Tag: Alexander Pope

Categories
Musings

Hope Lies Buried in Eternity

By Farouk Gulsara

I learnt early that life is never fair. They say time and tide wait for no man, moving along their own trajectory. 

I heard money solves all problems or at least eases the pain of tough times. There was a time I ventured into saving mode. I started my own piggy bank, dropping in a coin almost daily into a plastic-mould chick figurine. I patted myself on the back as the clink of coins became louder and louder. It was not much, but every jingle reminded me of the value of money and the comfort it would provide me one day. The trouble was that my sisters were equally pleased that my coffers were filling to the brim. They began needling out coin after coin to finance their addiction of buying little treats. I felt frustrated. I knew saving was hard, but I never expected reaching my goal to be so difficult. My sisters’ malfeasance came to light one day when I noticed that the piggy bank had been displaced away from its usual place, tucked behind my nice shirts. That was when I confronted my sisters. 

In my eyes, I did nothing wrong. Instead of admonishing my sisters and compensating for my loss, Amma claimed it was my fault. She taught me the harsh truths of life. It was my responsibility to safeguard my property, not anyone else’s. After that realisation, I sought out other ways to save money.

Then, I had a new group of friends. I joined a competitive group of classmates who wanted to excel academically. I thought that would be easy. I devoted all my time to studying and paying attention in class. It seemed easy, but it was a different story when the examination results were released. It was the class jester, for whom everything was a joke, who came out on top. Another valuable lesson I learnt was not just to study hard, but to study smart.

As I grew older and the screaming radio became a constant background to my daily life, I realised that the world was not a peaceful place. On one hand, songs promised a tranquil world of apple trees and honeybees[1]; from the same country, they sent tanks and bombs to annihilate each other. It seemed that the Vietnam War would never end. Peace in the Middle East was merely a pipe dream. 

Amidst all that, a hippie song emerged, envisioning a world without boundaries, an airspace free from control, and a peaceful existence [2]. It instilled a sense of hope that life might indeed have something to look forward to after all. The image of two figures dressed entirely in white playing a white grand piano remains permanently etched in my mind as the beacon of hope that one day everything will be all right. And life went on. 

After many years of burning the midnight oil and reaping bitter seeds, its sweet fruit finally emerged. Yet, all my classmates who were partying and living life to the full had already gained a head start in their careers. They had ascended the ladders of their professions and were cruising around in flashy cars, while I was starting as an intern with little to show except a few letters behind my name. The competitive streak within me, however, reassured me that academic excellence is superior to the acquisition of wealth.

I continued my healing work, convincing myself that what I was doing would be returned in kind and that I would receive blessings of a different kind. As time passed, I realised that those were merely comforters to soothe a colicky baby. The old adage ‘health is wealth’ was a fallacy. In the real world, wealth buys health, just as one gets justice with all the money one can afford to pay for legal services. The youthful cry of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ [3] was another lie. Money buys everything, and it feels better to cry in a BMW than by the footpath of the street. 

So, there I was, thinking that if I were to follow the ways prescribed by the elders, I would be all right. “Tell no lies.” They said. “Speak only the truth!” Then there were people who made lying— or they would call it ‘bending the truth’— the pillar of their profession. “Don’t be materialistic, look at humanity!” Tell that to the stockholders who do not take it kindly when the conglomerate shows high praises and blessings but announces no monetary returns in dividends. For one thing, even big countries help each other not for altruistic reasons but for geopolitical and economic interests. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes with its encumbrances. 

I was advised not to fight back but to turn the other cheek. Yet, behind my back, the world has regarded me as a fall guy, and I was merely a useful idiot—someone they could blame for all their wrongdoings because I was naïve enough to admit my mistakes. Now my friends urge me to strike before the other party draws first blood and to never admit to any wrongdoings. 

