The Sacred and the Profane

Stir

2010-11-20T02:06:00.001+05:30

You wake me up in the middle of the night and give me a dream to follow.

I once used to chase dreams like a little boy chases butterflies – with joy in his eyes, jumping over the rocks in his path with ease – until my innocence was stolen and the world became ugly.

The dream you show me stirs me up. I don’t know if now’s any different, but I will take it. Chase it against the setting sun and the puffy clouds and alpine forests. As long as it will keep me alive. This dream.

I dwell in Possibility

2010-09-11T02:56:00.001+05:30

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of Eye –
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

Emily Dickinson

Things I’ve done

2010-08-07T16:06:00.001+05:30

I picked this tag from Vasudha’s blog. Was fun!

1. ~~Graduated high school~~.[Awfully long time ago. 5 years?]

2. Kissed someone.

3. Smoked a cigarette.

4. Got so drunk you passed out.

5. ~~Rode every ride at an amusement park~~.[Strange day in a strange city. 7 years ago?]

6. ~~Collected something stupid~~. [Seashells. Oddly shaped stones. Ribbons (Why do I do that?). Chocolate wrappers (of course). Someone’s doodles.]

7. ~~Gone to a rock concert~~. [Only because I was on the organising committee. A nightmare!]

8. ~~Helped someone~~.

9. Gone fishing.

10. ~~Watched four movies in one night~~.[Friends, hostel, weekend in the beginning of a term, and that weirdly filling stuff called Maggi.]

11. ~~Lied to someone~~.

12. Snorted cocaine.

13. Smoked weed.

14. Failed a subject.

15. Been in a car accident. [Does it count if just one of the glasses cracks?]

16. Been in a tornado.

17. ~~Watched someone die~~. [I’m a med student.]

18. Been to a funeral.

19. Burned yourself.

20. Run a marathon.

21. ~~Cried yourself to sleep~~.

22. ~~Spent over 10,000 bucks in one day~~. [Books. Family shopping.]

23. ~~Flown on an aeroplane~~.

24. Cheated on someone.

25. Been cheated on.

26. ~~Written a 10 page letter~~. [Longer. Long ago.]

27. Gone skiing.

28. Been sailing.

29. ~~Cut yourself~~. [Oh yeah, beautiful day. Didn’t hurt one bit.]

30. ~~Had a best friend~~. [Still do.]

31. ~~Lost someone you loved~~.

32. ~~Got into trouble for something you didn’t do~~. [Didn’t we all?]

33. Stolen a book from the library. [Sacrilege!]

34. Gone to a different country.

35. ~~Watched the Harry Potter movies~~.

36. Had an online diary.

37. ~~Fired a gun~~. [NCC. I’m almost apologetic, but I’ll probably be given one soon.]

38. Gambled in a casino.

39. ~~Been in a school play~~.

40. Been fired from a job.

41. Taken a lie detector test.

42. Swam with dolphins.

43. ~~Voted for someone on a reality TV show~~. [Embarrassing to admit now, but he was so cute!]

44. ~~Written poetry~~.

45. ~~Read more than 20 books a year~~.

46. Gone to Europe.

47. ~~Loved someone you shouldn’t have~~. [And it keeps coming back.]

48. ~~Used a colouring book over age 12~~.

49. ~~Had a surgery~~. [In plural, actually. Teeth. Gallbladder.]

50. ~~Had stitches~~. [Minimal. The surgery was laparoscopic]

51. ~~Taken a Taxi~~.

52. ~~Had more than 5 IM conversations going on at once~~.

53. Been in a fist fight.

54. ~~Suffered any form of abuse~~.

55. ~~Had a pet~~. [Technically those birds belonged to my sister, but what the hell, we were in the same house.]

56. Petted a wild animal.

57. ~~Had your own credit card & bought something with it~~. [Books, and icecream]

58. Dyed your hair.

59. Got a tattoo.

60. Had something pierced. [Thank God, no!]

61. ~~Got straight As~~. [Those were the days!]

62. ~~Known someone personally with HIV or AIDS~~.

63. ~~Taken pictures with a webcam~~.

64. ~~Lost something expensive~~. [Amma’s pearl necklace. Don’t even remember how that happened. Nor how I didn’t get any punishment]

65. Gone to sleep with music on. [No, I couldn’t sleep of that guilt!]

35 done!

The Life Ramblings (No. 2)

2010-08-04T05:10:00.001+05:30

Part Two of a post I’d written earlier. Follows the invention of reproduction (asexual).

* * *

Why sex was one of life’s greatest inventions.

1. Organisms (molecule systems, qv) were reproducing by fragmentation and continued survival.

2. The pieces that resulted could live, and found new ways of doing old things / new things to do.

3. Therefore, most new babies belonged to different groups, some closer to a few others in structure / mechanisms, and farther from others.

4. In another accident, two forms which were different came close and fused together when say, a wave hit them into togetherness.

5. The wall between them dissolved (?), and they became one system.

6. It was one hell of an uncomfortable situation. But they found they were having a lot of new things inside them (which actually has now become “it”). This was nature’s first act of sex. Divine. Beautiful.

7. It liked the new things. It was happier than the rest of the “singles.”

8. When this chimera fragmented into new babies, they lived better. They were the first family.

9. More and more of these sexual acts happened. More and more organisms found mates and had sex. They together became their own babies before they fragmented.

10. These sexual beings lived better.

Ergo, sex.

Ergo, improvement.

Ergo, diversity.

Exam Revelations

2010-08-04T04:40:00.001+05:30

Wrote this a looong time ago, after a long stint of exams. Reproduced from a document with amendments.

* * *

· A day is an infinitesimally, shamefully small unit of time.

· Never discuss your progress in revision with anyone but your study partner (if you have one). Else, you will have people dishing out advice from all directions, beginning something like, “Tu abhi bhi Paper II hi kar raha hai?”

· Mnemonics. Make good ones, but let them be easy to remember. You shouldn’t have to invent another mnemonic to remember one. Yesterday I heard one beginning ‘Teri…’ Naah, I won’t forget that one.

· Poetry and undergraduate Pharmacology are highly incompatible. You could even say they’re mutually destructive.

· Inside the examination hall, when you want the guy in front of you to shake the bench a little less, feel free to tell him so. But make sure the proctor hears what exactly you’re telling him.

· In a viva voce examination, take the examiner to some territory you’re familiar with. If there’s nothing there, practise a nice pitiable face. Also wear an immaculate uniform including a pressed apron and polished shoes. Just in case.

· Study a lot. Learn a lot of small details. But don’t forget – in Heaven’s name – what a rabbit looks like and how it’s different from a Guinea Pig (No, it wasn’t me).

Possibility

2010-08-04T03:51:00.001+05:30

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.

AYN RAND

Explanation

2010-08-04T03:43:00.001+05:30

Shades of Manic-Depressive Disorder. Mild.

Edited College Mag. Hypomania.

Depression.

Presented a Medical Symposium at the Bombay Medical Congress. Child Abuse: More Than What Meets the Eye. Worked like it was the end of the world. Won the trophy. Hypomania. (Depression?)

Depression.

Read Whitman. Nothing.

Depression.

