It's a Great Loss...Not for S D Phadnis, For The New Yorker!

Today July 29 2013 is 88th Birthday of  S D Phadnis (शि द फडणीस). He and I went to the same school- Miraj High School, Miraj!

(Mr. Phadnis has appeared on this blog a few times before. Please search the blog to reach there. I created his Wikipedia page in December 2008. If you have relevant expertise, please help me expand it.) 

Sometime this month I saw this beautiful cover of The New Yoker in my FB feed and it reminded me of S D Phadnis.

Artist: Christoph Niemann, The New Yorker

The lady has dropped the phone and is really setting herself up for real vacation by cutting off from the reality.

Now, haven't I seen many similar wonderful pictures by Shi Da?

 Artist: S D Phadnis, 1954

Courtesy and more such pictures: Official Website of S D Phadnis

And then I wondered, is New Yorker even aware of existence of Phadnis, who has been drawing some great pictures for more than 60 years?

It's a great loss, I feel. For the New Yorker!

Coppersmith Barbet, Green Rose & Books- A M T Jackson & Durga Bhagwat-... तांबट पक्षी, हिरवा गुलाब आणि ढीगभर पुस्तके

William Faulkner: “The past is not dead; it is not even past.”
  
The late Pandit A M T Jackson 1866-1909, a member of Indian Civil Service and Indologist,  has appeared on this blog before in December 2009  here.

After reading the post, Mr. Murli Khairnar (मुरली खैरनार), a Nashik resident, -  recipient of the first fellowship for creative writing given by Kusumagraj Pratishthan  (कुसुमाग्रज प्रतिष्ठान) in 2013- asked me in July 2013 about the accuracy of a claim made there. 

(Mr. Khairnar is engaged in writing a Marathi thriller that involves the incident of Jackson assassination. He and I spoke about his astounding research on July 25 2013 and I have never been more looking forward  to a Marathi novel.)

My claim was that the late Durga Bhagwat (दुर्गा भागवत) 1910-2002 , borne a year after Jackson's death, had told the author Pratibha Ranade (प्रतिभा रानडे) of "Ais Pais Gappa Durgabainshee" (ऐसपैस गप्पा  दुर्गाबाईंशी) that the chase of Jackson's valuable library was entrusted to the Asiatic Society, Mumbai. Mr. Khairanr had gone through the multiple editions of the book but couldn't find it.

He couldn't have!

My claim was wrong (since then corrected). It wasn't in the book I mentioned there.  But I was sure that Durgabai did say it. So I went looking for it in all the books of Durgabai I have (around ten) and also the 'Lalit' (ललित) magazine's special issue dated August 2002 dedicated to her after her death.

                      courtesy: Lalit

Finally,  I found it and I was so delighted to re-read it.

The information comes from Ms. Bhagwat' essay "Tok...tok...tok" (टोक…टोक…टोक), first published Diwali 1957. The essay, a deeply moving tribute to the late Mr. Jackson,  is now part of her book "Bhavmudra" (भावमुद्रा), 1960/ 1998.

 Coppersmith Barbet (तांबट पक्षी), Picture courtesy: Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia Marathi 

"Tok...tok...tok",  a sound made by the bird  pictured above,  is imagined by Durgabai being made by Jackson.

She writes addressing Jackson in first person: "...'Tok, tok, tok' a nonhuman sound, distant sound, does not now belong to  Coppersmith Barbet. It's certainly your sound! For all these years remaining smothered inside the bookcase, rows of books, pages it's only your sound!..." ("...'टोक, टोक, टोक' हा अमानवी, दूरचा आवाज, पण तो आता तांबट पक्ष्याचाही राहिलेला नाही. खास तो तुझाच आवाज! इतकी वर्षे त्या कपाटांच्या गाभ्यात, पुस्तकांच्या रांगात, पानापानात गुदमरून पडलेला तुझाच तो आवाज!..."


Now, I give three small passages from Durgabai's essay.

