Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

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."

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Thank the Lord He is Dead, This Son of a Gun...Khushwant Singh...

“Amon deshti kothao khojay

Pabey no ko toomee,

Shokol desher rani shejey,

Ammar jonmo bhoomee”

India was unique also because Khushwant Singh lived there.

Mr. Singh has appeared on this blog many times earlier and he will continue to do so. I have almost all his books. I have liked him since when I was a kid.

I still remember reading Dhiren Bhagat's obituary of him for "Sunday Observer" in 1980's. It obviously came almost three decades too soon. Mr. Bhagat, one of my favourite columnists, himself died in 1988.

Artist: Mario de Miranda, The Illustrated Weekly of India

The Times of India interviewed him in November 2011.

How are you spending your days currently?

By not meeting anyone. In fact, I’m happiest when left alone. I have never ever felt lonely...

...Yet, your penchant for contemporary political commentary hasn’t gone – broad comments on what’s happening in the country today?

We have an honest and able prime minister but there is rampant corruption…I don’t believe the likes of Anna Hazare can do a thing about this corruption. Only Mahatma Gandhi would have been able to arouse mass consciousness to halt this corruption spreading all around. Meanwhile, on the other side, it’s so obvious that chief minister Narendra Modi is targeting officers in Gujarat who dared to bare the truth...

...Your age is always a matter of public comment; do you privately think about death?

Yes. I think of death very often. I think of all my friends gone and wonder where they are…I wonder why we don’t discuss death in our homes. It’s one of those realities no one can escape…I also believe in the Jain philosophy that death ought to be celebrated. Years ago, I’d sit at the cremation grounds. That had a certain effect on me, worked as therapy. And years ago, i’d written my own epitaph: ‘Here lies one who spared neither man or God/ Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod/ Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun/ Thank the Lord he is dead, this son of a gun.’

...Clearly, you have few regrets; is there anything you wish you could have done differently?

I should have started my writing career much earlier – I wasted several years pursuing the legal profession. The other regret is not to have written more against religious fundamentalists hell-bent on causing divides between communities of this land. They have to be dealt with severely. My worry is over the rise of right-wing fascist parties in the country. We have to save our country from these destructive forces.