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."

Sunday, August 22, 2010

If Barack Obama is a Muslim, so was J L Nehru!

According to Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 18 percent of Americans recently polled believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.

I have often wondered how similar, many prosperous Indian middle-class and right-wing Americans are: Obsessed with Islam and mosque. Babri or WTC. One demolished, one yet to be erected.

I was privileged to attend Narhar Kurundkar's (नरहर कुरुंदकर) many public lectures in Miraj during yearly Vasant Vyakhyan Mala (वसंत व्याख्यान माला) in later half of 1970's. [Our teacher Vasantrao Agashe (वसंतराव आगाशे) worked tirelessly for the event every year.]

Once Kurundkar told his majority Brahmin audience that he was now going to praise Mahatma Gandhi knowing fully well that his audience disliked, if not hated, Gandhi! (Kurundkar was a staunch Gandhian but he was happy that Pakistan was created.)

As I have noted earlier, in Brahmin Marathi middle-class homes, seldom a family gathering perhaps passes without tongue-lashing at either Muslims or North Indians or affirmative-action or all of them.

If a Pew poll were to be taken about J L Nehru among Brahmin Maharashtrians in late 1940's, 18% would surely have said Nehru, and even M K Gandhi, were Muslims!

While reviewing "Voyager" By Stephen J. Pyne, Prof GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS notes with disappointment:

"...It remains to be seen whether today's intellectual legacy will be as impressive. The signs of late have not been encouraging. Witness the recent statement by President Obama's appointee to head NASA, Charles Bolden, who said that his "perhaps foremost" mission is to "engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."..." (WSJ, July 19 2010)

I wonder why Mr. Reynolds doesn't find this encouraging. Sure, many Muslims already know this. But isn't a bit special for them to hear it from the chief of NASA?

If such a statement were to be made by NASA chief about medieval India's contribution to science and technology, he would become a household name. After all isn't NASA more popular and respected- who can forget hoopla over Indian-American Kalpana Chawla's travel in space shuttle Columbia- here than it is in US?

I think Charles Bolden's statement is one of the most matured statements I have read made by a Westerner in high position in recent times. It will surely help US build bridges to Islamic cultures.

As for achievements of Muslims in science, math and engineering, read S. Frederick Starr.

"...In AD 998, two young men living nearly 200 miles apart, in present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, entered into a correspondence. With verbal jousting that would not sound out of place in a 21st-century laboratory, they debated 18 questions, several of which resonate strongly even today.

Are there other solar systems out among the stars, they asked, or are we alone in the universe? In Europe, this question was to remain open for another 500 years, but to these two men it seemed clear that we are not alone.

They also asked if the earth had been created whole and complete, or if it had evolved over time.

Time, they agreed, is a continuum with no beginning or end. In other words, they rejected creationism and anticipated evolutionary geology and even Darwinism by nearly a millennium. This was all as heretical to the Muslim faith they professed as it was to medieval Christianity.

Few exchanges in the history of science have so boldly leapt into the future as this one, which occurred a thousand years ago in a region now regarded as a backwater. We know of it because a few copies of it survived in manuscript and were published almost a millennium later. Twenty-six-year-old Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, or al-Biruni (973–1048), hailed from near the Aral Sea and went on to distinguish himself in geography, mathematics, trigonometry, comparative religion, astronomy, physics, geology, psychology, mineralogy, and pharmacology. His counterpart, Abu Ali Sina, or Ibn Sina (ca. 980–1037), was from the stately city of Bukhara, the great seat of learning in what is now Uzbekistan. He made his mark in medicine, philosophy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, theology, clinical pharmacology, physiology, ethics, and even music. When eventually Ibn Sina’s great Canon of Medicine was translated into Latin, it triggered the start of modern medicine in the West. Together, the two are regarded as among the greatest scientific minds between antiquity and the Renaissance..."

Remember Omar Khayyam (1048—1131) was a poet, rebel and astronomer!

It was he who developed a calendar which had an error of one day in 3,770 years (superior to the Gregorian calendar with an error of one day in 3,330 years). It was based on his amazingly accurate determination of the length of the year as 365.242199 days. The length of the year is currently 365.242190 days... (from Justin Marozzi's review 'Omar Khayyam: Poet, Rebel, Astronomer /His own man' by Hazhir Teimourian for The Spectator, 21st November 2007).

Was he also a tent maker?


Artist: Ed Fisher, The New Yorker, 26 March 1990

My caption: Your calendar is a miracle Mr. Khayyam- but actually I asked you to drop by so we could discuss my daughter's horoscope. They say Mars there may cast an evil eye on her marital life.

p.s This post was published on August 22 2010. And I came across following cartoon on August 24 2010. We waste reams of paper only to discover a Luckovich! Isn't he a modern master? Look at the eyes of the Indian and American frogs in a well...err pot. They reflect their attitudes.


Artist: Mike Luckovich