Last Bus to Vasco

A Peace of India: Narrative of a Nation

2012-01-22T12:26:00.010+05:30

-Brian Mendonça

When I bounced the title of my second book of poems 'A Peace of India'

with friends a while ago, some of them wryly retorted 'Piece'? - or 'Pieces'?

That was the time Jharkhand was happening and and we had not yet got

to Chattisgarh. Telangana was nascent and the Manipuris were doing

their bit with the head hunters. Nearer home, trains occasionally got

stoned at Hubli or Belgaum and the only safe transit point between two

states seemed to be the silence in Silent Valley.

After the hermeticism of 'Last Bus to Vasco' my first book of poems,

India itself, I thought, would be my canvas. So from Delhi - or Goa

depending on what my base was, I travelled from Kashmir to Trivandrum

and from Kachch to Kohima to peel the skin of India. The search took

more than a decade.I am more convinced than ever now that my homonymic association with the word will vouch for 'peace' rather than 'piece.'

A great part of my working life was spent in a room at the top of the

stairs.Weekends, I rushed frenetically across India to discover my

adopted 'family.' 'Family' was an all-inclusive term really:

Yes I Will Go

Yes I will go

to see my 'friends'

the rivers, the birds

and the trees

Where the wind calls

and the forests wait

in the stories of an India

yet to be told.

India is a huge carpet.

The narrative of the nation is told in her stories. Each experience humbled me. The Narmada river told its story in its terrifying descent at Amarkantak. The river then flowed across to Gujarat from Madhya Pradesh. Does the river pause when it crosses the state boundary? Saramago -- speaking of the river Tagus which flows from Portugal into Spain -- ponders whether the fish give a second thought when they cross the border in the fluidity of the river. Nature like India is free and bountiful.

'What were you doing at midnight at a crossroad at Jamshedpur? Don't you get scared of the naxalites? Fortunately, this was asked to me after I returned to Delhi. But then again, it would not have deterrerd me. I know friends with NGO's who work with villagers in abject poverty. What is their recourse when they are the undead of the State? We had a superb poetry session in the makeshift guest bedroom of my friend who is a documentary film maker in Jharkhand. 'Ek shaam kavita ke naam se,' wrote a senior poet who had attended the session.

Amid all vicissitudes, I have found poetry has the power to redeem. There are people everywhere in this land of Bhavabhuti, Kalidasa, and Shudraka who revere the poetic. Poetry inspired us all to join hands and knit India into a poetic canvas. Poetry enabled Indians to rise above seeming differences to enjoy a space of bliss. It gave us the inspiration to believe that we had a higher destiny to realize. United in this common goal, India received me in peace wherever I went.

‘A chronicler of our times,’ wrote a critic after my poetry reading at the Pasha in Chennai. The ordinary, in India, seemed so momentous simply because it was reified by experience – and chastened, as it were, by a uniquely Indian sensibility. Whether it was a reflection on a sadhu urinating from a railway platform at Tatanagar or on a railway vendor making parotha bhaji at Lumding station, these were all vignettes of a tactile, sensuous India. Here was India live with all its folkways and mores. From the homegrown wisdom in Chamba of ‘Halwai kitna khayega’ [How many sweets can a sweetmeat seller eat?] we moved to the sagacity of a grandmother in Gujarat reassuring us that ‘Koteshwar is not far away.’ With every breath there was a lifetime to be learnt or to lament.

The horrific disasters India has been through, mellowed us all. ‘On the Anjar road, the ceiling hangs like a curtain’ was all that was needed to remind us of the Gujarat earthquake. So many had lost their lives here. And how was one to say to the proud safa-headed mahout that his city of lakes was reeling from drought? Your heart went out to these simple villagers whose stoicism saw them through their curtain of pain.

Staring at Majuli across the Brahmaputra you knew Sanjoy still lived. Bhupen-da’s music still reverberates in wayside eateries in Assam. Legends pass on but India lives on. ‘Of a valiant race / all that remains . . . / Is mawa tiranga / And a woman on a hill’-- Maharani Gayatri Devi epitomized Jaipur. What now?

The panoply of the ancient and the modern, is what makes India so timeless. To key into that energy, is to partake of some of that eternity – to be outside time. At the Gajner palace, the very wind hums the name of the daughter of Oudh, ‘diadem of the pleasure gardens.’ Basking on the lawns at Pinjore you are behoved to know the Pandavas once walked by followed by a dog.

And the ignominy of it all – when we reduce our most moving epitaphs to the dead to a jamboree for a carnival horde – the Taj. Peace is sometimes chastened by irony. Or in the case of the sights of India: Palace on Wheels / You do the rounds . . ./200$ per day / For a package of India / What can I offer you? / I am only an Indian.

You see the same trees everywhere in India – or in most places. Trees, animals, rivers, skies are unifying tropes which stitch India into a many-splendoured quilt. The motifs reappear in the myriad art and craft traditions only serve to accentuate the enduring beauty of this land, each in its own medium: ‘Sanganer’s scrolls / Sport Krishna’s dalliance / As Amber’s turrets / recall the watches of the night.’ Then again to the East: ‘Lanterns from Pipli / Patachitra on the walls / Off NH33 / This is home / Once more.’

This timeless land is also under threat: ‘Sand mining / Has denuded you / Of your waters / O mighty Bharatpuzha / Refuge of the ancients.’ When one whistleblower after another is laid low by the scythe of evil, it unites us as never before. When a finger is lifted to voice the truth and the truth is silenced by murder, it unites us – to preserve an India we believe in. From the fierce patriotism of Haldighati to the sinking of the sailors in INS Khukri, off Diu, the supreme sacrifice does not go unnoticed. It is the purpose of the poetic to reveal these truths.

Moving India on her journey is the eternal Indian woman: ‘Instant city / Home to hot millions / Gita Govinda / Of Taya and Rukmini.’ You will always find an ‘autumn woman’ waiting by the kerb in end-October. ‘Does one still shed clothes / In a summer reprieve / Or is it that / You are just too hot?’ Indian women personify India. The maiden from Satna ‘bedecked in bangles / ardhanareeshwara . . ./ Are you fleeing / from, or to, love / in such precocious haste?’ Travelling across India is to discover the beauty of woman in all her dimensions. ‘Daffodil Kahmee, bound for Imphal / Fumbles for the chords / As she strums the guitar / For the girls from Manipur. . . / Praise and worship / In the North East night.’

I just let the places speak for themselves through my poems. In Morni hills I wrote, ‘In Rumi’s night my life is in surrender / In the way of life of the villagers / And the trundle of the city bus.’ Movement is the antidote for any cul-de-sac. The lessons of India may not be learnt in many lifetimes. Gadar still calls ‘From the land / Of the landless.’ On the Hooghly, ‘Under the absent moon . . . / A lonely man appears / And consigns sheets of newspaper / theatrically on the silent river . . .’
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This article - except the last 3 lines beginning from Gadar - was published in 'Spectrum,' the Sunday supplement of the Tribune issue, of Sunday 22 January 2012. This was a specially commissioned article to commemorate India's Republic Day (26 January). Pix courtesy: Asia Trans-Pacific Journeys Photo Contest

Narrative of a Nation

2012-01-22T12:25:00.001+05:30

Etios Liva

2012-01-05T18:01:00.000+05:30

These days I have been keeping an eye on cars. There are small cars, big cars, medium-sized cars. We started out with small aspirations. So it was naturally the Nano that we tried. Price was of course a big consideration. We bumped our way from Vasco to Bogmalo and came back via Mangor hill. I always feel I am buying the car I am driving. It makes everyone feel good.

The Nano was good in 2nd but terrible in 3rd. It was nifty around the bends, but seating was far from comfortable out back. And could someone turn off the noise? It's a 600 cc so it's pretty light on its feet but with no boot space we'd be confined to our kitchen. The driver who accompanied us informed us very charmingly that it was mostly bought by housewives. I think it was then that I lost the plot.

Stacks of Car and Bike magazines now started adorning/disgracing my shelves at home. Summons to dinner would find me buried in car specs. All that reading plus the noticing of a Chevrolet Spark outside gave me the hots for her. Of course, this was the car I'd been waiting for all this time. A 1000 cc, it was as mean as it looked genteel. Friends around the country vouched for it and for 3.5 (LT) it seemed a steal. I had already brought my cheque book down to the showroom, when I re-examined the space between my thighs and the steering. Being almost 6 feet I found no legroom to react swiftly or to put it more graphically- lift my foot from the accelerator and place it on the brake. This was after we test drove the vehicle.

The Maruti Estilo was next on the list but the power steering was more of a joke. It was wooden to handle and the new WagonR completely turned me off. The Alto would present the same height problem even though I had already put down 500 chips after the sales person pushed her advantage when I was a greenhorn in August last. 'Will Ecru Beige do' she had asked.

I hadn't thought much of Hyundai, until when I dropped in to the Verna showroom and took out the Aeon. Its brash looks make it look defiant, like my son days after his birth. But I figure all the hype around the bonnet only masks the fact that it is still a 800 cc with a 1000 price at 3.8.

You can buy a car as though you are 30, 40, or 50 years of age. Being middle age the choice becomes even more difficult. I think we need to try the i10. . .

Until then I will always be eyeing those show stoppers like the Etios Liva, which I saw yesterday on my way back from work.

Mindgames

2011-12-11T13:44:00.002+05:30

Yesterday I could not sleep at night. My mind kept going back to an unpleasant incident towards the end of the day.

It was 1.30 a.m. The 'film' kept replaying itself in my mind. I got up took out your book and read a few pages and felt the energy of the room where we met. I had to get out of the loop.

i) I went to the hall and put a Mozart concerto. ii) Closed my eyes and thought of all the things which I love. My mum's face in rapture and she used to sit in the same hall listening to classical music came to me. I felt stronger.

I consciously began to itemize and dwell on all the things that made me very happy that day - why was my mind harping on a small incident when the rest of the day was so joyful? iii) Surely what happened was a learning experience for me? The rationalisation made me feel that I was taking the incident maturely.

iv) Fortified by the upsurge of positive energy, I revisited the incident. This time when I replayed the film, I pictured the hurtful stimuli in absurd combinations and laughed at the sheer incongruity of it all! I imagined one person with horns another without pants.

v) I slipped into 'billboard' mode. I imagined a huge field of billboards, each depicting a beautiful incident from my life. I placed the unpleasant incident on a billboard among them - it looked inconsequential. I began to feel much better. I thought of how many complimented me on my playing the guitar for the picnic that day. And then the local paper had carried my profile the previous day highlighting my second book of poems . . .

vi)I thought of how I needed to practise my classical guitar.

vii) Feeling a bit hungry I ate half a bun and returned to bed. viii) I did a few breathing exercises.

Sleep came after a while. I awoke refreshed at 7 this morning.

Some weeks ago I met Dr A. Abraham, Life Skills Coach and Mentor, and practitioner of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). All the techniques I used to beat the blues were the ones recommended by him. His conviction saw me through the night.

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Image source: www(dot) daysofcolour(dot)co

St. Andrew Pray For Us

2011-11-30T18:56:00.000+05:30

Happy Feast!

Today is the feast day of the patron saint of our parish - St Andrew.

In a few hours a tiatr in Konkani will be staged named Oso Ek Dis Ietolo. The drama is expected to dwell on the travails which beset Goa at the moment. Inward migration for blue collar jobs, mining, corruption and garbage. Yes the IFFI is also on but as I learnt from some students I lectured this morning - Who cares?!

We celebrated November for its holidays. From 1 Nov to 2 Nov, for the first time I luxuriated in the bliss of 3 weeks of free time. We did many things, attended a wedding at Majorda, and tried out the Nano. I just peeped in to see Beat now and it looks classy!

We tried to get some reading done. A visit to the Mother Teresa Old Age home at Carambolim was another winner. Dad was keen on it. We stuffed two trunks with used clothes and deposited then for distribution with the sisters.

Dwayne is growing up ever so michievously. 'Mosto', 'mastulia' are some of the words we have for him.

Now as the second semester begins I find myself more poised at college where I teach. The students are comfortable with me and I am better prepared with my lectures.

We look forward to the staff picnic and a host of activities in December.

'No Hay Olvido' - Pablo Neruda

2011-11-20T20:48:00.002+05:30

Unreserved India

2011-10-15T10:56:00.002+05:30

Pix courtesy: mapsofindia.com

Sometimes I travel ‘unreserved’ by train. I want to know how it feels to journey against the odds and sometimes discern the footfall of the train ticket examiner (TTE) who creeps up behind me.

On other days I take the idyllic Vasco-Kulem passenger train at 7.35 A.M.from Vasco to Sanvordem. Three days a week I have an option to travel ‘unreserved’ to my place of work in Quepem.

‘Unreserved’ because there is simply no place to place your butt in the ‘General’ coaches – since most of the passengers are traveling upto Howrah -- or Hubli, at least. So where does that leave local intra-state passengers like me who still want to take the 7.10 A.M superfast to reach in time for work?

So, armed with a general class ticket, I ambled down the length of the superfast train at Vasco station. Each of the semi-empty sleeper coaches, viz. S1, S2, S3 . . . winked at me invitingly – I heaved myself into S7. Surely 7 was my lucky number and I would not be detected?!

The thrill of traveling by a superfast train on a long journey is unmatched. The wayside stations which you so lovingly meandered by – to smell the flowers – on other days of the week, now rush by in a blur. You see life in an urgent and fresh new perspective. You reach into yourself and find your truth in the rhythm of the rails.

Sure, I have been discovered by zealous TTEs, but each encounter gives me more material to write about. Benevolent TTEs ask you to cough up Rs. 100 (in addition to the Rs. 21 you pay to travel in the unreserved class) -- the minimum fare for a reserved ticket on this train. Some give you a receipt, others don’t.

One day I missed my 7 A.M. Kadamba from Vasco bus stand to Margao by a whisker. I swerved my scooter and burnt rubber, to dash to Vasco station -- only to see the Amravati Express (as it is also called) gliding imperiously out of the platform. Sans ticket I clambered onto a reserved coach of the train, through a compartment door at which stood a man in black suit. He was to prove my nemesis as he turned out to be the TTE! I told him ‘I missed the bus.’ It did not cut any ice. He fined me Rs.300 for ticketless travel. He gave me a receipt – and the inspiration to write this article!

Travelling in ‘general class’ across India hones one’s senses. Travelling unreserved helps me think on my feet, weigh the options, and act, in challenging situations. It is in the ‘unreserved’ class where you meet unreserved India -- unreserved in their generosity and humanity. You can interact with the simple people who live their silent lives, bound and bonded by a common destiny – of reaching their destination.

No, I don’t baulk at the worthy TTEs now – a pleasant diversion on a ride to the heartland of a billion people
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Mendonça, traveler-poet, has recently self-published A Peace of India: Poems in Transit.

This article was featured in the Buzz supplement (page 2) of the Navhind Times newspaper published from Goa on 14 October 2011.

No Hay Olvido - Neruda

2011-10-02T12:19:00.007+05:30

Frost and Cooke

2011-09-18T14:35:00.001+05:30

The more I read Robert, the more he seems like me. Or vice versa. Amid segues from Saramago and the bucolic interlude, I see how cow's can be a great inspiration. A chance glimpse of Alistair Cooke's essay on Frost showd me how much I still loved Cooke's writing - the way he retold history as if over dinner. I used to hear Cooke's 'Letter from America' on the BBC in the old days. The essay is simply titled 'Robert Frost' and it told me a lot more of the man - in fact both men - than I knew till now. Stumbling upon the collection on the musty shelves of a college library was a diadem in disguise.

An estimate of a poet written in a yankee drawl is just the thing for a lazy mid-morning to take your poetry students on a romp to New England. We discovered new and Frostian applications for words like SIM (Symbol, intontion, and meaning)!, and noted how not eager to please, yet committed he was. Amid the raft of poems we took on board that furtive semester in the second year BA class (elective/allied) I found one that was not 'prescribed' - 'Acquainted With the Night.' It reminded me of one other poem on this blog written in Barcelona by the Argentinean poet Borges. Yes, the city has its quiet moments - and its roads that lead to nowhere.
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Alistair Cooke Talk About America, New York: Knopf, 1969
Image from catherine's collection - a collection of handmade and digitally enhanced creations

'Good Morning Majorda'

2011-06-30T16:17:00.000+05:30

This blog is about the singular pleasure of travelling by train on the Vasco-Kulem passenger train in the morning on a rain-swept day in June.

IGC(SEa)

2011-06-14T17:33:00.000+05:30

The title is more comprehensible as IGCSE actually, but I've had such a swell time teaching in a Cambridge IGCSE school by the sea in Goa, that I simply had to tweak the acronym.

International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) is an exam conducted by Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK in class 10.

Velsao, Goa - 10 years on

2011-06-03T13:26:00.001+05:30

This morning I turned the page of the wall-calendar to June. The rains are here in Goa and everything is green and pristine save for a few garbage dumps along the road to provide a sense of reality.

The scene at Velsao-Pale with the sea in tumult after the rains was a sight to behold. I recalled my poem:

Velsao

- Brian Mendonça

Like a slate of grey,

The sea stretches

to meet the sky

The horizon blurs

As the dawn

Swollen with rain

Douses the sun.

O let me be here

Like Rodin on a rock

And forget existence

In the lisp of the waves.

