Crazyfinger

Chengoona Ala Meeda...

From this Old Telugu Songs site, (thanks, Swarup for the link and for kuffir and Swarup for stoking this translation idea) here is my transcription of the song "Chengoona Ala Meeda..." sung by M.S. Rama Rao.  Telugu diacritics have always eluded me with their non-intuitive and computer-unfriendly styles, so I am not employing them in this below transcription. 

chengoona ala meeda midisee potadi meenu
chengoona ala meeda midisee potadi meenu
chinnavaadu edaraite' marachee potavu me'nu
kaadantaava?  kaadantaava chinnadaana neevu, kaadantaava chinnadaana

vallaamaalina mamata kamma timme'ra laaga
vallamaalina mamata kamma timme'ra laaga
kammukunnadi ninnoo, chinnadanaa
sammasaina vaadu sarasane' vunnado
pallakunta ve' le' chinnadaanaa neevu, pallakunta ve' le' chinnadaana

My translation:

Suddenly in the net, the fish leaps insolently
    suddenly in the net, the fish leaps insolently
Seeing in front the young lad, you forget yourself

Do you deny it,
    do you deny it, young lass,
Would you deny it young lass?

Overflowing affection, like an irresistible numbness,
    overflowing affection, like an irresistible numbness,
Overwhelms you, young lass

That who matches you is nearer, perhaps
Soon you'll be on a palanquin, young lass,
    you'll be on a palanquin soon, young lass

See?  How pallid and lifeless the translation reads?  Those who can read Telugu will know what I mean.  Click below to see more of this post with further updates, perhaps with a transliteration of the poem, soon.

(C) "a problem with authority"

My rough and tumble translation of this telugu poem by Varavara Rao.  My comment on "kufr" blog reproduced below, entirely for my own reading pleasure:-)

~

My language has rusted quite, but I thought I'd take a shot at the translation, just for kicks. Here it is. The column width is messing up the display but nevertheless...

Regards,
Crazyfinger 

True, the rains fell
And streams bent this year,
But there were no seasons since ten years,
Surprised am I, soon as stepped into the prison,
By the cuckoo's welcome song,
"Has the Spring arrived, already?"

Walls, of Nizam's eon; barbed wires,
Endings, electrified for death,
Guarded bastions,
Walls surrounding walls,
Gates inside gates,
Locks to open,
Locks to close,

Lush green,
Trapped between the guard watches,
Flightless pigeons,
Sky, looking as though wholly trapped
And imprisoned in the yard

The "Allaho Akbar", the prayer call in the lazy noon,
Wind, shivering in the cold from wet ground,
In here are imprisoned all the seasons, all this time,
The Mango bud and the Neem blossom, taste one and same,
The prison cuckoo sings on, and on,
Like a coaxing cheer,
The fettered, the chained song

That may be for my arrival,
Or may be that, friend Kanakachari is not here

Update #1:  Click below to see a transliteration and a word-by-word annotation with English words.

(C) "a belated 9-11 post"

...It seems to me that these two entities, the desire for the ideal and the longing to be in our own community, are continuously negotiating with one another in a human being throughout the workings of the history.

Can a Blog Be Energeic?

"The action of the nerves," he began eagerly, "is curiously slow in some people. I had a friend, once, that, if you burnt him with a red-hot poker, it would take years and years before he felt it!"
    "And if you only pinched him?" queried Sylvie.
    "Then it would take ever so much longer, of course.  In fact, I doubt if the man himself would ever feel it, at all.  His grandchildren might."
                                            Sylvie and Bruno - Lewis Carroll

When the impulse to write a blog-post strikes, it lodges itself in the consciousness like a bad tooth and extends in all directions.  In this state, nothing irks one as an unfinished thought that presses towards further exploration, while the impulse to post drags the opposite way, i.e., to chronicle whatever is ready, now.  Thus, our imagination becomes vulnerable.  I think, without sufficient proof, that it is during such vulnerable moments that we feel – without ever admitting to it – as if all the good and evil in the world is flowing through our pen; that our writing is a call to all the good men and women to pick their sides, i.e., to announce their allegiance right here and right now.  Thus, our chronicle itself – a result of our primal instinct, strangely, to connect – becomes a gunshot into an already hostile reader group, alerting them to partition, i.e., to divide. 
    So, how should we write a blog-post?  But we should first ask: what should we aim to achieve by plunging our productive, imaginative and vulnerable selves into this strange medium of internet, a medium that forces us to engage in – in Christopher Knight’s words – “immersion without submission”?
    That distinction between “immersion” and “submission” fascinates me.  It seems to me that our experiences in the blogosphere (that dangerously all-encompassing term) are modulated by where we find ourselves between the two extremes of “immersion” and “submission.”  What do these extremes mean to me? 
    I read blogs, comment on them, but I have this visceral desire to expose the full extent of the raw emotions churning in me, i.e., to submit to the compelling power to express, so others may experience the feeling.  In this, my instinct is to experience a blog like watching a well-made film.  My desire is to force the blog to let me in, and to inflict on me other people’s experience most unobtrusively, just as the characters in the film unfold the drama and pour out the experience into me.   
    How good this experience is, is of course determined by how “flat” or “rounded” the characters are (a somewhat pedantic classification, but novel writers, not me, would relate to this analogy) and how self-effacing, how unself-conscious the characters are and how energeic the narrative is.   
    Carried forward like this, I feel the urgent clarity of the mechanics of the further action; see in my view which lever should be pulled first, what then results and how the world changes; and am frustrated by snail-mail speed of the real world.  This I call the experience of someone who is at the “submission” extreme of the blogosphere interaction.  Here in lie all those folks who are attracted to the blogosphere’s potential for collaborative action.    

