Kolkata Botanical garden is one of the most unkempt gardens i have come across, its more like once grand colonial burial ground you come across in cantonments that is abandoned is in state of neglect and since it is to do with dead people keep a reverent distance, it is true to kolkata. There are some buildings in Kolkata that is like roman colosseum, so precarious you might think it will collapse the very instance. Newer buildings look in desperation to shed the skin of old surroundings that they end up gaudy. Kolkata live in extremities, traffic rage-contented Hooghly, appalling-dignified, loud-melodious so on.I was staying in a lodge (so dirty that i refused to switch on the toilet light...on my return i stayed in a better but costly place) in the chaos of Howrah, it is a kind of place where things can go from bad to worst in matter of seconds, so one has to be constantly vigilant- lapse can go severe. I took a taxi-ubiquitous yellow coloured cavernous ambassador-and was at Botanical garden at about six thirty and witnessed people in various stages of mortified expressions, they call it morning exercise. Incidentally I always thought Botanical gardens are places to observe and cherish.
Must say i really don’t prefer this panting crowd so lazed around for few hours, it is between 8.30 to 10.30 that is the best time to be in any park since after the walkers next are amorous couples. The garden was silent and isolated by 9, and then by some cue emerged all the birds and squirrels (it was time for all things small and beautiful, i even saw a jackal!). What i liked about the garden is that they have cordoned off some land and left it to grow wild like a jungle...maybe others like Cubbon could do the same. Kolkata Botanical garden also has a huge banyan tree. It is good place to walk around with varieties of trees and plants i came back in the afternoon too. It is saddening that they haven’t been able to maintain it properly.
Fernando Pessosa: now that is what we call an incredible poet!!
Why did you give what i asked, holiness?
I know the truth, at last, of the real Being.
Would it had pleased God i should know less!
When i first read about Fernanado Pessosa (1888-1935) i just couldn’t believe it. The man did something incredible
. Pessosa wrote poetry under four names, one his own and three ‘heteronyms’ (not pseudonyms): Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Ries, Alvaro de Campos and himself. These three were imaginary poets with real poems and individuality in them, he even created distinct biography for each (incidentally i read in the Net that he had 72 heteronyms the above being more prominent!!. Genius is the most misused term these days but this man was really one. He was Einstein of poetry). It was an attempt to find self keeping the multiplicity intact. I really don’t think anyone else has tried this anywhere, this is something unique. Pessosa writes about how it happened “on the day when i finally desisted-it was 8th March 1914-i went over to a high desk and, taking a sheet of paper, began to write when i can. And i wrote thirty poems straight off, in a kind of ecstasy whose nature i cannot define. It was the triumphal day of my life, and i shall never be able to have another like it. I started with a title...and what followed was the apparition of somebody in me, to whom i at once gave the name Alberto Caeiro. Forgive me the absurdity of the phrase: my master had appeared in me. This was the immediate sensation i had”. Thirty poems straight off, quite stupendous must say.Born in Lisbon Pessosa wrote early poems in English without much success before shifting to Portuguese, he worked as a translator in a private firm earning his meagre living. He was active in literary circle for brief period and knew many including Mario de Sa Carniero a gifted poet who committed suicide. Nothing much was published in his lifetime and what was found after his death earn him the recognition as one of the greatest Portuguese poet!!. Pessosa wrote (in Personal Notes) “I am now in full possession of the fundamental laws of literary art. Shakespeare can no longer teach me to be subtle, nor Milton to be complete. My intellect has attained a pliancy and a reach that enable me to assume any emotion i desire and enter at will into any state of mind. For that which it is ever an anguish and an effort to strive for, completeness, no book at all can be an aid.”. (The portrait of Pessosais by Almada Negreiros, 1954)
Why, O Holy One
Why, O, Holy One, did you spill your word
Over my life?
Why does my false start have to have
This crown of thorns, the truth about the world?
Formerly i was wise and had no cares,
Listened, at day’s end, to the homing cows,
And the farmland was solemn and primitive.
