At The Edge

A note on one of the most violent modern Hindi poems.One more reason to hate wars. It makes old people blood thirsty. "From 22nd December 1962, the composition of the poem called Parshuram ki Pratiksha started and it was completed on 7th January 1963. Stirred by the Chinese invasion, he wrote several poems, but in this poem the anger of the whole country was articulated. By 25th December, 1962 most of the passages had been written. When his friend Manoranjan Prasad Sinha heard them, he thought that the poet was showing arrogance. But Dinkar was not at all receptive to such a comment. He wrote in his diary, Sivaji Ganesan in Ratha Thilagam, 1963. The Tamil China War movie. The poem has burst out from the abstruse part of the situation; it has emerged from its basic centre. If one is face to face with the centre, it becomes clear that a grave mistake has been committed. Those days he sat on the third floor of his house on Arya Samaj road at Patna, shed tears and kept wri...

Shah Jahan.  An average maharaja A Few statistics about princes are in order. On average each prince has 11 titles can wear three uniforms has 5.8 wives (or concubines) procreates 12.6 children lives in five palaces dies at the age of 54 owns 9.2 elephants kills 22.5 tigers during lifetime possesses 2.8 specially fitted railway carriages owns 3.4 Rolls-Royces ~  Life Magazine 31 April 1947

Kanan Devi in Vidyapati, 1937 Previously: Choli pay nazariya jaye -0- Now youth advanced, childhood withdrew, Her eyes have caught the dancing of her feet, Twin eyes performed the task of messengers, Her laughter hid, and shame was born. Continually she sets her hand upon her robe. Speaks every word with hanging head: Her hips have gained their full-grown glory - She leans on her companions when she walks. ~ from Vidyapati: Bangiya Padabali, Songs of the Love of Radha and Krishna.Translated into English by Ananda Coomaraswamy (1915) [ openlibrary.org LINK ] -0-

At Indirapuram, Ghaziabad October, 2012 I, a Paper Ravan The glimmering of the stars The hustle and bustle of the streets And the colourful company of the friends – These bandits make away with my fortune In the twinkling of an eye. With a view to protecting myself I take refuge, broken and defeated, In the primal cave of my mind. When I find the shadow of a giant, repeating ' Adam- bo , adam -bo' . I settle down, in the primal cave of my heart, with bated breath like a pigeon in front of a cat. In the world of the primal cave dreams keep me company and Ego talks about me and they respond to my intentions. Let this mystery be cleared and my query answered. In a train disaster the travellers were cut into pieces. why shouldn't I search for myself in the list printed in bold letters? or in a fair that of Chhapaar Why should I show my skill, perform cycling feats before a crowd, revolving like a wheel? Or in the Kumbhmela I slip down fr...

When the colorful Holi Came sailing with a sweet Rapturous motion; when it threw Away the veil from its face And put forth before the eye The splendor of her face All shimmering with bright ornaments; Then merrily She set  her foot And the anklets showered a spray Of sweet and charming music From her eyes flashed A succession of coquettish winks And some passionate sighs Vibrated in her breast. - Nazir Akbarabadi Translation Rafiq Zakaria

  Zones of Assault by Ranjit Hoskote (born in Bombay, in 1969), his first book of poems, was published in 1991. From the book's back cover: This is also, at one level, a poetry of landscape, of battleground, foodplains and mountains. The vitiated coast of and near Bombay (where the poet lives) and a Central Asian terrains - inherited from Hoskote's ancestral past, which is Kashmiri - play a significant role in some poems. Reviewing Zones of Assault , in 1991 for India Today , Agha Shahid Ali , a poet who often traced his Kashmiri ancestry in his work, wrote: "Hoskote wants to discover language, as one would a new chemical in a laboratory experiment. This sense of linguistic play, usually missing from subcontinental poetry in English, is abundant in Hoskote’s work." -0- Two Women in Midsummer Two women in midsummer Sharing their loss In traditional white. Walls, their bricks baked brown, Relieved now and then By pictures fading into cool green remembr...

