i for Imaginary Numbers and Ishavasya-Vritti

Today Jan 12 2012 is 347th death anniversary of Pierre de Fermat.

G H Hardy:

"Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."

Alexander Waugh:

"...Mathematics, in which physicists vest unwarranted confidence, is far too blunt a tool. It worked for Newton, Maxwell and Einstein because they found equations that accurately described the classical world. But with the discovery, in the early 20th century, of quantum mechanics, everything changed. Subatomic particles do not behave like large visible objects. One cannot measure a particle’s position and its velocity at the same time; the arrow of time cannot be observed in particle interactions; and (so Hawking believes) for a particle to travel between two points it has to take every ‘possible path’ between them simultaneously. The number of possible paths from A to B is, he claims, infinite. If this is correct, then it becomes a feature of the quantum world that all history, and all possible histories, also take place simultaneously.

How can mathematics, however sophisticated, be up to the task of dealing with this? Numbers, after all, were created by humans to describe things in the observed world. They are adjectival. How can one ascribe a number to a particle, or to its position, or its velocity if, while travelling from A to B, it is said to be in an infinite number of places simultaneously?..."

Robin McKie:

"Grigori Perelman, arguably the world's greatest mathematician, worked out a solution to one of the seven great unsolved mathematical problems, the Poincaré conjecture, in 2002. It was a magnificent achievement. Honours, cash, offers of world lecture tours and lucrative teaching posts were hurled at the Russian theorist. But Perelman turned down the lot, including the Fields medal, the mathematical world's equivalent of a Nobel prize, and a million dollars in prize money that the Clay Institute wanted to give him for his work. Since then, he has announced he has given up the study of mathematics altogether and has cut off communications with all journalists and nearly all his friends."

Shiv Visvanathan:

"One misses the celebration of science today. Science acquired its creativity through play and it is the playfulness of science that created a Jagadish Chandra Bose, a Raman, a Ramanujan or Chandrasekhar. Science as playfulness has to come back as cultural form to childhood and the universities. Science has to be enjoyable...

...Try an experiment. Make a list of our top scientists and read their speeches. Pick the best and you will see that our scientists have little understanding of the nature of science. Just try it with a sample of speeches from the Indian Science Congress. The illiteracy of our scientists and our politicians about science seems to be co-produced." (The Asian Age, Jan 12 2012)

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared 2012 as the 'National Mathematical year' as a tribute to Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also voiced concern over the "badly inadequate" number of competent mathematicians in the country.

त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर:

"ज्या वर्गांत भास्कराचार्यांसारखा बृहस्पति असतो, त्या वर्गांत दुसर्या कोणा तरी मुलाचा दुसरा नंबर लागतच असतो. पण त्यावरून त्यांस पहिल्या व दुसर्या नंबरचे विद्यार्थी ठरविणें योग्य नाहीं..."

("The class that has got a Bṛhaspati (guru of the gods) like Bhāskarāchārya, also has a boy who ranks second. But it incorrect that they be rated numer one and two students...")

(from: 'Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar Nivadak Lekh Sangraha', Aggregator-H V Mote, Introduction- G D Khanolkar, 1977)

('त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर निवडक लेख संग्रह', संग्राहक-ह. वि. मोटे, परिचय-गं. दे. खानोलकर, १९७७)

I quote this because I find it very interesting how a historian like Shejwalkar invokes a mathematician like Bhāskarāchārya while comparing Nanasaheb Peshwa (1721-1761) (नानासाहेब पेशवा)- student claiming to be second in an imaginary class- to Shivaji (1630-1680) (शिवाजी) who is first.

Mathematics always brings to my mind one of the best books I have ever read: Simon Singh's 'Fermat's Last Theorem' (1997).

The author says in the preface:

"The story of Fermat’s Last Theorem is inextricably linked with the history of mathematics, touching on all the major themes of number theory. It provides a unique insight into what drives mathematics and, perhaps more important, what inspires mathematicians. The Last Theorem is at the heart of an intriguing saga of courage, skullduggery, cunning, and tragedy, involving all the greatest heroes of mathematics.

Ferrmat’s Last Theorem has its origins in the mathematics of ancient Greece, two thousand years before Pierre de Fermat constructed the problem in the form we know it today. Hence, it links the foundations of mathematics created by Pythagoras to the most sophisticated ideas in modern mathematics.”

For me the book becomes classy because it is as much about mathematicians as mathematics.

