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, February 03, 2011

Can Black Magic Making Jobs be Bangalored?

(Today Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे one of the chief inspirations for this blog and who has appeared here dozens of times turns 84.

Happy birthday, Sir.

Compel us to look at ourselves...
Removing the glasses (blindfolds?)...
आम्हास आम्ही पुन्हा पहावे काढूनि चष्मा डोळ्यावरचा...

One more time.)


The Times of India dated February 2 2011:

"B S Yeddyyurappa, Karnataka Chief Minister:

There is a conspiracy to eliminate me through black magic."

Indian Express August 18, 2007 reported:

“…the (Indian) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed how the BJP had tried to invoke divine forces not just to unseat him, but to kill him.

“They (BJP) didn’t even believe I would last as the PM and some leaders even did havans that I should die on a certain day,” said Manmohan Singh in an interview to India Today three months ago but published today…”

(More than 3 years later, BJP is trying to unseat him using other means!)

On November 20, 2007, The Hindu reported:

“The former (Karnataka) Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa on Monday charged the former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and his sons with resorting to “black magic” to finish him off.

“I am facing a threat to my life. I know the places where they did pujas under black magic. I will write to the Home Department on Tuesday complaining against the black magic of Mr. Gowda and his sons. They will be responsible if anything happens to my life,” he said.

He said he would also write a public document in this regard.”

I wonder if this "public document" has come in public domain after more than 3 years.

I have seen this all in corporate world.

Then, 1989-92, I worked for a major multi-national company in Eastern India. Wife of its Managing Director firmly believed that her husband was the target of Bhanamati, black magic and related stuff.

And who was doing it?

None other than his own sister!

Mantrik used to often visit them and objects like bones (animal or human?) were hung at different places to counter the magic.


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 21 Apr 1956

My caption: "Honey, Stop wasting your time here. Pack Your needles. You have a plum job waiting in Bangalore."