Evergreen Leaves ….

Just something light and funny that I came across:

An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that over Bohr’s desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out).

The American said with a nervous laugh, “Surely you don’t believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist –”
Bohr chuckled.
“I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.”

Even before I open my love-sick eyes,
before I see the first rays of sun
hitting my dreamy paradise,
before the salt of ocean mists
carry their forlorn caress to me,
within my arms I feel the colours
of my lover’s entwined sighs.

In front of me the open oceans
and the deepest, bluest skies
tear each other apart in liaisons.
Divine in the beauty of their dances
raindrops shed on me below.
Underneath the seashore clouds
in enchanting blackness, slow,
I see my lover’s clasps and moans as
in my heart she begins to flow.

Even before I hear the thunder,
or the rush of brown dry leaves,
or the sound of thrashing waves
and the sands of coy retreats,
before I hear the careful drops
of a sweet rain’s water in my sleep,
my memories run to hear the sound
of her loving fingertips.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Fingertips by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

I should apologize in advance to my regular readers who expect a poem or a short humorous post in this blog. I am not sure at all about any reader liking this. In fact, I am quite sure that nobody will like this. The hardcore Krishnamurti followers will perhaps hate the ‘Hindu’ tag that I am naively putting on him. And extreme right-wing Hindus will certainly not like the idea of a Hindu text abolishing several concepts popularly believed to be very Hindu. But let me put this whole thing up anyway.

A note on Sanskrit phonetics:

I have italicized all Sanskrit words in this article. The following phonetic regulations are to considered for correct pronunciation of those words:

• aa – the second ‘a’ in ‘alarm’. (alaarm).
• c – ‘ch’ in ‘chant’.
• i – ‘i’ in ‘him’.
• ee – ‘ee’ in ‘peel’.
• N – hard ‘n’. Unfortunately, there is no European equivalent to this sound.
• Use of capitals:
  • t – the soft ‘t’ used in French, (’t’ in ‘tu’).
  • th – ‘th’ in ‘thank’.
  • d – ‘th’ in ‘the’.
  • T – the normal ‘t’ in English. ‘t’ in ‘tea’.
  • D – the normal ‘d’ in English. ‘d’ in ‘do’.

“I would like to talk about the whole problem of existence. . . . All values are changing from day to day, there is no respect, no authority, and nobody has faith in anything whatsoever; neither in the Church, nor in the establishment, nor in any philosophy. So one is left absolutely to oneself to find out what one is to do in this chaotic world. What is the right action?” - JK, Beyond Violence, Ch 1: Existence

I had wandered into the library of the KFI (Krishnamurti Foundation India) Chennai this Friday afternoon for want of something to do. I had expected the place to be a pile of books meant for the coffee-table philosophers (people who feign interest in philosophical or religio-philosophical matters only to secure a position among the heavyweights of a pseudo-intellectual circle) engaging in Jiddu Krishnamurti for their fall/winter conglomerations. To my pleasant surprise, they had a rather impressive collection of books on several subjects. Having bought a few books by J K recently, and having managed to reach the middle of only the second among them, I decided to select a non-Krishnamurti work from the shelf. For no reason whatsoever, I picked up yogavaasishtha

At this point, I should provide a brief introduction to the yogavaasishtha

Yogavaasishtha is a philosophical treatise written by the great Sanskrit poet and scholar Vaalmiki. The original treatise comprises of 30,000 slokas. It is written in the form of a dialog between sixteen year old Raama and the great sage Vasishtha. The book is one of the best discourses on monism, propounding that everything in the universe is a projection or manifestation of a singular consciousness. It is also a beautiful book even only in terms of its poetic charm. For a more elaborate description of this treatise, I urge you to visit – A Brief Introduction to Yogavaasishtha. Yogavaasishtha starts with Raama as a dejected prince who finds life and its achievements quite pointless by noticing, quite correctly, that all happiness and sorrow of life is transient. The sage Vasishtha decides to tell Raama about permanent bliss, liberation, bondage of life, etc. Broadly speaking, the book deals with the problem of inharmonious existence and impermanence.

As I kept on reading this wonderful treatise, I was repeatedly hit by the similarities between this ancient Hindu text and the teachings of one of the greatest contemporary teachers, J Krishnamurti. I would like to draw parallels between Krishnamurti’s book “Beyond Violence” and Yogavaasishtha.

