My Sister was in Mother's Womb. ..ललितच्या मुखपृष्ठाची प्रसुती

The only Diwali issue of Marathi magazine I read (thumb through really) is Lalit (ललित) and that too because I subscribe to it.

Not that I am against Diwali numbers but I am too lazy to join a circulating library and I don't feel like buying any of them because I rather buy a Marathi / English book instead. 

On the afternoon of November 12 2013, I  received my copy of Lalit dated November 2013 and realised that it indeed was not carrying Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) drawn cover, for the first time after Diwali 1964.

It was just a confirmation because Sarwate himself had informed me this on November 8 2013 on phone.

I did not know that 'ललित', as an adjective in Hindi, translates as pictorial (चित्रमय). Lalit magazine indeed was 'pictorial' because it proudly carried Sarwate on its cover at least once a year. 

If you wish to enjoy a few of the past covers done by Sarwate, please visit the given links.

2012:  Lalit, 2012 

2011: Lalit, 2011

2010: Lalit, 2010

2009: Lalit, 2009 

2008:  Lalit, 2008 

2007:  Lalit, 2007 



This is the first Lalit Diwali cover Sarwate drew in 1964.  I was four, my brother was two and my sister was in my mother's womb!

The small plant he started watering is still alive. It's a fantastic news in a brutal world of Marathi periodicals because many of Lalit's sisters who were around then have perished.

Passing of Diwali and Feelings of Matryoshka Doll

Philip Larkin,  'Aubade', 1977:

"...
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
..."


Diwali 2013 is now history. 

Containers that stored Diwali snacks up to the brim are emptying fast. Even 'Sunil Gavaskar'  'shankarrpale'  (शंकरपाळे) (called so because they come to 'bat first' and go out last) are on their last leg.

And no matter what, it leaves a sense of emptiness behind. It has always done so for me. It perhaps taught me, very early in life,  without using any words, that you couldn't hang onto to anything.

 I began to understand a little about Larkin's  "the sure extinction" much later.

"A matryoshka doll, also known as Russian nesting/nested doll, refers to a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other." (Wikipedia)

Artist: Geoff Thompson, The Spectator, UK, September 2013

(I have always loved Mr. Thompson's work and you will find a few more example of it on this blog.)

Chess Itself Will Always Win

In one of the greatest sports events India has hosted, Vishwanathan Anand,  an Indian and his nation's greatest sportsperson along with Major Dhyanchand,  will try to defend his title against Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian, from today November 9 2013, in Chennai...

                                                       ...Let the best 'ian' win!

Michael Chabon:

"Apart from homosexuals, only chess players have found a reliable way to bridge, intensely but without fatal violence, the gulf that separates any two men"

Stephen Moss:

"Novels and films about the game, especially Nabokov's The Luzhin Defence, have focused on eccentrics, leading to a popular assumption that all chess players are bonkers. But Kasparov takes a more prosaic view. "Exceptional cases like these ... make it easy to ignore the vast majority of chess players who are entirely unexceptional apart from their capacity to play chess well." Just because there are some mad chess players doesn't mean all chess players are mad"
 
Andrew Robinson, 'Satyajit Ray / The Inner Yey', 1989/ 2004:

"...The most awkward problem remained, however: how to make cinematically interesting the act of chess-playing and the relationship of the nawabs’ game to the larger political one. For months Ray wrestled with this and with his dislike of the King’s character. ‘You see, the problem was to interweave the main story with Wajid and the British and the whole business of annexation’, he wrote to Saeed Jaffrey (Mir) in May 1976, seven months before shooting began. ‘Also, to establish the idea of obsession –which is basic to the development of the story – with a game which is basically abstract and intellectual. If it had been gambling, there’d be no problem. But the beauty of the story lies in the parallel that Prem Chand draws between the game and the moves of the crafty Raj leading to the “capture” of the King.'..."

Chess has appeared on this blog a few times earlier. Most volubly on December 19 2007 here.

I once was a chess 'nut'. 

I then thought the film "North By North West" described the knight's move on a chessboard. Munshi Premchand / Satyajit Ray's 'Shatranj Ke Khilari', 1977 remains one of the better films I have seen as much for its cinematic qualities as its title. As a kid I was attracted to a lousy Hindi film (despite very good music) 'Shatranj',1969 once again because of its title.

I have watched Ray's film a few times and I feel there is a lot of truth in Michael Chabon's quote above.  Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali are 'closer' to each other than to their wives.

