Each to the Other Must Seem Futile and Ridiculous...East Is East

Wade Davis, ‘INTO THE SILENCE: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest ‘, 2011:

“…The British climbers admired the Sherpas, but made little effort to understand their world. Younghusband famously said that there were hundreds of Tibetans living at the base of Everest who could have reached the “summit any year they liked. Yet the fact remains they don’t. They have not even the desire to. They have not spirit.” Beetham believed, too, that there was something fundamentally missing in the Sherpa character. He stated, “It has been said that these men could easily reach the top if they themselves really wished to do so. I do not believe it for one moment … they have acclimatized bodies but lack the right mentality.”

Norton wrote that the Sherpas were “singularly like a childish edition of the British soldier. They have the same high spirit for a tough and dangerous job; the same ready response to quip and jest. As with the British soldier the rough character often comes out strongest when up against it in circumstances where the milder man fails.” From Norton this was high praise. He was not a nuanced man when it came to culture, but he recognized courage and authenticity when he saw it.

Of all the men, it was the good doctor Hingston who came closest to sensing something sublime in the Tibetan way of being. Even as Sandy Irvine and the Sherpas made their way up the corridor of the East Rongbuk for the final assault, Hingston, back at base camp, had a remarkable encounter. He recalled in his journal on the evening of May 28: 

This morning I explored a narrow gorge in which a hermit had taken up his abode. I did not approach his cell too closely; but it appeared to consist of a natural cave partially closed in by a stone wall. He was literally buried in the mountains, surrounded only by cliffs and stones and a frozen torrent, which rushed through the gorge. He has been in his cell for three years and intends to stay there for another two. Once a month food supplies are sent him from the monastery; but beyond this he never sees a human being. It is a genuine and I imagine a miserable hermitage in cold and barren mountains at 17,000 feet. Of course he will earn great merit by it and will be considered an especially saintly lama when he returns to monastic life. No doubt he regards our attempt to climb Mount Everest in much the same light as we look on his incarceration. Each to the other must seem futile and ridiculous; yet each in its own way earns merit, and each is no doubt of equal value, the gain being purely moral and spiritual and of little, if any, practical use.

…”

 Artist: Peter C. Vey. July 2000

The Old Man and The Sea

Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, August 2017

What Is Whistler's Mother Doing?

मला जेम्स व्हीस्लर माहीत झाले द ग गोडसे यांच्या लेखामुळे. ह्या पोस्ट्स पहा : एक, दोन, तीन.

त्या   व्हीस्लर यांचे, १८७१ साली काढलेले हे प्रसिद्ध चित्र पहा.

 Whistler's Mother

courtesy: Wikipedia

काय करत आहेत त्या?

Artist: Garrett Price, The New Yorker,  Sept 3 1955

The Godfather@50

#TheGodfather50

Sonny Corleone, Tom Hagen, and others in the family learn of Brasi's demise by receiving a dead fish wrapped in Brasi's bulletproof vest, indicating he "sleeps with the fishes", meaning that Brasi's corpse was thrown into a body of water by Solozzo's and Tattaglia's men.

 

Artist: Lars Kenseth, The New Yorker, October 2018

चिरंजीवि, पण कोणासाठी?...What Do Immortals Say?

अश्वत्थामा बलिर्व्यासो हनुमांश्च विभीषणः। कृपः परशुरामश्च सप्तैते चिरंजीविनः॥ 

Artist: Hartley Lin, The New Yorker, January 2020

अढळ ध्रुवाचा ढळला तारा....Dhruvapada, Is it?

बा सी मर्ढेकर:
"… अढळ ध्रुवाचा ढळला तारा
सप्तर्षींचा चुकला प्रश्न;
..."

Sean Carroll, ‘The Big Picture. On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself’, 2016:

“…A friend of mine, a neuroscientist and biologist, can make individual cells young again. Scientists have developed techniques for taking stem cells in the adult human body, which have aged and taken on some more mature characteristics, and reverse-aging them until they are just like newborn stem cells.

There is a long road from cells to complete organisms. So I asked her, half-jokingly, whether we would someday be able to reverse-age human beings, and potentially keep them young forever.

“You and I are going to die someday,” she mused. “But if either of us has grandchildren, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

That’s thinking like a biologist. As a physicist, I know it doesn’t violate any laws of nature to imagine living beings lasting for millions or even billions of years, so I have no objection there. But eventually all of the stars will have exhausted their nuclear fuel, their cold remnants will fall into black holes, and those black holes will gradually evaporate into a thin gruel of elementary particles in a dark and empty universe. We won’t really live forever, no matter how clever biologists get to be…”

Wikipedia informs:

"...Pleased by his (Dhruva's) tapasya and by his stuti, Vishnu granted his wish and further decreed that the lad would attain Dhruvapada - the state where he would become a celestial body which would not even be touched by the Maha Pralaya, or the final cataclysm..."

courtesy: Amar Chitra Katha

Biman Nath, Frontline:

"...because of the precession of the earth’s axis, the positions of stars in relation to the earth slowly change with time. Since the axis points towards different spots at different times, what is North Star today would not remain so after thousands of years. In fact, after 14,000 years, the star Vega (Abhijit) that shines almost overhead on summer nights now will become the ‘north star’..."

