(Potential plot spoilers ahead)

Potter Potter everywhere, but not a kid to shrink
Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

I woke up every morning of last week muttering to myself that I would not write a post on Harry Potter ‘cos everyone, their uncle and their uncle’s dog has written about it. And yet here I am. Comments ranging from ‘I am so swept up by Rowling’s world of magic‘ to ‘I don’t know what the big deal was, it was a pretty pedestrian book‘ to ‘I refuse to read anything that is so hyped‘ to ‘woof woof‘ have peppered the blogosphere. But whichever way the wind blows, Potter has found his way into a post on pretty much every blog.

And at the risk of getting publicly lynched by Rowling fans, I still maintain what I said after I finished Book Three — that Rowling’s stories (not necessarily her writing style) are simply put — Lord Of The Rings meets Enid Blyton. A parallel magical world set in a dorm. Tolkien and Blyton fans, please to not kill me. I am oversimplifying just for example’s sake. This is not to say I won’t read Rowling. Yes, the deed has been done. The ubiquitous book has been read, the person who had to die, died, the Half-Blood Prince has been discovered and other such earth-shattering trivialities have been dealt with. And I am also mighty pleased that my guesses about both were on target. And yes, I have a theory about where the seventh Horcrux is. Much joy.

On an unrelated and more serious note — In the aftermath of the Mumbai rains and floods, there are a couple of new collablogs that have sprung into action. Please go visit them and if you can, help. Here’s what one of the blog creators, Peter Griffin (also the person behind the TsunamiHelp blog) has to say —

Almost a thousand people dead in Maharashtra, about half of them from Bombay. Transport screwed, no electricity, no running water, some areas STILL under water a week later.

They haven’t even begun figuring out how many people were injured. Or what the tolls might increase to if the epidemics we all fear do happen. (And that’s likely, if you have sewage mixed with rain water standing thirteen feet deep in some places) They have’t even begun estimating what the losses of property are going to be like. So many have lost everything.

Bombay needs help folks. We can analyse what went wrong later. We can figure out what to do about it later. Right now, Bombay needs help. Bombay’s bloggers (and some friends - the net doesn’t worry about borders) are trying to do their bit, by making sure information is easy to find. Information was one more thing we all didn’t have enough of last week. Not that it’s much better now.

http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/ is an effort to put online such critical “for emergencies” information as we can find. We hope to turn this into a permanent site that will act as a Bombay disaster portal.

http://cloudburstmumbai.blogspot.com/ is a collection of news, both from the media as well as stories sent in via email and blog links.

Link to us if you run a site, pass these links around to your friends, send us information, send us stories Cloudburst@googlegroups.com.

Pass the word, people. It’s a small gesture, considering the enormity of what has happened, but we hope it will go a long way.

As they say, too much of anything can be bad — Potter or water.

Most people reading this blog will find it useless. But some people have asked (which is a good way to put it when you cannot think of any one person who asked) what the 42 in my Musical Ramblings series is all about, so this blog is for those souls.

(Potential plot spoilers ahead)

42 is a concept taken from Douglas Adams’s series of books — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a ‘trilogy in five parts’ as the author describes it. It is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The supercomputer Deep Thought is built to answer this, and after seven and a half million years of computing it gives the result : forty-two. The relevant lines from the book go something like this —

“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

The creators of Deep Thought realize that they really don’t know the question. At this point Deep Thought offers to design an even more powerful computer — the Earth, to figure out the question. However, after ten million years of calculation and five minutes before the computation is completed, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons. So now, we’ll never know.

Interesting sidenote — Google has a calculator built into its search engine, which contains a formula for the question — answer to life the universe and everything. Try it and see what it returns!

