साम्राज्य और साइकल

संपन्न शक्तिशाली साम्राज्य
जो कि सुना है
आश्चर्यजनक रूप से
सुसंस्कृत भी था
जहाँ तेनालीराम जैसे दरबारी
कुछ वैसे ही रहते थे
जैसे अकबर के यहाँ बीरबल

बड़ी घटिया उपमा है
पर मैं झूठ बोलने से
बचना चाह रहा हूं
वैसे भी मैं कवि नहीं हूं
मेरी बोली तो
खड़ी बोली है

तो खड़ी बोली में
कहा जाए तो
बारिश का मौसम है
रिमझिम रिमझिम
इतनी ही कि कैमरा भी
बचा के रखा जा सके
तस्वीर खींचते हुए भी

भीड़ वगैरह भी नहीं है
आप आराम से भ्रमण का
पूरा मज़ा ले सकते हैं

छोटे-छोटे पहाड़
बड़ी-बड़ी चट्टानें
साफ़-सुथरी सड़कें
सब तरफ पेड़-पौधे
पत्तियाँ भी घास भी
फूल भी और उन पर
मंडराने वाले भी
तितिलियाँ भी होनी चाहिए
पर आखिरी दो मदों की
याद मुझे नहीं आती
भूल-चूक लेनी-देनी

ऊपर ऐसे बादल
कि तस्वीर खींचने से
मन ही न भरे
और हाँ
नदी भी तो है
अपने उफान के चरम पर
लेकिन छोटे से साम्राज्य की
छोटी सी तो नदी है
इसलिए चरम भी
अनुपात में ही है

सुना है हमेशा ऐसा नहीं होता
भ्रमण के भी मौसम होते हैं
तब हर तरफ भीड़ होती है
ऐसी सफाई और हरियाली भी
नहीं पाएंगे आप
नदी में इतना पानी भी
नहीं पाएंगे आप
रिमझिम बारिश तो खैर
नहीं ही पाएंगे आप

मुझे पता नहीं था
तकदीर (कभी तो) अच्छी थी

लेकिन एक बात है
क्या तब भी यहाँ घूमने में
इतना ही मज़ा आता होगा
जब कि साम्राज्य गिरा नहीं था

दो हज़ार साल पहले के
रोम में भ्रमण का मज़ा
कितना आता होगा
यह किससे पूछा जाए

दो-तीन राजधानियों की बात
तो जानता हूं मैं
चतुर दरबारी तो
वहाँ भी बहुत से हैं
लेकिन भ्रमण …

जाने दीजिए

मेरा तो मन हो रहा है
मैं भी एक साइकल
किराये पर लेकर
फिर से घूमने निकल जाऊं

वाहन पर चढ़ कर जाऊं वहाँ
पहले पैदल गया था जहाँ

कुछ तो तुक हो

थक जाने पर साइकल को
पेड़ के नीचे खड़ा करके
आराम किया जा सकता है

पतन को पा चुके साम्राज्य में
रिमझिम रिमझिम
बारिश के मौसम में
लगभग आकर्षक रूप से
घुमावदार और चढ़ावदार
लगभग स्वाभाविक रूप से
कच्ची और टूटी-फूटी
सड़क के किनारे
लगभग अपेक्षित रूप से
धीर-गंभीर और छायादार
लगभग निराशाजनक रूप से
छोटे और हल्के-फुल्के
एक पेड़ के नीचे
खड़ी हुई एक साइकल

सड़क के होने का
रहस्य बताते हुए

और शायद साम्राज्य
के न होने का भी

जहाँ साम्राज्य था
वहाँ अब साइकल है
पर मुझे कुछ खास
अफ़सोस भी नहीं है

यहाँ तो फ़िलहाल मुझे
साइकल, पेड़ और सड़क
काफ़ी भा रहे हैं
जहाँ पृष्ठभूमि में स्थित है
साम्राज्य का एक अवशेष

