and he knows it better than you anyday, any time of the year.

Then why all these bombastic words, and that too all at a time? I wish, I could simply say, "This is because of due to their poor English.", but I won't!

Growing up in a small town under the influence of pretty religious family members and others, I, like many others, was ritualistically religious; I had total faith in a very personal God, to whom I confided and with whom I discussed all my troubles, and then prayed to help me.

However, life took its own course and during another phase of my life, I lost faith in all ritualistic apsects of my religion and I almost denounced everything associated with my religion.

It would be more than a decade before I would read Steinbeck's "To A God Unknown". I came across a beautiful Hymn in this book that Steinbeck quoted from the Rig Veda. That Hymn, which refers to making offerings to the God, was so nice that I searched for an online version of Rig Veda to have a casual look.

Of the many beautiful stanzas that Rig Veda contained, the one among the ones that I could have a glance within that short interlude, that impressed me most was one about creation; it made me feel very good about my religion and my God once again. The Hymn is as follows:

Creation. (HYMN CXXIX)

1

THEN was not non-existent nor existent:
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter?
Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

2

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal:
No sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature:
Apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

3

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness
This all was indiscriminate chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless:
By the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

4

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning,
Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought
Discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.

5

Transversely was their severing line extended:
What was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces,
Free action here and energy up yonder.

6

Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
Whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?

7

He, the first origin of this creation,
Whether He formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps He knows not.

I liked this immensely, perhaps because by now I was converted into a person,who believed in a very Impersonal God, who had no time to applaud me for the good things I did, or to punish me for my faults. I started believing in a God who had much better and more important things to do than to keep an eye of each person. I believed that he had to take care of the whole universal machinery, but he actually could not care less if I ate meat or did not pray to him.

And then I slowly started seeing the beauty of my religion. Here I am reading a verse composed by the descendants of a bunch of nomads, who have just settled down on the banks of a river and started devoting time to more compilcated questions of life, such as the creation of the Universe, and the God. And these nomads have not taken God for granted; they are not yet ready to give Him the benefit of the doubt; while they are willing to accept that He might have known the origin of the Universe, they at the same time are aware of the possibility that He may not hold all the information. I think, I won't have ever looked for a better definition of God!

I feel that the only reason these nomads could develops their civilization so rapidly was because they doubted their God and learned in the process. I don't know if that is the same reason they also compared Guru with the Hindu Trinity, so that we doubt our Guru in the same way as we doubt our God!

In my opinion, one cannot learn unless one doubts. During my childhood, due to family influence and other factors, I started by believing in every word my teachers said. The same applied to every printed word I read! It would take me years to realize that not every teacher is wise or informative, and that MOST books are full of garbages and wrong information. I would turn into a renegade in the high school, I would counter many of my teachers' statements and would end up being a public enemy at the school; but rarely, if ever, they could prove me, or what I said, wrong. (I have maintained that belligerent mood even today. But when I read this Hymn, I feel myself vindicated).

If those nomads knew that -- to doubt is to gather wisdom --, why did they worship a river as their Goddess of wisdom? It looks ridiculous; but for me this is another fascinating facet of their thought! Their entire civilization flourished on the bank of that river, and that prosperity offered them the opportunity to indudge in their lofty quest of wisdom. They knew that all that they had, belonged to the river and its goodwill.

And so they repaid the loan by making Saraswati their Goddess of Wisdom!

An Amor with El Loco (In Love With the Insane)

The first time I heard of Abdala Bucaram was in 1996, when I read about his being elected to the post of President of Ecuador in the Time magazine. Bucaram, a former sprinter with the 1972 Natianal Olympics team, invited the whole nation for the Presidential inaugural dinner, declined to move into the Presidential palace because it did not have a football field, called the former President a burro and then apologized to the burros for insulting them. All in all, Bucaram was a colorful personality.

Within a few months, he would cut an ablum entitled, El Loco An Amor (The Crazy Man in Love) and for its release would sing and dance in a live performace with a few scantily-clad women. He would also promise to the millions of poor and homelss families a home each.

Sadly, Bucaram's populist plans would not do much good to his people, and he would end up being unconstitutionally dismissed from the Ecuadorian presidency by congress on alleged grounds of mental disability and exiled to Panama.

I loved the man's antics.

Looking back, I now see that I have always liked crazy people and their antics, and that dates back to my childhood.

There was this guy in my hometown, son of a very respectable family, who went to Luncknow to do his Masters in Tabla (an Indian Musical instrument, supposedly made by a Nawab of Awadh by chopping of a Mridangam, another traditional Indian musical insturment, into two parts) and came back totally insane. My earliest memories of him are of a man holding his trousers from falling down with the left hand, while pointing his right hand towards the sky and talking. He often talked about meeting the Deputy Commissioner for collecting Rupess 1000 and doing something; I am sure, it was something constructive, but I never clearly heard what it was!

Then there was this person in my father's village, whose infinite desire to buy more cultivable land drove him crazy. It was said that he almost struck a deal to buy a huge plot of such land; but finally his rival managed to buy it, and the failure to be the man with the maximum amount of land drve him crazy. He was a school teacher, and by the time I saw him, it was a periodic event; a single harsh statement by someone he loved (for example, his brother) could make him analyze and re-analyze and then go nuts! He was sent to a lunatic asylum and would each time get back to normalcy without a few months. People used to say that while being unstable, he used to mention only two words: land, and money!

At my father's village, I also met Das, who was supposedly a brilliant student and then went mad. He used to drop by, whenever there was some festival (and the mandatory community feasting therewith) uninvited, have a hearty meal and then clean up the big cooking utensils on his own. There were pots in which they could cook a whole, big goat with vegetables and other stuff, and he has no problem cleaning all of them on his own.

