Just checking for dandruff....
This image is the cover art for the 1963 pulp novel, The Cruel Touch, by Alan Marshall, a pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake
Paul Rader was a prolific artist known for his work on paperback book covers, especially in the pulp fiction genre.
James Naremore, “Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction”, 2019:
“Many people recognize a film noir when they see one—or so we might assume from the numerous retrospectives, DVD sets, and books that deal with the subject. But defining the term is notoriously difficult. It’s usually associated with narrative, stylistic, and design qualities of black-and-white Hollywood pictures from the 1940s and 1950s: drifters attracted to sexy women, private eyes hired by femme fatales, criminal heists, corrupt police, young lovers on the run, flashbacks, offscreen narration, shadowy interiors, dark rainy streets, diners, swank nightclubs, snap-brim hats, cigarettes, hard liquor, snub-nose revolvers, and hard-boiled dialog. (“Is there any way to win?” Jane Greer asks Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past [1947]. “There’s a way to lose more slowly,” he replies.)
Such films occupy a fictional zone somewhere between Gothic horror and dystopian science fiction; as narrative formulas, they derive from what Jean-Paul Sartre called the literature of “extreme situations” and what Graham Greene called “blood melodrama”; and as commercial products, they blur the distinction between formulaic entertainment and art films….”
story by Guru Dutt and Balraj Sahni
J. I. Baker, "LIFE Film Noir: 75 Years of the Greatest Crime Films", 2016:
"...The film genre that the French would eventually dub noir (meaning “black”) was created when the visual tropes of German expressionism (think the stark, angular chiaroscuro and Teutonic angst reflected in such silent classics as Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) were combined with the influence of the pulp and hard-boiled crime fiction that had been popularized in large part by an American magazine called Black Mask. Influenced by the terse realism of Ernest Hemingway’s fiction, the stories limned a seamy world of fedoras, cheap booze, cheaper bars, guns and gumshoes, double-crossing dames, cynicism, doomed boxers, doomed dreamers, doomed gamblers, and doom itself. Often evocative but mostly pedestrian, the pulp tradition nevertheless spawned three authentic geniuses: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain...."
Wikipedia :
"Gender self-identification is the concept that a
person's legal sex or gender should be determined by their gender
identity without any medical requirements, such as via statutory
declaration." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_self-identification)
"Gender
fluidity is a non-fixed gender identity that shifts over time or
depending on the situation. These fluctuations can occur at the level of
gender identity or gender expression. A genderfluid person may
fluctuate among different gender expressions over their lifetime, or
express multiple aspects of various gender markers simultaneously.
Genderfluid individuals may identify as non-binary or transgender, or
also identify with their assigned gender."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_fluidity)
ह्या वोक जमान्यात बिचार मर्ढेकर तोंडावरच पडले...
"...
पहा विचारूनि त्यांना कसली
मैथुनांत रे असते झिंग;
दखवितिल ते भोंक रिकामें
जिथें असावें मांसल लिंग.
..."
त्या हाडाच्या सापळ्याला जिवंत करून विचारायला लागेल- तुझे लिंग काय होते?
(५६, पृष्ठ ६४, 'हाडांचे सापळे हासती' मर्ढेकरांची कविता, १९५९-१९७७)
माझे पुण्यातील एक नातेवाईक महापुरात मुठा नदीत लकडीपुलावरून उडी मारून ओंकारेश्वर ला बाहेर निघत .. आणि अशा तत्सम अनेक गोष्टी मी पुण्यातील पुराबद्दल ऐकल्या आणि वाचलेल्या आहेत ..
एकेकाळी पुण्यात खडकवासला सुद्धा नव्हते किंवा ते एकटेच होते ... त्यामुळे पुण्यात पुराची खूप सवय लोकांना असणार ...
कै महादेवशास्त्री जोशी हे '||आत्मपुराण||' ह्या, प्रथम १९८५ साली प्रसिद्ध झालेल्या, आत्मचरित्रातील 'सांगली बहु चांगली ' ह्या नवव्या प्रकरणात, त्यांच्या सांगलीच्या कृष्णा नदीला आलेल्या साधारण १९२५ च्या सुमारास आलेल्या महापुरात, बापट नावाच्या मित्रामुळे त्यांनी उडी कशी मारली, आणि त्याचे पुढे काय झाले याचे रोमहर्षक वर्णन करतात ... ते सोबतच्या चित्रात ...
युद्धस्य कथा रम्या तसाच काहीसा प्रकार आहे, आपण पाण्यात नाही याचे बराच काळ बरे वाटत राहते ...
मी अवघ्या दहा किलोमीटर वर मिरजेत लहानपणी ओळीने वीस वर्षे राहून सांगलीत असे घडत असते किंवा सांगलीचे वेगवेगळे घाट याबद्दल मला हे पुस्तक वाचे पर्यंत माहित नव्हते!
१९०६ साली आंबेडे , गोवा येथे जन्मलेले पंडित महादेवशास्त्री जोशी साधारण १९२१ साली पहिल्यांदा चतुर्भुज झाले ... ते लग्न गोव्यात होऊ शकले नाही कारण गोव्याचे कायदे , सोबतचा जोशींच्या आंत्मचरित्रातील मजकूर वाचा ... ते लग्न वाळपई, साखळी जवळच्या ओझरे या संस्थांनी गावी ब्रिटिश हद्दीत झाले ...
त्यांची पत्नी त्याच्या अथक प्रयत्नानंतर सुद्धा क्षयाने वारली आणि त्याचे दुसरे लग्न झाले (१९३० च्या आगेमागे, ते सुद्धा ब्रिटिश हद्दीत ...
they had to walk a lot from the border of Goa to reach their wedding place, Joshi was walking and his soon to be bride was being carried on someone's shoulder! Finally still short by a mile, they gave up and got married in Goa in evening right in the face of Portuguese civil code....
if you google for such kind of information including using AI tools as I did, you will never know the practical problems Joshi describes , but here they are ...
Key Aspects of the Portuguese Civil Code Regarding Marriage, 1910:
Civil Contract: Marriage is recognized as a civil contract rather than a religious one, secularizing the institution and allowing for divorce.
Registration: All marriages, both Catholic and non-Catholic, must be mandatorily registered with the civil registrar.
Age of Marriage: The legal age to marry is 21 for both men and women, though this can be waived with the consent of a guardian for minors.
What this does not say is- what Joshi informs - provision of mandatory smallpox inoculation...no google search in Sept 2025 pointed to this...
It's also interesting to note that none of this was applicable in British occupied India!
