royal scream

This one gives Munch a run for his money. :D

Source: The Guardian

 The Royal Mail strikes.

ew.

Read this.

Disturbing that there's nothing about what the girl herself says; there's only her family's word for it that "she's happy". And I find it ew that he wants to have children with her.

Okay, I'll allow for freedom of choice and autonomy and all of that, but... ew.

Perhaps we should think of an upper age limit for marriage, too.

Random

It's a bug we all have. We want to know details about the private lives of others, especially celebrities, or people we admire or look up to, or those we hate and wish ill for. Those details help solidify our ideas about them, whoever "they" are, and aid understanding and love, or ill feeling and anger.*

Last trimester, Nicola Lacey's book did just that for me. Hart was no longer just one another genius in a madding crowd who had formulated a brilliant and path-breaking way to understand the philosophy of law; he was human. And it was easier, having read Lacey, to forgive the flaws and holes in Hart's theory of law, because after all, he was as human as the rest of us, and had his failings and brilliance. Lacey draws extensively from Hart's diaries, and there is much that is endearing in Hart's frank and candid - and sometimes wistful and wishful, at other times angry and confused - version of his life, the ideas and the people populating it.

And the Obamas too: they're very human, if you know what I mean. It's a fairytale marriage (but not a fairytale living it), going by this article. I'm tempted, through sheer Cassandra-ness, to believe there must be red herrings. But I won't. No, I won't.

*Illustrative, not exhaustive. :)

Coming Home

Coming home is always a sort of an adventure. First, there's the mad hurry where you realise five minutes before leaving that you haven't packed half the things you should have, and the consequent chase to the station (with said travel-companion near tears*), and the weather. Oh! the weather!

Bangalore is a beautiful city that way, much like Kerala (though it is nothing like it, except in terms of the unending number of Mallus roaming the streets and populating the shops). It rains unexpectedly; it gets cold effortlessly; the skies darken and the clouds race across rapidly. On clear, cloudless nights, the moon is a joy to watch from the Library bridge or the basketball court or the terraces, and on clouded days, the dark grey silhouettes bewitch. And when it rains, it doesn't pour, but chills and pitter-patters deliciously.

Delicious pitter-patter it was, yesterday. And so it was that the way to the station, and the view from the train - both were of fresh green leaves and newly re-born trees, with a cool, gracious breeze of rain-washed, earthy scent and of raindrops dancing on puddles and small lakes.

And the journey itself. Haven't you noticed how coming home is like an opportunity to step back and update the records? To keep track of changes and causes, of mistakes and lessons learnt, and best of all, a new set of days to be all alone (unless you want company) and get reacquainted with everything you knew and don't know, or forgot.

It's sometimes a pain - the travel and the lugging bags and remembering tickets, but...

Happy holidays. :)

*I exaggerate, as usual. :)

Deepavali

It's Deepavali.

I used to be told that there were two ways of celebrating Deepavali. One was the conventional way, with family and friends, sweets and a feast, new clothes and crackers. This was routine every year, and Amma used to make the most incredibly tasty sweets and pass them around to stuffed mouths and greedy hands. Much before dawn, my sister and I would be wildly shaken awake, dragged to the temple and made to stand in the midst of the lights and chants and dressed-up women. And once that ritual was done, we'd race to join the kids in the neighbourhood, with pencil sparklers and catherine wheels and those pyramid sparkles. I remember our most glorious moments were when the umbrellas (ghostly pink and green and white) came floating down from the rockets we'd painstakingly lit and prodded upwards.

Then the day would pass like any other, though added bonuses of the best sort of food and payasam, and there would be Lakshmi Puja.

I learnt of the other way when I met S-ji. That way was/is intensely personal, and here, the symbolism and the hidden significance take the limelight, and ritual and crackers recede into the dim background. This is that significance that Wiki tries to condense into half a page, and something I have heard almost all my life with a strange and half-undeserving feeling.

Sitting around him on certain earmarked days, we would hear of how Deepavali is one of those days set apart in the Hindu calendar to remind man that material pursuits are shrouded in unreality and ephemerality, and that the Real was right here, way deep inside, and we were all looking in the wrong places. All one needed to do to realise this was rake away all that trash one called thoughts, for they blinded and blocked the truly important. Deepavali, with its Lakshmi Puja (for she is the Goddess of Wealth, and not merely material wealth), was an invocation to that inner light, and a festival to set aside material pursuits and start the spiritual journey.

I'm not sure I understood what he strove to make us understand, but then, perhaps that is secondary for the purposes of this post. All I'm required to know for now is, Deepavali is a festival of lights, and the lights are to be lit within and without.

Happy Deepavali. May you find your light.

freedom's just another word*

I have no words to write.
I have nothing to talk about.
I have no one to talk to.
I have nothing to learn.
I have no beauty to see.
I have nothing to take away.
I have nowhere to stay.
I have no one to help.
I have nowhere to be.
I have nothing to lose.

So every day, I sing.
And wish for everything.

*Janis Joplin: "Me and Bobby McGee"

i hear the water lapping...

I want to write poetry. Now. But my mind isn't amenable, and my brain won't listen unless the Mind Pathway is open and uncluttered.

So I read.

***

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
~ Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

***

Yeats puts into verse what we feel and think, but can't translate. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Either way, they click: his verse and our thought.

Lake Isle is a contained little poem (like most others of his), and it brims to the neck with a deep want to find a place of one's own: that one place where everything is as it should be, and everything is as one wants. And there is no disturbance, either of the Mind or of people or of the world, and peace is everywhere because there is nothing to destroy it. This isn't hard-won, desperately-saved peace, but it comes "dropping slowly", beautifully, quietly, of a dew-misted morning and stays contentedly, for there isn't anything to shoo it away. It is like... a serene, azure lake, unspoiled by ripples or waves.

I don't think our Innisfree is east of Lough Gill. It's right here, deep inside. Finding it, though, is a different matter. Though it occurs to me now: we wouldn't value our Innisfree as much if there were no pavements of drab, grey stone.

Random

I must confess: I do not understand the vagaries of the human mind.

It's amazing how you know when you should stop doing something and start studying, or stop obsessing about chocolate and move on to jalebis, or stop staring at the screen and start typing, but... don't. The human mind must be masochist, really. What else would warrant and justify obsession, blues (and greys) and non-activity?

I suppose sometimes, the difference is that you must stop wanting something and start working on it. Or something else. Else you'll just stay where you are - just another rusted cog in that big rusty wheel. And rust isn't a nice thing to have or be.

Hm.