The Man Booker Prize 2014 - The longlist.

Here is the longlist comprising the thirteen books selected for the Man Booker award 2014, one of these will be awarded. The short list will be announced on 9 September 2014 and finally the winner will be announced on 14 October 2014. Any comment or guess of on who the winner will be is welcome.

And The Leaves Will Fall Again

And The Leaves Will Fall Again

The blazing heat

Wilted the stones

Paved along the path

To the land of toil

In the long summer days

Oozing out the last drop

As the rising sun

Of an early dawn

Beckoned me.

The hot air

Of molten dust

Ushering me 

Back to labour

To till across horizons

To sow

To water the parched

Seed bearing mud packs

With drops of sweat

With un-complained

Long forbearing.

And slog I will
Till the day when

Her wait will end

When together we will

Fill the harvest

Into the silo.

And the leaves will fall again

In the rolling fog 

Engulfing 

The auburn foliage

Of the Maple trees.

And we will brace ourselves

to brave the chill

With the grains of labour

For long dark nights

In the evening of life

Belonging to each other

Shrouded in the warmth

Of our togetherness.

                   ..... by Ramakant Pande

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A Little Way By Frank Lebby Stanton

A Little Way

        A little way to walk with you, my own—  

   Only a little way,  

Then one of us must weep and walk alone  

   Until God’s day.  

 

          A little way! It is so sweet to live          

   Together, that I know  

Life would not have one withered rose to give  

   If one of us should go.  

 

       And if these lips should ever learn to smile,  

              With thy heart far from mine,          

         ’T would be for joy that in a little while  

   They would be kissed by thine!

                            ... By Frank Lebby Stanton

The Hidden Enemy Part I: Why we tend to be irrational.

Scientists of cognitive psychology have time and again wondered at the irrational nature of humans, especially when it comes to taking decisions. Even the most brilliant top brain is not free from this flaw and will tend to be irrational when it comes to taking a real life decision, or wayward while interacting with people in his routine activities involving even the most insignificant things of everyday life.

A lot of effort is being made to understand this human flaw in the West but no concrete or convincing explanation is forthcoming. The brain chemistry too has been mapped but the mystery of illogical action continues to elude one and all alike.

Sages in the Ancient India too were intrigued by this inexplicable flaw. By constant observation over centuries and meditating on their findings they discovered that it is not a human flaw by default. They found that the fault lies in the aham or ahankaar i.e. ego that gets engrossed in the Human psyche as one grows up.

But over the tens of dozens of centuries, the meaning of these words changed and various definitions of the word 'ego' surfaced, the result being that the findings of the sages of Ancient India got lost.

Their findings were as simple as their living but the discoveries have tremendous possibility for the whole human race to live a complete life without miseries.

They found out that a newly born child is equipped with enough endowments to live a life in its entirety. 
As the child grows, she sees the world around her and feels the world with the five senses bestowed upon it by the Mother Nature.

The child can see everything and an image of the properties of everything around it gets formed in her mind in the form of knowledge or logic which she would use to her advantage by connecting these logics. That far the child is rational and would stick to logic and will do everything exactly the way she had planned to do it and react to the result in the most mature way. Life will remain simple, disciplined and fulfilled.

The sages figured out that the real problem was in that the child could see and feel everything but herself. Not being able to see herself she is not able to understand as to what exactly she is. As the child grows, she becomes  aware of people around her and what they think about her. The child sees herself through the impression reflected by the people around her, mostly based on how they treat her. 
When she is appreciated, loved, encouraged, confirmed etc she feels good about herself and a self image is formed inside her mind in which she thinks she is good, brilliant, efficient, strong, fearless etc. When she is rejected, refuted or abused she feels bad about herself and a self image is formed inside her mind in which she thinks she is worthless, weak, dull, clumsy, fearful etc.

As she goes about the worldly activities and moves around in the society which is ever increasing in size, she meets different type of people in different circumstances, each person casting in her a good self image or a poor self image.

By and by a composite self image is formed in her which consists of two broadly classified self images. One is the good self image which makes her think of herself as possessing the ability in achieving things, having good looks, deserving respect etc and this self image makes her happy.  Likewise the other image is a poor self image which makes her feel sad. The problem now lies in the degree of goodness or badness of the images, of which she has no idea and therefore she keeps on testing the degree of goodness and/or badness about her through the reaction of people towards her and their opinions of her.

Eventually, she starts to think of herself as the composite image that has taken over her real self, The real self is now clouded and lost for ever. The false image now guides her.
This false composite image is called aham or ahankar or ego. 

She now goes about her adult life  and lives with two images simultaneously. Every time she thinks that her good self image is confirmed she feels happy and whenever she thinks that her poor self image is being validated, she feels miserable. In either case she has become a slave to her ego and tends to act and behave irrationally to satisfy her ego.

Full of futile and troubled preoccupation, her life becomes miserable. 

Click here for Part-II of this article.

In The Ensemble

In The Ensemble

It is just once,

When the heart

Doesn't crave,

For all that is gone

And

Lost into the past.

It was just that once.

When everything changed

Forever.

When

Borne by ourselves,

In that astonishing

Incredibly stupendous

Moment of unexpected

Ecstasy.

When

Reason stopped asking.

When

Life got endowed

With the purpose

Of being.

When I saw you 

and you me and

together,

In each other

In an ensemble

We saw us.

                                       ...... by Ramakant Pande

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Before Midnight (2013): Movie review

                Before Midnight (2013)

In this sequel to Before Sunrise, the romantic movie of 1995, and Before Sunset, the movie of 2004, you will now find the lead characters Celine and Jesse in their mid-forties.

Nine decades after the previous movie, Celine and Jesse are now married and have twin daughters and are having a get together at a friend’s house in Peloponnese in Greece. Just like its earlier prequels, Before Midnight, is a story told over a period of 24 hours. The two much admired and loved characters of earlier movies are caught in a relationship that is at risk when Celine is struggling hard with her job while Jesse is a bit down and out after dropping his son from his ex-wife at the airport.

Directed with great finesse while handling a very explosive situation in married life, this movie was nominated for academy awards in the best adapted screenplay category.

Before Midnight is a must watch.

We give it an 8.5 in a scale of 10.