In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, that whiskered pill Percy Gorringe recites a poem about a man who, while watching the sun go down, comments:
"I say,I'm sure if Stilton Cheesewright, 'soulless clod' extraordinaire and muse for the poem, was to see this image of the morning sky from a few months ago, it would doubtlessly remind him of some scrambled eggs.
Doesn't that sunset remind you
Of a slice
Of underdone roast beef?"
Caliban at Sunset
Most of the stories are brilliant, both in narration and content. Those rocking coffins have inspired a variety of minor sagas, differing in flavour and treatment. That famous names appear on-screen and behind the camera only enhances the appeal.
To choose from, there's the squirmingly funny H0rny (potentially uncomfortable if you have XY chromosomes!), the musically eloquent Bone (directed by Ewan McGrrreggorr), or the very clever Mr. Cool (Kelly Macdonald as the object of his attention) that opens the compilation. There are comic and dramatic twists, unexpected losses, the supernatural, and the poignant (like Jude Law's A Bird in the Hand). Add to them the pulsating background score.
Highly recommended (warning: NSFW at times). My viewing was courtesy the local British Library, but some of the segments may be available at online video shares.
A credits page to weep for
The album's credits has a power-packed batting order: Mohit Chauhan opens with a bang. Javed Ali & Kailash Kher at one down. The music director snatching a dreamy song in the middle. And then all the cameos: the uber-talented Rekha Bhardwaj. A blast from the past in the voice of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Amitabh Bachchan rounding things off. There's even Rajat Dholakia in the background as well.
Unusual, unpredictable, and largely unmatchable.
Dove, oh dear
It takes but a few seconds into masak kali to know this one is up there in Rahman's all time best, which is an astonishing feat even for the man himself. A splendidly onomatopoeic avian paean (take a bow, Mr. Joshi), Mohit Chauhan and the now-trademark accordion (played by Rahman) vie for top honours here. If ever there was a modern song made for Kishore Kumar (something Salil also observed), it was this one. Adding to nostalgia is the old device of the violin-backed lead-ins. I always wish I could find an instrumental dissection of songs - this one in particular.
The best explanation as to the meaning of the term masak kali came from Vibhendu: masak is a term for the roof (a.k.a the chajjaa). Thus, the eponymous pigeon is literally the the bud/darling of the terrace.
Another Rahman trademark is that of the Sufi song. So remarkable has he been in this genre, that a Rahman sufi/qawwali/devotional top 10 is merited. arziyaa.n would comfortably fit into the top echelons of such a list. Many of the others showered praise; this qawwali pleads for succour. Prasoon Joshi's notes for this song in the inlay (a nice touch that) say it was almost a year before he finished writing the lyrics for this tune. With phrases such as marammat muqaddar ki kar do, the time spent was well worth it.
Like khwaaja mere khwaaja, these songs are all about 'feeling'. The singers nail it. The ending with the Bulleh Shah kaafi mora piyaa ghar aaya is neatly placed.
Electric guitars and the rhesus factor
The title song is as far removed from the previous two as one can get. The French lyrics and drawn out female vocals, the electronic modulations, the clever hooks in lyrics and music - very snazzy. kala bandar is interesting: one is prone to dismiss it on a superficial level: we are quite conditioned by the mindless use of rap in Hindi albums. But the lyrics, loaded with some kind of political metaphor, deflect that simple interpretation. This song comes closest to the "the journey within" sub-title of the film. This causes some disorientation in our story expectations: along with the 'ramleela' scenes and the film sub-species of the returning NRI, are we in for a revisitation of the Swades territory?
Continuous delight
dil giraa dafatan taught me a new Urdu word (dafatan means 'suddenly', my dictionary informs). Ash King sings, croons, touches the falsetto ceilings, returns and dwells. The string section breaks out in a lush Celtic melody. There is no full takeoff - the singers soar and swoop. I wrapped my head round this to make sense. Many have spoken of how Rahman and Vishal subvert the traditional grammar of Hindi film music. This song is part recital, not full-blooded Bollywood song. As was rehna tu
The obvious faults in Rahman's Hindi diction are always overshadowed by the sheer sincerity in his singing. That he turns rehanaa tuu into rainaa tuu hardly matters when there are so many interesting elements dotting the canvas. Such as the guitar riff in the background, or the way the singing begins in the middle of the beat cycle, or the lyrics themselves (liked the imagery of people right-hand-in-right-hand).
