By Jean Follain ( French Minimalist poet) Translated by Heather McHugh
Insects and fish move from the shade to the light the fruit hangs still on the tree brushed by the fine wing of a flamboyant bird then a dull one. The blind man hardly thinks of his missing eyes in the garden of wine-red flowers. Suddenly the sun in the drawing room lights a large painting that shows rioters surging wildly into sight.
A delicate and layered poem, “The Beautiful Day” uses serene imagery and subtle shifts in tone to reflect on how easily tranquility can be shadowed by unseen violence or remembered suffering. It unfolds with a deep awareness of contrast—between serenity and disturbance, the visible and the hidden, nature and human turmoil. It’s a meditation on the fragility of peace and the haunting presence of what lies beyond the beautiful moment.
By moving from a garden’s quiet details to a painting of rioters lit up indoors, the poem subtly asks us about what we see, what we miss, and how sudden revelations (of violence, of reality) change the character of a peaceful day. It’s a poem about beauty and disturbance, perception and ignorance, outer calm and inner turmoil.
Heather McHugh in her introduction says the following about the poem:
“And in “The Beautiful Day,” the aristocratic idleness of the garden (appearing for all the world—*brushed,” posed—like the subject of a more romantic art) is disturbed by the image of the insurgent mob in a living-room painting. Which is more alive, more real? We feel we know. We know we feel. Still, the man in the garden is blind. The seer is present in these poems not as the fashionably poetic first person but rather as the subverted designer of the seen. We, the readers, have a place here too. Is it we who lull, senseless, in the garden of the decorative, blind to the blood in the living room? The poem s both subject and object here.”
Source : D’Apres Tout: Poems by Jean Follain. Image created using AI)
THE POEM I CAN’T YET NAME By Nguyen Phan Que Mai (Vietnamese Poet) Translated by Bruce Weigl (American Poet)
My hands lift high a bowl of rice, the seeds harvested in the field where my grandmother was laid to rest. Each rice seed tastes sweet as the sound of lullaby from the grandmother I never knew. I imagine her soft face as they laid her down into the earth, her clothes battered, her skin stuck to her bones; in the Great Hunger of 1945*, my village was starved for graves to bury all the dead. Nobody could find my grandmother’s grave, so my father tasted bitter rice for sixty-five years.
After sixty-five years of searching, spirits of my ancestors led my father and me to my grandmother’s grave. I heard my father call “Mum,” for the first time; the rice field behind his back trembled.
My feet clung to the mud. I listened in the burning incense how my grandmother’s soul spread, joining the earth, taking root in the field, where she quietly sang lullabies, calling the rice plants to blossom.
Lifting the bowl of rice in my hands, I count every seed, each one glistening with the sweat of my ancestors, their backs bent in the rice fields, the fragrance of my grandmother’s lullaby alive on each one.
* The Vietnamese Famine of 1945 occurred in northern Vietnam from October 1944 to May 1945, during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina in World War II. Between 400,000 and 2 million people are estimated to have starved to death during this time.
Born into the Vietnam War in 1973, Nguyen Phan Que Mai grew up witnessing the war’s devastation and its aftermath. She worked as a street vendor and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. Upon her return to Vietnam, Que Mai contributed to the sustainable development of her homeland via her work with local and international organizations including UN agencies. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in Vietnamese.
Her poems are fiercely loyal to the sentiments they gracefully express, which is what we mean when we talk about honesty in poetry. Ms. Nguyen is never hesitant to take on grand ideas, and never hesitant to rely on a sometimes raw and direct talk in order to expose the phenomena of our lives. She is a poet of a Vietnamese version of romanticism, in which she finds her subjects among the so-called ordinary lives of so-called ordinary people, and she celebrates not the accomplishments of kings or emperors, but of regular Vietnamese citizens, like the grandma in the poem, who have struggled to stay alive, feed their families, and find their way back home after long, war-inflicted years of exile and despair. Hers is a poetry that instructs us on how to live more fully in the world, and reaffirms the power of clear-headed and direct poetry to transform even our darkest hours into deeply abiding lessons on the complexities of
Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s “The Poem I Can’t Yet Name” is a tender and elegiac tribute to ancestry, memory, survival, and the sacredness of daily life. Rooted in personal and national history, this poem weaves together the trauma of war and famine with the resilience of generational love — especially the enduring presence of a grandmother the poet never met.