Let the fishing boats carry me

To the crest of the storm

And the palm trees

Murmur the caress

Of the breeze.

‘Velsao’ was written in 2002, enroute the Goa Express from Delhi to Goa. Today, almost 10 years on, it is possible to translate some of those dreams into a way of life.

Velsao-Pale has a new landmark – ‘Queeny Nagar’ – just a small reminder of the tremendous infrastructural development which has taken place on the Dabolim road from Vasco to Kesarval. First Murgaon Education Society’s (MES) college of Arts and Commerce shifted there, then Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS) came along. The picturesque views of the river Zuari to the North and the Arabian sea to the West are a sight to behold.

Days back, I had peered through the windows of the chapel from Pallotti House at Chicalim to view the Zuari but could not as a row of swank bungalows obscured my view. Hoary trees are being cut down as they are deemed inconvenient to development plans.

Our return to Goa was a turning point in our lives. It was a move which was always hovering on the horizon. We just took the call and made it happen. Despite the fence-sitters and the looks of dismay I have always believed in Goa. This is where we belong. No matter what.

Yes, a lot of Goa is not what it used to be – but what is? Divisive forces are rampant. It is well that Goans in sleepy hamlets are taking up cudgels for the welfare of their land and loved ones. The umpteen trains coming in from all parts of the country to Goa have brought in migrant population, to the extent Goa has never seen before. It is true we are well-connected to the rest of India but are we connected to our soul, to Goa?

Many acquaintances live humdrum lives in big cities with ‘good’ jobs and pine for Goa. We don’t have forever and we need to make our days count. Beyond the projected glamour of Goa as a tourist destination, this is a place where Goans live and eat and sleep. Our needs are few, for we are blessed with much. To recognize this in one’s own lifetime is the route to inner peace and harmony.

‘The crest of the storm’ is always nigh. It is what the poet Iqbal wished for us – a storm – so that we may rise to realize our full potential. As summer gives way to the monsoon in Goa, may the drops of rain rejuvenate us and point us to our true purpose in life.

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Picture courtesy: wintersong(dot)wordpress(dot)com

Procura-se Um Amigo

2011-05-14T20:07:00.001+05:30

Procura-se Um Amigo

Vinicius de Moraes

Não precisa ser homem,

basta ser humano, basta ter sentiment,

basta ter coração.

Precisa saber falar e calar,

Sobretudo saber ouvir.

Tem que gostar de poesia, de madrugada,

de pássaro,de sol, da lua,

do canto dos ventos e das canções da brisa.

Deve ter amor, um grande amor por alguém,

ou então sentir falta de não ter esse amor.

Deve amar o próximo e respeitar a dor que os passantes levam consigo.

Deve guarder segredo sem se sacrificar. . .

Procura-se um amigo para gostar dos mesmos gostos, que se comova,quando chamado de amigo. Que saiba converser de coisas simples, de orvalhos, de grande chuvas e das recordações, de infância. Precisa-de um amigo para não se enlouquecer, para contar o que se viu de belo e triste durante o dia, dos anseios e das realizações, dos sonhos e da realidade . . .

Precisa-de um amigo que diga que vale a pena viver, não porque a vida é bela, mas porque já se tem um amigo. Precisa-se de um amigo para se parar de chorar. Para não se viver debruçado no passado em busca de memórias perdidas.

Que nos bata nos ombros sorrindo ou chorando, mas que nos chame de amigo, para ter-se a consciência de que ainda se vive.

Looking for a Friend

(Translated from the original Brazilian Portuguese)

Vinicius de Moraes

You don’t have to be a man,

It’s enough to be human, it’s enough to have sentiment, it’s enough to have heart.

You have to know how to speak or be quiet, more than anything you have to know how to listen.

You have to like poetry, dawn,

A bird, the sun, the moon,

The song of the winds and the music of the breeze.

You must have love, a great love for somebody,

Or feel a void of not having that love.

You must love your neighbour and respect the pain the passer-by carries with him.

You must keep a secret without sacrificing. . .

Look for a friend to like the same tastes, who is moved when called a friend. Who knows how to converse about simple things, the dew, the great rains, and the recollections of childhood. You need a friend so as not to go mad, to talk bout what transpired, beautiful and sad things during the day, of the yearnings and realizations, the dreams and reality. . .

One needs a friend who says it’s good to live, not because life is beautiful but because he has a friend. One needs a friend to stop crying. In order not to live leaning on the past in search of lost memories.

Who slaps us on the shoulder smiling or crying, but who calls us friend in order to have the consciousness of what we are still living.

Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian poet (1913, Rio de Janeiro – 1980, Rio). Excerpt from the article ‘Renaissance Man’ (1999) by Kirsten Weinoldt. Sourced from brazzil.com; Photo source: www(dot)eyeball(dot)fm - 'music you can watch.'

A Moment of Silence, Before I Start this Poem

2011-05-09T11:56:00.001+05:30

by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I start this poem,
I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.

Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhhhh…
Say nothing
we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented,
have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos …
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas

25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west…

100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence,
Take it.
But take it all…
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet residing in Minneapolis, MN. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, and is the coordinator of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Twin Cities-based grassroots project bringing together artists of color to address socio-political issues and raise funds for progressive organizing in communities of color through art as a tool of social change.

Ailo Cholo

2011-05-02T11:04:00.003+05:30

- by ManoharRai Sardessai

The son has come back home,

The cottage’s half-door kept shaking,

The mango tree leaves murmured,

The coconut tree kept happily dangling.

Moti the dog straightened its tail,

The banana tree, its leaves curled up.

From the trash at the tamarind tree root

The cock its neck moved up.

The son has come back home,

The cotton pods laughed openly,

A couple of stars came falling down

From the top of the onvllam tree.

The father’s hair has gone grey,

The mother’s eyes are slumbering on,

The sisters grown and wears kapodd

The front doorstep is worn.

The rice ears are withered,

The bamboo on the roof has rotten,

Without love and watering

The mhoxing’s creepers are gone.

The son has come back home,

The house was filled with new glee,

With the weight of that delight enthused

The leaflings of the small coconut tree.

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(Ailo Cholo /‘The Return of the Son’ translated from the Konkani original by Jorge de Abreu Noronha. Published in My Song by ManoharRai SarDessai, New Age Printers: Verna, Goa, 2008)

Seafarers

2011-04-23T12:44:00.001+05:30

Banjarans by the sea
walking single file
white shirts billowing
over ebony skin.
Wife, husband, sons
-with their bare belongings -
on a Saturday morn.
India at their feet
passing through paradise.

Receive some raiment
O Sarvajna
for succour from the wind and rain
May your footsteps
leave their imprint
Of your joyous labour.
Anoint your kin
with your mirth for life.

(23 April 2011
Baina beach, Vasco, Goa)

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Sarvajna - 16th century Kannada poet famous for his 3 line poems called vachanas

A Peace of India - Book Launch, 16 April 2011, New Delhi

2011-04-17T14:55:00.003+05:30

On a balmy evening at 6.15 p.m. at Dilli Haat, opposite INA market, New Delhi, Brian Mendonca launched A Peace of India: Poems in Transit his second self-published book of verse. The day was 16 April - the same day Brian launched his first book of poems Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa 5 years back in Vasco, Goa.

It was indeed a moment of triumph for Brian showcasing in A Peace of India about 80 poems written across 23 States/Union Territories of India over a period of over 12 years, viz. 1998-2010.

Shyamala Narayan, Bibliographer, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, who released the book said that the Indian Railways should have sponsored the book - since Brian had travelled across India extensively by rail. The comment was apt- since it 16 April was Railway Day.

Mr A. G. Mendonca, Brian's dad, who hosted and sponsored the first book launch in Vasco, sat at the internet cafe in Vasco on the launch day of the second book and sent his speech by email at 2.p.m. Sonya Gupta, Head, Department of Latin American Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia University, read dad's speech from Brian's sleek Lenovo ideapad. Dad observed that Brian wanted to dedicate the second volume to friends and well-wishers in Delhi in tribute to his living more than a decade of his life there.

Payal compered the function ably and introduced the poet and Shyamala to the audience. Payal's assiduous quoting from Brian's lastbustovasco.blogspot.com introduced his ouevre to the audience. Her reading of Yehuda Amichai's epic poem 'A Man in His Time', from the blog, was specially beautiful.

A hush descended on the poetic space - so like the ancient Greek amphitheatre -- as Brian read from his work. Readings by the poet from the volume included 'Diu', 'Origins,' 'Lucknow,' and 'Autumn Woman.' Aloke Roy Chowdhury, Director, Asian Age, and Brian's mentor in Delhi suggested that Brian provide some annotation for his poems on his blog. Brian was of the view that poetry should always leave something unsaid. He reminisced that the font for the book of verse - Perpetua - was arrived at after a long time. 'The font signifies that poetry should always be perpetual' - said Brian

Brian posed proudly by his wife Queenie and his little son Dwayne - who took in the proceedings with remarkable elan. In this respect Brian was twice blessed.

Dilli Haat, with its numerous stalls selling fare from all the States of India provided the perfect ambience for the launch. As Rajesh Juneja, Manager, Food and Craft Bazar, Dilli Haat said, 'The Haat provides the 3 C's - Craft, culture and cuisine.' Brisk sales at the launch covered the rental for the stall and the cost of hiring the chairs.

Perhaps the exquisite Dastkar Haat Samiti maps of the States of India which Robinson Raju and Shaoni Sanyal gamely helped to put up to decorate the stall, provided the perfect mood for verse. Justin Jamang made the occasion memorable by clicking away at the event and providing the beautiful photos above which accompany this text. The beautiful flexi banner prepared by Lalit at Shree Balaji Printworld, Shahpur Jat, Delhi in ochre exuded poetry. Brian looks forward to unfurling the banner now in Goa.

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Photo courtesy: Justin Jamang

Spring(ing)

2011-04-03T14:14:00.001+05:30

In my new robe\
this spring morning -
someone else.

Basho (1644-94)

Taking the picture above, of the new shoots on the branches of the tree, I am reminded it is Spring - though it is a Sunday afternoon in Delhi.

I first noticed the leaves being shed of the neem tree, in the open space in our locality, which I can see from my Eastfacing balcony. It's perhaps (not) a coincidence that back home in Goa we have two similar balcaos - one facing East, adjoining the kitchen, and one facing West, adjoining the bedroom. Like here.

Even the sky is the same.

Spring is the time for new moves. Of Spring(ing) from one place to another, of broadening horizons, of challenging frontiers. The change of seasons, and the prospect of summer, make the just endured winter, only a memory. And so it is with life. One season yields to another. One place ceases to be the daimon; another takes its place.

When one is springcleaning, one reviews the years gone by. Have the years been worthwhile? Meaningful? Fulfilling? The answers seem to be in the old leaves and the new shoots.

Spring is about recognizing your poetential. With me, it is about publishing my second book of poems A Peace of India: Poems in Transit. While the printing and binding is underway I realise how spring is a season of the self which led me to spring new roots. It led me to an inward journey of the spirit, of self-discovery and greater awareness. Maybe 'gravitas,' centredness - which a close friend of mine said this morning, I had newly acquired.

In 'Seasons of the Spirit' Mike George advises one to meditate on the stages of Spring as they appear in sequence - 'Just as the leaf-shapes reach outward from the centre, so does your goodness reach out from the spirit into the world around you.'

So whether it is here or there, or elsewhere, let the springs of living water from Exodus lead us on to a wider shore . . .
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Mike George, Learn to Find Inner Peace (London: Duncan Baird publishers, 2003)

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-12T17:28:00.002+05:30

-T.S. Eliot

Athough I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

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Ash Wednesday was on 9 March 2011. The section quoted above is canto VI from T.S. Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday.' Its cadences of interiority are a meditation on stillness and flux, departure, and the promise of the sea.

Travelling light - Mark 6

2011-02-03T18:21:00.002+05:30

7 And he called to him the twelve, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts;

9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.

10 And he said to them, "Where you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.

11 And if any place will not receive you and they refuse to hear you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet for a testimony against them."

12 So they went out and preached that men should repent.

13 And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them

- Mark 6: 7 - 13

Often, as we go through life, we look to scripture to give us a handle on things. And there it is. You see verses (as those above) which seem to be written with you in mind. This is what gives you the courage to go on. Today's reading is a good example.

Many a time, we are not accepted where we go, or our words are not heeded. Jesus was well aware of these possibilities when he sent out his disciples. We should, trusting in Him, be unperturbed, and resume our journey. For Jesus was a traveler, and when he was not bid welcome, he did not tarry, but went his way to continue his mission. Ultimately, it is the conviction in oneself that will see us through.

Insight

Why does Jesus tell the apostles to "travel light" with little or no provision? "Poverty of spirit" frees us from greed and preoccupation with possessions and makes ample room for God's provision. The Lord wants his disciples to be dependent on him and not on themselves. (www.rc.net)

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Picture source: Robert Grant Jordan at anglicansablaze(dot)blogspot.com

To My Son of 14 Days

2011-01-26T09:22:00.000+05:30

- Brian Mendonca

The robin came to see you
this early morn
As you gazed your troubles away
ensconced on my lap.
Your alert eyes take in everything
as, in the pre-dawn silence,
you mull over the verities of life.
The myriad faces on the curtain
in Kalamkari blockprint fascinate you -
'How can there be so many?
- And all of them to see me?!'
As angels play
You smile in your sleep
You cry when they go away.

I am no Yeats
O son of my Fathers
Just an alphabet or two
to memorialize our joy.
Our hectic lives
bask in your presence
Lead us on to
the frontiers of tomorrow.

(26 January 2011, New Delhi)

Holy Family

2011-01-25T08:48:00.003+05:30

For almost a month Holy Family hospital, New Delhi, was our home. With sugar and BP levels fluctuating we thought it best to stay put after what we thought was 'a few days rest' on 30 December 2010.

Sounds of Christmas carols resounded in the mornings after 6.30 a.m. Mass in the Holy Family chapel. Everywhere you could see cribs and the holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the stable. Decorations gave the hospital a festive look.

Our doctor Shaila Kamra decided to go for the 'C' on 14 January - just into the 35th week - after looking at the medical reports. A safe delivery and week on, I am thinking about how we spent those hospital days.

The Holy Family staff was scrupulous to the core. There is great transparency about billing and everything is itemized right down to a rupee. This is one of the few hospitals where needy patients are given emergency treatment and allowed to pay later. The nurses discharge their duties with a smile and a gentle bedside manner. They do everything to keep the patient comfortable. It is the hospital's policy not to accept money by way of tips or otherwise. As a result the staff work without any expectation of reward, in the true spirit of the verse from the Bhagavad Gita.

One gets to hear a steady chatter of Malayalam as most of the nurses are from Kerala. The NICU (Nursery ICU) on the second floor has two rooms. We noticed a marked contrast in the attitude of the nurses in Room 206 as compared with those in 208 next door. Some nurses in 206 were unhelpful, and at times caustic, as mama tried, for the first itme, to breastfeed baby. Nurses in 208 were encouraging and positive and managed to get nursing, on the road, for us.

We came by a nurse from Nagaland, I think, who always managed to calm baby's cries - by speaking to him in lovingly in Nagamese! It seemed like an all-India effort to take us through those anxious moments. A nutritionist visits twice a day and hot meals are served to the caregiver who stays in the room as well. One can opt for a choice of Continental or Indian food, veg or non-veg. A physiotherapist visited post-delivery to brief us on the exercises to be carried out on the road to healing.

Monitoring used to be round the clock, but the day usually used to start at 6 with a cheery 'Good Morning'. 6.30 was Holy Mass after which Fr George used to come around the hospital to give communion to those who asked for it. At 8 breakfast used to to served, which we used to eat, in natural light, while the bed was made and the room was spruced up. Before that, I used to do my yoga. From room number 212 on the second floor, I used to love watching the sun make its journey from East to West.

We got our discharge on 20 January 2011, after a beaming Dr Kamra (in photo above) wrote 'Home 20th' on our medical file. Visits by well-wishers uplifted our spirits. Strangers came forward to help while those we had banked on didn't so much as show their face. It was a period of great learnings, about the mysterious stirrings of life, and how a lot of life is touch and go. It had been a long journey, sometimes tense, always hopeful, trusting in the mercy of the Lord, and we came through it stronger.

Welcome Home Dwayne

2011-01-17T15:35:00.008+05:30

Sing a new song to the Lord;

He has done wonderful things! . . .

Sing for joy to the Lord, all the earth;

Praise him with songs and shouts of joy! . . .

Roar, sea, and every creature in you;

Sing, earth, and all who live on you!

Clap your hands you rivers;

You hills, sing together with joy before the Lord,

Because he comes to rule the earth.

He will rule the peoples of the world

with justice and fairness.

(Psalm 98, verses 1, 4,7-9; Good News Bible)

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Dwayne Mendonca was born at 11 a.m. on 14 January 2011 at Holy Family hospital, New Delhi. His beaming parents, Queenie and Brian, thank Dr Shaila Kamra and her team and all well-wishers for their prayers.

2011 - A Man In His Life

2011-01-09T18:13:00.001+05:30

A Man In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life

to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

Yehuda Amichai

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Photo of Brian Mendonca, courtesy: Vipin Kardam

No Christmas for Shashidhar

2010-12-28T20:19:00.005+05:30

As we returned home after Christmas midnight Mass we were somewhat shocked to notice that none of the stars we had seen displayed over the past week in our locality, were lit. We sadly put it down to the ignorance of people who nowadays celebrate any festival as a fad, not being touched by the true meaning of the occasion.

