The song “Machhi Marna Jauna Dajai Kalapani Ma” is the rare legendary masterpiece in Nepal that’s so deep, plus emotions and thoughts provoking which calls for every Nepalese to stand up for their country. The words are so metaphorical and meaningful which resonates directly with the patriotism. After you go through the lyric, just imagine, how our country will be if this song’s essence is embedded in our National Policy. Just Imagine That…!
For now, let’s learn to play this song on Guitar.
Here’s the ultimate guitar chords and lyrics for the song. Fill your heart with patriotism!
Let’s rock!
Guitar Chords and Lyrics for “Machhi Marna Jauna Dajai Kalapani Ma”
I decided to do some four levels on the chapters from English II, Second Semester, BBA, TU, as I received several requests to post more of ’em, and I liked to save some of my old notes! So here’s one for you young boys and girls: Analysis or Four Levels of Metaphors by Sylvia Plath. (FYI: She committed suicide baking her head inside the oven. Sick!) Thank me later!
Four Levels of Metaphors by Sylvia Plath
1. Literal Comprehension (Summary)
The beginning of the poem is somewhat playful and even exciting. The speaker is a pregnant woman and she takes herself as a mystery as she has no idea about the baby inside her womb, say its sex, color, hereditary characteristics, and bunch others. She calls herself an elephant as she has become big and round. She compares herself to a ponderous house, filled with a baby or some activities. She regards herself as a melon, and her two legs the tendrils. She considers the baby residing inside her belly as precious as ivory and hopes for the good of the unborn baby.
The state of the poem then changes to that of doubt and gloom. She calls her baby a loaf that seems to be rising because of the yeast. Likewise, she feels herself as a fat purse, with newly minted money inside as the baby, which will be new to the world when born. Then the mood of the poem shifts to extreme desperation and a lot of negativity. She feels that she is just a means for the baby to come through into the world. She is a stage. She admits that she has eaten a bag of green apples. The poem ends dramatically stating that there is no turning back now from this state of pregnancy.
2. Interpretation
The poem seems to have a very negative connotation in aggregate. Plath has used metaphorical language (maybe she is a lady version of Eminem) and a poem with nine sentences with nine syllables, each to symbolize the entire nine months of pregnancy. This implies that it takes nine months after conception for a baby to be born. The thought of a melon strolling on two tendrils can be closely associated with the pregnancy as the structure of pair of fallopian tubes, where the baby develops in one of them, unless of course, you are expecting twins, triplets, or even quadruplets.
Her plight of being a stage where a performance is taking place hints that she fears of being deserted (or forgotten) after it is over. The bag of green apples shows biblical reference: Forbidden fruit to Adam and Eve (First they were naked, and everything went wrong then after). Also the green apples may symbolize unripened or the feelings of the speaker as not being ready for the pregnancy. She is going to lose her freedom.
3. Critical Thinking
I must say, the ability of Plath to describe the entire period of pregnancy using metaphors and limiting the poem in just nine sentences is just f***!ng awesome (Uh oh, what did I write!?) But she ain’t no God (I am beginning to sound like a nigga). Her poem is not free from loopholes. Irrespective to the time when this poem was composed, nowadays the modern technology has enabled us to disclose the gender of the baby inside the womb. Plus, she has overlooked the exceptional cases of pregnancy like giving birth to baby in less (or more) than nine months. The speaker isn’t clear about the number of children she had given birth to. Is it her first pregnancy or she is used to it? Is she a single mother?
Comparing the unborn baby with loaf and dough (money) is inhumane. The latter of these two comparisons reveal the intention of the speaker behind giving birth to the baby, i.e. He or she will support her financially in the future. Besides, if she is unhappy with being pregnant, it’s her own fault. She should have thought of it beforehand (or before s€x). It will have been better if she has used contraceptive while having intercourse with the to-be-daddy of the to-be-born-baby.
Still after the conception, she can get an abortion, provided that it is legal to have one. So technically, this poem seems to be anachronous. Plath seems to concentrate on the symptoms and things that happened to her during the pregnancy rather than the fact that she is bringing another life into the world.
4. Assimilation
After reading this poem, I “asked” Google about Sylvia Plath. I came to know that she committed suicide, baking her own head inside the burning hot oven till death (Wow, that’s daring). Well, what I learned from this poem is obvious, isn’t it? Now I know that what it feels like to be pregnant and walk around with a baby inside… psychologically though, not physiologically. I came to know that it actually takes nine months for a baby to be born. The pregnant women like to eat sour things to overcome morning sickness. I feel pity for the destiny of pregnant women that they will be forgotten and will lose their after giving birth to the baby. One thing after reading this poem… I am proud to be a man! No offense!
