8

It started as a language exercise in the German class the other day. Our professor told us to try our hand in writing a little poetry after explaining the nuances of Vergnügungen, a poem by Bertold Brecht. The original poem is in German (Deutsch). But she told us to write it in English. “We can translate it at the end of the term”, she said. I was not thinking much about the form or content when I attempted it. Words came. Like Pablo Neruda said, “Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from…” No, no… I am not claiming what I wrote was a great poem. I even don’t know whether it could be called a poem. But I liked the result. Here it is.

Pleasures

Solitude

Company of loved ones

Reading a good book

Listening to a favourite song

Watching the rainbow

Walking in the rain

Riding a bike along a country road

Walking the streets of a strange town at dusk

Visiting an old temple

Long drives

Short walks

Music

Silence

Dark nights

Bright afternoons

Rainy evenings

Waking up

Falling asleep

Placid lake

Choppy sea.

Now read the original…

Vergnügungen / Bertold Brecht

Der erste Blick aus dem Fenster am Morgen

Das wiedergefundene alte Buch

Begeisterte Gesichter

Schnee, der Wechsel der Jahreszeiten

Die Zeitung

Der Hund

Die Dialektik

Duschen, Schwimmen

Alte Musik

Bequeme Schuhe

Begreifen

Neue Musik

Schreiben, Pflanzen

Reisen

Singen

Freundlich sein.

…and here is the translation

Pleasures / Bertold Brecht

The first view from the window in the morning

The rediscovered old book

Enthusiastic faces

Snow, the change of seasons

The newspaper

The dog

The dialectic

Showers, swimming

Early Music

Comfortable shoes

Comprehension

New Music

Writing, Plants

Travel

Singing

To be friendly.

I decided to post this in my blog simply because it gives the blog a different look and adds some variety.

7

It is December. Much before the Christmas stars announce it, I feel the arrival of the month. Evenings become cooler. There is that tinge of chill in the air. The stars in the ink black sky twinkle through the veil of mist. This is my favourite time of the year. December, which comes after November and the rains, has a calming effect on the nerves.

Though in one of my earliest memories associated with the season there is a Christmas cake, December is not just about Christmas for me. Christmas became associated with ‘my December’ much later. But now Christmas stars and a lot of other things associated with Christmas figure prominently in the background of my December ‘landscape’.

December vacations during school and college days were a calmer affair – compared to the hectic Onam holidays. That may be one of the reasons why this ‘cold month’ has found a place in the warm corner of my mind. December and Christmas have something which seldom changes – unlike the Onam season, which almost always makes one feel ‘the yester years were better’. Each December is different. But each December is also the same, some how.

I realised the magic of December – December cast its spell on me, rather – when I first encountered A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in the form of a textbook in high school. The December portrayed by Dickens in the novel was a foggy and dark one, but the story and the atmosphere was gripping and left an everlasting impression in my mind. I have come across December and Christmas in many other books, but none came closer to the Dickensian December and Christmas depicted in this novel. No wonder people still consider it as the best ‘Christmas book’ (and the best ‘December Book’ for me). There are a couple movies which give me the ‘December feel’ any time of the year. One such movie is The Polar Express – a 2004 animation movie directed by Robert Zemeckis that tells the story of a magical train which takes a boy and a couple of other children who no longer believe in Santa Claus up north to meet St. Nicholas himself. It is not the story, but the music and the backdrop which make it a ‘December movie’ for me. So is Home Alone (the first in the series directed by Chris Columbus starring Macaulay Culkin).

If I have to do some travelling in December I see to it that the journey starts in the evening, so that I would get a chance to enjoy the soothing calmness of a December evening (and night). As the dusk falls one can see that the growing darkness has a tint of grey in it as a result of the mist which shrouds it. Churches, especially in small towns and villages, decorated with colour bulbs and Christmas stars appear as glowing islets of light. The songs of Carol parties which are on their way to visit houses led by someone dressed as Santa Claus act as the soundtrack. These are the sights and sounds I look forward to and enjoy very much during these nocturnal trips.

There is something about December which makes my mind and thoughts calmer and clearer.

Elliot described April as the “cruelest month” which “breeds Lilacs out of the dead land” in The Waste Land. But December breeds hopes – or that is what I feel.

6

Learning a new skill is real fun. So is perfecting an old skill. I am indulged in both these activities nowadays. I am learning German (Deutsch) and at the same time perfecting my drawing skills.

