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For those who haven't already seen, The Last Lecture on achieving Childhood Dreams by Randy Pausch

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Book recommendation

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Fitzgerald

Sip upon the Rubaiyat slowly and over a long period of time and let its beauty soak into every small corner of your senses.

Short Review:

You can find numerous reviews of this collection of poems all over the internet and here is my take. For background purposes a Rubaiyat means, a quartet ( a 4 line poem) where the first, second and last line rhyme. The poems were written in the 10th century by Omar Khayyam in Persia and were translated into English by Fitzgerald in the 1800s. The translation is extremely beautiful, preserves the rhyming scheme of the Rubaiyats and is a feat in itself.

The poems mull upon the transcendental nature of this world and the mortality of every being. They emphasize the importance of enjoying every bit of time we have in this one life. The theme of the poems is derived from Sufi Mysticism which to some degree is similar to Hindu philosophy. But the words are cast so very beautifully and the ideas presented are so rustic that these poems are a treat to read. Make these poems your companion on a beautiful sunset or a fragrant lonely evening and I assure you, you won't be disappointed. A few Rubaiyats to end this post:

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Here with a Loaf of Bread
beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine, a Book of
Verse---And Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
And Wilderness is Paradise
enow
[Bough= Big tree branch, enow= enough]
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Ah make the most of what
we yet may spend,
Before we too into the
Dust descend
Dust into Dust, and under
Dust, to lie
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans
Singer, and ---sans End.
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For in and out, above,
about, below,
Tis nothing but a Magic
Shadow-show
Play'd in a Box whose
Candle is the Sun
Round which we Phantom
Figures come and go
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Whats the big deal about Joker!

This has to do with "The Dark Knight". I along with another friend attempted to watch this movie on the very day it was released. Needless to say because of the extremely favorable reviews and the death of the actor who played the role of Joker, it was extremely difficult to get a ticket. We reached the theater at 6 PM but found out the tickets had all sold out. Then we faced the difficult decision to either watch some other movie or to try some other theater. I convinced my friend to do the later, and after reaching this new theater, we found it full too. After idling in a park for about an hour we returned to the theater we started from. It was already 8:30 -9:00 PM by then and in a moment of madness we bought tickets for a show which would begin at 12:30 AM. Idled away 3 more hours with great difficulty and by the time we were in our seats, I was exhausted, dehydrated, irritated and half dead. . And after all this we had to endure at least 30 minutes of long, boring and useless trailers. By the time the movie began I had myself been transformed to a cynical Joker.

I found nothing great or darkly philosophical about the movie as reviewers had described it. The story was very very ordinary and didn't have the tiniest of the twists. Of course Batman chose to save " The Good Mayor" over his ex girl friend. But then, didn't he do it so that his dead ex would approve what he did. I didn't find Joker to be unusual, nor his performance to be powerful. Things were easy for him because he was under a mask, so he didn't have to change expressions on his face. The only modulation in expression came through the variation in the tone of his speech, which I concede was good. But the credit for that should go to the dialogue/script writer as well. Joker's character was built around the proposition that this world is full of people who are empty, that he stands out of them all and that Batman is one more empty guy who is just trying to showcase himself as non empty.

There is nothing novel about this proposition and most of us believe that very few people in this world are intelligent. So we are all Jokers and we can all at least act how Joker acted. The actress was beautiful, the stunts were fancy and Batman had an accent which was difficult to comprehend. But that was about it. I always fail to understand why deeper meanings and philosophical motives are ascribed to science fiction tales or comic book stories like this. Sure, they are inspired from the ups and downs of real time stories, but doesn't that make real stories more well...true and real. I am rambling already and should perhaps shut down before I try to debunk this whole business of deconstruction and interpretation of tales. Matrix(I) was an exception though.

To Neo I cheer, not to the most ordinary of jokers!

Ghalib 101

I recently finished reading this book on Ghalib's life by Gulzar, titled very straight forwardly as:

Mirza Ghalib, A Biographical scenario.

I remember scurrying through this book at some stall on MG road in Bangalore 3 years back, when I was at IISc for the summer. Three years of nothingness!!. Or may be a whole life of nothingness!!. But let me not digress. So 3 years back, I remember scrawling quickly on a piece of paper ( in the small telephone diary, I have) a sher ( 2 rhyming lines also called a couplet) from the last page of the book. I still find it beautiful and here it is:

ना था कुछ तो खुदा था, होता ना कुछ तो खुदा होता
डुबोया मुझको होने ने, ना होता मैं तो क्या होता!

Deserves a wah-wah, doesn't it! At that time the book seemed costly to me (~400 Rs). I am still not economically well off, but the book seemed affordable to me now and so I got it . After this long prelude let me talk about the book a bit.

Well as a treatise on life, the book treats Ghalib with reverence, which biographies should ideally not. I would call this book an extended epitaph rather than a complete biography. It is interspersed with his shers and ghazals ( longer poems) in accordance with the phase of his life which it is describing. The shers and ghazals are in chaste Urdu (transliterated in English) and can be hard to understand for a person familiar with contemporary Indian Hindi. The translation of the verses is really bad ( its not Gulzar's own translation, Gulzar's original version is in Hindi/Urdu) but the verses which Gulzar chose to present are interesting. Some of them are Ghalib's more famous ones like:

हमको मालूम है जन्नत की हकीकत लेकिन
दिल के खुश रखने को घालिब ये ख्याल अच्छा है

and this:

उनके देखे से जो आ जाती है मुहँ पर रौनक
वो समझते हैं बीमार का हाल अच्छा है

Despite the "hard" Urdu and the bad translation there are moments and verses which make one smile and elicit a wah wah. Like this one where a courtesan (कोठे वाली ) is rummaging about her unrequited love for Ghalib:

इश्क मुझको नही, वहशत ही सही!
मेरी वहशत, तेरी शोहरत ही सही

हम भी दुश्मन तो नही हैं अपने,
गैर को तुझसे मुहब्बत ही सही

हम कोई तर्क ऐ वफ़ा नही करते हैं
ना सही इश्क, मुसीबत ही सही

[वहशत = madness, तर्क ऐ वफ़ा = giving up my love]

And then there are the sad ones. The emotions of loss, sadness and irony are the ones which create great poets. Don't they? This one after the death of another one of his little sons,

जाते हुए कहते हो, क़यामत के दिन मिलेंगे
क्या खूब! क़यामत का है गोया कोई दिन और

[क़यामत = Doomsday, गोया = as if]

And another brilliant gem:

जला है जिस्म जहाँ, दिल भी जल गया होगा
कुरेदते हो जो अब राख, जुस्तजू क्या है

[कुरेदना = digging, जुस्तजू = intention, purpose]

A sketchy story and ghazals compliment each other all the way in the book. An only Ghazal or poem collection would perhaps be boring. I am sure there are more accurate and complete translations of Ghalib's poetry and more real biographies. But my first tryst with Ghalib was through this book and I enjoyed it despite all the shortcomings.
I will keep looking for more Ghalib and will end this post with a couplet which Ghalib has gifted to posterity looking for suitable words to conclude any kind of tribute to his writing.

हुई मुद्दत की घालिब मर गया, पर याद आता है
वो हर एक बात पर कहना, की यूँ होता तो क्या होता!!

[मुद्दत = ages]