हिन्दी ज़ेडनेट - नये अनुवाद (1)

तो आखिर मैंने हिन्दी ज़ेडनेट के लिए तीन और अनुवाद पूरे कर ही दिए। इतना समय लगने का एक कारण यह था (इसके अलावा कि मेरी उम्मीद के विपरीत और कोई अभी तक इस काम में शामिल होने के लिए आगे नहीं आया है) कि एक लेख काफ़ी लंबा था और उसमें दो कविताओं के उद्धरण थे, जिनमें से एक शायद दुनिया की सबसे अधिक पढ़ी गई कविताओं में से एक है।

उम्मीद है कविता अनुवाद के बाद भी कविता जैसी ही लगेगी।

नये अनुवाद ये हैं:

• ग़ैर-टिकाऊ अविकास: नोम चॉम्स्की
• कला, सच और राजनीति: हैरॉल्ड पिंटर
• सभ्यताओं का टकराव: नोम चॉम्स्की

और हाँ, ज़ेडनेट की साइट पूरी तरह बदली जा रही है, परिणामतः हिन्दी ज़ेडनेट भी यहाँ से अब यहाँ आ गया है।

और यह भी कि कुल अनुवादों की संख्या अब एक दहाई यानी दो अंकों तक पहुंच गई है।

तीन अंकों तक अकेले पहुंचाना मुश्किल होगा, फिर भी…

Discovering Delightful Connections

I have been thinking about writing a post about what (at least one thing) to do when life seems unbearably depressive and you are in the grip of the EIM (Everything Is Meaningless) syndrome. When you feel that you can’t really believe in anyone or anything. Even the ‘best’ people start turning out to be unreasonably mean and nasty. And there seems to be no point in doing anything. Even waking up. Or eating.

By the way, psychologists would love to have this one more syndrome. Or have they already (gladly) got it?

I just came across something that reminded me of one such thing. I mean one of the things you can do at such EIM etc. times. And that is discovering delightful connections. I discovered one such connection.

A few days ago I had seen a movie (La Mome) about the legendary French popular (female) singer Edith Piaf. I will write about her later, but one of the things I learnt during my post-movie (re)search on the singer was that another legendary French popular (male) singer Yves Montand was discovered and mentored by Edith Piaf. He was also, for some time, her lover. Anyway, after seeing this movie, Edith Piaf became one of my favourite (favorite for the dominant party) singers.

Some months ago I had written about the director Costa Gavras and one of his movies called ‘Z’. This happens to be one of my favorite films. But I forgot who played the role of the assassinated (really) democratic leader in that movie. I am not very good at recognizing French (or other non-Indian and non-Hollywood) actors, though I have seen many many French films. Probably because they don’t have as strong a star system as Hollywood.

Today I (re)discovered that it was Yves Montand.

 

This is what I call a delightful connection.

One that can bring a smile on your face.

One that can make you recall that not all is meaningless.

One that can make you happy.

A little bit, if not much.

And make you Happily write a post again.

Etc.

(In case you are wondering, the use of a capital letter above is not arbitrary).

But there are one or two more connections that I would like to mention. At the end of the movie ‘Z’, when the military takes over the government, a list of things is announced which have been banned. The list goes something like this:

Peace movements, strikes, labor unions, long hair on men, The Beatles, other modern and popular music (”la musique populaire”), Sophocles, Leo Tolstoy, Aeschylus, writing that Socrates was homosexual, Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain, Samuel Beckett, the bar association, sociology, international encyclopedias, free press, and new math. Also banned is the letter Z, which was used as a symbolic reminder that Lambrakis and by extension the spirit of resistance lives (zi = “he (Lambrakis) lives”).

This list is from the Wikipedia page about ‘Z’, but I remember one more banned item from the movie: Pinter. The writer Harold Pinter.

