November has always held a special place in life for me. For reasons that range across various facets like personal, literary, academic, festive.the personal cause of joy got over on the 15th..its now the turn of the literary facet to get its share of attention. picked up a book which is slightly off track from the usual stuff that i read.
"Writing on the wall: India Checkmates America 2017"
General S Padmanabhan PVSM, AVSM, VSM (retd)
Former Chief of the Army Staff (India)
so screamed the cover at the IIT Delhi library. let me deviate a little at this junctureand assert that the KREC library is infinitely better that the IIT Delhi library in terms of the sheer volume of the collection of books, rarity of the collection and also the number of copies of a book. the only place where the IITD library can score over is the air conditioning facility.
back to the book: wildly optimistic. even if u were to take a zillion grams of cocaine+marijuana+LSD+ some of the other stuff that college rock bands consume...(iodex, getting bitten by some variety of snake), such thinking is too wild. imagine a situation where the following happen:
1) indian political parties forget all their diferences and form a national government. no more campaigning is done in the name of caste/creed/religion..instead, issues are debated and surprisingly action is taken on all fronts.
2) indian political foresight and sagacity reaches out to the far corners of the world.
3) india actually starts attacking PoK for every terrorist attack on indian soil....
4) 100% productive research being carried out by the combined DRDO+IISc+IIT front...massive technological advances have been made....india develops its own missile defence shield etc
5) indian intelligence agencies have an eye, ear, nose and lots of skin in various coutries. hell yeah, even the conferences that the Pak prez has with his top generals come down to India...
6) all internal conflicts in the north east and the maoist belt are resolved...
7) Indian Percapita income rises to $1000......(i guess it should be per month...any economics student out there who can correct me if i am wrong?)
it was evident that some other person had read this book and had left the following comment on the front page..."Utter bilge! The true picture of the Indian army and Indian generals emerges in 'Uniformly Crazy (355.312 (lib index number)) resting on this shelf"
My review will not be so caustic. All that I have to say is that incredulous as the book may be, it gives one a chance to strut with a chest puffed with pride atleast during the time one is reading the book...
November has also seen a change in my music taste. Previously I used to label techno music sarcastically as 'takchik takchik' music...donno why but i have gravitated a little after istening to the braveheart techno remix..
i plan to celebrate the end of november with a screening of' sweet november' on the 30th..it can't get better than this..me, charlize theron and keanu reeves...
lemme finish this post with a few out-of-the-ordinary quotes that i have heard
1) 'a devout parsi and "virtual dictator" of bombay, sir pherozeshah mehta was a man commited to protect his "spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch"....'The Hindu, November 21st 2005
2) 'I am very happy that you have all turned up here though there are no attractions like naked women", XYZ company executive during a PPT (pre placement talk)
3) "when i woke up in the morning i felt that was hand was missing..i was like 'wheres my hand?'", Murali Krishnan (former classmate) after sleeping on his hand for a long time and finding that it had gone numb...
Friday, November 25, 2005
Thursday, November 17, 2005
'Czech'mate
Finally, it has happened. The Czech Republic has qualified for the Soccer World Cup finals to be held in Germany next year. Action starts June 9th. I would have finished my course and if things go well, should get a month's break before joining work which would prove heavenly as the world cup ends on July 9th.
back to the Czechs. After the fireworks in Euro 2004 where bloody Greek luck robbed them of a sure title, they struggled a bit in the WC qualifiers and had to take part in the play offs against Norway whom they beat by the identical margin of 1-0 at Oslo and Prague.
The well oiled machine Czech mean machine is sure to mow down a lot many teams. The mere presence of 'Ostrilava's Maradona' Milan Baros, the giant Jan Koller, the talisman Pavel Nedved, the crafty Vladimir Smicer, the energetic and inspirational Marek Heinz, Tomas Rosicky should cause a shiver or two to go down the spine of the other teams in the fray.
Go on boys, make this Indian supporter proud.
back to the Czechs. After the fireworks in Euro 2004 where bloody Greek luck robbed them of a sure title, they struggled a bit in the WC qualifiers and had to take part in the play offs against Norway whom they beat by the identical margin of 1-0 at Oslo and Prague.
The well oiled machine Czech mean machine is sure to mow down a lot many teams. The mere presence of 'Ostrilava's Maradona' Milan Baros, the giant Jan Koller, the talisman Pavel Nedved, the crafty Vladimir Smicer, the energetic and inspirational Marek Heinz, Tomas Rosicky should cause a shiver or two to go down the spine of the other teams in the fray.
Go on boys, make this Indian supporter proud.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Our names and living with them
There is a story about a young brahmachari in an ashram who found his name very disgusting and asked his guru to change it. His guru told him to take a tour of the world and even after that if he wanted to change his name, the guru would change it for him (a la notary)......
Our hero starts off on the journey and comes across many incidents (which i don't remember) and finally comes to a conclusion that a name is only an identifier and not a prototype (software gurus, please forgive me if there is some error here). For example, he comes across a peron whose name means wealthy but is poor, a person whose name means life, but at the time when the young man saw him was being transported for his funeral rites.
The above story showcases a situation in ancient India where the individual was at war with himself, but learns from society. Fast forward to the year 2004-2005 in the capital of India, New Delhi..The settings are all in and around IIT Delhi. These situations showcase how society is very curious to know why one's name is thus and whether any interpretation about the person can be made.......
