My Dromophobia in Pune by John Vassos

Today November 16 2015 is World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims

"Dromophobia, the Fear of Crossing the Street." 

Artist:  John Vassos

गोविंद बल्लाळ देवल G B Deval@160

Today November 13 2015 is 160th Birth Anniversary of  G B Deval (गोविंद बल्लाळ देवल), the author of 'Sangit Sharda' (संगीत शारदा), 1899.

"...श्रीमंत : तर मग माझं वय किती असावं बरं ?

शाम : श्रीमंतांचं वय जवळ जवळ तिशीच्या पुढें आणि बत्तिशीच्या आंत; फारच झालं तर बत्तिशी पार पडली असेल !

श्रीमंत : इतकंच, इतकंच, बरं जा, जोडी आणि पाक आणून दे. ( शाम जातो. ) हा म्हणतो बत्तीस, मी म्हणतों चाळीस ! तरी कांहीं म्हातारा नव्हे, बत्तिशी पडली असं ऐकून आलं, तेव्हां म्हटलं या शाम्याला आमचं वर्म कळलं ! पण नाही, चला आतां थोडा व्यायाम करूं. ( उठूं लागतो ) ओय ! ओय ! ओय ! पण ही कमरेची वळ कधीं राहणार ? चोरून शेकतों, तेल चोळतों, तरी कमी होत नाहीं..."

“Darling, what—kachoo—difference does age—kachoo—make anyway?”

Artist: George Petty, Esquire, 1933

पंडितराव खाडीलकर...My Toy Soldier Day is Today...Diwali

Diwali is my Toy Soldier day.

Panditrao Khadilkar (पंडितराव खाडीलकर), a lifelong bachelor, was our family friend at Miraj (मिरज). He used to stay in a single room in my friend's wada (वाडा) about a hundred meter from our house.

He had free access to any part of our small house and even when father wasn't around he used to joke and chat with our mother as she worked in the kitchen. She and we kids always used to pull his legs but he took it gamely or so we always thought.

Panditrao, that's what we all called him,  worked at chemistry lab of Willingdon College, Sangli. I could read lots of Marathi books because of him as he borrowed them from the college library.

He used to visit his brothers in Mumbai and Pune for Diwali. In 1980 (I think), he was traveling to Mumbai by train to be with his brother for Diwali. As the train stopped after Thane for some reason, he got down from it and started walking towards Mulund. We heard the same train knocked him to death as he was crossing the rail tracks. He was apparently carrying ghee from Miraj which was famous for all its milk products. They said the same ghee was poured on his funeral pyre.

For many years, Panditrao used to give us kids small gifts. One such gift was a toy soldier of clay. I don't remember the year but he bought it during urus of Samsuddin Mira Saheb. That toy soldier, 'huge' in stature, was my prized possession for many years. I still remember his face, his built, his weapon, his green fatigues. Every year I used to mount him on Diwali fort we used to build at home. He was a complete misfit standing next to Shivaji-maharaj (शिवाजी महाराज) and his saber/spear holding lieutenants.

  courtesy: Toy Story page on Facebook

आमचे डुमडुमातून पलायन...Was It Fear or Relief 25 Years Ago in Assam?

Ignoring the wisdom of the crowd, I went to Assam to work for a transnational FMCG giant in July 1989. I have referred to my stay in the east from time to time on this blog.

Today November 8 2015 is 25th anniversary of the event that shook middle class foundations of our lives.

Apparently under the death threat  by The United Liberation Front of Assam, we were evacuated from Upper Assam, with the help of India's defense forces, on the morning of November 8 1990. 

My wife who was not keeping well and I remember almost every minute of that day.  

The Indian Airlines flight that was supposed to take us from Sookerating airport to Kolkata developed a snag. A spare part for it was carried by another commercial plane and by the time we reached Kolkata, it was dark.

Media had gathered outside the airport. We were told not to open our mouths. We were whisked away to a city five star hotel.  Then there was a rumor that the ULFA gunman had reached the hotel and so were taken to the company guest house not too far from the hotel. 

If the electronic media then were to be anything like today's, I would be famous for more than 15 minutes.

