Crazyfinger

Our Draupadi

Something I wrote about Draupadi over at Pustakam.net site.

My Not-so-Trivial Pursuit

I was just about to wake up, not quite 
There you were, intently reading a book
I saw only your neck, your ear and your nose
Your big black eyes, your cheeks, 
Your shoulders, and…

And then my heart grew heavy
Spasms, 
Though becoming soft at your sight,
Nevertheless strike through me

Why won't you talk to me…?
We exchanged resumes once
Me being myself, you confident

What is this now that I keep running into…?
A cloud of unknowing between us
A graceless ignoring by one of us
... 

Dr. Edwina Pendarvis on U.S. Education System

Particularly for Asian-American parents, a first brush with the primary and secondary schools in US evoke feelings varying from disappointment, dread to depressing thoughts with worries about the future of the child.  Especially among Indians temptations are high to go back to India, preferring the secondary schooling system there.  In both US and India, there is a definite glaring difference in the quality of secondary education and the graduate schools.  For some reason neither country is able to get both right.  This interview, over at Fools Mountain blog, with Dr. Edwina Pendarvis (Part 1, Part 2) sheds some light on the experiences from Chinese point of view.   

New "Translation" Blog

For a while there was a thought to put up a focused blog on translating efforts from Indian languages into English, but no action until now.  Well, Pavada is up.  I know, the design is not exactly original but please visit, comment and help correct the misinterpretations and mistakes. 

Skybright, Skylight

So bright you are
You said
Too bright for me

So sharp you are
You said
Too sharp for me

So much love I have
You said
Too afraid to say how much
Too much to speak in words

Staying back
You shine
Like those vitreous
Streets of Qianmen

Staying alone
I remain
Like that shadow
Wishing I were one
Among your zhongguoren

"I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!"

Way back when I wrote this but had to shove it back into draft mode.  But now, with only so much time remaining, I am going to claim that per statute of limitations the hiding time is over.  It's so much fun to have one's own blog...don't you think?  No?  Ask someone who lives like today is the last day of the life...

Into the dim light of her acquaintance
He stepped forth, neither as a friend
Nor as a stranger, not even as a lover

She squeezed him in, her gentle hands
Guiding his blind eyes, saying they are
Vitreous, saying they are mystical

Then, satiated, ceased,
She suddenly remembered
She ought to be independent
That she ought to be feminine
And that she ought not to let in
That she ought not to give in

So she touched her breasts
Said they are not special
Said he is blind

Young women these days
So intelligent,
And so Self-centered
Married, betrothed, dedicated
In love, over the sloshing tin box
Called blogosphere
"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"

And so,
Out of the dim light of her acquaintance
He stepped forth
Now as a stranger

"Why Does Getting Married Makes You Fat?"

All the betas and epsilons are there...including that "tradiational marriage" in Table 1 (clicking on link opens a PDF document)  

Unique ID Authority Chairman & the Art of Handwaving

 From India's Unique ID Authority Chairman's interview: 

• "We are not doing something different from what already exists."  
• "Having this number does not confer any rights, benefits or any entitlements.  All it does is confirming that X is X."
• "We will have to design it as good as possible."
• "It is not a reinvention but scaling up."

In other words, we don't know how much it really costs, we are still investigating the technology, at this time we can't really articulate in specific terms what problem or a set of a problems this UID program really solves, but we will do our best. Either Mr. Nilekani is doing a poor job of evangelizing the UID program or worse, he and his team are in over their heads on this one.  But most worrisome is that the approach, from this interview, appears to be technology-centric for the sake of building technology.  And you know when that happens, it's like a solution looking for a problem.  What we need is more information, more specific information on what are the specific problems this UID is suppose to address and how.  

I know it is apples and oranges, but compare the above handwaving to this news item that came out of China (take it for what it is worth):

China’s nine-year compulsory education policy had made great achievements in recent years, covering more than 160 million primary and middle school students so far in both rural and urban areas, said Education Minister Zhou Ji at a news conference here recently.

Last year, the enrolment percentage in both the 3, 00,900 primary schools and 57,900 middle schools across the country reached 98 per cent, said Mr. Zhou. The government also spent tens of billions of yuan over the past several years to establish more than 8,000 boarding schools nationwide, rebuild dangerous buildings and improve living conditions in schools, he said.

China’s nine-year compulsory education policy, which was launched in 1986, enables students over six years of age nationwide to have free education at both primary and secondary schools.

Mr. Zhou also stressed the importance of shortening the gap between urban and rural areas in terms of teachers’ quality by improving rural teachers’ economic and social status.

The government has released a wage reform ensuring that payment of rural teachers are not lower than that of local civil servants. Further, the government issued many preferential policies to encourage teachers, college graduates and school students to go to the countryside to teach. This year, more than 2, 00,000 college graduates have done so.

