Z is for Zorba

is for Zorba

Zorba was a foreman, that’s not to say

he wasn’t a dab hand at play and foreplay -

he played the cimbalom,

asked a courtesan, “madam

which door may I use to go the whole way?"

A final shout out to Arlee Bird the creator of the challenge and a big, fat thank you especially to Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh for being the exemplary co-host and personality he is, and to all the other co-hosts as well.  Also a warm vote of thanks to all visitors and commenters for their words of encouragement and laughing at the right places even when they didn't feel the least like laughing :)  

Okai. So. That's that.  A-Z.  Done. Survived. Happily exhausted. The best kind of exhaustion is when you're knackered from doing too much of what you enjoy. Got to grab that badge when I wake up.  Z is for zzz...and oh yes, nearly forgot.  Fistpump!! Yay! See you in May!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

Y is for Yuri

is for Yuri

Yuri’s space trip

There was a famous spaceman called Yuri

who preferred his chickens à la tandoori

he went into the rocket

with some drumsticks in his pocket

and said, “these’ll do till Moon, even Mercury.”

His bosses said, “We don’t care a whit

how far you carry or how indeed you take it,

the protein’s okay high,

for beyond our deep blue sky

the problem, quite frankly, is how you shit.”

Have you ever wondered, given it some thought

how zero g affects pooing astronauts?

A different level of aim

is the name of the space poo game,

on no account must shit escape and float.

Please note that the above is wholly a product of the imagination and any resemblance to people or events are purely coincidental etc etc. 

The real Yuri’s flight lasted less than two hours and therefore shit and pee weren’t a burning issue.  However, the story goes that as he went to the launch, he apparently asked for a pee-stop and relieved himself on the back right-hand tyre of the bus that was taking him to the launchpad, which subsequently evolved into a ritual of epic proportions.  Astronauts follow it even today.  

Is it just me or does it strike you as well? how Yuri sounds like a truncated version of pee, and if this whole pee-stop thingy is somehow connected?  No? Okay, it's just me then.  Never mind.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

X is for Xerxes

is for Xerxes

Xerxes and arses

The one and only for this letter

is Xerxes, and no-one else better!

Because he was a great king

though that could mean anything

from sex-crazed jerk to kick-ass go-getter.

But he was portrayed in books after

as cruel, inept, with scorn and laughter;

but then history depicts

based on whose arse was kicked
and whose boot was involved, nothing’s dafter.

What can I say about X? That it is the most Xtreme letter is obvious. The only other name I know that begins with X is Xavier.  And the only Xavier I know of is the Jesuit saint who went to India and founded schools and stuff all over the place.  Not Xactly a life to induce wild laughter or anything, not a limericky type of life at all.  At least Buddha had the sense to sport a distinctive hairstyle!

Maybe there are other names and characters- Xiu, and Xin, and Xu.  But my knowledge of China is shaky and knock-kneed. Limited to the cuisine passed off as Chinese by the residents of China Town in my hometown Kolkata. Which has been there for nearly two hundred years of the three hundred odd years Kolkata has been in Xistence.  They are more Bengali than Chinese, if you ask me. At least their food is nothing like what’s available in Chinese restaurants in Singapore. East is East, and West is West, and in this case, don’t have the least intention of meeting.  The Chinese in Kolkata speak fluent Bengali and probably write Mandarin in the Bengali script, since their own alphabet is so Xcruciatingly compleX.

Tell me, who’s your X? 

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

W is for William

is for William(s)

Can't have it all, mate!

William S. was a golden lad, all told.

His fancy and its flights were purest gold -

he wrote up some blizzards,

each of them zillion words,

but the head that housed his brain was quite bald.

No-one gets the whole world on a plate

whether he's Will S, or Will of Kate.

A prince or a pauper,

or a nonpareil author -

can't cadge one damn hair to grow on his pate.

Who else but Will S Will you post about this month of this year? His birth and death anniversary are both in April, and this year is the 400th anniversary of his death, and we are still reading his sonnets and watching his plays.  That's some serious best-selling numbers! 

As for Will of Kate, though  he emulates the bard in hair-dos and anniversaries, and seems to be an all round good egg generally, I have my doubts whether his legacy to the English-speaking Wider World will be of the same magnitude after 400 years. No Way!