1) Room #ND16, Shivalik Hostel: This was when my firt year roomie Vasan Churchill was moving into the room. By my own curfews, I generally do not bother about the origin of someone's name unless I can make some nickname out of it, or if something from literature strikes me or if the name is unusually rare. In this case, the name happened to fall in the third category. Added to this he was also carrying pictures of Lord Balaji and was also carrying a Bhagawadgeetha. The conversation went like this: (before anyone gets dobts about the religiosity of the following conversation, i would request you to come with an open mind and just follow the way in which confusion is cleared)..Also, the original dialogue was in Tamil and Hindi. I provide a translated version for ppl to understand...
DK: "Vasan, its nice to see secularism being practised"
Vasan: "Aah....Deepak, I am not a Christian"..
DK: "Then how do you explain the name Churchill..."
Vasan: "My father is a fan of Sir Winston Churchill..Thats how I got the name tagged on..Its not my surname..its a part of my first name..if you go by the rule book of nomenclature, I should be called Vasan Churchill"...
By this time a few more guys had gathered.....
Prashanth: "Lets call him Anna. In any case, everything from Tamil Nadu has some Anna association"....Thats how the tag Anna stuck.
Everyone called him so except for 'the character of a lifetime' Ankur Gupta who guffawed loudly in his Gorakhpuri accent, "Winshton Churchill chutia..ha ha ha ha ha ha (like a villain)"......
2) IIT Hospital: This was when I had gone to be certified that I would be able to swim. Once the medical check up was done, the doc asked me my middle name. Upon hearing the word Sriram, he started filling out Shriram. The following conversation ensued:
DK: "Sir, its SRIRAM not SHRIRAM"
Doc: (puts his pen down) "Where are you from?"
DK: "Bangalore"
Doc: "I don't know what ails you South Indians. You guys do not follow the Sanksrit pronounciation. If its Shriram, why do u write it as Sriram? Beats me"
DK: (wanting to tell him to mind his own business and also to tell him that his so called North Indian Sanskrit itself says that Lord ram is Sriram and Shri refers to goddess Lakshmi..but remembers his med certificate with the doc) "Sir, it should have been as you said. But when my dad was being enrolled at school the clerk made a wrong entry."
Doc: "Oh....so its only a spelling mistake...ok then" (signs with a flourish relishing the thought of a north indian victory over a south indian)
DK: "Thanks a lot sir."
3) PNB Branch, somewhere near Yusuf Sarai: My ex-roomie Vasan had gone to open an account. This amzing conversation took place there
Vasan: "Sir, I would like to open an account"
Official: "Whats your name?"
vasan: "Sir, Vasan Churchill S C......"
Official: (putting his pen down and calling out to all other bank staff) "Listen everyone, come here. Just look at this guy's name. He says its Vasan Churchill. vasan, I can understand is a Madrasi name. there is some madrasi guy in our HQ right? But Churchill?? Dude, you appear like a fraud to me..Please go get your passport"........
vasan: (psyched and irritated): "OK sir"........
Whew........the old sayng went 'Whats in a name?"..But with such nosey parkers around, a name is everything........
Our hero starts off on the journey and comes across many incidents (which i don't remember) and finally comes to a conclusion that a name is only an identifier and not a prototype (software gurus, please forgive me if there is some error here). For example, he comes across a peron whose name means wealthy but is poor, a person whose name means life, but at the time when the young man saw him was being transported for his funeral rites.
The above story showcases a situation in ancient India where the individual was at war with himself, but learns from society. Fast forward to the year 2004-2005 in the capital of India, New Delhi..The settings are all in and around IIT Delhi. These situations showcase how society is very curious to know why one's name is thus and whether any interpretation about the person can be made.......
1) Room #ND16, Shivalik Hostel: This was when my firt year roomie Vasan Churchill was moving into the room. By my own curfews, I generally do not bother about the origin of someone's name unless I can make some nickname out of it, or if something from literature strikes me or if the name is unusually rare. In this case, the name happened to fall in the third category. Added to this he was also carrying pictures of Lord Balaji and was also carrying a Bhagawadgeetha. The conversation went like this: (before anyone gets dobts about the religiosity of the following conversation, i would request you to come with an open mind and just follow the way in which confusion is cleared)..Also, the original dialogue was in Tamil and Hindi. I provide a translated version for ppl to understand...
DK: "Vasan, its nice to see secularism being practised"
Vasan: "Aah....Deepak, I am not a Christian"..
DK: "Then how do you explain the name Churchill..."
Vasan: "My father is a fan of Sir Winston Churchill..Thats how I got the name tagged on..Its not my surname..its a part of my first name..if you go by the rule book of nomenclature, I should be called Vasan Churchill"...
By this time a few more guys had gathered.....
Prashanth: "Lets call him Anna. In any case, everything from Tamil Nadu has some Anna association"....Thats how the tag Anna stuck.
Everyone called him so except for 'the character of a lifetime' Ankur Gupta who guffawed loudly in his Gorakhpuri accent, "Winshton Churchill chutia..ha ha ha ha ha ha (like a villain)"......
2) IIT Hospital: This was when I had gone to be certified that I would be able to swim. Once the medical check up was done, the doc asked me my middle name. Upon hearing the word Sriram, he started filling out Shriram. The following conversation ensued:
DK: "Sir, its SRIRAM not SHRIRAM"
Doc: (puts his pen down) "Where are you from?"
DK: "Bangalore"
Doc: "I don't know what ails you South Indians. You guys do not follow the Sanksrit pronounciation. If its Shriram, why do u write it as Sriram? Beats me"
DK: (wanting to tell him to mind his own business and also to tell him that his so called North Indian Sanskrit itself says that Lord ram is Sriram and Shri refers to goddess Lakshmi..but remembers his med certificate with the doc) "Sir, it should have been as you said. But when my dad was being enrolled at school the clerk made a wrong entry."
