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."

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

पंडितराव खाडीलकर...My Toy Soldier Day is Today...Diwali

Diwali is my Toy Soldier day.

Panditrao Khadilkar (पंडितराव खाडीलकर), a lifelong bachelor, was our family friend at Miraj (मिरज). He used to stay in a single room in my friend's wada (वाडा) about a hundred meter from our house.

He had free access to any part of our small house and even when father wasn't around he used to joke and chat with our mother as she worked in the kitchen. She and we kids always used to pull his legs but he took it gamely or so we always thought.

Panditrao, that's what we all called him,  worked at chemistry lab of Willingdon College, Sangli. I could read lots of Marathi books because of him as he borrowed them from the college library.

He used to visit his brothers in Mumbai and Pune for Diwali. In 1980 (I think), he was traveling to Mumbai by train to be with his brother for Diwali. As the train stopped after Thane for some reason, he got down from it and started walking towards Mulund. We heard the same train knocked him to death as he was crossing the rail tracks. He was apparently carrying ghee from Miraj which was famous for all its milk products. They said the same ghee was poured on his funeral pyre.

For many years, Panditrao used to give us kids small gifts. One such gift was a toy soldier of clay. I don't remember the year but he bought it during urus of Samsuddin Mira Saheb. That toy soldier, 'huge' in stature, was my prized possession for many years. I still remember his face, his built, his weapon, his green fatigues. Every year I used to mount him on Diwali fort we used to build at home. He was a complete misfit standing next to Shivaji-maharaj (शिवाजी महाराज) and his saber/spear holding lieutenants.


  courtesy: Toy Story page on Facebook
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