| 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”  |
Tag: PGR Nair
STAY IN TOUCH
STAY IN TOUCH
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.
Short short stories of Lydia Davis
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.)
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Half a Day
Half a day
By Naguib Mahfouz
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.
A Note
A Note
by Wislawa Szymborska
(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.
The Essence Called Excellence
(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.
Elephants are Different to Different People
I started my profession as a chemical engineer in a public sector fertilizer company named FACT (Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore) and soon moved to its design and detailed engineering division called FEDO, which was earlier one of the top five detailed engineering organizations in the petrochemical field in India. In 1994, I was appointed as the project Manager of a grass root Ammonia plant. I used to prepare the minutes of meeting for all progress review meetings and sundry vendor meetings such as for compressors, Boilers, Utility plants, Instrumentation etc. I was even jokingly called the MMOM, the master of minutes of meeting. One day, the Chief projects Manager called me and warned- ‘Look, you are a chemical Engineer. I don’t want you to prepare minutes of meetings that do not pertain to your area. Let the concerned coordinators from each engineering department prepare the minutes of the engineering packages they handle’. I was happy and felt relieved. The following week, we had a discussion with BHEL for a boiler plant. The people who came from Trichy requested me that they wanted to return by evening and wished to carry the minutes with them latest by 5 PM. I conveyed the matter to the new engineering coordinator of Static equipment dept, who had been branded as a tough nut to crack. He cynically looked at me but didn’t say anything. At 5 PM, I went to him to get the minutes. He told me that he had not started writing yet. I was damn upset and I told him that we failed to meet a commitment because of his lax attitude. An argument started and gained momentum very fast. Since both of us had thunder tucked in our mouths, the whole hall of his department reverberated with our alternating arguments. Well, many arguments are sound and only sound. Even people from neighbouring departments came to witness our verbal warfare.
The following day, I went to our General Manager (Project) and explained what had happened. He conceded with my viewpoint. However, a friend of me who had considerable experience in Projects management called me aside and advised -‘PGR, if you want any progress as a project Manager, you shouldn’t fall into an argument trap. As a project Manager, you have to please your engineering coordinators all the times and you need them every day till your project is completed’. He was right. I lifted my phone and apologized to that coordinator for all that happened. Believe me, we had excellent relationship after that inciting incident.
Do you know what issue causes the greatest number of arguments leading to conflicts in households in USA? According to a “USA Today” report, people argue most often about which TV show to watch! Would any couple or family have believed that the selection of television programs would become the major cause of their unhappiness? Well, it could be happening in many households in India as well. They often forget what is important! They stop thinking that relationships are built on love, respect, consideration, kindness, and understanding. They forget all those compelling and wonderful reasons that brought them together in the first place. Instead, they let minor inconveniences trumpet as major issues ripping their relationships. I don’t deny that positive and constructive arguments can be healthy and are a normal part of any relationship; however the problems start when we get into a vicious cycle of arguing about the same thing over and over again. I was reminded of the above incident when I chanced to see some blogs in Sulekha vituperating each other on an inane subject like hosting an EYC contest.
Dear friends, an argument is like a country road; you never know where it is going to lead. The truth is that often it doesn’t lead us anywhere. When an arguer argues dispassionately, he thinks only of the argument. In the process, it produces plenty of heat but not much light. It is often a collision in which two trains of thought are simply derailed. It is very true that the more arguments you win the fewer the friends you will have. Sometimes, silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
An argument is question with two sides and no end. More homes and families are destroyed by fusses than funerals. More nations are at war to win their argument than work out an answer.
I wish to conclude my rambling with a poem by the great American poet Carl Sandburg
Elephants are Different to Different People
Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.
Wilson said, “What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide for? What use is it besides to look at?” Pilcer didn’t have any questions; he was murmuring to himself, “It’s a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields, by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;I know elephants are good to babies.” Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, “He’s a tough son-of-a-gun outside and I’ll bet he’s got a strong heart, I’ll bet he’s strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside.” They didn’t put up any arguments. They didn’t throw anything in each other’s faces. Three men saw the elephant three ways And let it go at that. They didn’t spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;“Sunday comes only once a week,” they told each other.
This is the way the world should be! Here are three men who are not blind! They don’t fight out their differences and spoil the day. We are all different with our different perspectives. When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
Let us not spoil this Sunday in arguments. After all, Sunday comes only once in a week.
THE DINOSAUR
THE DINOSAUR
Bina Gupta has made a challenging proposition to Sulekha bloggers to write a poem or story of 55 words containing mixed emotions. When I saw that theme, I was reminded of one of the smallest (and one of the best) stories in literature titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words:
‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’
A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses.
In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below.
The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past.
What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (“Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible.
The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’.
No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.
YOGI RAMAMURTI
There are some poems that tug our conscience at the first reading itself. The below one riveted me. I know the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski as one of the great literary journalists of last century , having read many of his books like ‘Emperor’ (On the fall of Ethiopian dictator Haile Selassie), ‘ Another day of life'(his dramatic account of the three months he spent in Angola at the beginning of its decades’ long civil war), ‘Shah of Shah'(on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran) and my favourite ‘Imperium’ (His account of the collapse of the Soviet system). He spent the last half of twentieth century on the front lines, covering twenty-seven revolutions, rebellions and coups d’état who ranged and wrote across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America and bore witness to the collapse of colonialism in the Third world and the crumbling of Soviet Empire.
