"...I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room..."
(Raymond Chandler, 'Farewell, My Lovely', 1940)
"Damayanti was the Yadava princess of Vidarbha Kingdom. One day, a beautiful swan came to her and told her about Nala, king of Nishada. The swan was sent by Nala after hearing about her from it. After hearing about Nala, she was impressed with him and wanted to marry him. A swayamvara was organized by Damayanti's father and Nala was also invited. Damayanti chose Nala out of the kings and princes and married. After a few years, they had two children...."
(Maybe swan wanted to marry her too!)
Artist: Raja Ravi Varma
“For the past several years, since shortly after my arrival upon this island of Pandateria, it has been my habit to arise before dawn and to observe the first glimmer of light in the east. It has become nearly a ritual, this early vigil; I sit without moving at an eastern window, and measure the light as it grows from gray to yellow to orange and red, and becomes at last no color but an unimaginable illumination upon the world. After the light has filled my room, I spend the morning hours reading one or another of those books from the library that I was allowed to bring with me here from Rome. The indulgence of my library was one of the few allowed me; yet of all that might have been, it is the one that has made this exile the most nearly endurable. For I have returned to that learning which I abandoned many years ago, and it is likely that I should not have done so had not I been condemned to this loneliness; I sometimes can almost believe that the world in seeking to punish me has done me a service it cannot imagine.
It has occurred to me that this early vigil and this study is a regimen that I became used to many years ago, when I was little more than a child…”
(‘II. The
Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)’, ‘Augustus’ by John Williams, 1972)
(Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine N. Hopper, served as his model)
हा अखंड नंदादीप जळणार, सतत जळणार...
ही अनिरुद्ध पवनचक्की, फिरणार सतत फिरणार...
"The Windmill", 1850s by Jules Dupré (1811-1889)
#Oppenheimer
JAMES A. HIJIYA, "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer", June 2000:
"...Oppenheimer acquired a deeper knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita in 1933 when, as a young professor of physics with interests ranging far beyond his academic specialty, he studied Sanskrit with Professor Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley. The Gita, Oppenheimer excitedly wrote to his brother, was “very easy and quite marvelous.” This is the earliest direct evidence of the impression the book made on Oppenheimer, and a lasting impression it was. Later he called the Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” He kept a well-worn copy of it conveniently on hand on the bookshelf closest to his desk and often gave the book (in translation) to friends as a present. He continued to browse in it while directing the bomb laboratory. After President Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Oppenheimer spoke at a memorial service at Los Alamos and quoted a passage from the Gita. Clearly this ancient book was on his mind as the atomic bomb neared completion, even before he saw the dazzling fireball from the Trinity test. In later years, too, he would look back on the Gita as one of the most important influences in his life. In 1963, Christian Century magazine asked him to list the ten books that “did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life.” Along with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Eliot’s Waste Land, Oppenheimer listed the Gita...."
What did he quote at FDR's funeral service on April 15, 1945:
सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य श्रद्धा भवति भारत |
श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्ध: स एव स: || (अध्याय १७, श्लोक ३)
विनोबा भावे त्याचे रूपांतर गीताई मध्ये असे करतात:
"जसा स्वभाव तो ज्याचा श्रद्धा त्याची तशी असे
श्रद्धेचा घडिला जीव जशी श्रद्धा तसा चि तो "
"The faith of all humans conforms to the nature of their mind. All people possess faith, and whatever the nature of their faith, that is verily what they are."
