Another day, another bomb

Yesterday another half a dozen bombs went off across the city.
We're still counting the dead
Fitting together the jigsaw pieces of flesh,
Hosing down the red streets
Helped by the heavens which opened up
To add to the usual official chaos.

The news-hyenas arrived in packs
Drawn by the stench of blood and meat
To a feast of breaking news.

Nothing was new.
Nameless, faceless men giving succour
Without fanfare
To others equally anonymous.
A picture a bomb-weary city has grown used to.

For countless households
The long night has just begun.

The Nests of Nandigram

Is it my imagination
Or are there far fewer birds singing ?
What dawn do they mutely await
Through the long night of terror ?
Silence speaks of pervasive fear
And of the loss of ancestral nests.

The protector has taken an axe to the trees.
Trees fall; the earth shakes.
Raucous cries of dispossession supplant birdsong
As the khaki-clad hunters pot sitting ducks
While Zeus' swans feast on Leda's flesh.

Rejoice, my countrymen, for the prophecy has come true
-The state has indeed withered away.

Autumn Harvest

Words, once obedient servants
Now claim suzerainty over ideas
The age of meaningful verse has yielded
To gobbledygook.

Poetry, a grey mist half-understood
Through which I stumble blindly
A mirage I chase through the sands...

The wells of creativity run dry
Neither outpourings of emotion nor tender murmurs
Mere craftsmanship remains
Lines dolled up in tawdry baubles
Literary whores, soliciting passing readers
Fireflies, impotent
In the face of the darkness within.

The autumn harvest of verbosity is ripe
For the scythe of the Grim Reaper

LIAR, LIAR

Manmohan Singh said in his statement in the Indian Parliament:

"the agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary."

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said :

"The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear cooperation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement,"

Both of them can't be right. Ergo, one of them is lying. Take your pick.

Song of a Tuneless Nightingale

In the Garden of Verse trills many a nightingale
Of the advent of spring
Fertile, bountiful, pregnant.
Of clouds turgid with the fluid of life,
Of rain, and of lush green meadows,
Of starlit, silvery nights

Silenced are the mutterings
Of those in whose veins courses
The brutal, parched thirst
And ravenous hunger
Of searing summer unquenched.
Their deep, frightening voices
Out of place in Eden.

Autumn permitted to weep
Only in the silent shedding of leaves
And winter mute, frozen
By the chilling demise of the senses.

Here may be sung
Only chaste, bejewelled verse
Set to uplifting metre.
Shut are the doors
To tuneless wolf whistles
Prurient, irreverent, defiant
Yet far more spontaneous and heartfelt...

Sunjay Dutt and John Donne

Sunjay Dutt committed a crime, was caught, tried, and after fourteen long years, was finally found guilty and sent to jail. But this piece is not about him, not about whether he was guilty or innocent, nor about the quantum of his sentence. It's about the high decibel clamour from Bollywood protesting against his sentence. It's about everyone from Dilip Kumar to the newest wannabe shouting from the rooftops about what a saint Sunjay is, about how he was just a victim of the circumstances, about how he has reformed. To a man (and woman) they declaim before the cameras that "poor Sunjay" must be set free. The touching camaraderie almost brought a lump to my throat. The man must be a really lovable type, I thought, for all his colleagues to jump to his defence like this. Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends And Influence People" come to life.

Just then, my brain's resident cynical imp woke up, took one look at my train of thought and hooted with derision. "You poor mug, do you really believe that they are all so deeply concerned about Sunjay Dutt? Most of them couldn't care less about what happens to him! My poor innocent, this outrage isn't about Sunjay Dutt at all. What has got them deeply worried is that the invisible wall of immunity they have always taken for granted has been breached."

As usual, the imp was right. These people have played fast and loose with the laws of the land, firm in their conviction that the laws did not apply to them. Up to now they've got away with murder. Money, and the aura of stardom ensured that they were never called to account for their crimes - ranging from drugs to bigamy to tax evasion to posing as farmers to grab agricultural land to mowing down innocent men, women and children while drunk. To be above the law was the birthright of the stars. Sunjay Dutt's case has violated this very birthright. That is what the shrill hysteria is all about. Dutt is simply a cloak for the fear that has taken root in their hearts - the fear that tomorrow the law may call them to account for their crimes. The fear that finally the law may actually implement what was till now a pleasant fiction - that all are equal before the law.

Unbidden, John Donne's lines sprang to mind :

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The Bollywood bigwigs have heard the bell tolling - and they don't like the sound one bit!