Bombay to Goa@50

 #BombayToGoa50

बॉम्बे टू गोवा या सिनेमाला आज मार्च ३ २०२२ रोजी ५० वर्षे पूर्ण होत आहेत. 

हा सिनेमा मी अनेक वेळा पहिला आहे आणि प्रत्येकवेळी प्रचंड हसलो आहे पण ह्या सिनेमामुळे मला माझी ताईमावशी आठवते. सिनेमाचा कित्येक भाग ती करून दाखवत असे - विशेषतः ललिता पवार यांचा....आणि सिनेमापेक्षा जास्त करमणूक ते बघण्याने होत असे. 

 

Shakespeare, His Sonnets, and American Immigration Officers

Bertrand Russell: The Harm That Good Men Do，1926:

“...It is difficult to think of any instance of a poet who was 'good' at the times when he was writing good poetry. Dante was deported for subversive propaganda; Shakespeare, to judge by the Sonnets, would not have been allowed by American immigration officers to land in New York. It is of the essence of a 'good' man that he supports the Government; therefore, Milton was good during the reign of Cromwell, and bad before and after; but it was before and after that he wrote his poetry - in fact most of it was written after he had narrowly escaped hanging as a Bolshevik. Donne was virtuous after he became Dean of St Paul's, but all his poems were written before that time, and on account of them his appointment caused a scandal. Swinburne was wicked in his youth, when he wrote Songs Before Sunrise in praise of those who fought for freedom; he was virtuous in his old age, when he wrote savage attacks on the Boers for defending their liberty against wanton aggression. It is needless to multiply examples; enough has been said to suggest that the standards of virtue now prevalent are incompatible with the production of good poetry....”

  

“Oh. Wow. Another sonnet.”

Artist: Trevor Spaulding, The New Yorker, October 2015

“Oh. Wow. Another sonnet. Now, say goodbye to your H1B visa application."

वो चाँद खिला, वो तारे हँसे ये रात अजब मतवाली है...Omar Khayyam and Shailendra

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edmund Dulac

तळमळत असून कवी बनणे, श्रीमान योगी बनणे... 17th Century

मराठी भाषिकांसाठी १७वे शतक हे मंतरलेले आहे- शहाजी, जिजाबाई,  शिवाजी, तुकाराम, आणि रामदास ही पाच  महान व्यक्तिमत्व त्यात जगली.

मराठीत '१७वे शतक' असे एखादे पुस्तक लिहायला जायला पाहिजे होते. गेलेही असेल तर मला माहित नाहीये. जेंव्हा ते लिहले जाईल त्या वेळी त्या पुस्तकात त्या शतकाचा सर्वांगीण आढावा घेतला जावा.

माझी तत्कालीन महाराष्ट्राची माहिती ही काही पुस्तकांवर आधारित आहे.

कै. दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे त्यांच्या 'पुन्हा तुकाराम', १९९० मध्ये तो प्रयत्न करतात. पण ते सगळ फारच मोघम आहे. त्यातून आपल्याला एवढ मात्र समजत की १७व्या शतकातील सामान्य माणसाचे जीवन किती कठीण होते (ते केंव्हा नसते?).  "... इ स १६२९च्या दुष्काळात तुकोबांची पहिली पत्नी अन्नान अवस्थेत त्यांच्यासमक्ष तडफडत मेली. देहूतील अनेक नात्याची आणि ओळखीची , इतर लोक , गुरेढोरे सर्वच जीव दुष्काळात होरपळून निघाले...."

रा भा पाटणकर त्यांच्या 'अपूर्ण क्रांती', १९९९ मध्ये लिहतात : "...शिवाजीने रयतेच्या भल्यासाठी केलेल्या गोष्टी सर्वश्रुत आहेत. पण तरीही तेथील सामान्य रयत सुखात होती असे म्हणता येणार नाही... अव्वल दर्जाच्या जमिनीची कमतरता , पावसाची अनिश्चितता , नेहमीच युद्धाचा प्रसंग, २/५ सारा व वतनदारांच्या विविध पट्ट्या , सावकारांचे मोठे दर- अशा परिस्थितीतला शिवकालीन शेतकरी संपन्न असू शकेल का? "

पण याच्याच बरोबरीने आपल्याला खालील एक-दोन गोष्टी पण विचारात घ्यायला लागतील.

