Why this blog is called "Gallimaufry".

gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun.

Originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," "gallimaufry" comes from French galimafrée; in Old French, from the word galer, "to rejoice, to make merry"; in old English: gala + mafrer: "to eat much," and from Medieval Dutch maffelen: "to open one's mouth wide."

It's also a dish made by hashing up odds and ends of food; a heterogeneous mixture; a hodge-podge; a ragout; a confused jumble; a ridiculous medley; a promiscuous (!) assemblage of persons.

Those of you who know me, will, I’m sure, understand how well some of these phrases (barring the "promiscuous" bit!) fit me.

More importantly, this blog is an ode to my love for Shimla. I hope to show you this little town through my eyes. If you don't see too many people in it, forgive me, because I'm a little chary of turning this into a human zoo.

Stop by for a spell, look at my pictures, ask me questions about Shimla, if you wish. I shall try and answer them as best as I can. Let's be friends for a while....

30 July 2010

Hope likes justification, but can do without.

Ideas have been Gods for me. My consciousness a harmony of devotion to sanguine expectation. Hope, to me, has been that liar whose veracity I have never doubted even when belied. There have been times that I have despaired and, as the Bard says, "been at enmity with cozening hope". But such times have been few and far between, for I have found truth in what George Eliot says: "What we call our despiar in only the painful eagerness of unfed hope". The trick, I have found, is to confront suffering with hope. Hope triumphs every single time!
Hope has sometimes been fragile, and trembled like a harebell. Other times, it has been as solid as a rock and been my bulwark when all around me failure raged like a sea in storm. I have, however, refused to abandon what my friend HS calls my "pathological" belief in the occurrence of the impossible!
Here are some things which give me hope:


My faith, which is my anchor, my guide and the lantern which lights dark paths.



Children. Because they have two things in abundance: joy and a sense of wonder.



Dewdrops, which stand for all that is fragile and fast-disappearing and yet so essential in life.


Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! -

After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!

~ Thomas Hardy ~

2 comments:

Priya said...

What a beautiful thought- enough to compel even the most die-hard pessimists to look at the bright side even if just for awhile :)

Geetali said...

Thank you, Priya. Incorrigible optimists recognise each other, no? Seeing you here after a long while. I trust all goes well with you and yours.

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