My Irish Nanny & a Poetry called Childhood…

I never learnt poetry though i lived the first 10 years of my delectable life with my Irish Nanny,Mrs.Donovan. I was trusted to her by a lovely couple who were completely besotted with each other, fairly & squarely: my mother & my father.

Mrs.Donovan was as white as possible and thus soon white became my national colour and the existence of any other colour was anything but not a glorified song sung to her Lord. And this glorious love of her,for white, actually saved me from her Lord. My skin colour was irreparably Brown (and still now)!

And now going back to about my inability to learn poetry was more to do with Mrs. Donovan’s immaculate love for White & the fundamental white verses sung in the praise of her Lord. If any other verses could come in between was the grim fat book, filled with thick,fearful words invented by Henry and Frank Fowler. If i had been a referee would have surely concluded their acts as a Foul. But in front of Mrs.Donovan i was nothing more than a hapless fowl!

Now to cut the long and arduous story of my childhood short, Mrs. Donovan was the real reason behind most of success and failures. Success for being able to grow a distaste against the sermons of her Lord and a deep swirling joy for the Santa. For that matter the taste for wintry winds and fallen twigs were also planted in me by my sacred Nanny. She was also the reason for my lifelong failure in declaring a state of war with the Scots!

How could i treat the Scots as an enemy when all they did was make me taste the sacred harmony of malted barley and oak loved spirits, resulting the arrival of the 5th note of Chopin in my otherwise less humorous flesh? But i still consider my loyalty for her was far more than weighed.And just do not become rude enough to question me on that, now.

I remember sleeping on a white bed with white window curtains and white napkins to swipe my clean face during suppers. I remember not asking her the reasons behind so many colours the Butterfly exuded. I also remember listening to the same old stories from The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill all summers and a part of winter. Rains were the most busiest part of Mrs.Donovan’s life and my chance for freedom.

When Mrs.Donovan was busy cleaning all that was white and cursing the arrogant rains for making her life miserable, i was all busy tip toeing out from the white door to the sloppy backyard filled with mud and croaks. The incessant rains were the reason for my curiosity towards otherwise hidden words in that fat grim book. My chance meet with wet grasses unfolding the colour of Green and the wide open mud showing me what black was all about, made me learn the most non pacifist word in my life:Desire!

And Dia duit, Mrs. Donovan was not at all prepared for the coming Autumn and i surprised her completely by asking her about the colour of the fallen birch leaves!

Her looks were pale, as if the question had taken away all her whiteness and a certain fade glow of some colours, unknown to me, were returning on her faint white cheek. I could see a quaint shadow of light fluttering through her pupils. Her dry lips were half opened as if to taste the rains. But the rains were no more. The winter was about to come.

As we were returning towards home, she held my weak brown hands with her fair hands. For the first time i noticed how frail her hands and how nimble her veins were. Just we were about to enter the bend that housed our home, she looked at me and stopped. With her deep Corrib like voice she said: I will never like to feel the days of Long War, again. I want you to grow in Peace. I want you to know that Poetry and everything about Poetry and colours are not so happy my dear. They smear Red all over the houses your loved ones stay. I know you will not understand me now but when you will do know i have always prayed to HIM such that you can never grow up, writing poetry. Writing about Freedom…..”

Mrs.Donovan i have failed you. With all my love for you could not help me stop writing Poetry! With all my grave loyalty towards you i could not save myself from the Red colour flowing out of my slowing heart. If only you could see how all the houses of Ballymurphy are no more old and in vain….Gerberas are without any stains of the Long War and Daisies are dancing in joys!

If only i could have you with me a lil’ more than my childhood and make your bed with cloudless white…..

Eccentricity of English as a language…

Almost every languages in the spoken form has its unique manners which is quite amusing however with English it goes an extra mile…

Absurdity is found profound in the written form, in English, as a language. These virtues makes it the King amongst all the living and dead eccentric languages found in this brave earth. And thus I unashamedly say: God Save The King!

Some academics refer English as a language for the commoner but I find it just so blue. Just so Eccentric. It is such an amazing experience at times how my English, which border lines between my nativity and my borrowed knowledge from the native English speakers, plays an unnecessary havoc around me :):) And believe you me when I go back and try to find the right reasons behind my unintentional effect, I find grammatically and thematically there were no wounds inflected upon the language.

