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."

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Will today's Bandunana and Pandutatya hear Chitragupta?

The Asian Age March 24 2011:
"Minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday launched a nationwide campaign to reduce noise levels across India, as it was turning “too noisy”..."

Nikil Saval:

"...What if we tried to listen to nothing? Silence is the feature of our buzzing sound-world we enjoy least, whose very existence we threaten to pave over track by track. Silence is the most endangered musical experience in our time. Turning it up, we might figure out what all our music listening is meant to drown out, the thing we can't bear to hear."

(Slate, March 28, 2011)

Sudhir Venkatesh:

"In public spaces, serendipitous interaction is needed to create the 'mob mentality.' Most iPod-like devices separate citizens from one another; you can't join someone in a movement if you can't hear the participants. Congrats Mr. Jobs for impeding social change."

Stanley Crouch:

"People are uncomfortable in silence because it can breed needless contemplation and may engender a floating into the deeper world of the self."

I celebrated the end of cricket ODI world cup because it was my life's noisiest sports tournament in India. Noisier than even Ganesh Chaturthi and Diwali.

Wiki: Chitragupta (चित्रगुप्त) is a Hindu God assigned with the task of keeping complete records of actions of human beings on the earth. Upon their death, Chitragupta has the task of deciding heaven or the hell for the humans, depending on their actions on the earth.

The interesting aspect is: Chitragupta reads out one's life's balance sheet to the dead.

More than 100 years ago, Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar (श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर) wrote a brilliant article 'Chitraguptacha Jamakharch' ('चित्रगुप्ताचा जमाखर्च') on what happened when his characters Bandunana (बंडूनाना) and Pandutatya (पांडूतात्या), after their death, reached Chitragupta's court and listened to their accounts.
['Sahitya-Battishi : Sudamyache Pohe', 1910 ('साहित्य-बत्तिशी : सुदाम्याचे पोहे')]

Alas there was very little show on the credit side. But at least they heard what was read out.

We mayn't be that lucky.



(apologies for the quality of cartoon's reproduction as my scanner is still down. Please open the picture in another window to get a better view.)

caption in Marathi reads:

"चित्रगुप्त महाराज! वाचून काही उपयोग नाही. हे सर्व मुंबईतून आलेले आहेत न ठार बहिरे आहेत .."

("Chitragupta Maharaj! No point reading. They all have come from Mumbai and are stone-deaf...)

Artist: Vasant Sarwate, 1996

"The Best of Sarwate" editor: Avadhoot Paralkar, Lokvangmay Gruh 2008

[कलावंत: वसंत सरवटे, १९९६ , "सरवोत्तम सरवटे" संपादक: अवधूत परळकर, लोकवाङ्मय गृह 2008]
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