Around the workplace – the internet is stretched to its limits with half the junta listening to BBC 5 live commentary or sneaking up on the live streams. Every time an Aussie wicket is taken, a mild roar of joy runs through the floor. It’s almost midnight, and am listening to a wonderful show on BBC 4 about cricket and cricket related poetry and literature.

Last night, entering “Don Bradman” as the search string on Youtube resulted in this wonderful video, where the Don demonstrates various strokes. It’s utterly perfect, somehow perfect, and yet stylish.

Rediscovering cricket in this country somehow makes me less homesick on certain days. And on other days, makes me think of the glimpses of cricket caught when traveling by train – through towns that are so small that their names barely feature anywhere. An uneven field, with a few bricks for stumps.

BBC 4 has someone reading out this wonderful poem called Brahma by Andrew Lang.

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he’s bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.

Which is a wicked play on the original poem by RW Emerson.

“Him that I love, I wish to be free — even from me.”

Incredible thought. But this comes from someone who wrote this as well -

“Don’t wish me happiness — I don’t expect to be happy; it’s gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor — I will need them all.”

What makes some of us so more much articulate and perceptive than others?

Moving essay. But more than moving, it is shockingly articulate. The idea of a “Not Rape” …

What we were not prepared for was everything else. Rape was something we could identify, an act with a strict definition and two distinct scenarios. Not rape was something else entirely.

Not rape was all those other little things that we experienced everyday and struggled to learn how to deal with those situations. In those days, my ears were filled with secrets that were not my own, the confessions of not rapes experienced by the girls I knew then and the women I know now.

The way rape is perceived – it is seen as the “worst” sort of assault. As if all kinds of sexual assault can be placed on a scale, and rape is the one that gets 10/10 for being the most vicious, or the most harmful. I don’t think it is quite like that.

The word rape itself – it makes people squirm. But words like sexual harassment or even “eve teasing” never really have the same affect. Even if in some cases, casual eve teasing is more physically harmful, more dangerous or worse for one’s self esteem. But it’s unfair to compare.

I don’t want to even think about this anymore – the whole idea screws with my mind and just makes me too anxious.

Teri Samundar Ankhon Mein

Yah dhup kinara shaam dhalen,
Milte hain dono waqt jahan,
Jo raat na din, jo aaj na kal,
pal bhar ko amar, pal bhar mein dhuaan
Is dhup kinaare pal do pal.
Hothon ki lapak
Baahon ki khanak
Yah mel hamaara jhooth na sach
Kyon raar karen, kyon dosh dharen
kis kaaran jhoothi baat karen
Jab teri samandar aankhon mein
Is shaam ka suraj dubega
Sukh soyenge ghar dar waale
Aur rahi apni rah lega.

And a translation by Bilal Tanweer (pdf)

When in Your Ocean Eyes

This shore of sunlight on
The slopes of evening,
This meeting of times:
Not day or night
Not today or tomorrow
In a moment eternal, in a moment fume

Moments on this shore of light
The spark of lips
The clink of arms
Our intimacies,
Not lies, not truths

Why should I secret this, why should I blame?
For what should I lie:

When in your ocean eyes
This evening’s sun shall set

The home shall find its sleep
And the traveler will walk his way

Among other things, I am getting into some really interesting stuff. Like this.

Le Grand Content is described thus

Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand ‘association-chain-massacre’. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.

If you’re interested this is part of what the voiceover says –

A heart full of regret on the other hand may cause a serious amount of pain
while leaving only little visible mark
just compare it with a hickey, gun shot or rejection.

…
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, for this we have our 471 cable tv channels
These and saccharine, and pop ballads provide us an unlimited source of artificial sweetness.

There are three types of virgins
a. Virgins by choice, b. virgins by poor social skills and c. people who should be in group B but claim otherwise for reasons of social prestige.

Just beautiful!

To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people:

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. … It is almost impossible not to see all this and make some connection between the needless waste of all these educational supplies and the needless loss of so many lives in this city to poverty and violence, though the reality of why these supplies were never used is unclear.

As translated so beautifully by AK Ramanujan – Red Earth and Pouring Rain.

What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
Did you and I meet ever?
But in love
our hearts have mingled
as red earth and pouring rain

Sigh!

PS – As I post this – the other Megha – is knocking herself out. Please expect themes to change suddenly and changes to be made.