Gathering in Circles Around the Glimmering Lights of GA's Epigraphs

Tomorrow December 11 2012 is 25th death anniversary of  G A Kulkarni (जी. ए. कुलकर्णी)

Walter de la Mare:

"No, No, Why further should we roam

Since every road man Journeys by,

Ends on a hillside far from Home

Under an alien sky"

from me to GA:

"तुम्ही अवतरले गोकुळी आम्ही गोपाळांच्या मेळी
तुम्ही होते रामराजा आम्ही वानरांच्या फौजा"

(Marathi folksong quoted in Srinivas Vinayak  Kulkarni's 'Aamhi Vanaranchya Phauja', 1965)

I still remember the December 12 1987's eerie morning  at Nashik (नाशिक) when I heard about GA's death on the All India Radio. 

After reading GA's numerous letters, particularly about his final years,  and knowing full well that such decisions are very complex, I still wonder if he should have stayed back in his beloved Dharwad instead of moving to alien Pune (पुणे). When I went to Agra in 1980's,  I was most moved by the place they show where  dethroned Emperor Shah Jahan used to sit and stare at The Taj Mahal in the distance as he lay dying. 

I was at 'G A Kulkarni road' in Pune, a few months ago, to attend an engagement ceremony, in a makeshift hall, in a multistory building's basement, and how grotesque it sounded that that piece of Pune- complete with a Pizza Hut- and not some Greek Colosseum or a stretch of beach at Mahabalipuram-  is named after GA!  Indeed, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

Although I have bought it some time ago, like majority of  my books, I have still not read  Cervantes's 'Don Quixote'. 

But I kind of feel I have 'received' it after every reading- 50 at least- of G A's  'Yatrik' (यात्रिक) from the collection of his short stories 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ), 1977.

Equally delightful has been reading D V Deshpande's (धों वि देशपांडे ) commentary on G A's story in 'jeeenchya katha: ek anwayarth' (जीएंच्या कथा: एक अन्वयार्थ).

 Yatrik  has these lines:

"अरे, निर्बुद्ध, जड जगाविषयी बदलती रुपके करत राहण्यापेक्षा तुझ्या रुपकांप्रमाणे जर जग बदलत जाऊ लागले तर तुला तरी जास्त काय हवे सांग."

("...hey, instead of creating changing metaphors for stupid, gross world, if the world starts changing to suit your metaphors, tell me what more you want.")

In October 2012 I read on Guardian website:

"New book cover designs for the Observer 100 greatest novels of all time list – in pictures:

Belgian artist Tom Haentjens has united 100 artists from 28 countries in a co-creation project, Doedemee to help raise awareness of illiteracy in Africa. Each has redesigned a poster-sized cover for a book from the list compiled by Robert McCrum in 2003..."

What  pleasure those designs gave!

I was captivated particularly by this:

Don Quixote, designed by Lobulo Design Photograph: Public Domain

Now doesn't it represent: Wold Starts Changing to Suit His Metaphor...?   I feel it does.

They say GA was a good painter. I can't vouch for that. But being a voracious reader, I wonder if he ever saw Roc Riera Rojas illustrated special edition of  Don Quixote. 

After seeing the picture below from that edition, I re-read GA's story and imagined dialogues between Don and Sancho spoken by the figures below.

It was a lot of fun. 

GA was a master of epigraphs. His books would not be complete without the epigraphs he chose for them. (I wonder why  he didn't also choose images to go along.)

Rachel Sagner Buurma writes:

"Epigraphs escort us safely across the boundary between the title page and the story. Easing us into narrative, epigraphs make us pause and notice the transition from the world to the work, from life to the novel. They slow us down—which is why we often skip them."

(The New Republic, December 6 2012)


GA chose these two epigraphs for 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळा वेळ), 1977:

                           You do not know
The unspoken voice of sorrow in the ancient bedroom
At three o'clock in the morning.
                                               - T. S Eliot

'Shallow people demand variety - but I have been 
writing the same story throughout my life, every
time trying to cut nearer the aching nerve.
                                                         - Strindberg   

I have reproduced them very close to as they appear in the book.

