Yellow wagtails

The young and females of yellow wagtails vary quite widely. I am putting all yellow wagtails together, as you can see the above pic is that of a yellow wagtail while the lower one is that of yellow headed wagtail. A typical male is greenish above and yellow below. They are found on the ground preferably on damp grassy spots or pastures about the rivers feeding insects. These birds are winter migrants to peninsula from Himalayas.

Pictures were taken at Siruvani waterfalls near Coimbatore, only a part of the forest is open to tourists. Make sure you don’t go early. I was here by 7am but it opens only at 10, roamed around the village for few hours (next junction has some education institution, one run by Chinmaya foundation others by evangelist groups). To reach the waterfall you have to walk about 2-3kms through the jungle, tribal settlements could be seen. A man in two-wheeler gave me lift. He happened to be a toddy tapper based in Palakad, comes to Coimbatore once in 6months for ‘purchase’. He said he makes it a point to visit different tourist sites every time he comes to Coimbatore. These are only few occasions he comes out of kerala, he keenly observed some plants. I offered him some money on the way back (I tagged on to him since there weren’t anyone around, and had a lurking feeling of being unsafe, further it was suggested by the guards since elephants were common) but he refused, shocking considering how easily he could have capitalized the opportunity. Marketer would say “geez what the world has come to. No enterprise”. In West they encourage children to make money quite early; quantifying actions as labor for money, otherwise it is classified as voluntary. I guess they cannot live without classifying action!

Charles Bukowski: an endearing poet

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) lived a life of a vagabond, moving from one job to another before settling down at US postal service- longest steady job lasting three years!. A menial job but gave him ample time to write, poems were being published in different journals on a regular basis, a massive collection of 40 volumes of poems is what he left

As The Poems Go
as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little


His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase
Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.

Bukowski has delightful use of invectives, his irreverence vaguely reminds me of Kolatkar. Slur in poems are rare and needs deft handling so as to not reduce it to crass. I don’t recall bursting out into laughter after reading any poem in recent times. This poem 8counts did it. Charming!. Charles Bukowski has become one of my favorite poets. It is a great find thanks to internet. Oh by the way Bukowski was hell of a punter!!.

8 counts
From my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
My typewriter is
tombstone
still.
And I am
reduced to bird
watching.
Just thought I‘d
let you
know,
fucker.

Having the flue and with nothing else to do

I read a book about John Doss Passos and according to
the book once radical- communist
John ended up in Hollywood hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal

this seem to happen all to often.

what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being an young conservative to becoming an
old wild ass-radical

however:
young conservatives always seem to be old
conservatives.
It’s a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.

but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped a mental
institution

such is our politics and you can have it
all

keep it

sail it up your
ass


Back to the machine gun

I awaken about noon and go out to get the mail
in my old torn bathrobe.
I'm hung over
hair down in my eyes
barefoot
gingerly walking on the small sharp rocks
in my path
still afraid of pain behind my four-day beard.

the young housewife next door shakes a rug
out of her window and sees me:
"hello, Hank!"
god damn! it's almost like being shot in the ass
with a .22

"hello," I say
gathering up my Visa card bill, my Pennysaver coupons,
a Dept. of Water and Power past-due notice,
a letter from the mortgage people
plus a demand from the Weed Abatement Department
giving me 30 days to clean up my act.

I mince back again over the small sharp rocks
thinking, maybe I'd better write something tonight,
they all seem
to be closing in.

there's only one way to handle those motherfuckers.

the night harness races will have to wait.

This poem “As The Sparrow” is one of the best I have read in recent times. So is “Cause and Effect”, “A smile to remember”. How much I love these poems

As The Sparrow

To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures
lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.
Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.

Cause and effect

The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
to get away
from
them

A smile to remember

We had goldfish and they circled around and around
In the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
Covering the picture window
and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: It’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continue to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.

My mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Bukowski wrote somewhere that "My contribution was to loosen and simplify poetry, to make it more human... I taught them that you can write a poem the same way you can write a letter, that a poem can even be entertaining, and that there need not be anything necessarily holy about it."

Don’t we all agree with that?

The ubiquitous Black Kite

One of the most abundant birds, these magnificent birds are effortless fliers, the distinguishing forked tails are used are rudders. They avoid densely forested areas and thrive along human habitation, it shares a parasitic relation. A fearless scavenger they make patrolling flights in circles with long leisurely strokes and short glides before sweeping onto the food, that is held with the claws and transported to the mouth in flight. Bigger pieces are savored at leisure after alighting on a favorite perch. In case there are several kites in the vicinity of food it leads to immense action accompanying typical shrill mewing screams (in Hindi they are referred to as cheel from these calls). They could be seen floating in the sky on a clear day, the reason paper toys are named after them.

Kumalau Tamali: The soul of a nation

Papua New Guinea (PNG) literature is considered to be one of the oldest indigenous creative expressions of Pacific. PNG consist of about 600 small islands with about 6million people, an organized and documented output began only in 1960s with education becoming popular.

By 1970s the antagonist atmosphere towards colonialism provided incubative atmosphere for many nationalist writings, these lines from one of the best known writer: Waiko (The Unexpected Hawk) captures the sentiments of a nascent uncomprehending traditional society and its attempts in understanding the technologically superior and culturally arrogant outsiders. After the police has burnt down a village whose people had refused to comply with a government order to move to become part of a single large village:

Son: Why do they treat us like this?
Mother: No one knows why. We do not understand them, and they do not try to understand us. But every tree has its roots deep down in the ground. Even their actions must have roots. I want you to go to school, so that you can dig out the roots. Do not hesitate to uproot their tree and drink their wisdom.

There is an interesting take on war between the Australians and Japanese in PNG by Vincent Eri in Crocodiles –one of the first novels to be published from PNG: ‘It seemed a silly idea that the white men and the yellow men should come to Papua to fight one another. Still, there was no clear story about the reasons why they were fighting one another’. How much I love these lines. Real history is about what people think about wars and not who fought whom. Another line I came across “Colonisers gave names to our land, they named mountains, rivers, seas and other landmarks as if we did not have any names for these places” (Tuhiwais)
These lines from Kasaipwalova's poem "Reluctant Flame"

Cold bloodless masks stare me, not for my colour
But for my empty wealth house and passion logic

Look how orderly fat and silent they float this earth
With their guns, their airplanes, their cyclone
Wheels and their bishops

It is quite a long poem with 200 odd lines and considered one of the most influential writings against colonialism around the world. In the same poem

Each day the weighty cover shrieks arrogantly
Vowing to crush and smother the tiny flame within that
pulse
I will call my ancestors and all the spirits of my
grounds and waters
Inside each mountain lies a tiny flame cradled and
weighted above
People will live, people will die
But the tiny flame will grow its arms and legs very
slowly
Until one day its volcanic pulse will tear the green
mountain apart…

Forerunner among these protests towards Australian occupation was poet Kumalau Tamali. Tamali (1947-2006) was born in Tawi, a little island on the south coast of the Manus District. He had a career as teacher and pastor. Even respected and restrained poets like him couldn’t avoid using violent expression against colonizers (there is so much of anger in these words) in The Bush Kanaka Speaks, he writes

The kiap shouts at us
forcing the veins to stand out in his neck
nearly forcing the excreta out of his bottom
he says: you are ignorant

He says: you are ignorant,
but can he shape a canoe,
tie a mast, fix an outrigger?
Can he steer a canoe through the night
without losing his way?
Does he know when a turtle comes ashore
to lay its eggs?

In the same poem, he continues

Every white man the gorment sends to us
forces his veins out shouting
nearly forces the excreta out of his bottom
shouting: you bush kanaka.
He says: you ol les man!
Yet he sits on a soft chair and does nothing
just shouts, eats, drinks, eats, drinks,
like a woman with a child in her belly.
These white men have no bones.