My big complaint of the album was the lack of an instrumental track. But the 2 minute piece at the end of this song assuages this. Rahman's interest in The Continuum has been noted on this blog earlier and he chose a spectacular way to introduce it to Hindi film music. From what I know, the continuum is after all just an electronic synthesizer whose resulting instrumental feel can be controlled - say, strings or woodwind or others. Here, he goes in for an ethereal flute-theremine sound, playing it with great élan over 2 minutes in a Carnatic classical vein. Goosepimply stuff.
Special appearances
I've yet to get over the disappointment of finding out that Rekha Bhardwaj did not have any Rahman originals to sing. She features in two traditional songs ('supervised' by Dholakia): a smartly mixed folk song gendaa phool (intriguingly, a 'courtesy' credit to Raghuvir Yadav) and a bhajan. A similar effort is Shreya Ghoshal 'jamming' (as the inlay notes put it) with the voice Bade Gulam Ali Khan - a very interesting concept. Wonder what shape it takes on screen.
There's just 50 seconds of Amitabh Bachchan reciting a short ghazal called Noor, but that was enough to make me smile in contentedly. In 17 years, A.R.Rahman has never composed music for an Amitabh Bachchan film (discounting such narrations as in Lagaan or Jodhaa Akbar), and this guest appearance (in film and voice) is the first.
And so...
Delhi 6 is easily a career highlight for the composer and the lyricist. The album is not just figuratively heavy, but literally so, with an actual mirror on the front side! An 'in-your-face' rendering of the introspection referred to in the movie sub-title. A satisfying musical effort that awaits a similar outcome on-screen this Friday.
Without ever tresspassing on 'preach'-ery, the film works both as a piece of socially relevant material as well as pure story-telling. If all this wasn't enough, perhaps you may be interested in the facts that the film was shot by Guillermo Navarro (Pan's Labyrinth among others) and is based (partly) on a story idea by screenwriter Matthew Robbins.
The film can be viewed online. While you are at it, have a look at the others in this pack of four (Mira Nair, Farhan Akhtar and Santosh Sivan completing the quadruple).
No what-if projections either, of what things would have been like if a different path of the fork had been chosen.
So at the end of it all, how do you know if you're falling or still on your feet?
Here you go:
A series of fun, interactive sessions for children of different ages A Mystery for MindNuts
Some stuff for people who may be of voting age but who still want to learn and have fun doing so.
Also on the cards:
Nagesh's genius for comedy and pathos, drama and character, put him, IMHO, in the Chaplin league. Hindi film watchers may have seen Mehmood portray several Nagesh roles in Hindi remakes, including the role of the waiter in Main Sundar Hoon (Server Sundaram) and the madcap wannabe director (complete with horror narrator) in Pyar Kiye Jaa (Kadalikka Neramillai).
A detailed tribute at PFC
I hope it doesn't gain currency like "revert". That would make it a deficult situation.
Here's why. I have spent about two and a half decades in the generous bosom of Indian films, or Hindi & Tamil films to be precise. We learnt us how to appreciate these movies. Training our neo-cortex to take in the bloodless dishum-dishum, where henchmen respectfully awaited their turn in being beaten up by a hero who was in a much lower weight category1, where Landsteiner's divisive blood groups freely mixed, and the locked up heroine always sprawled across the bed in a diagonal direction.
When we asked how does the hero know which hospital to go to?2, the wise answer came: the director must have told him.
Add to this situation, the parallel cinema movement of the 80s (which came with a governmental guarantee that women would get molested, children would die of hunger, and there would be no songs). These came into prominence once a year when the National Film Awards were announced.
Therein lies our Slumdog dilemma. When you grow up with two sets of film philosophies, one engineered for entertainment and escapism and the other for awards, you can't easily reconcile the former type winning critical awards. Our 'commercial' filmmakers knew what end point to get to, and how to get us there. What if they broke half-a-dozen natural laws in getting there? We didn't complain about them not getting any awards - that wasn't their purpose in life.
