Ab to haathon ki lakeerein bhi miti jaatin hain ....

An excellent source of outstanding shers are the qawwalis of Ustaad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Most Qawwalis don't have a 'Matla' (Introduction) as such but typically they start with couplets which ease one into the main body. The following are the collected shers recited in one particular qawwali  by U. NFAK. I don't know who the shayar is or even if they are all of the same shayar,but each is a finely cut stone, I am sure you will agree. Enjoy!(The blog title is in english to help easy search!)

अब तो हाथों की लकीरें भी मिटीं जातीं हैं 

उसको खोकर तो मेरे पास रहा कुछ भी नहीं |

कल बिछड़ना है तो फिर एहदे-वफ़ा सोच के बाँध

अभी आगाज़-ऐ-मुहब्बत है गया कुछ भी नहीं |

मैं तो इस वास्ते चुप हूँ के तमाशा न बने,

तू  समझता है ,मुझे तुझसे गिला कुछ भी नहीं |

सोचता हूँ के वोह कितने मासूम थे,

                                                  क्या से क्या हो गया देखते देखते !

मैंने पत्थर से जिनको बनाया सनम,

                                                   वो  खुदा हो गए देखते देखते |

                                                                        --------------देखते देखते |

हश्र है वहशत-ऐ-दिल की आवारगी,

                                                   हमसे पूछो मुहब्बत की दीवानगी |

जो पता पूछते थे किसी का कभी ,

                                                  लापता हो गए देखते देखते |

हमसे ये सोचकर कोई वादा करो ,

                                               एक वादे पे उमरें गुज़र जाएँगी |

ये है दुनिया ,यहाँ कितने एहद-ऐ-वफ़ा

                                                    बेवफा हो गए देखते देखते |

                                                                            -----------देखते देखते |

दिन छुप गया , सूरज का कहीं नाम नहीं है|

                                                              ओ वादा शिकल  , अब भी तेरी शाम नहीं है |

                                                     ------ओ वादा शिकल |

शब-ऐ-वादा  ये रहा करतीं है बातें दिल में ,

देखें, यार आता है पहले या क़ज़ा आती है |

कल से बेकल हूँ मै बला ख़ाक मुझे कल आये

कल का वादा था, 

                        न वो  आज आये ,

                                                   न वो कल आये |

रोज़ का इंतज़ार कौन करे ,

                                        आप का ऐतबार कौन करे?

हो  चुका वादा के कब आईएगा ,

                                            देखिये अब न भूल जाइएगा |

बला कोई वादा-खिलाफी की हद् है,

                                              हिसाब अपने दिल में लगाकर तो सोचो |

क़यामत का दिन आ गया रफ्ता रफ्ता, 

                                              मुलाक़ात का दिन बदलते बदलते |

हमसे ये सोचकर कोई वादा करो,

                                                एक वादे पे उम्रें गुज़र जाएँगी |

ये है दुनिया यहाँ कितने एहद-ऐ -वफ़ा ,

                                                बेवफा हो गए देखते देखते |

गैर की बात तस्लीम क्या कीजिये ,

                                                 अब तो खुद पर भी हमको भरोसा नहीं |

अपना साया समझते थे जिनको कभी ,

                                                       वो  जुदा हो गए देखते देखते |

Word Meanings:

एहद-ऐ-वफ़ा - Promises of loyalty (here promises of fidelity)

आगाज़-ऐ-मुहब्बत- Onset/beginning of love

गिला - plaint, slilght grudge

मासूम- Innocent, unblemished

हश्र -Result

वहशत-ऐ-दिल-fearful heart

आवारगी-restlessness

दीवानगी- Madness(of Love)

वादा-शिकल -  prone to make promises

शब्-ऐ-वादा - the promised night ( here, of the rendezvous)

क़ज़ा- Judgement (as in the day of the divine judgement, end of the world)

बेकल-fidgety, restless (less intense than आवारगी  though !)