Now that i have become truth’s slave,
The gall of having it is all i have.
I am an exile here and, dead, still live.
Cursed be the day on which i asked for knowledge!
More cursed the one that give it-for you did!
Where now is the unconsciousness-mine, early-
Which consciousness, like a suit, keeps hid?
I know, now, almost all and am left sighing...
Why did you give what i asked, Holiness?
I know the truth, at last, of the real Being.
Would it had pleased God i should know less!
Portuguese Ocean
Salt laden sea, how much of all your salt
Is tears of Portugal
For us to cross you, how many sons may kept
Vigil in vain, and mothers wept!
lived as old maids how many brides-to-be
till death, that might be ours, sea!
Was it worth? It is worth while, all,
If the soul is not small.
Whoever means to sail beyond the cape
Must double sorrow- no escape.
Peril and abyss has God to the sea given
And yet made it the mirror of heaven.
I want (i love this poem...how i wished i had written lines like these!!)
I want-unknown, and calm
Because unknown, and my own
Because calm-to fill my days
With wanting no more than them.
Those whom wealth touches-their skin
Itches with the gold rash.
Those whom fame breathes upon-
Their life tarnishes.
To those for whom happiness is
Their sun, night comes round.
But to one who hopes for nothing
All that comes is grateful.
Harvestwoman
But no, she’s abstract, is a bird
Of sound in the air of air soaring,
And her soul sings unencumbered
Because the song’s what makes her sing.
To be great, be entire
To be great, be entire: of what’s yours nothing
Exaggerate or exclude.
Be whole in each thing. Put all that you are
Into the least you do.
Like that on each place the whole moon
Shines, for she lives aloft.
Pessoa is no ordinary poet, as you read you grow with him, last few weeks i have been reading him on and off. Quite charming these poems. I strongly recommend readers of this blog to read him, i got this collection of poems from College Street Kolkata. I really loved the frivolous nature of this poem...
Newton’s Binomial Theory
Newton’s binomial theory is a beautiful as the Venus
of Milo.
The fact is, precious few people care.
O!O!O!O!--- O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O O!O!O!O!----
O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O! O!O!O!O!
(The wind out there.)
Pessoa undoubtedly was a brilliant guy but we ordinary mortals too go through these experiences sometimes, i for one surely have some understanding of that ecstatic state of ‘creative writing’...i recall about a decade back i was staying in Malpe beach, its been a week or two of reading and general roaming around, was lazing on the beach one afternoon, rushed back to the room and in a frenzy wrote five short story in three weeks straight without much break and gave framework to two more. I showed these to an English college teacher, i knew through an acquaintance in Udupi, the fellow gave me a thumbs down and told me to read Shakespeare (?!!), i did work on it further on my return to Delhi-i was stationed there-and have posted these in my story blog. ‘Beginning at the end’ is my favourite. Two of the Short Story i threw away at Malpe beach, i almost destroyed “First Love” (title influenced by one real crazy story by Becket) but read it again at the beach before tearing, somehow i liked it so kept it, in retrospect i think it is a decent effort. I think maybe i shouldn’t have torn away those two, i actually have torn away many pages like that, and have lost too in rain. Must say blogs do sometimes remove that discretion that is essential and you put some substandard stuff (i am referring to scribbles here)...but then what the heck it’s my blog!!. Having said i make it a point not to put something that really is quite atrocious, well you know it by reading it again after a day or two as a third person, quite a challenging task that one. Once satisfied i put it in my blog.
Readers could go to Short Story blog for more on the above mentioned Short Stories (i surely should be on a beach!!).
A scribble...
Next day
The world beyond what i comprehend
is a marvellous mystery
The threshold i cross once in a while
brings all the excitement
an insight, a sight,
an experience, a thought
a new electronic gadget
even an exotic ice cream flavour.
The lines are redrawn
the experience afflictions, insight attaches,
thoughts burden,
gadget another toy in the market.
Next day
here i go again...
