Poetry

Reading poetry was as natural as breathing. I thought everybody does that. “Daffodils” everybody knows. ‘They flashed upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude & then my heart with pleasure fills & dances with the daffodils’. Wordsworth has made our lives worthy of living the dream. I did not know which flowers are daffodils then but they are yellow , in bunches & Wordsworth has seen them near his house.

“Solitary Reaper”.. I saw her singing at her work & over the sickle bending, I listened motionless & still. As I mounted up the hill the music in my heart I bore long after it was heard no more! The last sentence had a finality to it. again I didn’t know what a sickle looked like. Then when I learnt about the blood, blood cells & the ailments.. there was Sickle cell anaemia, I immediately knew. I had seen Nargis on the poster of Mother India but did not know it was the Sickle.

In college, I wonder if learning took place or not but poetry did. The plain pages were the fools paradise. Rather than the arithmetic problems, more verses flowed. It was the period of simple verses as , Tuzhe vahi mazhi sahi….a typical Mangesh Padgaonkar. Adaga kevdha ha zagga,etc. I loved every moment of it. Then as a teacher I had access to the supplements & lot of time till the students wrote their papers. Now I have time & the students don’t write anything but the verses are not so flowing as before.

Last year we had a program of songs..Shravan saari. A student Joshi sang a song from ‘Manzil’ that I had been thinking of for a couple of days.’Rim jhim gire saavan sulag sulag jaye mann…’ there are so many songs why this? At the end I was asked to give my opinion. I said ,’You made my day. I had been thinking of this song. I am not aware what Amitabh Bachchan thinks of this song but it is an indispensable part of us. Well, the other sons were bonus. Thank you for a nice event.’ I had planned two verses which as usual did not recite. ‘Avchat alelya pavsane dharla jor, paithanicha agraha hota sarvancha pan mi anla mor’ a little tacky perhaps but I had been ready.

The leisure & the stimulus needed are both missing nowadays, sometimes some verses do come to you unbidden. I just can’t read the violence or the cruelty in the verses. They don’t appeal like these.. Sang sakhe tu pahile ahes ka akashat pakshanche thase? The flying birds leaving their mark? what an idea! or Sanj ye gokuli savli savli…the repetition makes it more dark here. The song enhanced by the lovely dancer Ashwini Bhave makes it a beautiful memory.

Phite andharache jale…I like verses as…Ti geli tevha rimzim paus ninadat hota, meghat adakli kirne to surya solvit hota which make you visualise the scene just like Wordsworth. An apt name to the maker of words.He could bend them as he wished.Beside the lake beneath the trees fluttering & dancing in the breeze, ten thousand saw I at a glance tossing their heads in sprightly dance…continuous as the stars that shine & twinkle on the milky way…

It gets more & more pictorial as we proceed. In tough times do the friends really help ? Do the books guide you? I believe the poetry does, because it has more power. The national anthem or the patriotic songs bring in the change. ‘Jinku kinva maru’ or ‘Ab tumhare hawale watan sathiyo’ have the ability to recharge always. Charging ahead to all the good times to come.Keep reading!