शेक्सपिरियन आणि शेक्सपियर यातला फरक काय?....Kusumagraj@106

#कुसुमाग्रज१०६  #Kusumagraj106
 
Today February 27 2018 is 106th birth anniversary of Vishnu Vāman Shirwādkar (विष्णु वामन शिरवाडकर) aka Kusumagraj (कुसुमाग्रज). 

शेक्सपिरियन आणि शेक्सपियर यातला फरक काय?

In 2016, Marathi play "Raja Lear" (राजा लिअर) by Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) was staged again to observe 400th death anniversary year of William Shakespeare.

I did NOT see it because...

Artist: B E Kaplan, The New Yorker, 2014

Vinda's 'Raja Liyar' was Shakespeare....On the other hand, Shirwadkar's 'Natsamrat' (नटसम्राट) is Shakespearean...And also, I already know King Lear, explained here in just three frames:

Artist: Maya Gosling, 2014

लाकडी वाघ ठेवून खऱ्या वाघांना मारणारे....Tipu's Three Real Tigers and Arthur Wellesley

खालील तिन्ही उतारे Jon Wilson's "India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the Chaos of Empire", 2016 यांच्या अप्रतिम पुस्तकातून साभार.

“...French craftsmen had built the mechanism inside the famous life-size toy tiger that is now on display in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The tiger, a symbol of the Mysore regime, has sunk its fangs into the throat of a prostrate European man, and it roars when it bites. Wellesley was worried that France and India would collaborate in more than symbolic craftwork, fearing particularly that the French navy would invade western India from its base at Mauritius to join up with Mysore and drive the British from southern India....”

Tippoo's Tiger, ca. 1793 (made), location: the Victoria andAlbert Museum, UK

 पण या लाकडी वाघाच्या बरोबरीने इंग्रजांना तीन खरे वाघ सापडले होते...

 “...The Company’s armies arrived at Tipu’s capital of Sriringapatam in April. The city survived a month’s siege, but on 2 May the Company managed to blow a series of big holes in the walls of the fort and then, over the next two days, fought their way into the city. Tipu was seen shooting from the battlements with hunting rifles, but was killed in the fighting, his still warm body later found in a room full of corpses. Inside the palace, soldiers found Tipu’s mechanical tiger, and three of the real beasts, caged and starving.

Arthur Wellesley was appointed military governor of Tipu’s lands. His first act was to shoot the tigers: ‘[T]here is no food for them, and nobody to attend them, and they are getting violent.’...”

दुसऱ्या महायुद्धात ज्यावेळी जपानचा मद्रास वर हल्ला होणार असे वाटत होते....

"... In Madras, the prospect of invasion seemed so imminent that government offices were moved to towns scattered throughout the interior, and the big cats in the city’s zoo killed to stop them rampaging after the inevitable attack. When the city’s Indian chief officer complained that ‘everyone seemed to have lost their head’, the British chief of police sent a platoon to the zoo who ‘ruthlessly did their job in minutes’. By the middle of 1942, the government was drawing up plans to retreat from India and lead the fighting against Japan from Australia. Indians withdrew their savings from British-run banks and could not even trust paper money so started to collect small coins..."

Artist: Joe Dator, The New Yorker, 2017

विस्टन ह्यू ऑडन यांनी मागितले - "धैर्य दे अन् नम्रता दे..." आणि त्यांना ते मिळाले!...W H Auden@111

#WHAuden111

बा सी मर्ढेकरांवर (१९०९-१९५६) ज्यांचा समर्थ रामदासांइतका प्रभाव होता, ज्यांच्या न्यूयॉर्क मधील एका भेटीवरती विलास सारंगांनी अधुनिक मराठीतील एक सर्वोत्कृष्ट निबंध लिहला, त्या डब्ल्यू एच ऑडेन (१९०७-१९७३) यांची आज फेब्रुवारी २१ २०१८ रोजी १११वी जयंती आहे.

