**From & To Satish **( New Pictures Pl see pg 163) - Page 30

Sathish,

hi people,
I was cleaning house today or at least trying to clean and stuff things away from eye sight.it is so damn difficult to throw away stuff even if you haven't been using them for so much sentiment is attached to it.time and again i come to some cardboard boxes filled with old tapes,records and books which i have heard a thousand times,read a few times but somehow i shy away from throwing them away.i feel guilty and the feeling is akin to abandoning a friend who has stood by you for ages.going through the books i found essays by famous writers,poetry by famous poets and realised that i hadnt visited them for a long time.trying to recollect when i purchased them i guaged that i must have done it on and impulse or in the thought of knowing everything about poetry.

As the years go by life teaches that the world is in your making and is your own reality.my home,my family,my friends and my regular haunts.the everyday shedule is such that we lose track of different worlds and just keep in touch with them during dinner on our news capsule.should i feel guilty,should i feel remorse that staying in chennai i can only say so sad when i think of the mumbai attacks.should i feel less of a human being that i could not launch a war on pakistan.honestly and secretly i feel less of a man and even lesser of a human being that my people were killed and are being killed everyday in the name of religion.i really wish i could get into my superman costume and fly to pakistan and destroy them but does it work like that.

But honestly what is happening to this world of ours.in the name of god,an entity we can't see,touch,taste and feel we kill,maim,plunder,rape and wound people of our own species.the shame and guilt i feel i cover with my eyes cast down and face in a mask of perennial pleasing grin.lord what i have become.

as homosapiens we have destroyed nearly 70% of our forest cover,most of the major glaciers are receding,the big cats are on the verge of extinction,elephants being slaughtered for ivory which is used for ornaments,rhinos being killed for their horns to make some old bas***d horny,tigers being killed for their scrotums to make some man more manly.

i feel scared that the day of reckoning is not far away for us humans.what if the aids virus mutates and spreads like the common cold,what if some madman releases a new form of small pox and plague.what will the world be like ten years from now.i guess i am going to know for i should hang around for another few decades.

O Captain My Captain a poem by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

"It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them."

Satish,

Lullaby
by W. H. Auden

Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy,

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost.
All the dreaded cards foretell.
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought.
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

hi people,

Yes, Sathish, our childhood memories are the most precious of all. They take us back to a time of innocence, of youthful wishes, of simplicity when the most one wanted was a Kwality ice cream bar or a bottle of Coke or a bead necklace off the sidewalk in front of Nalli. Now I see children asking for Nike shoes and parents trying to buy the best of everything for their children, sacrificing their own desires in the process and I wonder if the children will ever recognize this sacrifice from their parents or will they just walk away from them when the parents are old and in need of company? Because that is all that those old parents want, and the fact that there are so many parents languishing in old age homes is testimony to the fact that the children are totally unaware of anything except themselves and their wants and desires.

Very well said eljay. Reminiscence Our childhood memoirs our best friend in old age. After all old age is second childhood.

@ satish.... Thanks for the post.

Shocking Telegrams

TELEGRAM #1

A daughter sends a telegram to her father on her clearing B.Ed exams, which the father receives as:

"father, your daughter has been successful in BED."

TELEGRAM #2

A husband, while he is on a business trip to a hill station sends a telegram to his wife: "I wish you were here."

The message received by wife: "I wish you were her."

TELEGRAM #3

A wife with near maturing pregnanCy goes to railway station to return to her husband.

At the reservation counter, while her turn came, it was the last ticket.

Taking pity on a very old lady next to her in the queue, she offered her berth to the old lady and sent a telegram to her husband which reached as:

"Shall be coming tomorrow, heavy rush in the train, gave birth to an old lady."

TELEGRAM #5

A man from Agra went to Ajmer. His wife was in her parent's house in Delhi .

When the man went to Ajmer, he asked his servant to send a telegram to his wife indicating about his trip to Ajmer.

He sent a telegram. When the wife received the telegram, she fainted.

It was written:

'Sethji aaj mar ! Gaye! (Sethji Ajmer gaye )