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."

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Renuka Shahane & Archana Joglekar, Try Mirabai Not Positivity on Your Patients

Renuka Shahane (रेणुका शहाणे) is (was?) hosting a reality TV program in Marathi 'Yala Jeevan Aise Nav' (याला जीवन ऐसे नाव).

I saw its promos.

Ms. Shahane is famous for her smile. She in fact is the pioneer of its Indian-TV version. Remember 'Surabhi', the program she co-hosted on Doordarshan?

Today Ms. Shahane promotes positive thinking. She feels it is panacea. Whatever is your problem, she has the answer: "Be Positive".

The other day I briefly saw Archana Joglekar (अर्चना जोगळेकर) on Marathi TV. She too was talking about the power of positive thinking. She asked viewers to embrace 'positivity'.

I bet if you watch Marathi TV everyday, you will get a large dose of positive thinking, kind of Jamalgota for your mental constipation.

(See an earlier post on the subject here.)

I wish both the fine ladies read either 'Bright-sided /How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America' by Barbara Ehrenreich or Lucy Ellmann's review of it:

"...Positive types aren't just misled, they're mean...

...The pitiless message to the powerless from all these motivational speakers, megachurch preachers, self-help gurus and other assorted selfishness-sellers is that sad sacks get what they deserve.

Promoting the idea that happiness is within your grasp is in the interests of corporations trying to bamboozle an overworked and underpaid workforce...

...Informing the uneducated and unmedicated that their plight is all their own fault is followed up by instructions for making anything you desire – from a new TV screen to a trip to Mexico – "materialise" through mind control. The censorship of negative opinion combines perfectly with the American policy of each man for himself in the best of all possible worlds.

This is the philosophy that gave us the smart bomb, the space programme, sub-prime mortgages, plenty of psychopaths and Sarah Palin. Every dumb American idea we've all had to stomach and die for can be attributed to this devotion to fantasy and self-satisfaction...

...Americans aren't happy, they're just trained to look as if they are. It's fake orgasm on a grand scale, and we're almost deafened by the din..." (The Guardian, Saturday 9 January 2010)

During the interview in February 2010, Ms. Joglekar talked about how her mother- Asha Joglekar, a classical dancer herself,- once completely ignored whatever Archana and her students were doing in class and instead immersed herself in a book on/by Mirabai.

Wise choice. I am sure junior Ms. Joglekar didn't mind the snub because of her 'positivity'.

But the message I got from senior Ms. Joglekar: Mirabai helps even in dance.


Artist: Colin Wheeler, Spectator
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