Charvaka, Ambrose Bierce and the existence of Santa Claus

जी ए कुलकर्णी: 

"...त्याने प्रेमाचा व शांतीचा संदेश सांगितला, पण प्रसार झाला तो तलवारीच्या जोरावर; त्याने निरिच्छ्तेवर भर दिला, तर आता त्याच्या धर्माचा आधार आहे संपत्ती. हा तुला त्याचा विजय वाटतो, तसे पाहिले तर त्याचे सच्चे अनुयायी एखाद्या खेड्यातील वसतीपेक्षा जास्त नसतील. पण म्हणून का त्याच्या शिकवणीचे महत्व कमी होते?..." ('यात्रिक', 'पिंगळावेळ', 1977)

 ("...He gave the message of love and peace, but it spread on the strength of the sword; he insisted on austerity, and now the support of his religion is wealth. You think it's his victory, look it this way: his true followers would not exceed the population of a village. But then does it reduce the importance of his teachings ?..")

Charles Dickens

“Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!”

Stefany Anne Golberg on Ambrose Bierce-  who for me is  one of the greatest- who died around Christmas in 1913:

" Even as a child, the passion Bierce had for the Truth outweighed his sympathy for human weakness. As a child, Bierce once asked his mother to verify the existence of Santa Claus. Of course there is a Santa Claus, his mother assured him. But Bierce was soon to discover, as all children will, the horrible reality. It was this, Bierce said years later, that cemented the deep and irreparable betrayal of his mother: “I proceeded forthwith to detest my deceiver with all my little might and main.”..."

In his inimitable 'THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY', 1906 Bierce defines Christian as:

" n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. "

From  Indian pantheon only Cārvāka (चार्वाक) can be compared to Bierce. ("the Charvakas were
strict empiricists who believed that the only valid source of knowledge is direct perception; they believed only what could be seen by the eyes directly. They rejected even inference as a method of investigation." - 'Encyclopedia of Hinduism' by Constance A. Jones and James D. Ryan)

So Charvaka too would have asked her mom to show a Santa Claus. 

Artist: Bill Watterson

p.s.

This is how Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) describes Charvak in Marathi:

"सत्याचा स्वीकार। श्रद्धांचा अव्हेर,

हिंसेचा धिक्कार, । करोनिया,

मानवी जीवन। करणे सुखमय

हेच एक ध्येय। मानणारे

मानवतावादी, । उद्योगप्रवण,

असे हे दर्शन । चार्वाकाचे."

[ASHTADARSHANE, (अष्टदर्शने), 2003]

Drawing Rangoli of Pi for the Sheer Joy of Mathematics: Ramanujan @125

Today December 22 2012 is 125th Birth Anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Shiv Visvanathan:

"One misses the celebration of science today. Science acquired its creativity through play and it is the playfulness of science that created a Jagadish Chandra Bose, a Raman, a Ramanujan or Chandrasekhar. Science as playfulness has to come back as cultural form to childhood and the universities. Science has to be enjoyable...

...Try an experiment. Make a list of our top scientists and read their speeches. Pick the best and you will see that our scientists have little understanding of the nature of science. Just try it with a sample of speeches from the Indian Science Congress. The illiteracy of our scientists and our politicians about science seems to be co-produced." 

(The Asian Age, January 12 2012)

Evelyn Lamb:

"Ramanujan's discoveries have influenced several areas of mathematics, but he is probably most famous for his contributions to number theory and infinite series, among them fascinating formulas that can be used to calculate digits of pi in unusual ways."

 (Scientific American, December 22 2012)

 त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर:

"ज्या वर्गांत भास्कराचार्यांसारखा बृहस्पति असतो, त्या वर्गांत दुसर्या कोणा तरी मुलाचा दुसरा नंबर लागतच असतो. पण त्यावरून त्यांस पहिल्या व दुसर्या नंबरचे विद्यार्थी ठरविणें योग्य नाहीं..."

("In a class that has got  Bhāskarāchārya, a Bṛhaspati, guru of the gods, also always has a boy who comes second. But it is misleading to rank them number one and number two students...")

(from: 'Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar Nivadak Lekh Sangraha', Aggregator-H V Mote, Introduction- G D Khanolkar, 1977)

('त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर निवडक लेख संग्रह', संग्राहक-ह. वि. मोटे, परिचय-गं. दे. खानोलकर, १९७७)

I quote this because I find it very interesting how Shejwalkar, a historian,  invokes Bhāskarāchārya, a mathematician,  to compare Nanasaheb Peshwa (1721-1761) (नानासाहेब पेशवा)- student claiming to be second in an imaginary class consisting of prominent personalities from Maratha history- to Shivaji (1630-1680) (शिवाजी), who obviously is first by a long shot.

