The Seeing See Little – Helen Keller

"The Seeing See Little"

This is a long essay, which is largely based on the life and philosophy of Helen Adams Keller, one of the world’s most famous deaf-blind writers. The main motive of this essay is to provoke the reader to look at the amazing beauty all around him/her and think about what happiness he/she might have missed out on, while running after “success”. The reader is asked to read the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” carefully, as it puts Helen Keller’s life into today’s context.

Please click the following link to read the essay:

The Seeing See Little – The Creativity Unseen

True Gold – Parth Gudhka

 

Walking down a lane, lost in thought,

Thoughts of rent, an overdue loan, the failing crop,

And of yet another day hard-fought

In vain, wishing for change of fortune or a drop

Of water from the sky. “Oh Lord!

Why do I have to continue to persist,

Keep a brave face, read beyond the fake smiles, a horde

Of sorrows full of hope that does not exist?”

 

Deep in contemplation, I enter a posh lane.

Chuckling at the contrast, I look through a window

Of a big house and see a man scratching his unshaven mane.

To delay my arrival home, under the sun’s red glow,

I dream of living the life I never had,

Even if only for a while. The man’s tense face

Is a puddle of worries, calculation clad,

And worrying about the loaded suitcase.

 

Poring deeper into his thoughts, at the back of his head,

He is perturbed by his daughter staying out late

And the bitterness in the air, which constantly reminded

Him of the fight he had had with his bed mate.

The tired face says he hasn’t slept for the past few days,

Pondering where to invest his liquid cash;

The stock market which almost “always” pays,

or the real estate in case there’s a market crash.

 

As I withdraw from my hiding spot,

I chuckle at the contrast again, a true chuckle,

Feeling pity for the “poor” man who forgot

He cannot “buy” happiness. So, as I resume my dawdle,

I pray, “Oh Lord! Thank you for showing me my gold

(My dear wife and children, sweet sleep, a beautiful abode)

I shan’t die before my death, this I uphold!”

Thus saying, I hurry down the road.

Post Colonial Era – Piyush Mahajan

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metro pole and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonists. The colonial period normally refers to a period of history from the late 15th to the 20th century when European nation states established colonies on other continents. The post colonial era began when the revolts by the people from various countries forced the European nations to quit their countries.

Postcolonial literature (sometimes called New English literature), is a body of literary writings that reacts to the effects of colonization. Post colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary criticism to texts that carry racist or colonial ideas. It invokes ideas such as social justice, emancipation and democracy in order to oppose oppressive structures of racism, discrimination and exploitation. Post colonialism seeks to understand how oppression, resistance and adaption occurred during colonial rule. It is like a disciplinary project aimed towards the academic task of revisiting, remembering and most importantly, interrogating the colonial past. In the 1980’s and 1990’s issues of ethnicity, displacement, sexuality and gender were added as categories for analysis. Thus post colonial writings began to focus on how nationalist projects in colonial times and the decolonized nation state encouraged certain fundamental oppressive structures in class, gender and caste (especially in India and Africa). The post colonial theory explores how colonial ideology and racial prejudices are coded into the literary texts. Many writers tried to abolish the various ideas that were set in people’s minds through their writings in this period. They tried to criticize all the systems that encouraged caste discrimination, racism etc. Many writers tried to inculcate modern ideas in the minds of the people through their writings, poetry and drama.

In this period the writers such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe tried to explain the following ideas through there writings-

1) Bi-culturalism

2) Nationalism

3) The conflict between European modernization and native tradition

4) The usable past

Duncan Ivison proposed three liberal values in the post colonial era-

1) All individuals are fundamentally equal

2) All people are free

3) Social and political arrangements should be such that they favour the well being of the people.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) made a significant mark in African literature. Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Thousand Seasons tried to establish an African perspective to their own history.

Isabel Allende from Chile contributes to Latin-American literature. The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is also a post-colonial writer who dealt with themes of identity-seeking through her Southern Ontario Gothic style of writing.

Postcolonial writings have been found among much of Indian literature. Meena Alexander is probably best known for lyrical memoirs that deal sensitively with struggles of women. Sir

Ahmed Salman Rushdie has also contributed to the post-colonial literature (Midnight’s Children (1981)). Indian authors like Chaman Nahal, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai have brought the Indian post colonial Literature into the world.

