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."

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Gods Are Us; A Scene from Our Heaven

Reading numerous Puranas in my childhood, I used to wonder how Lord Indra gets away so lightly with all kinds of crimes- including adultery- he commits.

Julian Gough: “…To have the gods laughing at us through our fictions is acceptable if the gods are multiple, and flawed like us.” (Prospect Magazine UK May 2007)

Now, I know better. Indra is flawed like me.

But I will die; Indra won’t.

Homer Simpson:
“If he's so smart, how come he's dead?” ("Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" Production code: AABF21 Original Air-date on FOX: 24-Oct-1999)

Lord Indra is smart.

Author G A Kulkarni जी ए कुलकर्णी - influenced by Greek mythology and literature- had this take on the subject of our gods.

"...आपल्या अनेक देवता पाहा. त्यांना संतती तरी नसते किंवा झालीच तर ती त्यांच्या प्रणयक्रीडेचे अनिवार्य फळ म्हणूनच असते. एखादी देवता आपले मूल कडेवर घेवून त्याच्याकडे मातृप्रेमाने पाहात आहे, असे तुला कधी दिसले आहे?"

“…Look at many of our gods. They either have no children or if they do, it’s the inevitable fruit of their copulation. Any goddess holding her child atop her waist, looking at it with mother’s love, have you ever seen this?”

("ऑर्फियस" पिंगळावेळ) ("Orpheus" Owl-Time) 1977

So is following scene from our heaven?


The Spectator 2007