Go Ahead and Die During Sex

"Mrs. Goodman, Yales's mother: [At Yale's funeral, he died of heart attack after sex] 

Judith just one thing...If you can remember...What were Yale's last words? 

Judy Benjamin: I'm coming."  

 (from film 'Private Benjamin', 1980) 

Goldie Hawn and others   Courtesy: copyright owner of the film


Daily Mail, UK Reporter,  January 5 2014:

"For one Seattle woman, a mind-blowing orgasm sent her to heaven - and then to the emergency room.
Liz had just had sex with her partner Eric, but well after he climbed out of bed, Liz was hitting new peaks of pleasure.
About an hour into her epic climax, Liz started to panic. By the second hour, the panting woman was rushed to hospital where medical staff thought she was in labor.
Liz's orgasm lasted for over three hours before she finally found relief."

The Times of India, November 11 2013:

"Stress and alcohol are the primary immediate triggers for stroke in Indian men but sexual activity could also set-off the life-threatening condition, a cross-sectional survey of patients conducted by AIIMS has found."                

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2000

Photo courtesy: REX/SHANE PARTRIDGE and Daily Mail, UK

I wrote on March 23 2011: "The Kama Sutra: It's NOT for me but have Blairs read it?".

In year 2013, I felt good that I generally think mouth is meant for eating, drinking...and kissing.

Why?

Michael Douglas: oral sex caused my cancer (The Guardian,  2 June 2013)


"..."No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus."

Douglas, the husband of Catherine Zeta Jones, continued:

"I did worry if the stress caused by my son's incarceration didn't help trigger it. But yeah, it's a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer. And if you have it, cunnilingus is also the best cure for it."..."



Artist: P C Vey, The New Yorker, May 17 2004

सूर्यफुले हाती ठेवणारा कवी…Namdeo Dhasal

Dylan Thomas:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

…And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  
George Santayana:

"Schopenhauer thought tragedy beautiful because it detached us from a troubled world and did not think a troubled world good, as those unspeakable optimists did, because it made such a fine tragedy."

Frances Spalding, The Guardian, 17 January 2014:


"...Van Gogh never suggested that the sunflower had any religious meaning for him, though it is customarily associated with humanity's love of God, or Christ. But he did link it on two occasions to gratitude. He admits in one letter: "My paintings are … a cry of anguish while symbolising gratitude in the rustic sunflower."..."

I have never forgot following lines of poet Namdev Dhasal (February 15 1949 - January 15 2014) since I read them in class X,  1974-75.

"...सूर्यफुले हाती ठेवणारा फकीर हजारो वर्षानंतर लाभला
आत्ता सूर्यफुलासारखे सूर्योंमुख झालेच पाहिजे."

('आत्ता', नामदेव लक्ष्मण ढसाळ, गोलपिठा, १९७१ )

[ ("After thousands of years, we met a fakir who handed to us sunflowers
now we must become sun-facing like sunflowers"

('Aatta', Namdev Lakshman Dhasal, Golpitha, 1971)]


Tragedy in the hands of the late Mr. Dhasal was beautiful like fiery sunflowers. Like Van Gogh, those flowers also perhaps were his 'cry of anguish', while symbolising his gratitude towards Dr. B R Ambedkar (डॉ भी. रा. आंबेडकर).

But he never thought the world around him good because it made such a fine tragedy.

                                                            Van Gogh's Sunflowers, 1888

Courtesy: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and The Guardian


I don't think NLD's rebellion in Marathi literature was pointless.

Artist: Robert Kraus, The New Yorker, April 9 1960

There Also Was Malati Karve...No Woman Wants to be Orphaned by a Cause

Today January 14 2014 is 132nd Birth Anniversary of R D Karve (र धों कर्वे)

Margaret Sanger-  birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse- was just three years older than Karve.

Karve's work has often been compared to her.

M V Dhond (म वा धोंड) has written three essays on Karve. They are part of his book  'Jalyatil Chandra',1994 (जाळ्यातील चंद्र).

In the third essay, he analyses why Karve was not as much successful in his mission as Ms. Sanger and Marie Stopes.

Dhond feels Karve’s mission was not restricted to that of Sanger and Stopes: Happy family life, emancipation of women, control of population.

Karve also wanted women to have as much sexual freedom and sensual pleasure as men.

Dhond claims contemporary society’s objectives were restricted to those of Sanger and Stopes and hence not only Karve’s mission has a whole suffered, he himself was persecuted by society at large. There were other reasons too: Karve’s unattractive personality, poor finances and lack of networking skills.

There is a new book- graphic biography- out on Ms. Sanger's life: "Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story" by Peter Bagge.   

(When will there be a graphic biography of Raghunath and Malati?  Amar Chitra Katha might do one but their writing and research are not often 'strong'.)

The book claims: "she had an open second marriage, counted HG Wells among her lovers and continued to enjoy a sex life well into old age.." 


Dan Kois says about Bagge's book for Slate:

"The book is a fascinating testament to the ability of one person to make a difference in this world, as long as she’s a huge pain in everyone’s ass."

