Sometimes I wonder...

...if I would be happier if I had given myself the flexibility to break promises.

Thought of the day..

Dil chaahta hai ki dil kuchh na chaahe..

Rendezvous with Gulzar: 1

Poem:(yahi title hai book mein :))

The time draws close
for Bosky's marriage.

Something leaves my body,
something sinks in my soul.

Am I sad?
Am I serene?
I do not know.

Is it the dawn
before daybreak?
Is it the dusk
before the sunset?
I do not know.

As I go along
I keep thinking,
after the next bend
she will take a turn
and head towards
the rising sun.

I'll walk on,
all alone,
till I merge
into the setting sun.

 Translation:

Kavita:

Bosky ki shaadi ka din
Kareeb aa raha hai

Jaise kuchh chhoot raha hai
Kuchh bojh sa hai rooh par

Kya mann shaant hai?
Kya main dukhi hoon?
Main nahi jaanta

Ye din nikalne se pehle ka andhera hai?
Ya din dhalne se pehle ka ujaala?
Main nahi jaanta

Bas ek khayaal ke saath
Chala ja raha hoon
Ki agle mod par
Wo chali jaayegi
Ugte hue sooraj ki taraf

Aur main yun hi chalta rahoonga
Akela
Jab tak ki main kho nahi jaata
Dhalte sooraj ke andhere mein kahin.



Rating: 3.5/10  (it will get better I assure you :))


Aa Gulzar, hum bhi aaj khila ke dekhen  chaand,
Ki mere saawan mein tere patjhad sa nasha hai ki nahi

Autumn moon - Aa Gulzar, hum bhi aaj khila ke dekhen chaand...

This is the first of what will hopefully be a series of posts on this blog. I have on my desk currently a book of poems called Autumn Moon translated in English by J.P. Das and were originally written in Urdu by Complete (Sampooran) Singh Gulzar, as I sometimes fondly call him :D.

Here is the short introduction of the book from the writer himself -

"Autumn Moon is a reflection of Gulzar's penchant for the sublime. He is one of the most versatile Urdu poets on the scene today. The anthology presents some of Gulzar's most significant Urdu works in translation for the first time.

The poems in this seminal collection, Autumn Moon, are in deep exploration of love, longing, passion, ecstasy, absence and loss."

What I want to do in this series is to try to translate these poems back to Urdu. Sounds like a foolish idea? Well...

I have been wanting to do this exercise for quite some time now but everything starts only at the right time which for this is, I guess, now.

They say that one always loses a part of the soul of the original work in a translation. However if the translation is not entirely literal, sometimes the effect created can be much better than the original (the movies Chachi 420 and Hum Tum are examples). This perhaps hints at what my goal is with what I am trying to do. That can be seen as one of the goals but that is too ambitious.

So, the reasons I want to do this are the following.

• To understand poetry better - It has been only a couple of years since I began to appreciate poetry. But, to like something is far from understanding it well enough. It is often the case that you like some poetry and if someone asks you for the meaning of some part, you are lost.. this, at times, results in statements like, "These lines can only be felt. They cannot be explained" :D.. so translation is a fantastic exercise in this respect I guess. Even if we are not able to explain the emotion well, we should be able to express/phrase it in another language if we understand it. This can take a lot of effort and can take going back and forth to the original making you understand more each time.
• To improve at expressing the thoughts - I sometimes wonder what is it that makes the great writers actually great. Is it the thoughts that matter more or is it the ability to express? Where does someone like me lack? There are some lines that simply leave the reader in awe at how fantastic the lines are... here is an example of a few by Gulzar, "Jiska bhi chehra cheela, andar se aur nikla, masoom sa kabootar naacha to mor nikla, kabhi hum kameene nikle, kabhi doosre kameene". Simply awesome. Although not exactly the same, the idea is in a way similar to something I wrote a while ago.. so perhaps i don't lack as much in idea/observation/thoughts as in expression. Hence this exercise is definitely worth doing :)
  
• to challenge my language skills- having a very limited vocabulary in both English and Hindi/Urdu, this could be a good way to improve on that..
  