“Bush kanaka” was degrading reference to indigenous people. Evidences suggest that indigenous people lived in PNG for thousands of years. Writes Tamali after PNG wins independence from colonial rule I have come from 50000 years so they think. Others say I was born on 16 September, 1975. Let my arrows fly another 50000 years. Tawali’s poem uses innovative language, a mix of local in a carefree way. His poems also reflected his concern over the destiny of his land and country.

Niu
You are the baby that crawls
too long.
All the others are walking
what has your mother been doing with you?
Have you been carried too long?
Have you been fed too much?
... One day nobody will be around
and you will have to carry weight
if you can't
you will fall.

Niu translates as coconut. Tawali is not only speaking about the struggle of a young coconut shoot, but he is referring to nationhood, or Niugini, in Tok Pisin (an indigenous language). In an interview Tawali mentions "The word "niu" means coconut in my language. In fact you are right when you say that it's an allegory for "New Guinea”.

Tamali’s environmental concerns were well known, he writes: The crucial questions one may wish to pose are, should we open every commercially viable mine now ? Or, if we think of our forests, should we cut down every commercially valuable tree now ? For whom are we mindlessly and heartlessly doing this ? This gold, copper or log rush is not for us, it is for those who greedily want to devour our heritage, before we become aware of it. Our environment is like the outer layer of our skin. When we strip it off, we render ourselves vulnerable. Conservation and stewardship have their own merit. We would be wise indeed for our own good and the good of future generations if we did not open every mine and cut down every tree for commercial purposes.
Russel Soaba writes a poem on Tamali’s death that captured the mood of people of PNG…

A Tribute to Kumalau Tawali
His name is echoed over and over again.
Through a tribesman's heartbeat
Through the beat of the garamut
Or a crescendo of waves cascading along the shores of PNG

Sometimes you hear his name whispered
Across the silence of the ocean
Especially when the moon is high
And the turtles are on shore
Gently kicking sand in the air
But spoiling for a fight to survive

But most times you hear his name mentioned
In the classroom
And at orientation meetings
When a new batch of young men and women
Comes to colleges and universities
To study to learn and to write.

That is Kumalau Tawali.
And that is how he is known
Here in PNG
And all over the world.

In reality he is the soul of the nation.

Tamali’s other popular poem includes The Game Upon the Sand, Take This Flower and The River Flows Back

Wire tailed Swallow

Wire tailed Swallow have a characteristic long wire like shaft to the outer pair of tail-feathers. Sexes are alike, except that the wire is shorter in the female. Top of the head bright chestnut ; sides of the head and neck and the whole upper plumage glossy steel-blue. Invariably found near water these birds are fond of canals, the above was spotted around the canal in Srirangapatanam (near Mysuru). They perch on power lines, bridge parapet and as a rule avoid perching on trees. They descend on ground only to collect mud for nest that is made under the culverts of bridge or under roof or under shelves of rock. These birds are also known to feed the young on flight.

Li Po: The living is a passing traveler

Li Po was an ancient Chinese poet (tang poet), he was referred to as ‘wandering poet’ as he traveled various places and wrote poems, later he found favor with imperial court but court plotter worked against him and he found himself arrested and sentenced to death that was later commuted to banishment. He became a Taoist, his poems reflected the nuances of human relation as also abundance of Nature.

He was a close friend of the poet Du Fu, to whom he addressed the following lines:

Here! is this you on the top of Fan-kuo Mountain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?

How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!

You must have been suffering from poetry again.

Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,

And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.

Which was the real—the butterfly or the man?

Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?

The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea

Returns in time to the shallows of a transparent stream.

The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,

Was once the Prince of the East Hill.

So must rank and riches vanish.

You know it, still you toil and toil—what for?