Doc: "Oh....so its only a spelling mistake...ok then" (signs with a flourish relishing the thought of a north indian victory over a south indian)
DK: "Thanks a lot sir."
3) PNB Branch, somewhere near Yusuf Sarai: My ex-roomie Vasan had gone to open an account. This amzing conversation took place there
Vasan: "Sir, I would like to open an account"
Official: "Whats your name?"
vasan: "Sir, Vasan Churchill S C......"
Official: (putting his pen down and calling out to all other bank staff) "Listen everyone, come here. Just look at this guy's name. He says its Vasan Churchill. vasan, I can understand is a Madrasi name. there is some madrasi guy in our HQ right? But Churchill?? Dude, you appear like a fraud to me..Please go get your passport"........
vasan: (psyched and irritated): "OK sir"........
Whew........the old sayng went 'Whats in a name?"..But with such nosey parkers around, a name is everything........
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Its a 'Jazz Car' Baby, Abso'fuckin'lutely....
I need to thank Mr. Big of Sex and the City for the above dialogue. Er..not the whole one, only the abso'fuckin'lutely part. The way he says it sweeps Carrie Bradshaw off her feet and had me and many of my friends hooked on to the series.
Now, before you get any ideas that I am going to turn into a bouquet-carrier for S&C, let me tell you that this blog is intended for three things, two of which are related to Jazz and two of which are related to Carnatic music. That means, if you apply De Morgan's theorem for the intersection of sets, you wil find that there is one element which is common to both jazz and carnatic music. A list follows:
1) Sex and the City: for Jazz (about the sex, well it requires an entire blog..will write about it sometime)
2) Morning Raga: Jazz and Carnatic....(the other pillars of this movie Shabana Azmi, Perizaad Zorabain and the singers Bombay Jayashree, Ranjani Ramakrishnan, Sudha Raghunathan, Kalyani Menon, Gayathri, Nandini Srikar, Suneetha Sarathy, Veena and Rajesh Vaidya deserve volumes and volumes of space for the excellent work that they have put in...)
3) Sangeetha Shivakumar: Carnatic
Morning Raga: A very different film to say the least. But I'll confine my writing to only the soundtrack of the movie because 1) i haven't seen the movie 2) because of this review in the NY Times by Anita gates, where she says, "The screenplay doesn't have a shred of subtlety. The strange man who talks to his cow, apparently intended as comic relief, isn't very funny. But the performances of Carnatic music, Southern India's classical form, are heaven"...check out the full review at
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/movies/18raga.html?ex=1142658000&en=c21aaedc59dc060a&ei=5083&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes
The songs are trendsetters in the carnatic-jazz-rock remix field. Listen to these songs guys. They are available at http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/H000765.html
Each song has a unique characteristic. But the underlying theme is fusion. Songs like 'Thaye Yashoda' sung by Sudha Raghunathan and Ranjani Ramakrishnan; 'Mathe' by Sudha Raghunathan and Kalyani Menon; 'Saamaja varagamana' by Gayathri; 'Alaap Jam' by Nandini Srikar; 'Mahaganapathim' by Bombay Jayashree are mindblowing. Apart from this there are instrumentals like 'City Interlude', 'The Chase' and 'Charminar'. The use of Jazz in 'City Interlude' and 'Mahaganapathim Jam' are just awesome. read more about Jazz at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz
Sangeeta Shivakumar: This lady is a revelation in the field of Carnatic music. Her rich voice mesmerises you. She renders even the difficult Ragas with consummate ease. A pity that I haven't atended even a single concert of hers ,my friend Malavika scores over me in this aspect; but as far as listening to her voice on CD goes, i guess the scoreline is in my favour.
Sex and the City: This show is not only about sex, nor is it only about New York City. Its also about Jazz...The subtle use of jazz makes each and every scene a treat to behold (which in any case it is..he he he)
Have always wondered, what is it that makes jazz and cities gel so much together? classical music certainly cannot capture the entire essence of a city..nor can rock.....lets take an example of carnatic music, rock and bangalore. while carnatic may capture the essence of some areas like malleshwaram, rajajinagar jayanagar or basavangudi (grudgingly giving some credit to the home of the rival of MES college (the place where I studied for my 12th), National College); it certainly cannot capture the spirit of Koramangala or MG Road. on the other hand, rock and roll, techno, trance will capture the essence of these areas but fail miserably when it comes to malleshwaram and sutta mutta (as a community on orkut goes)....'sutta mutta' translates to in and around
But jazz....aah..jazz is different..it incorporates the naughtiness, soberity, rebelliousness, modernity, ancientness and most importantly the cultural composite of a city. thats the beauty of jazz....
would certainly like to hear about this from you guys.....
Let me conclude this post with a list of some of the best musical voices that I have heard among my friends/relatives/acquaintances/people i have just seen once....please note that the serial number is just that..a serial number..not a rank
Male:
1) Nagachetan: this chubby disciplinarian was a schoolmate upto 12th....wonderful voice, very particular about the technique and the rules of music
2) Vasu: my colleague at my music class. we have given a couple of performances together. unfortunately he is no more...
3) Mahadevan: my cousin..he's now in the US and is still continuing full time with music. amazing voice..
4) Shakeel: the lead singer of my college rock band
5) The Unknown Singer from CREC: This chap sang 'My Sharona' and 'Highway Star' during Incident in KREC in 2002.....
