Learning Never Stops

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Rahul

All right, I have now learnt how to swim. At 29, it’s quite an achievement of sort for all my classmates are teenagers. Of course, I am far from being “fluent” in it but I practise every alternate day, and I am getting my coordination of kicks, hands and breathing right. I can now jump into a pool and not sit by its side and see other people having fun in water. My target is to get much better in swimming [I don’t know how to quantify that] by end of this year. May be a simile will come handy. By December, I want to swim like a motorboat. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? Yes. Still aiming it? Yes.

I have now looked up a violin teacher. I am thinking of learning how to draw the bow across those four strings so that it produces a rhythm that is melodious. However, I am not sure of when I would want to start it. Perhaps, after I am done with my swimming classes, which will be by end of July.

I have come across lectures of Kim Addonizio and Dorriane Laux and their book The Poet’s Companion. All my attempts at learning poetry – as I read the book and listen their lectures – will be posted here [under a different category]. My dear blog, don’t get annoyed of my poetry or my attempts at it for who knows I may end up writing a 21st century masterpiece on your pages. Even if I don’t, you please not be annoyed of all the people.

So long!

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Some thoughts on Poetry

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Rahul

Recently, a German friend of mine posted the following on his Facebook wall:

Am I the only one who doesn’t get anything out of poetry? It seems so pretentious to force meaning into something that rhymes to make it appear meaningful. It’s heavily constrained by the language someone speaks. I get music because the melody already has meaning on its own and the rhyming lyrics complete the “rhyming sounds”, but poetry seems like someone attempted to make music but thought “eh, works on its own as well”. The rhyming seems unnecessary. If you want to make a point, why not write a “quotable essence of an argument” instead? Maybe I’m missing something here.

I have loved poems since forever. From English rhymes to Shakespearean sonnets to Eliot’s Love Song to Wilde’s ballads to Ogden Nash’s fear of sitting in dentist’s chair to surrealist poems of Neruda. From Hindi rhymes to Rahim and Kabir’s Doha to chaupai of Ramcharitmanas to Magha’s Sisupalavadham. Occasionally, I have dabbled in Urdu poetry of Gulzar, Dehlvi and Ghalib, and Punjabi poetry of Bulleh Shah, Warish Shah, Nand Lal and Batalvi. Every now and then, I turn a page for reading Spanish poems of Antonio Machado, though I seldom remember his poem after I have read it. I read them for Antonio brilliantly made use of Shakespeare’s suggestion of brevity being soul of wit.

The above post of my friend sent me into contemplation mode. I am no expert on poetry or poems. I read them. I try my hand in writing them, every now and then, and the work, without any doubt, is banal. Also, I feel it’s no crime to have thoughts on something you have little handle on. Of course, I will make every attempt to make these thoughts as much qualified as I can and honest.

As a thinking member of human race, I find poetry as a crucial conduit of human expressions. Poetry is not for elite classes of society as is often paraded. Poetry is for proles. All of our early works – from Old Testament to Odyssey to Mahabharata – are poems. Humans learnt poetry first, prose later. Poetry came naturally to humans. Now, I do not blame my friend for such opinions about poetry for the poetry, as is taught in schools, during formative years, worldwide, is responsible for it. Our teachers used to, as Billy Collins pointed out, torture a confession out of it. Poetry is not merely about understanding the bland meaning of lines. Poetry is about experiencing the state of the mind, selection of words, their placement and the effect they produce or intend to produce upon the reader. Another way to read a poem is to consider a poem as a separate entity of its own. As I said in one of the earlier posts that when a writer writes, they write so to give their vestiges a separate existence. Poems are generated from poets’ experiences and memories, but they have their own existence and this is what makes Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, probably to his homosexual partner, as enchanting for some male’s heterosexual partner.

