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."

Friday, June 10, 2011

M F Husain: The Horse has now Bolted and is perhaps at Rest

George Orwell:

"...It was so important that she should understand something of what his life in this country had been; that she should grasp the nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to nullify. And it was so devilishly difficult to explain. It is devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings with sympathy. But who that has not suffered it
understands the pain of exile?"

Pico Iyer:

"Now mostly living in New York, (Orhan) Pamuk is perhaps more prey than ever to an exile's sadness, as he finds himself removed from his youth not just by time but space. In response, he has taken to memorializing every last linden tree and halwa seller of his hometown, and to constructing a literal, physical museum of memories that he is planning to take around the world as an exhibition."

U.R. Ananthamurthy:

Rama had been exiled to the forest and Sita was insisting that she would accompany him. Rama tried to tell her that life in a forest would be hard. In the course of the argument, when Rama came up with a strong argument, Sita replied: “In every Ramayana I know, Sita accompanies Rama to the forest. How can you then say no to me?” This is a fascinating example of the intertextuality that unites India.

They say M F Husain was a great artist.

Maybe he was but my mind is clouded with his depiction of Hindu deities. Read related posts here and here. And, more importantly, his pictures don't move me.

But I liked his celebration of A R Rahman's winning of Academy Award. See it here.

I always kind of understood his pain because I too feel exiled living away from Miraj, after our family left it around 1986. Since then I have not been able to call any place I have lived- "My place" (माझे गाव).

Walter de la Mare:
No, No, Why further should we roam
Since every road man Journeys by,
Ends on a hillside far from Home
Under an alien sky

I didn't want to say anything on his passing but was moved by Sudhir Tailang's cartoon-tribute to him. Mr. Tailang has drawn a masterpiece, worthy of the late artist.


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, courtesy: The Asian Age, June 10 2011

This picture reminded me of another cartoon by creators of Chintoo after passing of P L Deshpande (पु ल देशपांडे): Chintoo (चिंटू ) standing at window is looking at a rather hurriedly departing figure of Pu La and a few of Pu La's books are lying near him.

If I had held back a tear or two, that picture gave me an excuse.

Until now there are no tears in my eyes after seeing Mr. Tailang's picture but I feel sad that Mr. Husain had to live and die in exile.

Has he taken a visual museum of memories of India wherever he has gone?
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