My reading at the Red Leaf Poetry group

This is a bit late in the day, but then its still current by my chronologically challenged mindset (and then again, we are still in the same month), so I hope it isn't too late to thank Linda, Shubhorup and Nivedita for having me over at the Red Leaf Poetry group's monthly get together for April.

Thanks to Nivedita's presence as an "interpreter" and Linda's hands-on stewardship of the event, I was very much at ease and could really enjoy being there at Landmark. As I have said earlier, I have no problems reading my poetry (nor any hang-ups about doing it), its just that the hearing environments in most such dos defeat my hearing aids and that evidently contributes to making me seem inarticulate or shy or self-effacing or whatever (I really don't think I am any of that -- not more than any more poet, anyway).

Not that it matters in any earth-shattering way -- but it was good to have an audience to read to and it was good to have to field so many questions as well. And it was also good to use the occasion (and the location -- how many people who come to Landmark buy any poetry books?)  to briefly touch on the penury of being a poet who has published two books.

Linda, Subhorup and Nivedita (not in any order) thanks for having me over, I was honoured. Wishing you all the very best in your endeavours to popularise / revive poetry. May your tribe increase :-)   

This and that about Philip Larkin

For no specific reason, but for that I found a lot of mention of Larkin in a novel that deals with the tragicomic lives of  "deafies" that I recently managed to finish (thanks to train travel), I have been reading up on Larkin. And also getting re-acquainted with some of his poems -- I remember reading a lot of his poems, after the sock in the gut impact of reading "This Be The Verse" for the first time. But then, you know how it is with me, I am certainly not constructive in the way I read poetry, so I don't really remember much of what I have read of Larkin's poems.

And then again, maybe the blame is not entirely mine, for as it is with AK Ramanujan and "The River" or with Nissim Ezekiel and "Night of The Scorpion", so it is with Philip Larkin and "This Be The Verse". I mean, what other Larkin poem will one remember / relate to (as a reader and not necessarily as someone who "agrees" with what the poem says) after getting "a sock in the gut" from "This Be The Verse" ?

So there.

And speaking of reading up on him -- well I found this lovely piece on him that makes for interesting reading. 

Not that reading up on Larkin demystifies him or translates his poetics -- his verse still remains verse, to be assimilated and enjoyed in the vocabulary of poetry -- but one does get a fair amount of insight into what shaped his poetic mettle, and served him as ink.

Would seem (on the basis of what I can gather from reading about him without claiming any scholarly application of mind) that Larkin was largely stoic as well...but then which wise poet / lay "deafie" isn't that anyway?    

Personally speaking, I do know (from the novel I mentioned reading) that Larkin was bothered about not being able to hear the larks singing, a fact brought to home when he was interrogated on it, while on a walk with a companion. I wonder, did he ever "get used" to it?

Who knows.    

A thousand trains (and another "lost" phone)

I spent a little less than 2 years in a small, more or less one street (that connects bus stand and railway station) town in Orissa in the pursuit of a Diploma in Electrical Engineering, so I am not new to out of the way, marooned-in-the-boondocks towns.

Then again, I grew up in Rourkela which certainly couldn't claim to be anything more than prosperously provincial back then, so I am used to things bucolic and slow-moving in a way not many born (and bred) in cities are. And since I used to commute a lot between Rourkela and the aforementioned town, I have more train journeys under my belt than most TTE's.

So then, this was one more journey (or two -- counting going and coming back as individual journeys, or four -- considering I had to change trains at Delhi) and one more visit to an out of the way, marooned-in-the-boondocks town.

The highlight of the four train journeys was traveling first class to Delhi. Something that came to transpire primarily because I couldn't get tickets in any other class (even after enduring the torture of IRCTC's Tatkal bookings). And I must say this, traveling First Class by train beats every other way of traveling -- and certainly scores high, much higher than traveling by air (not that I am much qualified to speak of air travel, I have caught a flight barely 4-5 times and it has always been cattle class) especially when it comes to the room on offer and the kind of pampering one gets to enjoy (tea / coffee, soup, breakfast, lunch, dinner...). Beats being offered a small bottle of water and a matchbox sized pack of boiled peanuts (or whatever else, if at all) by an anorexic lass speaking in a phoney accent (not that I can even begin to hear what they say) any day if you ask me.

