Gene Tierney@100

#GeneTierney100

 

Today November 19 2020 is 100th birth anniversary of Gene Tierney

 

 

 

 

 

 

1939                                                                                                         1941

जेंव्हा व्हॅन घो आधीचे दुसऱ्याचे चित्र कॉपी करत नाहीत तर अनुवादतात... Jean-François Millet, Vincent Van Gogh

 'Winter Evening', 1867 by  Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875)  

Van Gogh Museum Facebook page:

"During his stay in the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy, Vincent received a series of prints from Theo after paintings by Jean-François Millet. That was a French painter he greatly admired. Van Gogh used one of those prints as his model for this work. On 3 November 1889 Vincent described the painting as follows:

 “The evening is in a range of violets and soft lilacs, with light from the lamp pale citron, then the orange glow of the fire and the man in red ochre. You will see it. It seems to me that doing painting after these Millet drawings is much rather to translate them into another language than to copy them.”"

 

 Vincent van Gogh, The Evening (after Millet) (1889) 

Van Gogh Museum

नुसते शब्दच नाही तर चित्रे सुद्धा अनुवादायची असतात!

 

When Woodpecker Loves Your Crutch.....Robert Louis Stevenson@170

#RobertLouisStevenson

Today November 13, 2020 is 170th birth anniversary of  Robert Louis Stevenson

Artist  Sofia Warren, The New Yorker, October 2018

Vijay Anand's Johny Mera Naam@50

#JohnyMeraNaam50

 Johny Mera Naam premiered on November 11 1970.

मी तो पहिल्यांदा १९७१ साली कोल्हापुरात पाहिला असावा.

माझ्या बालपणात मला अतिशय आनंद कित्येक महिने, वर्षे (अगदी अजून सुद्धा) देणारा 'जॉनी मेरा नाम' हा सिनेमा पन्नास वर्षांपूर्वी प्रदर्शित झाला.

तो मला 'पाठ' होता, संवाद, गाणी, कथा... थेटर मध्ये अंधार होणे आणि हा सिनेमा सुरु होणे ह्यापेक्षा जास्त काही आनंददायक असू शकत अस मला त्यावेळी कधी वाटल नव्हत...

courtesy: Trimurti Films Prasad Productions Pvt. Ltd.

डूमडूमा हुन सुटका ..Our Escape From Ulfa Terrorists@30

When Suredra Paul, owner of the Apeejay group and brother of UK-based Swraj Paul,  was brutally murdered by militants in Assam near Chabua on May 9 1990, my wife and I almost heard the gunshots because we lived only a few kilometers away from the crime scene, at Doom Dooma.

Later we came to know that the murder was done with a weapon called AK-47 and any 'idiot' could operate it with ease and that it was easily and cheaply available in Assam.

I still remember that eerie afternoon. Luckily we did not see any AK-47 while we lived there. It seems, as of today, the rifle has killed more people than any other firearm in the world!

In the wee hours of November 8 1990, Executive Director P K Das came to our house and urged us to leave our tea-garden home, for our own safety, with as little baggage as possible. A couple of hours after his visit, we were driven to the company's head office about a km away.  

There we all rode a gun-mounted, well guarded Indian army truck through the town of Doom Dooma where hundred of people watched us standing on the truck.  We were being taken to  Sookerating air force station- almost never used for non-defense purpose- to be airlifted from there in an Indian Airlines Boeing 747 flight to dodge the bullets of Ulfa's AK-47's.

We were fed nice breakfast at the air force station's dining hall but the Indian Airlines plane that had come to rescue us developed a snag and required a spare part. Another IA plane flew in either as a substitute or with the part and after a few hours we began our journey. We were given no lunch on the flight and the flight landed in Calcutta much after sunset. 

The action did not end with our arrival in Calcutta. We were shielded from the media at the airport and were driven straight to the Park Hotel on Park street where we were checked in but soon a rumour started circulating that a few Ulfa terrorists were spotted inside and around the same hotel.  So hurriedly we were shifted from there to company's guest house (Brooke House) on Shakespeare Sarani, not far from the hotel. 

courtesy: The Economic Times, November 20 1990

courtesy: Frontline dated December 8-21 1990

* I knew well all the employees from the picture above and Deepak Sen, Managing Director lived in the bungalow above.

* The cars in the picture above were not "abandoned" by any definition of that word. They were parked in the head office because the military convoy  carrying us started from that point. Managing Director was NOT evacuated with us. He was already in Kolkata. Deepak Sen never returned to Assam that he had left because of the militancy. He developed an illness while staying at Calcutta and died eventually at Jaipur after his retirement. He was a handsome man when I first saw him in Assam. The same could not be said about him once he fell ill.

