Praj > Recent Status Updates

Let us find salvation in a simple statement from an ordinary person: Practice is the sole criterion of objective truth

I long to shout : “Mind your own business! Let us wait patiently for our counterparts. Even waiting in vain is better than loveless marriage. To live single is not such a fearful disaster. I believe it may be a sign of a step forward in culture, education and the quality of the life.”

Why the hell is my homepage looking like as if someone just dumped a pile of garbage and turned my room upside down !!.... GR just does a fantastic job of keeping me away from reviewing books on this site!!

..... he read once, something about an artist hanging a row of bananas from a rack along the wall, how all the bananas were painted white, so they all looked identical, and how they were all artificial, except for one, and how once the exhibition opened, one banana, the real one, of course, began to rot, thereby revealing its true face, while the others, the artificial ones, of course, stayed white and pristine.

Take an apple, for example, or any other fruit or vegetable that rots, that withers, shrivels, and wrinkles, as human bodies wither, shrivel, and wrinkle more and more as they age, so that rotting can be considered the lowest common multiple of all fruits (or vegetables), just as people too are only really revealed in decline, he thinks.

Geez…Goodreads!!! Only a week left for X’mas and you spring this ghastly surprise on my poor eyes! Me thinks….. I prefer the burnt coal in my stocking than sway some ‘Lato’ over crumbling ‘Merriweather’…

So, I have Kawabata’s ‘The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa' opened in front of me and the iTunes is looping tracks of New Kids on the Block and Camille Saint-Saëns....imma crushing on Kawabata all over again like a teen on newly found hormones.....muy loco!!!

Sayeed is a poet, a very heartless poet. If he catches a chicken, he won’t slaughter it but will wring its neck. Once he’s done with that, he’ll pluck out its feathers and make soup. Once he’s drunk the soup and gnawed on the bones, he will retire to a corner to write a poem about the chicken’s death, crying profusely as he writes.

Manto‘s restrained yet scandalous textual pitch fascinates me.

'Love'... What a beautiful word! She wanted to smear it all over her body and massage it into her pores. She wanted to abandon herself to love. If love were a jar, she would press herself through its opening and close the lid above her. When she really wanted to make love, it didn’t matter which man it was. She would take any man, sit him on her lap, pat his head, and sing a lullaby to put him to sleep...

I don’t long for an eternal, perfect love anymore. It’s not that I have stopped in believing in it. The two times in my life I could’ve had eternal, perfect love both wilted on the vine. I’ve ripened, wilted, fallen....... But even if I only blossomed for a split second, I blossomed fully. Now all I have left to do is accept and face the facts about these two cripple loves. Because I’m still alive.....

On women and literature, the two paramount concerns, Ding Ling wrote:- “When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’ and raise it specially?” (1942).

“The story I read was about a man getting rich.”
“There is one about a man getting rich, and he goes by a bridge and there……”
“He doesn’t buy a bridge. He buys a dream.”

When finally I did see those thousands of cars in Tokyo, moving along the streets and the elevated expressways without a sign of war anywhere, I cursed myself. For thirty years on Lubang I had polished my rifle every day. For what? For thirty years I had thought I was doing something for my country, but now it looked as though I had just caused a lot of people a lot of trouble.

The heart is split in two, irresolute between its desires. Yet the boat has to advance ... night or day are merely shifting veils to be traversed. Advance with fierce courage. Not for the sake of men. For the sake of insoluble riddles. In utter secrecy the heart is split in two.....

I'm in love with Vesaas! He sits right next to Kawabata. Can these men ever go wrong with their words.....

...faute de mieux, to seduce the hotel chambermaid, named Terez or something of the sort. I banged her hard a few times with a condom, because she had quite a tight vagina. Her virginity had been taken two years before by the spa’s Dr Mahler......

“coitus”...virgins....morphine...leisure fucks.....chambermaids.....possible suicide.....masturbation....arsenic..... Csath makes me miss Henry Miller!

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said. “Pay your respects to our new Ruler."

On the third day, a widow came in with complaints of tubercular toxicosis. I soon put her on iodine-potassium (IP) treatment and fattened her up nicely. Her condition improved surprisingly, and she bade me farewell with overflowing gratitude. That was the first success. I considered it a good omen that my first patient suffered from a disease I had already learned to cure.

One question remained unanswered: Had there been a struggle the first time she kissed the clay doll? She recalled how she had raised the clay doll to her lips, then flung it to the floor, shattering it, leaving the two bumps that had been on the chest looking up at her haughtily. (Curvaceous Dolls)

It was a minor incident that occurred during the days of my now lost radiant youth. I was quite young then, a period that should have witnessed the flowering of my youth; but all I possessed were a few translations of novels I'd bought in some bookstore and a prince on a white horse who existed only in my dreams.

Want to know how I managed to become what I am today? By nurturing that hatred. It’s the prize of human capital. You can forget your mother and father, but you must never relinquish your hatred.

The final cut—the coup de grace—entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the color and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade. The strong smell of that blood once again made Zhao nauseous. He cut out a piece of the heart with the tip of his knife and, with his head slumped, announced to his feet:“May it please Your Excellency, the five hundredth cut.”

Five Dragons couldn’t help but wonder if he had finally found the haven that would bring an end to his wanderings. Mounds of snow-white rice; beautiful and desirable women; trains on one side; steamships on the other, the centre of town, yet within the sight of industry; surrounded by people and wealth.The dream of every man from Maple-Poplar Village was within his grasp.A private utopia was taking shape in his mind.

Red-eyed and foaming at the mouth, he thrashed around like a mad ox...every show of strength drew approving roars from the crowd, which further emboldened him. Finally they were able to tie him down on the wooden block, with First Aunt holding down his head and Second Aunt his legs. He fought us at every turn, flailing his arms, kicking with body in all directions like a snake,even arching his back like an inchworm..

He had already set a pattern of wanting her when he returned from the slaughterhouse in the morning. The only question was how often. During the “honeymoon” period she had been forced to endure her man nearly every other day. Occasionally, the intervals were even shorter and he might want her several times in a single day. Always he would reach for her when she was least prepared.....he simply didn't care.

..anyone not of our profession could not detect the alternate. But Little Insect released a tortured cry, shrill and forceful, one that would have put the howl of a wolf in the zoological garden to shame.Knowing that this was a sound the Emperor and His women loved to hear, we kept it up, subtly tightening and loosening—no longer involved in putting a man to death, we had become conductors producing exquisite music.

He has been criticised for having popularised the fashion of the long silhouette in women and giving these figures unrealistic proportions.... but his portraits of women, with their distorted proportions, remain works of an art which is marvellous and eminently Japanese.

Gun’Prostitute (Teppo),“Five Shades of Ink in Northern Quarter(1794-95)

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity.

The sound of myriad cicadas swirls and echoes through the woods. You wonder. An image unfurls in your mind. A nameless monk lies dead in the hills- a heap of decaying bones and rotten flesh, his tongue still wriggling in his skull, repeating the holy scriptures. “Namu-myohorenge- kyo, namu-myohorenge- kyo....."

The sound of myriad cicadas swirls and echoes through the woods. You wonder. An image unfurls in your mind. A nameless monk lied dead in the hills- a heap of decaying bones and rotten flesh, his tongue still wriggling in his skull, repeating the holy scriptures. “Namu-myohorenge- kyo, namu-myohorenge- kyo....."

"Why is GR hellbent on defacing my profile page! I'm getting confused with the "people I follow" and "authors I follow". I already have my list of Favourite Authors. I'm not that smart !"