As human beings, we yearn for a world without conflict. We all desire peace of mind—a world where everyone follows a single prescribed path, where everything falls into place, a utopia in which one person sees another not by the colour of their skin or the tunic they wear, but by the strength of their character. Most prayers we offer to a higher being invariably end with ‘Peace on Earth’ or ‘Happiness for All’. Prayers like ‘Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaha‘ [4] and ‘Om Shanti‘ [5] assume that everyone can have things their way at one given time, creating a win-win situation. Such a situation can only exist in our imagination. Regardless of what everyone else says, life is a zero-sum game. For someone to win, another must lose, somewhere, somehow. For the lion colony to be happy, a goat must be sacrificed. Contentment is achieved when we acknowledge our limitations and accept that sometimes things do not go in our favour. Outcomes may improve if we recognise that we can only do so much.

An Earth without conflict is a pipe dream. The natural course of events is entropy interspersed with instances of chaos and order. One can choose to adopt a nihilistic view of our existence and do nothing, or be like Sisyphus [6] — resigned to the fact that we are in a hopeless situation — but strive to find joy in setting small targets and achieving modest successes, filling our hearts with laughter and happiness during the lull before the storm, and endeavour to leave a better future for the next generation.

When everyone found it impossible to carry a big load, the human mind devised the wheel. When the greener pastures across the lake obsessively stirred the curious, it took one brave young man with the imagination to make a raft of fallen tree trunks. Hope springs eternal in the human breast[7]. The change we want the world to embody starts with the man in the mirror. Numerous social experiments have repeatedly shown that doing a kind gesture is contagious. One good turn deserves another. No good deed remains unreturned. We can try. 

Sisyphus: From Public Domain

[1]  A verse from The New Seekers’ “’I’d Like To Teach the World to Sing” became a jingle for Coca-Cola later.

[2] John Lennon’s most successful solo single, ‘Imagine’, envisions a world of peace without materialism, without borders separating nations, and without religion.

[3] The Beatles’ 1964 hit ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is a McCartney composition that naively preaches that true love cannot be bought. In the later stages of his life, McCartney discovered the hard way that divorce, without a pre-nuptial agreement for someone of his stature, could be financially draining. Money can’t buy love, but falling out of it can be costly.

[4] Sanskrit for ‘May all be happy’

[5] Sanskrit for ‘Peace’

[6] In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a shrewd king. The gods condemned him to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to see it roll down again after reaching the summit. Albert Camus, in his book ‘The Myth of Sisyphus,’ implies that Sisyphus was happy. He found performing and completing the act itself meaningful. He gave meaning to the meaningless.

[7] “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” an excerpt from Alexander Pope’s poem “An Essay on Man.”

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Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Editorial

‘Imagine all the People, Sharing All the World’

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Let’s look forward to things getting better this New Year with wars tapering off to peace— a peace where weapons and violence are only to be found in history. Can that ever happen…?

Perhaps, all of us need to imagine it together. Feeling the need for peace, if we could dwell on the idea and come up with solutions, we could move towards making it a reality. To start with, every single human being has to believe firmly in the need for such a society instead of blaming wars on natural instincts. Human nature too needs to evolve. Right now, this kind of a world view may seem utopian. But from being hunter-gatherers, we did move towards complex civilisations that in times of peace, built structures and created art, things that would have seemed magical to a cave dweller in the Palaeolithic times. Will we destroy all that we built by warring – desecrating, decimating our own constructs and life to go on witch-hunts that lead to the destruction of our own species? Will human nature not evolve out of the darkness and chaos that leads to such large-scale annihilation?

Sometimes, darkness seems to rise in a crescendo only to be drowned by light emanating from an unknown source. This New Year — which started with an earthquake followed the next day by a deadly plane collision — was a test of human resilience from which we emerged as survivors, showing humanity can overcome hurdles if we do not decimate each other in wars. Bringing this to focus and wringing with the pain of loss, Suzanne Kamata, in her column tells us: “Earthquakes and other natural disasters are unavoidable, but I admire the effort that the Japanese people put into mitigating their effects. My hope is that more and more people here will begin to understand that it is okay to cry, to mourn, to grieve, and to talk about our suffering. My wish for the Japanese people in the new year is happiness and the achievement of dreams.”

And may this ring true for all humanity.