It quotes German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz on the imaginary number:

"The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an amphibian between being and non-being."

I first learnt about imaginary numbers in 1975. I was stunned: so math is not just about real. Although, I soon figured out how to deal with them and it was fun, how does one comprehend this 'imaginary' stuff?

I wish I was told about this quote of Leibniz then...Divine spirit, being and non-being...'saguna'(सगुण), 'nirguna' (निर्गुण), amphibian invoking my favourite frogs...

No wonder Vinoba Bhave (विनोबा भावे) is as much fascinated by imaginary numbers (i.e. mathematics) as 'Ishavasya-Vritti'. (Read a related post here.)


Google Doodle Honouring Pierre de Fermat

Carl Zimmer has just published a book "Science Ink" which explores the stories of people who have put equations, formulas, or other science-related images permanently on their body.

WSJ has reviewed it here.

In this India's national mathematical year, here is a suggestion:



'In the early 1900s, a group of mathematicians turned set theory, first proposed by Georg Cantor in the 1870s, into a series of logical statements from which all of mathematics could be derived. The results include the "Zermelo-Fraenkel with Choice axioms," and inspired this enthusiast to take permanent note of the achievement on both arms. '

courtesy: Sterling Publishing

What if 'Ghashiram Kotwal', a Political Satire, became Funnier Instead of Darker...

Today Jan 7 2012 is 84th Birth Anniversary of Vijay Tendulkar (विजय तेंडुलकर).

Anton Chekhov:
“You must write shorter, to make it as short as possible.”

Sadanand Rege on the quality of dialogues written by Vijay Tendulkar:

"...म्हणजे एक पात्र जे बोलते आणि दुसरे जे बोलते...त्याच्या मध्ये शेकडो वाक्ये जी येतात ती वाक्ये ते लिहीत नाहीत. इतर नाटककार एक वाक्याकडून दुसर्या वाक्याकडे शंभर वाक्यांची शिडी घेऊन जातात..."

("...means what one character says and another character says...the hundreds of sentences that come in between, he doesn't write them. Other playwrights go from one sentence to another with a ladder of hundred sentences...")

['अशर गंधर्व 'सदानंद रेगे ', प्र. श्री. नेरुरकर ('Akshar Gandharva' by P S Nerurkar), 1987]

Samuel Beckett:
“I went to Godot last night for the first time in a long time. Well played, but how I dislike that play now. Full house every night, it’s a disease”.

Vaclav Havel:
"Recall the gigantic Nazi congresses, torchlight processions, the inflammatory speeches by Hitler and Goebbels, and the cult of German mythology. We could hardly find a more monstrous abuse of politics’ theatrical aspect. And today – even in Europe – rulers use theatrical tools to arouse the kind of blind nationalism that leads to war, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and genocide.
So where is the boundary between legitimate respect for national identity and symbols, and the devilish music of pied pipers, dark magicians, and mesmerizers? Where do passionate speeches end and demagogy begin? How can we recognize the point beyond which expression of the need for collective experience and integrating rituals becomes evil manipulation and an assault on human freedom?
Here is where we see the huge difference between theatre as art and the theatrical dimension of politics. A mad theatrical performance by a group of fanatics is part of cultural pluralism, and, as such, helps to expand the realm of freedom without posing a threat to anyone. A mad performance by a fanatical politician can plunge millions into endless calamity."

Carl Hiaasen:
Everybody my age worries about that. But the hardest thing for me, for anybody who writes satire or any kind of contemporary fiction, is to invent a scenario that doesn't eventually come true. Almost everything you write now, no matter how outrageous, comes true, and if you're writing satire you don't want to be behind the curve but ahead of it.

Daniel Henninger:
“With fakery everywhere—some of it amusing, some of it not funny—people's ability to know where things fall on the spectrum between fact and falsity becomes so compromised that they retreat into a shell of cynicism about everything…The antidote of choice for many of us in a suspect world is irony and satire. The Onion, Jon Stewart or "Saturday Night Live" end up closer to the truth than the original material…”

Vijay Tendulkar's 'Ghashiram Kotwal' (घाशीराम कोतवाल) was first staged almost 40 years ago.

As I have said earlier, in 1980's, I watched it thrice. Once at NCPA, Mumbai (एन सी पी ए, मुंबई ) and twice at Kalidas Kalamandir, Nashik (कालिदास कलामंदिर , नाशिक) .

