Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

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."

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Aah! Tamil films

Business Standard on Saturday Oct 2 2010:

"Rajini fells all records with sci-fi entertainer Endhiran...The year’s biggest box-office event, Endhiran’s first day, first show, kept its date. On Friday, the big-budget, multi-lingual Rajinikanth starrer, with an ‘official’ budget of Rs 162 crore and ‘unofficial’ budget based on market rumour of Rs 250-300 crore, opened to packed houses, with tickets sold out days in advance...

# Biggest budget for any movie in Indian film industry
# To be shown on 2,250 screens worldwide, including in China
# First Tamil film album in iTunes World Album Top 10
# First Indian sci-fi movie with 1,500 graphical shots"

गोविंदराव टेंबे: "नवीन काहीतरी करावं हे धारिष्ट्यच आपल्या सिनेमावाल्या लोकांत नाही , त्यामुळे आणि त्यामुळेच त्यांची अशी दुर्दशा झाली आहे."

['सांस्कृतिक महाराष्ट्राचे शिल्पकार : गोविंदराव टेंबे', 2006 लेखक: डॉ. सौ. चारुशीला दिवेकर]

(Govindrao Tembe: "Thers is no courage among our cinema people to do something bold and because of that and that alone they are in terrible shape."

from "Sanskritik Maharashtrache Shilpkar : Govindrao Tembe", 2006 by Dr. Mrs. Charusheela Divekar)

'Enthiran The Robot' was shown on Sony TV on the evening of March 13 2011. I couldn't see it because I wanted to watch the live coverage of the last day of Yonex All England Badminton Championships.

Rajinikanth's (Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, शिवाजीराव गायकवाड) first language is Marathi and he still speaks the language with some relish and certainly much 'better'- for my ears at any rate- than many Marathi 'celebrities'.

Earlier I wrote a post on Marathi films on Dec 18 2007. Read it here Ugh! Marathi Films.

Since then I have seen parts of both 'Mee Shivaji raje Bhosale boltoy' (मी शिवाजी राजे भोसले बोलतोय) and Natrang (नटरंग).

I did not like the former at all and found the latter OK.

But frankly 'Natrang' is not close to many Marathi films of the past, especially a few of those starring Nilu Phule (नीळू फुले), Arun Sarnaik (अरुण सरनाईक), Ganpat Patil (गणपत पाटील), Ramesh Deo (रमेश देव), Jayshree Gadkar (जयश्री गडकर), Usha Chavan (उषा चव्हाण), Leela Gandhi(लीला गांधी)- (has a Marathi speaking woman ever danced better than her?)...

[The other day I watched 'Mumbaicha Jawai' (मुंबईचा जावई) . What a wonderful film with some brilliant acting by Sharad Talwalkar (शरद तळवलकर) and others!]

I have already quoted following earlier.

Suhas Palshikar: "...preferential treatment to locals is always an easy and attractive policy proposal. What is wrong with it? It is wrong simply because it creates an untenable category of “local”. In administrative parlance it becomes “domicile” – meaning resident for 15 years. This strategy practically abandons diversity. Apart from raising issues of definition of the local, such a policy encourages inbreeding and denies its beneficiaries he advantage of greater exposure and competition. It produces ghettoisation at schools, colleges and at workplaces – resulting in non-diverse social universes –hostels, localities and cities...."

More than anything else, I feel, this ghettoisation affects Marathi culture deeply.

Almost no Marathi cultural program shown on TV is complete without talking about "outsiders". For them, not just Hindi, but any other language or its native speaker is a fair game.

Even the devastating floods of 2009 in North Karnataka- where lacs of Marathi speakers live- were NOT covered in any depth by most Marathi media. (btw- They are covering March 2011 Japanese quakes in great depth!)

Like Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग) says about Marathi literary world, this Marathi media world too is afflicted with "inbreeding".

As I have said earlier, Namdev is arguably the greatest bilingual Indian writer because apart from his enormous talent, his vision was worldly and heart large. (Where was he domiciled? Maharashtra or Punjab?)

If Marathi has to assert itself on India and the world stage, her 'lovers' need to do some serious re-thinking on how to get there.

Returning to Endhiran, look at the picture below.

Artist: Alan Dunn, The New Yorker, July 17 1937

"I dread the day when I'll have to tell him about sex."

Maybe. But what about telling him what happens after the sex?

In Enthiran, like '3 Idiots' in 2009, robot Chitti manages a complex child delivery successfully.

p.s. We as a nation are obsessed with producing babies!