Friday, August 08, 2008

Death becomes her. Her, of the absorbing eyes and the smile that puts you both at ease and on edge, without having it quirk too hard. It's when you know you're at the mercy of something you don't quite know everything about - knowing that you have not a handle on things, yet things have control over you that you cannot fathom.

Thoughts come poring out of dreams conceived years ago - about ideas and expressions dealing with love, lust and all of that rot. But when one puts things in perspective, there is nothing more or less than what one wants at any given point of time.

There is nothing that is absolute - everything seems so utterly relative. Things said to you by an inane history teacher begin to make sense at the border between sobriety and the artistic attempt at fervour you dig deep out of your soul because you believe you ought to.

I'd recommend Madhushala by Harivansh Rai Bachchan to anyone who is even vaguely interested in poetry. Tracts translated into Hindi from the original Persian, they are brilliant depictions of the feeling of a man caught in a daze or stupor.

"I have not the valour to move forward,
Nor the courage to go back from whence I came.
To which of my deeds and hopes should I turn?
And far, far way, there stands the source of intoxication."

Hm. It does sound terrible in English.


2 comments:

Recher_she said...

That does tend to happen; Tagore's translations share a similar fate; what with the semantics of English being different from Hindi and/or Persian. I don't even think we have an English word for "Buddhi", do we?

Unknown said...

Have not visited here in a long time. That was a nice poem below!Sensual and powerful. Keep blogging!