Although I love the play and its performance- largely because of music director Bhaskar Chandavarkar (भास्कर चंदावरकर) and choreographer Krishnadev Mulgund (कृष्णदेव मुळगुंद )- I wish Tendulkar went further teasing his targets.

The play is funny only in parts. When I look at the booklet containing the play's 'scenewise synopsis', running into thirty-nine subheads, I see that less than half are funny.


picture courtesy: Theatre Academy, Pune

I read Vasudevshastri Khare's (वासुदेवशास्त्री खरे) rather sympathetic biography of Nana Fadnavis, "nana phadanvees yanche charitra" (नाना फडनवीस यांचे चरित्र), first published July 1892, after I had seen the play and I realised Nana in real life was not that omniscient and hardly in control - often scared- many times in the last decade of 18th century, the period portrayed in the play.

I find Khare's book in many places funnier than Tendulkar's. I wonder if Tendulkar knew the lacuna of his work and hence always gushed about the master of the art of satire: Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे). (Go back to the quote of Sadanand Rege at the top of this post...Ladder...Did Sarwate's ladder make a thousand sentences to vanish compared to his hundred?.)

If parts of Khare's book are dramatised, I am sure, it would even trump something as classy as 'Raag Darbari'.

I wish 'Ghashiram' became riotously funny.

Here is an example of how funny a satire can get:


Caption: 'les biens viennent tous ensemble' ('all good things come along together')

Artist: Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin (1721-86)



courtesy: Waddesdon, The Rothschild Collection (The National Trust)

Colin Jones and Emily Richardson have written an essay 'Madame de Pompadour: The Other Cheek' for 'History Today' Volume: 61 Issue: 11 2011:

"...A woman dressed in a cardinal’s robes is squatting on the back of a chair, positioning her exposed behind so that she can defecate into the gaping mouth of a sleeping cleric. A dove hovers close by, bearing a winged cardinal’s hat.

This obscene 18th-century image (shown above) displays a kind of French humour – crude, anti-clerical – that forms part of a long, Rabelaisian tradition. Yet what makes it both astonishingly bold and also highly unusual in its substance and context is that it represents Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721-64), Louis XV’s mistress, and her political client, the Abbé (soon to be Cardinal) Bernis.

The caption reads ‘les biens viennent tous ensemble’ – ‘all good things come along together’. Text and image evoke the moment in December 1758 when Bernis received his promotion to the rank of cardinal, which was intended to give him eminent authority within the royal council. Yet at the same moment that the good news came through from Rome, the king dismissed Bernis and sent him into exile – allegedly under Machiavellian instruction from Bernis’ hitherto patron, Pompadour herself. There is no disputing where power lies in this picture: the arse of Madame de Pompadour..."

"...The Pompadour drawings surprise on several levels. Such fierce visual political satire was, first of all, extremely unusual in France before 1789, when the Revolution opened the floodgates. The Ancien Régime lacked the vibrant, rumbustious tradition of political satire that England – with its Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson and the rest – enjoyed at much the same time. It is true that many writings sought to ‘desacralize’ the monarchy by highlighting the sexual high jinks and failings of the royal body. During the final years of the Ancien Régime a pornographic visual and textual genre would develop that mocked Louis XVI for his alleged impotence and Marie-Antoinette for her supposed sexual voraciousness. But this was exceptional and much less widely diffused before 1789 than historians sometimes maintain..."

"...Pompadour had turned her toilette ritual into a mechanism of power and Charles-Germain displayed in a number of other drawings his deep disapproval of her claims to play a political role..."

Reading an Epic after the 'Good Guys' have Won

Today Jan 3 2012 is 6th death anniversary of my mother. For me, her life is an epic.

Samuel Beckett:

“I keep watching my mother’s eyes, never so blue, so stupefied, so heartrending, eyes of an endless childhood, that of old age. Let us get there rather earlier, while there are still refusals we can make. I think these are the first eyes that I have seen. I have no wish to see any others, I have all I need for loving and weeping, I know now what is going to close, and open inside me...”

The spirit of Oscar Wilde:

Homer, there are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it.
("Father Knows Worst",18th episode of the 20th season of 'The Simpsons')

Norman Mailer:

"The only thing wrong with this Army is it never lost a war."
('The Naked and the Dead')

Anthony West's aunt on Lawrence of Arabia:

“It’s the problem all heroes have to cope with—when you’ve made your gesture you’ve got the rest of your life to live.”
(Newsweek, November 4 2010)

I often read Ramayana and Mahabharata in my childhood (even today if I come across them I can't ignore them). Numerous versions of them. In Marathi.

