व्हिएतनामी वनस्पतींचा टाहो: Agents' Rainbow- Orange, White, Blue, Pink, Green, Purple...

Today March 21 2015 is International Day of Forests. It also is Gudi Padwa (गुडी पाडवा), first day of an Indian calendar and Nowruz, first day of an Iranian calendar.

Michael Herr, 'Breathing In' from 'Dispatches', 1968:

"...At the end of my first week in-country I met an information officer in the headquarters of the 25th Division at Cu Chi who showed me on his map and then from his chopper what they’d done to the Ho Bo Woods, the vanished Ho Bo Woods, taken off by giant Rome plows and chemicals and long, slow fire, wasting hundreds of acres of cultivated plantation and wild forest alike, “denying the enemy valuable resources and cover.”..."

Almost fifty years ago, on March 8 1965, first American ground troops arrived in Vietnam. By the time they left at the end of 1973, an estimated 3 million Vietnamese were killed, including 2 million civilians. Hundreds of thousands were seriously injured and disabled.

However, they were even more devastating for Vietnamese plant life.

George Black explains in The Nation what American invasion meant for Vietnamese natural environment:

"...Although the Romans used to destroy their enemies’ fields, and armies have always bombed and burned adversaries out of their hiding places, there is no real precedent for the systematic use of science and technology to destroy large portions of a country’s natural environment, as the United States did with its herbicide-spraying program in Vietnam. The overall operation was called Trail Dust, but it’s generally referred to as Ranch Hand. Another name that was sometimes used was Hades, and that may be the most apposite of the three...

...Agent Orange accounted for more than 60 percent of the spraying, but actually it was just one in a rainbow spectrum of herbicides, each employing a different cocktail of chemicals and color-coded by a painted band around its fifty-five-gallon storage barrel. Agent White was the second most widely used defoliant, while substantial amounts of Agent Blue were also sprayed, mainly to kill crops by desiccation. Agents Pink, Green and Purple were used in smaller quantities during the early years of the war..."

'The Scream', 1893, 

Artist: Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

courtesy: Wikipedia

Are all Agents captured in Munch's picture?

Artist: Harry Bliss, The New Yorker, April 2014

Did Bhau Padhye Draw Dramatic Pictures 劇画 or Whimsical Pictures 漫画?

No Indian media informed me that Yoshihiro Tatsumi died on March 7 2015. He created a dark, noirish style of Japanese manga he called gekiga, meaning “dramatic pictures". 

Apparently the term gekiga (劇画)- dramatic pictures- was coined by Mr. Tatsumi because he did not like the term manga (漫画), whimsical pictures.

Even in Marathi (मराठी)  there is no agreement on what cartoons should be called: हास्यचित्रे का व्यंगचित्रे? And there are Americans who started calling erstwhile comic books as graphic novels. 

I feel very shy  including Marathi in this discussion because Marathi does not hold a candle to the vast graphic literature that exists in Japanese and English.

I remember, on my first visit to Japan in the 1990's, I was overwhelmed by the huge stacks of manga books in even the smallest of the kiosks in and around Tokyo. I bought one adult manga book. I was not sure if Indian customs would allow it. They never bothered with my baggage.  

The title page of “Unpaid.” 

Artist: Yoshihiro Tatsumi (辰巳 ヨシヒロ)

courtesy: The Paris Review

Imagine if we had the tradition of gekiga/manga in India, what possibilities would have opened up to describe the life in Mumbai? 

One the greatest chroniclers of Mumbai, Bhau Padhye (भाऊ पाध्ये) would be a gekiga artist! Or was he already a  manga artist?

Artist: Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे)

In this caricature, Sarwate seems to have drawn Bhau as 'whimsical picture' 漫画!

Can Germany REGIFT and Not REBUFF Greek Trojan Horse?