And I Wonder if William S had ever anticipated the changes his language Would go through in 400 years? I'm sure anyone doing the A-Z in 2416 would be using different Words. And I bet vowels will have disappeared entirely, I mean this para would probably be Written like this - 

n wndr f wllm s hd vr ntcptd d chngs hs lngg wd g thru n 400 y? m sr ny1 dng d B-Z 2416 wd b usng dff wrds. n bt vwls wl hv dspprd ntrly, mn ds pr wd prbly b wrttn lk ds -

and of course, capitals would be part of an ancient ritual, and using a comma would put you at par with the Wonderfully esoteric.

And We the last Weekers of this challenge are almost done, Whew! and Wow!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

U is for Urban

is for Urban

Urban's crossness

Pope Urban said crossly to Galileo,

"In this awful business of your helio –

you see centricism is fine

if you know to draw the line,

as for where it’s centred – that would be geo."

Pope Urban was mostly suave n urbane

except he lost it at Galileo’s vein,

“The sun the centre? Just absurd!

besides it contradicts the Word

and I’m not allowing that during my reign.”

I don't know much about Pope Urban (or for that matter any Pope, very little to do with Popes and Kings and lofty beings). But Urban is not my favourite word, and why anyone Pope or otherwise, should choose to have it as a name beats me hollow.  

Urbanisation is a serious issue where I come from, the socio-economic impacts are mind boggling.  Personally, I have grown up in spaces that are beyond back-of-beyond, and therefore tall, dense buildings, concreted roads bristling with the ubiquitous sodium vapour lamps,  and too many people milling around, all make me want to take off at 100 miles an hour. The only advantage to city living that I can think of are bookshops and libraries.  I'd rather be a forest than a street any day, or to be more specific, an African grassland than a street.  Grasslands imho are Uber cool, have you ever seen any street that was of the same awesomeness as a stretch of savannah? Nope, me neither.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

T is for Totaled

is for Totaled

You’d think T would be simple, but oh boy!

I dithered between Titan and Troy,

Telemachus and Trope,

Till I lost all hope.

T Turned out the hardest to deploy!

I wavered between Topaz and Turquoise.

Between Tourmaline, Trinkets, and Toys,

Tricorne,  Trireme, and Theme,

the Terrible Ivan’s Team,

and I pondered long and hard on Tolstoy’s.

I Thought of Triptych and Tetraptych,

but They neither clicked nor did They stick;

Tsar, Tmena and Tassel

proved too much of a hassle

to push and shove into a limerick.

Till now I have Trounced every letter

but T has pulled a fast one and better.

I’m Totaled, quite stumped

T has Triumphed and Trumped,

fingers crossed it’s not a Trendsetter!

I never Thought That T would be This difficult.  No dearth of words for T, it is among The Top Ten frequent-use letters in English. Has it happened To you too?  What you assumed would be a piece of cake Turned out like chewy gristle and you had to fumble for your napkin? 

T is also for Truth, True : a word we hear early in life. 

"Who's Taken Those Tarts I kept for Tante Tabitha and eaten Them all? Tell me the Truth!" 

"Mark The answers True or False."

"The dog ate your homework? Not a word of That rigmarole is True!"

Well, That at any rate, is True.  Not one word of This rigmarole, here on This blog, is True either.  I don't claim To Tell any Truths Through my poetry, or short stories (there's a reason why They are called fiction, folks!) or anything else. They are not life-changing, self-empowering, affirmative, ultimate end-of-quests, questions or answers.  

(My Truths are all face-To-face, The verbal kind, I can't look anyone in The eye and lie convincingly, I am a Terrible liar.  Which is why I had to hand in all my homework in every Time, on-Time. But I digress)  

Give me a pen and paper and I could Tell you a series of pretty respectable lies, quite enticingly I Think. Only Thing is no-one believes me when I say I am lying. But I am. And They are. One hundred percent pure unadulterated lies.  Trust me on This.  All poems here are a Tissue of lies, a figment of The Imagination. Truly!

Except This one.  I couldn't wrestle a single historical/mythological/fictional T-figure into a limerick. That's True alright. And you have The evidence above.

  

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

O is for Ocypete

is for Ocypete

Ocypete and hOw the patriarchy determines stereOtypes

Ocypete the swift was a mythic Harpy

A bird woman, though not quite as chirpy

Whatever may be the jam

It’s always cherchez la famme

From mythology to crime to malarkey.