Read Dickinson. A Stir?

Depression.

Exams. Got through.

Wrote some. Never posted.

Two and a Half Men. Yuck!

“Where are you?
Write, dude, write! :D” Definitely a stir.

Depression.

The Suicide debate. Almost lost a friend over it.

Depression. (Or was that indifference?)

Read Rumi. Recovery?

Ate like a horse and starved myself, alternately.

Tried to write. Load of crap even I couldn’t reread.

Final Year MBBS. Yeah Okay.

The Big Bang Theory. Long lost friends call me to tell me someone here reminds them of me. Uh huh.

Will & Grace. Yeah Baby!

Today.

Am I Okay? Not a clue.

Why am I back? ‘Cuz I need it.

Fools Rush In - The Papal Faux Pas

2009-03-21T23:10:00.007+05:30

Please note, before you read further, that I do not have any religious affiliations. Nor do I have anything against any religious establishment or personality. (My religion is the business of me and my God.) This post deals with an idea, not a person. A certain religious personality is recurrently mentioned in this post. I respect that person for all that he is.

If you are an ardent Roman Catholic or very fervently hate condoms, do not read further. Don’t blame me later: you’ve been warned.

* * *

What do you do when you have a problem?

If you were a simple, normal and sensible human being, you would analyse the situation, find out what caused the problem, and then try and fix it. If the problem involves other human beings, you would try to think like them, so you could have in perspective everyone involved. And if you still couldn’t find a solution, you would submit the problem to someone better equipped than you are – resource-wise, knowledge-wise and intellect-wise. If you were a simple, normal and sensible human being.

When some people bypass all these steps in problem-solving and jump to conclusions on an issue they hardly understand, the results are often amusing. Sometimes, sometimes, they are outrageous. A recent remark made by the Pope has evoked a similar response from me and my friends. And I realised reading the papers today that we were not the only ones.

Pope Benedict XVI said in front of the international Media and an aghast medical community that condoms are useless in the battle against AIDS in Africa – they’re not weapons, but may actually aggravate the problem.

I say, respected Sir, what are your references? Have you published any research papers to this effect, or read any? If you think the solution to this problem is imparting a spiritual education to people and asking them not to be promiscuous, what is your experience in this field, and what is its success rate? If you start a campaign now around Africa on this mission of shoving spirituality down the throats of millions of people, would you guarantee the eradication of the virus in say, fifteen years? Do you have any experience in Sociology that prompted you to make a remark such as you did? What do you know about the habits and lives of millions of Africans living in conditions hardly imaginable for a majority of the world’s population?

If you indeed have an idea better than what the rest of the world thinks, can you devise a workable plan involving the required personnel, counsellors, etc, fund it, and prove to the world that you are right?

The distribution and use of condoms has proven to be effective in combating the spread of the AIDS pandemic, however slowly. Thousands of healthcare personnel are spending their lives in this endeavour. An irresponsible statement made by someone who wields immense power over the thought processes of millions of people worldwide can jeopardise the whole process.

We are not fools, Your Holiness. Please do not pull an issue too far. If you don’t like condoms, please don’t use them. But please don’t say they don’t work. You don’t have the knowledge or the experience. You don’t have the right. To solve a problem of global proportions, you need to have these. And if you say that what you have against a deadly, constantly mutating immunosuppressive virus is just a few magic words – well, thank you very much – we have the condom.

* * *

I don't have an email address for hate mail. Do pour it all in the Comments.

Rebooting

2009-03-21T22:59:00.002+05:30

Still alive.

Been busy with a few things. Very busy. Busy like I've had no time to step here and feed something in my blog. Poor thing. Looks like it has been starving quite some.

I'll post a few things related to what I'd been upto in the past couple of months. And I'm yet to fill in Vasudha's exciting Tag, a few opinions to voice, and a few poems to post.

Thanks to all my friends who have been here, asking me to fill in the spaces. Won't go away for this long again. Love you all!

The Life Ramblings (No.1)

2008-10-19T21:49:00.005+05:30

One of the few theories about life that I've been trying to write down over the past few months / years. Not as much a theory as a celebration of the beauties of life.

* * *

Why reproduction was one of life’s greatest inventions:

1. There were a few molecules.

2. They reacted with one another, again and again, for millions of years.

3. They learnt to do things.

4. They were happy.

5. They learnt to do more things.

6. Not all of them stayed organised for long periods. Some of them got hit by waves / rocks / whatever, and disintegrated (read died), no longer able to “do things.” However, more accidents happened as time went by, and more molecule systems appeared.

7. One day, one of the molecule systems which could do things, accidentally broke in half (?).

8. At least one of the halves survived.

9. More of the pieces became larger, and more of them broke apart. More of them survived.

10. A group of molecule systems had found a new thing to do: be able to break apart and try to make the pieces continue “living.

11. These molecule systems were happier, for as the pieces grew larger, disintegration to oblivion was prevented by their own “break but preserve” mechanism.

12. These happier systems continued to live through their pieces.

13. The mechanisms of “doing things” did not have to be invented all over again each time by each new molecule system, as those that lived through fragmentation carried all / most of those mechanisms in them. So the ones that lived on now could concentrate on improvisation – finding newer things to do, and newer ways to do older things.

14. Some of these newer ways were better than the older ones. They lived longer and made more (successful and surviving) babies than the systems with the older ways of doing things.

Ergo, reproduction.

Ergo, selection.

Ergo, life.

Anachronism

2008-09-26T22:39:00.003+05:30

The door is locked –

an ancient padlock hangs.

But only yesterday

a grand carnival passed through it.

The door is new –

you can smell the paint;

but there it is

with its rococo design,

the padlock old:

tyrannical, unmoving, old –

keeping the restless crowds waiting.

KISHORE KUMAR

Moral Policing - Who Will Guard the Guards?

2008-09-26T22:35:00.006+05:30

A speech I made recently as part of a debate. Not all my arguments on the topic are here: only those that I could fit into four minutes of speaking.

* * *

I think it was Mark Twain, one of the greatest wits we have ever known, who once said, “Morals are an acquirement – like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis – no man is born with them.”

Honourable chair, respected judges, ladies and gentlemen – Moral Policing and why it is an abominable folly. Why the people who call themselves the guardians, the watchdogs of morality, can never be trusted. This is one of the oldest of philosophical debates with its roots in our very definitions of morality, our perceptions of self. I stand here vehemently opposing moral policing in all its grotesque forms.

Now why do I do that? Let’s talk about the origin of moral policing. To explain it very crisply, here’s a simple flowchart:

1. Someone thought there were absolute rights and wrongs that apply to all human beings in general - all human beings who have ever existed. This is a flawed philosophy.

2. The same someone thought, because they were absolute, the rights and wrongs can be actually, practically, imposed on their fellow human beings. This is flawed morality.

3. To prevent people from falling away from these principles, they thought they could use instruments of fear, of emotional, religious blackmail. Hence moral policing.

Ladies and gentlemen, absolute rights and wrongs? Slavery, war crimes, suttee by widows - regular practices in one age condemned vociferously in the next. Values change, my friends. And morality – true morality – is something that resides in the deepest reaches of a person’s heart and soul that it cannot be reached, let alone be guarded, by anyone else.