The Old Dust

The living is a passing traveler;

The dead, a man come home.

One brief journey between heaven and earth,

Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.

The rabbit in the moon pounds the elixir in vain;

Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.

Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word

While the green pines feel the coming of the spring.

Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.

What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?

These lines from the poem Nefarious War

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;

The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,

While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,

Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.

So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,

And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms

Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns

Common Iora

Common Iora is a small sized greenish yellow bird that has a distinctive two white bars across its wings. A garrulous bird that keeps itself busy in the bushes of thick foliaged trees found at the edges of forests. During breeding season it is known to make some striking displays. A common bird but must say quite difficult to take a snap, the above has not come properly but as and when I am able to capture better pictures I intend to replace it. Till then the readers will have to do with these pictures!. These birds have many subspecies with the variations in the plumage.

Amy Lowell: We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons
Amy Lowell (1874-1924) was an American poet who was known for her contribution to Imagist movement (along with Ezra Pound). This i read about her in the net that i thought was interesting "She never attended college because her family did not consider that proper for a woman, but she compensated with avid reading and near-obsessive book-collecting". Apart from some excellent poems she is also known for her biography of Yeats.
This para from the preface she wrote to Sword Blades and Poppy seed

I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, of no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung!

The Painter on Silk

There was a man
Who made his living
By painting roses
Upon silk.

He sat in an upper chamber
And painted,
And the noises of the street
Meant nothing to him.

When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums,
He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses
Bursting in the sunshine,
And smiled as he worked.

He thought only of roses,
And silk.
When he could get no more silk
He stopped painting
And only thought
Of roses.

The day the conquerors
Entered the city,
The old man
Lay dying.
He heard the bugles and drums,
And wished he could paint the roses
Bursting into sound.

These lines from A London Thoroughfare. 2AM

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city;
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.

Happiness
Happiness, to some, elation;
Is, to others, mere stagnation.
Days of passive somnolence,
At its wildest, indolence.
Hours of empty quietness,
No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,
Effervescent, superfine.
Full of tang and fiery pleasure,
Far too hot to leave me leisure
For a single thought beyond it.
Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it
Means to give one's soul to gain
Life's quintessence. Even pain
Pricks to livelier living, then
Wakes the nerves to laugh again,
Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.
Although we must die to-morrow,
Losing every thought but this;
Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.

The Tree of Scarlet Berries
The rain gullies the garden paths
And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades.
A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist.
Even so, I can see that it has red berries,
A scarlet fruit,
Filmed over with moisture.
It seems as though the rain,
Dripping from it,
Should be tinged with colour.
I desire the berries,
But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns.
Probably, too, they are bitter.

This poem “A Ballad of Footmen” is my favorite; it is a strong statement against war…I loved this “all bent on killing, because of their ‘of courses’”. Brilliant.

Now what in the name of the sun and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?

Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?

Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"

Are not quite the same. All these men by the ears,
And nine nations of women choking with tears.

It is folly to think that the will of a king
Can force men to make ducks and drakes of a thing

They value, and life is, at least one supposes,
Of some little interest, even if roses

Have not grown up between one foot and the other.
What a marvel bureaucracy is, which can smother

Such quite elementary feelings, and tag
A man with a number, and set him to wag

His legs and his arms at the word of command
Or the blow of a whistle! He's certainly damned,

Fit only for mince-meat, if a little gold lace
And an upturned moustache can set him to face

Bullets, and bayonets, and death, and diseases,
Because some one he calls his Emperor, pleases.

If each man were to lay down his weapon, and say,
With a click of his heels, "I wish you Good-day,"

Now what, may I ask, could the Emperor do?
A king and his minions are really so few.

Angry? Oh, of course, a most furious Emperor!
But the men are so many they need not mind his temper, or

The dire results which could not be inflicted
With no one to execute sentence, convicted

Is just the weak wind from an old, broken bellows.
What lackeys men are, who might be such fine fellows!