Despite this, these days, I often feel, I know so little about them. The other day I was reading Chintaman Vinayak Vaidya's (चिंतामण विनायक वैद्य) 'Sanskrut Vangmayacha Itihas' (संस्कृत वाड;मयाचा इतिहास ), 1922.

It says: "ऋतूंची वर्णने रामयणाइतकी सुंदर दुसर्या कोठेही नाहीत...वर्षाऋतूचे वर्णन वाचीत असता आपण पावसात उभे असून पावसाच्या धारा आपल्या अंगावर पडत आहेत की काय असा भास होतो ..."

(Nowhere will you find descriptions of seasons as beautiful as in Ramayana...While reading description of rainy season one feels like we are standing in the rain and rain is falling on us.)

Pity, I have so far totally missed out on this 'shower' because I have never paid any attention to this aspect of the epic!

Another example is a scene from Mahabharata when Kunti abandons her firstborn Karna, setting him afloat in a box on a river. Very few of us read her original heart-wrenching song in Sanskrit or our native:

शिवास्ते सन्तु पन्थानो मा च ते परिपन्थिनः।
आगताश्च तथा पुत्र भवन्त्यद्रोहचेतसः ।।
पातु त्वां वरुणो राजा सलिले सलिलेश्वरः।
अन्तरिक्षेऽन्तरिक्षस्थः पवनः सर्वगस्तथा ।।
पिता त्वां पातु सर्वत्र तपनस्तपतांवरः।
येन दत्तोसि मे पुत्र दिव्येन विधिना किल ।।
आदित्या वसवो रुद्राः साध्या विश्वे च देवताः।
मरुतश्च सहेन्द्रेण दिशश्च सदिदीश्वराः ।।
रक्षन्तु त्वां सुराः सर्वे समेषु विषमेषु च।
वेत्स्यामि त्वांविदेशेपि कवचेनाभिसूचितम् ।।
धन्यस्ते पुत्र जनरको देवो भानुर्विभावसुः।
स्त्वां द्रक्ष्यति दिव्येन चक्षुषा वाहिनीगतम् ।।
धन्या सा प्रमदा या त्वां पुत्रत्वे कल्पयिष्यति।
यस्यास्त्वं तृषितः पुत्र स्तनं पास्यसि देवज ।।
कोनु स्वप्नस्तया दृष्टो या त्वामादित्यवर्चसम्।
दिव्यवर्मसमायुक्तं दिव्यकृण्डलभूषितम् ।।
पद्मायतविशालाक्षं पद्मताम्रदलोज्ज्वलम्।
सुललाटं सुकेशान्तं पुत्रत्वे कल्पयिष्यति ।।
धन्या द्रक्ष्यन्ति पुत्र त्वां भूमौ संसर्पमाणकम्।
अव्यक्तकलवाक्यानि वदन्तं रेणुगुण्ठितम् ।।
धन्या द्रक्ष्यन्ति पुत्र त्वां पुनर्यौवनगोचरम्।
हिमवद्वनसंभूतं सिंहं केसरिणं यथा ।।

(May all thy paths be auspicious! May no one obstruct thy way! And, O son, may all that come across thee have their hearts divested of hostility towards thee: And may that lord of waters, Varuna. protect thee in water! And may the deity that rangeth the skies completely protect thee in the sky. And may, O son, that best of those that impart heat, viz., Surya, thy father, and from whom I have obtained thee as ordained by Destiny, protect thee everywhere! And may the Adityas and the Vasus, the Rudras and the Sadhyas, the Viswadevas and the Maruts, and the cardinal points with the great Indra and the regents presiding over them, and, indeed, all the celestials, protect thee in every place! Even in foreign lands I shall be able to recognise thee by this mail of thine! Surely, thy sire, O son, the divine Surya possessed of the wealth of splendour, is blessed, for he will with his celestial sight behold thee going down the current! Blessed also is that lady who will, O thou that are begotten by a god, take thee for her son, and who will give thee suck when thou art thirsty! And what a lucky dream hath been dreamt by her that will adopt thee for her son, thee that is endued with solar splendour, and furnished with celestial mail, and adorned with celestial ear-rings, thee that hast expansive eyes resembling lotuses, a complexion bright as burnished copper or lotus leaves, a fair forehead, and hair ending in beautiful curls! O son, she that will behold thee crawl on the ground, begrimed with dust, and sweetly uttering inarticulate words, is surely blessed! And she also, O son, that will behold thee arrive at thy youthful prime like maned lion born in Himalayan forests, is surely blessed!)

