1st Anniversary

Been 1 year since I started blogging, so here we go again…reprint of one of my oldest favourites.

• This was in response to a British Council competition where one had to create a poem with the following words:


• Paint/ hue/ Chi-chi/ riff-raff/lava/ jasmine/ dolourous/ gorilla/ sinuous/ whorl/ avant-garde/ mish-mash/ cubicle.


• Came out better than I thought it would in the half an hour that I took to write it. I hope they appreciate such bursts of creativity at Tuck or Harvard or Wharton ;-)

LAB REPORT 312: SPILT QUICKSILVER.
She was just that type,
Who did not paint her toenails,
Hue her lips,
Shadow her eyes,
But dared you to imagine them
Painted.She was just that type
Who kissed all dogs on the mouth,
All the Jimmys,Chi-Chis,Babus,
Blackies,Manis,Brunos.
All veteran riff-raffs,
Of the mongrel world.
And it was thus that,
An initially enchanted Dr.Seetharaman-Very famous veterinarian,
Her fiancee of 2 months
18 hand-holdings,
3 kisses-2 full,2 halfs(Kisses being what they are,
she was quite precise)
5 hushed dinners,And one Solitaire ring,
Broke off the engagement,
Citing hygienic reasons.

She was just that type,
Who lets you burn
In dark green envy,And then dips in the lava
That you pour forth,
Burns herself,
And so diffusesA smouldering scent so
Unlike the fresh smell of jasmine,or the slightly wet lily after rain.
This was that burnt,sandalwood incense-smell
That promised hidden Garba-grihas
The sanctum sanctorums
Inside her Sanskrit mind,
For those who dared to stroll
Those nether regions,
She offered dark Chidambaram temples With small lamps in damp corners
Where the stone sculptures
Cannot be seen, only felt.
Such were the perceptual promises of
Her sinuous mind.

She was just that type,
Pretended to murmur secret invitations
To your best male friends,
Chaiwallahs, melon-sellers,
And the traffic policemen.
Just to see
That red rage of a matador's muleta
Wave so well on your windy cheeks
Just to hear
That angry Wagner refrain
Dancing in your lighted eyes,
And then when you start to
Silently trade sound for frozen fury,
She would coyly become
Amy,the amazing African gorilla
Who could speak
Over 2000 words
With only her fingertips.
And dolourous eyes.


She was just that type,
Who could and did in a moments glance,
Make mish-mash of your
Carefully rehearsed proposal,
Gleefully unaware that you had
ractised it for 4 hours


In front of the toothpaste stained bathroom mirror.
And so would make you slightly crush that
The outermost-whorl of that
Hidden red rose in your jeans pocket.
Slightly.
And suddenly all the soft pink words
On ribboned paper,
Start sounding silly
For avant-garde Athena,
Who proceeds to explain
The Fibonacci sequence
On a paper napkin,
With vague arrangements of peanuts,
For analogy.


She was just the type,
Who hungrily devours,
All the arguments that
You had carefully stored
In your mind's cubicles.
And proceeds to fill those shelves
With bottled kerosene
Which she can at will
Set afire
By shooting and so shattering.

She was just the type,
That 25 mercuric years
And 30 inches of Levis
Could barely contain with quiet restraint.
And so she jumped
Out of the 6th floor window
On a clear, sunny,
Sky-blue evening of Darjeeling's sunshine,
Twelve months after she said Yes,
Nine months after her father punched me,
Six months after we walked down
A flowery-arched aisle,
She in snowy white, me in Armani blue.
The day those giggly piggy-tailed flower girls
Almost lost our ring.


But in passing mention, I must say that
She was just the type who
Could and did carefully remove that ring,
Posted it,
From a 6th floor room,
On a clear, sunny,
Sky-blue evening of Darjeeling's sunshine.


I am bored; therefore I tag – Silverine/ Alexis/ Tyler Durden/ Mind Curry – to try this out.

Truth Vs Good.

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
- Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1938- )

1000s of words...

She did this to me. She who is called Silverine .

