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."

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

There Also Was Malati Karve...No Woman Wants to be Orphaned by a Cause

Today January 14 2014 is 132nd Birth Anniversary of R D Karve (र धों कर्वे)

Margaret Sanger-  birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse- was just three years older than Karve.

Karve's work has often been compared to her.

M V Dhond (म वा धोंड) has written three essays on Karve. They are part of his book  'Jalyatil Chandra',1994 (जाळ्यातील चंद्र).

In the third essay, he analyses why Karve was not as much successful in his mission as Ms. Sanger and Marie Stopes.

Dhond feels Karve’s mission was not restricted to that of Sanger and Stopes: Happy family life, emancipation of women, control of population.

Karve also wanted women to have as much sexual freedom and sensual pleasure as men.

Dhond claims contemporary society’s objectives were restricted to those of Sanger and Stopes and hence not only Karve’s mission has a whole suffered, he himself was persecuted by society at large. There were other reasons too: Karve’s unattractive personality, poor finances and lack of networking skills.

There is a new book- graphic biography- out on Ms. Sanger's life: "Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story" by Peter Bagge.   

(When will there be a graphic biography of Raghunath and MalatiAmar Chitra Katha might do one but their writing and research are not often 'strong'.)

The book claims: "she had an open second marriage, counted HG Wells among her lovers and continued to enjoy a sex life well into old age.." 


Dan Kois says about Bagge's book for Slate:

"The book is a fascinating testament to the ability of one person to make a difference in this world, as long as she’s a huge pain in everyone’s ass."

It also praises the graphics: "Bagge’s drawing style remains clearly identifiable: His rubbery, expressive characters are just top-hatted and corseted versions of the people who populated Seattle and New Jersey in Hate."


Rachel Cooke reviews it for The Guardian, January 5 2014.


The last paragraph of the review reminded me of the life of Karve's wife, Malati.

"...And then there are the poignant final pages, when she is an older woman, her work done (though the federal obscenity laws that effectively outlawed contraception were not finally overturned until 1970). In a combative television interview, she crumbles and winds up showing her interlocutor pictures of her grandchildren, an act that would have appalled her younger self. Bagge pictures her (once abandoned) son with his head in his hands, unable to watch. But perhaps his horror is braided with a thread of relief. No man wants to be orphaned by a cause, not even a very good one..."
  Artist: Peter Bagge