We looked at our simple white star on our terrace. The star is put on every night - beginning from the night after Christ is born on Christmas night, i.e. 24th December night, till the feast of the three kings on 6 Jan - as Christmas is traditionally celebrated in Goa. The decorations and Christmas tree will also remain till 6th.

Like it or not, Christmas today is a consumerist's delight with everything up for sale - from mittens to homemade chocolates. But are we missing the point beyond a point?

Christ was born in a cowshed. He didn't have many people come to see Him. His message of humility endures even today. Christmas is about the inner experience of Jesus coming into the world. To be touched by the miracle of God made man and come to us as man, as a newborn baby.

Indulging in excess seldom satisfies. Reaching out to our less-privileged brothers and sisters is a more apt way to remember the first Christmas. Mindless buying insensitizes us to feeling for another as one believes anything is buyable - even life.

It is easy to be taken for a ride by Santa's sleigh of goodies while inconvenient people are being murdered because they are pursuing information under the RTI act - as Shashidhar Mishra was in Barauni, Bihar yesterday. Jesus - and Shashidhar died for a better world. How far are we prepared to go?
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Cartoon by Ros Asquith from 'Christmas in the Classroom' series in The Guardian; Article: Dying for data- the Indian activist killed for asking for asking too many questions: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/27/india-rti-activists-deaths?INTCMP=SRCH

November Rain

2010-11-28T15:48:00.003+05:30

I think I’ll be working on things I believe in, until the day I am no longer here, because that makes me want to wake up in the morning.
-Gisele Bundchen

November is on its heels. Again. It's been a good month with some pretty breathtaking moments. With all apologies to Guns N' Roses, winter has kicked in through the back door. Through some pretty rainy days – Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Kota, Jaipur . . . The clothes are still wet on the line, in fact. This was around mid-November.

Autumn, it is said, is a time for reflection. On life, as the year cedes to its cyclic end. Yes, it's Christmas round the corner. We even wished each other on the 25^th – in anticipation. Today on the first Sunday of Advent, we are called to be awake (Romans 13:11-14). As Fr Paul in his homily said yesterday we need to be awake to things, people and situations. We need to be able to see Jesus in them.*

We listened to some lovely classical music at lunch time - Haydn to be precise - with a dash of the Wedding March, Handel, and an overture from Tosca. Breezing in the other day with the groceries, I entered to Lionel Richie’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’- a favourite in college/yesteryears - which we both promptly started singing together. It was beautiful doing a karaoke of memories, even if it was to say to oneself, ‘Yes, life is on song.’

A sampling of some poetry written and recited by senior kids from a school here, which I was invited to judge saw the themes in Hindi field a far wider spectrum than the recitation in English. Hindi took in its sway the plight of the dalit woman, the plight of being a woman and yes, one hailing the CBSE's new found reforms as a contemporary Gandhi! Most poetry compositions in English waxed eloquent about being undefeated and victorious – something which had characterized the likes of Coleridge and Wordsworth. It had a sense of deja vu.

Children’s Day rolled around on November 14 – with the usual ads of chacha Nehru in the papers. What does it mean to the child on the street? In the apartment across ours, we used to hear a child being brutalized, his screams renting the air around 7 p.m. – presumably when his studies were being taken. Early this month I could bear it no longer. I went across and rang the bell. Cruel eyes greeted me - with a hint of fear. ‘These screams are coming from this place?’ - I asked? ‘Who are you?’ they demanded. I ignored the question and made the observation that we had been hearing the screams frequently. I tried to sound menacing. And left. The screams stopped after that. I felt more confident recalling my experience with Salaam Balak Trust and Childline. We need to intervene, to make a difference.

If there is a movie on how to be an optimist, I would say go for Due Date. Two men with entirely different temperaments – one a stressed out corporate dad, the other an on-the-road aspiring actor who goes by the name of Ethan Timberlake – take the ride of their lives. In the same car. What ensues is hilarious but is a subtle parody on how we pride ourselves on our self-importance, when actually life is really chaotic!

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen's lines above give the boot to those who think modeling is easy. It takes tremendous discipline and far greater acuity than one will concede. Between jobs, Gisele’s words stressed the things in life that matter. To be happy to be doing something in life is an art. Few know how. Given the time one has on earth, how do we define what makes us happy and set about doing that? Gisele continues, ‘As a model I haven’t defined a work time, but slowly I am electing other priorities. So I think I will never retire, I will always be working on something.’**

Tits and ass journalism sometimes makes us dismiss models as vamps or less, and does them disservice. That’s our loss – and a gross example of negative projection in the media. It dehumanizes people and makes them objects.

Having time on your hands, may just help you to recharge – I prefer ‘reboot’ – your life. Instead of drifting aimlessly wondering what to do, it is useful to set tasks for yourself and set into place a routine. Yoga and prayer ennobled my spirit.

November rain has given way to sunshine on my terrace now. The cry of the woodpecker of morn is now replaced by the raucous twittering of mynahs in the gulmohar. Life changes. On the heels of a feast of salmon (rawas) fish curry with rice for lunch with surmai as fried fish, life is beautiful. And fulfilling. November taught us many things. So will December. The song never dies.

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*Church of the Transfiguration, East of Kailash, New Delhi

**Delhi Times, Times of India, New Delhi, 10 November, 2010.

All pictures taken by Brian Mendonca; a little girl does the hoopla, while a boy plays the dholak on a train; street kids at play in Alaknanda.

Until Yesterday

2010-11-07T22:25:00.002+05:30

Amidst the general orgy of bursting deafening firecrackers on Diwali till 3 in the morning, one fact almost went unnoticed.

A tall safeda tree was brought down in the park nearby in the locality where I live.

No, this was not a tree falling down because it was weak. Apparently the folks who lived on the perimeter of the park were &%*@ scared that it would fall on them. Eventually.

So they rang up the Jal Board at Lajpat Nagar - I was told by the contractors - and mentioned their fears. The Board, it seems, was only too happy to oblige. They sent a phlanx of workmen armed with axes, complete with a warrant for axing the tree.

And they felled what had stood tall here for so many years.

Until Yesterday

- brian mendonca

Until yesterday
you greeted me every morning
as I arose to meet the new day.
Birdsong went before me
And your branches bid me welcome.
But when they came
I was helpless.
I thought they were trimming
your girth
Like the gulmohar next to you.
But the evil ropes ensnared
your breath
And you fell for the last time.
Locusts crowded around you
to share the spoils
and cart away free wood
-headed for the shamshan ghat-
I was told.
Even as you pass on
your burning pyre carries incense for the dead.
Like ghouls we remain dead of soul
To axe a tree because the sunlight is too feeble.
My Diwali is dark
I have lost you, my friend.
Come to me on a ray of hope
as I do my vrikshasana
Lord of the cosmos.

Postscript: 'By about 10 p.m. on Diwali day we found it impossible to breathe because of the pollution caused by crackers. Absence of strong wind made matters worse. Because of very high noise levels it was very uncomfortable for children, patients and older people.'

With the commonwealth games opening and closing ceremonies themselves violating the anti-cracker campaign the message did not sound convincing to the people. As a result very high levels of pollution were witnessed this Diwali.
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Picture source: vrikshasana from surfersworld(dot)co.uk
Postscript: 'Say No to Crackers' campaign in the Capital takes a Beating,' Hindu Sunday, November 7, 2010, Delhi, page 4.

March on, Ulysses

2010-11-05T11:26:00.003+05:30

We often change the spaces we inhabit.
For many reasons.

One of the foremost is to be happy.
Because we don't have forever.

As we move, we leave behind memories and friends who are sad to see you go.

But sometimes friendships develop because you move away from constricting spaces.

Deepak Choudhary, a poet, and new-found friend, wrote . . .

Dear Brian Bhai,

Good morning with a broad smile....

Though you have left our ‘official ‘company, the indelible mark your persona has left on the ambience here is an inextricable component of our collective memory. This poem is a small piece of tribute to the outstanding personality, the creative genius, the embodiment of unflinching commitment and courage, the indefatigable warrior of life, called BRIAN MENDONCA.

March on, Ulysses...
March on Ulysses, March on....
Ithaca is already yours,
Now you have got to conquer the vast world beyond
With your genius in a tireless quest..

March on,
For you have to go countless miles,
You have to leave your winning stamp
On the large continents of literati,
You have to undertake voyages tough and challenging
As you have done before...

March on Ulysses,
The road to Ithaca never ends for you,
The paths trodden by you umpteen times
Still look untrodden and fresh
And there are new ones, too,
Emerging and waiting for your victorious feet
To touch their turf with the strides of glory and pride....

March on, Ulysses,
O the idol of a million flowering promises,
March on
And I will always accompany you
With the curiosity and zeal of a true admirer,
As a well-wishing phantom of the past
In all your campaigns,
Waving my hands with ecstasy
At your every success...
Smiling, cheering up and greeting you as a part of the roaring crowd
On your journey back home
After every outstanding feat....

March on, Ulysses,
March on...

(Reproduced here with Deepak's permission)
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Picture source: almiyachts(dot)com, Ionian islands, Ithaca, Greece

'Zacchaeus come down'

2010-10-31T10:30:00.003+05:30

'Zacchaeus, come down quickly for I must stay in your house today.' (Lk 19: 5)

Jesus's words to Zacchaeus, the reading for this Sunday, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Zacchaeus, the tax collector of Jericho, had risen in his station collecting taxes at Jericho which was strategically situated along various trade routes. But he was not satisfied. He was looking for something else. For an inner peace.

'Jericho was located strategically, with roads going from Jericho to Trans-Jordan in the east, Damascus in the north and Egypt in the south. As goods went through Jericho, many taxes were collected. From Jericho's balsam trees a famous balm was also made, so it became a very rich district.

Living in this rich district, Zacchaeus grew into a very short man whose ambition was to become rich. He became a tax collector for the hated Roman government, although he was hated by all the Pharisees and scribes in the district. He was treated as a heathen, excluded from all social life and made to stand with the Gentiles at a distance when he went to the temple. Despite this, Zacchaeus worked his way up and became the chief tax collector--the only person in the Bible identified as such.'*

When he heard that Jesus was to pass that way, he ran ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree. Can you imagine a portly excise commissioner running and hoisting himself up a tree in today's times? But the need to be renewed from the staleness of his existence was so great that Zacchaeus did exactly that. He knew he was short. So what. He was proactive.

One interpretation says that you are drawn to Jesus by His power- as was Zacchaeus. And Jesus came to find Zacchaeus - he knew he would be sitting on that sycamore tree. So it is no surprise that Jesus calls him by name, 'Zacchaeus, come down . . .' , even though they have never met or seen each other before.

Jesus declares that He will stay at Zacchaeus's house. Breaking established practice, Jesus has supper at his table and transforms Zacchaeus's life from that moment on.

Zacchaeus says, 'The half of my goods Lord, I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay him back four times as much.'

'Jesus seeks out the sinners, the lost, those who are excluded, those counted out, and invites them to the heavenly banquet. Like Zacchaeus, they too are brought from the margins into the centre.

The one person everyone thought was outside, is on the inside as far as Jesus is concerned. And those who think they are on the inside are in danger of finding that they are on the outside.'#

The Zacchaeus experience is there for the asking for all of us. We need to be attentive to His calling. To reach out to others as Jesus reaches out to us. The meaning of life is not to be found in material things but is arrived at with a constant growing in trust in His will for us.
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* source: gracevalley(dot)org
# source: http://revpatrickcomerford.blogspot.com/2009/03/meals-with-jesus-2.html

CSNY - Teach Your Children

2010-10-23T11:24:00.000+05:30

Talking to dad this morning, I thought how true the words of the song below are. This song composed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) in 1969 remains one of my favourites. I have added the guitar chords and hope to strum it this evening for my unborn babe.

I spoke of the changes in my life, with dad. I calmed his fears. Change, as Heraclitus said, is the only thing that is constant. To resist that is, to me, to die. To roll with the punches, to me, is to live (with apologies to Krishnamurti).

Teach Your Children

CSNY

intro

C F C G

C F

You who are on the road

C G

Must have a code that you can live by

C F

And so become yourself

C G

Because the past is just a goodbye.

C F

Teach your children well,

C G

Their father's hell did slowly go by

C F

And feed them on your dreams

C G

The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

C F

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you

C Am F G (mute)

would cry,So just look at them and sigh

C F G (mute)

and know they love you.

C F

And you, of tender years, Can't know

C G

the fears that your elders grew by,

And so please help them

F C G

with your youth, They seek the truth before they can die.

C F

Teach your parents well, Their

C G C

children's hell will slowly go by, And feed them on

F C G

your dreams, The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

C F

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told

C Am F G (mute)

you, you would cry, So just look at them and sigh

C F G (mute)

and know they love you

strum C

and know they love you.

(San Francisco, Atlantic Records, 1969 – as a protest against the Vietnam war and nuclear proliferation by the US.)

Will we have rice tomorrow dad? - 16 October : World Food Day

2010-10-16T18:10:00.000+05:30

Back in school in Don Bosco, Matunga, Mumbai, the glimpse of an act by little Bosco comes before my eyes. Bosco was a cute kid who was usually chosen to play tear-jerking parts in scenes from dramas we used to stage. This act has Bosco looking up pleadingly at his 'dad' and singing the chorus of this song as they cross the stage from left to right, looking at the bright lights as day winds down in the big city. . .

Day is over, work is done
People are hurrying by
The streets are bright, the buildings tall
They almost touch the sky.

My heart is weary as I go home
My feet are dragging slow
For every night my little son
and daughter want to know:

(Chorus)Will we have rice tomorrow dad
Before we go to bed
Will we have rice today dad
Remember what you said.
Why are some people fat dad
and others thin like us?
Was is like this when you were a boy
Will it be always thus.

Today on 16 October - World Food Day, we are called to live up to our responsibilities as citizens of India. An India where millions - mostly children - live below the poverty line.

To see a starving child voraciously devour something given to him one need only see frames of the boy in the striped pyjamas in a movie by the same name. We did not will this world to be the way it is. Let's not leave it as it was.

NEWSBYTE:
Urging the government to take necessary action, Sandeep Chachra, executive director of ActionAid India, said: "The dark side of India's economic growth has been that peasants, workers and excluded social groups have been further dispossessed, compounding malnutrition, hunger and even leading to starvation deaths."

"Access to basic rights and social inclusion are critical in advancing participatory democracy and addressing chronic poverty and hunger," he added.

Quoted Source: Do more to combat hunger, say NGOs - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Do-more-to-combat-hunger-say-NGOs/articleshow/6758175.cms#ixzz12Za55iNZ

Amigo

2010-10-08T16:43:00.000+05:30

brian mendonca

Chicken El Dorado

With a Brisa to my left

Seems a fitting moment

For a batsman on 45.

Spanish gypsy music

A candle turned low

The woman of your dreams

Blooms with the promise of life

Kalamkari print, henna in her hair

Hundra mhojea mama

Makes the mango-mint seem pyrrhic.

(7 October 2010

Amigo Restaurant, New Delhi)

Aidan shows the way

2010-09-29T16:20:00.004+05:30

Aidan Dunne hoped he would be appointed as Principal of Mountainview school, Dublin. He had worked there long enough, he was an excellent teacher and the students loved him.

But Aidan did not get the job. It went to Tony O'Brien, the rather nefarious man who was seen in bars with younger women, and smoked in front of the students. ‘He’s the man for the times. He is what the school needs,’ the Board felt. The outgoing Principal, who was batting for Aidan, had a vote, but it didn’t count.

So Aidan , whose family life was also falling to pieces, did what he loved best. He mooted the idea of starting evening classes, to the new Principal. Aidan would teach Italian. The ensuing classes brought him 30 students, a love interest, and a class trip to Rome. Next stop Sicily.

We are often placed in circumstances over which we have no control. Our perceptions of ourselves are not shared by others and what seems to be obvious is not always so. Few of us have the courage to make the situation work for us. Like Aidan did.

Evening classes inducted into Aidan’s life a new energy, a new meaning , a new reason to live. The old meanings had all been shorn away. Life had to reinvent itself for him – and it did. Because he had the courage to give it a try. To trust his instincts.

Listening to the 3 CDs of Evening Class over the weekend, took me back to the time when I was learning Portuguese at the Instituto Camoes, New Delhi. We found bonding in a new language, a new culture, a new dream. Yes, we were a motley crew, mostly adults, but syntax drew us together. Grades really didn’t matter, at least for some of us. We were there to grow in a new world.

In the later pages, Tom reaps one tempest in love after another, while Aidan cruises to finding fulfilment in Signora – his teacher of Italian. Aidan suavely – that’s perhaps not the right word – assesses his strengths – and builds on them. He desists from comparing himself unfavourably with Tony. He lets it go. Life is too short for recrimination. When his daughter - the beauteous Grania - offers her hand to Tony, it does not even merit a scene. Aidan is at peace within himself.

Aidan moved us more than Terese in Zola’s Terese Raquin, or Adam in Steinbeck’s East of Eden – both of which we listened to on CDs. Aidan is an ordinary man with an extraordinary zest for life.