Then we became tired. Guilty even of this naach-gaana. We learnt dismissive words such as 'kitsch' to keep them at arm's bay. Mostly, we wanted a change. Especially from cringing at watching befuddled foreigners3 staring in songs sung by Kumar Sanu4.
My examples of how movies that perfectly meshed entertainment and mental stimulation came from Hollywood, especially many of the Academy Award winning films. Then we learnt how those gongs get marketed and manipulated. We discovered great movies that even the American public didn't like. We learnt to use our own eyes and minds.
Now, most mainstream Hindi film makers are deliberately ironic about what can only be termed as 'heritage'. The best directors now don't make movies like in the 70s and 80s, and thankfully so. That's a deliberate act of (r)evolution. Each year, we make some films, that in our own estimation, can stand up to any of the best that we've ever seen from the West.
So it's hard to go ga-ga about a film that embodies so many bad habits of the Hindi films of our growing years. Yes, the cinematography is good, the pace is far from leisurely, the kids are fresh, the background score is pulsating. But then, like the Bollywood tradition it channels, SDM suffers from the oldest groan in the book: what George calls the Sagging Second Half syndrome.
SDM makes a chinese bhel of the NP-complete Indian languages resolution problem, serves up one of the most ineffective Hindi film gangsters of all time, and ends with a song that even Sunny Deol could have choreographed better. But largely, it's the extra masala thrown in to suspense-ify the film: the live telecast of the TV show, the chance to break off post-question-pre-answer (hurt my quizzing sensibilities), meet me at VT (where - it's such a big station!) and so on. That made-for-all seasons answer bubbled up when we complained: oh, come on! how did that happen?. The answer was: it was written. In the screenplay."
A pity. It's a clever story. But we've seen the treatment before. My complaint to the Academy is: if this was the filmi angle you wanted, you should have told us before, no? We could have arranged for it earlier, cheap price only, better quality maal. The resulting attention that some of our best creatives have receive is welcome. But the affair has confused us5.
A final point:
To those here who complain about poverty and exploitation: break the give me. Our own movies are still full of exploitative material.
Danny Boyle, against whom much of these charges have been leveled, can probably take solace in one of the long standing traditions of the Hindi masala. That of the villainous angrez, whose backside must be kicked by the end of the movie, preferably when he's trying to escape with the gems via helicopter. Jai Bajrangbali to you.
No, one last, god-promise last point:
Leaving the primary role of film awards to reward movies aside, their legacy is to serve as some measure of the quality of films in a year and to serve as one source of recommendations for the future. This episode also reveals the utter paucity of trustworthy Indian movie awards, which is why any tizzy at the Oscars - a Hollywood exercise - gets our blood pressure high.
Update
1. Matthew Schneeberger says it much better than I ever could.
Until a Zen-like realisation dawned that allowed me to accept and appreciate whatever Tendulkar provided each minute in the middle. Subject sometimes to the moods of the jealous sporting gods. Irrespective of large or infinitesmal.
It worked, because now, it doesn't matter all that much. And he's enjoyed an 'nth' Australian summer.
For the greater part of the last tennis season, Roger Federer became my new Tendulkar. It was painful to watch, not because he was hitting balls into the net, but because a figurative string had snapped in that divine racket. The most recent illustration came on Sunday, when Tomas Berdych walked in and snatched two sets without leave or license. The butterflies ordered some more nectar and boogied away.
Hard to say exactly what impression the next three sets had. The man who played, nay sweetly horsewhipped, Juan Martin del Potro today had absolutely no effect on my stomach, apart from causing satisfaction that I doubt even a gourmet meal at The Ritz would come close to matching. The second set - the first of two bagels of the match - was sufficiently sublime for us to congratulate del Potro on managing to take three games in the first set.
In fact, let's digress to pay a tribute to del Potro, the recipient of a sympathetic near-apology from the man on the other side. Those very same sadistic sporting gods chose you because someone had to be on the other side of the net. No one deserves that. Despite your own lux-quotient (you are #6 in the world, remember), the light at the other end was a pleasantly blinding experience. You are more than someone who had to serve every other game, more than a straight man in the wrong kind of act, more than a hula hoop for a God. You deserve to star in your own YouTube videos, rather than a hapless cameo in someone else's.
