मिस्र पंच...'Abou Naddara'...Twin Sister of 'The Avadh Punch'?

On July 27 2011, I wrote "Shallow People Demand Variety. Even in Cartoon Captions".

Following example illustrates how even cartoons need not be different, just like cartoon captions!

In a wonderful essay 'The Egyptian Satirist Who Inspired a Revolution', Anna Della Subin and Hussein Omar write about James Sanua, founder of 'Abou Naddara', in The New Yorker dated June 6 2016. 

Subin and Omar write:

"...In the three years since Sisi overthrew the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup, public dissent in Egypt has been violently muted. State police have raided newspaper offices, and journalists have been imprisoned, N.G.O.s expelled, and hundreds of suspected activists forcibly “disappeared.” Yet, in April of this year, the streets of Cairo broke out in protest once again when Sisi announced that he had given a pair of islands in the Red Sea to the government of Saudi Arabia. On the surface, the fate of the uninhabited islands would seem to have little impact on the daily lives of Egyptians. But to many observers the news seemed like proof of the hypocrisy of Sisi’s regime. The President himself had amended the constitution to prohibit the country’s ruler from ceding Egyptian territory to foreign powers; the gift of the islands coincided with Saudi Arabia’s promise of an oil deal and $1.5 billion in investment. It was easy to feel as if Sisi were now selling off bits of Egypt to the highest bidder. On April 9th, the exiled satirist Bassem Youssef tweeted in Arabic, “Roll up, roll up, the island is for a billion, the pyramid for two and a couple of statues thrown in for free.”

There is a cartoon from the late nineteenth century that conveys the very same scene. In it, Egypt’s leader sits at a table in front of the Giza Pyramids, wielding an auctioneer’s hammer, as a crowd of interested foreign buyers looks on. “Lovers of antiques, the pyramids and the Sphinx are for sale in cash. The currency is pounds,” he cries. “A la uno, a la due, by God people, bid!”..."

Egypt’s leader auctioning off the Giza Pyramids to a crowd of foreign buyers.

  Artist: I don't know, 'Abou Naddara' (1878-1910), May 30 1879

All this reminded me of India's 'The Avadh Punch' (1877-1912 , 1916-1936). I have written about it on August 26 2007 here.

Is it just a coincidence that two great magazines dedicated to satire were launched by two great ancient civilizations around the same time?

'Swadeshi movement and the boycott of foreign goods'

 Artist: I don't know, The Avadh Punch, November 16 1905, Courtesy: Niyogi Books

Corner Office In Labyrinth...The World Is A Divine Comedy

John Gray on G K Chesterton:

"...Though some have tried to interpret The Man Who Was Thursday as a type of Christian allegory, the world it describes has more in common with the interminable labyrinth of Kafka's Castle. In the orderly Christian cosmos, in which Chesterton wanted to believe, nothing is finally tragic, still less absurd. The world is a divine comedy, the ultimate significance of which is never in doubt. In The Man Who Was Thursday, the world is illegible and may well be nonsensical. This was the nightmare he struggled, for the most part successfully, to forget. Producing a succession of wearisome polemics and mechanical paradoxes, he spent his life denying the vision that informed his greatest work...."

 

 Artist: Sofia Warren, The New Yorker,  March 2019

एखादी देवता आपले मूल कडेवर घेऊन त्याच्याकडे मातृप्रेमाने पाहात आहे, असे तुला कधी दिसले आहे? ...Yes, G. A. -Sir

 जी. ए. कुलकर्णी, 'ऑर्फियस', "पिंगळावेळ", १९७७,  पृष्ठ १३:
"... एखादी देवता आपले मूल कडेवर घेऊन त्याच्याकडे मातृप्रेमाने पाहात आहे, असे तुला कधी दिसले आहे? नाही...."

 

Reading a Book that hasn’t been Written Yet

Today April 23 2023 is World Book Day.

Artist: Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Nude Reading’

शाई संपली वाटते? प्रश्न मात्र नाही...Saul Steinberg and Vasant Sarwate

courtesy: Saul Steinberg

 कलाकार : वसंत सरवटे

मर्लिन मुनरो आणि विनोद खन्ना पाणी पिताना ....Marilyn Monroe and Vinod Khanna Drinking Outdoors

शोले हून मला किती तरी जास्त आवडलेला , राज खोसला यांचा मेरा गाव मेरा देश , १९७१... आम्ही असे घरात पडत असू पाण्याच्या समोर!

All the Gods and Mortals Once Sought it Together But....Honey

‘The Rig Veda: An Anthology: One hundred and eight hymns’  selected, translated and annotated by Wendy Doniger:

“I have tasted the sweet drink of life, knowing that it inspires good thoughts and joyous expansiveness to the extreme, that all the gods and mortals seek it together, calling it honey” (8:48, 1)

Sadie Stein, The Paris Review, March 2016:

“.....In some ways, honey’s rise seems more improbable, more like a triumph of marketing. Indeed, it gives all those current-day Stevia manufacturers reason to hope. Because at some point honey lost its reputation as a specialty ingredient. It became the only sweetening option available to Utah settlers. It became Pooh’s drug of choice; a crank’s hippie sweetener; and then, at last, a ubiquitous plastic bear available on every supermarket shelf for a few dollars, even though it proverbially lasts for eons. Here is a glamorous 1960s Bit-O-Honey commercial extolling its social virtues:

“Honey!” I said aloud when I laid eyes on the packets. A woman next to me looked up. “To think,” I said urgently. “It was in the pharaohs’ tombs! It was eaten by Nero! And here it is, free!”

She smiled politely—best-case scenario, really—and walked away, and of course I took sugar for my coffee...”

An ad for French honey

Artist: Unknown to me