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."

Monday, October 29, 2007

Miss Drucker, Now Go For The Kill

Times of India on October 26, 2007 reports: Revealing clothes a no-no in office.

“An IT company received complaints from employees who found the dressing style of some employees objectionable and distracting, and hence the need to formulate a policy. Women security personnel are being deployed to check women employees.

Mini-skirts, spaghetti-strap dresses, halter-tops are a strict no-no. Sleevless tops unless draped by a jacket are not acceptable. Irrespective of the choice of attire, clothes with very low necks and backs should not be worn. Skirts that end above the knees, transparent clothing, capris, pyjamas, trousers with cut-offs, low waist jeans are also not acceptable.”

It’s very obvious from above laundry list (!) that the code is largely meant to curb sex appeal of women employees to their young colleagues and not-so-young managers.

This is very simplistic.

In our society, men in power-at home, society and office- kept women, of all castes and colours, down for far too long, the way the Dalits were oppressed. Women like the Dalits now are fighting back. They won't follow men's rule-book for the fight!

Social reformer and sexologist R D Karve’s mission was not just happy family life, emancipation of women, control of population etc but more. R D Karve wanted Indian women to have as much sexual freedom as men did. He wanted them to have as much sensual pleasure as men did.

When one spends most of her waking life at a workplace, she cannot be faulted if she sought few pleasures there.

Daily Mail of UK reported in February 2007: Forget hard work - women would rather flirt their way to the top.

“Forget the sisterhood - the majority of working women would rather have a male boss and flirt their way to the top, according to a survey.

Despite the fact that women often complain of inequality in the workplace, new research reveals that women will don high heels and rely on their feminine charms to get what they want.

Rather than combining strength with fellow female workers, they in fact see other women as the main competition.

As a result three out of five women would rather work directly for a man than a woman while a further 86 per cent would happily flirt with a male colleague if it meant they got their own way.

The survey, commissioned by magazine Harper's Bazaar, questioned 500 professional women with top jobs in finance, newspapers and healthcare about their attitudes to their office environments.

It found that while women continue to reach high-powered positions in the workplace, they are still prone to indulging in what could be described as typically female behaviour.

Crying in the loos was a common confession with 85 per cent of women admitting that they had locked themselves in the office toilet for a quick weep.

Despite striving for equality at work a third of women admitted to pretending to be less intelligent than they actually are to flatter a male ego and get ahead.

Seven out of ten women said that simply by wearing a pair of high heels to work they automatically felt more powerful and confident in their ability to deal with the working day.

Although only 58 per cent of women thought there was gender equality in the office, one in 25 admitted to selling out a female colleague for their own career gains.
Nearly 70 per cent confessed that they would secretly revel in seeing another colleague fail while one in five have taken the credit for someone else's work.

According to the research there is conflict between mothers and childless women in the workplace.

More than half of women thought that women with children held more power in the office to the disadvantage of those without. “


Artist: Robert Weber The New Yorker April 6, 1963