The Victory

She was the Princess Ajita,
the heaven’s beauty,and the nature’s grace
and he was poet royale Shekhar,
smith of the words, sewing them with a lace

She was the Princess Ajita, the smile broke a thousand moons
and he was Shekhar,on poems of whose the kingdom revelled

He loved her, with all his poetical truth,
and all his white heart.

Yet, knew not the King Narayana,nor the Gods themselves.

Yet sang he when, the songs of his love unheard,

the love of his bosom graced the stars of the sky

O ye! but who listens to this song behind the velvet drape?

Who is it, who peers on his voice with her melodious trinklet?

Manjari, is it, the maid of princess?

Shekhar, loved her not,but her company to keep,
She sat on the evenings alone for his sweetness to seep.
Shekhar, buoyed by his lone muse and presence,
and flowed from his pen the ballads like essence

devoid of all his worldly defence ,

The world knew, the King knew, and so did Manjari,

or so did they think,on these innocent trysts.

But truth is oft a bag of clues, layers filled,
and Shekhar knew the truth and his heart alone,
yet with the jesting world he reeled.

***

The Duel

Day 1

Whose ominous shadows does this monsoon bring?

On whose arrogant wisdom does these trees swing?

It is the Pundarik, oh is it?

The great poet from the Kingdom of Anandapur…
It is Pundarik, oh is it?

The word smith par-less, holding the pride
of thousand bested poets.

“Oh Rajadhiraj, Oh kind and virtuous king,” Pundarik roared

“I seek the war of words, the battle of hymns”, his voice soared
“I have the pride of thousand poets, and all of them implored
afraid and defeated even was the poet of the Lord”

Urged the King, the crowd and life itself,
Shekhar bowed down and glanced at his love,
yet joyous was the court, thought he smiled at the Lord.
“If I be the winner, lady, then thy name be victorious”

So did, the duel begin,
the battle of the hymns, the sound of the seers
The war of the words and clash of the wordsmiths.

Pundarik stood, and so did the court,
raptous were the subjects, hypnotised in short
So began the conquistador, and so began the King’s praise
The court moved, swung in the gardens of Pundarik’s emotions
King swayed, in the swings of his beaming voice.

Shekhar, stood up and lanced with his poetry,
glanced at his King, advanced on his mastery.
The love for his king, the pearls of his heart
the blood of his veins throbbed in his art

Yet it was Pundarik’s glory
The day went on, with both of them lancing around
Yet Shekhar was at a loss, and the curtains were drawn.
the war stopped till another dawn

Day 2

Shekhar got up, glanced at his love
he smiled, unknownst to the world, prayed in his heart
and sang the song of his King.
“I maybe defeated in the play of words,
yet defeated I am not in the love of thee”
Shekhar forgot the trial with his rival,
lost in his thoughts rustling, quivering in the breeze of spring
thus flowed the Song of his Flute,visions of Ajita in his poetic wing.

Yet lost was he, with Pundarik’s art,

flinged him out with the toss of his poetic twig
the court hushed, revelling in the scholar’s clout.

Narayana smiled, and held up in his hand
the exquisite necklace of pearls,

The arrogance beamed and took it as his band

Shekhar lost and dejected, wandered away in the warmth of the setting sun.

The Victory

Screamed did he, in his home alone,
tossing his works in the fiery fire to atone
yet hurt was he, with his own broken love,
couldn’t usher the court in his patho filled cove

“Burn, Burn thee, my beauty, my lady, my fire
thou hast been burning in my heart since the futile aeons
If my life was the gold unshone,it would glow ever brighter,
but it ‘s a turf of grass and nothing remains but dust and ashes”

The night wore on, the jasmines blossomed
Shekhar drank with the acrid bacchus, dipped in poison of his life.
Golden trinklets seeped past this night, the smell of roses rising high.
The poet with his eyes shut,”You are a bit late, My lady, my end is well-nigh”
“My poet, I have come”,

His sight was dim, breath shallow, yet he heard the last of her swallow
“I am Ajita, oh poet, and you were my victor today,

Charmed was I, in your words did I ever sway”

She took the garland of flowers off her neck and put it on his head
The poet smiled on her grace and threw himself

beaten, desolate and dead.

So here is my entry to From Soups to Nuts. Let me see where does it all fit in. A story rendered by Rabindranath Tagore of the same name, presented as a poem by yours truly. Although didn’t quite expect it to be such a long treatise, yet couldnt quite make it short. Its bit of heavy, so I don’t think at least it will go well with Hors d’Oeuvres , maybe will send it to Main Course . Anyway do let me know how did you like it…

Another poetry alongside, Upagupta , inspired from the same man who penned them all…

And yeah if you liked this place, then I would appreciate if you spread its word around.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

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Where does the power lie?

