Your ghost
Had his hair
Parted to the right
It is one of the most
Recognisable sights
In the crematorium
When the woods
Crackle and burn
It calls the insects
To the flames
One blindly follows
the other while grimly
you stood
beside though your teeth
you couldn’t hide
you were
only a shadow
in that leaping light
just before the sun
sinks
I think oh what a night
It’s going to be
But before I know it
It’s another morning
The gilded hours
have passed unnoticed
between dozing off
and fighting off sleep
and here I think I’ll be given
to guard the king’s treasury
I’ll woo you
With my spaceman
Promise you that
Hand in hand with you
I shall see my thousandth sun
Then how will you turn me down
When I tell you
I am not of this ground
Even as I kneel
To see whether the sandal fits
You will squeeze into it I know
Though it should bite and pinch
And come away one foot bare
And the other bleeding
With me leading you
Across the moon because
You have the breath of stars
In your bosom
You want to live
In the skies
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
mind it
This one is crazy. utsav sharma actually did what the nation hailed as the thing to do in rdb and was promptly presented as the maniac on medication with a penchant for violent catharsis and a history of assault and battery that was described as having more to do with his mental state than with his motive. In brief, utsav is the 29-year-old who hacked at ramesh talwar with a cleaver because he was fed up with the “absolute laxity” of the criminal investigation in the aarushi talwar murder case. No, he has nothing to do with aarushi. And he has been fed up before. February last year he posed as a journalist to attack sps rathore, the former Punjab police officer accused of molesting ruchika girhotra, driving the poor girl to suicide. That attack was carried out with a penknife. Rathore incidentally got away lightly for his role in the death of the girl whom, when she was 14-years-old, he had molested in front an eyewitness.
Protective parents might have pleaded with the authorities to let the boy be declared mentally unstable and kept under observation and constant monitoring, total responsibility for which they would surely have promised. Indeed, the brazen acts can only be the work of a lunatic. I too feel horribly depressed by the ‘miscarriage of justice’ in this country, my blood boils too when I find our leaders and captains as being no more than venal, corrupt idiots whose claim to respect is not what it should be. I too feel frustrated that we give them that respect regardless. But I sure am not going a killing anyone.
But here’s a thought: maybe, since no one’s died by his hand yet, he didn’t want to actually kill anyone. Just scare them, embarrass them. Terrorize them that they are as vulnerable and exposed as the victims they did to death. There is a reason I say this. Utsav won a gold medal when he graduated in fine arts from the banaras hindu university (I know people who’ve studied there) and has just passed out of the nid last month (I know people who’ve been to nid). Speaking for myself, for all my sensibility, I don’t think mustering a gold medal is any piece of cake. And this is art and shit involved here. Among one of the mental processes of an artist is to find an expression that would echo. A very creative and personal signature but one that would nonetheless have to resonate with a meaning which communicates itself through the imagination.
Now to build a case on the evidence available, it would be too simplistic to term the subject a mental case and pass our verdict. It is one thing to be on the side of civil society and justice, due process and the course of law but to go tut tut and shut away as delinquent someone who wears his indignation on his sleeve because that is not the prescribed way to protest is dangerous.
Make no mistakes, utsav has committed a crime. He should be arrested, tried and sentenced according to the laws of the land. But to brand his activism as an act of madness and keep him under supervision, that is cynical. And it is cynicism of a grave kind because it cuts at the very sap of feeling that makes human beings civilized. For it is uncivilized and vulgar how even after committing great misdeeds our criminals can live among us (to be sure we cannot ostracize or outcast our felons, the shot at re-assimilation is their greatest hope but that is a different matter — can’t be politically correct all the time man) to popular acclaim.
So this man here too deserves his right to be taken seriously. It is a serious thing he is trying to say.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/I-only-wanted-to-hurt-Talwar-not-kill-him-says-Utsav-Sharma/articleshow/7364668.cms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruchika_Girhotra_Case
Protective parents might have pleaded with the authorities to let the boy be declared mentally unstable and kept under observation and constant monitoring, total responsibility for which they would surely have promised. Indeed, the brazen acts can only be the work of a lunatic. I too feel horribly depressed by the ‘miscarriage of justice’ in this country, my blood boils too when I find our leaders and captains as being no more than venal, corrupt idiots whose claim to respect is not what it should be. I too feel frustrated that we give them that respect regardless. But I sure am not going a killing anyone.
