Lysol for Soul...

Today October 10 2013 is 76th Birth Anniversary of My Mother- Jyoti G Kulkarni nee Shakuntala V Bhate (Shaka शका ). Her love and compassion always transcended conventions.


Wendy Doniger, The Times of India, September 2013:

 "...I noticed how often dogs played critical roles in Hindu texts, first as symbols of impurity (because they are scavengers , eating garbage) and then as symbols of devotion (because there is no one as devoted as a devoted dog). And that contrast seemed to me to epitomize the broader contrast between the caste-bound aspect of Hindu dharma , so fixated on purity, and the compassionate aspect of Hindu bhakti, which transcends ideas of purity."

 विलास सारंग , 'सामाजिक व वाङमयीन विटाळवाद':


"…'विटाळ ' हा  शब्द आता सोयीस्करपणे वापरातून गेला आहे . परंतु  थोडा विचार केला तर हा शब्द किती समर्पक आहे हे लक्षात येईल . तथाकथित अस्पृशत्व , दलितत्व यामागे मुख्य कल्पना ती  विटाळाची . मराठी समाजात विटाळाची कल्पना सरसहा कार्य करत असते . बदलत्या काळाप्रमाणे विटाळही सकृदर्शनी  भूमिगत व सौम्य झाला आहे…"

('मॅनहोलमधला माणूस / मराठी वाङमय, समाज व जातिवास्तव', 2008)

The word 'vital' (विटाळ)- roughly meaning ritual pollution or pollution in English-  was very 'popular' when I was a kid. For example, when a woman was menstruating, she was considered 'vitalshee' (विटाळशी), polluted. 

I haven't heard that word for a while in my family circle.

Bloomberg July 25 2013 has a story titled: "No Menstrual Hygiene For Indian Women Holds Economy Back"
 
 "Sushma Devi, a mother of three in Northern India, stores her “moon cup” on the window sill of the mud-brick veranda that shelters the family goats.

In a village where few have indoor toilets and the Hindi word for her genitals is a profanity, 30-year-old Sushma struggles to talk about how she manages her period and the changes brought by the bell-shaped device she inserts in her vagina to collect menstrual blood.

“It’s a thing from hell,” she says of the malleable, silicone cup, which she received from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research group. “I have to keep it far from the house, from where I pray.”
Across the world’s largest democracy, where a decade of economic growth nearing 8 percent a year has tripled per-capita income, millions of women are held back by shame around their most basic sanitary needs..."

So whatever word you choose, Sushma Devi feels "polluted" (विटाळ) on "those days" and considers her MIT-designed "moon cup" a thing from hell. 

Lucky her, Sushma Devi does not get Lysol treatment because once Lysol was recommended for both the women and the kitchen floors!

"...Lysol, which shares germicidal properties with carbolic acid, was a highly recommended treatment for "offensive" vaginal odors. This initiated a vicious cycle, so to speak: a self-conscious, but often healthy, woman would douche with Lysol and kill off normal flora (and scald her tissues), which would pave the way for bacterial/yeast infections, which WOULD cause an offensive odor, which would compel her to douche more often. Because an abnormal body odor in a normally clean person indicates an underlying problem, women who actually did have a raging infection only made matters worse with this frequent purging..."

(from 'Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation' by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim, 2009)

Q: What was common to a woman working in a kitchen and the kitchen floor?

A: Both were disinfected with Lysol, a household cleaner!

Read more on this by visiting here and here.






courtesy: http://thebrowser.com/fivebooks

रेको (अर्थात् रकेमेंडेशन्) Reco (That is Recommendation)

Wikipedia:

"As per Mahabharata (MBh 1.3), on one rainy night Aruni's preceptor Dhaumya Muni asked him to supervise water flowing through a certain field. Aruni went there and found that water had breached the field and was moving away from its designated path. Aruni tried to stop water by all means but was unsuccessful. Left with no other way, Aruni lay down on the breach and prevented the water flow using his body. Due to this Aruni did not return to the hermitage in the night. Later in the morning, Dhaumya Muni came to the spot in search of Aruni with other disciples. Upon seeing the dedication and sincerity of Aruni, Dhaumya was very pleased upon Aruni and gave him the title Uddalaka. Later Aruni became very famous under the name Uddalaka Aruni..."

Ezra Pound:  

"Make it new".

Gore Vidal's advice to a young writer in the late 1960s:

 “Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.”

In 1984 I did not know the late Mr. Vidal's wisdom but I wanted to write for 'Abhiruchi' (अभिरुचि) magazine.

 D G Godse's cover of Abhiruchi Diwali 1946

Abhiruchi of course has been dead now for a while. But not too long before it died, it burned brightly for me.

It published a couple of my own Marathi short stories.

My joy was limitless. It still gives me goosebumps after almost thirty years.

I attempted to write something for the first time after completing my education in July 1983 and there I was: Getting published in one of the most avant-garde magazines in Marathi. [Who didn't write for Abhiruchi? It was as 'brow' as Satyakatha (सत्यकथा)]

I am sharing here the first story that was published in the joint issue of  March-April 1984. (Note - the magazine was already on  the 'joints'.)