As for development of vocational education, which is considered as an important task for China’s education development, Mr. Zhou said there would be free access to secondary vocational education this year in order to better promote its development. The policy would be primarily implemented in agriculture related majors and for poor students, said Mr. Zhou.

He did not reveal the exact time for the policy to take effect. He said the scale of secondary vocational school development was now equal to that of high schools, with student enrolment numbers higher than high school. Last year, the enrolment number in secondary vocational schools reached 8.1 million, and the number might be 8.6 million for this year, he said.

White Oleander

During the past six months or so I've seen on HBO a few movies that are quite simply near-perfect.  Yesterday's White Oleander was one of them.  I used to think that if a movie is made out of a novel, then forget the movie, just go read the book.  Not lately.  There are some movies today that make you think, "Wow, it's difficult to write that.  How did they pull it off...?"  Here is a clip.

Donald Keene in Japan Times

Those who read Japanese literature translated into English will know who Donald Keene is.  The Japan Times published an extended interview with him in their Sept 6, 2009 issue.  I used to read his weekly column in Daily Yomiuri Online but I can't seem to find the link to it anymore.  If anyone can find it I'd love to read them again.  But it may be that those columns have been turned into a book.  If you haven't read Keene, I recommend starting with Chushingura - a puppet play, and Yoshimasa (you can find the book on Amazon)

"Dying art?"

As a matter of taste, it is never an interesting exercise to point out the deficiencies of someone's article.  But the author of this article ought to look around once in a while on the internet.  There's plenty of good poetry, especially in local languages.  And whatever does he mean by this, by the way:

"Partly owing to the advent of technology that provides mass entertainment like television and partly because poets have developed a propensity to self-destruct."

The Character of a Writer

Often I read this essay in order to remind myself that the weariness and the contempt that inevitably surfaces when I attempt to write my thoughts is not just a matter of mood, nor it is of a particular sentiment or the medium.  It is all of that, but essentially it is a matter of character.  Of the reader and of the writer.

"…And before I had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set of authors I had come among, and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve.  Those views furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life. 
    The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach? it was explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taught without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food, lodging, women, and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was very good.
    This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests.  To be its priest was very pleasant and profitable.  And I lived a considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity.  But in the second, and especially in the third year of this life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this religion and to examine it.  My first cause of doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in accord among themselves.  Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers; we teach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly.  Others said: No! we are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly.  And they disputed, quarreled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another.  There were also many among us who did not care who was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means of this activity of ours.  All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed.
    Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life; but they were self-confident and self-satisfied as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized that that faith was a fraud.
    But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher.  I naively imagined that I was a poet and artist and could teach everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly.
    From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what.
    To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though there are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic asylum.
    We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote -- teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another -- just as in a lunatic asylum.
    Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions of words which the post carried all over...[...], and we still went on teaching and could in no way find time to teach enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.
    It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work and to feel assured that we were very important people we required a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised:  "All that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture.  And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself justified.
    It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself."

 A Confession - by Leo Tolstoy (1872 or 1882) (Trans: Aylmer Maude)

Within, Without

Without you,
And you
These re-collections
Cut furrows in the soil of my being
Within me

Without you,
And you
My sadness is so heavy
That I don't know
Where my heart is anymore
Within me

Without you,
And you
I smile at everyone
Thinking somehow then I will find you
Within me

Without you,
And you
I see There, everywhere I see
Within me

There, will you let me in?
Here is no longer bearable
Without you
And you

Translating Gorati Venkanna

After this conversation over at Kufr blog, I got to thinking about translating this song.  Here it is.  It is not at all how the original in Telugu is.  I won't go into details of why such a loss is the most difficult thing to recover.  I am leaving the comments section open just in case someone has a better result or a corrective suggestion. 

How many more years...!
[Missing two lines]
This bloodshed, this violence, still how many more years...!

Lords, ruling chiefs, elders...!
O, well-armed ring leaders
O lord Samaranagireddi... you,
Do be cozy my lord, do be in comfort

Bharatavirareddi... you, shall
Hand out the bombs
Our people... shall 
Tread that path

Narasimha nayudu, you... shall   
Snap your fingers
And all these people... shall 
Jiggy in ringers

Narasimha nayudu lord, you,
Narasimha nayudu lord, you... shall   
Bristle your moustache in pride
We shall rush with our incensed anger

Indrasenareddi...!  Indrasenareddi shall 
Cast high as moon, shall  
Sit on heaven's throne

The umbrellas over your head we are
The soles under your feet we are
The machetes in your fists we are

Hound dogs, that chase
At your roil, ruffle and hiss, are we

Sons, who slaughter
Even a blood-brother at your wrath, are we
Do be cozy my lord, do be in comfort