Where are the connections? First, note the inclusion of popular music in the list. Second, ‘the spirit of resistance lives’ is used as a kind of a motto by the site ZNet (or ZMag) where articles (among other things) by a great many of the world’s intellectuals and activists are published.

The Hindi section of ZNet (still pretty small) was started by your’s truly. Another thing I found out today is that some of these translated articles have started making appearance on other (Hindi) sites and blogs.

Reason enough to smile. Even if the ‘best’ people are turning out to be (at least) mean and nasty and you feel EIM.

Does it sound somewhat Frank Capraesque (as in It’s a Wonderful Life)? No, I wouldn’t go that far.

A smile is enough.

Transcribing Romance on Your Menu

It makes us feel that we are all extras in somebody else’s movie.

That’s a comment someone made about the movie I am going to write about today. I am not the kind of person who likes to watch the same movie again and again. But there are exceptions. So I do watch some movies more than once. And this one is a movie I have watched the second highest number of times.

From what I have written so far about movies, the regular readers of this blog (assuming there are any), might have got the impression that I am a very dry kind of person. Always talking about serious movies. And always talking about only the serious (political, philosophical, psychological) themes in all movies.

I am not going to do that in this post. Not because I want to prove something (there goes an apology). Just that this particular movie doesn’t have anything serious to say about life. And, therefore, I don’t have anything serious to say about the movie either. (Well, yes, this is more of an exaggeration than a literal truth).

But I still have watched this movie the second highest number of times (for me of course). And will definitely watch it again. More than once.

Like the other movie that I have watched the highest number of times (for me of course), this movie too was a big surprise.

In how many non-Indian movies will you find a Punjabi folk song on the soundtrack? A song like the one transcribed below.

This is one other very unusual unme-like thing I am going to do in this post. Transcribing the lyrical and poetic parts of the soundtrack of a non-serious movie. There might be some mistakes in the transcription (there goes a disclaimer), but then I won’t be the only one to do that (there goes an excuse). Just a few days ago I bought a sackful of second hand books (all in English: good Hindi books don’t have a market, even a second hand market) from a roadside Sunday book bazaar. One of the things I bought was a booklet titled ‘Joyful Hearts (For Private use only)’. It had lyrics of popular songs in several languages, all transcribed in the Latin script. One of them (California Dreamin’) is on the soundtrack of the movie I am writing about. I too have transcribed it below, but I have done so from the movie. The version in the booklet wrongly contains the word ‘in a lay’ instead of ‘in L.A.’. Actually, the task for me was easier (for English songs) because the subtitles also had the lyrics. But the Hindi and Punjabi words I had to transcribe on my own. And if I remember correctly, even the subtitles had some mistake in the transcription of an English song.

Anyway, here is the Punjabi folk song:

पिपलां दी ठंडी-ठंडी
छाँ वरगी
सत्थ मैनूं लग्गे
मैनूं वरगी
…
मैं वी उन पुच्छ के
बैर कर दी
…

So, how many foreign (non-Indian) movies will have this kind of real and really beautiful folk song that is hard to find even in India? (I am talking about music more than the words. Unfortunately, I can’t transcribe the music).

Even in an India where, while Punjabi as a distinct language is going down the extinction path as much as any other language except the lucky handful, certain aspects of Punjabi culture are making inroads even in the South. And music is one of those aspects. But, tragically (I mean it: I don’t use words lightly), the Punjabi music that is proliferating is of the worst kind.

And how many foreign movies will have light classical Hindustani music with words like this:

बदरवा बरसन लाई
लाई फूहारों की लड़ाई
पवन चलत पुरवाई
बदरवा …

As this is Hindustani classical music, even if light one, the words give very little indication of the beauty of the music. Unless you have a gift for discovering the music hidden within the words. A well known Hindi film music director used to say that all songs (i.e., lyrics) have music hidden within them. You just have to find that music and you can get the right composition for the song. I think he was at least partially right (there go weasel words).