My only regret now- there are no pictures in it.

I had seen the desperate pursuit of USA by the students of  IIT, Madras. Those days to get yourself a good school for M.S, you not just needed a good GRE score (that most of them got easily anyway) but also a recommendation of an IIT teacher. 

In the story, I imagine that Aruni too is angling for a recommendation by his teacher Dhaumya-muni to go abroad.

 Artist: Unknown to me


(If you read Marathi and wish to read the following pages, I advise you to open each of them in your browser's new tab and then use magnification tool. Scanning has been done by my son on a brand new high quality scanner.)

This is the not the end of the story!

My story was attacked by a reader- Mr. G R Phatak of Mumbai. Following is his letter published in the issue of January-February 1985.

So I was not just published but was also noticed and not just noticed but was considered worthy of a scathing attack!

What more a young writer wants...I had received my recommendation!

मी बालक, ते सर्व पालक: S M Kashikar, Katy Mirza, Vithya, Chanodba, Amar Chitra Katha...

On September 29 2013 evening, Marathi film  BP / 'Balak-Palak' (बालक-पालक)- a comedy drama film on the topic of sex education-  was (world) premiered on TV. My son had already seen it at a theatre and NOT liked it. My wife watched part of it that evening. Whatever part of the film I 'heard', as she watched it, I did not like it.


I don't know the state of sex education to school kids in India today. 

In 1970's, we never had any. In the streets, we saw dogs and birds mating passionately and noisily all the time. My parents never told us a thing.  

In turn, I have never told my son a thing. Now 19, he probably has figured out a lot of things. I think he knows about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. 

 As I have already said a couple of times on this blog, my sex education and sexual fantasies revolved around Chandoba (चांदोबा), Amar Chitra Katha (अमर चित्र कथा), pictures from Awaaz Diwali number (आवाज दिवाळी अंक), S M Kashikar's (एस. एम. काशीकर) detective novels of Dhumketu (धूमकेतू) and other super-heroes, Padma Khanna's dance 'Husn Ke Lakhon Rang'  in Johny Mera Naam (1970), ads featuring  the likes of Katy Mirza in The Illustrated Weekly of India, Irving Wallace's 'The Fan Club', 1974...(I don't include some real life girls and women around me, in Miraj / Sangli/ Kolhapur, in this list to protect their privacy.) Our elder male cousin from Kolhapur too played an active role in nurturing of my fantasies.

 Courtesy my friend the late Vitthal (विठ्ठल) of Miraj (मिरज)- Vithya died so young in a road accident in Konkan-  I have seen at least once an erotic book wrapped in a yellow transparent paper. ("Such books in Paris were wrapped in yellow paper to alert the reader to their lascivious content.").


Henry Miller came in my life much later. I first read him as porn and then as literature.

Therefore, it was such a fun to read Joyce Wadler's essay on the subject in The  New York Times on August 14 2013. 

She writes :

 "...I grew up in the 1950's, in a resort town in the Catskills. The only time my mother gave me any information about sex was when I was 13 and traveling alone for the first time to visit an uncle in California.

“We haven’t talked much about this,” Ma said. “But if a strange man ever puts his hands on you, you open your mouth and scream.” 


Vague, some might say, but I was one of those kids who had been reading adult books since I was 7 or 8; “The Carpetbaggers,” “Peyton Place,” delving especially deep into my uncle’s Mickey Spillane collection, and I considered myself rather knowledgeable.

Here is what I learned about sex from my reading: Women with dyed blond hair are sexually available, but may try to shoot you later.

When women undress to have sex their breasts start heaving uncontrollably. That’s how you know they’re into it, which they always are, despite wanting to kill you later.

Sex always ends with an explosion, which tears through your body so intensely you see brightly colored stars. I pictured it exactly like a fireworks show, so you can imagine my disappointment years later. Of course, that may be because I was with that most accomplished of lovers, a teenage boy..."

 I don't know her breasts heaved uncontrollably or not earlier but notice the gun in her hand!

Breasts Are Us...स्तनौ मांसग्रंथी

 भर्तृहरी :  "स्तनौ मांसग्रन्थी कनककलशावित्युपमितौ …" 
[16, 'वैराग्यशतक' ,  साधारण इसवी सना चे पाचवे शतक ]

(वामन पंडितांचा  मराठी अनुवाद : "सोन्याचे कुंभ  हे की म्हणवुनि  वदती  गोठले मांस  त्याला")

Florence Williams:

"...Breasts are living a life they’ve never lived before.

Fortunately, scientists are beginning to unveil the secrets of breasts, and with those secrets, a new way of looking at human health and our decidedly complicated place in nature. To understand the transformation, we need to go back in time, to the very beginning. We must first ask, Why breasts? Why us? We share 98 percent of our genes with chimps, but among that immeasurable 2 percent are the ones governing breasts. Chimps, unlucky sods, don’t have them. In fact, we are the only primates so endowed with soft orbs from puberty onward. Other female primates develop small swellings while lactating, but they deflate after weaning. Breasts are a defining trait of humanity, and mammary glands define our entire taxonomic class. Carolus Linnaeus understood. That’s why he named us mammals.

