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."

Saturday, October 15, 2016

बॉब डिलन: तुकारामांचे वारसदार...Tukaram, Bob Dylan and Arun Kolatkar

श्री. बॉब डिलन यांना साहित्याचे नोबेल मिळाल्यानंतरचे काही विचार...

1> डिलन यांची गाणी मी क्वचितच ऐकली आहेत...पण त्याच्या बद्दल वाचल होत...त्यांचे काही उद्गार, गाण्याचे शब्द अगदी आत भिडले होते....

उदा: हे त्यांनी १९९१ साली म्हटलय:
"Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, 'Son,' he said, he say, 'you know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you, and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.'"

मी आणि माझ्या वडलांच्या संबंधांच्या अनुशंगाने हे वाचून डोळ्यात पाणी आल होत....अजुनही येत...

2> श्री. प्रल्हाद जाधवांचा कै. कोलटकरांवरचा अतिशय उत्कृष्ट लेख ३० मे २००४ साली लोकसत्तात वाचला होता... बराच लक्षात होता...पण सुदैवाने कापून पण ठेवला होता आणि आत्ता लकीली सापडला...त्यात जाधव म्हणतात:
'बिटल्स, बॉब डिलन यांचा त्यांच्यावर प्रभाव होता'...(बिटल्सवर डिलनचा प्रभाव होता!)... ते कोलटकर वाचताना जाणवत...अर्थात माझ्यासारख तुम्ही कोलटकरांनंतर डीलन वाचत असाल तर, उलट वाटत... तीच थेट सोपी भाषा, प्रत्येक शब्द चपखल बसलेला...साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता... सचोटी आणि विनम्रता...एक प्रकारची गेयता...


जाधव पुढे म्हणतात :
 "स्वतःच्या कवितांना चाल लावण्याचा प्रयत्न ते करीत होते... 'स्वतःचे शब्द लिहून ते गायचे, हा माझा प्रकल्प अर्धवट राहिला' असे ते बोलताना एकदा म्हणाले...पखवाज शिकण्यासाठी त्यांनी अर्जुन शेजवळांकडे शिकवणी लावली होती...३५ वर्षांपूर्वी काही इंग्रजी गाणी लिहून ती स्वतः संगीतबद्ध केली होती आणि स्वतःच्या आवाजात गायली होती... चौथे गाणे 'you have slept on a railway platform' म्हणजे या सर्व गाण्यांचा क्लायमॅक्स आहे. हे गाणे ऐकताना रेलगाडी धाडधाड करत आपल्या ङ्गवाय येत आहे, असे वातावरण कोलटकरांनी निर्माण केले आहे. या गाण्याच्या शेवटी बराच वेळ शब्दरहित संगीत ऐकू येत रहाते आणि हळूहळू रेल्वे दूर निघून गेल्याचे (बहुदा त्या माणसाच्या अंगावरून) भाव निर्माण होतात. हे गाणे कोलटकर यांच्या स्वानुभावर आधारित असावे असा तर्क निश्चितच करता येतो..."

डिलन यांचे १९६३ सालचे हे गाणे पहा:


“As I was out walking on a corner one day
I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay
His face was all grounded in the cold sidewalk floor
And I guess he’d been there for the whole night or more

Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song
Leavin’ nobody to carry him home
Only a hobo, but one more is gone...” (‘Only A Hobo’, 1963)

(कोलटकरांचे 'मुंबईनं भिकेस लावलं' हे एक होबो साँगचं आहे.)

3>स्वतःचे शब्द लिहून ते गायचे...जे बॉब डिलन आज कित्येक दशक मोठ्या प्रभावीपणे करत आले आहेत, जे मराठीत मोठ्या प्रमाणात कित्येक शतकांपूर्वीपासून सुरु आहे, ते कोणी सुरु केल? प्रामुख्याने संत-कवींनी...आणि त्यात आघाडीला तुकाराम...

कै. म वा धोंड असा अंदाज (speculation) बांधतात की तुकाराम पंढरपुरात एकतारीवर शेवटचे कीर्तन करून कायमचे नाहीसे झाले..."... तुकोबांनी आपल्या संपूर्ण जीवनात कीर्तनाखेरीज दुसरे काहीही केले नाही. संपूर्ण जीवन म्हणजे दुष्काळोजर  एकवीस-बावीस वर्षांचे जीवन. त्याची सुरवात एकादशीच्या कीर्तनाने झाली आणि सांगता निर्वाणाच्या कीर्तनाने..." (मटा, वार्षिक २००३)...