It also praises the graphics: "Bagge’s drawing style remains clearly identifiable: His rubbery, expressive characters are just top-hatted and corseted versions of the people who populated Seattle and New Jersey in Hate."


Rachel Cooke reviews it for The Guardian, January 5 2014.


The last paragraph of the review reminded me of the life of Karve's wife, Malati.

"...And then there are the poignant final pages, when she is an older woman, her work done (though the federal obscenity laws that effectively outlawed contraception were not finally overturned until 1970). In a combative television interview, she crumbles and winds up showing her interlocutor pictures of her grandchildren, an act that would have appalled her younger self. Bagge pictures her (once abandoned) son with his head in his hands, unable to watch. But perhaps his horror is braided with a thread of relief. No man wants to be orphaned by a cause, not even a very good one..."

  Artist: Peter Bagge

Who After Y D Phadke? य. दि. फडके

Today January 11 2014 is 6th Death Anniversary of Y D Phadke (1931-2008)

George Orwell, May 18 1944:

"...With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history..."

Julian Barnes, 'A History Of The World In 10½ Chapters', 1989

"...In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue

And then what? Everyone became wiser? People stopped building new ghettoes in which to practise the old persecutions? Stopped making the old mistakes, or new mistakes, or new versions of old mistakes? (And does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.)

Dates don’t tell the truth. They bawl at us – left, right, left, right, pick ’em up there you miserable shower. They want to make us think we’re always progressing, always going forward..."
 
L K Advani, December 24 2013:

"...I, for one, would never expect any journal of The Hindu Group to describe Sardar Patel as  “a man rabidly communal in outlook.” It is only when I looked inside the journal that I saw that it was an article written by A.G. Noorani. The surprise therefore need not be about its authorship but simply about the fact that such a perverse article should have been made the cover page feature..."
 
It's interesting to note that Mr. Advani, in the post on his blog from which the quote above is borrowed,  has nothing to say about Mr. Noorani's stinging criticism of Mr. V D Savarkar (वि दा सावरकर),  in the pages of the same magazine, in February 2013 and his following claim of BJP's association with Savarkar:

"...But Savarkar was also the BJP’s ideologue. He was the one who coined the term Hindutva and distinguished his theme of hate elaborately from the ancient and noble faith of Hinduism..."!

Among all this, I miss Ya Di Phadke.

How I long to read him on the subject...(I once wanted his views on every piece of history of 20th century Maharashtra. I, rather audaciously, suggested to Mr. R Guha, by e-mail, that he saw see Mr. Phadke about the former's book, "A Corner of Foreign Field/ The Indian History of a British Sport", 2003 that  covers the life of Mr. Palwankar Baloo  बाळू पालवणकर/  पी. बाळू. I did it because most of Phadke's writing is not translated into English.)

I wonder who has taken on Phadke's role in narrating 20th century history of Maharashtra / India, especially its 'inconvenient' part,  in Marathi.

Today I don't see any name in his class writing in Marathi.

In the last quarter of 2013, I read the following two things by Mr. Noorani:

1. Frontline magazine dated December 13 2013

2. "Savarkar and Hindutva- The Godse Connection", 2002

After reading these two, I re-read Phadke's classic "Nathuramayan" (नथुरामायण), 1998/1999. I also have (and read) Phadke's book on Savarkar: 'शोध सावरकरांचा', 1984 ('Shodh Savarkarancha').

The late V D Savarkar poses a unique challenge to most middle-class Marathi speaking writers. I often feel they are too influenced by his two wonderfully moving patriotic songs and his other writings to be completely objective.


Noorani's book is severe on V D Savarkar while his essay in the issue of Frontline is severe on both Savarkar and Sardar Patel.

Sample the following two paragraphs from the essay.

"...If this “achievement” is magnified, Patel’s grave lapse in the failure to nip in time Savarkar’s conspiracy to murder Gandhi has been completely overlooked. Jayaprakash Narayan was among those who censured him. JP said on February 27, 1948, that he wanted “a man who was free from communalism to be in charge of the Home Department” (Bombay Chronicle, February 28, 1948)..."


"...What does the entire record reveal but a man who was rabidly communal in his outlook? The dislike of Muslims hardened over time into antipathy towards them. A hostile Vallabhbhai Patel became an anti-Muslim leader in cahoots with elements who were after their blood, the RSS and the Mahasabha. All this was overlooked and a pocket-version of the Great Patel and Bismark emerged. Simultaneously, the process of denigration of Nehru picked up speed. Nehru foresaw the danger early enough. He told Wavell on July 14, 1945, that “some of the Congress Hindus were anti-Muslim and that the psychological factors were important” (TOP, Volume 5, pages ). This fitted Patel to perfection. For all his claims to fairness, the communalist in him could never be concealed..."