True, the versions are abridged, but I can’t see how we would get down to doing it otherwise. In this lifetime.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy, Level 4, Retold by Evadne Adrian-Vallance, Penguin Readers, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4058-8215-6; Picture source: Dublin; brightshiny(dot) com

Id in the Balkans

2010-09-13T20:16:00.008+05:30

After a faux pas, calling to wish a friend for Id a day earlier – the morning of the night the Id ka chand was sighted – I recovered gallantly when I rectified my mistake and called, mid-morning on Saturday, 11th September and was right on cue. The traditional invitation for Id ka dawat for dinner was extended.

Id ka dawat was also proffered for lunch at another family I have known for the past 10 years. Uncle has just returned from Slovenia having stayed at its capital Ljubljana.

In our History class in college the Balkans was a region forever in ferment. Wasn’t it here that archduke Ferdinand was assassinated – sparking off the first world war? Yes, it was in Serbia in 1914 – which led Austria to invade Serbia, never mind Mozart. Later in university, we had to come to grips with the war crimes committed by neighbours Bosnia and Serbia against each other.

Listening to Dvorak’s ‘Prague Waltzes’ (1879) I mulled over what uncle was saying, how the erstwhile Yugoslavia was now quartered into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and, Montenegro. Romania, where poet Paul Celan was born, was to the far right of these on the map. Celan, whose poem 'Death Fugue' is regarded as one of the most powerful poems of the holocaust, threw himself into the Seine in 1970 and ended his life.

Looking at uncles's photos of the places he had visited on the trip . . . Graz in Austria, and Paris . . . I recalled the Austrian Nobel prize winner for Literature in 2004, Elfriede Jelinek, and her description of the Alps. But since this is about Id-ul-Fitr in the Balkans, space must be reserved for a bride of war:

To a Bride of War

-by Susan Ioannou

I lay the lilies of hate, my love,
along your bloodied hair.
From twisted foot and crumpled dress
the blue bruise crawling up your cheek
collapses a last breath.
May long white petals perfume your death.
Rubble is your marriage bed.
Blackened beams let in the sky.
Frost fills an emptied shoe.
Sleep quiet
though new thunder splits
this battered rock, and air bursts red.
I lay these lilies by your head
to wed you with old earth.

-from Balkan Poems, Wordwrights Canada, Toronto 2005

Map source: cfsworldmusic(dot)wikispaces.com
See also my blogpost - 'Aufwiedersehen' Austria
http://lastbustovasco.blogspot.com/search/label/Elfriede%20Jelinek

Dragonfly Mooring

2010-09-09T16:59:00.001+05:30

-Brian Mendonça

A murky monsoon morning

A swarm of dragonflies above

What must this portend?

Soundlessly, they lay siege to my roof

Like a thousand possibilities

On a September day.

(5 September 2010

L1/ 105 B terrace,

Kalkaji New Delhi)

Note:

The appearance of migratory birds is often considered to foretell approaching rains. But migratory insects also may arrive in huge numbers, either singly or in swarms staggered over the days preceding the arrival of rains. Arrival of these less conspicuous organisms often goes unnoticed. This oversight may soon be changing with the recognition of a migration of dragonflies across the Indian Ocean that was first announced in early 2009.

Source: Suite101. Insightful writers. Informed readers.

Abstract:

In the tropical Indian Ocean, the Maldive Islands lack surface freshwater, so are unsuitable for dragonfly reproduction. Nevertheless, millions of dragonflies (Insecta, Odonata; mostly globe skimmer, Pantala flavescens) appear suddenly every year starting in October. Arrival dates in the Maldives and India demonstrate that the dragonflies travel from southern India, a distance of some 500–1000 km. Dates of arrival and occurrence coincide with the southward passage of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Circumstantial evidence suggests that the dragonflies fly with north-easterly tail winds, within and behind the ITCZ, at altitudes over 1000 m. It is proposed that this massive movement of dragonflies is part of an annual migration across the western Indian Ocean from India to East Africa. Arrival dates in the Seychelles support this hypothesis. Dragonflies also appear (in smaller numbers) in the Maldives in May, with the onset of the southwest monsoon, suggesting a possible return migration from Africa. These proposed migrations of dragonflies, regularly crossing 3500 km or more of open ocean, were previously unknown. It is known that these dragonflies exploit ephemeral rain pools for reproduction; the monsoons and ITCZ bring not only alternating, seasonal rains to India and Africa, but also appropriate winds for dragonflies to follow those rains. Several bird species migrate from India across the western Indian Ocean to wintering grounds in Africa. They do so at the same time as the dragonflies, presumably taking advantage of the same seasonal tail winds. Many of these birds also eat dragonflies; the possible significance of this was not previously appreciated.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Do dragonflies migrate across the western Indian Ocean?

R. Charles Anderson (2009).

Journal of Tropical Ecology, Volume 25, Issue 04, July 2009 pp 347-358 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=5645072

Image source: Flickr

Teachers’ Day - 5 September

2010-09-06T16:45:00.004+05:30

Teachers who have made a difference to my life over all these years:

HOME - Alex George Mendonca and the late Alda Bertilia Mendonca - my parents

SCHOOL - Sr M Alvina A.C (Mount Carmel High School, Gandhidham, Kutch)

COLLEGE - Ms Anne Menezes – College (St Xavier’s College, Goa)

UNIVERSITY - Professor Lakshmi Chandra (English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad)

WORKING LIFE - Mrs Bimla Ahuja (New Delhi)

We are still close now after all these years.

May they be richly blessed.

Onasadya

2010-08-25T08:59:00.000+05:30

4 holidays in a row saw us carouse down from Delhi to Mumbai. The reasons were various. To get away from it all. And to renew ties with friends and family.

On the heels of Navroz, the period from 20-24 August 2010 was marked by two festivals offsite: Onam and Raksha Bandhan. The period was a veritable feast with Western and Southern cuisine at its best.

Pork sausages made by aunty – Marol nana - opened the innings. Gravied with potatoes it seeped into the pulao and just about didn’t manage to elbow out the flavor of the cinnamon. For tea aunty made poha- a Maharashtrian delicacy, garnished with coriander with a generous helping of lime.

The piece de resistance of course was a 25 item Onasadya (lunch) – so said the ad at Benzys, Marol-Maroshi road – on Onam 23 August. Gallantly dished out by a dashing Malayali waiter we kept watching while the empty space on our banana leaf kept shrinking. For connoisseurs this was the menu:

1.Pappadam
2. Banana chips
3. Sarkaravaratti
4. Puli ingi curry
5. Mulagu Kondattam
6. Salt
7. Lime pickle
8. Ulli Theyal
9. Beetroot Thoran
10. Avial
11. Kootu curry
12 Mango pickle
13. Cabbage Thoran
14. Parippu curry
15. Ghee
16. Sambar
17. Rasam
18. Puliserry
19. Kaalan
20. Butter milk
21. Olan
22. Erissery
23. Pazham
24. Gothambu Payasam
25. Adapradhaman

The evening saw us meander to Kurla to drop in on friends from Kerala. ‘The legend goes,’ said uncle, ‘that there used to be a King called Mahabali under whose reign all were happy. The gods, jealous of his popularity were determined to change things. In the garb of a mendicant one of the gods went to Mahabali and asked for 3 things. Mahabali agreed. The first request was all the wealth in the kingdom. The next was the 3 worlds. Finally there was nowhere for the god to place his leg – for he had increased his size enormously. Mahabali said “Place your foot on my head. But grant me one wish – Every year I must be allowed to return to earth to visit my subjects.” Having agreed, the god stamped the good king Mahabali into the earth and snuffed him out. But Mahabali returns every Onam and that’s why the rejoicing. A sobering reflection that those who are powerful are not always just – the gods included.

Banana chips have been my childhood favourite. I remember picking up heaps from Shoranur station on my trip to Trivandrum. Now I understand Kerala in a wider perspective. I discussed these linkages with uncle: the slaying of the son of the Muthoot group, the Sr Abhaya murder, elephants running amok, and the chopping of the fingers of a teacher in Kerala. All is not well in God’s own country. Maybe we should increase the frequency of King Mahabali’s visit – or try to be Mahabalis in our spheres of influence.

You don't need to be in Kerala to celebrate Onam. The joie de vivre is there across India and world-wide. Beyond the gorging, across time and space, we need to reflect on how we can use the energy of festivals to leave the world a better place.

Navroz Mubarak

2010-08-19T16:58:00.000+05:30

This morning I wished a dear friend – my professor - ‘Navroze Mubarak.’ I felt so good. And so did she. We connected after a long time and the festival gave us cues to make conversation. We exchanged notes on our lives and how we were doing. I asked my friend how she would celebrate the day. She said she was going in the morning to the agiary (Parsi fire temple) in Bombay. In the evening she would do dinner with her son and daughter-in-law. Dinner because they would be busy during the day.

On a day in college in St Xavier’s, Mapusa, Goa another mentor – now in an old age home – in Goa spoke a few words embedded in my memory. ‘Make at least one friend with someone from another faith [in your life],’ she had said. I still have a long way to go, but I like to think I have run the distance.

As life unfolds, we are often not close enough to share the impulse that drew is together initially. Festivals give us a chance to renew that bond – and partake in the gaiety. Who hasn’t partaken of a succulent mutton biryani at a friend’s house for Id?

As faiths intermingle, I found myself asking my dear professor to pray for our intentions in the temple. She said she would. In the journey of life it was a beautiful sharing of faith.

I am only sorry we will not not be able to join them for dinner this evening.

Liquor = Madeira

2010-07-26T17:02:00.002+05:30

If you are looking for any connection to the Portuguese lowland, famous for its wines, in 3 Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani, 2009) you can forget it.

In the opening scenes of the movie, when 2 of the 3 idiots meet for their reunion on 5 September one of them ask what would they like to drink. Out of the blue ‘Liquor = Madeira’ flashes on his mobile phone.

3 Idiots is like amaranth. It puts you into a drowsy weepy slumber from which you wake up with a feeling of having wasted (some of) your precious time. We sat down to watch the movie Sunday night on Sony TV at 8 p.m. and wound up – after the incessant ads – by 12. Two crucial weekend tasks lay undone. I went to sleep ‘like a guilty thing surprised.’

The plot lines meander, though the humour is good. After a while you begin to lose interest until you are jerked back into the movie after the floods. The ensuing aided childbirth with a vacuum cleaner had us gasping, though it did prove that bookish (read rote) knowledge was no match for a practical crisis.

Two social issues which 3I gets full marks for exposing – 1) peeing in public and 2) ragging in colleges. I strongly urge Sheila to get the MCD to install low voltage charges on all sidewalks prone to being peed upon. This will ensure that the pee-er has an electrifying experience! I tell you, this will bring more results than slapping a Rs 500 fine for doing it in public.

This one move will do more for social and nasal amelioration than all those contraptions Aamir is pottering about with, on the roof of the world. Even so, all is not lost, as kids from Ladakh - acolytes of Aamir – learn to use the current trick to devastating effect towards the end of the film, viz. when Mr suit-walla decides to take a leak against the monastery wall. Finally, it will dissuade beer tipplers even more than the hike for mild to Rs 60.

Reporting on the World Toilet Summit in Delhi in 2007, Radio Netherlands reported that less than 20% of Indians have access to good clean toilets. Let me put it this way – more than 80% of Indians have no place to pee. So 400 crore for the Commonwealth Games come September in Delhi seems way out of line.

Pressure leads to suicide. Pressure from parents, teachers, friends. When a college friend swings from the fan, Professor Virus is accused of ‘murder’ by Aamir in the Catholic cemetery (why Catholic?). Madhavan is in the same predicament. Almost. But his confrontation with his parents (egged on by Aamir) to face his own demons and theirs leads to a most satisfactory denouement. He gets to go click-click—something that he really loves. Though I wish he had stayed a wildlife photographer.

The camera returns to ECU’s of Sharman Joshi as he looks good weeping and is good for the overall effect. But beyond the sentiment, what?

Wasn’t this the second time Aamir had done this since RDB Rang De Basanti (Om Prakash Mehra ,2006) which also starred Madhavan as the dashing (read, crashing) IAF pilot?

In RDB I couldn’t see why they had to hijack the studios of AIR, Delhi to prove a point, and end up shot full of holes in the process. If this was a considered response to the corruption and nepotism in babudom India, it was futile. And ineffective. Is this the example we set for our youth?

RDB celebrated the season of Basant (Spring) and all its colours. We saw 3I in Sawan (Monsoon). What could be the link between the two?

Despite its obvious disconnect between the other two films above – being cult films for the Indian youth - I preferred Fanaa (Kunal Kohli, 2006) also starring Aamir. At least here he is a likely terrorist.

Aamir is good kid. He always seems t be out to change the world. For better. Or for worse. And if he sashays with Shakira for the World Cup finals in Jo’burg 2010, that too the world must know, as he burbles through his tweets.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (Sudhir Mishra, 2005), set in Bihar starkly sets out in an idiom of violence the imperatives of naxalism – as a more or less viable option. Here too the onus is on college-going youth at Delhi University. Its dismal lighting, dutiful to the needs of the script and its shady characters desperately tried to come to terms with an India that is disintegrating. I liked the film because it had none of the gloss of the later films discussed and called a spade a spade. It was believable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ECU – Extreme Closeup shot; Pix source; naklinews(dot)com

Sawan Aayo Ma

2010-07-23T15:59:00.001+05:30

It’s July. End-July. The earth has been renewed with bursts of rain in Delhi. The scorching summer has receded.

July-September is the period of sawan in Delhi – a season on which numerous ragas have been composed. The season is also known as shravan.

Every morning as I trundle to work in an auto- rickshaw I crane my neck as we drive past the expansive parks of Greater Kailash Part I. The brilliant greens renew my soul and invigorate my senses. Kailash – after all – Mount Kailash – is the abode of Shiva, so there must be something to show for it, I felt. The rampant red of the Gulmohur of May has disappeared to give place to the mellower yellower Laburnum.

Yesterday, as we readied breakfast, we listened to ‘Dover Beach’ by Samuel Barber. Mathew Arnold’s ‘darkling plain’ no doubt came to mind. Imagine my joy when I viewed a UTube version of a slide show with Arnold’s words of the poem set to the musical composition.

I revel in the rejuvenating power of Nature. Sitting in hall 60 drenched with rain atop the hill at St Xavier’s college, Mapusa, Goa, we pored over ’Scholar Gypsy’ and recalled ‘sermons in stones and books in running brooks.’ Well, the love affair continues.

-------------------------------------------------------------
'Sawan Aayo Ma' - Shobha Gurtu, Raag Des, Saregama Music.

A Drummer Boy's Story

2010-07-19T14:47:00.000+05:30

Last weekend saw the feast of Mount Carmel on 16 July. ‘Did you call Sr. Alvina to wish her?’ dad had asked when I made him a courtesy call on a Friday afternoon. We later called Sr. over tea and she was her irreprisable self – so full of joy and goodness. What follows below - ‘ A Drummer Boy’s Story’ - is an article I had written at her request.

According to the traditions of the Carmelite order, on 16 July, 1251, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock, a Carmelite and revealed to him the scapular of Mount Carmel – also known as the brown scapular. The Carmelites had long claimed that their order extended back to ancient times - indeed, that it was founded on Mount Carmel in Palestine by the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

A DRUMMER-BOY'S STORY

How can one forget school days? And going to school at Mount Carmel's High School, Gandhidham was a unique experience. Swathed in the tender care of the Sisters, childhood passed by like a dream to be re-encountered only in memory . . . I remember the morning assembly and the rousing beats of the march tunes that were played, the dust of the playground that soiled our white shirts, and the tiffin of bread butter and sugar which my mother used to carefully pack for me (but I used to insist on samosas!)

Mount Carmel school gave me an enduring sense of values in life. What principles to live by and how to grow up in faith and diligence. I used to like cream biscuits (I still do!) which my class teacher Sr Alvina used to carefully preserve for me. I used to be the drummer boy on the annual float at Christmas time when we went a-carolling. We could barely clamber up the back of the truck in our costumes. And I used to sing the song of the drummer boy 'Come they told me - pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.' Sr Adelaide's violin played in the back rows for Mass, and the robust Sr Michael, with her hearty laugh always chased away the blues!

I left Carmel's after Class 6 in 1977 but I returned to its portals last year during Navratri, after more than 25 years, to breathe in the ambience of Gandhidham. And of Gujarat. After the earthquake of 2001. The Surajbari bridge beckoned me to a silent land. The strains of the garba from Oslo still wafted through the night air.

The drummer boy is now in Delhi editing books for school children. He refuses to leave school! A defining moment in his life was on Easter Sunday, 9 April 2006 in Vasco, Goa, when Sr Alvina spoke so eloquently of the Carmel experience at the release of his debut volume of poems Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa.

Over these decades my family and I have been in touch with my school in Gandhidham through my class teacher of life - St Alvina. Through her own example she taught me how to persevere, no matter what, through the trials of life. And I know that though I have grown now from boy to a man, I am still in that classroom of Carmels . . . Still learning.

If I could, I would return to Carmel's for a second education. Within the socio-political context of Gujarat today I salute the Apostolic Carmel Sisters in their tireless efforts in the field of education. In the matrix of history, education for all is a noble endeavour. And the sterling contribution of Mount Carmel school needs to be recognized as such.

