it happened so-
Usha Ramachandran’s (Sandhya Sundaraman) hubby is posted in Pune and so she joins him here during long weekends. As today is a holiday owing to Yugadhi/ Gudi Padva, she is here. Yesterday she called to say she’s here and so we decided to meet up. In the recent past, everytime we met, she’d ask me to get some book on poetry to read aloud. You can’t take English out of the teacher you see..
So I rummaged thru my collections and took out copies of my own blog posts and several poems that I had penned during our college days while sitting thru boring sessions of Anandhi and Sundari Manian’s General English classes and also many poems that I had copied from magazines like Caravan, Mirror, Eves Weekly,Officers forum etc, ; poems from random american poets gleaned from American Library ; poems of Kamala das, Shelley, Keats, TS Eliot that touched a chord in me and excerpts from Ayn Rand/ Alexander Solzhenitsyn et al.
The list seems exhaustive isn’t it?
Sample these:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
Bridges are not built on ‘perhapses’. ‘Perhaps’ don’t lead anywhere, only to more ‘perhapses’ (Cancer Ward)
The value of the human race lay not in its towering quantity but in its maturing quality.
When each of us dies and History stands over his grave and asks,’what was he?’, there’ll be only one possible answer- Pushkin’s:-
‘In our vile times….Man was, whatever his element, either tyrant or traitor or prisoner’- depending on whether you were a Communist/non-comunist but pretends to be bolshevik for survival/ non communist, non conformist.
Kahlil Gibran:
What is this duty that separates lovers and causes women to become widows, and the children to become orphans? what is this patriotism that provokes wars and destroys kingdoms thru’ rifles? And what cause can be more trifling when compared to but one life?… If duty destroys peace among nations and patriotism disturbs the tranquility of man’s life, then let us say ,”Peace be with duty and patriotism” ( The Mermaids)
J D Salinger:
The mark of the immature manis that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is to live humbly for one.( the Catcher in the Rye)
Shelley:
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed! ( Ode to the Westwind)
T S Eliot:
This is the way the world ends…not with a bang but with a whimper. ( Hollow Men)
and my favourite:
Where have you gone
with your confident
walk..with
your crooked smile..
why did you leave
me..
when you took your
laughter
and departed
are you aware that
with you
went the Sun,
all light
and what few stars
there were..?
where have you gone
with your confident
walk, your
crooked smile, the
rent money in one pocket
my heart in another..
-(Mary Evans)
Usha Ramachandran’s (Sandhya Sundaraman) hubby is posted in Pune and so she joins him here during long weekends. As today is a holiday owing to Yugadhi/ Gudi Padva, she is here. Yesterday she called to say she’s here and so we decided to meet up. In the recent past, everytime we met, she’d ask me to get some book on poetry to read aloud. You can’t take English out of the teacher you see..
So I rummaged thru my collections and took out copies of my own blog posts and several poems that I had penned during our college days while sitting thru boring sessions of Anandhi and Sundari Manian’s General English classes and also many poems that I had copied from magazines like Caravan, Mirror, Eves Weekly,Officers forum etc, ; poems from random american poets gleaned from American Library ; poems of Kamala das, Shelley, Keats, TS Eliot that touched a chord in me and excerpts from Ayn Rand/ Alexander Solzhenitsyn et al.
The list seems exhaustive isn’t it?
Sample these:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
Bridges are not built on ‘perhapses’. ‘Perhaps’ don’t lead anywhere, only to more ‘perhapses’ (Cancer Ward)
The value of the human race lay not in its towering quantity but in its maturing quality.
When each of us dies and History stands over his grave and asks,’what was he?’, there’ll be only one possible answer- Pushkin’s:-
‘In our vile times….Man was, whatever his element, either tyrant or traitor or prisoner’- depending on whether you were a Communist/non-comunist but pretends to be bolshevik for survival/ non communist, non conformist.
Kahlil Gibran:
What is this duty that separates lovers and causes women to become widows, and the children to become orphans? what is this patriotism that provokes wars and destroys kingdoms thru’ rifles? And what cause can be more trifling when compared to but one life?… If duty destroys peace among nations and patriotism disturbs the tranquility of man’s life, then let us say ,”Peace be with duty and patriotism” ( The Mermaids)
J D Salinger:
The mark of the immature manis that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is to live humbly for one.( the Catcher in the Rye)
Shelley:
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed! ( Ode to the Westwind)
T S Eliot:
This is the way the world ends…not with a bang but with a whimper. ( Hollow Men)
and my favourite:
Where have you gone
with your confident
walk..with
your crooked smile..
why did you leave
me..
when you took your
laughter
and departed
are you aware that
with you
went the Sun,
all light
and what few stars
there were..?
where have you gone
with your confident
walk, your
crooked smile, the
rent money in one pocket
my heart in another..
-(Mary Evans)
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