दुष्काळ हा भारतासाठी एक मोठा शाप आहे हे खरे पण त्यांची भयंकरता इंग्रजी आमदनी मध्ये प्रचंड वाढली. Jon Wilson यांचे 'India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the Chaos of Empire' , २०१६ वाचून हे समजले की त्याची सुरवात प्लासीच्या लढाईनंतर झाली आणि आधीच्या आणि नंतरच्या भारतीय राजवटी, कशाही असोत,  त्या इतक्या टोकाचे अकाल टाळायच्या. 

"To collect cash from the new territories in Bengal acquired with the diwani, Robert Clive ordered ten companies of troops to march into the countryside and enforce payment. In his two last years as Governor of Bengal, 1766–7, Clive tried to focus the Company’s servants’ attention more emphatically on the goal of collecting revenue, banning officers from engaging in private trade and allowing them a commission on the Company’s private trade instead of private profits. This met with much resistance, and Company servants continued to make fortunes from personal commerce for another twenty years. But the impatient focus on the collection of revenue at all costs undermined the capacity of political authorities in Bengal to respond to economic crises. The consequences were catastrophic... 

... Later British officers saw Bengal as a place peculiarly vulnerable to these malign natural forces. In reality, though, they found it very difficult to find evidence for such a devastating famine in Bengal’s recent history. The last similar event occured in 1574, when the Mughal conquest of Bengal had only just begun. Between then and 1769, the back and forth of Mughal politics ensured ecological shocks did not cause human disasters. Good years created surpluses of food and money, which could then be redistributed to feed people in lean times. Bengal’s little kings and Mughal rulers used their reserves to buy grain, to feed the poor, to accept the late payment of land revenue and lend money to farmers to get them started again if their crops were wiped out. This was not an economy with a high rate of growth, and living standards were poor by today’s standards. But bad harvests, in 1737 and 1738 for example, did not create large mortality rates. India before the British was, after all, a polity where power depended partly on consent, and resistance and flight were options for subjects who did not like the way a ruler behaved. Maintaining political authority needed political leaders to be sensitive to the needs of subjects when their livelihood was under threat. It was that sensitivity the British lacked..."

भारत जवळजवळ १९व्या शतकापर्यंत, इंग्रज स्थायिक होई पर्यंत, जगात आर्थिक दृष्ट्या बलाढ्य राष्ट्र होते. ["...Strachey argued that the Raj was bad for Britain and the British. In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor argues, with equal passion, that it was much worse for India and the Indians. In 1700, when the British were mere traders clinging on to a few coastal toeholds, the Emperor Aurangzeb ruled over a country that accounted for a quarter of the world’s economy. By the time the British left, India’s share of global GDP had sunk to just over 3 per cent..." (Ferdinand Mount, 'Umbrageousness', LRB, September 2017)].

मराठीत एकूणच लिखित इतिहासाची वानवा. त्यात नैसर्गिक घटनांची नोंद आणखी अवघड.

SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days, outshining the most brilliant stars in the heavens.

Dr. Jayant Narlikar writes in his book “The Scientific Edge”, 2003:

"...Our searches did not lead to anything definitive that can stand alongside the Chinese or Japanese notings of the Crab supernova, nor are they even broadly confirmatory, as in the case of Ibn Butan’s records... 

Thus the practice of writing down some fact or idea and preserving it for posterity, common to Europe, China and the Middle East, was not so common in India. Also the practice of debating at length deep philosophical concepts in preference to experiments and observations must have played a role. Even the written material cannot be authenticated vis-à-vis dates, for in some cases portions from earlier manuscripts were simply copied in later ones, presumably because the author felt that it would enhance the overall credibility of the entire text. In other cases, portions were added later and made to appear to be from the original text. This was done presumably so that the later insertions would command the same authority as the original text..."

तेंव्हा १७व्या शतकातील महाराष्ट्राच्या पर्यावरणात कोणते आणि किती बदल झाले याबद्दल मी तरी अजुन वाचलेले नाही. 

१७व्या शतकावर लिहले गेलेले इंग्लिश मधील पुस्तक 'Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century' by Geoffrey Parker, २०१३ च्या परीक्षणात, डेव्हिड पॅरट 'लंडन रिव्यू ऑफ बुक्स' (LRB) मध्ये लिहतात:

"Contemporary accounts leave little ambiguity about the character of the 17th century. Natural disasters, warfare, political unrest and rebellion combined to bring about levels of mortality, destruction and collective trauma unmatched until the mid-20th century. The confessional conflicts, rebellions, plagues and famines of the 16th century were mild by comparison ..."