Bahaar aayi toh

bahaar aa_ii to jaise ek baar
lauT aaye hai.n phir adam se
vo Khvaab saare, shabaab saare
jo tere ho.nTho.n pe mar miTe the
jo miT ke har baar phir jiiye the

nikhar gaye hai.n gulaab saare
jo terii yaado.n se mushk_buu hai.n
jo tere ushshaaq kaa lahuu hai.n
ubal pa.De hai.n azaab saare
malaal-e-ahavaal-e-dostaa.N bhii
Khumaar-e-aaGosh-e-mahavashaa.N bhii
Gubaar-e-Khaatir ke baab saare
tere hamaare
savaal saare, javaab saare
bahaar aa_ii to khul gaye hai.n
naye sire se hisaab saare

[mushk_buu = musk like fragrance]
[ushshaaq = lovers; azaab = difficulties/pain]
[malaal-e-ahavaal-e-dostaa.N = sorrow at friends' condition]
[Khumaar-e-aaGosh-e-mahvashaa.N = intoxication of being in one's beloved's embrace]

A must watch documentary on Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Pablo Neruda

SONNET-49

It's today: all of yesterday dropped away
among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.
Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;
no one can stop the river of the dawn.

No one can stop the river of your hands,
your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest.
You are the trembling of time, which passes
between the vertical light and the darkening sky.

The sky folds its wings over you,
lifting you, carrying you to my arms
with its punctual, mysterious courtesy.
That is why I sing to the day and to the moon,
to the sea, to time, to all the planets,to your daily voice, to your nocturnal skin.

It's today: all of yesterday dropped away
among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.
Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;
no one can stop the river of the dawn.

It's today, it's today...

"Arre Yaar, kya sunte ho tum?"

Isn’t there a discipline in medicine called ‘Music Therapy’? I guess there is. Now trust me, this is no quixotic discipline. I can vouch that music does bring smiles on the visages of men. Now this is no abracadabra and I speak with full conviction. Every time I switch on my music system or take out my I-Pod, my friends holler, “Arre Yaar, kya sunte ho tum?”, but the smiles on their faces and glints in their eyes never escapes me. Their smiles may be derisive, but does it really matter? Isn’t any smile better than no smile at all?

So,I Heil thy power, ‘Music’. You spread happiness all round. You bring smiles on the faces of even those who are on the other side of the divide, i.e. who use you to improve their ‘Motor Skills’ on the dance floor rather than to stir their souls and soothe their wits. Don't get me wrong you dance lovers, am not complaining, merely stating a fact.

Though still some years away from being ‘Over the Hill’, my taste in music, you may say, is way-way ‘Over the Mountain’. While songs of KL Sehgal and Begum Akthar may be food for quiz-masters in their quiz shows, for me they define what music is all about; soothing and soul-stirring. So when I discovered a huge collection of Begum Akthar on Youtube, (so painstakingly compiled into a playlist by contributors Mahakavi and Shaukeentabiyat (God bless them)), needless to say, I was ecstatic. I was inspired to add a video of this Goddess of Indian Music on my blog.

So here it is, a video for you to savor. Getting into dreary details, it happens to be one of my all time favourite ghazal. While the Begum lends her voice to the ghazal, the great Faiz Ahmed Faiz pens the qalam.

One way or the other, you will smile, I know..I know...

Great Falls Park, Virginia

How I have changed! God, I really have. Those who know me will vouch that my idea of fun is not really going out. Taking all the trouble of getting out of my cozy bed, moving my big fat bum and taking all the trouble of getting ready to visit a place which, objectively speaking, in some way or the other, always resembles a place you have already been to. After all, I believe, places one visits generally fall in the following categories, (a) Cities; neat or not so neat, lots of high-rises or slums, bazars or malls, pubs or restaurants (depending on the part of the world you visit; first or the third). (b) Beaches; on seas or oceans (named differently but as they say in Hindu philosophy, their ‘atman’ always the same, waves striking against sands or cliffs). (c) Mountains; rocky surfaces with or without snow, having a cold climate with less or more trees thrown in for some greenery. (d) Historical; ruins of one kind or the other.

Well, so something must have changed inside me when I did want to get up early and visit a place. I don’t know, if I am becoming more human (I say so, because I always believe that seeing me confirms the theory that men have certainly descended from apes).

