Mona Lisa in Mera Naam Joker. Not Kseniya Ryabinkina,

I don't think I have been to a circus show for more than 20 years now but once circus was such an integral part of my life.

I loved the late Damu Dhotre's (दामू धोत्रे) book and that of S S Karlekar (शि. शं. कार्लेकर), particularly the latter, which I must have read dozens of times. The copy we had was a hardcover edition.

As I have said earlier, I adore 2/3rd of Raj Kapoor's 'Mera Naam Joker' that was released on December 18 1970.

The circus scenes from the film were captivating. Music that accompanied them was outstanding. Ms. Kseniya Ryabinkina too was not bad. Much better than Padmini anyway.

Now imagine Mona Lisa instead of Ms. Ryabinkina.

Artist: Maciej Urbanjec, 1970

Courtesy: The Vault, Slate's history blog

Circus posters I have seen in India were good but I never thought they were art. 

"These circus posters come from an unlikely flowering of artistic expression in Communist Poland. The visual style of the Polish School of Posters, funded and sponsored by state commissions, was characterized by vibrant colors, playful humor, hand-lettering, and a bold surrealism that rivaled anything similar artists in the West were doing at the time..." 

When There Were No Wikipedia and Google...and Now That They Are Here...

1> I came across the following in M. V. Dhond's (म. वा. धोंड) book 'Aisa Vitevar Dev Kothe!' (ऐसा विटेवर देव कोठें!), 2001, page 29 :

"...आधुनिक युरोपीय आणि आधुनिक आर्यभारतीय भाषांत 'ज्ञानेश्वरी' हा ग्रंथ सर्वांत प्राचीन. …आधुनिक आर्यभारतीय भाषांतील उडिया व असामी या भाषा सर्वात जुन्या. उडियातील सारळादासचे 'महाभारत' चौदाव्या शतकातील, तर असामीतील शंकरदेवांचे  'रामायण' व 'भागवत' हे ग्रंथ पंधराव्या  शतकातील… "

One feels proud reading the first sentence but I found three errors (blunders?) in the last statement. Corrected, it should read:

"...उडियातील सारळादासचे 'महाभारत' पंधराव्या  शतकाच्या उत्तरभागाचे,  तर असामीतील माधोब कोंडोलीचे 'रामायण' हा ग्रंथ चौदाव्या  शतकातील..."

(Sarala Dasa’s “Mahabharat” in Oriya belongs to second half of the 15th century and Madhava Kandali’s “Ramayana” in Assamese is from 14th century....)

[I am working on Dhond's another major error regarding R D Karve (र. धों कर्वे) and Margaret Sanger. I will write about it some time this year.]

2> Durga Bhagwat (दुर्गा भागवत) is quoted as follows:

"...या व्हिक्टर ह्युगोचंच एक नाटक आहे 'लुई दि फोर्टिन्थ' म्हणून. या नाटकातील फ्रान्सचा हा राजा अत्यंत बदफ़ैली. तेव्हाच्या पद्धतीनुसार त्याच्या दरबारात एक विदुषक होता. त्याला एक मुलगी होती. अतिशय सुन्दऱ्र. ती लुई राजाच्या नजरेस पडू नये म्हणून तो सतत खबरदारी घ्यायचा. पण एकदा लुई तिला बघतो आणि तिच्यावर बलात्कार करतो. हे कथानक तेंडुलकरांच्या 'घाशीराम कोतवाल' या नाटकाच मूळ. १४ वा  लुई आणि त्याच्या विदुषकाऐवजी नाना फडणीस आणि घाशीराम वर त्यांबी नाटक रचलं..."

[page 136 of the book- "Aaipais Gappa: Durgabainshi" (ऐसपैस गप्पा: दुर्गाबाईंशी) by Pratibha Ranade (प्रतिभा रानडे) , 1998]

This is good to know except the fact that Victor Hugo never wrote a play called "Louis the fourteenth"! He wrote the play Le roi s'amuse, 1832 that resembles Tendulkar's play and there is no Louis in it...there is Francis instead!

 

'Le Roi s'amuse' by John Singer Sargent, 1882

3> Now I wish to narrate something about which I am deeply embarrassed. It also proves how one has to be careful in getting the information from the internet.

B S Mardhekar  (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर) wrote following untitled poem included in his book 'Mardhekaranchi Kavita' (मर्ढेकरांची कविता), 1959/1977:

"सुखदुःखांचे गळे कापुनी
मळे पिकविले वर्षांनी तरि,
रवंथ काढी कुढ़या मनाची
जुनाच भाकड़-कडबा हा वरि.