The tone is gentle, reverent, and quietly grieving, but never sentimental. It moves with the steady rhythm of ritual — of lifting rice, burning incense, bowing to memory. There is deep emotion in the poet’s voice, but it is controlled, restrained — shaped by respect and cultural humility. Rice is central to the poem — not just as food, but as symbol. Each grain is rich with meaning: “Each rice seed tastes sweet as the sound of lullaby / from the grandmother I never knew.” Here, rice becomes a carrier of memory and maternal affection. It replaces the lost lullabies with nourishment. It is the body of the land and the body of the grandmother, feeding generations forward.
In the final lines, the speaker reflects: “each one glistening with the sweat of my ancestors… the fragrance of my grandmother’s lullaby alive on each one.” This elevates rice to a sacred, spiritual substance — a form of continuity, presence, and song. The act of eating rice becomes an act of remembrance and reverence.
As mentioned earlier the poem references a real and devastating historical event — the Vietnamese famine of 1945, in which over a million people died. The line: “my village / was starved for graves to bury all the dead.” is harrowing in its simplicity. The horror is not dramatized — it’s told with quiet devastation, making it all the more powerful. This sets the foundation for a deeply personal loss: the grandmother’s grave was lost amid mass death, and the father grew up without closure, tasting “bitter rice for sixty-five years.”
The poem builds toward the discovery of the grandmother’s resting place: “spirits of my ancestors led my father and me / to my grandmother’s grave.” There’s a spiritual dimension here — not mystical in a fantastical way, but deeply rooted in Vietnamese ancestral belief and rural sensibility. The land holds memory. Spirits guide the living. “I heard my father call ‘Mum,’ for the first time.” This is a moment of catharsis — the release of a son’s lifelong silence, the restoration of a broken link in the family chain. That the “rice field behind his back trembled” suggests that the earth itself acknowledges the reunion.
The poem is free verse, flowing like a stream of memory and reverence. Its images are earthy and tactile. There’s a fusion of body, earth, and spirit throughout the poem. The grandmother’s soul does not simply rest — it “joins the earth, takes root in the field”, singing lullabies to the rice itself.
This poem is as much about personal healing as it is about cultural survival — how memory, food, and ritual preserve identity and dignity even in the aftermath of unimaginable suffering.
To conclude, “The Poem I Can’t Yet Name” is a deeply moving elegy that speaks in whispers — but those whispers carry generations of grief, resilience, and reverence. Nguyen Phan Que Mai writes with a clarity and calmness that makes the emotional weight even more powerful. With rice as its central metaphor, the poem connects body, land, spirit, and memory into one sacred act of remembrance.
It is not just a poem about mourning — it is a poem about belonging, and how the dead continue to nourish the living.
Ref: The Secret of Hoa Sen by Nguyen Phan Que Mai. Translated by Bruce Weigl
Despondency breaks off its course. Anguish breaks off its course. The vulture breaks off its flight.
The eager light streams out, even the ghosts take a draught.
And our paintings see daylight, our red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything begins to look around. We walk in the sun in hundreds.
Each man is a half-open door leading to a room for everyone.
The endless ground under us.
The water is shining among the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.
Tomas Tranströmer’s The Half-Finished Heaven is a luminous and redemptive poem that captures the sudden breaking of despair by glimpses of hope and illumination. The Swedish Nobel laureate, known for his sparse but emotionally rich language, distills a vast emotional and spiritual shift into just a few carefully chosen images and lines.
The poem opens in darkness — with “despondency,” “anguish,” and even a “vulture” — symbols of death, hopelessness, and sorrow. But this heaviness is disrupted. The phrase “breaks off its course” suggests that suffering, though powerful, is not endless. There is an abrupt, almost miraculous intervention: “The eager light streams out.” It’s not passive light but eager — hungry to redeem, to touch, to restore.