आणि डिलननी तरी दुसर काय केलय आयुष्यात, कीर्तनाशिवाय?...एकतारीच्या ऐवजी गिटार एवढाच फरक...

कोलटकरना तसे 'सुख' मिळाले नाही, ते कॅन्सर होऊन बिब्वेवाडी पुण्यात (ना कोल्हापुरात, ना मुंबईत) बिछान्यात गेले...आज त्यांची गाणी मला तरी कोणी मोठ्यांदा म्हटल्याचे ऐकू येत नाही...

 हां तसा त्यांच्या 'द्रोण'च्या अभिवाचनाचा प्रयोग मी पुण्यात जानेवारी २००५ मध्ये पहिला होता... मला आवडला होता, त्याच्याबद्दल मी इंग्लिश मध्ये लिहल पण होत. पण कोलटकरना त्यापेक्षा जास्त भव्य अभिप्रेत असावं...आपण डिलनसारख्या कॉन्सर्ट बद्दल बोलतोय!



केशवसुत, बा सी मर्ढेकर, दिलीप चित्रे, नामदेव ढसाळ, विंदा करंदीकर, अरुण कोलटकर हे तुकारामांचे अनुयायी असतील, होते... पण तुकारामांचे वारसदार बॉब डिलन आहेत...

२०व्या शतकातील एका सर्वोत्कृष्ट मराठी पुस्तकात, 'पुन्हा तुकाराम' १९९०/१९९५, कै. दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे तुकारामांच्या ४६००+ पैकी काही निवडक अभंगांचे असे वर्गीकरण करतात :

कवी असणे 
माणूस असणे
भक्त असणे 
तळमळत असणे 
स्वतःच्या स्थळकाळात असणे 
ज्ञानी असणे 
संत असणे 
ब्रह्मानंदी असणे 
केवळ असणे 
असण्याचा निरोप.

डिलन यांच्या गाण्याचे कोणी वर्गीकरण केलय का मला माहित नाही. पण वरच्या यादीतील 'संत असणे' हे सोडले तर, तीच यादी वापरता येईल!

David Remnick says on October 13 2016: "...Over time, Dylan has been a spiritual seeker—and his well-known excursions into various religious traditions, from evangelical Christianity to Chabad, are in his work as well—but his foundation is song, lyric combined with music,..."

a spiritual seeker?... होती ना तुकारामांची आठवण? आणि त्यांचा पाया होता, वरती उद्धृत केल्याप्रमाणे, कीर्तन...

डिलन यांना मी तुकारामांचे वारसदार म्हणतोय...त्यांची तुकारामांशी बरोबरी करत नाहीये...तुकाराम हे मराठी भाषेच्या आणि आधुनिक महाराष्ट्राच्या संस्कृतीच्या केंद्रस्थानी आहेत...डिलन तशी जागा इंग्लिश मध्ये कधीही व्यापू शकणार नाहीत...तुकारामांच्या साहित्याची उंची शेक्सपिअर, गटे, पुष्कीन, टॉलस्टोय, चेखोव अशीच लोक गाठू शकले आहेत...डिलन त्यांच्या जवळपास सुद्धा नाहीत....पण दुर्बळांचा, दुर्लक्षितांचा आवाज, कवितेतील गेयतेचे महत्व, सादरीकरण, थेट, सरळ भाषा, अफाट लोकप्रियता, परात्मतेची बोच, अध्यात्मिकतेचा शोध हे त्या दोघातले साधर्म्य आहे.

(रवींद्रनाथ ठाकुर सुद्धा जास्त करून गीतकारच होते.)

4> A. E. STALLINGS, October 14 2016:

“...The honouring of Dylan is a reminder of poetry as utterance as well as text, and a reminder that a “poet” is, literally, a maker.  Perhaps the perceived irrelevance of much of contemporary poetry is a function of poetry’s turning its back on song, turning a deaf ear to audience. Dylan doesn’t need the Nobel Prize in Literature, it will neither help nor hinder him, but literature is weakened without song.”


