Happy New Year.

I make an annual attempt to resurrect this blog around New Years. So here is the 2012 version.

I don't want to jinx it, but this vacation has been excellent so far. Despite the many reasons for it not to have been.

My resolutions for this year are:

i) finish the last 40 pages of War and Peace

ii) start working my way through Shakespeare alphabetically. If I move at the rate one play a month I should be done with him in 3 years. Just as I enjoy knowing that I can name and locate every single country in the world (am still working on the capitals) I shall be happier after I know what happens in every single play. And just to be sure I shall make notes. As I do not think I shall be reading Richard II a second time, assuming I make it through a first time.

iii) be less lazy about writing. Academically, and otherwise.

iv) travel more on long weekends, instead of doing silly things like homework.

v) figure out how to keep a plant alive. I want a cat. But if I can't care for a plant the cat has no chance. This is a trial run. 2012 plant, 2013 cat.

vi) stop watching That 70's Show reruns. Enough is enough.

who said

i've just had a week of involved discussions about singing the national anthem, patriotism and why politicians should be shot on sight. now in a house like ours, where all of us are rather opinionated the degree of peace is relative to how many people are in the room. i resent being made to stand up and sing the national anthem when i go to the movies in ahmedabad. i don't at all resent getting up early and racing out at nine in the morning to find a flag to sing at on independence day. i think republic day is a bit of a fraud, though i do recognise that the constitution is quite important and all that. but singing the anthem is a gesture, and i feel like there's more drama attached to the day independence was acknowledged.

what i did today was go out and buy a pair of sunglasses. which is makes it no different from what i might have done on any other day. except that there was less traffic today.

i do find though that i am more open to reading poetry on state holidays- in general. so i spent the afternoon with agha shahid ali, cups of tea and home made cookies. and am spending part of my evening with k satchidanandan. here- have a poem. after this though i am going off to watch firefly.


Who Said?

Who said
that waiting is a
railway station in North Malabar?
That a dawn in uniform
will arrive there in a coffin?

Who said
that memory is a fragrant window
opening on ripe cornfields?
That our bodies grow cold
as light grows dim there?

Who said
that trees have ceased to follow
wind’s language?
That we must conceal
from lilies and rabbits
the news of the death of love?

Who said
that now noons will be
heavy like a drunkard’s head?
That evenings will have sick hearts
like a lover’s whispered songs?

Who said that we are running barefoot
over red hot iron
with a fistful of childhood rain?
That we will, at the end,
hand over our keys
to the same rain?

Who said that men once dead grow younger
and then they enter another Time?
That all the birds that vanished
at sunrise will return
when the world ends?

Who said
that we would understand everything
with no one saying anything,
but will still not share
anything with anyone?

© K. Satchidanandan
From: Vikku
Publisher: DC Books, Kottayam, 2002
ISBN: 81-264-0465-5



© Translation: 2002, K. Satchidanandan
From: At Home in the World:
Publisher: Full Circle, Delhi, 2002

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2865