6) Noel Fernandes: the Pink Floyd expert
7) Keshav Desai: every list needs a rebel in it...though not a singer in the conventional sense, Kesh managed to sing well if u judge him solely by the interest that he shows and the effort that he puts in
Female: this is going to be tough..I may be accused of favouritism..but I steel myself against criticism and barbed comments...he he he
1) Ranjani: my friend from school....guess shes out of touch now, but when in form she was the musical 'Sourav Ganguly' of our school...Dravid's dialogue about Ganguly "On the offside, there is God first, then there is Ganguly" would turn into "On the music scene of SPHS, theres Ranjani first, then the rest"....
2) Shwetha Keshav: If Ranjani is Ganguly, this lady must be the Rahul Dravid of SPHS music....technically superb....
3) Sreedevi: my senior....undoubtedly The Javed Miandad....very good at singing..but i brand her as Miandad for all the games hours that she has made me miss for music practice....but thanks all the same for all the prizes that we won together.....
4) Malavika: She was with me in KREC..her rendition of 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' had all of us guys floored...wonder why she never performed in a musical show after that....
5) Melissa: this female was in Nitte when I was in KREC...she sang a Roxette number 'Sleeping in my car'.....anyone who can sing that certainly has talent..
Now, before you get any ideas that I am going to turn into a bouquet-carrier for S&C, let me tell you that this blog is intended for three things, two of which are related to Jazz and two of which are related to Carnatic music. That means, if you apply De Morgan's theorem for the intersection of sets, you wil find that there is one element which is common to both jazz and carnatic music. A list follows:
1) Sex and the City: for Jazz (about the sex, well it requires an entire blog..will write about it sometime)
2) Morning Raga: Jazz and Carnatic....(the other pillars of this movie Shabana Azmi, Perizaad Zorabain and the singers Bombay Jayashree, Ranjani Ramakrishnan, Sudha Raghunathan, Kalyani Menon, Gayathri, Nandini Srikar, Suneetha Sarathy, Veena and Rajesh Vaidya deserve volumes and volumes of space for the excellent work that they have put in...)
3) Sangeetha Shivakumar: Carnatic
Morning Raga: A very different film to say the least. But I'll confine my writing to only the soundtrack of the movie because 1) i haven't seen the movie 2) because of this review in the NY Times by Anita gates, where she says, "The screenplay doesn't have a shred of subtlety. The strange man who talks to his cow, apparently intended as comic relief, isn't very funny. But the performances of Carnatic music, Southern India's classical form, are heaven"...check out the full review at
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/movies/18raga.html?ex=1142658000&en=c21aaedc59dc060a&ei=5083&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes
The songs are trendsetters in the carnatic-jazz-rock remix field. Listen to these songs guys. They are available at http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/H000765.html
Each song has a unique characteristic. But the underlying theme is fusion. Songs like 'Thaye Yashoda' sung by Sudha Raghunathan and Ranjani Ramakrishnan; 'Mathe' by Sudha Raghunathan and Kalyani Menon; 'Saamaja varagamana' by Gayathri; 'Alaap Jam' by Nandini Srikar; 'Mahaganapathim' by Bombay Jayashree are mindblowing. Apart from this there are instrumentals like 'City Interlude', 'The Chase' and 'Charminar'. The use of Jazz in 'City Interlude' and 'Mahaganapathim Jam' are just awesome. read more about Jazz at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz
Sangeeta Shivakumar: This lady is a revelation in the field of Carnatic music. Her rich voice mesmerises you. She renders even the difficult Ragas with consummate ease. A pity that I haven't atended even a single concert of hers ,my friend Malavika scores over me in this aspect; but as far as listening to her voice on CD goes, i guess the scoreline is in my favour.
Sex and the City: This show is not only about sex, nor is it only about New York City. Its also about Jazz...The subtle use of jazz makes each and every scene a treat to behold (which in any case it is..he he he)
Have always wondered, what is it that makes jazz and cities gel so much together? classical music certainly cannot capture the entire essence of a city..nor can rock.....lets take an example of carnatic music, rock and bangalore. while carnatic may capture the essence of some areas like malleshwaram, rajajinagar jayanagar or basavangudi (grudgingly giving some credit to the home of the rival of MES college (the place where I studied for my 12th), National College); it certainly cannot capture the spirit of Koramangala or MG Road. on the other hand, rock and roll, techno, trance will capture the essence of these areas but fail miserably when it comes to malleshwaram and sutta mutta (as a community on orkut goes)....'sutta mutta' translates to in and around
But jazz....aah..jazz is different..it incorporates the naughtiness, soberity, rebelliousness, modernity, ancientness and most importantly the cultural composite of a city. thats the beauty of jazz....
would certainly like to hear about this from you guys.....
Let me conclude this post with a list of some of the best musical voices that I have heard among my friends/relatives/acquaintances/people i have just seen once....please note that the serial number is just that..a serial number..not a rank
Male:
1) Nagachetan: this chubby disciplinarian was a schoolmate upto 12th....wonderful voice, very particular about the technique and the rules of music
2) Vasu: my colleague at my music class. we have given a couple of performances together. unfortunately he is no more...
3) Mahadevan: my cousin..he's now in the US and is still continuing full time with music. amazing voice..
4) Shakeel: the lead singer of my college rock band
5) The Unknown Singer from CREC: This chap sang 'My Sharona' and 'Highway Star' during Incident in KREC in 2002.....