So when I asked ‘I’ if we could visit the Great Falls Park and spend a day there, she could hardly believe her ears. She was game, as always, but I guess was pretty skeptical about the sincerity of my offer. BUT, folks’ today was the day when 'THIS MAN' did move his butt, got ready, took to the steering wheel and did drive down to the Park (another matter that it was only a 20 minutes drive but he missed the exit and had to take a detour). Being a working day, the place was not very crowded and as it is, how crowded can an 800 acre park in the heart of Washington, DC be? The view of Potomac River was breathtaking and we in our true blue Hindustani tradition completely disregarded all signboard warnings forbidding people from going too close to the river, lest they may be swept away by it's strong currents, trekked right up to it's banks. ‘I’ took off her shoes and soaked her feet in the river (a kind of ritual she can’t do without whenever she sees a water-body). ‘S’ seemed to be enjoying himself too, and to tell you the truth, so was I. The whole atmosphere was picturesque and serene. The walking trail in the forest overlooking the Potomac flowing in full force, soothed one's frayed nerves. I was carrying my book (just in case the trip turned out to be a bore) and plonked myself on a rock next to the guys’ busy fishing in the river. It was fun to see their delight when they did manage to catch one. The fit bodies of guys’ and gals’ cycling and rock-climbing made me feel envious, so I decided to ignore them. What do they call it? ‘Ostrich like attitude’ I guess. I won’t see fit bodies and so won't feel conscious about my rotund belly. After all, is it not said that the world is nothing but a reflection of how you see it? How very profound.

Hope my new found enthusiasm is not a flash in the pan, but a ‘jhalak’ to some more ‘butt shaking trips’ in the future…

TO RAJA...WHO LIVES ON

This day of seventh September, came as a rude shock, the sad news of Raja's death just refuses to sink in...of all people Raja.. I still can’t come to terms with the news. In the course of one’s life one comes across so many people and few leave their mark indelibly on your life. I daresay Raja was one such person. I guess his parents must have had some revelation when he was born to have named him Rajaram. I believe no other name could possibly describe such a person. He was truly Rajaram, a man of immense self respect and honesty. In a world which defines success in terms of your bank balance, position and power he reaffirmed your faith in humanity with his humility and simplicity. He was one person I got pretty close to during our probation days, this bonding getting further reinforced when we were posted together as AAG’s in Nagpur. In my entire life I have never come across any person who was so selfless and ‘giving’. A man who was always there for you when you needed him, always giving and never expecting anything in return. He started his career as a journalist and his knowledge of Marathi literature was incredible. A voracious reader, I can still picture him with a book in his hand lying in his bed in his strange posture, reading, with one hand supporting his book and the other supporting is head (he never used a pillow to support his head while reading) a posture I jokingly called ‘kitabasan’. Though his wrote intermittently after joining the IAAD, his articles that he had published in various journals before joining the service revealed the sharp and incisive intellect of the man, though I subjected him frequently to the torture of reading it aloud and translating it in Hindi for me.
Today the days spent with him have all started coming back to me and a few of them describe the person that he was, they were so Raja like, if I may use that word. Once some of us got embroiled in a brawl and when some guys out there with lathis attacked us, he took all the lathi blows on his forearm to protect one of us with a fractured arm. In the process he suffered major bruises, but when we asked him, ‘Chot zyada laga kya?, he said in his characteristic style, ‘Arre chalta hai yaar..usko lagta toh zyada problem ho jaata’. Ever ready to help, he was always there for you when you needed him. In Nagpur nine of our batch-mates from different services were posted and his house had become a virtual transit guest house for our batch-mates, who stayed at his place for months before they managed to get the accommodation of their own. He loved partying with his close circle of friends and we extracted parties from him at the drop of a hat. Once there was this small table which he had got made in Nagpur and I said, ‘Mein isse tumse kharid raha hoon yaar..yeh lo 150 rupaiya’. He said, ‘Theek hai’, De diya tumko'. I shot back, ‘Ab 150 rupiya kama liye ho, party do’, and he laughed and said, ‘Theek hai yaar, party karte hein’..and so there it was, he virtually gifted me that table.
He had a fantastic sense of humour and devil may care attitude to life. I still remember the first day when he bought his mobike and so we started on this drive around Nagpur..lo and behold we were jumping one red light after the other..I said ‘Marwayoge kya, red light kahe jump kar rahe ho?’, he said, ‘Yaar batao, iska brake kaise lagta hai?’, before any disaster could strike, we managed to locate the brakes we were back sahi salamat. There was never a dull moment when he was around, the songs that both of us sang together distorting their lyrics and tunes drumming the ‘baltis’ and tables, the innumerable arguments about totally nonsensical stuff, the whole night long drinking binges and the hangovers that followed. Next morning the same standard refrain,"S**le fat gayi hai yaar, ab aage se s**la daru choona nahin hai yaar", a promise which was never meant to be kept...I can go on and on..
Post Nagpur we kept in touch, calling each other off and on. Chatting with him, time just flew. The last chat that I had with him was a couple of months back and I could never foresee that it would be the last chat we would have.
Today Raja, if you are out there somewhere, ‘THANKS’ for everything, something which I should have said long ago, but better late than never…I am again distorting a filmy dialogue (like we did so often), “Raja mara nahin…Raja marte nahin”

Hum bhi blogger..!!!

