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."

Saturday, November 08, 2014

पुलंचे गुडघे, पाठ, पाऊस, प्रभाकर कारेकर...To Perish or to Live in Pain?

Today November 8 2014 is 95th Birth Anniversary of P L Deshpande (पु ल देशपांडे)


Abul Ala al-Ma’arri (973-1058), 'The Epistle of Forgiveness':

"...Over many a race the sun’s bright net was spread

And loosed their pearls nor left them even a thread.

This dire world delights us, though all sup –

All whom she mothers – from one mortal cup.

Choose from two ills: which rather in the main

Suits you? – to perish or to live in pain?..."

To perish or to live in pain?

Weather patterns are certainly changing across India. I don't know how they will look in the long run but one senses the big change alright.

The late P L Deshpande (1919-2000) suffered (a kind of) arthritis for a number of years. He of course made fun of it, at least, in public.

In one of the best pieces of humour I have heard, he once said that his joint started acting up even when he heard  Marathi song "Nabh Meghani Akramile" (नभ मेघांनी आक्रमिले), sung by Prabhakar Karekar (प्रभाकर कारेकर), from one of the most popular Marathi plays- 'Sangit Saubhadra' (संगीत सौभद्र), 1882 by Annasaheb Kirloskar (अण्णासाहेब किर्लोस्कर).

'Nabh Meghani Akramile' translates as 'the sky is invaded by clouds'.

When I heard the joke first time, I realised what  funny head the late Mr. Deshpande carried.

I often remember Pu La for something or the other. I don't own most of his books. I mayn't have read his book for a very long time now but he remains an integral part of my ecosystem.

I remember in one of his TV interviews, in a kind of response to his wife's autobiographical, rather grim, book ('Aahe Manohar Tari' आहे मनोहर तरी), not one of my favorites, he said : "मला उदास-बिदास  काही वाटत नाही… " (I don't feel depressed etc.)

It was funny but said with such conviction, I felt it deep inside me and has stayed there since then. I feel he never took himself seriously, an attribute most middle-class Maharashtrians seriously lack. Most of them, especially from  the writing/talking community, are full of themselves.

Let me now return to the invasion of clouds and arthritis.

WSJ on October 14 2013 reports:

"The Wolff family of Paramus, N.J., was eyeing the gathering clouds and debating whether to cancel a planned park trip when 6-year-old Leora piped up with an idea: "Let's call Grandma. Her knees always know when it's going to rain!"

Leora's grandmother, Esther Polatsek, says she started being sensitive to the weather in her 20s, when a fracture in her foot would ache whenever a snowstorm approached. Now 66 and plagued by rheumatoid arthritis, Mrs. Polatsek says she suffers flare-ups whenever the weather is about to change..."

I recently bought my favorite book of PLD:  "Nasti Uthathev" (नस्ती उठाठेव), first published in 1952. ["tyache vyavachhedak lakshan" (त्याचे व्यवच्छेदक लक्षण), an essay in there, is one of the best pieces of comic writing I have ever read]

The cover is by Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे). The subject of the picture is 'Majhi Path Dharate" (माझी पाठ धरते)-  my back sprains!