When I was a 'chess-nut', I too felt a kind of 'closeness' to fellow chess playing men, I have seldom felt later.


At Miraj, as kids, occasionally, we used to stop by a Muslim graveyard and witness, and even participate in, the chess being played near its entrance. I never thought it was a big deal but some of our relatives were 'concerned' with our visits to a graveyard.

A lot of Marathi speaking people have become very good chess players, indeed Grandmasters, but there is hardly any art-  including poetry, short stories, novels, music, paintings- created by Marathi speaking artists focused on the sport.

Vladimir Nabokov has written a novel 'The Defense'. It is considered far and away the best novel written about chess players.



Dominic Lawson writes about the book:

"It deals with chess and madness, which is an intriguing topic, because it’s often said that chess grandmasters have a propensity to insanity. Statistically, it’s probably not true, but, nonetheless, people think about Fischer, they think about [Wilhelm] Steinitz, the first undisputed world champion who went insane, and there were others as well, such as [Paul] Morphy and [Akiba] Rubinstein. The great mystery to me, which this book touches on, is that it’s often said that these people are driven mad by chess, when actually it might have been the other way around – chess was the only thing that kept them from going off the deep end. It’s when they get away from chess, or try to break away from it, that their characters disintegrate. Fischer’s lunacy, if that’s what it was, broke out in full force when he abandoned playing the game. Within chess he was sublimely rational. They are often people who can be slightly awkward outside chess, but in chess are completely balanced.


There's a very wonderful passage in the book, showing that there are problems with chess itself for the human brain. Luzhin is playing a game in a world championship match and he’s lighting a cigarette – those were the days when you were still allowed to smoke during games – and while he’s contemplating the move he leaves the match lit and burns himself by mistake. Nabokov writes: “The pain immediately passed, but in the fiery gap he had seen something unbearably awesome, the full horror of the abysmal depths of chess.” Which is true because the variations are unfathomable. The computer has done a great deal, but it hasn’t solved it, and probably never will. So you think that you’re battling another person, but there is actually something much more powerful that you’re battling, which is chess itself. And chess itself, it seems, will always win."


 


Benjamin Franklin getting mated by Lady Howe

Artist: Edward Harrison,  May 1867

courtesy: FB page 'Chess' 

Chanting Vedas In The Mud: In Devas and Thailand Shallows... काय खर्ज लागतो एकेक बेडकाचा

Tomorrow November 8 2013 is 94th Birth Anniversary of  P L Deshpande (पु ल देशपांडे)
 
Kakaji:

"...in our Devas thousands of frogs croak in the rain on Mendaki road, oh..oh..oh! What deep (bass) sound each one creates- one feels, it's as if  Brahmins with the command of the ten great books are chanting Vedas ! What?"

(P. L. Deshpande, "Tujhe Ahe Tujapashi", January 1957 / August 2000)

[काकाजी:
"… आपल्या देवासला पावसात हजारो बेडकं ओरडतात मेंडकी-रोडवर, ओहोहोहो! काय खर्ज लागतो एकेक बेडकाचा- असं वाटतं, की  कोणी दशग्रंथी ब्राह्मण वेदपठण करून राहिले आहेत बेटे ! काय ?"

(पु ल देशपांडे, 'तुझें आहें तुजपाशी')]

Location : the Thailand shallows 

 Photo Artist : Daniel Trim

Courtesy: REX/ Daily Mail November 2013

नमोस्तुते...Lakshmi, Yakshi, Ishtar, Ereshkigal, Lilitu...India, Egypt...

Today November 3 2013 is Diwali,  goddess Lakshmi Puja day in India
 
Some experts regard Lakshmi as a pre-Aryan goddess just like Yakshis.


 T.S. Subramanian says in Frontline, June 15 2012 issue:

"You will find them everywhere, as sculptured figures of women hanging from a tree laden with mangoes, on the gateways to Buddhist stupas, adjacent to Jaina tirthankaras as exquisite bas-reliefs on the rock faces of hills, in wayside shrines, as terracotta figurines and stucco idols, as beautiful bronzes elsewhere, and as murals in temples. They are yakshis, popular folk goddesses of pre-Aryan days who metamorphosed into protective deities during the time of the brahminical religion and later as female attendants of Jaina tirthankaras. Yakshis are also celebrated deities in the Buddhist pantheon.

