The importance of penning down love

I wonder if lovers still hand-write letters to each other. If they still sit a little lost, drumming their fingers on their heads, a pen dangling from their lips, thousand thoughts in their heads clamoring for attention. If they imagine a sweet sigh for every word they write, if the torn sheets full of rejected ink lie strewn on floor, rolled into balls. If they read and re-read what they have written, if their words ever match up to their yearnings, if they lick their postage stamps, if they post with a little prayer of intact delivery, if they jump at every door bell ring anticipating a reply...

I wonder if there was ever a love letter written whose author felt he could do justice to his feelings.

But then, you can always text message, instant message, write an e-mail or maybe call and you are left with no tangible proof of your labors of love which you can pull out of an ageing book when you are thirty-four.

Think about it.

Meanwhile, I will let Nizar Qabbani* convince you.

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.

--

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

(Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown)
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*Another poet whose work transcends language barriers. What Neruda is to Spain, Qabbani is to Syria except that a very few translations of his poetry are available online. You can read more of him here

What-say, dude?

Here follows some non-sequitur babble...

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I am not your experimental reader. I am skeptical. If you recommend a book to me , I would probably spend hours on the internet researching it, getting acquainted with the author, and only when it passes my-stuck-up muster, I decide to read it. Sometimes I over-estimate my reading capabilities and purchase books like 'The Great Indian Novel' which sit pretty on the shelf gathering glances. Sometimes I am gifted books I can't bring myself to peruse like 'Brida'.

So, one fine day, I decided to put an end to this uptight behavior because (a) I was reading faster than money could buy (b) Gifts should be honored. Anyways, I was going to spend a total of 60 hours over a week on a train or waiting for it, I thought I would just carry one reading material called 'Brida' and lack of options would make me read it. Sigh! Brida is still chaste.

The moral of the story is - If you can't read a Paul Coelho, you can't.

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I have a desire to see a revolution which is not related to technology. Who cares what iphone is coming next? Earlier, I thought if I had a time machine, I would go to 1940s and witness Indian freedom struggle. Now, I think going to 1960s would be bitchen, boy!

Ironically, one will have to bear another technological revolution of time machine being invented to do that.

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And on a parting note, always remember this, it is never too late to fall in love with Yeats.

In absence of zariwala aasmaan(it's so damn hot already), I present you with my favorite Yeats poem:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...

Q*: Have you tried going cold turkey?

A few authors in this world are not just mere mortals sitting at their writing desks and penning down stuff. They are pure evil. They have devilish powers and they have ulterior motives. Their pens are filled with magic potions. They are like those drug peddlers who will entice you, enamor you, engage you and finally, end you. You start with reading one of their books and you know what... it's already too late. You can't escape. You are addicted. You want to read ALL, ALL, ALL.

So, let me put, in chronological order, how I have been doped all my growing up years by the following heartless brutes...

Enid Blyton
She brought a spark of Satan in my angelic childhood. For her sake, the only person I have ever ass-licked in my entire life is my school librarian. But since I was issued two books instead of one every week, I think it was all worth it.
Also, I had an invisible friend called 'Shy' for a few years. She was a long lost twin of Amelia Jane. I had hyped her enough to make Emma Bee extremely envious of her. It was a lot of fun seeing her shout at vacant spaces, in pretence of arguing with 'Shy'

R.K. Narayan
I only read his first book after I had watched a good amount of 'Malgudi Days' on DD-1. I loved Swamy and his antics and fantasized about South Indian life and its food( which I have had enough of, by the way). He provided an insight into an India which was so alien to me at that time that I just wanted to go there and see it all by myself. His books were a perfect everyday read because they made simple routines sound so interesting.

Agatha Christie
She is the worst of the lot. You start a book by her and you do not put it down till you have reached the end. So what is you become asocial or irresponsible... So what if the school homework is missed or your mother keeps calling for dinner or there are guests you are required to greet or the hell breaks loose and comes crashing on your head...her books are a break free read. Front to back. Period.

P.G. Wodehouse
This sunshine author is my savior. I was miserable in the last two years of my school life. I had taken science and maths as my electives( Can you beat it! BY CHOICE!)... I couldn't study, hid in my shell, lost all interest in life and was like a zombie... till he dropped by and resurrected me. I read him on the sly, hid him in my text books while the classes were on, and flunked my way out of those two years laughing my head off! I have read and re-read all his books... and yet whenever I am in one of my morbid moods, I pick him up and voila! I smile.
Also, he is responsible for my love of everything English... and since he is dead and I can't treat him to an English brunch, someday I will have a cupboard in my house full of hard bound copies of all his books (which of course, I will keep locked, in case you are making plans of borrowing him)

Vikram Seth
He is my kind of a writer... honest and simple... who one can read right through like an open book. He writes fiction in a real kind of way and I am in love with his poetry. Since I read 'The Golden Gate' five years ago, I suffer from this terrible urge to rhyme everything. So, you can blame all my verses on him, for he is the one who inspired this art, what can I say more except that, he is the man after my own heart.

Salman Rushdie
What an obsessive compulsive disorder he is! I can't understand what he writes, the way he writes it and why he writes it... still every time he writes something, I have to go to a bookstore, buy it, attempt it and then throw it on my bookshelf! Maybe subconsciously I want to be a part of 'that group' which 'can understand' what he writes...for what else can be the reason for this irrational behavior in which I flush my money down the drain, buying the books I will NEVER EVER READ!

