मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि 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: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, April 24, 2021

अनंत पै, बेनेट कोलमन आणि महाबली वेताळ...Anant Pai Suggested The Phantom to Bennett, Coleman & Co.

 माझ्या ह्या ब्लॉग वरती महाबली वेताळ असलेल्या दोन चार पोस्ट झाल्या आहेत. 

मी जानेवारी २२ २००८ च्या पोस्ट मध्ये लिहले होते:

"... When I grew up, no one (yes, including Shivaji) captivated me more than Phantom, Mahabali Vetal महाबली वेताळ in Marathi. I read and re-read exploits of Phantom and Mandrake, published as part of Indrajal Comics series by Bennett, Coleman & Co

Those heroes’ families became mine.

Bheem of Mahabharat was strong as Lothar, Mandrake as clever as Shivaji. When Princess Diana died I felt sad because she had the same name of Phantom’s wife!

Kolhapur had many attractions for me. One of them was my cousin’s collection of Phantom and Mandrake books. I knew by heart all those books. They were translated in Marathi with some chutzpah.

I have never understood why Phantom comics books were not published in Marathi later.

I wish I had the help of Phantom to learn Newton’s laws and Diana’s help to understand working of the United Nations!

Marathi newspaper Sakal सकाळ on January 18, 2007 reported: “अल्लाद्दिन, टारझन, मोगली आता मराठीतून 'बोलणार'!” (“Aladdin, Tarzan, Moguli now to ‘speak’ in Marathi”)

Poor Sakal. It doesn’t even mention the rich world of Phantom in Marathi that came to pass...."

Kevin Patrick, ‘The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero’, 2017: "... Anant Pai (1929 – 2011) was a junior executive in Bennett, Coleman & Co.’s book-publishing division at the time when his supervisor, P. K. Roy, remarked that the company’s printing presses lay idle after orders were met for India’s calendar production season. Roy thought they could be used to print comic books to keep them operating at peak capacity, and initially suggested that Superman would be a suitable title. Pai, however, recommended the company choose The Phantom instead, on the grounds that its “steamy tribal . . . milieu” would be more familiar to Indian audiences... "


 courtesy: copyright holder(s) of the image