Manic Monday

It was a hard return to reality as the thanksgiving break came to a close and school is back for a couple of weeks. Well it might only be a couple of weeks but it promises to be one of those times when day and night lose meaning to be replaced by one continuum of grey twilight where the only thing around you is engineering and more engineering.

Monday night saw the beginning of my longest stint at any kind of academic assignment. Started at 8:00 in the evening and ended at 1:00pm the next day without a break. Can now safely say that its surpassed anything in the past. Its been one crazy day. Thankfully my work shift has been relatively peaceful. :) Am penning this one rite now and even the chick counter shooting through the roof is not enough encouragement to keep sleep, that beckons, away:). Its only some 45 mins more before I sign off :p

Now that I think of it this blog is the only thing thats keeping me from going off to sleep. .. well okie the blog and the few PYTs around ;)

Let me leave with another little something ... this time its from Rabindranath Tagore..

Hard Times
Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls
Of an ocean's drowsy booming,
Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.
Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?
Where the nest and the branch's hold?
Still, O bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

Stretching in front of you the night's immensity
Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;
Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming
Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon
Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.
--But O my bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers
Intently watch your course and death's impatience
Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves ;
And sad entreaties line the farthest shore
With hands outstretched and crooning ' Come, O come ! '
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes ;
All that is lost: your words and lamentation ;
No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers.
For wings are all you have, and the sky's broadening courtyard,
And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction.
Dear bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings!



Well this is a translation from Bengali and its turned out pretty good. :) For some reason when I read this poem I kinda get reminded of that book by Richard Bach "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". Evocative .. .. as one of my friends is so fond of saying ... c'est tout ;)