Steve Jobs:
“(death) is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
“(death) is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
Homer Simpson:
"You never know when an old calendar might come in handy. Sure, it’s not 1985 now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?"
David Graeber:
"Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?"
We are lucky. We at least have Kalnirnay on our kitchen wall.
Kalnirnay was launched in 1973, we bought it soon afterwards and the kitchen wall in our Miraj (मिरज) house just lit up! The calendar became the brightest spot in the whole of kitchen.
Almanac (पंचांग) became accessible to anyone who read Marathi (मराठी).
And at our house it did not just remain a calendar, in later yeras it became my mother's diary. She did not wait for an app on smartphone for that. We did not not even have a land-line but we had an appropriate app! When she died, I kept looking at her last entries on Kalnirnay.
Even today in 2013, Kalnirnay Marathi remains my and (occasionally) my wife's diary! We keep the last year's calendar hanging just below the current year's for the entire year. We also have preserved a couple them- say the year our son was born- from the past. (ref- Homer Simpson's wisdom quoted at the start.) I also have kept some articles clipped from them at the end of the year.
For me, Kalnirnay remains one of the top indigenous inventions of India since my birth. I know almost nothing about its inventor Jayant Salgaonkar (जयंत साळगावकर) who died on August 20 2013. But I will always remain thankful to him...
Our Mother's Diary App!
Artist: Kamal Shedge (कमल शेडगे)
courtesy: http://www.kalnirnay.com