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, October 30, 2012

परी तू जागा चुकलासी You Are Looking in the Wrong Place...Two Examples


There is this beautiful line in Marathi: 'तुझे आहे तुजपाशी, परी तू जागा चुकलासी' ...You have what is yours, but you are (looking) in the wrong place...Now can there be any better visual expression of the words above than the following picture of Mr. Kaplan? 

For me such pictures  make the art of cartooning great.After seeing this picture, I just stopped doing what I was at my PC and stared away from the screen.

 As a kid I really used to enjoy this myth of Hindu god Ganpati told by my mother:

"...Parvati declares a race around the universe between the ponderous Ganesha and his younger brother, Skanda or Kartikeya  or Murugan. The younger boy takes off on his swift peacock vehicle swift as lightning, leaving the slow Ganesha with his pitiful rat vehicle far behind. Thinking a moment, Ganesha realizes that his mother and father themselves constitute the entire universe. He simply walks around his mother and father (प्रदक्षिणा) and wins the race. "

 ('Encyclopedia of Hinduism', 2007 by Constance A. Jones and James D. Ryan)

Artist: B E Kaplan, The New Yorker

On the subject of 'one has what is his but one is (looking) in the wrong place', I think of another brilliant cartoon.

   



Artist: Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे), 1959

[ from: "Sarvottam  Sarwate" editor: Avadhoot Paralkar, Lokvangmay Gruh, 2008 ("सरवोत्तम सरवटे" संपादक: अवधूत परळकर, लोकवाङ्मय गृह)]

Caption in Marathi reads: 

"गोप्याʃ ʃ ʃ ʃ गधड्या ʃ खळीचा कागद कुठाय..."

 ("Gopya ʃ ʃ ʃ ʃ idiot ʃ where is the paper containing glue...")

Now, I don't know how many young people can appreciate this great cartoon because the technology has changed decisively. In the age of Fevi-stick one may not appreciate what once was a very popular glue in middle-class Maharashtra: 'Khal' (खळ). 

'Khal' used to be made using rice paste. As a kid I have used it to make kites. 'Khal' used to be stuck to a paper to be passed around and could cause minor accidents and misunderstandings as in the picture above.
  Another example of 'तुज आहे तुजपाशी । परी तु जागा चुकलासी'?
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