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."

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Ravi Baswani, an eternal Sancho Panza

One of the joys of reading Marathi written in 20th century is G A Kulkarni's (जी. ए. कुलकर्णी) 'Yatrik' (यात्रिक) from the collection of his short stories 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ) 1977, an allegory of Cervantes's 'Don Quixote' and D V Deshpande's (धों वि देशपांडे ) commentary on it from 'jeeenchya katha: ek anwayarth'(जीएंच्या कथा: एक अन्वयार्थ).

Who moves me most, from the story, is not Don but Sancho.

('Pinglavel' appears on this blog quite a few times.)

Kundan Shah said after hearing Mr. Baswani's death:"...He helped Naseeruddin Shah flesh out his character and that was the reason behind the on-screen chemistry..."

That has always been the role of Sancho. He helps Don Quixote flesh out his character and that is the reason behind their eternal chemistry.

In Marathi literature the most famous example of Don and Sancho is the pair of Chimanrao (चिमणराव) and Gundyabhau (गुंड्याभाऊ) of C V Joshi (चिं वि जोशी). Gundyabhau helps Chimanrao flesh our his character.

No Gundyabhau, no Chimanrao. No Dr. Watson, no Sherlock Holmes. No Sancho, no Don. No Ravi Baswani, no Naseeruddin Shah and no JBDY.


Artist: Pablo Picasso

Artist: Roc Riera Rojas

brainpickings.org:

"There must be something in the air about remarkable Spanish illustrations of literary classics. In 1968, Spanish graphic design pioneer Roc Riera Rojas illustrated a special edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ cult 1605-1615 novel Don Quixote, which has since become a prized collector’s item."

S D Phadnis Turns 85 today

Artist S D Phadnis (शि. द. फडणीस) turns 85 today.

I have very little to add to what his close friend Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) says on Phadnis's art in a masterly essay included in Sarwate's book Sahapravasi (सहप्रवासी). ( A couple of years ago I was fortunate to spend 2-3 hours with both of them at Phadnis's house.)

On this blog, in the static information on the right side, there is a quote of W H Auden:

“…though one cannot always
Remember exactly why one has been happy,
There is no forgetting that one was”

(Good-Bye to the Mezzogiorno )

Well, I sometimes exactly remember why I have been happy.

It's because I just saw Shi Da's sunlight -or moonlight as in the picture below- filled cartoon where even today a lady looks like my mother of 1970's, where there is no evil, where life is uncomplicated, where people pay attention to their surroundings instead of burying their face in mobile phone...


courtesy: Official website of S D Phadnis