Reject and don't (re)submit

"We are sorry inform you that your submission for the Journal of Pain and Death has been rejected on account of being too life-affirmatory. We thank you for your submission and hope that you will submit to us again."

More TASWOSAW Inversion

From 'Jaan Tere Naam' (1992), lyricist Sameer.

तेरे से मैरिज करने को मैं बम्बई से गोआ आया 

पर तेरे डैडी ने मुझको रेड सिग्नल दिखलाया 

डैडी से तेरे क्या लेना मुझे?

तू मुझको चाहे मैं चाहूँ तुझे 

ये अक्खा इंडिया जानता है हम तुम पे मरता है 

दिल क्या चीज़ है जानम अपनी जान तेरे नाम करता है 

...

To get wedded to you from Bombay to Goa I came

But your daddy he red signalled me all the same 

With your daddy what do I have to do?

You love me and I love you

The whole India knows it that I'd die for you

What trifle be a heart o dear I grant my soul to you 

TASWOSAW

Trivenis by Gulzar [sung by Jagjit Singh]

ज़िन्दगी क्या है, जानने के लिए 

ज़िंदा रहना बहुत ज़रूरी है 

आज तक कोई भी रहा तो नहीं 

है नहीं जो दिखाई देता है 

आईने पर छपा हुआ चेहरा 

तर्जुमा आईने का ठीक नहीं 

आओ हम सब पहन लें आईने 

सारे देखेंगे अपना ही चेहरा 

सबको सारे हसीं लगेंगे यहाँ 

हमको ग़ालिब ने ये दुआ दी थी 

तुम सलामत रहो हज़ार बरस 

ये बरस तो फ़क़त दिनों में गया 

...

What is life, to know this

Staying alive is very important

Till date none have

It is not what it seems

The face printed on the mirror

The mirror's translation is not accurate

Let us all wear mirrors

Each will see their own image

All will find each handsome

We were blessed by Ghalib

May you be preserved for a thousand years

This year though passed merely in days

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How is it that Žižek doesn't have the virus yet?

Backward guidance

First they came as sniffles, then trickles, then in waves, and finally in gushing streams---unbidden, unannounced, unasked for---them tears that is; and threatened to overwhelm her senses, to the acute bafflement of those watching, wondering what did provoke such an onset, the released quarterly earnings only three percent below target after all. Although initially she tried to frame it as misfirings of her overwrought broom of the system, eager to remove traces of its long-dormant lachrymosal inactivity, only much later would she herself begin to grope towards its mysterious incidence and its ambiguous, weakly tethered connection to a set of distant memories she began to be convinced were systematically tampered with and set ablaze.

The Reading List: Jan 2019--Jan 2020

1. Dune (Frank Herbert) (reread)
2. Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)
3. Essays (George Orwell)
4. Homo Deus (Yuval Noah Harari)
5. The Futurological Congress (Stanislaw Lem)
6. South of the Border, West of the Sun (Haruki Murakami)
7. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami)
8. The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins)
9. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
10. Essential Chomsky (Noam Chomsky)
11. The Dark Forest (Liu Cixin)
12. Death's End (Liu Cixin)
13. The Map and the Territory (Michel Houllebecq)
14. The Night Manager (John le Carre)
15. Men Without Women (Haruki Murakami)
16. Thinking, fast and slow (Daniel Kahneman)
17. After Dark (Haruki Murakami)
18. English August (Upamanyu Chatterjee)
19. Against Interpretation and Other Essays (Susan Sontag)
20. I married a communist ( Philip Roth)
21. The last samurai (Helen deWitt)
22. Directorate S (Steve Coll)
23. साये में धूप (दुष्यंत कुमार)
24. Pakistan: A Hard Country (Anatol Lieven)
25. The Best of R K Laxman
26. कवि-मन (अज्ञेय)
27. A Beginner's Guide to Japan (Pico Iyer)
28. Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)
29. The Foundation Pit (Andrey Platonov)
30. The Man who solved the world (Zuckerman)
31. Normal People (Sally Rooney)