its almost dinner time and mansoor is singing in his soulful voice

dobare madar buzorg rakht e no suzan zade
tokhm e murghe rangi am az qafas dar aumade

i am transported to my hostel room where i would listen to mansoor for hours together rewinding certain songs again and again...just lying on my cot letting mansoor take me to a different plane

aks man barakse toh aasheqtarine
chun hanoozam aashique toh nazneene
alahi har ki mano bi toh bebine
mesle man be khaqe dil tangi beshine
qalabe man aasheqtarine
farqe man ba toh hamine

mansoor is no sufi or classical singer..he sings songs of pure longing and love but the words are simple yet profound and his voice seems to carry so much pain...probably his style ...but has given and still gives me immense pleasure

there are times when i want to write..my hands are on the keyboard and my mind is full of things ...but is wanting enough? feel so incoherent and words are lost to me...trying to put something off my mind delibrately..a futile attempt defeating its own purpose..the ghosts from past come haunting..i shoo them away and close my eyes..hope and pray they don't come back but they do ..afterall they are meant to haunt and thats the purpose of their existence..even though as a memory only..
sometimes i wonder at the complicated and convoluted world around me..i wonder is simplicity such a difficult quality to adopt...wouldn't it help make things better if we kept them simple and straight forward..but history is witness to the convulted logic that human kind has been following since ages...few days back we were watching a dramatisation of pre 9/11 incident. there was this young guy who probably flew one of the fateful planes that day...prima facie he had everything he could wish for..a rich family, a wonderful car and a sexy girlfriend...how could such a guy feel so wronged that he risked everything...what kind of indoctrination does it take to involve such people..i wonder

i read my horoscope for the day in the morning papers..it said your day can become wonderful but it all depends on you..left me wondering what was i supposed to do...so as you see started the day in a completely confused manner....moreover since it was a holiday i could leasurely afford to feel confused and ponder upon the ambiguous statement...how intelligent these fortune writers are...whatever happens with you they prove to be absolutely correct..play on our insecurities and fear of unknown and in the process earn a fortune for themselves.
usually i am asleep by this time but there are times when sleep refuses to nestle in my eyes..i am so charged with energy that i think i can take the whole world on...these are the nights when i manage to read and write in few hours what usually takes me days of effort. eyes glide over pages devoring them one by one and going to the next book or my pen keeps scribbling something or the other on my notebooks..hardly stopping to give a second look to what i have written..i leave it for later....when i am in a saner condition..i write ..without giving a thought to the content...to the form..sometimes write pages in mirror language...my code language since school days...these are the times when i write to hearts content and write just for myself without bothering how it sounds.......

there are some days when you just start on the wrong foot..there are signals flashed which unfortunately our minds used to rational thought refuse to acknowledge..we trash them, don't understand their implication and go on but somewhere deep in our unconcious we know things aren't right...some wise old man sitting deep in our heart tries to advise us ..the voice seems to be coming from a deep deep chasm..most of the times we ignore it as a voice of senility...what age of reason termed as superstitions probably have a logic now completely lost to us...knowingly or unknowingly we believe we fear and at times give a benefit of doubt to various beliefs....

how wonderful it would be if we could hear these multiple inner voices more often..and probably pay more heed to them..afterall theory of intution and all meditational techniques claim to make us reach that stage...but wouldn't it be maddening to listen to various and at times contradictory voices coming from within...how would we know which voice to follow....is there some kind of rivalry between these voices...do like us they also harbor a small ego which gets hurt too...guess i am finally going mad and there will lie the road to freedom........

ponderings

hmm so this writing everyday thing didn't work more than a fortnight..actually hadn't taken travel and powercuts in account...will give it a try again now that i am back..gujarat was hectic but fun....hope i can get things done in the direction of our discussion there...

reading jung in the auto was exciting..the bumpy ride also seem to echo his turbulent life..the connection between alchemy, yoga and the deep hidden self, the various neorosis he suffered and his major break from freud unfolded page by page...i devoured it but suddenly had to get down as auto wallah had to fill gas...with jung in my hand i got down and waited thinking about all the artists and writers who were propelled by some unknown force..while some managed to channelise the immense energy others failing to do so suffered from mental break downs...but jung was amazing...even while going through a break down he kept recording his feelings and hallucinations for future......wonder what insight he must have had in the unconcious...aaah there is so much to read..can't do justice to all and to myself my curiousity in one life time....