In the past, all people who assumed responsibilities of moral policing had their own glaring fallacies. We all know what happened to the Christian Church just before the Reformation, what happened to the Taliban.

And where do people who assume guardianship find themselves today? In the most ludicrous of all positions – burning Valentines’ cards, prohibiting casual clothes, and taking to task actors who say that consenting adults having sex is their own business. By far, ladies and gentlemen, the moral nadir of the moral police in all history.

Whether a girl wears full length clothes or casual wear is her own business – what she derives from her own principles and choices. The way I choose to love someone who also loves me, is my business. And for that matter, whom I love, a boy or a girl, and whether I sleep with him or her – now that’s the height of it! Whether I kiss her in a park, give her a card or even a car, is nobody’s concern either.

Directives forcing people to stick to one set of clothing styles, prohibiting them from dancing together in hotels – what, marriage next? – and banning bar dancers, these are the acts of the worst of a generation who feel threatened by cultural variation and assume it their responsibility to bring things back to cultural antiquity.

All such regimes are marked by persecution. There’s always been a master morality and a slave morality. Where do these police get their ideas from? Wherefrom their principles and ideologies? What happens to people who don’t accept them – who happen to be a majority?

This is where the police go wrong. They are based on a conceited presumption that one human being can decide and dictate terms to another human being as to how to live their life and what to do with it. Because values change – one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

And, if there is a Heaven and there is a God, then on the day I stand up to answer his questions, not one human being is going to hold my hand and feed me words – my morality and my reasons are my own.

KISHORE KUMAR

Rights and Wrongs

2008-09-10T21:14:00.003+05:30

One of the many things that keep floating in my head and are then converted into scribbles on paper. Posted it in a Comment on Vasudha's Blog the ther day.

Rights and Wrongs are majestic concepts. They are independent of time and space. They hold good for any age and any nation and any person. They are the compass needles and signposts which tell people of the right directions to take in every situation. They are infallible concepts. In other words, they are too good to be true. Too utopian, too romantic, to actually exist.

History

2008-08-22T16:57:00.002+05:30

The end of an evening argument with a friend:

X: History repeats itself.
Y: Repetition is redundancy and redundancy is substandard. I’m wont to think that the story of man is anything but substandard, and that we’re capable of more than just going about in circles. Ergo, the adage about history repeating itself is a gross generalisation.

Here we go again

2008-08-22T16:46:00.004+05:30

Tagged by Awais, hence this:
Eight peculiar things about me:

1. I don't like public chatrooms.

2. I have a notorious history of getting attracted to things / people I know I can never have.

3. Most of the time I suffer from euphoria and an unbound zeal for life. The rest of the time I am depressed bordering on suicidal. I seldom settle for anything in between.

4. I don’t believe in idols – stone, human, or otherwise.

5. I’m a medical student, and also like to call myself a writer. Many of my high points in literary inspiration coincide with my exams, with obvious results.

6. I don’t watch cricket, I don’t read thrillers, I don’t listen to rock music, and I don’t like big parties. So far from the modern ideal.

7. I wander alone in the middle of the night within my college campus and without, talking (aloud, often) to the stars and trees and flowers, or more likely these days, getting drenched. (You do realise medical colleges have mortuaries in them, don’t you?)

8. My friends tell me I’m “abnormal.” Quoting their reasons here will annoy prudes.

I don’t find any of these to be really peculiar. And incidentally, I like cucumber sandwiches.

I tag Aditya, Formerlyknownasabe, Shay and you.

The Suicide's Argument

2008-08-03T22:09:00.003+05:30

Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me – it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be yes; what can no be? To die.

NATURE'S ANSWER
Is't returned, as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you were!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope,
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the invent'ry ; inspect, compare !
Then die –if die you dare !

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Complete?

2008-07-29T15:49:00.001+05:30

Happy family. Perfect friends. Sparkling dewdrops. Scented lilies. Breeze on my face. Painted sky. Chocolate candy. Teeming bookshelf. Admired teachers. City lights. Midnight cycle rides. Universe in a sandgrain. Shooting nerve impulses. Palpitating heart. Wood and bricks and cement.

What’s lacking?

KISHORE KUMAR

In Praise of Sorrow

2008-07-29T15:46:00.001+05:30

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,

Who never spent the midnight hours

Weeping and waiting for the morrow –

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.

GOETHE

* * *

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.

If the world has indeed […] been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of Love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.

OSCAR WILDE, De Profundis

Wild Strawberries - Quotes

2008-06-29T22:51:00.001+05:30

I've watched this movie recently and found some memorable quotes. I of course don't agree with some of them.

Isak reciting with the help of the 'kids':

"Where is the friend I seek at break of day?
When night falls I still have not found Him.
My burning heat shows me His traces
I see His traces whenever flowers bloom
His love is mingled with every air."

Anders:

Ah, when Creation shows so much beauty, how radiant must be its source!

Conversation between Viktor and Anders:

Your rationalism is as dry as dust. / I say that modern man believes only in himself and his biological death. / Modern man is a figment of your imagination. / Man regards death with horror. / Religion for the people. Opium for the aching limb.

Marianne:

The truth is that I have been too considerate. And hence unintentionally cruel.

Examiner to Isak:

As professor emeritus you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't.

Examiner to Isak:

A doctor's first duty is to ask for forgiveness.

Conversation between Evald and Marianne:

There's no right or wrong. We live according to our needs. Yours is a hellish desire to live and to create life. / What's yours? / To be dead. Stone dead.

The Chill in the Air

2008-06-09T16:09:00.003+05:30

The air was still fresh from the rain last night. In the morning, there was the distinct smell of a fresh monsoon chasing out a cruel summer. And there was something that I had been putting off for over a week.

Cleaning. Sigh. Reluctantly I started pulling down all those stacks of schoolbooks. My mother was getting impatient over them. Lazily I gathered them all – notebooks, old texbooks, files, comics – and threw them into a heap. Started separating out things that could be given away, notebooks that hadn’t been written in, things my sister’d want to keep, rusty geometry set cases, and finally, things that had to be thrown out. Now that made one humungous pile – things that were no longer needed. Among them was a copy of one old school magazine that had the misfortune of having me on the editorial board. School laboratory journals that were hastily copied from older journals in long ago lunchbreaks. And a notebook with a handwriting that I ran my fingers over for one last time.

There was a chill inside that had nothing to do with the weather. A heaviness started to set in my heart. I was considering keeping the notebook.

Atif Aslam’s Meri Kahani was playing on the deck. I walked over and changed it to Enya’s Pilgrim. And deposited the notebook safely in the trashcan.

KISHORE KUMAR

A Soap Bubble and a Couple of Revolutions

2008-06-07T16:12:00.004+05:30

Writing this poem has been to me the end of a delusion and the beginning of a search. It is long, but do read it all: you might understand what I mean when I say that this has been a deeply personal pilgrimage for me.

(Blogger doesn't allow me to use the tab key. Hence I've used bold fonts for alternating lines to improve readability. Using bold fonts has no other significance.)

