My apologies if you don't like the reference to Ghalib....

Is ku hijr na wisaal kahiey

Izhaar-e-shauq kamaal kahiey

Zulf sar honey ke muntizir

Aur umr bhar na haal kahiey

Kaash...

Rat jagey se kisi ne kia paya hai

Who aaj phir thak kar sub’h ghar aiya hai

Mulla draata hai jaan ke janey se magar

Farz hai karna jo batil mun mein aiya hai

Yeh aakhri baazi bhi khel hi jao *Hosh

guNwaney ku tum ne kia bachaya hai?

Emergency

Kehtey hain:

"Khamosh raho tu sukhi raho ge

Ghar mein raho tu sukhi raho ge

Kitabon mein jo tum ne seekha hai

Bhool jao tu sukhi raho ge

Sola crore jo bhooke mar rahe hain

Marney do, tu sukhi raho ge"

They say:

"Stay silent and no harm will come to you.

Stay at home and no harm will come to you.

Whatever you have learned from your books,

Forget it and no harm will come to you.

The millions that are dying of hunger,

Let them die and no harm will come to you."

Insaaf per nafiz nazar-bandi hai

DiloN ke milne pe pabandi hai

ZubanoN pe taale laga rahe hain

Niyyat in hukamranoN ki gandi hai

Justice has been detained

And meeting of hearts restrained,

The tongues have been padlocked,

Intentions of these rulers are stained.

kia yeh aik mushkil faisla hai?

kia ab bhi intizaar ki gunjaish hai?

Is it a difficult decision?

Is there still time to wait?

Nahi chahiey mujhe yeh

Sisk'ti hoi lachaar zindagi

Dari hoi, murda, bekaar zindagi

I am sick of this life:

This woeful, helpless life,

This scared, dead, meaningless life.

Bohat kos chuke tareekh ko

Bohat pooj chuke iblees ko

Haq ki roshnai jab ragoN mein ho

Farz hai badlna taqdeer ko

Enough of criticizing history!

Enough of worshipping lies!

For when the truth runs in your veins

It's binding to change your destiny

Jeena hai tu dil se jeo

Dil ki baat her bol ke jeo

Jin haathoN mein bandoqeiN hain

Mal-e-haraam ki sandooqeiN hain

Un zalim hathoN ku tor ke jeo

Dil ki baat her bol ke jeo"

Want to live? Live by your heart,

Live, by expressing the truths of your heart

The hands that have guns for oppression,

The hands that have the wealth of corruption,

Live, by shattering those suppressive hands.

I don't know as well...

But burdened with too much in your head? bibi tum London mein bhi preshan si kiuyn ho? "I dont know..." you'd say, and probably that IS the right answer.... because life is always this complicated... but this burden starts feeling on your head only when you are unable to resign yourself to it, to surrended to it... it looks like a rebellion initially, but since the victory is at best a reconciliation, this rebellion is no more than the futile effort of Sisyphus to reach the top and stay there. He'd never stay.

Some people do solve the jigsaw, but in an instantaneous epiphany. You can't look for it, or worry about it. It comes like a divine blessing. If there were any other way, the thousands of philosophers in the last two thousand years would have found it.

Time - a cruel consolation

I came across this small epilogue in an Italian movie I watched last night.... it's quite romantic and has a line from Neruda's poem "me gustas cuando callas":)

"My friend, my confidant: don’t despair for me, or wish me well. I’ll learn to live without you. I’ll learn to breathe again, and follow my schedules. It’s just a matter of time before I’d have rationalized my love for you, and it’s just a matter of time before you’d have rationalized your sympathy for me, and soon we would have all the explanations we don’t have now.

Time is a cruel consolation: it relieves the pain, but relishes in scars. It’ll relieve us of our pains too, and teach us to embellish our scars – perhaps for its own debauchery, but to our advantage as well. I’ll be content with secondary advantages and, perhaps, you’ll discover new interests too.

But I still can’t help but be honest with you, and tell you, even though “my voice does not reach you”, that I might very well live on and learn to breath and follow my schedule, but I’d never be able to comfort in my scars."

I will write a novel someday

"I must admit it's a dilemma.... I have only myself to amuse me, but it's intellectually much more productive than any alternative... should I cry or laugh?"


p.s. I like to put quotation marks around my own words - they are written with great care and respect:)

Circular arguments

inspired by Breakfast at Tiffany's...