easy n available

how easy internet has made our lives...some time back feeling a little confused about saivite iconography i felt like seeing some kushana coins..logging on the net i was surprised to find innumbrable coins with complete scholarly desctription....back in college i would have had to spend an entire day in collecting and collating the required information...so are the students today much more priviliged then us...they can get all the required info in a jiffy and literally at the click of the finger...i was reminded of our visits to various libraries and archives to give our assignments and projects a better shape and to be well equipped for the post presentation viva...have i started feeling ancient..not really..i am still a student and will always be one...

ponderings

had quite an interesting day in college today..discussion class mainly focussed on everyones views and opinions on the visit to ngma yesterday..we had spent some 2 to 3 hrs in one of the new wings of the gallery..observations were quote interesting and diverse raising questions like what do we value, the actual work of art or the signiture?...the lack of skill in rabindranath tagore's works was noticed by more than one student...needless to say he was already a nobel lauraute when he jumped into visual arts..moreover it was the time when childart and automatism were being explored in west....his works easily gained popularity...could he have been considered as a good artist during renaissance? one of the students evidently disgusted with the display coined an interesting term 'art pollution' ...though i don't agree with his negative approach but i did find it intersting and jotted down the term in my diary. i wanted to know the views of a japanese student on what she had seen..and i would say her answer was quite politically correct. She considered the works of revivalists important and bold...she could historically contextualize the works..had definitely done her homework on indian art..

As I was having my excessively milky tea in the college canteen and thinking about ravi varma paintings I was about to show in my class a tall figure approached me. I recognized him as one of the irregular but talented students of masters first year painting. I had been seeing his works in the studio, where apparently I take my class. So when he asked me to see his sketch book I was more than happy to oblige. There unfolded page by page in front of my eyes the surrealistic looking drawings but with a very Indian feel. As he explained the manner in which he approaches his works I was getting more and more interested in the lyrical forms he had culled from what seemed like arbitrary doodles. He informed me that finally he has started work on a huge canvas 10 by 5 feet and the first stage had been completed. The canvas was spread on the studio balcony as it could not be accommodated in the interiors. Since we had some ten minutes more to go for the class we rushed to the balcony. There sprawled on the ground I found this huge canvas painted almost like Pollock with the difference that instead of lines he had used various bold curves. He guessed what I was thinking and said this is just the first stage. He will make a figurative work out of it and then it will cease looking like Pollock.

The battle is on....a battle between the senses and the restrain. a battle to conquer temptations...a battle between the process and the end product..a battle within myself.
How often do we realise that our 'self' is a conglomeration of so many varied gross and subtle substances which are frequently fighting each other...so isn’t self contradiction the most natural outcome of such a process...what is conclusiveness but an expression of partial knowledge…here I am reminded of a couplet by Kaifi

“jisko khabar nahi use josh o kharosh hai
jo pa gaya hai raaz gum hai khamoosh hai”

Unfortunately times are such or rather times have always been such that louder you proclaim the more credible you sound…subtleness has no place in the system…but does it really need a place in this system…I wonder, as I often do, but get absolutely no answers….probably there are no answers..its only meant to be experienced….the inability to express certain thoughts in words irritates me..somehow words don’t seem enough to express the actual feel of the thoughts…its restricted by my english vocabulary ,by the form and syntax of the language itself, by the need to give it a readable format and so on and so forth….writing is limiting and so is painting..i have many a times heard artists complaining that what has come out on their canvas is not exactly what they thought…it’s definitely a compromise and all of us have to make it to lend a concrete shape to our ideas……..

I have been reading a lot these days probably that’s why I have lost the hang of reading between the lines…it has more or less become a mechanical process and unfortunately the urge to reach the end of the book or article is too strong….somewhere process itself has lost its meaning..The moment I finish reading the book the excitement is over..i crave for the process again and same cycle repeats itself…..Its like eternal cycles of life..u pass each one in the hope of emancipation but on the contrary it cruelly leads you to another one..so u go on and on and on in the eternal search.

Seriously feel this reading should lead somewhere..somewhere it all should connect..Its not just enough to understand and quote from a certain text or a book. Books have to be internalized..Though I have no clue how one does it and I guess subconsciously some impact definitely is made but how does one consciously internalize the knowledge and ideas presented in a text?

