Not tonight.

No, I can't sleep.
Not tonight.
Not when the sweet silence
Brushes against my ears
Like a soft breeze,
Not when my droopy eyes
Fill my lazy mind
With hazy waking dreams.
No, I can't sleep.
No, not tonight.

thistledown

flighty thistledown

floating across the meadow

flirting with the breeze


-- a construction of the 'Self'  ;-)

Abu...

One of the things I learned from my grandma was how to find pleasure in the blandest fare that life has to offer. And I don't mean this in a boring figurative way, but in fact, with regard to the most tangible, most sensuous aspect of life--food. Not that she did not give me that same wisdom at the figurative level: I did ultimately learn that every experience, whether sweet or bitter, had its own unique taste, and that even the most terrible moments deserved to be savoured because they were just as beautiful and ephemeral as the pleasant ones; but I'd rather talk about food here, because that was something my grandma savoured at a level almost bordering on spirituality.

When I was fourteen years old, my grandma decided that she wanted to live with her youngest son and moved in with us. That was the beginning of trouble for me. I was an obnoxious teenager, that too an only child, who was forced to submit to the authority of one more adult in her life. What was worse, I had to share my room with her! And she was a disciplinarian who thought I was the worst brought up kid in the world. She needed to feel that she had some say in the upbringing of the only child in the house she was a part of, and also wanted to mould me into a person of her liking. And I had a fierce resistance to this kind of manipulation, along with a feeling of rejection and an aching desire for unconditional approval. Those were turbulent times--shouting matches, slamming of doors, bouts of crying--I just hated her.

But I am digressing here. I was going to talk about food, right? Well, when she first came, I thought my grandma was the most boring person in the world. And she ate the most boring kind of food. Poor thing. Bland boiled food for her delicate stomach and high blood pressure. I used to pity her, with silent pleasure, of course (I was such a jerk). Mealtimes were the only part of the day when I enjoyed the sweet pleasure of revenge. But as days went by, I began to feel that her food looked tastier than mine. She had a way of mixing the food on her plate that made the pure white rice and the fresh green vegetables of all shades look like a work of art, and a way of rolling that mixture in her mouth which made that austere morsel look like the food of the gods. Soon, the food on my own plate became progressively unattractive and I found myself eying her food during every meal till one day, she offered me some of it. It wasn't bad at all. Every meal after that day was topped by one huge morsel of her food as the last bite.


That was the thawing of the ice. We became great friends after that and all the shouting matches proved to be the building blocks of a most beautiful relationship. Ultimately, I think I became the only grandchild of hers who was allowed to scream at her, storm out of the room and then come back an hour later to lie by her side while she gently stroked my hair. And I have abused that privilege so many times! It's needless to say how much I miss her now.

Now that she is gone, I cook boiled food for myself when I am in the mood sometimes, while my poor exasperated friends attribute my bizarre taste to an obsession with healthy food habits. I have learned that the taste of food lies in the art of eating (very mundane wisdom, but wisdom nevertheless), and I have also learned how to make that heavenly mixture she used to make on her plate,  but I still can't get rid of the nagging feeling that the mixture on her plate was far far tastier than mine.

haiku

prejudiced darts

missed their target today-

-the loser won.

Five Hundred Miles

...But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would five hundred more
Just to be the man
Who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door.
                                     The Proclaimers.
The Scottish 'national anthem'. The ultimate 'wooing song', as me and my friends would say. Embarrassingly sentimental, stereotypical, conventional and what not, but lovely. Why is it that in spite of all feminist pretensions, in spite of being able to fend for ourselves, having insisted on not being put up on a pedestal and insisted on paying bills on equal terms, this song which says, "when the money comes in for the work I do, I'll pass almost every penny on to you," does not come across as offensive? Is it just because of the catchy tune of the song? Is it just because of these two cute, heavily bespectacled Scottish twin brothers bouncing up and down and belting out this number with so must gusto? Or is it out of nostalgia for old codes of love? Or because certain aspects of conventional love are actually still beautiful?
What is it that makes the cartoon-like image of this man lying on your doorstep with worn out shoes, grimy face and tongue hanging out, (in other words, half dead) so so endearing? What?

'Amen'

From "LiIies of the Field".
I remember this song because my poor father once tried to hum Sidney Poitier/Jester Hairston's part but got the timing completely wrong, and finally exclaimed, "Arre baap re, this is a difficult song!"

from Dr Zhivago: the joy of writing

     After two or three stanzas and several images by which he was himself astonished, his work took possession of him and he experienced the approach of inspiration. At such moments the correlation of the forces controlling the artist is, as it were, stood on its head. The ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state of mind he is trying to express, but with language, his instrument of expression. Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for man and turns wholly into music, not in the sense of outward, audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its outward flow. Then, like the current of a mighty river polishing stones and turning wheels by its very movement, the flow of speech creates in passing, by the force of its own laws, rhyme and rhythm and countless other forms and formations, still more important and until now undiscovered, unconsidered and unnamed.

     At such moments Yury felt that the main part of his work was not being done by him but by something which was above him and controlling him: the thought and poetry of the world as it was at that moment and as it would be in the future. He was controlled by the next step it was to take in the order of its historical development; and he felt himself to be only the pretext and the pivot setting it in motion.

     This feeling relieved him for a time of self-reproach, of dissatisfaction with himself, of the sense of his nothingness....