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."

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Can You Spot Me in the Crowd?

Edward Hoagland, The New York Times, March 23 2013:
"By our own account we’re pigs, yet bearish, owly but mousy, catty and bovine. We beaver at work, hawk merchandise, and ape others by parroting them. We’re lemmings, wolfish, snakes in the grass, weasels, bucks, hens, leonine or sharks. We’re beaky or tigerish, doe-eyed, raven-haired, foxy, chicken-hearted, slow as a tortoise, meek as a dove, sheepish, dogged, old goats, goosey, sitting ducks or vultures. We butt in, bull ahead, change our stripes or spots, strut like a peacock, weep crocodile tears, ram through or swan about. We’re rabbity, calf-eyed, we beat our chests like gorillas, buzz off, or act like a jellyfish."  
संपादकीय, लोकसत्ता , मार्च 28 2013:

"...लोकप्रतिनिधींनी हक्कभंग ठराव आणला म्हणून कोल्हेकुई करणारे काही जण सत्ताधारी भुजांच्या आधारे आपल्यात नसलेले बळ कसे वाढवीत होते याचे स्मरण शिमग्याच्या पवित्र दिनी करणे समयोचितच ठरणार नाही काय? काही पक्षीयांकडून झालेल्या कथित हल्ल्यांच्या न झालेल्या खोटय़ा जखमा मिरवण्यात ज्यांनी आयुष्य व्यर्थ घालवले तेच त्याच कथित हल्लेखोर पक्षप्रमुखांचे चरणतीर्थ घेण्यासाठी रांगेत उभे असतील तर ते दृश्य कधीही शिमग्याच्याच स्मृती जागवणार यात विशेष ते काय?..."

These days in Maharashtra a three-cornered contest is being fought:

Law Makers, Cops, Two Marathi TV news channels....

One does not know where it is going but I know how it will end: Amicably...the old order and peace will be restored...after all they are all respectable,  award-winning/ decorated/ elected citizens of the greatest democracy on this planet...

But while it is going on, it's not even good entertainment...worse than the Marathi TV serials, including the one supposedly comic one

Although the quote at the top reminds of the great Aesop, in such times, I remember only one thing:  George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'


from movie 'Animal Farm', 1954

courtesy: Halas and Batchelor, a British animation company

This is how the great book ends:

“The pigs and farmers return to their amiable card game, and the other animals creep away from the window. Soon the sounds of a quarrel draw them back to listen. Napoleon and Pilkington have played the ace of spades simultaneously, and each accuses the other of cheating. The animals, watching through the window, realize with a start that, as they look around the room of the farmhouse, they can no longer distinguish which of the cardplayers are pigs and which are human beings.”




from movie 'Animal Farm', 1954

courtesy: Halas and Batchelor, a British animation company and  BBC
I am in this second picture.  Can you spot me? Or am I in the first picture ?

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