All he wanted was a good meal, and nobody ever declined that. When in an entertaining mood, somone from the crowd would ask Das, "Das, please speak something in English." and Das would recite some essay or some news item he had read maybe 10 years ago in non-stop English.

My God-fearing mother never let us tease a madman; she insisted that the Lord Shiva resides in every madman, and so, insulting a manman is insulting the Lord. Back then, I was suspcious of that fact; but now I think that is the best way that a society can give some resepct and reprieve to a madman, oblivious to his surroundings. If I remember correctly, her mom (my grandma) once made her, or her brother, go touch the feet of a mandman and apologize to him after (s)he teased that person.

Then there was Half Paytara (Half-Style) who was a source of both interest and fear. His browls with Kanu Daroga (Police Inspector) had reached fabulous proportion in the town. We were told that he carried a big knife with all the time him. None knew for sure where his name came from. Some said that it was rderived from the fact that he wore fashionable clothes as far as possible; but a more reliable source once told me that that name had nothing to do with style. According to him, it came from his stealing a bunch of ducks in his teens: Hahn Paikari (Duck Wholesaler) --> Half Paitara.

Murgi Chor (Chicken Thief) was even more colorful a character. A pitch dark, middle-aged, bearded man, Murgi Chor often used to be bare-bodied, carry a wooden sword and, if teased or annoyed by someone, shout, "I will sacrifice you at the alter of Maa Kali", Maa Kali being the Hindu Goddess who wears a garland of Demon-heads.

When I moved out of my town to do the Higher Secondary level of schooling, I missed my hometown, and interesting, I missed those characters as much as I missed Sambhu (the big Bull donated by someone to Lord Shiva, and who used to roam the streets of the town. Everyone used to feed him with fruits, and he used to have sex with all the cows in the town..what a Royal life Sambhu had!).

Then I read a story by Sheelabhadra. [RMDC, a Mathematics Professor at the Engineering College started writing short stories at the age of 40, after being fed up by the jokes of his colleagues, who claimed that he did not know how to speak the language properly; he was born in a place at the border of two states and so their language was not pure. He took this as a challenge and started writing using the pen mame Sheelabghadra. Always down-to-earth in his writing, he often wrote about small incidents about insignificant people of Gauripur, the twon he had grown up! His writing was probably not bad (I loved it!), because in 1994 he won a National Award in literature. Not bad for someone who started writing just to show that he could speak the language.

Incidentally, I would be present at his felicitation ceremony at Delhi, and,after his speech would ask him if it were him or PBK who first started bringing in themes related to Sexual Psychology into the literautre in my language. He would at first say that he had never written explicitly about sex in his writing, our society being traditional; but on being bombarded by me with quotes from his novels (that I churned out from my memory), he would finally agree that he had written indirectly about sex and yet give the credit to PBK.

After his return, he would write a column about a college student asking him about sexual psychology, and he would express his happiness that people of young generation read his books so well that they could remember parts of these line by line. After reading this my friend P., who did not meet me since 1992, would ask A, who was with me that day, if it were I who asked that question. On being answered in affirmative, he would reply, "I knew it. Only he is crazy enough to ask this question, and at the same time, informative enough to back his statement with evidence."

Sheelabhadra's story described an old gentleman, D., who was very rich and yet believed everyone. Thus everyone took loans from him on verbal terms, and none returned the money. He even lost all his buses to people, and then the impending financial calamity drove him nuts. When S. went home that time, his uncle proposed that they go and pay a visit to D., because he may not live much longer. What S. noticed was that D. constantly asked people if they owe him anything, and if so, to return the amount because he was under a rough patch. After coming out of his house, S.'s uncle said philosophically," He talks of money; who knows what I will talk about?"

But I really saw mad people from close quarters during 1989-1990, when we (my friend B. and I) started waking up early in the morning and going to the Teashop under Apex Bank building. It was run by someone named P. or S.; I will call him P. here. We always tried to reach by 5-00 AM, so that we could have the first cup of tea there; it was a lovely experience.

By 5-30, his regular customers would arrive, many of them autorickshaw drivers, and they would carry with them all the news from all the corerns of the city. So one can, in principle, just talk to them and be updated with all the things that happened during the previous night.

Then there were this bunch of old gentlemen: retired Army officer, retired Reserve Bank boss, Businessmen and Renowned players of the yore. Their highly decent behavior and warm treatment towards us made us feel close to one another. It was fun to talk to them; they always waited for special tea to be made: no sugar, more milk. And so they always had time to talk to us and read all the National newspapers that came for the bank, and which the night watchman kept for them to read (which only after then he collected).

However, the most fascinating characters to us were a stream of mad people, who were very punctual in their arrivals, precise in their behavior and very articulate with their choice item of food. For example, if one of them wanted jalebi, another would only eat samosa. A third one would patiently wait for Lal, a helping hand at the shop, to come from his morning bath at the Brahmaputra and give him the cold rice and vegetables cooked the previous night and kept aside for him. There was one of them, who obsessively touched --bicycle, door, wall, scooter, windowpan-- everything, with the outside of his hand while holding a food item in his hands.

Sarma used to play the same monotonous tune (without ever any change of the rhythm) on his flute. Someone once told us that Sarma had used to run one of the busiest panshops in the whole area, the most important part of the city; but when his 17-year old died suddenly within a couple of days of falling sick, Sarma lost his mental balance. He also lost his shop and everything else he had, obtained the flute and started a nomadic, aimless life!