That’s it!
But before you go, if you are having a hard time getting control of your life, you should kick start your life again. Don’t be a rat. The problem with the rat race is that even if you win the race, you’ll still be a rat. Read an inspirational article here: Quit that Rat Race!
There ain’t nothing like easy money in this “dog-eat-dog” world. Trying to be rich via fast track has its own consequences, and that ain’t no pleasure. That’s exactly what you learn from Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece – The Lottery. Let me save you the time and effort of going through the whole text. Submit this analysis or four levels of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson in your English assignment, and I’ll bet that your professor will be more than impressed. You can thank me later!
Roll ’em for me!
Four levels of ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson
Literal Comprehension (Summary)
The residents of a small village gather at 10 am on June 27 in the square between the post office and the bank for the annual lottery. A bright sun is shining down on fragrant flowers and green lawns while the townspeople—more than 300 of them—await the arrival of Mr. Summers and the black wooden box from which everyone is to draw a folded slip of paper. Adults chat while the children play a game in which they gather stones. Whoever draws the slip of paper with the black dot on it will receive all of the lottery “proceeds”.
Over the years, the lottery rules and trappings remained the same for minor changes: wooden chips were replaced by slips of paper, and ritual chants and salutes preceding the drawings were eliminated. Other than those modernizations, the same old rules prevailed year after year. No one in the square knows why on earth or under what circumstances the lottery began. All they know is that it is a tradition—a tradition that they are not willing to abandon.
After Mr. Summers shows up with the black box, he sets it down and prepares for the drawing. A housewife, Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson, arrives late just then telling Mrs. Delacroix that she had actually forgotten it is the lottery day until she noticed that her children had left her house and remembered it was the day of the lottery. Each of the townspeople draws a folded slip of paper but doesn’t open it until everyone has drawn it. When the big moment arrives, it’s Tessie Hutchinson who has the paper with the black dot. Everyone then closes in on her, picks up rocks – the “proceeds” of the lottery – and stones her to death.
Interpretation
This text highlights the reluctance of people to reject outdated traditions, ideas, rules, laws, and practices. This is due to our historic construction. Human beings are fearful creatures. It makes them selfish and society wrongfully designates scapegoats to bear the sins of the community. People always want to be on the safe side. Human beings want to explore prosperity, but at the cost of others—making others suffer for one’s pleasure (Freaking @ssholes). So humans can’t be trusted. There is no such thing as love and trust. Besides, this text implies that following the crowd can have disastrous consequences. Human beings are so crazy that they worship unknown entities for an unknown power. Overall, this text depicts village life.
Critical Thinking
This text is so beautifully constructed that each and every character has a significant role. Not only this, even each word is worth reading in the text. The incident does not only takes place in only one character’s life. There is a balance of narration and dialogue. The story may be primitive, but the theme is modern and still applicable. Jackson may not have the intention of claiming that she had extraordinary writing with an odd-sounding story but she must have wished to satire human selfishness, human follies, and human cruelty.
But there are some loopholes, few though. How can the villagers go back to work after executing an innocent woman by stoning her to death as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened? The villagers should have had the conscience not to include the children in such a cruel lottery. And how can the same family members: Nancy and Bill Jr. laugh when they know that their father or mother will draw the lot with a black spot and die? Above all the lottery suggests drawing for a prize, but here, the prize is unusual— the price of life—a merciless death.
Assimilation
The first and most important thing I learned from the text: Never take part in the goddamn lottery. (Remember that “Hurley” from the “LOST” series who wins the multi-million lottery and all bad fortunes fall upon him… Beware!) The lottery is taken as a shortcut to prosperity by many people, but in fact, it is the shortcut to HELL, because getting something without one’s own effort doesn’t sustain, and it is a cause of suffering in life. Instead of being a slave to blind traditions, we should revolt against such nonsense beliefs. We should think logically so that it is justice for every people.
Rabindranath Tagore is a gem of Indian literature, known all over the world for his amazing works in the domains of prose, poetry, and dramas. If you have read his writings, you must have inevitably experienced an out-of-this-world triangle of philosophy, humanism, and mysticism. No wonder, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Digging deeper into his writings, we can see that Tagore had great regard for Lord Buddha. If you have come across his drama “Chandalika”, you will certainly find Buddha’s teachings and ideologies throughout the text. Even more, this underrated drama is included in the curriculum of English in many universities’ courses around the world. If you are one of those who landed on this page searching for analysis or the four levels of Chandalika by Rabindranath Tagore, you have come to the right place. You need not look any further. Thank me later!