To be killing each other, unmercifully,
At an order, as though one said, "Bring up the tea."

Or is it that tasting the blood on their jaws
They lap at it, drunk with its ferment, and laws

So patiently builded, are nothing to drinking
More blood, any blood. They don't notice its stinking.

I don't suppose tigers do, fighting cocks, sparrows,
And, as to men—what are men, when their marrows

Are running with blood they have gulped; it is plain
Such excellent sport does not recollect pain.

Toll the bells in the steeples left standing. Half-mast
The flags which meant order, for order is past.

Take the dust of the streets and sprinkle your head,
The civilization we've worked for is dead.

Squeeze into this archway, the head of the line
Has just swung round the corner to 'Die Wacht am Rhein'.

Something I scribbled the other day

Leezzaarrd!!

Don’t know why they call a lizard a gecko
must be the way it sounds
short guttural dismissive
unlike blustery confidential leezzaarrd

Miniatures of Jurassic era
wriggles its nervous tail
wipes its tongue over bulging eyes
translucent gluttonous frame
like cheap chinese toy
haggled for in the crowded market
adorn the wall
the bigger one chased by smaller and smallest
frozen in a reverse evolutionary hunt
until the glue give away
and they tumble one after the other
and gamely wait to be arranged again.

The Ceylon Frogmouths

The Ceylon Frogmouth (now also referred to as Srilankan Frogmouth) is a nocturnal bird endemic to Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. Found in dense forests these are large headed birds that has huge frog like gape and large flattened hooked bills that is used to swoop on insects during night. Female are rufous while males are grey. These species sit upright on low branches during day, brilliantly camouflaged and look as if part of branch. It needs discerning eyes to locate even when few feet away. Absolutely amazing. They sat staring as if they think they are not been located, my guide a sensitive fellow asked me not to use flash (after my first click, the above pic) and disturb them. He reminded we are intruding into their sleep, i regretted my transgression. We took care not to make any noise and push the branches around as delicately as possible to get better view.

Of the 13 Frogmouth species found in the world, only two belong to India. The other is found in the Himalayas.

Reggie Siriwardena: Renaissance man from Sri Lanka

Reggie Siriwardena (1922-2004, later Regi, earlier Reginald) was one of the foremost Srilankan intellectual, critic, journalist, teacher, novelist, playwright and a humanist, and yes he also happen to write some excellent poems!!. When he turned eighty he wrote this line, the angst of violent nation that was loosing its promising young

scandalous at eighty years to walk
the earth where younger better people now are dust and ashes

Regi Siriwardena also collaborated in the introduction of a controversial new English literature syllabus to the consternation of the conservatives he included the lyrics of Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind and replaced Shakespeare. He was convinced of the unsuitability of Shakespeare at school level. Even for university students, he abolished Shakespeare for first year students. Once, while discussing English in the schools, he commented, This school Shakespeare competition has become the literary equivalent of the Royal-Thomian match. He also analyzed English and Sinhala text books for racist bias towards the minority communities. He noted and documented these prejudiced texts and highlighted that these promoted hatred towards the minorities in general and Tamils in particular. These texts published by the state were harming ethnic relations it was pointed out. As a journalist he covered the culture as also the international section (he wrote about astronomy for children too). He learned Russian and translated many works into Sinhala (noted for Anna Akhmatova and Pushkin).

His creations were hinged in torment of colonial humiliation of native culture and yearning for self respect for its people and universal aspiration. In his poem “Colonial Cameo”, he speaks of a father who made him read Macaulay and admire Napoleon and a mother who spoke only Sinhala. He remembers the day she took him to school and leaving she said “Gihing Enang” (sinhala) to a peal of giggles from his class mates (it was anglicized school). Reggie writes
My mother pretended not to hear that insult.
The snobbish little bastards!
But how can blame them?
That day I was deeply ashamed of my mother.
Now, whenever I remember,
l am ashamed of my shame.