बला -Trouble ,ख़ाक- ashes, बला ख़ाक मुझे कल आये-May I be consumed by fire tomorrow

ऐतबार-Trust

वादा-खिलाफी- Turning against a promise,बला कोई वादा-खिलाफी की हद् है- The height of tragedy, that you break a promise

क़यामत- Day of the divine judgement

तस्लीम -Salutation by way of surrender,Acceptance(literally) (here it means Rely, Trust)

Soothing Tales

How and Why do you recommend a book?With a movie I guess this particular task is a bit easier since the viewer is a relatively passive participant in the experience. For a book however I think the freedom to imagine and picturize brings with it the appendage of having to create part of the experience for one's own self.And so when I recommend a book I really have to judge the person's possible level of involvement in addition to his interest.I have to believe that the same/similar picture I drew behind the foreground of the text would possibly be recreated by him.In case that is not true ,I Imagine the catastrophe to be similar to one that would unfold if an opera were to perform Ram Leela!And so I am a little wary of recommending books.
I have been reading a collection of three short novels by RKN lately and just finished "Mr. Sampath-the printer of Malgudi.". The word that describes the experience best for me is "Tranquil". His writing really makes one want to return to simpler times, simpler ways and a simpler life. Not for his characters are the sudden changes of continent or time. His characters hardly circumscribe bigger circuits than the Lawley extension -Vinayak Road - Albertson street arena. While he trains his scope onto this geographically limited locale the number of layers of human behavior he peels off and it's richness is really mind-boggling. They all do ordinary jobs and have ordinary lives and most of their meals are eaten on banana leaves and comprise of rice with a stew of some vegetables. As one reads more of his stories one starts feeling the pulse of the town even stronger and get's a nagging suspicion that it is not entirely a figment of imagination -his or ours. That perhaps RKN lived in Malgudi and then hid it from the world and that if one looked hard enough while travelling down  south in India in a train or a bus one might just meet Srinivas or Mrigayya or Mr. Sampath with Shanti  while they were making the trips mentioned in the story to better known and provably existent towns like Madras or Mysore. I don't know if I relate to his stories well because I come from a small town and often visited my village which is quite rustic as villages go and also because most of my life I lived with my parents in a rented one room house. I do know however that people far removed from any city, town or village in India , nay even the continent have liked his stories for their particular trait of peace.
This remarkable pervasion of calm throughout his writing contrasts sharply with the book I last read which was "Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service " by none other than last year's Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. There is no need to use jargon to label his "brand" of literature when the difference between the two is best explained by the difference of experience one has when the books come to an end. When RKN's story comes to it's end I feel disconsolate at the severing of the contact I had with it's characters. I want to keep in touch with the characters for atleast some more time . I want to shake their hand if I meet them or throw jibes at them or tomatoes as the case may be depending on how they fared in my psyche.But mostly I wish to go and live in Malgudi!
With Captain Pantoja , I remember I was quite happy that the book finally came to an end.
With Midnight's Children I still have about 30 odd pages to go before I come to the end and that is something I have been aiming at for the past 4 years!
Some books (and all of RKN's),I guess grip you hard no matter how delicately they are written , the losses of their characters felt personally and at their joy we celebrate.
Despite the caveats in the intro , I would recommend RKN to one and all!!!

Food, Sex and Pain.

NO! This is not going to be a piece about the usual fixed points in a human being's trajectory mentioned in the title. Instead this is going to be about C. elegans (CE from now on) and it's possible connection to those.

Today we had a speaker Greg Stephens from Princeton over at our department who works in Bio-Physics to talk about his work on identifying basic components of motion for CE (He categorically refused to pronounce the 'C' in CE BTW!).His abstract had the very attractive "Eigenworm" (!) word to describe the 4 basic real space shapes that apparently account for most of the observed configurations of CE when photographed while executing motion on a 2D agar plate.(He went on to describe a lot of other work of which I understood only a little , but that does not take away anything from the remainder of this post.)