Four Levels of Chandalika by Rabindranath Tagore
Literal Comprehension (Summary)
The play revolves around the complexities of the human mind and its conflicting needs and wants. Prakriti, an untouchable woman, lives at the fringes of her society with her mother. Ananda, a disciple of Lord Buddha (Ananda himself was an untouchable before) accepts a drink of water from her. Ananda teaches her not to belittle herself even if the whole society might think otherwise. This small incident sparks a new self-realization in Prakriti. But at the same time, her new self directs her to so far unknown emotions towards Ananda, her emancipator. She wants Ananda only for herself. At the behest of Prakriti, her mother grudgingly agrees to use her witchcraft and necromancy to get Ananda for Prakriti. Prakriti’s mother unleashes the dark forces of the nether world, which captures and binds Ananda and brings him to Prakriti. Prakriti couldn’t watch the humiliation of Ananda under the duress of dark forces and asked her mother to release Ananda. Ananda despite his own agonies pardons and blesses Prakriti in the end. Prakriti also realizes that if you love someone, you shouldn’t hold them in captivity, but rather set them free.
Interpretation
Rabindranath Tagore wrote “Chandalika” based on the theme of age-old caste discrimination and its tragic consequences. He brings Buddhism into the play through the character of Anand (Buddha’s disciple). Although the play shows how the marginalized group in India still has to go through humiliation in the name of caste division. In other words, Tagore wanted to strike on the dark side of Hinduism by highlighting casteism as the vice of this oldest religion.
The title of the play “Chandalika” is significant in itself because it somehow refers to the lower class status of being untouchable. Tagore has resorted to Buddhism in this play to demonstrate the consequences of Hinud’s caste suppression because Buddhist philosophy is all about treating everyone equally with love and respect, irrespective of their background.
The play digs into several aspects of human life and its dimensions. It’s important to note that obsession with something might lead to unwanted disaster. Prakriti falls in love with Anand but ends up binding him with her mother’s black magic (superstition associated with Hinduism).
Critical Thinking
This drama was ahead of its time when it was written. The reader can experience everything related to human life and psychology such as love, compassion, obsession, a feeling of inferiority, sins, purgatory, and rebirth. We can appreciate the Buddhist philosophy brought into the play through the character of Ananda. However, the drama tends to fall back on some aspects from a critical perspective.
Several parts of the drama are really questionable. It is really hard to understand what the author is trying to imply with the actions of the protagonist, Prakriti. Provided that she was born into the marginal section of Indian society, the act of trying to spell-bind Ananda gives us the wrong picture. It indirectly hints to us at the stereotype associated with that section of society.
Talking about love, it is really doubtful whether Prakriti had sincere feelings toward Anand. If she really loved him, she would not have made him go through that suffering. The use of black magic by her mother makes us think if it really exists. Therefore, the readers tend to shift their position throughout the development of the story in the drama. It gets really confusing.
Assimilation
This two (or three) act play portrays an untouchable girl’s desperation to get redeemed from the dehumanized humiliating position, which was lower than animal status. The protagonist has no special desire or need. It’s understandable that she only wished to obtain human status. Like the snake shades its skin, Prakriti got the flicker of hope to discard her lower class status through Anand, the monk’s encouragement. However, she got undeservingly selfish and victimized Anand. She got immoral and selfish for achieving the unachievable.
I think that the theory of destiny is a given concept in Hinduism. It is not a self-developed or god given concept. One’s birth is associated with destiny according to Hinduism. As destiny is a given concept, it can be thus defied. If we dare to defy any given man-made concept, it loses its value. Casteism is a given system. It is a grammar of society. These are the rules, norms and values, and parameters of society. Society is a grinding machine. So we have to accept it until some trendsetters appear.
Last but not the least, I have increased respect for Buddhist philosophy because I think that it is able to bring the best out of any person. I think the drama is about self-realization. We can sum up the drama in a sentence: Love is not about possessing someone. It is about giving them freedom.
Before we go… Let’s chant it together: om maṇi padme hūṃ
This one was a long-awaited read for me. I had come across this book back some years ago when I was going through the self-development category in a bookstore. The name of the author “Viktor E. Frankl” was all that I could remember about this book. But as it happened, once again, I made my way back to this book (or, maybe, this book made its way toward me). After my first momentarily brief encounter with the book at some forgotten bookstore, it was only after this one guest lecture during our Training that the speaker mentioned this book. In fact, the session was mostly centered on this book because the speaker has had a similar experience in his life. Of course, unlike the one, Frankl had in the concentration camps. And that’s when the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl rang a bell in my mind and that’s how we met (I mean, the book and me).