I wonder if people now writing in Marathi invoke personalities like  Bhāskarāchārya or Ramanujan in such an easy manner.

 

Google Doodle on December 22 2012

Artist: Unknown at the moment; 

courtesy: Google Inc. 

Look at the kid enjoying drawing a rangoli (or so I imagine) of Pi...he has kept his books aside under a tree...and he will surely go play football- held stylishly under the foot by his friend-  little later...also look at the girl holding a skipping rope...

Science as playfulness has to come back as cultural form to childhood and the universities. Science has to be enjoyable...

Greasy Blogger Turns Readers into Frogs using Cholesterol !

Samuel Beckett:

“There is nothing to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.''

B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर):

" नळीतलें जग नळीत जगतें

उगाच रुसवा रसायनाचा;

उगाच दावा मानवतेचा

आणिक डंका सामर्थ्याचा !"

(“Test-tube world lives in test-tube

gratuitous grudge of chemicals;

gratuitous claim of humanism

And drum-beating of brute strength !”)

John Gray:

"Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?"

Kancha Ilaia:

"Learning a well-developed language with a global reach releases enormous energies from people who remained suppressed for long years...The richness of English, its global reach, the extent and variety of knowledge available in it, allow its learners to aim high, experiment and try out or embrace innovative ideas..."
  

SAMUEL JOHNSON:

"Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess."

Henry Miller:

"In a few hundred years or less books will be a thing of the past. There was a time when poets communicated with the world without the medium of print; the time will come when they will communicate silently, not as poets merely, but as seers. What we have overlooked, in our frenzy to invent more dazzling ways and means of communication, is to communicate.

No, the advance will not come through the use of subtler mechanical devices, nor will it come through the spread of education. The advance will come in the form of a breakthrough. New forms of communication will be established. New forms presuppose new desires. The great desire of the world today is to break the bounds which lock us in. It is not yet a conscious desire. Men do not yet realize what they are fighting for. This is the beginning of a long fight, a fight from within outwards."

For Marathi daily Loksatta (लोकसत्ता),  Abhinavgupt (अभिनवगुप्त)  has reviewed this blog on December 17 2012. If you read Marathi, you may read it here. The title of the piece is "kulkarnyanch loni" (कुलकर्ण्याचं लोणी)..."Kulkarni's Butter". (From this title comes mine...cholesterol, greasy etc.)

It always feels nice to receive attention from the mainstream media and I was mildly excited for a couple of days after reading it.


I have now decided to comment on that review a little dispassionately. I begin with my overall impression.

Abhinavgupt  has done the review with great sensitivity, affection and after studying many posts on the blog. At a couple places, he showers high praise on me that I mayn't deserve. He has largely captured essence of the blog in his almost poetic summary. In short, that review is so effective that it will mildly influence my future blogging.

Thankfully, at the heart of the piece, he mentions cartoons and humour because most of the feedback I have received from others does not even mention either of them! They comment only on my words and thoughts. However, my blog is primarily about visuals that include cartoons.


The review correctly points out quirkiness of the blog. I particularly liked the imagery of how one has to keep jumping from one point to another while reading the blog. I felt as if I turn my readers into hopping frogs!

Artist: Brant Parker and Johnny Hart, "The Wizard of Id"

(remember readers, even after that it could still work out because I too am a frog.)

Another explanation for this has come from my friend and fellow-blogger Jamuna Inamdar. She wrote to me on February 14 2013:

"Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: 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.’ 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 the thicket of information — how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it — is what distinguishes my writing from yours. Your blog is like this Aniruddha"

The review also correctly points out how a typical blogpost here is a collection of bullet-points (मुद्दे).

It's so because I am a 'drawing-challenged' person who is trying to draw a cartoon! I can't and this is what I end up with. I have to use clutches of all kinds. I also have to be brief.  And above all I am very lazy.

Lewis Lapham recently explained what "Lapham's Quarterly" was in a recent interview:

"...What it is is the great books made topical. I mean I take a subject in the news – war, money, politics, nature, medicine – and then assemble texts. My contributors are people like Escalus, Cicero, Gibbon, Machiavelli and Shakespeare. It’s based on my notion that – it’s actually the notion of the German poet Goethe – he’s talking about history and he says, "History is our inheritance. The story on the old walls, or printed in the old books, is also our own story.’’

