At The Edge

When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues. Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.

We drank. The company followed our example without stint. They chatted -- they jested -- they laughed -- they perpetrated a thousand absurdities -- the fiddles shrieked -- the drum row-de-dowed -- the trombones bellowed like so many brazen bulls of Phalaris -- and the whole scene, growing gradually worse and worse, as the wines gained the ascendancy, became at length a sort of pandemonium in petto. In the meantime, Monsieur Maillard and myself, with some bottles of Sauterne and Vougeot between us, continued our conversation at the top of the voice. A word spoken in an ordinary key stood no more chance of being heard than the voice of a fish from the bottom of Niagra Falls. "And, sir," said I, screaming in his ear, "you mentioned something before dinner about the danger incurred in the old system of soothing. How is that?" "Yes," he replied, "there was, occasionally, very great danger indeed. There is no accounting for the caprices of madmen; and, ...

Directed by Guru Dutt in 1957, Pyaasa is a proclaimed and a much-acclaimed classic of the Indian Hindi Cinema. A movie worth re-viewing because after each viewing, it manages to convey some new message to us that we, might have failed to notice in last viewing. The movie is symbol-laden. It is crawling with symbols. During each viewing, a person can find some new symbol. A line from a song in the movie: Ye Dunia agar mil bhee jaye to kya hai. The protagonist rejects fame but only after achieving it. He doesn’t commit suicide or die. Instead he walks away from it all after achieving it all. Hence, the moral triumph of his human spirit. Does this have echoes of the Indian concept of Renunciation found in our religious myths and our popular T.V serials. A line from another song in the movie: jinhen naaz hai hind par woh kahaan hain Critics tell us that this line is a telling remark on the post Nehruvian India. How would the international community make this connection? In a w...

The Book about Books: The Anatomy of Bibliomania by Holbrook Jackson A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff Great Books by David Denby Bookworms edited by Steven Gilbar Books edited by Gerald Donaldson The Book-lover’s Enchiridion edited by Alexander Ireland The Romance of the Books by Marshall Brooks The wonderful Books edited by Michael Dorrie and Emilie Buchwald Penny Wise and Book Foolish by Vincent Starrett A Gentle Madness by Nicholas A. Basbanes On Book and the Housing of Them by W.E Gladstone The Size of Thoughts by Nicholson Barker Anne Fadiman is the author of the book Ex-Libris: Confessions of a common reader . Found the list in a review of the book, done by Pradeep Sebastian for the Gentleman Magazine, June 2000 issue.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. ~ Aldous Huxley, Foreword to Brave New World

Recently, I played a quiz at Funtrivia . The quiz was about Hindi songs copied from English songs. Some of the Q&As were quite obvious. Yet, some were very interesting. I scored just above average in the quiz. Here are some of the things that I would like to share: *The title song of "Dil Deke Dekho"(1959) was lifted by Usha Khanna from the song 'Sugartime' by The McGuire Sisters. *The Song ‘'Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle Ka Naata Koi' from Movie “Aa Gale Lag Ja”(1973) had two versions. Both copied for the film by dear R.D Burman from the song 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' by Elvis Presley appearing in the 1963 movie "Viva Las Vegas". *'Aate Jaate' from "Maine Pyaar Kiya" (1989) was lifted from 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' by Stevie Wonder. Music director of this movie,Ram Laxman, also lifted tunes for two other English songs for this film. ‘Tum Ladke Ho’ and ‘Mere Rang Mein’ were copied from Baltimore’s Tarz...

Sky-man in a manhole with astronomy for dream, astrology for nightmare; fat man full of proverbs, the language of lean years, living in square after almanac square prefiguring the day of windfall and landslide through a calculus of good hours, clutching at the tear in his birthday shirt as at a hole in his mildewed horoscope, squinting at the parallax of black planets, his Tiger, his Hare moving in Sanskrit zodiacs, forever troubled by the fractions, the kidneys in his Tamil flesh, his body the Great Bear dipping for the honey, the woman-smell in the small curly hair down there ~ A. K. Ramanujan (Second Sight, 1986)