I now live near downtown LA, an area flooded with homeless and mentally disturbed people. Most of these people are very lonely, unhappy and totally at loss! When I look back at all the mad people I met home, I somehow feel that most of those people were not unhappy. They knew where to go if they eneded food and where to go when they wanted a smoke. (I remember once someone asked P. how he could offer free food to a dozen of mad people. P. nonchalantly replied, "It's the rich people who are very worried about their wealth. I run a teashop and am always living on the edge. Why should I bother if a few nuts can feeel contended because I could offer them something to it?". Of course, to prove that what he did was completely insignificant, and to camouflage his big-heartedness, P. used the choichest Hindi abuses to describe himself and the nuts; yet both his humility and his affection for those nuts were obvious!)

And in my opinion, that is the binding force that keeps the nuts back home from going any nutter, because they know that they always have someone to go talk to, if they really wanted some company.

Jerk vs. Moron: An Introspection

It's for quite sometime that I have been trying to ask myself whether I am simply a jerk or a moron. I could be a jerk because I write nonsense comments on others' blogs; but then I should also be a moron, because I myself write a blog!

Finally, after lots of not doing anything about it, I looked at the Miriam Webster online dictionary and found the following:

_________________________________________________________________
Main Entry: jerk
Pronunciation: 'j&rk
Function: noun
Etymology: probably alteration of yerk
1 : a single quick motion of short duration
2 a : jolting, bouncing, or thrusting motions b : a tendency to produce spasmodic motions
3 a : an involuntary spasmodic muscular movement due to reflex action b plural : involuntary twitchings due to nervous excitement
4 : an annoyingly stupid or foolish person
5 : the pushing of a weight from shoulder height to a position overhead in weight lifting
__________________________________________________________________
Main Entry: mo·ron
Pronunciation: 'mor-"än
Function: noun
Etymology: irregular from Greek mOros foolish, stupid
1 usually offensive : a mildly mentally retarded person
2 : a very stupid person
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Now while I know it all along that I'm mildly mentally retarded, annoying and foolish, I am not exactly a stupid person. Come on! All them guys in suit at the Universities, who gave me degrees, cannot be stupids. I mean, if they can bestow degrees on a stupid, they are stupid too. How can that be possible? But then AKB always insisted, "Any donkey can have a degree."

Really, this leaves me fully confused. Am I a a moron or a jerk? Or am I both? Or none? Kind of Schroedinger's cat situation? Or that of a vius, which is both dead and alive, and both organic and inorganic!

Confusing....

Lord of the Werewolves (Zevon and I)

No, Warren Zevon was not my friend; nor did I know him in any capacity. Not at least until I read about his death in CNN in a distant afternoon in Sept., 2003.

What then makes me connect myself with him? Just a small thing: a small wish for each of us. But while he fulfilled his wish, I could not mine!

I quote from Wikipedia here:

"On October 30, 2002, Zevon was featured on the Late Show with David Letterman as the only guest for the entire hour. Zevon performed several songs and spoke at length about his illness. Zevon was a frequent guest and occasional substitute bandleader on Letterman's television shows since Late Night first aired in 1982. It was this show where Zevon offered his insight on facing death: that one should enjoy "every sandwich."

Zevon had previously stated that his illness was expected to be terminal within months after the diagnosis in the Fall of 2002; however he lived to see the birth of twin grandsons in June of 2003 and the release of The Wind on August 28, 2003. When his diagnosis became public, he told the media that he just hoped to live long enough to see the next James Bond movie, a goal he also accomplished. Appropriately, the film was called Die Another Day."

Now, I am not a big fan of movies such as "Lords of the Rings". No, I'm not! But I accompained my then colleague SdV for the LOTR I, and then the next year for the part II of it. By Dec-2003, I would be moving out, and we hoped that we would be able to watch LOTR III together. However, it would so happen that LOTR III would not be released until 14th Dec., 2003, and so we won't be able to watch all the thtree parts of LOTR together.

And that's what connects me to Zevon, in a negative and indirect way!
__________________________________________________________________

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Zevon

The Complexity of Naming My Cat!

The place was the Book & Literature Chatroom, the land of the Enlightened and the Megalomaniacs, and the topic was serious: What should I call my cat? Keyser Soze, or Benicio Del Toro? Or something totally different?

Now, could I call my cat Keyser Soze? Possibly not! Unlike Soze, who goes on a rampage to avenge his enemies, my cat jumps on to my lap each time he sees a mouse! So, for a while, I thought maybe I should call him Benicio Del Toro, who portrayed a born-again conman in the movie, "21 Grams". But is my cat that saintly? If so, why would he steal food, sharpen his claws on my bed and scratch me when he gets squeezed in my sleep, primarily because he sleeps in my bed (though he apparently thinks the other way around!)?

Should I then name him, Salvatore "Toto" Riina? Could I possibly call him "Capo di Tutti Capi"? No! A cat, who gets scared by the movement of a mouse, can not be the Boss, forget his being "Boss of All Boses"! No Nada Niet!!

What about Giovanni Brisca, "The Beast"? To be honest, I won't mind; but calling a cat "Beast", that too one with so much self-respect and ego, no! I don't want my throat slit at sleep by my renegade cat!

Also, I must admit that, notwithstanding his bad mood and craziness, I like him! So I won't name him Pablo Escobar either, because -- to imagine my poor cat being shot dead while having lunch with his family by Special Forces -- is something I detaste.

Just when I was beginning to lose all my hopes of finding a suitable name, I threw the question open to the chatters and along came Winchy the faded jaded Cowboy from Texan, the Lone Star State.

He proposed that I call him Schroedinger. Not a bad idea, but Schroendinger was not a cat, to begin with; neither did I want a quantized half-dead cat.

It's surely a difficult task to name a cat. The problem is even more severe if you have to name a cat that you do not have!. So I decided not to name him, and just call him "The Cat" instead.
_________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: The above picture is NOT of my cat. Don Cervantes de Vito Escobar y Macondo, the world's first cat with a fondness for champagne would never stoop to the level of being with me and owning me!