Ishq-yaabi-o-raqeebi ke gur tu seekhe the,
Mera raqeeb kambakht saccha ashiq nikla!

Tu Phir

Woh sab payar bhare khat
Likhe agar jaatey tu phir?

Us t'weel farhang main
Ma'ani bhi hotey tu phir?

Hum rashk-e-Qais-o-Farhad
Laiq-e-ishq hotey tu phir?

Imakanaat ki bhagdar main
Makeen-e-shauq ho jaatey tu phir?

Itna mat sochna tum Mirza
Tumhain bhi deir ho gai tu phir!

I do not love you...

I admit I have stopped loving you:
That fresh jasmine face,
Which I bore in my arms through so many nights
In sweet sleeplessness,
And tendered with utmost care,
Does not haunt me anymore.
I do not miss those tales
of passion and allusions –
Allusions to you and me –
That you used to tell
While waiting for sunset (or, for moonrise,
But you never stayed so late).
Nor do I love that shy smile
That tempted me into that...

Why, I am a sensible man.
I know when to let go.
Your name is like an epitaph -
To be read only with silent respect.

But why does it make me anxious,
Whenever I hear it in random discussions,
Or read it… in my rusted memoirs,
Even in someone else’s name?
Why is it that any other face,
Any other smile,
Or allusion,
Falls like rain on barren land?
And who can account for that abstract company -
That idle apparition -
That distracts me in a most intense conversation?
(I felt lost during my job interview yesterday!)
I wish it were a disease
Which I could find a cure for,
And let myself go as well.

"Cucurrucucu, Paloma"

An awesomely melodious ballad I heard in the movie Hable con ella/Talk to her.
A friend of mine downloaded the song for me, but I hope you can easily find it on net.

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufrió por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando:

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay gemía,
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.
Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par;
juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía espera
a que regrese la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú paloma, cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
¿qué van a saber de amores?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, ya no le llores.

[English Translation:
They say that in the nights
all he did was cry;
they say he didn’t eat,
all he did was drink.
They swear that even the sky
shivered when it heard him cry,
how he suffered for her,
and even in his death he called her:

Ay ay ay ay ay he sang,
Ay ay ay ay ay he cried,
Ay ay ay ay ay he sang,
He died of the mortal passion.

That a sad dove
in the early morning sang to him
to the little lonley house
with it´s little doors opened wide;
they swear that this dove
is none other than his very soul,
that is still waiting
for her to come back.

Cucurrucucu Dove, cucurrcucucu don´t cry.
Not ever for the stones, dove,
for what do they know of love?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
Paloma (dove), Don´t cry.]

Lyrics and translation from the last entry on http://eng.proz.com/topic/13415?start=15&float=

April 18, 2006.

teri rafaaqat ke ehsaas ku main,
apney wajood ka falsafa likhon.
teray parbati labon ki surkhi se,
kanvas-e-falak pe musawwari karon.
teri iss muskaan-e-hazaar-rang ke rang jaanchaney main,
aazmayash har raat apney khwabon ki karon.

gar hu tu udaas,
tu bahaali-e-nizaam-e-hayat ke wastey,
apni yeah ghazal teray naam likhon.

March 7, 2006

duur tak ma'yusi, jaisey veeraney main andhera par-fishan
ik wasle-saut, phir jaisey raja-o-zindagi ka samaaN

iss saut ke sau roop, sau thikaney
sau milta nahiN mukhatab ke lab-o-lums ka nishaaN

jawaban pukaron ussey, na paas ja kar chhu sakuN
mujh pey bhi tu zindaN hai meray zamaan-o-makaaN

kai baar tu bohat kareeb se bola, manind-e-irt'aash-e-dil
yeh haqiqat thi, ya mehaz mera gumaaN?

aur yeh gumaaN tu aur bhi gumrah-kun hai b'wajh-e-kashmakash
ke yeh sada-i-ghair hai ya mujh hi main hai pinhaaN?

kabhi tu mitaiN gey yeh zindaN, yeh gumaaN!
koi tu ho ga wasl-e-saut-saaz ka jahaaN!

iss jahaaN-e-be-gumaaN ki arzoo hi tu hai wajh-e-qayam
Hosh* ke paas warna aur kia hai jeenay ka saamaaN!