But the one that follows takes the cake. In how many movies will you find hardcore poetry in hardcore standard Hindi. The shuddh Hindi. The pure Hindi. Even I don’t understand everything in this poem. And, I am ashamed to say, I don’t even know whose poem it is.

गर्जन भैरव संसार
हँसता है बहता कल कल
देख देख नाचता हृदय
बहने को महाविकल बेकल
इस मरूर से
इसी शूर से
सघन भूर गुरू गहन रूर से
मुझे गगन का दिखा
सघन वह छोर
राग अमर अंबर में भरने जरूर
…

ए वर्ष के हर्ष
बरस तू बरस पर तरस खा कर
मार दे चल तू मुझ को
बहार दिखा मुझ को

गर्जन भैरव संसार
हँसता है नर खल खल
बहता कहता
बुद बुद कल कल
देख देख नाचता हृदय
…

This poem, like other songs in the movie, is played in more than one bits and is employed as the musical theme of a certain bit of the ’story’.

There is not much of a story though. What you see in this movie, what made me watch it the second highest number of times, and what made this one of Tarantino’s favorite movies, is simply cinematic magic.

Magic created out of photography, choreography, composition, colors, music, musical words and romance. Simple almost unreal and surreal romance made magical.

By the way, the movie is called ‘Chung King Express’ and is directed by Wong Kar Wai. And it stars a very good looking star cast consisting of Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu Wai (the smaller, who is a bigger super star than the bigger Tony Leung of ‘The Lovers’), Faye Wong (who was already a pop star), Takeshi Kaneshiro (who actually knows four languages and uses them all in this movie) and Valerie Chow.

The movie also has a song from one of Faye Wong’s albums which I couldn’t transcribe as I neither know the language nor the script.

I have a feeling that this movie has influenced a lot of people working in the realm of popular culture.

It is also influenced by a lot of other creations by other people working in the realm of popular culture.

It’s not every day
We are gonna be
The same way
There must be a change
Somehow

There are bad times
And good times too
So have a little faith in
What you do, oh yeah
Getting happy, yeah
I want you to understand, yeah

The movie actually has two interwoven stories (CLICHE!). Roger Ebert may be right in saying that watching this movie is a cerebral exercise as you like this movie because of what you know about it, not what it knows about life.

But Roger Ebert can be horribly wrong sometimes. Like when he wrote a review of Malena. I will just quote Michael DeZubiria to point out how unbelievably wrong the best known movie reviewer in the world can be (there goes a marathon digression):

Roger Ebert wrote probably the most idiotic review I’ve ever seen him come out with about this movie. He missed the point of this movie even more than he missed the point of Memento, and his review of that movie was like a blind man describing a shooting star. He describes Malena as a schoolteacher “of at least average intelligence, who must be aware of her effect on the collective local male libido, but seems blissfully oblivious.”

Roger, seriously, are you joking? BLISSFULLY?? Did you sleep through this movie?

She almost never speaks at all and never displays even the slightest hint of a smile. Given the extent of her depression and stifling sadness, it is astounding to me that anyone in their right mind could attach the word “blissfully” to any element of her character.

I know what that’s like though, because sometimes I completely miss something about a movie and I think that something else is the stupidest thing in the world because of it, at least until someone explains what I missed and then it all makes sense. Watch Malena, for example, walking through the central square in town at any point in the movie. If you think she keeps her eyes on the ground directly in front of her because she is in a state of pure, ignorant bliss, then trust me. You are missing something.

I don’t know if Malena was actually unaware of the effect that she had on the townspeople, but I find it nearly impossible to believe that she did. That thought actually never even occurred to me until I read Roger Ebert’s gem of a review. Her behavior struck me much more like someone who had been dealing with such behavior from the men around for her whole life. I doubt very much that she doesn’t understand the concepts of human physical attraction.