The history of the yakshi cult in India is a fascinating one. Yakshi sculptures have been found in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh; Didarganj and Basarh in Bihar; Bhopal, Sanchi and Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh; Ellora in Maharashtra; Udayagiri and Khandagiri in Odisha; Tiruppanmalai, Vallimalai, Anaimalai, Tirumalai, Samanamalai, Sithamur and Sitharal in Tamil Nadu; Aihole and Shravanabelagola in Karnataka; and Nagarjunakonda, Kondapur, Peddapur and Amaravathi in Andhra Pradesh. About 50 bronze statues of yakshis have been found in different parts of India..."

 

Photo Credit: V. VEDACHALAM

 "The Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh has eight yakshis sculpted on its four gateways. Since yakshis are associated with trees, these yakshis are shown standing under the mango tree or other trees or a banana plant. While the Sanchi stupa itself was erected by Emperor Asoka (third century B.C.), the Sungas renovated it by erecting the railings in the second century B.C. and the Satavahanas built the four gateways circa the first and second century A.D. These yakshis, two each on each gateway, look sensuous and realistic."

The Guardian Art Weekly reported on October 11 2013:

"the Queen of the Night relief was acquired for the British Museum's 250th anniversary"

 Old Babylonian, 1800-1750 BC From southern Iraq

Picture courtesy: Trustees of the British Museum  

"This large plaque is made of baked straw-tempered clay, modelled in high relief. The figure of the curvaceous naked woman was originally painted red. She wears the horned headdress characteristic of a Mesopotamian deity and holds a rod and ring of justice, symbols of her divinity. Her long multi-coloured wings hang downwards, indicating that she is a goddess of the Underworld. Her legs end in the talons of a bird of prey, similar to those of the two owls that flank her. The background was originally painted black, suggesting that she was associated with the night. She stands on the backs of two lions, and a scale pattern indicates mountains.

The figure could be an aspect of the goddess Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war, or Ishtar's sister and rival, the goddess Ereshkigal who ruled over the Underworld, or the demoness Lilitu, known in the Bible as Lilith. The plaque probably stood in a shrine.

The same goddess appears on small, crude, mould-made plaques from Babylonia from about 1850 to 1750 BC. Thermoluminescence tests confirm that the 'Queen of the Night' relief was made between 1765 and 45 BC."

How Would a Stegosaurus Cope With Diwali's Noisy Crackers?

Michael Ruse, June 2013:

"...In the cool of the morning, as the sun came up, they (the plates) helped the animal to heat up quickly. In the middle of the day, especially when the vegetation consumed by the Stegosaurus was fermenting away in its belly, the plates would have helped to catch the wind and get rid of excess heat. A superb adaptation. (Sadly for me, no longer a favoured explanation, since latest investigations suggest that the plates may have been a way for individuals to recognise each other as members of the same species). 

 So what’s a Stegosaur for? We can ask what adaptive function the plates on its back served, as good Darwinian scientists. But the beast itself? It’s not for anything, it just is — in all its decorative, mysterious, plant-munching glory."

As I was returning home on November 1 2013 around 9 AM, near our compound wall, I saw the Greater Coucal or Crow Pheasant (in Marathi 'Bhardwaj' भारद्वाज) whose sighting is considered auspicious, squirrels, the Common Myna's (In Marathi, salunki साळुंकी), sparrows...I stopped and kept looking in different directions...all moving so gracefully, keeping a watchful eye on a dangerous Homo sapiens like me but giving him a damn in the end!

I said come November 2nd morning of Narak Chaturdashi (नरक चतुर्दशी), their world would be shattered for next three-four days. They have no idea what is going to hit them tomorrow morning.

Man will know their feeling only when the next real big asteroid will hit the earth.

Artist: Rakesh C.S.


Courtesy: Amar Chitra Katha Studio and its FB page

With Bhau Padhye at the Window, Sitting 4th Seat in Second Class Mumbai Local!...मी जरूर लिहीन, पण जमेल तेव्हा…तसे…

Today October 30 2013 is 17th Death Anniversary of Bhau Padhye (भाऊ पाध्ये)

W. G. Sebald:

“There seems to be no remedy for the vice of literature; those afflicted persist in the habit despite the fact that there is no longer any pleasure to be derived from it.”   

Tony Perrottet:

"...Another of France’s wildly prolific authors, Honoré de Balzac, felt that the most effective spur to productivity was abject poverty. As a best-selling writer in his early 30s, Balzac looked back fondly upon his younger days as a bohemian, living in a garret and gnawing on a diet of bread, nuts, fruit and water. (“I loved my prison,” he wrote, “for I had chosen it myself.”) Even when successful, he would wake at midnight, symbolically don the habit of a medieval monk, and write for eight hours straight, fueled by pots of coffee. His biographer Graham Robb suggests that Balzac went so far as to deliberately run up debts to force himself to churn out the pages..."

As I was looking at old issues of Abhiruchi (अभिरुचि) I have preserved, I came across this letter of Bhau dated 23 November 1984, to the founder editor of the magazine P A Chitre (पु आ चित्रे), father of Dilip Chitre (दिलीप चित्रे), popularly known as Baburao (बाबुराव).

The letter was printed in the magazine's issue dated January-February 1985. 

The letter is so poignant...read this line :

"...means I don't remain occupied hence I feel miserable and since I feel miserable, I don't remain occupied. I don't know how to break this vicious circle..."

Sad and funny, typical Bhau.

Reminds me of Woody Allen:

"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable."

('Annie Hall', 1977)

Now some boasting...This issue of the magazine has a short story of mine.

What that means is Bhau and I shared the same literary space.

B S Mardhekar (बा सी मर्ढेकर) has written:

"गेलॉ विदूषक जरी ठरुनी सुहास,
दान्ते-नि-शेक्सपिअर-संगत आसपास
कोठे तरी स्वमरणोत्तर भाग्यकाली-!
हाही विचार न कमी मज शांतिदायी."

[poem no 15, "शिशिरागम" ("shishiragam") from "मर्ढेकरांची कविता" ("Mardhekaranchi Kavita"), 1959-1977; courtesy: राघव बाळ मर्ढेकर (Raghav Bal Mardhekar)]

("Even if I pass on as a grinning joker,
company of Dante and Shakespeare in proximity
somewhere in my good fortune after my death-!
even this thought is no less consoling")

 Not for me. No heaven or hell. Whatever it's, it's right here...and now I'm imitating Bhau: I sat 4th-seat on a bench in second-class of  Mumbai local train only to discover that Bhau was sitting at the window seat, wind in the face, of the same bench!

The idea is more than consoling for me. 

I repeat the following cartoon that I used for Bhau even earlier because I simply love it. I can't take my eyes off the speaking lady's face and can't stop smiling for a while.

Artist: the late Helen E. Hokinson, The New Yorker, 9 June 1945

"Where do you suppose Bhau Padhye learned such terrible words?"

Ashok Shahane Confesses and I Feel Cheated

W H Auden:

"...Should you have troubles (pets will die,
Lovers are always behaving badly)
And confession helps, we will hear it,
Examine and give our counsel :
If to mention them hurts too much,
We shall not be nosey..."

Loksatta (लोकसत्ता) dated October 7 2013:

"मराठी कवितेला जागतिक परिमाण मिळवून देणारे ज्येष्ठ कवी अरुण कोलटकर यांची कविता  प्रसिद्ध करताना प्रकाशकाची कोणतीही परवानगी न घेतल्याने, तसेच कवितेखाली प्रकाशकाचा उल्लेख न केल्याने, हा स्वामित्वहक्क (कॉपीराइट) कायद्याचा भंग आहे, हा मराठी साहित्य व्यवहारातील गैर प्रकारांवर क्ष-किरण टाकणारे ज्येष्ठ समीक्षक, प्रास प्रकाशनाचेअशोक शहाणे यांचा दावा मान्य करत मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाने 'सकाळ' या वर्तमानपत्राला माफीनामा प्रसिद्ध करण्याचे तसेच खटल्याचा खर्चही शहाणे यांना देण्याचे आदेश दिले आहेत."

(Bombay High Court, agreeing to the plea of Pras publication's Ashok Shahane- a senior critic who put an X-ray on misdemeanors in Marathi literature- that publishing a poem of senior poet Arun Kolatkar- who gave an international dimension to Marathi poetry-without obtaining any permission from the publisher and not mentioning publisher's name under the poem is a violation of copyright act, has ordered 'Sakal' newspaper to publish an apology as well as pay Shahane legal fees.)

The news above was on the front page of the paper. I had to read it because it mentioned Arun Kolatkar. I could never understand why it was on the front page. But I said, I didn't understand most of what happened around me and this was one of them.

The court ruling, as I understand it, says that newspaper Sakal (सकाळ) should have, among other things, mentioned the publisher of Kolatkar's poem. Remember,  Sakal has mentioned the name of the poet.

Let us now turn to 'X-ray on misdemeanors in Marathi literature' mentioned in the news above. 

