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."

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Use Jaane Na Do Yaaro- Ravi Baswani

उसे जाने ना दो यारों

Susan Sontag on the iconoclastic spirit of the 1960's: "...How one wishes that some of its boldness, its optimism, its disdain for commerce had survived……”

They must be kidding when they say Ravi Baswani at death was 64. When did he turn even 40?

I have given up any hope of seeing another Hindi film as good as Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (JBDY), 1983 where he was one of the main reasons to make it so good.

He was equally good in Chashme Buddoor (1981).

It's a pity that I saw so little of him on Hindi silver screen.

In 1980's, for me, it was much easier to identify with him rather than with Naseeruddin Shah or Farooq Sheikh who romanced pretty girls on screen while he on screen and I in real life weren't.

David Remnick recently said: If God had a plan, God was a fantastic comedian. There's a scene in The Human Stain by Philip Roth where Nathan Zuckerman is listening to an orchestra rehearse. People are having a good time and all he can think of is that, in 40 years, every single one of them will be dead.

JBDY is an orchestra. Sure, every single one of them will be dead. But I would dread to think that it would start with Mr. Baswani in 2010.

(after I published this post, I realised Bhakti Barve too was dead but then for me Ms. Barve- a good actor herself- didn't belong to the core of JBDY.)

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did not even know that Ravi Baswani passed away. Thanks for the write up. I will miss him for his role in Chashme Baduur for sure. Now that we are in an era of item songs with Eastern European girls dancing in chorus...I miss the 80's.

July 28, 2010 at 9:51 PM
Chetan said...

Jaane bhi do yaaron is my all time favourite film. Ravi Baswani was fantastic in the movie. Despite his un-hero like qualities, he made such an impression even in small roles. I still remember a very small ad he had appeared for m-seal where a pipe bursts. His expression in that ad will always be with me.

July 28, 2010 at 9:57 PM
Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Thanks Chetan and anon.

I simply loved him.

July 29, 2010 at 8:14 AM

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