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."

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

कोणी मॅरेथॉन पळली, आम्ही नाही पहिली...When Hucarras Ran Marathons...



Fanny Parkes, ‘Begums, Thugs and White Mughals. The Journals of Fanny Parkes’, 1822-1846:
“…Every twelve miles a dārogha comes on board to make salaam to the memsāhib, and to ask her orders. I send letters to Prāg by this means; the dārogha gives them to our own chaprāsīs, who run with them from station to station. There is no dāk (post) in these parts….”
 

निरोप्ये, हाकारी : कितीवेळा तो शब्द मी मराठी पुस्तकांतून वाचला असेल पण मला त्यांच्या बद्दल काहीही माहित नव्हते....

माईक डॅश यांच्या  'Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult' , २००५ पुस्तकातून समजलेली एक माहिती- निरोप्ये, हाकारी लोकांबद्दल (hucarras):

"By the early eighteenth century travel through the heartlands of the Empire had thus become comparatively easy. The imperial postal service, manned by the fabled messengers known as hucarras, was capable of 50 miles a day across unbroken country...
...These low-caste confidential messengers began their training at the age of six with regular ‘walking practice’. A year later, chosen boys started to run three miles at a stretch, moving at ‘a handsome trot’, and gradually increased this distance so that by the age of nine they could cross 10 miles of rough country without rest. Training continued for a further nine years until, at the age of 18, a freshly qualified hucarra would be issued with a water bottle, bread pan and other equipment and set to work. By then he would be capable of running anything up to 100 miles a day, and would be expected to possess a detailed knowledge of the sacred Vedic texts, astronomy, music, five Indian languages and six varieties of script – not to mention being a master of disguise."

ते तत्कालीन मागास वर्गीय समाजातले असत... त्यांना वेद, खगोलशास्त्र , संगीत, ५ भाषा आणि ६ लिप्या माहित असत आणि त्याशिवाय बहुरूपी.... १८व्या वर्षी ते दिवसाला १६० किमी पळू शकत असत!... (किती घोडेस्वार सुद्धा दिवसाला १६०किमी जाऊ शकत असतील?.... माझा ह्या आकड्यावर अजून विश्वास बसत नाहीये)...भारतात मॅरेथॉन चॅम्पियन कसे होत नाहीत?...

ह्याचा अर्थ त्याकाळात भारतातील अनेक भागात मॅरेथॉन नकळत पळाली गेली आहे... पण एक प्रश्न उरतोच...


Artist : Farley Katz , The New Yorker, November 2017