Ashok Shahane (अशोक शहाणे) has written an essay in Loksatta (लोकसत्ता) October 27 2013.

The essay is in 'celebration' of 50th anniversary of his 'own' essay titled 'आजकालच्या मराठी वाङ्मयावर 'क्ष'- किरण' (X-Ray on Marathi literature of these days) dated November/December 1963, first published in Marathi periodical Manohar (मनोहर).

What a huge disappointment it turned out be.

Right now, I give only two reasons: there is nothing new there and his confession.

The essay is largely a rehash of what he has already said in the past. He has got nothing new to say.

But more serious thing for me is his 'confession'.


He says in the essay:

"...या लेखाचा पहिला- म्हणजे जो तात्त्विक भाग आहे, तो मी लिहिलेला आहे. मराठी साहित्याच्या संदर्भातला भाग मी आणि नेमाडय़ांनी मिळून लिहिलेला आहे. त्यातलं माझं किती आणि नेमाडय़ांचं किती, असं नाही सांगता येणार. नेमाडे साहित्याचाच विद्यार्थी असल्यामुळे त्याला सगळी माहिती होती. त्यामुळे ते र्अधमरुध नेमाडय़ांचंच आहे..."

(...the first part of the essay,  that is philosophical, I have written it. The part about Marathi literature is written jointly by me and Nemade. How much is mine and how much is Nemade's can't be specified. Since Nemade was the student of literature, he knew every thing. So about half is Nemade's...)

The essay is now part of his much celebrated book 'Napeksha' (नपेक्षा) published by Lokvangmay Gruha first in April 2005 and then in January 2008. (I have occasionally quoted from the book on this blog.)

I have the second edition in front of me. The book starts with the said essay.

Nowhere in the book Mr. Shahane says that Mr. Bhalchandra Nemade (भालचंद्र नेमाडे) has generously contributed to the essay.

So the reader is told exactly after 50 years that what she thought was entirely Shahane's (then a young man) is partly someone else's!


If one has to compare this to the Sakal episode mentioned at the top, one may argue that, unlike Kolatkar,  Nemade was (perhaps) a willing party to Shahane's act.

I agree with the logic but shouldn't a reader be told about this 'joint venture' as early as possible, at least when the book 'Napeksha' containing the said essay came out in April 2005?

If I knew this, I would not have even read the essay because I can read Nemade's views on Marathi literature elsewhere, such as in 'Teekaswayamvar' (टीकास्वयंवर).

I feel such a 'joint venture' may also violate the integrity of the essay. Shahane says 'Nemade was the student of literature, he knew every thing'. What it means is: he did not know some things. In that case, why did he make some sweeping statements in the essay? Why couldn't he wait a few more years, read/study as much as Nemade and then write the essay?

I feel kind of cheated reading Shahane's confession. And wonder if he still has some more unsaid confessions.

Artist: Joseph Farris, The New Yorker, 24 January 1983

p.s.

1> This is being written on January 5 2014.

On January 4 2014, I read Vilas Sarang's (विलास सारंग) essay 'Lekhakrao Nemade' (लेखकराव नेमाडे), now part of his book 'Lihitya Lekhakache Vachan' (लिहित्या लेखकाचं  वाचन), 2011. (I kept laughing loudly reading it.)

Sarang writes:

"...शहाणेंच्या 'क्ष-किरण' लेखाने बेपर्वा शेरेबाजी करण्याची पद्धत रूढ केली. ती इतरांबरोबरच नेमाडेंनी आपलीशी केली..."

(...Shahane's article established the method of cavalier commenting. Nemade adopted it along with the others...)

Sarang probably did not know that one half of 'Shahane's article'  belonged to Nemade in any case. Therefore, Nemade didn't have to adopt the style of 'cavalier commenting' (बेपर्वा शेरेबाजी). He co-invented it!

2> This is being written on January 23 2014.

Ek Regh blog says on January 23 2014: "शहाण्यांच्या 'आजकालच्या मराठी वाङ्मयावर क्ष किरण' या १९६३ साली गाजलेल्या लेखाच्या घडणीत भालचंद्र नेमाडे यांचा हातभार आहे, हे शहाण्यांनीच त्यांच्या 'नपेक्षा' या पुस्तकाच्या प्रकाशनावेळी २००५मध्ये उघड केलं होतं."

My response to that: "Sure he 'disclosed' it decades after the essay was published but could not he 'announce' it as a part of the book when it was published or when its second edition came out in 2008?"