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."

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Te acompaño en tu pesar

Mahatma Gandhi translated a few of Tukaram's poems when he was jailed in Yerwada in 1930.

One of them reads in Marathi:

"जेथे जातो तेथे तू माझा सांगाती । चालविसी हाती धरूनिया ॥१॥

चालो वाटे आम्ही तुझा चि आधार । चालविसी भार सवे माझा ॥धॄ॥"

Gandhi's translation reads:

"Wherever I go, Thou art my companion. Having taken me by the hand Thou movest me.
I go alone depending solely on Thee. Thou bearest too my burdens."

Tukaram.com also has its translation in Rajasthani:

"हूं जठै-जठै जाऊं हूं बैठे-बैठे तूं म्हारे सागै चाले है और म्हारो हात झालनै मनै चलावै है ।

मारग में चालूं जणै मनै थोरा ई सायरो रैवै है, म्हारो सगळो भार तूं ई संभाळो है"

("म्हारो सगळो भार तूं ई संभाळो है". Sweeter than even Tukaram's original words! "चालविसी भार सवे माझा".)

The key phrase in the poem is 'to accompany'. "Taking by hand" is less important.

One of the greatest books, "Don Quixote", was written in Spanish c 1605-1615. Tukaram was already borne and perhaps writing.

Terry Castle informs that there is a phrase "...used in Spain to console someone: "Te acompaño en tu pesar"—"I accompany you in your sorrow.""

Castle continues:"...At the deepest level Don Quixote is about accompanying someone and being accompanied in turn..."

For me the most moving sequence of Richard Attenborough's Gandhi is the Dandi March. The way the March gathered strength. People kept joining in. In total silence.

They were accompanying and being accompanied in turn!

Last year, for the first time, I read D B Mokashi's (दि. बा. मोकाशी)- 20th century Marathi's foremost existentialist- Palkhi 1964 (पालखी). What a read! It describes how such an exercise transforms even a skeptic. Outsider in the end belongs.

Yesterday I finished reading Cormac Mccarthy's masterly and numbing 'The Road'. In apocalyptic times, father and son come closer. Thanks to a journey together.


Artist: Vijay Wadekar

To view more such pictures click here.
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