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, March 06, 2011

वसंतराव आगाशे: "पिटातल्या प्रेक्षकांप्रमाणे शिट्या काय मारताय?"...Vasantrao Agashe of Vasant Vyakhyanmala, Miraj

Our teacher at Miraj High School (मिरज हाय स्कूल), Vasantrao Agashe (वसंतराव आगाशे) died at Pune on March 5 2011.

I am eternally grateful to Agashe-sir not for his teaching but for making "Vasant Vyakhyan Mala" (वसंत व्याख्यान माला), spring lecture series, happen every year at Miraj (मिरज). Agashe-sir worked tirelessly and selflessly for its success. He also motivated a number of young volunteers to work with him.

There was no ideological bias in the selection of speakers. Organisation of every evening used to be impeccable. I spent dozens of my evenings in the summers of 1970's there and later discussed the lecture passionately with my parents and willing friends.

Staunch Gandhian Narhar Kurundkar (नरहर कुरुंदकर), who often came calling, once told his majority Brahmin audience that he was now going to praise Mahatma Gandhi knowing fully well that a lot of his audience disliked, if not hated, Gandhi!

I also remember how Vitthalrao Gadgil (विठ्ठलराव गाडगीळ) regaled his audience with anecdotes from Indian and British parliaments.

Sadly, I never attended any of Setu Madhavrao Pagdi's (सेतु माधवराव पगडी) lectures there who too came for a number of years. I now realise the enormity of my loss.

But I did not like Agashe-sir's teaching. He taught us higher English in HSC first year. I did not like his speeches too. Particularly his flowery language. But he was very popular among certain types of students.

I remember those students- many studious girls among them- giving him a 'fishpond': "ज्ञानाच्या सागरातील राजहंस" ('Swan in the sea of knowledge') or something similar at our school social (aka gathering) in 1975. I was amused.

Once there was quite a bit of whistling at the back of our class. I was sitting there. He was not used to so much of commotion in his class. He reprimanded us with these words (he never beat a student):

"पिटातल्या प्रेक्षकांप्रमाणे शिट्या काय मारताय?"

("Why are you whistling like the spectators seated in the theatre pit?")

I liked the pun alright!

By the way, I never whistled at Vasant Vyakhyan Mala. There I behaved the way Agashe-sir wanted a student to behave in his class.

Thank you, Agashe-Sir. For many delightful spring evenings and the pun. And sorry for being a bit(?) of nuisance in the class.


 The building in the background is Miraj Vidyarthi Sangh aka Khare Mandir

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