PHILOKTETES:
O hands, what you suffer for lack of a bowstring,
the prey of that man!
You whose thoughts are sick and slavelike,
how you have hunted me!
How you tricked me, how you stole up
with this boy as a shield, unknown to me.
He deserved a better master than you.
He is at a loss to do anything but what he’s […]
The Idea of the Continuum
20. Everything flows and nothing abides;. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
21. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on. (91, 12)
22. Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; the moist dries, the parched becomes moist. (126)
23. It is […]
Hector & Andromache:
Once the housekeeper spoke,
Hector left the house by the same route he’d come,
through the well-built city streets, across the great city,
and reached the Scaean Gates, beyond which he’d go
out onto the plain. There his wife ran up to meet him,
Andromache, daughter of great-hearted Eëtion,
who’d included a large dowry with her.
Eëtion had lived […]
“I have a special nomenclature of my own; I “pass away time,” when it is ill and uneasy, but when ’tis good I do not pass it away; “I taste it over again and stick to it;” one must run over the ill, and settle upon the good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing […]
‘Who can foresee the importance of a thorough knowledge of the structure and activities of the psychic apparatus when even our present state of knowledge produces a happy therapeutic influence in the curable forms of the psychoneuroses? What about the practical value of such study some one may ask, for psychic knowledge and for the […]
‘Today, as he has done for the past 6 decades, Ramrang spends his waking moments immersed in the contemplation and creation of music. True to his calling as one of the greatest vaggeyekaras of all time, Ramrang’s intellectual wanderlust shows no sign of abating; every day turns in a new insight or a new asthAi. […]
Ustad Allah Rakha was born in Muzaffar, a village in Sialkot District, in 1932. During early childhood, his family moved to Amritsar where he was raised. He acquired his initial education in classical music and sarangi playing from his father, Ustad Lal Din. Later, he became the student of three renowned sarangi players, Ustad Ahmadi […]
“The music of Khansaheb was pansophic in its conception, manna for the soul, an afflatus to purification of the self. In sum, the distillate of the most sublime in the Bharatiya tradition. To borrow a bit from a sentiment expressed in a similar context by Shri Bertrand Russell: it is artistry of men like Amir […]
“…Kishori Amonkar, L’Enfant Terrible de Hindustani Music. Born in 1932, this music genius from Goa has attained such mastery over her art that she can justifiably claim to be the sole heir to the exacting standards set by her predecessors- her illustrious mother, Mogubai Kurdikar, and the formidable Surashree Kesarbai Kerkar.” Rajan Parrikar
Kishori Amonkar’s Bilaskhani […]
Ustad Bismillah Khan, the greatest living exponent of an evocative instrument, the shehnai, received the Bharat Ratna in 2001. The 91-year-old maestro talks to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk programme about his riyaaz, the oneness of divinity, his unflagging love for music, and above all, his faith in […]
“For every animal, and more especially for man, a certain conformity and proportion between the will and the intellect is necessary for existing or making any progress in the world. The more precise and correct the proportion which nature establishes, the more easy, safe and agreeable will be the passage through the world. Still, if […]
Goethe talked with me about the continuation of his memoirs, with which he is now busy. He observed that this later period of his life would not be narrated with such minuteness as the youthful epoch of “Dichtung und Wahrheit.” “I must,” said he, “treat this later period more in the fashion of annals: […]
“Job’s forthright indictment of the injustice of this world is surely right. The ways of the world are weird and much more unpredictable than either scientists or theologians generally make things look. Job personifies the inscrutable, merciless, uncanny in a god who is all-powerful but not just. . . .
“Those who believe in God because […]
“(Lion) fell in love in his tenth year with a boy named Schmidt (best pupil in the school), the son of a tailor, liked to hear him talked about and got all the boys to converse with him, never spoke to him himself but it gave him great pleasure to hear that the boy had […]
Read Ibn-e-Insha’s An Address – by a Selfless Volunteer
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LETTER IX.
But perhaps there is a vicious circle in our previous reasoning! Theoretical culture must it seems bring along with it practical culture, and yet the latter must be the condition of the former. All improvement in the political sphere must proceed from the ennobling of the character. But, subject to the influence of a […]
“I have considered, thus far, the effects on the pleasures and benefits of the marriage union which depend on the mere unlikeness between the wife and the husband: but the evil tendency is prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is inferiority. Mere unlikeness, when it only means difference of good qualities, may be more a benefit […]
Nycticorax nycticorax
“As its name implies, this noisy bird is largely nocturnal, beginning to forage at dusk, when other herons are on their way to roosts. Night-herons are less likely to nest in mixed colonies than other herons; when they do, they often keep to themselves in a separate corner. These birds are sluggish hunters, standing […]
Epimetheus and Janus: Interchangeable Moons of Saturn
This was the gloomiest Ramzan of our lives - aside from amusing intermezzos on the television where it was revealed by certain politicians and other sagacious dungbugs that the earthquake was a consequence of our evil deeds.
The new moon has just been sighted and tomorrow is Eid for sure […]
I am reminded of individuals like this accomplished sarangi player when anyone talks of respect for music and musicians. I often recall Ustad Mubarik Ali’s peaceful distant gaze while he played the sarangi - like a dream.
Mubarik Ali suffered from tuberculosis, diabetes and emphysema for the last several years of his life. There were never […]
