haiku

Monsoon:
Orphaned old lady in dire poverty
is dressed in a rich bright green velvet gown;
An abandoned well.

Kalai:
Asayaamal, amiedhiyaay amarndhirundhu, ivvoviyan
en nenjai thodum oviyangal theetugiraan;
Sattai pyeyill viethirindha yen ink pena.

loosely translated into:

Art:
Unmoved, sits this artist in silence,
and does paintings that touch my heart;
The ink pen in my shirt pocket.

A spore of fire

Well… I’m back to what I do the best… brood.

Not that I haven’t been doing this at all. Actually I do keep brooding most of the time, at every opportunity my mind feels a bit untied and temporarily disconnected from everything happening around. But, using a technical term (and since I have also been attempting some ‘subject-surface-scratching’ - trying to understand some very basics of the subject matter I have been handling for more than 2 years now) this can be called ‘implicit brooding’! Here you brood, but only within. Yes, I acknowledge that brooding is by itself an ‘internal phenomenon’, pretty much concealed from the external appearance. But the implicit variety is like going another shell or another layer inside. Call it ‘inner-internal-phenomenon’ if that makes things simpler or sounds acceptable. You are so bogged down by activities/tasks/things/duties that you are left with very little time to devote to anything else. And so you brood in gaps/intervals/breaks/pauses, only for a few moments before you are rewound and catapulted back to reality.

And then there is the other, the grand, independent, carefree, unperturbed sort – ‘explicit brooding’! The state of mind where the foremost slot of application of the mind is allocated to brooding, second to none. It drives the machine and everything else rides pillion. Lets call it ‘outer-internal-phenomenon’ to stay inline with the other variety’s description.

If you consider yourself a seasoned brooder, you will at once recognize this to be an activity which aids in attaining supreme mental satisfaction. To me, this is the satisfaction arising from a session of analyzing and streamlining emotions. Happiness, sorrow, confusion, complacency, inspiration…everything appears to distill down to a solitary feeling of anger, which in turn fuels a craving for creativity, fuels a drive to do only things I want to do and not need to do and fuels the urge to attempt that big-leap, from what appears like the bottom of the pit currently.

Agni kunjodru kanden,

Adhei angoru kaattilo pondhidie veithen,

Vendhu thanindhadhu kaadu,

Thazhal veeraththil kunjendrum moopendrum undo?

A spore of fire did I sight,

It, in the dense of a forest did I hide,

Burn down to ashes, did the forest.

In their blistering rage, can one say a spore of fire from a blaze?

Eerppu

Vizhigal saendhana,

sila vinaadigal inaindhu ondraga nindrana,

ullangal irendilum perugi ezhundha aanandhatthil

kangal virindhana... jolitthana.

Udhadugalo… vetkathil asayamal nindrana.

Piragu,

mugavalaikkupin maraindhirindhu

siru oliyaai thondrum oru azhagiyin kangalaipol,

aval udhudugal sattre vilagiyadhu,

oliyin oru bimbam angu uyir kondadhu,

siru punnagai ondru angu mottu vittadhu.