Asian Brown Flycatcher

One of the tiniest of birds, apart from sunbirds I have mentioned earlier in this blog, is actually a migratory. This little bird traverse all the way from Himalayas to Western Ghats, isn’t that incredible. It beats me every time I look at this bird, how do they do it?. Birds with large wing span do use thermals and that makes it relatively easier. Small birds with tiny wings flying thousands of kilometers is mind boggling, it is almost impossible. They are not really intimidated by human presence and indeed are quite confiding. But taking pictures was quite difficult, for its size and second they are quite active not as much as a sunbird though. They have a melodic song and are quite common in open woodlands.

David Dabydeen: Hear how a baai a taak like BBC !!

David Dabydeen, an Indo-Guyanese writer, editor, critic, poet, was born on a sugar estate in Berbice, Guyana in 1957 (“he grew up during a time when East Indian people could not attend school unless they had a Christian name. In fact, that era was popularly characterised by East Indian folks practicing both Hinduism and Christianity simultaneously. As such he would routinely attend church and go to the temple as well”). He was sent to England at the age of twelve. He won a scholarship to Cambridge University, completing his doctorate in 1982 (quite impressive!). During this time he came out with collections of poetry “Slave Songs”. He is the author of four novels, three collections of poetry and several works of non-fiction and criticism. I did go to British library to read any of his writings but unfortunately none available. All about him is through Net.

Dabydeen’s writing mainly focus on experiences of colonialism and migration. He makes particular use of Guyanese Creole, a dialect that blends African, French, Spanish, and Indian languages with English and contributes a great deal to the rhythms, rhymes, and emotional power of his work. The language itself is revealed as an area of dispute between colonial power and individuals themselves. He uses Creole in ways that reveal a fascination with and resistance to standard English, of assimilation and invisibility within white sociolinguistic norms. The way in which language is used to control and dominate is a central theme in many of Dabydeen's works. His writings explore the relationships between power and its consequences for race, gender, and empire, as also dilemma of diasporic writing.

The poem, "Coolie Mother," touches upon language and education as pertains to identity and cultural mixture. A mother tells her son that he must read books, that he "got to go to school in Georgetown", so he does not become a drunk cane worker

Coolie Mother

Jasmattie live in bruk-
Down hut big like Bata shoe-box,
Beat clothes, weed yard, chop wood, feed fowl
For this body and that body and every blasted body
Fetch water, all day water like if the
Whole slow-flowing Canje river God create
Just for she one bucket.

Till she foot bottom crack and she hand cut-up
And curse swarm from she mouth like red ants
And she cough blood on the ground but mash it in:
Because Jasmattie heart hard, she mind set hard.

To hustle save she one-one penny,
Because one-one dutty make dam cross the Canje
And she son Harrilal got to go school in Georgetown
Must wear clean starch pants, or they go laugh at he,
Strap leather on he foot, and he must read book,
Learn talk proper, take exam, go to England university,
Not turn out like he rum-sucker chamar dadee.

These lines from his poetic sequence Turner (1995) on J. M. W. Turner’s painting of 1840, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying), Typhoon Coming On (that depicts an actual scene from the archives of the British slave trade: the case of the Zhong of 1783, a slave ship whose cargo was so badly affected by an epidemic that Captain Collingwood used the opportunity of an on-coming storm to throw 122 sick men and women into the sea. The reasoning for this was a financial calculation: he could claim insurance for Africans lost at sea, but not for those dying of disease)

Stillborn from all the signs. First a woman sobs
Above the creak of timbers and the cleaving
Of the sea, sobs from the depths of true
Hurt and grief, as you will never hear
But from woman giving birth, belly
Blown and flapping loose and torn like sails,
Rough sailors’ hands jerking and tugging
At ropes of veins, to no avail. Blood vessels
Burst asunder, all below - deck are drowned.

I could manage to get only the above lines few lines from the Net. These few poems…

Two Cultures

‘Hear how a baai a taak
Like BBC!
Look how a baai a waak
Like white maan,
Caak-hat pun he head, wrist-watch pun he haan!
Yu dadee na Dabydeen, plant gyaden near Blackbush Pass?
He na cut wid sickle an dig wid faak?
He na sell maaket, plantain an caan?
An a who pickni yu rass?
Well me never see story like dis since me baan!

E bin Inglan two maaning, illegal,
Eye-up waan-two white hooman,
Bu is wha dem sweet watalily seed
Go want do wid hungrybelly Blackbush weed
Like yu, how yu teet yella like dhall
An yu tongue black like casrip!
Dem should a spit, vamit pun yu, beat yu rass wid whip!
Is lungara like yu spoil dem good white people country,
Choke an rab, bruk-an-enta, tief dem people prapaty!