Famous Shri 420 song: Mera Joota hai Japani Yeh Patloon Inglistani Sar pe lal topi rusi Phir bhi dil hai hindustani A really rough translation: My shoe is Japanese This pant, English Red hat on the head, Russian And yet my heart is Indian It is almost a relic from the Nehru-Socialist-Raj Kapoor-Idealist era. Shailendra , the lyricist of the song, had a knack for writing such songs - he also wrote the other (what I like to believe to be a) Nehruvian song - Jeena isi ka naam hai from the film Anari)  Here's are two instances in which the song made its way to literature from this part of the world. 'O, my shoes are Japanese, These trousers English, if you please. On my head, red Russian hat; my heart's Indian for all that.' sings Gibreel Farishta while plunging down to earth in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Next one comes from I. Allan Sealy's The Trotter-Nama. At the end of a Hindu-Muslim riots some boys sing the song: My shoes they a...

  Durga. Luminous like the moon is her face, and a sight of it charms away many a woe. Her hair hangs like Shivji's serpents; her eyes are the envy of both the lotus and the gazelle. Her brows are in the manner of a bow; her lashes like the arrows. She has the waist of a lion and marches with the majesty of a royal tusker. She abides on the mountain-top; none can resist the splendor of her charms. She holds a sword in her hand and rides a lion; Flaming like gold is her presence. In another hand she carries a bow of war. The fish are shamed by her restless energy; The lotus and the gazelle by the softness of her eyes; The parrots by her nose; The pigeons by her neck; The cuckoo by her voice; The pomegranate by the pearly row of her teeth. Touching the person of the goddess, The moonbeams have become more lustrous. - lines from Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki (popularly named Chandi-di-Var ) written by tenth Guru of Sikhs, warrior-poet, Guru Gobind Singh.  This tran...

Are you not weary of ardent ways, lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days. Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze And you have had your will of him. Are you not weary of ardent ways? Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim. Tell no more of enchanted days. Our broken cries and mournful lays Rise in one eucharistic hymn. Are you not weary of ardent ways? While sacrificing hands upraise The chalice flowing to the brim, Tell no more of enchanted days. And still you hold our longing gaze With languorous look and lavish limb! Are you not weary of ardent ways? Tell no more of enchanted days. - A villanelle, a pastoral poem by James Joyce that can be found in his semi-autobiographical novel Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, first published in book form in 1916.  (Image: Something I did to a publicity still featuring Rekha.) -0- (Image: An illustration by Pierre Sonnerat (1748-1814), a French naturalist and explorer...

Will Muhammad look like Amitabh or will heaven look like Zeenat Aman? - Last lines from the poem 'Will Heaven look like Zeenat Aman?' by Bushra Rehman . [You can read it at her website] Image: Something I did to a publicity still from the film 'Pukar' (1983) starring Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman. It's that sea bather's song from the film. -0- And yes, some Zeenat Aman (and other philum) paintings by Chitra Ganesh .

a woman may collect cats read thrillers her insomnia may seep through the great walls of history a lizard may paralyze her a sewing machine may bend her moonlight may intercept the bangle circling her wrist a woman my name her cats the circulating library may lend her new thrillers a spiked man may impale her a woman may add a new recipe to her scrapbook judiciously distilling her whimper the city lights may declare it null and void in a prodigious weather above a darkling woman surgeons may shoot up and explode in a weather fraught with forceps woman may damn man a woman may shave her legs regularly a woman may take up landscape painting a woman may poison twenty three cockroaches - a poem by Arun Kolatkar from year 1967. Translated by Adil Jussawalla. Found it in New Writing in India (1974) ed. by Adil Jussawalla.  

Garmiyon may Kashmir jannat hai In summer Kashmir is a paradise - from "A dictionary of hindustani proverbs: including many Marwari, Panjabi, Maggah, Bhojpuri, and Tirhuti proverbs, sayings, emblems, aphorisms, maxims, and similes" by S. W. Fallon, Richard Carnac Temple, Dihlavi Fakir Chand. Originally published: Benares : E.J. Lazarus & Co., 1886. Photograph taken by me in June 2008.: View from a Shikara floating on Dal Lake. What's wrong with this picture? An old photograph by James Burke. Is the frame upside down?

“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.” - Mahatma Gandhi [Last Phase, Vol. II (1958), P. 65] . Lines could be found on the first page of every school text book printed by NCERT (National Council of Education Research and Training). Hindi text books had a translation of the lines. -0- Photograph: A child on the outskirts of Delhi. 14th May 2009. Unrelated post from my Kashmir blog: Bhookha Nanga Hindustan

We fight and our formation never wavers. Orders we obey and this is right. At a word from our commander fathers We ride out to cut and thrust and fight. - An old cossack song. Came across these lines, many years ago, in a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov . And we create music. Photographs taken at Jammu in April 2009. Right, the Army Band: Bagpipers of The 18 Grenadiers of Indian Army.