Often it is our creative urges that help bring to focus darker aspects of our nature. Laughter could help heal this darkness within us. Making light of our foibles, critiquing our own tendencies with a sense of humour could help us identify, creating a cathartic outcome which will ultimately lead to healing. An expert at doing that was a man who was as much a master of nonsense verses in Bengal as Edward Lear was in the West. Ratnottama Sengupta has brought into focus one such book by the legendary Sukumar Ray, Abol Tabol (or mumbo jumbo), a book that remains read, loved and relevant even hundred years later. We have more non-fiction from Keith Lyons who reflects on humanity as he loses himself in China. Antara Mukherjee talks of evolving and accepting a past woven with rituals that might seem effete nowadays and yet, these festivities did evoke a sense of joie de vivre and built bridges that stretch beyond the hectic pace of the current world. Devraj Singh Kalsi weaves in humour and variety with his funny take on stocks and shares. Rhys Hughes does much the same with his fun-filled recount on the differences between Sri Lanka and India, with crispy dosas leaning in favour of the latter.

Humour is also sprinkled into poetry by Hughes as Radha Chakravarty’s poetry brings in more sombre notes. An eminent translator from Bengali to English, she has now tuned her pen to explore the subliminal world. While trying to explore the darker aspects of the subliminal, David Skelly Langen, a young poet lost his life in December 2023. We carry some of his poems in memoriam. Ahmad Al-Khatat, an Iraqi immigrant, brings us close to the Middle East crisis with his heart-rending scenarios painted with words. Variety is added to the oeuvre with more poetry from George Freek, Ganesh Puthur, Ron Pickett, Stuart McFarlane, Urmi Chakravorty, Saranyan BV, JM Huck and many more.

Our stories take us around the world with Paul Mirabile from France, Ravi Shankar from Malaysia, Srinivasan R from India and Rebecca Klassen from England, weaving in the flavours of their own cultures yet touching hearts with the commonality of emotions.

In conversations, Ratnottama Sengupta introduces us to the multifaceted Bulbul Sharma and discusses with her the celebrated filmmaker Mrinal Sen, in one of whose films Sharma ( known for her art and writing) had acted. We also have a discussion with eminent screenplay writer Gajra Kottary on her latest book, Autumn Blossoms and an introduction to it.

Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Sudha Murty’s Common Yet Uncommon: 14 Memorable Stories from Daily Life, which she says, “speaks a universal language of what it means to be human”. Bhaskar Parichha takes us to Scott Ezell’s Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet. Parichha opines: “The book evokes the majesty of Tibetan landscapes, the unique dignity of the Tibetan people, and the sensory extremity of navigating nearly pre-industrial communities at the edge of the map, while also encompassing the erosion of cultures and ecosystems. Journey to the End of the Empire is both a love song and a protest against environmental destruction, centralised national narratives and marginalised minorities.” Meenakshi Malhotra provides a respite from the serious and emotional by giving us a lively review of Rhys Hughes’ The Coffee Rubaiyat, putting it in context of literature on coffee, weaving in poetry by Alexander Pope and TS Eliot. Rakhi Dalal has reviewed a translation from Punjabi by Ajeet Cour and Minoo Minocha of Cour’s Life Was Here Somewhere. Our book excerpts from Anuradha Kumar’s The Kidnapping of Mark Twain: A Bombay Mystery introduces a lighter note as opposed to the intense prose of Srijato’s A House of Rain and Snow, translated from Bengali by Maharghya Chakraborty.

Translations this time take us to the realm of poetry again with Fazal Baloch introducing us to a classical poet from Balochistan, the late Mulla Fazul. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his poetry from Korean. Niaz Zaman brings us Nazrul’s Samya or Equality – a visionary poem for the chaotic times we live in — and Fakrul Alam transcribes Masud Khan’s Bengali verses for Anglophone readers. Our translations are wound up with Tagore’s Prarthona or Prayer, a poem in which the poet talks of keeping his integrity and concludes saying ‘May the wellbeing of others fill my heart/ With contentment”.

May we all like Tagore find contentment in others’ wellbeing and move towards a world impacted by love and peace! The grand polymath always has had the last say…

I would like to thank our contributors, the Borderless team for this vibrant beginning of the year issue, Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous art, and all our readers for continuing to patronise us.