Only after reading this book that I realized how much I have missed about life and its meaning from a totally different yet simplest possible perspective that the author has put in the book. This article is just a humble and innocent attempt to present what I could grasp from the book and found worth sharing with the world.
About the Author:
Prof. Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, born in 1905, spent three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps during World War II.
Reviewing “Man’s Search for Meaning”
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is built around the author’s Experiences in the Concentration Camps. The second part is focused on Logotherapy which was pioneered by the author. The concluding part is a postscript that presents the Case for Tragic Optimism. The first part constitutes the significant part of the book and is the base for the successive parts.
Hitler’s concentration camps from World War II are self-explanatory. However, the author, being one of the few prisoners who survived the camps, presents in his book a firsthand account of what life used to be for the prisoners in the camps, the fates of the inmates, and most importantly the psychological reactions of the inmates.
For the Camp Administration, the prisoners in the concentration camp were nothing but just numbers. The name, the profession, past lives… none mattered. If someone died, it was just a number. If someone had to be sent to the gas chamber, again the prisoner was just a number. As a matter of fact, the author was Number 119,104.
As a psychotherapist (or logotherapist), he analyzed, through observations and experiences that the inmates in the camp generally used to go through three phases of mental reactions, viz.
a. Initial admission to the camp: Shock b. Getting used to the camp routine: Relative Apathy c. Release and Liberation
The author talks about his own personal experiences as well as others regarding the first phase. He and the other 1500 prisoners were brought to the camp on an overloaded train. The train stopped just where they wouldn’t even want to be at the end of the world, the place they dreaded the most—Auschwitz because the name itself was known for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, and massacre. Immediately on their arrival, their fates were to be decided—will they live to see another day or will they be sent to the gas chamber right away? And their fates were then and there determined by the simple waving of the finger of the SS officer in either direction, Left or Right. The significance of the finger game was later known that it defined their existence or non-existence. Almost 90% of the 1500 who arrived at Auschwitz that fateful day was sent to the left. They could be later seen as the cloud forming up from the chimney a few hundred years off. The author made it into his existence.
What would happen next? What was in the store for them? For instance, when they were sent for the shower, skin naked, they didn’t know if they would come out alive, for they always doubted if the real water dripped from the water sprays.
In such adverse and harsh conditions in the camps, the thought of suicide would dawn upon nearly everyone, and the camp provided enough opportunities for doing so. Take, for example, running through the wire—touching the electrically charged barbed-wire fence.
Coming to the second phase—the phase of relative apathy, the prisoner achieved a kind of emotional death. What the prisoner used to feel or experience on the first few weeks of their arrival at the camp, later they got used to it—the scenes of torture, beatings, screams, and even the death of fellow inmates. Feelings were blunted. No pity, no horror, no disgust… just nothing. Sick inmates and corpses couldn’t move them. Corpses were dragged carelessly on the floor like a bag of potatoes.
Such emotional death was necessary for the inmates to survive the condition. This insensibility worked as a protective shell—the necessary mechanism of self-defense. Getting out alive was all that mattered. A person thought of himself only, his existence being descended to the level of animal life, the survival instinct.
It’s worth understanding the psychological states and reactions that the author has illustrated in the book which is not only a matter of academic interest but can serve as a simple guide to the life of a person. The author had set a rule for his life. He learned to let fate take its course. Once, he volunteered to go with the sick inmates to the “rest camp”, which everyone thought was destined to be a gas chamber. But he decided to go anyway, even when his well-wisher offered to amend the list. As it turned out, lucky for the author, they were actually taken to the rest camp. No gas chambers. And shortly after he left, famine surged in the previous camp. Cannibalism broke out. Pieces of flesh were missing from the corpses.
This aforementioned account is related by the author to the story of Death in Tehran. The story goes as follows:
A rich and mighty Persian once walked into his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
The lesson of the Story
The lesson of the story: we cannot escape our fate. We will inevitably meet it even when we are trying to avoid it. We are our own worst enemies sometimes. The decisions we make for our future are part of our fate.
“What you’ve experienced, no power on earth can take from you.” – Viktor E. Frankl
Making choices in life and taking initiative whatsoever is one of the most difficult tasks for anyone. In the concentration camps, some decisions meant either life or death. However, the author’s experience of camp life shows that man does have a choice of action. Even in the most adverse conditions, one can have independence of mind. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. This is one of the most overlooked powers of the mind, the ignorance of which leads to psychological and mental decay of the person in an adverse situation.
Finding Meaning in Suffering
People try to avoid suffering in life. They tend to feel sorry for themselves. This is especially true for those who don’t have resources at their disposal. Society has learned to admire material wealth and happiness. And those who cannot afford such lifestyles feel sorry for themselves. Unhappiness is one thing. They feel unhappy for their unhappiness.