* * *

Nightly train journeys
lead me to the inevitable:
The chilly winds stir up memories of a winter
we refused to pull down the shutters,
And the incessant sway of the coach makes me thank
the long, long train journey that brought you to me.

I promised myself to get over this nostalgia;
But that was a promise that couldn’t stand against
an unyielding love, or the night train home.

My mind wandered on into abandoned territory,
and I let it:
Perhaps a little pain can cure the numbness
of my heart.

I bypass the lunches under the margosa
and the cycling on flat tyres,
And walk to the day of the missing mistletoe
and the quick hug on the doorstep:
That was the day you opened the windows
and showed me the stars.

Then there was the story of a seer who predicted
an inseparable friendship;
There were days when we discussed
part-time gods and misshapen universes.
There were nights with Gibran
and storms in inkpots,
And there was the magic of an addictive smile
that did what a thousand battles couldn’t.

When you met me on those corridors that summer, you and your fragrance
defined home to me like nothing else.
You gave me colour and meaning,
and the memory of a sleepless, frigid summer.
You gave me Gandalf in return for my Dumbledore,
and a love story that kills and resurrects.
We built an eternal soap bubble and sucked time out of it,
and filled it with our souls and quizbooks.

And then the days when under a fan with four blades
you fed me a spoonful of life,
Followed by the night I spent under the moon
looking at your face and guessing your dreams;
And there’s the bittersweet pain in the memory of the day
I feared I didn’t deserve you:
You took me so close in your arms and whispered,
“Would you talk about you deserving yourself?”

You gave me a challenge, a box of chocolates and questions to answer.
You gave me dreams to chase, that will overflow a lifetime.

That was a long ago summer in a far away country,
and a far away happiness –
Because for reasons that I do not know exist,
I lost the soap bubble and my soul along with it:
My deciduous delights were exactly that.

-

By another train journey I reach our semi-arid tropics;
it is summer again.
I’ve made this journey many times before
but it never was this painful;
Down pour memories of a violet ink and yellow envelopes
I no longer use,
And of the very next summer I came to say goodbye
and you gave me a mock embrace.
I’ve been many things and places since, but one thing I haven’t felt
in five years, is home.

That mocking, jeering, disheartening hug of yours,
made the first crack in my heart.
Then one day you crossed the road
forgetting me, and leaving me behind you.

Then came the day you told me your dreams were your own
and your plans are but your business.
You told me you wouldn’t correct me any longer, nor should I,
for there are limits!
Because however close two universes come, you said,
there is always a fine line separating them.
That was when we stopped debating and started arguing –
we were on that one way road.

What followed wasn’t a blur, it was one long moment
of unacknowledged oblivion
My silence and your insouciance,
broken promises and fatal changes –
Were you tired of me, or was it somebody else?
Was it the different places that we had to go?
Or was I just a compromise and a stand-in until
somebody else walked in?

There was a day I said I was going to miss you,
that I will wait, come back for you.
(Such a cliché. You answered with a line that could be
a writer’s delight).
You said you wouldn’t miss me, that you will stay
with yourself, wherever you go.
That was the last time I expected someone to wait for me;
the last time I ever counted myself in.

I befriended the moon and conducted a lunar love affair,
and added my tale to his long repertoire.
There were long nights on the stairs when
tears wiped all thought away.
I shredded your letters and burnt my diaries, but still you haunt my dreams –
this is the one promise you’ve kept.

Disappointment. Humiliation. These were your choicest words for me when I needed you.
Was acceptance impossible? Had understanding gone out of fashion?
That was the final blow, the final crack in my crumbling heart.
That was when I forgot what emotion meant.
The chirping of birds and glorious sunsets no longer meant anything:
I went to bed with the Reaper’s daughter called despair.
The passage of time didn’t make sense anymore.
Years passed and my wounds didn’t heal, didn’t bleed.

Worldly fortune was fair to me and humoured
the glutton I became trying to fill an invisible void;
But all the cities I’ve been to had nothing to offer
to fill this obstinately dead void.
I tried to run away from it, tried to
wash myself of everything life refused to give me;
I absconded the man in white and the smiling woman who taught us life;
in a happy, happening rich world, I became numb.
I only did not realize that in this great escapade,
I was running away from myself.

But today, here I stand in this grand little town
we once called home.
The green patch where once we sat entwined, and the bench where I waited for you,
are still there and enquire about you;
Someone mentions Physics and my heart skips a beat, and I visit
shady Attar shops in search of a lost Arabian perfume;
The noisy summer wind however, is not accompanied
by your voice, nor do I feel your breath on my face.
And I realize, the melody in your arms
might never again claim me.

Our library asks me questions I dared not acknowledge,
and our corridors rebuke my numbness;
People ask me where you are and I say
somewhere up north, having fun;
And my eyes lose their dryness
and regain a depth I deemed impossible.

In our dusty little town that gave us raw mangoes
and exalted purposes,
I realised it was time I looked for the pieces
and started picking them up.

Plaques and pictures brought me home
from the emptiness I madly sought:
I can’t live in an uninviting yesterday
in a lost world;
Because I am human and my search for permanence
is capable of looking beyond one eternity that decided to be ephemeral.
Nor can I annihilate those memories
which lie at the heart of all I am;
Nor can I desert our dreams which still fuel my days
and court the stars.

-

Epilogue
I don’t want to be a dead phoenix.
I want to rise again, just like I did every time I fell
before you happened.

There is a world you gave me.
There is a world you stole from me.
And there is an insane moment when the two come frighteningly close,
and a moment of horror when they converge.
I live in that impossible moment.
Anything else would be just a mediocre imitation of life.

A decision is imminent:
The lights are dimmed, and I need to take
a blind turn.
Yes, I am ready.

For if the Giver of Things asks me now,
what’s the one thing I want to clutch to my bosom forever,
I am no longer sure what the answer would be.
And I want to find out.

KISHORE KUMAR

Really?

2008-06-07T14:07:00.002+05:30

A witty saying proves nothing

FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET (VOLTAIRE)

Now that's a witty saying! Meaning... [:)]

The Great Kidnapping

2008-06-07T13:54:00.001+05:30

Once upon a happy monsoon,
A gentleman called Time
And a capricious lady called Fate,
Decided to send the youth Love to live with me.

Sweet Love and I carved a niche for ourselves,
And called it Our Eternity;
We forgot the people who sent Love to me
And decided that they didn’t exist.

But then those ephemeral deities got jealous
And kidnapped my sweetheart Love,
And made him forget me and my mistakes;
And they destroyed Our Eternity.

I’m a vagabond now, Love-less and homeless,
But never will submit to those kidnappers.
I will find my sweetheart again,
And make him remember who I am.

KISHORE KUMAR

Les Questions de Ma Vie

2008-05-16T20:07:00.005+05:30

(Read "The Questions of My Life")
In no particular order:

Can the Universe really understand itself? (Or, can we really understand it?)
However eloquently a guy talks about Free Will and Monotheism and the Subtlety of the Lord, why does he still go back home to burn incense in front of his stone idols?
Why do people look at me like I'm mad when I drink water after coffee?
Do conservatism, male chauvinism and homophobia go together?
Is it really that difficult to put Creation and Evolution together to write a better, more marvellous story? In other words, is it that difficult to see that the idea of Evolution only reinforces the idea of the Omnipotence of God?
Does Original Sin exist? That is, does God make people in a certain way, and then say that it is wrong to live that way?
Why is the concept of "new beginnings" so very loved?
Are Love and Prayer two different things?
Is man a facultative carnivore or a facultative herbivore?
Whence hither, and hence whither?

