Brahminy Mynas: the temple bird

Brahminy Mynas used to be so very common once upon a time, and here I am searching for weeks and months and then chance upon one in the outskirts of Bangalore. A handsome looking bird with black tuft and penetrating eyes they are found (or should I say “used to be found”) in groups. I am wondering since these birds too are omnivorous why they aren’t found in abundance in cities as is the case with common myna.

The name Sturnia pagodarum is from its early abundance in and around temple domes ‘pagodas’ in south India. Not strictly arboreal they could be seen foraging on the ground. 

Desanka Maksimovic: I seek amnesty 

Through night and moisture

Wild geese go south

Crying in painful glory.

I feel like writing

A dark story:

Them carrying away

On their two white wings

I don’t know where,

I don’t know what

Of my soul’s dearest things

That was the English translation of Serbian poem “Migratory Birds” by Desanka Maksimovic (1898 –1993), a professor of literature and a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her poetry dealt with love and patriotism, exuding youthful enthusiasm yet they were serious and sensitive. A very popular figure, so much so they made a statute of her and installed it in centre of the city despite her fervent protests. It is said that the Serbian language is best sung in the poems of Desanka Maksimovic.

 When she heard of German soldiers shooting primary school children in Kragujevac, she wrote "Krvava Bajka" ("A Bloody Fairy Tale"), a poem that speaks of the terror practiced by German army in World War II. The poem was not published until after the war had ended. 

Bloody fairy tale

It happened in a land of farmers on hilly Balkan

far, far away;

a troop of students

died martyred

on one single day.

They were all born

in the same year.

For all of them, the school days were the same:

They were all taken

to the same festivals with cheer,

they were all vaccinated

until the last name,

and they all died on the same day.

It happened in a land of farmers on hilly Balkan

far, far away;

a troop of students

died martyred

on one single day.

And only fifty-five minutes

prior the death moment,

a small troop of fidgets

sat beside their school desks

solving the same hard math quest:

“If a traveler goes by foot,

how much time he needs to rest...”

and so on.

Their thoughts were filled

with same figures and tags

and there was a countless amount

of senseless As and Fs

in their notebooks and in their bags.

They were squeezing

a whole bunch of secrets that mattered--

either patriotic or a love letter--

on the bottom of their pockets.

And everyone of them supposed

that he would for a long time,

for a very, very long time

run under the blue sky--

until all math quests on the world

were done and gone by.

It happened in a land of farmers on hilly Balkan

far, far away;

a troop of students

died martyred

on the same day.

Whole rows of boys

took each other’s hands

and leaving the last school class

went to the execution quietly,

as the death was nothing but a smile.

All friends in rows were,

at the same moment,

lifted up to the eternal domicile. 

I don’t have any more time

I don’t have any more time for long sentences,

I have no time for negotiations,

I type messages like telegrams,

I don’t have time to ignite flame,

now I bury handfuls of dying fire.

I don’t have any more time for pilgrimage,

the path to estuary is suddenly getting shorter,

I have no time to look back and return,

I don’t have any more time for small things,

Now is time to think about eternal and unembraceable.

I have no time to think on crossroads,

I can arrive only somewhere close.

I don’t have time to study anything,

now I don’t have time for analysis,

for me water is just water

as if I had drank it from a well;

I have no time to split the sky into pieces,

I see it as children see it.

I don’t have any more time for foreign gods,

I haven’t even got to know mine well.

I have no time to adopt new commandments,

the old ten are already too much for me.

I don’t have any more time to join

those that are proving the truth.

I have no time to fight against chasers.

I have no time to dream, to walk slowly.

Joy

I no longer watch the hands turn,

nor track the sun’s hot path;

day is here when his eyes return,

and night again when they depart.

Joy does not mean laughter, and

his yearning outweighing mine;

joy to me is when we’re silent,

and our hearts in tandem chime.

I do not rue that life’s rivers

will carry off my own life’s drop;

now blast youth and all to smither’s;

enthralled beside me he has stopped

I seek amnesty

FOR THE NAIVE

For those who believe

that all are equal,

poor and rich,

weak and strong,

the untired and the untiring prisoner,

the armless and the man with both arms,

the absolved and the man who has lost his faith,

the invited

and the one who waits at the door,

for them, for myself,

for everyone,

I seek amnesty.