When I think about learning to read and write (both my mother tongue which is Malayalam and English) I can’t remember anything clearly. It seems I got initiated to both these languages smoothly. Seamlessly. Coming to Hindi – though I remember first seeing those letters, putting a sound to them and making sense of words and sentences; I do not have any fond memories about it. I hated that language because of more than one reason. Learning that language deprived me of my three summer vacations which would otherwise have been memorable. And those who taught me the language never paid much attention in instilling any kind of love towards Hindi in their pupils. But somehow I managed to learn and pass my exams without much effort – which was the only purpose of learning it. One of the pleasures that came with leaving school was leaving Hindi behind. If I can speak, write and read (in that order) Hindi reasonably well, I owe it to All India Radio and Doordarshan. The cricket commentaries in AIR and the Sunday Hindi Movies in Doordarshan (I am talking about the late 80’s) have helped a lot in making my Hindi better. My five years in Bombay and travels to Hindi speaking states have also been useful. But that ‘learning process’ also happened at a subconscious level. I understand Tamil pretty well and can speak it ‘passably’ (but can’t read or write it yet). Again, I learned Tamil too with out any conscious effort it seems.

Learning a new language is not just about learning to read, write and speak that language. It is also about understanding a new culture. The nuances of a language are a reflection of the culture which developed that language. When you start understanding a new language it broadens your outlook and also gives a lot of ‘options’ to your linguistic abilities. The socio-cultural premises that developed a language influences the way an idea is conceived and expressed in that language. If you are good in more than two languages that gives you an edge. You can conceive and approach an idea you want to express in different ways, from different angles, which gives a fresh flavour to your language style.

But the real fun is in the actual learning process. Words which were just a collection of strange looking alphabets and odd sounds to the ears suddenly exude with meanings. While watching a movie or reading a book, when you suddenly come across a foreign word or phrase (Madagascar, a 2005 computer-animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation when the penguin quartet – Skipper, Rico, Kowalski, and Private – emerge from the tunnel and ask ,,Sprechen Sie Englisch?” or Odessa Files by Frederick Forsyth in which that famous statement by John F Kennedy, ich bin ein Berliner, is just one among many German phrases which appear in it) and the joy you feel when you understand the word and get its meaning is also part of the pleasures of the early days of learning a new language.

Perfecting an old skill is also fun - but more about it in a later blog.

5

It is more than a year since my ‘last post’. I was planning to write about driving. But now I don’t even remember what aspect of driving I wanted to ‘blog about’. In fact in between I was wondering what I should do with this blog. Because of one thing or other I could not do my blogging on a regular basis. But I did not like the idea of ‘quitting’. I knew one of these days I was going to come back. And here I am.

One thing that kept me away from blogging was a question – what should I be doing (writing/ blogging) here? I looked upon blog as an extension of my personal dairy. But that was a misconception. Now I know blog is something different. And I want to explore the possibilities of this new medium seriously (though blogs have somewhat lost its popularity to ‘twitter’. To put it crudely – Blogs are like letters or e-mails while twitter is like SMS. I mean no offence. And I am an ‘active twitter’).

Being a self confessed bibliophile one thing I like talking about (and thinking about) is books.

One of the first books I read was a (Malayalam) translation of Leo Tolstoy’s novella “A Prisoner in Caucasus”.

The story is about two Russian army officers – Zhilin and Kostlin - who get captured by Tartars and their attempt to escape. And then there is Dina, he little Tartar girl who helps the prisoners.

(Incidentally the first three books I read were translations. One was Macbeth. The other was Robin Hood. I still have the Robin Hood with me. But lost the other two.) In those days - I am talking about the 70s – we used to get a lot of translations from Russia. Especially Russian folktales and classics. Those books, neatly produced by Progress Publishers Moscow have elegant typefaces, beautiful illustrations and used a language style which was different in a refreshing way. The translators – Omana and Gopalakrishnan – used Malayalam words effectively to evoke a Russian feel. They simply transcreated the Russia in the readers’ minds. But this particular book I am talking about was not from Progress Publishers. Was it a “Balan Publications”? A publishing company owned by Mathew M. Kuzhiveli? I am not sure. It was a thin volume. It has a maroon colour cover. The name of the translator was not there. Or I have not noticed it. (I was in the second or third year at school then and did not know the importance of the role of a translator)

I would have read that book a number of times and reread certain portions again and again. (After reading a book I still try to reread it soon. And then go back to certain parts which I enjoyed most). But then that book went missing.

A few years ago in an article, MT (Yes… the one and only M T Vasudevan Nair) mentioned about a translation he did during his Victoria College days to get some pocket money. And the book he translated was “A Prisoner in Caucasus”!

I am trying to find out more about it. All about that research – in a later blog.