If you know the poet or have read extensively about his life and times, then perhaps you may be able to “torture a confession out of it”, but poetry is more than that. Every word counts. I feel that the metre, the rhyme, the imagery and the aesthetics are purposely built into the poem, depending on the mood of a poet. Shakespeare, as per my own little study of his works, had fewer than 10 syllables per line of a sonnet, if a sonnet commented on something upbeat. When Shakespeare felt upbeat about something, he often violated rules; however, when his sonnets followed the rules to letters when he wrote on sombre subject matter in a sombre mood. Then, of course, this was not a “rule” that he followed. This is what I have generally observed from whatever works I have read of him.

Instead of gleaning meaning out of a poem, glean the experience out of it. If you know the poet or about his life, you will probably glean the meaning. If you have experienced something similar, you will identify yourself with the poem, and perhaps empathise with the poem or its creator.

My friend here doesn’t get anything out of poetry because he is torturing himself and the poem to get something out of it. Poem is actually the naked expression yet mysterious; prose appears straightforward yet clothed. He needs to, perhaps, relax and learn to appreciate the aesthetics. He feels that meaning “has been forced into something that rhymes” to make it meaningful. Again, his stress is on meaning and he ridicules the aesthetics. Not that we shouldn’t try to decipher what a poem is trying to say but that any work of art is lost in “forcing meaning” into it only for the sake of it. I confess openly that I don’t understand paintings as art. Sculpture, may be. I don’t consider photography an art at all, but that’s just my opinion. Photography is an activity. Stamp collecting is not an art, it is merely an activity, but then what I know of arts. People might term emptying one’s bowel in most efficient manner as an art too, and I am nobody to contest that claim. BUT – that’s because [with regards to painting and photography], I try to confess meaning out of paintings and photography. I do not let a painting and a photograph talk to me.

In schools, we are first introduced to poetry, through nursery rhymes [albeit without making us understand the imagery, the rhetoric devices et al]. The way to writing a good prose goes through at least some understanding of poetry. This, once again, reminds me of Stevenson’s Essays in the Art of Writing, where he stresses “rhythm of the phrase” as one of technical elements of style in writing prose as well as verse. I, therefore, do not understand my friend’s qualms with rhythm and following a metre. Rhyme is just one method of maintaining “rhythm” while rhythms are of various kinds.  Some of my banal works follow rhyming as well as other “kind” of rhythmic patterns woven together. A discerning reader will be able to find that out.

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Putting Pen to Paper

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Rahul

George Orwell, perhaps the greatest writer on political subject matters, suggested four motives for writing prose and that they exist in different degrees in every writer – proclaimed [like him] or self-proclaimed [like me]. The four motives that he provided are:

1. Sheer Egoism

2. Aesthetic Enthusiasm

3. Historical Purpose

4. Political Purpose

In that essay, George Orwell first described his formative years, and that how his ‘disagreeable’ manners made him unpopular and eventually a recluse who had habit of making up stories in his mind and holding conversations with imaginary persons. I tend to disagree with Orwell on ‘sheer egoism’ as motive. However, Orwell was clever enough to include that “they (the motives) exist in different degrees in every writer”, therefore, a writer writes with combination of four motives with one or the other motive taking centre stage, now and then, while other motives work on sidelines.

I would have much preferred if Orwell had meditated and written about “Who writes” instead of “Why I write”. Beneath the veneer of vanity and all other motives that maketh a writer lies a person with several vestiges, which are surgically removed, by the person, by putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Not that those vestiges are “removed”, rather those vestiges are given a separate existence, where they thrive or die, and the person lives on with the vacant spots of those vanished vestiges. Vacant spots don’t hurt much and their pain is easy to endure.

Orwell was an author who believed that writing has to have a purpose of public spiritedness.  He hated purple prose, long winded sentences and I would go so far to say that he despised use of rhetoric, especially while writing about politics. In the end of the essay, Orwell confessed that “One would never undertake such a thing (writing a book) if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.” He ends essay with the note that “where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.” Orwell found his main motive to be the political purpose. He laid down his own rules while besmirching the authors and the poets driven by motive of aesthetic enthusiasm.

