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

Thursday, July 05, 2007

“Sarpa Dosha” of Sachin Tendulkar & H D Deve Gowda and “Manushya Dosha” of Poor Snakes

India’s ex-Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda did a daylong ‘homa’ at his residence on July 4 to ward off ‘sarpa dosha’ reports Times of India July 5,2007.

“The six foot rat snake’s visit to his house on June 15 seems to be haunting him. The fall-out Gowda feels the negative publicity his family has been getting in the last few days must be due to this snake. For the homa, 101 priests along with their family members from Ahobila mutt in Chennai were specially invited.”

Remember another high profile “sarpa dosha” afflicted personality?

On May 8, 2006 , India’s larger-than-life cricketer Sachin Tendulkar performed the 'sarpa samskara seva' at Kukke Sri Subrahmanya Temple , a ritual that took about half-an-hour. He also performed another seva 'ashlesha bali', which is for the general well-being and good health of the player and his family. Spiritual mentor V S Nayak told Times Of India that Tendulkar's ancestors had accidentally killed a cobra but not performed the necessary rituals. This had led to the 'sarpa dosha'. Nayak said the rituals were needed for a person's well-being. He said there was no place other than Subramanya where it could be performed. "Sachin should have performed two more poojas. But due to lack of time, he will perform only these two important sevas," Nayak said.

Others reported: the master blaster's loss of form and injury problems were traced to adverse planetary positions for which corrective rituals took place.

Gowda’s puja was not televised while Tendulkar’s was on almost all news channels.

When I lived in Bangalore, I had witnessed a longer than six foot snake slowly making its way from just outside our gate to somewhere inside the garden, chasing perhaps frogs and rodents. I was spellbound by that glorious site. I did not know I had to do “sarpa dosha” after that.

I wonder if snakes should do “manushya dosha” so that humans turned more sensible.


Artist: E L Shoemaker The New Yorker 28 Oct 1933