For us, The Ramayana even came without any language because we were lucky to have a copy of pictorial Ramayana that was acquired by my father's father in the princely state of Aundh (औंध).

It had pictures painted by Bhavanrao Shrinivas alias Balasaheb Pandit Pant Pratinidhi (भवानराव श्रीनिवास उर्फ बाळासाहेब पंडित पंत प्रतिनिधी), ruler of Aundh, who till today is referred quite affectionately by my father as 'Maharaj'(महाराज).

I still remember every picture from it. Each of them was like a song to me. (When I occasionally see a bunch of ladies from our families, enjoying together a siesta, it recalls Hanuman-Meets-Sita-in-Ashokvan picture from the book!)

Hanuman Watches Lanka Burn, c 1911 (This picture was intriguing even then because Hanuman is not exulting after setting Ravan's Lanka on fire.)

Artist: Balasaheb Pandit Pant Pratinidhi
(for more such pictures visit 'Kamat's Potpourri' here.)

Reading/ viewing the epics or listening to them from my mother, at dinner time, the umpteenth time, was always a thrill.

Until of course we reached the end of the battles.

Now what? Battle has been won. What do 'good guys' do NOW?

There were no satisfactory answers forthcoming from my mother, my brain or the pages of the epics.

A weird feeling prevailed over me.

Why?

When I recently read Arthur Schopenhauer, I felt I understood it.

"...Every epic and dramatic poem can only represent a struggle, an effort, a fight for happiness; never enduring and complete happiness itself. It conducts its heroes through a thousand dangers and difficulties to the goal; as soon as this is reached it hastens to let the curtain fall; for now there would remain nothing for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in which the hero expected to find happiness had only disappointed him, and that after its attainment he was no better off than before..."

Artist: Barney Tobey, The New Yorker, Sept 6 1958

p.s. They win and hence they become good guys or because they are good guys, they win?

Will 2012 Be As Lame As 2011?

John Crowley:

"Where Orwell’s ('1984') imagined world is shabby and cheap and nasty, and Huxley’s ('Brave New World') brightly colored and silly, Zamyatin’s (‘We’) is filled with an unsettling radiant joy, right through to its terrible ending. It has what Milan Kundera perceived in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “the comical absence of the comical.” Instead of perspicacity and authority, which in the predicting of the future are fatuous, there is beauty and strangeness, the qualities of art, which sees clearly and predicts nothing, at least on purpose. These are the qualities of all the greatest fictional representations of the future, books that, after the initial shock they carry has faded, can reappear not as tales about our shared future nor salutary warnings for the present they were written in but simply as works of disinterested passion, no more (and no less) a realistic rendering of this world or any world now or to come than is The Tempest or The Four Zoas.

Time, W. H. Auden said, is intolerant and forgetful, but “worships language and forgives/Everyone by whom it lives.” Time will leave my new and no doubt baselessly optimistic Totalitopia behind; it was being left behind even as I wrote it down. As a prediction it might bewilder or bore, but as a work of art in language—if it were as easy to turn it into a work of art as it was to think it up—it might survive its vicissitudes in the turbulence of time and emerge sometime downstream as a valuable inheritance from the past, all its inadequate dreams and fears washed away. Meanwhile the real world then, no matter what, will be as racked with pain and insufficiency as any human world at any time. It just won’t be racked by the same old pains and insufficiencies; it will be strange. It is forever unknowably strange, its strangeness not the strangeness of fiction or of any art or any guess but absolute. That’s its nature. Of course holding the mirror up to nature is what Hamlet insisted all playing, or pretending, must do; but—as Lewis Carroll knew—the image in a mirror, scary or amusing or enlightening, is always reversed.."

I find cartoonist Zachary Kanin, in his trade, is of the best in the world today.

See one of my favourite cartoons by him here.

See Mr. Kanin's '2012 FORECAST' here. Every picture there is a gem.

Here are the two I liked most:

(notice: tag of "breaking news", sun, earth...)

A Wish for Stray Dogs this Christmas

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 Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!”