(Published in anniversary souvenir of Mount Carmel High School, Gandhidham, Kutch, Gujarat in December 2007)

History of Carmelite order sourced from catholicism(dot)about(dot) com

Capital Time

2010-07-16T23:31:00.010+05:30

Spooked by Spoofing

2010-07-14T16:57:00.002+05:30

I have learnt a new word. It’s called ‘spoofing’. Not spoof. Spoofing. Yes.

I am aware of what spoof is – a take on a play or novel to caricaturize it. A spook is what jumps at you in the dark.

Spoofing, the GoogleHelp site informs me, means spurious ads are sent from someone else’s email i.d. without revealing the hacker’s identity or email .i.d.

I had a taste of being spoofed when the aforesaid happened.

Being spoofed also meant being on the receiving end of a host of bounced mails to people I had never mailed.

In my case it was a link to a site providing Viagra enhancements, that was being sent to all and sundry in my contacts list. Curiously this link was a google site itself with a URL beginning with sites(dot)google(dot)com . . .

Reactions ranged from the ribald – ‘So you need Viagra now?!’ – to the righteous indignation of ‘I didn’t expect this of you!’ Even the Portuguese ambassador deigned to reply in Portuguese cautioning me.

Happily, it urged many of my long lost friends to renew their acquaintance. ‘Thanks for the link’ said one. ‘I am doing fine – how about you?’ said another.

The cyber attack got more nefarious when my contacts started getting spammed from my email i.d. with other links as well – many of which thankfully did not open.

Somewhere along the way I got a red banner headline above my inbox saying that they had tracked unusual activity on my email in faraway France! Oh, so the cyber nannies were on the job – good!

GoogleHelp advised – as did my colleagues – to change my gmail password, which I did. I was quite pleased when the password strength registered as ‘high’ with a green band for added effect. I had used Arabic numerals together with upper and lower case letters.

I also shot off a mail to spam.uce.gov -- a cyber patrol site devoted to minimizing spam. Along with this I shared my tragi-comic tale with the google net online help forum.

It seems that this is only the tip of the iceberg though from among a cache of goof-ups by google. Someone got phantom mail from a person who was dead!

Thankfully the spoofing stopped. All is quiet in my inbox – until the next spook or spoof takes up residence! Till then I shall work on improving my vocabulary.

Pottery Barn

2010-07-09T16:56:00.001+05:30

I don’t believe it!! This Pottery Barn episode of Friends was written by Brian and directed by Kevin! Those are the names of me, and my brother in Goa!

We saw this episode last night – 9 p.m. IST on Star World (Mon-Fri) – for our daily dose of comic relief.

Curiously, earlier in the day I offered the name Barn Push as an anagram for an ELT practitioner in South East Asia. This was/is on a wacky ELT website deliciously called sixthings(dot)net. (Go to Comments – mine is the 42nd)

In this episode Phoebe can’t stand furniture from Pottery Barn. She says things are mass-produced there and that’s the cause of everything that’s wrong with the world. She prefers something ‘of yore’ – as Rachel delicately puts it. Rachel has just bought an ‘apothecary’s table’ for Pheebs from Pottery Barn – a fact she desperately wants to hide.

What I like about Friends is that they are all trying not to be losers. They all have their moments and each of them has a pique and a passion of his/ her own. They are all pursuing different ‘career paths’ but do, so often, jump the gun – like when Rachel thinks Ralph is coming on to her in the Ralph Lauren episode.

Their well-defined characters do sometimes collide though: Phoebe (off-key musician), Matt (aspiring actor), Ross (Professor of paleontology) and Rachel (fashion enthusiast). Given these central plot lines there is plenty of room for verbal faux pas.

Much of the innuendo would be lost on Indian audiences when the reference is to something that happened in an earlier episode in the sitcom. But the fact that it was first aired in 1994 from an apartment in the Manhattan area of New York city does not seem to be a turn-off for South Asia.

Pottery Barn was the most cohesive of the episodes we have seen recently. In many of the others the energy seems to dribble away and consume itself – with no help from the umpteen breaks for ads.

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Brian Boyle and Kevin Bright at http://www.friends-tv(dot)org/zz611.html; picture source: http://www.wallpaperbase(dot)com/

Oviedo

2010-07-08T12:59:00.002+05:30

PARA QUE YO ME LLAME ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ

Para que yo me llame Ángel González,
para que mi ser pese sobre el suelo,
fue necesario un ancho espacio
y un largo tiempo:
hombres de todo el mar y toda tierra,
fértiles vientres de mujer, y cuerpos
y más cuerpos, fundiéndose incesantes
n otro cuerpo nuevo.
Solsticios y equinoccios alumbraron
con su cambiante luz, su vario cielo,
el viaje milenario de mi carne
trepando por los siglos y los huesos.
De su pasaje lento y doloroso
de su huida hasta el fin, sobreviviendo
naufragios, aferrándose
al último suspiro de los muertos,
yo no soy más que el resultado, el fruto,
lo que queda, podrido, entre los restos;
esto que veis aquí,
tan sólo esto:
un escombro tenaz, que se resiste
a su ruina, que lucha contra el viento,
que avanza por caminos que no llevan
a ningún sitio. El éxito
de todos los fracasos. La enloquecida
fuerza del desaliento…

Translation:

Before I Could Call Myself Ángel González

Before I could call myself Ángel González,
before the earth could support the weight of my body,
a long time
and a great space were necessary:
men from all the seas and all the lands,
fertile wombs of women, and bodies
and more bodies, incessantly fusing
into another new body.
Solstices and equinoxes illuminated
with their changing lights, and variegated skies,
the millenary trip of my flesh
as it climbed over centuries and bones.
Of its slow and painful journey,
of its escape to the end, surviving
shipwrecks, anchoring itself
to the last sigh of the dead,
I am only the result, the fruit,
what’s left, rotting, among the remains;
what you see here,
is just that:
tenacious trash resisting
its ruin, fighting against wind,
walking streets that go
nowhere. The success
of all failures. The insane
force of dismay…

Translated by Steven Ford Brown from sixteentons(dot)wordpress(dot)com

Ángel González (1925-2008), Spanish poet is featured here to commemorate Spain's superb win over Germany in today's football world cup semi-final in South Africa. Scoreline 1:0. Puyol scores in the 73rd minute to take Spain into its first ever world cup final.

Listen to the poet read this poem here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKm22WyGHGs

Picture Santa Maria del Naranco, Oviedo, Spain from commons(dot)wikimedia(dot)org

Montevido

2010-07-07T12:53:00.005+05:30

About a century ago, today - well, yesterday - a young Uruguayan poet was shot dead by her divorced husband who then turned the gun on himself. She was 28.

This is one of her poems:

Intima

Yo te diré los sueños de mi vida
en lo más hondo de la noche azul...
Mi alma desnuda temblará en tus manos,
sobre tus hombros pesará mi cruz.

Las cumbres de la vida son tan solas,
¡tan solas y tan frías! Yo encerré
mis ansias en mi misma, y toda entera
como una torre de marfil me alcé.

Hoy abriré a tu alma el gran misterio;
ella es capaz de penetrar en mí.
En el silencio hay vértigos de abismos:
yo vacilaba, me sostengo en ti.

Muero de ensueños; beberé en tus fuentes
puras y frescas la verdad; yo sé
que está en el fondo magno de tu pecho
el manantial que vencerá mi sed.

Y sé que en nuestras vidas se produjo
el milagro inefable del reflejo...
En el silencio de la noche mi alma
llega a la tuya como un gran espejo.

¡Imagina el amor que habré soñado
en la tumba glacial de mi silencio!
Más grande que la vida, más que el sueño,
bajo el azur sin fin se sintió preso.

Imagina mi amor, mi amor que quiere
vida imposible, vida sobrehumana,
tú sabes que si pesan, si consumen
alma y sueños de olimpo en carne humana.

Y cuando frente al alma que sentía
poco el azur para bañar sus alas
como un gran horizonte aurisolado
o una playa de luz, se abrió tu alma:

¡Imagina! ¡Estrechar, vivo, radiante
el imposible! ¡La ilusión vivida!
Bendije a dios, al sol, la flor, el aire
¡la vida toda porque tu eras vida!

Si con angustia yo compre esta dicha,
¡bendito el llanto que manchó mis ojos!

¡Todas las llagas del pasado ríen
al sol naciente por sus labios rojos!

¡Ah! tú sabrás mi amor; mas vamos lejos,
a través de la noche florecida;
acá lo humano asusta, acá se oye,
se ve, se siente sin cesar la vida.

Vamos más lejos en la noche, vamos
donde ni un eco repercuta en mí,
como una flor nocturna allá en la sombra
me abriré dulcemente para ti.

(c.1923, From patriagrande[dot]net)

Intimate

I will tell you the dreams of my life
On this deepest of blue nights.
In your hands my soul will tremble,
On your shoulders my cross will rest.

The summits of life are lonely,
So lonely and so cold! I locked
My yearnings inside, and all reside
In the ivory tower I raised.

Today I will reveal a great mystery;
Your soul has the power to penetrate me.
In silence are vertigos of the abyss:
I hesitate, I am sustained in you.

I die of dreams; I will drink truth,
Pure and cool, from your springs.
I know in the well of your breast
Is a fountain that vanquishes my thirst.

And I know that in our lives, this
Is the inexpressible miracle of reflection…
In the silence, my soul arrives at yours
As to a magnificent mirror.

Imagine the love I dreamed
In the glacial tomb of silence!
Larger than life, larger than dream,
A love imprisoned beneath an azure without end.

Imagine my love, love which desires
Impossible life, superhuman life,
You who know how it burdens and consumes,
Dreams of Olympus bound by human flesh.

And when met with a soul which found
A bit of azure to bathe its wings,
Like a great, golden sun, or a shore
Made of light, your soul opened:

Imagine! To embrace the Impossible!
Radiant! The lived illusion!
Blessed be God, the sun, the flower, the air,
And all of life, because you are life!

If I bought this happiness with my anguish,
Bless the weeping that stains my eyes!
All the ulcers of the past laugh
At the sun rising from red lips!

Ah you will know, My Love,
We will travel far across the flowery night;
There what is human frightens, there you can hear it,
See it, feel it, life without end.

We go further into night, we go
Where in me not an echo reverberates,
Like a nocturnal flower in the shade,
I will open sweetly for you.

(Translated from the Spanish by Valerie Martinez at www.thedrunkenboat[dot]com)

Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) in her brief turgid life mirrored the tempestuous Latin American sensibility espoused in Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54) and contemporary Argentine pianist Martha Argerich.

With Uruguay crashing out of the 2010 football World Cup last night, the hopes of a continent lie unrequited. Uruguay put in a stellar performance against the Dutch squad, scoring a second goal in the 92nd minute.

Though the score line read 3:2 at end of play, the Spanish-speaking side will be remembered for their fierce fight-back , so unlike the paltry dismissal of Argentina by the Germans – even with Borges on their side!
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'Montevido, The Capital of Uruguay, South America.' Image courtesy http://www.sonofthesouth(dot)net/ from Harper's Weekly, 8 April 1865.

Thomas More

2010-07-01T12:57:00.003+05:30

Welcome to the first day of the second half of the year. The Lord has preserved you and us till this day. And for that we give thanks.

It is difficult to imagine that 6 months of 2010 have just rolled by. Just like that. When we look back, we had better have something to show for that time.

The rains have swept the west coast with damage on the eastern coast of AP and even the hinterland of Hyderabad. Would have loved to peek into Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon but didn't get down to it. Anyways, even Delhi was sprinkled with rain on the evening of San Joao - or the feast of St John the Baptist on 24 June - celebrated with traditional fervour by jumping into the well in Goa.

As we were reading the reflections on the Saints of the day we came upon the feast of Thomas More. Thomas More (1478-1535) Lord chancellor of England - a simple, family man - was beheaded under orders of his bosom friend Henry VIII, King of England, because he refused to acknowledge the King as the supreme Head of the church of England. He felt this undermined the authority fo the Pope.

More was convicted on trumped up charges of high treason and was executed on 6 July as a common criminal, with his head being displayed on a spike for a month.

Today, for his conviction to his beliefs, the church reveres him as a saint. Many have been misunderstood in their time, but have been redeemed by history.

But the contest between priest and king was entrenched in England.

In events which have a chilling resemblance to the murder of Thomas More, another man was to fall in the cathedral.

Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, was to pay the same price for standing by the the dictum of the church. By doing so he fell foul of his friend King Henry II. TS Eliot's magnificent drama Murder in the Cathedral dramatizes this incident where words recount the horror of the murder of innocent blood.

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Picture credit: 'The arrest and suplication of Thomas More' by Antoine Caron; from luminariun(dot)org

MID

2010-06-21T17:06:00.004+05:30

As I spirited over to my bank last Saturday, the question uppermost in my mind was, ‘Has the money been credited to my account?’ Well, the earlier week the ATM machine sucked the money which was meant for me – before I could lay my hands on it! It then dutifully printed me a receipt that the amount was debited from my account. When I updated my passbook I saw that the amount was already credited against the entry’ MID.’ When I asked what this meant the patient officer said ‘Money in Drawer.’

Sunday saw my money in someone else’s drawer as I discovered my purse was missing after I emerged from the metro station at Rithala. The last I saw of it was at Kashmere Gate metro station when I pulled it out to purchase some choco- biscuits for the children of a friend we were visiting.

Of course, in retrospect, a billowing white Lucknowi chikan kurta pyjama with a side pocket as big as a garage door didn’t help matters. That too with my Yamaha classical guitar slung on my back.

On the way back we did make a complaint at the control room at the Kashmere Gate station 011-23860837. The charming officer produced a black wallet from the drawer – but it wasn’t mine!

Here's a transcript of a gmailchat with a mercurial friend from Mumbai who never fails to lift my spirits:

Virtual: hola! brother brian!
           how goes dilli mein dil-hi
           rather do-dil-hi
me: brother brian got his purse swiped in the metro at kashmere gate yesterday! ha ha
Virtual: jeeezuz!!
          deepali was just in metro 10 mins back
          im telling her this bad news
          and so that she can remain alert
          how that happened!
me: ya. kai karu
Virtual: you must be lost in writing a new poetry
me: yes brother
      i think it happened in the KG station premises. Maybe not in the train per se.
Virtual: hmmm
          india is always inspired by krishna it seems
          he stole butter
         indians steal bread and butter both
me: ha ha ha ha
      how should i view this brother?
Virtual: good omen.
        god wants you to earn double now
        for you
        and for that loser who stole your money
:)

Coping with loss

The 4 R’s:

Remorse – ‘How could I have been so naive!’
Rationalization – ‘Everybody’s been through it sometime. It’s ok.’
‘What am I supposed to do if there’s a whole gang out there preying on unsuspecting people like me?’
Writing – is a cathartic for me. Hence this blog! Or a diary.
Recovery – ‘Got to economize now.’ ‘Maybe I’ll try and earn some money to make up the amount I lost.’

20 June was Father’s day. I like to think the notes are helping a father to bring home something for his kids - something he could not afford otherwise. Happy Father’s Day!

18 June 1946

2010-06-18T10:24:00.003+05:30

Reading Kamat's pot-pourri, my mind went back to the Goan dulpods [folksongs] I often sing on my guitar.

I usually translate the words of the delightfully impish Undra mhojea mama [Uncle rat] to my listeners, with the rear being brought up by the sonorous and serious:

Far-rar-far
Zatain Rane tu (2)

[Far ra far
You go into the forest]

Ranyar matyar Paklo cho
Paklo matyar Rane cho.

[The Ranes kill the Portuguese
The Portugues kill the Ranes]

The b/w pictures in Kamat's archive I browsed today, brought those moments of resistance alive. Extensively covered in Goan literature in folk tales of the resistance by Mario Cabral e Sa Legends of Goa and others for today's Goans time has changed a lot of things.

The Portuguese from the old days live with a nostalgia of the past. Dalrymple's description of Goa and Faith - a collection of b/w photos seem to be a case in point.

Goa today seems to be getting an Indian flavour with the Indian Railways having trains connecting Goa to all parts of India - even so far as Patna, Kolkata, Bikaner and Gandhidham.

Goans themselves have settled outside Goa and are doing well for themselves. The global village has caught up with them.

Recently a chain mail was doing the rounds about 'bleddy Goans'. While the points of loss of identity may be worth considering the (all-too-familiar) self-deprecating nature of the mail is nauseating.

Goa can learn to live with different voices, which are apparent in literary forays like Dust and Other Stories by Heta Pandit.

I debuted as a Goan poet with my collection of poems Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa (self-published: New Delhi, 2006, reprinted 2007). Soon I will be self-publishing A Peace of India: Poems in Transit (New Delhi, 2010).

The shift from Goa to India is not as emphatic as it seems as I was writing poems for both the volumes simultaneously. But it is a pointer to a widening of experience and a deepening richness of life.

from the ARCHIVE

'After Portugal came under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar in 1932, the repression extended to Goa with press censorship, suspension of laws and autocratic rule of the Governor of Goa. The rest of India at this time was caught in the electrifying mood for freedom from the British, and the great socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia thought that Goa should also be part of the struggle and be free from Portuguese rule. On 18th of June in 1946, he called for a gathering of Goans in Madgao (Margoa) to agitate against the suspension of civil liberties. This idea appealed to the people of Goa who, inspired by the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, were dreaming about becoming a part of free India. Thousands of people showed up in downtown Margoa, causing logistical and law and order problems for the administration.