From that turning point, the world awakens. Even “ghosts,” symbols of lingering sorrow or memory, are revived — “take a draught” — as if nourished by the new light. Tranströmer then introduces metaphors of art: “our paintings see daylight,” and “red beasts of the ice-age studios.” These suggest that even what was buried deep within human history or psyche — our primal instincts, ancient creations — are returning to view, revitalized.
The lines “Each man is a half-open door / leading to a room for everyone” are especially powerful. They evoke the possibility of connection, empathy, and community. We are not complete or perfect (“half-open”), but we are entryways to something larger, something hospitable. This idea makes the title The Half-Finished Heaven feel apt — the world is incomplete but leaning toward beauty and redemption.
The closing lines bring in elements of nature: “The water is shining among the trees,” and “The lake is a window into the earth.” These observations feel sacred — as though the earth itself is opening up to understanding.Overall, The Half-Finished Heaven is a quietly stunning meditation on the
As Venad Express was pulling out of the station, a young man clutching his briefcase leaped through the door. He stood puffing but victorious, mopping the sweat from his forehead, as the train gathered momentum. An older man on the train watched him with disdain.
”You young people don’t keep yourself in shape,” he said scornfully. “Why, when I was your age, I could carry a cup of coffee in one hand and run half a mile to catch the 7:30 in the nick of time and still be fresh as a daisy”
“You don’t understand”, panted the young man. “I missed this train at the last station!”
(110 words)
Story No.2
The stylish old man in impeccable suit sat next to me when he boarded the U-Bahn from Vienna. I was perusing the map to locate Schwedenplatz station to see the river Danube. Frustrated, I sought his help, but he replied that he would alight at a station before mine.
He described in advance the scenery I would see from my window–first the peach orchard, then the birch mountain, then oak alley….
Finally, the train halted at his station.
As I was helping him off the train, a young man, trying to get in, jostled him.
‘Would you let this blind man off first?’, the old man implored.
(108 words)
Story No.3
The Coromandel Express was approaching Cuttack station. The 2nd class compartment was empty except for him and the middle aged lady in deep slumber with a gold chain adorning her neck.
He needed a gift for his beloved for their 25th wedding anniversary. Business had turned him into a destitute. He vacillated and then in a sudden urge ripped that gold chain.
He was about to move away, when he heard a voice behind him, “If you will accept, I have a thicker one. It is a bit plain but one that fits all.”
He turned to see the lady with a handcuff and a pistol.
(107 words)
Story No.4
Panhandlers, of myriad categories, have always been a nuisance to commuters in the Flying Rani express. I generally avoid them. I was on my usual weekend trip to Mumbai from Surat. A young girl with beautiful blue eyes was collecting alms for the Lathur earthquake victims. When she approached me, with a flourish I pulled out a few notes from my wallet and placed it in her bowl.
“Two hundred rupees for your blues eyes”, I said looking into her lustrous eyes.
She smiled coyly, took the notes and put it in her pocket.
‘Now sir, could you give something for the quake victims as well?’
(106 words)
Story No.5
It was his first day in Saudi. He was on a bus to the office. He spotted a pink palatial house and asked the Saudi co-passenger,
“Do you know whose house that is?”
The Saudi looked out and replied, ‘Mahdri’
Soon they came upon an even bigger sprawling mansion.
“Do you know who owns that?”
“Mahdri” came the reply.
The same query and the same reply over and over again, only increased our Indian’s admiration for Mahdri.
Mahdri must indeed be a big business tycoon.
A month later, he asked a smart Saudi who this ‘Mahdri’ was.
He replied, “My dear fellow, ‘Mahdri’ in Arabic means ‘I don’t know’ “
I somehow love the cynical thoughts of Cioran than the optimistic fodder of motivational morons. EM Corian, the Romanian Philosopher, is perhaps the most pessimistic writer who lures the reader with his iconoclastic thoughts about everything- life, Gods, religion, society and culture. His writings is like that of someone possessed; subversive, demoniacal, anti-inspirational, feverish and finally enchanting. I just finished reading his book, ” All Gall is Divided: The Aphorisms of a Legendary Iconoclast”. Here are some quotes I loved. “Everything must be revised, even sobs …” “To be bored is to guzzle time” “A monk and a butcher fight it out within each desire.” “Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.”