In fact I almost went to the extent of thinking that this is a "life event" (no -- not in FB terminology, I am being serious) comparable to catching a flight (you know how it is with most small-town, middle-class people -- like yours truly -- who don't remove the baggage tags from their luggage for ages to "show off" that they have traveled by air) but then my father claims that he took us all (to Tirupati, no less) by First Class when I was too young to understand / notice.

Oh well -- that anyway explains why I love trains, eh? Must have cottoned onto the experience pretty early in life.

Another highlight was traveling through what used to be (if my sense of history and geography is correct) notorious as the Terai at one time -- at least that part of it which is in the north-western fringe of modern day Uttar Pradesh. Miles and miles of flat expanses with fields of golden wheat ready to be harvested or just harvested (and left in neat bundles). I have seen a lot of rice fields but this was the first time I got to see so much of ready to harvest wheat. Since a lot of my hoarded wealth in life these days is visual and in the form of photographs, this was certainly a bounty of a rare order, even if I did not take a single photograph.

And then, I lost it. In Delhi, I mean. The phone.

How?

Was in an auto headed to Nizamuddin to catch my train back to Hyderabad and texting (or writing into the phone, rather) and the auto (incidentally going at a fast canter on some Expressway) suddenly swerved, and as I lost balance, I lost my grip on the phone as well. Which then dived onto the Expressway and got hit and run (no idea how many times). Which then, I also managed to find (without its back cover) more or less intact and estranged from its battery (which also I managed to find) but...its best to write-off the phone as all it does is blink in a more or less half-assed way.

Yes, my ticket was in the phone and so were all my contacts, etc.

But then, I was mindful enough to manage to find a travel agent functioning out of a hole in the wall near Nizamuddin (all the cyber cafes were closed) log-in to IRCTC and coax it to let me print a ticket.The aforementioned travel agent (a tout more like) made a killing (he wanted Rs. 50 and was very rude too) and I decided not to knee him where it hurts, but what matters is I could get a ticket and carry on to Hyderabad and home.

Me and phones, eh?

And that brings me to the "town". Last time I was here, I had a wait of almost 3 hours for my train to Delhi to leave and I had to prevail on the Station Master to get the only Waiting Room opened. This time, I found that the Waiting Room has been taken over by a TTE and converted into his living (or at least sleeping) quarters. And no, there was no other place (apart from the loo in the Waiting Room) for me to relieve myself.

Marooned-in-the-boondocks town, did I not say? Or maybe this is how most end-of-the-line Railway Stations are...

   


                           

What Jimmy Carter said

This is not exactly that recent, and Jimmy Carter is certainly not much of a heavyweight in world affairs or the kind of person who can create a groundswell of opinions -- at least in comparison to serving US presidents, but it still makes for good and thought-provoking reading.

Take a look see, do.

Truth be told, all religions discriminate against women and Hinduism also doesn't really score very high when it comes to being "equal opportunity". Which is a bit surprising considering that there are so many Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon and the "Mother Cult" is an intrinsic part of the Hindu faith and way of life.

Truth also be told, Hinduism has been crying out for reform (and renewal) for ages now and Hinduism can do with some women Shankaracharyas as well...

Meanwhile, what Jimmy Carter said. 


      

An idyllic trip into the Garhwal hills

The place (like last time when I wrote about it here) will go unnamed. Sorry if that bothers you, but I prefer it that way and its not that I am being rude, its just that I am a bit concerned about the numerous "jeep safaris", "wildlife treks" and "nature hikes" being offered to a variety of city-bred, consumerism-cultured, gadget groomed groups of nouveau-rich Indians.

All of whom, (like most urbanized Indians, to be honest) care a shit about nature or environment; and this is something I am qualified to talk about (and even rant on) as I have been around in what remains of Hyderabad's outdoors and cannot really say much about the cleanliness or aesthetics of these spaces.
 
