At The Edge

Everybody Tells Me Everything I find it very difficult to enthuse Over the current news. Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. More About People When people aren't asking questions They're making suggestions And when they're not doing one of those They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you They employ you. Anybody at leisure Incurs everybody's displeasure. It seems to be very irking To people at work to see other people not working, So they tell you that work is wonderful medicine, Just look at Firestone and Ford and Edison, And they lecture you till they're out of breath or something And then if you don't succumb they starve you to death or somet...

They are death-defying, Lofty and hazardous in their Handsome strength. Yet you’ll never track them down. Still — they do leave behind A faint earthbound trail: Scattered here and there are Broken men and women who, Like old Jacob, limp along, Injured by the burden of Light… -Alfredo Vea, Junior Check out his book, Gods Go Begging

Pranesacharya’s plight is that of many, modern Hindus in search of a stable identity in a shifting world. It is this type of what I shall call fallen hindu who is ripe for a modern guru. Their number in India is steadily growing. The novelist U.R. Ananthamurthy, himself part of modern India, has confessed that he got the idea for writing S amskara after a viewing of Bergman’s disturbing religious masterpiece, The Seventh Seal . T.G. Vaidyanathan writing in his essay ‘Authority and Identity in India’, published in Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, issue entitled ‘Another India’, Fall 1989, Vol.118, No.4. I came across it in the book, Mr.Naipaul's Round Trip and Other Essays

“Everyone makes mistakes in life…but the element of criminality in you is incurable” -Tada Judge Pramod Kode to Sanjay Dutt That’s what the Red banner on the front page of Hindustan Times, screams. This in effect means that after spending whatever ‘actual period’ of the sentenced six years in prison, he is going to return to society not cured of his criminality. And what is he going to do then. If he takes Judge Kode’s advice, then, he is going to be India’s answer to Gregory Peck. After sentencing Sanjay Dutt, judge P D Kode summoned him back to his courtroom around 5:30 pm. Among other things, this is what he had to say- Sanjay Dutt: Yes sir, it’s just that I am tired. Judge Kode: Yes, I know but don’t lose faith. You are Number 1 in your field. In the 10 years, you have done well even during the trial…You should be like Gregory Peck, who acted in films like McKenna’s Gold. Sanjay Dutt: (Says nothing, merely nods his head.) A different account of the meeting as published in ...

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...