Why do women have to always take the rap

from epic Opprobrium to daily crap?

In literary stereotypes

and in mundane real lives

for every accident and Odd mishap.

Why must Harpies and Sirens be all females

the nastier sex in most of the tales?

If Ocypete were sometimes Pete

I for One would find that neat;

if those cherchez-ed were sometimes males.

O is for Odd : As I scheduled this pOst, there was news Of the Oddest possible hijack, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked this mOrning by a man in a suicide vest, demanding a meeting with whO? the POTUS? nO, his very Own ex-wife! NOt tO pOOh-pOOh the Ordeal of the passengers Or anything, but we were all geared up in frOnt of the TV, the media of cOurse zOOming in with their chOps all licked and dripping, agOg for the terrifying drama, people all Over social media frantically trying to get messages acrOss to their lOved Ones and all, when Oops! the suicide vest turned Out a fake. Egg On everyOne's face, TV crews dispersing with tail between legs, security experts who had pOntificated earlier, going ballistic with Outrage.  All round hilarity ensued, with the Egyptians laughing the lOudest.  LOve their sense of humOur!

The plane was supposed tO land at CairO but was diverted tO Larnaca instead. And what has the CypriOt President said about the incident? - "..there is always a wOman invOlved."  (Sigh...) Of all the cliches did he have to trOt this particular One Out just now??

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

N is for Nero

is for Nero

Nero was no fiddler

A most unpopular man was Nero

he may've been a Caesar but no hero

no fiddler on the roof

cause there is ample proof

that his fiddling quotient was close to zero.

He may have been one peculiar geezer

but no way  could he be a fiddling Caesar

The fiddle didn’t exist

untill 1556

however eager may have been the beaver.

Of course the violin isn’t the only thing

that can be fiddled or twiddled by a king

the selection’s quite wide

thumbs, body parts aside

there’s other stuff to scrape apart from strings.

All I’m saying here is that I’ve learnt

he wasn’t playing music while Rome burnt.

He could well have gotten

up to things far more rotten,

but not a violin – that much I’ve discerned.

N is also for Name and my name, Nilanjana : which is difficult to pronounce. Tough on a child who spent her childhood outside the comfort zone of her Native tongue.  I had a hard time explaining the pronunciation (Nee-laahn-juh-naah) when I went to Delhi, and it was mispronounced by everybody. I got asked endlessly about what it meant. The various interpretations took yonks.   Then there were the misspellings. Uribbaas!! as we would say in Bengali.  

I went to Nigeria, from the frying pan to the fire; globalisation, child-raising by villages, multiculturalism, were far into the future. The Delhi practice in explanations came in pretty handy. My classmates had as much trouble wrapping their tongues around my name, as I had wrapping mine around theirs.  But in time, both sides learnt to do it, and we were both the richer for it. Some classmates shortened it to Nila, which was my Nickname anyways, and some even further to Nil.

I went back to India after high school, graduated from Delhi, got a job in Kolkata, got married and settled down among Bengalis where my name was commonplace, I did not have to explain the pronunciation anymore.  Then suddenly one fine day we upped and moved to Arablands, and I had to learn the Arabic names, and the Arabs who I came in contact with, had to learn mine.  Story of my life, boss!  

So. Would I change it for a lighter, Neater, more portable, travel-friendly one? Nope, No, Nah, Niet, Never!! And that was the same way when I had to spell it out for the Ninety-ninth time in class as a Nine year old. Nilanjana (girl with blue-kohl lined eyes; the colour turquoise; lightning), Nila (sapphire), Nil or Neel (blue), all of them so me! Even though I've never lined my eyes with blue kohl till date, but who knows? one of these days I might just! :)




Nuts! that was quite a Non-post slushfest Now, wasn't it? Nonplussed - going the memoirs way, Not a good indication of possible age. :D Tomorrow is a No post day.  I'm going to use it to catch up on my reading and rest, it's been a big week offline and on.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

M is for Marie

is for Marie

The reason why the French love bread

Marie Antoinette sat reflecting in a chateau -

deep thoughts on how popularity hits a plateau,

When in ran her aide and said,

“Majestée, the poor get no bread”

“O Foolish One,” she cried, “Let them eat some gateau.”