There are many more beautiful poems of her that can be found in the net, this blogger requests all the readers of this blog to go through them

From my scribble pad…

The coral jasmine at the temple courtyard

(ambalanadayile parijatha pushpam)

The lone coral jasmine at the temple courtyard

has an expression of amusement

at the passing devotees.

The boy in blue shirt rather watch

the flower’s merriment in the passing zephyr

despite mother’s insistence.

The black Ibis

Black ibis is quite a common bird that could be found in groups in marshy land or irrigated farms, unlike other ibis it is not very aquatic and could be found in pairs in open grassland. Spotted this one on the outskirts of Bangalore. 

   

Rene Maria Rilke: To see into the life of things

My indebtedness towards Kendra Sahitya Akademi (and Central Secretariat Library, to some extend JNU library) is rather significant –one wonders how detrimental was Delhi summer since damp coldness that ensconced dark alleys of these libraries was no less inviting!! It is in here I came to know Rilke. Rilke is a celebration of beauty of visible real world and invisible reality. The Letters to Young Poet in which he expounds his understanding of aesthetics is a must read. Here are few lines  

  

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature.

In another letter he writes…

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentation, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

What amazing lines these…

As bees gather honey, so we collect what is sweetest out of all things and build Him. Even with the trivial, with the insignificant (as long as it is done out of love) we begin, with work and with the repose that comes afterward, with a silence or with a small solitary joy, with everything that we do alone, without anyone to join or help us, we start Him whom we will not live to see, just as our ancestors could not live to see us. And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time.

Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Joseph Maria Rilke was born prematurely on December 4, 1875and was so weak that his parents had to wait a fortnight before they dared to take him to the Church down the street for his christening. The previous year a daughter had died a week after her birth, and so Rilke’s mother watched over this newborn with excessive care. In fact, part of his names-Rene and Maria-was mother's attempt to lend him a female identity. For five years, until he went to school, she dressed him like a girl against his father's ineffectual opposition. "I had to wear beautiful long dresses," Rilke recalled many years later, "and until I started school I went about like a little girl. I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll."

His father couldn’t become an army officer that led to lots of problems and as a mature man Rilke glossed over his father's failures, pretending that his father had actually become an officer "following a family tradition" and describing his later career as occupying a rather high position" as a civilian working for a private railroad. In the descriptive poem composed at the time of his father's death in 1906, "Portrait of My Father as a Young Man," he depicted his father in full military regalia, thus dressing him up as well!

Portrait of my Father as a Young Man

 

In the eyes: dream. The brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the lips, a great
freshness--seductive, though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer's uniform:
the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it, going nowhere, calm
and now almost invisible, as if they
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the rest so curtained within itself,
so cloudy, that I cannot understand
this figure as it fades into the background--.

Oh quickly disappearing photograph
in my more slowly disappearing hand.

Some of his other poems…

Buddha in Glory 

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

 A Walk

 

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Again and Again

 

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Falling Stars

 

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

Sunset

 

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

From my scribble pad…

The stray cat at the door

I am complete as life could be

the platter of the rain is mine

the shimmer of noon sun is mine.

Desires open me as much as it shuts

The ripple at the center holds million pieces

I am intact, my movement confined

to shifting thoughts   

 

A tiny bird named Zitting Cisticola

A peculiar little bird –that was once referred to as Fantail warbler- about the size of sparrow found in plains and bushy terrain. It prefers a kind of sedentary lifestyle and therefore becomes difficult to spot, save for the fact of its amusing flight that draws attention. It shoots up and flies a distance and falls straight back into the bush. This bird makes a delicate and beautiful nest composed of cobwebs, growing grass and even vegetables. The chicks are known to make hissing noise –like that of a snake – when disturbed. 

The invincible Coorg of Western Ghats:

Chakke kari

Chada, chada, beva.

Kambala kari

Guda, guda, beva.

Translation

When the fruit of jack tree boils

It sings “chada chada”

When the kambala fruit boils

It sings “guda guda”

Very few Indians except maybe the Kannadigas know much about the Kodavas (Coorg). Unless of course if you have spend some time in Armed forces. Kodavas pride themselves for being warrior class. Coorg is a tiny district tucked away in the south west Karnataka bordering Kerala (this blogger had covered the yearly traditional family hockey -played between clans within Kodavas- almost 5years back). Coorg a fertile land with bounties of nature that kodava song or palame almost always opens with, expression of delight for the pleasant land they dwell that provide them with all material prosperity and comfort. 