The Portuguese tried to disperse the crowds, and prevent Lohia from addressing. But Lohia preferred to defy the Portuguese and courted arrest, a peaceful protest strategy that had become popular in India.

Dr. Lohia truly kindled the flame of freedom in the hearts of the Goan people, as a result of which all shops and business establishments put down their shutters and expressed their solidarity with the cause. Eighteen June 1946 thus remains a memorable and sacred day in the history of Goa [1]. An important road in Goa today (year 2006) is named "18th June" road.'
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Pix caption, 'Dada Rane in 1895 organized an armed rebellion against the Portuguese . . .' Caption and archive text from Kamat's Potpourri http://www.kamat(dot)com/

Valkyrie

2010-06-10T12:33:00.004+05:30

‘Valkyrie’ immediately takes me back to ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (1854)from Richard Wagner’s opera The Ring of the Nibelung. The valkyrie are mythical females who are believed to guard the Norse abode of Odin, in his dwelling in Valhalla. They are believed to decide who will die in battle.

Valkyrie (2008) is also the name of a movie starring Tom Cruise, in which he acts as colonel Klaus Schenk von Stauffenberg who tried to eliminate Hitler on 20 June 1944. Along with him are a bunch of disaffected generals who believe Hitler’s intransigence with the Allied forces will lead ‘sacred’ Germany to ruin. So they plan to depose him – and his second-in-command Himmler. All that remains of the triumvirate is minister of propaganda, Goebbels, who, as we shall see, has a pivotal scene in the movie.

Axis forces are under siege in all theatres as we pick up the action in Valkyrie. The Red army has overrun Poland and the Germans have been defeated at Stalingrad. D-Day has happened with the Allied landing in Normandy barely 2 weeks ago on 6 June 1944, wresting France back from the Germans.

Things are going so bad that Italy’s Mussolini himself comes over for lunch with Hitler.

Themes on Nazi Germany are many and varied, a notable one being The Reader (2008) starring Kate Winslett. Tom Cruise is no stranger to the silver screen either. I first saw him in Top Gun (1986) as a fighter pilot who did some manoeuvres of his own with his leggy leading lady Kelly McGillis to the music of ‘Take My Breath Away’ by Berlin. I have always been fascinated by how actors reinvent themselves.

Valkyrie as the final moments of the film inform us in black letters as the credits scroll, is the 20th and final attempt to assassinate Hitler. We have often read of the Allies trying to eliminate Hitler but seldom does one come across accounts of attempts being made from within his own trusted commanders.

Hitler later committed suicide 8 months later when the Allies surrounded Berlin.

As we turned the pages in our M.Phil class in Pune, of Jean Anouilh’s drama Antigone (1943) based on the Nazi occupation of Paris, we could not have imagined that History could be that interesting. Or humiliating.

When I was a kid, afternoons at Carnac Bunder, at Dockyard road, Mumbai were spent voraciously devouring war comics carefully tucked away in the trunk of my cousin Derrick. I remember the corner too, the bookrack hung over the trunk, stashed away in an aisle in the roomy port trust house. I used to wonder how in all these comics the Allies always won. Lately I was to hear that history is always written by the victors.

Pix source: Hollywood-elsewhere(dot)com

A quien ya no es joven

2010-05-26T13:43:00.002+05:30

In my dream I was coming back to my college - St Xavier's college - in Mapusa, Goa. As I strode the hill like a colossus, I saw teenagers excitedly chant my name calling attention to my arrival as a student who once passed through its portals.

I caught a glimpse of Maria, dressed in satin summerwear beckoning to her boy who seemed to be playing nearby. As I went up the stairs I saw how everthing had changed. Parlours merged with living rooms and where used to be the office, I saw instead the church office of Don Bosco, Matunga, Bombay, with neatly stacked bookmarks prepared by St Paul publications. Time was flowing backwards, though I didn't know it then.

As I meandered amidst the hall, I was told that Fr would see me now. This was Fr Dennis Duarte, rector of Don Bosco, Matunga and who was fond of me. Sadly he had passed away in Don Bosco, Goa sometime back.

As I rallied to attention I asked my wife what I should tell him and how to organize my thoughts. Then I awoke to see her sleeping beside me.

To one no longer young

-by Jorge Luis Borges

Already you can see the tragic setting
And each thing there in its appointed place;
The broadsword and the ash destined for Dido,
The coin ready for Belisarius.
Why do you go on searching in the hazy
Bronze of old hexameters for war
When seven feet of ground wait for you here,
The sudden rush of blood, the open grave?
Here watching you is the inscrutable glass
That will dream up and then forget the face
Of all your dwindling days, your agonies.
The last one now draws near. It is the house
In which your slow, brief evening comes to pass
And the street that you look at every day.

(Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid)

Belisarius: Roman general (500-565); Pix: coin of Roman Emperor Justinian

Coming Home

2010-05-25T10:56:00.004+05:30

- brian mendonça

. . . and we saw the ships below

from the view point at Sada

as the grey waters turned dark

and the lights came on.

The sea at the other end at Baina

wet our feet by the shore

but pulled us into its abyss

as the waters surged back.

At Candelaria church I prayed

for the grit to coax my scooter – and us

up the steep dark slope to Mangor.

St Teresa’s school was shorn of ‘green chillies’

save for the chapel of Our Lady of Piety

where Kevin said ‘I do’ to Miriam.

In situ we read ‘The Bells of St Andrew’s’

-the church refurbished with its gleaming chandeliers.

Nothing seemed to have changed

in the port city of my youth

yet in the warp and weft of time

everything has.

(20 May 2010, Vasco, Goa)

Note: 'green chillies' - the name given to girl students of St Teresa's school on account of their green school uniforms.

15 May 2010

2010-05-23T18:51:00.015+05:30

cbeebies

2010-05-14T11:42:00.000+05:30

This morning I sat with my almost-2-year old neice Maegan and watched cbeebies for a while. This BBC programme for kids had kids and adults glued for its attractive format, bright colours and action songs.

What I specially related to today was the action song about the weather which went something like this:

The sun is shining today
It is likely to be windy in the day.
With rain falling in a few places later.
The weather will be everything
today!

This is so much like life and all its colours. The weather is the perfect metaphor to symbolise this.

My sister and her husband who also sat down to watch said they liked cbeebies for its good English. They also featured nursery rhymes which Maegan was familiar with like 'Mary had a little lamb.' Often the stories were built around the toys Maegan had, like dinner sets or fire engines. 'Ginny the fire-engine' was the next animation programme about colourful fire-engines - one with an ice-cream cone- as they go about their jobs.

Earlier cbeebies had a dance routine with a mumber of simple moves for the children to imitate and dance to. Rotating shoulders; hiding, walking uphill; walking downhill - all to music. This is one programme that made me feel like a child once more - despite a letter by an angry British mom who was upset that the cooking was shown to be done by a male with no mention of mum - and that it was virtually a government manifesto!

Pix: from worldweatherpost(dot)com

Nossa Senhora de Gloria

2010-05-12T12:58:00.003+05:30

Gloria church, Byculla, Mumbai which I visited this morning is an essay in contrast. It's magnificent Gothic edifice and exterior belies its tatty innards whch sadly, have to be seen to be believed.

It immediately brought to mind St Paul's church, Diu which faces the same predicament.

The church was built initially by the Franciscans in 1632, funded by the Lima family who owned the island of Mazagon which they procured from the King of Portugal in 1572. It was rebuilt and blessed in 1911.

As you move towards the entrance of the church you see two inscriptions commemorating the blessing in 1911 - one on the right in Portuguese and the other on the left in English. Shoddy whitewashing has made it impossible to read the margins of the plaque smeared as it is in whitewash.

The church looked foreboding and distant with all the approach gates closed in the morning. Yet when I saw children play cricket in its precincts I knew there must be a side gate - which there was.

The Masina hospital nearby was far more bustling in the service of humanity with even a crow condescending to perch on the white marble head of Mrs Masina 'a devout Zoroastrian who was dutiful mother, daughter and wife.' Built around the same time as the Gloria churh was rebuilt in 1911, I was particularly drawn to it as dad pointed it out to me as the hospital where my brother Kevin was born.

A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth

2010-05-10T11:45:00.002+05:30

Reading 1 Acts 16:11-15

We set sail from Troas, making a straight run for Samothrace,

and on the next day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi,

a leading city in that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.

We spent some time in that city.

On the sabbath we went outside the city gate along the river

where we thought there would be a place of prayer.

We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered there.

One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth,

from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened,

and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention

to what Paul was saying.

After she and her household had been baptized,

she offered us an invitation,

“If you consider me a believer in the Lord,

come and stay at my home,” and she prevailed on us.
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Reflection: The simplicity of today's reading uplifts me. Awash in a sense of absence in empty rooms in Vasco on my arrival from Delhi yesterday, this reading gave me a sense of purpose and motivation in life. Like the woman who deals in purple cloth, we too must find our meanings - however simple they may be - in the will of the Lord. This is also an exceptional piece of travel-writing -albeit about Greece which is in financial doldrums now.

You are invited . . .

2010-05-06T16:51:00.005+05:30

It is interesting how milestones in life offer you an opportunity to reassess your relationship with those around you. In the event where inviting people to the occasion in question is called for, first you decide who is on your list. This exercise can lead you to into throes of indecision about whether or not a person qualifies.

There are some who have always been by your side . . . they are most definitely in. These are the kind who understand you so well that even if you do not exchange pleasantries over a period of time, they have this uncanny ability of picking up the thread where you left off. In this category are my mentors, professors, directors of places I've worked who with their vision - and often discretion - lay out your destiny before you. If you can realise that in your lifetime, you are blessed.

There are others who arise in your thoughts because of some particular moment in life where they played a crucial part. If they had not been around you may have made a different choice . . . For that, and only for that, intervention you want them to be once more by your side at this life event - because they have the power to change your life for you.

In your place of work, equations cannot always be similar. It is best to invite each department as a whole so no one feels left out. It also saves up on invitation cards. Directors and your bosses, of course, need to be personally invited.

Today there are a raft of options when it comes to invitations. Technology has given us the e-invite on email, which is instantly delivered. You can go for postal mail if there is time - and a card to spare. SMS is definitely a no-no, if it can be avoided.

Many stationers make thriving business mindlessly printing invitations to set formats and preconceived designs. While designing your own invitation card make be daunting, it is easier than one thinks. One invitation on which I had carried a poem of mine received rave reviews by the recepients for its freshness and personal touch. I figure life is always personal - so why can't an invitation to a life event be personal?
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Photo of park at Greater Kailash I, New Delhi, with the laburnums in full bloom this May.

Quo Vadis - Theatre in English?

2010-04-23T11:33:00.001+05:30

Brian Mendonça

Last Saturday, with a friend in tow, I trooped along to take in what was billed as Asmita’s Summer theatre Festival here in New Delhi. The play was Court Martial written by Swadesh Deepak. The venue – the breezy amphitheatre at the India Habitat Centre. Hoping for some English theater, I discovered later, much to my chagrin – that the play was in Hindi!

This linguistic masquerade sums up the theatre scene in Delhi. The English-speaking ‘cognoscenti’ of the capital is lured with English titles of plays in pamphlets printed in English to plays which are actually in Hindi. Once the public arrives, and realizes they have been taken for a ride, they settle down to enjoy the evening anyway (as I did) – much to the detriment of the cause of English theatre here or anywhere else in the country – except Mumbai.

It is not an exaggeration to say that good English theatre in the capital is still to make a stand save for a few gallant sparks. Tom Alter quit the capital in disgust and I hear he is happier in Mumbai. Way back in the 1980’s I had seen him on a balmy evening acting in Chapter Two in Kamani auditorium when I was visiting Delhi. Everything really is up for a spoof now – even Delhi’s most revered icons. Ghalib in Delhi directed by Dr. M. Sayeed Alam & Niti Sayeed of Pierrot’s troupe is a Hindi comedy telling of Ghalib’s rebirth in New Delhi in the 21st century and has the doyen of Urdu literature staying in a servant’s quarter in Patparganj.

Brave attempts by Smita Gupta and Sohaila Kapur, actors and directors of the Hungry Heart Theater group, like 45-35-55– a ‘Hinglish comedy’ have focused mainly on the nuances of woman’s experience of ageing with sometimes risqué fare taking in its stride menopause and female compatability. Even the flagship WelcomTheatre – ‘An expression of ITC-Welcomgroup’s commitment to nurturing and promoting the arts’ -- felt it appropriate to stage a bedroom farce entitled Love in a Tub, directed by Aamir Raza Husain and Virat Husain for its well-wishers last year at Kamani.

It is meet to ask the question is art reflecting life here? Do metrosexuals sleep around more than is usually admitted? The numbers will tell. This sort of theatre has a huge following, if this season’s finely nuanced Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dark Place is any indication. The play, staged in the magnificent new theater site, Epicentre, in Gurgaon’s Sector 44 had me dashing across the border into Haryana on a Saturday just in time to catch the 7.30 show. The fact that it was devised and directed by Feisal Alkazi of National School of Drama fame was an added plus point – besides the gloriously quirky title that is.

The hall filled to capacity was about ‘relationships’ as Poonam of the bookstore Quill and Canvas in Gurgaon nearby, put it baldly. The play was much more than that as it turned out. It was an exploration about the aspects of love at various stages in life. This was about couples and singles hitting middle-age. One of the couples was breaking up with a daughter behind them. ‘When a woman has a baby, everything is different. You can never mean as much to her again. But a baby doesn’t complete your world. Not if you’re a man. A baby is a rival. And you can’t compete. She found someone much more lovable than me – my daughter,’ rues the guy.

Another guy has his current paramour wanting him to undo his vasectomy, since she really wanted a child . . . In the third couple’s scenario the wife had had an abortion when she was a teenager – what would people say? – and as a result could not now conceive. What gives the play its fire and its impulse is that all the 3 couples know each other and the script beautifully excavates their inner yearnings and motives in dialogues on set. I liked the play for its rawness, its haunting music (Armaan Alkazi), and its unabashed usage for f’s and b’s, flung by erstwhile lovers at each other in a torrent of hurting.

Wedding Album written by Girish Karnad and directed by Lilette Dubey was staged by Puravankara at Chowdiah Hall in Bangalore last July. Here too humour seeps through beyond the ‘penumbra of hidden life.’ The play, published by Oxford University Press is about arranged marriages in today’s globalised village. I am told the play brought the house down when staged in Delhi with people ready to pay any price for an invitation to the opening night.

In his foreword to his first play Yayati (1960) translated recently from the original Kannada by the author Karnad himself, Karnad describes his opening encounter with Satyadev Dubey who was later to stage the play in Hindi with Amrish Puri. ‘What’s the point of writing plays in English? How can you write anything meaningful in that language?’ Dubey had said. This schism was addressed when Dubey later produced many English plays and even wrote one himself .

Recent excavations by Scholastic publishers have revealed a delightful collection of 5 plays written by Vijay Tendulkar and translated from the Marathi into English by Ajay Joshi (2008). It is another matter that I am trying to do the first play in the collection, viz.Missing: A Father in sadak Hindi with the street children of Salam Balak Trust opposite the teeming New Delhi station. Robinson Raju, an English hons. student from St Stephen’s college, New Delhi has gamely developed the script in Hindi.

A point worth noting is that a number of the ‘English’ plays staged here in Delhi are reruns. Whether this is for want of imagination or funds is not clear, but it is a sad commentary on a populace of a billion – give or take a few. Court Martial for example was written in 1991 and is still going strong. At the end of the performance director Arvind Gaur dwelled on the absence of financial support for his productions – to be fair his minimalist set included a couple of benches, a witness stand in the courtroom and a chair for the judge.

Many moons ago, the now legendary George Pulinkala of the Delhi Music Theatre directed Ain't Misbehavin (2000) - a musical, choreographed by his son Ivan. A delightful experience to behold, the musical was about a young woman's search for the man of her dreams and which ‘tells the tale of jilted love and promiscuous relationships among youth.’ There has been no play since, the musical going perhaps the same way as Evita played by Sharon Prabhakar and directed by Alyque Padamsee in the 1980’s.

It is well known that the English theatre also offers a slice of the real world instead of only showing half-clad characters cavorting around the wrong beds. Bringing her experience with disadvantaged women in Tihar jail into play, Smita put out Jail Birds (2006) acting with her daughter Anchal Bharti in a play directed by Sohaila. In Goa, Isabel de Santa-Rita Vas of the Mustard Seed Art Company has written and produced an English play entitled On the Holy Trail (2009) which addresses the sale of land in Goa and the sale of Goa itself to the highest bidder.

This summer playwrights are keeping themselves busy with new ideas. Last month Mahesh Dattani opened his stage adaptation of The Alchemist by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho to the public in Bombay. This weekend, First City Theatre Foundation, New Delhi will stage Taramandal [Planetarium], a story of an ordinary man in the autumn of his life who yearns to play a part in the movies. Directed by Neel Chaudhuri what strikes me is that this play is in 3 languages – ‘part-English, part-Hindi, part-Bengali.’