6) Noel Fernandes: the Pink Floyd expert
7) Keshav Desai: every list needs a rebel in it...though not a singer in the conventional sense, Kesh managed to sing well if u judge him solely by the interest that he shows and the effort that he puts in
Female: this is going to be tough..I may be accused of favouritism..but I steel myself against criticism and barbed comments...he he he
1) Ranjani: my friend from school....guess shes out of touch now, but when in form she was the musical 'Sourav Ganguly' of our school...Dravid's dialogue about Ganguly "On the offside, there is God first, then there is Ganguly" would turn into "On the music scene of SPHS, theres Ranjani first, then the rest"....
2) Shwetha Keshav: If Ranjani is Ganguly, this lady must be the Rahul Dravid of SPHS music....technically superb....
3) Sreedevi: my senior....undoubtedly The Javed Miandad....very good at singing..but i brand her as Miandad for all the games hours that she has made me miss for music practice....but thanks all the same for all the prizes that we won together.....
4) Malavika: She was with me in KREC..her rendition of 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' had all of us guys floored...wonder why she never performed in a musical show after that....
5) Melissa: this female was in Nitte when I was in KREC...she sang a Roxette number 'Sleeping in my car'.....anyone who can sing that certainly has talent..
Sunday, October 02, 2005
We deserve what we have
Some incidents in the last few days have made me think on the lines of the title. The incident concerned was during the inter-hostel aquatic events specially water polo. Some members of my hostel brought disrepute to everything that they represent and the game, by indulging in activities like impersonation of players, trying to eyewash the officials etc. Its a relief that the culprits have been brought to book.
If the so called 'elite' among the engineers can behave like this, then what right do we have to complain against our rulers? If we want an honest administration, we have to have an honest society first. Do we have that? But we preach to the others.
This is a national syndrome. India is the most hypocritic nation in the world in all fields. Examples? Plenty abound:
1) We have the communist bufoons led by the CPI(M) and CPI (specially Prakash Karat) who advocate outdated unionism and communism on the rest of India while in Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya rules like a capitalist. In addition, these oafs regard the Russian and Chinese nuke tests as 'asserting their rights' while Indian tests are considered as deviating away from an independent foreign policy....
2) We shout ourselves hoarse as the champions of democracy and castigate Nepal for having imposed dictatorship, when the reality is that its the same here..In Nepal the king rules with an iron hand while in India, armed gangs (be they 'in-law' or 'outlaw') rule the roost.
3) We expect our leaders to be honest but we ourselves take the easy path at the earliest available opportunity.
4) We claim things like 'woman is mother/sister blah blah' but how do we behave when we see a bit of skin or a foreign woman? People literally go berserk...why ago that far? just answer this simple question...whats the status of a woman in our society?
5) We say that our society is 'moral' and western society is 'immoral'....what is done by the westerners that Indians do not do? rapes? orgies? porn clippings? Holy shit man, just accept the reality and get along with it. This item specially applies to tamil nadu....simple matters like the personal opinion of Khushboo, a private party at a 5 star hotel, choice of dress on campuses is projected as an assault on the 'Tamil woman"......interaction b/w the sexes is prohibited on campuses.....Who makes these comments/decisions? People who are known for their concubine connections......
There are many more....A list would occupy the entire space on the web. Coming back to the heart of the post, an Indian will be an Indian whatever age India exists in..Even if it becomes a superpower, India will be backward morally and ethically.........And this is the beginnign of the end of superpowerdom......
If the so called 'elite' among the engineers can behave like this, then what right do we have to complain against our rulers? If we want an honest administration, we have to have an honest society first. Do we have that? But we preach to the others.
This is a national syndrome. India is the most hypocritic nation in the world in all fields. Examples? Plenty abound:
1) We have the communist bufoons led by the CPI(M) and CPI (specially Prakash Karat) who advocate outdated unionism and communism on the rest of India while in Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya rules like a capitalist. In addition, these oafs regard the Russian and Chinese nuke tests as 'asserting their rights' while Indian tests are considered as deviating away from an independent foreign policy....
2) We shout ourselves hoarse as the champions of democracy and castigate Nepal for having imposed dictatorship, when the reality is that its the same here..In Nepal the king rules with an iron hand while in India, armed gangs (be they 'in-law' or 'outlaw') rule the roost.
3) We expect our leaders to be honest but we ourselves take the easy path at the earliest available opportunity.
4) We claim things like 'woman is mother/sister blah blah' but how do we behave when we see a bit of skin or a foreign woman? People literally go berserk...why ago that far? just answer this simple question...whats the status of a woman in our society?
5) We say that our society is 'moral' and western society is 'immoral'....what is done by the westerners that Indians do not do? rapes? orgies? porn clippings? Holy shit man, just accept the reality and get along with it. This item specially applies to tamil nadu....simple matters like the personal opinion of Khushboo, a private party at a 5 star hotel, choice of dress on campuses is projected as an assault on the 'Tamil woman"......interaction b/w the sexes is prohibited on campuses.....Who makes these comments/decisions? People who are known for their concubine connections......
There are many more....A list would occupy the entire space on the web. Coming back to the heart of the post, an Indian will be an Indian whatever age India exists in..Even if it becomes a superpower, India will be backward morally and ethically.........And this is the beginnign of the end of superpowerdom......