Nothing higher can be seen,

Though one look through all the earth

Than the Mahameru hill.

Brightest amongst the flower trees

Is the brilliant Sampige.

So in all the fertile earth

Coorg a necklace is of gold.

Some children’s rhymes translated (it need be pointed out that all these poems are wonderful rhymes in original, that has playful nature embodied in its construction)

The fingers

The little finger nail is small,

The finger for the ring is gold,

The middle finger loves coins,

The fourth is Kotera,

The thumb is Murutika,

And both are gone for cheese.

Colors

The mother is black,

The daughter is white,

And the grand-daughter is like gold !

Little chickens

An old story, an old story !

Clever Brahman, an old story!

What shall i say?

I know none.

Little chickens! Little chickens !

Sing me a song!

What can i sing?

Pyong ! Pyong!

Coorg Huttari or Harvest Song

Sun and moon the season make,

Ruler over all the sky they take.

God is lord of heaven and earth.

All the joyous earnest toil

happy ryots give the soil,

our rich land is fully worth.

midst the beauteous forest trees

brightest to the eye that sees

is the brilliant Sampige

sweeter than sweetest rose,

purer than the mountain snows,

better than mere words may say

thus is Coorg the noblest land,

rich and bright as golden band

on the neck where youth doth stay

in this happy lovely realm

no misfortunes overwhelm.

Live and proper while you may !

“A stanza from different huthri

Come on, friends, lets all sing louder

Let all our bunches of canes clatter;

Come on sing all, louder and louder,

Let the gods in high heavens too hear”

Listen how the sound resounds all over,

The country’s cream of youth is here;

That one legged man too moves around,

Those squint eyed women and the blind.

Either in or off the field, all are dancing,

And a large crowd is excitedly watching”

The above song consist of words that rhymes with the rhythms of clattering cane sticks.

Gods here come from Kerala!!!

Iguthappa temple in Coorg is a prominent place of worship for Kodavas located near salubrious Kakkabe. Iguthappa the main deity of the temple is also the chief divinity for Kodavas, iggu in kodava is grain and thappa means to give. It looked like a temple that seems to evoke favor with snake gods.
Coorg is a pleasant place to roam around charmingly green and agreeable people. So while I was in Medikeri took a bus to Kakkabe, at a tea shop I asked a man, who not surprisingly happened to be a Malayali, about Iguthappa temple and presiding deity and so on. Since there was ample time –as the buses are infrequent in this part of the world –he got talking. He said, what I thought was a hilarious irony, gods here come from Kerala. He winked, probably realizing there is a humor here, and next few minutes narrated to me rather excitedly about Igguthappa who had left Kerala because he found the climate at Coorg agreeable (surely a godly enough reason!!), he was accompanied by his brothers and sister. Tired by walking for days they camped near Kakkabe, they milked the stray cow and with the rice they were carrying prepared payasam. They needed plate so they asked the owner of the property for plantain leaves who angered by the intrusion refused. Iguthappa did what gods are good at –atleast in this part of the world, he cursed. Henceforth no plantain will grow in the property; it remains so to this day. It is stuff that makes miracles I guess. All important dates are ascertained by the priest through Kerala Panchang system.

The bus halted at the dead end on the edge of the hill at the entrance of the temple, further up seemed like forest that I came to know later was Aiyengeri forest. The surroundings of the temple are sparsely inhabited by people who are into coffee and other plantations. There was a small crowd in the temple, seemed like monthly gathering or something of that sort. Famished and tired the free refreshments at the temple courtyard caught my unadulterated attention, after the fill I explored the place. You could mistake yourself to be in Kerala, the temple is in typical Kerala architect – that itself was influenced by early Buddhism. Deepastambam, vilakumadam so on, low lying triangular roof and space around the main shrine (chuttabalam) for people to rest. Like temples in Kerala devotees waited for the priest to open the nada and peek in from a rather narrow door. After an hour or so the deity was taken out for a procession around the shrine. Now this is where the Coorgy flavor overtakes and differ much from Kerala. As soon as the