कुड़ीकुड़ींतिल भाव लाळला;
आचळ धरिती पातळ आशा;
अधू मनाची दुडकी कुठवर-
जमेल तर ही जिथवर भाषा,

-अणि पांगल्या गाई जगभर
गोमुत्राने पावन अंबर!"

Dhond called me some time in 2003 and asked me if I knew this poem. I did...
How did I like it? I liked it, particularly the last two lines....
Did I understand it? I had no clue!

He explained to me what Mardhekar probably meant.

Mardhekar is making fun of  US-led multinational forum (गाई जगभर) - San Francisco Conference- that was held in 1945,  the plane called “Sacred Cow” (Air Force One) used by the then American President Harry S. Truman to attend it (गोमुत्राने पावन अंबर) and the conference's (led by USA) lofty aim to reshape (manipulate?) the world  .

President Truman and Wife Boarding Sacred Cow 1946

I congratulated Dhond on his impeccable timing because US had invaded Iraq that year, again by brazenly manipulating UN. We all now know how brazen and with what consequences!

I did some googling and sent Dhond some info that I thought was relevant to the subject. Dhond included that  in his essay for Lalit Diwali (ललित दिवाळी) 2003:”Gomutrane Pavan Ambar!” (गोमुत्राने पावन अंबर!).

 Lalit, Diwali 2003

Earlier he had thanked me for the information with this letter dated September 8 2003:

I realized later, after Dhond's death, that I had sent him partly erroneous information!

Along with other things, I had told him that the plane 'Sacred Cow' was later given to UN and it crashed in Congo, in 1961, with 2nd Secretary-General of the United Nations Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld on board, under suspicious circumstances.  

The plane that crashed that day was NOT 'Sacred Cow'...Media making fun of 'Sacred Cow' was correct...

I had gathered all that information from the internet!

Goya @270...Even in India, He Seems So Close to Our Reach ...

Today March 30 2016 is 270th Birth Anniversary of Francisco Goya

Robert Hughes writes in his much lauded book 'Goya', 2003:

"...The main reason that I started thinking about Goya with some regularity lay in the peculiar culture whose tail end I encountered when I went to live and work in America in 1970. It had almost been eviscerated of all human depiction. Of course it had plenty of human presence, but that was another matter. Here was America, riven to the point of utter desolation over the most bitterly resented conflict it had embarked on since the Civil War. Vietnam was tearing the country apart, and where was the art that recorded America’s anguish? Well, there was art—most of it, with a few honorable exceptions like Leon Golub, of a mediocre sort, the kind of “protest” art more notable for its polemics than its esthetic qualities. But in general there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that came near the achievement of Goya’s Desastres de la guerra, those heartrending prints in which the artist bore witness to the almost unspeakable facts of death in the Spanish rising against Napoleon, and in doing so became the first modern visual reporter on warfare. Nor did there seem to be any painting (and still less, any sculpture) produced by an American that could have sustained comparison with Goya’s painting of the execution of the Spanish patriots on the third of May, 1808. Clearly, there were some things that moral indignation could not do on its own..."

Now imagine what all we missed by not having our own Goya in India....

...imagine him painting cruelty of the practice of Sutti...Indian Rebellion of 1857...Jalianwala Bagh....hanging of Bhagat Singh....exploitation of Dalits....decadence and opulence in Indian palaces...romance of Indian railways...light and colours of Diwali/Holi...Nautch girls...first showers of monsoon...

(By the way- I have already fantasized about his presence at an important political event in India here: "

शनिवारवाड्यात गोया!")

 Goya’s ‘Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga’ (1788)

"...Even while he was following the protocols of aristocratic portraiture, Goya just couldn’t stop himself noticing — and depicting — all sorts of extraneous and revealing sights. Cats, their eyes bulging with ferocious greed, wait to pounce on the pet bird held on a string by the dandified toddler, ‘Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga’ (1788). There are such subversive undertones and notes of sardonic comedy to many of his pictures..."
(The Spectator, UK, October 10 2015)

Robert Hughes again:

“...Goya was a mighty celebrant of pleasure. You know he loved everything that was sensuous: the smell of an orange or a girl’s armpit; the whiff of tobacco and the aftertaste of wine; the twanging rhythms of a street dance; the play of light on taffeta, watered silk, plain cotton; the afterglow expanding in a summer evening’s sky or the dull gleam of a shotgun’s well-carved walnut butt. You do not need to look far for his images of pleasure; they pervade his work, from the early tapestry designs he did for the Spanish royal family—the majas and majos picnicking and dancing on the green banks of the Manzanares outside Madrid, the children playing toreadors, the excited crowds—right through to the challenging sexuality of The Naked Maja.

