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."

Saturday, July 13, 2013

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.
 
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