O, well-armed lordly lords
O, well-armed ring leaders
O, faction leaders
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

May your last born be,
May your last born be
Given the visa for America
Be happy There

May your first born, be an SP and
May your first born, be an SP and
Swing the truncheon
Look after you
In a manner with no cases

Collector, like a son-in-law, shall 
Bear your feet's burden
Authority, like a dog, shall
Watch over you

Our cow herding son
Shall lift up your hatchet
Shall decapitate as many heads
As the morsels from you 
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

Your thousand-noter
We shall receive with humility
Sever the arm
Of whomever you show,
And show you

Your five thousand-noter
We shall receive with joy
Cut off the two legs of one of them
And show you

At your call for tender
We shall raise working heads
If the work stalls,
If the work stalls we shall be
Bones of your contention

When we gave you bombs
You fed us your expensive whisky
Your delicious food

And so if harm's your way,
Though our little one shivers
With cold and fever,
We shall go even at night,

And though the month-old bride
Is alone at home we shall
Seize our hunting knives,
At your times of trouble

If you give us bombs
We shall hurl, as play balls
For your sake
On our own heads
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

As hired guns, we shall bear the blame
As country's leaders, you shall gain merit
What do you say...!

Playing your part, heroes shall strike a hit
Seeing that cinema, our folks shall whistle

Next to Gandhi, Nehru shall be your pictures
In police stations shall be our photos
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

Lifecycle of Love

This is a slightly edited version of an older poem, "My Body, Your Body"

Not through one, not two, nor even three or four
But six hearts in six bowls of blood
Stirred together,
In me, for you

Two sisters enquired about you
Two brothers joked
Made my face flush
A mother and a father
Eagerly asked for your name

In my state of awakening
I climb into your walls
Cling onto your heart

What manner of love is this
I suckle your breast like a child
And make love to you like a man

What an in-between world is this
Not yet a child in you,
No longer in your man

Six hearts eagerly wait
Will I be a boy or a girl?

I giggle hard, kick hard
Roll over hard, laughing hard

While you, palms on your stomach
Say you never had it so hard
And swear, "What manner of love this is...!
No more, no, no no NO, no more...!"

This is a slightly edited version of an older poem, "My Body, Your Body"

Not through one, not two, nor even three or four
But six hearts in six bowls of blood
Stirred together,
In me, for you

Two sisters enquired about you
Two brothers joked
Made my face flush
A mother and a father
Eagerly asked for your name

In my state of awakening
I climb into your walls
Cling onto your heart

What manner of love is this
I suckle your breast like a child
And make love to you like a man

What an in-between world is this
Not yet a child in you,
No longer in your man

Six hearts eagerly wait
Will I be a boy or a girl?

I giggle hard, kick hard
Roll over hard, laughing hard

While you, palms on your stomach
Say you never had it so hard
And swear, "What manner of love this is...!
No more, no, no no NO, no more...!"

Roots of Sorrow

Like the ear for music
That never rusts
Like the longing for the raindrops
That never dries
And like the habit of an instinct
That turns right over and over again

The heart knows
That the Abandonment is near
Oh Lord, why do I not know myself...!

Fever

Every moment of flying away from you
I kept myself occupied with your image
Sitting in the middle of everyone
But looking elsewhere
Sighing and smiling

But now, so far away from you
Body exchange is impossible
Weariness, slow frustration
Shaking of the fingers
Quivering of the tears

First the chest began beating faster
Then the mind wanders off
And keeps wandering off

Now, I am not just hungry again,
Not just thirsty again
Because this love
Is now a fever, stealing my peace
Stealing my friends
Stealing my muse swallow

But I have one hope still
That in this burning
My desire be ashes
So I smile at your silence
And love you any which way, love you more

Heartless No More...!

Two birds set out
From your heart, racing

One filled with tears
Kept looking back

The other with life
Kept soaring high

What lies ahead, you wonder

Why don't you ask the spring
That squeezed your heart
That seized your heart
As you kissed those lips
That said, "Heartless no more...!"

"Aap ki yaad aati rahi..."

How else can a feeling be transferred, wholly and completely...?  Amma, Nanna...did you feel this way too...?

The New Bitch

Back in the day it was:

"That's really why he got upset that day when he couldn't get his engine started.  It was an intrusion on his reality.  It just blew a hole right through his whole groovy way of looking at things and he would not face up to it because it seemed to threaten his whole life style.  In a way he was experiencing the same sort of anger scientific people have sometimes about abstract art, or at least used to have.  That didn't fit their life style either." ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," Robert M. Pirsig)

Now:

...a mass upper class that was so immersed in symbolic and digital cerebration that it had become incapable of carrying out the most ordinary functions.

Feels to me it is the technology that has undergone a transformation in its gender.  Back in the day it was "manly" and now it is "sexy."