So I ask Webster (as Oxford is lying very low nowadays as a result of poor economic and political performance) about the reasons behind the toils my language is causing around me. And I find a blank page, for a while, and then redirecting me to a Google page asking me whether or not I would like to refer a Cause & Effect diagram?

Not so strangely I go on searching for the inadequacies of my language resulting to various results including a reference of a grand book on “India & a colonial expression of Iffs’ butts’ andd’ horn ok’ & His Masters Language.”

I think I was readying to believe that my trust on language as a whole was far more than it was actually meant to be, when I stumbled upon the theatre of ridicule, aimed at specifically English as a language. And here it goes for you to have a few laugh,and pat your back for not being too insensitive when you are accused of it, at different situations,if you have not grown up as an English or reading fantasy stories in English.

(I know it hurts more in romantic liasons where both of them do not dream in English forget talking)

But ya some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English:

o The bandage was wound around the wound.
o The farm was used to produce produce.
o The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
o We must polish the Polish furniture.
o He could lead if he would get the lead out.
o The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
o Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
o At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
o When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
o I did not object to the object

A peek in my mind…

Lot of you might have some silent curiosity on my usage of verbs, nouns and metaphors. I cannot say why my mind works in a certain, uncertain manner,where language comes to play. However,in self defense I can quote my favourite writer, Kafka, who once said :every creation is laced with an uncertain and unexpected streaks of colours out of the box of sanity…

If I add to what Kafka said then I believe writing in a foreign language and being a foreigner helps one to bend the language, its principles and it’s expressions much easier than said.

I do agree,at times,that might create a sense of disruption and anarchy to the mind of those who are the carriers of the native languages.

However, a certain amount of patience and understanding of the possible deconstruction,on part of the native,will definitely assist the overall process of creation as history of creativity and languages suggest that confluence or influence of foreign elements often helped the language or creation to resist an untimely death, otherwise expected.

However, this piece of writing is not to claim my place as someone creating or deconstructing the language in a great manner, and acting as a change enabler. However, this is just to explain how my mind works while articulating my expression towards Art & it’s manifestos…

The Devastation in waiting: Nepal

Preface:

If we are to believe that the worst is over. No it’s not. The next in line is the Himalayan region along with Tarai region of India. Now why this article? I think through this article What I would like to do is warn our friends that we should be ready for the worst to come and plan your movements and travel accordingly. The adventing monsoon will make it a larger disaster in making unless our Preemptive Disaster Management improves. Sadly, we are not learning. Not at all. Increasing deforestation, rise of urbanisation in the hills, lack of planning ( architectural, sanitation and exit routes) are speeding up the process of already activated abd shifting tectonic plates resulting to Earthquake. Help is pouring in but this is not sufficient.

Possible Action Plan: We need to engage world wide with seismologists and geologists along with urban and rural planners to prepare an action plan and draw a road map. That road map which will then engage the civil bodies and initiate a watch centre which will regularly monitor the situation and help build a consensus in re development as per Disaster Avoidance parameters and not indiscriminately.Appropriate review of building lay outs and density mapping, creation of exit routes – like having an open area which could make people avoid buildings during earthquakes and thus avoiding loss of minimum lives, appropriate building materials recommended for high seismic zones, readiness of emergency services, creation of mobile hospitals or first aid agencies thus reducing the turn around time during emergency situations, fixation of population within urban centres and thus avoiding high density which paves way for higher mortality during earthquakes, creation of a command centre at high seismic zones and exchange of reports with administration on a continuous basis for readiness, advance disaster management training to administration bodies.

My recent learnings are that we forget too soon till the time another devastation comes.

An Excerpt from Washington Post Article:

Earthquake of 7.8 magnitude shakes Nepal.
Nepal hit by 6.7 magnitude aftershock
Dharahara Tower destroyed, killing dozens.New supercontinent slowly takes shape:
“A massive block of Earth’s crust, roughly 75 miles long (120km) and 37 miles (60km) wide, lurched 10 feet (3m) to the south Saturday over the course of 30 seconds. Riding atop this block of the planet was the capital of Nepal – Kathmandu – and millions of Nepalese.”

That’s the description of Saturday’s earthquake from University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, a world-renowned expert on Himalayan earthquakes. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that flattened historic buildings in Kathmandu and has taken more than a thousand lives is the latest release of built-up strain from the collision of two of Earth’s tectonic plates.