“In a world without melancholy, nightingales would belch.” “The flesh is incompatible with charity: orgasm transforms the saint into a wolf” “Music is the refuge of souls wounded by happiness.”
“I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.” This remark of a mental patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works of introspection.”
“Our sadnesses prolong the mystery sketched by the mummies’ smile.”
“Many times I have sought refuge in that lumber room which is Heaven, many times I have yielded to the need to suffocate in God!”
“Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth …”
“Compel men to lie down for days on end: couches would succeed where wars and slogans have failed. For the operations of Ennui exceed in effectiveness those of weapons and ideologies.”
“We rarely meditate in a standing position, still less walking. It is from our insistence on maintaining the vertical that Action is born; hence, to protest its misdeeds, we ought to imitate the posture of corpses.”
“We rarely meditate in a standing position, still less walking. It is from our insistence on maintaining the vertical that Action is born; hence, to protest its misdeeds, we ought to imitate the posture of corpses.”
“Nothing reveals the vulgar man better than his refusal to be disappointed.”
“Without God, everything is nothingness; and God? Supreme nothingness.”
“The best way of distancing ourselves from others is to invite them to delight in our defeats; afterward, we are sure to hate them for the rest of our days.”
“Every action flatters the hyena within us.”
“A man’s secret coincides with the sufferings he craves.”
“For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.”
“Only erotic natures sacrifice to boredom, disappointed in advance by love.”
“A monk and a butcher fight it out within each desire.”
“Each of us shuts himself up in his fear — his ivory tower.”
“Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned”
One of the greatest gifts you can give anyone is the gift of your attention.
Relationships have many levels and depths. You have family members whom you see and talk to on a daily basis, best friends whom you talk to and see on a regular basis, other friends and acquaintances, who colour your mindscape, but with whom you may not have spoken to for a long time. Sometimes when you zoom in on a hazy face, you are flooded with pleasurable memories and you wish you had been in touch with the person. The passage of time may have diminished the prospect of reconnecting, but it will not have corroded your string of connection. Staying in touch would have kept that wonderful relationship alive.
My wife Raji has this story to share:
“During my school days, my father was posted in Mazagaon Dock, Mumbai and we lived in Matunga. My best friend Laxmi, stayed next door to us. Our families were pretty close and we spent many wonderful years together. Later, my father was transferred to Cochin Shipyard and finally we settled in Cochin. With the passage of time and the entanglements of life, we lost touch with them, though whenever we remembered them we did so with a smile in our heart. Recently my father was at a bank, talking to the manager, when a lady standing nearby kept on staring at him quizzically. Dad was perplexed and asked her whether she thought she knew him. The lady broke into tears and said that she was Laxmi. Their family too had moved to Cochin. Being aware that we were in Cochin, they had tried to get our address in vain. They had wanted to meet us but were unsuccessful in their efforts. Her mother had been terminally ill for the past three years and had passed away the previous month. She had always been talking about my mother and wanted to meet her. My dad was shocked. Sadness overwhelmed him. If only we had remained in touch”’ Everyone has a vast network, and yet some people’s networks are largely dormant, while others maintain an active one. It is important that you call your friends and associates occasionally for no particular reason other than to say ‘hi’ and let them know that you’ve been thinking of them. This evokes a sense of happiness in them.
Sometimes, one of your friends may be facing a depression or dilemma or a crisis. All you need to do is contact them and make yourself available as a resource. I know the case of a person who was on the verge of suicide and abandoned it just because a minute before his final mission, a call from a classmate brought ineffable joy in him. Letting someone know that you are available can mean a lot. People often may not know what to ask for, but with good listening and asking skills you may find out enough to know what to offer. Support assumes different forms ‘ a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold or an ear that listens. Keeping in touch helps reduce the tension and burden of others.
We come across many new faces in our day to day life. A natural rapport or a sense of connection with some of them is also common. You may be left with the feeling that you want to know the person better. All it takes is a telephone call to establish the camaraderie. This can then be cultivated only by staying in touch through regular communication. We are in this ‘Sulekha’ blogworld for quite some time. Yet how many of us are in regular touch with each other and send at least a note when a blogger is not seen active for some time? I was indeed elated by the amazing enthusiasm of some bloggers in chronicling their get-together while attending the marriage of purefriend’s daughter in Coimbatore. I consider it as an exhilarating episode in this virtual realm. How many of us take pains to keep in touch? Staying in touch shows that we care. When we do a good job of staying in touch, we ensure that our current network will be part of our future network, our lifetime network.