Yes, I'm getting 'kinda' cocky. Blame it on Roger Federer, who even chose to head a ball across the net than merely accept yet another point won via happy slaughter. Who knows, I might even hex him in the semis. But the mood he was in today was a return to the days that made grown tennis players want to speed-dial their moms so that they could weep into their laps.
Naturally, it's appropriate that his semi-final opponent is Andy Roddick.
How to assess the progress made in addressing the the November attacks on Bombay? There have been a lot of stories across the month from newspapers and magazines (IMO, they have been doing a good job of reporting related stories). However, finding this information in one place, say on a newspaper's site, is very difficult. I wonder if someone has a blog or webpage chronicling some of the serious reports and opinions to come out. If not, someone should. This Wikipedia article is the best we have now.
SG: And citizens also learn that there is a price to pay for security.Made me think: we go hoarse demanding politicians, police, customs et al. do their duties. So that they protect our right to break a traffic signal in the middle of the day.
PC: There is a price to pay. You have to accept some inconveniences. The same citizen who goes to the US and willingly removes his jacket, shoes etc. shouldn’t complain if he is frisked here. I think we must get over some of the bad habits that we have allowed to grow in the last few years[...]
People complain when they are frisked, people complain if they are stopped at the check post, people still jump red lights at night. All that must go.
As always, feedback will be much appreciated.
To me, the word 'interesting' is teetering on the edge of usefulness. Earlier, when someone used the word, you could assume they found something worthy of curiosity. But, in many instances now, the word is used in a politically correct sense, usually as a response to the question: "so what did you think of that?"
If you don't possess the mordant wit of Dorothy Parker or the honesty of a child, you hem and haw and say: "Oh, um, it was interesting. Quite interesting.".
And "interesting" becomes consigned to the scrap heap of pointless patter.
Pune’s Rosy Winters Once known for its historical traditions and now an educational and commercial hotspot, Pune rediscovers its roots each year in its invigorating winters.
There comes a day when the early rising Punekar will step out of his house, pause in slight surprise, and try to clear his eyes. When the blurriness remains, the Punekar realises that the light fog is to blame for the reduced visibility and that winter has arrived on padded feet.
Winter arrives quietly in Pune and is greeted with relief by the city, especially since an unpleasantly hot October is a common postscript to the rainy season. Pune has always lived, figuratively and literally, in the shadow of a metropolis that makes much of its monsoons. But winter is a season Pune can lay claim to as its own. Unlike the disruptive machismo of the Bombay rains, Pune's winter is gentle in both arrival and tenure, mirroring the laidback ways of the place. A trip down the sleek Mumbai-Pune expressway through the misty Western Ghats more than amplifies this difference.
In the Pink The phrase that the locals use to describe the first month of the winter says it all. Punekars bask in “gulaabii thandii”, literally the “rosy cold”. During this time, citizens, in their light woollens, can be seen bearing a light rosiness of both cheek and demeanour.
Since Pune's winters are temperate, especially in comparison with the frigid bitterness of many North Indian towns, they can rouse residents to action rather than cause them to cower behind a thick quilt. Once the indolence of the early cold morning is defeated, a walk in the balmy ambience is the best way to kick off a day. Given that parts of commercially booming Pune are sometimes bedevilled by smog towards the evenings, the mornings remain the best time to soak up the sun-kissed winter.
A favourite variation of this is to walk up the nearest ‘tekdi’ or hillock. Pune is blessed with an abundance of these easy-to-climb hillocks, which offer vantage views of the city, especially in the late evenings. Many of these tekdis have a temple at the summit, providing the spiritually-minded with a reward for their exertions. For the more material at heart, tekdis also offer flat summits for exploration, hot snacks and tea, and the pleasant company of fellow wanderers. Much higher than any tekdi is Sinhgadh on the outskirts of Pune which boasts of a legendary fort of the Marathas. It is a favourite with both trekkers and foodies. The traditional pithla-bhaakri or onion bhajjis washed down the special buttermilk gains a special tang after a pleasant wintry ascent.
Avian Season For those with their feet firmly on the ground, the season offers other charms. The many lakes in and around Pune receive several varieties of migratory birds. Chief among these are different kinds of ducks, geese, and herons. However, the chief headline-hoggers are pink flamingos that come in from the West and the North, via the Rann of Kutch. Apart from trekking expeditions, local adventure groups organise bird watching tours to places such as Pashan Lake, Bhigwan Dam, Kavdi, and Sinhgadh, and have inspired many an amateur ornithologist.
