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, May 10, 2011

Contesting Chandoba's Photo Caption Competition

Bob Mankoff of The New Yorker said on January 19 2011:

"When The New Yorker started its caption contest, in 2005, it quickly became the world’s most popular weekly cartoon caption contest. I don’t have any data to back this up, but back then, just having a weekly cartoon caption contest made us the world’s most popular one. Five years and more than a million and a half entries later, a Google search for “cartoon caption contest” yields about 292,000 results...

I’ve been pretty frustrated by all of them, not due to the copycat factor but because I haven’t been able to win..."

I can understand Mr. Mankoff's frustration.

I wonder when did the first picture (photo, cartoon...) caption contest debut anywhere in the world?

For me it started in children's magazine 'Chandamama'. Marathi version of it 'Chandoba' (चांदोबा) was launched in April 1952. (Past issues of Chandoba are available here.)

I don't know in which month's issue the caption contest was launched but when I started reading the magazine, c 1967, it was well established.

In Marathi, it was called 'photo jodanaave chadaaod' (फोटो जोडनावे चढाओढ). I think as a family we tried to win the contest by attempting it a couple of times but failed.

Here is a typical contest:

Contest: from January 1969 issue

Winning Entry: from March 1969 issue by Ms. Lata Kharade, Mumbai (लता खराडे, मुंबई)

"आपण दोघे मित्र जणू / शुभ्र वेषांत !" "मैत्रीचा गोड घास घे / तुझ्या मुखांत !!"

(p.s. Today they may get an entry saying that we shouldn't encourage feeding animals in captivity at zoo!)
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for re-creating the nostalgia. I had almost forgotten about the "Photo Jodnave"... I enjoyed the photos. You must have kept some really old archive issues in your portfolio :)

May 11, 2011 at 3:59 AM
mannab said...

'चांदोबा' मासिकातील "फोटो जोडनावे चढाओढ" यांचे जुने फोटो देउन आपण मला पुनःप्रत्ययाचा आनंद मिळवून दिलात, याबद्दल आभार. तो चांदोबा गेला...! परंतु याची दखल न्यू यॉर्कर घेईल काय हे विचारावेसे वाटते.
मंगेश नाबर.

May 11, 2011 at 7:27 AM
Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Thanks Mangesh.

I agree New Yorker may never learn about Chandoba.

Anonymous, I don't have old issues. I access them on the web.

best,

May 11, 2011 at 8:33 AM
Veetthal Pandurang. said...

Aniruddha,

I've been reading your blog for quite a while now and I'm amazed at the range of sources you quote/use/link. I'll find it highly useful if you compile a list of your oft-used sources. What makes the staple of your media diet?

Thanks,
Sayyad

May 14, 2011 at 5:32 AM
Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Thanks Sayyad.

I feel our planet is so rich and we and our fellow life are such complex creatures.

If one remains curious, one keeps stumbling upon.

Earlier good newspapers and magazines in India used to "stumble upon" for their readers. Now they all eat from the same corporate-sponsored trough. But I want variety and hence the struggle.

I will give a thought to your suggestion of compiling "a list of your oft-used sources."

Thanks again for being a perceptive reader.

May 14, 2011 at 8:17 AM
Adi Beeja Ekale said...

So Aniruddha,

Have you compiled your resources as Veetthal suggests?

December 23, 2012 at 8:55 PM
Aniruddha G. Kulkarni said...

Not really...I am too lazy for that...but I still may...best

December 24, 2012 at 8:56 AM

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