Image by idealterna

A long time ago, there was a powerful shaman in a village, in a place far,far away. There was this young man, He’-sha-be who apparently impressed by the magical skills of the shaman, decided to be his apprentice. But there was a problem, he was not the only one who wanted to be his apprentice, there were two more. So the shaman, decided to take a test. He said to his fellow-men, with his eyebrows curled, and eyes closed in a hawk-like expression, “Ye! all, Look at these hands and look at these fingers. Powerful are they, blessed are they, magical are they…” And the crowd nodded vociferously, and cheered.” And let these men… “pointing to the three youngsters, who wanted to be under his tutelage, “then point out which finger of mine, resides the most potent power”. And the crowd cheered with anticipation of something truly miraculous. One by one the youngsters walked up and pointed to one of the fingers. Yet wrong it was, then He’-sha-be came up and said,

“O ye great one, the power is not in them…” and the crowd gasped, the shaman squinted his eyes even more.

“… the power lies in our hands”. The entire crowd gasped and looked to the shaman with wide astonishment, but the shaman, smiled and gave him a pat of praise.

So where does the power lie? Does it lie in your hands or in the hands of invisibles whom you let control your life.

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Three

Life brings with itself ironies galore,

filled with sarcasm and some more

yet we love this cruelty met to us

cursing Him often on our tomorrow’s loss

***

This heart is a cruel thing to listen to

often has to say a word or two

it pains to hear them, O, I do know

yet in the works infinite, those words still they glow

***

The warm sun beating down on the weary road,

that soldier rests in the tree shade

and takes of his velvet coat

rests and refreshes, he walks away

I wonder what happened to the tree,

for it has to but stay.

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The Artistic Sabbath, Ghalib and Taj Coromandel

This is going to be a long post. At least longer than what I am used to post. Many of my readers have no doubt come here a lot often in the past two months only to return disappointed at no new thing here. Or in Web 2.0 speak “no-fresh-content”. Well although it certainly is not beneficial for your online presence to have such long hiatus of inactivity, yet surprisingly it does oneself far more good than bad.

Let me come to the point right away, and let me start explaining all those small questions which pop up in our heads often, when we see something inexplicable. I had been blogging actively for some time, bringing forward to some poetry and prose, which I would like to believe was enjoyed by one and all. But I guess, thats the beginning… isnt it? You start off with your heart’s sorrow pouring out in front of the world, and suddenly you see that those lines are so well appreciated that, you blow yourself up. Not literally, but in pride, satisfaction and other such altruistic feelings you start feeling on cloud 9. But then you indeed blow up, not yourself but your artistic pursuits. People pour in, take a morsel of the dessert here, try a ladel of the sauce there, reject the tofu yet lap up the soups, and life goes on. Yet after the party ends and you retire to the sanctum sanctorum of your heart, you feel a void. A sudden void which crops from the release of long pent up feelings out in front of the world, and a stronger void in the lull after the ‘party’ . Now you want your friends to drop in some more, most often to give you company, yet you want to make the tofu, which they refused to even touch last time. You know you can make the tofu and the sauce much better this time, far different than what they have ever tasted, far more exotic yet you again go back to the soups and dessert and convince yourself that tofu will be for the next time. So this carries on, you want to try out unchartered territories in your artistic skills, yet you have to carry on with the facade which everybody loves putting on. So what do you do? I think at the heart of this, lies a very basic question about artistic survival? What do you do? You keep on trying new things and risk rejection (albeit after some time they will vehemently take that thing up, and you know its a good thing the others have never tried out) or you keep on whipping up the different sweet variations of the same old things. Well I believe nobody can answer it. What do you think?

Well something similar happened, yeah my prose suck (somebody said that ), my poetry is heart tugging, yet somewhere I was feeling a gaping void build up. Couldnt help it, could I? And when you stagnate, things dont flow(cliche). Your words refuse to flow and then you get frustrated, get up and leave or keep convincing yourself that it will get better. I took the first choice. .

I left. I left and took a long Sabbath. Stopped commenting on others blogs. Stopped visiting poetry blogs. Didnt reply to any mail which came to me, inviting me to poetry blogs. Well I had all, and left all those things. Whooff! Two months… yeah two months quite some time. My daily online activity just had checking my mails and visiting orkut. Nothing more, sometimes less. I needed to clear my head. Feel passionate about things again.

Well so here I am . A lot of things have happened in between. I have been actively involved in many things. Professional life has taken quite some interesting turns. May divulge to you sometime later. Had been following the financial markets actively, started investing too. Predicting and expert commenting, I had it all. Doing some extensive technical work on my end, (personal although and completely). Reading quite a bit. Had a cursory walk through The High Performance Entrepreneur by Subroto Bagchi, for whom I would have ended working if not for my present employer. Had been dabbling with Perl, and VLSI Testing very actively, my list also contains a Python (heard a lot about it), Javascript, My SQL and PHP(dont know if I can pull the last two).

So what made me come into it all over again. Well, I came across an article today in The Economic Times, Chennai Edition about Tom Alter, a Plebystrian Christian living in India, yet knowing Hindi and Urdu better than perhaps the natives(me too included). He has a Gold medal from National School of Drama, active theater artiste and..and ..and , guess what, a Ghalib enthusiast.

