Sheer Poesy

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I must own it up! At my age I shouldn't tell needless lies:

"Sajan re' jhoot math bolo
Quda ke' paas jaana hai"


It is a birth-defect. Like cleft-lip or Color Blindness.

But I am happy with it; no need for surgical or other intervention.

"I am allergic to English Poetry"

Mark the word 'English'. I have no allergy to Urdu Poetry. In fact you see, I quoted one famous Filmy Line above.

Nor with Bengali Poetry. Shyamal woke me up early this morning (he is a lark) and reminded me that it is Tagore's Birthday and a Kobita of his is appearing in The Statesman Supplement.

In English Poetry, I exclude the bawdy and satirical limericks, Abol-Tabol type Jabberwocky and Modern, Post-Modern and Post-Post Modern stuff which don't count.

I mean The Classical Poetry.

With so many constraints like rhyme, rhythm, prosody, cadence, meter, millimeter etc, it is a Put-Up Job. Not Natural. Gimmickry. Trickery, Unmanly.

Just consider:

It is Saturday morning. You had a stag party last night after Office Hours. Sneaked into the bedroom via the tricked back-door.

You are rudely woken up by your lark-wife; not by a snatch of song but a bucket of water poured on your face. When what you badly needed was a Jeeves' Pick-Me-Up the morning after.

You are dragged to the Breakfast Table. You make a surly remark on the "buttered egg and the boiled toast".

You pay the price and are outdoors. You amble down the well-trodden path. Suddenly there is an arresting sight. A bit of De Ja Vu with a Difference.

Last Saturday at precisely this hour, and precisely the same circs, it was a mud-pool. Now it is bristling with a vast carpet of blooming flowers. With your professional expertise you make a quick estimate using Sampling Theory. The count turns out to be ten-thousand, give or take a hundred.

You rue your past. Those were the days you bought (or more likely robbed a grave as Sean Connery has it in the Great Train Robbery), and regularly made a present of a bunch of roses every Saturday Morning to what turned out to be your wife.

There is a gentle tap on your back: "Hey Bill, here again!" "Yeah, very well, Same with you?"

Both you buddies turn back arm in arm and trudge to the nearby 'Lake & Slake'. You stand him a drink. Then he stands you one. Then again you..... It goes on till you can no more stand it. Nor can your pub-mates. Bonhomie turns to Brawl and you two are bounced out. You pick up yourselves, chastened and return arm in arm to the mud-pool that it was last Saturday. On an impulse, you get in, pluck a dozen each, gather them up in your hankies and stagger to your respective homes.

It is well past noon. You ring the bell and there she is, scowls and all. You retract your arm from behind, kneel down and offer her the bunch of flowers. They are suckers to this ploy. Arms around your neck, smothered by kisses; and all is forgiven.

Post-lunch you two drive down to the Saturday Evening Cocktail Party. Drinks again. More drinks. On your way back you make that abiding surly remark on her ex- who was blabbering his head away.

She goes straight to her Bedroom and you to your Study. Roll on the floor. Stoned.

You wake up midnight to a Vacant & Pensive Mood. You recognize the symptoms as hunger. Open the door of the fridge and gobble up the remains of the lunch-chicken. Wash it down with port. More port.

You feel swell. Recall you haven't blogged since last Saturday.

And work the keyboard.

Nature expects you to be a Man and type out: "Heck of a day it was!..."

Instead it comes out as:

"I wandered lonely as a cloud....."

What a chump you are!

I was living for 40 years right on the Monsoon Trough at KGP. And in the Department of Physics & (mark my words) Meteorology.

I saw all the varieties of Clouds from One to Nine:

Here is the listing: 'Stratus, Nimbus, Cirrus, Cumulus and various linear combinations of these'.

None of them 'wandered'.

They swirled, ran, tumbled, streaked up and down, flashed, rolled, and; choose any verb, they did it.

Except wandered. Not even in Kalidas's Meghdooth. They were driven by winds. Purposefully. We can't figure out Nature's Purpose ever: but it is always there.

Clouds are not known to gather wool aimlessly.

Now we come to the celebrated Vacant & Pensive Mood.

And the 'Emotion Recollected in Tranquility' stuff:

Last October, after dropping my daughter-in-law at her Balanagar Office in the pell mell Morning Commute in my ancient Maruti, I sat down to check my mails.

Suddenly the figure of SDM floated before my eyes. As I saw him in our first-ever meeting. He was staring at an empty blackboard with his legs up on his Table.

Truly a 'Vacant & Pensive' Blackboard, inviting to be chalked in.

This Vision charged my Emotions Recollected in the Tranquility of our household. Son in the US, wife in kitchen.

The keyboard 'flowed' and in fifteen straight minutes, there was this famous blog titled: "In Praise of Laziness".

Sheer Poesy without Rhyme or Reason, or Meter or Mile.

Shyamal, the resident Poet Laureate @ KGP was struck dumb and sent it to Mike Flannery of The Statesman without my knowledge or consent.

It was there in print in the 'Now & Again' Column next Tuesday.

A One-Off Poem.

'Laziness', unlike 'Nonsense', is 'Glory' for Bengalis.

Word spread. IM's father @ Calcutta rang up his sleepy son in California. And conveyed the Good News. Generally IM turns the other way and continues his sleep. But the word 'Laziness' was like bugle for the proverbial war-horse. He had to get up and look it up in the Statesman online and mail me straight away thanking me for his 'lazy' years @ KGP.

That is the Power of Straight and Simple Powerful Prose!

Daffodils, my foot; Man, what you saw in your groggy state were water-hyacinths!

Don't look up now; SR is the current HoD of Metallurgy Dept @ KGP.

But he was my friend of 38 years there.

He was born and brought up in the famous Midnapore District when it was the Rice Bowl of Bengal.

It is a differnet matter now that its 'buck' is passing between Delhi & Calcutta.

He once told me:

"Sastryjee! There is a saying in our fertile land where you just throw seeds and gather rice 3 months later: Give a Medinipur Bengali 100 grams of rice and a piece of fish (sorry SG!) in the morning; and he will not go to the field the whole day.

He will sing, dance, write Love Poetry and read History of South Indian Temple Architecture.

My friend, the erstwhile DD, tells me this is true. He went to his Bengali Technical Assistant's Qrs to invite him for his son's Wedding Reception. And the TA closed the book he was reading and spoke for half an hour on the Vijayanagar Empire of KrishnDeva Raya and Tippu Sultan.




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