I was sceptical when I saw a poetry collection titled ‘I Wrote Stone’ by him in Toronto Public library as I didn’t know he wrote poetry too. This book gathers poetry Kapuscinski wrote over 40 years. Kapuscinski believed poetry could “illuminate dimensions of human experience that otherwise would remain unknowable.” These poems capture the moments between crises, impressions that carry a book-length argument in a few lines. The poems in this slim volume live up to that expectation. It is full of small gems like the one I have posted below. His poetry, so sparing in expression, so simple and transparent, but also melancholic and impassioned enters and affects our psyche. Kapusciniski was nominated several times for Nobel prize in Literature for transforming acts of incisive journalism into stunning works of literature.
.I could easily identify with the moral question and the poignant irony in this poem as I have witnessed this ‘death for life’ many times in my village during my childhood.
YOGI RAMAMURTI
Yogi Ramamurti bids
he be buried in a grave
he will remain there one week
doctors will testify it’s not a scam
whoever wishes can go down the tunnel
watch through a window:
Ramamurti lies in a grave
not breathing
everyone is asked for a donation
the buried one wants to earn money
that’s why he went to the grave:
to survive
after a week they dig up the yogi
Ramamurti emerges
weakened
he’s touched the absolute
that’s always exhausting
he bows to the gathering
counts the donations
102 rupees
less than ten dollars
everyone disperses
an empty grave remains
Ramamurti was reborn
but he’s still a beggar
weeks pass
he has nothing to eat
he’s dying of hunger
I am going back to the grave
he says
only in death
life
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Ref: I WROTE STONE: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuscinski . Translated from the Polish by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba. Published by BIBLIOASIS, Canada
THE PRECISE PERSIMMON
On a winter evening in 2002, I was attending a meeting for a social cause at my friend Shahul Hameed’s house. When the meeting was about to be over, he brought a tray of fruits as snacks. Among them, I saw something incongruous- a plateful of sliced pieces of what looked like tomatoes. No one touched the apparent ‘Tomatoes’ while we eagerly savoured the other fruits. Noticing our inhibition, Shahul told us that they were not tomatoes but sweet persimmons (It is called Kaki fruit in India). I tasted a piece and was struck by its smooth texture, its sticky sweetness, syrupy taste and indescribably delicious fruity flavor. I was literally tasting a new experience. Shahul said he too once bought it by mistake thinking it as tomatoes but was bowled over by its taste. There onwards, I have become an addict of this fruit, waiting for the season to savour the pleasurable persimmons. But the fruit has a split personality. The unripe ones , though sweet, carries a bit of astringent taste. The skin of a ripe and glossy one is so taut that one tough touch can tear its delicate skin and spill the jelly pulp.
I was reminded of my above experience as I read this beautiful and powerfully painful poem by a Chinese Poet called Li-Young Lee. It also roused my own maudlin mango memories.
PERSIMMONS
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.
Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.
Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.
Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.
My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.
Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang. The sun, the sun.
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father would stay up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.
This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.
Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.
He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?
This is persimmons, Father.
Oh, the feel of the wolf tail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.
Li-Young Lee
There are several elements that figure importantly in this poem. Persimmon stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between “persimmon” and “precision” and makes a play on other words which sound similar and “that got (him) into trouble.” He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he “watched the . . . faces” without participating. We now understands that the sixth grader’s misperception due to pronunciation finds the right revenge when the boy can handle the difference in meaning between these two words quite nimbly: “How to choose / persimmons. This is precision.”
Persimmons also remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember. The speaker first suggests, perhaps shamefacedly, his detachment from his parents and their culture by embodying the source of his distraction in the figure of Donna, a white girl (or woman) with whom he lies naked in the grass. The speaker’s vacillating attempts to teach Donna Chinese and his own forgetting of some words due to non-use hint at the fading power of his parents’ culture and its values in USA.
Ripe persimmons continue to gain positive associations as the speaker next recalls his mother’s observation that “every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face.” The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father’s life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him two sweet, ripe persimmons, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. The fruit links him with his father when he says ”forgotten” persimmons, “swelled, heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love.”
Later, in the “muddy lighting” of his parents’ cellar, with his father sitting on the stairs, the poet searches for something meaningful from his past: “I rummage, looking / for something I lost.” He finds three rolled-up paintings by his now blind father. As the father reaches to touch a rendering of “Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth,” he remembers “the strength, the tense / precision in the wrist” required to paint them. For both the poet and reader the search has ended. The poet has recovered two qualities embodied in and demonstrated by his parents that he has found so lacking in American culture: the rich, full warmth of his parents’ love, figured in persimmons, and their precise, caring ways, represented by their respective crafts. The poem ends with the father’s remark that “some things never leave a person”.
Indeed this precisely crafted poem reaches into the murky depths of memory to salvage the captivating characteristics of one’s parents and one’s culture. It is a sensitive and supreme example of how a fruitful emotional association such as with persimmon can transform and enrich our life
Ref : Rose (New Poets of America): Li-Young Lee (Author)
Gerald Stern (Foreword)
pgrnair.com 