While a picture is worth a thousand words, no painting or photograph can quite achieve the pictures that Robert Frost (1874—1963) paints with his words on the canvases of our mind. Using simple metaphors and a casual conversational style, he brings to us the sights and sounds of his native New England area. But beneath the beautiful imagery lie words much deeper, more profound. Poetry, that describes a simple moment frozen in time (a few leaves clinging to an otherwise bare tree in the poem A Boundless Moment) while at other times, expresses a whole gamut of human emotions and experiences (in poems like Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening and The Road Not Taken). Bringing something profound to a seemingly simple moment, giving the reader a chance to see nature in a new light and to see the beauty in the emotions it evokes — this is what makes Frost’s poetry special to me. The ability to see the extraordinary even in the ordinary.

Despite the idyllic, laid back and detached atmosphere that his poems create at times, there is also a modern and real-world context to his work, apparent in poems like Mending Wall, perhaps most famous for the line that has become an aphorism on international relations — Good fences make good neighbors, a line often quoted with the assumption that the poet supported this thought. In reality, as the poem shows, he questions it. He asks — Why do they make good neighbors? An interesting paradox, as walls create a sense of security, but they exist because of an absence of it, to begin with.

Biased that I am, its difficult for me to pick just one poem to showcase the magic of his words. Here is one titled Reluctance, that remains one of my favorites. A poem that talks about resignation, acceptance and our unwillingness for it. Makes you think.. Why do we strive to aim higher than our past experience indicates we are capable of? Is it the drive to do better, or are we in a way, deluded about our own capabilities? Or is it simply a reluctance to give up?

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

The words of the last verse say it the best — yielding simply because it is the reasonable and practical thing to do, is cheating oneself. The unwillingness to given in to things just as they are, the belief in ourselves that doesn’t let us just bow down and accept, but instead makes us fight against the odds, isn’t that really what the human spirit is all about?

Before I begin this ramble of mine, a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth comes to mind in which he describes life —

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more..
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Chances are, this blog post will go the same way. You have been warned.

One of the nicer outcomes of an overpriced ICSE education in India was the love for Shakespeare’s writings that it developed in me. Revisited some of the bard’s sonnets in the last few days. Here I reproduce, what is arguably my favorite, along with my interpretation of it. But first, a li’l background on sonnets —

The genre of sonnets became popular under the guiding influence of the Italian poet Petrarch. The basic form of the Petrarchan sonnet had 14 lines divided into two distinct parts, an opening octet (8 lines) and a closing sestet (6 lines). The octet often presented a dilemma that the sestet addressed in resolving. Also, the Petrarchan sonnets usually were a sequence of poems written by a besotted lover about an unapproachable or unattainable love, someone the poet pined excessively for.

In style, sonnets were often used by a poet to show off his skill. Excessive use of flowery language, metaphors, extended metaphors (also called ‘conceits’) and hyperbole was common. This resulted in the poem being an obvious testament to a poet’s talent as much as a tribute to his love. Shakespeare however, brought a certain sincerity and directness to this otherwise rather superficial treatment of the feeling of love.

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

A rather pensive sonnet, the poet ruminates on his life and the sorrows that have come with it. There is a tone of discontentment, a sentiment carried over from the previous sonnet (29). However just like the joyful sentiment that ends the previous one .. (For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings) .. this too ends on a positive upbeat note. The poet dwells in the sorrow of his dead friends and his friend/love’s absence only worsens it. Yet, it is the thought of the same friend/love that relieves him of his sadness and gives him emotional strength.

The denouement of the concluding couplet is striking in its simplicity and directness as opposed to the heavier language used in the first 12 lines to signify the pall of gloom in his life. (But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d and sorrows end). The sharp contrast also helps transfer the feeling of unburdening that the poet feels, onto the reader.

Shakespeare’s use of alliteration within words to add a sense of rhythm to the sonnet is to be particularly noted. An example (of the many in this sonnet) is in the following couplet where the ‘V’ sound is stressed —

Then can I grieVe at grieVances foregone,
And heaVily from Woe to Woe tell o’er

Hmm.. I should remember to thank my 10th grade English teacher..

This blog’s title is the opening line from the poem The Daffodils by one of my favorite poets — William Wordsworth.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Update (May 9, 2004)

The blog has been renamed to ‘A walk in the clouds’ as of today (Thanks Thirdeye!). So no Wordsworthian references any more.