And Goethe says, ‘He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth..."  
 
On this blog, I TRY not to live  hand-to-mouth. And in that, I take generous help of all those people- many of them dead- about whom I know a bit about.


The blog is targeted first at my restless soul, particularly since my mother's death in 2006 and then at the rest of the world. It's a therapy for me. Sure, readers- to name a couple Vasant Sarwate, Avadhoot, Mangesh Nabar, Jamuna Inamdar, Nikhil Bellarykar-  and reviews encourage me and I am grateful to them but they are not indispensable.

Using this vehicle, I attempt to take my small test-tube world to the larger world out there. And that larger world starts just beyond  the borders of  Western Maharashtra!

There were (are) a few readers of the blog who wanted me to write this blog in Marathi and I never gave it much consideration.

Here are a couple of reasons for that decision:

Most educated young Indians now are bilingual or trilingual. (My son's generation-b 1994-  is more comfortable reading English than Marathi or Hindi.)  


Secondly, do Indians know enough about fellow Indians such as the geographies they live in or their distinct histories or their rich and beautiful languages? Do we respect culture of each other enough? For instance, major floods in  erstwhile 'Marathi' districts of Northern Karnataka ('Bombay-Karnataka') are hardly covered in Marathi newspapers printed in Southern Maharashtra!

The Loksatta review gives an example of a Dutch blogger but I have received more feedback on this blog from non-Marathi speaking Indians- Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Assamese- than non-Indians.

A person claiming to be a descendant of great Ibrahim Khan Gardi has thanked me for my post on Panipat, 1761. When I got that feedback, I felt as if Mr. Gardi came out of his unmarked grave- a bit dusty alright- and hugged me!


This was possible only because the blog was bilingual.

There is another reason why I started writing this blog:  I was bored with what I was reading and watching in so called 'Marathi world', its incestuous nature, meaning excessively close and resistant to outside influence. The same actors (brands?) performing the same play on the same stage saying the same dialogues in front of the same audience at the same time. I was not being a rebel, I was simply bored.


In a brilliant essay on the poetry of Sadanand Rege (सदानंद रेगे), Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग) writes:

"मराठी कवितेच्या कोंदट, कोत्या, ‘इनब्रीडिंग’ने कोळपलेल्या वातावरणात सदानंद रेग्यांची कविता हा एक मोकळा वारा होता. हा वारा आता वाहायचा थांबला आहे." (Read the full Marathi essay of Sarang here.)


("In stuffy, shallow and shadowed-with-inbreeding environment of Marathi poetry, Rege's poetry was whiff of fresh wind. That wind has now stopped blowing.")

I wanted to write like D G Godse (द  ग  गोडसे), M V Dhond (म  वा  धोंड), Rege and Arun Kolatkar (अरुण कोलटकर). Choosing my subjects, my medium, my words...blundering my way through...(Abhinavgupt interestingly says in the review that the blog throws up some new possibilities in the area of blog writing.)

Early in the life of this blog, some readers insisted that I wrote about Baba Amte (बाबा आमटे) when he died. I refused because although I know a bit about him and have abiding respect for his work, I had nothing to say about him. I still don't. Those readers were so offended by my response that I think I lost them permanently.

For me, probably like Bhau Padhye (भाऊ पाध्ये), all the life is at par. Crows and pigs in my neighborhood are as interesting as velociraptors in a Spielberg movie and hippopotamuses on National Geographic channel.


Towards the end, the Loksatta review talks about what "ultra-rebels" (अल्ट्रा-बंडखोर) might think about this blog.

I don't quite understand what the system and the rebels have to do with this. My blog is what the title says: I am looking at visuals, trying to make sense of this complex, confusing, cruel world and surviving while having  a bit of fun...as I have quoted Mardhekar poem at the start: "नळीतलें जग नळीत जगतें"...I very much live and write in a test-tube...'उगाच दावा मानवतेचा'...Not me, I make no claim.

If in the process, I have been able to take a small part of my culture to the larger world, I am happy for it but,  if not me, and there is no modesty in this, some one else would have done it anyway.

Recently, I read "...Five months before he died, Paul Cézanne attended the unveiling of a bust of Émile Zola, his old soulmate, at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix. Numa Coste, friend to both, addressed the gathering. He reminded the attendees of Zola’s autumnal insistence that “one thinks one has revolutionized the world, and then one finds out, at the end of the road, that one has not revolutionized anything at all.” The elderly painter cried at the words..." 

(MAUREEN MULLARKEY)

And finally is there is a book in me?

Artist: Geoff Thompson, The Spectator, UK

p.s.