“But even in suffering, one can find meaning. Life and Suffering are co-existent. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.” Frankl writes.
After all, suffering isn’t that bad. It is a blessing in disguise. But the question is: Are you worthy of your suffering? Dostoevski once said, “There is one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my suffering”.
Therefore, you got to have faith in yourself and your future to make it through your life—no matter your circumstances. Nietzsche put it simply as “he who has why to live for can bear with almost how”. Give yourself a why—a goal, for your life. The how of your existence will make its way. But if you see no more sense in life and see no point in carrying on, you will soon be lost. An anonymous person once said to me: Live a BIGGER life… Not the lonnngggger one”. True.
Life and Expectations
Most of us ask ourselves this question: What can we expect from our life? This question is fallacious. We need to make fundamental changes in our attitude. It doesn’t really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. What is the responsibility of our existence and its continuance in this universe? You have a responsibility toward someone who is waiting for you—your parents, relatives, lover, or even some pet. Or you have unfinished work to do. This a great message from the author to all those potential suicide fanatics.
Life is a B!tch. It hardly goes your way. But if you are still alive and reading this post, CONGRATULATION!!! You have a reason for existence. You have hope. You haven’t given up. I know you have gone through a lot in your life and a lot more is yet to come. Whatever you’ve gone through, the pain and pleasure, the sufferings and celebrations, all these can be and will be an asset for you in the future. As Nietzsche said: “[that] what doesn’t kill me, makes me [more] stronger”. (No… it wasn’t by METALLICA. Sorry to break it to you.) What you have experienced so far in your life, no power on earth can take from you. Live and cherish your life.
So what’s the Ultimate Meaning of Life?
There’s no one specific answer. It’s like asking Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo what the best trick in football is. It is unique for every individual, and even for an individual, the life of meaning differs from situation to situation, day to day, and hour to hour… like for the prisoners of concentration camps.
When you find meaning in life, you find meaning in suffering. But that doesn’t mean that suffering is necessary. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove it from the equation. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
Ask yourself: How do you see your life from your deathbed? Do you see meaning in it? Have you lived it to the fullest? Even if you are wealthy, full of financial success and social prestige but when looking back at it from your deathbed if you cannot see what all that was for… it may not have been worth everything. But, in spite of your suffering, if you see meaning in your life… well, there you go, Winner.
You change the calendar every year. From the pessimistic POV, it’s like your calendar of life is thinning out with every passing moment. But if you truly want to find meaning in life, live your life in a way that you can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness you have had in your life. You tear out the page from the calendar that you have lived through, scribble the notes worthy of remembrance and stack it with the well-cherished pile of your life’s experiences.
And what will be your choice when you grow old if you are given the option to be young again? Do you find a reason to envy your younger self, feeling nostalgic over your lost youth? While the youth may have yet uncovered possibilities for him in the future, isn’t it better to have the realities of your past rather than just the fantasies and possibilities of youth?
Final Words
Finally, I would like to conclude with this line from the book:
Live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. It means that first, the present is past, and second, the past may yet be changed to be what you are meant to be. It’s like a Time Machine, I guess. Just a thought!
I’d seriously recommend that you read this short but deep book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl. You won’t regret it.
Stop reading (Seriously, put this newspaper down or turn off the display on your e-device). I’m sure you still remember that old tale from Moral Science (I hope they still teach that subject), the story about the race between the hare and the tortoise. Dear Lord, how can you forget that!? Remember the moral of the story: Slow and steady wins the race. (Snap! Now get back to reading so that quit that rat race ASAP before it is too late.)
“What’s so special about this story? Everyone has heard or read about it.” Good thing that you asked. Well, no, you don’t know what you don’t know. You bet!
Tortoise is slow but it keeps on going and wins the race. The Hare boasts of its speed but lags behind eventually. So what’s the lesson you learned? Be slow and steady? Or, don’t boast? These are obvious, aren’t they? But if you had taken time to analyze this story, then it would feel incomplete as if something is missing. Something very important. Didn’t it ring the bell? Never mind, let me do it for you. Ding!
Quit that Rat Race!
Such moral tales are written in a way that reflects human behavior and psychology. But the story as we know of doesn’t seem to contribute much to that. That’s because let me repeat, there’s something missing from the story. It’s the human nature that’s missing. Not all people I know (and you know) fall under the category of either the Hare or the Tortoise. That happens only in the movies. Sorry to break it to you like this. Get used to reality!
Then how do we complete the story?
