Tagore 's Chitrangada and Lipika over the weekend

Have been reading Chitrangada by Tagore this weekend.
It about another of those princesses smitten by Arjuna though Tagore models this drama in a very sensitive and different way and herein the warrior princess is the equal of Arjuna at least thats the way the drama's written . It ends by some very strong proposal by the princess
"I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped, nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed
aside like a moth with indifference. If you deign to keep me by your side in the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self."

The story as per Indian mythology is different and softer but then thats the joy of mythology ...there are myths galore ...to each his own.

It beautifully describes how the princess is spurned by Arjuna giving his celibacy vow as an excuse
when she meets him first in her true form and thus she gets a beauty as a boon from gods for a year
and when Arjuna breaks his vow on seeing her she is disillusioned .
But then the gods persuade her to keep the disguise for the year.
When i am in a critical mood i guess i would dissect everything and make all noises about stuff
but since i decided for now i am enjoying fairy tales and dramas in good spirit it was a nice read.
It probably reminded me of the same thoughts that made me write "The Charm of Appearances"

Its been long though since i read Tagore.
Some times translations take away so much...i probably realize t a bit more as i have knowledge at least two languages which i an speak and understand to a great extent but cannot read but This book Lipika is relatively well translated by Indu Dutt.



I had got Tagore's Lipika(Brief Writings) in a very old and soiled with ink condition and another book 'The Gardener" on the street for some 10 or 20 rs 6 yrs ago and then i had loved it way too much cause it made you ponder a lot.
I wish i had blogged then...i seem clueless about my thoughts
except the one story which i somehow remeber well and recall at quite a few occasions.

Its a small writing called the "The First Letter"

Herein a young man newly married has to leave his young bride to go abroad.
Then abroad while walking reading the first letter from her
where she begs him to return saying

"Without you, when i do ot see you, the whole sky of my world is drenched in tears"

At this point he wonders
"What have I in me that has the value of those tears?"
Then suddenly a group of foreign girls come across him on the
street and its described thus
"Who knows what was exactly in his face or his dress or gait.........but they hurried away bursting into a giggle"
"In that cruel amused laughter mountain springs also changed their tune"

Now he wonders
"What was the value in my looks that could provoke such laughter"
and then he cant stop himself and goes back to his letter and
re reads the lines asking him to return.

Somehow i find myself often wondering on such lines when people are sweet or nice or cruel to me or vice versa(coz i too seem to be nice and cruel to some)
in ways that seem to have no explicable reasons.
I will probably re read those other stories and post some more .

You know you've read a good book when

you turn the last page and feel as if you've lost a friend.

I just loved this wallpaper and feel i dont need to add more words for it.

Degeneration methinks…

Fame however unwanted i think if forced uponpeople adjust but then itmight be very difficult to get over.
That is the only reason i can think ofwhy Rowling has done what she did.To again become front page materialnow that the last book mania is calming down.
I have nothing against her revelation about Dumbledore being gay(except a lurking feeling that in the west the concept of friends is really being killed by giving every relationship a name.) .Her revelation is simply is irrelevant to the story and hardly makes a great difference to Dumbledore lovable and wise character.It would have been good fun and enjoyment to all those Potter adult fiction fans to spin tales on it…but why does she need to confirm it….simply to drum up attention on herself.Its really sad how much people get dragged down by fame.
If this every time new revelations goes on she may very well ruin all the othercharacters too, or may be she has changed her thought process to…well before someone else ruins my characters let me ruin them.
Nevertheless some characters outgrow their author and Harry Potter series is a great example and for us simple fans ……it will always be the original books …no matter what Rowling degenerates into.

Pomegranate

The most impassioned of all trees,
The home of three intensities;
Gnarled trunk, dark concentrated leaf,
And flowers that burn in love and grief.

These are part of those haunting lines by Vikram Seth and
i really dig them too much and they kind of get imprinted on the mind.

This was a small draft i saved somewhere and i just though i better get over with it.

Last year when i had to walk 10 mins home everyday across some lovely houses with gardens- there used to be these trees with the sweetest orange flowers....and most of us know its the Anarkali.(Sad if we can only remember Salim now).


I have been so off mood that i looked back on my own blog
and then thought ....
why once upon a time i was so better at cribbing ....
now its such a boring rant....
Almost all in life seems so hopeless....
dont know whats the fuss is all about ...
its not just me...most people just go on living ....and on.
But then i realise we create our own hypes...
our own passions which keeps us going....
the movies and movie stars/cricket and cricketers /Harry Potter/TV shows/Stock

markets /chat forums/hours of gossip/ambitions and even blogging for some.