But he was also one of the few great describers of physical pain, outrage, insult to the body... Goya truly was a realist, one of the first and greatest in European art...

 

...Most of the Spanish artists who were Goya’s contemporaries—Agustín Esteve, Joaquín Inza, Antonio Carnicero, and others—left no trace of opinions about society and politics in their work. They were craftsmen; they made their likenesses, did the job expected of them, and that was all. Goya was a very different creature; he could see and experience nothing without forming some opinion about it, and this opinion showed in his work, often in terms of the utmost passion. This, too, was part of his modernity, and another reason why he still seems so close to our reach, though we are separated by so much time..." 

Poker Night Never Ends: Tennessee Williams @105

Today March 26 2016 is 105th Birth Anniversary of Tennessee Williams

 John Lahr, ‘Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh’, 2014:

“…Sexuality brought Williams down to earth and into life. “What do you expect to get from this sort of life?” Stanley asks Blanche about her promiscuity, in the first version of Streetcar. “Just life,” she says. Sexuality also called all absolutes into question. “The truth of the matter is that all human ideals have been hats too big for the human head,” Williams wrote in his diary in 1942. “Chivalry—democracy—christianity—The Hellenic ideal of Intellectual purity (the one I find most appealing)—all too big a hat!”…”

I feel Marathi stage owes a  debt to Mr. Williams.

Without  his plays 'A Streetcar Named Desire',  1947 and  'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ', 1955, there would perhaps be no Marathi plays like Vijay Tendulkar's  (विजय तेंडुलकर) 'Sakharam Binder', 1972 & Jaywant Dalvi's (जयवंत  दळवी ) 'Barrister' (बॅरिस्टर ), 1977 , 'Purush' (पुरुष), 1982.

Poker Night ('A Streetcar Named Desire'), 1948  by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), the Whitney Museum NYC

"Poker Night captures the sexual tension and violent undertones in the relationships between Blanche DuBois, a down-and-out Southern belle (holding up a mirror), her sister, Stella (leaning over the armchair), and Stella’s husband, the hot-tempered, childlike Stanley Kowalski (wearing a white undershirt). It documents one of the play’s most dramatic and memorable moments, when Blanche taunts a drunk and angry Stanley with her petty provocations and refined airs."

This picture makes me wonder why, in India, we don't have paintings capturing a slice of a great play or a movie from 20th century. We have such paintings for Indian mythology drawn by the likes of  Raja Ravi Varma or Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi or T.V. Subramaniam (Maniam).

For instance staging of 'Samyukta Manapman' (संयुक्त मानापमान) on July 8 1921,  featuring two greats Keshavrao Bhosale (केशवराव भोसले) and Bal Gandharva (बाल गंधर्व),  was one of the greatest events on the cultural map of 20th century Maharashtra. It can only be compared to the rock star concerts in today's era. It's said that if the play were to be performed in open air, the ticket collection could been as much as Rs. 1 lac.   

(Gold price was $20.67 per ounce at the end of 1921, in March 2016 it's $1218.7...Therefore Rs. 1 lac then would be about Rs. 60 lac today...for just one performance of a Marathi play!)

And yet there is no great painting based on that performance!

My First Decade With Wikipedia

Today March 20 2016,  I complete 10 years of my association with Wikipedia: one of the best things to have come out of World Wide Web. Find me on it here.

courtesy: Wikipedia

I am just grateful to Wiki for all it has done to educate and entertain me. I

I also feel good that I have given back a little to it-  not monetarily but contribution wise.

I have created these pages on it:

Vasant Sarwate,
T S Shejwalkar,
 M V Dhond,
D G Godse,
Y D Phadke,
Richard decker, 
S D Phadnis,

and edited following pages:

Vilas Sarang,Setu Madhavrao Pagdi, Govindrao Tembe, Raghunath Karve, Thomas Daniell, Chon Day, Peter Arno, Helen E. Hokinson, Pandurang Sadashiv Sane, Mastani, Ibrahim Khan Gardi, Bal Sitaram (B. S.) Mardhekar...

I also had created a page on my father: Gopal Dutt Kulkarni who deserves it considering his contribution to journalism and literature but the page was deleted because of conflict of interest....

These days I keep visiting it every day but don't do any editing or creating. It's largely because I spend all my energy on the Facebook pages I have created.

 courtesy: Facebook