Had Orwell attempted to thoroughly rip off the veneer of motives and tried to discover the person underneath, at which he hinted or tried to do while describing his formative years, he would’ve found that these purposes and these motives are merely for ‘grown-ups’. I find cart of whatever-I-write not driven by any of these horses of motives. I am privy to many of my friends’ personal writings. Some publish a blog only accessible to some select five or six people and some maintain a regular journal. They write beautiful poetry in Hindi and Urdu. They write most interesting anecdotes in more interesting manner. They care about the metre, the structure, the weight of the prose as much as it should matter, however none is driven by motive of conducting experiments with different styles.

All those writings of my friends, reveal a person that is hidden or shy or considers the world too frivolous or unbothered to listen, let alone understand, their observations or thoughts. Writing, at the end of the day, is an exercise in talking to yourself, a stroll through sometimes dry and sometimes lush valleys of your mind, probing your layers, touching your most hurtful and most humorous spots of memory and heart, and discovering your vestiges. Sometimes, we just want to talk, with no motive, and we want an interesting listener, who challenges us, our notions, proposes their notions, and agrees with our most ridiculous of assertions, thoughts and ideas while providing completely absurd reasons. In a nutshell, we crave a listener who is as absurd as you are, and as logical as you are. A listener who will go with you on mindwalk from heights of Descartes to the lows of Karl Marx without losing interest in you and your story.

More often than not, paper is that listener.

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For the love of Cricket

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Rahul

This blog is meant as a vent for all the turbulences of the heart and mind. It is meant to lay them bare. I know that nobody is interested in my stories or my turbulences, but the blog is. It always was and it always will be. I have been treating it with some solemn stories and thoughts recently. This is not the way you treat someone who listens to you so ardently. We must give them happy stories too, and today is the time I shall do so. This blog is also my time machine. When I am with it, I travel time. From past to present to future. Today, I am taking this blog down the memory lanes, the lanes where I house memories of my time with Cricket.

I was introduced to the gentlemen’s sport very early in my life. Perhaps as soon as I was able to stand up and walk. That would make me about 8 months old. I have photographs to prove it. I, holding a bat, and my father, bowling at me. I am a right-handed batsman and bowler. Occasionally, I can also bat left-handed. I was always the brightest student of my class. Ever since I started going to school. One of the motivations of topping exams at school was the deal my parents would have with me – to buy me anything of my choice If I top exams, and they did. The first thing I demanded, when I first topped my first exams in the first year of my schooling [after KG], was a bat. In fact, THE bat. I could easily reproduce the photograph of the bat here, but that defeats the purpose of writing. I want to describe the bat a little, and photography is the laziest art. It is art nonetheless, though.

The bat, when first bought, was about same size as mine. Reaching up to my shoulder, I remember. It was white, made of Kashmir willow and had a “Power” sticker, pasted on its striking face, with “Power” written diagonally across the sticker, in blue, along with its logo on top left corner. Below the sticker was pasted another sticker: “The Tendulkar Scorer”.  It was my most favourite bat and it was with me until I went to university. By that time, it had gone old, with its cane handle forced in place with help of glue and nails.

Playing Cricket was a crucial part of my life. I remember that one day my father introduced me to his boxer friend and asked me to go with him to train as one to the city’s stadium called Bheem Stadium. That stadium is known for boxing all over India. Same Bheem Stadium boxers have brought India Gold and Silver medals in Olympics, Commonwealth, Asian and other sporting events. However, I wasn’t interested. I did go there for a day or two, and I also went to the Gymnastics Hall of the same stadium, but it was Cricket that interested me. Therefore, I joined the Cricket coaching sessions at the stadium. I wasn’t regular, but wasn’t irregular either.

My short stature made sure that I wasn’t to be taken seriously. In sports, at least. I still wish I was taller. At least 6 feet 6 inches. Short heighted men, if not so bright, are often overlooked. Anyway, I was bright, and I was too bright to be overlooked. I was also good at Cricket. Eventually, I became part of my class’s Cricket team, and we would often play matches in the evening. Not in large grounds. On the streets. On the roads. Breaking windows. Knocking doors. Hitting neighbours. In short, inviting the scourge of neighbours. Every. Other. Day. However, nothing would stop us from going out again and playing. In India, we don’t buy full sporting gear to play a sport. Well, at least when we are beginning to learn. We played Rugby without any shoulder, shin, abdomen etc. guard. Therefore, the moment of wearing the full sporting gear becomes memorable one.