I have always found talks that encompass two different branches of research turn out to be interesting battlegrounds for the respective practitioners. Also because these talks are generally delivered at a lower technical level than to normal professionals of the art the audience often finds avenues for intellectual mischief.It probably is also a very humbling experience for everyone concerned. Something akin to the realization that there are other religions out there with followers equally fervent?

The speaker gave a very well prepared talk , speaking as he was as part of the interview I believe for one of the faculty positions in biophysics in our department. As part of the introduction we came to know that the CE was a multicellular organ of ~1000 cells of which 302 are neurons giving it a brain about a third of it's body and making it brainier than us!The basic experiment involves photographing the free wriggly motion of CE on an agar surface while confined to a certain region by a copper annulus of R=51 mms , copper being used since copper repels CE and so it keeps to only the insides of the region.It's motion in this region is videographed using high frequency video and then the frames analysed for the geometric shape of the creature.

As part of modifications of this basic setup sometimes a laser light is used to provide "Pain" to the creature and then the effect seen on the subsequent motion.This was the point latched onto by a very meticulous Prof. Gerd Bergmann who very benignly asked "Is it true that to sense pain a minimum number of neurons are required, is 302 above that mark?for eg. some insects don't feel pain!!!!" At which point the speaker changed the label of the stimulus to "Acute Thermal stimulus " adding further that he was not sure whether the stimulus was pain enough for the creature or not but the proceedings sure were for him.

More than an hour into the talk ,a very pertinent question arose which is quite fundamental actually ? -left to itself ,devoid of any stimuli why did the CE move? This point being brought up by someone at my back all I could hear in the darkened room was something like:

"So do you sprinke food in the inside region"

"NO."

"So No food.!"

"No, No Food"

"Ah, No food."

at which point a professor right in front of me quipped "Just Like this seminar" !!! 

The asker continued :

"So why do they move?"

"I don't exactly know or want to hypothesize, but may be to mate"

"Do you use only males or hermaphrodites too!"

"If they want to mate, they must be males"

And so this was another instance of an interesting cross disciplinary talk.

यारों के नाम

 

 

बड़े दिनों की यारी थी अपनी,
                                      फिर आशियानें अलग बना लिए|

यार सब अपने तो अब भी एक हैं,
                                      मिलने के ठिकाने अलग बना लिए!

 

मैं राही|

पेड़ों पे खुदे नामों से,
                          संसार बना बैठा|
सराये के मुसाफिरों को यार,
                           हर बार बना बैठा|

शामों की महफ़िलों में ,
                           अब रेहता हूँ बेकरार|
के अपनी ज़िंदगी को उजाले का,
                           इंतेजार बना बैठा|

रोके नहीं रुकते पैर मेरे अब,
                           आगे दश्त या बागे बहार|
जब रास्ते को ही मैं अपना,
                            मज़ार बना बैठा|

किस काफिले का था?
                     क्या पता, कहाँ वो रुका?
अकेले चलना है खुद को,
                      तैयार बना बैठा|

छीनेगा भला क्या मुझसे,
                      दिखाकर कोई तलवार|
के अपनी हंसी को ही मैं,
                       हथियार बना बैठा|

मैं लिख नहीं सकता |

अपनी भाषा में कुछ लिखे अरसों बीते|अब  लिखता हूँ तो अक्षर सीधे नहीं आते,रेखाएं टेढ़ी मेढ़ी, मात्रा गुल|वाक्यों से वाकये का पता नहीं चलता|लेखनी लेखक के खिलाफ मोर्चा खोल चुकी है|लेख का शीर्षक लेखनी के जीत का सूचक है|
पर कभी की माशूक सी, कलम अब भी, कभी कभी दिल की सुन लेती है |कभी कभी लिख लेने देती है कुछ पंक्तियाँ|
ब्लॉग का यह सत्र और आगामी कुछ एक, लेखनी की इजाज़त से अर्ज़ हैं...

|। भारत बंद ||

आज भारत बंद है |
न सूरज उगा,
न चाँद ढला,
रात के बाद न सुबह हुई|
क्यूँ के, आज भारत बंद है|

पक्ष किसी की नहीं सुनता |
कल दाल के दाम बढ़ा दिये!