Ghalib's Playground: Zafar's Solitude (Dylan contra Zafar)

To be written....

Problems. Typo in the Urdu text.
My lack of knowledge
their mistake. Guman =? Pride (I).

Baaziichaa-e-atfaal hai duniyaa mere aage
Hotaa hai shab-o-roz tamaashaa mere aage
[baaziichaa-e-atfaal = child's play]

This whole world is but child's play for me,
Day and night, this drama is enacted in front of me.

Ik khel hai aurang-e-sulemaan mere nazadik
Ik baat hai ejaaz-e-masiihaa mere aage
[aurang = throne; ejaaz = miracle]

The King's throne is just a trifle game to me,
Miracles of the Messiah, a small talk to me.

Juz naam nahin surat-e-aalam mujhe manzuur
Juz vaham nahin hastii-e-ashiyaa mere aage
[juz = other than; aalam = world; ashiyaa = things]

Hotaa hai nihaan gard men seharaa mere hote
Ghisataa hai jabiin khaak pe dariyaa mere aage
[nihaan= hidden; gard = dust]
[seharaa = desert, jabiin = forehead]

Dust goes hiding in the desert while in my presence,
The sea rubs her forehead in front of me.

Mat puuchh ke kya haal hai mera tere peechhe
Tu dekh ke kya rang hai tera mere aage

Don't ever ask how I suffer behind your back
You better worry about your unease in front of me,

Sach kahte ho khud_bin-o-khud_aaraa hoon na kyon hoon
Baitha hai but-e-ainaa simaa mere aage

[Khud_biin = proud/arrogant, Khud_aaraa = self adorer]
[but-e-aa_iinaa = lover's mirror; siimaa = particularly]

You are right when you call me arrogant and Narcisistic;
Because the lover's mirror is there in front of me.

Phir dekhiye andaaz-e-gul_afshaanii-e-guftaar
Rakh de ko_ii paimaanaa-e-sahabaa mere aage

[gul_afshaanii-e-guftaar = to scatter flowers while speaking]
[sahaba = wine]

If you want to see flowers scattering in my words
Just place a jar of wine in front of me.

Nafrat ka gumaan guzare hai main rashk se guzaraa kyon,
Gar kahoon lo naam naa us kaa mere aage.
[gumaan = suspicion/doubt; rashk = envy]

She passed her days in the arrogance of dispise,
Why did I have to live mine in envy?
If I may suggest, please never mention her name again.

Iman mujhe roke hai jo khinche hai mujhe kufr
Kaabaa mere peechhe hai kalisaa mere aage
[kufr = impiety, kalisaa = church/cathedral]

The priest tried to stop me, because impiety drags me away,
Qabaa is behind me, my cathedral is in front of me.

Aashiq hoon pe maashuq_farebii hai mera kaam
Majnu ko buraa kahti hai Lailaa mere aage

I am a lover, deceptive romance is my job,
Even Laila blames Majnu when I'm around!

Khush hote hain par vasl men yuun mar nahin jaate
Aa_ii shab-e-hijaraan kii tamannaa mere aage
[hijr = separation]

If I were so happy, I won't have died like this,
When the night of separation finally stood in my front.

Hai mauj_zan ik qulzum-e-khun kaash!
Yahi ho aataa hai abhii dekhiye kyaa-kyaa mere aage
[mauj_zan = turbulent (as in waves)]
[qulzum = sea, khun = blood]

The blood in my veins is like waves in a turbulent sea,
Just wait and see what all happens now in front of me.

Gar haath ko jumbish nahiin aankhon men to dam hai
Rahane do abhi saaGar-o-minaa mere aage
[jumbish = movement; saaGar-o-miinaa = glass of wine]

Though my hands are immobile, my eyes are still active.
Let the glass of wine at least remain in front of my eyes!

Ham_pesha-o-ham_masharab-o-ham_raaz hai mera
'Ghalib' ko buraa kyon kaho achchhaa mere aage
[ham_peshaa = of the same profession]
[ham_masharab = of the same habits(i.e. a fellow drinker)]
[ham_raaz = confidante]

Oh my colleague, my table friend, my close confident,
Why do you have to badmouth Ghalib in my presence?

Mind you, this is the same Ghalib, who once wrote:

"Ghalib-e-khasta ke bagair kaun se kaam band hain?
Royiye zar-zar kya, kijiye hai hai koyon?"

(Has the world come to a halt, because of sickly Ghalib's death?
Why such bitter weeping, why all this hue and cry?)
________________________________________________________________

Na Kisi Ki Ankh Ka Noor Hoon.

Na kisi ki aankh kaa noor hoon
Na kisi ke dil kaa qaraar hoon
Jo kisi ke kaam na aa sake
Main woh ek musht-e-Gubaar hoon

I am not the light of anyone's eyes,
Neither am I the tranquity of someone's heart
That, which is of no use to anyone,
I am just such a handful of dust.

Na to main kisi kaa habeeb hoon
Na to main kisii kaa raqeeb hoon
Jo bigad gayaa woh naseeb hoon
Jo ujad gayaa woh dayaar hoon

Neither am I anyone's friend
Nor am I anybody;s enemy,
I am the fate that is ruined,
I am the orchard that is destroyed.

Meraa rang-roop bigad gayaa
Meraa yaar mujh se bichhad gayaa
Jo chaman fizaa men ujad gayaa
Main usi ki fasl-e-bahaar hoon

My beauty has faded away
My friends have separated,
The garden that withered in the autumn,
I am the fruit of such a springtime!