 

 courtesy: Frontline, December 8-21 1990

p.s. Despite so much of turmoil in Assam and our lives, the cover of the Frontline has heart-rending images of Punjab and there is no mention of Assam!

There is a message in it: It's perspective and proportion, stupid!

Shit Happens: History, Science, Mythology...

Mr. Chtan Bhagat tweeted on October 30 2015:

"What do historians do? I am genuinely curious. This happened. Then this happened. Then this. Ok work done for the day."

This made a lot of people angry.

If you too have a view on the above, you may find following interesting.

John Horgan is writing about the late Stephen Jay Gould, November 2 2015:

"....Gould noted during our interview that many scientists do not consider history—which resists reduction to general principles, such as evolution by natural selection--to be a science. "I think that's a false taxonomy. History is a different type of science." Gould found the fuzziness and contingency of history exhilarating. "I love it! That's because I'm an historian at heart."
By transforming evolutionary biology into history--an intrinsically subjective, interpretive discipline, like literary criticism--Gould makes it uniquely suited for someone with his vast rhetorical skills. If the history of life is a bottomless quarry of largely random events, he can keep mining it, verbally cherishing one odd fact after another, without ever fearing that his efforts have become trivial or redundant.
Whereas most scientists seek to discern the signal underlying nature, Gould keeps drawing attention to the noise. After all, punctuated equilibrium is not really a theory; it is a description of noise. Gould’s view of life can be summed up by the old bumper-sticker slogan: Shit happens."

Mr. Horgan calls history  "an intrinsically subjective, interpretive discipline, like literary criticism".

And what about science?



Freud to Einstein: “...Does not every natural science lead ultimately to this—a sort of mythology? Is it otherwise today with your physical sciences?...”

Artist: Warren Miller,  The New Yorker, March 9 1963

काय डेंजर वारा सुटलाय...Not For Mount Fuji ...Arun Kolatkar @ 83, Katsushika Hokusai @255

Today November 1 2015 is 83rd Birth Anniversary of Arun Kolatkar (अरुण कोलटकर)...and
Katsushika Hokusai's 255th Birth Anniversary was yesterday!

When I saw Katsushika Hokusai's (c October 31 1760- May 10 1849) following picture and Jonathan Jones' commentary as part of 'Art Weekly' of The Guardian, I remembered Kolatkar's:

"अरे तुझी टोपी
तुझी टोपी गेली खड्ड्यात
कपाळ पहिलं सांभाळ
काय डेंजर वारा सुटलाय
डोसक्यात कचरा
धूळ धूळ डोक्यात

साहेबाची खिडकी फुटली
गादीवर काचा काचा
आपोआप गुंडाळतोय
पंजाब्याचा गालिचा
पार्शिणीचा फ्लावरपाट
गडाबडा लोळतोय

सिंधीणीच्या दांडीवरली
म्हागडी नायलॉन साडी
चालली वार्‍यावर हवाई झाज
नवव्या मजल्यावरल्या
बंगाल्याचा लेंगा लगेच
लागला तिच्या पाठी..."

"Katsushika Hokusai: Ejiri in Suruga Province. Colour woodblock, 1830-33. Photograph: British Museum

 

Hokusai – Ejiri in Suruga Province (1830-33), from the series 36 Views of Mount Fuji
People are caught in a gust of wind on the open road, holding on to their hats, bending into the gale as sheets of paper fly up in the air. Mount Fuji sits motionless behind them, untroubled by anything so small as a breath of wind. Hokusai contrasts its permanence with the flux and comedy of our lives, blown this way and that."

p.s. I realized that there is no equivalent of Mount Fuji in Kolatkar's poem....Kolatkar  just shows
the flux and comedy of our lives, blown this way and that.
 

तो सूर्य पाहिलेला माणूस नव्हताच!.....Was he Socrates at all?

On this blog, I have let known my great displeasure about overrated Marathi play: "सूर्य पाहिलेला माणूस" here and here.

The Death of Socrates (French: La Mort de Socrate) , 1787

 Artist: Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825

Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, June 2015

81 Years Aaprt, Solutions for the Parking Problem: R K Laxman, Alfred Fruch

Today October 24 2015 is 94th Birth Anniversary of R K Laxman. His first since his death in January 2015.

