Jeene ke liye, socha hi nehi dard uthane hoge
What if my heart, which I dismissed as an abstract construct or an extinct volcano yesterday, comes alive tomorrow and questions me, my right to assume on its behalf it's extinction absence for a lifetime? What if like memories of a child I gave up for adoption, my right to love haunts me? What if life turns around tomorrow & question my signing off happiness & living for as long as I live, for saying I have lived and loved already more than my share, or capacity, on all of our behalf ...
Heartbreak is like a sudden accident where you we're merrily going about your day, when you were hit suddenly by a train for no fathomable reason and you end up without an arm or an leg. Everyone will sympathize, no one will quite get it. The pain will drive you crazy at first then you will get used to. Slowly you will become initiated into the walking wounded club, amongst everyone but never one of them, separated for ever by something they will forever sympathize with, but never quite get. It will slowly teach you to lie, as you realize that no one really wants to hear about your pain, because no one will ever quite know how in what way it hurts somehow they will be resentful of it in a million ways.
There are many different kinds of love
No. Everybody does not spend his life chasing an impossible dream. Most normal people are not helplessly enslaved by rosé bushes. Very few people, relatively, are irredeemably fixated on a passion that is not wholesome. Only some people hold on to one love a whole long life long, even when it is irredeemable, unspeakable, unrequited and terribly completely perhaps permanently gone, long after the ghost of love has left – the petrified lover clutches desperately on. No. Thank god. Very few people really fall in love
New Blog, New Address, New Posts :-)
I am now writing at my new blog: http://chocolateamer.wordpress.com
letting go
first love is as arrogant as it is arbitrary
but losing & breaking humbles you
took all this shattering for me to break you out of me as a separate person
i will read a lorca without burning
to signal that i finally forgive you
and that i let her go
random things that remind me of you. arrestingly. paralyzingly
your initial
the colours blue
a good supermarket
a bad supermarket
pantene
sardines
children
old people
soldiers
mediation
breathing
my fingers
hair
yellow flowers
dandelions
books
words
poems
music
lovers
love
friends
friendship
happiness
sadness
anger
children
little boys
spring horses
mountain resorts
paddle boats
cars
the colours blue
a good supermarket
a bad supermarket
pantene
sardines
children
old people
soldiers
mediation
breathing
my fingers
hair
yellow flowers
dandelions
books
words
poems
music
lovers
love
friends
friendship
happiness
sadness
anger
children
little boys
spring horses
mountain resorts
paddle boats
cars
Pico Iyer in interview with Sandip Ray at the Kolkata Literature Meet (KLM) Part 2
there must be another more appropriate word
than "crush" to represent my feelings about pico iyer, graham green,
nayangshu, budhhadeb, kookie jar nuttie corners, kwalities strawberry
ice cream, bodum, yogatic, DTI tractography, MATLAB, connectionist
modelling, the hindu, titas, paris ...
Loved this interview with Pico Iyer and Sandip Ray
http://youtu.be/5XKggBRhLBw
"everyone in this room has some connection with this singer or writer, where you somehow feel that this unmet stranger, gets you, knows you and your secrets better than your friends and family do. so i decided to investigate graham green, and of course as you were saying, the more I thought about it, as to why do you create these alternative fathers, these shadow parents in our heads, in opposition to the parents who really created us. the more i thought about graham green the more i thought about my father and then they did converge and I suddenly i remembered, the last conversation i ever had with my father was on the subject of graham green, before he died 17 years ago.
when you are growing up, you think, that in order to make yourself in the world, in order to define yourself you have to run away from your family, you have to become the opposite of your parents. You have to define yourself by your first name, not your family name. And then 21 years later you look in the mirror or your hear your voice on an answering machine, and you realise you have turned into your parents. You rebel against them until you have become them
Its sometimes tougher to have a relationship with goodness. There are several quotes you have from Graham Green, talking about goodness and the problems of being good. And he says I wish you had a few bad motives you might understand a little mroe about human beings. And another book where he says its the good in the world that do all the harm. What was your relationship with goodness growing up? Where you the quintessential good boy? GG's relationship with goodness was that of a child with his face pressed against the window fascinated by integrity purity and simplicity which he could never get to himself. And the poignancy of his books is that he had such respect for goodness and felt he was so far from goodness. That tension is at the heart of most of his work.
When I was growing up I had one goal in my life when I was a boy and that was not to listen to my father and when he was gone I realized that the best source of wisdom I had was probably my father and I through my pride had squandered that opportunity.
And also, there's mixed feelings. Also I think we have a double standard. Its very difficult to look at yourself, and navel grazing just thow's a blank wall. But the minute there is something external that reflects yourself, you can bring a much more penetrating gaze"
PS: Who said recently in an article something to the effect that Calcutta is so full of itself and it and its under-cultured-ism, that it needs two Lit-Meets?
Loved this interview with Pico Iyer and Sandip Ray
http://youtu.be/5XKggBRhLBw
"everyone in this room has some connection with this singer or writer, where you somehow feel that this unmet stranger, gets you, knows you and your secrets better than your friends and family do. so i decided to investigate graham green, and of course as you were saying, the more I thought about it, as to why do you create these alternative fathers, these shadow parents in our heads, in opposition to the parents who really created us. the more i thought about graham green the more i thought about my father and then they did converge and I suddenly i remembered, the last conversation i ever had with my father was on the subject of graham green, before he died 17 years ago.
when you are growing up, you think, that in order to make yourself in the world, in order to define yourself you have to run away from your family, you have to become the opposite of your parents. You have to define yourself by your first name, not your family name. And then 21 years later you look in the mirror or your hear your voice on an answering machine, and you realise you have turned into your parents. You rebel against them until you have become them
Its sometimes tougher to have a relationship with goodness. There are several quotes you have from Graham Green, talking about goodness and the problems of being good. And he says I wish you had a few bad motives you might understand a little mroe about human beings. And another book where he says its the good in the world that do all the harm. What was your relationship with goodness growing up? Where you the quintessential good boy? GG's relationship with goodness was that of a child with his face pressed against the window fascinated by integrity purity and simplicity which he could never get to himself. And the poignancy of his books is that he had such respect for goodness and felt he was so far from goodness. That tension is at the heart of most of his work.
