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, March 03, 2008

Pity No N S Phadke ना सी फडके to Describe New Cricket Record

On March 1, 2008, South African opening batsmen Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie broke the Test world record for the best opening partnership set by Indian openers Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy on January 7, 1956. It was the first ever Test series between India and New Zealand.

Brief scores:

India (1st innings): 537-3 decl (M H Mankad 231, P Roy 173, P R Umrigar 79*)
New Zealand (1st innings): 209 all out (B Sutcliffe 47, S P Gupte 5-72)
New Zealand (2nd innings): 219 all out (J R Reid 63, J G Leggat 61, S P Gupte 4-73, M H Mankad 4-65)
Result: India won by an innings and 109 runs

I had a lesson in my school text based on Phadke's masterly essay describing Mankad-Roy's record breaking achievement of 1956. Reading it was such a thrill.

N S Phadke ना सी फडके (1894-1978)- one of the highest paid Marathi authors- was a lousy novelist for my taste.

But Phadke was a pioneer when it came to writing in Marathi on cricket. See a related post here.

I also enjoy reading many of his short essays on various subjects. His essay on Bal Gandharva (बालगंधर्व) is also masterly.

Phadke once imagined that the 'time-man' कालपुरुष was ferrying all books in a boat with a limited carrying capacity. As time goes by and new books keep loading, the time-man is forced to discard books of lesser quality. Phadke obviously hoped that the time-man would keep a few of his books on board.

I am afraid all of Phadke's novels have now probably been thrown out by Kalpurush! Read Vilas Sarang's essay in Marathi on this here.

Almost none of his books has survived the scrutiny of either popularity over long time, like Sane Guruji's Shyamchi Aai (श्यामची आई ), or critical taste.

[Phadke would hate this comparison with Sane Guruji because he has written scornfully about Guruji's literature. See साने गुरूजी पुनर्मूल्यांकन, संपादक: भालचंद्र नेमाडे, १९९९ पृष्ठे: ३७-५७ (Sane Guruji Revaluation, Editor: Bhalchandra Nemade, 1999 Page: 37-57)]


Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy,India v New Zealand, 5th Test, Madras, January , 1956
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1 comment:

dhananjay khare said...

You should watch what you write about celebrated and decorated writers like N S Phadke. Obviously you do not have any inkling of what a few words that you say and their impact. If in case you do have reservation about someone it would be wise to be judicious of you acerbic writing.

June 17, 2009 at 10:44 AM

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