Birthing Beans

Yesterday I was ripping beans apart. Not fancy French beans. Plain broad beans (which by the way sound fancier in America: “Fava” beans). Twasn’t the glint in the eye greedy relish act of ripping but the rather tamer restless violence born of sheer boredom. With deft surgical precision and patience Grandmother had prepared the beans for C-sections. Already removed the taut wire like thing at the side of the beans. They lay in a heap of springy spirals by the beans side. An average of four sometimes more, the twins popped out of their oddly elongated wombs- brothers and sisters one by one (can’t be too sure of the sex though). Future sibling rivalries were foretold. Some beans being shinier and slimmer. Heftier beans gave birth to plumper baby beans that seemed to have burst an artery somewhere. Under pressure. Purple slowly seeping through the lime green. A hole in the heart maybe. And then Suddenly (No I didn’t wake up and it wasn’t a dream) I jumped. Womb revealed a wriggly ugly worm. Sorta spine chilling. Lulled into security, settling into the humdrum ripping. Stillborn bean then.

Do The Daft !

Does creativity have any limits? Doesn’t the word “limit” itself kill the true essence of “creativity”. I had once read someone quote that a creative person can never become ‘famous’. This, he argued, was because; in his view the world does not accept a new idea very easily. And that is exactly what a truly creative person does. He creates. He creates an idea, a concept, and a whole new line of activity. “Creation” is a whole new beginning and it often results not from a complex calculated procedure but most often just results from some extraordinarily imaginative human thoughts.

A lot of times, I believe, creativity remains just where it’s born- in the mind. One may not express it through ones words or actions or through any form of art ..
However since creativity itself has a great number of inconceivable means of expression, the process of “expression” often acquires an equally important role as the creative idea itself.


Here is something I recently stumbled upon. I was fascinated by the idea that went behind this concept. Music entertains me in its own way and creating our own composition here, though, would not qualify as a truly creative activity but it is only a means of expression.
“Tutored” expression I may say :) So go ahead ..rap on!

http://www.dothedaft.com/idaft/

Battle at Kruger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

I'd really like to share this fantastic video with you this week- it fascinated me no end! Every wildlife photographer waits a lifetime, or perhaps more, for a capture like this. But here's a real-life drama that an amateur stumbled upon rather unexpectedly. Even the National Geographic Channel made an almost hour long documentary on this 8 minute clip which definitely has the makings of a blockbuster film…literally! :)

While a lot of people conclude the video by taking a moral standpoint- 'Good over evil', 'Unity is strength' or even 'All's well that ends well' - I think its just amazing to watch the behavior of these magnificent beasts, which at some points almost has a human touch. However, in the area of behavior- I believe humans still have a long way to go...

P.S- Do read the viewer's comments once you finish watching :)

That thing called Life.

"Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. ………………."

I read these lines today and wanted to share them with you. These are limes from a speech made my Chetan Bhagat.
The thing that made me read these lines once again was the fact that the idea he was discussing is quite the opposite to the attitude of the times that we are studying and working in. The emphasis is on being the very best. Academically excellent and stategically brilliant at our careers. We all enter this rat race knowing what we what in the end and what we have to give us to acheive that.
And here is a person , one of the many, who once again reminds us the exhorbitant prices we pay for our 'success' in terms of personal and physical ends. It is ironic that we have more people today who have to remind us that we need to work at our relationships than our books. More people who will recomment stress relieving workshops than those who will advise for academic programmes.
I am caught in this trap, are you?

Whoops. Its Friday!!!!!

