I cannot stop writing

I often get a question:  “How do you write?”  It has a wide range of connotations:  “How do you get such thoughts?”; “How can you find time to write?”; or just “Why the hell you stress yourself after a workday? Don’t you get tired ?”  The answer is simple for me.  I write because I write; I cannot do otherwise.  I cannot live without writing.  It is not about writing a blog or writing online.  Writing online is kind of a perversion, because I cannot write on-paper for many reasons.  Writing online has its benefits too; I get a quick response and I can refine my thoughts if there is any odd thinking.

I never knew myself for years that I can write.  I was a reader; reading for my own pleasure.  I never understood at what time my reading changed from “just reading” to “a reading experience.”  At some point in my reading career, without even knowing myself, I started interpreting things in my own way.  And I started to realize whatever I had read until then was just a reading practice for the years to come.  Earlier, I used to devour hundreds of pages in a day, but it was just a preparation.  Till then, I hated poetry.  I had never brought a poetry book from library.  I never understood why people write poems.  It was all because I had never read good poetry, or I had not learnt interpreting things till then.  All this happened around my early twenties.  From around 19 through 21, I was turning from a “reading reader” to a “writing reader.”

Of a poem and a dream…

Another Saturday. Life passes week by week. Ideas come and go. Days pass. Saturdays, Sundays, and then Mondays. What’s the thing that’s missing?

Hmm, my mp3 player is too intuitive. I wrote what’s the thing that’s missing and it started playing Enge enathu kavithai. Where is my poem–one that I had written in dream?

Bless me O God!

Morning!  I started the PC and was about to start work.  I usually keep humming all the time, may be it at home, at work, while riding a bike, or while doing nothing (no one has ever enlightened me on how to do nothing).  And I started humming an abhanga by Tukaram:  हेची दान देगा देवा तुझा विसर न व्हावा, विसर न व्हावा तुझा विसर न व्हावा!!  “Bless me O God; I shall never forgot thou, never, never ever!”  How couldn’t I love these words, how couldn’t I!! Oh God, bless me, I shall never forget thou, never ever!

I knew a similar couplet by Bashir Badr “Wo bada rahim o karim hai mujhe ye sifat bhi ata karein, tujhe bhulne ke duaa karoon to meri duaa mein asar na ho.“  He is really a kind one, He should grant me a wish–if I ever wish to forget you, I wish must never be granted.  And I loved these lines too, but this time Tukaram took my heart away!

In case of Bashir Badr, he wishes he should never forget his beloved one.  And Tukaram?  For him, the God is his beloved, and he is asking the God never to let him forget Him.

I was humming it all over the day, it was constantly going in my head while all the work was going:  हेची दान देगा देवा तुझा विसर न व्हावा, विसर न  व्हावा तुझा विसर न व्हावा!!

For a moment I thought did Tukaram mean that God should always keep us unhappy that we must not forget him?  Nay, it cannot be such.  Tukaram didn’t mean it that way.  May be it was the case with Bashir Badr, certainly not with Tukaram!

Be with me! Never let me go! Hold me to your heart!! And how can I forget you?  Isn’t it what Tukaram means?  Never let me go!

Tukaram made my day today!!

Notes:
Tukaram (1608-1650) was a Marathi seer poet and is considered the zenith of the Warkari tradition, which sought salvation for all irrespective of caste and creed.  Tukaram wrote poetry in the form of abhangas (literally something that cannot be broken).  Tukaram is considered as one of the best poets the language has ever produced.  Tukaram’s abhangas are still played in the households of Maharashtra.

Bashir Badr is a contemporary Urdu poet, one of my favorite.

Day 1: Post a Day October 2011 — A thirty-day challenge

So, here am I with the first post of my 30-day challenge for the month of October 2011.  The idea of posting everyday on a blog is really fascinating and it will be more so with continued support and motivation from all of you.

There are certainly some reservations.  Can it really be creative?  Won’t it just be writing for the sake of writing?  Won’t it be writing because I have the challenge to complete?  Yes, it will be, but writing something is better than not writing at all.  And I know, whatever I will write, I would always be kind of creative in some way or other.

Creativity is “to create”.  He who creates is a creative and not the one who just thinks.  Having some feelings and putting them down on the paper (or on screen) are two really different things.  One cannot be called creative unless he transforms his thinking in the form of creation.

I think I won’t fall short of ideas for at least this 30-day challenge.  I have a lot to tell you.  If I just wait for the form, the form would never come and whatever I am thinking will fade out.  So, before it fades out, I want to put in out in whatever form it takes.