Guy Dammann, October 14 2016: 
"The greatest poets have sought to make their poetry as musical as possible, not by setting them to music necessarily, but by bringing out the musical qualities of language. It is language’s music, after all, which makes poetry poetry. In turn, the greatest musicians have sought to make their music as poetic as possible, by enriching it with images and ideas which their compositional ingenuity has spun into gleaming jewels which light up our world and stretch our ability to feel it. But without poetry, music is just facile play." 

अशोक शहाणे म्हणतात:
 "...परिंदे मेरे साथ गाने लगे है।
इशारोसे बादल बुलाने लगे है। 
हंसी देखकर मुस्कराने लगे है। 
कदम अब मेरे डगमगाने लगे है। 

ह्या ओळी हिंदी सिनेमातल्या एका गाण्यातल्या आहेत. आणि हा अपवाद नव्हे. हिंदी सिनेमात अशा कितीतरी आश्चर्यजनक गोष्टी सर्रास असतात..." (पृष्ठ २०, 'नपेक्षा', १९६३/२००५/२००८)


माझ्यामते शैलेंद्र, साहिर लुधियानवी, मजरुह सुल्तानपुरी, नीरज वगैरे लोकांनी हिंदी सिनेमासाठी गाणी लिहिता लिहिता भारतातील काही सर्वोत्कृष्ट साहित्य लिहले आहे. त्यांची लोकप्रियता तर संतकवींसारखी आहे पण त्यांचा गौरव साहित्यकार म्हणून जसा व्हायला पाहिजे तसा झालेला नाही. 

उदाहरणार्थ, जी. ए. कुलकर्णींच्या असंख्य पत्रातील एका पत्रात ते शैलेंद्र यांना ग. दि. माडगूळकरांच्या तुलनेत कमी लेखताना दिसतात. शैलेंद्र हे जींएच्या योग्यतेचे साहित्यिक होते, गदिमांपेक्षा काकणभर चांगले गीतकार होते आणि जींएच्या पेक्षा हजारो-लाखो पटीने जास्त लोकप्रिय होते आणि अजूनही आहेत. 

5> Cass R. Sunstein says on October 13 2016:

 "Bob Dylan has surpassed Walt Whitman as the defining American artist..Dylan said in an interview that the song originated in a “long piece of vomit,” beginning with “steady hatred directed at some place that was honest” and ending with a kind of revenge, captured in the famous chorus: “How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?”
In concert, however, the song was turned upside down. As people sang the chorus along with Dylan, they were exhilarated, jubilant, exultant. Far from laid low, they were unchained. As Dylan sang it, “Like A Rolling Stone” had become a declaration of independence."

The key words are: As people sang the chorus along with Dylan, they were exhilarated, jubilant, exultant. Far from laid low, they were unchained. This is what millions of people experience in Maharashtra today when they sing poetry of Marathi saint-poets.  Kolatkar NEVER had that satisfaction. In this regard, he could never become even a little bit like Marathi saint-poets.

6> Liz Thomson writes on October 13 2016:

"The Sixties icon took poetry off the bookshelves and put it on the jukebox...Homer and Orpheus were buskers and Dylan is their modern equivalent — the young man who took poetry off the bookshelves and put it on the jukebox. There can be no arguing that he changed the course of popular music. Not for him the “moon/June” rhymes of 1950s songwriters turning out bubble-gum kitsch. Shakespeare, Eliot, Lorca, Rimbaud, Steinbeck, Guthrie and the Bible were his touchstones. Dylan was the first singer-songwriter, his songs too long for a 45 rpm single. He inspired the Beatles. He wrote for the wronged and the dispossessed, about injustice and war, about love and revenge in songs that were sometimes simple and direct (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) but at the same time profound and mysterious:..."

7> Bob Dylan, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, 1965:
"...
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows
..."

Artist: Lee Lorenz (1932-), The New Yorker, April 7 1973



Artist: Milton Glaser, 1966

Friday, October 14, 2016

र. धों. कर्वे आणि वंडर वुमन...R. D. Karve and Wonder Woman

2016 is 75th birth-year of Wonder Woman and today October 14 is 63rd death anniversary of R. D. Karve (र. धों. कर्वे).

Marathi (मराठी) translation of the following post was first published on a web-only  Marathi magazine "Aisi Akshare" (ऐसी अक्षरे) in their issue named "पॉर्न ओके प्लीज!" (Porn Ok Please!) dated May-June 2016.