Saturday, September 24, 2005
'Jog falls' by The Dream Weavers
Firstly, let me explain the phrases used in the title. Jog falls, as some of you know is the name of the most spectacular waterfall in India. How does a waterfall sound to you? If you are the kind of person who looks at only the "water fall" part, it will only be a roar with tremendous velocity and power. If you are the kind who looks at only the part of it before it falls, it will only be a speedy, smooth flow. What you need to be is like the river rafter who negotiates the currents and then takes the spectacular plunge to the bottom, but at the end is still steering his/her boat.
A similar sense of exhilaration is present in music. It happened to me while composing music along with my band for a fusion piece for the annual cultural fest at IITD, Rendezvous. For all those still puzzled, let me say that Jog Falls is the name of the piece that we played. Inspiration? Obviously Jog Falls which roars in the monsoon. Also the fact that a Raag named Jog from the Agra Gharana was readily available to simulate the effect of the falls was an added attraction. And of course, Dream Weavers is the name of my band.
The piece was conceptualised in the following fashion:
1) An alaap on the violin followed by an alaap on the flute: this denoted the birth of the River Sharavathi in the silent/majestic jungles of the Western ghats at Ambuthirtha
2) A rhythmic beat pattern on the drums, tabla, mridangam and congo drums: denoting the buildup of the river as it struggles against rocks, crevices etc
3) A smooth musical piece involving the violin, keyboard, tabla, drums, congo and the guitar: denoting the flow of the river in its full glory
4) A rapid change of pace denoting the splitting up of the river into the four falls raja, rani, roarer and rocket
5) A brief lull to allow the impact of the waterfall as it touches the ground to be absorbed by the listener
6) A sudden resumption at top speed to pay our respect to 'The Law of Conservation of Energy' whereby potential energy is converted to kinetic energy
7) A slow ending to denote the gurgling flow of the river after it has fallen 960 feet
Credits for the piece are listed below:
Keyboard: Manish Kumar (also the band leader plus the composer)
Flute: Shival Khate
Tabla/Mridangam: Balaji M
Drums: Sameer
Lead guitar: Raghav
Base guitar: Akhil
Congo drums: Santosh
Violin: Deepak Krishnan
Future plans: Jam on a regular basis, take part in events outside...lets see after that......
A similar sense of exhilaration is present in music. It happened to me while composing music along with my band for a fusion piece for the annual cultural fest at IITD, Rendezvous. For all those still puzzled, let me say that Jog Falls is the name of the piece that we played. Inspiration? Obviously Jog Falls which roars in the monsoon. Also the fact that a Raag named Jog from the Agra Gharana was readily available to simulate the effect of the falls was an added attraction. And of course, Dream Weavers is the name of my band.
The piece was conceptualised in the following fashion:
1) An alaap on the violin followed by an alaap on the flute: this denoted the birth of the River Sharavathi in the silent/majestic jungles of the Western ghats at Ambuthirtha
2) A rhythmic beat pattern on the drums, tabla, mridangam and congo drums: denoting the buildup of the river as it struggles against rocks, crevices etc
3) A smooth musical piece involving the violin, keyboard, tabla, drums, congo and the guitar: denoting the flow of the river in its full glory
4) A rapid change of pace denoting the splitting up of the river into the four falls raja, rani, roarer and rocket
5) A brief lull to allow the impact of the waterfall as it touches the ground to be absorbed by the listener
6) A sudden resumption at top speed to pay our respect to 'The Law of Conservation of Energy' whereby potential energy is converted to kinetic energy
7) A slow ending to denote the gurgling flow of the river after it has fallen 960 feet
Credits for the piece are listed below:
Keyboard: Manish Kumar (also the band leader plus the composer)
Flute: Shival Khate
Tabla/Mridangam: Balaji M
Drums: Sameer
Lead guitar: Raghav
Base guitar: Akhil
Congo drums: Santosh
Violin: Deepak Krishnan
Future plans: Jam on a regular basis, take part in events outside...lets see after that......
Friday, September 02, 2005
Of Music and Movies
mu·sic (my›"z¹k) n. Abbr. mus. 1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. 2. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm. 3.a. A musical composition. b. The written or printed score for such a composition. c. Such scores considered as a group. 4. A musical accompaniment. 5. A particular category or kind of music. 6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds.
I'll begin this piece with an article from The Telegraph, a revered British newspaper. Analysis of music is a tough task, but I must say that the columnist has done a pretty good job.
How Beethoven ruined classical music
By Dylan Evans(Filed: 12/06/2005)
It was Beethoven week on the BBC last week. By midnight on Friday Radio 3 had filled six days of airtime with every single note the composer wrote - every symphony, every quartet, every sonata and lots more besides. At the same time, in a series of three films on BBC2, the conductor Charles Hazlewood told us about the composer's life, while BBC4 produced three programmes of musical analysis.
It's good to see classical music getting some coverage on primetime television, but the relentless focus on Beethoven is dire. Not all fans of classical music are members of the Beethoven cult. Some of us even think he did more harm than good to classical music.
Beethoven certainly changed the way that people thought about music, but this was a change for the worse. From the speculations of Pythagoras about the "music of the spheres" in ancient Greece onwards, most Western musicians had agreed that musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal. Beethoven managed to put an end to this noble tradition by inaugurating a barbaric U-turn away from an other-directed music to an inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul.
This was a ghastly inversion that led slowly but inevitably to the awful atonal music of Schönberg and Webern. In other words, almost everything that went wrong with music in the 19th and 20th centuries is ultimately Beethoven's fault. Schönberg was simply taking Beethoven's original mistake to its ultimate, monstrous, logical conclusion.
