A few years ago when the poetry bug bit me I wrote a complete anthology of 60 odd poems and in the rush of vanity I also sent a draft proposal to Penguin India to get the collection published. In an urgent reply they responded with “Commendable but does not suit our editorial policy,” which actually meant, “Your poems suck so get lost,” or something in that vein. Now when I see them, they mostly seem immature. Not all of them of course — some of them I really like. Some are expressionistic, and some are forced rhymes, and some are so ridiculous that I hope nobody ever reads them (somehow I cannot delete them).
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The pro-democracy movement in Nepal is finally taking shape 
with hundreds of thousands of protesters hitting the streets. There were some extremely disturbing images on television but the king, by acting so brazenly, is sowing the seeds of his own ouster.
The India government has sent its superciliously “diplomatic” envoy — Karan Singh — who is always saying, “I can’t say this,” and I think it was high time. In fact 4 people who have died in the indiscriminate firing from the chopper wouldn’t have died had they neighboring countries acted in time. I’ve always found this king a bit shady, as he acquired the throne under bizarrely strange circumstances.
And you can help me stay there longer by either clicking this link or by clicking the image given below
I don’t know why for many years I’d been thinking about reading Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Yesterday night I stumbled upon a PDF file containing the story so I read it. Poe is known for depicting horrible, inescapable situations, and I think nothing is more horrible than a sense of hopelessness. But reading him is tough. Consider this:
I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science.
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I was just wondering how it helps reading books on writing. Some books come highly recommended. Until a few weeks ago I actively used to interact in an Indian writers’ group and there, people put lots of emphasis on “learning” to write better and following contemporary conventional (the expression is an oxymoron in itself) methods. Despite being an ardent admirer of classical writers such as Charles Dickens and Dostoyevski, I don’t exactly believe in following methods, or writing “keeping readers in mind”.
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Sometimes I feel intellectually dead. By “intellectually” I don’t mean all that thinking, brooding and cryptic stuff people call intellectualism. I mean, I sit in front of the laptop, my arms hanging lose by my side, my eyes burning slightly, and having more than 20 tasks to complete. If you can believe me, I’ve got so much work to do that even if I work non-stop for two weeks — non-stop means non-stop, literally — I’ll be completing just 40% of it. And still, my body and mind behave as if I have nothing to do. Even if there is no “professional” work to do, I have so much to write. There are so many ideas that crave to jump out of my mind, slide through my fingers and get stored in my word processor. They have begun to stagnate in the dark taverns of my cerebral electromagnetic passages. Need to drink lots of water I think.
Another post from Mridula’s latest blog. If Javed really died of medical negligence this is as big a tragedy as the Meerut fire. What wrong signals do we send out to all those people who really want to do something for the society? Remember Manjunath ? Remember Satyendra Dubey ? All these people had the courage to take a stand. Javed too took a stand, and paid with life even when, like all other, he could have remained alive.
But I think people like him don’t care for reactions or “signals”. They just do what they want to do.
This the title of Mridula’s new post . A commenter seems to feel that protests only seem to pay in France. I think recent protests in Meerut paid too, although they were not the quintessentially peaceful protests. Tragically, in our country — the country of Mahatma Gandhi — the government only pays heed to violent protests, and the peaceful protests meet the fate of Medha Patkar’s protest.
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Google Calendar - beta was recently released. I stumbled upon it while searching for AJAX related applications. Nice alternative to Outlook Express, in fact better, because you can access this from anywhere.
Another interesting application I’ve been using for months now is Ta-da list . It lets you create a list — even daily list — of things you’d like to accompalish. You can tick the things that you’ve completed.
Yesterday I watched crowds going on rampage because Rajkumar died . Today I saw crowds go on rampage because Salman Khan was in jail . Sometimes I feel we deserve the kind of treatment we get in this country.
Crowds were running around as if they had no self-respect. It was at some sub-human level. They were pelting stones at the police, and the police was chasing them wielding “lathis”. In Bangalore they were burning buses. The whole of Bangalore is shut down today for two reasons: people are “mourning”, and no vehicles are allowed to ply on the roads. Even some private vehicles have been set on fire. People in Jodhpur bore injuries and insults just so that they could get a glimpse of the movie stars rushing to show their solidarity to the Bollywood baba.
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