Another poem from “Waiting for the soldier"

After the Roman army took
a soldier, in the midst of looting and raping,
stopped when he saw a Greek bent over
figures inscribed in the sand. Gaping,
the Roman watched his strange absorption
in that magic of lines and circles. He
(not looking up at the soldier) said," Move
With your shadow there it's hard to see"
The soldier hit him on the head, and so
Archimedes died. If, then, today
I turn more and more to this ordered world
of sixty four squares, to the mimic play
of forces in a field where nobody bleeds;
where in the intervals of the game my silent friend
won't annoy me by spouting racist drivel
or Marxist simplicities; if the chief end
of life at present seems to find
an infallible answer to the French Defence
(my opponent's favourite opening ), don't say
I am escaping. In a world without sense
one must look for meaning wherever one
can find it-if only, perhaps, for a day
or two. I know the Roman soldier-
in one shape or another-is on the way.

Continuing with his last poem that he wrote when he turned eighty these evocative lines
To have existed while the planet made
eighty revolutions round the sun is no
achievement, but I must confess I am
rather surprised to find myself still here.
It’s scandalous at eighty years to walk
the earth where younger, better people now
are dust and ashes,
who died of violence and had much more
to give -Rajini, Richard, Neelan
makes it embarrassing to be alive

In the same poem he writes

But I shouldn’t complain: to compensate.
I have acquired immunity to other
infections - post - modernism, for one.
And free verse, for another. I’m glad, too,
I never caught, as my late brother did.
The Sinhala nationalist flu. An early shot
Of Marxism, perhaps, took care of that.

Also some fun and premonition of his impending death

By time's mere flux, I am called to play the part
Of patriarch I am unfitted for.
But not for long, I hope. When the time comes,
Ajith, Prince of Obituarists, will write,
I know, a graceful piece - measured, as always,
And free of flattery or fulsomeness.

I don't believe there is judgment after death,
Or penal court of Yama: If there were,
And I were called to account, what could I say
In mitigation of sentence, but stammer,
"P-please sir, I tried not to be p-pompous ever,
P-pretentious, Sir, incomprehensible,
or b-boring". Would the judge pronounce severely;
"A frivolous trifler! He deserves no mercy,
I sentence him to fifty years of torture
Translating into Serbo-Croat the texts
Of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha!"

Ashy Prinia

A delightful little bird that can found in open field that has patches of bushes, it is a frequent visitor to gardens (atleast in the pre pollution era!) and can be seen on low uncertain flight from one bush to another. Small bird with long tail they have ashy brown upperparts and lower warm buffy. I have observed this bird many times but only recently able to take the snaps. I was at Art of Living (run by Sri Sri Ravishankar) on the outskirts of Bangaluru with the specific intention of capturing wildlife (did spot a well fed rat snake) walked up to the lake and around but couldn’t spot many birds, after the breakfast (they provide free food, I am a big fan of free food!!) while I walked across the garden in the front of the main mediation hall that I spotted Ashy Prinia busy searching food, it was a spectacular sight against bed of green grass. This was the only bird I could photograph in the whole trip but must say was worth it.

In my mid twenties I did travel around different ashrams in the country and so on, indeed I spent much of my time in Rishikesh (I still love that place, it is quite vibrant), I look for intellectual stimulation -what is referred to as Gyana marga and never been comfortable in Bhakti marga, the latter is where you find many charlatans. There are some genuine gurus too, though I was quite cynical of these people (famously Sai Baba, Mata Amruthanandamayi so on) some experience taught me that they have created a positive space and have considerably helped underprivileged people, so even if there maybe some minor transgression that get sensationalized by media sleaze I tend to look at the overall context of their contribution and find myself rather quite insignificant to even comment, it easy to find fault but think of millions of contended people. I have listened to almost all gurus those who have influenced me include Ramanna Maharishi, Swami Chinmayananda, Jiddu Krishnamurthi and most significantly Osho (quite a sharp fellow that one…what I liked about him was you can call him an adorable asshole!!. I haven’t met anyone so sharp and precise, one moment he could be on the pinnacle of enlightened thoughts the very next he comes out with some hilarious crap. It is juxtaposing these that made sense to me. A reminder that there is no all nice world, indeed such a world would be sickening. Intellectually I would rate Naipaul in the same category: unpleasant brutal truth told as brutally that it shocks and you are in awe, there is no compromise it is like a Zen slap. Clinical and profound).