Please leave your answers, if you have them, in the Comments.

Homeward Bound

2008-05-13T17:36:00.005+05:30

One of those things for which you leap out of bed at two in the morning and reach out for paper and pencil. Orthodox readers might find it slightly blasphemous (Please don't take offence. This is between God and me). Please tell me if you find this juvenile.

* * *

I am here sitting
On top of the greatest pyramid that’s ever been built.
You know what I’m going to do?
Build another step and then climb it.
And again.
And again.
Then maybe let somebody else climb.

Last night I was chatting with God in a chatroom.
He promised to talk to me on phone soon.
Then one day I’ll meet Him.
And maybe shake hands with Him.
And definitely kiss Him on the lips.
Then one day I will be Him.
Home.

There’s a long way to go!
But every moment is going to be more exciting
Than sky diving!

KISHORE KUMAR

The Long ago Lakes

2008-05-11T11:58:00.002+05:30

I remember the days
Of the green vales
And the blue lakes
And the long drives along them

I have later moved
From small town to city
From Faber-Castell to Staedtler
From basic science to medicine

Now I miss the vales
And the lakes and the drives
But what I miss most
Is the face in the passenger seat

KISHORE KUMAR

The Enchantress of Florence: Quotes

2008-05-11T11:47:00.005+05:30

I'll try and write a review for this masterpiece of a book in some time. But before that, a couple of memorable quotes.

* * *

'There is no particular wisdom in the East,' [Qara Köz / Angelica] said to Argalia. 'All human beings are foolish to the same degree.'

The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.
Niccolò Vespucci, or Mogor dell'Amore, to Akbar, Emperor of Hindustan

(From The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie)

Tagged

2008-05-10T14:43:00.004+05:30

Awais tagged me. Well, this is the first time, and here I go:

* * *

1. Last movie you saw in a theatre?
Khuda Kay Liye. Fabulous. Before that, The Lives of Others, whetever it is called in German. Fabulous again.

2. What book are you reading?
The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie. The guy’s a genius.

3. Favorite board game?
Umm.. Scrabble?

4. Favorite magazine?
Readers Digest. Well, Maybe.

5. Favorite smells?
Old books, After-rain smells, Freshly mown grass, Liril Soap (the kind they don’t make anymore), Mom’s closet.

6. Favorite sounds?
Rain , A certain voice.

7. Worst feeling in the world?
When the person you loved ardently all your life tells you that you are a humiliation, a disappointment. See "Compromise" below.

8. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
How the hell did I sleep for so long? Anyway, thanks for another beautiful day.

9. Favorite fast food place?
Any of the unnumbered Cafe Coffee Days in Pune. Or the McDonald’s at SGS Mall, Pune.

10. Future child’s name?
Apollo / Minerva. Well, depends :)

11. Finish this statement. "If I had lot of money I’d….?
Of course buy a lot of books. And travel all over Europe.

12. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
Not now, not in living memory.

13. Storms - cool or scary?
Cool!

14. Favorite drink?
Coffee. Hot.

15. Finish this statement, "If I had the time I would…."?
Well, I think I do have the time.

16. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
No Broccoli for me either.

17. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?
I wouldn’t dye it.

18. Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?
Vijayawada, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune

19. Favorite sports to watch?
I don’t watch sports. Wouldn’t mind F1 though.

20. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you?
One would be difficult.
He reads my pathetic blog, leaves very encouraging comments, even gives a reference on his own blog on a good day! He’s a philosopher who’s been in love and hence understands things quite well. As I understand it :)

21. What’s under your bed?
Empty cartons which couldn’t go anywhere else.

22. Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Definitely! Er.. Do I have a choice?

23. Morning person, or night owl?
Night owl. Almost invariably.

24. Over easy, or sunny side up?
Sunny side up!

25. Favorite place to relax?
My room. Well, maybe also wherever someone is :)

26. Favorite pie?
Naah.. No pies!

I tag Vasudha, Aditya and whoever reads this.

The Suicide that didn't happen

2008-05-10T13:36:00.001+05:30

The only depressing poem I wrote until now. No meter. Just flow.

* * *

They asked me why,
I said I was tired of being a liability.
I asked them to leave me alone with my poetry;
They asked me why, again.

‘Cause I wanted to search my face, I said,
And asked the mirror whose guilt it was
That I wore so comfortably on my face.
Whose, they asked, again.

I did answer them.
I cut the radial artery.
Now they put these tubes into me
And make me a liability. Again.

KISHORE KUMAR

Happily Lost

2008-05-07T19:43:00.004+05:30

The rhyme and meter evolve from the first stanza to the last line, as the lengths of the stanzas themselves decrease. Just as self dissolves as it increasingly becomes conscious of the Eternal.

* * *

The golden sun
Reflected in sand grains,
Giant waves dwarfed
To lap at my feet,
And Eternity blinking from across the ocean:

Sea breezes - shadows of mighty winds
Propelling ships, vanguards of history -
Ruffled my hair as I sat
Dissolving myself into Creation’s mystery.

Romanticism and meanings
Of things and atom bombs,
Merged in the peace that vastness brings.

Nightfall killed the shadows that sunshine brought
And it lit a thousand stars in me bright.

Foam, Fate and Firmament engulfed me, and I blissfully gave in.

KISHORE KUMAR

How it Happened

2008-05-07T19:36:00.004+05:30

Just in case you don't notice, and to humour my own vanity: There's a certain play with the consonant sounds in the words in the first three lines. I don't know what it's called.

* * *

Bike seats and sweat beads,
Jingles and gadgets,
Coffees and freakouts,
They know but you don’t:
Baby I’m in love.

KISHORE KUMAR

A Compromise

2008-05-07T19:34:00.003+05:30

Do you know how it feels to love someone ardently all your life, with all your heart, only to know in the end that you are but a compromise in their life? Just a stand in until someone better comes by?

KISHORE KUMAR

Reflections: How I became a Mystic

2008-05-02T21:44:00.004+05:30

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. So said Rabindranath Tagore. My own realisation of this came in quite an unlikely place.

Doing my clinical rotations in the Neonatal and Gynaecological wards has been quite an exalting experience. Watching a young mother holding her three day-old infant son and chatting happily away with him, as if he understood every word she said, struck a chord somewhere deep inside me. It woke me up to the immeasurable love that goes into conception and into parenthood. Into creating something out of yourself. Into nurturing a new lifeform as part of yourself and then tearing it away from you in a process of almighty pain. Into seeing it grow into an independent being with an all new individuality. Such is the joy of Life.

This, I realised, is the same joy that goes into making an oak tree from an acorn, into making two bacteria out of one. The same joy that made women and men out of monkeys and mushrooms from LUCA's. I could see the oneness of life - the proverbial unbreakable golden thread - connecting me to the brownest seaweed, my most intricate neurones to the gut cells of earthworms.

