Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
Sri Aurobindo has written about this in detail - the Western obsession with external form, division, categorization and analytical classification and the Hindu’s opposite tendency to fuse, connect, integrate and universalize to see how it all fits into the patterns of the universal order beyond form. It’s a fascinating difference in focus which has influenced our entire mindset and worldview.
https://x.com/MumukshuSavitri/status/1972249156283740162?t=Vmz7k2bdf_IDc1IicMPiEA&s=19
Dosa? No words, just respect.
It's idli that tastes like steamed regret
https://x.com/Molutty_writes/status/1971453849413222676?t=IOnvWAvE7pzzlnZmPXEGMA&s=19
Poor soul has clearly never had a good one. A truly great idli is a cloud, a whisper, a perfect dream of the perfectibility of human civilisation. It's a sublime creation, a delicate, weightless morsel of rice and lentil, steamed to an ethereal fluffiness that melts on the tongue. With the right accompaniments, it is the culinary equivalent of a Beethoven symphony, a Tagore sangeet, a Husain painting, a Tendulkar century. To call such a thing "regret" is to have no soul, no palate, no appreciation for the finest achievements of South Indian culture. I can only feel pity for @Molutty_writes and @SassyDopamine !
https://x.com/ShashiTharoor/status/1971914611223138664?t=zRZge-YEaMzt9gu4cPGZdQ&s=19
Our ancestors shaped tools for survival: to hunt, to build, to endure. Today, we wield tools of another kind—digital workstations, microphones, libraries of sound. These are not about survival, but imagination. They are our chisels and brushes, carving the invisible into something we can all experience together...
What role, then, does design play? Perhaps it is not the glittering set piece or the dramatic costume change, but the rehearsal itself: the quiet, disciplined process where possibilities are tested, discarded, and reborn. Design is not merely the shaping of objects but of gestures, systems, and relationships.
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=5093790&post_id=173121379
This year marks the centenary of Mohan Rakesh who was one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani ("New Story") literary movement in Hindi literature in the 1950s. He wrote the first modern Hindi play, Ashadh Ka Ek Din (One Day in Aashad) (1958)... Mohan Rakesh’s Aadhe Adhure, a somewhat complex family drama which challenges the very concept of the “family” as we know it... The play explores themes of disillusionment, gender roles, and the false hope of fulfillment through external relationships. Every character appears incomplete, emotionally stunted, unable to communicate, and locked in cycles of blame.
Watching it again after a long gap presented and performed by the young group of performers of Rangakarmee, reinstated the belief in the original idea which reflects the incompleteness of every human being, themselves quite unaware of.
They are perennially angry with themselves as much as they are with the others in the family and even ‘friends’ who step in and out of their lives now and then... The house and its cluttered ambience with clothes, books, belongings strung here and there, is perhaps the principal protagonist of the story as this is the central space where everything happens. It is also a physical example of their scattered and fractured lives...
Agashe performing all the senior male roles suggest that even if the men were different, intrinsically, they may wear different faces and have different personalities, as men,they are all the same.
https://www.thecitizen.in/amp/in-depth/rangakarmees-new-play-1191198
Bartlebooth represents the human desire to impose order on a chaotic world through a self-imposed, arbitrary project, ultimately symbolizing the futility of such control and the beauty found in the attempt itself. His monumental, lifelong endeavor—to paint 500 seascapes, turn them into jigsaw puzzles, reassemble them, and return them to the sea to fade into nothing—is a grand, futile effort to create meaning and understanding from life, a theme explored in Georges Perec's novel Life, A User's Manual.
The Project of Bartlebooth
A Life of Arbitrary Constraint: Bartlebooth's life revolves around a single, self-contained project, a constraint that provides a framework for his existence but has no purpose beyond its own completion.
Painting and Deconstruction: He travels the world for twenty years, painting seascapes of ports and beaches.
The Jigsaw Puzzle: He then sends these paintings to a craftsman to be turned into intricate jigsaw puzzles, which he spends another twenty years reassembling upon his return.
Fading into Nothingness: Once completed, the puzzles are returned to the original ports, submerged in a solution, and returned to Bartlebooth as blank sheets of paper, erasing his life's work and emphasizing its ephemeral nature.
What Bartlebooth Represents
The Human Mind's Quest for Order: Bartlebooth's saga illustrates the human tendency to attempt to bring structure and meaning to the complexities of life through artificial systems.
The Inevitability of Failure: His project, like many others in the novel, highlights the way life often thwarts human efforts to control it, emphasizing the inevitability of failure and the elusive nature of true understanding.
An Exploration of Art and Life: Bartlebooth embodies the artist's vision, a struggle to create, and an exploration of the limitations and frustrations inherent in such an endeavor.
A Metaphor for the Novel Itself: The Bartlebooth narrative functions as a puzzle and a structure within the larger novel, reflecting Perec's fascination with arbitrary constraints as a source of inspiration and art.
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