Breasts are us..." ('Breasts : a natural and unnatural history', 2012)

"शाळेची जिना उतरून रोस्याकडे धाव घेणारी नाचणेबाई वावटळीत गरगरत वर जाणारे पान बनली होती.

तिथल्या तिथे अंगातून काढलेली ब्रेसियर त्या पंधरा-सोळा वर्षाच्या कारट्याच्या थोबाडावर, गालफाडांवर, डोळ्यांवर चाबकासारखी फडाफडा बसते आहे आणि सुजलेले डोळे तरीही रोखून पाहताहेत. छातीवर भारभूत वाटणारे मांसाचे गोळे चिखल बनताहेत आणि त्या भुकाळू चेहऱ्यावर धपाधप चिखल पडतो आहे.

घराकडे जाण्यासाठी ती जिना उतरत होती त्यावेळी तो कठड्याशी रेलून समोरच उभा होत. त्याने शब्दांची पिंक टाकण्यापूर्वी आपल्या ब्लाउजमध्ये रोखून वाकून पाहिलेले असणार. छातीवर दृष्टी ठेवूनच तो बोलला होता,
                               'बाई, तुमचे बॉल काय टॉप आहेत.'... "

('स्तनौ मांसग्रंथी', आ ना पेडणेकर, 'आ ना पेडणेकर यांच्या निवडक कथा', संपादक: विलास सारंग, 2011) ['Stanau Mansgranthi', A N Pednekar, 'Aa Na Pednekar yanchya nivdak katha', editor: Vilas Sarang]

Bart (after Shauna shows him her breasts, thought): "Oh, my God! It's just like Dad's! "

He could have also said: "बाई, तुमचे  XX काय टॉप आहेत."

  
("Beware My Cheating Bart" is the eighteenth episode of Season 23 of The Simpsons. It originally aired on April 15, 2012)

Poet, Novelist, Painter <<< Graphic Novelist

Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) writes in Marathi (मराठी) magazine Lalit (ललित) September 2013:

"...in summation, it can be said that Marathi person enjoys auditory experience more than visual experience An average Marathi person engrosses in music very well. Very little in pictures. Almost none. It's certainly true of ordinary people. But even those writers, poets and critics who are celebrated in Marathi literature, are well known for their talent can't see pictures on the cover and those (if they exist) inside. Let the book be of the other authors' or their own ! Then appreciating them remains a remote thing..."

("...एकूणात, मराठी माणसाला दृश्यापेक्षा श्राव्य अनुभव अधिक भावतात, असं म्हणता येईल. सामान्य मराठी माणूस संगीतामध्ये उत्तम रंगतो. चित्रांच्यामध्ये फारच कमी. जवळजवळ नाहीच. सर्वसामान्यांच्या बाबतीत  तर हे खर आहेच. पण मराठीमध्ये साहित्याचे जाणकार म्हणून किर्ती मिळवलेल्या , प्रतिभावंत म्हणून मान्यता प्राप्त झालेल्या लेखक, कवी, टीकाकार यांना मुखपृष्ठावरच आणि (असतील तर) पुस्तकाच्या आतील चित्र दिसतच नाहीत. पुस्तक इतर लेखकांचे असो किंवा त्याचं स्वतःच असो ! मग त्यांचा आस्वाद घेण तर दूरच...")

 I have already written more than one post on the subject. Most volubly here on November 9 2010.

I wish to give another example before I go ahead.

I often read parts of  G A Kulkarni's (जी ए कुलकर्णी) book 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ). I have a copy of its first edition published in 1972. Its cover is striking. 

I noted recently that the book does not even mention who the cover artist is! One has to figure out from the artist's signature on the cover. And this is from the author who, according to Vasant Sarwate, was a man of learning in visual arts and was himself a painter of some caliber.

Artist: the late Prabhakar Gore (प्रभाकर गोरे)

 
 Art Spiegelman wrote on October 13 2010:

"...In a pervasively influential eighteenth-century essay, Laocoon: or The limits of Poetry and Painting, by the German aesthetician, Gotthold Lessing, Western culture was admonished against confusing between the nature of poetry or prose—written forms whose province is time, and the nature of visual forms like painting and sculpture, whose province is spatial..."

Since Marathi people enjoy music so much, is music too a form whose province is time and NOT spatial? And is there an art form that works well in both the provinces of time and space?


"...Nothing could violate this long-held aesthetic taboo more directly than comics, a kind of picture-writing—the very layout of a comics artist’s page insists on pulling the reader from one drawing to the next. (Lynd) Ward also trafficked in time, of course, but by inviting the eye to rest on each isolated composition—unsullied by written language—he was sneakier about it..."
 

 

Artist: Lynd Ward