Yesterday, I peeked into Ruchika Theatre Groups May production for children of all ages called Children of the Magic Pen.The India International Center (IIC) auditorium was overflowing with kids (and their parents) chuckling away to the antics of characters stomping all over the delightful wooden stage. The clear favourite was the ravenous screeching witch – the slithering croc, a close second. It was heartwarming to notice that the play was presented in collaboration with the Association of Writers and Illustrators for Children (AWIC) based in New Delhi.

All the characters like supercalifragilistic Mary Poppins, Long John Silver - the pirate in Treasure Island, R2D2 of Star Wars, Aladdin, and even Satyajit Ray’s private investigator Feluda, in quest of the magic castle, were shepherded by a young girl in the real world who helps them find the treasure. The lone monkey sprinkles her dialogues with Hindi. As it happens, the keeper of the castle turns out to be a librarian yes, you read that right, who grants all the characters the gift of immortality. For, who can forget the fairy tales of his/her childhood. The librarian then exhorts the spellbound audience to visit libraries and read about the adventures of these characters so as to keep them alive! Ingenious, I say! – and the entry of an awfully sexy young “Ranee” who enters stage-left dancing mesmerically to Moorish music, really picks up the plot when it seems to be sagging. We certainly hope Ruchika has a long innings.

English theatre in India is groping for its métier. To my mind India’s diversity cannot be contained in English. For English theatre to resonate with the pulse of theatre-goers it is best received if it does not shy away from dabbling in a medley of languages since most of their audience is anyway multilingual. This may seem ridiculous at the moment but not if Aparna Dharwadker has her say. Aparna mulls over the fact that though English is the ‘national’ link language for Indians, in relation to theatre, why is it a weaker critical medium than some so-called ‘regional’ languages?

'As translators of the work of other contemporary playwrights, Tendulkar and Karnad stand apart in their understanding of the importance of transregional routes in theater, and by rendering his major plays into English, Karnad has applied that understanding to his own work. All these playwrights construct authorship and authority as activities that must extend across languages in order to sustain a national theatre movement in a multilingual society.'*

If this be the criteria, ‘English’ theatre in India is headed the right way. Swadesh Deepak, the writer of Court Martial is still awaited by his theatre enthusiasts at Asmita. In 2006 he went for a morning walk but never returned. What the future holds for English theatre in India is uncertain, but like we wait for Deepakji we also wait for it to find its feet.
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Published in MuseIndia - The Literary eJournal July-August 2009, uploaded today, 23 April - Shakespeare's birthday; *Criticism, Critique and Translation’ in 'Talking Theatre: A Symposium on Theatre Practice in India Today,' Seminar 588 August 2008, New Delhi: 62; Stills from Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dark Place. Courtesy - delhi.burrp.com;

Earth Day - 22 April

2010-04-22T09:32:00.003+05:30

Nature has always rejuvenated us. Be it a leaf, a walk in the garden, the caress of the breeze. In its animist nature it has the power to heal, to make us one with the universe and lead us to harmony within ourselves. The cyclic nature of the rhythm of the seasons, with the song lines 'Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall / All you have to do is call' commemorate the perennial nature of true love, viz. love through all seasons.

This breathtaking picture of the birds in the foliage of trees is on Google for today. Sometime back Google started commemorating the day by placing a dedicated visual just above the search space, to remind users of the significance of the day. I loved the enterprise the moment I chanced to notice it. It helps bring more meaning to the day. And to remind us that we don't live for ever - if we want to make a difference we need to do it today.

Wherever, whenever I travel (which is most of the time) I seek out oases, or sometimes clumps, of peace. In these zones of quiet you are face to face with your destiny. Here geographical boundaries or locales lose their significance. What matters is the earth you are standing on, the tree under whose shade you are in, and the sky above.

Yes I will go

Yes I will go
to see my ‘friends’
the rivers, the birds
and the trees
where the wind calls
and the forests wait
in the stories of an India
yet to be told.

(Delhi-Jabalpur)

In the vastness of Nature, all technological advances seem feeble and soulless. When you find bliss in a leaf or a drop of dew. My father was telling his grandchildren and me that he used to love the smell of burnt leaves when his mother used to heat the bathwater for him as a child.

The Lap of Nature

Me?!
With a laptop?!
Hah!
After Kyari
All you have
on your lap
are leaves . . .
burnt leaves.

(Kyari village, Uttarkhand)

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See my poem 'The Smell of Burnt Leaves' dedicated to dad in my blogpost 'Last Bus to Vasco' of 21 May 2008 - a collection of poems read on AIR Delhi: http://lastbustovasco.blogspot.com/2008/05/last-bus-to-vasco.html

Dancing in Odessa

2010-04-13T16:38:00.005+05:30

9 AM Bombardment

by Ilya Kaminsky

Running down Vasenka street my clothes in a pillowcase
I was looking for a man who looks exactly like me
so I could give him my Sonya, my name, my clothes.
Running down Vasenka street with my lips moving,
one of those who run from the trolley that bursts like an intestine in the sun,
those who lock the door, lock it with the second key,
and who try to speak, stutter but try to speak.
A wife screams as if she were in labor & she was in labor.

Running by windows where women bought lemon and fish and garlic,
to the right madame Gornik painted icons sold at morning,
to the left lived Veronina, mother of two boys
who stole tomato sandwiches from her boys.

We stuttered and drank and laughed like barefoot peasants

and also drank quietly, damning only the earth and quietly

we made vodka from cherries, vodka from wooden chairs.

It has begun: they climb the trolleys

at the thief market, breaking

all their moments in half. And the army officers

in the clanging trolleys shoot at our neighbors’ faces

and in their ears. And the army officer says: Boys! Girls!

take your partner two steps. Shoot.

It has begun: I saw how the blue canary of my country

picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s hair

picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s eyes.

Rain leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should.

To have a country, so important,

to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should.

Watch their legs as they run and fall.

I have seen the blue canary of my country

atch their legs as they run and fall.

My Mother's Tango

I see her windows open in the rain, laundry in the windows—
she rides a wild pony for my birthday,
a white pony on the seventh floor.

“And where will we keep it?” “On the balcony!”
the pony neighing on the balcony for nine weeks.
At the center of my life: my mother dances,

yes here, as in childhood, my mother
asks to describe the stages of my happiness—
she speaks of soups, she is of their telling:

between the regiments of saucers and towels,
she moves so fast—she is motionless,
opening and closing doors.

But what was happiness? A pony on the balcony!
My mother’s past, a cloak she wore on her shoulder.
I draw an axis through the afternoon

to see her, sixty, courting a foreign language—
young, not young—my mother
gallops a pony on the seventh floor.

She becomes a stranger and acts herself, opens
what is shut, shuts what is open.

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Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former USSR and moved to the US in 1993 where his family was given asylum; Ilya Kaminsky can be heard reading 'My Mother's Tango' at http://www.fishousepoems.org/ - an audioarchive of emerging poets; Both these poems were published in Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004).

Odessa, now in the Ukraine, and Russia are now splitting hairs over the dismantling of the Black Sea fleet ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Writing on the Job

2010-04-12T12:13:00.004+05:30

“If you ever leave your job, you will stop writing.” An office colleague-turned-soothsayer relayed this stark prediction to me last year. Most poets, however, seem convinced that they would never begin writing if they were to spend a lifetime in one of the busiest (not to mention least loved) branches of public administration, one attracting more critics than The Waste Land.

Our creative habits are as mysterious to each other as our domestic habits. So, as someone who has neither taken nor given a single poetry workshop or creative writing class, it is natural for me to ask—“not in sorrow, but in contemplation,” to borrow the great Milosz’s phrase—how I would survive if my pay, prospects, pension, and tenure were to depend, irrespective of the vagaries of a fickle muse, on my being able not only to prove my poethood through regular publications, but also to act as a kind of creative sat-nav, plotting my students’ routes toward expressive fulfillment.

***

Roland Barthes observed that writers do not take holidays. Even if ostensibly on vacation, they continue in one way or another to work: taking note, making notes, checking proofs, dabbling in research, reading toward an essay or lecture; always “on,” they are permanently on duty, on call, on high alert, refusing to desert their posts.

If writers never really take a vacation, neither are they always willing to relinquish their day jobs (T.S. Eliot in publishing, Wallace Stevens in insurance), long after economic necessity can have been the deciding factor. The rhythms of poetry and the routines of work are interdependent for some poets; the discipline and the distraction of the workplace leave the unsupervised unconscious home alone, free to range and roam at its own pace, select its own society, intensity, and pitch.

In the end, however, it is as impossible to fully comprehend the poetry policies of the insurance office writer as it is to draw definitive lessons from the career of the teaching poet. At any rate, Wallace Stevens (who, in his own words, “never believed that it took a great deal to be both a poet and something else”) refused to surrender his job for a Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company pension.

In a letter—written from his office—to Archibald MacLeish, declining the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard for 1955–56, the seventy-five-year-old poet stated, “The Hartford has a rule that fixes mandatory retirement at seventy. Although I am well beyond that age, I believe that I can keep on here as long as I want. To take the greater part of a year, however, for something else would be only too likely to precipitate the retirement that I want so much to put off.” Perhaps the lonely prospect of isolated and unstructured Hartford days, staring out the green-shuttered windows of his clapboard mansion on Westerly Terrace, unnerved him. Or maybe, as he said of Alfred A. Knopf’s plans for a Collected Poems, “I have held off . . . for a number of years because, in a way, it puts an end to things.”

Of T.S. Eliot, his biographer Peter Ackroyd notes: “Even in the years of his greatest fame, he continued with the routine business of publishing. For a man who found it difficult to write for more than three hours a day it was one way of passing time but, more importantly, as he explained in an address in 1951, it was necessary for him to hold a job which other people considered useful; he had so little confidence in his own work that he did not want to risk wasting all of his time upon it.” Randall Jarrell, who died before retirement age, was job satisfaction personified: “I’m crazy about teaching. If I were a rich man, I’d pay to teach.”

For all his legendary grumpiness toward God, the distinguished Welsh poet R.S. Thomas thrived on the life of a rural priest (“It was a blessing for me that I entered the Church”), anchoring his aesthetic in the ascetic, and earning a living—in the sense that the characters in Pride and Prejudice would best understand that word—by means utterly different from those of his reckless, feckless, brilliant namesake and near-contemporary, Dylan Thomas. Philip Larkin’s mutterings about work as a “toad” squatting on his life did not blind him from the jewel in this amphibian’s head, and he confessed that his choice of librarianship as a career was, in retrospect, an “inspired” one.

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Excerpt from Dennis O'Driscoll, 'The Taxman Cometh: A Notebook' in Poetry (May 2009), Poetry Foundation, Chicago

Artwork source: denitza(dot)wordpress.com

Easter 2010

2010-04-05T20:27:00.005+05:30

Being home for Easter and Christmas was something we all looked forward to. These were times to be spent with the family, in prayer for midnight Mass, and around the dinner or lunch table. For over 10 years I have held a job in Delhi but have tried to be home in Goa for these occasions.

In the early days of my working life it was tough. I could not afford to be home, much as I wanted to. Getting sometimes only a few days holiday inclusive of the weekend Saturday- Sunday, it seemed suicidal to toss half a month's earnings on a flight fare.

But never did mum and dad say anything to deter me. It was my job and I needed to make a career out of it. I had to carve my life and someday stand alone. It was this bitter truth which sometmes sustained me - though not always - in my many years away from home.

So I used to trundle along on the 2780 Nizamuddin-Vasco Goa Express which took 3 calendar days to arrive. But sleeper class was all I could afford then. On the return journey, I sometimes wept as each revolution of the train's wheels took me further away from home to faraway Delhi.

In the tumult of these moments, many a poem was written in the womb of the train with my slippers as my pillow on a side upper berth.

Dad and mum were overjoyed to have me when I was home, and mum took position near the wide-open front door to welcome each one of us as we came home.

When mum's health deteriorated I used to fly-by-night on the New York-Delhi-Mumbai Air India jumbos which offered cheap fares at hideous times at night. I used to time it such that I could take the connecting Jan Shatabdi to Margao from VT the next day at 0510. I knew it would not be for long.

Time has rolled by and I no longer cavil to spend that extra something to be with dad when I can. It is enough to see the bliss on his face that a son has come home.

This Easter I did a fly-by-night again to Goa - if only to collapse those 2000 odd kms to be home. Again. Even if a voice we loved, is now still.
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Picture: Dad reaches me to Dabolim airport, Goa for the flight back to Delhi on Easter Sunday, 4 April 2010.

Chuddo

2010-04-04T16:15:00.003+05:30

Goan Weddding Customs - Chuddo
by Fr. Nascimento Mascarenhas

As in other parts of Bardez, April-May is the month of feasts and
weddings in Saligao. I will dwell to-day on the bangle-wearing ceremony among Christians and Hindus.

The custom in olden times in Saligao demanded that the girl wear the
best bangles possible from the usual bangle-seller in the native village
known as " "Voar"(volar) or " Kankonkar" with a choice of her favourite
colours.

But a special bangle-wearing ceremony that is held only once in her life time for the bride is called CHUDDO. The bangle symbolises married life for the bride, as they are broken only on her dead husband's coffin.

This " Chuddo" among some Saligao Christians consists of a set of
fifteen glass bangles of green, brown and yellow colours on each wrist. These are specially in some villages of Bardez. In Moira it is 13 or 15 bangles and the colour is the same as in Saligao.

Among others, the bangles are of seven colours of the rainbow. This ceremony is performed on the eve of the marriage or a day or two before it.

The Chuddo is performed at the house of the maternal uncle of the bride in the normal course.

The bride-to-be is bedecked in flowers and these bangles are put on her by hthe bangle-seller. Other relatives and those present at the ceremony are also given by him a pair or more of their choice, in the house. There aare songs sung during this time, which are typical of and appropriate to the occasion and offering of money in token of blessings are put in a tray placed before the bangle seller.The money collected thus is taken by him over and above the payment that he gets for the work done.

There are women who are experts in the art of extemporisation in the
matter of songs. They engage themselves in singing in parables and pointed metephor in the form of ' Zotis', the virtues of the bride and the future groom as well as throwing an aside or taunt to them and other home people, vis-a-vis relatives and would be relatives. There is competition in song like the "Chand" of the Punjabis, or like "Qawali" in Urdu, one woman vying with the other to pay tributes in vivid metephor or taunt in crisp, devastating phrases sung in rhythm, the nearest relatives of the bride or the groom.

In some villages there is the following custom which we don't see in Saligao, but for curiosity sake let us hear.

After the ceremony at the maternal uncle's, the said uncle sends his niece home with a 'vojem'( a parcel of sweet-meats in a big special-type of bamboo-woven basket) containing sweetmeats, bananas, bread, twelve each in number. This system is known as " parkund", which means food bedecked with flowers, as she has a banquet-type food at his house also, with flowers worn in her hair by the bride- to- be and the relatives as a sign of rejoicing.

The " piece-de-resistance" of this function is a lunch or dinner on the day of the first banns normally, at her maternal uncle's place.

Later, similar " porkund" calls without the festive bangle-wearing are made when other relatives invite her at their place for lunch or dinner of farewell. She receives a special bunch of flowers from her uncle and others on this occasion.

Even if the parents of the bride do not happen to be on speaking terms with the said uncle or relatives, she has to go and get at least water from their well. If they have no well or it is not possible to get water from there, then some water at least has to be taken from their house by the bride.

Meanwhile, relatives visit the two houses, of the bride and of the groom, with flowers etc. Special" Khole",( as they say in Salcete) cakes made of rice-flour stuffed with shredded coconut mixed with jaggery, cupped into a wrapping of jack-fruit-tree leaves and pinned by a thin stick-pin, baked whole( Pudde, in Saligao), are served at the maternal uncle's. Or it may be " mankeo", something like dosas stuffed with coconut-shredding and jaggery.

Now-a-days the bride- to- be is taken to Mapuca to the bangles'- seller
where he is paid his sum after the wearing of bangle ceremony is done. Another information I got is that the bangle- wearing ceremony is now held in the home of the bride itself. And there are those who do not have this ceremony at all.

After a certain period has elapsed after the nuptials, the bangles, in Saligao, are then tied and kept at the foot of the image of Mae de Deus in the nave of the Church.

There is also a" Chuddo" ceremony among Hindus of Goa and Saligao is no exception. It is performed at the bride's place though conducted by the maternal uncle like the practice among the Christians.In the old days it was done in a big " matov"( pandal or pavillion)set up in front of the bride's house. On this day the bride receives gifts from relatives. She gets the ceremonial bangles, 8 to 9 in number on her right wrist and 7 to 8 in number on her left wrist. The glass bangles are in green colours among some, like the Christians, and of rainbow colours among others.

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Photos: The myriad bangles, a set of 17 on each wrist - the bangle-seller (in pix) said - are to be worn by the bride-to-be in the same sequence two days before the marriage. The set of red bangles, 6 on each wrist, are worn by the bride after her wedding day. Blue bangles are not worn. All photos taken at the shop of the bangle-seller, Vasco-da-Gama market, Goa.

References; GOMES, Olivinho J.F., in "Village Goa" pp. 135-137 ; BRAGANZA, Alfred, " The Discovery Of Goa", p.43 ; Curchorcar, Chandracanta & Mother, Courtesy of, Chandor , in Gomes, Olivinho, J.F. " Village life" Op. Cit.,p. 137. From [Goanet] Old Wedding Customs in Saligao - Chuddo, Sat, 20 Apr 2002.