* It was said (but hard to believe) the then Chief Minister of Assam - P K Mahanta- (or indeed the Prime Minister of India- V P Singh) did not know about the operation to rescue us. Mahanta government was dismissed by the centre on Nov 28 1990. V P Singh was replaced by Chandra Shekhar as Prime Minister on Nov 10 1990. Just a coincidence? Mr. Mahanta was the chief minister of Assam again from 1996-2001.

 courtesy: Frontline dated December 8-21 1990

* There were all kinds of conspiracy theories floating in the days before the mission in  Doom Dooma, Assam. They said an Ulfa terrorist had started living in an Assistant Manager's bungalow to observe 'us' and that there was a demand of huge ransom to spare our lives. 

* When we lived there, people showed us the exact place in Chabua where the Chinese army had reached in 1962. India is still not at complete peace with China. 

* A rickety Tinsukia station of 1990 has now been replaced apparently by a majestic one. 

* In 2012-13 Unilever sold off its tea plantation companies in  Assam and Southern India. 

* The recent status of Ulfa senior leaders can be seen here.

The Raids of Mahmud of Ghazni and Rajendra I were Not At All Comparable

Perry Anderson, LRB, August 2012:

“…Compared with the fate of Pakistan after the death of Jinnah, India was fortunate. If the state was not truly secular – within a couple of years it was rebuilding with much pomp the famous Hindu temple in Somnath, ravaged by Muslim invaders, and authorising the installation of Hindu idols in the mosque at Ayodhya – it wasn’t overtly confessional either…”

John Keay, ‘India: A History: Revised and Expanded Edition’, 2011:

“…From this campaign Mahmud returned with booty valued at twenty million dirhams, fifty-three thousand slaves and 350 elephants…

…Somnath’s fort looked more formidable. It seems, though, to have been defended not by troops but by its enormous complement of brahmans and hordes of devotees. Ill-armed, they placed their trust in blind aggression and the intercession of the temple’s celebrated lingam (the phallic icon of Lord Shiva). With ladders and ropes Mahmud’s disciplined professionals scaled the walls and went about their business. Such was the resultant carnage that even the Muslim chroniclers betray a hint of unease. What one of them calls ‘the dreadful slaughter’ outside the temple was yet worse.

Band after band of the defenders entered the temple of Somnath, and with their hands clasped round their necks, wept and passionately entreated him [the Shiva lingam]. Then again they issued forth until they were slain and but few were left alive … The number of the dead exceeded fifty thousand.

Additionally twenty million dirhams-worth of gold, silver and gems was looted from the temple. But what rankled even more than the loot and the appalling death-toll was the satisfaction which Mahmud took in destroying the great gilded lingam. After stripping it of its gold, he personally laid into it with his ‘sword’ – which must have been more like a sledgehammer. The bits were then sent back to Ghazni and incorporated into the steps of its new Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), there to be humiliatingly trampled and perpetually defiled by the feet of the Muslim faithful….”

 Richard Eaton has written a book 'India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765'. The title is interesting and I intend to read it all.

But this post is about just one chapter in the book 'A TALE OF TWO RAIDS: 1022, 1025', 2019 where he compares raids of Rajendra I (r. 1014–44), maharaja of the Chola empire (848–1279), on Orissa and Bengal and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 997–1030) on India. Both armies had traveled approximately 1600 km.

It's a fairly longish chapter and worth reading but I was left very unsatisfied because he does not talk about  three aspects of both the raids:

1. how were captured women - both ordinary citizens as well as royalty- treated?

2. were there religious conversions because of the raids?  

3. How were the new slaves- created because of the campaigns- treated?

He however clearly states this:

"...Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni  also ordered its Śiva image to be broken up and its pieces taken back to Ghazni, his capital, to be set in a floor and walked upon.

 The southerners (led by Rajendra I) crowned their victory by carrying off a bronze image of the deity Śiva, which they seized from a royal temple that Mahipala had presumably patronized. In the course of this long campaign, the invaders also took from the Kalinga raja of Orissa images of Bhairava, Bhairavi and Kali. These, together with precious gems looted from the Pala king, were taken down to the Chola capital as war booty. Before leaving the delta, however, Chola officers directed an operation unusual for military campaigns: they arranged for water from the Ganges River to be collected in pots and carried on the army’s long march back to Tanjavur..."

 Richard Eaton also writes: "... The silence of contemporary Hindu sources regarding Mahmud’s raid suggests that in Somnath itself it was either forgotten altogether or viewed as just another unfortunate attack by an outsider, and hence unremarkable...In fact, the demonization of Mahmud and the portrayal of his raid on Somnath as an assault on Indian religion by Muslim invaders dates only from the early 1840s..."

I don't think so because a lot of India's history has remained unrecorded for most of its history and what Mahmud of Ghazni did was not just connected to the religion but arguably it had large impact on its culture.  

Therefore,  I feel that that the raids were really not comparable.  

 courtesy: the cover artist and the writer