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."

Monday, December 24, 2007

No Public Urinals? Then No Public Health, Colourful Graffiti & Free Medical Advice.

Times of India December 11, 2007 decries inadequate number of public urinals in Pune. Just 352 for 3 Million people, one public urinal per 9,000 people.

“…This is grossly inadequate as compared to the PMC's own public health norms which categorically state that one urinal should be available per 100 people. The main victims of the civic body's apathy are women and the disabled, who are completely deprived of the essential facility.

Same is the case with pay-and-use public toilets. The civic body has constructed about 772 such toilets with 11,319 seats — 5,731 for men and 5,588 for women. However, a majority of these toilet blocks have been encroached upon and many have turned into gambling dens. These urinals and toilets are stinking without regular cleaning.…”

Public urinal has already appeared on this blog before. See it here.

Given a choice Indians would build a small temple instead of a urinal. Why?
Aren’t both equally important to one’s health? For my health at any rate, urinal is more important.

Vinoba Bhave विनोबा भावे reportedly used to say “प्रभाते मलदर्शनम्” (In the morning sight feces) rephrasing following famous Sanskrit shloka's last line:

कराग्रे वसते लक्ष्मी:
करमूले सरस्वती ।
करमध्ये तु गोविंद:
प्रभाते करदर्शनम्।।

(At the tip of the hand resides Laxmi (Goddess of Wealth),
At the root Sarasvati (Goddess of knowledge),
At the centre Govinda (Lord Krishna),
In the morning sight hand.)

I use public urinals quite a bit.

Every road I go to in Pune, I first mark location of urinals on them. Many of them are poorly maintained.

But most of them carry interesting graffiti and posters of medical advice on venereal diseases, lack of sexual appetite and impotence. All done in very colourful language.

Artist: Peter C Vey The New Yorker January 5, 2004
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