Paye faatehaa koi aaye kyun
Koi chaar phool chadaaye kyun
Koi aake shammaa jalaaye kyon
Main woh bekasi kaa mazaar hoon

Why should a pilgrim come to me?
Why should one place flowers on me?
Why should light candles on me?
I am just a tomb of desperation.

Main nahin hoon naGmaa-e-jaan_fishaan
Mujhe sun ke koi karegaa kyaa
Main bade barog ki hoon sadaa
Main bade dukh ki pukaar hoon

I'm not the soul of a lyric
Why should anyone listen to me?
I'm the distress call of the cursed one,
I'm the scream of extreme agony.

Zafar also wrote:

"Hai kitana badanasiib Zafar dafn ke liye
Do gaz zamiin bhii na milii ku-i yaar mein"

(How unfortunate Zafar is, who for his burial
Could not even get six feet of ground in his beloved land.)
_________________________________________________________________
Source: http://www.urdupoetry.com/ghalib04.html
http://www.urdupoetry.com/zafar09.html
http://www.aczoom.com/isongs/urdu/a/ghalib13.s
http://www.cs.memphis.edu/~ramamurt/ghalib.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahadur_Shah_Zafar_II

Top 10 Songs

I have decided to chronicle my most favorite 10 songs (in no particular order) every now and then, because the list keeps changing. Here we go:

1) Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - If you don't know me by now
2) Warren Zevon - Accidentally like a martyr
3) Travis - Sing
4) Willie Nelson - He was a friend of mine
5) Faith No More - Easy like Sunday Morning
6) Neil Young - Only love can break your heart
7) Barbra Streisand - Golden dawn
8) Annie Lennox - The hurting time
9) Bob Marley - Stop the train I'm leaving
10) Willie Nelson - You were always on my mind

Delhi: A Chronicle of Arrogance (and Blatant Self-Appraisal)

Continued from my earlier post about Delhi:

Delhi would also teach me that not every guy who opens his mouth first to answer a question in the class is necessarily the smartest. Actually, quite the contrary!

In Delhi, I met Sethi (for example), whose immense desire to impress his teachers and answer questions, and whose infinite capacity to pretend to be a great thinker, did not quite go hand in hand with his average understanding of Physical Chemistry and his basic deficiency in analytical thinking! And yes, he did his Bachelors from one of the top colleges in Delhi.

Delhi would also teach me that even someone coming from a remote part of the country could compete hand in hand with the more privileged students from the so-called best colleges of the country, and show them that he had a better understanding of what he way saying. (No, I did not do well in the exams; but I could prove that a person always sitting in the last bench could sometimes solve problems that the sofisticated and proud Delhi University students could not!)

It was in Delhi that I would make the fearsome AKB stop his teaching, and show him that his derivation of the mathemtical formulae of the day were entirely wrong, leading to his exit for the day, and other students' suggesting me that I ruined myself by antagonizing AKB. (As luck would have it, it would be I having lunch at AKB's home 8 years down the line, and not one of those wise kids!).

Delhi would teach me that not all colleges in remote parts of India are inferior to the Delhi colleges; Delhi would teach me that while St. Stephen's College was perhaps the best college in India for a student's all-round development, being in St. Stephen's did not necessarily make one a master of all trades. Else, I won't have spent endless hours teaching Quantum Chemistry and Irreversible Thermodynamics to Kathuria in his dorm room! (And which would prompt Ranjan to comment, "Tera dimag hai bolke tu bhao khata hai, sala.", which could be loosely transliterated as, "You bastard, you don't have to act so smart, just because you know a thing or two more than us!"). But then for Kathuria, it was a matter of priority; all he ever wanted to do was an MBA and not a Masters in Physical Chemistry.

It would take me 4 more years to read "My Crazy Friends" by Pablo Neruda, and to realize that Delhi was where my Rojas Gimenez and Joaquin Cifuentes lived. And I would forever be grateful to my destiny that I met them, and learned things from them that I won't have otherwise learnt. These two crazy friends among themselves thought me arrogance, pessimism, a bit of impracticality, and to laugh at myself; but they also taught me what a real teacher should be like!

Mauz was right after all (And I hate him for that!).
__________________________
"...Rojas Gimenez, lost in his own
fastidiousness,
a theoretical sailor, certifiably
crazy, offering in the smoke
his wayward tenderness
in one drink after another,
until he fell is stages
as if the wine itself
had taken him further and further away from us!
My vulnerable brother, I learned
so much in your company,
I lost so much in the waywardness of your heart,...."

"...And later, like an apparition,
keeping to his dark corner
during parties,
Joaquin Cifuentes arrived,
freed from his chains, a ghostly friend
with his emphatic face in the rain,
his sharp, defining hairline
crossing a forehead open to pain.
He didn't know how to laugh, my new friend;
and in the course of cruel, ashy evenings,
I watched him destroy himself, Horseman of Death."

___________________________________________________________________
Note: This page belongs to VMK and AKB, my crazy friends, my teachers, two of my Gods!

Astrology/Horoscope

A young student from Nisapur, Persia made three predictions with far-reaching consequences, each of which would turn out to be prophetically accurate. His predictions concerned his King and the kingdom. He would later rectify Ptolemy's calendar and write excellent Poetry. And yet he would never accept that one could make predictions. He would be vocally opposed to Astrology all along. That student, whose name was Khwaza Omar Ben Ibrahim Al-Khayyam, would be better known simply as Omar Khayyam.

Neils Bohr, one of the most important physicists of the 20th century once remarked, "Prediction is always difficult, especially about the future."

However, millions of people across the globe believe, and actively consult, horoscope all the time. Many people subscribe to Astrological magazines and purchase particular magazines due to their faith in the Astrological column of the magazine. Personally, my reaction to Astrology has been mixed. While I feel happy when I read something positive, I always ignore when it says something negative about me. And so, the above cartoon amused me.