A headline in FT in the month of February 2015: 'Germans rebuff Greek 'Trojan horse': 

"Athens' chances of finding itself without an EU financial backstop in one week will come down to a bitter face-off in Brussels today between the Greek and German finance ministers, after Berlin rejected Greece's request to extend its €172bn rescue by six months. 
The German rebuff came just hours after Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, reversed his government's long-held promise to kill the current bailout in a letter to his fellow ministers. But the letter, obtained by the Financial Times , had clauses that Berlin told counterparts amounted to "a Trojan horse" designed by Athens to change the conditions it must meet to receive €7.2bn in aid available for finishing the bailout."

Is rebuffing the only option? How about regifting?

“We could always regift it.” 

Artist:  Christopher Weyant, The New Yorker, February 2015

Here is another one:

Artist: Richard Graham Jolley (RGJ), The Spectator, June 2011

Can You Juggle a Household, Three Kids, and a Career?

Today March 8 2015 is International Women's Day

 “Can you juggle a household, three kids, and a career?”

Artist: Kaamran Hafeez, The New Yorker, January 2015

Punishment for Not Flossing

Today March 6 2015 is Dentist's Day

“I’m not actually doing anything—this is just punishment for not flossing.”


Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker, October 2014

वृषण नव्हे शेपटी: अतिसभ्यतेची कास...Panchatantra's Wedge-Pulling Monkey

Today, March 3 2015, my son Jaydutt turns 21...a big day for him, perhaps but certainly for his mother Anju and me...We encouraged him to read / watch/ listen to lots of classics, we never taught him many so-called morals and tried to show him two sides of most problems...as for profanity, he could not help listening to it because of his father...I was brought up in Miraj where a tail was never just a fucking tail! 

"...शिव्या हा समाजाचा एक अपरिहार्य भाग आहे. शिव्यांना अनैतिक ठरवायचे झाले तर अगदी शेक्सपीअरपासूनचे निम्मेअधिक साहित्य हद्दपार करावे लागेल. सेन्सॉर बोर्डाने चित्रपटांतील शिव्यांवर बंदी घालणे हे मूर्ख मध्यमवर्गीय धर्मनिष्ठतेचे लक्षण असल्याची टीका ज्येष्ठ नाटककार-दिग्दर्शक आणि अभिनेते गिरीश कर्नाड यांनी रविवारी केली..." (लोकसत्ता, February 23 2015)

"मराठी माणसांनी केलेल्या लेखनामुळे कन्नड साहित्य समृद्ध झाले. त्याची परिणती ज्ञानपीठ पुरस्कारविजेत्यांच्या यादीमध्ये दिसते. तर, १९४८ मध्ये झालेल्या गांधी हत्येनंतर अतिसभ्यतेची कास धरल्यानेच मराठी साहित्याने आपला बाज हरवला, असे मत ज्येष्ठ साहित्यिक आणि रंगकर्मी गिरीश कर्नाड यांनी सोमवारी व्यक्त केले." (लोकसत्ता, November 12 2013)

I must have read Panchatantra in Marathi dozes of times during my childhood. Even today I remember every story.

Recently I bought "संपूर्ण पंचतंत्र: प्रामाणिक मराठी भाषांतर" (sampoorna panchatantra: pramanik marathi bhashantar), 1977 by ह. अ. भावे (H. A. Bhave).

I started thumbing through it and came across one of my favorite stories:  'The Wedge-Pulling Monkey', in Marathi 'पाचर उपटणारे माकड'.

The story has this:"...There the monkeys began their playful frolics upon tree-top, lofty roof, and woodpile. Then one of them, whose doom was near, thoughtlessly bestrode the log, thinking: "Who stuck a wedge in this queer place?" So he seized it with both hands and started  to work it loose. Now what happened when the wedge gave at the spot where his private parts entered the cleft, that, sir, you know without being told..."

(from the translation dated 1925 by Arthur W. Ryder)

Now I remembered clearly that the Marathi translation we had stated that the monkey's tail- not penis- was caught in the cleft.

Therefore, I looked up the same story in Bhave's book. It stated:

"....खांबातून पाचर निसटली व त्याचे वृषण फटीत अडकले!…" 

Thank goodness, Bhave's translation indeed is honest (प्रामाणिक) and NOT sanitized!

