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."

Thursday, February 18, 2021

‘Bismillah! Here comes her highness, Shahzaadi Jahanara Begum! Bismillah!’...


Ira Mukhoty, ‘Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire’, 2018:
“....It is a glittering spring day in Shahjahanabad in 1654 and the usually raucous crowds at the stalls lining the Chandni Chowk have fallen silent, beguiled by the magnificence of the procession moving down the wide, tree-lined street. In front of the slow-moving elephants, liveried men sprinkle water on the street so that no dust rises off the ground. Cavalry and infantry follow, the horses tripping and impatient, the soldiers fierce and sombre. Eunuchs walk behind the soldiers, surrounding the imperial elephant on all sides. ‘Hoshiyaar!’ they shout, and make a great show of keeping back the crowds. They raise their silver sticks, ‘shouting out, pushing and assaulting everyone without the least respect of persons’. The Abyssinian eunuchs are particularly fearsome, their muscles rippling beneath their dark skin like a promise. The traders at the shops stand back respectfully and there are Armenians, Persians, Italians, Turks, Portuguese and French adventurers who will spread the stories of Mughal grandeur throughout the world. While the procession passes by, the merchants forget to haggle over the Chinese eye glasses, the jewellery, the perfumes, the gemstones, the slaves, the eunuchs and the caged cheetahs. The elegant white-robed men at the coffee houses drinking the dark brew made from imported beans from Persia set down their tumblers and stand to watch the commotion. Servants walk next to the imperial elephant, driving away flies with peacock feathers stuck into handles of enamelled gold. Others hold perfumes and incense as they walk next to the elephant, so that no offensive smell reaches the exalted passenger. A woman-servant walks in front of the elephant, swinging an incense holder in her hands and shouting out at each step: ‘Bismillah! Here comes her highness, Shahzaadi Jahanara Begum! Bismillah!’...”

'The Queen of Sheba', 1911

Artist: Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)