So, hum bhi blogger ho gaye!!! But why did I want to be a blogger in the first place? Aisa kya hai jise mein duniya se share karna chahata hoon? What pearls of wisdom will I drop that will make people stop by and read what I ‘publish’? I guess none…Waise bhi, Wikipedia says that there are seventy one million blogs already in existence, so what new can this one additional blog to this humungous world of this seventy million add? I guess nothing.
So why on earth did I take the trouble to start a blog? Well the answer lies in a party I attended couple of days ago. It was the usual party attended by the types one calls the ‘stiff upper-lips’ variety. I must confess though that these stiff upper-lips tend to become slightly less stiff as more and more ‘stiff’ drinks make their way inside those lips of theirs.
I stood mostly in a corner, for I knew, as soon as those not so stiff lips of mine parted and my Bihari accented English interposed with ‘bhere’ ‘bhat’ reverberated in the drawing room, all eyes would turn to me, a khatra I did not wish to take. For when eyes turn, it is not just to hear what you speak, but also to examine what you wear (I was wearing no Armani but cloth stitched by Tip Top Tailors of Patna), how you smell (no cologne, but Old Spice), how your hair looks (don’t have much left anyway)..etc etc..pura x-ray analysis..
If you think I suffer from this feeling of Ehsas-e-kamtari… bhai mere.. zindagi ke haadson ne hamen aisa bana diya…hum hamesha se toh aise na the......Ab yeh kissa suno, jo mere saath Bharatiya rail ke ek AC compartment mein guzri...Bhai mere, meine snazzy leather jacket pehna rakha tha..chal bhi raha tha AC II tier compartment mein.. ‘Sauchalaya’ ke paas khada dhumrapan raha tha jab, suddenly this beautiful young girl walked out of the compartment and she gave me a long lookk (double k because the look was that long). Jab tak mien sambhal pata, aur usse kutch poochta, she asked me, “Bed roll kab tak dijiyega”…Mein behosh hote hote bacha..
Waise, must say am improving, I remember those good old days when I used to wear sneakers with my double breasted suits, for wearing sneakers was ‘hep’ thing to do those days (North Star had just opened an exclusive showroom in Patna), and wearing double breasted suit was toh always the ‘hep’ thing to do. Baad mein pata chala, yeh maths nahin hai, where two plus two will always equal four no matter what, but in the fine art of sartorial splendor guess two ‘heps’ don’t make you ‘mahahep’ but a ‘budwaak’ as they say in Bihar, the land of the free, where everyone is free to do as he pleases, chahao toh pyajama ke upar shirt pehan kar east-west ka milap karwa dalo..
My Angrezi too has improved, both spoken and written, my vocabulary has come a long way, now when I tell my wife, I need a ‘hug’, it does not mean I need to go and do the unspeakable thing that a Bihari associates it with, but with the romantic intension it is supposed to connote. I am getting there, but I do confess, I still have a long way to go.
Taking turns in sitting/standing in the corner next to the loo, hearing people having their conversations on issues ranging from the stupidity of the US foreign policy to Indian cultural heritage, I felt I too wanted to talk... Arre bhai, ‘Hum bhi moonh mein zaban rakte hein…Koi Poocho ke Muddaa kya hai?’ But except a few polite hello’s on their way to pee, not a single soul asked me anything...showed any interest in taking any 'gyan' from me.
Usi samay biji kadki, aur akashwani hui..(which of course only I could hear)..Vats, Gugal account khol aur blogspot par ja..phir keh jo kehna hai..Gugal par ja kar 'gal' kar..Bus phir kya tha..Aa gaye paas hum..
And as they say, the rest is history..
So, bhaiyon aur unki bahnon..is liye mein yahan pe hoon..umeed hai, aage bhi aap meri bakwas sunenge..i mean padhenge..aur agar nahin bhi padhenge, toh mein toh bhai besharam hoon..post karta hi rahoonga, jab jab dimag mein 'kemikal locha' hoga..naye khayalat janam lenge aur andar se yeh antarnad uthegi..mujhe bahar nikalo..bahar nikalo aur post karo apne blog par..