Now revisit  Prof.  Buurma's quote above.

Each story from GA's book is nicely set up with these epigraphs...they indeed transition us from 'the world to the work, from life to the novel. They slow us down' —but I never skip them! I might skip his book!

Prof.  Buurma concludes:

"The Art of the Epigraph’s epigraph, drawn from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, says that books “continue each other in spite of our habit of judging them separately.” This is true—but it might not be the whole truth. For though we like to imagine the autonomy of a world of books that speak to one another, separate from our own fallible judgments and best guesses and wishful thinking, it may be that all we have are groups of readers, gathering in circles around the glimmering lights of our authors’ epigraphs, building literature together one line at a time."

GA probably would have loved this conclusion...'groups of readers, gathering in circles around the glimmering lights of our authors’ epigraphs, building literature together one line at a time.' 

नवे सूर अन्‌ नवे तराणे Dave Brubeck 1920-2012, Narayan Rao Koli and Take Five

"या भवनातिल गीत पुराणे
मवाळ, हळवे सूर जाऊ द्या, आज येथुनी दूर

भावभक्‍तिची भावुक गाथा
पराभूत हो नमविल माथा
नवे सूर अन्‌ नवे तराणे
हवा नवा तो नूर
जाऊ द्या दूर जुने ते सूर"

[from Marathi play 'katyar kaljat ghusli' (कट्यार काळजात घुसली) by Purushottam Darwhekar (पुरुषोत्तम दारव्हेकर) ]

Herbie Hancock (listen to his talent: 'Watermelon Man'  here):

"Dave Brubeck was a pioneer, so many of us sprang from his incredibly creative and daring work. He even proved that a song with 5 beats in it and one with 9 beats in it could become popular, with Take 5 and Blue Rondo à la Turk. We were so lucky to have had him for as long as we did and will never forget his musical gifts as a pianist and composer, his kindness, his generosity, and his smile."

ERIC FELTEN:

"Miles Davis's masterpiece, "Kind of Blue," was recorded at 30th Street, and so too, just a couple of months later, was Dave Brubeck's album "Time Out." David Simons, in his book "Studio Stories," suggests that the success of those two records owed something to how they sounded, something that wasn't just a function of the quality of the recording equipment. There was the sympathetic resonance of the studio's unvarnished wood floor and the distant reverberations reflected by its towering ecclesiastic architecture: "To hear 30th Street is to hear drummer Joe Morello's snare and kick-drum shots echoing off the 100-foot ceiling during the percussion break in Dave Brubeck's great 'Take Five.'"

 I have already written about Anthony Prabhu Gonsalves's piano for "Hum aapki aankhon me" ('Pyaasa', 1957). 

 That is the kind of music Dave Brubeck played every time he sat at the piano. Just listen to his:

Blue Rondo A La Turk - Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck's 'Take Five',  first recorded in 1959  has been viewed on YouTube for more than 50 lac times! 

I have heard it on my cassette player so many times that the tape is now damaged. Even my son once was  very fond of it. (He wrote on his FB page: "Farewell Dave !!!! You were the most influential musician of my childhood.")

"It is famous for its distinctive catchy saxophone melody; imaginative, jolting drum solo; and use of the unusual quintuple (5/4) time, from which its name is derived."  (Wikipedia).

Now do you know that our own Mridangacharya Narayan Rao Koli (नारायणराव कोळी) might have played a big role in this?

"That is perhaps why Fernandes chooses to concentrate rather on a forgotten and tragic genius, the jazz pianist Edward “Dizzy Sal” Saldanha, who was feted by a visiting Dave Brubeck, who went to study jazz in Boston, cut a well-received album in the U.S. and then returned to India into self-enforced exile. Brubeck and his drummer Joe Moreno, meanwhile, experimented with the Goan drummer Leslie Godinho and the percussionist Narayan Koli, from whom, some say, Moreno learned the unusual 5/4 time signature that informed Brubeck's classic, “Take Five”...."

