Running with a veteran, and Rabindrasangeet
Yesterday I resumed running along the Charles after a brief gap following the half marathon. And it was the hardest run of my life. I met this gentleman from Calgary who was also running, on the way back from Harvard square. He’s over 50 now, and has done 56 marathons!!! He’s training for his 57th marathon in December. He had 2 suggestions:
- Only compare your performance with your last performance. Don’t compare it with others.
- Use a heart rate monitor, its invaluable.
Earlier in the day, I was talking to my good friends Ray and his wife Faarzein about Rabindrasangeet. Although I don’t understand Bengali so well, I can read the script, and understand simple conversation or at least the flow of it. When Ray and Faarzein got married over the summer, they used a Tagore song as the wedding song. The song is titled “Tumi shondharo megho mala… Here’s an English translation she sent me:
You are like a necklace of twilight clouds,
You are my cherished yearning.
You, who pervade my empty universe-,
You I have conjured with my heart’s nectar.
Mine, and but mine alone
Are you who pervade my boundless skies.
The vivid scarlet of my heart adorns your feet,
Oh woman who pervades my dreams of twilight.
I have traced the lines of your lips
With the mead and vitriol drawn from my sorrow and joy
Mine, and but mine alone
Are you who pervade my unpeopled life.
My illusions are the dreams I have given to your eyes,
Oh you who pervade these besmitten eyes of mine!
Your limbs, your entire being
Is wrapped in the folds of my song
Mine, and but mine alone
Are you who pervade my life and my life’s end.
Faarzein went on to add:
Btw…..Pablo Neruda, famous Spanish romantic poet/writer, was a BIG fan of Robindronath. So much so that many people accused him of plagiarising from Robondronath! Coincidentally, both these writers got the Nobel Prize in literature.
Faarzein also sent Pablo Neruda’s paraphrasing of Robindronath’s song/poem:
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon’s
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
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