bye bye 2011

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand/Surely the Second Coming is at hand."


what did I discover in literature/news/media space

1. headline today is best channel in India and arnab goswami though loud is most impartial anchor today

2. local media of Indore is corrupt to core and hopeless

3. Hindu beats all others in quality.will make my kids read it

4.good magazine - caarvan, first post

5.good blog brwon pundits some Pakist based out of london

6. wished to read more of Al zajeera but could not

7. books which I read

Pallavi Aiyer's book on China - smoke and mirrors
from beirut to Jersulam
could not finish ses of poppies of amitava ghosh..too pretentious
mahabharat by devdutt patnaik
finishing emperor of all maladie on cancer


target for next year

1. read up all the books I got from flipkart
2. zero on one good hindi magazine which I can subscribe for lifetime
3. transfer all my collection of quotes etc to blog
4. hope to be introduced to new books through course on public policy
5. read some book on finance and eco
6. read some cook book and try its receipes
7.try hand at poems again
8.try to write 100 - 1 pager travelouge or character scatch

ढ़ूंडओगे अगर मुल्कों मुल्कों

By Abida Parween

read in some blog on death anniversary of benajir bhutto

ढ़ूंडओगे अगर मुल्कों मुल्कों
मिलने के नहीं नायाब हैं हम
तबीर है जिसकी हसरत-ए-गम
आए हुमनफासो वो ख्वाब हैं हम

आए दर्द बता कुछ तू ही पता
अब तक यह मु’अम्मया हाल ना हुआ
हम में हैं दिल-ए-बेताब निहान
यह आप दिल-ए-बेताब हैं हम

मैं हैरत-ओ-हसरत का मारा
खामोश खड़ा हूँ साहिल पर
दरिया-ए-मोहब्बत कहता है
“आ कुछ भी नहीं पायाब हैं हम”

लाखों ही मुसाफिर चलते हैं
मंज़िल पोुंचते हैं दो इक
आए आहल-ए-ज़माना क़द्र करो
नायाब ना हों कामयाब हैं हम

मुरघन-ए-क़ाफास को फूलों ने
आए शाद ये कहला भेजा है
आ जाओ जो तुम को आना हो
ऐसे में अभी शादाब हैं हम


Transliteration

Dhoondo Ge Agar Mulkon Mulkon
Milne Ke Nahin Nayaab Hain Hum
Tabeer Hai Jiski Hasrat-0-Gham
Aye Humnafaso Woh Khwaab Hain Hum

Aye Dard Bata Kuch Tu Hi Pata
Ab Tak Yeh Mu’ammya Hal Na Hua
Hum Mein Hain Dil-E-Betaab Nihan
Yah Aap Dil-E-Betaab Hain Hum

Main Hairat-O-Hasrat Ka Maara
Khamosh Khada Hoon Sahil Par
Dariya-E-Mohabbat Kehta Hai
“Aa Kuch Bhi Nahin Payaab Hain Hum”

Lakhon Hi Musafir Chalte Hain
Manzil pohunchte Hain Do Ik
Aye Ahl-E-Zamana Qadr Karo
Nayaab Na Hon Kamyaab Hain Hum

Murghan-E-Qafas Ko Phoolon Ne
Aye Shaad Ye Kahla Bheja Hai
Aa Jao Jo Tum Ko Aana Ho
Aise Mein Abhi Shadaab Hain Hum


Translation

Even if you search from nation to nation
You won’t find me, for I’m an extinct rarity.
O friend! I am that dream which can only be
Interpreted through your desires and grief.

O grief! Now you give me some clue
For this puzzle isn’t solved yet,
Whether a restless heart is concealed within me
Or I myself is a restless heart

I, in a state of awe and regret
Stand quietly at the shore,
The river of love expresses
"come, I'm only a shallow” [rivulet]

Thousand of travellers embark on journey
But only a few of them reach the destination.
O my contemporaries! Revere me for I'm,
If not extinct, a rare [kind of] being.