ऑडेन यांच्या बाबतची, माझ्या डोळ्यात अक्षरशः पाणी आणणारी, वाक्य मागच्या वर्षी LRB मधील एका लेखात वाचली:

Mark Ford: "...I think there’s a humility in Auden which is one of the most striking characteristics, and unusual characteristics, of a great poet, that often great poets have a kind of hard self-belief or egocentrism which survives all their various kind of … the trajectory of their careers, and the ways in which their thoughts or idioms develop. But Auden, from beginning to end, despite the kind of seemingly prophetic or didactic or like a preacher-man aspect of his poetry, there is a kind of humility in it. And when I was re-reading his poetry in preparation for this, I just found myself weeping at that particular aspect of Auden – not just the beauty of the poetry, particularly the early poetry, I just found it overwhelming … Paid on Both Sides, Poems (1930) – I just found them just so moving to read. But I also felt that there was a humility in his concept of poetry which was very distinctive and very powerful...."

Seamus Perry:
"...Yes, and Alan Bennett captures that very beautifully, I think, in his piece in the LRB in 1985, so perhaps we should end with what Bennett says. Bennett’s saying how happily Auden lacked a lot of characteristics that are usually associated with the masculine, and Bennett says, ‘He didn’t care much for fame, for instance, or go in for self-advertisement, was careless about his reputation and was unmoved by criticism.’..." 
('Auden Anxieties', LRB, August 2017) 

'विस्टन ह्यू ऑडन (१९०७-१९७३): एक त्रोटक आठवण', 'सर्जनशोध आणि लिहिता लेखक', मौज प्रकाशन, २००७

 सौजन्य : विलास सारंग यांच्या साहित्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स 

  Picture courtesy: The John Deakin Archive/ Getty and LRB

शिवाजी महाराजांच्या शासनात कारभार कसा नसेल याचे एक उदाहरण ...Advertisement of PMC on Shivjayanti

#Shivjayanti2018

John Keay, 'India: A History', 1999:

"...As well as causing a sensation at the time, Shivaji’s extraordinary exploits would transcend their immediate context to dazzle his successors, console Hindu pride during the looming years of British supremacy, and provide Indian nationalists with an inspiring example of indigenous revolt against alien rule..."

शिवाजी महाराजांच्या शासनात कारभार कसा नसेल याचे एक उदाहरण त्यांच्या जयंती निमित्त, त्यांच्या जयंती संबंधातले....

आज फेब्रुवारी १९ २०१८ रोजी लोकसत्तात महाराजांना अभिवादन करणारी एक पूर्ण पान जाहिरात आहे .  त्या जाहिरातीच्या तळास काही मान्यवरांचे आणि इतिहासकारांचे उद्गार दिले आहेत. मी ते नीट वाचले.

सौजन्य: पुणे महानगरपालिका आणि लोकसत्ता

 १> जपानचे बॅरन कादा कोण हे मला गुगल करून सुद्धा समजले नाही.
२> युरोपियन इतिहासकार अॅनाल्ड टायबर्न कोण? विकिपीडिया मध्ये Anold Tyburn नाहीत. बहुतेक हे Arnold J. Toynbee असावेत.
३> डॉ डेलॉन मलातरी सापडले नाहीत. पण असतील.
४> डच गव्हर्नर इब्राहीम-लि-फ्रेंडर सुद्धा मला सापडले नाहीत. पण असतील.
५> ग्रँट डफ अधिकारी असतील पण ते इतिहासकार सुद्धा होते म्हणून त्यांचे महत्व
६> व्हॉइसरॉय जनरल वॉरेन हेस्टिंग कोण? हे वॉरेन हेस्टिंग्स असावेत. वॉरेन हेस्टिंग्स भारताचे व्हॉइसरॉय केंव्हाही नव्हते. व्हॉइसरॉय हे पद १८५८साली अस्तित्वात आले (Following the adoption of the Act that transferred the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown in 1858, the Governor-General as representing the Crown became known as the Viceroy).
 हेस्टिंग्स हे गव्हर्नर जनरल होते.

वरील क्रमांक १,३, ४ यांच्या कडे दुर्लक्ष करा. पण बाकीचा मला अत्यंत खेदजनक असा ढिसाळपणा वाटतो.