Dear Bloggers, Build your network-past, present and future. Don’t be shortsighted or caught up in immediate gratification. Building a support system over a lifetime creates phenomenal results and an incredible sense of joy and fulfillment. Commit yourself to staying in touch. Cultivate the culture of connecting, reconnecting and solidifying your resting relationships.
Let this day of resurrection be a day to resurrect your dormant relationships. Let this be your Easter thoughts.
It is never too late. Your friends are just a phone call, an e-mail, or a doorbell away.
Lydia Davis is the most important short American story writer I have come across after Raymond Carver. I love her stories’. Here are three samples of her flash fiction, some of her very short short stories in her collected stories. I pray one day she wins the Nobel.
A Different Man
“At night he was a different man. If she knew him as he was in the morning, at night she hardly recognized him: a pale man, a gray man, a man in a brown sweater, a man with dark eyes who kept his distance from her, who took offence, who was not reasonable. In the morning, he was a rosy king, gleaming, smooth-cheeked and smooth-chinned, fragrant with perfumed talc, coming out into the sunlight with a wide embrace in his royal red plaid robe…”
(Loved the way she concludes with a valediction of time passing, of a dwindling into cramped old age (night is used as metaphor for old age and morning for his youth), but then in an act of ironically sentimental romantic retrospection, she delivers a final flurry—with the ever-present participles “gleaming” and “coming out into the sunlight” animating and glamorizing a last sentence that ends not with a period but with an ellipsis springing hope eternal.)
The Outing
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes. (I like “The Outing” because it’s the skeleton of a story, poking fun at the notion of “what happens”—and yet still creates a powerful sense of what indeed happened.)
Fear
Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families too, to quiet us. (This one portrays anxiety, the kind of irrational fear that rises right to the surface, breaking through the comforting repetition of certain phrases and words. In the last sentence of the story the narrator says that each of the neighbors have thought about running out their homes and screaming just as the woman does, but they never do because they have friends and family that keep them under control. .This one gives a deep drink of what can and cannot be known, of the relative success and failure of sympathy with other people, of need that enables comfort and comfort that disguises need.)
Introduction Every now and then one encounters a story that leaves an indelible impression long after it is read. I read this short short story written by Naguib Mahfouz shortly after his winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I was enamoured by its rich and ornate style, its narrative technique, universal theme and dramatic ending. Quite recently, I suggested a speaker to present it as a monodrama in a Toastmasters meeting and it was well-received by the audience. Egyptian writer Mahfouz is the only Nobel Laureate in Arabic Literature. I had the delight to visit the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe (Earlier known as Fishawy’s Cafe in Khan Al Khalili market, one of the most ancient surviving markets in the World) during my visit to Egypt in 2007. Naguib used to write many parts of his Cairo Trilogy in a special place in this cafe. In his 33 novels, including his masterpiece, “The Cairo Trilogy”; his 16 short story collections; 30 screenplays; and several plays he invented a vast human comedy populated by the inhabitants of Cairo’s sprawling metropolis whose lives embodied the history of his country: wily shopkeepers and heartless bureaucrats, wheedling beggars, voluptuous women, whores and holy men, desperate parents and starving students. Mahfouz passed away in 2006. Story I proceeded alongside my father, clutching his right hand, running to keep up with the long strides he was taking. All my clothes were new: the black shoes, the green school uniform, and the red tarbush. My delight in my new clothes, however, was not altogether unmarred, for this was no feast day but the day on which I was to be cast into school for the first time. My mother stood at the window watching our progress, and I would turn toward her from time to time, as tough appealing for help. We walked along a street lined with gardens; on both sides were extensive fields planted with crops, prickly pears, henna trees, and a few date palms. “Why school?” I challenged my father openly. “I shall never do anything to annoy you.” “I’m not punishing you,” he said, laughing. “School’s not a punishment. It’s the factory that makes useful men out of boys. Don’t you want to be like your father and brothers?” I was not convinced. I did not believe there was really any good to be had in tearing me away from the intimacy of my home and throwing me into this building that stood at the end of the road like some huge, high-walled fortress, exceedingly stern and grim. When we arrived at the gate we could see the courtyard, vast and crammed full of boys and girls. “Go in by yourself,” said my father, “and join them. Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others.” I hesitated and clung to his hand, but he gently pushed me from him. “Be a man,” he said. “Today you truly begin life. You will find me waiting for you when it’s time to leave.” I took a few steps, then stopped and looked but saw nothing. Then the faces of boys and girls came into view. I did not know a single one of them, and none of them knew me. I felt I was a stranger who had lost his way. But glances of curiosity were directed toward me, and one boy approached and asked, “Who brought you?” “My father,” I whispered. “My father’s dead,” he said quite simply. I did not know what to say. The gate was closed, letting out a pitiable screech. Some of the children burst into tears. The bell rang. A lady came along, followed by a group of men. The men began sorting us into ranks. We were formed into an intricate pattern in the great courtyard surrounded on three sides by high buildings of several floors; from each floor we were overlooked by a long balcony roofed in wood. “This is your new home,” said the woman. “Here too there are mothers and fathers. Here there is everything that is enjoyable and beneficial to knowledge and religion. Dry your tears and face life joyfully.” We submitted to the facts, and this submission brought a sort of contentment. Living beings were drawn to other living beings, and from the first moments my heart made friends with such boys as were to be my friends and fell in love with such girls as I was to be in love with, so that it seemed my misgivings had had no basis. I had never imagined school would have this rich variety. We played all sorts of different games: swings, the vaulting horse, ball games. In the music room we chanted our first songs. We also had our first introduction to language. We saw a globe of the Earth, which revolved and showed the various continents and countries. We started learning the numbers. The story of the Creator of the Universe was read to us, we were told of His present world and of His Hereafter, and we heard examples of what He said. We ate delicious food, took a little nap, and woke up to go on with friendship and love, play and learning.
As our path revealed itself to us, however, we did not find it as totally sweet and unclouded as we had presumed. Dust-laden winds and unexpected accidents came about suddenly, so we had to be watchful, at the ready and very patient. It was not all a matter of playing and fooling around. Rivalries could bring pain and hatred or give rise to fighting. And while the lady would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold. Even more frequently she would resort to physical punishment.
In addition, the time for changing one’s mind was over and gone and there was no question of ever returning to the paradise of home. Nothing lay ahead of us but exertion, struggle, and perseverance. Those who were able took advantage of the opportunities for success and happiness that presented themselves amid the worries.
The bell rang announcing the passing of the day and the end of work. The throngs of children rushed toward the gate, which was opened again. I bade farewell to friends and sweethearts and passed through the gate. I peered around but found no trace of my father, who had promised to be there. I stepped aside to wait. When I had waited for a long time without avail, I decided to return home by my own. After I had taken a few steps, a middle-aged man passed by, and I realized at once that I knew him. He came toward me, smiling, and shook me by the hand, saying, “It’s a long time since we last met – how are you?” With a nod of my head, I agreed with him and in turn asked, “And you, how are you?” “As you can see, not all that good, the Almighty be praised!”
Again he shook me by the hand and went off. I preceded a few steps, and then came to a startled halt. Good Lord! Where was the street lined with gardens? Where had it disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it? And when did all these hordes of humanity come to rest upon its surface? How did these hills of refuse come to cover its sides? And where were the fields that bordered it? High buildings had taken over, the street surged with children, and disturbing noises shook the air. At various points stood conjurers showing off their tricks and making snakes appear from baskets. Then there was a band announcing the opening of a circus, with clowns and weight lifters walking in front. A line of trucks carrying central security troops crawled majestically by. The siren of a fire engine shrieked, and it was not clear how the vehicle would cleave its way to reach the blazing fire. A battle raged between a taxi driver and his passenger, while the passenger’s wife called out for help and no one answered. Good God! I was in a daze. My head spun. I almost went crazy. How could all this have happened in half a day, between early morning and sunset? I would find the answer at home with my father. But where was my home? I could see only tall buildings and hordes of people. I hastened on to the crossroads between the gardens and Abou Khoda. I had to cross Abou Khoda to reach my house, but the stream of cars would not let up. The fire engine’s siren was shrieking at full pitch as it moved at a snail’s pace, and I said to myself, “Let the fire take its pleasure in what it consumes.”
