Saturday, December 30, 2017

Shiva


all his ganas
instead of dancing in hilarity
are cowering behind him 
to avoid the curse of the living

they are frightened of those 
who are still alive
with whose dead bodies 
and cremated ashes 
they will cover themselves 
and dance and jump 
in the dance of death
intoxicated by cannabis

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Path


is there a path to eternity
can there be a path to eternity
or should eternity be left alone

since by both its meaning and scope 
the universe is eternal
a path
any path
road
route
terrestrial or cosmic
is also eternal

so what should we understand
when we humans talk
write
sing
of a path to eternity

is it pure profundity 
or self-serving rhetoric

Monday, December 25, 2017

Silent Music



By the time Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, perhaps his most famous work, was first performed, in 1808, he was increasingly becoming deaf. According to a popular version of the story, the first time the Fifth was performed, with Beethoven himself conducting, he was facing the orchestra and did not hear the applause of the audience. Being temperamental, he is said to have been very upset, until some of the people on the stage turned him toward the audience, whose continued standing ovation was one of history's longest. So, interestingly, Beethoven saw the applause, but did not hear it himself. The picture depicts the silence which he heard.

A popular book fictionalizing Beethoven's life was Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe, which won him a Nobel prize for literature in 1915. 

It would be relevant to mention here that when Mahatma Gandhi visited Europe to attend the Round Table in 1931, among the few people that he met in France, the most prominent was Romain Rolland. Also, it was at that same Round Table Conference where Winston Churchill disdainfully referred to Gandhi as the half-naked, seditious fakir from india.

My picture, though, was not taken either in Vienna or Berlin, but at the plain old Music Academy on Cathedral Road in Madras, in the mid-1970s.


Thursday, December 21, 2017

Artifice


artifice
if it is lucky
has its beauty

a painting
a photograph 
of an artificial flower
an imitation of an imitation

human effort
striving toward
sometimes almost touching
the effortless 
perfectly imperfect
original 

-----------------
Bhashwati wrote:

Artifice is lucky as it has its beauty and seems almost to be touching the imperfect beauty of the original.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Clavicle Music


light and shadow
highlighting
the lovely bones

(Utica, Upstate New York, 1972)


Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Children of Sunset


Juhu beach, Bombay, 1954

--------------------------
Bhashwati wrote:

Children of sunset bilkul puraane nahin lagte :)

There is as much pull in the image as there is in a high tide 
pull of nostalgia, of lost days

The setting sun has always been a good receptacle of loss...
The fifty shades of grey and light in the elements encompassing the two small human forms are a perfect combination of hope and despair.

Thinking of koi lauta de mere

 

Friday, December 08, 2017

Self, Calcutta


I was eleven or twelve, standing in front of our barsaati, Brabourne Road, Calcutta.

-------------------
Bhashwati wrote:

Haai tere tevar!!!!

Haai teri zulfein :) :) :)

i suppose the thoughts may have been:

"Vaise to hum tasveer nahin khinchwana chaahte na hi jeena chaahte hain, jeene hi nahin wale magar luck by chance jee gaye to aisi tasveer kheencho ki bhavishya mein hamaare bhoot ko dekhne wale samajh jaaein ki hum 11 mein bhi utne hi buddhishaali they jitne 81 mein honge. Agar nahin they to kam se kam buddhishaali soorat to bana lete they."

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Monday, December 04, 2017

UFOs, Arriving, Departing


aliens
arriving
or departing

after observing
the depraved, malevolent
discord below

being more intelligent
than we
as they arrived before
we reached them

they should be in a hurry
to leave

----------------------------
Bhashwati wrote:

I would like to believe that The UFO s shrink in horror as they approach earth and then as they depart they regain their vigour and strength in evident relief at having escaped forced or voluntary proximity to beings such as those inhabiting earth.

Saturday, December 02, 2017

Two Women


The Italian author Alberto Moravia wrote a novel called Two Women, which was made into a haunting film by Vittorio de Sica, starring Sophia Loren and Eleonora Brown as a mother and her twelve-year-old daughter, struggling to survive in Italy just after World War II. Loren won an Oscar as Best Actress for her role in the film.

The delicate expression of love and joy in the sculpture contrasted in my mind with the painful, desperate love of the mother in novel/film.