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."

Monday, March 24, 2014

2057 Ides of March...240 August 30th


This month 2057 years ago Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated




William Shakespeare:

"Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
...And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide 'em."
      --Brutus from "Julius Caesar" Act 2, scene 1, 166, 171–177

Charles Simic, March 2014:

"...It is the selective morality of our interventionists that offends me. They judge acts of violence not by their consequences, but on whether someone else or we are the perpetrators—if the acts are done by us they tend to have their full approval. Hypocrites who are blind or indifferent to their own country’s atrocities are not well suited for playing the part of moral conscience of the world,...There are few things that never change in this world of ours, but one of them happens to be the near certainty that those who raise their voices against injustice get betrayed in the end."

Judith Flander:

“Murder is like hearing blustery rain on the windowpane when sitting indoors. It reinforces a sense of safety, even of pleasure, to know that murder is possible, just not here.”

Colin Wilson, ‘CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND’, 1984:

“…Crime is renewed in every generation because human beings are children; very few of us achieve anything like adulthood. But at least it is not self-perpetuating, as human creativity is…”



Caesar's assassination lives in memory largely because of Shakespeare’s great play. 

The most memorable assassination in the medieval history of Maharashtra is that of Narayanrao Peshwa (नारायणराव पेशवा) that took place on the afternoon of August 30 1773 during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.

There is very little literature in Marathi based on that event, let alone any great one. There is no great painting, done later, either.

This is surprising because Pune then was the most powerful force in the politics of South Asia.

A Marathi novel (not a good one) based on this event was one of the earliest serious books I read as a kid. I have often imagined the bloody event. The Peshwa was not alone to be killed that afternoon. Apparently, almost a dozen people, including two women, and even a couple of cows were killed along with him.

How the young man of just eighteen must have run for his life...did he stumble and fall while running? Which all places he ran to before he got killed? How messy the crime scene must have looked...who cleaned it? How was Peshwa's body prepared for cremation? How was the news received by the stalwarts of the Peshwa court? Which exact Marathi words were used by the plotters of the murder? Did anybody speak like Brutus and Antony? Was it raining that day in Pune?

There is so much tragic drama in all this...

I also think that the event has a great significance as a turning point in Maharashtra's politics.

People, led by Brahmins,  became audacious in their acts to grab the power. They started getting confident that they would eventually get away even with a regicide.

 John Gray says: "The true lesson of Machiavelli is that the alternative to politics is not law but unending war." Maybe this murder averted a revolt or an immediate start of an unending war among various factions that existed in Peshwa's regime.

Another lesson, and a shocking one,  of Machiavelli's 'The Prince' is not that politics demands dirty (bloody?) hands, but that politicians shouldn’t care.


I feel every political event in Maharashtra's politics,  that ordinary people judge as a 'shameful' one,  has its roots in that afternoon of August 1773.  A sitting Brahmin 'king' was brutally slaughtered, in his own house, during one of the biggest Hindu festivals, apparently on the orders of his uncle and right under his nose.

The uncle went on to live for another ten years and continued to play a significant role in the politics of Maharashtra until his death. His son, Baji Rao II, went on to become the 'king' in due course and 'served' the people of India the longest among all the Peshwas.

In India, today, all this does not sound strange at all.

 Should Vijay Tendulkar (विजय तेंडुलकर) have paid more attention to this political murder than the episode of Ghashiram Kotwal (घाशीराम कोतवाल) to write his political satire?

R G Gadkari (राम गणेश गडकरी), Annasaheb Kirloskar (अण्णासाहेब किर्लोस्कर), G B Deval (गो ब देवल), S K Kolhatkar (श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर), K P Khadilkar (कृष्णाजी प्रभाकर खाडिलकर) never wrote any (well-known) play based on the event.

I wonder why.



 'The Death of Caesar', 1804-1805, Oil on Canvas  Artist: Vincenzo Camuccini (1771-1844)  courtesy:  Wikimedia Commons