Coming back to the current movie, I can say with a crystal clear conscience (I don’t like to lie too much) that this is one of the best movies about plain and simple ‘love’ type romance.

What a difference
A day makes
Twenty four little hours
Brought the sun and the flowers
Mmm, where there used
To be rain

My yesterday was blue, dear
Today I am a part of you, dear
My lonely nights are through, dear
Since you said you were mine

Lord, what a difference
A day makes
There’s a rainbow before me
Skies above can’t be stormy
Since that moment of bliss
That thrilling kiss

It’s heavens when you
Find romance
On your menu

What a difference
A day made
And the difference
Is you

But then it is a movie by the master of nostalgia. Wong Kar Wai can make you feel extremely (I don’t use adjectives or adverbs lightly) nostalgic even about places where you have never been. He can even make you feel nostalgic twice removed. In this movie he first makes you nostalgic about Hong Kong (even if you have never been there) and then he makes you feel nostalgic about California (even if you have never been there) from Hong Kong. And all this time you (there goes projection) are sitting in a man made cave in India.

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
I would be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.

California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
You know the preacher likes cold
He knows I am gonna stay

California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

If I didn’t tell her
I could leave today

California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

I was (along with the person who gave that movie to me) fascinated by the soundtrack of another one of Wong Kar Wai’s movies, ‘In the Mood for Love’. But ‘Chung King Express’ beats even that movie. It has one of best soundtracks in the history of movies. In fact, I have watched it sometimes just for the soundtrack. And I am not really crazy about movie soundtracks.

Tarantino has claimed that everyone that he knows who watched this movie (he only knows men, or, more likely, he only counts men) had a crush on Faye (who is named Faye in the movie too).

A tribute from the king of cinematic non-serious violence to the king of cinematic non-serious romance.

So, whenever you want romance on your menu, go to Wong’s. They serve the best there. You will find yourself visiting frequently.

Even if there was nothing else, I will still watch this movie to listen to the Hindi poem being played on the TV, accompanied on the soundtrack by many other sounds.

Hindi poem on cinema. Foreign cinema. Now there’s a rare thing for you if there ever was one. Even if it forms the backdrop of an almost comic botched small time drug smuggling operation involving many very bad looking lower class ‘Indians’ who are actually Pakistanis.

English is Language Independent

It’s the Global Language, right? So how can it be language dependent? You propose a theory based on English. It has to apply to all languages. You propose a Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Computational Linguistics (CL) technique for a particular problem. For English. It applies to all languages. You build a software for some purpose. For English. It has to be useful for all languages. You build a dictionary…

Never mind.

But the vice versa is not true. You propose a theory based on Hindi. It is language specific. It doesn’t count for much. You propose an NLP technique for a particular problem. For Hindi. It is language specific. It doesn’t count for much. You build a software for some purpose. For Hindi. It is language specific. It doesn’t count for much.

That’s how it works in practice, if not theory. Or may be even in theory, with some help from the (very valid) idea of Universal Grammar (except that the UG may be the UG of English).

Even today I have got a review of a paper on a problem which is like one of the holy grails of NLP or CL. One of the comments is that the approach has been evaluated on Hindi so it can’t be compared to other techniques that already exist. True. But what is the number of papers published in the ‘first class’ NLP/CL conferences and journals in which the approach has been tried only on English? Doesn’t matter, because English is language independent. If you only evaluate your technique on English, that’s OK. But if you evaluate on only Hindi, that’s not acceptable. Because Hindi is language specific.

We know this very well in India. The Elite talks about (Indian) literature. And sometimes the Elite magnanimously (or dismissively) talks about (Indian) literature in languages. The first, of course, refers to literature in English. The second refers to literature in other languages. Indian languages.

The Elite talks of media. And the Elite (rarely and mostly negatively) talks of language media.

Hindi is a language. English is not a language.

Pardon me.

Hindi is a language. English is the language.

English is above being merely a language.