This is not to deny Beethoven's genius, but simply to claim that he employed his genius in the service of a fundamentally flawed idea. If Beethoven had dedicated his obvious talents to serving the noble Pythagorean view of music, he might well have gone on to compose music even greater than that of Mozart. You can hear this potential in his early string quartets, where the movements often have neat conclusions and there is a playfulness reminiscent of Mozart or Haydn.
If only Beethoven had nourished these tender shoots instead of the darker elements that one can also hear. For the darkness is already evident in the early quartets too, in their sombre harmonies and sudden key changes. As it was, however, his darker side won out: compare, for example, the late string quartets. Here the youthful humour has completely vanished, the occasional signs of optimism quickly die out moments after they appear and the movements sometimes end in uncomfortably inconclusive cadences.
It's instructive to compare Beethoven's morbid self-obsession with the unselfconscious vivacity of Mozart. Like Bach's perfectly formed fugues and Vivaldi's sparkling concertos, Mozart's music epitomises the baroque and classical ideals of formal elegance and functional harmony; his compositions "unfold with every harmonic turn placed at the right moment, to leave, at the end, a sense of perfect finish and unity", as the music critic Paul Griffiths puts it. Above all, Mozart's music shares with that of Bach an exuberant commitment to the Enlightenment values of clarity, reason, optimism and wit.
With Beethoven, however, we leave behind the lofty aspirations of the Enlightenment and begin the descent into the narcissistic inwardness of Romanticism. Mozart gives you music that asks to be appreciated for its own sake, and you don't need to know anything about the composer's life to enjoy it. Beethoven's music, on the other hand, is all about himself - it is simply a vehicle for a self-indulgent display of bizarre mood swings and personal difficulties.
Hazlewood claimed, in his BBC2 series, that music "grew up" with Beethoven, but it would be more accurate to say that it regressed back into a state of sullen adolescence. Even when he uses older forms, such as the fugue, Beethoven twists them into cruel and angry parodies. The result is often fiercely dissonant, with abrupt changes in style occurring from one movement to another, or even in the same movement. Hazlewood is right to describe Beethoven as a "hooligan", but this is hardly a virtue.
In A Clockwork Orange it is the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that echoes in the mind of Alex whenever he indulges in one of his orgies of violence. Alex's reaction may be rather extreme, but he is responding to something that is already there in this dark and frenzied setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy; the joy it invites one to feel is the joy of madness, bloodlust and megalomania. It is glorious music, and seductive, but the passions it stirs up are dark and menacing.
I was unable to resist tuning in to Beethoven at times last week, but I needed to cheer myself up with something more optimistic and life-affirming afterwards.
• Kevin Myers returns next week. Dylan Evans is a senior lecturer in intelligent autonomous systems at the University of the West of England. This article first appeared in The Guardian.
It was this article that spurred me on to listen to the western classical collection that I had on my PC. Till now, these files had served just as ornamental pieces showing visitors to my room that my musical collection was wide and varied and oh yes, it represented my 'jack of all trades' nature.
The first thing that i did was to watch 'A Clockwork Orange'. Its a true classic, a must watch and if you haven't watched it yet, please do. It answers many questions regarding ethical treatment of prisoners, prison reforms, exploitative nature of humans, how a violent mind works and so on. What the author says is true. Ludvig van's (as Alex (the protagonist) puts it in the film) fourth is certainly disturbing to a viewer who is immersed in the movie as much as the protagonist is. It matches well with the rape scenes, the assault scenes and the show of power of the nazis during their heyday.
The next thing that I did was to listen to Handel and Mozart. Vivaldi I had already heard to long back. The difference is spotted instantly. Handel's music is what do I say, more religious. A quick search on the net proved my guess. Compositions like 'The Messaih' were meant to be catholic rather than narcissistic. My personal favourite is "Turkish March'. my dream is to dance for this piece with my lady love as and when I find her. Mozart's compositions, needless to say are pure joy. They leave you light hearted, full of joy and hopeful. Vivaldi falls in the same category as well. Love 'The Four Seasons'. A crude modern comparison would be Dream Theatre's 'A Change of Seasons'.
If one tires imposing these compositions upon the very same scenes, the mismatch becomes obvious. Beethoven is the 'Dark Angel' who could compose such pieces. One can feel the emotional upheaval while listening to Beethoven. Dark, disturbing are some words that come to the mind. On the other hand, the very same Beethoven has given classic, lovely pieces like 'Fur Elise'. The Berlin Philharmoniker pieces are a musician's delight.
If I have to choose 2 singers to represent my state of mind, it would have to be Handel and Beethoven. Beethoven for those depressed, dark days when nothing is happening while Handel is for those heavenly periods that come along as a silver lining.
Right folks, I close this piece with the opening lines of 'A Clockwork Orange'....Hope it encourages you to watch it: Auf Wiedersehan from DK, Ludvig van and Alex.....
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence"
I'll begin this piece with an article from The Telegraph, a revered British newspaper. Analysis of music is a tough task, but I must say that the columnist has done a pretty good job.
How Beethoven ruined classical music
By Dylan Evans(Filed: 12/06/2005)
It was Beethoven week on the BBC last week. By midnight on Friday Radio 3 had filled six days of airtime with every single note the composer wrote - every symphony, every quartet, every sonata and lots more besides. At the same time, in a series of three films on BBC2, the conductor Charles Hazlewood told us about the composer's life, while BBC4 produced three programmes of musical analysis.
It's good to see classical music getting some coverage on primetime television, but the relentless focus on Beethoven is dire. Not all fans of classical music are members of the Beethoven cult. Some of us even think he did more harm than good to classical music.
