मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, July 14, 2007

What’s a girl’s marriageable age, asks SC

This is Times of India’s headline on July 13, 2007.

India’s Supreme court asked this question to the government after listening to a petition!

“The seeds of confusion lie in provisions of Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, 1929, Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the exception to rape in Indian Penal Code and Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.

The Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, 1929, says a child is a person, who if a male, has not completed 21 years of age, and if a female, has not completed 18 years
The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, says a female has to be 18 years before she can legally marry

However, the Indian Penal Code, while defining rape in Section 375, exempts a person from this charge if he has forcible sexual intercourse with his wife who is above 15 years of age

Under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1986, a child means a person who has not completed the age of 16 years and a minor means who has completed the age of 16 years and not completed 18 years

The Indian Majority Act says a person is a major if he/she has completed 18 years
"

Anecdotal evidence from Pune suggests to me that girls, even from middle and upper-middle class, get married early. I wonder why. Is it because they are reaching puberty early? Don't they wish to become economically independent before they say-'I Do'?

Earlier, I used to see few qualified and/or good looking girls who never married because they had financial responsibility at home and/or they did not meet some one suitable and/or they were pursuing a career goal.

Not any more. Now I see such women only in politics. Mayawati, Jaylalita, Mamta Banerjee etc.

I thought we had come a long way away from the times of Vasant Sarwate’s वसंत सरवटे picture below where a girl is asking her friend: “you say you have enrolled in a college, couldn’t arrange it this year too,is it…”



Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे (Source- “Khada Maraycha Jhala Tar….!”, Mauj Prakashan, 1963)

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