लोकसत्ता, ऑक्टोबर 23, 2015: "दसऱ्याच्या मुहूर्तावर अडीच हजार दुचाकी, अकराशे नव्या मोटारी शहराच्या रस्त्यावर...दसऱ्याच्या मुहूर्तावर यंदा शहरात वैयक्तिक वापराच्या वाहनांच्या खरेदीत लक्षणीय वाढ झाली आहे."

As has been pointed out earlier, apart from making them laugh, cartoonists often generate innovative ideas that might be useful to mankind.

Here is an example.

Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, 1 September 2007

And here is another.




Artist: Alfred Fruch, The New Yorker, 8 May 1926

Mr. Fruch and Mr. Laxman are so close to the 'aching nerve' and to each other.

Arthur Miller @100

Today October 17 2015 is 100th Birth Anniversary of Arthur Miller

(Most of the the following is from my earlier posts on this blog)

J. M. Tyree:

“What vexed Miller were the stories Americans have told themselves about the power of positive thinking, the instant money and spiritual purity that are sure to follow from unfettered entrepreneurship, the decency of the profit motive, the goodness of the national past, and, when all else fails, the possibility of escape and reinvention in the West. This land is your land: Henry David Thoreau crosses uneasily with Norman Rockwell; the tenets of Ayn Rand crash into the gospel of Jesus Christ; the Book of Mormon reads strangely in parallel with the Bill of Rights; Huckleberry Finn lights out for the territory but never becomes the Marlboro Man, exactly. Above all, Miller responded to a culture that cherished a sanctimonious and noxiously sentimental vision of family life as a beacon of health and wealth.”

ALGIS VALIUNAS:

“The most famous suicide in American theater is that of Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman (1949). Exhausted by years on the road, his mind going, Willy is suitably beaten down by heartless business forces, so that his killing himself is at once supremely pitiable and supremely noble: He fakes a car accident so his widow and sons can collect the $20,000 insurance payout. Willy's wife admonishes her sons, who despise their father's doddering and weakness and failure, "But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid." Miller's attention is fixed on larger concerns than the fate of one man. For him, the universal tragedy of American life is the fundamental capitalist insistence that business is business. That's exactly what Willy's boss says as he's firing him; Willy agrees reflexively, but then goes on to qualify and plead. The truth is incontestable nevertheless: If you can't make a killing you get murdered.”

Arthur MILLER:

(INTERVIEWER People often come out of Death of a Salesman crying. If you said to them that you’d watched them laughing while in their seats, they would deny it. And yet humor is part of it, isn’t it?)

"The whole thing is very sad, but the fact is I did a lot of laughing when I was writing the play because some of Willy Loman’s ideas are so absurd and self-contradictory that you have to laugh about them; the audience in fact does, but they don’t remember it, thank God! If they remembered it, they wouldn’t be as moved as they are. Basically, it’s the laughter of recognition, I believe."

Artist: George Booth, The New Yorker, December 2 1972

Name Calling

(This post has been borrowed from my own post dated 29 December 2007)

I simply love Lapham's Quarterly's chart on 'Name Calling'.

Read what William Faulkner called Henry James: "One of the nicest old ladies I ever met."  or what Margaret Kendal called Sarah Bernhardt  "A great actress, from the waist down"!

Using extreme profanity in public is not new to India and prominent Indians.

It probably started with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (बाळ गंगाधर टिळक) 1856-1920 and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (गोपाळ गणेश आगरकर) 1856-1895. In 1893, they fought mother of all wordy duels.

They used terms like leper, dog afflicted with rabies, murderous, rotten brain, arrogant, mean to describe each other.

Agarkar started it.

[Source- “Vyakti aani Vichar”, 1979 by Y D Phadke (“व्यक्ती आणि विचार” य दि फडके)]

 In January 1882, Wikipedia says, telephony was introduced in India but Tilak and Agarkar never spoke to each other on phone. By 1891, 15 years after its invention, more than 5 million of the devices were used in the United States. But none connecting Tilak and Agarkar in 1893.

If there were to to be one...


Artist: Whitney Darrow,Jr.,  The New Yorker,  8 February 1947