Beethoven certainly changed the way that people thought about music, but this was a change for the worse. From the speculations of Pythagoras about the "music of the spheres" in ancient Greece onwards, most Western musicians had agreed that musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal. Beethoven managed to put an end to this noble tradition by inaugurating a barbaric U-turn away from an other-directed music to an inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul.
This was a ghastly inversion that led slowly but inevitably to the awful atonal music of Schönberg and Webern. In other words, almost everything that went wrong with music in the 19th and 20th centuries is ultimately Beethoven's fault. Schönberg was simply taking Beethoven's original mistake to its ultimate, monstrous, logical conclusion.
This is not to deny Beethoven's genius, but simply to claim that he employed his genius in the service of a fundamentally flawed idea. If Beethoven had dedicated his obvious talents to serving the noble Pythagorean view of music, he might well have gone on to compose music even greater than that of Mozart. You can hear this potential in his early string quartets, where the movements often have neat conclusions and there is a playfulness reminiscent of Mozart or Haydn.
If only Beethoven had nourished these tender shoots instead of the darker elements that one can also hear. For the darkness is already evident in the early quartets too, in their sombre harmonies and sudden key changes. As it was, however, his darker side won out: compare, for example, the late string quartets. Here the youthful humour has completely vanished, the occasional signs of optimism quickly die out moments after they appear and the movements sometimes end in uncomfortably inconclusive cadences.
It's instructive to compare Beethoven's morbid self-obsession with the unselfconscious vivacity of Mozart. Like Bach's perfectly formed fugues and Vivaldi's sparkling concertos, Mozart's music epitomises the baroque and classical ideals of formal elegance and functional harmony; his compositions "unfold with every harmonic turn placed at the right moment, to leave, at the end, a sense of perfect finish and unity", as the music critic Paul Griffiths puts it. Above all, Mozart's music shares with that of Bach an exuberant commitment to the Enlightenment values of clarity, reason, optimism and wit.
With Beethoven, however, we leave behind the lofty aspirations of the Enlightenment and begin the descent into the narcissistic inwardness of Romanticism. Mozart gives you music that asks to be appreciated for its own sake, and you don't need to know anything about the composer's life to enjoy it. Beethoven's music, on the other hand, is all about himself - it is simply a vehicle for a self-indulgent display of bizarre mood swings and personal difficulties.
Hazlewood claimed, in his BBC2 series, that music "grew up" with Beethoven, but it would be more accurate to say that it regressed back into a state of sullen adolescence. Even when he uses older forms, such as the fugue, Beethoven twists them into cruel and angry parodies. The result is often fiercely dissonant, with abrupt changes in style occurring from one movement to another, or even in the same movement. Hazlewood is right to describe Beethoven as a "hooligan", but this is hardly a virtue.
In A Clockwork Orange it is the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that echoes in the mind of Alex whenever he indulges in one of his orgies of violence. Alex's reaction may be rather extreme, but he is responding to something that is already there in this dark and frenzied setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy; the joy it invites one to feel is the joy of madness, bloodlust and megalomania. It is glorious music, and seductive, but the passions it stirs up are dark and menacing.
I was unable to resist tuning in to Beethoven at times last week, but I needed to cheer myself up with something more optimistic and life-affirming afterwards.
• Kevin Myers returns next week. Dylan Evans is a senior lecturer in intelligent autonomous systems at the University of the West of England. This article first appeared in The Guardian.
It was this article that spurred me on to listen to the western classical collection that I had on my PC. Till now, these files had served just as ornamental pieces showing visitors to my room that my musical collection was wide and varied and oh yes, it represented my 'jack of all trades' nature.
The first thing that i did was to watch 'A Clockwork Orange'. Its a true classic, a must watch and if you haven't watched it yet, please do. It answers many questions regarding ethical treatment of prisoners, prison reforms, exploitative nature of humans, how a violent mind works and so on. What the author says is true. Ludvig van's (as Alex (the protagonist) puts it in the film) fourth is certainly disturbing to a viewer who is immersed in the movie as much as the protagonist is. It matches well with the rape scenes, the assault scenes and the show of power of the nazis during their heyday.
The next thing that I did was to listen to Handel and Mozart. Vivaldi I had already heard to long back. The difference is spotted instantly. Handel's music is what do I say, more religious. A quick search on the net proved my guess. Compositions like 'The Messaih' were meant to be catholic rather than narcissistic. My personal favourite is "Turkish March'. my dream is to dance for this piece with my lady love as and when I find her. Mozart's compositions, needless to say are pure joy. They leave you light hearted, full of joy and hopeful. Vivaldi falls in the same category as well. Love 'The Four Seasons'. A crude modern comparison would be Dream Theatre's 'A Change of Seasons'.
If one tires imposing these compositions upon the very same scenes, the mismatch becomes obvious. Beethoven is the 'Dark Angel' who could compose such pieces. One can feel the emotional upheaval while listening to Beethoven. Dark, disturbing are some words that come to the mind. On the other hand, the very same Beethoven has given classic, lovely pieces like 'Fur Elise'. The Berlin Philharmoniker pieces are a musician's delight.
If I have to choose 2 singers to represent my state of mind, it would have to be Handel and Beethoven. Beethoven for those depressed, dark days when nothing is happening while Handel is for those heavenly periods that come along as a silver lining.
Right folks, I close this piece with the opening lines of 'A Clockwork Orange'....Hope it encourages you to watch it: Auf Wiedersehan from DK, Ludvig van and Alex.....
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence"
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