The Truth of Beauty

Hello my friends, my readers! Today’s poem is on ‘Beauty’. A poet called Keats once wrote ,’ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’, as well as the lines ‘ Beauty is truth , truth beauty’. But what does this ‘beauty’ mean to anyone? It is a quality which is subjective. It’s the same as the way in which we pick the best mangoes, that is, we go for color, skin, smell, texture, shape, weight, and still, we can go wrong! Not sweet enough! Well that’s just Gods, way of telling us ‘It is what is in the inside that counts, dear human!’

 Superficially anyone (male, females, and animals) and anything can be beautiful, but Beautiful is what Beautiful does! A batsman can hit a ‘beautiful shot’, a surgeon can do a ‘beautiful surgery’, an average person can do a ‘beautiful deed’, and nature is always beautiful!

We are being sold to beauty, these days! Colors are flashed before us and we are hooked on to what looks good and feels good. The worst place is in the ‘Marriage Market in India’, I was ‘in’ it a few years ago and believe me it’s even tougher than winning a beauty pageant! And yes, most of the times women she/he themselves are the culprits! You hear things like, ‘she is too short, ’He/ She is too tall!’, She/he is not fair, He/she  wears  glasses, He/ She has very less/ too much hair, She/he weighs –Options : too, much, too less,  is too ‘flat’, too ‘beefed up’, too ‘Big’! …….  Help! I think horses have it easier!

Hence the poem below was written, with all of the above in mind. So have a read, grab a cup of lovely ‘black’ coffee, and tell me if the poem was ‘Beautiful’!  Enjoy!

The Truth of Beauty

Some have everything,

Except a lovely face,

No twinkling sea blue eyes,

Or a nose of royal grace,

No ruby lips like strawberry or rose,

or silky smooth soft hair.

No soft skin that glows,

No hands like petal leaves closed,

Or the voice of a nightingale.

But lovely things come with wicked traits,

Stars can fall in the sky,

The sea can gray in spate,

Royalty has its own downturns,

And strawberries can cause rashes on the face,

Roses have their thorns,

For rubies people have killed and lied,

Silk can cut marble and skin,

The nightingale is dark, dark as the black night

Like a book that needs to be read,

Sweet like chewing wheat bread,

A wine to be tasted and enjoyed,

Beautiful like a carpet,

With all its knots cut and tied,

If looks could kill then some can save several lives!

The mirror never lies, but

Beauty is in the beholders eyes,

Is the opinion of the one who is wise.

If you wish to read more on Keats poems from which I have quoted kindly see the following links:

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/463/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn

Wikipedia also does a good analysis on ‘Beauty and the philosophy about it you can do a search on the site. Gandhi too spoke about Beauty and Truth, if anyone is interested kindly see the link below:

http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/philosophy_truth_truthnbeauty.htm

Also have a look at what Monalisa the Cow is up to in her next adventure in my Blog of Short Stories!

This post was written for a competition for IndiBlogger , Yahoo! India - Dove contest "What does real beauty mean to you?" Do check this link out to know more - http://realbeauty.yahoo.com/

Four Summer Bombs!

Hello my friends, my readers! The Summer times are full on! And all of us are baking in the heat! So much so that even the creative spirit has been lost! Yet there are brave people in this world who are playing football and cricket!! And others are busy bombing NATO tankers and Embassies! Where do they get the energy? Well, I myself have been very wary of opening my lap top to do any kind of internet work! I fear the battery will become so hot that it will burst! I freaked out when my husband told me that he might be coming back! Help! I thought, that would mean real time cooking in the heat and not just Maggi, bread and butter, fruits, etc. So today since the Gods above have been so kind to give us pleasant weather I thought I might do my blogging.

In all this summer the poetry has been in bits and spurts. My friend a poetry writer herself, asked me to write some Haiku. I told her that it is not me! Somehow I cannot restrict myself to3 lines and 3,5,3 syllables! Though I find Haiku poetry really beautiful, but like SRK said in KKHH, its 'not my type'! But what I did manage were four short poems, all written quickly due to being moved with emotion. Was it the summer time blues?

The Hurt, The Soul, The Death, and The Walk are my four summer poetry bombs for you !The first poem was written in sadness of thinking of the past, the second I wrote when I heard that one of the wives of an army officers had lost her husband very suddenly. Yes, we army wives have a sisterhood-if one is saddened all of us are as well. The third is for the person who gave me a bowl of Dhokla's (savory cakes) when I had eaten only bread and butter that night. The simpleness and love in the eyes on giving was just amazing! The fourth was written in mere thinking about the past, present and future and uncertainty. They are all different poem but with a single thread.

So take your cup of cold, cold coffee and ice cream and quickly read the poems below before it get too hot!

The Hurt

The setting Sun sulks,

The Nightingale wails,

And so do the lonely souls,

Is it too late to heal?

The Soul

Go! Simple soul, seek!

Travel over hot ashes and fearful forests,

To the cool oasis of peace.

The  Death

Frenzy and fiery, focused eyes,

The  dry green grass turns wet crimson ,

Gone.

And thus,

In that instant a heart breaks,

In that moment a star  born.

The Walk

In solitude sitting still,

In the shade of the past, then

Tripping over the future,

Treading on the present,

I walk into the sun, and

Wide eyed face,

The unavoidable destiny.

Check out the next adventure of Monalisa the Cow in my blog of short stories!

