Some practice again

With a love for literature which I don’t know where it comes from and not much formal education in it, perhaps it is a good practice to use your other knowledge gathering techniques of other fields of specialization. Such as, copy a paragraph or two, and try to fit yourself inside a Great Man’s shoes using the process called copying. At least it helps improve one’s grammar, I can say; there are other observations too. Page 73 of Mark Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”, has a paragraph so relevant 150 years down the line. Copied below it goes -

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when I proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle—a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn’t. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, aquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be a Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The preists had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet.

I find that buying the Bantam classic is worthier and sustainable than getting the stuff online, although it has its own benefits, available at
http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
I swear, throat twitched, bie-god, I have rewrit the above para myself, just for practice.

Paving corners is useful

The panchayat bench is rough concrete. Not so rough that one cannot sit. It has a nice feel to it. One sits easy on it, turns his neck left, pause and then to right - notices that the wide four to six lanes on either sides of this cross roads has traffic building up. Evening has set in and so has the rush. People are making to their way home from work.

A small orange temple sits next to the bench. It looks nicer than before, perhaps because more people came to visit it during the recent famous recession. The temple has big new orange flags, bigger than the temple itself, and repainted walls. The in-vicinity neighborhood is flourishing. In between the bench and temple is a temporarily built home, otherwise known as shack - houses a family with few kids. There are other neighbouring shacks too, with their one wall belonging to the boundary wall of India’s self congratulatory premier Management institute. Well, all make use of the well done paving. Toddlers and not-more-than five or maybe ten years old are playing in front of the bench on which One is sitting, and are safe on this futpath. Ma is cooking evening food, dealing with fumes of the collected firewood, blowing it through a half inch steel pipe. All this thanks to the corner-side paving.

One, sitting on the bench likes the smell of this freshly cooked home food, so his mood lightens and brightens up. The rising traffic means more fumes, gasoline ones to rise in a few hours to stay about for a few more hours. Enjoying the comforts of this panchayat bench, he notices the owner of the shack, with part curiosity and part pity. The owner appears busy with some important work of his.

“Hey – why don’t you put your kids in school? They are roaming about in this dirt dust doing nothing!”

The owner, a little startled at the question, looks back at One and replies, “Sahib, his leg broke, he'd slipped – injured - so, that’s why he's at home not in school.” continues staring at One with an innocent grin.

Madness?

When a man sits in a city faraway, as faraway as the other side of the planet, and worries about Woody Guthrie, sings a few songs of his he knows, and also feels he has to read some classic; goes to the nearest bookshop picks up A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT and hardly three pages done, he feels he has to write this.

He then connects this to a singer and how he visits his legend Woody in the asylum, much publicized since a few decades, now dying out, mentions it to his colleague, inquiring if he himself isn't mad?

The response is "thank god! At least you know!"

The man wonders, "Is it madness to acknowledge madness?"

We paint the mornings

I go to sleep early because I know I have to wake up early. It is a routine. The child inside me craves for some company which is of my own kinds. But more importantly, my morning chore also involves clearing out my stomach. I wait to get up as soon as the dark is over plus perhaps there is a clock inside me which compels me to. Almost every time I have to lick my man, and if need be, I have to lick on his face, and sometimes I even have to push him with force. He then disappears for a while and is back strangely full of life, even though I don’t care much about it.

He takes me to a place where I see people, many people, I think they are different people doing different things. The big highway next to which I walk is full of speeding vehicles noise, but what attracts me most is the other dogs. I will not tell about all but I can tell of some I met today and meet often. Bingo, same breed as me, was a friend, we used to play for a good while till we both would get tired, but now strangely he comes to bite me. I have been bitten deep in wounds by him. Otherwise he is a good dog, he lets me and I let him go our own ways. I guess he has his life, I have mine.

Laiger is another lab but he is elder, and likes to act that way or something, everytime I try to sniff his butt, he barks at me full of warnings. He is otherwise interested in playing with stray dogs who are around in a plenty. I cannot play with strays because somehow they don’t like me and I have been bitten a couple of times by them as well. Lucifer is a week stray bitch, and too has been bitten. She now lives in the municipal park protected by its restaurant owners who have a little portion on lease. They feed Lucifer, so they must protect her, the neighborhood residents have warned. Now she looks unbitten mostly but she isn't attractive. None of us talk to her much. I want to play with other dogs who come here to spray like me too, but their masters won’t let them off the leash. But something new has to happen and recently, I have found Coby, a six month boxer who is a pup, and is same height as me. We now tirelessly play in the same garden.

