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, December 06, 2007

कुठली सीता, कुठला राघव? Which Seeta, Which Raghav?

I wrote the original post a couple of days ago. I need to revise it because sadly M V Dhond म वा धोंड, who I have quoted extensively on this blog, died on December 5, 2007 at the age of 93. Along with D G Godse द ग गोडसे and Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत, he was one of the greatest art critic anywhere in the world. This now becomes his obituary.

See few more entries from this blog on Dhond's scholarship here.

I have had number of interesting exchanges with him. Some of them have already been described, more will follow. One such letter is included at the end of this post. He gifted me an autographed copy of his classic ज्ञानेश्वरी:स्वरुप, तत्त्वज्ञान आणि काव्य (Dnyaaneshwari : Nature, Philosophy and Poetry 1980) in year 2001. I was in tears when I received it.

Headline in Marathi newspaper Pudhari पुढारी on December 6, 2007 says: "M V Dhond merged with infinity."

Atheist Dhond would surely object to that description! Lucky he, now he knows if there is a heaven or a hell or just nothingness.

ORIGINAL POST:-

Asian Age December 3, 2007 has a moving photo (see the picture of a woman holding baby at the end of this post):

"Mothers hold their children affected during the Bhopal gas tragedy...Hundreds of thousands of babies were borne in the years since a deadly gas billowed over Bhopal in 1984, but the survivors of that night say their children are forever stunted by that tragedy."

Frontline December 7, 2007 said:

"In June, activists working among the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster obtained certain documents from the Prime Minister’s Office under the Right to Information Act. These documents suggest how keen the government is to relieve the Dow Chemical Company of any liability for the disaster and its toxic legacy.

...Dow has consistently denied inheriting any liability for the Bhopal legacy from UCC. However, back in the U.S., it set aside $2.2 billion to address future asbestos-related liabilities arising out of the Carbide acquisition. Activists of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal argue that if Dow can assume responsibility for asbestos-induced illnesses among victims in America, why then it should deny responsibility towards the victims of Bhopal and its continuing toxic legacy..."

93-year old M V Dhond म वा धोंड has written another brilliant article in Lalit Diwali 2007 (ललित दिवाळी ) lambasting our apathy towards poor and downtrodden, while appreciating poetry of Tukaram and B S Mardhekar (तुकाराम,बा. सी. मर्ढेकर) on the same subject.

In following Marathi poem, Mardhekar describes how Sharvari शर्वरी-young, hardworking, practical woman- while making cow-dung cakes, is telling Shabari शबरी-devotee of Ram- that Ram and Seeta are never going to return from Ayodhya to Dandakaranya to accept her offering.

खप्पड बसली फिक्कट गाल
तळभिंतीवर घेउन जख्खड
मातीची ही जुनी झोपडी
आंबट मिनिटें चाखित रद्दड.

मधेंच दचकुनि बघते वरती,
अष्टदिशांचा सासुरवास;
चंद्रमौळि परि बेढब शबरी
क्षण-बोरांची रचिते रास.

मातीवरती करीत मात;
मिनिटांमधुनी काढित व्याधि;
तापकिरि-पिवळ्या मउ सालीचें
बोर गवसतां जरा सुगंधी,

कुरवाळित तें बोटांनी मउ
मिनिट सुवासिक हसते शबरी;
माणुसकीच्या दंडकांत अन्
गौर्या थापित वदे शर्वरी:

येइल का कधि सीतापति ग
चुकून तरि पण ह्या वाटेला?
घेइल का अन् रुजू करूनी
ह्या बोरांच्या नैवेद्याला?

कुठली सीता, कुठला राघव?
पुसे खडीचा रस्ता फक्कड़;
आंणि ठेविते गाल झोपडी
तळभिंतीवर फिरून खप्पड.

(poem 11 "आणखी कांहीं कविता" "some more poems")




(double click on the image to get a larger view)
Ma Va Dhond's Letter in December 2001
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