Extremely irritated, I wondered when I would be able to cross. I stood there a long time, until the young lad employed at the ironing shop on the corner came up to me. He stretched out his arm and said gallantly, “Grandpa, let me take you across.” Tarbush: red hat similar to the fez worn especially by Muslim men
Post Script: Time is telescoped into a morning’s walk, the first day in the school, and the return journey home. To Mahfouz, our entire life can be condensed into just ‘Half a Day” in the school of life, from sunrise to sunset. Everything you learn in school repeats in life as well (Learning to work, love, play, obey rules, break rules). Being a follower of Bergson’s philosophy Mahfouz has made a stunning masterwork on ‘Time’, both lived and straight. The narrator emerges from the gates of the school oblivious that his entire life has passed, and that he is now no longer a young boy but an old man. Life is a tragedy. It is a gentle story tinged with nostalgia for time irrecoverable.
(Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)
Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings;
to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain from everything it’s not;
to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes.
An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off;
and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another,
mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
The author of this poem is the Nobel Prize winner -Wislawa Szymborska. She is that rarest of phenomena- a serious poet who commanded amazing popularity in her native land as the most representative Polish poet of last century. She is one of the most accessible of all poets I have read and therefore one of my favorite poets.
It’s hard to follow a poetic explanation on Life . Every line in this poem draws a sigh out of the reader. If you take out each line by itself, they might seem quite unpoetic. Or is it that the magic of the poem is in the opening line? It is only when dovetailed with this opening line that the rest of the poem’s lines acquire their magical qualities.
The above poem is a good note on life. There is a reward for being fully open to all of life’s pain and its promise.
Life is the only way…”
It wakes the reader up! We’re all ears now; what is this ‘Life’ thing? Oh let’s see what it’s all about. This is going to be deeply philosophical and wrenching. Intense. But then Szymborska follows it up with all these simple and yet wonderful, wonderful lines that defy any sort of intellectual analysis. It defies them. It denies them the opportunity to probe the poem for this or that with their rude speculative tools. Follows it up with lines that are almost Koan-esque in nature, accessible only to the intuition and leaves the reader with the sense that he/she now shares this secret knowledge of Life with the poet ‘ a knowing, and at the same time a Not Knowing that gives us joy, the joy
“to keep on not knowing something important.”
How nice! The frustrations of not-knowing are an opportunity, one for which to be grateful. We can’t have answers to our biggest questions – but in that piquancy somehow lies our big chance.
Life is the only chance ‘to mislay your keys in the grass’-that must be an intensely romantic moment!..hehe . ‘To tell pain from everything it’s not’- I lifted up my eyes for a momentary flashback after reading that line. ‘a conversation held with the lamp switched off’, I would love this. ‘To squeeze inside events’- some of you who have experienced turbulent times may already be doing that. But the gift of being fully present, ‘to squeeze inside events’, also brings responsibility: to bear witness (like after a holocaust).
There is a stamp of unmistakable originality, playfulness, delightful inventiveness, prodigality of imagination in most of her poems. I love her laconic style and precision. Her poetry is devoid of any affectation and is fresh and full of charm and wit.
Reference: Monologue of a Dog: Wislawa Szymborska (Author), Stanislaw Baranczak (Translator), Clare Cavanagh (Translator), Billy Collins (Foreword). Publisher: Harcourt.
(Posted below is a Valedictory speech that I gave early this year to a group of school students in the 9-12th grade who had participated in a Youth Leadership program, a well-structured communication and leadership training program lasting 8 weeks , conducted by Global Toastmasters Club in Jubail.)
Dear Club President, Fellow Toastmasters and my dear Youth Leaders
Good Evening!
Let me at the outset congratulate Global Toastmasters for wonderfully orchestrating this Youth Leadership Program that has helped many students to learn the rudiments of public speaking.
Tonight, I wish to share with you two incidents of my school days and a couple of other observations relating to this program.
