मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Anil Kumble’s Team is Largely Brahmin. So was Shivaji’s Ministry..

त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर, 'रामदासांचा उपदेश व उद्योग महाराष्ट्रराज्याला विघातक ठरला काय?', १९४३, 'निवडक लेखसंग्रह', पृष्ठ ३१-३२, १९७७:
"... प्रो. (व्ही. व्ही) जोशांचे 'शेतकरी-राज्य' महाराष्ट्रात स्थापन करणारा शिवाजी सेनापतीखेरीज बाकीचे सात प्रधान ब्राह्मणच का नेमतो?... खरी स्थिती अशी की, शिवाजी जातधर्म , आपपर, उच्चनीच, काहीही न मानता 'अधिकार' पाहून प्रत्येकाकडून काम घेत होता... "

Indian media is angry because Australian media have raked up caste.  

 The Sydney Morning Herald article says: “…The Brahmin caste, which forms only a tiny fraction of India's population, has always dominated the national cricket side. Even today, with the game reaching further and further into the countryside, and the so-called lower orders, the Indian team has a decided flavour with Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, R.P. Singh and Ishant Sharma all Brahmins. Wasim Jaffer is a Muslim, Harbhajan Singh a Sikh, while, of the Hindu players, only Mahendra Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh come from "lower" castes…” 

The other day I read T S Shejwalkar’s article on the importance of work of Saint Ramdas who was a Brahmin. He says:”…seven out of eight members of Shivaji’s 17th century administration were Brahmins…only chief of army was non-Brahmin...” 

Most Hindu Indians are sensitive about caste. Most of them like me marry into their own caste.  Why can’t foreign media talk about it?