idol is taken out for procession instead of stern demeanor the priest is expected to maintain, as is the case in Kerala temples -sometimes these are carried on elephants with accompaniments of nadaswaram and chenda in almost businesslike manner. The priest start a jig to my utmost consternation, he put a step here and a step there and rushed as abruptly, with the idol still mounted on his head, to one corner of the premise, while the acolytes cautioned the crowd to give way. As abruptly he started he halted at one end of the courtyard as a woman whispered her woes the priest was instant with his solution, others joined in. This went on for much of the noon as the priest circumnutated the devotees, halting for those in immediate need of favor. 

Lunch was arranged at the adjoining hall, devotees backed up as volunteers and everything handled in clockwork precision. After the lunch –spartan but delicious, I decided to walk back the verdant route, about a Km or two down caught up with a bus and was back in my hotel by the evening. Late into the night a thought start to pervade my mind…Coorg could be the place I might finally settle down!! But on a second thought you can only settle if you are unsettled!! 

From my scribble pad...

Little girl in the garden

She talks to the flowers

and to herself, and the damselfly

and all that there is to talk to

of course she realises

that language never been a barrier

everything right in its place to be picked.

and arranged into her world.

A gaiety the tiny body carries

much beyond herself,

one step back, a step in front

dance she beget and forgotten at the instance.

In the late noon of her life

when time has signalled its triumph

she will recall that everything was right in the garden

.

White-napped woodpecker: its family time!!

You would mostly find White-naped Woodpecker in groups comprising mostly of siblings or parents, sometimes even unrelated young ones which they are known to tutor. Seen in well wooded country they are quite active and loud. I am getting quite lucky with woodpeckers and this one might be the seventh or eighth specie I am writing in this site. Since then I am able to gather one more information about Woodpecker and that is they tap the wood-a hollow sound, also to let know their territory. 

Eugenio Montale: Bring me the sunflower that I may transplant it

Bring me the sunflower that I may transplant it

in my saline burned ground,

and that it might display all day to the blue expanses

of the sky the anxiety of its pale yellow face.

Things that are dark long for brightness,

the bodies exhaust themselves in a flowing

of colours: these become music. To fade away

is therefore a chance among chances.

Bring me the plant which leads

to where the blonde transparencies appear

and where life dissolves like essence;

bring me the sunflower insane with light.

One of the website i visit atleast once in a fortnight is the Nobel Prize website. It’s about some amazing people. Awards may or may not be important and there may be many brilliant people who may not have got awards but the fact remains that Nobel Prize winners are mostly some very remarkable people, who have done some amazing stuff. In my younger days despite problems and craps one face in life one thing i kept an eye on was who were the Nobel Prize winners and what they have done and its implications, as also what they have to say. Many a times i used to keep paper cutting, now of course internet has made it easier. And yes their speeches became important reference points, as also initiating myself into refined reading. 

It is while i was visiting the website the other day that i came across this Italian poet (must add Swedish poet Martinson about whom i wrote in my earlier blog was also a find from this website). Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) served as an Infantry officer during World War I, when he was asked to join the Fascist forces during late 1930s he quit public life and devoted his attention to translate Shakespeare and Eliot into Italian, in the meantime he wrote some wonderful poems. Montale once remarked, "I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me." 

The Lemons

Listen, the prize poets stroll

only among the trees

with uncommon names:

boxwood, privet, acanthus.

Me, I love roads that run out

among grassy ditches into

mud-puddles where kids

hunt skinny eels; lanes

that follow field-banks down

through beds of reeds and

end up in back gardens

among the lemon trees.

Best if the birds' chatter-prattle

is hushed, swallowed up

by the blue: then you'll hear

– clearer in the still air – the whisper

of companionable branches,

and catch a sense of that smell

that can't tear itself from earth,

drenching you in edgy pleasure.

Here, by some miracle, the battle

between one distracting passion

and another dies down, and here

even we who are poor

pick up our share of wealth –

and it's the scent of lemons.