So yu tink yu can come hey an play big-shat,
Fill we eye wid cigarette, iceapple an all dat?
Aweh po country people bu aweh ga pride:
Jess touch me gyal-pickni, me go buss yu back-side.’

Slave Song

Tie me haan up.
Juk out me eye.
Haal me teet out
So me na go bite.
Put chain rung me neck.
Lash me foot tight.
Set yu daag fo gyaad
Maan till nite –

Bu yu caan stap me cack floodin in de goldmine
Caan stap me cack splashin in de sunshine!

Whip me till me bleed
Till me beg.
Tell me how me hanimal
African orang-utan
Tell me how me cannibal
Fit fo slata fit fo hang.
Slice waan lip out
Waan ear an waan leg –

Bu yu caan stap me cack dippin in de honeypot
Drippin at de tip an happy as a hottentot!

Look how e’ya leap from bush to bush like a black crappau
Seeking out a watahole,
Blind by de sunflare, tongue like a dussbowl –
See how e’ya sip laang an full an slow!
Till e swell an heavy, stubban, chupit, full o sleep
Like camoudie swalla calf an stretch out in de grass, content,
Full o peace...
Hibiscus bloom, a cool breeze blow
An from a hill a wataflow
Canary singin saaf an low...

Is so when yu dun dream she pink tit,
Totempole she puss,
Leff yu teetmark like a tattoo in she troat!

She gi me taat
She gi me wife
So tear out me liver
Or stake me haat
Me still gat life!

Greenish Willow Wren

If there is one species of birds that are difficult to classify then they are Warblers/wren. Even seasoned birdwatchers are flummoxed by the variety and spread of these small birds. These birds are really quite difficult to identify, and I had to spend quite a long time to classify the above-finally I think it is Greenish Willow Wren (again I could be still wrong!!).

A migrant from Himalayas these birds have characteristic chi-wee note, must say it is quite penetrating. A subdued bird found creeping in foliages searching for insects; these birds have pale yellowish streak above the eyes, dull olive green upper plumage and yellow white lower half.

Phillis Wheatly

Creation smiles in various beauty gay

While day to night, and night succeed to day

Phillis Wheatly was bought as a slave girl from Africa to America in 1761 when she was about seven years old. We don’t ev

en know her real name as this name was given by her master. She learned English in matter of few years and was writing poems. She was first Afro-American to be published, it was published in England as Americans refused to acknowledge and doubted that slave girl could write these; indeed they put her into interrogation to check the authenticity. Wheatly died when she was just 31 years old, despite her acclaim as a poet she died in poverty. Frankly I was quite saddened to read all these. More saddened since her talent were being used to please the masters, most of her poems are elegy to kith and kin of whites (I found that repulsive) with strong religious undertones, probably the reason why these were published. In one place she even mentioned Africa as ‘pagan land’ ‘May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train’, despite these constraints some lines shine through “While an intrinsic ardor prompts to write, The muses promise to assist my pen”. In the 1830s, abolitionists reprinted her poetry and the powerful ideas contained in her deeply moving verse stood against the institution of slavery.

Imagination! Who can sing thy force?

Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?

Soaring through air to find the bright abode,

Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,

We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,

And leave the rolling universe behind:

From star to star the mental optics rove,

Measure the skies, and range the realms above.

There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,

Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.

These lines from Hymn to Morning

To shield your poet from the burning day:

Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom

See in the east th' illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away--
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th' abortive song

From the poem “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years

of Age”

Perfect in bliss she from her heav'nly home

Looks down, and smiling beckons you to come;

Why then, fond parents, why these fruitless groans?

Restrain your tears, and cease your plaintive moans.

Freed from a world of sin, and snares, and pain,

Why would you wish your daughter back again?

No--bow resign'd. Let hope your grief control,

And check the rising tumult of the soul.

Calm in the prosperous, and adverse day,

Adore the Lord who gives and takes away

Eye him in all, his holy name revere,

Upright your actions, and your hearts sincere,

Till having sail'd through life's tempestuous sea,

And from its rocks, and boist'rous billows free,

Yourselves, safe landed on the blissful shore,

Shall join your happy babe to pa

Its about the rains !!

I could never appreciate rains in the cities, but there are acres of beautiful gardens in Bangalore that does give the experience of rain. O the joy of going to these gardens the morning after heavy downpour. Quaint things in life, my top priority ‘things to do’. In contrast beaches go wild with the fury of ocean, another great sight.