I discovered Ghalib at a tender age of 12, and wow! the poetry and prose he wrote. Before I continue with the thread of Alter, let me tell you something about Ghalib. Ghalib had a tumultuous childhood and being the royalty he was, the apparent poverty on young Ghalib’s family was sort of a black cloud. Born and brought up in Delhi,at the close of 18th Century Delhi Sultanate, the apparent grim childhood gave him a much stoic mental makeover. Married at the tender age of 13, he had seven children yet none survived. In his twilight years he even adopted one of his nephews, but kismet had other plans. At his ripe age, his adopted son too passed away. Although a witty man, yet his poetry seems to reflect his hearts pangs and some more.He self taught himself to Persian and Arabic(to a certain extent), he was a man who wore many hats. In fact his masterpieces came at the time when he was devastated with pain and sorrow. He is today remembered as one of the most prolific writers of Urdu. For all those who understand Hindi and Urdu, Ghalib is one of those beacons of Urdu literature which winds of time cant fade out. (You can find a wiki entry here and a much more comprehensive entry over here ).

Yesterday Tom, co hosted along with Juhi Babbar, in Taj Coromandel an exclusive evening on Ghalib’s shayari in Taj Coromandel. The guests were requested to come dressed in Mughal attires, and were made to sit on the gaddi-s on floor (in true Lucknowi Gharana stlye). Flowers adorned their wrists and Chivas flowed copiously as Chennai braced itself for another rainy night. Tom and Juhi along with some heart rendering back ground violin, recapped some of his best works, interspersed with the incidents in his life which made him write such heart rendering stories. As I write, I am finding myself increasingly transported to those days of Lucknowi shaan.

Jaate jaate arz kar raha hoon-

Naqsh faryaadii hai kis ki shokhi-e tehrir ka

Kagazi hai pairahan har pekar-e tasvir ka

-Ghalib (age of 19 yrs)

kismet :fate

gaddi :cushions

Lucknawi shaan: A golden period in Lucknow(a city in erstwhile United Provinces in British India) where the best in every material tastes were associated with the city.

 

Creativity,Collective Conscience and Desires

I was just going through all my previous karma and unwittingly wandered to my blog roll(it had been quite some time that I went through them) The site being Poets Who Blog written by Sara. It has a very unique thing. Sara often arranges group poems, i.e a group of people will compose a poem without the apparent loss of their creativity ,yet sans the absolute authority of the flow of the poem. It goes on like this: Sara posts some three-four lines and invites people for their contribution to it. So people do exactly that and chip in. And jolly good! the contribution they do. And yes, Sara does acknowledge the source of each contribution. So I browsed back in the pages of time (and Sara’s blog) and what I found is a group poem started in August with just four lines by Sara grown to over 50 lines! But it sometimes strikes me as funny, you contributed it but cant say its your own(given the possessive guy I am), you wrote your lines but cant control its flow and it sometimes is funny to see how the river of collective creativity flows when all the banks and dam are broken apart.

So here is the poem I was talking about:

He didn’t ask for
forgiveness.
Didn’t talk about regrets.
Wouldn’t think about the morning;
it wasn’t here yet.

Words spoken in haste;
Daggers hurled with intent.
Eternal damage inflicted,
But only temporarily meant.

a twisting tale of whirling dream
sat spinning through his mind,
a veil of words
sewn delicately
a palm to hide behind.

Never knew, whats wrong,
never felt whats right
but, in the silence of his lonely dreams,
sometimes he cried.
He did run all his life,
he did fall sometimes…
but unforgiving was his heart
for gone day’s crimes

there by the rags and the amputation
scavenging the shadow of the symbol
lives still the glow of his lost lantern
these are the lines of severance
a love letter sealed into the art
of the surgeon
the parts of him not here
fly like birds in an unrequited sky

This life takes leaving,
time unveils one more
unread book left on Life’s shelf -

his weathered hand
on the old book
pauses,
as his fingertips
trace the delicate spine
he wonders
where the time went

He wouldn’t think of trangressions,
wouldn’t think about regrets,
or what may come in the dawning
that was not here yet.

His memories smudged among
the thin crevices of what is reality
and that which is sometimes not….
But now only too aware of the pace of time
He tries what he has not ever done
while he treads those withered hands on the book,
pauses now on something engraved deep, written in gold.
for all the words which broke heart a many,
& all his deeds, which struck’em misery
A tear silently wets his eye, as if
He now knew what’s been lost,
his own truth engraved deep, written in gold
Lines 1-5 by Sara at the Shores of My Dreams .

Lines 6-9 by Dan at Poetic Justice

Lines 10-14 by Absolutely Miles Away

Lines 15-22 by Soham Das

Lines 23-30 by Crimsonsonflaw

Lines 31-33 by Janet Leigh

Lines 34-40 by Autumn Moon

Lines 41-44 by Sara.

Lines 45-56 by Sarayu from Hues of Thought

But by the way what’s its name ? Does that also gets decided by the group?