Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
ना अपनी खुशी आए ना अपनी खुशी चले
बेहतर तो है यही कि ना दुनिया से दिल लगे
पर क्या करें जो काम ना बे-दिल्लगी चले
हो उम्र-ए-खिज्र भी तो कहेंगे बा-वक़्त-ए-मर्ग
हम क्या रहे यहाँ अभी आए अभी चले
दुनिया ने किसका राह-ए-फ़ना में दिया है साथ
तुम भी चले चलो यूंही जब तक चली चले
नाज़ान ना हो खिरद पे जो होना है वो ही हो
दानिश तेरी ना कुछ मेरी दानिशवरी चले
कम होंगे इस बिसात पे हम जैसे बद-किमार
जो चाल हम चले वो निहायत बुरी चले
जाते हवा-ऐ-शौक़ में हैं इस चमन से 'ज़ौक'
अपनी बला से बाद-ए-सबा अब कहीं चले
Meaning:
Life brought me so I arrived, and I will go when death takes me
Neither my arrival nor my departure was of my own will
It's better to not get charmed by the world
But what can be done if there's no other way
Even if I get an eternal life,
on my deathbed I will rue the fact that I didn't get enough time to live
The world accompanies none on the path to destruction
You too keep moving till life goes on
Be not proud of your intellect, whatever has to happen will happen
Neither your nor my intelligence will work
There'd be few gamblers as bad as me in this game
Each and every move of mine was extremely imprudent
I leave this garden with a pining for a whiff of fresh air
The zephyr that may flow hereafter be damned
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
For madmen only
- Harry Haller in Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
"It seems to me that of all my books, Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other, and frequently it is actually the affirmative and enthusiastic readers, rather than those who rejected the book, who have reacted to it oddly. Partly, but only partly, this may occur so frequently by reason of the fact that this book, written when I was fifty years old and dealing, as it does, with the problems of that age, often fell into the hands of very young readers."
- Author's note to the paperback edition of Steppenwolf
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
- Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"7 am on a Tuesday, in August ...
Next week I'll turn 28...I'm still young, it'll be me...
Off the wall I scrape... you...I gotta wait...
Show me Your Irate
To cause this wake, Its my fate.
They.....They...Never going to fuck
with me again... My own clean slate...
Don't fuck with me again...I just want to go straight
through you....
Irate"
- Frogs by Alice in Chains
Monday, April 07, 2008
Value-add (on-demand)
"Wanna drop witty one-liners and become the life of a party? Subscribe to Vodafone Tashan Pack...." (followed by some specific service details that I don't remember particularly well because at this point my brain cells were about to perform their "goodbye cruel world" routine, lemming-style! Obviously I had to concentrate on pacifiying them. It was a very intimate moment, and I had to summon all my charm to convince them that I still loved them and that everything would be okay. I'm surely going to hell for duping my own brain cells.)
Anyway, so I guess the you-can-buy-happiness brand of consumerism, better understood (by pop-culture nutcases like me) as the 'IKEA nesting instinct', is scaling new heights - actually entering altogether new dimensions - even as I type. The phenomenon is beginning to transcend the boundary between objective and subjective effortlessly, although I'm not sure I want to be around to see the results. You can simply buy being funny now. I'll emphasize that again in all caps just to drive home what is to me a very weird transition, even by the standards of kaliyug!
WIT IS ON SALE NOW!
Jerry Seinfield and Chandler Bing can go to hell.
(A side thought: This completely convinces me that there really is no afterlife, because if there was, the ghosts of Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, P.G. Wodehouse, Groucho Marx, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Ambrose Bierce, Douglas Adams, et al would have haunted the shit out of the Vodafone guys!)
So apparently, humour is not the bitch of those elitist fuckers anymore who think they're oh-so-ingenious. It's just another on-demand value-add to your personality.
Go to sleep, dear Cerebrum. All's well with the world.
Friday, April 04, 2008
In the rain
Do you think I’m not,
What I once used to be?
Can you sing me a song
And alleviate me?
Or maybe, buy me a shell that is thicker than this
Bid me goodbye and I’ll go amiss
Can’t stand to wait for the finish
I’ll do fine sitting in the rain
Can you give me a hand
With all this burden of lies?
Can you pass me the wand
That has me hypnotized?
I will run through the sky, like a tickled up bee
Is that a stupid analogy?
Can't remember last time I felt funny
Since you've been missing in the rain
Or should I try even more?
Try to see through the dirt
There's a castle of yore
We can build back this way, we can make it alright
You'll build the bridge, I can be dynamite
All this trouble to kill the boredom inside
It's easier sipping up the pain
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Easy now
The divine sigh
Chafing the skin
Exposing every sin
Didn’t mean to get so high
No choices anymore
No time for you or time for me
No pain, no joy, no epiphany
No hinges on this door
A different plane
Lines converge and lives diverge
Now cremate this final urge
Not easy being insane
This languid ride
Uneasy truths, unnerving stakes
Pummeled pride, broken brakes
Perched lonely on a tide
Dissolving light
Expanded eyes, dilated dreams
Loosely held by opening seams
Liberated, but not quite
Disjointed faith
Uncomfortable paragons
Immoral kings and shoestring pawns
Can't use much but wraith