Artist: Anant Salkar (अनंत सालकर)

Romancing Cosmos...कुसुमाग्रज, Hafez, Italo Calvino and Amar Chitra Katha

Today February 27 2015 is 103rd Birth Anniversary of Kusumagraj (कुसुमाग्रज). It also is Marathi Bhasha Diwas (मराठी भाषा दिवस).

पृथ्वीचे प्रेमगीत:

"...तुवा सांडलेले कुठे अंतराळात
वेचूनिया दिव्य तेजःकण
मला मोहवाया बघे हा सुधांशू
तपाचार स्वीकारुनी दारुण

निराशेत सन्यस्थ होऊन बैसे
ऋषींच्या कुळी उत्तरेला ध्रृव
पिसाटापरी केस पिंजारुनी हा
करी धूमकेतू कधी आर्जव

पिसारा प्रभेचा उभारून दारी
पहाटे उभा शुक्र हा प्रेमळ
करी प्रीतीची याचना लाजुनी
लाल होऊनिया लाजरा मंगळ

परी दिव्य ते तेज पाहून पूजून
घेऊ गळ्याशी कसे काजवे
नको क्षूद्र शृंगार तो दुर्बळांचा
तुझी दूरता त्याहुनी साहवे

तळी जागणारा निखारा उफाळून
येतो कधी आठवाने वर
शहारून येते कधी अंग तूझ्या
स्मृतीने उले अन् सले अंतर

गमे की तुझ्या रुद्र रूपात जावे
मिळोनी गळा घालुनीया गळा
तुझ्या लाल ओठातली आग प्यावी
मिठीने तुझ्या तीव्र व्हाव्या कळा..." (courtesy: current copyright holder of the poem)

I never quite liked Kusumagraj's rejection of the Moon on behalf of earth- तुवा सांडलेले कुठे अंतराळात वेचूनिया दिव्य तेजःकण मला मोहवाया बघे हा सुधांशू- because he (moon) is working with borrowed light.  His earth (she) might choose the Sun in the end but the Moon (whether he or she) sure is a great contender.

Italo Calvino:

“The Distance of the Moon

At one time, according to Sir George H. Darwin, the Moon was very close to the Earth. Then the tides gradually pushed her far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the Earth’s waters, where the Earth slowly loses energy.

How well I know! – old Qfwfq cried – the rest of you can’t remember, but I can. We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous Moon: when she was full – nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light – it looked as if she were going to crush us; when she was new, she rolled around the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind; and when she was waxing, she came forward with her horns so low she seemed about to stick into the peak of a promontory and get caught there. But the whole business of the Moon’s phases worked in a different way then: because the distances from the Sun were different, and the orbits, and the angle of something or other, I forget what; as for eclipses, with Earth and Moon stuck together the way they were, why, we had eclipses every minute: naturally, those two big monsters managed to put each other in the shade constantly, first one, then the other…”

(from ‘The Complete Cosmicomics’, 1965)

courtesy: Hafez, Amar Chitra Katha Studio and its artists on Facebook page

Madhubala Probably Had Good Teeth

Today February 23 2015 is 46th Death Anniversary of Madhubala

Her smile for me is more precious than Buddha's or Mona Lisa's. 

But apparently, in as late as 18th century Europe, the act of smiling, not just smirk but the one showing teeth, was considered improper and radical. "If the slightest curl of the mouth was detected, it was taken as a sign of disdain or disapproval, not of pleasure or amusement."

Another important reason NOT to smile was having bad teeth!

"...The new sensibility of smiling was underpinned by the new science of dentistry (the term dentiste and the toothbrush both being inventions of this period). There were small fortunes to be made patching up teeth and replacing those that had been lost..."

(the quotes above are from Mary Beard's review of the book for The Spectator.)Artist: Sidney Hoff, The New Yorker, December 25 1954

Notice- he has no teeth!

वाऱ्यात उडणारे काळेभोर केस...Mandela from Maharashtra, G K Gokhale

Today February 19 2015 is 100th Death Anniversary of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (गोपाळ कृष्ण गोखले) 1866-1915


A G Noorani, Frontline, May 2 2014:

"...Nelson Mandela’s greatness lay not only in liberating the blacks of South Africa but in taking along the whites and the rest with him. None of the leaders of India had that quality. In the hour of their trial, they all emerged as small men, indeed.