That’s why all the work done in English is language independent. Not just research. Not just in NLP/CL. Anything. Movies, literature, music.

I am guilty of the sin of indulging too much in mere languages. I should be working mostly on English. Not just writing blog posts in English. Sometimes, of course, I can bestow a bit of my attention on languages. Like Hindi.

But I won’t do that. I will do the opposite. I am incurable.

हिन्दी ब्लॉगों की बढ़ती संख्या

कुछ ही साल पहले तक हालत यह थी कि इंटरनेट पर हिन्दी में पढ़ने के लिए वेबदुनिया के अलावा मुश्किल से ही कुछ मिलता था। उसके लिए भी कई जतन करने पड़ते थे। बहुत से लोगों की कोशिशों, यूनीकोड के बढ़ते चलन आदि के कारण अब इंटरनेट पर इतनी सामग्री तो हिन्दी में हो ही गई है कि आप एक हफ़्ते या महीने भर में सब कुछ पढ़ डालने की बात नहीं सोच सकते। अकेले ब्लॉगों की ही संख्या रोज़ाना बढ़ती जा रही है।*

फिर भी अभी एक कमी जो मुझे बहुत खलती है वह यह है कि हिन्दी साहित्य के बारे में बहुत कम सामग्री है। अगर इस कमी को पूरा करने की दिशा में आप कुछ करना चाहते हैं (बिना किसी धनलाभ के) तो आप मुझे संपर्क कर सकते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए, अगर आप किसी भी साहित्यिक कृति के बारे में जानते हैं जो इलैक्ट्रॉनिक रूप में उपलब्ध है, तो उसे सबके लिए इंटरनेट पर डाला जा सकता है। या और कुछ नहीं तो आप दो चार दिन या हफ़्ते या महीने में किसी बड़े लेखक की कोई कहानी या कविता या निबंध टाइप करके मुझे भेज सकते हैं। रचना के साथ आपका नाम भी शामिल किया जा सकता है। गुटनबर्ग जैसी न जाने कितने वेब स्थल अंग्रेज़ी (और अन्य भाषाओं) के लिए उपलब्ध हैं। हिन्दी में भी तो ऐसा कुछ होना चाहिए। जितना अभी है उससे कहीं ज़्यादा।

* अपना भी ज़रा सा योगदान इसमें है, यह व्यक्तिगत रूप से थोड़ी सी संतोषजनक बात है: हिन्दी ज़ेडनेट के अतिरिक्त कुछ चीजें यहाँ देखी जा सकती हैं (अधिकांश अभी प्रयोगशाला में ही हैं):

• वेब घर
• संचय
• Workshop on NLP for Less Privileged Languages
• Workshop on Named Entity Recognition for South and South East Asian Languages

यह सेल्फ़ प्रमोशन तो हो सकता है, लेकिन तब दिल को थोड़ी तकलीफ़ होती है जब गूगल, याहू, ए ओ एल के भारतीय भाषाओं पर काम की खबरें तो बड़े शोर शराबे के साथ छपती हैं और बिना किसी मदद (वित्तीय या कोई अन्य) के अलावा काम करने वाले हम जैसे लोगों के काम को साफ नज़रअंदाज़ कर दिया जाता है।

हिन्दी में ज़ेडनेट

ZNet/ZMag पर एक बेहतर दुनिया के लिए कोशिश करने वाले लोगों के विचारों और उनकी गतिविधियों के बारे में लेख प्रकाशित होते हैं। हाल ही मैं मैंने ज़ेडनेट के हिन्दी संस्करण की शुरुआत की है। यह शुरुआत केवल पाँच लेखों के अनुवाद से की गई है, पर उम्मीद है और लोग भी साथ देंगे ताकि ज़ेडनेट की सर्वोत्तम सामग्री हिन्दी में उपलब्ध हो सके। आप भी इसमें सहयोग कर सकते हैं।