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, February 02, 2008

Legs of God Hoofing the Ball into the Night Sky

Indian newspapers on February 1, 2008 reported:”Maradona sorry for ‘Hand of God’”.

I watched that match of 1986 world cup- England Vs. Argentina- live on TV, courtesy my sports crazy friend V Parameswaran.

No exaggeration, I haven’t seen a better football match than that. Thank you, Param.

In one of the best essays- “My hope for a tortured genius”- I have read, Gary Lineker, Maradona’s rival, wrote:

“…He was a footballing genius and the best player of my lifetime. I know everyone talks about Pele and George Best but they came a bit early for me and of the players I watched, Maradona was head and shoulders above anything else I saw.

During my days at Barcelona, I was picked to play alongside him for a Rest of the World XI against an English League team and as we warmed up he hoofed the ball into the night sky as high as he could. When it came down, he trapped it perfectly on his left foot. An interesting little party piece, you might think. But he did it again and again and again, perhaps 13 times in all, each time kicking it as high as he could. Believe me, that is near-impossible but I stood there watching with Michel Platini, who was a pretty special player himself. Yet even he was open-mouthed, in awe of the magnificence of what he was seeing.

He will always be remembered for the Hand-of-God goal (see picture below on the left) against England in the 1986 World Cup. But I played in that game and I feel no bitterness.

We’ve seen players get away with a bit of skulduggery and I would say the referee and linesman should take the blame. You would hardly expect Maradona to own up to punching the ball in. From my customary position, just inside the halfway line, I did not see it because there were too many bodies in the way.

In my mind, Maradona should be remembered more for that sublime second goal. What sticks in my mind about that match was the pitch being just big lumps of turf. It was all but unplayable and when you tried to turn, the whole pitch seemed to turn with you. But for a genius nothing was impossible and as I again stood in my customary position, I had a perfect view as he received the ball, controlled it with one touch, turned perfectly and accelerated past the first English player.

The rest, as they say, is history but whatever people think about his handled goal, they ought to give him credit for the second one (see picture below on the right) that day. It was a magnificent run and a magnificent finish. Sometimes, no matter how disappointed you feel as a player, you have to accept that a goal is simply brilliant and unstoppable, and give credit to the opposition. It was so unbelievable that I actually felt like applauding, though naturally I didn’t. Argentina were a better side than us in 1986 — we reached our peak in 1990 — and though it was not a one-man World Cup, it was as close as you can get…” (April 26, 2004)


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