But here’s a thought: maybe, since no one’s died by his hand yet, he didn’t want to actually kill anyone. Just scare them, embarrass them. Terrorize them that they are as vulnerable and exposed as the victims they did to death. There is a reason I say this. Utsav won a gold medal when he graduated in fine arts from the banaras hindu university (I know people who’ve studied there) and has just passed out of the nid last month (I know people who’ve been to nid). Speaking for myself, for all my sensibility, I don’t think mustering a gold medal is any piece of cake. And this is art and shit involved here. Among one of the mental processes of an artist is to find an expression that would echo. A very creative and personal signature but one that would nonetheless have to resonate with a meaning which communicates itself through the imagination.
Now to build a case on the evidence available, it would be too simplistic to term the subject a mental case and pass our verdict. It is one thing to be on the side of civil society and justice, due process and the course of law but to go tut tut and shut away as delinquent someone who wears his indignation on his sleeve because that is not the prescribed way to protest is dangerous.
Make no mistakes, utsav has committed a crime. He should be arrested, tried and sentenced according to the laws of the land. But to brand his activism as an act of madness and keep him under supervision, that is cynical. And it is cynicism of a grave kind because it cuts at the very sap of feeling that makes human beings civilized. For it is uncivilized and vulgar how even after committing great misdeeds our criminals can live among us (to be sure we cannot ostracize or outcast our felons, the shot at re-assimilation is their greatest hope but that is a different matter — can’t be politically correct all the time man) to popular acclaim.
So this man here too deserves his right to be taken seriously. It is a serious thing he is trying to say.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/I-only-wanted-to-hurt-Talwar-not-kill-him-says-Utsav-Sharma/articleshow/7364668.cms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruchika_Girhotra_Case
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I am
The light of the world
If I can
Shine on
A little longer
These are
The hot winds of hell
I’m not so much
The burning beacon
As the smoke
That harms less
I have
The confidence of a survivor
A habitual
Idiot, a liar, a scavenger
On the open road
I’m the avenger
Elsewhere I’m abetting the crimes
I wonder whether
Thought precedes action
Or the other way round
I do not much put
My feet on the ground
My anthropology
Is of going from quasi-hunter
To the regurgitating kind
I am
The king of Calcutta
The lord of the crows
With them I hold court
And unleash chaos on
This city of mice and men
I’ve learnt
To say what I want
But I’ve forgotten
The bit about learning
I’ve seen
The spots on moon
And think I prefer
The darkness of its waning
The light of the world
If I can
Shine on
A little longer
These are
The hot winds of hell
I’m not so much
The burning beacon
As the smoke
That harms less
I have
The confidence of a survivor
A habitual
Idiot, a liar, a scavenger
On the open road
I’m the avenger
Elsewhere I’m abetting the crimes
I wonder whether
Thought precedes action
Or the other way round
I do not much put
My feet on the ground
My anthropology
Is of going from quasi-hunter
To the regurgitating kind
I am
The king of Calcutta
The lord of the crows
With them I hold court
And unleash chaos on
This city of mice and men
I’ve learnt
To say what I want
But I’ve forgotten
The bit about learning
I’ve seen
The spots on moon
And think I prefer
The darkness of its waning
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
e=mj2, a new year's prayer
After another old
Is this new
Not a lot cold
But it would do
To grab a shoulder
And bring it closer
Before we start again
Till it gets over once more
When not a little loud
But in whispers too
People come together
Kick off their shoes
Take the lips closer
To the lips you choose
live for the kiss
beat in the booze
And by morning
We’d have come
A little further
In the wilderness
And I’m a little
Closer to you
Now waiting. What will be this year’s defining date? What day will jump out of the calendar and become a part of the history of the post-MJ era after being branded as per the characteristic economy of our superfluous times that has given us such twenty-first century signposts as 9/11, 26/11, 7/7 and so on. The battle for world peace lost a frontline soldier with the passing of the King but b says the way he makes her feel, and b feels she wants her children to grow up in a peaceful world. The reason for this is that at the end of o-ten I heard lots of conversations about the King and I got to thinking that if America has discovered one truth of MJ’s gospel in its first black president maybe after all someday the world will get down to healing itself. Once in a while I dig the world man.