Once a Prashant Vaidya (a Marathi ghazal writer from Kalyan) told me, “Ganesh, we won’t become a poet by just writing good poems for say three months or three years.  To be called a poet, you must give out good poetry for some 30 years. “  Soon after that, I almost stopped writing poems.  My short poetic career did not even last for three years.  After a keen reading of classics, I had made my taste so special and had raised my bars so high that I could never reach them, and I never wrote again.  And then a lot of things happened and eventually the ideas stopped to occur to me.  Thus, I became a no-poet.

So now, without waiting for ideas or form, I am going to start writing.  And I know, as I will move ahead, I will get my form back.  I know what my form is; I will rediscover it.  I don’t mean that I will start writing poetry again, or stories or novel or some sort of book, but certainly I will start loving writing as it used to do.

So, this is for today, for the first of October 2011; and a whole month of excitement ahead.

P.S.  And I will have to learn to stop too, otherwise I will write a long, long posts for the first few days and will stop writing altogether after that.  So, stop, stop, stop… Enough for today.

A note from Glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore

Shazadpur 10th July 1893

All I have to say about the discussion that is going on over “silent poets” is that, though the strength of feeling may be the same in those who are silent as in those who are vocal, that has nothing to do with poetry. Poetry is not a matter of feeling, it is the creation of form.

Ideas take shape by some hidden, subtle skill at work within the poet. This creative power is the origin of poetry. Perceptions, feelings, or language, are only raw material. One may be gifted with feeling, a second with language, a third with both; but he who has as well a creative genius, alone is a poet.

Once I used to be a poet! (Another junk from my Outlook draft folder!)

They say once I used to be a poet. I have a diary full of poems I had written in my hostel days. Some of my poems were published in local newspapers, and one of them had gotten a wide critical acclaim. I still occasionally get messages, are you the same Ganesh Dhamodkar, the poet of that ghazal? I hesitantly say, yes, I am the same one, but it was a thing of past; I don’t write anymore! And practically, it was one of the very last poems of mine. My short poetic career ended just in less than a couple of years.

Why did I stop writing, in particular writing poems?

A lost poem

And now I cannot wait! It’s just a couple of minutes since I published my last post where I said I am downloading Enge Enathu Kavithai. I just was watching the video, fortunately subtitled! I loved the lyrics of the song, but I had never watched it on screen, and could never get line-to-line meaning, but as I was watching it with subtitles, the lyrics were amazing!!

I have read lyrics of both the songs Enge enathu kavithai and Evano oruvan vasikiran in translation, and though Evano oruvan has superb music (even better than Enge enathu kavithai) and an excellent poetry, the lyrics and poetry of Enge enathu is excellently touching. This song is from a Tamil movie Kandukondain Kandukondain (I have found it, or say Eureka Eureka). Featuring Tabu and Aishwarya, this movie is based on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

Let’s move towards our lyrics! Here it is, I am giving it from the movie subtitles:

The song picturizes Aishwarya as a singer who is recording her first song, and starts with some incomprehensible chorus. Subtitles read: After seeing its own shadow, this hearts weeps by seeing you! Then starts Aishwarya singing (in the melodious voice of Chitra). I would stop my commentary now and give the lyrics altogether:

Where is my poem, which was recited in the dream?
Has it got melted by eyes?
Was It erased by dawn?
Search and give me back my poem!
Or else redeem my dream!
My heart is in search of the face which was missed in the evening.
This flower is withering love in the sun.
It’s searching you in the raindrops…
My melting heart is in search of you even in the bursting bubbles!
I will be peaceful if I see your handsome face.
Once if you touch me by your single finger,
I will die hundred times.

My heart is craving for your single glance and word!
I am craving for your kiss that will leave me breathless.
I want to smell you sweating clothes.
It’s wishing for a cheek with a few hairs to prick.

It seems a bit incomplete here, and I have an mp3 version, which goes further a few lines with a proper ending, but as far as the scene goes, and the subtitles, that is it I could have, but overall excellent poetry, and almost surprisingly fresh for film songs!!

I also wished to write about the background of the song in the movie etc, but that you can easily google! Cya

Gitanjali Poem XIV

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked.

My desires are many and my cries are pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

Day by day thou are making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest me unasked–this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind–saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

There are time when I languidly linger and times when I awaken and hurry in search of my goal; but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before me.

Day by day thou are making me worthy of thy full acceptance by refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.

~By Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)