In case, you read Loksatta article and  are curious to know about the posts from this blog referred there, here are the web links:

 "'स्वत:मध्येच डुंबत राहण्याच्या सवयीमुळे व्ही. एस. नायपॉल हे स्वत:चंच अर्कचित्र झालेले आहेत.. "

"'स्पिनोझा. ब्लॉगसे. एनएल' या डच भाषेतील ब्लॉगचे कर्ते स्टान वर्डुल्ट यांनी विंदा करंदीकर गेले त्यानंतर 'अनिरुद्ध कुलकर्णीच्या ब्लॉगमुळे मला हे कळलं'"

"कुसुमाग्रजांवरली नोंद  ही अनिरुद्ध कुलकर्णी यांचे विचार किती मराठी आणि किती जागतिक आहेत, याचा एक उत्तम नमुना ठरेल."

"'अमर चित्रकथा'बद्दल अशाच एका निमित्तानं लिहिताना, 'हे सत्यवती की शकुंतला की कुणाचंतरी चित्र पाहा' म्हणून एक चित्र दाखवून पुढे हा लेखक म्हणतो : थँक्यू अमर चित्रकथा.. तुम्ही सस्त्या पोर्नपासून मला वाचवलंत!"


"कविताप्रेम, त्यातही आजच्या जगाकडे पाहताना मर्ढेकरांबद्दल आस्था वाटणं आवश्यकच आहे असा त्यांचा (आग्रह नव्हे) सहजभाव" :  Many posts on this blog, search "Mardhekar", "Kolatkar" "Sadanand Rege" etc or visit my Facebook on Mardhekar here and Sadanand Rege here

"जी. ए. कुलकर्णी यांच्याबद्दल त्यांना असलेली ओढ," : Many posts on this blog...search for G A Kulkarni or visit my Facebook page on him here

" म. वा. धोंड यांच्यासारख्या समीक्षकांबद्दल त्यांना वाटणारा जिव्हाळापूर्वक आदर": Search for M V Dhond or visit my Facebook page on him here.

Adventures of My Huck - Raj of Shree 420

Today December 14 2012 is 88th Birth Anniversary of Raj Kapoor.  

Mr. Kapoor was very special to our family. According to my father Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Raj Kapoor and my father's father could no wrong and didn't! (Please note there is no 'god' in that list.)

Facebook page informed on December 11 2012: 

"Today in 1884, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was first published in Britain and Canada. The American edition (deleting the word "The" from the title to become "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn") debuted in February of the following year..."

It was accompanied by this image:

When I first saw this picture, for a moment I thought Huck was holding a drum and not a hat. And it reminded me of my Huck: 

"Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the "right" thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality..." (Wikipedia)

Doesn't Raj  of 'Shree 420', 1955 try something similar?

Mr. Kapoor has been often compared to Charlie Chaplin - I don't agree with that characterization- but probably never to Huckleberry Finn,

For me, 'Shree 420' is an adveture of a small town educated simple guy coming to a major metropolis. He strays for a while but then returns to his original path of honesty and hardwork and love for all.  

Image Courtesy: Shemaroo

Ravi Shankar's 'Anuradha' -माधुर्यामुळे सतत ऐकावेसे वाटते पण उत्कटतेमुळे असह्य वाटते

"माधुर्यामुळे सतत ऐकावेसे वाटते पण उत्कटतेमुळे असह्य वाटते, असे तुझे संगीत! तुला मृत व्यक्तीला जिवंत करता येत नसेल, पण मृत दिवस मात्र तू पुन्हा जिवंत केलेस!"

(आँर्फियस, "पिंगळा वेळ", जी ए कुलकर्णी, १९७७)

"wished to be heard constantly for sweetness but unbearable because of intensity, such is your music! You mayn't raise the dead, but you brought to life the dead days!"

(Orpheus, "Pingala Vel", G A Kulkarni, 1977)
 
The late Mr. Ravi Shankar means many things to many people. But for me he is music composer of  "Anuradha" (1960).

That music is  "माधुर्यामुळे सतत ऐकावेसे वाटते पण उत्कटतेमुळे असह्य वाटते".

