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."

Friday, July 26, 2013

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?

Posted by at 2 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)