1.Most desired celebrity


Why Angelina?
Not because she’s bisexual. Not because she adopted Maddox from a Cambodian orphanage. Not because she’s got luscious lips and a figure to match. Not because she founded the National Council for Refugee & Immigrant Children. Not for being delightfully nude in Original Sin. Not because she adopted Zahara from Africa and not because Zahara means flower in Swahili. Not because she chose to be a mother and gave birth to a daughter in Namibia. Not for saying “Why sodomize dragonflies?”. Not for naming her daughter Shiloh-“The Peaceful One”. Not for that wet T-shirt photo. Not for being the god-daughter of another famous wet T-shirt wearer – Jacqueline Bisset. Not for that slinky sexy voice of Lola in Shark Tale. Not for publishing a collection of notes while travelling across the world as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Not for the half a million she got for allowing People to photograph her while pregnant and not for donating it to a Haitian charity. Not for the "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages" tattooed on her left forearm. Not because her name means “Little Angel” in Italian. Not because she collects knives. Not because she likes her “sex to be wild”. Not for her $1 million to Afghanistan….What at all could it be?!?

2.Want to do this some day






Backpack through Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Spain...(If I said Europe, I know someone who will bash me up ;-) Trace the marble folds of The Pieta, ride a gondola in Venice, drink coffee in Rome, toss a coin into the Trevi fountains, eat sprungli in Zurich, sacher-torte in Vienna, breathe the rarefied air of Jungfraujoch, see the sun through stained glass at Notre Dame, tread the ruins of the Acropolis and sleep for a night in the hills of Sicily. One at a time - the money is the only thing holding it back.


3.Want to visit this place

ALASKA
Touch a whale, watch bears, walk across glaciers, mush with huskies, aurora borealis, kayak down the Kenai, sea lions on a rock, bull-moose in the wilderness, mirror-lake at noon, the mountains at midnight.


4.Random Favorite
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man”
- Bob Dylan.

The trappings…
Lord Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Baron Nelson, of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk, Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hillborough in the said County, Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Vice Admiral of the White Squadron of the Fleet, Commander in Chief of his Majesty's Ships and Vessels in the Mediterranean, Duke of Bronte in Sicily, Knight Grand Cross of the Sicilian Order of St Ferdinand and of Merit, Member of the Ottoman Order of the Crescent, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of St. Joachim.

The truth…
- Started as a seaman, ended as an Admiral.
- Captain of HMS Hinchinbroke, HMS Boreas, HMS Albemarle, HMS Agamemnon, HMS Theseus, HMS Captain, HMS Fourdroyant, HMS Victory.
- Sufferer of chronic sea sickness & near death malaria.
- Lost an eye. Lost an arm. Went to sea again.
- Originator of 1.The Nelson Touch 2.“England expects that every man will do his duty” 3. “Thank God I have done my duty".
- Leader of Men, Master Mariner, Volcano Lover.

5. I was tagged by Silverine
.
Danks u for the image posting tip, lady.It was a pain, but looks like its well worth it

Ithaka!

- Constantine P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS POEM....

ITHAKA - THE TITLE
I have always been enamoured by history, myth, places & journeys; One of my other favs is Ulysses (Tennyson). And the title of the poem, like the label of a wine or the name of a woman, is a fascinating precursor to what is yet to come. Sometimes in flowing harmony, sometimes in crashing discord! ;-)

THE CORE
The journey is the reward...it was Ulysses' choice to go on "a" journey and go on "this" journey...too often we miss out these journeys and and prefer to stay at the safe harbour of home...and caught in the humdrum of everyday life, we dont even realize what we are missing out...and am not just talking about a physical journey from moor to mountain, but the journey to a decision, to a career, to a relationship where we often prefer the taken path, the broken road...at these times, we need the vision to see our own Ithakas ...with firmly rooted feet ofcourse.

Also what I have come to know as my locus of control funda - what you are decides what the world is...
"you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you"
What we see and what we feel during a journey is as much as what we want to as much as what is there...a nights wait at a strange airport, a 5 minute stopover in some foreign field, a funnily named dish...think adventure!

THE IMAGERY
"Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon"
"mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can"
WoW!

THE END
"you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean"
In utter awe of this line...what an end! The poem ends in the same way that Ulysses would have ended his journey...a rugged man with his proud scars and Penelope, reminiscing, on the white cliffs of Greece with a cup of wine gazing at the crashing sea and the wild wild sun...as it goes down.