In and out of tune with Parveen Sultana

I
sing
along
with her and
am happy to be
in tune sometimes and notice it.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Note
Parveen Sultana, born in Assam in 1950, is one of the great current singers of India. Her voice spans umpteen octaves, making it difficult for normal untrained mortals like yours truly to even attempt to sing along.

Here's a not so serious sample – Parveen Sultana's contribution to the movie Kudrat from 1981:

Ancient fib

What
am
I go-
ing to do
about my stubby
admirer? He keeps coming back.

– Anonymous, dates from ca. 800 A.D.

Translated from Sanskrit by L. Blumfeld. Goes to show that the ancient Indians, who were incidentally the ones that invented the so-called Arabic numerals, had already mastered the form of fibonacci poetry.

On a blackened door

This one I found near London's Brick Lane this May.
Take 7 for Anna Carson's Project Black.

More about treasures found in Brick Lane.

Chief storekeeper

Boy manning the family store in Kolkata
Posted for Wordless Wednesday

Sung by Joy

ॐ आनन्दमयि चैतन्यमयि सत्यमयि परमे
– Sri Aurobindo

These (om anandamayi chaitanyamayi satyamai parame) are the words of the first song on a wonderful CD I've had for years – Hymns and Songs in Sanskrit, sung by Joy Chowdhury of Auroville, South India.

I briefly met Joy Chowdhury at a friend's house in Auroville late in 2004 and remember – and this is a memory that's stuck in my mind for incomprehensible reasons – seeing her vanish behind a curve of an Auroville dirt road on her scooter, with her daughter riding behind her.

– Leonard Blumfeld

The musicians are:

Joy Chowdhury - Vocals
Holger Jetter - Keyboards & arrangements
Bryce Grinlington - Flute
Krishna Both - Tabla
Nadaka - Tambura and additional vocal

Yeh Raatein Yeh Mausam

Here's a picturization of one of the most famous romantic duets of popular Hindi cinema – it also was sort of the theme song of the happiest times of my marriage...

The song is from Dilli Ka Thug (1958). It stars Nutan, one of the most beautiful and charming actresses of the time, and Kishore Kumar, who is better known as a playback singer than an actor. Here he does playback singing for himself, while Asha Bhosle is the singing voice of Nutan.

"Chupke Se" music video from "Saathiya"

A song from the film Saathiya by Mani Ratnam (2002), music by A. R. Rahman. Sung by Sadhna Sargam. Picturized are Rani Mukherjee and Vivek Oberoi.

This is in reference to the Hindi chupke se (चुपके से) used in the poem Evil Mood Fib in my previous post.

Actually, though, I had not thought of this song when I wrote the poem, but only of the literal meaning of the expression, which is secretly. And this is part of the lyrics of the song Chalo Na Gori (चलो ना गोरी) by C. H. Atma, an Indian singer popular in the 1950s, I was listening to when I wrote the poem.

Let's go and see if such things can be true

The Miracle Man

That doctor's amazing! They say the old sinner
Puts food in his mouth when he's eating his dinner,
And also feels hungry if starved of his bread,
And closes his eyes when he sleeps in his bed!
He walks with his feet always treading the ground,
His eyes can see things, and his ears can hear sound.
On his shoulders, they tell me, his head you can view:
O let's go and see if such things can be true!

– Sukumar Ray

(Translated from the Bengali by Sukanta Chaudhuri)

Note
Sukumar Ray (1887-1923) could be called the Indian Lewis Carroll. His nonsense verse is as known in Bengal as Mother Goose is in the English-speaking world. His son was the great film director Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), also a writer; the third generation in a family of multi-talents.

More on Sukumar Ray at At Home, Writing.

Self-accounting

Perhaps it's not such a bad idea for a blogger to once in a while muze over whether blog objectives have been reached or where things are going. An unedited interview with Jackie Shannon from the Bloggo Times sheds light on these and other issues.

JS: With a pretentious title like "World So Wide" your blog definitely invites scrutiny.
LB: I didn't intend it to be pretentious. Just wide.
JS: What? Oh. Haha. ... Let's see. Yes: With a title like that, one would expect something comprehensive, something that covers lots of areas. One thing that seems to be missing is razor edge reporting on political events.
LB: Sorry. I live on the edge of town, and the razor cuts off the news before it gets to me.
JS: What? Oh. Haha. I see.
LB: Also, I must say that there are lots of people out there who do a terrific job of reporting. There's no need for another poor job from me. Take, for example, Quirky News from Ananova. Where they recently reported on a swan in China that is friends with fish and regularly feeds them.


JS: You read that column regularly for news?
LB: No. Discovered it just this morning in search of quirky news.
JS: Thank you for these kind words, Mr. uh ...
LB: Blumfeld. That's all right, sometimes I forget it myself. Thanks for stopping by, Jackie de Shannon.
JS: There's no "de" in there.
LB: Sorry! Confused you with somebody I used to listen to.
JS: Anyway: toodleloo.
LB: One last thing. I do cover a wide variety of topics that are both pertinent and relevant. Like pastoral elegy, going back to Old Greek times. If you want me to, I'll go back even further. Babylon, Atlantis, you name it – I'll deliver the pastoral elegies. I do fibonaccis, that's leading edge technology.
JS: That's all nice and well, but –
LB: I mix (up) classical Indian music with poetry I write, report on the weather sometimes. Perhaps not often enough. But in sharp edge fashion. I write about coffee, warm-ups, rumors, sighs, wind-downs, even quoting García Lorca and Robert Bly.
JS: Gotta go. Bye!
LB: I added a haiku in Hindi the other day, for God's sakes! That's India for you, an old and upcoming nation. It's a wide world out there, and I take my nibbles. By the way: I can report that the weather looks very promising today! Blue sky, cherry trees in bloom, lots of pollen in the air making me dread hay fever ...
JS: (sound of door slamming)

A Hindi haiku

अमावस कि रात
मदिरा में चांद डूबा
पेई सुंग शिव जगेय

– Richa Dubey (copyright 2006)

Originally posted by the author in transliteration on her blog khwaab-i-fursat, where this haiku can also be read in her own English translation.

Open letter to the author

Dear Richa,

Your poems are wonderful. Unfortunately, your blog has been inactive since the end of last year, and there is no link with an e-mail address. Otherwise I would have asked for your kind permission to post this haiku in World So Wide.

Please get in touch if you stumble across this posting.

Kind regards,

Leonard Blumfeld

Early evening fibonacci

(in raag bhupali)

Rose
dusk
falling,
eve ashes
seeping in, still hour
just before night encloses all

– Leon Blumfeld

Bout to go out for lunch

¡Nada más!

Haven't even decided where to go, Indian is topmost in my mind.

There's a great Sri Lankan/South Indian restaurant in the neighborhood, but some people I know are boycotting it because of an unfriendly "Chinese-looking" waiter. He could be Indian, from one of the Northeastern States bordering Myanmar, like Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram.

Bamboo forest in Mizoram

This is definitely blabla, but also close to nothingness apart from showing off my shining knowledge of some more obscure geographical areas.

Perdóname.

Su humilde servidor,

Leonardo Flores