I haven’t see Porshee for a while, they say she is a golden retriever, and trust me, me, Bingo, Laiger, Coby, we all say, wow what a bitch.

We love the smell of the place, and we all spray the country road, and most of these mornings are one of the most beautiful things to be in. I wish someone could paint them on canvas too.

Woof woofed in behalf of -
Banjo
(Also pronounced by other people as Benjoo, Banzoe, Bunjoe, VanGo and so on)

ooo
O

Some pat songs say it all

The patriotic sprit of the Indian Union has countless songs, with mostly having melodies unbeatable. Even Bollywood contributing in early sixties or seventies, tough to remember could be eighties, songs like -

आएँ हैं तूफ़ान से कश्ती निकाल के, इस देश को रखना मेरे बच्चों संभाल के...

Literally, which means that – “kids, we have just rescued this boat out of storm, now it is your turn to keep this country safe...”

Reminds me of an another patriotic Bollywood song -

छोड़ो कल की बातें, कल की बात पुरानी. नया दौर है लिखेंगे मिल कर नई कहानी, हम हिन्दुस्तानी..

Leave the talks of yesterday, they are by gone. It’s a new age, together we shall write some new stories, we Indians…

***

I am inside an air conditioned car which suddenly has to stop. I pull down my window, and outside see a helluv a lot of traffic noise, lots of smoke, and hazy evening sky. People are scrambling onto each other with their scooters, bikes, tempos, and exectra. In reality, only a few wanting to scramble out first, dominoing other’s anxiety. Pedestrians are walking in between too. Car drivers add to the effect by shouting loud, with their one elbow and neck sticking out of their windows; their expression of anger. It is like almost one stage before a riot.

Since the car is struck, one has all the time in the world to witness a formal gathering in the front yard of a semi-commercial semi-residential property banking the road side . A few citizens wearing Gandhi topis are sipping chai, relishing it, and a pale yellow cloth banner near them, through the sulphur haze says, ‘Shahid divas’ (Martryrs day). I see the clock in the car, it says 23^rd march 2010. While the loudspeaker blares clearly out of all this cacophony, I pull up my car’s windows, and still the song would filter through, perhaps more clearer now.

कर चले हम जान वतन साथियों, अब तुम्हारे हवाले ये वतन साथियों…

Translated to English would reveal,

Friends, we have given our lives for the country, now it is up to you...

I had penn'd

Sometime back, a few words came strong in head. As follows:

No space one could gather,
better dead than dud,
realism and fiction live together,
out of anger,
hopes, and what not all.

The Tin Soldiers

Anthropology or ethnology are not my specialist areas, but would like to share an observation. Please correct me if I am wrong.

It was one of those rarely sun-lit mornings in Manchester, a United Kingdom city, I took one of my regular buses - available in plenty – to the Oxford Road train station which would further take me to my workplace. It is usually a nice journey with lots of college students in their prime jogging and bouncing around. For office goers like me perhaps it is a regular one. To break or maybe spice this transit, for momentary population like us, there are a few morning newspapers, mostly available for free. They would run on either subsidies or sponsorships, or both. It was another regular day and I bought a rather more expensive newspaper for a change - don’t remember whether it was ‘The Guardian’ or ‘The Times’.

It was year 2006 then, and the Iraq war issue was at its peak, and requests and noises, one may also say ‘hopes’, to bring their troops back home pretty high in the whole Island nation that time. Reading gives you more clarity, and this article hidden somewhere amongst many did so, for it gave some numbers in form of statistics. That about 1K of the soldiers deputed are in Iraq. About 10K sporadically distributed for the UN all over the world, and 60K still in Germany after the world war two.

The sun's shine had brightened; unusual for that day.

A german friend, later, in my office tells me, “Yes, I have heardh so tuh, zey are stationed close to my villaze” “and now with, some time haz passe by, zey are up line to be cithizen. One of zem officer told me he juszent feelz brizish anymore afzer living for zo long in the zerman zoil."