Two of my scribbles, don’t know what to title maybe Rain series!!

When it rains I am what I am

all that is me come out to dance,

the pouring rain, surging blood

come around tapping in tiny circles

ankle deep and still rising

I’m drowning

I’m drowning

What will life be

without a drop of rain

not too less not too more

just right enough

for parched earth

and the soul

Racket tailed Drongo

These are Drongo’s with elongated outer tail feather, black plumage with patchy glossy blue. Crimson colored eyes and crest like plumes that fall backward over the nape. Quite a common bird that is seen in and around thick forest, purely arboreal they devour insects. Like other drongos these too are delightful mimics.

Namdeo Dhasal

Man’s lost his speech
His god’s a shitting skeleton
Will this void ever find a voice, become a voice?

Born in Maharashtra under dire poverty, grew up red light areas of Mumbai, Namdeo Dhasal is a unique and one of the most brilliant contemporary Indian poet. He burst into the scene with his collection of poems Golpitha (a red light area where he grew up…incidentally also the place that is backdrop to iconic debut movie Salaam Bombay by Mira Nair). Writes Vijay Tendulkar to the forward for the collection "This is a world where the night is reversed into the day, where stomachs are empty or half-empty, of desperation against death, of the next day's anxieties, of bodies left over after being consumed by shame and sensibility, of insufferably flowing sewages, of diseased young bodies lying by the gutters braving the cold by folding up their knees to their bellies, of the jobless, of beggars, of pickpockets, of holy mendicants, of neighborhood tough guys and pimps... " These evocative lines from the collection

... I am headless body of a rat with a pyramid rising above me
Meat and fish
Rice and eggs
Bootleg liquor and flowers of white champak
Kisses, embraces, coital postures, jewels,
And beds, and a house with a leaking roof,
And the rhythm of a lullaby.
I am squeezed: in my yearning
Feminine beauty flowers
The Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci
In the service of A-B
Rain driving down in sheets, a dying cigarette,
A dehydrated dancing girl,
Contrasting colour harmony
I too have poverty as my own piece of land... .

I came to know about Namdeo Dhasal’s writings in 1996-97, but must say I went back to him again after the reference in Naipaul (India: A Million mutinies now) probably in 1998. Namdeo himself wasn’t too excited about Naipaul (there is a reference wherein he compares with Dilip Chitre…by the way I didn’t know that Dilip Chitre is dead, I came to know only the other day while I was browsing…he was an amazing guy. I liked his movie about the guy stuck in some remote place as an official, hilarious and thought provoking). Like or dislike Naipaul is brilliant and Million Mutinies is an insightful and well written book, chapters on Namdeo is one of the best (I read Dom Moreas was more perceptive about Namdeo getting his poems translated to get insight into the person).

Namdeo is the only Indian poet to have received a Lifetime Achievement Award from country’s apex literary institution, the Sahitya Akademi. He is the author of nine books of poetry. His works express the anguish and aspirations of dalits, their suppressed urge to emerge out of centuries of darkness and suffering to claim their just heritage and space in society. These lines from the poem Cruelty (contained in the collection Gandu Bagicha-Arsefuckers Park)

I am a venereal sore in the private part of language
The living spirit looking out of hundreds of sad, pitiful eyes
Has shaken me
I am broken by the revolt exploding inside me.
There’s no moonlight anywhere;
There’s no water anywhere
A rabid fox is tearing off my flesh with its teeth
And a terrible venom-like cruelty
Spreads out from my monkey-bone.
Release me from my infernal identity
Let me fall in love with these stars
A flowering violet has begun to crawl towards the horizon
An oasis is welling up in a cracked face.
A cyclone is swirling in irreducible vulvas
A cat has commenced combing the hairs of agony
The night has created space for my rage….

These lines from another of his poems, the wrath is astounding…
Man, you should explode
Yourself to bits to start with
...
You should carry acid bulbs and such things on you
You should be ready to carve out anybody's innards without batting an eyelid
…
Cuss at one and all; swear by his mom’s twat, his sister’s cunt
Abuse him, slap him in the cheek, and pummel him…
Man, you should keep handy a Rampuri knife
...
Launch a campaign for not growing food, kill people all and sundry by starving them to death
Kill oneself too, let disease thrive, make all trees leafless

The poem ends in these beautiful lines
One should regard the sky as one’s grandpa, the earth as one’s grandma
And coddled by them everybody should bask in mutual love
Man, one should act so bright as to make the Sun and the Moon seem pale
One should share each morsel of food with everyone else, one should compose a hymn
To humanity itself, man, man should sing only the song of man.

