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."

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Dyeing Our Nasal Hair To Look Vivid and Bright

For last few years, I have developed a strange habit. When I meet or see someone, I first look at his/ her hair to check if dye has been used.

On December 17, 2007, DD telecast live the ceremony- attended by the high and mighty of India- to release a postage stamp honouring the late S B Chavan.

The event was a sea of jet-black hair with very few grey islands!

India is young. And is younger if you discount hair colour!

My father often used to observe that poor people in India- portrayed in TV serials and cinema- almost always possess two things- huge house and black hair.

Full disclosures- My wife dyes her hair and so does my mother-in-law. Both of them won’t be reading this post though!

“The total organised hair colour market in India is about Rs 200 crore, 60 per cent (Rs 120 crore) of which is the mass-market colour segment. While the total market is growing at around 35 per cent, the mass market is growing at 40 per cent on a year-on-year basis. “ Business Line May 4, 2007.

Thanks to my DNA, I started turning grey very early. But so far I haven’t tried dyeing.

I agree with Edwina Ings-Chambers when she said:

” …I wonder about the effect that rising life expectancy has on our perceptions of age. I stopped caring about wrinkles when my father died, but friends who are 20 years older, but who still have their parents, happily obsess about those physical markers that signpost the route to death. I look at the ravages of time with interest - they are the visible terrain of our lives; they are, effectively, our memories.” (FT March 30, 2007)

But most people I meet at social functions want to look nice, smooth, glowing, untouched by woe and by time. They use what is called red-carpet dermatology.

Michael Crichton said: “..The media image is the reality, and by comparison day-to-day life seems to lack excitement. So now day-to-day life is false, and the media image is true. Sometimes I look around my living room, and the most real thing in the room is the television. It's bright and vivid, and the rest of my life looks drab..”


Don’t you think it’s a bit sad, dyeing your nasal hair?

The Spectator 2007
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