Also see,  if you wish some articles on how to beat the summer heat and know about the summer blues (yes they exist!) at the following links : http://www.ehow.com/how_2319796_beat-summer-heat.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_2096459_beat-summertime-blues.html , http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-12/health/29535420_1_heat-stroke-coconut-water-food-poisoning.

Dream On

Hello, my readers, my friends! More than a week has passed since my last post, and what is new in this world?Hmmmm.... NOTHING! We had our very own 'Mothers Day', there was nothing on the idiot box on that , I suppose Oba MA and Osa MA, was the closest we got to even knowing that it was Mothers Day! What happened to 'Mere pas MA hai'? ( 'I have my Mom', A famous dialogue in an Indian movie- for those who dont know!). I am sure some of our neighbours will be having bad dreams about a 'Amercian Drone Attack'! The media is just 'droning' upon that topic?. Lets forget about that now.

You know, I really dream of the day when there will be no news on TV, I dream of the day when there will be no boundaries in this world, no hate , and only truths shall prevail and the 'meek' shall finally inheriting the earth!When will that happen? Is that a very Utopian dream? I don't know? But yes, I do dream, and I dream a lot! What do they say of dreams? There are your repressed thoughts and desires, or that it is the way in which the mind weeds out the emotions and brings out the logic, when the eyes are closed. I suppose so.
My husband the Doctor would say,' You ate too much, so the gas was disturbing your sleep', Yes, he is my husband and a doctor ,so I get these 'brutally honest' answers! Which I don't like, so I stick to the reasons I like. 

So today, I am posting a very straight forward poem, I write of some intuitive, and recurring dreams that I had got. Again, they DO reflect my repressed thoughts and fears and they did bring out the logic in my thoughts. The first dream in the first verse I got after I got married, and it resembled the place I am staying in now, the second dream was just two days before I got engaged, I saw seven boys that I had met on a stairway, and my husband was the only one who waved to me. The last part is a recurring dream, I get of being followed, maybe due to a childhood spent in a neighbouring country and being continously watched by their intelligence ( Dont ask me 'Why' or' How?', I will have to kill you if I have to tell you!)

For an indepth analysis of dreams look at the following links : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream -this will give you a general view on the various theories, http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/ - this link is simpler to understand see the section on types of dreams, and http://library.thinkquest.org/C005545/english/dream/freud.htm- this site has got good sections on Symbolism and Interpretation- I strongly recommend!

So grab a very hot and strong black coffee and read, and tell me what you think of my dreams and where they fit in the theories!

I Dream

I dream of yellow berries and tall trees,

Tall mountains and deep seas,

People come and some go ,

Some strangers and some I know?

Two stairways going up and down,

I on top and he on down,

I look below and he looks up,

We wave to each other and the dream is up!

Between trees and green vines,

Tall houses on railway lines,

Shadows creep and crouch behind!

I turn around and its wake up time!

Such dreams I get,they come and go,

Some make sense and some I don’t know?

To some strange lands and some strange times,

When my heart breaks or pleasant times,

I dream on.

Do also read what the Monalisa the cow is upto now in my blog of Short Stories!

The Trees in the Abbey

Hello, my readers, my friends! A lot has happened since my last post,,,hmmm....lets seee?...Gadaffi is in trouble, Prince William got married, Osama is dead, Prince William got married,...... the sensex went up, Prince William got married......A chopper crashed in India, Prince William got married, the Queen was wearing yellow?, Prince William got married.  It was more like my child's nursery rhyme: 'Pussycat Pussycat where have you been? I have been to London to see the Queen !'  My gosh, so much of overdose of the wedding! So I shall NOT write on that anymore!
But what I did like about the wedding ceremony ( ok, ok, I am doing it) was that they had trees in the Abbey! Such lovely green trees ! I just hoped they were not uprooted from their natural places for 'The Wedding'.
Trees are so important to us, they provide us most of the things we need in day to day life which we donot appreciate. Most of the world is cutting and hacking down large areas of forests for industries and for creating areas for human settlement. When is it going to stop?
I have often driven around and have seen mountains with bald patches , with  trees which have been lumbered down. From the road they look like amputated arms and legs laying on tall mountains. We are having extreme winters and extreme summers- all due to the abuse of nature. As I go up ahead from where I stay, I see forests burned  for wood. And then the people complain of landslides in the area?
All I want to say is lets appreciate all that God has given us to use. Let us use but not abuse. I just hope that we find some alternative sources of energy, as nuclear energy too is causing danger to people and nature. For detailed information on alternative energy see the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_energy, and to know what is going on currently in the sphere see link  http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/- here you can read about the amazing ability of the Oriental Hornet.
So todays poem is for the tree, my tree in front of my balcony! So grab a mug of coffee with some cream and vanilla and enjoy !

Me and My Tree 

My balcony, my tree and me,

Alone we stand, alone we see,

Quiet in the sunlight,

We dance in the rain,

We do the twist, when strong winds crazily change,

In winter I feel sad, when my tree loses its greens

Its means goodbye to my friends the parrot, the sparrows and bees,

Goodbye to the rustling of the berries and leaves.

                                                            

Yet, my only friend, shows me its spine,

Tells me ‘It’s winter now, but won’t spring bloom good times?’

And thus it teaches me in all my moods, loneliness, happiness and sorrows,

Each day is a day to cherish and look forward for tomorrow.

Also see what is happening to Monalisa the cow- Some more Pictures posted-Enjoy my blog of short stories!