It was a match played by our team with a team 2 years our senior in school. It was the first time we played with Cricketing gears on. Pads, L-guard, gloves, elbow guard, shin, and helmet. All on. I was the opening batsman of my team. I was exceptionally good at playing on the off-side of the stumps. My best shots included the cover drive, the square cut, the deep cut, the hit on the long on. I was poor on the leg-side of the stumps, but I could play ball towards third leg and deep third leg convincingly. In that match, I scored 30 runs. It was also our team’s first 15-over match. I was the fourth wicket to fall. We lost the match.

Summer Vacations, Winter Vacations, Diwali and Dussehra Vacations – they were all spent in Punjab. 2-3 months of a year were spent in Punjab. As vacations. Summers, in particular. All I did in those hot summer afternoons was to just play Cricket with my cousins and their umpteen friends. One of my cousins was exceptionally amazing at playing Cricket, and it was through him that I was introduced to many different “kind” of bats and balls. We often started in the morning 5 AM and played until 3PM-4PM. Surviving on water, and some little lunch or road-side dishes that we could buy from our paltry pocket money. The ground, where we used to play, was little far from my grandma’s home in Punjab. At least, its main entrance. We would, therefore, cross the railways lines near to one of the quite high boundary walls of the ground and then climb that wall to get to the other side. The wall was and is almost 10 feet high and during first few times, I would be pulled and pushed up the wall by cousins and their friends. After a few attempts, I was able to climb the wall like a monkey. We would climb that wall about 4-5 times a day.

As we grew, the craze of Cricket in India grew as well. India liberalised its economy in 1991-92, and its most direct effect could be seen on Cricket and its increasing craze. 1996 Cricket World Cup, which was organised in India, after Indian economy was liberalised, was watershed event of sorts in my cricketing life. Mostly because it had the first of the matches where I watched Sachin Tendulkar playing live on TV. I came to know of many Cricket terms. Many names associated with the game. Mostly, I read about its history in good detail after this world cup through magazines and columns of newspapers. I was only 9-10 years old back then.

Over the sport of Cricket, I have always made friends, never a single enemy. Of course, back in Punjab, we will get into all sorts of fights, but end of the day, we shared same ground, sometimes same 22 yards, same stumps, same balls and same bats, that the fighting was almost a trivial moment for it was all about Cricket. Who could hit the highest? Who could catch the highest? Who could hit neat? Who could catch clean? Who could drive beautifully? Who could bowl dangerously? Cricket Cricket and only Cricket!

Then, I moved to a new town. It was right after I had been given a new bat, after topping the exams again. It was SS bat, from Meerut, with Fish skin on White Willow, dipped in “Cricketing Oils” – the last and the most expensive bat I ever bought. Leaving old friends and town back, when I first came to the new town, I missed playing Cricket the most. What put me off was that the kids in the neighbourhood would play cricket with plastic balls. I felt that I’ve been downgraded in my standard of living. Back in the old town, a day before we left it, I had promised my best friend that I would often write to him. He was also my cricketing buddy. I did. I wrote at lengths about how much I dislike the way they play Cricket in this new town, and how much I miss our old days. I never received a reply. I wrote quite a few times but I never received any reply. It was perhaps for the first time I felt sad for a loss and felt bitter towards friendships. Nevertheless, life, like always, moved on.

In the new town, while I lost many friends, and a best friend, I also started losing touch with Cricket. It was limited only to playing 4-5 times a month. I never could find a good team or I never actually tried. Especially after 2001, my ties with Cricket were severely cut. One reason being that I was entering the “adult world” and I had to start “becoming realistic” towards “what I want to do with my life”. I went full steam on academics after 2001. I abandoned Cricket or Cricket abandoned me; I can’t tell.