I recall spending a night at Ramakrishna mission in Chennai in early 1990s (after doing some crap that I felt intensely guilty about), mylapore was such a beautiful place those days (now it overruns with vehicles and barricades). I carried a copy of Bhagvad Gita (with interpretation by Chinmayananda) when I landed in Delhi and would refer it quite often. An old man (the head of institute I used to visit to take occasional classes in evening at Karol Bagh) had a heart attack and was prescribed bed rest; I gave the copy to him. I was free!!.

I wrote these on the way back from recent visit to Western Ghats…

The dawn

I started the day early
and visited the trees
the birds were there
so were the bees.
The chill in the air
doubled the mirth
the eastern sky flare
gave out the joy
that the clouds carry
in little knots.
Not a penny
not a diamond
can the amazement buy.

On Trogon trail

It was one of the thickest forests still humid from night rain the heavy forecast sky had made the noon eerily dark add to it an information from the locals that king cobra was spotted on the very vicinity where my bird guide and me where in hot pursuit of Malabar trogon. A dull single tone call had alerted us, following the sound, intermittently waiting for it to repeat and adjusting our path through the undergrowth (also sucked by leeches and getting a bleeding cut on head from an ominously thorny branch-must say the omen was missed!!) we finally got the glimpse of the elusive Malabar Trogon. This bird has a peculiar defense mechanism of allowing the duller side of it to the observer and keeping still, they can like owls turn their face 180 degrees and they sit as if hunched, the moment it sense the intruder it flies to nearby branch facing the other way and so we followed, it was as if we were being led, and then it hops to the further branch. It was getting quite tiresome after an hour I declared it is futile and next to impossible to get the front view pictures but my guide was an optimistic fellow and some encouraging words we continue the chase but eventually it was spoiled by group of happy noisy hornbills.

Malabar Trogon has black head that is separated by a white ring from the bright crimson underside, the back is dull chestnut, black wings and serrated tails. These birds live exclusively on insects. They have heterodactyl toe (backward toe) arrangement and like woodpeckers can be seen clinging to branches when foraging for insects. The word "trogon" is a Greek term for nibbling as these birds gnaw holes in trees to make their nests.

Though I wasn’t able to take the photos of front view I did glimpse it, mine mine it looks as if the bird is on fire no wonder in Malayalam it is referred to as fire crows. It was worth the chase. I guess readers will have to do with these photos…well I cannot help it when the bird shows so much of nakhras !!

Marianne Moore: Literalist of the imagination

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) poems are notable for sharpness of detail, keen observation. Sometimes difficult to read they pose a challenge to the readers, she understood the power of words. To those who complained that her poetry often seemed obscure, she once replied that something that was work to write ought to be work to read. Fond of nature her imagery seemed hinged to her surroundings but pointing to profound just as in this poem “Nevertheless” what a brilliant line this one…

What is there like fortitude! What sap went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

A trivia: she was big fan of Muhammad Ali !!!. Also that she was asked to suggest names for a car brand…she came out with amazingly ridiculous ones like Resilient Bullet, Ford Silver Sword, Mongoose Civique, Varsity Stroke and yes the clincher Utopian Turtletop....all were rejected!!

Nevertheless

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

The fish

wade
through black jade
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices–
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice–
all the physical features of
ac-
cident–lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is
dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.

Silences

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences.

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry