Because We all are similar in our Vulgar and Prurient and Dumb Interests

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008):

"TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

I hope the late Mr. Wallace is correct in that middle-class Indians like me still have "refined and aesthetic and noble interests".


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, April 6 2010

Bloody Trail: Building Railway through the Western Ghats

Andrew Odlyzko:

"The British Railway Mania of the 1840s was by many measures the greatest technology mania in history, and its collapse was one of the greatest financial crashes..."

I really like following Marathi song describing a train journey through Khandala ghat between Mumbai and Pune:

Hirvya hirvya rangachi jhadi ghanadaat, sango chedva dista kaso khandalyacho ghat...

हिरव्या हिरव्या रंगाची, झाडि घनदाट
सांग्‌ गो चेड्‌वा दिस्तां कसो, खंडळ्याचो घाट

हिरव्याहिरव्या झाडीत हिरवीहिरवी पानां,
हिरव्याहिरव्या पानांत वारो गाता गानां
पुना-बाँबे हीच गो तुझ्या, सासरची वाट

खंडाळ्याच्या घाटात हवा थंडगार,
थंडिमधे लालि चढे गालि गुलजार
तोऱ्यामध्ये होऊ नको, उगी अशी ताठ

बोगद्यात गाडी जाता होई अंधार,
अंधारात प्रीत घेता प्रीतिचो आधार
इंजिनाच्या मागे जाती, डबे मागोमाग

[गीत - रमेश अणावकर, संगीत - सूरज, स्वर - शारदा, जयवंत कुलकर्णी व इतर चित्रपट - ती मी नव्हेच , १९७०]

Train has featured on these pages many times before. And why not? They were some of the brightest spots in my childhood.

Although I saw Satyajit Ray’s “Pather Panchali” (1955) much later, we lived the famous scene of the film- children coming face to face with the train- many times.

Our favourite place to while away time was Miraj junction’s shunting yard. I still smell the rich cocktail of steam and coal fire.

I never knew that Miraj station once used to have a liquor bar. I learnt about its existence from Vishram Bedekar's (विश्राम बेडेकर) autobiography "Ek Jhad Ani Don Pakshi", 1987 (एक झाड आणि दोन पक्षी). These Englishmen sure knew how to live in style!

And even today I think like Paul Theroux: "Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it." (The Great Railway Bazaar, 1975)

I have still not pardoned George Fernandes for organising 1974 railway strike in India that lasted for twenty days (May 8- May 27).

In that summer, courtesy our neighbour Sharakka Joshi's daughter Shobha Kulkarni, we had planned to travel to many parts of North Karnataka serviced by South Central Railway.

Instead we got stuck in Almatti, a dam town, where Shobha's husband Suresh of Indian Railways was posted. (We still managed to visit beautiful pink Badami Cave Temples though.)

There hasn't been a railway strike of that kind in India since!

The Times of India reported on January 17 2010: "The razor-sharp mind feared by successive governments since the 60's lies in disarray, hobbled by a debilitating illness. An unconventional defence minister during a career largely spent on Opposition benches, George Fernandes presents a frail and defenceless picture, perhaps quite unaware of the family battle raging around him..."

Maybe I should condone Mr. Fernandes now.

Matthew Engel has reviewed "Blood, Iron and Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World" by Christian Wolmar for Guardian November 29 2009.

He says:

"...It is easy to forget just what the train did to and for the planet. No invention – forget the internet, not even a contender – has ever transformed the way the world travelled, worked, thought, fought, ate, drank, made love – you name it – the way this one did...

...The narrative takes on its most epic quality in the United States; its most stupid in Australia (where the different states set about building a charming variety of gauges without a thought about what would happen when you tried to link them up); and its most brutal in India, where maybe 25,000 workers died building the line through the Western Ghats alone..."

Lest we forget. Disaster struck not just British investors.



courtesy : Bettmann/CORBIS, WSJ Feb 27 2010

An illustration of the race on Aug. 25, 1830, between a horse-drawn mill car and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb steam engine—the first used on a commercial track in America. Horse power won when the engine broke down.

Remember 'Naya Daur' (1957)?

Where Cricket Bowlers Gallop through their own Intestines

The Free Dictionary: "match: One that is able to compete equally with another"

The Times of India, March 29 2010:

"...India's Sports Minister M S Gill said the rules of cricket had been changed by the IPL, and acquiesced by the BCCI, by way of giving batsman advantage over bowlers to promote entertainment, allowing mongoose bat and shortening boundaries, all to earn profit."What the IPL is doing, the bowler is only the victim and the bat -- now you have a mongoose bat (and) I look forward to a cobra bat. The boundaries have been shortened ... the whole thing is to entertain the masses. And the bowler is just an instrument for this promotion. IPL is fundamentally business..."

This reminded me of Ernest Hemingway's book “Death in the Afternoon”, 1932 which was about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting.

Cricket bowlers today in limited-overs cricket are like horses from the book.

They were not expected to leave the bull-ring alive. The bull’s horns usually gored the horses’ sides and stomachs and they were often tossed in the air or flipped over. Hemingway describes as ‘comic’ the occasions where horses galloped through their own intestines. (They say this practice in bullfight has changed since then.)

So Mr. Gill this is comic and not trajic and, in any case, can you really argue with popular tastes of the day?

Following happened in US of A less than 111 years ago:

"...On Sunday afternoon, 23 April 1899, more than two thousand white Georgians, some of then arriving on a special excursion train, assembled near the town of Newman to witness the execution of Sam Hose, a black Georgian. Whole families turned up to watch. Parents sent notes to school asking teachers to excuse their children. Postcards were sent to those who could not attend the spectacle, and photographs were taken to preserve it in memory.

After learning of the death of her husband at one such occasion, Mary Turner – a black woman in her eighth month of pregnancy – swore to find those responsible and have them punished. A mob assembled and determined to teach her a lesson. After tying her ankles together they hung her from a tree upside down. While she was still alive her abdomen was cut open with a knife. The infant fell from her womb and its head was crushed by a member of the crowd. Then, as hundreds of bullets were fired into her body, Mary Turner was killed.

Were the smiling children who were photographed watching such events gnawed by remorse for the rest of their days? Or did they recall them with nostalgia and quiet satisfaction?..." (John Gray, 'Straw Dogs', 2002)


Artist: Reginald Marsh, The New Yorker, 8 Sept 1934

तो पहा! तो पहा!! अमिताभ बच्चन! अमिताभ बच्चन!!

If you followed only Marathi e-media to keep tabs on "akhil bharatiya marathi sahitya sammelan" (अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्य संमेलन) held in Pune on March 26-28 2010, you would not be wrong to conclude that it was all about if Ashok Chavan and Amitabh Bachchan shared a dais or not or if very-busy-in-IPL Sachin Tendulkar attended the meet or not.

I can assure you it was surely more than that.

As I was coming out of Sammelan on Sunday morning, a young couple carrying a toddler, looking at my books, asked me anxiously where the book exhibition was. They didn't want to miss out on that! When I assured them that it was not going away for a while, they smiled ear-to-ear.

I once again remember William Leith's words:
"...India’s media is heading for ad-backed celebrity hell faster, and more comprehensively, than ours (British)..."

तो पहा! तो पहा!! अमिताभ बच्चन! अमिताभ बच्चन!!
(Look there! Look there!! Amitabh Bachchan! Amitabh Bachchan!!)

Artist: Vasant Sarwate(वसंत सरवटे), 1974

Was Hole Always a Hole?

We lived in Kolkata and the east for almost three years. I know the city reasonably well. Therefore, watching the recent fire on TV was painful.

"On March 23 2010, in Kolkata, the blaze that swept through three floors of a 150-year-old multi-storeyed building here claimed at least 16 lives with fire brigade personnel recovering 10 charred bodies from the sixth floor of the ill-fated structure late tonight, officials said...

..."It's not possible to say whether they were male or female. They were charred beyond recognition," they said..."

B S Mardhekar (बा.सी.मर्ढेकर) wrote

"...

पहा विचारुनि त्यांना कसली
मैथुनांत रे असते झिंग;
दाखवितिल ते भोंक रिकामें
जिथें असावें मांसल लिंग.

..."

