Trees and Roads

As usual when last evening went for walking I happened to see huge tamarind trees being cut down that are more than 70 or 80 years old and cutting down them with modern gadgetry is easy , but the roots being taken out seems to be a hard task , since the trees even after digging up below the earth to the tune of 15 feet and below seemed impossible to pluck it ; so the cutters using different techniques ; one using bulldozers and cutting machines with human endeavour . One thing immediately struck me was how humans are easily disposable compared to the immensity and life of trees and its strength and service to the humanity.
Although these trees are felled down to lay the six lane roads for the convenience of traffic and future infrastructure development, something melting inside us while witnessing these trees being cut down.

Dr.Ramachandra Guha

Born in Dehra Dun in 1958, Guha studied at The Doon School and St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He graduated in Economics with a BA in 1977 and then an MA from the Delhi School of Economics, and did a PhD in Sociology at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, with a dissertation on the social history of forestry in Uttaranchal, that focused on the Chipko movement. It was later published as The Unquiet Woods. Between 1985 and 2000, he taught at various universities in India, Europe and North America, including the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Stanford Universityand at Oslo University, and later at the Indian Institute of Science. During this period, he was also a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in Germany (1994-95).


Here I have given a link which takes you to the interview he has given to CNNIBN by Rajdeep Sardesai on his new book 'Makers of Modern India.
Ramachandra Guha is a prolific writer who you might have read in many magazines, or News papers.


His essay, "Prehistory of Community Forestry in India", was awarded the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society for Environmental History for 2001.
"A Corner of a Foreign Field" was awarded the Daily Telegraph Cricket Society Book of the Year prize for 2002.
He won the R. K. Narayan Prize at the Chennai Book Fair in 2003.
The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008.[4] In the poll that followed, Guha was placed 44th.
Padma Bhushan for 2009, India's third highest civilian award[5]

Thoppil Mohamed Meeraan / Writer

Thoppil Mohamed Meeran, writer, Novelist who made his presence felt in Tamil Novels,brought out the new wave of the nation's sorrows buried over hundred years, anguishes,cryings,rests and all in his writings . He was awarded the Sahithya Academy in the year 1997.

The following is what he said in his interview to Sri Sankara Ramasubramanyam, and Thalavi Sundaram in Tamil about the creation,creator,reader ,fan and 'Sathruthayan'

He says there are only three things for a creation or for any creation;

one the reader
second the fan
third Sathruthayan , a sanskrit word.

Sathruthayan is one in consonance with the creator having the same mind set, both travel in the same path [ both the creator and the sathruthayan ]
In creations, first silences,second intervels,third there is constant search; Sathruthayan is making silence as sound; he fills the gaps among intervals and the same search is created in his mind also like the one in the mind of the creator.

Sathruthayan is not created, he is born on his own, like abiogenous. He is also artist by birth. When the artist and the creator meets, there is the confluence. Till that time the created one never becomes whole.He is the one who bridges the culture and the mind.The reader and the fan may be needed for the sale and purchase of the books of the creations.No TV or any medium can do anything with the sathruthayan.

Dr.Anna , former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu

Dr.C.N.Annadurai was the first Chief Minister of DMK Party in Tamil Nadu, who unfortunately for the Tamilians lived only one year when he was the Chief Minister, who had been a scholar both in Tamil and English and extempore orator ,writer,actor in dramas,and versatile speaker on many an issue of both India and other countries.

His command over both the languages are known to one and all of his times and scholars alike.
When once he was invited to Annamalai University, one of the Universities of his times,he was asked to speak on any subject , thinking he might select a topic easy to him; Dr.Anna insisted on being given a topic and students preferred him to select.When this was happening , he found someone behind the stage was lighting a cigarette with a spark. Having seen that he started talking and giving oration more than one hour on the topic 'Spark; by then this university was dominated by only Congress people and they thought Anna would be fumbling in English. Contrary to the expectation when he closed the ovation continued for long time.

to be continued

Sreedevi Nair Books

Those who would like to know the recent publications of poems by the author can click the topic of this article which will lead to the latest publications.

Dr.Rudran and his outburst

Dr.Rudran is a doctor known throughout Tamil nadu and rest of India and he practices Psychiatry and an author of many books in Tamil He blogs in English and Tamil and he is an honest man who writes fearlessly on things happening around.
In this link given below he wrote in Tamil about Prime Minister's refusal to giving free the grains rotting in the godowns of Food Corporation of India and other places to the poor people who die of hunger.He wrote brilliantly the anguish, angry,emotions all in his own style of presentation.
I feel one in this regard with him .Those who know tamil , please follow the link given below or click the title 'Dr.Rudran and his outburst'.

http://rudhrantamil.blogspot.com/2010/09/blog-post_07.html

Sreedevi Nair Poems in Malayalam

Sreedevi Nair is a Malayalam poetess, who writes not only poems but also short stories, novels etc; the following is a collection of poems originally written in Malayalam which subsequently translated into English- now translated here into Tamil . So if there is any discrepancy found from the Malayalam original, the responsibility lies with the English version , since the writer does not know Malayalam.
Mrs.Sreedevi Nair uses so wide a canvass for her poems, hence trying to write a few pages about our perception of her poems is so difficult a task to try.So I confine myself to writing about a few of her poems as a basis and I feel it is like the first rung of the ladder of understanding the entire gamut of her sweep over almost all activities of inanimate and animate world in her writing. Words speak different language in her writings and able to bring the ambiance of pronounced silence. Again her words bring a new mirror to our face , showing the self awareness and analysis of human existence. She adds more meanings and to the situations and places which normally appear to be meaningless to us; like in her 'Qarrelsome Kitchen Vessels' in kitchen we see only vessels depending on the utility , whereas when she sees , vessels talking about film,cooking, music and even dressing...............Silence of the kitchen vessels is an affair of heart- breaking to her........... she is able to have a communion with the sorrow of the vessels and says................ ' keeping their face shining, By draining their own tears'. An ordinary Sculpture comes to life , gains more life than humans, and able to show the human frailties, in the poem 'Sculpture" , she in her own way castigates the sculptor for his possessiveness over the statue and makes the fact visible that possessiveness is a destructive process where both possessor and the possessed are lost in this process. Again in the poem we are able to see the power of sex involved in any creation though the 'created one ' does not know this. In a general sweep of her brush , how she paints the presence of soul in both animate and inanimate objects............ leading us to believe the common soul of which we are parts. 'Sea for Sale' is another poem bringing out the woman's mind on to the paper. What people normally think is contradicted by the poet by her saying , the woman in house is partial and the whole woman can not be contained in the house; she is uncontainable and incomprehensible like the sea since sea contains all wealth and in one's lifetime , one can not comprehend ..... the incomprehensible phenomenon .......... called woman. when we open a folder in our personal computer we may see a picture which we stored earlier, but the poet sees a bird comes through her window to the computer and sees a replica of the bird , that had been captured when the bird the previous day came and pecked at the food grains.............. and flew away laughing loudly!!!!! .......... and poet writes , she does not know the reason why the bird laughed.......... in that she effortlessly stresses the point that every moment is freshly taking birth and no point in being stuck with the past thereby demarcating the time as past , present and future........... and we can imagine the scenario behind the lines. Here is a poetess whose lines you can enjoy and imagine by reading the meanings both said and unsaid between the lines. Enjoy reading the poems of Sreedevi Nair.

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves. "
T.S.Eliot

Following are the translations from Malayalam through English .

The following link takes you to the link where the Poet was introduced on an online Magazine.