Cultural Capital Pune's cultural calendar is packed in the winter, with music events ruling the roost. The days during the festival of Diwali, especially the “Paadva” day, are marked by early morning classical music concerts by top musicians. However, the undisputed star on the cultural firmament is the “Sawai Gandharva Music Festival”.
The festival is named in memory of Rambhau Kundagolkar or ‘Sawai Gandharva’, a leading Hindustani classical music exponent of the 40s. Of the Kirana gharana, Gandharva tutored several students who later rose in musical prominence. Chief among these was the legendary Bhimsen Joshi. Led by him, these students started this festival, now over fifty years old, which always features a stellar list of classical musicians.
The event is held on three successive days, beginning in the afternoon and going on till well into the night. Held in the open with some partly covered areas, the result is a very unique experience for spectators. Sweaters of increasing thickness are worn as the evening wears on, blankets are used to reserve areas for groups to recline during the night, and a thermos is pulled out for tea & comfort. Municipal rules prohibiting shows past 10 o clock are cheerfully violated (permission is eventually granted). But nobody in the neighbourhood really minds, especially when some of the best musicians in the country are on stage.
The performers on the bill are usually singers and instrumentalists of various Hindustani classical music styles. The event also showcases leading musicians of the Carnatic form of classical music, and dancers. For each performer, an appearance at the Sawai Gandharva is a stern test in front of the connoisseurs, who have cast discerning ears at many a pretender over the decades. The Sawai is very much a home of music, especially an open-air, wintry one.
The fastidious Sawai attendee will tell you that for several people, the Sawai is the social event of the winter calendar. A chance to meet friends, and to have tea and snacks with them at 1 in the night. But for the average music lover, it is a once-in-a- year opportunity to hear some of the best sounds in the business, and to do it in the company of the stars above.
In recent times, a number of other cultural events have sprung up during the winter months, such as the Pune International Film Festival and the Pune Book Fair. Another festival-in-memoriam is “Pulotsav” which commemorates Pune's most favourite littérateur, P. L. Deshpande, or “Pu La” as he was fondly known. A man of immense artistic talents, a keenly observant Pu La used humor writing, theatre, film, poetry, and song to depict life around him in ways no one else has. This two-week festival is devoted to the arts, featuring Pu La vignettes as well as theatre, music, and reading performances.
Since winters in Pune rarely descend into single digit temperatures, the city is never hobbled by the weather. As January ends and the sun becomes less oblique, winter fades away just as gently as it arrived. Each year, the hard-to-impress Pune old-timer will insist that the city was not what it used to be. But come next November, this sentiment will be assuaged by the winters of Pune's content.
Mel Gussow, a critic and cultural reporter for The Times, died in 2005.The obit was written by Mel Gussow and Ben Brantley.
Obviously, Gussow had contributed to the obit a long while ago. Though seemingly morbid, keeping an up-to-date obituary of a notable personality even prior to his decease is common newspaper practice. That said, I haven't seen this inversion before.
Max Gussow was a NYT theatre critic, whose own obit can be read here. There's also this nice Washington Post article about the life of an obituary writer.
There came a point when I knew significantly more trivia about Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, or Shakti, than much of their music. So it was only fair that I plough back some of my ill-gotten earnings into redressing this state of affairs.
So where does a newbie start but with so-called definitive collections? As long as I don't ask 'what need do I have of this' and 'that'.
The results from 2006 and 2007 should more than assuage any lingering doubts as to its musical tastes :-). The motivations behind such an exercise are available for perusal here.
One can nominate up to 30 songs (use this list of films from last year to jog your memory) and use the form at the end of this page. The poll is likely to remain open until the middle of this month.
Amit Trivedi (music), Amitabh Bhattacharya (lyrics, along with Shellee and others), and Anurag Kashyap (director) manage to do three things: they exhibit a superlative range of genres, provide a solid texture (a mix of urban melancholy, mofussil brass, and quiet yearning), and most importantly, they demonstrate great faith in their choices. There are 18 tracks, and while some of them do falter, just taking the effort to put in 18 more-than-decent tracks (haven't seen that kind of depth and scale since Rahman's Bose) gives them many brownie points.
