Is She Taking Selfie or Enjoying the Serenity of the Nature?

Artist: Unknown, December 1944, courtesy: Marathi magazine Vangmay Shobha (वाङ्मय शोभा), Bookganga.com

To Be Continued tomorrow....

मी पाहू कशाला नभाकडे?...How to Make Your Victim Bare His Neck

I recently learned one more time how poorly most of us are taught at school.

We were told (I forget the year) that Lord William Bentinck​ achieved the suppression of the thugs but no one told us, certainly not the text book, who exactly thugs were.

I thought they were like dacoits, like mythical Valya-koli (वाल्या कोळी): they stopped you in your track, robbed you and killed you.

I realized how wrong I was when I started reading Mike Dash's book 'Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult', 2005.

"....Any skilful party might have had three or four affairs a night without anyone being any the wiser for it. People knew not what Thuggee was, nor what kind of people Thugs were. Travellers were frequently reported to have been murdered by robbers, but people thought the robbers must be in the jungles; and never dreamed that they were murdered by the men they saw every day about them.

From the interrogation of Hurree Singh by William Sleeman, 1835..."

Thugs were the men you saw every day about you...Dash's book starts with a harrowing tell of the murder of an entire upper middle-class traveling family by the people who have been traveling with them and then leaving no trace whatsoever of their crime behind...quite chilling...

'Thug inveiglers induce an intended victim to bare his neck by pointing to the stars.', 1837

Artist: Unknown Indian artist at Lucknow

If You Live Deliberately, Who Does Your Laundry?: Henry David Thoreau

Today July 13 2016 marks the beginning of 200th birth anniversary year of  Henry David Thoreau

दुर्गा भागवत,  ("ऐसपैस गप्पा : दुर्गाबाईंशी", लेखक : प्रतिभा रानडे, 1998):
"…थोरो म्हणजे गांधी आणि टॉलस्टॉयलाही शिकवणारा, स्फ़ुर्ती देणारा गुरु...गांधीच्या अहिंसेचं मूळही  थोरोच्या विचारात दिसतं. त्यांच  निसर्गाचं प्रेम मलाही होतंच...तो जंगलात राहायचा. पण कधी पांथस्थ त्याच्याकडे आला, तर तो कौतुकाने त्याचा पाहुणचार करायचा …"

Joseph Lelyveld, ‘Mass Mayhem’, Chapter 11, ‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India’, 2011:

“...It soon became obvious that the Noakhali Gandhi was now bent on making his young relative (Manu Gandi) his primary personal attendant, the person who’d monitor his daily schedule, see that he was fed exactly what he wanted, measured out precisely in ounces (eight ounces boiled vegetables, eight ounces raw vegetables, two ounces greens, sixteen ounces goat’s milk boiled down to four ounces), at exactly the desired time; not only that, the person who’d administer his daily bath and massage, which could take longer than an hour and a half. An ounce of mustard oil and an ounce of lemon juice had to be mixed for the massage, which proceeded “in exactly the same manner every day,” according to a memoir Nirmal Bose later wrote: “first one part of the body, then another … in invariable succession.”

Even that could be considered just the beginning. It turned out that Manu Gandhi would also be expected to play the female lead in the brahmacharya test the Mahatma now saw as essential to his self-purification. Starting in the late 1930s, he’d had female attendants sleep on bedrolls laid out to the side of his; if he experienced tremors or shivers, as sometimes he did, they’d be expected to embrace him until the shaking stopped. Now he planned to have Manu share the same mattress. Perfection would be achieved if the old man and the young woman wore the fewest possible garments, preferably none, and neither one felt the slightest sexual stirring. A perfect brahmachari, he later wrote in a letter, should be “capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually aroused.” Such a man would be completely free from anger and malice...”

There are at least four references to Thoreau (July 14, 1817-1862) in Ranade's book that I quote above. It's interesting Durgabai talks about Thoreau's love of nature, non-violence, hospitality. 

She also talks about how "Manusmṛti" (मनुस्मृति)- translated by Sir William Jones- fundamentally changed Thoreau's view of life: How trees and bushes too have a soul, how everything is connected...

But she is silent on his "living deliberately". 

Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, October 19 2015:

"...in a curious way, “Walden” is not well known, either. Like many canonized works, it is more revered than read, so it exists for most people only as a dim impression retained from adolescence or as the source of a few famous lines: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”

Extracted from their contexts, such declarations read like the text on inspirational posters or quote-a-day calendars—purposes to which they are routinely put. Together with the bare facts of the retreat at Walden, those lines have become the ones by which we adumbrate Thoreau, so that our image of the man has also become simplified and inspirational. In that image, Thoreau is our national conscience: the voice in the American wilderness, urging us to be true to ourselves and to live in harmony with nature.

This vision cannot survive any serious reading of “Walden.” The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world. From that inward fixation flowed a social and political vision that is deeply unsettling..." 

Thoreau lived in a cabin built on the land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) near Walden pond from 1845-47.  

The following set of pictures imagine what happened when Emerson visited Thoreau in his cabin. 


A small part of the exchange:

"...Emerson: So what do you do all day, anyway? 

Thoreau: I live in each season as it passes: breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign myself to the influence of the earth.

Emerson: Yeah, but I mean...like, what do you literally do?

Thoreau: Mostly sit around and try to come up with profound sounding quotes. Want to hear some?

Emerson: Please no...."

Artist: Existential Comics

(if you can't read the word in the pictures above, open the entire frame in  new window and magnify)

कथांची चित्रे Good Pictures तरी असावीत किंवा Good Illustrations तरी...G A at 93

Today July 10 2016 is 93rd birth anniversary of G A Kulkarni (जी. ए. कुलकर्णी) 

लोकसत्ता, मार्च 1 2016: "...लेखकाने हस्तलिखित दिल्यानंतर त्या लेखनाचे पुस्तक होताना सौंदर्यामध्ये भर घालण्याची जबाबदारी ही प्रकाशकाची असते. ती निभावण्यामध्ये प्रकाशक कमी पडत असेल, तर हा एक प्रकारचा सामाजिक गुन्हाच आहे, असे मत ज्येष्ठ साहित्यिक भारत सासणे यांनी व्यक्त केले..."

Howard Simon:

“One of  the distinguishing marks of a great book is the persistence with which it is illustrated. The Bible, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the works of Shakespeare and Rabelais, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables—are all among the much illustrated books. Almost every generation demands the classics in modern dress, set forth pictorially by a favorite modern hand. There scarcely has been a generation without its interpreter of the world’s great books.
On the subject of fine bookmaking there have always been two different schools of thought. There are those who would decorate a book with clear, beautiful type, print it on good paper and allow, at most, a printer’s flower to decorate the page. And there are the others to whom an illustrated book is an enriched one. ..” (‘500 Years of Art & Illustration’ , 1942)

The late G. A. Kulkarni clearly belonged to the second group, "to whom an illustrated book is an enriched one".  

Most fans of GA don’t often talk about this aspect. But GA himself has written about it. 

Reading the letters quoted by Mr. Anand Antarkar (आनंद अंतरकर),  in his book ‘Ek Dharwadi Kahani’ (एक धारवाडी कहाणी), 2015, however it looks like GA was largely unhappy with the state of illustrations for Marathi publications in general.  

"...अंक सजावटीत अतिशय फिका पडतो. कथांची चित्रे Good Pictures तरी असावीत किंवा Good Illustrations तरी. सौ. केशकामत यांच्या सजावटीत दोन्ही आढळते, पण असे क्वचित. 'हंस' चा हा भाग मला फार सामान्य वाटला. (मी थोडासा चित्रकारही होतो.) आणि मुखपृष्ठावरील चित्रदेखील आपण पूर्वी पहिले तर नाही ना असे वाटले. (अर्थात हे पुष्कळच मासिकांच्या बाबतीत घडते.) म्हणजे तुम्ही दुसर्या टोकाला जाऊन ' सत्यकथेसारखे भीषण मुखपृष्ठ द्यावे असे मी म्हणत नाही. पण 'आस्वाद'वरील चित्र मला बरे वाटले…(सजावटीत [शि द] फडणीसांचा समावेश नाही. एका विशिष्ट तर्हेच्या लेखनाला त्यांची सजावट  मस्त जमते. पण त्यांचा आवका फार मर्यादित आहे.)..." (a letter dated November 4 1968)

Following are two more examples of his views on illustrations:

courtesy: copyright holders of GA's letters and Mr. Anand Antarkar

 

Now imagine if William Blake illustrated GA's 'Orpheus' (ऑर्फियस) from 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ), 1977!

Artist: William Blake (1757-1827), The Book of Job,

illustrated, engraved and printed by William Blake