A Cartoonist's Advice

White Man's Burden

All this talk of US attacking Syria reminded me of this poem.

I wonder why Kipling was castigated for stating what happened and has been happening. The actions and attitudes and expectations and responses of the peoples involved have remained remarkably same over the years. Yet the wheels keep turning again and again over the same paths.


Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden
Ye dare not stoop to less
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden
Have done with childish days
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

                                                         -- Rudyard Kipling

Creation Hymn

This is a beautiful hymn, full of wonder and very honest. For once, someone is not trying to brush everything unknown under the feet of Gods. Someone is open to the thought that even the most revered Gods may be subsequent to this creation, and even they may not have an insight into its origins. Someone is brave enough to feel the raw awe and wonder truly about this creation.

Where do the gods fit in this creation scheme?

The non-existent was not; the existent was not at that time. 

The atmosphere was not nor the heavens which are beyond.

What was concealed? Where? In whose protection? 

Was it water? An unfathomable abyss?

There was neither death nor immortality then. 

There was not distinction of day or night. 

That alone breathed windless by its own power. 

Other than that there was not anything else.

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning. 

All this was an indistinguishable sea. 

That which becomes, that which was enveloped by the void, 

that alone was born through the power of heat.

Upon that desire arose in the beginning. 

This was the first discharge of thought. 

Sages discovered this link of the existent to the nonexistent, 

having searched in the heart with wisdom.

Their vision was extended across; 

what was below, what was above? 

There were impregnators, there were powers: 

inherent power below, impulses above.

Who knows truly? 

Who here will declare whence it arose, 

whence this creation? 

The gods are subsequent to the creation of this. 

Who, then, knows whence it has come into being?

Whence this creation has come into being; 

whether it was made or not; 

he in the highest heaven is its surveyor.

Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not.

                          --- Rig Veda

A Moment's Indulgence

You know I would say this for you...


I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works 
that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. 

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, 
and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. 

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and
the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove. 

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing 
dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure. 

                                                    -- Rabindranath Tagore

To Know

We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time

               --- A part of Four Quartets by T S Elliot.