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."

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Y D Phadke य दि फडके No More

Yesterday afternoon I spoke to Vasant Sarwate. I thanked him for sending me two of his books. I read his obit of Ramesh Mantri रमेश मंत्री and felt sad.

Little did I know by evening I would be sadder.

I have created five entries pf prominent Marathi speaking personalities in English Wiki- Vasant Sarwate, D G Godse, M V Dhond, Y D Phadke, T S Shejwalkar.

Four of them are now dead.

I couldn't have imagined that it would happen so soon after M V Dhond.

19th/20th century Maharashtra produced some great historians.

V K Rajwade, Riyasatkar Sardesai, Vasudevshastri Khare, T S Shejwalkar...

Y D Phadke easily fitted in that tradition.

Unlike Shejwalkar, he was not great original thinker but focused on hard data and facts.

When Ramachandra Guha wrote "A Corner of a Foreign Field", I suggested him to check his fundamental thesis with Phadke.

I like all of his books but particularly like Nathuramayan नथुरामायण. He is not much known outside Marathi reading world because most of his work is not translated in English.

Non-Marathi reading world is poorer for it!

8 comments:

Nikheel Shaligram said...

Yes, Aniruddha, what you wrote is absolutely correct.

Dr Phadke, once convinced about the veracity of his source, always put it in the right perspective

Maharashtra has a noteworthy tradition of scholar-historians whose concept of history was no different from that of Ranke who said ‘facts reveal themselves.’ Those who spent lifetime in search of collecting fresh historical documents and left no stone unturned correcting historical aberrations committed by earlier historians began with the doyen V.K.Rajwade. AK Priyolkar and Professor NR Phatak belonged to the same school.

Phadke was in that sense a disciple of Professor Phatak whose approach was multi-disciplinary and who believed in the aphorism ‘History should be viewed from the Bench and not from the Bar’.

What is more important is the fact that once convinced about the veracity of a source material, Dr Phadke, like his peers, never hesitated to put it in the right perspective and did not backtrack despite fiercest of opposition.

Nikheel Shaligram

mannab said...

It was a discussion, during which I saw him, when Ya.Di. was quite energetic. He narrated one decison of Kashi math. Saraswat Brahmins were allowed their 6 rights equally like all Brahmins.
It was a pleasure to listeh to him.

Mangesh Nabar

Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Nikheel/ Mangesh, Thanks.

Nikheel has rightly mentioned the aberrations. They started with Rajwade. Read Shejwalkar on Rajwade.

I admire Phadke's approach but I prefer Shejwalkar and Rajwade as they are ready to take more "risks". They have a hypothesis. More importantly they want to predict the future based on the past. Otherwise there is a real danger of history becoming just "interesting".

Paul Krugman has written about this danger in his review of David Lades's "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations":

“…In the end, what both books left me with was a sense of the inadequacy of narrative history as a guide to action. No matter how many interesting stories you may tell about the past, they are just that - stories - unless they are brought to bear on some hypothesis about how the world works. History is useful because it is a laboratory, in which time and chance have performed experiments that can confirm or reject our ideas. But you can't learn anything from those experiments unless you are actually willing to state your ideas clearly in the first place.
So I ask myself: what do Yergin and Stanislaw and Landes actually believe? And the answer, which seems to me to be damning, is that I am not sure. I think Yergin and Stanislaw approve of the move to the market, but I have had to pick that up by osmosis - or as a colleague of mine puts it, the economic moral is conveyed by innuendo, rather than stated in any way that could be refuted. And for all the erudition in Landes's book, I am a loss to tell you what economic policies he might prescribe for any particular country.
So I am still waiting for a book that helps me understand what really happened in this utterly perplexing century, when the world moved decisively away from the market, then equally decisively back. The one thing I know is that whoever writes that book will have to be a person unafraid of offering theories as well as facts, and therefore of saying things that might turn out to be wrong.”

Unknown said...

Dear Aniruddha,
It's great to see your post first time in the new year 2008. Y.D.Phadke was a prominent Marathi personality. I expect moe such posts from you from time to time, as in the past.
Waman Karnik

Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Thanks Waman.

I am still in part-time mode which may remain for some more time.

I wonder if we will make likes of Y D Phadke again.

Nandan said...

Namaskar Aniruddha, a friend of mine is looking for some of Dr. Phadke's books - NathuramayaN and Shodh savarakarancha should be available. But I am not so sure about -
1. Dr. Ambedkaranche Marekari Arun Sauri (that's how his wikipage mentions the title. Is it correct?)

and

2. Ambedkari Chalaval

(Also couple of English books - Maharashtra in 20th century and Women in Maharashtra).

Would you know where in Mumbai/Pune he can get these? Thanks for your help.

Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Namaskar Nandan,

Yes, NathuramayaN and Shodh savarakarancha are available.

And so are Shodh Bal-gopalancha and multi-volume history of 20th century Maharashtra.

I have been looking for "Dr. Ambedkaranche Marekari- Arun Sauri" (Arun Shourie actually) for a long time. I guess it's out of print. (Recently, I got P K Atre's excellent book on Dr. Ambedkar)

At Pune, your friend can get them at most book shops in Appa Balwant chowk. Or best is to wait for an exhibition at Acharya Atre hall that is held once in two months or so.

I have limited experience of buying Marathi books online. I have only bought them from Popular Prakashan's website. They sell only their books.

In Mumbai, best shops for Marathi books for me were Bombay book depot (Grant road), Ideal (Dadar west)...

If I get to know anything more, I will touch base.

best,

Nandan said...

Thanks for the prompt reply, Aniruddha. I've conveyed this information to him. Since he'll be getting the books here, I'm eager to read them as well :)