(VIJAY PRASHAD, 'The Indian jazz age', review of 'Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age' by Naresh Fernandes, Frontline, April 6 2012)

p.s I think there is a mistake  in Mr. Prashad's statement- It should be Joe Morello and NOT 'Moreno'.

Dave Brubeck listens to pakhawaj player Narayan Koli

Image Courtesy: Naresh Fernandes

सोफ्यात जगले मऊ उंदिर! Ba See Mardhekar Turns 103

Today December 1 2012 is 103rd Birth Anniversary of Marathi poet B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर). I know he isn't the best but he comes more easily to my lips than Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar!

Nathan Helle:

"Imagine a world in which good manners and the beau ideal trump all, and you have basically imagined the mood of 21st-century American life. New Yorkers once carried mace; now we sit at home in cardigans and pickle cabbage. Angry young men while away quiet hours playing Angry Birds. The big song of this summer—“Call Me Maybe”—was light, reserved, and deeply polite. ("Here's my number/ So call me, maybe?") How, exactly, did we get here from “You Shook Me All Night Long”?"

Artist: Sam Gross, The New Yorker

Poem no#  21  from "Mardhekarnchi Kavita" (मर्ढेकरांची कविता), 1959

"पिपांत मेले ओल्या उंदिर;
माना पडल्या, मुरगळल्याविण;
ओठांवरती ओठ मिळाले;
माना पडल्या, आसक्तीविण.
गरिब बिचारे बिळांत जगले,
पिपांत मेले उचकी देउन;
दिवस सांडला घाऱ्या डोळीं
गात्रलिंग अन् धुवून घेउन.

जगायची पण सक्ती आहे;
मरायची पण सक्ती आहे.

उदासतेला जहरी डोळे,
काचेचे पण;

मधाळ पोळें
ओठांवरती जमलें तेंही
बेकलाइटी, बेकलाइटी!
ओठांवरती ओठ लागले;
पिपांत उंदिर न्हाले ! न्हाले !"


Translated  by Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग):

"Mice Died in the Wet Barrel

Inside the waterlogged drum, the mice are dead,
Their necks hang, wrung by nobody.

The necks hang, and lips meet lips
Without desire.

Poor bastards lived in holes,
And, with a hiccup, died in the drum.

Day spilled into gray eyes,
rinsed their limbs and genitals.

Living is obligatory;
so, too, is dying.

Melancholy has disquieting eyes;
they are glass ones, though.

Even the honeycomb
brimming on their lips
is merely foam rubber!

Lips nuzzling lips:
O the mice are douched in the drum!
the mice are douched!"

(कृपया लक्षात घ्या कार्टूनिस्टनी काढलेत मांजर आणि मी ते धरलेत उंदीर!)

Vasant Sarwate's 49th Year at Lalit...खेळ चालू राहिला पाहिजे!

ROSS DOUTHAT:

"But look through these anti-establishment theatrics to the deep structures of political and economic power, and suddenly the surge of populism feels like so much sound and fury, obscuring the real story of our time. From Washington to Athens, the economic crisis is producing consolidation rather than revolution, the entrenchment of authority rather than its diffusion, and the concentration of power in the hands of the same elite that presided over the disasters in the first place."

Sumanta Banerjee 

"Whenever such accusations are made – and often proved correct – against ministers or MPs, Supreme Court or high court judges, senior bureaucrats or army g­enerals, press reporters or TV journa­lists, we are always assured by the establishment that these are a few “black sheep”! Members of these professions rush to the d­efence of their respective fraternities sometimes even whitewashing their cri­mes, but generally taking the apolo­getic ruse that they are minor “exceptions” which are being “exaggerated”. These “exceptions” are supposed to prove the rule that our state and regulatory i­nstitutions are still solid and pure enough to prop up the world’s largest demo­cracy."

I received the Lalit (ललित) Diwali 2012 issue on November 24 2012 and was greeted by Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) cover, now drawn for  record 49th year!

It is not surprising to see the contents of it. This year, on TV at least,  has been dominated by the members of The India Against Corruption Jan Andolan (IAC), most of them now 'celebrities' in their own right.

