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

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Dousing Fires of Nationalism Lighted by Staging of Kichak-Vadh

Do we learn anything from history at all? Or history is just one damn thing after another and hence to be ignored?

I read ROGER COHEN (IHT August 12, 2007) saying:
“….America has incurred a debt to Iraq, and the liability is weightier than the paper on the sub-prime mortgage market. Those in a hurry for neat resolutions in Mesopotamia might cast their minds back 60 years to the summer of 1947 when, on Aug. 15, after almost a century of direct rule, the British quit India, having drawn some hasty lines on a map.

The lines produced Pakistan. The rapid exit - independence and partition had only been approved a couple of months earlier by Parliament - produced a savage outbreak of killing and rape among millions of Hindus and Muslims attempting to disentangle entwined existences. India and Pakistan went to war over still-contested Kashmir.”

I thought we were learning from history. Or is it?

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF in NYT August 12, 2007 says:”…. There’s lots of talk about partitioning Iraq to reduce the violence, and it’s happening already — and that de facto partition is a crucial step to reduce the risk of genocide once we leave. But for the U.S. to embrace partition would be disastrous: We would be portrayed in madrassas around the world as the infidels who dismembered an Arab country to seize its oil and emasculate it on behalf of Israel.”

Portioning Iraq? How can they even think when they should know that what happened in India in 1947 could be traced back to the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905. Yes, the same Curzon who once said: “As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall drop straightway to a third rate power”. (Is George Bush saying the same for Iraq?)

Lord Curzon is arguably the most unpopular personality of British rule in India. Blockbuster Marathi play of year 1907, “Kichak-Vadh” was a metaphor for Curzon’s rule in India. It’s based on an episode in Mahabharata. Curzon became tyrant Kichak and India became his hapless victim Draupadi. The play charged many a youth in Maharashtra against the British rule.

One of them, it is said, was Anant Kanhere who assassinated collector of Nashik, A M T Jackson, of the Indian Civil Service in December 1909, at a theatre where he had gone to watch another famous Marathi play Sharda.

Calling the play seditious, its performance was banned by British government on January 27, 1910. Ban was in force until 1926. (There is also a Marathi film "Kichak Vadh" made in 1959 that has this haunting song-Dhund madhumati rat re nath re- written by G D Madgulkar and composed by Master Krishnarao. But I find villain Kichak played by Baburao Pendharkar much dearer than hero Bhim!)

Currently Iraq is staging its own "Kichak Vadh". American Curzons will find it hard to extinguish the fire, especially if they are going to use oil for the job!


Artist : Mike Luckovich
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No use splitting up

Asian Age Aug 15 2007 reports: “Londoners like Delhiites think their bus drivers are rude and blundering.”

In India, since we started administrative reforms we have got many things right (e.g. railway ticket booking) but some big holes remain. Lack of reliable public transport at most urban centres is one of the biggest of them.

I use Pune Municipal Transport’s (PMT) bus service about once in a week and it appalls me to find it as bad as ever. Most of the hardware, other than recently launched expensive BRT, is rickety. Most conductors are rude. Buses often don’t carry destination nameplates. Frequency of service on most routes is inadequate. There is hardly any timetable that is strictly adhered to. During peak hours, senior citizens can hardly reach a bus, let alone climb on it. During morning hours, I see school & college going children of all ages hanging on to bus door and windows perilously.

I feel sad because the neighbourhood Mumbai has had one of the best bus service- called BEST- on the offer for a long time now. Recently, BEST launched its website, one of the most useful and pretty I have seen. Visit it here.

When I was at Chennai from 1981-83, I probably used the best bus service- then called PTC- I have seen any where in the world. Particularly so if we considered the load on it and resources at its disposal. I remember an incident when the conductor of a very crowded bus got down to help an old woman climb on the bus. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

I had gone to Chennai after spending first twenty one years of my life at Miraj. At Miraj, I used bus service to get to my colleges from 1976 to 1981. Conductors on that service were almost cruel. We thought they derived sadistic pleasure by not stopping their bus at our college’s stop. We could never tell when we would get home after the college. It was a torture we could do without in those glory years of India’s socialism.

We used all the tricks like in picture below to get a bus to stop. Alas they almost never worked!


Artist: George Price The New Yorker Jan 11, 1947
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