Shubham Greens

2010-04-02T19:31:00.004+05:30

by brian mendonca

Dhoop at twilight
Angelus at Gaunsawaddo
Gayatri mantra
on a Tarnaka bridge.
From Gethsemene to Golgotha
St. John takes 10 minutes
Joseph of Arimathea
beholds his own grave
Psalm 22 - 'My God, my God
why have you forsaken me?'
The azaan from the mosque
calls the faithful to prayer.

(Shubham GreensPure veg restaurant
Marol, Military Road
Andheri East
Good Friday, 2 April 2010)

Pix courtesy: Joseph of Arimathea lays Jesus in his own tomb - from saints.sqpn.com

Come sit by my side, Lydia

2010-03-28T21:48:00.006+05:30

Come sit by my side Lydia, on the bank of the river
Calmly let us watch it flow, and learn
That life passes, and we are not holding hands.
(Let us hold hands)

Then let us reflect as grown-up children, that life
Passes and does not stay, leaves nothing, never returns
Goes to a sea far away, near to Fate itself,
Further than the gods.

Let us hold hands no more: why should we tire ourselves?
For our pleasure, for our pain, we pass on like the river.
'Tis better to know how to pass on silently,
With no great disquiet.

With neither loves nor hates, nor passions raising their voice,
Nor envies making the eye rove too restlessly,
Nor cares, for if it knew care, the river would flow no less,
Would still join the sea in the end.

Let us love each other calmly, with the thought that we could,
If we chose, freely kiss and caress and embrace,
But that we do better to be seated side by side
Hearing the river flow, and seeing it.

Let us gather flowers, and do you take some and leave them
In your lap, and let their scent lend sweetness to the moment -
This moment when calmly we believe in nothing,
Innocent pagans of the decadence.

At least, should I first become a shade, you will remember me after,
Though remembered, I may not inflame nor hurt nor disturb you,
For we never hold hands, nor kiss,
Nor were we ever more than children.

And if, before me, you take the obol to the gloomy boatman,
I shall have not cause to suffer when I remember you.
You will be sweet to my memory if I remember you thus, on the river bank,
A sorrowful pagan maid, with flowers in her lap.

- RICARDO REIS
(Translated by Peter Rickard)

Cheyenne Autumn

2010-03-19T17:19:00.014+05:30

‘White man speak with forked tongue,’ goes the adage. The Cheyenne tribe is witness.

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) by director John Ford is a movie about the dispossessed - in this case the Cheyenne tribe in the American South West [pr. Sha-yan].

Ford's last movie depicts 'Dull Knife' (d.1883),chief of the northern Cheyenne, leading his people on a desperate trek from confinement in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to the home of their ancestors in Montana.'Even a dog can choose where he wants to go - not a Cheyenne,' he says.

The movie -apart from its spectacular scenes of the American South West - was disappointing as the Cheyenne tribe was depicted as dependent on the largesse of Washington. Reduced virtually to beggars, the tribe is forced to move out of its land and head to ‘Reservations’ marshaled by police.

The history of dispossession is long and bloody. Back home it is one of the central issues which motivates the Maoists. In Latin America it is the colonial eye of Hernan Cortes.

‘Spanish Woman’ is a woman who plays an important role in the film. Her provenance is unknown but she is married to one of the chiefs. In the tragic last scene she watches her son killed by her husband because he desires a woman pledged to the other chief. Her convulsive sobbing over the dead body is what brings the film to a close, as it were. Life for her seems meaningless. But the law of the Cheyenne must be upheld.

The film is long-drawn out (156 minutes) and at times aimless. The middle section is a riot of subtle humour but its purpose leaves one wondering.

The incredible journey of the Cheyenne as they try to make it back to their homeland in Yellowstone recalls Kundun (1997) by Martin Scorsese. In both films, the depiction of the heroism of a marginalized race is pitched against the backdrop of an unrelenting land.

The film veers on masochism. The kind of self-flagellation the Cheyenne succumb to, ill-befits a proud race. The buffalos of the Dakota are mentioned but they do not make an appearance.

Somehow John Ford only skims the surface of this great theme. The descent into bathos in the carriage scenes with the wagon upturning and the ladies tumbling out of them is ungainly and only serves as comic relief for an epic disaster.

Everywhere you have, admirably portrayed, a test of (often misguided) strength of will. Is it more noble to accept that you were wrong, or to persist in an insane plan of action because you have to ‘obey orders’? Is there no humanity left in this world?

‘The old man at once felt the resolution he had built up during so many years falling in. He was telling himself that he must not give in. He tried to steel his heart against all emotional appeals. . . He leaned against a window and looked out. The sky was overcast with heavy black clouds and a high wind began to blow filling the air with dust and dry leaves . . . Very soon it began to rain, the first rain in the year. It came down in large sharp drops and was accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season . . . How could he shut his door against them?

That night he hardly slept, from remorse – and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them.’

From ‘Marriage is a Private Affair,’ by Chinua Achebe

April Fool

2010-03-19T17:19:00.013+05:30

The 'fool' in Shakespeare is always the wisest person. This is because through his jokes he makes others aware of their foibles.

College days

2010-03-19T17:19:00.011+05:30

Captions: Luso-French Association, St Xavier's college, Mapusa, Goa, 1983-84; College Table Tennis team, St Xavier's college, Mapusa, Goa, 1983-84; Higher Secondary State Level hockey winners, St Xavier's college, Mapusa, Goa, 1982-83; National Service Scheme (NSS) picnic, Baga beach, Goa, 3 February 1985

River of Life

2010-03-16T17:14:00.002+05:30

Ezekiel 47: 1 - 9, 12

1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.

2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me round on the outside to the outer gate, that faces toward the east; and the water was coming out on the south side.

3 Going on eastward with a line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water; and it was ankle-deep.

4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was up to the loins.

5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.

6 And he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen this?" Then he led me back along the bank of the river.

7 As I went back, I saw upon the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other.

8 And he said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the stagnant waters of the sea, the water will become fresh.

9 And wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live, and there will be very many fish; for this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.

12 And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing."

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Savannah

2010-03-10T11:54:00.001+05:30

Savannah

by Relient K

I hope to be there by the morning
And see this pining all transforming
Into the arms of the Georgia sun
Savannah
I'd love to feel the heat the sunrise
Brushing rays across my windshield as if one dries
The streams from off my face

Yet I know you'll be there cause you'll know I'll want you to be there
And we'll say hello as you're smiling in love
And we'll sigh so relieved I believe because we will both know by tonight we'll feel normal again
But until then
Until then
Until then

Savannah
Our backs supported by a hammock
We sum up perfection like a handbook
And God knows it all too well
Savannah
We'll take a walk to find a gift shop
Who would've thought the book that you bought
Would never come off the shelf

Baby
I spent my life wondering
Wondering when I'd find you
I searched for all these years and now you're right here
I need you to know that
Everything makes sense when you're with me

Savannah
Walk out into the sultry evening
Cotton breathing when the sea winds
Brush the hair down around your neck
Savannah
You hold my hand like it's the first time
And all the feelings that our hearts find
Will be just what we expect

Baby
It's all I can do to
Thank you
Cause every time you wrapped those arms around me
I felt I was home cause
Everything made sense when you were with me.

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Samosa pav

2010-03-08T18:13:00.011+05:30

Mumbai is a foodie's delight. I have often been a street kid, and when it comes to Mumbai, where I spent my growing years, it's a riot. Quite contrary to the expectations of my well-meaning aunt in Mumbai, I can be found at 1 a.m. hovering near the pav bhaji carts outside Andheri station. The reason is that late-nght flights from Delhi are so stretched by then, that there really is no food to go around. So, hunters that we are, we go get our game. And in this case it's pure bliss.

Sometime back my friend from Goregaon took me for delectable Malwan cuisine to an otherwise reassuring dig, but with the staircase reeking of pee. But the tons of kulfi we had later, on a midnight dash to Borivili, more than made up.

When I narrated my nocturnal gambols, I was promptly christened a 'mawali'- I took it as a singular compliment! Aunty says I will never go hungry. That's kinda correct.
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Pix: pav bhaji past-midnight at Goregaon; Malvan non-veg thali at Goregaon; samosa pav with jelebi at Sagar sweet shop at Marol, Andheri East, outside Pallotti church. All locations in Mumbai, India.

8 March - International Women's Day

2010-03-08T18:04:00.003+05:30

Me to an office colleague today: 'Happy Women's Day'
She:'I'm not a woman yet.'
Me : 'That's what you think.'

'Behold this Dreamer Cometh . . . Let us slay him'

2010-03-05T21:28:00.006+05:30

This call by Joseph's brothers with reference to him (Genesis 37:19-20), seems to me today as fresh as it was when it was first uttered. To be Christ-like in today's world involves situations in which our values and actions are often at variance with the voice of the majority, and sometimes that of force. Like Joseph, we too have our dreams which often touch the lives of those around us and pose a threat to the status quo - especially when we knowingly or unknowingly project ourselves as better than others (Gen 37:7-9), or report them to the authorities (Gen 37:2).

We are all familiar with the feelings of hate and envy of Joseph's brothers (Gen 37: 4). Joseph was gifted. He was the interpreter of dreams - a gift which he had and they did not. They felt threatened and inferior. So they conspired against him and decided to kill him. It was as simple - as it often is today.

Like Judah, we see many today who befriend others not out of any intrnsic affection, but in terms of their utilitarian value. Like Joseph who is first sold to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver (Gen 37: 28), then via the Midianites, sold again in Egypt to Potiphar, we circulate as currency in the market of our time, sometimes signifying less, sometimes more. Even Jesus did not escape this. Only, the price was hiked by 10 more pieces of silver.

In today's world of increasing violence we need to listen to God's word and not just hear it. In this world there are the Josephs, the Reubens, and the Judahs and oftentimes we have been each of these in varying degrees. Like Joseph's 'coat of many colours,' (Gen 37:3) we also have different persona. In its divergent voices Genesis 37 calls us to clarify our intentions and renew our faith.

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Published in Renavacao, the Pastoral bulletin of the Archdiocese of Goa, Panjim, Goa; vol 27.6, March 16-31, 1997; painting by Velazquez.

Uploaded today to commemorate the same reading from Genesis 37 for today's Lenten Mass.

Isaiah 58: 9-14

2010-02-21T22:17:00.006+05:30

9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am. "If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.
11 And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
13 "If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;
14 then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
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This was the Gospel reading for Mass yesterday when I was on a weekend retreat. It struck me with a powerful force and I pondered over it several times. After the morning Mass at 7, I picked up the Good News Bible which lay in one of the bookshelves in hall.

As I proceeded to read the verses during the first session after breakfast, the lights were put off for an OHP presentation. I despaired.

From the East, a shaft of light from the rising sun fell on the page where the Bible lay opened, from the window adjacent to where I was sitting.

I was too overwhelmed to look elsewhere. For me, the Lord had spoken.
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Picture courtesy: holistic moon

Brian Reads at St Stephen's College

2010-02-16T13:12:00.009+05:30

Gandhi Study Circle
St. Stephen’s College, Delhi

SATYA 2010

invites you to a poetry reading session with

Dr. Brian Mendonça
traveller-poet \ musician \ blogger

An evening of scintillation and cultural re-invention

16th February 2010 (Tuesday)
6:30 pm, SCR Lawns

THE EVENING

A day before Ash Wednesday, Brian shared his poems with students of St Stephen’s college at the SCR lawns, St Stephen’s College, Delhi University, North Campus, New Delhi. As daylight dripped into dusk, students silently filed in and occupied chairs – as if in a performance play – as Brian softly plucked ‘Greensleeves’ – the Elizabethen tune -- on his classical guitar. Robinson Raju, Final Year BA student at Stephen’s and the coordinator of the event, introduced Brian as a traveller-poet at 6.30 p.m. -- the scheduled time for the event to begin. In tribute to the synergy which made the gathering possible, Brian opened with the hymn ‘You are my hiding place’ on the guitar.

BLOG : The first clutch of poems were from Brian’s blog and included the Udaipur/Jaipur poems (Forthcoming in Journal of English Studies, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, 2010) and ‘Morning Walk- Delhi South’ and ‘Autumn Woman’ -- two poems recently published in the debut issue of South Asian Ensemble (Canada, Autumn 2009). Brian invited the students to contribute to the Ensemble for which he is on the advisory board. The Stephen’s reading of 16 February 2010 is Brian’s 90th blog at www.lastbustovasco.blogspot.com

POEMS for CHILDREN: ‘Hymn to Ravi’ (Published by Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2009) and ‘Barefoot Child’ (OUP, 2007) were read by Brian, bringing up the rear with ‘Childhood’ (Parmal, Goa, 2009). The little boy in the poem who pushes his tyre up the hillside and watches it roll down with glee recalled, observed Robinson, the myth of Sisyphus.

LAST BUS to VASCO (Self-published 2006, reprinted 2007): Next, the group set sail for Goa via Brian’s first poem ‘Requiem to a Sal’ (1989). ‘On the Run’ and ‘Sea in the Sky’ brought giggles with its staccato style leading on to the lyrical ‘Sonya’ and the acceptance of ‘Bells of St Andrews.’ ‘Fugitive’ was recited in Portuguese followed by the translation. ‘Praxis’ recalled the search for the poetic voice. Social issues were showcased in ‘Londa Station.’ The last poem in this section was ‘A Peace of India’ which was promptly followed by a Portuguese song ‘En Costa tua Cabecinha’ and the riotous Konkani medley ‘Undra Mhojea Mama.’

A PEACE OF INDIA (Forthcoming): A request for a poem from Bihar took us to Brian’s poem on the Sonepur mela and its ‘absent elephants.’ The pungency of ‘Kamariya lachke lupa lup’ made many blush. ‘Kali Gandak’ on the ‘black river’ followed. Nainital was next with the pathos of ‘Gargia’ lamenting the tragic death of a village girl to a speeding mini-truck in the hills: ‘You went away /when we came to love you’, the first lines, made a deep impression on the listeners. ‘Kundun’ an early poem, written in Dharamshala, evoked ‘The oracle [which] warns / of imminent danger.’ ‘Deep South’ took us all South of the Cauvery and a memorializing of the tsunami dead.

SAHITYA AKADEMI (2004): The moment of truth in Brian’s poetic career was the 14 poems published in the SA journal Indian Literature. From here Brian read the much-loved ‘I am not alone’ and ‘Traveller’- a manifesto to his destiny.

Fellow-travellers were impressed with the plenitude of Brian’s themes. Among his influences Brian mentioned, TS Eliot, Yeats, Pessoa, Sofia Andresen, and a host of Romantic music composers with Schumann leading the charge. ‘Do you write full-time?’ one student asked. Brian replied that he needed to work so that he could travel. Asked where he saw himself in the tradition of Indian poetry, Brian replied, ‘I enjoy writing. Let’s leave the theorizing to someone else.’ ‘Avalon’ (Parmal 2009) written in Anjuna was ample evidence of that. ‘Dr Brian Mendonca – traveller-poet, musician, blogger: An evening of scintillation and cultural re-invention’ said the poster. The evening certainly lived up to that!

Brian Mendonça

Dr Brian Mendonça, traveller-poet, musician, and avid blogger works in New Delhi as an ELT publishing professional. His self-published debut volume of poems Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa (2006, with audio CD) was reprinted within a year. It also inspires the name of his blog. He is currently working on his second collection of poems entitled A Peace of India: Poems in Transit.

An ‘India-vidual’ Brian travels widely across India to read his poems and interact with poetry-lovers. 13 poems of his were published in Indian Literature, the journal of the Sahitya Akademi in May 2004 – his watershed moment, poetically.

Brian's poems, articles and travelogues have been carried by local and national dailies, and also in scholarly journals. In March 2009 he read a paper on Cuban poetry at the Centre for European and Latin American Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Born in Mithapur, Gujarat, he schooled in Don Bosco, Mumbai and did his graduation at St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa, Goa. His MA in English Literature is from the University of Bombay and his M.Phil from the University of Poona, Pune. His doctorate from the English and Foreign Languages University (formerly CIEFL) is on irrationality in the English Gothic novel.

He studied the Portuguese language at the Instituto Camoes in New Delhi and learnt classical guitar at the Delhi School of Music.

He divides his time between Goa and Delhi and any other place, which beckons him.
He can be reached at (0)9818432507
blog: www.lastbustovasco.blogspot.com

Sea and Wind

2010-02-15T17:19:00.004+05:30

The sea for me has always been a point of reference in life. Gazing at the Arabian sea yesterday, watching the dhows bob near the horizon while scores of young and not so young played beach cricket I saw at play an eternal movement.

Later in the last quarter of night when I played Samuel Barber's magisterial Adagio I felt rocked by the sea and its lyrical truth. I have yet to listen to his musical interpretation of Mathew Arnold's 'Dover Beach.'

The timelessness of the moment by the sea seems to be distilled - despite its disorientation - in Ted Hughes' 'Wind'. The poem describes an entire day and how the elements rage against the house by the sea. In its reaching towards a meaning that eludes, the poem is about the mystery of life itself as articulated in the panopoly of the cosmos.

Wind

by Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

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Samuel Barber (1910-81) Adagio, Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, EMI
Picture courtesy: Mumbai sea by Aroj on Flickr