"To be or not to be"

"To be or not to be," or to consider to commit suicide, is, in Camus's view, "the most important philosophical question." The options, however, as Shakespeare implies, are quite simple: yes, or no. If one says no, his or her opinion doesn't matter because that's not what the question was looking for. If one says yes, then I have some personal reservations against some, but the only ones that matter to me, possible grounds for this opinion.

Saying yes means you are choosing to live either because you are supposed to (to take care of family, to cure humanity, or to earn heaven), or else, you want to. Former reasoning shows that you have applied no reasoning at all, and that you are so mindlessly religious that you didn't even understand the question, but the second approach leads to some interesting discussion on the question: why do you want to live? Now, if we analyze our conclusion about the mindless man of faith, we see that his problem was of a fundamental nature worth a quarantine: he precociously judged on the past and had fantastic pictures of the future, while historical facts is all we should devote our sane judgment to and only realistic predictions should be deduced from such analysis. But history doesn't paint a very hopeful picture: it is nothing but account of people who certainly never chose to be born there and then, and many dying who would be found to be in disagreement with the timing of the event (or, at best, accepting it as “inevitable” – the only ones in agreement would be those who answered the original question in “no”, and hence, as established at the start, irrelevant to our discussion).

So, as soon as you think of making a choice, you realize that all these choices have already been made for you. An existentialist, a type of people whose kalamah is "to be", might say that he creates his own world by developing his self in the face of hostile worldy circumstances, but he doesn’t realize that it’s the hostilities in the world that give him the chance to develop his self, and his so-called self would be really different if the set of hostilities facing him was different. The dialecticians come closest to the reality by acknowledging the inter-play of self and “hostilities”, but, unfortunately, still far from any help in providing a justification to live (rather, from an anti-existential point of view, they further aggravate the fallacy ailing the existentialists).

In conclusion, you can, at best, understand life, but can’t find any reason to live it. Hence, the redundancy of Hamlet's question.

P.S. This was my humble attempt to portray a dogged fatalist. My personal approach, however, to the question discussed above is, I admit, a bit too romantic: would I have assented to my birth if my will was asked before the most interesting accident in my life actually took place? What appears romantic to me in this approach is the following paradox: to answer this question would be a logical fallacy, as such an answer would be based on one’s life spent so far, which, of course, he or she cannot be assumed to have presaged at the time of his or her birth, but this, to me, is the only time when Hamlet’s question has any relevance! In short, it is a right question at a wrong time.

I Fell For It...

I must have written it under some crazy Emersonian sermonizing fit, but I did write it. So help me God!



When the crowd was shouting shame on the speaker,
Her tender soul was convinced of
The despised argument.
She also shouted shames -
and with a condescending smirk - but
Couldn’t coerce her fool-hardy inmate.
A bloody conflict ensued, which soon
Ended the ego’s irrational reign, and
Secured self-esteem from its hostage.
Truth marched onto her cheeks,
With crimson fireworks of victory, and
A mercury star in her eye
About to melt.

The smirk died.
And the red glow on her face
revealed what a poet lives on.

Beauty is not the consummation, but
The first sight of estranged self:
Haunting not like a monster in the sea,
But an inmate – like a god in the sky.

Penitence

Fate brought them face to face,
The two of them, and no chase.
But each had reasons to chose otherwise,
And step aside as if in a real disguise.

Only, they failed.
Failed to recognize the all-to-real agony
that fate creates out of its fictional womb.

No wonder...
They'll always be stepping,
From one foot to another,
Stuck, in front of each other.

Raison d'etre

I lost the few poems I wrote sometime in the past... and alongwith it, pretty much the talent to write more. I was rather suprized to be able to compose these two lines...

Umr bhar ghazlain likh ke bhi mirza
ik lamhe ki khamshi ka mudawa na hua.

reminds me of a verse by Ghalib...

Jama karte ho kiuyn raqeebon ku
ik tamasha hua, gila na hua.

Insomniac

For quite some days, I am insomniac. Dreams - all sorts of them; weird, frightening, embarrassing, exhilarating - keep me awake all night, as if even the night was the toils I suffer inexorably during the day.

But don't you worry. I never saw you. I preserve you behind so secure a veil in my consciousness that even my willful dreams cannot defile your memory.