Feminism Made Wonder Woman:

When ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ was released in March 2016, majority of reviews were lukewarm towards it. But they were almost unanimous in praise of ‘Wonder Woman’ performed by Gal Gadot in it.


Courtesy:  Warner Bros. Pictures, 2016

Some have argued that feminism is on decline worldwide. When in early 2016, Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski justified posting their nude selfies on internet as a form of feminism, one wonders if it is true.

But it was not always so.

Prof. Jill Lepore writes in her magisterial ‘The Secret History of Wonder Woman’, 2014:
“...Wonder Woman isn’t only an Amazonian princess with badass boots. She’s the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism fully a century later. Feminism made Wonder Woman. ..”

R D Karve Launched Modern Feminism In India:

The first name that comes to my mind on the subject of feminism in India is: R D Karve ( धों कर्वे) 1882-1953.

Most Indians think of Karve as only a social reformer who worked on the issues like birth control, family planning and sex education but very few know that his first goal was that women achieved as much sexual freedom as men.  Birth control was only the by-product of it.
Karve also was a rationalist- in the mould of Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (1856-1895), an art critic, a thinker, a college teacher.

The late M V Dhond (. वा. धोंड) has argued that because Karve never shied away from promoting sexual freedom of women, his work on birth control suffered. He was persecuted by the government of the day and some sections of the civil society.   He and his wife personally suffered a lot. Dhond felt Karve should have focused only on birth control. India was ready for that, and not for women’s sexual freedom. 

"....विवाहसंस्थेची अनावश्यकता, स्वैरसमागमाची इष्टता, अप्राकृतिक संभोगाविषयी उदारता, इत्यादी ( धों ) कर्वे यांची मते आजही भारतीयांना मान्य होणे कठीण. मग ४०-५० वर्षांपूर्वी या मतांबद्दल त्यांची कुचेष्टा झाली, तर ते स्वाभाविकच म्हटले पाहिजे. कामशास्त्र, संतातिनियमन गुप्तरोगप्रतिबंध यांविषयीची माहिती कर्वे यांनी तत्कालीन समाजास दिली, हे त्यांचे कार्य मोठेच म्हटले पाहिजे; परंतु संततिनियमनाचा प्रचार त्यांनी ज्या भूमिकेवरून केला, ती कामस्वातंत्र्याची भूमिका त्यांच्या कार्याला मारकच ठरली."
(. वा. धोंड , ‘जाळ्यातील चंद्र: समीक्षालेखसंग्रह, 1994/1998)

Karve often tried to reconcile sexual freedom with birth control. He argued that venereal diseases and unwanted pregnancy were two hurdles in the path of sexual freedom and the latter was faced only by women and hence if that was removed, women would find it easier to achieve the sexual freedom. 


Women chained by unwanted pregnancies. From Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review, 1923

Courtesy: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

In order to counsel his readers, especially women readers, on this subject, Karve created a fictitious character called ‘Sharda’ (शारदा) and created a column called ‘Sharda’s letter’ (शारदेचे पत्र) in his magazine ‘Samajswasthya’ (समाजस्वास्थ्य) 1927-1953.  


Issue of Samajswasthya dated January 1951,

Is she Karve’s ‘Wonder Woman’ Sharda?

Sharda not only publicizes sexual freedom, she enjoys it too.

She has no hesitation in enjoying sex outside marriage. She is ready to live like Mahabharata’s  Draupadi if she ends up loving more than one man. She enjoys moving around naked at home. She asks women to enjoy as much sexual freedom as they get today and not wait for some revolution.

Karve’s contemporaries Ms. Marie Stopes 1880-1958 from UK and Ms. Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) from US were doing work similar to his. They both are mentioned by Dhond in his book and by Y D Phadke (य. दि. फडके) in his Karve’s Marathi biography “Ra. Dho. Karve” (र. धों. कर्वे), 1981.

Dhond has argued that these two women were far more successful than Karve because they promoted family planning on the platform of happy family and emancipation of women. (“पण त्यांनी संततिनियमनाचा पुरस्कार केला तो कामस्वातंत्र्याच्या भूमिकेवरून नव्हे, तर स्त्रीदास्यविमोचन सुखी कुटुंबसंस्था या भूमिकांवरून)

In the same essay, earlier, Dhond says: Karve used to advertise his book as ‘Key to Women’s Liberation’ (स्त्रियांच्या स्वातंत्र्याची गुरुकिल्ली) while Sanger’s book was titled ‘Family Limitation’. This difference in titles explains the difference in their approach. 

