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."

Monday, August 22, 2011

Rereading Vasant Sarwate at Ramlila Maidan in August 2011

Indian government until August 22 2011 to the supporters of The Jan Lokpal Bill and middle-class people in general...


caption:

मी लोकशाहीचा कट्टा पुरस्कर्ता आहे. मग त्यासाठी सर्वच्या सर्व जनतेविरुद्ध लढा द्यावा लागला, तरी बेहत्तर, मी माझी भूमिका जरासुद्धा बदलणार नाही, सांगून ठेवतो!..."

(I am an ardent supporter of democracy. And for that if I have to fight the entire populace, I could not care less, I will not change my stance even one bit, I am telling you!...")

Artist: Vasant Sarwate first published in 1969, (वसंत सरवटे)

[courtesy: 'Reshalekhak Vasant Sarwate' (रेषालेखक वसंत सरवटे) edited by Dileep Majgaonkar / Madhukar Dharmapurikar (दिलीप माजगावकर / मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर ), 2009]

This was published in one of the best Marathi periodicals- despite its soft(?) Hindutva bent- of all time - 'Manoos' (माणूस).

Political cartoons of Sarwate that were published in Manoos from 1969-1972 tell us more about Indian democracy as practised in Maharashtra than any history book. Particularly see his cartoon on hunting expedition of the then chief minister Vasantrao Naik (वसंतराव नाईक).

This collection proves how in the field of political cartoons Sarwate is equal to the likes of Abu Abraham and R K Laxman. And if you add the rest of his repertoire to it, he is better than both.

We at Miraj used to get Manoos for a long time by post. I used to pounce on it. I still remember many things from it- Sadanand Borse's (सदानंद बोरसे) reviews of films for instance. My father and my brother both were handsome contributors to its contents over a number of years.

Like almost all good Marathi periodicals, it died long time ago...
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