Necessary Looking

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,500+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"... श्रीमंत बाळासाहेब पंतप्रतिनिधी : "बहुश्रुतता असल्याशिवाय सुसंस्कृतता नाही"

मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च 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: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Gandhigiri

For a Satyagrahi (an Individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action), turning other cheek is not just "doing nothing" about the action but actually responding to the action.

Jesus Christ, Saint Eknath, Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave विनोबा भावे, Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Anna Hazare are few of the Satyagrahi's world has known.

There is a defiance in "turning other cheek".

Artist: Mischa Richter Published : The New Yorker Apr 23, 1960

p.s Perhaps it is no coincidence this came right in the thick of The American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) led by a Satyagrahi Martin Luther King jr.

By the way, I have rarely seen picture of anyone at Rajghat bowing so reverentially as Jazz masters below in Jan 2007. Satyagrahis? You may never get tickets or passes to their show but you can hear sound of their instruments loud and clear.

Blues

Artist: James Stevenson. Published in The New Yorker June 25, 1960

Swedish dramatist August Strindberg is reported to have said: "Shallow people demand variety – but I have been writing the same story throughout my life, every time trying to cut nearer the aching nerve".

I am using the same blue as his to reach the aching nerve but damn, I have run out of it.

Gandhi's, Pawar's, Gowda's, Scindia's, Singh's..............

Artist: Everett Opie Published: The New Yorker July 3, 1960

When I wore half khakis to school, JFK's photo was ubiquitous in small town of Maharashtra. It used to hanged in esteemed company of Nehru, Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rana Pratap, Shivaji et al. I still remember seeing this pantheon on the wall of a small neighbourhood restaurant.

Over the years, JFK has been unmasked. He has been pushed down from his pedestal like a Lenin. For my back, reading Gore Vidal's review of Seymour Hersh's book- The Dark Side of Camelot- was the final straw.

Now, I don't want to know which is which Kennedy.

I think similar fate awaits most of India's most prominent political families. Although I must say reputation of Nehru has fared much better than JFK after his death.

Titanic. Where is First Officer Murdoch?

Artist: Kenneth Mahood Published: The New Yorker April 9, 1960

In "Titanic", First officer William McMaster Murdoch, the officer in charge of launching the lifeboat, threatens to shoot any man who tries to get into the boat, allowing only women and children to get in.

Where is William or has everyone aboard paid this Bill a bribe inducing a bout of amnesia?

Insect world is waiting - and one day it's going to roll over

Artist: Dana Fradon Published in The New Yorker July 2, 1960

Ingmar Bergman: "I've a strong impression our world is about to go under. Our political systems are deeply compromised and have no further uses. Our social behavior patterns, interior and exterior, have proved a fiasco. The tragic thing is, we neither can nor want, nor have the strength, to alter our course. It's too late for revolutions, and deep down inside ourselves we no longer even believe in their positive effects. Just around the corner an insect world is waiting - and one day it's going to roll over our ultra-individualized existence. Otherwise, I'm a respectable Social Democrat." I am a respectable social democrat!

Norman Rockwell and Rockwellian

Artist: Norman Rockwell publsihed in Saturday Evening Post , May 16, 1959

Dad watches mother and the children parade through the living room on their way to church.

Artist: Barney Tobey published in The New Yorker on 16 July 1960

Dad gets a birthday 'gift' of exercycle from the family. Now, who called it a "happy" and a "gift"?

Friday, December 29, 2006

God delusion aka Stuff happens

Artist : Bruce Eric Kaplan Published: The New Yorker May 29 2000

A E Housman:

“For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care”

Steven Weinberg:

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

Richard Dawkins:

“…… if your God is a being who designs universes, listens to prayers, forgives sins, wreaks miracles, reads your thoughts, cares about your welfare and raises you from the dead, you are unlikely to be satisfied.”

Trying to remain sane

Artist : Bruce Eric Kaplan Published: The New Yorker August 23, 1999.

Steven Weinberg: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

I don't try to understand the universe. Therefore it is...........

Woody Allen says: “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible be like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable"

Luckily I am miserable. So far!

But them Adam Phillips advises me: “Sanity involves learning to enjoy conflict, and giving up on all myths of harmony, consistency and redemption.".

I am trying to remain sane.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

People died once

Artist : Bruce Eric Kaplan Published: The New Yorker April 10, 2000

People are living longer.

When I grew up in 70’s in a small town in Maharashtra, India, death was ubiquitous. Some one seemed to die all the time in the neighborhood. By all kinds of causes. Boozing, child-birth, jaundice, typhoid, snake-bite, fainting into the water-well, road accidents etc.

You saw old people but not as many as you do these days. Now, they are all over. At a family function, they sometimes seem to out-number the young.

But they seem to be treated cruelly more and more. More so by their so called loved ones.

The most tragi-comic figure I have known is of Abe “Grampa” Simpson, age 83, father of Homer Simpson. He is, according to Wikipedia, "an old, grizzled, periodically incontinent and quite senile figure who lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle, a sad, lonely place filled with demented, crippled and depressed old people. "

I sometimes think creators of Simpsons are heartless when it comes to Grampa. But then look at some practical examples.

Charlie Hauck said “The fact is, mature viewers are threatening the well-being of network television. I have a bold but common-sense suggestion: old people should not be allowed to watch TV.” This is about old people watching TV. And how about they on TV? Television wants just one qualification in you to appear on it, LOOKS. So unless you are a Sophia Loren, you won't look good when old.

When most popular jokes in a culture (such as in Maharashtra, India) are around nature calling or loss of hearing, weakening of bladder control and other body functions is very funny before it is cruel.

So how much longevity is desirable?

In 1999, Time magazine did a feature called “Visions of the 21st century”. JONATHAN WEINER wrote a piece called “Can I Live To Be 125?”.

He wrote: “Walking and talking get more difficult for my mother every day, and when I phoned to tell her the headline of this story, there was a long pause before she found the words to reply: "I don't recommend it."At 75, she is fighting one of the innumerable syndromes that elderly flesh is heir to.”

cc

Artist : Bruce Eric Kaplan Published: The New Yorker May 25 1998

When man left hunting-gathering for farming, organization arose and her favourite child - bureaucracy was borne. Bureaucracy’s most visible hallmarks?

Practice of unnecessary cc-ing.

I am sure you have heard jokes like while doing office clean-up- “destroy the original but keep the copy”.

There is also a fear that is lurking in our minds. Is death the end or just another beginning? There is an expression in Sanskrit: “Poornat poornam udachyate”. Zero borne out of zero. Or is it?

So we fear, we might meet the same dreaded bureaucracy wherever we reach eventually.