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, April 23, 2009

Pipe Down? Think Again. Your Leg, if not Life, Depends on it.

A few weeks ago, I started feeding crows on the balcony of my house and since then I have got a glimpse of their complex society.

No wonder crows are believed to represent our ancestors. (btw-I hope my mother is among those who visit me every day!)

They say the sound of vehicle horns scare the crows away. Even here they are like me!

I was amused to read in FT (April 7, 2009) Amy Kazmin’s article “Engineer makes big noise”:

“In India, one of the most used components of any motor vehicle is the horn. Drivers navigating livestock, pedestrians, animal-drawn carts and motor vehicles lean heavily on their horns to express frustration, if not to clear a path. Trucks are emblazoned with the slogan “horn please”.

Responsible for much of India’s distinctive road noise is Roots Industries, a small private company that is also the country’s biggest hornmaker…

…Throughout most of 2008, Roots ran three shifts a day, six days a week, turning out 400,000 horns a month for its home market and for export…”

Amy Kazmin should also have said- Horn is used in lieu of break.

These days my only hope while walking or driving on Pune roads is: Let vehicle driver be kind enough to honk.

Because I don’t expect him

to drive on the right side of the road,
follow traffic signals and speed-limits,
show courtesy to elders and children,
use unadulterated fuel,
have vehicle certified for pollution laws,
possess third-party insurance policy and driving licence,
keep safe distance between two vehicles,
carry no more than certified number of passengers,
showing hand or lamp directional signals while driving,
park vehicle responsibly,
use reverse horn sparingly
…


Artist: Frank Modell, The New Yorker, March 22 1958
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)