Margaret Atwood
She is the recent one... and is turning out to be a persistent one... she has sort of brought up the girl in me into a woman... and is making this 'feminism' affliction worse day by day... so may lord bless the guy who ends up with me... for he is going to have SUCH A HARD TIME! No, seriously, whatever gender you are, read 'The Handmaid's Tale'... its like being delivered into a completely different perspective... like you have scuba dived into the some unfathomable depths and saw something brand new... it is a cathartic experience.

Aksar
Since I read as many blogs as books, it's only fair I get addicted to at least one, isn't it? And so I am. I think I will end up stalking this blog to its death( No, I take this back, please don't die). It is like my daily bread and there has not been a day when I have not visited this site for some poetry... I just click on a random archive link and soothe my stressed nerves ...this works wonders, believe me! This is one blog which should be a book (which I can help compile, really!)

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Reading a particular author repeatedly is almost same as discovering a new person, befriending a stranger (albeit in a very one-sided way)... because no matter whatever degree of fiction an author pens down, a little bit of him or her always creeps into it... and no matter with how much of a detached critic's eye you read a book... a little bit of it creeps into you too!It's only fair...isn't it?

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*A: Did you really ask that, DID YOU? Are you even aware what contra indications of this can be, ARE YOU? I tried it and yes, I got random urges to steal books, flick them straight off the bookshelves of fancy stores (though I can blame SK for putting this fancy idea in my head in the first place)... No, I would rather be a chronic reader than a kleptomaniac any day... Wouldn't you?

Even her dark side is witty

It is such a delight to discover a poet like Dorothy Parker.
She is funny, witty and such a 'wisecracker'.
I can imagine her, wearing a fancy hat, sitting in one of those upper class Manhattan lounges, sipping a margarita, and driving everyone crazy with her candid conversations.

No poet is spared a dark side and because I have such a pre-dilection for exploring dark poetry, I present a simple yet pensive account by her of why she stopped attempting suicides (and died a natural death at age 73).

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Here, she is a little cynical about love(maybe like everyone who has experienced the falling in it is)...

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Aah! What a woman!

PS: If you want to read more by her, click on the title of this post. It has a link to most of the poetry written by her.

This one is for her

It is not an age she should look forward to... ideally...
It is an age where she is one-more-deep in so called Q-life crisis...
Still... she wants all of it... because today she can quote her favorite man to herself...

Sit, drink your coffee here;
Your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six,
And still have some life ahead.
No need for wit;
Just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away

She sometimes dreams she was his muse...
How she flatters herself!

Now only if he could actually read this to her, she would consider this life lived.

Heads I win, Tails you lose!

I want to keep this narcisstically-self-indulgent-blog-of-a-thing as original as possible, but today it simply can't be. And may not be for some time to come. For you see, I am neck deep in love with Ahmed Faraz . I wish I could express even a tenth of what he does, the way he does it, but we know I can't. So, skip amateur me, and welcome this genius.

us ne kaha sunn
ahad nibhane ki khatir mat aana
ahad nibhane wale aksar majburi ya mahjuri ki thakan se lauta karte hai
tum jao aur dariya dariya pyaas bujhao
jin aakhon mein doobon
jis dil mein bhi utron
meri talab aawaz na degi
lekin jab meri chahat aur meri khwahish ki lau
itni tez aur itni oochi ho jaye
jab dil ro de
tab laut aana

You may call this being optimistic or naive or impractical or over-confident or trusting or risk-taking or too-much-in-love or whatever... I will call it letting-go-on-a-leash.

[ For the uninitiated, here is a little translation...
She* says...
Don't come back to me just for the sake of keeping a promise you made
For those who consider promises as onerous obligations are often tired of keeping them
I will let go of you...
You are free to find love elsewhere
Get enchanted by another pair of eyes
Get lured by another heart
My longing will not call you back
But
When my desires reach their zenith
When my heart cries out for you
Then, come back]
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* I take the liberty of defining the gender here because I am not able to see this from the perspective of a guy. Apologies, Ahmed.

Loss

Whatever little poetry I write, rhymed or otherwise, I have never really struggled with it. It just comes to me and I put it down somewhere… But not today. Today, I have an idea, a desire, a deep sense of loss, some elusive words… but I am scared to pen down my thoughts, because I do not want to grant them the luxury of permanence that comes with writing.

Instead, like someone who loves rain but hates getting wet, I take refuge in the words of another poet, who is Javed Akhtar, who has written this so well that it is universal, and thus, his loss becomes universal too. I am not even attempting a translation here, because if you can't understand in the language it is written, then there is no point in reading this.

Main bhool jaaon tumhe, ab yahi munaasib hai
Magar bhoolna bhi chaahoon to kis tarah bhooloon
Ke tum to phir bhi haqikat ho koi khwaab nahin
Yahan to dil ka ye aalam hai kyaa kahoon
Bhula saka na ye wo silsila jo thaa hi nahin
Wo ik khyaal jo awaaz tak gaya hi nahin
Wo ek baat jo main keh nahin saka tumse
Wo ek rawt jo hum mein kabhi raha hi nahin
Mujhe hai yaad wo sab jo kabhi hua hi nahin
Agar ye haal hai dil ka to koi samjhaaye
Tumhe bhulaana bhi chaahoon to kis tarah bhooloon
Ke tum to phir bhi haqikat ho koi khwaab nahin

Have you ever come across something that exactly articulates your thoughts ... something you were afraid to express yourself?