That is the reason, I put it here.
___________________________________________________________________
Pic source: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/rnr/140743860.html

Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it Never helps.

To be written


The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.

Mauz's Delhi, Zafar's Chandni Chowk

As someone who arrived in Delhi with a tonsured (following strict Hindu ritual) head (thus being, at times, mistaken for a heart patient, whom I accompanied for a while) leaving behind a devastated family, and very litle money in pocket, I had no way to indulge in the luxuries Delhi offered, and so I hated Delhi. It's a curse to live in poverty in a place of abundance.

And when I expressed my disgust with the excesses of Delhi and my strong desire to return, KJ, a veteran of Delhi by then, replied, "Every newcomer says that. And then one day, without your knowledge, you will fall in love with Delhi. That is what is so special about Delhi; you will always begin by hating Delhi, and soon end up loving it. And Delhi will one day break your heart when you will decide to leave it and go back."

It would be three more years before I would read Mauz's "Kaun jaye Mauz Dilli ki galiyan chhod kar" (Who goes away, Mauz, leaving the labyrinths of Delhi behind?), and another 6 months before I would curse Mauz for writing this. By that time, I would leave Delhi and Delhi would soon break my heart for more than one reasons.

However, much before reading Mauz's poem, I would be acquainted with the labyrinths of Chhipi Wara Kalan and Dariba Kalan, thanks to the strategic location of my friend Abhijit's home. Quite a number of times, I would accompany his grandma to Chandni Chowk through the maze-like miniscule alleys and yet would never be able to trace my way back to their home.

Delhi taught me lots of things. Delhi exposed me to National School of Drama (NSD). I learned to appreciate Theatre in Delhi. I had spent previous five years in a hostel situated only about 400 meters away from the place where there used to be drama enacted all the time, and yet I visited it only a couple of times; but now I would frequent NSD. I would, inspite of my total ignorance, would learn to differentiate between good acting and bad acting, and between significant and insignificant roles. NSD would give me the feeling that sitting next to giants such as Habib Tanvir or Bhisham Sahani and enjoying a drama was the most natural and insignificant thing to happen.

Delhi would give me the courage to ask questions. I would even dare to question Habib Tanvir within a few years (when his play, Mudra Rakshasa, would be played at Hyderabad), and in spite of knowing fully well what a straight-shooter he could be! Surprisingly, he won't blast me! His voice still rings in my ears. It would be in Delhi that I would write to someone as prominent as Dr. J. V. Narkilar asking permission to translate his articles, a request he would instantly grant!

Delhi would teach me why stereotyping was wrong! In Delhi, I would meet Amit, Ranjan and Abhijit, who would stand in stark contrart to the Nationally prevelant stereotypes of cunning Bihari, selfish Oriya and self-centered Bengalis respectively.

Delhi would, for the first time, let me buy (at throwaway prices) and read used copies of expensive books from Daryaganj Book Market. It's sad (and also symbolic of our level of stupidity) that those bastards banned the market, as I read a few months ago.

Delhi would teach me what teaching meant, and how dedicated and knowledgeable teachers could/should be! I would learn to take myself lightly, and to laugh at myself. I would almost master the art of self-depracating humor under the tutelege of AKB, my crazy friend and teacher. It's in the corridors of the Delhi University that MMK would explain to us how to respect other's space and thus not to interfere with other's affairs. I would also learn from him how a teacher should never consider that he was doing a favor to his students by teaching them -- he was just discharging his duties for which he was paid -- and how the students had every right to demand better performance from a teacher.

VMK would give me a feel of what real arrogance was! After all, it was him who had asked the interview board chairman, while being interviewed for a full Professorship, "Why are you asking me things you have no knowledge about? Better ask me about things you know."

But then, VMK knew everything in Chemistry! Or, so I thought and would love to think so! That crazy guy would teach a single course in Polymer Chemistry from 35 books ("My courses are never advanced; they are always basic chemistry.", he would boast, his voice soaked with obvious arrogance.)! I would sell my soul to Devil over twice to acquire his level of knowledge

It is also in Delhi that I would attend the first lecture of my life by a Nobel Laureate (John Kendrew, 1962).

Delhi would expose me to different shades of friendship: I would witness examples of both "Being dead means not being able to be with your friends" and "Friends are a bunch of bastards" in Delhi.

On the other hand, Delhi would also unveil a market in place of the historical Chandni Chowk, about which I had read for years. There would be no trace of Jahan Ara, or any trace of the shooting of the three sons of Bahadur Shah Zafar by the British. I would also witness a broken and greatly reduced Ridge, where Kings once went for hunting. The only saving grace would be the monkeys on occasional friendly visits to the classrooms across the Ridge at the Delhi University, notwithstanding their once bitting my friend Rajiv in a distant winter morning.

I would, thus, never see the Delhi that books, songs and movies made me imagine! Perhaps Rafi was right when he sung:"Zameen bhi wohi hai, wohi aasman; magar ab woh Dilli ki galiyan kahan?" (The Earth is the same, and so is the Sky; but where are the by-lanes of Delhi now?).

And then I would leave Delhi, only to regret my decision forever! I wish, I never read Mauz! I wish, I never knew about his poem!

I will never forgive Mauz for that one poem!

__________________________________________________________________

Notes: Ranjan Pradhan, my melancholy philosopher, would show what real love of a friend is. While he would always acknolwedge (and sometimes praise) my intelligence, he would always cut me short when I talked big-mouthedly by saying, "Kahan Raja Bhoj, Kahan Gangu Teli". This most personal of my blogs belongs to him, though he would never know that I wrote this!