When I was growing up I had one goal in my life when I was a boy and that was not to listen to my father and when he was gone I realized that the best source of wisdom I had was probably my father and I through my pride had squandered that opportunity.
And also, there's mixed feelings. Also I think we have a double standard. Its very difficult to look at yourself, and navel grazing just thow's a blank wall. But the minute there is something external that reflects yourself, you can bring a much more penetrating gaze"
PS: Who said recently in an article something to the effect that Calcutta is so full of itself and it and its under-cultured-ism, that it needs two Lit-Meets?
i have messages saved in my to reply folder, which I really want to reply to. i feel like they got here yesterday, but whenever I open the folder I am shocked to see some from 2011. Since the last year didnt really happen for Rip Van Winkle, and my usual reply rate is so bad, it makes sense, in a twisted way. The thing is when I am not working, I would rather idly google "bitter and twisted" long island or Aethelstan "first king" english or posting random thoughts like this and then time flies ...
a lost poem. marked calcutta, india. returned to sender. no such city. no such place
hijacked by a poem
as urgent as a sneeze,
about an NRI with the latest model camera
with eyes blurry with apparent sympathy
molesting the personhood of the semi-nude sleeping rickshaw puller
who had called time out from his justanotherordinaryday
he scribbled frantically on a plastic bag
hiding under the stairs, with a spider peering over his shoulder
the bag was lost like a baby
which had climbed into someone else's basket in a railways station
the poem belong to calcutta
the said there was no such place
as urgent as a sneeze,
about an NRI with the latest model camera
with eyes blurry with apparent sympathy
molesting the personhood of the semi-nude sleeping rickshaw puller
who had called time out from his justanotherordinaryday
he scribbled frantically on a plastic bag
hiding under the stairs, with a spider peering over his shoulder
the bag was lost like a baby
which had climbed into someone else's basket in a railways station
the poem belong to calcutta
the said there was no such place
its all so pointless
to stay.
to go. to give in. to fight on
yet we go on. and on.
day after zombie day
when the pain is desperately bad,
we stare in to the horizon
and wait for it to pass
or grab a random stranger
and try to laugh and talk till it passes.
and it does and we go back to nothingness
no pain. no joy. no hopes. no fears
just a memory.
like cramp in the lung
to go. to give in. to fight on
yet we go on. and on.
day after zombie day
when the pain is desperately bad,
we stare in to the horizon
and wait for it to pass
or grab a random stranger
and try to laugh and talk till it passes.
and it does and we go back to nothingness
no pain. no joy. no hopes. no fears
just a memory.
like cramp in the lung
it is 11 o clock.
the world and her baby is asleep
i helped a new friend shovel snow all day
then an old friend telephoned
and we hicupped through pleasantries
maybe she thought to herself
as she hung up the phone,
how much i have changed
my friend joked about how in her house,
it is her man's job to shovel the snow
i smiled meaninglessly
and got back to sorting my bills
its such a strange divide,
between being somebody's woman,
and your own, own, your very precious own
to be protected by someone "bigger and stronger"
than you bigger and better and stronger.
bigger how?
by your subscription
to the company, the state, the patriarchy,
the mafia
and now i am suddenly, desperately lonely
but once i ride that choppy part
where the wave breaks,
its such an exhilarating feeling
the world and her baby is asleep
i helped a new friend shovel snow all day
then an old friend telephoned
and we hicupped through pleasantries
maybe she thought to herself
as she hung up the phone,
how much i have changed
my friend joked about how in her house,
it is her man's job to shovel the snow
i smiled meaninglessly
and got back to sorting my bills
its such a strange divide,
between being somebody's woman,
and your own, own, your very precious own
to be protected by someone "bigger and stronger"
than you bigger and better and stronger.
bigger how?
by your subscription
to the company, the state, the patriarchy,
the mafia
and now i am suddenly, desperately lonely
but once i ride that choppy part
where the wave breaks,
its such an exhilarating feeling
i must periodically revisit
the beginning
the scenes of the darkyears of my life.
the bleak years.
the hopeless years.
the years of helplessness, weakness,
painlessness, of glorying in evil,
of accidental humiliation
and mute injury.
if only to remind myself
how powerful the lumbering giants of childhood still are,
how unhealed are still the wounds,
which scream when the amazon brushes against it unawares,
how cowardly is still my heart as a flinch
and almost freeze when the lion growls up close without warning.
how fragile is recovery
and the illusion of the self remade self
and how full of grace
the beginning
the scenes of the darkyears of my life.
the bleak years.
the hopeless years.
the years of helplessness, weakness,
painlessness, of glorying in evil,
of accidental humiliation
and mute injury.
if only to remind myself
how powerful the lumbering giants of childhood still are,
how unhealed are still the wounds,
which scream when the amazon brushes against it unawares,
how cowardly is still my heart as a flinch
and almost freeze when the lion growls up close without warning.
how fragile is recovery
and the illusion of the self remade self
and how full of grace