When I was a grade 6th student, I began a love affair with a beautiful girl in my class. Well, this girl’s mother was a teacher in the school where I studied and was a close friend of my mother , who was also incidentally a teacher there. So, in all my sincerity, I had thought it would be a perfect future alliance as both the families knew each other very well. The girl used come to my home with her lunch box to have a leisurely lunch as the school was located nearby. I would watch her taking lunch and after the lunch she would go to the pond in our compound to wash her tiffin box and then would straight away proceed back to the school. One day, I decided to write a detailed love letter to her. Like a good speech, it had a captivating introduction, a persuasive body and a pleading conclusion. The next day, as soon as she came back from the pond after washing her tiffin box, I gave her that letter. She took it and left immediately. I followed her with my eyes as she went to the school.I could see her reading it as she walked along and finally she folded the letter and secretly kept it back in her lunch box. That was perfect and I was very happy. On that night at 9 PM, my mother came to my room and showed me my letter and asked whether I had written it. The rest is history. My parents took turns in caning me. That night I literally realized the pain of love.
That was my first set back in communication. That taught me a lesson that communication strategy has to be appropriate for each occasion. If I had developed my oral communication skills through a YLP like this, I would have then used my body language, vocal variety and language skills to woo her. Well, I don’t know whether I realized it or not, the next year I won the first prize in the elocution competition and I got a violet soap box as a present from the school. Till early 90’s I had that soap box in our ancestral home and then someone thought of putting it to better use and I haven’t seen it after that. So, my dear Youth leaders, with YLP under your fore, you can be sure of avoiding such setbacks. I can see the smile of confidence on your faces.
Now, let me share with you the second incident. When I was studying in the fourth grade in the same ordinary Malayalam Medium school at Vayalar (near Alleppey), I had a classmate named Sadasivan. He used to sit next to me. Every day, I would go to school with pocketful of guava and he would come with juicy mangoes. We would secretly exchange it while the classes were in progress. Notwithstanding our pretty pranks, Sadasivan was the most brilliant boy in the class and was the pet of our Maths teacher whereas I would duck my face when the teacher looked for volunteers to solve a problem on the black board. Years passed by and we parted our ways. A few years after I got my job as an Executive Trainee engineer in FACT, one evening I was returning to my village for a weekend. I got down from the bus and thought of walking a KM to reach my home. As I approached my village, I saw from a distance a wheel cart loaded with vegetables approaching a grocery shop. The man who pulled the cart wore a turban and had a haggard look. Life’s labors had prematurely aged him. As I came near him, he started smiling at me- one of the most hearty and utterly candid smiles I remember in my life. I struggled hard to identify the face behind the face. It was my Sadasivan.
Dear Youth leaders, opportunities for growth and achievement in life do not come to everyone even if you are more talented, more intelligent, smarter and hard working than my Sadasivan. Your destiny is often shaped by your circumstances. They are often more powerful than you. Perhaps the 24 students who had the opportunity to hone communication and leadership skills during the past 8 weeks in this YLP may not be the best and the most deserving of all the students in their schools. Consider that you were the luckiest students to benefit from this program and have that sense of gratitude to Global Toastmasters for giving you this opportunity. Remember that this club has spent time,money and energy for your self-improvement.
Mao Zedong once said -If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. This is very true in Toastmasters. You as young leaders got direct experience and knowledge on how to prepare and deliver a speech through this program. YLP that concludes today has given you the wings. I believe that wings are more important many other things. If you exercise them, you are going to excel in your life. I didn’t intentionally say succeed, as I don’t believe much in success. You can become a success tomorrow, if you win the Dubai festival lottery or You are made the anchor of “Kon Benega Karorpathi”. You as youths are more likely to be carried away by the successes of celebrities like Shahrukhan or Preity Zinta. Success has no permanence. But excellence has. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. It is the gradual result of always striving to do things better. That is why we, the Toastmasters, believe that building a better YOU is the key to excellence. The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. Excellence is an intrinsic quality. Even when your body wrinkle like Madina dates, it will still carry that juicy essence called excellence. It is a growth within you like the blooming of a flower. The only difference is that that flower never wilts. My dear student friends- go for excellence in your life. It will help you to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
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