Saturday, December 31, 2011

Pilgrim's Progress

"Twirled" by Neha

..And to stir the mind
To a search after what it fain would find:
Things that seem to be hid in words obscure,
Do but the Godly mind the more allure;
To study what those sayings should contain
That speak to us in such a Cloudy strain...

- Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan (1678)

Monday, December 26, 2011

Saraktee jaye hai

Saraktee jaye hai rukh se naqaab ahista ahista
nikalataa aa raha hai aaftaab ahista ahista

Jawaan hone lage jab vo to ham se kar liyaa pardaa
hayaa yakalakht aayii aur shabaab ahista ahista

Shabefurkat kaa jaagaa hoon farishton ab to sone do
kabhee fursat men kar lenaa hisaab ahista ahista

Savaalevasl par unko uduu kaa khauf hai itna
Dabey honthon se dete hain javaab ahistaa ahistaa

Hamarey aur tumharey pyar men bass fark hai itna
Idhar to jaldee jaldee hai udhar aahistaa aahistaa

Woh bedardee se sar kaatein "ameer" aur main kahoon un se
Huzoor aahistaa aahistaa, janaab ahista ahista

- Written by Ameer Menai, Sung by Jagjit Singh

Key to urdu words: sarakti - to slip, naqab - veil, ahista - slowly, aftaab - ( vision of) moon, yakalaKht - modesty/shame, shabefurkat - night of separation, savaalevasl - question-answers, uduu - villian,

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Whitsun Weddings

....There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

- Philip Larkin

A German Requiem

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces in between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.
Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reproach you.
Today you take your place in the Widow's Shuttle.

*

The bus is waiting at the southern gate
To take you to the city of your ancestors
Which stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments,
As vivid as this charming square, your home.
Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding,
The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh,
The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent them
Just a little, on this first day.
But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.
Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter,
His tongue still searching between his teeth.
See, he has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.
It will pass, young lady, it will pass.

*

How comforting it is, once or twice a year,
To get together and forget the old times.
As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen,
When the boiled shirts gather at the graveside
And a leering waistcoast approaches the rostrum.
It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.
They mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.
The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.
Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way-

*

The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise,
The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs,
The better that these bent figures who flutter among the graves
Tending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemums
Are not ghosts,
That they shall go home.
The bus is waiting, and on the upper terraces
The workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.

*

But when so many had died, so many and at such speed,
There were no cities waiting for the victims.
They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorways
And carried them away with the coffins.
So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries:
The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crosses
And all the impossible directions in brass and enamel.

*

'Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14-16 hours or by appointment.'
Professor Sarnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate memberships
And instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.
Your uncle's grave informed you that he lived in the third floor, left.
You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the lift
To which one needed a key...

*

Would come down, would ever come down
With a smile like thin gruel, and never too much to say.
How he shrank through the years.
How you towered over him in the narrow cage.
How he shrinks now...

*
But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.
And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.
So that a man might say and think:
When the world was at its darkest,
When the black wings passed over the rooftops,
(And who can divine His purposes?) even then
There was always, always a fire in this hearth.
You see this cupboard? A priest-hole!
And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.
Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell you
The half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through!

*

His wife nods, and a secret smile,
Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leaf
Over two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.
Even the enquirer is charmed.
He forgets to pursue the point.
It is not what he wants to know.
It is what he wants not to know.
It is not what they say.
It is what they do not say.


James Fenton

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tears of the Giraffe

Giraffe Sketch by Johan31000

Mma Ramotswe had a gift for the American woman, a basket which on her return journey from Bulawayo she had bought, on impulse, from a woman sitting by the side of the road in Francistown. The woman was desperate, and Mma Ramotswe, who did not need a basket, had bought it to help her. It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

"These little marks here are tears." she said. "The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket"

The American woman took the basket politely, in the proper Botswana way of receiving a gift - with both hands...."You are very kind, Mma."she said. "But why did the giraffe give its tears?"

Mma Ramotswe shrugged; she had never thought about it. "I suppose that it means that we can all give something," she said. "A giraffe has nothing else to give - only tears."

Did it mean that? she wondered. And for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange, stilt-borne body camouflaged among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought of all the beauty there was in Africa, and of the laughter, and the love.

- From Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

Ab ke saawan mein

"Wheat Field in Rain" by Vincent Van Gogh

Ab ke saawan mein shararat ye mere saath hui,
Mera ghar chhod ke kul shahar mein barsaat hui.

Aap mat puchiye kya hum pe safar mein gujri,
The luteron ka jahan gaon, wahin raat hui.

Zindagi bhar to hui guftgu gairon se magar,
Aaj tak humse hamari naa mulakat hui.