[Poem no 56 from 'Kanhee Kavita' (कांही कविता)]

(Ask them what high
exists in copulation;
they will show an empty hole
where once was a fleshy penis)

Sahitya Sammelan Visits were Worth it!

Yesterday, March 26, I bought 13 books of Vinoba Bhave (विनोबा भावे) at the book exhibition of "akhil bharatiya marathi sahitya sammelan" (अखिल भारतीय मराठी साहित्य संमेलन).

If you are interested please contact following address:

Parandham Prakashan, Pavnar, Dist: Vardha PIN 442 111 Phone: 07152-288040 and 9822565574

(परंधाम प्रकाशन , पवनार , जिल्हा: वर्धा )

I also got a number of difficult-to-lay-your-hands-on books of different authors- most of them now dead- at Venus Prakashan (व्हीनस प्रकाशन).

count on day 1: 29.

p.s.

count on day 3: 30 [including rare books like Bahurupi (बहुरूपी) by Chintamanrao Kolhatkar (चिंतामणराव कोल्हटकर) ,1957]

Net net : 59!

So after all sammelan visits were worth it.

Can We Trust an Artist to Show us the Reality?

Lalit (ललित) March 2010 carries a review of "leelacharitratil Samjdarshan" (लीळाचारित्रातील समाजदर्शन) by Suman Belwalkar (सुमन बेलवलकर), 2009 by Pradip Karnik (प्रदीप कर्णिक).

I have been planning to buy the book.

I liked the review although I would have liked to see some reference to D D Kosambi's work.

At the end of the review, Karnik quotes this from the book:

"a painter would relate to the nature around him but not necessarily to the social environment." ("चित्रकार त्याच्या भोवतीच्या निसर्गाशी नाते जोडेल परन्तु तो सामाजिक पर्यावरणाशी जोडेलच असे नाही")

Karnik thinks this is not true. Artist also connects with the social environment, Karnik seems to say.

I feel both of them are not entirely correct.

It is likely that the artist doesn't connect even to the nature around him! Read an earlier post on the subject here.

Therefore, we can't trust an artist, particularly a bad one, to reflect truly anything. Neither nature nor social environment.

And are nature and social environment two different things to start with?

Here I strongly recommend an essay by Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) on the subject of his home-studio: 'Chitrakarachi Kholee' (चित्रकाराची खोली), part of 'Vyangkala-Chitrakala' (व्यंगकला-चित्रकला), 2005.

In Sarwate's rooms, in Kolhapur and Mumbai, nature and society-at-large blend seamlessly. They are one.


Artist: the late JB Handelsman, The New Yorker, 28 February 1994

प्रलयकाळी धरणीकंप

Marathi can be such a vibrant, colourful language! Here is one example.

In my childhood, English movies, released at theatres, had no Hindi subtitles. The knowledge of English was not as widespread as is today. Sound at the cinema was often poor. It was some times hard to even catch Marathi dialogue.

Like most people, I too struggled with English movies. But like English books, I kept trying. (My father used to tell us not to bother about meaning of each word when we first started reading English books. He thought it killed the joy of reading.)

One of the most important tool to promote any film was usage of large billboards and posters. Occasionally the posters were paraded across the city using brass-bands.

I have forgot most of the beautiful girls I came across in real life but not posters of movies! I still remember where all they were hung in Miraj.

The posters of English movies carried Marathi translation of the titles. They often carried a brief summary of the story.

One such memorable title was 'प्रलयकाळी धरणीकंप' (Earthquake on the doomsday). It was translation of 'One Million Years B.C.' (1966)!

I feel Marathi title is better than the English one. It also is far more realistic too because although I don't mind them meeting in delighful comic strip 'B.C.' by Johnny Hart, humans and dinos were separated by millions of years on this planet. (Lucky us!)

I saw the movie in early 1970's at Amar talkies. I was attracted to it by its poster and Marathi title.

I liked the film ok. I recently saw it again.

I don't remember what I liked then: the fight between a Ceratosaurus and a Triceratops- both of them look like caricatures of what we now know they looked like in real- or scantily clad Raquel Welch!

I guess both.

All three of them are in the poster below.



I wasn't alone.

