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, April 13, 2009

Piano as an Aquarium Bar

The Times of India (April 10, 2009) has reported passing away of Shakti Samanta without mentioning "An Evening in Paris"(1967).

This was like omitting "Hamlet" from Shakespeare's obituary!

The music of "An Evening in Paris" was composed by Shankar Jaikishan.

Shankar Jaikishan and R D Burman were arguably the most prolific users of piano in Hindi cinema. (It was R D who composed one of the greatest piano songs of Hindi cinema: "pyaar diwaanaa hotaa hai, mastaanaa hotaa hain
har khushee se, har gam se, begaanaa hotaa hain" for Shakti Samanta's Kati Patang [1970] )

I just love piano: its look- majestic like an elephant- and its sound.

Piano was embraced by Indian film industry in 1930’s. Keshavrao Bhole केशवराव भोळे at Prabhat प्रभात was the first to use instruments such as the piano, the Hawaiian guitar and the violin in his compositions.

I have seen a lot of pianos in Hindi films but little of them in real life.

There are so many hummable Hindi film songs where a hero or a heroine is banging away at the piano (to be precise: pretending to do so as almost none of them knew/knows how to play it), onlookers are standing or moving around with a glass in their hands, the story is galloping forward.

Recall Brahmachari (1968):

“Dil Ke Jharoke Mein Tujko Bithakar
Yadoon Ko Teri Maein Dulhan Banakar
Rakhoonga Maein Dil Ke Paas
Mat Ho Meri Jaan Udaas,
Dil Ke Jharoke...”

Piano has always seemed a lot of real estate for me because I have lived largely in small houses. Therefore, I have always wondered: What else can it be put to use?

Here is an idea: aquarium-cum-bar.


Artist: P. C. Vey, The New Yorker, April 13 2009, Cartoon Caption Contest #188
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