QuestWednesday, May 27, 20092:58PMThe Impossible Dream
from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972) To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrong To love pure and chaste from afar To try when your arms are too weary To reach the unreachable star This is my quest To follow that star No matter how hopeless No matter how far To fight for the right Without question or pause To be willing to march into Hell For a heavenly cause And I know if I'll only be true To this glorious quest That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I'm laid to my rest And the world will be better for this That one man, scorned and covered with scars Still strove with his last ounce of courage To reach the unreachable star Thursday, April 16, 20095:24PM - Prajapati AwakensStillness. No sound, no wind, no moon, no stars. There was only One. He breathed. He breathed in silence, “I am” Who knows whence He came? No thought, no desire, no creation. Yet. “Yeah, I am” If time had existed, many a million years would have passed. But there was neither a past nor a future, not even a now. In silence arose the first question, “Who is?” The emptiness trembled in anticipation. “Who is?” And then began Time, A silvery thread of light speeding towards the endless edges, Backward and forward, And instantly there was eternity in the past and in the future, Time wiping out the possibility of its own genesis. He asked only the one question ‘Who am I?’ The question was Tapas The questioner was Tapas, The answer too, was Tapas. In Tapas, He burned. Out of that austerity, arose sacrifice. With joy, He gave himself up. The Father gives himself in sacrifice, Like His son wouldst one day give his flesh and blood. From Him sprang forth the worlds many. Galaxies and gravity, mind and music, All made from His own marrow. In sacrifice, He became the many. Cleaving His own heart, He breathed life into existence. And today, we search for Him, the first-born. “Where is He? Where is He? When will He come, the King of Kings? Do I find Him in the church, mosque or temple?” The way back is the same. Out of sacrifice is born austerity, Out of austerity, the question – “Who am I?” Dwell upon the primordial question for this indeed unlocks the door. Behold the answer oh Prajapati, Behold thine own face. Monday, April 13, 20092:41AMWhat makes a difference in our lives? When I turn back and look at my life, spread behind me like a map, what stands out? What do I remember? What makes me smile? What moves me? I remember loved ones, I remember dawn, I remember kisses, I remember solo-trips, I remember sacred rivers, I remember moments of truth - those heart to heart talks, and I remember a moment of Truth, I remember walks in the crisp air, I remember beaches, I remember songs, I remember dancing, I remember love, I remember teary-eyed poems, I remember the evening sky as the sun danced on the ocean, oh I remember butterfly-kisses, I remember that rave, I remember some friends, I remember hugs, I remember a starving man and the guilt, I remember a moonlit night on Fraser Island, I remember childhood lies greeted by love, I remember inspiration, I remember the Himalayas and I remember Koh Phangan, I remember some msn chats, I remember wanting to be like dad, I remember the dark monsoon skies, I remember first days of school in June, soaked shoes in torrential rain, I remember kissing the ground, I remember books, I remember a couple of movies, I remember questions that would make my heart ache with ignorance, I remember moments of stillness. All these, I accept. Now and in the future. The rest I reject, I do not remember you. You are not me. Wednesday, April 8, 200910:27PMThere is a moment in the life of every generation when that spirit of hopefulness has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. - Tuesday, April 7, 20091:40AMWhen I was in my early teens, history lessons were a mixture of boredom and comedy thanks to a slightly eccentric history teacher of peculiar mannerisms and a tendency to flirt with the girls. History – hard-to-remember dates and names of emperors, strange sounding dynasties and a distant national struggle for freedom which seemed best relegated to its regal place in those thick, dusty books. Perhaps it is a testimony of our education system that the living dynamic stories of nations and civilisations can be made to seem about as appealing as pickled pig’s feet. It is only in recent years that I have begun to appreciate the rich tapestry of lives, knowledge and myths that have brought us to the doorstep of the present. To understand the world today without truly imbibing the past is an attempt doomed to failure. We are but expressions of the waves of change that have swept through the world over decades and centuries. Our present is deeply rooted in the history of our forefathers, our lives built upon the toil of others and the blood on many a sword. If through religion, we try to seek our place in the cosmos, through history we seek our place in Time. Time the conqueror, Time the slayer, Time which has brought civilisations to dust. The historical imagination (to steal from Mills’ sociological imagination) is at once an experience in profound humility as well as outright fantasy. To truly understand that for many thousands of years, hundreds of millions of people have lived and died, almost all of them forgotten in the deluge of time, is to begin to question our individual-centred perception of life. Magnificent cities arose on the banks of the mighty ancient rivers and yet with the ebb of time, there is nothing left but buried ruins that archaeologists dust away with that little brush of theirs. ( Read more... ) Thursday, April 2, 20091:23PMI sat on a rock on top of the bare hill. The sunset over the forested valleys around me began to look surreal as the mist crept up from the winding river, engulfing the trees bit by bit. Surreal. The sun bounced off the fluffy-white tree tops, strands of gold knitted with the softest cotton. There was a stillness to the evening which began as a serene calmness and then as I watched, right before me, it flipped. An eerie silence. Eerie. When did that word enter my mind? I wished I hadn't thought of it. Saturday, March 28, 20094:57PMI have stories to tell, I wish I had words to tell them all. I have images stuck in my head, little staccato moments caught in camera flashes. I have moments of mental inversion, a topsy-turvy world where I see through someone else's mind. I have moments of clarity when the mind slows down and I can see the possibility of what could be. I have moments of weakness, I have thoughts of despair, I have highs of wonderment and I have lows of wretchedness. And I have questions....many. Could this be what it is to be human? Current mood: creative Thursday, March 19, 20097:57PMI wish I could write poems everytime I sat on my computer with the word document open before me, like I used to. I've lost count of the number of times in the past many months, I've started writing a line before having to close the file because nothing further would come. I think I'm not a writer/poet, I'm just a chaneller. If I were one, I would be able to write whenever I wanted. Maybe there are no muses flying around me like they used to. I should set up a muse trap in my bedroom. 7:34PM - Rasa UnmaskedRasa Unmasked performed at The Studio in the famed Sydney Opera House was an intricate exploration into the depths of the human psyche. What makes us human? What is the nature of these emotions that we feel? Where do they come from? There were no precise answers but as a part of the audience, one could not but feel that the performance was holding a mirror up to our very selves.