I do miss playing Cricket. Sometimes, I want to run away and play Cricket, with the wall. All by myself. I used to do it in the new town I moved to. To play cricket with the wall in the backyard. Back then, playing Cricket with the wall was like I writing silly blog posts today. It was a means of occupying the demons in my mind. I rue the fact that when I started playing “real cricket”, I could never play a single match with my father. We never met on a Cricket pitch.

Today, I quench the occasional thirst of playing Cricket by immersing myself in watching Cricket matches of the years I was growing up. Watching Sachin, Saurav, Dravid, Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Graham Thorpe, Courtney Walsh, Ambrose, Ponting, Gilchrist, Lara, Cronje, Kumble, Warne, Jayasuriya and all these greats play is my way of re-living some of the moments of my Childhood.

Cricket has always made me happy. Win or loss. Either way. Watching or playing. Either way. Listening about it or telling about it. Either way. And today, writing about it has made me even happier!

To the Cricket!

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Notwithstanding

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Rahul

I am an honest man. Completely. 100%. “Purely honest”. So honest that the Greek God of Honesty, Eilikrineiusus, swears upon me when she sits with other Gods and plays poker. So honest that I have no neuron-wire going between my members capable of cognitive true-false-processing functions and vocal functions.  So honest that I can tell an ugly girl that she is not beautiful. I mean I am extremely honest. As honest as the Sun rising in the east. As honest as a blue colour is blue. My honesty is as confirmed as the existence of higgs or of DNA or of higgs between various DNAs.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the aforementioned honesty stands suspended in the event of Sun setting in the West on a given day.

I am a completely loyal man. 100%. “Purely loyal”. So loyal that Greek God of Loyalty, Afosiosus, swears upon me when he goes out clubbing on Friday night with his friends, and his wife, Goddess of Suspicion, Ypopsius, needs him to assure her, by taking an oath upon my name, that he will not hit upon random fairies, unmarried goddesses et al. So loyal that dogs are jealous of my loyalty. Humans first came up with word – Fideity, which didn’t make sense; but then they came across my name and used last letter of my name to give sense and meaning to the word, and recognise my contributions to the field of fidelity.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned claims on loyalty, my loyalty is suspended in event of Sun rising in the east.

“Notwithstanding” is perhaps one of the best weapons in the arsenal of any person associated with legal profession or has come in touch with it. It has tremendous powers of diluting all what has been said, written and agreed upon. It has superior powers of negation. It can negate your existence in a court of law, let alone your claim or pleading. Governments world over, especially those who adopted the British legal system, use it to remind their respective citizens of their lowly status and their (government’s) own exalted status in the laws they enact. It is the only word, in a legal document, that separates powerful from the weak, and government from its citizens. The private corporations use it to harass the private individuals. The private individual uses it to harass a weaker private individual.

I have always been curious about this word, about its origins and about its current use as a weapon of mass fraudulence by stronger parties in a contract. Well, Oxford Dictionary tells its origins from Late Middle English as: from not + withstanding, present participle of withstand, on the pattern of Old French non obstant ‘not providing an obstacle to’. From the definition, it does appear that when the word was first introduced, it was done with  a noble intent. “Not providing an obstacle”: does sound like a noble intent. However, the legal vultures latched on to this word, and juxtaposing it with right words in a legal document turned the intended meaning of the word on its head. The word is now an obstacle in itself, not just a purveyor or non-purveyor of obstacle.

Instead of creating exceptions to the rules, this word has come to be used to define a new rule in any contract that will dilute all other rules under special circumstances. The circumstances, for example, as special as whenever a bird flaps its wings. Instead of subordinating provisions, the word has come to subordinate the weaker. I am guilty of using this word. However, I use it sparingly. Most of the time when I “use” it, it is to interpret a clause [that has this] of any act passed by a country’s government.

I know normal humans being don’t use this word. This blog post is just me indulging in catharsis for number of times I have used this word, and also about reminding myself that I can always do better than using the word “notwithstanding”.

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