The list of my personal picks begins with the dulcet banaarasii Dhol yaaraa Dhol sung with great desire by Shilpa Rao and backed by Kshitij. Some of the turns gave me the kind of goosepimples that I usually get with some Rahman interludes. Raa.NjhaNaa is a small downbeat version of this song.
The album has many such doppelgangers - pairs of tracks taking gloomy/bouyant U-turns, hard rock/street music incarnations, or turning from joy to lament. The two Dev-Chanda Themes are especially interesting - the first is a slow bluesy hum (and a fine one at that) while the second is a very moody whistle with a touch of menace.
The album continues its excursions off the rails. There are a couple of Punjabi songs and a Rajasthani song mixed to club arrangements. Then there are a couple of songs that just don't seem to belong here. They're from some Indi-rock-pop album. It gets very difficult to mentally put this lot together - your mind has to make several leaps to reconcile them. What's uncanny about the soundtrack is how it keeps riding the waves of romantic exhilaration and cavernous dejection. Shruti Pathak's paayaliyaa is a great example of this.
Then come the songs voiced by Amit Trivedi - these tend to be garrulous (the harmonium-guitar fuelled duniyaa), scruffy rock (nayan, aa.nkh micholii), or dripping with melancholia (saalii khushi). He's off the sur in places, but that seems very calculated - or is it?
And at last, for the dhokhaa-daayak "emo[tio|sa]nal atyaachaar" songs. That phrase is so cheesy and so appropriate that it will turn into a worn-out cliché. Especially for the brass band version (an immaculate concept, if any), which on repeated hearings could so easily turn into hilarity by the time the movie hits the screens. That might actually work against the intended mood. Don't hear it too often if the song needs to retain its novelty freakness! The rock version is safer, with a great opening guitar riff and sung with throat-shattering gusto by Bony Chakravarthy.
Phew. Undoubtedly, there are a hajaar music influences at play in Dev.D's soundscape. I found myself thinking of fragments from several songs. In several places, the lyrics are both wonderful and with an original flavour. A loser's tale has seldom been more plunge-worthy. Whatever happens to his movies, Anurag Kashyap's track record in getting music that you can also touch and feel remains intact. In many ways, the follow-up to the collaborations with Vishal Bhardwaj is appropriate. Amit Trivedi's music is intertwined with Amitabh Bhattacharya's words in a wholesome concoction. Where did all these people come from, you wonder - these Labh Jajuas, Shilpa Raos, Shellees, Toshis and Aditis and Shrutis, Manis and Kshitijs, and most of all, these Amits? The efforts in composition, writing, performances boggle the mind.
An album so trippy, you find yourself on your backside often, staring into that strange sky. You bitch. Indeed.
I've realised I don't really have much of an ear for the standard issue Hindustani classical concert. The template performance, with the lengthy warm-up aalaaps, made me fret. Or perhaps it was just the choice of performers. The trouble with Sawai is that the first few performances are either newcomers or slightly obscure musicians. In comparison to the big names, they don't seem to tailor their recitals in accordance to the audience's mood (or in response of the lack of one). Contrastingly, all the Carnatic musicians I've seen at Sawai have gone out of their way to engage with the listeners, either by useful explanations of what they're about to do, or by picking attractive compositions. It could be that they have to put their best foot forward, being mostly novel to the average attendee.
It could just be my South Indian ear, brought up on idli-dosai at home and pongal-coffee at the Chennai winter sabhas (which I hated to attend as a ten year old at the peak of my neighbourhood game). But those with me seemed to concur. I enjoyed the programme last year. This time, Ganesh-Kumaresh and Pandit Jasraj (who clearly knows how to recruit the audience on his journeys, and did some interesting harmonic bits with his pupils, whom he also sledged from time to time) were the highlights. Even the usually appealing Ronu Majumdar couldn't hold my interest.
Or it was the crowds. The Bhaaratiya Baithak (you sit cross-legged, Indian-style) is a pain in the arse, quite literally, and especially so when there's hardly room for the occasional stretch or back-lean. Your mind gets into a sitting-marathon mode and at some point you hit the wall. I spent the rest of the Sunday morning (lasted about 3 hours in the BB) standing. There's got to be a rethink about some of the organisation - the place is splitting at the seams. Or an extension of the shamiaanaa on either side is needed. I sat under the stars last year till 2 am and ended up with a massive cold in return for watching the astonishing L. Subramaniam and his son.
