1879
Phalke's family moved to Bombay when his father joined the teaching staff of the Wilson/Elphinstone College
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.
In a time when many minds were restlessly inventing new devices, often simultaneously, Edison had the knack of making the loudest noise to say " I made this". 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 Edison's Mount Rushmore, the size of the spectacle seeking to ensure him a loud presence in the history of inventions. At the same time, he was taking care of all legalities, buying patents fast. And as a powerful businessman, selling his version of the invention and also ancillary products, and making his place in the houses of the new consumers.
Babaraya at play with the other children. Babaraya:
Who knows the story of Vasudeo Balwant Phadke, the mad dacoit who lived two lanes away from Pune kaka?
Prabhakar: Really?
Babaraya:
They used to call him home to eat, he would sit in their kitchen and eat off so much chivda. He told good jokes, Kaka told me. And he had a wound on his shoulder, that he would always hide with his towel. He said he had hurt himself on the fence one day, but then they got to know, who he really was.
Mandakini(wide eyed): Who was he?
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 a 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 with angry veins. His fingers let go of their role as a pen clutch. They open up begin to flow wildly like pennants in a blue sky. His long fingered hand sweeps the table clean 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.
Like a slow caterpillar, the quiet Vasudeo had been standing in corners, watching the wrestlers at Lahuji's Gajpeth talimkhana for a while. He saw upper caste revolutionaries, including Tilak, had been frequenting this place run by a lowly Mang. They were seeking the pulse of Parsuram, the warrior brahman.. they came to the Mang to find it. And what a fighter he was, Lahuji! And he spoke so well.
Even as the office ate away so many of his precious hours, Vasudeo would make his way to the talimkhana when he could.. and with every conversation made there, with every energetic roll of body he made on the sand there, he was spinning himself his chrysalis.
When the chrysalis finally moulted, a fine angry face with light eyes unfurled itself with glorious creases all over its skin. The printing machines in Pune would go made making his images, soon. He would serve paper no more, paper would serve him.
In one fell swoop, one bearded man had defeated another.. Lytton's Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act were both rubbished, as the lithographic presses found new energy to run and bring out images, and a government clerk took to arms.
When the butterfly-brahman-bandit flew over the landscape on a horse, leading an army of Ramoshis, he was followed by skyfuls of screeching parrots that flew away from the Chitrashala prints.
He wanted no more truck with the ill kept bodies, prone to acidity, of his own community. He would never keep writing in a file again either, he fought, and he lived among those who fought. Their first joyous raid was at the house of a local business man in a village in Pune district..there, in his vault, was the collections of income tax to hand over to the government.
Vasudeo and his army looted the British loot, and decided they would work to give it back to the people.
When two strong men come face to face though they come from the ends of the earth Coleridge
Babaraya:
Did I really tell that story, Baba?
Sarasvati kisses his head:
You were a great storyteller, always.
She looks across at her husband.
Art School teachers are organising public exhibitions.
In 1879, Perstonji received the Viceroy's gold medal for his Head of a Gosain. He had won the overall prize at the exhibition, which went some way in loosening the category of a mere 'native artist'.
25 women artists also participated in 1879, most of them Bengali and married.