Ms. Bhagwat was raised in Nashik for a few years. In the passage above she talks about her first visit to the garden named after Mr. Jackson. She also expresses her ambivalence towards his memory. Should she associate with him for his collection of books or hate him for being a representative of the foreign ruling empire?... But for the collection of his books, she would forget his name.

Here she finds what brings Jackson and her together. She regrets that there is no picture of him. Nor there has been a biography. How does she understand his personality? But somehow she 'gets it' looking at a green rose in Jackson garden. Later in the essay, she says whenever she heard or read Jackson's name or stood still next to Jackson's library in Asiatic society of Mumbai, she thought of green roses, first seen in Jackson garden.

Here she speculates how once Jackson must have been a ruthless, diplomatic, shopkeeping British but must have transformed after reading about India in thousands of books. She thinks only because of Jackson's affection for India he was able to put together such a majestic and all encompassing library in such a short time.

(passages courtesy: the legal owners of copyrights to the book)

Durgabai also writes that Jackson's widow had no money to return to England.  She had to request Royal Asiatic Society to purchase her husband's library.  The Society then bought it for Rs. 4 - 5,000 and that is where it is today.

(Mr. Kairnar informed on July 25 2013: "Jackson chase is there in Asiatic Library. R E Enthoven, who edited Jackson's folklore books has mentioned in the foreword that He along with a few friends raised a fund to buy all Jackson books and papers to donate them to Asiatic Society, Mumbai.")

After re-reading the essay, I have got little curious. 

Did Durgabai tone down her affection for Jackson in latter years of her life? Other than this essay, whatever I have read, she seldom mentions Jackson or any other English officer - such as Mountstuart Elphinstone or Alexander Cunningham, founder of the Archaeological Survey of India. 

Did she feel her patriotism would be questioned by some if she did? Being Thoreau's follower and a fan of Tagore, could she have embraced Tagore's views on nationalism?

Why It's Hard to Compare Dnyaneshwar With Socrates... तो गुण म्हणजे त्यांचे मार्दव

Today July 19 2013 is Aashadhi Ekadashi (आषाढी एकादशी)

विनोबा भावे:

"...पण ज्ञानदेवाच्या या सगळ्या गुणापेक्षा त्यांच्या ज्या गुणावर मी मोहित आहे,  तो गुण म्हणजे त्यांचे मार्दव, त्यांची विनयशीलता, त्यांची अहिंसा होय. या बाबतीत त्यांची तुलना कोणाशी करावी हेच मला समजत नाही. सॉक्रेटीसाची क्षमा, शांती, अहिंसा प्रसिद्ध आहे. पण दुसर्यांना बोचणारा विनोद तो करू शकत होता...."

('विनोबा सारस्वत', संपादक : राम शेवाळकर, 1993)

{Vinoba Bhave:

"...but the virtue of Dnyandev by which I am more fascinated than the rest of his virtues is his leniency, his humility, his non-violence. In this regard, I don't quite understand who to compare him to. Socrates's compassion, peace, non-violence are well-known but he could  humour that could hurt other people..."

('Vinoba Saraswat', Editor: Ram Shewalkar)]

How true!

The Economist, December 17 2009, "Socrates in America/ Arguing to death" says:

"...The trouble was that, although his students, including Plato and Xenophon, who passed on Socrates’s conversations for posterity, saw him as noble, much of Athens did not. Instead, many Athenians detected an underlying arrogance in Socratic irony. Socrates thus resembled, say, the wiser-than-thou and often manipulative comedian-commentators Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in today’s America. Those who agreed with him found him funny and enlightening. The rest found him merely condescending."

Julian Gough  says in his masterly essay 'Divine comedy' ('Prospect', May 2007):

"...Ah well, this praising of comedy at the expense of tragedy has gone on forever. Let us go back to Greece, before Muhammad, before Christ, and let someone else have the last word. In Plato's Symposium, Aristodemus, a bit pissed, has just woken up to find "… there remained awake only Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates, who were drinking out of a large goblet that was passed around, while Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus did not hear all the discourse, for he was only half awake; but he remembered Socrates insisting to the other two that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of the one should also be a writer of the other. To this they were compelled to assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding what he meant. And first Aristophanes fell asleep, and then, when the day was dawning, Agathon."..."