Gathering in Circles Around the Glimmering Lights of GA's Epigraphs

Tomorrow December 11 2012 is 25th death anniversary of  G A Kulkarni (जी. ए. कुलकर्णी)

Walter de la Mare:

"No, No, Why further should we roam

Since every road man Journeys by,

Ends on a hillside far from Home

Under an alien sky"

from me to GA:

"तुम्ही अवतरले गोकुळी आम्ही गोपाळांच्या मेळी
तुम्ही होते रामराजा आम्ही वानरांच्या फौजा"

(Marathi folksong quoted in Srinivas Vinayak  Kulkarni's 'Aamhi Vanaranchya Phauja', 1965)

I still remember the December 12 1987's eerie morning  at Nashik (नाशिक) when I heard about GA's death on the All India Radio. 

After reading GA's numerous letters, particularly about his final years,  and knowing full well that such decisions are very complex, I still wonder if he should have stayed back in his beloved Dharwad instead of moving to alien Pune (पुणे). When I went to Agra in 1980's,  I was most moved by the place they show where  dethroned Emperor Shah Jahan used to sit and stare at The Taj Mahal in the distance as he lay dying. 

I was at 'G A Kulkarni road' in Pune, a few months ago, to attend an engagement ceremony, in a makeshift hall, in a multistory building's basement, and how grotesque it sounded that that piece of Pune- complete with a Pizza Hut- and not some Greek Colosseum or a stretch of beach at Mahabalipuram-  is named after GA!  Indeed, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

Although I have bought it some time ago, like majority of  my books, I have still not read  Cervantes's 'Don Quixote'. 

But I kind of feel I have 'received' it after every reading- 50 at least- of G A's  'Yatrik' (यात्रिक) from the collection of his short stories 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ), 1977.

Equally delightful has been reading D V Deshpande's (धों वि देशपांडे ) commentary on G A's story in 'jeeenchya katha: ek anwayarth' (जीएंच्या कथा: एक अन्वयार्थ).

 Yatrik  has these lines:

"अरे, निर्बुद्ध, जड जगाविषयी बदलती रुपके करत राहण्यापेक्षा तुझ्या रुपकांप्रमाणे जर जग बदलत जाऊ लागले तर तुला तरी जास्त काय हवे सांग."

("...hey, instead of creating changing metaphors for stupid, gross world, if the world starts changing to suit your metaphors, tell me what more you want.")

In October 2012 I read on Guardian website:

"New book cover designs for the Observer 100 greatest novels of all time list – in pictures:

Belgian artist Tom Haentjens has united 100 artists from 28 countries in a co-creation project, Doedemee to help raise awareness of illiteracy in Africa. Each has redesigned a poster-sized cover for a book from the list compiled by Robert McCrum in 2003..."

What  pleasure those designs gave!

I was captivated particularly by this:

Don Quixote, designed by Lobulo Design Photograph: Public Domain

Now doesn't it represent: Wold Starts Changing to Suit His Metaphor...?   I feel it does.

They say GA was a good painter. I can't vouch for that. But being a voracious reader, I wonder if he ever saw Roc Riera Rojas illustrated special edition of  Don Quixote. 

After seeing the picture below from that edition, I re-read GA's story and imagined dialogues between Don and Sancho spoken by the figures below.

It was a lot of fun. 

GA was a master of epigraphs. His books would not be complete without the epigraphs he chose for them. (I wonder why  he didn't also choose images to go along.)

Rachel Sagner Buurma writes:

"Epigraphs escort us safely across the boundary between the title page and the story. Easing us into narrative, epigraphs make us pause and notice the transition from the world to the work, from life to the novel. They slow us down—which is why we often skip them."

(The New Republic, December 6 2012)


GA chose these two epigraphs for 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळा वेळ), 1977:

                           You do not know
The unspoken voice of sorrow in the ancient bedroom
At three o'clock in the morning.
                                               - T. S Eliot

'Shallow people demand variety - but I have been 
writing the same story throughout my life, every
time trying to cut nearer the aching nerve.
                                                         - Strindberg   

I have reproduced them very close to as they appear in the book.

Now revisit  Prof.  Buurma's quote above.

Each story from GA's book is nicely set up with these epigraphs...they indeed transition us from 'the world to the work, from life to the novel. They slow us down' —but I never skip them! I might skip his book!

Prof.  Buurma concludes:

"The Art of the Epigraph’s epigraph, drawn from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, says that books “continue each other in spite of our habit of judging them separately.” This is true—but it might not be the whole truth. For though we like to imagine the autonomy of a world of books that speak to one another, separate from our own fallible judgments and best guesses and wishful thinking, it may be that all we have are groups of readers, gathering in circles around the glimmering lights of our authors’ epigraphs, building literature together one line at a time."

GA probably would have loved this conclusion...'groups of readers, gathering in circles around the glimmering lights of our authors’ epigraphs, building literature together one line at a time.'