Apitcherfullofmirth Spews Vitriol

Excerpt of conversation between apitcherfullofmirth and the Universe.

Apitcherfullofmirth (spewing vitriol) : Screw you Universe! You’re an ugly place to be..
Universe:………
Apitcherfullofmirth: You’re an ugly twisted place to be
Universe (deep solemnity):……………….

Apitcherfullofmirth (a pang of guilt): Different matter there is beauty in ugliness also
Universe (almost patriarchal):…………………..
Apitcherfullofmirth (attempt at reconciliation): The tree with red berries outside my window is quite marvelous.Ok. Thank you.

Keeping it brewing..

As long as there is love in the heart, and a Gulmohar in full bloom,
As long as there is pleasure drawn from some work well done,
And an owlet staring at you from a tree in the morning.
As long as there are friends to encourage you
The mocha will brew..

Dostoevsky

“…..As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”

— Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov

Delicious Ambiguity..

I just had to post this…

“…..I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. — Gilda Radner ……”

Pretty poetry for the day.

TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE

by: James Elroy Flecker

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Mæonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

Haiku mode

Mango Fruit flies
Flit over my head
Warm May morning

No 5- 7- 5 syllable structure.. Pretty much freestyle..Experimenting..

The many worlds

The other day, I read a rather innocuous article in the Hindu about a mother’s relief over the verdict passed against her son’s killer. 12 years ago, her son had died of bullets wounds when the Mumbai Police, allegedly resorted to indiscriminate firing to control a mob agitating against the desecration of Dr. Ambedkar’s statue. The courts had found the Police commissioner in charge at that time guilty.

I say innocuous, in that firstly , it had appeared in the bottom left corner of the last page of the paper. Secondly, in this great country of a billion plus, murders, injustice, agitations, scapegoats, indiscriminate firing, delayed justice are de rigeur, atleast to me. Even as I say this I feel no remorse, no shame, to admit that such incidents don’t move me as much as they did once( or so, I’d like to believe) upon a long long time ago.
But what did strangely register in my mind was the old lady’s plight. For her, the question that still lurked was “who had hung the garland of chappals on the statue?”
I do not know if the issue was politicized. I’m inclined to believe it was, as the incident occurred close to the elections. However, what Dr. Ambedkar symbolized to the many who had been discriminated against is something I cannot even begin to fathom. For that matter, I cannot comprehend what it means to be discriminated against, to live life in subjugation, a second citizen in a world you create..

The many worlds around me, that I so naively believe thread into mine in some way. ..

Pointless…

Sometimes all you can do is believe..

An excerpt from Walden

There are so many passages I love from Walden..This excerpt is for the Now.

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.It may be translated into every human language, and not only be read but also breathed from all human lips;-not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself……….

…Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them.” ……

- Henry David Thoreau (Pg.67)

India pulses

Somewhere in Dwarka, a butcher welcomes his customer in crisp English and insists that his assistant speaks English too. Ann, a British expat in Dubai, in her conversation with Johann Hari of The Independent, tells him, “It’s the Emiratis at the top, then I’d say the British and other Westerners. Then I suppose it’s the Filipinos, because they’ve got a bit more brains than the Indians. Then at the bottom you’ve got the Indians and all them lot.”

In Pune, a 17 year old rejoices at the prospect of going to Brown to major in Astrophysics with Music and Russian as her minors..
Russia- the land of Lenin. Lenin- who our communist party leaders worship little knowing that power for him came at the cost of bloodshed. Russia shuns communism today, to us, it is still a venerated religion.

A young girl working at Ernst and Young in Bangalore packs her vacation in Dubai. In this city of city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, there are hundreds of Indian workers whose passports have been snatched away, whose human rights have been grossly violated and yet they toil away with just hope and faith standing them good stead.

Somewhere in Mumbai, Rubina’s (of Latika Jr. fame) father wants to give her up for adoption to the highest bidder.

I sit in the comfort of my room, with the warm company of DMB, in the (presently) idyll world of academia.. Who am I to judge?