The word Rasa has been bandied about in Indian classical dance since the days of the Natyashastra, a 2000-year-old treatise on the performing arts. And it’s questionable whether its essence has not been forgotten somewhere along the way. Despite it’s centrality to classical forms of dance in India, inevitably, the artiste is often conceived as the centre of any performance. In truth, the Rasa theory turns this view on its head and the artiste becomes a mere conduit, through which he or she can inspire and overwhelm the audience with emotion. The dancer rises and falls, lives and dies, not by his excellence alone but by that which is felt by the audience! The emotion expressed by the dancer (bhava) has to be fully transmitted to the audience for Rasa to be born. It’s neither the artiste nor the bhava which is ultimately important in the ancient aesthetic dramatic theory. A work of genius is not that which is able to convince the audience that they are watching a great piece of acting but for them to forget for a while that there is any acting at all. Instead, they are fully present in the moment, feeling every emotion expressed by the dancer - the joyous flirtation between lovers in the midst of spring, the unutterable fear of the unknown or the sheer rage felt in battle amidst the hacking of limbs. Rasa Unmasked is a bold and re-interpretative work revolving around mapping out the various human emotions that underlie our very existence. A collaboration between Anandavalli’s Lingalayam Dance Company, Ramli Ibrahim’s Sutra Dance Theatre and ethnomusicologist/composer ( Read more... ) Saturday, March 7, 20094:35PMMy housemate who is from Hongkong laughs like a retard. She goes into these laughing fits where she makes these crazy out-of-breath sounds in between laughing like she was just pulled up from underneath water after 2 whole minutes. Plus she is messy and doesn't clean up after her. Safe to say that she is not my 'favouritest' housemate. Current mood: Saturday, February 28, 200911:03AM - Annul Mele - Vaaranam AyiramI translated the rest of the song. Some of the words might be second guessing as im not a native Tamil speaker, I checked against two crappy translations available on the net...they were very crappy. hehe. Also excuse minor poetic license. Thursday, February 26, 200910:58PM</div></div>Annul Maelae - Sudha Raghunathan</div> My translation of first paragraph. The dewdrops that smother these burning embers. A little bird fluttering aimlessly. The raindrops that seek to quench a tree. All these, she has become. anal mele panithuli alaipaayum oru kili maram thedum mazhai tuli ivai thaane ival ini 5:34PMI just read the below quote on a random quote page and i thought why did i never think of it in that way! :) Monday, February 2, 20095:12PMI have lost the will to pray, I have lost the will to write, I have lost myself whom I had never found. I have lost the search, i have lost the answer with the question. There is talk somewhere about miles to go before I sleep but I dismiss it as a rumour and return to my splendid stupor. Monday, September 8, 20082:08PM - Repost from 2003In thy soul of love build thou a fire Wednesday, August 13, 200810:28AMWhat words shall I sing to thee my child? Thursday, February 14, 20081:20PM - ‘Wandering Poet’It is neither the love for places, nor the love for words, which gave me my name. Both are ephemeral. Places change, so do words. Yet, there is a common thread that strings together my love for both, but which transcends the idle curiosity of the tourist or the linguist. Friday, November 30, 20077:01PMWhen her lips part, her sensuous tone subdues me, Wednesday, November 28, 200712:27AMThe drops of rain opened a door within my heart; the poet lay asleep inside. The poet is neither male or female, nor old or young. Absolutely androgynous. Saturday, November 24, 20074:09AMSometimes I am engulfed by an unrest within. It is not unhappiness, it is not sadness… it is like an abyss which is devoid of meaning, an abyss in which lies buried deep mysteries which I myself can’t fathom. Sometimes it makes me write, I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write whatever it makes me write and then the feeling goes away. Sometimes it is clearly a spiritual unrest. A spiritual longing. But today, I felt the same way but knew that whatever I wrote, it wouldn’t go away. And neither was it a spiritual feeling as I have come to know it before. It was just there. Without name, without any clear form. Navigate: (Previous 20 entries) |