Thanks to Dr. Paul Dobransky who completed the story for us. The missing animal is a RAT. So how come we never knew about the Rat? That’s because the Rat didn’t even join the race. That’s exactly what we people do. Now we can complete the old fable. Here’s the missing part.
…As the race started with the gunfire, the Hare sprinted like Ushen Bolt. The Rat, amazed at the Hare’s speed, took a couple of steps behind and said, “What’s the use? I can beat the Tortoise but I can never outrun the Hare. I have better things to do, like digging through garbage cans for an easy prize—one I can taste—a nice leftover piece of meat or bread.”
You chose the wrong guy, n*gga!
And we know what happened thereafter. The Hare took a nap. By the time the Hare awoke, it was too late. The Tortoise became the new champion in town (or the jungle). And the Rats were left behind wondering where the race had gone wrong. (Imagine the Rats standing on their hind limbs and scratching their heads with their paws.)
It’s up to the person to decide to do the things that make one great, to be like the Tortoise: tough against threats, yet popping his head and feet out when there’s something good for him to explore; the Hare, ruled by instinct; or the Rat: destined to be unknown.
That’s why they call it the rat race, and as the adage goes: “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” (Lily Tomlin). Truly said.
And like our Brother Rat, we never even manage to leave the starting gate of life in general. Our ancestors (the apes) must have been disheartened to see us like this.
God bless us, however!
[Seems like RATS were our ancestors. Darwin was wrong after all about “Evolution”. No wonder, rats are used to clone surrogate human ears in genetic engineering. Wow! Just Wow!]
I may be in love. I have fallen for the lady who doesn’t even exist or may have existed hundreds or thousands of years ago. While working on the third charcoal replica of one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous paintings, “Leda and the Swan”, I fell for that Renaissance Playboy model, I suppose. But since I am pretty sure that we all are “social animals” trapped in the cages of our own ego and selfish desires, and you live on the same planet as I do – my sixth sense hints to me that you aren’t a bit interested in my narcissistically artistic love story. So I am just going to leave it out of this 21st Century Renaissance discourse.
Nevertheless, the Da Vinci charcoal art project got me contemplating the Renaissance, and I went back further into retrospect. What if Leonardo Da Vinci was alive today? I’d love to share with him some of my version of his artwork. Turning the knob in my time machine further backward – what if Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and even Jesus Christ were among us today (as reincarnation or something)? Would the world have been a much better place to live in, philosophically and politically… or just honestly? I hope so!
But wait!! That’s just a snap judgment. This is the 21st Century, aka Digital Age (advocates of different sectors claim it as their own respective ages – Age of Business, Globalization, Advertising, Ebola… blah, blah, blah), where we are webbed in social media in such a way that we don’t even know how to shut up when we are on our own. In this context, it appears that Socrates’ and Plato’s philosophical status would be smashed into pieces by loads of #hashtags and god-awful selfies, and some adult confessions and nonsense status updates. We can’t even afford to turn our blind eyes and deaf ears to serious issues. We are just a bunch of cowards!
The 21st Century is no different from the Dark Age. (We have electricity, but that’s a different thing. Thanks to Faraday and Edison.) We evolved from Democracy to Republic. That’s good, theoretically! But in practice, the situation has aggravated instead. I don’t know if it is just me that I am crazy or something, but everything seems to have a corrupt genesis.
Do I even need to make you aware of the defective and morbid government and leaders we have? Rulers rule in their own selfish interests rather than for the benefit and welfare of the country and its people. We tagged monarchy as a tyranny. And still with democracy and ‘Republic’, we are no better off. We jumped from the frying pan into the fire. We caged the lion, and let us be ruled by a filthy gang of rats. What can be annoyingly worse than that? And the rats are vying for crazy power-play among themselves.
But here’s the catch: the problem with the rat race is even if you win the race, you’re still a rat. Lily Tomlin said that I guess! We have a melodrama going on in this country. We aren’t going to get anything good out of it. It’s an open secret. This isn’t me being pessimistic; I am being pragmatic. We have a helpless government that is awfully devoid of morals and justice, which according to Augustine, is nothing more than a band of robbers. “If justice is taken away, what are governments but a great band of robbers?” said Augustine of Hippo. The same thing happens in our country: victims are tagged crazy when they seek justice; criminals are proposed as martyrs. God knows what’s next on their sacred manifesto!
We no longer can afford to ignore and tolerate the misconducts of these rabble-rousers, and their savage-aimless followers who are best qualified to practice their rights inhibiting our freedom, hoping that everything will be all right one day. It won’t. We are done with these Leviathans. We need no more politicians. The country and its people will not have rest from the evils until and unless politicians are banished from the government. We need philosophers who understand the meaning of the good life. We need the 21st-century Renaissance.