The Indian plate is inexorably sliding, in a halting, ground-shaking fashion, northward, beneath the much larger Eurasian plate. The process has created the lofty Tibetan plateau and pushed up mountains that reach nearly 30,000 feet above sea level. The Himalaya front can produce earthquakes that are much more powerful than the one on Saturday – such as the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal in 1934.

But this one was relatively shallow, which intensifies the surface shaking, and its epicentre was closer to Kathmandu than the 1934 temblor.

“The earthquake ruptured under the city, very close to the city, so this is as bad as our worst-case scenario, probably,” Bilham said.

As news reports filtered in, experts predicted the death toll would mount steadily.

“I expect that there’s devastation scattered all around Nepal that we’re not even glimpsing at this point,” said Susan Hough, a geologist with the US Geological Survey who has made multiple trips to Nepal.

The news bulletin of the massive quake hit Hough and colleagues hard. Theirs can be a frustrating profession, because they know there are natural disasters and humanitarian crises about to happen somewhere – but they can’t predict precisely where and when. This one, however, had been long anticipated.

For years now, experts on seismic hazard have kept a list of cities most vulnerable to a catastrophic earthquake. Kathmandu has always been high on that list.

Geology, urbanisation, architecture and building codes have increased the vulnerability of the Nepalese, experts say, and the only major unknown has been the timing of the disaster.

“We knew it was going to happen. We saw it in ’34,” Hough said. “The earthquakes we expect to happen do happen.”

Scientists, engineers and government officials have worked in recent years on retrofitting schools and hospitals to make them sturdier in a temblor. But at the same time, civil unrest has pushed more people into urban areas, where they inhabit newly constructed, unreinforced-masonry buildings that in many cases are not designed to withstand the strong motion of a quake.

Another problem: buildings often have what engineers call a “soft first storey”, because merchants want open spaces to sell their wares and there are fewer sturdy walls to limit the shaking in an earthquake.

“It was clearly a disaster in the making that was getting worse faster than anyone was able to make it better,” Hough said. “You’re up against a Himalayan-scale problem with Third World resources.”

Bilham agreed: “The message has not been ignored, it’s just that the scope of the reconstruction required to strengthen all the buildings in Kathmandu is so enormous.”

The orthodoxy among seismologists is that earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings kill people.

The challenge of improving building codes has become all the more urgent in an era when urbanisation is surging in many parts of the world, including in the Kathmandu Valley.

“It seems that the rural-to-urban migration of people has resulted in really rapid construction of housing which, as far as I can see from my visits, has been unregulated and is just very, very vulnerable,” said Brian Tucker, founder and president of GeoHazards International, a non-profit devoted to reducing casualties from natural disasters.

On Saturday, he recalled a conversation in the late 1990s with a Nepalese government minister who told him, “We don’t have to worry about earthquakes anymore, because we already had an earthquake.” That was a reference to the 1934 quake.

“I took him to the window and had him look out and said, ‘As long as you see those Himalaya Mountains there, you will know that you will continue to have earthquakes,'” Tucker said.

Baltimore & the role of Media

Does Media help in portraying the reality or media often wants to show it’s own story fulfilling it’s own agenda?
There are some serious questions around the world being raised towards the sanctity of Media. Towards its neutrality and intended plagiarism.
Eminent sociologists tend to believe that Media in its search for a story, tends to create more of a divide than unity; tends to create more of an illusion out of a single piece of reality.
More of an inception….

Professor Chomsky  once asked about the role of  Media had to say this :

“What you know about Iraq war is not the whole true. It’s the war made up by media and Bush. Today the word Media is much more dangerous than ever. They have the power to show what is half truth. Their truth. And that is quite dangerous and one of the strongest reasons for the divide. For the clash between people to people. It’s a new age militancy which we have to deal with…”

On April 28, Geraldo Rivera was confronted by a young black Baltimore resident as he prepared to report on the unrest in the city following the death of Freddie Gray. The resident explained his frustration with Fox News’ failure to spotlight Gray’s death while hyping the unrest that ensued.

The young man explained to Rivera, “I want you and Fox News to get out of Baltimore City, because you are not here reporting about the boarded up homes and the homeless people under MLK.

You’re not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue. … But you’re here for the black riots that happen. … you’re not here for the death of Freddie Gray.”

You can watch the video at YouTube. In the mean time my heart goes out to Baltimore and wish the people come out as stronger and unified for a hopeful future.