On the other hand, Phadke writes in 'Nathuramayan': 

"...सरदार पटेलांच्या खासगी पत्रव्यवहाराचे अनेक खंड वाचल्यानंतर सरदार पटेल हे मुस्लिमविरोधी होते किंवा हिंदू जातीयवादी होते असे म्हणण्यास आवश्यक तो भक्कम पुरावा आढळत नाही…" (page 118)

(...After reading multiple volumes of Sardar Patel's personal correspondence one does not find concrete evidence to say that Sardar Patel was against Muslim or was a communal Hindu...)


This is hard to believe.

Noorani gives example after example of Patel's alleged 'communalism' by quoting primary sources while Phadke says he can't find anything solid to support that claim!

I wonder if Phadke and Noorani, both  based in Mumbai, ever met. Phadke died in January 2008. Therefore, I also wonder if he got to read Noorani's book on Savarkar.

Where does the truth lie?  Has any one from Maharashtra tried to counter the charges of Noorani against Patel and Savarkar?

I saw the late Narhar Kurundkar's (नरहर कुरुंदकर) 1932-1982 largely laudatory article, dated Diwali 1975, on Sardar Patel, reprinted in Loksatta dated November 10 2013  here.

I find it funny that Kurundkar has to say this about Mr. Patel: "...ते सावरकरांचे किंवा (माधव सदाशिव)
गोळवलकरांचे अनुयायी जाहीरपणे कधी नव्हतेच; पण मनातूनही कधी नव्हते..." (He never was a follower of Savarkar or (M. S.) Golvalkar overtly; not even covertly.)

Why has this to be stated for a staunch follower of Mahatma Gandhi? Does one say this about another devout Hindu and Gandhi's follower like Vinoba Bhave (विनोबा भावे)? Mr. Patel would not have certainly liked this 'certification'!

Loksatta introduces Kurundkar article with this: "पटेल हिंदुत्ववादी व जातीयवादी होते, अशा अनेक कंडय़ा सध्या पिकविल्या जात आहेत." (These days the rumours are spread that Patel was communal and a follower of Hindutva.)   

This claim is not much different than that of Mr. Advani.

But all this rhetoric does not even begin to address the serious issues raised by Mr. Noorani about Mr. Patel and Mr. Savarkar.

Is it a Selfie of Rembrandt?

S. Radhakrishnan, 'Indian Philosophy', Volume 1, 1927:

"The individual self is ever unsatisfied with itself and is struggling always to become something else. In its consciousness of limitation, there is a sense of the infinite. The finite self which is limited, which ever tries to rise beyond its sad plight, is not ultimately real. The true self has the character of imperishableness."


David Shariatmadari, The Guardian, January 1 2014:

"Previous generations seem to have been more aware of the sense of false security that images can provide – portrait paintings were often accompanied by a memento mori – often a well-placed skull signified that death was inescapable. The selfie lacks this handy feature. As we happily snap away, are we are engaged in a kind of mass denial? Things can be preserved, we seem to be saying, perfectly, digitally, and for ever."

I learnt in November 2013 that "selfie" has been named as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.

It is defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website"

Posing for a selfie photo at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela in December 2013 (courtesy: AFP / Getty)

The New Yorker's Robert Mankoff has some fun with this selection of the word  here.

There is not a cartoon by Peter Arno,  I don't love and so too was the case with this one. He rib-tickles me all the time.

Artist: Peter Arno, The New Yorker, 1 January 1959

My favourite 'Selfie' cartoon although is this:

Artist: Ed Fisher, The New Yorker,  11 February 1956

My caption today would be: "That's your selfie, I suppose".

I was moved to almost tears by what Jonathan Jones has to say about the following picture on his Guardian blog on November 21 2013:

"...Rembrandt, at the age of about 59, looks at us from the depth of his years, and with the authority of his craft. He has portrayed himself holding his brushes, maulstick and palette, in front of two circles drawn on a wall. Why the circles? Do they represent a sketch for a map of the world? Or is Rembrandt alluding, with this drawing on a brown surface, to stories that say the first picture was a drawing made with a stick in sand?
His eyes contain so much knowledge and melancholy that even looking at this painting on a computer screen, I get the eerie feeling that Rembrandt is looking back and weighing up my failures. You can deduce the power of the original.

He was a failure when he painted this, a proud man reduced to poverty by his enthusiastic spending – but here he throws it back on the burghers of Amsterdam. Art is not a business; it is a struggle with eternity. Rembrandt stands not proudly or arrogantly, but in the full consciousness of the heroic nature of his work.
First there is nothing, then there is a circle. The human hand, guided by the eye and the brain, makes a mark that only we can make – there are no other geometricians but us, no other animal that can draw or presumably conceive a circle.

From the circle to this portrait is another leap. Rembrandt has mapped himself with such craggy truthfulness that we simply stand and look back, wondering if we can ever be as real as he is..."

 But I still have a question....Is the picture Rembrandt's selfie?

 

"Detail from Portrait of the Artist" c.1665 from the collection at Kenwood House

Artist: Rembrandt Van Rijn

Photo courtesy: English Heritage