DAVID BERREBY:

...Dehumanization — representing people to be lesser, non¬human creatures, as when police officers label crimes against criminals as “N.H.I.” (“No Humans Involved”), or when Muammar el-Qaddafi calls his critics “stray dogs” — isn’t just shabby rhetoric. Dehumanization is a mind-set, as Smith writes, that “decommissions” our “moral inhibitions” about mistreating fellow human beings. Encased in law and custom, this psychological process has often licensed slavery, genocide and countless other cruelties.

(review of 'Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others' by David Livingstone Smith, NYT, March 4 2011)

Jenny Diski:

“All the animals I knew in the early years of my life were stuffed.”

I like stray dogs. Most times. Each has a distinct personality and if you care to spend some time, their lives are miserable but interesting.

Almost every morning, a stray bitch waits for me to feed her biscuits as I return home from my walk. If she isn't there, I miss something.

I still remember the late morning in 1970's when, as I got ready to go to school that opened at 12:10 PM, I was informed by friends that our favourite stray 'Vakadmani' (वाकडमानी) was dead, poisoned by municipal staff.

I went and saw her foaming at mouth, slightly bloated body. I was devastated and remained so for a number of days. I would not feel that bad again until Shreedhar Joglekar-sir's (श्रीधर जोगळेकर) death a few years later. As I filed past Joglekar Sir's body in c 1978, Vakadmani was on my mind.

I almost never feel proud of what I have done in my life but one thing I feel good about is I never threw stones at strays and chameleons when it was fashionable among kids in Miraj.

But the strays have certainly become a bit of menace for many people in Pune and elsewhere in India.

I never venture out of my house on foot in dark because of strays.

The Times of India reported on Dec 23 2011:

"Mumbai: Despite taking steps to curb the stray dog menace in the city, there seems to be a steady increase in the instances of dog bites...

... in a decade's time, the dog bite cases have mounted from 53,051 to 77,484 in 2010..."

I hope we find a way for strays and humans to coexist without biting and killing.


Artist: Dana Summers, December 2011

Mario Miranda: Of Margao's Stinking Fish and Distortions Suiting the Mood of Feverish Anarchy

Mario Miranda:"I’m a keen observer of people. They are generally doing something they should not be doing.”

Oh, isn't it the story of all of us: generally doing something we should not be doing?

Wikipedia claims MM considered Ronald Searle (b 1920) his mentor.

Matt J's classy blog dedicated to Mr. Searle's art says:

"a Searle picture is certainly unmistakeable. The human figures are bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes that are often shifty or bewildered – their distortions and wispy lines suiting the mood of feverish anarchy. They are drawings whose skill is perhaps concealed in a feeling of rapidity, an impression that they were quickly set down."

Mr. Searle himself has been influenced by great Saul Steinberg (who isn't?).

Look at the following classic:


'Homage au Steinberg'

on the left is Saul Steinberg on a pedestal, standing like Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the right a figure with "bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes"!


Do you see figures that are "bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes" in MM's picture above?

Book based on Mr. Miranda's diary of year 1951 has been just published: 'THE LIFE OF MARIO: 1951', Author: Mario de Miranda, Editor: Gerard da Cunha.

It has this wonderful picture:

Notice those cats- tails up- chasing the stench!

The only Indian sportsperson Chinese will fear in London 2012 is Saina Nehwal

Just like Cricket, I have played only gulli Badminton. But I find the sport exhilarating.

I keep following it on NEO Sports. In 2011, I must have seen all the BWF World Superseries tournaments.

I know it has been an indifferent year for India's Saina Nehwal.

But on the afternoon of Dec 18, 2011, for me, Saina made up for all that. On her way to the final, she had beaten Wang Xin and Tine Baun with some fuel to spare.

Sure she lost to the final match to Wang Yihan, a true champion herself, 18-21, 21-13, 21-13, but the way she played the match tells me what she is made up of.

When the camera focussed on Saina's face from the other side of the net and closed in on her face, her eyes- probably like Mahabharata's Arjuna-or even better, like a tigress from Nallamala forest- told me how determined she was to win it.

And she almost did the way first game went.

In 2012 London Olympics, China will most likely top the medals table. India will get by with a couple of medals of any colour.

In sports, China probably never considers India as their competition. But the only Indian sportsperson Chinese will fear in London 2012 is Saina Nehwal. They know she can beat the best of them in their sport on their turf.