Unfortunately Dhond got it very wrong when it came to Margaret Sanger. As we shall see soon, Sanger's approach was no different than Karve's (or the other way round).


Margaret Sanger, A Wonder Woman:

Prof. Lepore: “...The “basis of Feminism,” Sanger said, had to be a woman’s control over her own body, “the right to be a mother regardless of church or state...
... In 1912,...Margaret Sanger wrote a twelve-part series...called “What Every Girl Should Know.” It covered, matter-of-factly, the subjects of sexual attraction, masturbation, intercourse, venereal disease, pregnancy, and childbirth...”

Sanger believed in free love, which meant she believed in sex outside of marriage, and considered marriage itself a form of oppression.  She strongly believed that women’s equality and sexual autonomy were the only way forward for humanity. In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger was the best-known feminist in the world.
“When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine,” H. G. Wells predicted in 1935. (Sanger had decades-long affair with H. G. Wells). Like Karve she also had run-ins with the local law.

Reading all this, I feel Karve’s approach to women’s liberation was no different than that of Sanger and at no time she was defensive about either her goals or her methods to achieve them. Indeed she (and her lover the British sexologist Havelock Ellis) and their concept of ‘erotic rights of women’ must have inspired Karve and firmed his resolve in continued use of his methods.

Sanger unlike Karve was a celebrity. In London, Sanger met with J L Nehru; in India, she debated Mahatma Gandhi. In 1937, she was featured in Time and the Nation; in Life, her life story was told in a four-page photo spread. It's likely her 'success' in contrast to his 'failure' was one of the reasons Karve became increasingly bitter.

William Moulton Marston (1893-1947) created Wonder Woman in December 1941. His partner was Olive Byrne.  Olive was the daughter of Ethel Byrne who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States with her sister Margaret Sanger.

Marston has explained why he created a female superhero:
“A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child’s ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing—love. It’s smart to be strong. It’s big to be generous. But it’s sissified, according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving, affectionate, and alluring. “Aw, that’s girl’s stuff!” snorts our young comics reader. “Who wants to be a girl?” And that’s the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power. Not wanting to be girls they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”

Jill Lepore informs: “...Marston, who at a press conference in 1937 had predicted that women would rule the world, and had named Margaret Sanger as the second-most-important person on the planet (second only to Henry Ford), as measured by “contributions to humanity,” knew very well who he had in mind for a female superhero...”....Margaret Sanger!



Look closer, Margaret Sanger is NOT bouncing off a trampoline but a springy contraceptive diaphragm

Artist: David Levine, 1978

 “The philosophy of Margaret Sanger’s ‘Woman and the New Race’ 1920 would turn out to be the philosophy of Wonder Woman, precisely.
With the beauty of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena, the strength of Hercules, and the speed of Mercury, she brings to America woman’s eternal gifts—love and wisdom! Defying the vicious intrigues of evil enemies and laughing gaily at all danger, Wonder Woman leads the invincible youth of America against the threatening forces of treachery, death, and destruction.

Women should rule the world, Sanger and Marston and (his wife) Holloway thought, because love is stronger than force...”



In 1929, when Margaret Sanger visited Boston to lecture at Ford Hall, city authorities banned her lecture, so she appeared on stage with a gag over her mouth

Courtesy: Corbis Images 


Wonder Woman and her mother gagged. From “The Four Dooms,” Wonder Woman #33 (February 1949)

Courtesy: The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division











Karve and Sanger:
 Although Sanger and Karve met only once at Mumbai in November 1935 at Sanger’s invitation, nothing significant seems to have come out of it. I would really like to know more about this meeting and what transpired between them. Has Karve written about it?

I also wonder if Karve knew Wonder Woman comics and, if he did, did he discuss it with Sanger?
Is Karve Still Too Hot To Handle?:

I think although India as a country can  claim some success in the area of family planning, I feel even in 2016 we as a society find it hard to accept Karve’s views on the futility of marriage as an institution,   desirability of sexual freedom and liberalism about all kinds of sexual acts.

Homosexuality is mostly a taboo subject in Indian civil society and for the government. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes sex with persons of the same gender punishable by law.

I have not read or heard an open debate on the subject of masturbation. Marathi newspapers report a lot that is happening around the world but I have not seen any news item on a report such the one published in Independent, UK on September 11 2015.