Happy Birthday, MMK, incidentally!

Pic source: http://www.guardian.co.tt/photos/details.php?image_id=190

On Gays, Cowboys, Stereotyping, Machoness and other Issues

Of late, I have been listening to many obscure songs and most of my latest blogposts are based on one song or another. This one is on that Willie Nelson song, "Cowboys are frequently, secretly fond of each other", written by Ned Sublette, and earlier performed by Pensy Division.

Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly (Fond of Each Other)
Willie Nelson

There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas;
There's many a young boy who feels things he can't comprehend.
Well small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes,
No, small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.

Well I believe to my soul that inside every man there's a feminine,
And inside every lady there's a deep manly voice loud and clear.
Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he does with his women,

But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other —
Say what did you think those saddles and boots was about?
And there's many a cowboy who don't understand
the way that he feels towards his brother,
And inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.

Well there's always somebody who says what the others just whisper,
And mostly that someone's the first one to get shot down dead:
When you talk to a cowboy don't treat him like he was a sister
You can't fuck with the lady that's sleepin' in each cowboy's head.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other —
Say what did you think those saddles and boots was about?
And there's many a cowboy who don't understand
the way that he feels towards his brother,
And inside every lady there's a cowboy who'd love to come out.
And inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.
_______________________________________

Now, I love Willie Nelson; he is my hero, in a sense! How can one not love someone, who plays guitar, wears cowboy hat, smokes truckloads of pot and does not pay taxes? But then, while searching for the song I came across a blogspot which made me think if the lyrics of this song were not just another prime example of stereotyping so prevelant in this country.

Mind you, in the USA, if you are a single guy, and you keep your apartment neat and clean, then the popular belief is that you are gay! If you wear briefs instead of boxers, then the general consensus is that you are gay! And so, another, usual stereotype is that "inside every gay guy, there is a woman trying to come out"

Is it really so? Is it so easy to identify a gay man that way? Is it that every person who walks with a gait, or has feminine gestures is gay? I don't think so.

One of my colleagues once very stubbornly insisted that a well-known professor in our field "must be gay". Later, I read that that professor has been married to the same woman since 1965, when he was 20 or 22 years old. Some other people, in turn, think that this particular colleague of mine is gay! (This reminds me of the popular Bollywood symbolism, where any pregnant woman would have to throw up, by default. And that led to such a situation that any girl/woman throwing up any place is immediately suspected of pregnancy by the populance in many places in India.)On the other hand, who would have thought that someone like J. Edgar Hoover, who terrorised the USA for years, was gay? Or for that matter, Rock Hudson?

Perhaps the whole stereotyping happened because some of the first openly gay people were related to the fashion industry, a so-called feminine field.Whatever may the cause be, did Willie insult the gay people by his song? Would Willie so that to cowboys? That does not seem feasible to me, especially when it should come from the man who sang:

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (Album: Essential Willie Nelson)

I grew up a-dreamin' of bein' a cowboy,
and Lovin' the cowboy ways.
Pursuin' the life of my high-ridin' heroes,
I burned up my childhood days.
I learned of all the rules of the modern-day drifter,
Don't you hold on to nothin' too long.
Just take what you need from the ladies, then leave them,
With the words of a sad country song.
My heroes have always been cowboys.
And they still are, it seems.
Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of,
Themselves and their slow-movin' dreams.

Cowboys are special with their own brand of misery,
From being alone too long.
You could die from the cold in the arms of a nightmare,
Knowin' well that your best days are gone.
Pickin' up hookers instead of my pen,
I let the words of my years fade away.
Old worn-out saddles, and 'old worn-out memories,
With no one and no place to stay.

My heroes have always been cowboys.
And they still are, it seems.
Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of,
Themselves and their slow-movin' dreams.

Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of,
Themselves and their slow-movin' dreams.
_______________________________
Perhaps not! Perhaps all Willie wanted to do was to do his bit, or forward his support to the gay people. Or maybe that he just wanted to make a few bucks by riding the popular wave, especially when Brokeback Mountain was already made, and his song, "He was a friend of mine" was used in it.

Who knows! Only poor Willie will be able to answer, unless of course he already forgot what he did!
__________________________________________________________________
Sources:
http://www.i-walt.com/inquietudes/archives/2006/02/cowboys_are_secretly_fond_of_each_other.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy_Division
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queercore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/nelson-willie/my-heroes-have-always-been-cowboys-2510.html
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/014434.html
http://ca.music.yahoo.com/read/news/21629728
http://zinhof.blog.hr/arhiva-2005-06.html

Bon Voyage, Mr. President!

Among the many books by Marquez that I read, "Strange Pilgrims", a collection of 12 of his short stories, is one of my favorites. The first and longest story in the book was entitled, "Bon Voyage, Mr. President". It was about a newspaper editor/owner in Colombia, who became the President of his country, only to be exiled later. It was a very beautiful story, and I loved it so much that I planned to translate it.

Anat A., a friend from Jerusalem I met in a Yahoo group, even provided me with Gabo's phone and FAX no.s, so that I could ask for his permission to translate and publish the story in my language. My mexican friend Lulu agreed to translate my letter into Spanish.

Of course, like many other othings in my life, I never wrote the latter, forget translating the story.

However, my intention was not to tell about myself, but about Camus and Gabo. Within a few months of reading "Strange Pilgrims", I read a series of books/essays by Camus. In one of them (I fail to remember the name....was it "Resistance, Rebellion and Death"?), I came across the address Camus prepapred for a then recently exiled President of Colombia who had once been a newspaper man.

Reading Camus led me to three conculsions: 2 of them significant and 1 insignificant.

