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, February 06, 2017

तुम्ही मागे ठेवलेल्या प्रतिमा...Sudhir Tailang on Modi, Mamata and Demonetisation!

Today February 6 2017 is first death anniversary of Sudhir Tailang (1960-2016), one of the best political cartoonists produced by India. On Feb 26 it will be his 57th birth anniversary.

Ralph Steadman (1936-), 1970:

"My subject had become a victim and his dark features blackened, resembling my drawing even more."

You may see a few example of his huge talent on this blog.  These days, every time,  I see Ms. Mamata Banerjee thunder on TV, I imagine how Mr. Tailang would have used it to draw her. 

The other day she said Mr. Modi should be arrested using ropes. Mr. Modi replied to it in his own style in a rally. 

Mr. Tailang had captured an earlier version of the  'war' between Modi and Mamata in the following unforgettable picture. Indeed the picture becomes very poignant after the latest verbal skirmish between the two on the subject of  'arresting Mr. Modi'. 

I wonder what he would have drawn today!


 The following picture was drawn by Mr. Tailang in 2011 but I re-imagine the picture with the word  "demonetization" replacing the words "rate hike"!


 Pictures courtesy: copyright holders of Mr. Tailang's work

To conclude, once again, I think of the following poem of the late Mr. Sadanand Rege (सदानंद रेगे) who also was a painter. 


"निरोप
तुम्ही गेल्यापासून
तुमच्या कवितांची वही
अत्यवस्थ आहे

तुम्ही मागे ठेवलेल्या प्रतिमाही
आता संपत आल्या आहेत
तुमची वही रोज थोडीथोडी
कोरी होत चाललेय;
तिला चांगला भाव यायला
अजून थोडा अवकाश लागेल."