"Urim" or "thummim"??
Classes on at full toll... assignments pouring in, complete chaos with timetable mishandling, inexplicable breadth options that have forced me to take subjects as far from my core as could be imagined. Quite tired of this running around and have vowed to stick to my resolution of following the heart, come what may.
OK, OK, I can see all the smiles.... but this time, am determined.... well, :D
In the middle of "The Alchemist". Can't recall any book that ever took me longer to finish, but with all thats happenning around, its a miracle I still manage to read it. Pretty insightful stuff. The line, about us seeing the world as we want to see it and not the way it actually is, stood out, for me anyway. Had the truth of this statement driven home to me through incident after incident in the last few days.
Wonder then, just what it is that movies like "Serendipity" and "Sleepless in Seattle" are so liked for. Those are the kinds of stuff that happen in movies. Show me a person who dreams about them happening in life, and I'll show you a fool. If I rattled on about this, it would start to resemble one of those discourses on "We use movies to get away from reality-Argue for or against" type of high school topics, so I'll drop that for now.
Another trip to cal, great fun over the weekend, ppl from school, and catching up... perfect weekend spoilt by the train on the return journey. Would you believe the engine acted up enough to leave us high and dry and waiting for a couple of hours. Reached kgp two hours late, and missed dinner. Not the greatest of finishes to the day either, after that, but thats something I am rapidly getting used to.
Getting more and more hooked by poetry... guess its to do with states of mind. Just makes you come back and question the kind of mechanical life all of us seem to be leading, the purpose, and the strange selfishness of it all. Desperately seeking my raison-de-etre...
"Intellectual disgrace,
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of [pity lie,
Locked in each eye."
I
OK, OK, I can see all the smiles.... but this time, am determined.... well, :D
In the middle of "The Alchemist". Can't recall any book that ever took me longer to finish, but with all thats happenning around, its a miracle I still manage to read it. Pretty insightful stuff. The line, about us seeing the world as we want to see it and not the way it actually is, stood out, for me anyway. Had the truth of this statement driven home to me through incident after incident in the last few days.
Wonder then, just what it is that movies like "Serendipity" and "Sleepless in Seattle" are so liked for. Those are the kinds of stuff that happen in movies. Show me a person who dreams about them happening in life, and I'll show you a fool. If I rattled on about this, it would start to resemble one of those discourses on "We use movies to get away from reality-Argue for or against" type of high school topics, so I'll drop that for now.
Another trip to cal, great fun over the weekend, ppl from school, and catching up... perfect weekend spoilt by the train on the return journey. Would you believe the engine acted up enough to leave us high and dry and waiting for a couple of hours. Reached kgp two hours late, and missed dinner. Not the greatest of finishes to the day either, after that, but thats something I am rapidly getting used to.
Getting more and more hooked by poetry... guess its to do with states of mind. Just makes you come back and question the kind of mechanical life all of us seem to be leading, the purpose, and the strange selfishness of it all. Desperately seeking my raison-de-etre...
"Intellectual disgrace,
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of [pity lie,
Locked in each eye."
I
posted by Lancelot @ 10:45 AM
15 Comments:
At 7:28 PM,
NotFunnyNotFamous said…
Bade bhai ... Me too from Kanpur and me too a bengali.... Loved your posts.... also will make it someday to your other blogs ....they need time and attention to be appreciated..... by the way read those lines somewhere - cant remember - some real good poem.... ?????? ... anyway will keep coming back
At 8:01 AM,
Rimi said…
hooked to poetry--does that mean you write them, or read them?
sorry abt the course fiasco--it's INFURIATING when your optionals are removed from your core, isn't it? uncomfortably disjointed, somehow...
all the best with it!
At 12:41 PM,
Dipanjan Das said…
dude, how's life going in 5th sem?
At 3:34 PM,
Lancelot said…
@smiling agony:thanq...do keep coming back...lines are by WH Auden...
@rimi:just read... not enuf cali to write :(
@dd:fine so far...its always fine till the egg-jams start :D
At 4:53 PM,
Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay said…
Intellectual disgrace
At 2:04 AM,
Rimi said…
not write? then you're my kind of guy. and it's a good thing, trust me. can you imagine what the place'd be like if everyone spouted verses? aarrghhh!!!
At 10:17 AM,
Dreamcatcher said…
The beginning of a new semester tends to sweep you up and engulf you.Even iam taking courses which i wouldnt have taken otherwise. sometimes its phun to trod the untrodden.
At 5:21 PM,
KT said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 5:34 PM,
KT said…
In Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption there is a line -"Hope is a good thing-may be the best thing and no good thing ever dies.." based on the same philosophy is the book "The Alchemist".Great book indeed
At 6:52 PM,
Lancelot said…
@euphoric dreams:couldnt compile-plz elaborate, if u will...
@rimi:well, some ppl spout good ones(e.g. teleute) and the job's best left to them. There's no bigger pain to a reader, i guess, than a self-appointed wordsworth ;D
@dreamcatcher:hope its fun...evrybody's given me a "god-help-thee" already!!!
@phippogriff:well, after all the twists and pain it takes you through, hope better be what you say :D ..and thanx for dropping by...keep coming bak
At 11:05 AM,
Rashmi Patel said…
nice writing.. and while you at poetry pick up walt whitman...
At 4:45 PM,
jaded said…
i cannot comment about anything in your post other than "In memory of W.B.Yeats"......i am enthralled and captivated by the sheer magnificence of that man.....
W.H.Auden....mannn, was he good or what....
this is one of my all-time fav. poems....
this made my day :-)
At 8:54 PM,
Anonymous said…
well im a first time visitor to urblog n it may be a little presumptous of me but i think the last line is
" locked and frozen in each eye"
the poem is really beautiful...
u an isc student?
n i agree alchemist is a real slow read....i hav read abt a third n now am reading something else...but its not bad its just too profound to take in all at once
At 1:11 PM,
Acroyali said…
"Show me a person who dreams about them happening in life, and I'll show you a fool" - eshob er maane ki?
At 2:33 PM,
Arindam said…
heh heh...you seem to have gotten the same results out of the alchemist like many people i know. :D instant philosopher. heheh.
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