My life as a Curious Autodidact

जिनके आँगन में अमीरी का शजर लगता है
उनका हर ऐब ज़माने को हुनर लगता है

Jinke aangan mein amiri ka shajar lagta hai,
Unka har aib zamaane ko humar lagta hai

—Anjum Rehbar

Behti hawa sa tha woh
Udti patang sa tha woh
Kahan gaya usse dhoondo

Behti hawa sa tha woh
Udti patang sa tha woh
Kahan gaya usse dhoondo
Hum ko to raahein thi chalati
Woh khud apni raah banata
Girta sambhalta masti mein chalta tha woh
Hum ko kal ki fikar sataati
Woh bus aaj ka jashn manata
Har lamhe ko khul ke jeeta tha woh
Kahan se aaya tha woh
Choo ke humare dil ko
Kahan gaya usse dhoondo

Sulagti dhoop mein chaaon ke jaisa
Raigistaan mein gaaon ke jaisa
Mann ke ghav pe marham jaisa tha woh
Hum sehme se rehte kooein mein
Woh nadiya mein gotey lagata
Ulti dhara cheer ke tairta tha woh
Baadal awara tha woh
Yaar humara tha woh
Kahan gaya usse dhoondo
Hum ko to raahein thi chalati
Woh khud apni raah banata
Girta sambhalta masti mein chalta tha woh
Hum ko kal ki fikar sataati
Woh bus aaj ka jashn manaata
Har lamhe ko khul ke jeeta tha woh
Kahan se aaya tha woh
Choo ke humare dil ko
Kahan gaya usse dhoondo

—Three Idiots,  Behti hawa sa tha woh (Lyrics), Swanand Kirkire

We need to be alert to the thin line between being a bit of fun, light, quirky, provocative, mildly irreverent, and being silly, a waste of time, self indulgent.

—Cassius Fernandez

“The birthday of my life 
Is come, my love is come to me.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti, A Birthday (1894)

Note: Nonsense, I hope this was true. Sigh!

The idea of “identity” was born out of the crisis of belonging and out of the effort it triggered to bridge the gap between the “ought” and the “is” and to lift reality to the standards set by the idea—to remake the reality in the likeness of the idea.

—Zygmunt Bauman, Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi

…individuality is an illusion wrought by the Western emphasis on objectivity and rationalism. Western understanding requires that things be analyzed, dissolved into parts, distilled into fundamental units, and, finally, isolated from the larger ecology that sustains and nurtures them and may even provide their reason for being. The Western ego ideal is strength, independence, and self-sufficiency. Although we certainly have relationships, we do not require them, for relatedness entails dependency, and dependency entails weakness. Our scientific theories have inherited this bias. Even a notion that many psychologists would take for granted—that personality is composed of smaller units, or traits—can be viewed as a cultural distortion.

—Personality disorders in modern life By Theodore Millon, Carrie M. Millon, Seth Grossman, Sarah Meagher, Rowena Ramnath

I do my thing and you do yours. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.

—Frederick Perls

Intelligence maybe attributed to those who have a great memory and the ability to calculate. Knowing the difference between a fluke, a guess and an estimate, that is wisdom.

-Me

Ret se but na bana mere achchey fankaar,
Ek lamhe ko teher mein tujhe pathar la doon.

Sand idols, do not make my artist,
Wait, let me get you stone.

-?

Big beautiful eyes are my biggest weakness. So, I told a girl with intelligent eyes:

Terii nigah-e-mast ne maKhmuur kar diyaa
Kyaa maikade ko jaauu.N tujhe dekhane ke baad 

Your intoxicating eyes have made me drunk,
Why should I go and drink after having seen you?

- A Urdu couplet from a Ghazal by Saeed Shahidi.

Claude Lévi-Strauss is dead.

Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulixes,
Et tamen aequoreas torsit amore deas.

Ulysses was not handsome,
but he was good with words,
and he still set the watery goddesses afire with love.

— Ovid’s Ars Amatoria

Bartender: I want to thank you for telling me this story.

Priest: Why?

Bartender: Because now I can retire.

Priest: You have to give me advice. That’s what this is supposed to be about.

Bartender: Oh, God. What do I know?
I’m a ha If Punjabi Sikh…
one-quarter Tamil separatist.
My sister’s married to a Jewish doctor from New Jersey…
and our other grandmother…
was an Irish nun who left me this bar, which is a very long story.

Priest: You’re a Sikh Catholic Muslim with Jewish in-laws?

Bartender: Yes. Yes. It gets very complicated. I’m reading Dianetics.

Priest: I don’t blame you.

Bartender: I thank you for listening to me.

Priest: I feel like I should ask you for my penance.

Bartender: I don’t do penance. I do shots.
I’ll tell you what I know.
May those who love us love us.
And those who don’t love us…
may God turn their hearts.
And if He cannot turn their hearts…
may He turn their ankles…
so that we may know them by their limping.

Keeping The Faith (2000), Edward Norton

Jalaa hia jism jahaa.N dil bhii jal gayaa hogaa, 
Kuredate ho jo ab raakh justajuu kyaa hai.

- Ghalib

There is no other line better then Agha Shahid Ali’s that explains this better poetically.

All you grammarian retards can pretend language is about rules and not about culture. As for the ‘native speaker/language’ chauvinists, shove it.

I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time. 

Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time …

The one you would choose: were you led then by him?
What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?

Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth—
The funeral love comes to hold in real time!

They left him alive so that he could be lonely—
The god of small things is not consoled in real time.

Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys—
It’s hell in the city of gold in real time.

God’s angels again are-for Satan-forlorn.
Salvation was bought but sin sold in real time.

The throat of the rearview and sliding down it
the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time.

I heard the incessant dissolving of silk-
I felt my heart growing so old in real time.

Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned.
What hope lets your hands rake the cold in real time?
(Read this is if you want to understand this line.)

Dear Friend, the Belovèd has stolen your words—
Read slowly: the plot will unfold in real time.

-Agha Shahid Ali