Difference between revisions of "1879"

From PhalkeFactory
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Vasudeo Balvant Phadke pushes the files at the government office he works in, right over the table. He widens and 'wildens' his eyes, till their whites are streaked with red. The Brahman clerk  who has been working at the military accounts department in Pune, for 15 years, becomes a bandit, in the cause of revolution. He leads a band of forty, and charges them with the dream of collecting enough money to found a Hindu Raj.
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In the military accounts department for 15 years now, Vasudeo Balwant Phadke is used to the presence of paper. Plenty of paper, many files, and a pride in knowing how to write in English.
  
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He has learnt wrestling from Lahuji from the Mang community. Lahuji Vastad Salve actually becomes his mentor.  
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That afternoon in the large stone cavern of the office, in that cool darkness, Vasudeo metamorphoses. His hair shrinks first, becomes unruly. Then his toes flow out in curves ending in a flourish of nails. His eyes open wide, then wider, and redden, his fingers clutching his pen, let go and open up and are soon flowing wildly like pennants in a blue sky.  
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The Gaekwad of Baroda is deposed.. he is Maratha originally.
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His hand sweeps across the table and makes all on it disappear, out of sight, under it- the inkpot falling on the papers and all the wretched English that was written on them. The papers astrew on the floor.
  
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Vasudeo's mother is critically ill, delays in departmental procedure over granting leave does not allow him to be at her deathbed. He is enraged.  
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No one notices? Or people just let it be. They know his grievance..he had applied for leave to meet his ailing mother, but the leave application had taken its time touring so many desks, that his mother had died meanwhile.  
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(image suggestion- labryrinth of government department)
 
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When he becomes a bandit, he rallies Ramoshis, and then, Kolis, Bhils, Dhangars.
 
  
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Vasudeo had been learning wrestling for awhile from Lahuji, whose talimkhana(gymnasium) at Ganjpeth in Pune, was very popular among many nationalists seeking to become revolutionaries. Lahuji became something of a mentor to the young Chitpavan Brahman whose hours were eaten by his government job, and who therefore longed to fill those remaning hours with some meaning, some evocation of childhood, some pleasure.
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Wrestling and talking with Lahuji gave him that.
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And when he finally metamorphosed, it was with a desire to find the pulse of Parsuram, the enraged Brahman warrior.
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Vasudeo gathered together an army. Disillusioned with the weakened bodies of his own clan, he gathered the Ramoshis. They raided the house of a local businessman and tax collector for the British.. to steal back some of the Indian wealth from the British..
  
 
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Revision as of 17:08, 11 May 2009

Phalke's family moved to Bombay when his father joined the teaching staff of the Wilson/Elphinstone College

1879-86 Bombay

The Zoopraniscope projector was designed by Muybridge to project glass discs projecting sequences of pictures painted from the photographic series.

First electrified railroad. Arc lamp, Ball-bearing.

The train moves on.

After a time, it enters a cave-like Victoria Terminus, almost as though entering a camera obscura[1], and halts.

A crowd gets off.

Phalke is separated from his family and gets lost.

Darkness descends.

He is alone in a deserted Victoria Terminus, bewitched by the carvings of gargoyles, lizards, lions, tigers, flora and fauna, like in a fairyland.

Suddenly it starts to rain, and everything comes to life.

Streams of water pour out of the stone mouths ofmythical monsters, frothing at the jaws.

Phalke is shaken, shivering with cold, crying for his father in the dark.

But it is in a still unreal twilight outside VT station that a group of boys from the JJ School of Arts sits with hammers and knives, carving out figures on the terraces and the tops. The cotton loaders are teasing a Victoria look-alike, a mad woman at the fountain outside.

Picking up leaves as if to build a nest, small birds move above.

A Victoria enters and drags the woman away by the hair.

A mad dog chases Phalke through a backdrop - streets, railway lines, ships and factories.

He enters a palace and finds the princess stretching her arms and calling his name, and then metamorphosing into a frightening old woman.

With a jerk, Phalke comes awake.

Edison lit up a street in Menlo Park and invited people to see his incandescent bulb. The bulb itself had been invented decades earlier, but this was the first time that such a practical version had been made, moreover, publicly demonstrated. Besides, it was part of a larger system of production.. the Edison generator. Each flamboyant demonstration by the The "Wizard of Menlo Park", was like a private Mount Rushmore, that ensured him a loud presence in the history of inventions.

Ed sign1.jpg

In the military accounts department for 15 years now, Vasudeo Balwant Phadke is used to the presence of paper. Plenty of paper, many files, and a pride in knowing how to write in English.

That afternoon in the large stone cavern of the office, in that cool darkness, Vasudeo metamorphoses. His hair shrinks first, becomes unruly. Then his toes flow out in curves ending in a flourish of nails. His eyes open wide, then wider, and redden, his fingers clutching his pen, let go and open up and are soon flowing wildly like pennants in a blue sky. His hand sweeps across the table and makes all on it disappear, out of sight, under it- the inkpot falling on the papers and all the wretched English that was written on them. The papers astrew on the floor.

No one notices? Or people just let it be. They know his grievance..he had applied for leave to meet his ailing mother, but the leave application had taken its time touring so many desks, that his mother had died meanwhile.


Vasudeo had been learning wrestling for awhile from Lahuji, whose talimkhana(gymnasium) at Ganjpeth in Pune, was very popular among many nationalists seeking to become revolutionaries. Lahuji became something of a mentor to the young Chitpavan Brahman whose hours were eaten by his government job, and who therefore longed to fill those remaning hours with some meaning, some evocation of childhood, some pleasure. Wrestling and talking with Lahuji gave him that.

And when he finally metamorphosed, it was with a desire to find the pulse of Parsuram, the enraged Brahman warrior.

Vasudeo gathered together an army. Disillusioned with the weakened bodies of his own clan, he gathered the Ramoshis. They raided the house of a local businessman and tax collector for the British.. to steal back some of the Indian wealth from the British..

Template:Yearbox Template:C19YearInTopic

1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January-March

April-December

Unknown dates

Births

January-April

May-December

Unknown dates

Deaths

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