Kerala - 3

Kozhikode has a Hillarious Chit funds among several other hilarious businesses.

Kerala - 2

The sea is something else, nai? We land-locked people never know.

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Kerala - 1

I am planning to set up as a Malayalam translator when I get back; I am getting that good.

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I am tired today. Too tired to move. Too tired to think. I have been waiting for a decent hour to sleep. Even TV seems like too much effort. I wanted something really nice before I slept. I looked in the right place and found it. For now and again –

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

_________________________________________________________________

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

_________________________________________________________

I’ve liked these before tonight, you know, but I find that to find joy in Wallace Stevens a really quite mind is dead useful.

Sib

They were showing The Apple on WorldMovies just now. I had been told about it but never got a chance to see it. As usual I had forgotten what I had been told about it, but since I’ve liked God, Construction and Destruction by Samira Makhmalbaf, I sat down to see it.

I should have expected it perhaps, but when it hit me that the actors were not actors at all, it turned my stomach. Now I‘ve turned off the TV and read the whole storyline and reviews on the net and am sitting here feeling slightly ill. Young ambition, artistic or otherwise, can be a bloody ruthless thing.

Moon blues

Oooooooo I would go and do something like this! Of all the days in the year to go and admire the moon, it had to be today. Most years I make it a point not to get out after dark on Vinayak Chauthi. If I do, I assiduously study the paving on the road. This year I plain forgot. After about thirty seconds of contemplating the lovely things clouds do to moons, a nigglet crept up. With a slap of the forehead I had it.

My mother who should have rightfully warned me in advance says she did not do so because it might have Freudian-pressured me into doing exactly what I should not.

Anyway it was done, and what cannot be undone should be remedied.

So for the fourth or fifth time in my life I reminded myself that-

The Lion killed Prasena

Jambhuvantha killed the Lion

Thus the little boy need not cry

He can have the Shyamanthakamani

This is an additional precaution: I would remind all my acquaintance that Krishna did not kill Prasena and I probably did not do any of the wicked things you might imagine I did this year. Remember 'twas only the moon.

P.S You do all know that if you look at the moon on VC you will probably be suspected of some horribly thing of which you are entirely innocent, right?