A GEORGIAN QUEEN IN INDIA
The article was first published here.
Abhijit Chatterjee
Lazy armchair philosopher and the occassional poet.
Reading A Painting - Flow Of Time In Millais' Ophelia
The painting titled "Ophelia" was painted by Sir John Everett Millais sometime between 1851 and 1852. He was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood along with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The group believed that mimesis or the imitation of nature is the central purpose of art. Hence, they sought a return to a "pre-raphaelian" age of art before the mannerist style of painting took over from Raphael and Michelangelo.
Abhijit Chatterjee
Pied Piper and Dionysus: Figures of Repression
Read the original article here.
Abhijit Chatterjee
HOSTING THE OLYMPICS HAS BECOME A FINANCIALLY UNTENABLE UNDERTAKING
The Olympic Games, a celebration of athletic prowess and international unity, have grown into one of the most prestigious and widely watched events in the world. Since their modern inception in 1896, the Olympics have transformed from a modest sporting event into a massive spectacle that commands the attention of billions. However, this transformation has come at a significant cost. The financial burden of hosting the Olympics has escalated to unsustainable levels, raising concerns about the long-term viability of the Games. This essay explores how hosting the Olympics has become a financially untenable undertaking, leading to severe economic, social, and environmental repercussions for host cities and countries.
Abhijit Chatterjee
In A Drunken Stupor
I left the inhibitions behind,
Abhijit Chatterjee
Anatomy of a Death
He punched the ticket on the turnstile,
Abhijit Chatterjee
The Empty Hall of Mind
These tired eyes once opened to find
Abhijit Chatterjee
A Portrait of My City
Zigzagged streets and crisscrossed lanes,Brick walls and stained window panes,Flaneuring down alleys in vain,Strewn with human follies and pains.
Abhijit Chatterjee
When December Sets In
Staring,
Abhijit Chatterjee
Strolling Through A Street
Through the dusty yellowed street
Abhijit Chatterjee
A Night At The Autumn Festival
Whipped cream clouds rain down from high,through velvet winds in vanilla sky,through crimson dawn and orange dusk,the mind wanders for the soul to lusk.Perfumed smiles beneath street lamps.fairgrounds full of kids and tramps,the lights and sounds engulf and dazeas feet tumble through the human haze.The air is thick with bells that peal,devotees throng the streets in zeal,midst electric warmth and incensed breezethe cutpurse operates with fluent ease.The lucent faces come and go,some from slums, some homes highbrow.life saunters home, those faces yawnas radiant night gives way to dawn.
Abhijit Chatterjee
The Dichotomy of Life
When the sky's about to fall,Paint the stars fiery and bright,So, when the heavens do crashYou will be decked in starlight.Smile when the wounds festerAnd release a sighed breath,Cry at a violent birth,And hope for a peaceful death.
Abhijit Chatterjee
Once a Night’s Dream
Of ancient lands and mythical streams,Sweeping pastures where starlight gleams.The vibrant green and marine blue,Between them a thousand wondrous hue.This is the glorious world we lost,Our present on future has rendered a cost.A world now only in dreams entrapped,The pastures, the streams and lands unmapped.Marvels only the night can unlock,Of lives beyond time and ticking clock.A splendid genesis of quaint mystery,Fables and lores forged in prehistory.Beyond the distant pelagic climes,Far where the wedgebill chimes,Deep forests where tigers prowl,On moonlit nights the grey wolves howl.Of sublime design this dream I dared,In chains of pedantry is ensnared.The strict straight lines of daily reality,Perpendicular lanes in perfect symmetry,Harsh street lights and electric wires,Astray cynics in dull attires.Air thick with doubt, fear and smog,And noxious vocables of the demagogue.Away from this daily strife and brawl,And sights that invoke thoughts banal,Lies the silver land of visions eternal,Where breezes blow melodies of songs vernal.There, hopes germinate into abundant flora,With method shrouded in obscure anaphora.But the trees turn ashen and the sky grows dark,The land once resplendent is now stark.As grey morning dawns the alarm clock sounds,The dream breaks and the vision drowns.I wake up drowsy on my austere wooden bed,And start to plan my dreary day ahead.
Abhijit Chatterjee
An Honest Prayer
How would you know?Did you step outOn to the gravel or snowAnd aimlessly wander about?From your hawkish perchYou watch us abidePrecepts of your amoral church,And you, our bootless guideLead us down this endless strait,As you use words as verbal bait.
Abhijit Chatterjee
To My Motherland
You are the dawn of hope,
Abhijit Chatterjee
A Song For The Final Days of Earth
A sight none to behold,
Abhijit Chatterjee
Indian Summer - A Short Poem
The blazing sunSets earth afire.Melts ice,Hardens loam,Rivers dissipate,In arid despair.
Abhijit Chatterjee
Inception and The Dream of Descartes
The Matrix has always been hailed as one the most accurate celluloid adaptation of the “Dream Argument” of Descartes, but people mostly overlook the Cartesian parallels in Nolan's Inception (2010). Nolan is a storyteller. He engrosses us so much with the plot at hand that the audience forgets to engage with the philosophy of the film while enjoying the film. It was only later after I finished watching the film that I began to understand how Descartes might have influenced Nolan's philosophy. The film begins in a dream and slowly rises up to the level of reality on-board the Shinkansen in Japan.
Abhijit Chatterjee
Haider and The Common Man: A Reading of Vishal Bhardwaj's Film in Arthur Miller's Light
There can be little doubt in the fact the Vishal Bhardwaj has established himself in the last few years as one of the foremost imaginative and nuanced film-maker in India. Much of his success can be attributed to his adaptations of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. The Indian-ness of Mr Bhardwaj's adaptations is what makes the movies so critically and commercially successful in the Indian milieu. This points to the fact that something is universal with Shakespeare's tragedies and with tragedies in general.
Abhijit Chatterjee
The Branson and Bezos Adventure
It's a bird!...No, it's a plane!...No, it's Bezos and Branson in their game of one-upmanship of who would become the world's first bonafide private astronaut (sounds a lot like private pilots). And, guess what? It is still not clear even after their respective successful flights. A lot of the controversy depends on definitions and technicalities and who's defining them. One of the technical terms that are doing the rounds after their flights is "Karman Line". Named after Hungarian-American engineer Theodore von Karman, it is defined as the boundary between atmosphere and space. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale sets it at roughly 100 kilometres above mean sea level. Now, some aeronautical agencies often do not recognize the Karman Line as the valid definition for 'edge of space' and many have their own respective boundaries set for defining the edge of space. NASA, for example, sets it at 50 miles (80 kilometres) above mean sea level. Any flight above 80 kilometres is considered by NASA to be a spaceflight. However, even within NASA, this metric has often stayed inconsistent and sometimes its definition was motivated by Soviet and American achievements during the space race in the early 1960s. But, most of the world followed (and still follows) the Karman Line as the defined boundary between space and atmosphere.
Abhijit Chatterjee