With hope of moving towards a utopian future, I invite you to savour our fare, some of which is not covered by this note. Do pause by our contents page to check out all our fare.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the January 2024 issue

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READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

Categories
Review

A Cup that Cheers: Savouring The Coffee Rubaiyat

Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: The Coffee Rubaiyat

Author: Rhys Hughes

Publisher: Alien Buddha Press

 Rhys Hughes’ creative adaptation of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam[1] is a delightful read. Located somewhere between tribute and parody, it has recreated the tonal and prosodic rhythms of the original translation, quartet by quartet. Yet, there is a thin line between parody and subversion, and Hughes’s adaptation negotiates this with a tongue-in cheek flippancy.

To illustrate the close parallel of the original 1st quartrain of Fitzgerald’s translation and Hughes creative adaptation:

Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

The original aubade is wittily recast as:  

Awake! For the alarm clock next to the bed

Is ringing the bells that can wake the dead:

And Lo! The ruby rays of the rising sun

Colour the espresso machine a pinkish red.

This paean to coffee is replete with personifications –“Dawn’s lips are coffee-smeared”(vi).

Some of Hughes odes to coffee poke fun at the metropolis and its quirky inhabitants, the poem(s) capture the rhythms of life and its frenetic pace in the urban metropolis. Thus in quatrain 18, we get a glimpse, a veritable word-picture of the tube/metro train commuter:

I sometimes think that never blows so hard,

The commuter who is late, reputation marred,

To cool his coffee so he can catch his train

Before all the doors are closed by the guard.

Literary- and other-Histories of Coffee

In a ‘Brief History of Coffee around the World’, Garrett Oden clarifies that , unlike tea and alcohol which have been around and in use for more than five thousand years, coffee has had a relatively recent history. Although it has supposedly been around for over a 1000 years, its first verifiable documented use was about 500 years ago. Accidentally discovered by a goat herder whose goats turned unusually frisky after consuming some red beans, it became popular in Yemen and the areas surrounding it, the area  we know now as the Middle East or as west Asia. The journey of coffee to Europe and beyond is replete with narratives of colonialism, plunder, pillage and scandal. This murky history was often forgotten as  the roasted magic bean  became a rage in coffee houses across the world.

The dubious antecedents of this heady brew derived from the magic bean is invoked in literary works such as Alexander Pope’s  ‘The Rape of the Lock’ where the effects of coffee are thus described:

“Coffee, (which makes the Politicians wise, And see thro’ all things with his half-shut eyes)/Sent up in vapours to the Baron’s brain new stratagems” to fulfil  his nefarious designs. Closer to our own times, we have T.S. Eliot’s line in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ where his persona declares, summing up the urban ennui of his quotidian existence, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”, a line which is yet another testimony to the fact that coffee has become  an inseparable and indispensable part of our everyday life.

Echoes of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat are interwoven into each quatrain and the poems follow the chronology of the original sequence. From the chess board (p 56-XLVIX) to the image of the “moving finger” which is replaced by the “moving tongue” (LI, p58), in poem after poem, we have many hyperboles to capture the effects of this drink which stands for a way of life. It is a way of life familiar to inhabitants of the modern metropolis where one’s life is lived under the glare of neon lights, and where sleeplessness, stress are all par for the course.  

Although the poems employs the resources of several figures of speech like metaphor, personification, hyperbole, perhaps the most apt and commonly used figure is that of bathos. It is an effect of anticlimax created by a lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial. A typical example is Pope’s line in ‘The Rape of the Lock’ where he says, “Great Anna, whom three realms obey/ Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea”: In Hughes’s case, “the cosmos is nothing but a frappucino” ,”the inverted cup we call the sky.”

The poems are crafted in a spirit of irreverent good humour and this  book is definitely a  little nugget, worth savouring. Even if (to persist in the metaphor) one’s cup does not run over, it is definitely a cup that cheers.

Click here to read an excerpt from The Coffee Rubaiyat

[1] The translation was first published in 1859. Omar Khayyam, an astronaut, mathematician, a philosopher and a poet lived from 1048–1131 and wrote in Persian.

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Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.  Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International