O Shaad! The flowers have dispatched
This message to the captive birds,
"Come if you so desire
For, at the moment, we're very fresh."

advice to women

Keep cats
if you want to learn to cope with
the otherness of lovers.
Otherness is not always neglect --
Cats return to their litter trays
when they need to.
Don't cuss out of the window
at their enemies.
That stare of perpetual surprise
in those great green eyes
will teach you
to die alone.

On Bangladesh War : September on jessore road

I have to point out two things.
1. I found Bangladeshi wherever I met them Singapore metro, Dubai mall or subway at times square- always more dignified than African Americans, hard working, less brutish than Pakistanis and friendly towards Indians
2. From Muslim majority countries, it has least or no person in Guantanamo bay or people involved in international terrorist organizations despite having a large global migrant population


Poem to nation of brave people on their 40th anniversary

September on Jessore Road

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage

Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!"

Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--

Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?

How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams --

Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come tast the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they've killed?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory pain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go


November 14-16, 1971

video games

listening to this song and in love with this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO1OV5B_JDw&feature=related

Swinging in the backyard
Pull up in your fast car
Whistling my name

Open up a beer
And you say get over here
And play a video game

I'm in his favorite sun dress
Watching me get undressed
Take that body downtown

I say you the bestest
Lean in for a big kiss
Put his favorite perfume on

Go play a video game

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

Singing in the old bars
Swinging with the old stars
Living for the fame

Kissing in the blue dark
Playing pool and wild darts
Video games

He holds me in his big arms
Drunk and I am seeing stars
This is all I think of

Watching all our friends fall
In and out of Old Paul's
This is my idea of fun
Playing video games

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

(Now you do)

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

Occupy wall street

From economist : for wall street protesters

A Sane Revolution

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.

Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.

Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!

(Tip of the hat to Jim Henley.)

हम देखेंगे – फैज़ अहमद फैज़

कहते है कि आता है मुसीबत में खुदा याद,
हम पर तो पड़ी वह कि खुदा भी न रहा याद|

हम देखेंगे यह नज्म फैज़ अहमद फैज़ की अन्य नज्मो में बहुत महत्वपूर्ण स्थान रखती है और यह नज्म पाकिस्तान में इस्बाल बानो द्वारा अपने पुरे शबाब पर गाई गयी है लीजिए पेश है:

हम देखेंगे
लाजिम है के हम भी देखेंगे
वो दिन के जिसका वादा है
जो लौह-ए-अजल में लिक्खा है
हम देखेंगे…

जब जुल्म-ओ-सितम के कोह-ए-गराँ
रुई की तरह उड़ जायेंगे
हम महकूमो के पाँव-तले
जब धरती धड धड धड्केगी
और अहल-ए-हिकम के सर ऊपर
जब बिजली कड-कड कड़केगी
हम देखेंगे…

जब अर्ज-ए-खुदा के काबे से
सब बुत उठवाए जायेंगे
हम अहल-ए-सफा, मर्दूद-ए-हरम
मसनद पे बिठाये जायेंगे
सब ताज उछाले जायेंगे
सब तख़्त गिराए जायेंगे
हम देखेंगे…

बस नाम रहेगा अल्लाह का
जो गायब भी है हाजिर भी
जो मंजर भी है, नाज़िर भी
उट्ठेगा ‘अनल हक़’ का नारा
जो मै भी हू और तुम भी हो
और राज करेगी खल्क-ए-खुदा
जो मै भी हू और तुम भी हो
हम देखेंगे… – फैज़ अहमद फैज़

Bitter sweet symohony

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
But I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,no,no,no,no,no(fading away)

Well I never pray
But tonight I'm on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
I can't change
I can't change it

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
Trying to find some money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

You know I can't change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no

I can't change my mind
no, no, no, no, no,
I can't change
Can't change my body,
no, no, no

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
Been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
That you've ever been down
That you've ever been down

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/bittersweetsymphonylyrics.html