If you have taken an English course at the university, you must have inevitably come across the name Alden Nowlan. Does that ring a bell? My best guess is that your professor asked you to submit an assignment on “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” by Alden Nowlan. And you did some google search with that keyword, and that’s how you landed on this page. Well, it’s your lucky day today. I have just what you need. Thank me later!
‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ by Alden Nowlan
Literal Comprehension
The speaker in the poem is an amateur poet who is trying to compose a poem about his love for his wife. He hasn’t written down the poem on paper yet. It is being processed in his mind. At the same time, his wife enters the room creating some kind of unfavorable environment for the speaker to hold his mental composition as he loses his attention. Consequently, he couldn’t finish the poem. The composition is lost. He then silently curses his wife.
Interpretation
The poem seems to be trying to tell us about the speaker’s passion for composing poems. A briefly mentioned act of his wife hints that she is either angry or playful at the moment. The inability of the speaker to hold his mental composition just for a while shows his mental deficiency or short-term memory. It causes loss for him, but he can’t scold her to her face. He only curses her silently which implies his henpecked and submissive behavior. Finally, the poem endeavors to establish a link between peace and creativity.
Critical Thinking
Consciously or unconsciously, the poet has created a poem different from the other long poems with a vague subject matter. At the same time, the subject matter of this poem is too thin that it only focuses on the love of fame, peace and creation, and scolding. The speaker curses his wife silently. Why doesn’t he scold her openly? Is he dumb@ss? Or is he afraid of that b!tch? It is better for him to go kill himself than to live a submissive life. Besides, his wife shouldn’t be blamed for his loss of the poem. In fact, it is his lack of creativity and memory weakness responsible for the loss. The speaker is trying to compose the poem about his love for his wife, but he ends up cursing her which is quite contradictory. This shows that he loves his creation more than his wife. How can such a man be a good husband?
Assimilation
I absorbed the fact from this poem that our human mind is limited and tends to have short-term memory, but this should not hamper our creations. To overcome this, we should jot down creative ideas as soon as they crop up in our minds. I realized the importance of a peaceful aura for creativity. Anyone can be a poet, and anything can be the subject matter of the poem. What we need is concentration. From now on, I’ll be carrying a pen and a piece of paper wherever I go and writing down my creations when they evolve. This will help me as I write songs for my band too. However, I never had the sort of experience as the one mentioned in the poem.
Before you go… Since you will graduate through this BBA before you know what hit you… you should read this one: Wake up. Kick Ass. Repeat.
“In order to get a kickass job, you need to have a kickass work experience which you can have with a kickass job that you’ll be offered only for the kickass experience, which you can get with the…”. Well, you get the point! Wake up. Kick ass. Repeat. Life’s like that.
Welcome to the real world, my friend! Welcome to hell!
On the verge of wrapping up four successful years of undergraduate studies at one of the top business schools with flying colors, I’ve learned nothing useful other than a couple of or three extraordinarily useful behavioral topics. Yet my intellectual teacup has completely been filled to the brim with the gluts that need to be done away with before I can learn and discover anything new and practical that actually matters. Seems like, in the hindsight, I’ve laid out the four most precious and impressive years of my life learning the theories and kinds of stuff that I’ll have to spend a decade or the entire lifetime unlearning and burying them.
How naïve was I? I’m sure you have a no different story to share, either!
And even before convalescing from the Bachelor’s (BBA) degree hangover and taking time in the real world to bask in that evanescent freedom of the lifetime for a while, most of us are cannon-balling along to sign up for the next Hangover MBA marathon as if the world is coming to an end tomorrow, dreading the notion of being left behind in the race.
That’s insane. You deserve a break!
Biz Schools are awesome. I won’t deny that. I went to one of them like many of you guys. In fact, Biz Schools are so attractive that we’re easily enticedto them, like a moth to a flame. It lures us into the pleasant fantasy of a perpetually prosperous and comfortable life—the dream that a couple of years (or a double couple for Undergrad) at the Biz School and University and a happy-hour networking and case studies and year-end internships will get you the corporate recruiters shamelessly throwing handsomely paying prestigious executive jobs in your pockets. Plus you get a couple of years off from having to live in the real world. Wow! Who could afford to turn a blind eye to such an offer?
I couldn’t. I’m going to get my eyes checked, just in case!
Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between daydream and reality! (No, wait…! That’s one heck of a big-black-bold line in between.)
