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."

Monday, November 26, 2007

England, India Go Missing from Big Sports Tourneys. Does it matter?

England has failed to qualify for Euro 2008. The British economy, by one estimate, could lose out on a £2 billion payoff...

Paul Doyle of The Guardian said:

"...The brutal truth of tonight's 3-2 defeat is this: England aren't one of the best 16 teams in Europe, let alone a world football power.

Blame it on the manager if you want, or a decadent society that means the country's current crop of players are more a bling generation than a golden one. Or perhaps it would be better to blame it on a blind fear and loathing of foreigners, the malaise that moved English fans to boo the Croatian national anthem before the game..."

Sunil Gavaskar wrote (Sportstar November 10, 2007):

“…. England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 would be akin to India not making it to the main draw of Asia cup.”

This comparison is not fair. The field for qualification for Euro 2008 was much stronger than Asia cup cricket.

But the point is taken. Gavaskar has always enjoyed rubbing it in when it comes to England. Me too!

The fair comparison would be England’s this failure with India's failure to qualify for the final stage of Cricket World Cup

Gavaskar also said:”…the English players are far more concerned about their club than their country…”

This may also happen to Indian cricketers once professional cricket leagues (Zee and BCCI) in India take off.

Does this loss matter to either team? I think not.

Football in England and Cricket in India are locomotives of massive commercial interests. Those interests keep everybody (media, fans, advertisers, sponsors, commentators, coaches) still follow the losers as closely as winners. In fact, winning or losing is only incidental.

I feel cricket matches in India in future may be organized like free-style wrestling bouts involving brothers, Dara Singh and Randhawa, at Vallabbhai Patel Stadium, Worli in the past: Opponents get beaten by Indian team to give Indian fans a huge high.

Team Croatia played excellent football on Wednesday. But I don't know a single Croatian footballer!

However, I know many English footballers thanks to their scantily dressed wives and girlfriends (WAGs), who keep making appearances on the pages of Indian newspapers almost every single day! Thank goodness, my familiarity with Indian cricketers is more direct!

For example, Carly Zucker of Joe Cole fame appears very often:




Artist: R K Laxman Times of India March 20, 2007
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