So there, the place will remain unnamed. Not that it really matters, you could mail and ask me and I will tell you :-)

I guess, "idyllic" is a bit of a misnomer, because the last thing I did was relax or luxuriate in any kind of idyll; rather I more or less walked the skin off my feet and the ankles and knees off my legs (there were some killing inclines involved) and was on the move from almost 6.00 in the morning to 6.00 in the evening...but I guess it was still an idyll, because mentally I was at absolute peace and even feeling "blessed" as I was in the company of innumerable trees and a lot of birds were repeatedly straying into my consciousness.

What else would a self-confessed poet of nature (and birds) and a simpleton with notepad skills (and bum ears) consider idyllic?

******************

Like the last time I was here, I was again put up with the Army guys, in fact at the very same Mess. As such, I remembered the trees and the lay of the land and which way is east, which west, etc, etc

These are all very important from the viewpoint of birding, because these are what go into getting your eye in. In my case, I am happy to say that I could start shooting barely 10 minutes after getting to my room and dropping off my gear. And I am also happy to say that the first bird I photographed was one of my "firm favorites", a Blue Whistling Thrush, a bird that is fairly common here but yet needs a lot of skill to get close to (as it always wears a habitually suspicious air), a bird that I had laboured to photograph through fog and rain the last time I was here...

Speaking of fog and rain, it did rain the second evening, for around 30 minutes or so and there was the low rumble of thunder over the valley (surprisingly -- more than three years after Moving On and a poem where I have celebrated the "fact", I can still hear thunder, and most of the time it is a low rumble to my ears...and a very welcome, atavistic and wild rumble too!) that I for an instant took to be the boom of artillery guns being fired in some field exercise. But then, this was after it was already dark and when I was going through the day's catch of photographs on the laptop that I had lugged along.

That (apart from a couple of false alarms) was the only time it rained this time, as opposed to the last when the rain / fog would again and again literally come out of the blue and put paid to my hopes of gathers keepers / lifers.

For some reason that I just cannot fathom, this time, I did not get to see / photograph a single Greater Flameback -- a species of woodpecker that is as common here as the moss grown pines and deodhars that it favours.

That, let me tell you was one big, big let down. Because, I had set my heart on an intimate encounter with at least a couple of Greater Flamebacks, to make up for not being able to photograph them properly the last time I was here. Something that was more or less guaranteed if I could have sighted them -- considering the abundant sunlight and my enhanced (read higher ISO, faster shutter speed) capabilities, thanks to the D600 (AND my enhanced understanding of woodpecker behaviour as well).

But then, maybe the Greater Flameback likes this part of the hills and frequents these trees where I had seen so many of them only when it is is rainy / foggy...or else it likes to go down into the valley during the "winter" (something that technically speaking hasn't ended for more than half a month and was very very severe).

Who knows, after all -- we know so less about birds anyway.

***********************

I did run into a lot of other woodpeckers and in fact (in retrospect) I spent too much time photographing them, while I should have been more after the Verditer's Flycatchers, the Minivets, the Lammergeiers and the Himalayan Kingfishers (in the valley down below -- in fact, I did not even go down to the valley for any birding). But then, woodpeckers are nothing if not mesmeric to watch as they traipse up and down a tree's bole or branch and let me tell you both the Yellow-fronted Woodpeckers (of whom I saw two nesting pairs almost on a daily basis) and the Indian Black-naped Green Woodpecker (of whom I saw both the male and female, again on a daily basis) are positively hypnotising when watched through a lens.

So, maybe you will understand if I say that I did not get to photograph much, apart from these woodpeckers and a Lesser Yellownape that I saw on my last morning.

That "much" being -- a pair of Eurasian Blackbirds, a couple of Spangled Drongos, the highly elusive Great Barbet, a Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher, some Verditer's Flycatchers some Eurasian Jays and a lot of other birds that I still need to properly look at and ID.

All in all, a nice idyll, I would say. Especially if you are a self-confessed poet of nature (and birds) and a simpleton with notepad skills (and bum ears).