• Writing fiction is the best way to disguise your thoughts and still be able to express yourself... so lets get better at writing fiction in the meanwhile :)
  
• To give the world the next Gulzar - :D ... since the great person is already in his seventies, he might not have a lot of years left.. bitter truth of life, as they call it.. so we need someone to replace him 8-)  [I know bahut bahut zyaada ho gaya but ki farak painda hai .. apna blog hai :D :D]..
  
• To give the readers time to ponder over something interesting - poetry books gone through quickly make you lose charm and this will be a interesting exercise to anyone dropping by.. and thinking that maybe this could be phrased better, etc etc..
  

ok, lots of bullshitting.. basic baat hai ki apna mood hai.. of course this does not mean this will be the only thing appearing on this blog from now on. It will just come from time to time.


The reason for choosing this book is kind of obvious. Since it was originally written in Urdu, there HAS to be a way to get it back.. and so it is reasonable to hope that back translation might make it better than the English version and/or as good as the original.  I will give my rating from 1 to 10 for each one, 5 meaning that the English version, to me, sounds just as good as my translation and 10 meaning the Hindi/Urdu version is much better than the English version. The interchange between Hindi and Urdu in my version will be frequent. I will kind of treat them as one language in the spirit of what Ghalib used to say, "Hindi and Urdu are the same languages but with a different script." 

Will want to compare it with the original later sometime. So, lets begin this journey towards trying to find out what was lost in translation.


Ek couplet humaari taraf se shuru karne ke liye :D


Aa Gulzar, hum bhi aaj khila ke dekhen  chaand,
Ki mere saawan mein tere patjhad sa nasha hai ki nahi

...

Dreams, in their essence, are an extremely pure entity. It is the hope that is the adulteration we normally subject them to, to make them impure. If only we could learn to dream without hope.

Everything in life is a paradox

God has a really weird sense of humour.

aadat

Miss Lucy kehti hain .. "aadaten agar waqt par na badli jaayen to zarooraten ban jaati hain" .. if you don't remember the reference, get drowned in chullu bhar pani

Got reminded of these lines by Gulzar today due to a friend's status message .. "Aadaten bhi ajeeb hoti hain, saans lena bhi kaisi aadat hai, jiye jaana bhi kya ravaayat hai... jiye jaate hain, jiye jaate hain... aadaten bhi ajeeb hoti hain"

It is somehow interesting to put these together.... kuchh alfaaz is khayaal par :D :D


Karta kaunsa waqt muqarrar is aadat ko badalne ka
Jab se hosh sambhaala, ye aadat kam, zaroorat zyaada thi

Jo badal paata insaan bas is ek aadat ko
Kisi aur aadat ko badalne ki zaroorat nahi rehti

Saans lena bhi kaisi aadat hai...


PS: autobiographical nahi hai :)

Orkut is, for once, at its brilliant best...

Today's fortune: The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.

Brilliantly put, I must say.. and oscillating between absolute optimism and absolute pessimism at the moment, I couldn't relate to this more at any other point of time..

I am stupid....

I normally take care not to fall into these situations but this time i didn't...

Result - Sitting in a restaurant at a table with 10 european group-mates and wanting to go to the toilet and wondering what is the right protocol that should be followed here to excuse oneself from the dining table. I didn't remember anyone doing so while people were eating. After about one hour of this struggle, to my relief, i find the guy sitting next to me get up saying, "i have to go to the toilet" and I wonder "Hmmm, so this is the protocol" and I said, "Actually, me too" and follow him...

Sach hai duniya waalon ki hum hain anari..

Religion is the root cause of almost all evil

As simple-minded as this may seem, is there anything good that religion brings to us that was not possible if there was no religion?