Thanks for reading this blog. As you would have been able to see from the dates in which the blog posts have been done, this is not the most active blog in the world, and it’s not the most inactive one either.
Since I promised to make this blog one to do with the arts, I would like to share a few ideas that have been floating in my head for an unspecified amount of time now.
I start with a poem, that I will write on the spot, so that I can expand on it.
Facial Hair – Nirmal Kirtisinghe
A beard is a beard,
No matter how weird
Sometimes it is feared
and can even be cleared.
A beard sometimes can be smeared
with grease or something weird
but you should not be feared,
because your beard is smeared.
Some beards are revered,
some are cleared
maybe even jeered,
but hardly cheered.
My own beard
appeared
quite weird
then it was cleared
This poem is weird
supposedly about a beard
deserves to be jeered
should have wished you disappeared.
That is some bad poetry for you. It was going nowhere, and it had very little deep meaning or significance. Its genre, if one can classify it into one, is nonsense. It is, by all means, utter nonsense. Why a person would write such a thing eludes me to this day. Why I would write such a thing myself is a total mystery to me. If that poem is to be compared to a dog, it would have been put down a long time ago. If it were a vegetable, not even a maggot would eat it. If it were a wild animal, it would have died of hunger. It’s that bad a poem. I personally think that to call it bad poetry would be an insult to bad poetry everywhere, and that it actually ended up in this particular web log is total and utter blasphemy. But wait. I could have not put this here. I could have shielded you, the reader, from this monstrosity of a thing, but I did not do that. I could not do that, for one reason in particular, other than for my sense of sadism.
That reason is exposure. I wanted you to be exposed to this “poem” because I believe that you will start to appreciate other poetry (mine as well as others’) more than you do now. You will go looking for the cure to the illness this thing gave you. You will start to actively pursue other forms of poetry, in all the languages that you know, maybe even learn new languages so that you can read and appreciate good poetry in that language. May be you would, but chances (I am thinking 99.99%) are that you won’t do any of those things.
Why did I write it as such, if it does not make sense to do so? Well, it’s what I do as a creative person. I confuse you. I disgust you and torture you with my words. Have you noticed that my own critique of the above work is much more voluminous than the work itself (if one can call it work, that is.)
Thanks for reading this entry. Please feel free to leave your comments and/or complaints in the section below, where you are allowed to do that.
It’s a funny thing. You look for something all over the place, and you don’t realise that it’s been around you all the while.
This is the story of my life. I knew her for more than seven years. I asked her to find me a girlfriend and she has been asking me to find her a guy. We were practically with our backs to each other, looking for love in all the wrong places. It never dawned on us to turn around and find that the person they are looking for is right there, behind you.
It is a nice feeling to be in love. A nicer feeling to be in love with someone you know, someone who knows you, someone you trust and someone who trusts you. When all those come together in one person, it’s the best thing in the world.
I have had many inadequacies in the past, and to this day, have a lot of them. Every human being does, I guess, but I have had more than my fair share. What I love about her is that she gives me the courage and strength to get over my inadequacies and make my life better for me, her and the two of us as a couple.
I love her with all my heart, and though I don’t always show it, and make a faux pas here and a blunder there, I know that our love can only grow. I know that she loves me more than she can say. It’s the same with me. Somehow, the words “I love you” don’t seem to do justice to how much we love each other.
The team lead of the tech-writing team (of which I am a member of) at the company I work at left the other day, and I thought I should write a poem to write in the farewell card. Upon her request, I post the poem, along with the comment she made about it. 
Sangeetha, an appreciation
Always thoughtful, always a friend
Any little problem, you know how to mend,
Giving us credit whenever it’s due,
Always teaching us what you know to be true.
A professional in the true sense of the word,
you made sure that the lines aren’t blurred,
when trouble reared its ugly head,
you made sure that we were well lead.
Always willing to take one for the team,
you gave us courage to build our dream.
we’ll miss a team leader, a mentor, a friend,
We won’t forget you, Sangeetha, right till the end.
Sangeetha’s Comment on this :
“the poem was priceless!!!
Nirmal you have such a way with words – you must add this poem to your blog as well.“
If any of you want to see the stuff that I have written in days gone by, you can check the Historical Works of Nirmal Page.
It hurts one and all, it makes some cry
It makes you weep, make you wanna die
It makes for the best poems, and everyone knows why
I know you know that you know what this is about
Let me not repeat that and your mind re-clout
Of course it’s what it is, love, no doubt
A man once told me that love’s just an illusion
He told me that to a mind, it is pollution
I wish to disagree with that thought, and that’s my conclusion
I received a comment from someone recently on my first post, but I refuse to show it because of the lewd nature of the language used. If any of you readers out there are going to make comments like that, go to some other blog and leave them. Leave my blog clean. There is total freedom of expression here, only if you can act civilised.
When you are writing, sometimes you wish you had the inspiration to write something brilliant, and something brilliant is the last thing that comes to your mind.
Your mind starts to fill up with all sorts of things that you wish it doesn’t get filled up with… Insect sounds, that cousin who has an annoying landlord, the beggar with no legs you saw in the morning and what you thought about him, the little girl with the missing ear and that annoying blog post about something brilliant.
What most writers don’t know is that this is just the kind of inspiration that you need to write something brilliant. That thing of brilliance may come to you in a flash, or it may come to you slowly, like that snail who just won’t give up climbing your garden wall, no matter how many times you tap it and make it fall to the ground. Sometimes I wonder what snails are looking for, but that’s a blog for a rainy day, and today, it’s bright sunlight all the way in these parts.
Back to brilliance, I guess… Yes. Inspiration… Right…
Inspiration is a weird thing… It’s not scientific… It can’t be replicated in controlled environments. One can’t look at or listen to the works of the masters and get the same kind of inspiration that another gets. Listen to Mozart’s 40th Symphony, look at the Mona Lisa… Go ahead.. Listen, look… Now let someone else listen and look.
Inspired? Some of my readers might say yes, and some might say no. I, for one, can be inspired more by Mozart than by the Mona Lisa, but the big difference is this… Whatever level of inspiration you get from it, you have been inspired in a way that is completely different from the ways others have been inspired.
So if you get a weird idea about something and think it stupid, chances are that you may be right to think it stupid, but always be mindful of the fact that there is the distinct possibility that it is not.