But honestly what i still like when i look back and reread are my favorite poems

and my thoughts on reading books.
Actually thats what it seems is missing....its been so long that i read a pure
fiction story apart from Harry Potter.(Well i better not start on it again...).
I need that escape ...my books else this is how i become .

Bad memory has its pleasures.
I was looking up some old selected quotes and found this quote

"People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus."
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 2, "Swann's Way: Swann in Love"

Some people have an awesome way with words....Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
Comma bacillus ...ROFL...........

A bit of nostalgia

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
  ~Doug Larson

Last fortnight i can recall two things which made me very nostalgic.
One was a movie which was a glossed out fairytale of a college life i have never seen anyone living (forget being part of it myself ).
Its not that i don't enjoy romanticized stuff in movies but when i see too many people talking of that in real terms of those good old days i feel absurd.
Very few people(and yeah a few have it partly do i agree) have had the real fun and hep college life displayed in most movies but everyone talks as if they did cause we like to think the past was better.....we forget that the troubles we faced then , and which we laugh at now actually felt monstrous in those days.


The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.  ~Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic

Yes its so very easy to idealize and gloss over past and if i let myself get carried away by such versions  in my imagination i can see how easy it is.
Luckily my cynicism keeps me safe from such these days.

Other very unexpected nostalgia was a chat (it might have been a one sided recollection by me actually once the topic was triggered ...the topic of days when i was a huge cricket fan...
not that i am not now ,
but its not the same...
no one but i know the difference.)

about some very old ,simple but immensely passionate joys.....
joys i rarely speak of in the present,
 for i fear they might be soiled by the present....
It isn't those events it is what we were then to
 derive such happiness  from such .

Weekend with the Google Story

This weekend with nothing better to google than the complications of wisdom tooth extraction(if doctors are a pain ....what the heck  do you call dentists...they are  a bloody damn pain and i am living with it for nearly a month and a half) i just cuddled up with ' The Google Story '  by David A Vise.

Its a book that gives a pretty good insight but somehow not a very interesting book.Its quite factual the kind most techies would be familiar with and so it just adds  date and time and names to the events.

Of course i liked some chapters a bit more like 'Divide and Rule' wherein Sergey and Larry decide to have both the leading venture capitalists and not one so that the infighting between them would prevent the loss of control by the founders and the parts about Eric Schmidt's initial times at Google.Also interesting was the 'Going Public ' and ' Playboy' chapter which details Google very different way of going public.

The book makes it clearer though how superior the product was as unlike most other companies here it wasn't reallly some management and marketing guys who called the shots but the engineers who built the product and they pretty much have been having their own way which actually is not a very easy thing on a corporate world dependent on marketing and management heavily once a product is available.Not many engineers really think or can manage  keeping that kind of control over what they build or code.

All in all its a good book but not quite half as good as the product itself and no there's nothing inspiring for those who love inspirational and motivating stuff(of course their success of all kinds itself may motivate some people...dont know but yeah it will not fit that category).

Its just a chronicle really of one of the greatest product of our times and it fascinates in small parts .

Google is one of those  rarest of the products i guess where the  product is as superior if not more than how its projected to be.I cant deny i have a deep personal fondness for it as i cant think of any other brand i have any sort of attachment to. Unlike most people i guess i dont really get awed by brand names just like some, dislike some.Some brands , i do admire but never really feel their presence or absence would cause any difference to my life.

But it is exactly here that Google differs. Among many brands that might have changed the world, humanity , science , universe or whatever , when it comes to me in my cocoon and instant thoughts i know Google made a huge difference to my life .

Unlike other brands for which i can think up alternatives or adjust may be with their absence i really would as an individual feel its absence....its such a part of everyday life.

Last week when i saw the google logo conveying its 9th birthday i remebered the difference it made.I passed out of college 9 years ago and how different it would have been to have google then.Not many can understand the impact lack of information can have (esp for people who lack contacts who hoarded information)....information which we or certainly I take for granted in recent times.

I am one of those hugely dependent on Google. Not that there aren't other search engines or i don't try them...just that i seem to be have a very good hand at searching very fast what i want in google and for some one with my kind of random access memory Google is a real savior and i dont mind having a reputation of a Google dependent.

Last week i got a new handbag in a shade of pink . Now a colleague asked  what do you call that color. I was very busy at that moment and could think of nothing really and I said I will find it and tell ya ...and i get an immediate smiling reply...where on google????  I could only quip....Hmmmm

Well i did find it through google and its 'Mauve Taupe'.Well.....