Mr. Arvind Kejriwal is at the centre of the picture.  He is threatening his 'enemies' with his expose documents. I like depiction of Ms. Anjani Damania. standing just behind Mr. Kejriwal, but no less vocal.

But I like more the motley group facing the IAC is depicted, especially the ferocious looking dog and tongue-in-your-face kid. They represent what the well entrenched establishment really thinks of the new 'occupy movement', regardless of the thoughtful posturing by others there. They remind me of Mr. Burns of The Simpsons with a finger on 'the hounds' button.

Press is shown on the right side but probably belongs more on the left side of the picture. Media guy is shown smiling because regardless of what happens later he is going to win because the rise in his TRP.


Indian judiciary is watching all this with its eyes closed. It also seems to belong to almost another world- painted in pink and red. I also sense a kind of smugness that comes with a feeling that in the end all this will come to my backyard to decide one way or the other.


And people like us are watching all this...they seem more bemused than sad or anxious. It's as if they have come to watch a street circus show (डोंबाऱ्याचा खेळ).

This picture is in contrast with the last year's picture of Sarwate on Anna Hazare's 'occupy movement'. There was more hope there in a seemingly hopeless situation. It reminded me of India's freedom movement. There was idealism on march there. 


Artist: Vasant Sarwate, Lalit (ललित), November-December 2011



To view Sarwate's Lalit Diwali covers of the past few years, click on the respective year 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007

Beautiful Osmosis of Giving and Receiving- Henry Miller and Vinda Karandikar

Howard Jacobson:

"The novelist, at his swelling comic best – a Dickens or a Dostoevsky, a Cervantes or a Kafka, a Joseph Roth or a Henry Miller – goes where Hamlet dares the skull of Yorick to go, straight to my painted lady's chamber, rattling his bones and making her laugh at the terrible fate that awaits her. His comedy spares nothing and spares no one. And in the process asserts the stubbornness of life. Why would we want to read anything less?"

I first read this famous Marathi  poem of Vinda Karandikar (विंदा करंदीकर) probably in 1974. It ends thus:

"'देणाऱ्याने देत जावे, घेणाऱ्याने घेत जावे, 
घेता घेता एक दिवस देणाऱ्याचे हात घ्यावेत'"

I thought it was interesting- this dance of giving and receiving-, a bit startling but in the end straight forward. I was ready to answer any question on it in an examination.

Henry Miller on the Beautiful Osmosis of Giving and Receiving:

"...I, who have been helped so much by others, I ought to know something of the duties of the receiver. It’s so much easier to be on the giving side. To receive is much harder — one actually has to be more delicate, if I may say so. One has to help people to be more generous. By receiving from others, by letting them help you, you really aid them to become bigger, more generous, more magnanimous. You do them a service.

And then finally, no one likes to do either one or the other alone. We all try to give and take, to the best of our powers. It’s only because giving is so much associated with material things that receiving looks bad. It would be a terrible calamity for the world if we eliminated the beggar. The beggar is just as important in the scheme of things as the giver. If begging were ever eliminated God help us if there should no longer be a need to appeal to some other human being, to make him give of his riches. Of what good abundance then? Must we not become strong in order to help, rich in order to give and so on? How will these fundamental aspects of life ever change?.."

(1942, from 'The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944')

  Artist: Chon Day, The New Yorker, December 9 1950

Missing Mr. Bal Thackeray Only As a Cartoonist

Since late afternoon of November 17 2012 all shops- including medical ones- in our area are closed. Today November 18 we could NOT even get any milk in the morning. So far water is running in our taps. But who knows? Yes, we have no choice but to mourn the death. I remember how much I suffered as a bachelor in Mumbai for 3 days after Mrs. Indira Gandhi had died. On that day no Indian radio station was ready to say: Mrs. Gandhi was dead. My cable provider on November 18 blocked all TV channels except the news ones. Great men and women are forced to be mourned alike!

The Hindu,  November 19 2012:

"Mumbai’s communal fault lines were thoroughly exploited by Thackeray and his Sainiks, especially in the weeks after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. As the Srikrishna Commission documents, Muslims were systematically killed in riots engineered by Sena leaders."