“No, no” the peasants growled, “we’ll have our bread!

We will NOT be fobbed off with cake instead,

we the French peasants

can get quite unpleasant.”

We all know what happened – the queen lost her head.

Was she just a thoughtless woman, or plain rude?

Or quite out-of-touch with her wider brood?

Her aide lacked for tact

that is a certain fact.

The moral? mess not with ye masses over food.

If you’ve wondered why the French are so passionate,

so finicky about their croissant, and baguette

well, now you clearly know.

It’s that long ago gateau

the French were offered by Marie Antoinette.

M is also for Marionette - very strangely close to a portmanteau of Marie Antoinette, who May or Mayn't have been one of circumstances.  At any rate, there is no historical evidence to support this famous let-them-eat-cake callousness of hers.  She was a very extravagant lady no doubt, but family members of terrible rulers have been known for their dodgy shopping habits in all times, then and now, Imelda Marcos, Suzanne Mubarak, Many examples, only I can't just now think of any More names with M. 

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

L is for Lucy

is for Lucy

Lucy of the hottest curves

Lucy, though quite old, has curves so hot

that folks would die to touch her as often as not -

a lumbar curve and a valgus knee

a pubic arch quite beyond sexy

assets that most other fossils haven’t got.

I'm told that's why there's just a replica -
in the museum, so robbers don't nick her.
you'll get a quick shufti
but no touching that knee!
and totally forget what was in her knickahs!!

I sometimes question what would we find
if we dug into the paleonto-logical mind?
Suppose the knees were a male's
would we get the same details
of limbs and arches, curves front and behind?

L is aLso for Lag : there is a Lag in returning comments here this week. My meticuLous scheduLes have gone sLightLy awry.  The CoLours of Life Poetry FestivaL is this Saturday, and every other evening is taken up with rehearsing. In fact, the dress researsaL is Later today, serious attack of butterfLies! But I digress, what I actuaLLy meant to teLL you was - I am going to Leap right back on track and catch up with you on Sunday.  As soon as the poetry fest is over.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

K is for the King

is for King

the King’s pickle

The King of Egypt, known as the Pharaoh,

had his innards pickled and his bone marrow

dried after death and preserved;

in Giza his tomb can be observed -

it starts off wide, but then pointedly  narrows.

I wonder why his friend and architect

thought building straight was somehow a defect?

Or was it a monumental

metaphor for the central

premise that all things fall in once they’re erect?

K is also for Knack and Knock and Knee and Knowledge - as a Knon-Knative, sorry, non-native speaker of English, this silent K business used to make me go Knock-kneed and cross-eyed as a child. Utterly, Kompletely Konfusing?  Why is it there if no-one is going to pronounce it? Why is it there at all in the alphabet when C and Que-endings are doing half its work anyways? Why does English have 3 Konsonants which are essentially doing the same job? Any Kind souls here who'll get me out of this Kwandary?

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016 

J is for Job descriptions

is for Job descriptions

Job descriptions of Johannes et al

Johannes, you know, of the Kepler kind

worried till he went almost out of his mind,

“astrology, astrophysics

or just plain mathematics

how on earth is my work to be defined?”

Job descriptions are the rummest of things

they flummox all, from scientists to kings.

"Must get the Bible translated,"

thought James, "or else I'm fated

to be called First and Fourth, bloody confusing!"

Don't you know a couple Jobs who never fit

their job titles and their defined limits?

They bent and extended,

counselled and befriended -

and went far beyond their official remits.

The job descriptions of letters J and G

never fail to amaze, amuse and confuse me -

G does both George and Gavin

But J’s only job is jabbin’

at one sound with forlorn monotony.


Who's overstepping the line, who's being a slob
who is falling down merrily on the job -
finally it's all a matter
of a juxtaposition of letters
and that doth time and again smacketh me gob.

J is also for Joke : which is what limericks are supposed to be.  If they are somewhat lame limericks, then they are poor jokes and bring about eye rolling rather than all round Jollity and mirth.  Come across any lately?

J is also for Just : as in 'Just one more blog/page/story/whatev, and then I'll stop reading and shut this damn gizmo down and get some rest.' And then when you next look up, the dawn is a hairline crack in the curtains.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2016