The post colonial era also witnessed some major wars such as India-Pakistan war, India-China war, USA-Iraq war etc. Thus even though the colonial period has ended, there is increasing tension between some of the countries due to territorial problems, terrorist attacks etc. Let us hope that a Post Colonial era in the form of a third world war does not occur!!

ROMANTICISM: THE ROMANTIC ERA OF LITERATURE – VAIBHAV MATHUR

Romanticism has very little to do with things popularly thought of
as “romantic,” although love may occasionally be the subject of Romantic
art. Rather, it is an international artistic and philosophical movement that
redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures
thought about themselves and about their world.

Romanticism is a convenient term used in English literary history for
the period dating from 1789, the French Revolution, to about 1830. The
early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called the “age
of revolutions”–including, of course, the American (1776) and the French
(1789) revolutions–an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social
traditions, the age which witnessed the initial transformations of the
Industrial Revolution. The writers of this period are many and various,
but they tend to share some of the features which might be said to be a
part of the general literary atmosphere called “Romanticism”. There are
two ‘generations’ of ‘Romantic poets’: ironically many of the first generation,
which include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey outlived their
younger contemporaries, the second generation, Byron , Shelley and
Keats, who all died young.

There are a large number of literary interests and attributes which might
loosely be labeled ‘romantic’, often in contrast to literature labeled
NEOCLASSIC.

They are:-

1. A concern to value feeling and emotions rather than the human capacity to reason.
2. “Nature” meant many things to the Romantics. It was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language.
3. The self. As wisdom and morality are conceived in terms of an individual’s response to the world outside rather than as a coherent collection of reasoned ideas and opinions, the writers turn in on themselves and try to explain and evaluate their living relationship with the world about them.
4. A yearning aspiration towards something beyond the ordinary world, not necessarily religious, is a typical aspect of ‘Romanticism’ and often give rise to SYMBOLISM, both as a way of looking at the world and as a poetic technique.
5. Spontaneity, creativity, and the need to allow poems to shape themselves ‘organically’ (naturally rather than mechanically according to rules or reason) are all valued ideals of this era. It is worth pointing out, however, that this did not lead to poor, careless, writing: the Romantic poets were also superb poetic craftsmen.
6. Rebellion not only against poetic stultification, but against outmoded political institution. Many of the writers of the Romantic period were inspired by the apparent idealism of the French Revolution (1789); some like Blake, Shelley and Hazlitt, never lost their enthusiasm for revolutionary politics.

Finally, it should be noted that the revolutionary energy underlying
the Romantic Movement affected not just literature, but all of the arts-
-from music (consider the rise of Romantic opera) to painting, from
sculpture to architecture and much more. Many values and interests of
the Romantic period remain alive right through the 19th century and are
absorbed into modern literature.

On the late evening train -Harsh Gupta

We met on the late evening train.

Colors you brought to this life so plain.

My amusement I could not explain

Living without you, made me insane

On the late evening train

I asked you

Can I marry you?

 

What goes around comes back around.

Ten years down the line

I travel on the same late evening train

All my efforts to stay happy, now in vain

Thoughts cross my mind, full of pain

By bringing a fake smile, nothing I gain.

On the late evening train

I ask myself

Why, did I ask you?

 

I do all my work with perfection

Trying hard to find motivation

But, all I get back is frustration

Will I ever get satisfaction?

On the late evening train

Why, did I love you?

 

I keep listening to one song

Thinking of your once written song

Now, for your touch, I long.

On the late evening train

Why, did I believe you?

 

In the dark hours, I lie on my bed

With no one alongside my head

Craving for my child’s hug, tears I shed

On the late evening train

Why, did I love you?

 

I gave you my whole life

I turned you to my wife

But, it all ended up with strife

You stabbed me with a knife.

On the late evening train

Why, did I marry you?

 

On starry nights, so lovingly we dined

Perfectly, evil with a smile you bind

My mind doubted but my heart declined

For trusting you blindly, I was fined.

On the late evening train

Why, did I trust you?

 

Yet I go on

Striving to attain my life’s peak

Because I am not weak

Someday, this truth you will seek

You were the best thing I never had

I was the best thing you ever had

Then you will ask yourself

Why, did you do this to me?