These lines from “Kamatipura”

Here queue up they who want to taste
Poison’s sweet or salt flavour
Death gathers here, as do words,
In just a minute, it will start pouring here.
O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.
— A lotus in the mud.

This from another poem

howls and barks from time to time.
This is his constitutional right.
He lives on stale crumbs.
His mind is calloused with endured injustice.
If at a rebellious moment it becomes unbearable
and he jerks at his leash, tries to break his chain,
then he is shot.
The gaping wounds on the body will not vanish.
The marketplace of bones is flourishing.

My mind is turning into blood bathed doves.

This is what Chitre once wrote “Namdeo is a big poet in the sense Whitman, Mayakovsky and Neruda are big. But unlike them, his poetry contains large chunks of a real and dirty world peopled by have-nots and their slang. Henry Miller once said, ‘I am not creating values; I defecate and nourish’. Namdeo did precisely this for Marathi poetry. He restored its soil-cycle by feeding it the very excrement and garbage that could fertilise it for the future”.

I wrote these the other day…

An old man at Turf club

I must tell you about this man
who does post mortem of races
to anyone who cares to listen
“Horse 5 was not ridden properly, the trainer is not on job today. Look at the last run of the horse, it should win next time. Take note”
He isn’t much bothered about his audience
and walks with a gait of self importance
almost a swagger
Is that contempt for loosing punters? I wonder.
He doesn’t care
His grimy cloths and torn shoes doesn’t help the matter
though some do offer him money for winning tips
he pocket these with relish.
A week later he sought to work on this opportunity
and was seen with copies of his scrawled predictions
for a price, not many bought it
and so he is back where he belong
-giving random advice.

Recently though he has gone quiet
and went missing.
Last night I saw him shivering
on the dark corner of an abandoned bus stand.
Seems to be preparing for sleep.
Need any help old man? I ask.
He stood up brushed his tattered cloths
shrugged himself, gave me a cold stare
“Is it conscience motherfucker?
too much trouble these days”
behaved as though he wasn’t expected to be there
and walked into the night
with an intact stride his famished body could manage.

Pond Heron a city survivor

Wherever there is water you will find pond heron (also referred to as paddy bird), no water body is too small or too dirty. Sometimes it is a sad sight to see these birds feeding in muck water of city. Pond herons are survivors; they are omnipresent without being all that common. They are mostly seen humped motionless next to water source keeping a keen eye on fish or small vertebrates, though we may mistake it for a laggard but the fact is it is a successful hunter, striking the target most of time. It easily camouflages with muddy surrounding and so tends to bump into passerby, creating a ruckus for being disturbed. This blogger has always had a bad experience with these birds as they shriek out with loud croaks alarming my other pursuits.

Lorca: Even the tiny banquet of a spider is enough to upset the entire equilibrium of the sky

I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.

Federico Garcia Lorca was one of the widely known Spanish poet, he worked closely with likes of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dali. During the Spanish civil war he was captured and shot dead. This from one of his poems

It doesn't matter if the boy grows silent when stuck with the last pin,
or if the breeze is defeated in cupped cotton flowers,
because there is a world of death whose perpetual sailors will appear in the arches and
freeze you from behind the trees.
It's useless to look for the bend
where night loses its way
and to wait in ambush for a silence that has no
torn clothes, no shells, and no tears,
because even the tiny banquet of a spider
is enough to upset the entire equilibrium of the sky

Lorca stayed in New York for sometime but city had bitter experience for him he wrote…

there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood

Declaring
Find them a conscience declared in
an absolute casual
sun, find them a feat
declared by the happy
things
Absolute windows, absolute little lives
Always tell a wall, letter throne
stone desk-life, as it may
That which through
a cautious power dwells, accidental and passing

Fare Well

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!

Random bets
So what’s your bet, the man behind me in the queue asks
Not decided, say I
But then you are in the queue, he retorted
Will decide at the payment, say I
Aha the random bet
I love random bets
Its guilt free, say he.

When On-money is Board out
‘Thoo’ ‘Eyewash’ ‘Made up’
‘Scoundrels’ ‘bastards’ ‘fuckers’
‘Sons of bitches’
Loosing money is no less painful
than earning.

No.8
‘No.8 is even money’ it is announced
Wonder whether the horse know about it, think I

(very much influenced by Charles Bukowski)

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