जाहिरात तयार करणारे, देणारे, आणि वर्तमानपत्रे हे सर्वजण या गोष्टीला जबाबदार आहेत.

करमरकर विरुद्ध करमरकर , २०१८.....Kramer Vs. kramer, 1979

'क्रेमर व्हर्सेस क्रेमर' (Kramer Vs. kramer), १९७९ चा सिनेमा माझ्या वडिलांनी c१९८० साली नाशकात पहिला होता आणि त्यावर त्यांनी 'गावकरी' दैनिकामध्ये अग्रलेख लिहला : 'करमरकर विरुद्ध करमरकर'.

तो लेख माझ्याकडे आत्ता नाही. पण त्यातील एक मुद्दा मला आठवतो  - घटस्फोट आपल्याकडे पण वाढणार आहेत ....आणि तसच झाल.

हे सगळ आठवायच कारण म्हणजे मिसेस करमरकरांनी (मेरिल स्ट्रीप) नी मिस्टर करमरकरांवर (डस्टीन हॉफमन) केलेले आरोप:

"... Take this 1979 interview in Time magazine, in which Meryl Streep described auditioning for a play Hoffman had directed several years earlier. It was apparently the first time they had met. “He came up to me and said, ‘I’m Dustin—burp—Hoffman,’ and he put his hand on my breast,” Streep said. “What an obnoxious pig, I thought.”..."

 (Slate, November 2 2017)

Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer.

courtesy: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images - © 2011 Getty Images

....But Will You Go To India?...PNB Fraud and Change of Cartoon Caption

Artist: K J Lamb, The Spectator, UK, February 2018

#PNB

India In One Word....Indira is India, India is Indira....कुठून आले हे? चीन मधून?

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan, 'Padmavati controversy once again exposes history's Achilles Heel’:

“ ....In India, the extent of KGB funding of the Congress, as revealed by Vasily Mitrokhin, has been glossed over entirely. Ditto for the role of the CIA...”

(Business Standard, November 19 2017)

D. K. Barooah, Congress president, c 1974: 

"Indira is India, India is Indira"

 हे  नंतरचे अर्थातच लहानपणीच वाचले होते पण हे कसे सुचले याबद्दल clue यावर्षी मिळाला.

Yu Hua, 'China in Ten Words',  2011:

"...In my childhood years “the people” was just as marvelous an expression as “Chairman Mao,” and when I first began to read, these were the first words I mastered; I could write them even before I could write my own name or the names of my parents. It was my view then that “the people are Chairman Mao, and Chairman Mao is the people.”

That was during the Cultural Revolution, and I marched about proudly sharing this insight with everyone I met. They responded with dubious looks, apparently finding something problematic about my formulation, although nobody directly contradicted me. In those days people walked on eggshells, fearful that if they said anything wrong, they might be branded a counterrevolutionary, endangering their whole family. My parents, hearing of my discovery, looked equally doubtful. They eyed me warily and told me in a roundabout way that they couldn’t see anything wrong with what I’d said but I still had better not say it again.

But since this was my greatest childhood insight, I couldn’t bear to hush it up and continued sharing it with the world at large. One day I found supporting evidence in a popular saying of the time, “Chairman Mao lives in our hearts.” I took this to its logical conclusion: “Chairman Mao lives in everyone’s heart, so what lives in Chairman Mao’s heart? It has to be the entire people.” Therefore: “The people are Chairman Mao, and Chairman Mao is the people.”

Those doubtful looks among the residents of my little town gradually dissipated. Some people began nodding in approval, and others began to say the same thing—my little playmates first, and then grown-ups, too.

But I felt threatened when lots of people started saying, “The people are Chairman Mao, and Chairman Mao is the people.” In a revolutionary era one cannot claim a patent for anything, and I found my status as inventor was being steadily eroded. “I was the first one to say that,” I would declare. But no adults set any store by my claim of authorship, and in the end even my young companions refused to accept that I deserved credit. Faced with my strenuous arguments or pathetic pleas, they would shake their heads: “No, everybody says that.”

I was upset, regretting bitterly that I had made my discovery public. I should have stored it forever in my own mind, safe from anybody else, keeping it for myself to savor my whole life through..."

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