once upon a time - videos

 

 

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once Upon a Time – Gabriel Okara

This is a poem by the Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara, in which he laments the lost innocence of youth. In it he condemns the hypocrisy of adults – hemmed in and constrained by rules and conventions – adopting masks for different occasions: for lying, cheating and betraying – whereas childhood is portrayed as a time of honest laughter, and spontaneity.

Once Upon a Time
 
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too
to laugh with only me teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

Gabriel Okara

ONCE UPON A TIME

“Once Upon a Time” is an emotional poem about the story of a grown up man—who once was an innocent child.
His adult world has lost the charm of his childhood years. The poet describes how the process of growing up transforms the innocence of childhood. After entering the adult world, the young adults will gradually forget how to “laugh with their hearts.”
 
While growing up, the cold world intimidated our main character. He used to sense people’s insincerity and their superficial laughs, because “they only laugh[ed] with theirteeth,/while their ice-block-cold eyes/search[ed] behind [his] shadow” 
 
It is a vicious circle: once someone has entered the adult world, he will change—then change others. Our character will learn how to say things that he doesn’t really mean: “I have also learned to say, “Goodbye,”/when I mean “Goodriddance”;/to say “Glad to meet
you,”/without being glad; and to say “It’s been/nice talking to you,” after being bored”

2
Like everyone else, our main character was forced to grow up—in order to adapt to the adult world: “I have learned to wear many faces/like dresses—home face,/office face,street face, host face, cock-/tail face, with all their conforming smiles/like a fixed portrait
smile” 
 
In this selfish world, our character learned how to adapt; he adapted a little too well. He now can play the adult role without any problem.However, once he became a parent, parenthood seems to have helped him to remember the innocent world of his childhood. Because of his son, he wants to re-learn how to be sincere. His son holds the key to this old, forgotten world.
 
What a wonderful poem! It presents in such a simple manner, such a complicated subject:the pain of growing up, and the loss of innocence

Night of the scorpion

GAMES AT TWILIGHT

INTERVIEW - ANITA DESAI

Anita Desai

Anita Desai
Born	Anita Mazumdar 24 June 1937 (age 73) Mussoorie, India
Occupation	Author
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	University of Delhi
Period	1970s—present
Genres	Fiction

Anita Mazumdar Desai (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1978 for her novel, Fire on the Mountain, by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.^[1]

Background

Born as Anita Mazumdar to a German mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar^[2] in Mussoorie, India. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English outside the house. She first learned to read and write in English at school and as a result it became her "literary language".^[3] Despite German being her first language she did not visit Germany until later in life as an adult.
She was a student at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in Delhi and received her B.A. in English literature in 1957 from the Miranda House of the University of Delhi. The following year she married Ashvin Desai, the director of a computer software company and author of the book: Between Eternities: Ideas on Life and The Cosmos. They have four children, including Booker Prize-winning novelist Kiran Desai. Her children were taken to Thul (near Alibagh) for weekends, where Desai set her novel The Village by the Sea.^[2]

Career

Desai published her first novel, Cry The Peacock, in 1963. She considers Clear Light Of Day (1980) her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the same neighborhood in which she grew up.^[4] In 1984 she published In Custody - about an Urdu poet in his declining days - which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[5] Her latest novel, The Zigzag Way (2004), is set in 20th-century Mexico.
Desai has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch College and Smith College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and of Girton College, Cambridge University (to which she dedicated Baumgartner's Bombay).^[6] In addition, she writes for the New York Review of Books.

Film

In 1993 Merchant Ivory Productions released In Custody, directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by Shahrukh Husain. It won the 1994 President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and stars Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.

Awards

• 1978 - Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize- Fire on the Mountain
• 1978 - Sahitya Akademi Award (National Academy of Letters Award)- Fire on the Mountain
• 1980 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - Clear Light of Day
• 1983 - Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - The Village By The Sea
• 1984 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - In Custody
• 1993 - Neil Gunn Prize
• 1999 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction: Fasting, Feasting
• 2000 - Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)
• 2003 - Benson Medal of Royal Society of Literature ^[7]

Selected works

• The Zigzag Way (2004)
• Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000)
• Fasting, Feasting (1999)
• Journey to Ithaca (1995)
• Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
• In Custody (1984)
• The Village By The Sea (1982)
• Clear Light of Day (1980)
• Games at Twilight (1978)
• Fire on the Mountain (1977)
• Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)
• Bye-bye Blackbird(1971)
• Cry, The Peacock (1963)