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, January 30, 2012

Joe Sacco's Suvanti is just 1 in 230 million Indians!

Today Jan 30 2012 is 64th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

Another thing that is 64 year old is the baby in following picture:


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, January 12 2012

A headline in The Times of India, January 16 2012: "Superpower? 230m Indians go hungry daily."

Nourishment and food are always closely associated with Public Distribution System (aka ration) in India.

The dialogue of character of Pran in Hindi film Upkar (उपकार), 1967 became a huge hit. It sounded something like this: "राशन पे भाशन बहुत है लेकिन भाशन पे राशन नहीं." (There are lots of speeches on ration but there is no rationing of speeches.)

We still have grand speeches (bhashan) on the subject.

The Times of India Jan 11 2012:

"The findings of a report on country malnourished children compelled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to call malnutrition a "national shame" on Tuesday. A report on Hunger and malnutrition (HUNGaMA) released by the PM in New Delhi on Tuesday states: "Over 25% children in the state (UP) are severely and 58.55% are moderately malnourished." The report has covered 40 districts of UP out of total 112 districts across India."

There are more poor people in just eight Indian states than in all the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, with the large state of Madhya Pradesh comparable in intensity of deprivation to war-ravaged Congo. The incidence of underweight children in Gujarat, one of our most economically-advanced states, is substantially worse than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. (from writings of Pankaj Mishra, Pranab Bardhan)

But none of them reached my heart as starkly as Joe Sacco's comic reportage- 'Kushinagar'- for 'The Caravan' January 2012.

Kushinagar is a town in Uttar Pradesh where Gautama Buddha is believed to have attained Parinirvana after his death.

Mr. Sacco tells us about the ground reality there. He tells us about how Dalit Musaharas (rat-eaters) families survive, if at all.

Sample some of the speech bubbles:

Food! The topic to end all topics!

Suvanti: The women go to the fields where the rats are and we collect the grains that [they store] in their holes, and we bring them here. We go there everyday. Who goes? Just the women. All of us. And children. Even men!

Suvanti says that raiding ratholes is steadier work than agricultural labour.

Suvanti's husband: I might not have a job for many days but she goes to collect [the rat's food] for at least eight months a year.

What about their son Rajinder?

Rajinder: I try to find food in the holes of rats.



speech bubbles in the picture just above read as follows:

"For the Musahars of the Gurumiha Mafitola hamlet , the Below the Poverty Line definition , which government committees endlessly recalibrate, is a moot point because the issue is not merely poverty which might be bearable, but hunger."

"That is their only concern: food."
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