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."

Thursday, March 28, 2013

My Space is Small, My Life too is Small.


Samuel Brittan:

"The Greek philosopher Diogenes is said to have lived in a tub. But far from being dismissed as a crank, he was the only thinker whom Alexander the Great went to see – the others had to come to him. Was Diogenes a happy man? You can answer how you like. You can say that he was happy living in a tub. Or you can say that he thought that other things were more important than happiness."

Graham Hill has written an interesting essay for The New York Times, March 9 2013 titled 'Living With Less. A Lot Less'. Read it here.
Such things keep appearing in the Western media from time to time. The most recent famous example of it, as I remember, would be Jared Diamond's essay “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” (The NYT,  January 2  2008). Read that essay here.

I often wonder if this is a long, loud belch after a sumptuous meal or is there more to it?

My first question to the likes of Mr. Hill would be: why do you have to say this? Why not just more people do it?

My second question: why do you have to be successful first and then throw away things? Why not be a 'failure' in the world's eyes to begin with? Won't it make things much simpler? Less garbage to clear for municipal authorities.

My final question to him: Are you happy saying : 'My space is small. My life is big.'? What if your space is small and life too is small?

All my life I have been always attracted to austere living rooms.  I have lost count of how many such rooms I have seen during my childhood at Miraj. My classmates who came to Miraj  from nearby villages  to study after 7th or 10th always lived in such rooms and ate even simpler meals.

To my eyes, even following elegant and world-famous  room looks crowded!




Artist: Vincent van Gogh, 'Bedroom in Arles', 1888

Instead I like this room:





Artist: Alok Shukla, "Blue Nile", April 2010

 courtesy: Jamuna Inamdar

SIMON CRITCHLEY says:

“...Diogenes credited his teacher Antisthenes with introducing him to a life of poverty and happiness — of poverty as happiness. The cynic’s every word and action was dedicated to the belief that the path to individual freedom required absolute honesty and complete material austerity.
So Diogenes threw away his cup when he saw people drinking from their hands. He lived in a barrel, rolling in it over hot sand in the summer. He inured himself to cold by embracing statues blanketed with snow. He ate raw squid to avoid the trouble of cooking. He mocked the auctioneer while being sold into slavery..." 

p.s There is another problem with collecting stuff....excess baggage charges on the final journey!


Artist: Richard Jolley (RGJ), The Spectator, UK , 2013

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