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, September 29, 2016

Did India Send the Yak to China After a Threat of Shower of Strontium 90?..:Cartoonist Carl Giles@100

Today September 29 2016 is 100th birth anniversary of cartoonist Carl Giles (1916-1995)


Wikipedia informs that "In April 2000, Mr. Giles was voted 'Britain's Favorite Cartoonist of the 20th Century'".

Mr. Giles has drawn hundreds of cartoons. I have seen and liked dozens of them. Here are two of them that made me laugh my head off...

On India China border dispute over which a war was already fought...just take in all the details....


...yak, boy, bed of spikes, snake charmer, Chinese soldier standing in attention, another pointing gun at snake...pettiness of war (atomic one, over a yak)...Chinese military officer being driven in a man pulled cart....bellicose language ...Himalayas...


"Note from Chou En-lai says that unless your boy sends his yak back within three days the Eastern Hemisphere can stand by for a shower of Strontium 90."

Daily Express, September 21, 1965

(Strontium 90: it is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission. China had tested the first atomic bomb in 1964.)



"An enterprising one is our Rhamjah!"

Daily Express, January 24 1961 

There is no tourist, indeed even a cow, interested in watching a snake charmer or the Indian rope trick....notice the cow alongside the tourists...so many pictures of the late R K Laxman too feature such cows....and don't I remember Rhamjah like enterprising peddlers from my childhood at Miraj? I have spent hours watching them...

Both pictures courtesy of: The British Cartoon Archive hosted by University of Kent

p.s. After I published this post, I read the following in The Times of India September 29 2016:


"Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif threatens to unleash nukes against India."
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)