On the other extreme is the immersive experience.  Simply put, this is the non-fiction counterpart of the “submissive” extreme.  Immersive blogging experience is self-consciously deliberate, measured, intellectual, sometimes fully aware that “this is only a blog,” self-segments itself into a familiar taxonomy of politics, law, economics etc., tagging aggressively, and feels no compulsion to take further action. It doesn’t mean they don’t act in some political sense, because after all, the matter of ideas counts too. 
    Note that I am not casting an aspersion of any inauthenticity in the immersive blogging experience, but the fact is this immersive blogging experience is much closer to the state of the present media analysis: after the fact, not involved in producing anything tangible, not involved in taking tangible part in the supply and demand chain of working men and women’s productivity for the sake of the well-being of people.  In other words, the immersive blogging experience is away from the actual production of either tangible goods or the movement of them, but the speak-stuff around them.    

Perhaps it is only a demographic thing, or a generational thing but it seems to me that, in spite of their initial propensity to unleash the personal in us, blogs are becoming more and more impersonal. 
    In other words, to put it in somewhat simplistic terms, we are perhaps witnessing a transition of the blogging experience from that of a wholehearted submission to that of an immersion, perhaps even a disaffected immersion.  It is as if those who first instinctively reached out to blog – seeking submissive experience – are, though encouraged that people are reading them, turned off by the anxiety that these readers have nothing much to say in return.  That quiet recognition which in an off-line world would bring people closer, turns into a no-comment silence which has a jarring impact in the online world.

But, having written all this, I wonder if these submissive and immersive blogging experiences have anything to do with an individual’s and a nation’s political  and cultural condition.  Surely at some basic level the answer is yes.  In some comment on some blog I was trying to make sense of all this in just that political sense, and thought that, for the present circumstance that we find ourselves in India, perhaps some form of submissive blogging experience is more the pressing need.  That makes sense to me, and not just in India.   

(C) "Just Heart Alone Won't Suffice"

Something along the lines of what Franklin said: “Just as we should account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence,” applies here. ...In this present situation, the credibility loss is not Sainath’s but the government’s, for all obvious reasons this post highlighted.

(C) "I am a coward"

These are the times when during the day we are asleep everywhere except on the islands of our own selves, and during the night we wake up to sights and sounds from another world, afraid like little children.

Leaders vs. Media: Know Which is Which

You think the media and the politics of today are depressing?  Take a peek at the newspapers during American Civil War.  For a sample, an 1861 article in New York Express has this to say about Abraham Lincoln's election to the Office:

"This was a part of the game of deception played by the Republicans upon the people, to foist a man upon the country for its chief magistrate who was never regarded by his most intimate acquaintances, as anything more than a jocose, cunning, country politician.
[...]
The election of such a man at such a crisis is undoubtedly the greatest evil that has ever befallen this country.  But the mischief is done, and the only relief for the American people is to shorten sail, caulk the hatches, put in the dead-lights, send down the topmasts, and prepare for a hurricane."

Yes, that was referring to Abraham Lincoln.  See, what a little piece of historical knowledge can give us a wholly renewed perspective? 

Lesson: It is the individual actions driven by a deep sense of moral vision that leads to a real change.  Reading news and media analysts' articles, listening to talking heads on TV is an aftermath, and should be kept that way.  Don't mistake one for the other. 

More of the above article here.  The Valley of the Shadow, a digital chronicle of the American North and South communities during the American Civil War, is here.

(C) "Exploding By-Lines: Update on NewAssignment.Net"

...With "reliability ratings" line of thought, expect to walk into the vagaries of reputation management like schemes, their ins and outs. By that I mean, in specific, that most of these "ratings" are, for want of a better technology, discrete (as in from 0 to 5 etc.) Perhaps that is ok but I wish a necessity like the NADN would lead to a bit more of a more apt invention.