What hasn’t happened
will happen never
and what has shall
never not happen
if ever there
was such a land
to walk it would be
to dance on moon
even if there was
only one who could
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08_Jsfi1dbE
Is this new
Not a lot cold
But it would do
To grab a shoulder
And bring it closer
Before we start again
Till it gets over once more
When not a little loud
But in whispers too
People come together
Kick off their shoes
Take the lips closer
To the lips you choose
live for the kiss
beat in the booze
And by morning
We’d have come
A little further
In the wilderness
And I’m a little
Closer to you
Now waiting. What will be this year’s defining date? What day will jump out of the calendar and become a part of the history of the post-MJ era after being branded as per the characteristic economy of our superfluous times that has given us such twenty-first century signposts as 9/11, 26/11, 7/7 and so on. The battle for world peace lost a frontline soldier with the passing of the King but b says the way he makes her feel, and b feels she wants her children to grow up in a peaceful world. The reason for this is that at the end of o-ten I heard lots of conversations about the King and I got to thinking that if America has discovered one truth of MJ’s gospel in its first black president maybe after all someday the world will get down to healing itself. Once in a while I dig the world man.
What hasn’t happened
will happen never
and what has shall
never not happen
if ever there
was such a land
to walk it would be
to dance on moon
even if there was
only one who could
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08_Jsfi1dbE
Thursday, December 16, 2010
the importance of being earnest
For whom the bell tolls
The ball rolls when
The veil drops
And the flower falls
From the flowers
Garlands form and from
The petals pollen dust
Is scattered in the wind
For whom the bell tolls
In garlands, mobs and feasts
He is going down for sure
Where he will be her man
by the sea, old hopefully
but thus not lacking company
A few days back end of imagination and now at land’s end. For as saireet and debasree took the plunge I find myself (and this is a sentiment I share with other eyewitnesses) out of depth. But this sinking feeling has nothing to do with being thrown in the deep end because as of now I haven’t been thrown in the deep end. We haven’t been thrown in the deep end. For I’m talking of the great Indian wedding, the commonwealth games of wedlock. The land’s end is the saat phere which constitutes for me a different sphere of existence. The point where one faces the protean expanse of the sea having leapt over mountains and hills and jumped across plateaus and rivers of the plains. For this is another territory, the realm of the deep. To go onwards is to complete a circle, to circumnavigate. Something worth doing even if it is only a normative achievement. But the stories sailors have and the places pirates sail to. All in all the high seas are heady.
Married
Like ahab
And moby dick
Having
A whale of a time
unashamedly
The ball rolls when
The veil drops
And the flower falls
From the flowers
Garlands form and from
The petals pollen dust
Is scattered in the wind
For whom the bell tolls
In garlands, mobs and feasts
He is going down for sure
Where he will be her man
by the sea, old hopefully
but thus not lacking company
A few days back end of imagination and now at land’s end. For as saireet and debasree took the plunge I find myself (and this is a sentiment I share with other eyewitnesses) out of depth. But this sinking feeling has nothing to do with being thrown in the deep end because as of now I haven’t been thrown in the deep end. We haven’t been thrown in the deep end. For I’m talking of the great Indian wedding, the commonwealth games of wedlock. The land’s end is the saat phere which constitutes for me a different sphere of existence. The point where one faces the protean expanse of the sea having leapt over mountains and hills and jumped across plateaus and rivers of the plains. For this is another territory, the realm of the deep. To go onwards is to complete a circle, to circumnavigate. Something worth doing even if it is only a normative achievement. But the stories sailors have and the places pirates sail to. All in all the high seas are heady.
Married
Like ahab
And moby dick
Having
A whale of a time
unashamedly
Saturday, November 27, 2010
political expression or the b sting
Left —
To me what is important is class. One’s got to have it. But then there are those that think it crucial that there not be any and i cannot agree with them more. They are the left. To leave is also left. B is leftist.
Centre —
In my opinion everyone should have some aim. You know a central target. And then there are those that aim for the centre. I’m aiming for the centre. To centre is also to cross. I have a mountain to cross, but just now i'm a little low.
Do a left and a centre make a right then
To me what is important is class. One’s got to have it. But then there are those that think it crucial that there not be any and i cannot agree with them more. They are the left. To leave is also left. B is leftist.
Centre —
In my opinion everyone should have some aim. You know a central target. And then there are those that aim for the centre. I’m aiming for the centre. To centre is also to cross. I have a mountain to cross, but just now i'm a little low.
Do a left and a centre make a right then
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)