अशी पाखरे येती

अशी पाखरे येती आणिक स्मृती ठेवुनी जाती
दोन दिसांची रंगत संगत दोन दिसांची नाती

चंद्र कोवळा पहिलावहिला
झाडामागे उभा राहिला
जरा लाजुनी जाय उजळुनी काळोखाच्या राती

फुलून येता फूल बोलले
मी मरणावर हृदय तोलले
नव्हते नंतर परि निरंतर गंधित झाली माती

हात एक तो हळु थरथरला
पाठीवर मायेने फिरला
देवघरातिल समईमधुनी अजून जळती वाती

कुठे कुणाच्या घडल्या भेटी
गीत एक मोहरले ओठी
त्या जुळल्या हृदयांची गाथा सूर अजुनही गाती

--  मंगेश पाडगांवकर

Snows of Kilimanjaro

There are some stories that read differently when you read them at different times in your life. It seems like you are seeing your life's reflection in these stories, and you find yourself nodding as you read them. And then as you ruminate, some things that were in the haze of your mind's background suddenly connect and shimmer forth.

I had read Snows of Kilimanjaro long back, and then, I had appreciated it for its brilliant portrayal of a dying man's mind. Today I read it, and I see much more. I see how his mind wanders and reminisces and regrets and how he eventually reaches an understanding. The understanding that everything he didn't do, was because he didn't do it, and because dreams need too much of work and renunciation to make them real. And that those were really not the dreams he wanted badly enough. Its a revelation that comes too late, there is no turning back, no fixing it in future. But its an understanding that gives him his peace.

Its a beautiful story. 

Road not taken

I find myself wondering about this many a times. What would life have been if any of the choices had just been different? And what would I have missed from here if life was different?


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


-- Robert Frost

A Lifetime of Learning

Another awesome strip from Zen.

What a wonderful world

Invictus

Nelson Mandela would recite this poem to his fellow prisoners during his long incarceration.


Out of the night that covers me,
   Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
   For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
   I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
   My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
   Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
   Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
   I am the captain of my soul.

                               --  William Henley

जिंदगी जब भी तेरी बज़्म

I have been missing one of my favorite compositions. Here it is.

जिंदगी जब भी तेरी बज़्म में लाती है हमें
यह ज़मीन चाँद से बेहतर नझर आती है हमें

सुर्ख फूलों से मेहक उठी है दिल कि राहें
दिन ढले यूँ तेरी आवाज़ बुलाती है हमें

याद तेरी कभी दस्तक कभी सरगोशी से
रात के कितने पेहर रोज़ जगाती है हमें

हर मुलाक़ात का अंजाम जुदाई क्यों है
अब तो हर वक़्त यही बात सताती है हमें

                                 -- कैफी आझमी

Put In Words

I sometimes hold it half a sin 
To put in words the grief I feel 
For words, like nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the soul within. 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain 
A use measured language lie's 
The sad mechanic exercise 
Like dull narcotic's, numbing pain 

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold 
But large grief which these enfold 
Is given in outline and no more. 


                                     ---- Tennyson from In Memoriam

Loved and Lost

I envy not in any moods

         The captive void of noble rage,

         The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

         His license in the field of time,

         Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

         The heart that never plighted troth

         But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

         I feel it, when I sorrow most;

         'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

                                 ---- Tennyson from In Memoriam

Pale Blue Dot

Voyager I is out of the heliosphere, once again and probably really this time around.

In 1990, after visiting Saturn and its primary mission completed, Voyager I turned around to take that picture of home before saying goodbye. The Pale Blue Dot is Earth photographed from about 6 billion kilometers away.

This picture was taken by a narrow-angle photograph. Eventually, NASA also published a composite image of Sun Earth and Venus. The wide-angle image was inset with two narrow-angle pictures centered on Earth and Venus. That image was composed of 640,000 individual pixels of which Earth takes up less than a pixel.

Cassini did a better job photographing the Earth this summer though. I suppose, though we are small and insignificant, we do have the ability to make ourselves count.


Excerpt from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

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. 

House divided by spoonfuls

I have always wondered how the peoples of South America came to accept the language and the religion of the Spanish conquistadors, to the extent that they intermarried and became virtually indistinguishable from their oppressors. And how do they look back on history today? Are they the vanquished or the victors? This poem captures this question really well.


In galleons, on war horses, with their lances
and helmets - illiterate the first lot -
they arrived in waves
and in this house which was ours,
right here, they laid down the law.
They were the kings,
they had the weapons.
And when in the end they went,
after some deaths, shootings and treaties,
as a legacy, they left us
their blood and the cross, a language and nothing;
the house divided
in spoonfuls.
Now neighbors, invited guests,
starving beggars, all claim us as their own.


-- Marco Martos

To-morrow, and to-morrow

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

                                           -- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Love is a Terrible Thing

There are times when love tires the heart that yearns to break free of all the nets and strings and dance with the wind under the blue sky...

I went out to the farthest meadow,
I lay down in the deepest shadow;
And I said unto the earth, “Hold me,”
And unto the night, “O enfold me,”
And unto the wind petulantly
I cried, “You know not for you are free!”
And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;
Then to the stars I told my tale:
“That is my home-light, there in the vale,
“And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern.
“For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear …”
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan,
“The heart in my bosom is not my own!
“O would I were free as the wind on wing;
Love is a terrible thing!”                                                   -- Grace Norton

The Lord is my shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

This is from the Bible.

I had heard this before and it had sounded so full of hope. I heard it, again, being recited while I watched Lost yesterday, and it touched me to feel how faith can be that ray of hope for people who have lucked out in life. Sometimes I think I can remain an atheist because I have not faced the soul wrenching trials and desperation that makes one yearn for the hope of faith; I would never know though.

Btw, this guy Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays Mr Eko in Lost impressed me by his acting. Its amazing how he was able to transform himself into two completely different characters so convincingly. His rendition of the verse above was very meaningful.

Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-- Khalil Gibran

I especially love the last stanza... very aptly put.