On the late evening train.

The Chair – Ramesh Kumar

What was in his mind
that he made it?

 
Was it rest or race,
Was it solution or problem
Was it peace or war
Everything happens to achieve it.

New era started with it
Corruption is day poverty is night
Sympathy has gone away from sight
Still we are living with it.

Nature has become unbalanced
Sun spends more in west
Flood and drought are our test
Still we are living with it.

Some are flying up and high
Rest are drowning and crying
Inequality is our friendship
Still we are living with it.

Think of the world without it
Everything will be to your reach
All will sit on the mat
You can fly where you want
So let us throw it away
And begin our age

A chance for peace….. -Tilak Pathe

“For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.”

Into the world of peace,

I come from the land of death.

Into the world of love and bliss,

I come from the land of hate.

I am a savior of peace,

I was a warrior fighting for this.

Not to take and just to give,

That’s what I want to teach.

Love and tolerance,

That’s what I want to preach.

Ways to live and not to slaughter,

Let only my songs matter.

Life is precious,

Because I know;

Not it’s price but it’s value.

I have seen enough of war

And I have seen people die.

Till death, their loved ones cry.

I have seen people who kill them,

They thank GOD for they were safe and fine,

But their hearts know that their souls whine.

You may wonder how I know this.

I know this because I was the one who killed,

And I was the one who died and the one who cried.

You may say I was fortunate enough to live,

From the cold hands of death, lucky enough to slip.

But death is better than this life,

Dying thousand deaths is never nice.

But my life is what my fates decide,

The songs of peace, that’s what I am destined to recite.

From the battles and the wars,

There is nothing to gain.

Just life and heart full of pain,

And a thousand wishes in vain.

But lucky the world is,

They have a second chance for peace,

A chance for love and bliss.

Make sure this chance isn’t ruined.

If not for the generation gone,

Then at least for the generation yet to born.

Make sure your past isn’t your future,

Now the world is yours to nurture.

Your past was written by hatred and grief,

But make sure your future is painted with a maple leaf.

For the lives of millions, the death of thousands is forgiven.

But make sure you make the world a better place to live in.

FIGHTING THE INNER DEVIL… – MONISH BHANGALE

I walk alone
In this lonely place,
With a dejected look
And a gloomy face.

 

I try to think
On every step I make,
Is failing once
Such a big mistake?

 

I’m stuck between
The devil and the deep sea,
Depression and hopelessness
Completely trying to destroy me.

 

Heart full of pain
And completely filled with grief,
Is there any way
That can give me some relief?

 

My confidence is shaken
Just out of hope,
I’m trailing down along
The deep depression slope.

 

I’m tired of this pain
Desperately in need of rest,
But the devil in my mind
Is causing great unrest.

 

I have completely lost
My peace of mind,
I just hope
For the good old days to rewind.

I pray to God
To revive my hope,
But my sanity and faith
Are trying hard to elope.

Even after
So many failures and defeats,
I would never abandon
My fight till the end.

Like a phoenix
Who rises from his ashes after death,
I would walk
On the path to success once again…….

My sweetest heart…. – Nishant Rao

One night I saw a lovely sky;
The stars were lit, the moon was bright.
Handsome clouds and the moon was shy:
Stars embroidered in the scarf of night.
That night I saw a lively sky;
The stars were lit, the moon was bright.

Just as distinguished was a day in life,
When I saw her, she looked and smiled.
She’s an art herself, her eyes are knife,
Her lips so cute! Her speech so light!
Splendidly innocent, so simple life!
“O’ my sweetest heart, you’re my might.”

She joyously gazes, what a smiling face!
I’m deeply touched, I watch her and rejoice….

To her eternal divinity, my heart prays,
“Oh goddess of love, you’re my only choice.”

Just as distinguished was a day in life,
When I saw her, she looked and smiled.
One night I saw a lovely sky;
The stars were lit, the moon was bright….

(Modelled on “She Walks In Beauty” by Lord Byron)

Time – Ravi Kumar

None could ever stop it,
Neither tried to offend,
But all wish to change it,
To right the wrongs at end.

It waits for none,
And cares not for one,
But those who respect it,
Get things done.

It has no end point,
Neither did it begin.
It is just an illusion,
Which seems very pleasin’.