Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च 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: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Guests Who Came In from the Cold. And Got Noticed!

Writing for Outlook Magazine October 15, 2007, Khushwant Singh said:

“…There is not enough about nature in Outlook. The only magazine which has made it a regular feature is Frontline. But it tends to be scholastic, with limited readership appeal.

Outlook could not only explain phenomena like the disappearance of vultures, sparrows, frogs, fireflies and moths during the rainy season but also have more stories about human-animal bonding.

Besides dogs like Vinod's Editor, cats, parrots and partridges, there are plenty of stories of humans with pet donkeys, goats, hens, squirrels, lizards, cows, buffaloes, camels etc, which are very heartwarming.”

After reading this and reading it aloud, I did my own stock taking.

My wife and son next day showed me a frog. We still spot sparrows and moths but they have considerably reduced in number and their arrival inside the house is a novelty now. And I haven’t seen a vulture and fireflies for years now.

Indian newspapers too have so little on nature. I am talking about the nature around me in urban sprawls, and not in some distant Chandrapur or Himalayas. (Sorry Maruti Chitampalli मारुती चित्तमपल्ली, you have written so well on Indian wild life. But I am not talking abour your kind of writing.)

For example, as I was writing this, I saw a small stray cat chasing a full size mongoose. I couldn't follow the duo. I wonder what happened. During my school days, I used to follow big ants मुंगळे for hours.

Every tree, weed, flower, insect, amphibian, bird and mammal has a story to tell and some one needs to hear and tell it. Similar to what Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत did it in her Rutu Chakra ऋतुचक्र (1956).

I am particularly impressed with Verlyn Klinkenborg of The New York Times who writes about such things regularly. Or read two excellent articles on the subject of ants in NYT November 13, 2007.

Thankfully, Marathi newspapers couldn’t ignore colourful guests who have barged in this month.

Lokmat November 18, 2007 has the following story on migratory birds.