Yahoo Mail Cleaner

Yahoo e-mail account-holders are familiar with the irritation of losing nearly one-fourth of the width of the browser workspace to advertisements. Grit your teeth and bear with it if you want a free web-mail service was the unspoken message. Now, for Firefox users, there's a way around this. First you need to install the Greasemonkey extension. Greasemonkey is one of the best extensions available for Firefox. It enables the user to customise the way web pages display by installing scripts. Once you've installed Greasemonkey and re-started Firefox, install the Yahoo Mail Cleaner script available here. Re-start Firefox and go to your Yahoo Mail. Abracadabra, hey presto, no ads and a full width message reading experience. Firefox's customisability wins hands down again. If you're still using Internet Explorer, do yourself a favour - get Firefox.

A patch of Paradise

Alone on a far shore
Savouring the limpid turquoise blue of the ocean
The soft, clean golden sand
The solitude, and the heaven-sent silence
Punctuated only by the lullaby of the waves
My own small patch of Paradise
Without the strings attached
An isle of repose, of calm
All the more beautiful for its impermanence
My personal Eden
Sans apple, sans Eve, sans Lucifer...sans God himself
For even He would be a distraction
Let me cherish it while I may
For the world will intrude all too soon...

Window

I sit by the window looking out
And see myself reflected
Outside the glass looking in
Reality and illusion facing off
Or is the window the only reality
Separating two ghosts
Or perhaps imprisoning just the schizoid singularity
Of a self-absorbed existence?
A Rowlingesque Hogwartian mirror showing
My heart's deepest desire - myself -
A true inheritor
To the mantle of Narcissus

"No, thank you" says Ford

Each time I think the BCCI can't do any worse, they prove me wrong by creating an even bigger cock-up. Graham Ford was well within his rights to turn down the job if he felt that the compensation or the tenure was inadequate. If the dumb clucks in the BCCI chose to go ahead and announce his appointment as the coach of the Indian cricket team without waiting for his official acceptance of their offer, he can hardly be blamed. The BCCI babus suffer from incurable foot-in-the-mouth disease and seem to count each day that they do not appear on the idiot box as wasted. I never thought I'd say this but these buffoons have succeeded in making Dalmia's reign look like a golden era. When he was in power at the BCCI I had no love lost for him and celebrated his exit as a new dawn for Indian cricket. But Dalmia was a hard-core Marwari businessman who at least got things done. Sharad Pawar has made the organisation a standing joke, albeit a very bad one. The BCCI now resembles nothing so much as a Tower of Babel, where each of his lackeys tries to outdo the others in shooting his mouth off without verifying anything. This latest fiasco only reinforces the popular perception of the BCCI as a bunch of arrogant,power-drunk incompetents answerable to no one. Someone got it spot-on a long time ago when he said that the only thing worse than a public sector monopoly is a private sector monopoly.Let's pray for the early birth of Zee's ICL (Indian Cricket League). Surely they can't do any worse than this lot!

Why did the chicken cross the road ?

Children, not to mention many of us adults have been asking one another this question for ages. If you feel "To get to the other side" is too simplistic or too childish an answer, see here for some profoundly philosophical answers.

The Yanks are worried

The Yankees are worried - and it's showing in their cartoons. Have a look at these two from the International Herald Tribune.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1126/525746127_dd25b86969_o.png

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1188/525746131_859b8720d5_o.png

When issues move from ivory tower editorials to newspaper cartoons one can safely say that they've become topics the man in the street talks about. Score one point for us, chaps. They've lectured the world on the virtues of a free market for decades. The shoe's on the other foot now.To use their idiom, they've talked the talk. Now it's time to walk the walk. Without whining that the shoe pinches. (Pardon the mixed, even mangled, metaphors but the temptation to crow a little bit was irresistible))

26 Golden Rules for Writing Well

I found these rules on the internet. They were attributed to Anon. If the copyright belongs to anyone , please let me know and I'll remove them.
Read them and smile. Then go back to what you were writing when you took a break and see how many of these 'rules' you've inadvertently violated. Don't ask me how many I'd broken. I refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer may incriminate me. (See, I read Erle Stanley Gardner too!)

26 Golden Rules for Writing Well

1. Don't abbrev.

2. Check to see if you any words out.

3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

4. About sentence fragments.

5. When dangling, don't use participles.

6. Don't use no double negatives.

7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

8. Just between you and I, case is important.

9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.

11. Its important to use apostrophe's right.

12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.

13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.

14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop

15. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.

16. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.