विपक्ष ने भी सर पर अपने

(और कइयों के)
सादे-काले कफन चढ़ा लिए|
बात मर्यादा की है |
दाल की नहीं ,
टमाटर की नहीं ,
रातों रात कम ज्यादा की है |
दो रुपये किलो बढ़ गए,
अगर खरीदो थोक,
बंद न होता आज जो भइये,
कौन यह सकता रोक?

गर दो का सिक्का
सीधे किसान को जाता,
धूप में सिंके उसके,
अभिमान को भाता|
पर यह सिक्का तो भाभी,
काफी
घूम घूम कर जाएगा-
अंततः किसान ये शायद,
एक चवन्नी पाएगा|

इसीलिए ,
विपक्ष उतारू है |
सड़क पर सदस्य सभी ,
चलें हैं कपड़े उतार,
नर नारे मार रहे ,
नारियां करतीं हाहाकार|

जश्न के माहौल में ,
प्रश्न खो से गए हैं |
पर जनता को न कोई आनंद है,
सो,
आज भारत बंद है!


इति|

Grrr-aduation!!!

It is graduation time and people all around cannot stop 'celebrating'.(Just a puny 'r' in 'celibate' creates so much of a difference!)
Would-be-graduates immerse themselves in alcohol and/or walk around in wet skimpy clothes on campus(depending on whether it's a he or a she). They wear strange apparels and stranger head gear and harbor hopeful illusions about the future-Theirs and others'.Their parents put up 'College-Grad' stickers on their cars and float cartoon-graduate balloons from their car tops.Mother earth simply cannot keep up with their gargantuan lust for roses,daisies, germinis,orchids and what not. Having spent much of their last 4 or 5 or 6 or...n years, as the case may be, in college learning (and often preaching!) responsible use of earth's resources they go berserk and their unabashed display of floral fetish is but quite disconcerting. Some hang Olive ,alpine and what not coronas around their neck like Olympians or victorious gladiators.
They throw parties and want everyone to know that someone they know has arrived. That the world will be a better place for it and that had their graduation been a bit earlier our world would not have had Dec,2012 as it's tentative expiry date.
Too much gaiety around me disturbs me. I don't know exactly what feeling it is though. I don't suppose it could be called jealousy or contempt or resentment . Not that I don't want the show to go on.By All means it should , it must- for me to make such sullen observations about it!Indeed, I have found it central for my general way of existence that there be people or events or places -entities really- that have done nothing against my well being materially or morally - but those that I could lampoon and critique for no fault of theirs. You must pardon me my idiosyncrasy if you are reading my blog. I get restless if I don't find something to lambaste at regular intervals of time. Politics, Politicians, free style poetry, Cliched jokes, humorless acquaintances, state of High Energy Physics....you name it and no amount of money will suffice to keep me from lambasting it.Perhaps the closest dictionary 'abstract' noun that I can classify my feelings into is cynicism :
"An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others"
As I sit now at a south facing window of Leavey library there must be atleast a couple of thousand people in festive attire holding balloons and wearing garlands and leafy crowns and photo-oping away in the McCarthy quad adjacent below.Their caps and gowns bright black , red sashes fluttering in the air.From my vantage point inside sealed windows high up on the fourth floor, they are mute characters on a television screen and myself - a deaf and grumpy cricket reporter covering the Indian team performing at West Indies recently.All I can think of producing is grump and yet more grump.
Can a possible explanation (why do we even need one?!) of the source of all this grump be that I never got to attend my college graduation that was postponed to a date I wasn't in India anymore and the day of my high school graduation I was away in Patna (unsuccessfully attempting the Indian National Chemistry Olympiad).
Who is to say ?
Why something is,
The other 
or 
The One Way!

Godmen-1

I am enumerating the title as I intend to followit up later....for now you might wanna watch the following video from 2.58 to 4.55.


and we wondered how come astrology became a honors course during his tenure as MHRD. Oops i missed the 'Hon'ble' outfront.