Celebrate the joy of reading

Stephen Fry tweeted this.

Forgot to thank the people responsible. Two of them. My parents.

Mamma, for telling me incredible stories - Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, and so on. The length of the tales varying according to the time it took your fussy little firstborn to finish her food. Abruptly short at times, dawdling infinitely over the snout of the wolf, the taste of the porridge, at others. For taking me to Dakshineshwar, where I could insist on buying 'Pictorial Stories for Children' published by the Ramakrishna Mission. ! For filling my childhood with hers through mad yarns and unbelievable anecdotes!


Pappa, for never saying 'no' to books! For letting my sister and me have as many as we wanted, no matter how expensive they were, or how far the Sunday book market was; braving the sun and the stress to come and buy us all the omnibuses, the collections and titles we could want. . . For your quiet pride in our reading. Eternal thanks for introducing me to P.G. Wodehouse.
My father does smell of elderberries! (But I dare anyone to call my mother a hamster!)

I love you both!
And I will make it count! Promise :)

Poems on Sri Ramakrishna's Tithi Puja

These two poems from an obscure source. Every once in a while I go looking for them, scouring the internet and want to post them here so I know where they are!

From John Moffitt Jr.'s book 'The Living Seed'. John Moffitt, Jr., known as Swami Atmaghanananda. was a novice and monk from 1932-1963, when he converted to Roman Catholicism. As a Hindu, he contributed poetry to various magazines, including The New Yorker. He corresponded with Salinger from 1953 to 1965, and the two discussed spirituality and its relationship to literature.

SPIRIT OF THE LAND
(Belur Math, India)
Out of unaging earth,
Out of a dark, soft, immemorial
Womb - not the thick paddies only,
Not the slim herons, not the buffalo
And the calm milch cow,
The lifted palm and sturdy deodar;
Not the thatched hut, the naked boy
On the road's edge, the grain winnowed
And piled on the road; not the flowing
Woman, the jolly hawker, the clasped hands
Of brothers joined in artless affection,
The spare, orange-clad monk striding alone;
Not the close bazars, the cozy
Lamps dotting the twilight,
The straining coolie, the round brass pot
Poised on the peasant woman's
Head; not the soiled white saris
Stretched in the sun to dry:
Not all these only, but above and beyond
And through all these, the veiled
Shape, the infinite Mother brooding,
The much affronted, the reviled, the secretly
Serene - long-suffering and forgiving:
She, rising out of this earth,
Above and beyond them all - it is she,
Mysterious and benign,
Whose presence, as you thread the crowded lanes,
Stills you, holds you,
Cheers you like a healing wind.


VIGIL
(Belur Math)
Unfathomable ray,
Which in me, this wide night,
Quietly answers to the tranced quality
Of a light a clean moon throws
Over sheer domes, slow Ganges shallows,
Thick-hung mango leaves: 
Say audibly for me here
In the still presence of this moon-touched air
A hidden word, dark only for simplicity,
To catch my faith's consent
And - past trees, water and white silences -
Gather me to me, 
Unfathomable ray.

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