Look, in these silences

which things sink into

and seem on the verge of

opening their closest secret,

you'd expect once in a while

to uncover some mistake

in nature, the world's still point,

some weak link, the loose thread

that leads us at last

to the heart of truth. Eyes

rummage in every corner:

the mind seeks agrees argues

with itself in this perfume

that floats – as day fades –

over everything; a silence

in which, in every dwindling

human shadow, a troubled

divinity could be seen.

But the image fades, and time

takes us back to the din of cities

where you see the sky only

in bits and pieces, off up

among the chimneys. Rain then

wears the earth out, dreary winter

settles down around the houses,

light grows miserly, the soul bitter,

till one day, through a half-

shut gate, you see

among the trees in someone's yard

the yellows of lemons –

and the heart's ice melts,

and with their music

the golden trumpets of sunshine

blow your bones wide open.

Do not ask us the word which in every way 

Do not ask us the word which in every way

our shapeless soul perhaps measures, and in letters of fire

may declaim it and shine like a crocus

lost in the centre of a dusty field. 

Ah! the man who goes away sure,

to others and to himself a friend,

and cares not about his shadow which the dog days

reflect across a plasterless wall!

Ask us not for the formula to open worlds for you,

only some syllable distorted and dry like a twig.

This alone is what we can tell you today,

that which we are not, that which we do not want.

Doubt

I was giving a lecture

to the "Friends of Cacania"

on the subject "Is Life Likely?"

when I remembered I

was totally agnostic,

love and hate in equal parts and the outcome

unsure, depending on the moment.

Then I decided five minutes

were enough--

two and a half for the thesis

two and a half for the antithesis

this was the only homage possible

for a man without qualities.

I spoke exactly thirty-five sconds.

And when I said

that yes and no were look alikes

shouts and whispers interrupted my talk

and I awoke. It was the most laconic dream

of my life, maybe the only one not devoid

of "quality."

Often I have encountered the evil of living

Often I have encountered the evil of living:

it was the strangled stream which gurgles,

it was the crumpling sound of the dried out

leaf, it was the horse weaty and exhausted. 

The good I knew not, other than the miracle

revealed by divine Indifference:

it was the statue in the slumber

of the afternoon, and the cloud, and the high flying falcon. 

I recall your smile, and it is for me a lucid water 

I recall your smile, and it is for me a lucid water

Discovered by chance between the pebbles,

a meagre mirror in which to watch a reflection of the ivy,

and with it all I embrace a quiet white sky.

Such is my memory; I would not know how to describe,

or distant from your face as it expresses the free, innocent spirit,

Or are you a wanderer who challenges the evil of the world

and who carriers his suffering with himself like a talisman.

But this I can say to you, that the memory of your image

engulfs the animosity in a big, calm wave,

and which your image brings to my vivid memory

Openhearted like the tip of a young palm…

Winter lingers on. The sun is doled out

Winter lingers on. The sun is doled out

with a dropper. Isn't it strange that we,

lords and perhaps inventors of the universe,

to understand a piece of it, must trust

the charlatans and soothsayers mushrooming everywhere?

It seems obvious the Gods

are beginning to tire of their presumptive

children or wards.

Even clearer that, Gods or demigods,

they in turn have quit

their employers, if they ever had any.

But. . .

The Wall

To lie in shadow on the lawn

By a crumbling wall, pale and withdrawn

And spy in the weeds the gliding snake

And hear the rustle blackbirds make –

To watch in the cracked earth and the grass

Battalions of red ants at drill,

That break and form ranks, pass and repass

In busy marches on some tiny hill –

To catch, each time the leaves blow free,

The faint and pulsing motion of the sea,

While ceaseless, tremulous and shrill,

The cicadas chatter on the bald hill –

Rising, to wander in bewilderment

With the sun's dazzle, and the sorry thought

How all our life, and all its labors spent,

Are like a man upon a journey sent

Along a wall that's sheer and steep and

endless, dressed

With bits of broken bottles on its crest.

From my scribbling pad.....

Mishap with the shaving razor 

Scrapped skin pinch a drop

of blood out the throbbing vein

from the dreary task of oxygen carriers

nano matters that cleave life from death

ferrous ignited RBCs glisten under the bulb.

Aeons ago,

Time, Space and Matter encounter the laws of nature

meanwhile supernovas billions of light years afar

let itself die and condense into an

arrangement that let butterfly hold its colours.

Is it a star or is it divine

that dance in my blood?