Picture courtesy: http://www.bwfbadminton.org

India's Lingering Love Affair with Correction Fluid

Gilbert Adair:

For centuries the pen remained the supreme guarantor of legal, contractual, epistolary and literary authenticity. Then, during the last century, this role was gradually reassigned to the more “objective” typewriter. In fact, so central was the typewriter to the pursuit of literary Truth that there came a time when, for most American novelists, you simply weren’t a writer unless you had one.

Jonah Lehrer:

In 1916, T. S. Eliot wrote to a friend about his recent experiments with composing poetry on the typewriter. The machine “makes for lucidity,” he said, “but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.” A few years later, Eliot presented Ezra Pound with a first draft of “The Waste Land.” Some of it had been composed on the typewriter.

Great Friedrich Nietzsche used a typewriter.

Andrew Sulliavn wrote on June 15, 2008:

"Many of those terse aphorisms and impenetrable reveries were banged out on an 1882 Malling-Hansen Writing Ball. And a friend of his at the time noticed a change in the German philosopher’s style as soon as he moved from longhand to type. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote. Nietzsche replied: “You are right. Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”.."

Artist: John M Price, The New Yorker, 9 March 1940

It's Nietzsche who said: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

Cartoon caption could read: Good Lord! I have killed you!

Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times September 1, 2011:

"...The factories that make the machines may be going silent, but India's typewriter culture remains defiantly alive, fighting on bravely against that omnipresent upstart, the computer...

...India's lingering love affair with correction fluid and carbon paper befits a country that often seems caught in two centuries, where high-tech companies and an ambitious space program coexist with human-powered rickshaws and feudal village life...

...Typing was all but compulsory for any woman who wanted a job, said Geeta Meshran, 53, who banged away for 22 years in the Mumbai government's typing pool. Efficiency wasn't always paramount there. "I often worked as slowly as possible, so I wouldn't have to retype the page," she said...

..."Typewriters were a real symbol of Indian life. Just consider how many laws and birth certificates came from its keys," said Abhishek Jain, who at age 13 set a world record in 1991 typing 117 words a minute on a Godrej manual...

..."The computer is lifeless, but there's a sheer joy in manual typing," said Jain, the record-holder. "It's a kind of music..."

As stated above, was typing all but compulsory for any woman who wanted a job?

I say not just a job but also a marriage.


Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे

(Source- “Khada Maraycha Jhala Tar….!”, Mauj Prakashan, 1963)

Original caption in Marathi: "कॉलेजमध्ये नांव घातलंस म्हणतेस? यंदाहि कुठं जमलं नाही वाटतं.." (“You say you have enrolled in a college? Couldn’t arrange the marriage this year too eh...”)

Enrollment in a college could be replaced with enrollment in a typing class- English and Marathi both!

India's lingering love affair with correction fluid?

The Times Of India on Sept 2 2011:

"Whitener inhaling addiction on the rise among minors: Somnath Deshkar TNN

Pune: Fourteen-year-old Manish (name changed) stabbed his father with a kitchen knife recently and was sent to juvenile custody. What makes this stray case of juvenile crime all the more complicated is that Manish is addicted to sniffing whitener, a cheaper and potentially dangerous way to get high.
According to experts, there are close to 8,000 children in the city who are addicted to substances such as whitener, ink remover, thinner, shoe polish and vulcanising solution..."

To be honest, I like smells of whitener, ink remover, thinner, shoe polish, vulcanising solution, petrol, benzene...But I didn't know I could get high on them.

(When I joined a chemical MNC in 1984, the whole plant 'reeked' of benzene, I never complained!)

Can part of Nietzsche's genius (or madness) be explained by correction fluid?!


"I see you have a degree in shorthand."

Artist: Johnny Hart (1931 – 2007)

Did Mario de Miranda ever get to sit in the Bulb?

Whenever I got a chance, I read "The Illustrated Weekly of India" in 1970's as a schoolboy. My father either got them from where he worked or from 'raddi' (रद्दी) at M/s Chougule grocery store at Miraj (मिरज).

I still remember its coverage of India's victorious cricket tour of England in 1971. Raju Bharatan wrote the story that had some luscious pictures of England's green-top wickets where English fast bowler John Price knocked out stumps of a couple of India's batsmen and Eknath Solkar (एकनाथ सोलकर) took some breathtaking catches at forward shortleg.

I knew Khushwant Singh was TIWI's editor in 1970's but I never read his column then. However, I always stopped by and gazed at Mario's illustration on the "Editor's Page"...a pile of books, a bottle of scotch, and a girlie magazine...It was so funny and yet intriguing...