The first: I realized that the greatness of an author lies in the way he presents his words. For an author such as Gabo, it was an easy task to make a real life story apprear like a make-believe story of the exile of a President (Of course, later I learned that Borges translated volumes of books that never existed!).

The second: I was awed by Camus's level of intellect. I understood that things he wrote at the age of 30 with the level of clarity that was his benchmark, only he could write. His level of intelelct was all his! Most of the rest would never reach that level.

And the insignificant effect: I realized that no matter what I did or how much I tried, I would never be able to reach the level of intellect that giants like Camus did, not even in a million births!

And my earlier decision not to try to write anything,taken after reading Gabo, Kundera and others, turned into a solid vow! (Forget this blog; someday I will delete this).
____________________________________________________________________

Note: This posting was partly instigated by a reply I wrote to a question of DP, who wanted to know if I ever wrote anything.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

Decifering The Romantic Code*

I had first listened to "If you don't know me by now", a song by Harold Melvin and his band, at the Washington Square in New York. A black gentleman and regular there sung it. After many months, I listened to the song the other day. It goes as follows:

If You Dont Know Me By Now
Artist: Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes
Album: If You Dont Know Me By Now

If you don't know me by now
You will never never never know me

All the things that we've been through
You should understand me like I understand you
Now girl I know the difference between right and wrong
I ain't gonna do nothing to break up our happy home
Oh don't get so excited when I come home a little late at night
Cos we only act like children when we argue fuss and fight

If you don't know me by now (If you don't know me)
You will never never never know me (No you won't)
If you don't know me by now
You will never never never know me

We've all got our own funny moods
I've got mine, woman you've got yours too
Just trust in me like I trust in you
As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do
Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye
What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye, oh

If you don't know me by now (If you don't know me)
You will never never never know me (No you won't)
If you don't know me by now (You will never never never know me)
You will never never never know me (ooh)

The song brought me back to a question, an aswer to which I have been long searching: Could we possibly know another person?

As a born pessimist (with extreme arrogance and stupidity who once believed, and was proud, that he could understand people and then found it otherwise as enlightenment dawned on him), my answer will be a curt "No".

I no longer believe that one can know/understand anoher person completely; nor do I believe that one can make others fully understand oneself. And I think, most of the human inter-personal relationships end up bruished and battered due to this very same reason.

The major factor that contribures towards this is: we fail to differentiate between infatuation and love. (What I will say here is mainly about romance, but the same could also be applied, in a sense, to friendship). When one is infatuated with someone, one feels that one knows the other person completely. During that colorful phase, one finds everything positive about one's partner. But then, as times goes by, reality slowly starts setting in and one starts unearthing findings that one never witnessed/noticed before. And more often than not, such findings are detrimental to the relationship.

Then the relationship slowly, almost imperceptibly, collapses.

People who once promised to die if he/she could not be with the other person forever, would, at a later date, struggle to remember the name of "that" person; people who claimed he/she knew the other person like the palm of one's own hand, would be surprised as to why the other person became so different. And then, one of the two people in the relationship would decide to withdraw, ending it and leaving the other person behind. And obviously, the end-product of all these will be that the person left behind would have to pass through a painful rite of passage.

This again makes me ask myself the same question: when could, if ever, one know that one knows someone? Or, is it that one can never really know another person completely and, so one will never never never know anyone?

Believe me, I don't have answer to this question!
____________________________________________________________________
Source: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/radio/ifyoudontknowmebynow.htm
*After, "Decifering The Chemical Code", a book by Professor Nicholoas D. Epiotis.

Accidentally Like A Werewolf!

Sept., 2003 was a significant month for me. This was the month in which I read about the deaths of Warren Zevon and Elia Kazan. Whereas I knew of the movie, "On The Waterfront", I knew nothing about its director Elia Kazan. I did not even hear the name of Warren Zevon prior to then. Actually, before 2001, perhaps I knew of only a handful of English songs. (Interestingly, Elia Kazans was born on 7th September, a day on which Zevon passed away!).

I still remember the CNN news item about Warren Zevon, and his most famous song, Werewolves of London. It was amusing to me, because someone had told me how the city of London has many stray Foxes. In my mind, the foxes do not differ much from wolves, and so Werevolves of London was an interesting title of a song to me.

I knew about "On the Waterfront" because of an article by someone named Uptal Datta, about the much-acclaimed Hindi movie "Parinda", made in Hindi. While the whole of India was ga-ga over this great movie, Datta clearly pointed out that it was an act of plagiarism, where the whole theme and the storyline was stolen from "On the Waterfront".

It would be in fall-2004 that I would finally watch "On the Waterfront". It was almost during the same time that I would listen to Zevon's "Werewolves of London".

However, till date, my most favorite of his songs is, "Accidentally Like a Martyr". If you don't believe my words, just look at the title of this blog!

Looking back now, it seems to me that the news of Warren Zevon's death could be the point at which I started becoming interested in the various info about English singers and bands.
__________________________
Accidentally Like A Martyr
(Warren Zevon)

The phone don't ring
And the sun refused to shine
Never thought I'd have to pay so dearly
For what was already mine
For such a long, long time

We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

The days slide by
Should have done, should have done, we all sigh
Never thought I'd ever be so lonely
After such a long, long time
Time out of mind

We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder
_______________________________
WereWolves of London
Recorded by "Warren Zevon"
Album: "Excitable Boy" - 1978

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein
Werewolves of London

If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again
Werewolves of London

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Hunh, I'd like to meet his tailor
Werewolves of London

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Werewolves of London
Hunh, Draw blood
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Sources:
http://www.lyricsondemand.com/w/warrenzevonlyrics/accidentallylikeamartyrlyrics.html
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/lyrics/werewolves_of_london.html
Pic Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius:_The_Best_of_Warren_Zevon