The scene would have looked something like this:

Artist:  David Borchart, The New Yorker, February 2013

Now there must be four of them- Aristodemus, Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates. We see only three (Socrates sitting extreme right with an empty chalice in hand). Spot the fourth!

After seeing the picture, it's even harder to compare Dnyaneshwar with Socrates!

If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought

 George Orwell:

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better"

Noam Chomsky

"With language, for example, we have very good evidence that for the last 50,000 years there has been no evolution. That is a reflection of the fact that our basic capacities have not evolved."

Wikipedia:

"(Edward) Snowden explained his actions saying: "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things [surveillance on its citizens]... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

 

Artist: Unknown to me , Source: Facebook

मोती गळाले...Villains Often Soften...

Alfred Hitchcock:



"The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture."
 
Michael Levenson:

"So many of Dickens’ fictions start by dividing the world in two, with separate zones of goodness and badness. Then the engine of generosity starts to whirr. Villains often soften; hypocrites relent; misers melt. The more Dickens dwells on any character, the more likely it is to turn toward the light. The deepest urge in his imagination was to invite everyone to the feast of life (“you come too, Mr. Scrooge”), which is why the books conjure an immensity of food: so that there will always be more than enough of everything for everyone, especially enough laughter and ham and happy tears."

Luke Johnson:

" Of course moving pictures are mostly fantasy. Real life is more mundane – even in the executive suite. And it is never as clear-cut as the narrative of a 90-minute screen story. Few of the pictures mentioned are morality tales, and several of the best, such as Citizen Kane or There Will Be Blood, leave questions unanswered. Arguably, the villains are often the most dynamic characters – like Williamson (Kevin Spacey) in Glengarry Glen Ross"

जी ए कुलकर्णी:

"झाडावरूनच ऊबदार, गुळगुळीत कैरी काढावी, ती मुठीनेच फोडून तिच्यावर मीठ- हां , लाल तिखट, हिरवे नव्हे- घालून ती खावी. ते तर अगदीच राहून गेले. आता हे मात्र कधी होणारही  नाही.

कारण तानीमावशी गेली, व जाताना माझी मीठ तिखटाची कैरीच ती आपल्याबरोबर घेऊन गेली."

("कैरी", "पिंगळावेळ", 1977)

[G A Kulkarni:

"One should pluck the warm, smooth raw-mango from the tree itself, it should be broken with  fist only and stuffed with salt- mind you, red chilli, not green- and then be eaten. It remained completely undone. Now, it can never happen again.

Because aunt-Tani went away, and while going, she took along with her my salty-chilli raw-mango."]

Who is the hero of my-childhood-defining Hindi film Vijay Anand's  'Johny Mera Naam', 1970- the film I still keep watching?

Answer: Pran, who plays character called Moti (मोती)/ Mohan in the film. I still know by heart all of Pran's dialogues in the film.

for me, Moti wins hands down!

courtesy: Trimurti Films


Is there a film I didn't like Pran? 

Almost none. For instance:


Azaad (1955), Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai (1960), Dil Hi To Hai (1963), Ram Aur Shyam (1967),  Brahmchari (1968), Sadhu Aur Shaitaan (1968), Sharaabi (1984)...

Upkar (1967), Nannha Farishta (1969), Parichay (1972), Victoria No. 203 (1972), Zanjeer (1973), Bobby (1973), Dharma (1973), Majboor (1974), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)  ...

When Pran became a 'good guy' from a 'bad guy', it was so reassuring. It became easy to be hopeful and optimistic. And when it happened, the good guy on the silver screen looked stronger and more realistic.

Fist my aunt-Taimavashi, then my mother, then Shammi Kapoor and now Pran...my childhood tree of raw-mangoes is almost bare!

But lucky me, I could eat a lot of mangoes- with red chilli stuffing alright- before it happened.