Dear fellow bloggers profuse apologies for missing my appointed date. Moving on here are a couple of things I wish to discuss:

• How are we going to write? This is rather silly because ideally we should all have the freedom to write however we want. However things are getting rather haphazard and I feel we are slacking and need to write more "professionally". By professional I do not mean to say we should get rid of the personal themes in our writing (for example Faiza's interesting post "The Making of a Masterpiece") for we do draw a lot from day to day life.
• What I am suggesting is more "structure". In the sense that most of the posts are very loosely written with no introduction, body, conclusion (not that I am saying all posts have or should have an introduction, body and conclusion ).This is where how we write comes in. While poetry posts are simple to classify the others seem to be more or less general ramblings or random jottings in the form of (essays, articles?) or notes and posts! Im finding it quite funny that I should be talking of "structure" when I am utterly clueless about the differences (in actual writing not theory) about essays, articles and stories and how any attempt of mine at one transforms into another. But Ive hit upon what I want to say at last: Im simply pleading for more thought, more effort and more craft (even in random jottings). I agree that some of the best blogs are all about general, random and everyday musings, thoughts and ideas but they are also as I wrote before, quite well written and even more well thought out.
• Is our blog something like a journal? Everyday a thousand things go on inside our head. Some of them are things we wish to share. But often they are bare skeletons and need more flesh - posting something in its infancy is not something Im really keen on and would like to ponder over it more and if required read and research more. In short work on that piece of writing for a longer period. However it would be fantastic to have a forum to discuss, brainstorm and thrash ideas out before we finally post something so maybe we should post it anyway but that would create more clutter and less clarity. Maybe we can create two separate heads. Maybe make that three. After a gap of two to three months we could revise/rewrite the post in question including comments, revisions, new ideas, leads and links. What say?
• Speaking of a longer duration to work on the posts I would like to suggest we revise our timetable. Let everyone post something whenever they want. The pressure to post something on a particular day results in half-hearted attempts and half-baked posts to meet the deadline. However lets make it a minimum of three posts per person in a month. But I agree that the weekday concept is good in making us write regularly which after eighteen years I have realized is extremely essential in developing writing skills and hence happens to be extremely difficult to do too. In fact from whatever most authors seem to say writing "daily" and not regularly is the key to success. Still I feel we should maintain pen and paper daily jottings and later pick up particular themes we want to develop and evolve them into posts.
• Returning to the point about "structure". It was essentially to point out that more effort was required and that posting something for the heck of it should not be encouraged. Further, what exactly are our rules on plagiarism? Here I don't want us to go academic with citations and references and the whole nine yards but to me at a glance certain works, particularly the more "informative" article types seemed to be slightly cut,copy,paste (no offence to anyone). Informative works are certainly welcome particularly those that are compilations involving in depth and detailed research and more importantly analysis with multiple perspectives.
• Okay I just realized I sound as always what people call "serious". I have no qualms about that label and do not believe in the compartmentalization of things into spheres called serious and non. Life while not too complicated and complex should not be subject to such simplifications either. So do I wish for "serious" writing when I talk about information, research, analysis and the like? Nope not at all. If you actually look at it you do all that and more even when you write about anything including daily life. There is no earthly reason why people should really give a damn about poverty and climate change and communal riots let alone writers. I am all for every kind of writing from interviews and book reviews to journal like random thoughts and the more typical essays and articles. Stories and poems of course should never be too typical. But as I say again and again let it be well thought out and well written whether it is about something one would call serious or light hearted or whatever.

Looking forward to lots more reading, writing, discussing and revising.

some concerns....

fellow opine-makers

lets critique ...honestly and positively( or negatively!)...we are not revisiting the earlier posting...most of our reactions are one of one and that too based on the content of the written ...eg

we say ...love the thoughts/poem...why do i like it? what is the linguistic merit? could some of the verse lines be exchanged...could there have been other words used?does this remind me of something else i have read or thought?

lets start this...otherwise this will be a mutual admiration society!!!

twist in the tail...some thoughts on short stories....

The short story allows us in a short space of time to understand huge things, huge dilemmas. Short stories pull us into their world and shake us up.

A short story is a small moment of belief. Hard, uncompromising, often bleak, the story does not make things easy for the reader. It is a tough form for tough times. If the novel sometimes spoon feeds the reader, the short story asks her to feed herself. A story asks the reader to continue it after it has finished or to begin it before it began. There is space for the reader to come in and imagine and create. There is space for the reader to think for ages, to mull the impact of a story over, to try and recover from it! The short story is such a perfect form, you should really be able to lift it up and carry it into a huge cornfield, and it should still glow.

