Faiz Ahmed Faiz—the poet, teacher, editor, freedom-fighter, dramatist, critic, progressive writer and Lenin Peace Prize recipient—is one of the greatest poets of the Indian subcontinent. He was not a mere dreamer of dreams but was an iconoclast who inspired a million mutinies. Great poets like Faiz are warriors and serve as the sentinels of the collective conscience of their[Read More...]
Ghalib has fascinated generations of people and they have tried to understand/interpret his poetry in their own way. For any such individual it is really difficult to recollect when and how Ghalib entered her/his life and ensconced himself comfortably in one’s heart. This wanderer still faintly remembers how many of Ghalib’sshers were part of common parlance even in an area[Read More...]
Death pressed 3 bullets on an old man
The old man uttered two words
On a God that Death did not know
The old man did not die
He walked past with a smile.
The post My Lady Fingers Are Better Than My Bullets! appeared first on Countercurrents.
He was pious, but rarely went to Church and did not like priests. But he spoke with rapture about Christ. —Baron Vrangel on Dostoevsky. Alexander Blok’s narrative poem, “Twelve” is undoubtedly a central text of the Russian Revolution, an event that has served as one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. But since the[Read More...]
Generations pass and lives change
But the seeds of hatred never lose its range
At the time of my death, it only appears strange
That for no fault of mine, I receive death in exchange
The post Story Of A Communal Riot Victim appeared first on Countercurrents.
The pairs of feet that passed him by in a second
Equals 2 x 60x 60x24x 766 = 13,23,64,800, say 13 crores.
The 2011 census pegs the population of Kerala at 3.33 crores.
Which shows that Kerala trampled over him
four times in 766 days,
without seeing him.
That’s statistics for you.
The post The Arithmetic of Protest appeared first on Countercurrents.
I’m in with the in crowd I go where the in crowd goes I’m in with the in crowd And I know what the in crowd knows — opening lines to Dobie Gray’s The “In” Crowd “There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” — Flannery O’Connor “It’s not a popular notion, but no advance in social[Read More...]
The post Sinful appeared first on Countercurrents.
Every action produces an effect and every effect
in turn becomes a cause and produces still further
effects, and causes, and effects, and causes, and
effects and causes...
Like spreading ripples of water
The post We Keep Ourselves Peaceful appeared first on Countercurrents.
Most of the reviews or newspaper reports about Amit Masurkar’s Newton is about its entry to Oscar’s or it has been labelled as “black comedy”, “Satire” and the critics even went on to say that it has been plagiarised from an Iranian film called Secret Ballot (2001). I sometimes wonder how many movies, songs; beats are just copy cuts of[Read More...]
1) Nothing. One hand cannot clap…. 2) Half the sound of 2 hands clapping…. 3) Air…. 4) A bowl of rice…. 5) A cup of tea…. 6) “A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou….” 7) A crazy old guy doing a jig on thin ice….[Read More...]
The post Koan: What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? appeared first on Countercurrents.