It says: “Masturbation is good for you, scientists explain/ Self love increases your fertility, makes you happier and helps you fight disease.” 

In year 2016, Marathi newspapers went over the board reporting gravitational waves. They often get excited about any ‘significant’ scientific development or scientists in general.

 But I have never read anything like what renowned American palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould says in the essay ‘Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples  in his book ‘Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History’, 1991:

“...As (Alfred) Kinsey had said earlier with his characteristic economy and candor: “The techniques of masturbation and of petting are more specifically calculated to effect orgasm than the techniques of coitus itself.”...
...Anatomy, physiology, and observed responses all agree. Why then do we identify an issue at all? Why, in particular, does the existence of clitoral orgasm seem so problematic? Why, for example, did Freud label clitoral orgasm as infantile and define feminine maturity as the shifting to an unattainable vaginal site?
Part of the reason, of course, must reside in simple male vanity. We (and I mean those of my sex, not the vague editorial pronoun) simply cannot abide the idea—though it flows from obvious biology—that a woman’s sexual pleasure might not arise most reliably as a direct result of our own coital efforts...”

There also was no word on a recent survey reported in Independent, UK on December 19 2015 that said:

"Masturbation is the 'most successful' way for women to achieve orgasm......Despite its international reputation for romance, France has topped a survey for having women most likely to fake an orgasm.
Out of a survey of France, the US, Spain, the UK, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, French women struggled most to climax with their partner. Experts said this might be due to a culture that is still wedded to the classic sexual practice of vaginal penetration - which does not commonly induce orgasms in women...."

I am sure Sharda would have had a lot to say about these surveys in her letters in Samajswathya!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Cartoonists' Take On Groping and Grabbing (& Divided and Deluded) America




Donald Trump:

“‘I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women,’ he told NBC presenter Billy Bush. ‘I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.. Grab them by the p***y. You can do anything.’”

Piers Morgan. Daily Mail, UK, October 10 2016:

“...Yet there was one huge problem: her husband Bill, sitting just a few yards away in the front row.

The world knows him as a brilliant politician, but also as a serial seducer of epic proportions who, while he was President of the United States, even had sexual relations with a young intern in the Oval Office.

In comparison to Bill, many view Trump as a choirboy when it comes to women.

Earlier last night, Trump hosted a press event with four women: Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton.

Broaddrick claimed Bill Clinton raped her when he was Arkansas attorney general, and that Hillary intimidated her into silence when her husband launched his own bid to be president.

Willey was a former White House volunteer aide who alleges Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her during his first term as president.

Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment.

Shelton was a 12-year-old rape victim whose attacker was defended by Hillary Clinton in her lawyer days. A tape later emerged showing Hillary chuckling when talking about the case and suggesting she knew her client was guilty. She used a legal technicality to get him a substantially reduced sentence....”

Gideon Rachman, FT, October 11 2016:

“...And for all his flaws, no one doubted that Nixon had the experience and the intelligence to be president.

By contrast, Mr Trump is manifestly unqualified and has thrown the US system into confusion, leaving the press and the Republican party floundering. The fact that more than 40 per cent of Americans, and a majority of whites, are probably going to vote for him suggests that the US is in deep trouble. We can, by now, all list the ingredients that have helped create this sickness — economic stagnation, inequality, illegal immigration, the rise of social media — but the outcome threatens the prestige of democracy worldwide.

If Mrs Clinton makes it to the White House there will be relief across the west and a certain disappointment in Moscow and, perhaps, Beijing. But it will be very hard to erase the memory of this campaign. It has presented an image of a troubled, divided and deluded US to the rest of the world. As a result, it has already dealt a serious blow to the prestige and power of the west.”
 
I wrote a post on Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 16 2011 here.

PTI / The Times of India on May 11 2011:

"One of America's most high profile couples, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and wife Maria Shriver, have announced their separation after 25 years of marriage...During the 2003 elections to elect the next governor of California, reports surfaced about Schwarzenegger's lengthy history of groping women. At the time, Shriver defended her husband, helping him to victory..."


My post carried the following brilliant (and naughty) cartoon by Mike Luckovich:






Now Mr. Luckovich comes up with the following one:


Both pictures courtesy: AJC and the artist


Artist: Darrin Bell , GoComics.com

p.s. Let us remember Mr. Schwarzenegger did win...