Froster Me!
Rote learning poetry was a pain back in high school. I did not understand why one must "compare thee to a summer's day" or how "a thing of beauty was joy forever". If only I could talk to my 13 year old self, of how much I crave a good piece of poetry today and how I seek comfort listening to online recitations of Shakespeare and Keats. How it could never beat the feel of the very first time I read it on one of those wooden benches that have witnessed classic poetry recitations, time and again. If only I could relive those moments of live poetry recitations back in class.
Funny, how Life's chanced indecisions lie in those semi-precious, self embroiled spaces between "What If" and "If Only" .
With all due respect to Shakespeare and Keats, their works never caught my fancy until later. But to the innocent, indecisive, simplicit observer of a school girl, unfazed by the delusions of literary grandeur, Frost came easy.
I didn't have to force learn Frost. He spoke to me.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost
Words flowing so effortlessly in a composition that narrated what legions preached and failed. But Frost, nah! All it took was a Fire and Ice metaphor. Nobel Prize. NOW!
Everytime Madhu Teacher (my high school English teacher, whom I hold so dearly close) recited Frost, I was transfixed. It was actually better than Television. Imagine. A young 13 year old me telling you, she found a better alternative to cable television. This, in a time where the Internet was only something that only a few privileged had access to. The phrases "tech savvy" and "Raapchik Touchscreen hy Boss" ("Sexy touchscreen bro!") hadn't quite yet made it to our diction. And saying stuff like, "New age technology fascinates me", was retorted by, "Gaandu hy kya? " ( "Are you nuts?").
Like even today, I do not understand the fascination with technology. The argument is that technology saves time. Frankly, I've never heard someone say that I've saved all this time using a word processor, let me use this saved up time by visiting an old friend or a museum. It's a ridiculous argument.
At the same time, it's foolish how many confuse poetry to be a complicated conjunction of prose, manipulated across generations, to mean a billion different fudged up rationales. That's how we got screwed with religion. Don't fudge this up too!
A poem speaks to you with the most effortless sense of words to find that one common sentiment that binds us all. A desire. A desire to feel connected to something, to someone. To orgasm together in a faint realization, of how beyond these chalkboard scheme of things, we could grow up to be whoever we want to be and our invincible mights could one day after all, change the world. Such was the rush, when I read Frost.
As a child, I grew up in a house that was a window peek away from an unconquered, uninhabited landscape of lush green trees and wild grass, which Frost so utterly paints in several compositions. We shared a fascination. And it wouldn't be whimsical to presume that this Carmel grey skirt found her own reclusive escape from life, in Frost.
So, here's wishing an observer of trees and grass, of frozen lakes and forested darkness who shared a common dream with a generation of us to venture out into the unknown and unsaid, yet another eternity of greatness. For many an imagination knew that it was Frost that had answers to the most daunting puzzles of self-realizations.
Happy Birthday Sir Robert Frost. Thank you for joining a generation of hopeless wanderers in our quest unto the Road Not Taken. We might not have grown up to be the invincibles or changed the world like our 13 year old selves dreamt, quite yet. But the woods still look lovely, dark and deep and we've miles to go before we sleep.
Funny, how Life's chanced indecisions lie in those semi-precious, self embroiled spaces between "What If" and "If Only" .
With all due respect to Shakespeare and Keats, their works never caught my fancy until later. But to the innocent, indecisive, simplicit observer of a school girl, unfazed by the delusions of literary grandeur, Frost came easy.
I didn't have to force learn Frost. He spoke to me.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost
Words flowing so effortlessly in a composition that narrated what legions preached and failed. But Frost, nah! All it took was a Fire and Ice metaphor. Nobel Prize. NOW!
Everytime Madhu Teacher (my high school English teacher, whom I hold so dearly close) recited Frost, I was transfixed. It was actually better than Television. Imagine. A young 13 year old me telling you, she found a better alternative to cable television. This, in a time where the Internet was only something that only a few privileged had access to. The phrases "tech savvy" and "Raapchik Touchscreen hy Boss" ("Sexy touchscreen bro!") hadn't quite yet made it to our diction. And saying stuff like, "New age technology fascinates me", was retorted by, "Gaandu hy kya? " ( "Are you nuts?").
Like even today, I do not understand the fascination with technology. The argument is that technology saves time. Frankly, I've never heard someone say that I've saved all this time using a word processor, let me use this saved up time by visiting an old friend or a museum. It's a ridiculous argument.
At the same time, it's foolish how many confuse poetry to be a complicated conjunction of prose, manipulated across generations, to mean a billion different fudged up rationales. That's how we got screwed with religion. Don't fudge this up too!
A poem speaks to you with the most effortless sense of words to find that one common sentiment that binds us all. A desire. A desire to feel connected to something, to someone. To orgasm together in a faint realization, of how beyond these chalkboard scheme of things, we could grow up to be whoever we want to be and our invincible mights could one day after all, change the world. Such was the rush, when I read Frost.
As a child, I grew up in a house that was a window peek away from an unconquered, uninhabited landscape of lush green trees and wild grass, which Frost so utterly paints in several compositions. We shared a fascination. And it wouldn't be whimsical to presume that this Carmel grey skirt found her own reclusive escape from life, in Frost.
So, here's wishing an observer of trees and grass, of frozen lakes and forested darkness who shared a common dream with a generation of us to venture out into the unknown and unsaid, yet another eternity of greatness. For many an imagination knew that it was Frost that had answers to the most daunting puzzles of self-realizations.
Happy Birthday Sir Robert Frost. Thank you for joining a generation of hopeless wanderers in our quest unto the Road Not Taken. We might not have grown up to be the invincibles or changed the world like our 13 year old selves dreamt, quite yet. But the woods still look lovely, dark and deep and we've miles to go before we sleep.
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| Happy Birthday Mr. Frost! |
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