(more…)

A breeze flies to me, luscious yet unkind,
tosses around my well-laid life
and melts across the horizons.
My poems remain; their manuscripts float
disheveled in forgotten spaces behind.

Perhaps an unblemished moon in my skies.
With immaculate strokes of pen I draw
a nose and a handful of wrinkles on her face.
And all the stars of all new-moon nights
twinkle with delight in their impish sighs.

Certain dreams I so carefully build,
fall apart in a disturbing clamour.
In multitudes of dazzling colours,
in a sheath of rainbow hues
stays hidden my desired image.

A different dream I dream now.
A different picture I paint.
Like the different creaks of a creaking wheel
the difference sounds so quaint.
As time goes by and times come back,
spiteful, the sounds return as well.
I sit, pen down the forever new
as the past of forgotten spaces swell.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Floating Dreams by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Once again, a translation from my nameless Bengali original. As Puchkilla says so often, “reading a translation is like eating chewed food!” And I feel it now with this translation more than ever before. But I present this example of ineptitude anyway, under the guise of my urban wilderness:

Like the sweet wind carrying the
hints of Tamarisk love,
the unvaried wearisome stream of a million lives
keeps on floating and floating by,
but without the moisture, dry.

Like the allure of some distant memory
the din of rolling waves
of hundreds of unknown sounds, dreamily supernatant,
reach my ears.
Like the faint silhouette of a distant misty village,
it provides the glimpse of a fascinating hope,
but without the respite of a cry.

A mere stretch of arms, and in my palms
I hold the fretful clinker drone.
Like the foam of a well-known ocean.
As underneath two empty brackish hands
endless roars keep falling in unceasing thrashes,
at moment’s closing, they dissolve amongst
the scentless sky.

I sit on shore sands, solitary.
Colours of life fill my eyes.
I fill my heart with the inheritance
of all I have seen and all I have not
and all my silent sighs.

Has always been inept, the heart,
and steadily has moved apart.
Echoes of the roar stop, the din grows faint,
as if I comprehend the transience of foam
and all sound’s futile effort.

Wild, fathomless, unaccepting blue
at the hearts of the two people resides.
Spasms inflate the colours of forlorn.
One is a rainbow forgetfully hiding a love in its music.
The other, a dark black unmoving stone.

Like twigs floating by in a wearied stream,
with infinite gestures of a choiceless love
for an instant they lift their eyes to see
the absurdity of a poem
at moment’s closing in blissful Lethe
within the clinkers of foam.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Urban Wilderness by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

For the uninitiated, I provide a link to the concept behind Gogol: The Floating Mobile.

Knowing Gogol as briefly as I did, my surprise rose to newer hitherto unknown levels bordering on shock when I discovered that his tryst with cellular phones did not end with an instrument floating down the sparkling tropical waters.

On his return from that memorable outing, Gogol solemnly promised to his near and dear ones, as well the witnesses of the tragic demise of his first cellular phone, that he shall be buying an inexpensive instrument as a penance to his irredeemable irresponsibility. I think I just used unrealistically harsh words to describe his solemnity. The witnesses tell me that he certainly did not utter ‘irresponsibility’! But, whatever the exact nature of this promise was, he did manage to keep it for a week by not buying any phone whatsoever.

But then, disaster struck in the form of the arrival of his credit card.

(more…)

Like almost every other night, I lie awake
in my slumber. My senses lusting for you.
With wizened eyes I wish to see
your slender fingers, in cruel forgetfulness,
twisting me over.
Split open all the chambers and
spit, derisive; pull it apart for all to see.
Pull it apart as you daintily walk
with piercing, sharp, and nimble feet
on my softest fleshes.

Taunting my frightened face with the joy
of your command. Smelling my being,
my being the doll to be ripped apart
for a moment of perfervid ardor.
Unstitched, cotton heart fleeting in your dream
I dissipate, torn arms lying under your
party shoes; soaking discomfort, pain drafting
my martyrology within you.

Pick up the limbs, please, from under the overture
in convulsions of denial, frenzy, close to your
heart of hearts — hold them.
Heavy with your tears, stuff me back
to back myself I sew my self
until, in your careless laughter,
you render me fleeting cotton again

and again.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Render Me by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.