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."

Saturday, December 08, 2007

माता कापी गळा Mother Slices the Throat. With King’s Excalibur.

Tarun J. Tejpal has written a scathing article: “Partying While Gujarat Burned” (Newsweek December 3, 2007).

The article may make some of us not swallow our food.

“…There are times when the tragedy is particularly gory—as during the Gujarat riots of 2002, which, after someone set fire to a train carrying Hindu travelers in a town named Godhra, killing 59, saw the massacre and rape of more than 2,000 Muslims by Hindu zealots.

…2002 killings had been planned, had enjoyed the sanction of the state and its chief minister, Narendra Modi, as well as the collusion of the police. Later on, the process of justice had been effectively manipulated to keep those responsible out of jail.

The evidence was graphic. Mass murderers appeared on camera, describing how they killed, why they killed and who helped them kill…”

Tejpal concludes:

“…Any nondoctrinaire Indian can see that a serious schism between its 900 million Hindus and about 150 million Muslims would tear the country apart.

… The fact is India cannot be fixed through economic initiatives alone. It needs great political vision. And there are no signs of that. Yes, India is highly resilient, which allows the management of great contradictions and crises. But in the coming years, this resilience will be tested as never before.”

I agree with Tejpal's conclusion but I think he still underestimates India's resilience. Often in the past, India looked similar to what it looks today but it persists, largely because of sway of Bhakti/ Sufi movement over Indian masses.

Gujarat 2002 reminded the late M V Dhond म वा धोंड Tukaram's तुकाराम following poem:

माता कापी गळा, तेथे कोण राखी बाळा,
हें का नेणां नारायणा, मज चाळवितां दीना,
नागवी धावणें, तेथें साह्य व्हावें कोणें,
राजा सर्व हरी, तेथे दुजा कोण वारी

(Akshar Diwali अक्षर दिवाळी 2002)

Can likes of Tejpal with their pens fight Excalibur of Modi? We shall see.


The Spectator 2007
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