Har galat mod pe toka hai kisi ne mujhko,
Ek aawaz teri jab se mere sath hui.

Maine socha ki mere desh ki halat kya hai,
Ek kaatil se tabhi meri mulakat hui.

- Gopaldas Neeraj

खुशबू सी आ रही है

Parinda by Neha

खुशबू सी आ रही है इधर ज़ाफ़रान की,
खिडकी खुली है फिर कोई उनके मकान की.

हारे हुए परिन्दे ज़रा उड़ के देख तो,
आ जायेगी जमीन पे छत आसमान की.

बुझ जाये सरेशाम ही जैसे कोई चिराग,
कुछ यूँ है शुरुआत मेरी दास्तान की.

ज्यों लूट ले कहार ही दुल्हन की पालकी,
हालत यही है आजकल हिन्दुस्तान की.

औरों के घर की धूप उसे क्यूं पसंद हो,
बेची हो जिसने रोशनी अपने मकान की .

जुल्फों के पेंचो-ख़म में उसे मत तलाशिये,
ये शायरी जुबां है किसी बेजुबान की.

'नीरज' से बढ़कर और धनी है कौन,
उसके हृदय में पीर है सारे जहान की.

- गोपालदास "नीरज"

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Untitled (aka "Last Love)

"Love on the Street" by Neha

To my daughters, I need to say:

Go with the one who loves you biblically.

The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck.

Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle, the way old grief is gentle.

Love the love that is messy in all its too much,

The body that rides best your body, whose mouth saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips, whose tongue translates the rock language of all your elegant scars.

Go with the one who cries out for his tragic sisters as he chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin

Triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.

Go with the one who resembles most your father. Not the father you can point out on a map,

But the father who is here. Is your home. Is the key to your front door. Know that your first love will only

Be the first. And the second and third and even fourth will unprepare you for the most important:

The Blessed. The Beast. The Last love. Which is, of course, the most terrifying kind.

Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us? Can reveal to us

Our true heart’s end and its thirty years spent in poverty?

Can mimic the sound of our birdthroated mothers, replicate the warmth of our brothers' tempers? Can pull us out of ourselves until

We are no longer sisters or daughters or sword swallowers but, instead,

Women. Who give. And lead. And take and want

And want

And want

And want

Because there is no shame in wanting.

And you will hear yourself say: Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours.

And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you and tuck them deep inside myself until they are

Ready to be the children of such a royal and staggering love. Or you will say: Last Love,

I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless, have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself

At the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet.

Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you.

Let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end.

Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you.

Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you.

Let the wrong beds find me if it brings me to you.

Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you.

Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you.

Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you.

Last love, I let other men borrow your children. Forgive me.

Last love, I vowed my heart to another. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room and come out empty. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me.

Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me.

Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me.

Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen.

Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.

I am all that is left.

Amen.


Barason ke baad

baraso.n ke baad dekhaa ik shaKhs dil_rubaa saa
ab zahan me.n nahii.n hai par naam thaa bhalaa saa

abaruu khi.nche khi.nche se aa.Nkhe.n jhukii jhukii sii
baate.n rukii rukii sii lahajaa thakaa thakaa saa

alfaaz the ke jugnuu aavaaz ke safar me.n
ban jaaye jangalo.n me.n jis tarah raastaa saa

Khvaabo.n me.n Khvaab us ke yaado.n me.n yaad us kii
niindo.n me.n ghul gayaa ho jaise ke rat_jagaa saa

pahale bhii log aaye kitane hii zindagii me.n
vo har tarah se lekin auro.n se thaa judaa saa

agalii muhabbato.n ne vo naa_muraadiyaa.N dii.n
taazaa rafaaqato.n se dil thaa Daraa Daraa saa

kuchh ye ke muddato.n se ham bhii nahii.n the roye
kuchh zahar me.n bujhaa thaa ahabaab kaa dilaasaa

phir yuu.N huaa ke saavan aa.Nkho.n me.n aa base the
phir yuu.N huaa ke jaise dil bhii thaa aabalaa saa

ab sach kahe.n to yaaro ham ko Khabar nahii.n thii
ban jaayegaa qayaamat ik vaaqi_aa zaraa saa

tevar the beruKhii ke andaaz dostii ke
vo ajanabii thaa lekin lagataa thaa aashnaa saa

ham dasht the ke dariyaa ham zahar the ke amrit
naahaq thaa zo.Num ham ko jab vo nahii.n thaa pyaasaa

ham ne bhii us ko dekhaa kal shaam ittefaaqan
apanaa bhii haal hai ab logo 'Faraz' kaa saa

- Ahmed Faraz