There, in an unlikely place, drowned in cries of infants and the insane babbling of new mothers, I became something I never thought I'd become. No, I became something I thought I should never become. (In one crazy moment which Abraham Maslow might've called Self-actualisation,) I became a mystic.

There, holding the infant in my arms and watching his fingers curl around mine, I was lookining the glory of all Creation in the eye. And just one step beyond, I could feel the raiment of the Hand that wrote it all. In the sparkling eyes of the newborn, I saw a million promises of life, as it was conceived billions of years ago. I saw the hope that man is.

That was a moment of such emotion, such exhilaration and ecstasy, that its intensity cannot be captured even in the rhyme of poesy or the notes of music. While my friend was busy asking if the erythema on the soles, and the clumps of scant hair, were normal, I fell madly, insanely, in love with the symphony called Life.

Call me a mad guy. But I know I'm a happy guy.

KISHORE KUMAR

Thank You

2008-04-24T17:51:00.004+05:30

Can this be called Poetry?

* * *

Thank you God, for friends.
And for the troubles and the coffee.

Thank you God, for the seasons.
And for airconditioning.

Thank you God, for sex.
And for latex.

Thank you God, for Love.
And for roses and for tears.

Thank you God, for books and philosophy.
And for brutal war, where they don't work.

Thank you God, for being God.
And for making me.

KISHORE KUMAR

Song of Myself

2008-04-24T17:11:00.003+05:30

A poem written by Walter Whitman, an American poet. This is one of those poems which I think reflects my own self. And something that I think will affect me profoundly in years to come. Excerpts.

* * *

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Vivas to those who have fail'd! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! And to those themselves who sank in the sea! And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd, I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?)

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, (What have I to do with lamentation?)

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be.

All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

WALT WHITMAN

The full text of the poem can be found here.

Where?

2008-04-17T19:45:00.001+05:30

God is in the details

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

On a day quite far from today

2008-04-10T18:13:00.004+05:30

There are five stanzas here, three lines each. 8, 12 and 4 syllables respectively. I used this style to create a feeling of inclompleteness, a feeling of something-more-to-do, of promises left to redeem (Please tell me if I failed desperately). And the rhyme is like this: the first two lines of each stanza end in a rhyme, and the last lines of all stanzas end rhyming "you". Phew.

* * *

The play is done, the curtains close;
The time has come for us to walk away with those
Memories few.

The heart knows not how to forget;
You'll remain my guiding star as we ourselves set
Onto paths new.

An enduring strength in all pains,
A soothing answer to all questions, there remains
A promise due:

On a day quite far from today,
Across a million miles, your breath in mine shall lay,
If love be true;

Having reached the stars of our prime,
Quite far from the rumblings of the matchbox called Time,
I shall be you.

KISHORE KUMAR

The Meaning of Courage

2008-03-08T18:57:00.002+05:30

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."
Atticus Finch to his son Jem in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

This definition of courage appeals to me more than any other, and has actually made me see some things clearly.

First Fig

2008-01-13T13:19:00.000+05:30

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!

EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY

Love Bade Me Welcome

2007-12-26T18:35:00.000+05:30

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

GEORGE HERBERT

Voices in the Night

2007-12-06T22:40:00.000+05:30

A poem I wrote over four years ago on a scrap of paper in the middle of a winter night. Free verse.

* * *

Walking through the ancient woods
I heard the minstrels sing
Songs of old; not of war glory,
But of little men and their little deeds.

The touching tales moved my soul,
Seeping through the layers of old
Draped around me in infamy;
Tales of wonder and joy, cherished sorrow.

In the silence of the woods
Rang the odes of praise
Of men who lived
In forgotten eras of the pat beyond.

On the fallen autumn leaves
Did I read the epic tales
Written by men of long ago
On the leaves of human history.

That they marvelled at the stars
And once reached for them, I heard;
And here the minstrels stopped
And the silence took over

In that silence did I hear
The voices of men long dead
Echoing through my mind
Louder than could my mind perceive

Thus did the woods teach me
The designs of the human soul
Residing in me for eternity
And told me tales to hold me forever.

KISHORE KUMAR

Tragedy?

2007-12-06T22:38:00.000+05:30

Some worldly wisdom is required even to secure praise for the lack of it.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Fate of Thomas Paine

Catholic Vs Protestant Theology

2007-12-06T22:34:00.000+05:30

One may say, backwardly speaking, that protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbours bad.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, Why I'm not a Christian and other Essays

Jesus Christ and Family Values

2007-12-06T22:30:00.000+05:30

Woman, what have I to do with you?
JESUS CHRIST to his mother Mary of Bethlehem, in John 2 : 4

Think not that I come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. / For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother in law.
JESUS CHRIST in Matthew 10 : 34, 35

Taught, taught, taught

2007-12-06T22:25:00.000+05:30

Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what necessarily moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught in early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, Why I'm not a Christian and other Essays

Listen, My Love

2007-12-06T22:14:00.000+05:30

In the calm of the night, under the stars of the sky,
I feel your breath and its warmth,
Hear your heart pulsating with life
Across the miles that lie between us

Do you hear me, my fair darling,
Do you hear my song,
As I whisper into the night
Little things I would you hear

Remember the days of long ago
When we lay together, flying in your dreams,
Little children in the cradle of time
When love bonded us together forever?

Remember that long ago
When we met Life as it crossed our path
And made a mutual promise
Of love and truth

I see the questions in your eyes
And the doubts in your heart
I feel the fears that storm your mind
And take them all up, pour l'amour de l'amour

Tell me, my white daisy, tell me yes
Do you feel me in you, do you hear me speak
The truth with all fervour:
I am yours forever

KISHORE KUMAR

Restrained Modernity?

2007-12-06T22:01:00.000+05:30

I was born with all the instincts and the senses of primitive man, tempered by the arguments and restraints of a civilised being.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Med-humour

2007-12-06T21:58:00.000+05:30

* Mary had a little lamb. The doctor fainted.

* Asthma is a disease that has practically the same symptoms as passion, except that with asthma, it lasts longer.

Beyond Murphy

2007-12-06T21:47:00.000+05:30

Frahnestock's Rule for Failure:
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Gualtiere's Law of Inertia:
Where there's a will, there's a won't

Lackland's Law:
Never be first. Never be last. Never volunteer for anything.

Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

McDonald's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
In any given set of circumstances, the proper course of actions is determined by the subsequent events.

Actual Medical Records

2007-12-06T21:20:00.000+05:30

I found this in an old magazine of my college. These are some sentences from actual medical records from different hospitals, written by doctors.

* The baby was delivered, the cord clamped and cut and handed to the paediatrician, who breathed and cried immediately.

* Rectal examination revealed a normal sized thyroid.

* The patient lives at home with her mother, father and pet turtle, who is presently enrolled in day-care three times a week.

* Bleeding started in the rectal area and continued all the way to Los Angeles.

* The patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.

* Examination of genitalia was completely negative, except for the right foot.

* While in the emergency room, she was examined, X-rated and sent home.

* The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.

* The patient was alert and unresponsive.

* When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room.

* The patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

* On the second day the knee was better; on the third it disappeared.