The prime issue is not whether going to university is a positive experience; it’s whether or not the experience is worth the cost. University is great in itself. But instead of spending huge sums of your (or your parents’) hard-earned money to learn marginally useful information that could be acquired for a few hundred bucks from a local bookstore or ubiquitous Google, you can best utilize your time and resources learning things that actually count in practical life. Talking about Google, Americans didn’t just develop the holy internet to make it easy for you to search for some celebrities’ leaked nude photos online.
It’s about time you got one Kickass Street-smart MBA! Jim Rohn, a college dropout turned millionaire, testifies: “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
A school is a place where a hundred people read the same book. That’s downright stupidity. Those one hundred people can read one hundred books. Do the math.
Skip Biz Schools; educate yourself. And go out and kick some ass. Thank me later!
I just finished reading one of the masterpieces by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and as you have guessed correctly, it is none other than “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. So this article is an honest and naïve attempt to summarize this novel. To be honest, I couldn’t stop myself from writing about it. So here we go.
This is a novel with no single main character in focus as you would find in other. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has ingeniously webbed the characters that the readers are susceptible to confusing one character to another, especially with the names that often repeat in the generations, viz. Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, Ursula, and Amaranta. There is an implicit reason behind this repetition which the reader may or may not be able to unearth at the end of the novel. Marquez must have known that this state of confusion will occur among his readers, and that’s why he included a family tree, in the beginning, to help the readers to differentiate between the Arcadios and Aurelianos, at least.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The novel is set up in a small town named “Macondo”, maybe in the Latin American region. The town seems to be founded by the Buendia family upon which the entire novel is based. The novel starts with Buendia’s journey of creating a utopian society, isolated from the rest of the world for several years since its founding, except for the occasional visits by the gypsies bringing to the town the technologies and inventions from other parts of the world.
One of the gypsies, most notably, Melquiades, has been pictured as the most important but easily overlooked character, both by the Buendia in the novel as well as by the readers because as it seems most of the transformations and generations of the Buendia family almost had some reference to Melquiades’ deserted workplace, which used to be ultimately the place for solitude to at least any one of the Buendia’s generations, from the first one Jose Arcadio Buendia to the supposedly last one, Aureliano.
It may differ on the readers’ individual perception, but it appears that, at the end of the novel, it was none other than Melquiades who was narrating the entire events throughout the hundred years that happened in the lives of Buendias. The final Aureliano realizes the encrypted message left behind by the Melquiades in the parchments to the first generation of Buendia. Upon the horrific view of his newly born child from his wife (who was actually his aunt) Amaranta Ursula, where the newborn was eaten by ants, it is shown at that prodigious instant Melquiades’ final keys were revealed to Aureliano and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man’s time and space: The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.
And as you can find somewhere in the middle of the novel that the first Buendia goes insane and his family binds him to the chestnut tree where he dies. Considering all these instances, the author has mysteriously slipped in the prophecies and the mysterious manuscripts by Melquiades as the ultimate text of the novel. In fact, the hundred years of solitude were predicted for the Buendias by Melquiades. Melquiades turns out to be the gypsy from the Oriental world and his manuscripts were found to be in Sanskrit which the Buendias have been trying miserably to decode for generations to generations.
The fate of Macondo town closely resembles the Buendias’. From the utopian and isolated from the rest of the world, the village loses its magical charm and innocence, and most importantly, its solitude state as it comes to contact with other parts of the world. Civil wars begin. Death, which was never heard of takes over the town. Politics take over. And behind all these unpleasant events, Buendia’s offspring seems to be responsible.
Marquez has been generous in providing the readers with the details of the events in the lives of the Buendias from birth to death, love affairs to marriages, and fantastic of all, the wild love-making scenes which seem almost real. Sometimes it also appears that there is an incestuous relationship among the Buendias’ generations Ursula was always fearing that such a relationship will bear children with pig’s tails—the fear that lingers throughout the books—which ultimately happens with the final generation of Buendia which the novel ends.
Just as with the turbulent history of Buendia generations, the town faces a similar fate, and with the hurricane, the existence of Macondo and Buendias come to a tragic end, only to realize that the entire events were just being played out of the predetermined prophecies of a cycle from happiness and utopia to the tragic and sorrowful end.
In order to truly appreciate the horizon of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one must read this masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Let me quote you one of the lines from the final pages of the novel that shows the author’s ability to capture the readers’ mind with his attention to detail (you can find plenty of such throughout the novel):
“He put the child in the basket that his mother had prepared for him, covered the face of the corpse with a blanket, and wandered aimlessly through the town, searching for an entrance that went back to the past.”
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is truly a masterpiece.
As commented by The New York Times, “Should be required reading for the entire human race”.
Trust me… You wouldn’t regret a single moment you invested in reading this magical book by Marquez.
