it will never
  pass into nothingness; but still will keep
  a bower quiet for us

--
From Endymion, by Keats

This one's for jiji:

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."


-A. A. Milne 

And because I can not resist adding another pic,

Something like a rant

I'm talking, today, of a movie called 'geet gata chal'. I loved it, I did. I thought the hero had too much of that goodness, and innocence, and that that we call तेज in Hindi. But I hadn't much problem with that, no, I delighted in it all. Got a lil wistful, too.

And so, here's the story. He finds himself invited to a rich family's home. He shows more of his too-good-to-be-true-ness, and there's some comedy, with their spoiled brat of a daughter. Then, madame falls in love with him, acts all possessive of him, and they decide to get him married to her. Now, this guy's a free spirit, belongs not to anyone, ain't tied to anyone, and inordinately happy that way. And so, when he finds out, he runs away. Don't get me wrong, he loves her, and all, but he feels like a caged bird, he does, and they play the title song in an appropriately plaintive tone. Perfect, it waz. 

But then everybody had to scold him for ditching her, and he goes back, and everybody forgives him (ha! as if he needs forgiveness) and he meekly gets married to that spoiled child of a girl. 

I tells you, I hated it.

I've since maintained that they should've ended it when he walks away. And today, I found a short story called 'Atithi' by Tagore. Some half way through it, it began to remind me of this movie, and further events corresponded prettily. I, rather impatient, skimmed through the imagery, and when I made my way to the end, I gleefully saw that it stops right where it ought to stop. I'll quote the ending for you:

In a cloudy monsoon night, before love and emotional ties could encircle him completely, this Brahmin boy, thief of all hearts in the village, had returned to the unconstraining, unemotional arms of his mother Earth.

Home.

When people run in circles

it's a very, very 

mad world

--
Gary Jules, Mad World

She ain't no angel,

but if she were one, she'd look like this.

Rohini

If she tried, she could remember frantic afternoons, pressing his hurting legs, and suppressing her own hurt, as he spoke of his imminent death. I do not wish to be nasal fed, he’d declared. And she’d thought of the ugliness, the futility of it, and fervently agreed.

And yet when she’d found herself by him in the hospital, the dietitian strongly recommending nasal feeding, she had tried to be something she wasn’t -- cheerful and giving him assurances she herself didn’t believe in, and playfully admonishing to agree. Everybody had decided to extend his life that way, and she had readily cast aside her own convictions to do what was asked of her. All because she was jealous of the dietitian’s easy confidence and good humour that could coax smiles off her father.

(She had been so quick to hurt, when he’d stopped letting her kiss his cheek, cuz it suffocated him to have anyone so near to his face.)

Everybody called her strong. They told her that they wouldn't have been half as strong as her, had they been in her place. But she hadn't been strong enough to support him, when he’d recoiled from the thought of having a pipe shoved down his nose and hadn't the strength to really protest.

She was supposed to do what she needed to do. And what her father had needed was not for her to join in those thoughtless entreaties for him to accept it for his own good. Her mother hadn't understood, but she had -- that fervent desire to be dead, rather than suffer through painful days holding off death. And it was unpardonable, that she had not stood up for what had been one of his last wishes, that she hadn't stood up for what she had believed in.