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."

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Dancing Flames of Memory: Mr. Hanif Mohammad sees Sir Don Bradman Bat

LAURA BEIL:
"Memory is not so much a record of the past as a rough sketch that can be modified even by the simple act of telling the story.
For scientists, memory has been on trial for decades, and courts and public opinion are only now catching up with the verdict. It has come as little surprise to researchers that about 75 percent of DNA-based exonerations have come in cases where witnesses got it wrong"
(The New York Times, November 28 2011) 
Jennifer Senior:
"The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight.
It’s a lovely magic trick of the memory, this gilding of hard times. Perhaps it’s just the necessary alchemy we need to keep the species going. "

(New York Magazine)

 The Hindu reported on December 25 2012:

"Pakistan batting great, Hanif Mohammad on Tuesday, rated Sachin Tendulkar better than the legendary Australian Sir Donald Bradman and described him as the best batsman he has seen in my life.
“I am one of those fortune people who have seen Bradman and Tendulkar bat in my lifetime and in my opinion Tendulkar is the best batsman I have seen in my life,” Hanif said on Tuesday..."

First of all,  I take this statement with any seriousness only if the observer has seen both the players playing in a test match.

If he did,  I wonder when and where Mr. Mohammad saw Sir Bradman bat in a test match.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Mohammad  was borne on 21 December 1934.

 Wisden entry says about 'famous five' Mohammad brothers:

"Their father was a good club cricketer, their mother a regional badminton and table tennis champion. The shattering upheaval of Partition then put paid to their small and gentle world. They moved to Karachi as founder-inhabitants of Jinnah's new Muslim state."

So years 1946-1947 must have been rather hectic for  Mohammad family.

PTV Sports Official website throws some more light on the formative years of Mr. Hanif:

"...He was the third of five Sons born to Sheikh Ismail Mohammad and Amir Bee. The proud parents despite economical limitations always encouraged their sons to play cricket. After having lost two children, a son and a daughter who died very young, Hanif’s parents saw the ups and down of life very closely and the parental warmth was their main asset. Unfortunately Ismail, a hotel waiter, died suddenly in 1948 to see Wazir Mohammad, the oldest son seeking an employment in the National Bank of Pakistan to support his family...At 16 (1950), he was picked to tour England with the Pakistan Eaglets and spent fifteen days in  the Alf Gover Coaching School."

Sir Bradman was borne in 1908 and made his debut in test cricket in 1928. Because of WWII, he could not play any international cricket from 1938 until 1946.

Sadly,  Sir Bradman never toured India as a playing cricketer. "His only visit to India came in the mid fifties when he and Lady Bradman made a brief visit to Calcutta." ('Bradman and the Indian connection' by Partab Ramchand)

Sir Bradman played his last test match against England in  August 1948. His last first class match took place in 1949. Between 1946-1948, Mr. Bradman played 15 test matches against England (10) and India (5), in England (5) and Australia (10).


Therefore,   Mr. Mohammad must have seen Mr. Bradman bat in a test match either in England or Australia when he was 11-13 years old, between November 1946 to August 1948.

Considering his family's misfortunes, as stated above, I wonder who funded his travel? Did he travel with the Indian team to Australia in the winter of 1947? The late Mr. Gul Mohammad (not related to Mr. Hanif as far as I know) was part of that Indian team

And even if he saw Sir Bradman in a test match, in 1946, Bradman was 38 years old and, by many accounts,  much lesser player with fitness issues than what he was before WWII. (Does this remind you of another familiar player?)

So is he comparing apple to apple? Can one's memory be trusted when he  is a 78-year old talking about what he saw 65 or more years ago?

I react with a few people of around that age from time to time. A few of them are very intelligent and fit. But I never hear them holding forth on something that has happened that long ago with a lot of confidence.

In one of the funniest passages I have read, reminding me where I am heading, Mark Twain describes how fickle human memory could be:

"I used to remember my brother Henry walking into a fire outdoors when he was a week old. It was remarkable in me to remember a thing like that and it was still more remarkable that I should cling to the delusion for thirty years that I did remember it -- for of course it never happened; he would not have been able to walk at that age. . . . For many years I remembered helping my grandfather drinking his whiskey when I was six weeks old but I do not tell about that any more now; I am grown old and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened."

Artist: Robert J. Day, The New Yorker, March 14 1959


Mr. Day is one of very best cartoonists I have come across. You may find a few more of his pictures on this blog.

Ben Yagoda has quite rightly called Mr. Day "underrecognized New Yorker master."