Are You Still Reading Ayn Rand?

#AynRand114 

Feb 2 2019 is Ayn Rand's 114th birth anniversary

“The corn hasn’t quite matured if it’s still reading Ayn Rand.” 

Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, February 2016

How Can You Cross This Enormous Gulf Between Nothing And Something...John Cupdike, 10 Years

#JohnUpdike

John Updike died 10 years ago on January 27 2009


John Updike:
" Ancient religion and modern science agree: we are here to give praise. Or, to slightly tip the expression, to pay attention. Without us, the physicists who have espoused the anthropic principle tell us, the universe would be unwitnessed, and in a real sense not there at all. It exists, incredibly, for us. This formulation (knowing what we know of the universe's ghastly extent) is more incredible, to our sense of things, than the Old Testament hypothesis of a God willing to suffer, coddle, instruct, and even (in the Book of Job) to debate with men, in order to realize the meager benefit of worship, of praise for His Creation. What we beyond doubt do have is our instinctive intellectual curiosity about the universe from the quasars down to the quarks, our wonder at existence itself, and an occasional surge of sheer blind gratitude for being here."

"Science aspires, like theology used to, to explain absolutely everything. But how can you cross this enormous gulf between nothing and something?”

 

Artist:Timothy Leo Taranto, 2014

पहिल्या महायुद्धात ब्रिटिशांनी भारतीयांच्या मिशा सुद्धा वापरल्या....India In WWI

During the course of the war, a total of about 1.5 million Indian soldiers and non-combatants served in the Indian army; nearly 1.1 million of them were sent overseas; between 50,000 and 70,000 died.   

Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Jan 21 2019:

"India had just emerged from the first World War having made enormous sacrifices, and a huge contribution in men and materiel, blood and treasure, to the British war effort, in the expectation that it would be rewarded with some measure of self-government.

Those hopes were belied. The dishonest Montagu-Chelmsford “reforms” and the punitive Rowlatt Acts, imposing severe restrictions on Indian political activity and reimposing wartime prohibitions on freedom of the press and expression, were India’s only reward...."

 

 British postcard .WW1

स्थितप्रज्ञासारखीच 'उदासीन' स्पॅनिश मस्तानी...Mastani, Maharashtrian Mona Lisa!

द ग गोडसे:
"...तिचे (मस्तानीचे) विश्वसनीय पत्र नाही , तसे तिचे विश्वसनीय चित्रही नाही. एक वेळ मस्तानीचे विश्वसनीय 'पत्र' मिळणे शक्य आहे, पण मस्तानीचे विश्वसनीय 'चित्र' केवळ दुरापास्त आहे. कारण ते मुदलीच काढले जाण्याची शक्यता नव्हती...."
(पृष्ठ ११६, 'मस्तानी : मस्तानी.....", १९८९)
"...उदंड  'धीर' आणि सहिष्णू 'धारणा ' हेच शाळीग्रामांच्या दीर्घ तपस्येचे फलित असेल, तर देव्हाऱ्यातल्या 'शेष-शयनीं' शाळिग्रामाप्रमाणेच 'समाधिस्त' मस्तानीसुद्धा स्थितप्रज्ञासारखीच 'उदासीन' असल्यास नवल वाटायला नको."
(पृष्ठ २८०, 'मस्तानी : मस्तानी.....", १९८९)

Ira Mukhoty:

 “...for if women’s images are denied us, we at least have their words...”

('Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire', 2018)

 

The Lady with a Fan, ca. 1638—1639

Artist: Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660)

Jonathan Jones writes about the picture in The Guardian, Jan 2019:

"Who is the mysterious lady with a fan? She seems to deliberately create enigma and ambiguity. Wearing traditional Spanish dress, she gazes out of the painting as if at someone she knows. Her black headdress and shawl and white gloves set off a face that is acutely real, mottled with complex emotion. Velázquez uses the two sides of his painterly genius – his unrivalled sensual understanding of colour and texture, and capacity for rough, almost lumpen naturalism – to create a truly magical effect. She is ordinary yet glamorous, and has an elusive, paradoxical beauty. No wonder the theories about her identity range from her having been Velázquez’s wife, to a courtesan, to an exiled French aristocrat. She will always keep her secrets, because the artist planned it that way. She is the Spanish Mona Lisa."

चित्र मला  अत्यंत आवडले आहे, त्यातील lumpen naturalism आणि unrivalled sensual understanding of colour and texture.... पण ती कोण आहे याचा पत्ता नाही. मग एका अर्थाने मस्तानीचे पण तसेच आहे! ती अतिशय सुंदर होती (असे म्हणतात) पण तिचे चित्र नाही.  

 चित्र आहे पण नाव नाही, नाव आहे पण चित्र नाही. दोघीही अनामिक. मस्तानी मी हवी तशी कल्पू शकतो. दोन्ही सुंदर स्त्रीयांनी मला वेगवेगळे स्वातंत्र्य दिले आहे.