* The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.

* The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1983.

* Discharge status: alive, but without my permission.

* The patient refused autopsy.

Forbidden Love

2007-11-14T20:32:00.000+05:30

Another sad love poem. I'd give this more points than to my previous ones. There are ten syllables to a line, rhyme scheme is a b a b.

* * *

Watching the dancing flame consume away
A browning piece of paper once cherished,
I could see my beauteous castles of clay
That Fate hurriedly trampled underfoot.

I let the pain sink into my sinew,
Let the pictures play upon my heart free
And let tears out that were unshed and due,
For a love that was, but never could be.

Of unkept promises and dreams unmet,
I lament, of paths I must tread alone;
But from within my heart I hear it said,
"Don't try to share the pain that is your own."

That sweetest of loves is love unfulfilled
I know; hence this pain is for me to take.
I let them vanish, the mansions I built,
And I'm ready for another heartbreak.

KISHORE KUMAR

Organised Chaos

2007-11-08T13:01:00.000+05:30

I do some painting, too. I made this a few weeks ago. Water-colour on paper.

I'd like to call it Organised Chaos. Hope you noticed the eccentric Yin-yang.

War: Do we need it?

2007-11-04T20:20:00.000+05:30

This is a speech I made as part of a debate some time ago. The topic was Peace Across Borders: The Middle-east Crisis.

The style is of a speech, and not an Essay. I am no authority on Middle-east History. I present it here as just one of my works. As some other writings of mine, it portrays my own Pacifistic views.

* * *

August 1947.
History’s greatest migration across a newly drawn McMahon Line was accompanied by ruthless manslaughter of thousands. Hostilities continued for another fifty years. We shall live with the implications forever.

December 11, 2006.
Three-year old Salaam, six-year old Ahmed, and nine-year old Osama were on their way to school when they were blown to smithereens along with their car. The reason? They were the children of a Palestinian security officer.

Our history as a species is replete with blood-drenched tales of strife such as these. Human life has been sacrificed at the altar of territorial disputes since the days of unrecorded prehistory. But how often do we look back to see the damage we’ve done? How often do our military leaders look upon life as something more than just troops and casualties?

War is an illegal appropriation of a people’s right to exist. It is never justified, never legitimate. In my opinion, there isn’t a single dispute that cannot be solved over a conference table.

Attribute it to fate or man’s arrogance, but we have always bled in war. Border conflicts, war, insurgency attacks, terrorism – I’m just skimming the surface. Peace across certain borders of the world remains a pipedream today. The Indian subcontinent, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia today alternate between disturbances and spells of uneasy peace.

However, it is the region of the Middle-east which has consistently borne the brunt of human tragedy. It was the cradle of human civilization. Also, our first battlefield. For five thousand years, this region witnessed the most gruesome of wars. The Persian and Macedonian conquests to begin with, following the Jewish Exodus; followed by those of the Romans. Islamic invasions and the fall of Rome in the most decisive battle of all time. Then, the advent of Byzantium ; the coming of the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks, and the unstable Mongols.

We took an irreversible turn with the “holy” call by Pope Urban II to a series of unholy Crusades – history’s most lamented chapter. What followed was a blur of conquerors redrawing borders every few decades.

The turn of the 20th century saw a chaotic and weak Middle-east, ready in every way for a European domination. Hitler’s systematic genocide of six million Jews validated the Zionist movement. Failure of the 1947 UN Plan for the Partition of Palestine and the Declaration of the State of Israel by the Zionist leadership the next year, were the beginning of literal pandemonium in the Middle-east.

The land of the Patriarchs is now rent by anger, fear, and hatred. The core issue of conflict in the Middle-east is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and what is left in Lebanese Occupied Territories. Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq still suffer from open wounds. More than a hundred civilians die every day in the Middle-east. And in the recent past, 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes: large chunks from Iraq and Palestine. The Middle-east is burning.

It is high time the peace process made a headway. And a final solution to this problem can only come from a profound understanding of the region’s ailments and an integral view of the peoples. The creation of a viable Palestinian State, and a settlement of all disputes to end all hostilities, over conference tables, is of utmost importance. As long as a commitment to peace is absent, there will always be grenades flying into our homes and revenge building in our hearts.

My fellow makers of tomorrow’s world, History’s mistakes stare at us from the eyes of homeless refugees, estranged families and orphaned children. We can never correct these mistakes, but we can pledge, this moment, that we will never repeat them. Because there is no such thing as a good war.

KISHORE KUMAR

The Old dreams..

2007-10-31T22:46:00.000+05:30

The old dreams were good dreams. They didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them

ROBERT JAMES WALLER, The Bridges of Madison County

The Scars Remaining

2007-10-30T21:01:00.000+05:30

But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from pining -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary see now flows between; -
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Christabel

When once the Nightqueen bloomed

2007-10-28T17:54:00.001+05:30

Winter has come again
And brought with it its chill
And a whiff of your scent.

Cold evenings on a country road,
The nightqueen's fragrance in our garden
And the moonlight streaming in though the window:
Distant memories stirred by the wind

Of shared umbrellas in the monsoon,
Autumn leaves falling to the ground
And the relished feel of wool
In a warm country's winter.

Every road leads me to you
And the sweet pain in which we revelled;
But greater pain it is to know
That these memories are all I have

KISHORE KUMAR

Tit for tat?

2007-10-26T18:31:00.000+05:30

Alexander Dumas' (pere, 1802-1870) reputed response to a snide comment on his heritage is a rich repartee.

"My father was a mulatto, my grandmother was a negress and my great grandparents were monkeys. My pedigree begins where yours ends"

Lolz

Ridiculous beginnings

2007-10-26T18:09:00.000+05:30

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning

ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus

Our Heritage

2007-10-26T18:07:00.000+05:30

Man is condemned to be free

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Ode to the Moon

2007-10-18T20:20:00.000+05:30

I wrote this poem a little after reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It is a quasi-mystical argument against the central argument of the Rubaiyat. In this, I try and speak about the splendour and vanity of human life. This poem is in quatrains, in the style of Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat. Complete with iambic pentameter and a a b a rhyme.

This first part deals with war.

Look down to us, O celestial Angel
From your high seat in heaven where you dwell,
You witness our lives pass under the clouds
Touching, as we pass by, heaven and hell

Imprinted forever on your memory
Is our spent shame-faced and blood-drenched history
For you have seen us tremble, rise and fall;
Play in the cruel hands of fate, sans pity!