I never sought them but I kept coming across Mr. Mario's pictures. When they were big and complex, I read them like a matrix- first by rows -left to right and then by columns- top to bottom. I didn't want to miss out any detail. It was like reading the frontpage of a newspaper.

I never considered him a great cartoonist like Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे), Abu Abraham and R K Laxman- his contemporaries- but he never failed to make me smile.

English 'Ralph Darnell' is NOT scarce. Marathi 'Plaseecha Ranasangram' of D B Mokashi is!

Curtis White:

"We know that the major players are positioning themselves for a very uncertain future, but there are really only two major players, Amazon and Google. Everyone else is trying to figure out the best way to go bankrupt or to become something else, not publishers, God knows, but “content providers” for whatever word vessels the future will offer. From their point of view, the book was just a “platform” that had its day but it’s done now, and so what?" (October 21 2011)

Mike Dash:

"For me, it’s the history that exists beyond the margins and the textbooks and what we normally consider to be history"

(FiveBooks Interviews, December 7 2011)

Once in six months or so I visit 'Varada Prakashan' (वरदा प्रकाशन) in Pune to buy books.

Last time I was there, in August 2011, one of the books I bought was:

"Plaseecha Ranasangram" Author: Colonel Meadows Taylor, Narrator Di Ba Mokashi, August 1974 ("प्लासीचा रणसंग्राम", लेखक: कर्नल मेडोज टेलर, निवेदक: दि बा मोकाशी)

The book is based on 'Ralph Darnell' by Meadows Taylor, 1865.

Mr. Taylor became very famous for his book 'Confessions of a Thug', 1839. The book became a best seller in 19th century Britain. (More on it at the end of this post.)

That book was translated into Marathi as 'Thagachee Jabanee' (ठगाची जबानी ) by Prof Va Shi Apte (वा शि आपटे ). It made waves even in Marathi, running into two editions. Mokashi mentions in his preface how he as a kid enjoyed reading it.

I did not know who Colonel Meadows Taylor was but I have always liked whatever DBM has written. 'Plaseecha Ranasangram' was no exception.

Among other things, the book informs us the extent to which the British empire was built on deception in this country...Robert Clive constantly reminding me of Tony Blair.

On the back cover of Marathi book, publisher says:

"...मूळ कादंबरी 'राल्फ डार्नेल' अत्यंत दुर्मिळ आहे ..."

(...The original book 'Ralph Darnell' is very scarce...)

Not really.

Thanks to the internet- Google Books, Archive.org- 'Ralph Darnell' is not scarce any more. But what is scarce is Mokashi's Marathi book!

I wonder whether Varada Prakashan will reprint it once the current print of 1995 is sold out.

I was looking for six volumes of Rajaram shastri Bhagwat's (राजरामशास्त्री भागवत) literature edited by Durga Bhagwat (दुर्गा भागवत) published by Varada. Mr. Bhave told me how it took decades for them to sell out the last edition of R Bhagwat's literature and that it was very unlikely that he would publish them again.

The late D B Mokashi is one of the best Marathi writers of 20th century and many of his books are not available in bookshops and almost none of them is availabe in softcopy format.

I have already argued here that Marathi and the other Indian languages need Google books far more than the English and others.

My conviction is now even stronger.

from : Confessions of a Thug

p.s.

Mike Dash, the author of 'Thug' 2005, quoted at the top of this post, says this about 'Confessions of a Thug' by Meadows Taylor:

"...These early accounts influenced the way in which Thuggee was perceived, both in India and elsewhere. They were expanded on in a hugely successful contemporary novel entitled Confessions of a Thug written by Meadows Taylor, a British officer based in Hyderabad. Taylor turned his own experiences of the anti-Thug campaign into what was widely acclaimed as the greatest ‘chiller’ of its day, and his protagonist (a murderer named Ameer Ali, whose ‘confession’ was based on the deposition of a real Thug) was more ruthless, more successful and more free from the pangs of conscience than even the killers whose confessions had peppered the first historical accounts. Ali’s ‘guiltless confessions of multiple murder’ were – a reviewer in the Literary Gazette declared – ‘enough to freeze the blood in our veins’, and Taylor himself was flattered to hear that the young Queen Victoria herself was so impatient to read his final chapters that she could not wait for the pages to be bound, asking that the running sheets to be sent directly to her as they came off the press..."