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, July 07, 2008

Who Answers Your Phone and How? 'हलो हलो' ला हलकट उत्तर.

One of B S Mardhekar’s बा. सी. मर्ढेकर poems starts with following lines:

त्रुटित जीवनीं सुटी कल्पना,
ट्रिंग ट्रिंग जैसा खोटा नंबर
सलग जमेना एक भावना,
'हलो हलो' ला हलकट उत्तर.

Last two lines read:

“not aligned are feelings,
‘hello, hello’ is answered by an abuse.”

(poem number 28, “मर्ढेकरांची कविता” “Poetry of Mardhekar”, 1959)

Times of India wrote a leader on June 17 2008 “Goodbye Hello”

“A study commissioned by UK's Post Office Telecoms to mark the 130th anniversary of the telephone in that country has found the once standard telephone greeting of "hello" is falling out of favour.

Instead, up to one in three 18 to 24-year-olds prefer answering their mobiles with "hi", "yo" or "wassup". ..

…Today, with caller identification protocols in existence in cellphones, most people — especially the younger set — know exactly who's ringing them up and react accordingly with nobody getting offended in the process.

…However, having acknowledged that technology is the main cause for the cultural shift in creating more informal relationships, it should also be recognised that the use of cellular devices per se is not helping much to maintain basic courtesy levels in society either.

Too many people are starting to complain about mobile phone users. They criticise them for leaving their phones on in movie halls and meetings, for speaking while driving rashly or too slow, for discussing personal matters loudly in public or simply for using hands-free attachments and walking..

Emily Post's well-known book, Etiquette, written in 1922 may read like fuddy-duddy stuff today but its principles remain the same: honesty, respect and consideration for other people…”


Artist: Raymond Thayer The New Yorker 21 May 1932