17. Watch out for irregular verbs that have creeped into our language.

18. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

19. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.

20. A writer mustn't shift your point of view.

21. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.

22. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.

23. Avoid cliches like the plague.

24. 1 final thing is to never start a sentence with a number.

25. Always check your work for accuracy and completeness.

[ANON.]

BBC, the Queen's English & I

About an hour ago I was watching the news on BBC World. Their reporter was talking about the organ transplant trade in China and about how, in response to international pressure the Chinese government was trying to set up a regulatory framework for organ transplants.

The caption on the lower part of the screen read :

"VOLUNTARY ORGAN TRANSPLANT TO BE MANDATORY"

No, I'm not making this up, you read that right. After listening intently to the report I finally managed to work out what they meant - that consent from the deceased's family would henceforth be an essential prerequisite to the harvesting of human organs. Ah well, the pressures of 24*7 reporting! It's nice to know that the Beeb can goof up like all the rest of us. The next time I make a dog's dinner of the Queen's English I can at least be assured of being in elite company.

"Overselling capitalism"

Browsing the web today, I came across a very insightful and thought-provoking editorial in the 'Los Angeles Times' - "Overselling capitalism" - by Benjamin R. Barber. Capitalists of all hues (And I'm one of the unreconstructed hard-core ones) should read it and introspect. It may explain why the Left is making a return of sorts in some parts of the world. Right v/s Left, capitalism v/s communism/socialism - these are arguments which lend themselves far too easily to pulpit-thumping, chest-beating and hyperbole. Quiet reflection may not be fashionable or easy in this era of 24/7 media cacophony and "always-on" internet but it's necessary. Otherwise by the time we find out how far we have drifted from the goals we had set ourselves it may be too late for a course correction. And the "bad guys" will be back with a vengeance !

The World According To America

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this.




And the Yanks wonder why they're so unpopular round the globe!

A long way to twilight

It's a long way to twilight
With the day refusing to die
The fiercely beating sun digging his heels in,
Dogged in retreat
The stars and the moon bashfully hidden
Behind the veil of his blazing glare

The sky cloudless, no impediment
To the spears of his incandescent beams
The road, barren, tree-less
Only the shrubbery of razor-sharp pebbles underfoot
Kin to the cacti
Without even the saving grace
Of their greenness

It's a long way to twilight
And the day refuses to die...

What to blog about today?

Somebody once said ( and the rest of the world's been quoting it ad nauseam ever since!) that one picture's worth a thousand words. Here's one I came across on the BLaugh site that takes loquacity to an altogether new level. It certainly made me cringe a bit and I don't even blog every day.

Art Buchwald - R.I.P.

Art Buchwald, arguably America's greatest humorist since Mark Twain, passed away on Wednesday, the 17th of January 2007, aged 81. I've never been very good at writing obituaries. All I can say is 'Thanks, Mr.Buchwald, for many decades of laughter. Your writings enlivened our lives. Your political satires showed up many a windbag for for being exactly that - a bagful of hot air. To a non-American like me, you were my first introduction to Watergate, before I'd ever heard of Woodward and Bernstein.

Rest in peace.

A short on-line biography of Art Buchwald can be read here on Wikipedia.

The pen goes dry

I long for your cooling embrace
After the relentless flames of the world
Give me repose, Mother Ganga, for I come to your arms as ashes
Increasingly irksome was the mortal garb
And the silken ties too tight


The skein has unravelled
And I am one with the sky and the stars
Those symbols of eternity;
Have left behind mortal playmates, fickle emotions...

My pen sobs
And I lack the courage to speak the truth
To let it know
That it has finally run dry, and I, empty
Words fail me, like the 'Brahmastra', at vital moments
Perhaps I, too, carry the curse
Of some Bhargava ?

A free verse translation of my Marathi ghazal.

Manhood

Every morning the headlines flaunt
The rising graph of our hallowed, ancient culture
And provide statistical confirmation
Of the collective manhood
Of a bogey full of passengers;
Of the protectors' unshakeable indolence
Of unabashed justifications, of corrupted lives


Soon, far too soon
The dust settles
The reporters move on
Then is declared the official price
Of outraged modesty
Then stands tall and proud the maze
Of hospitals, police stations,
Blind, deaf, impotent courts
In which are condemned wounds
Never to heal
And the wounded
To endure the curse of life

I click my tongue in empathy
Sipping my steaming cup of tea
Then, turning the page, focus on
The alluring barely-clads of Page Three...


A free translation of my Marathi poem 'Purushaarth'.