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."

Friday, June 26, 2009

Stench and Scent of a Woman

Neil Young:

"A Man Needs A Maid"
...
I was thinking that
maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby
for her to stay.
Just someone
to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.
..."

Only for "to keep my house clean, Fix my meals and go away."? Not necessarily.

Recently a high profile Hindi film actor has been accused of a brutal rape of his maid.

I am reminded of a scene from Marathi film "Simhasan सिंहासन" (1980):
An elderly man douses his maid (played by Sushma Tendulkar सुषमा तेंडुलकर ) with perfume before sleeping with her. At the end of the act, he calls her a prostitute and 'pays' her with a used saree of his wife.

Dousing with perfume!

On the other hand, Napoleon sent word from the thick of battle to Josephine that she should abstain from washing now that his return was nigh.

R K Narayan:

"I smelt my wife's letter before opening it. It carried with it the fragrance of her trunk, in which she always kept her stationery- a mild jasmine smell surrounded her and all her possessions ever since I had known her."

("The English Teacher", 1946)

In "The Simpsons" episode (Production code: CABF05 Original Airdate on FOX: 14-Jan-2001), a prisoner asks Marge Simpson: "Can I smell your dress?"

बा. सी. मर्ढेकर (B S Mardhekar):

दवांत आलिस भल्या पहाटीं
अभ्रांच्या शोभेंत एकदां;
जवळुनि गेलिस पेरित अपुल्या
मंद पावलांमधल्या गंधा.

(# 25, "मर्ढेकरांची कविता", "Mardhekar's Poetry", 1959)

Forgive my translation:

"You came in early morning dew
decked up like clouds once;
went past me planting
fragrance of your tender steps."