India suffered because it could not produce a Mandela or a Gokhale after Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s death..."

Ramachandra Guha, 'Makers of Modern India', 2010:

"...As a leader of the Congress, Gokhale tried hard to reach out to the Muslims. He was wholly free of sectarian prejudice himself. However, he was regarded as excessively pro-British by militants such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak. His was the classical liberal dilemma—too moderate for the radicals, yet too extreme for the Establishment. One viceroy, Lord Hardinge, called Gokhale ‘the most dangerous enemy of British rule in this country’..."

G K Gokhale, 1904, Pachaiyappa’s College, Madras:

"...There is work to be done for the mass of your countrymen who are plunged in ignorance and superstition. This mass has been kept at a lower level of existence, from which level it has got to be raised. Then there is work to be done for the elevation of the status of the womankind of the land. A whole sex shut out from the intellectual life of a people—this is not good for any country. In religion many of the old institutions are existing only in form and the spirit seems to have fled from them. You have got to recognize that there is work to be done in that direction as well. Further, the whole country is on a low level in regard to political existence and that means arduous work for those who interest themselves in that question. Lastly, the industrial development of the country needs to be urgently attended to. In all these directions there is work to be done..."

लोकमान्य टिळक, 1893 :

 " गोखले हे हुशार आहेत, तरुण आहेत, तरतरीत आहेत हे आम्ही मोठ्या आनंदाने कबूल करतो; पण उतावीळपणा व अविचार हे त्यांच्यामध्ये मोठे दुर्गुण आहेत… "

 ('Agarkar' by Y D Phadke, 1996/ 2002 / 'आगरकर', य दि फडके)


I am not sure about Mr. Tilak's views of Gokhale. Some might say those limitations- impatience and hastiness-  were Tilak's and not Gokhale's!  As Mr. Guha's quote suggests above, I don't think Tilak and Gokhale really were friends. I have a book of Palhad Keshav Atre 1898-1969 (प्रल्हाद केशव अत्रे) where Atre frankly admits how as a Tilak groupie he among many others used to shout slogans against Gokhale in public places in Pune.

But more importantly does any one- other than a few like Messrs Noorani and Guha- remember, let alone celebrate, Gokhale, 100 years after his death? It's to be noted that recently a Marathi cinema on Mr. Tilak's life ('Lokmanya - Ek Yugpurush') was released with a lot of publicity. 

In our class at Miraj High School, Miraj (1969-1975) we had a friend whose name was Gopal Krishna Gokhale. When he told his name, people nodded in appreciation. I wonder, these days, if any one has such a name and even if he does, any one really nods.

Y D Phadke describes Gokhale c 1886 as:

"...गोपाळराव गोखले तेव्हा जेमतेम वीस वर्ष वयाचे. सर्व शिक्षकात वयान लहान. तांबूस गोरा रंग, वाटोळा हसतमुख चेहरा, भव्य कपाळ, वाऱ्यात उडणारे काळेभोर केस. किंचित फुगीर लाल गाल. भरलेली छाती. नीटनेटका पोशख. ऐटीत चालणारे गोखले…" 

("...Gopalrao Gokhale then just twenty years old. The youngest among all the teachers. Brownish fair skin, round smiling face, broad forehead, thick black hair tousled by wind, slightly plump red cheeks, broad chest. Smartly dressed, Gokhale who walked with elan...")

Twenty-eight years later and despite receded hairline bordering on baldness, one can still see some of those features in the picture below.

G K Gokhale and Ratan Tata, c 1914

courtesy: Ramachandra Guha's 'Gandhi Before India', 2013

Love Is Such a Girl Thing to Say...So Say It...

Today February 14 2015 is Valentine's Day

Samuel Beckett:
 "...if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love.."

Darcy: "I love you."

Bart Simpson: "That is such a girl thing to say."

The Simpsons, Season 18, Episode 12 "Little Big Girl"