NavDharmyug

F. Scott Fitzgerald With his Daughter, Scottiee I was, of late, putting together an article on the letters of Francis Scott Fitzgerald or FSF. I have always been enamored by his writing. Fitzgerald had a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, whom he lovingly addressed as Scottie or Scottina. Scottie was borne in October, 1921, soon after Fitzgerald married Zelda, the daughter of a Judge, riding on the success of his first book, This Side of the Paradise. Scott Fitzgerald’s later life was fraught with difficulties, financial and otherwise. He lived apart from Zelda who mostly lived out of hospitals, searching for the cure for her chronic depression. His later work could not replicate the early success of The Tales of the Jazz Age, and The Other Side of Paradise,  and his slip into abject poverty could not even be arrested by The Great Gatsby, which could get its due only after his sad death at the age of 44. He lived away Scottie, and wanted to teach her all that he coul...

To doubt, to debate, to negate, counter and argue is the greatest virtue of human mind. It is a pity that we have long since forgotten taking a position. Then, one might argue, why should one take a position- any position? Why do I have to side with any truth which I have not discovered myself.   The people are divided into large masses, a huge chunk of human sea, split by diverse conviction.   Social media which was invented as a platform to share one’s own convictions has long since been reduced to a virtual battleground. A converse opinion is responded with  a feral violence. I do not feel happy anymore about debates. They aren’t debates.   There can’t be any debate without decency. The world is fractured and it demands that I lean to one side or the other.   Why must I surrender my right to be an individual and join a group to seek strength in number? Why there are no debates which either converts my opponents or me? We are fast turning into a wor...

I am currently reading Letters by Kurt Vonnegut. It is an amazing collection of letters, loaded splendid wit and amazingly disarming honesty. I have been off and on worrying about the dying art of letter writing, in spurts. Last I went into bout of sadness about the fact that no one writes letter anymore was when I had heard the rendition of the letters of Ghalib, the great Urdu poet, in the magnetic and soulful voice of an equally great Urdu writer, poet of the day, Gulzaar. What imagery, what honesty, wrapped in such shiny, twinkling couplets like " Jamaa karate ho kyun, raqeebon ko/ yeh tamaasha hua, gilaa Naa hua" (Translation- The way you gather those who strive and compete with me for your love to listen to the woes of our love/ Turns what would be Otherwise a plateful banter Between two lovers Into a vulgar spectacle) The visual description and verbal imagery transports you into a different world, when you read and imagine Ghalib writ...