I do not want to say a word about Mr. Bal Thackeray as a politician but he was a good cartoonist. (Although not a great one in my books.)

I still remember his Marmik (मार्मिक) pictures. They were repetitive but funny. Funniest were of the late  Babu Jagjivan Ram's.




The cover of the late Mr. Thackeray's latest book featuring his cartoons

The only Thackeray- who played a big role in public life- I respect deeply is the late Prabodhankar Thackeray ( प्रबोधनकार ठाकरे),  one of the greatest sons of Maharashtra, indeed  India. I wish Maharashtra walked in his footsteps rather than his son's.

Wikipedia states: "Winston Churchill was an accomplished artist and took great pleasure in painting, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. He found a haven in art to overcome the spells of depression which he suffered throughout his life."

Amartya Sen wrote in Economic & Political Weekly February 16-22, 2008:

“…Winston Churchill’s famous remark that the Bengal famine of 1943 was caused by the tendency of people there to breed like rabbits belongs to this general tradition of blaming the colonial victim. This had a profound effect in crucially delaying famine relief in that disastrous and easily preventable famine. The demands of cultural nationalism merge well with the asymmetry of power and can have quite devastating effects…”

Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease in that famine.

Artist: Charles E. Martin, The New Yorker,  6 February 1954

I wish Mr. Churchill did only painting and not politics!

I have yet to see cartoons drawn by others on Mr. Thackeray's departure but they will find it hard to beat Mr. Tailang .

Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, November 18 2012

Mr. Tailang achieves so much in this picture...Mr. Thackeray's first love was a drawing board...so he departs from there and not from his throne...departing paws...not shown in colour here but perhaps red...maybe a slight hesitation before the final leap into darkness...moving...

Missing Suffering- Kunti in Srimad Bhagavatam and Monk in Haryy Bliss Cartoon

जावेद नासेर: "अंधेरा हो तो तुझको पुकारूं यारब ! उजालों में मेरी आवाज बिखर जाती है."

 "Now that I'm enlightened, I have to admit: I kind of miss the suffering."

Artist: Harry Bliss

Kunti tells Lord Krishna in Bhagavata Purana:

Give me suffering, O Lord Krishna! If you give me suffering I will be able to think of you, otherwise I may forget you.

The original Sanskrit shloka is:

विपद: सन्तु ता: शश्वत्तत्र तत्र जगद्गुरो ।
भवतो दर्शनं यत्स्यादपुनर्भवदर्शनम् ॥८॥

(I wish we would have more of those calamities, o Master of the Universe, so that we can meet You again and again, because meeting You means that we no longer see the repetition of births and death)

source: The Bhāgavata Purāṇa- Sri Krishna Stuti by Kunti (श्रीमद्भागवतपुराण कुंती कृत श्रीकृष्ण स्तुति)

There's Nothing Sadder in this World than to Awake Diwali Morning and not be a Child!

Erma Bombeck:

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."

Charles Dickens:
 
“Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Diwali hearts, and by our Diwali fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!” 

Sorry, dear old Charlie for my some deft find and replace! How dare I? Because just like Christmas hearts we have Diwali- in my case high BP- hearts and you bet we have Diwali fires and then some. (BTW-Avoid coming to Pune from 7 PM to 11 PM tonight!)


This Diwali I do have a lost friend, lost both parents of a friend,   lost parent, cousin-sister, aunts, grand-ma&pa, artists, teachers, dog, cat, bird, town...And I will shut out nothing...I can't...until of course dementia kicks in
 
Happy Diwali 2012 

Fire crackers have become so weird that if indeed some day I come across a volcano like in the picture below I will think of  it as no more than a flower pot cracker!


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 13 June 1964 

Tribals in the picture above feel the gods are not angry.

I am not so sure about goddess Laxmi. They say Laxmi Puja Muhurat is after 6 PM today. The goddess Laxmi must be  tough and  fearless because she dare enter our homes during those hours avoiding serious injuries to her limbs, ears and lungs.