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."

Saturday, February 07, 2015

The House of Bijapur (Vesh)

Orhan Pamuk:
"...Thus, these legendary illustrators of Kazvin and Herat, all these elderly masters, along with their apprentices, these artisans who made masterpieces in Shah Tahmasp’s workshops, painters and colorists whose brushes made horses gallop at full speed and whose butterflies fluttered off the page, all of these master binders and calligraphers, every last one was left without work, penniless and destitute, homeless and bereft. Some migrated to the North among the Uzbeks, some West to India..."

('My Name is Red', 1998)

William Dalrymple, The Times of India, May 17 2015:

"As the works in the Met show demonstrate, while Ahmadnagar and Golconda both produced extraordinary artwork, it is Bijapur that is rightly admired as the most refined and innovative of the Deccani sultanates. The archetypal Bijapur ruler was Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1556-1627) of Bijapur, an erudite scholar, lute player, poet, singer, calligrapher, chess master and an aesthete. Under Ibrahim Bijapur underwent a remarkable renaissance. Though his first love was perhaps music (and his most popular composition a book of Urdu songs) Ibrahim oversaw the creation of a remarkable literary revival and attracted to his court the greatest poets and writers of his day, including Zuhuri, the Persian poet laureate. "
 
In Miraj, where I lived for first 21 years of life, the most important part of our address was "Bijapur Vesh".  

The distance between Miraj and Bijapur is 121 km and yet it exerted such deep influence on our life. That was because Miraj once was an important town of Adil Shahi for a long time. The capital of Adil Shahi was the town of Bijapur. Therefore, a border of the town  from where the road to the capital city began was named after it. Hence 'Vijapur/ Bijapur Vesh' (विजापूर वेस) and our house of Bijapur Vesh!

 The House of Bijapur, 1680 

Artists:   Kamal Muhammad and Chand Muhammad

courtesy: Wikipedia and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

I came across this intriguing, beautiful painting in 'The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 100 Great Works 1100-1900', 2014  by B N Goswamy. Four pages of the book are devoted to it. 

The painting is showing us successive Sultans of Bijapur.  The figure in pink- according to one theory- is that of Shah Ismail, the Safavid ruler of Persia. The figure on the throne is of Sultan Yusuf, the founder of the Adil Shahi dynasty.

The painting apparently was made for boyish looking Sikandar Adil Shah, the sitting figure on the extreme  right, who was placed on the throne in 1672 at the age of four and whose reign was marked by chronic civil war. The picture is making a statement that the young man belongs there in the company of his predecessors and should be accepted as such.

The painting becomes poignant because just six years after its completion, the Bijapur Sultanate came to an end at the hands of Mughals in September 1686.  Sikandar- who died in Mughal captivity- turned out to be the last Adil-Shah. Neither was there any need to prove anything to anyone nor the painting would ever need a revision!

Who were Kamal and Chand Muhammad, the artists? Did they come from Persia? Were they trained there? Apparently not much is known about them as per the book.

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