A reader can contain an entire story in her head and read a story in a single sitting. The story often makes a reader aware of what she is not being told. What doesn't happen in a short story is as important as what does. Like pauses in music; it is impossible to think about the short story without also thinking of its mysterious silences.

Perhaps the thing I love about stories most is that they give the appearance of space of length, so that when you return to them you are amazed at how the writer has created that effect. A whole life in a few pages.

Some of the ones that make excellent reading....

· Guy de Maupassant - 'The Necklace'

· Jack London - 'To Build A Fire'

·
Flannery O'Connor - 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'

·
Joyce - 'The Dead'

·
Roald Dahl - 'Twist in the Tale'

·
Ray Bradbury - 'The Veld' and 'The Playground'

·
William Sansom - ‘The Vertical Ladder’

·
Doris Lessing - 'Through the Tunnel'

·
Arthur Porges - ‘The Ruum’

·
Graham Greene - ‘The Destructors’

· Any story in Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Speaking with the Angel, featuring a story by Nick Hornby called ‘Nipple Jesus’

· Pigs is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler

The Making of a Masterpiece!

I'm beginning to believe that great art is less about possessing great inborn talent or artistic skills, and is more about making the best out of the worst available. Whether it’s the materials, their prices or the workplace (studio) - there always seems to be a compromise.

Take my 'studio' for instance- which was initially my bedroom that I share with my sister; because of her constantly re-occurring allergic reactions to my paints, I was forcibly and firmly thrown out :-( After insisting that the drawing room balcony was not going to be my workspace, we finally settled on the dining room (sheesh, I know!) So this is how my portable studio somehow works- for the sake of natural daylight, my easel is positioned near the windows, however, it's not as simple as that because it also competes for space with the fridge door- hence, every time someone needs to use the fridge, there's bound to be some readjustment in the easel's position. During mealtimes, my 'studio' is disassembled and packed up, and promptly reassembled when I'm ready to paint after a well deserved meal. Since the dining room isn't exactly a private enclosure, I quite often have to put up with live audience (which I don't quite appreciate)- particularly in the form of my old cook, who seems to have the brightest suggestions for my work (and people ask me how I have so much patience!).

Workspace apart, art material can be a great nuisance…if you don't have the right paper, it takes nothing short of an intricate surgery with a paintbrush to make sure that the paper doesn’t wear away. And when you're at a position when you're not exactly either good enough or rich enough like me to splurge on the best there is, it's best to shut up and work at it till you're both better and richer.

Of course, there are other innumerable obstacles too, but if I start cribbing about it I will probably forget how much I love what I do! So I do suppose it's all about the struggle- it's all a process of learning, improving and moving towards perfection. It is a struggle, that I'm certain, is not fruitless. Because, if you're able to create something commendable, despite the chaos, commotion and the other shortfalls- indeed you're an artist!

Pictured

I lil' too excited I was about our blog.....

The Shade of Swords

"The shade of swords is not an invitation to kill ; it is an invitation to die."

Thus starts boldly the book by M.J. Akbar 'The Shade of Swords'. I am currently in the perusal of this controversial book which catalogs the birth of the concept of jihad and the spread and effect of the same, the misinterpretation and the undue advantage taken of a religious duty by presenting it in a convenient light. It talks about the age old conflict between Islam and Christianity and traces it though the entire stretch of history.

I use the word controversial with a purpose. Every time we talk about religion in this country we create a controversy. And when you read a book with tends to call a spade a spade , it does get a little hard to digest. One will always be biased towards the faith one has believed in. Religious sentiments of the people are easily abused and used to meet ends. And to fuel the fire of misgiving we are aided by the many many interpretations that tend to divide us further.

Faith has always be a special subject for me. That's the reason I wanted to read this book. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to learn correct facts regarding the history and politics of two major religions in this world. Or anybody who has wondered about the concept of jihad and its hold upon the people.

M.J.Akbar is a pleasure to read. The language is precise and firm. The flow engaging. And as Seymour Hersh says ; An unbelievably sophisticated work that is terribly daring.'