Wiki informs: "...The publicity shot of Welch from the movie became more famous than the movie itself, becoming a best-selling poster and something of a cultural phenomenon. The image can be recognized by people around the world, even among those who are not familiar with the film..."

Thank you Ms. Welch. You triggered by interest in dinosaurs many years before Jurassic Park.

Why Vinda Karandikar Didn't Choose David Hume

Tom Hanks:
"'The Pacific' is coming out now, where it represents a war that was of racism and terror. And where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles on one of these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere was to - I’m sorry - kill them all. And, um, does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today? So it's-- is there anything new under the sun? It seems as if history keeps repeating itself."

I have already mentioned that Vinda (विंदा करंदीकर) did not choose any English philosopher in the list of eight for his book ‘ASHTADARSHANE’ (अष्टदर्शने), 2003.

There I also state the importance of David Hume.

Why was Hume ignored by Vinda?

Here is a possible answer.

John Gray:

"...From Francis Bacon to Nietzsche, Enlightenment thinkers have lauded will over the purposeless life of common humanity. Other animals may live without knowing why, but humans can impress a purpose on their lives. They can raise themselves up from the contingent world and rule over it

There have always been Enlightenment thinkers who do not share this vision. David Hume saw humans as a highly inventive species, but otherwise very like other animals. Through the power of invention they could ease their lot, but they could not overcome it. History was not a tale of progress, but a succession of cycles in which civilisation alternated with barbarism. Hume expected no more than this..." (Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, 2003)

History was not a tale of progress, but a succession of cycles in which civilisation alternated with barbarism.

Marxist / Committed Vinda could have never agreed with this.

This is a great pity because it leaves a large hole in his book. Some one as talented as him should have tried to do justice to Hume in Marathi.

I wonder how long now Hume has to wait.

It may not always be a horse, but history just repeats:


Artist: Richard Decker, The New Yorker, Feb 9 1963

Calling on B S Mardhekar to Greet a New Mother: Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi was an attractive lady and a darling of media.

She appeared on this blog here in that phase. One such picture is at the bottom of this post.

I say 'was' because I haven't seen her any where for a while.

Ms. Lakshmi recently gave birth to a baby girl.

I guess motherhood is deeply transformative. For the woman as well as the onlooker.

B S Mardhekar (बा.सी.मर्ढेकर)- today is his death anniversary- wrote in a beautiful Marathi 'Hymn to Her':


पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
होता पायांतही वारा
कालपरवांपावेतों.

आज टपोरले पोट,
जैसी मोगरीची कळी;
पडे कुशीँतून पायीं
छोट्या जीवाची साखळी.

पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
थांब उद्याचे माऊली,
तीर्थ पायांचे घेईतों.

[Poem no 27 from 'Kanhee Kavita' (कांही कविता)]

The last stanza describes the poet's feelings on seeing a pregnant girl:

"You were kiddish
Until yesterday or day-before;
Wait tomorrow's mother,
I drink holy water of washing of your feet."

Ms. Lakshmi so far belonged to the category described by my wife as 'half-naked' women (उघड्या-नागड्या बायका) that appear in newspapers, even Marathi, every day!

Now Ms. Lakshmi's chest will have a new context, other than page 3, as described by Mardhekar's idol Madhav Julian (माधव जुलियन) in a moving Marathi poem:

"...गेली दुरी यशोदा टाकूनि येथ कान्हा,
अन् राहिला कधींचा तान्हा तिचा भुका ना?
तान्ह्यास दूर ठेवी - पान्हा तरिहि वाहे -.." ('प्रेमा स्वरूप आई!')

["...Yashoda went away leaving Kanha (Krishna) here,
and hasn't that caused her toddler to remain hungry?
She keeps her toddler away- her breasts still ooze-.." ('Prema Swarup Aai')]

Ms. Lakshmi has given her daughter a simple, meaningful, gender-neutral name: Krishna (Krishna Thea Lakshmi).

It's such a welcome change from the names many middle-class Maharashtrians pull from archaic Sanskrit sources to name their kids these days.

I not only don't know their meaning but can't even remember them.

Padma, Lakshmi, Krishna. So easy...


Picture courtesy: Yana Paskova for The New York Times, Aug 5 2009