With passion and zeal we've traversed our time,
And heard for generations the same bells chime:
The gongs of war and the bells of a church
Sound from the same lands of piety and crime

With deep fervour we have loved and betrayed
And with crude sweet hunger our kin have slayed
Alas for human soul that fate has conned:
That very soul that for mercy has prayed

In blood and tears is man's great epic soaked
In emotions unknown is man's soul cloaked;
And you have seen, in the cold of the night,
Where roamed man for the key to the door locked

Far and wide have we strayed on our journey
And left the shown path in vain blasphemy;
In haste we run, O so far from Eden,
'til Heaven laments, for Man's Vanity

You watch, in the ceaseless divine Drama,
Actors come and go, play with charisma;
Of great Cosmic Order does your tale speak,
But nothing, perhaps, like human trauma

Whatever story that history speaks of
Whatever tale that makes us weep or laugh,
Reveals the mystery of human nature
Which we, for our frailty, dare not speak of

No blood was shed in vain, no tears wasted
For every lost drop was a victory tasted:
Not at battle but at a greater ground
Called wisdom from the follies of the rested

Under your serene vision have we passed
Striving as we might, for Wisdom to last
Yet that immensity does man elude,
That to which we would submit, and thus, last

Any disgrace that we may hope to find
Is a vain war against the cords that bind
The Universe in its Cosmic Order
And hence is perfectly moulded mankind

To those absolute laws that govern thy motion
And those that permeate the whole of creation,
- Do we pay obeisance
For that moment of Infinite Justice we wait
To feel the love of our Lord beyond the Great Gate
- Who is all, above all.

KISHORE KUMAR

Live while you're alive

2007-10-17T19:36:00.000+05:30

The only dream worth having ... is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never forget.

ARUNDHATI ROY

My definitions of the essence of life

2007-10-14T11:45:00.000+05:30

The fulfilment in a silent, wordless prayer.
The knot in the throat at the moment of separation from someone you
love.
The sweetness of a date after a day's fasting.
The lingering humility after giving alms.
Watching the love of your life sleeping.
Sitting on top of the tallest buliding in town on a starlit night.
Holding your six month-old nephew and seeing his fingers curl around
yours.
Sitting up whole days and nights, for years, for the triumph in declaring,
"Eureka!"

KISHORE KUMAR

Miracles

2007-10-14T11:11:00.000+05:30

There are only two ways of living your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
ALBERT EINSTEIN

We are the movers and shakers

2007-10-13T22:15:00.000+05:30

We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by the lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems
SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON

For Dissolved Dreams

2007-10-13T22:11:00.000+05:30

In fervour deep, and for love, hunger deep
I engraved a passionate poem on the sands of time;
While on the shore, the ocean raged and ravaged
And in a moment of fury, erased my lines written in blood

Then I realised, way too late, that I had written my lines on borrowed territtory

Kishore Kumar

Eternity Knocking

2007-10-13T22:00:00.000+05:30

Re-engraved time after time,
Ever in their youthful prime
My designs unchanged remain
Time may rage but rage in vain
For above Time's troubled fountains
On the Great Atlantic mountains
In my golden house on high
There they shine eternally
WILLIAM BLAKE

These things can never die

2007-10-13T21:28:00.000+05:30

This poem, by a less known poet, Sarah Doudney, is one of those childhood favourites of mine. I found it in the introduction to one of Ruskin Bond's books. It also happens to be a favourite of Bond's.

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
The spirirt's yearning cry,
The striving after better hopes...
These things can never die
SARAH DOUDNEY

The Road to Wisdom

2007-10-13T21:18:00.001+05:30

The Road to Wisdom?
Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less
PIET HEIN

Perfection Possible

2007-10-13T21:15:00.000+05:30

If among all the possible worlds, none had been better than the rest, then God would never have created one.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, 1710

And they lived happily ever after

2007-10-13T21:06:00.001+05:30

August 6, 2445

The flashlights don't work, either, just as many other modern contraptions. Of course not. Flashlights, television sets and dinosaur-computers have been lying forsaken in our technological museums for over a century now. Because electricity is passé. But you, my dear reader of four hundred years ago, need an explanation.

This is a chronicle of the future that has reached you through a transtemporal communication medium. And the prime aim of this endeavour is to show you how erroneous you modern fairy-tale predictions were about the future. Humanity did not end in catastrophe. Perhaps four hundred years after the end of the modern age is too early to say this, but I will try to justify myself. The principal difference between reality and your fairy tales is that we are actually happy.

Towards the end of the twenty-first century, we experienced a great intellectual revolution, arguably the greatest one after the Renaissance. This wasn't a technology-oriented revolution like the Industrial Revolution, but a science-based one. To begin with, some of the best human minds redefined the concept of "energy". Following years of research and experimentation, electricity was replaced by an improvement of quantum electromagnetic power. Industry became much more efficient, and life easier. Of course, people all over the place made more and more machines, but the war between man and machine never happened. Thanks, Bertrand Russell.

At approximately the same time, something else happened which opened our eyes to the fallacies of existing technologies. The worldwide web crashed, along with most of the world's security systems, resulting in a global mayhem. The repair process was rapid, but the implications of such another disaster loomed in front of us. What followed was a massive restructuring of all the information infrastructure of the world, starting from Pythagoras and the Incommensurables.

Rapid development occurred everywhere. Most of them were aimed at correcting previous mistakes before making new ones. Medical Science was one of the best affected by all these changes, though HIV did not submit itself for another hundred years, having taken a high toll. Healthcare witnessed a great change in approach from treating the disease to treating the patient. We now have medical and genetic records of every single human being on earth, and also of those who preferred purpler pastures elsewhere. Most disease, if not all, have been conquered. But our philosophers tell us that death should not, and cannot be conquered. Well, we're not trying.

But the greatest tale remains to be told. Basic research is, and will remain man's greatest scientific benefactor. Research into nature's building blocks has yielded knowledge which initially left humanity flabbergasted. I cannot give you any detail about this, or any other research or technology due to restrictions in the Statutes of Transtemporal Communication, but suffice it to say that this new knowledge changed our perception of existence. And gave us technology and material to build stronger edifices, cheaply and conveniently. We could soon make distant space travel and space-living a possible reality. Human colonies now exist in places you would not have expected. We have colonised Mars, but never found ET or any little green men. As yet. Travel has taken new shapes with a new definition of magnetic levitation.

Our understanding of the universe has improved tremendously, and man is now closest to the farthest edges of the universe. "Edge?" Well, all in good time. Writing in your style has taken me nearly an hour. Of course, language has evolved too, mostly for good.

In perspective, all these technological changes have brought about the greater changes in lifestyle. We would indeed have been doomed with our addiction to machines, had our philosophers and our own senses not intervened. An integral philosophy, which was taking shape in your time in the minds of people like Wilber, evolved to give a worldview which puts all aspects of existence (even Science and Mysticism, as Eddington would have put it) together to give optimal results in the process of living. Your sinister predictions of broken families and absent human emotions never came true, and never will. Our government structures have changed too (obviously), to be quite incomparable with those of your time. Borders between most nations are too hazy to make out. And mind you, the earth is clean as ever.

This progress, both scientific and otherwise, was once considered too difficult to achieve. I leave to you to contemplate upon the scale of a revolution that could have made this possible. Science and research remain mankind's greatest benefactors, only if used optimally and wisely.

You now know how much work you and your generation have in front of you.

Where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face
The marble index of a mind forever,
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone

Roger

Roger sent this message to the past, having screened it for illegal information, and got off from his workstation in the corner of his room. His parents were waiting for him downstairs. His mother smiled at him and they walked together to the travel systems, on their way to commemorate a five hundred-year old horror, and to pledge never to repeat humankind's great mistakes. In the middle of the gathering, Roger thought, "Who said mankind was a failure? Who ever said Science was a bane?"

Kishore Kumar