7 May, 2009 A ball-pen Sketch Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) -0- Page 36 Resin, viscous and heavy, endeavours to ooze out in frangrance, which would like to be locked forever in resion form. And melody calls for movement and searches a cadence, while rhythm pushes on into melody back to transform. Vagueness wants to acquire both form and definite facets, whereas form fades in fog and dissolves in amorphous dream. Things unbounded long to be squeezed in straitjackets, with the limits eroded afresh by the boundless stream. Who hath laid for eternity laws of the primeval quarrel - Death engenders creation, quiesence foreshadows a tamult? When restrained, all and everything seek to any corral, When as liberty looks for abode and a final result. Page 71 The silly mind, it's looking for a way To see itself in history in vain. It roams aimlessly, from room into the open, And further to the distant fields ahead, And to the forest dense It st...

  "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream"         by  Waring's Pennsylvanians , released 1929 video link The song was used to some great effect in 1986 film by Jim Jarmusch "Down by Law"starring Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni. Here's the hilarious scene that Roberto Benigni rolls out: video link -0- The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1923) by Wallace Stevens Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only empe...

Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, holds his iPhone as he speaks with Associated Press during an interview at his residence in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009.Zaeef spent almost four years in Guantanamo. He wears a black turban and has a thick beard -- and he is a huge fan of Apple's iPhone."It's easy and modern and I love it," Zaeef said Wednesday while he pinched and pulled his fingers across the device's touch screen to show off photos. "I'm using the Internet with it. Sometimes I use it for the GPS to find locations."( AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool ) And The Beatles were singing: Does he have an iphone, and loves his Apple? Does he like his new iphone with touchpad or NOT, The Mullah of Talib? -0- Edward Lear's The Akond of Swat by famous American voiceover and recording artist Ken Nordine video link -0- Dirge of the Moolla of Kotal: Rival of the Akhoond of Swat by George T Lanigan (184...

A thread of rhythm runs through man, And blossom and brute and the body of God; But the critic, who oft is a lampless clod, Still comes with his little endless span A hollow phrase and a measuring rod.          - Harindranath Chattopadhyay Video link Clip: Harindranath Chattopadhyay (April, 1898 - June 23, 1990, Mumbai) as the fiercely patriarchal Daduji in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's year 1972 film Bawarchi . Quirky dialogues by Gulzar and a great natural act by Harindranath Chattopadhyay made this character very special and memorable. He also gave vocals to the refreshing classical based song bhor aayi gaya andhiyaara from this film.( video )   The following year, in 1973 Harindranath Chattopadhyay was awarded Padma Bhushan in the field of Literature and Education. Harindranath Chattopadhyay was a poet, a dramatist, a musician and an actor. One of his most famous poems is Noon. The vivid imagery he evokes in his lines is mesmeriz...

The Traitor Not even a handful of green will grow if you pour on a heap as big as the Himalayas blood as much as the Indian Ocean - a crank still swears by this, and lives somewhere in a by-lane of Bombay. He trembles with a nameless fear and makes water when he hears the street-dogs bark. Call him coward rather than crank. He gulps down his daily ration of liquid fire served by the morning papers, and then to expiate the sin fingers the love-locks of children; reads the Gita and warns himself, 'Don't you touch a weapon. Beware.' Opens his umbrella only to remember the nuclear mushroom, and places his hand on just anybody's shoulder to regain his balance. He cries like a neuter, effeminately, when he hears the war songs in khakhi uniforms. Call him traitor rather than neuter. Chewing his nut of nemesis, he raves, though awake, 'How I would love to live, and see Picasso's dove flying in the sky!' - Vinda Karandhikar Translated...

And this is true, No man can live Who does not bury god in a deep grave And then raise up the skeleton again, No man who does not break and make, Who in the bones finds not new faith, Lends not flesh to ribs and neck, Who does not break and make his final faith. - Dylan Thomas Poem of May 23, 1933 in February 1933 Notebook -0- About the image: Flammarion Woodcut by an unknown artist and first documented in 1888. Read more about the image at wiki