What does one write on a sunday afternoon..day passed away lazing and reading maya thinking about possible differences between bhoot and preta and reading translations of few sutras from pasupata sutra...post lunch had plans to see cocktail and enjoy tom cruise's bartender act but haryana electricity board didn't like the idea..am feeling extremely sleepy and guess after writing this post will take a short nap..it would have been much better if i could go off to sleep with toms voice and couglin's advices reverbrating in my ears...anyways had a nice time reading and basking in the afternoon sun and simultaneously being tarini's student in her class..can still hear her narrating some impossible stories to her didi...kids are so imaginative and such good story makers ..i have never seen her getting stuck while making up her own stories..how i wish for such spontaneity..

Its amazing how kids can react to art..unlike grown ups they don't need to find recognizable shapes and a reasonable presentation of facts. In the morning i was watching 'Mirror Mask', a fantasy movie with my daughter. I could see her getting completely engrossed in the narrative. There were absolutely no questions like ..how can this happen..how can a cat have a man's face ..I waited in vain for her to ask something but she was completely satisfied. On and off i could hear her mutter 'aisa nahi hona chahiye tha' thats when the protagonist, a teenage girl would be carried away by black elements or could be seen in clutches of horrifying creatures.
Its sad how logic and reason take over fertile qualities of imagination and fantasy as we grow up. Feel a dire need to return to fairytales, folktales and this time read them like my daughter without a single question in my mind..will it be possible to unlearn..will it be possible to shake away the reason which has so strongly made a dwelling in my heart..is it possible to be a child again ...i wonder

I can't drive. As soon as I turned 18 i joined a driving school and in less than a fortnight had my learners license in my wallet. The actual test came when my dad started taking me out for driving practice in his car. Suddenly the realisation dawned upon me that it wasn't me who used to drive the institute car so smoothly...I gave up in some time..couldn't coordinate my hand and leg movements..found it terribly ardous and was completely dejected.Few years back gave it a try again but failed miserably. Probably in near future will try once more ..like the spider..try try again until you succeed.
Today while going to college i saw frustrated faces behind the wheels caught in a terrible traffic jam while i was reading 'Death of the Author' by Roland Barthes. These days i feel good about the fact that college is so far from my place. I get to read so much and somehow i have always found reading while commuting or traveling very exciting..there are no absolutely no distractions and you don't even get to change your position..its more like meditating...remember reading a conversation that swami laxman joo had with one of his disciples in which he stressed on the importance of meditation while moving....Now if if had been driving i would me missing this won't i? It might sound like making a virtue out of a necessity but then there are always two sides to a coin. As a college student have done my maximum reading in buses and trains..but then it cannot take away the fact that i can't drive and i should be doing something about it soon.

Monalisa Smile

Yesterday I saw Monalisa Smile, the movie, for the fifth time. Couldn't resist but put aside the aricle i was reading to see the movie again. Apart from being a good hollywood movie starring extremely talented Julia Roberts it appeals a lot to me personally. Its about a young woman Katherine who gets selected to teach Art History course in an elite and highly traditional college in mid 1950's . The movie is moreover about her bohemian and radical attitude and her efforts to make Art a living breathing discourse than a boring subject. Her interaction with her students goes beyond the classroom discussions and she helps them look at things differently...she makes them react to Art rather than remember facts about it...But she soon becomes an eyesore for the elite society and she is virtually thrown out of the college

Her student Betty who had written against her earlier writes in her last writeup

"...she is going to Europe ..there she will find new walls to break she has been a total wanderer but not all wanderings are aimless...."

Katherine is not successful in the strict sense of the term but she manages to touch various lives in her short sojourn..really makes me wonder what success really means

Are resolves meant for breaking..lets see

I have made a resolve to write everyday..anything that i feel like..probably jot down my ponderings..thats how this blog was born..why a blog..why not a dairy ..hmmmm because i don't want to lose whatever i have written..funny how the virtual space seems to be safer than a good old dairy...various narratives are always bubbling in my head, especially when i am traveling alone..at that time they seem to have tremendous potential but when i get to write them down there is a terrible quality loss...this reminds me of bhartrhari's three stages of speech..when my thoughts are in pasyanti mode they make so much sense but unfortunately what comes out on my computer screen leaves much to be desired...maybe i need some more practice...practice in writing extempore without correcting myself ..without stopping to relook what i have written...not exactly automatism but some form of internal purging...an exercise..lets see how long i can keep it up before i take refuge is ghalib's words
khayal hi to hai, badal sakta hai