On the sidelines, there was an excellent photo exhibition featuring the latest Bharat Ratna, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (who made an appearance and looked extremely frail, and so in no condition to repeat his short and sweet recital from last year). The highlight being a snap of a rather dashing Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Clamped up, I inevitably end up in a lot of soul-searching: what am I here for? Do I really "get" what the musician is trying to do? Am I, in Aditya Gadre's annoyed terminology, just a pseudo-fan (in its kindest interpretation). Are many of the people here just surfing the annual social waves or busy admiring the emperor's new clothes?
Anything to keep my mind off the pain that has oppresses the region from my lower back to the ankles like some mad despot.
Anyway, questions from that quiz are now available - the details can be found here.
I did a couple of interesting things for and during the quiz, which you can read about it in two "Making of..." articles under this label. (for lack of Disc 2 of the DVD, the one with the special features and the secret out-takes).
1: How we needed that phrase. Its time has come.
The last thing I remember is going into that indie theatre. This shifty-eyed bloke from Bradford gave me a ticket to this movie that he recommended. Have a look, curry-breath said. See if it reminds you of something.
It must have seared my memory, because all I feel now is this bloodcurdling intestinal rage. I felt a sticky something on my forehead. A Post-It. "jacket your Beneath." I wasn't in the mood for a prat's idea of a joke, so I crushed it into a ball and flung it outside the window. Which is when I looked at the ceiling. It read: "read everything in reverse, you eejit." There was even a footnote: ".above the except". I ran down and rushed past a bored looking receptionist.
After an hour's search, I found the crumpled note. Then, I thumped my head (made the throbbing worse) and opened my purple jacket. Tattoos all over. Garamond, 40 pt. This must have been serious enough to bear the cost and pain of the serifs.
(Where am I? It doesn't look like London outside. We don't have yellow taxis and hot weather.)
I have looked at all the words. Except the ones on the back. I now also have a sprained neck trying to get a look at my back. What I know so far is this: a severe trauma has left me leaking memory like a RAM chip made in China. I am tracking someone. To kill. Or at least to demand a lengthy explanation. Thanks to the spread needed for the large font size, all I can read of the people who left me in this state is: "...i of Mahmud" and "killed was meme..." I need a mirror.
After two hours of intense confusion, I realise I need two mirrors.
Update: my feet say the cryptic words IMDB and nm0634240. Also, I seem to be wearing lots of white make-up and a clown's lipstick.
From the newspaper, I have realised this is Bombay. Under the bed, I notice several polaroids of a short, dark, moustachioed man. He is always behind another short, fair man clutching several moustaches and scissors in his hand. My hotel is opposite a hairdressers'. Do these guys work there? Disturbingly, an arrow on one polaroid points to the dark bloke and says: "They complete me".
Who the heck am I? Like some strange bug, I've been following two people using a memory like a full-sized golf course. I have a framed postcard of a big mountain on the table that reads "remember?". I keep tossing and turning at night. Nor can I sleep in the day - my head hurts from the roars of a cricket match on the telly that has just begun. I feel like a canary in a magic trick - will I die or will I be revealed to the audience's cheers? It is day but I'm still in the dark.
I remember something. It wasn't an indie theatre, but an Indi-theatre. And songs were playing. One thing is for sure. I'm taking no prisoners.
The short men have walked out into the open. Time to go.
Not to mention awards: the LA Critics Association chose him for their pick for Best Score (the Slumdog again), and he has just been nominated for his first ever Golden Globe, in the august company of Hans Zimmer, James Howard, Alexandre Desplat, and (surprise!) Clint Eastwood. That's a trivia question prediction (until perhaps the Oscars list :-)). The Oscar march has truly begun.
Back to Connections. Karthik on his Milliblog points out how anyone not buying a Nokia phone with a certain kind of music service will just have to wait a while to hear the songs (in the legal way, at least). For now, you can check out the video for Jiya Se Jiya on Rahman's official site (warning: all flash content).
Which is where our friend Arnold, a.ka. Hugger-the-(not-so)-Horrible, should take note: the song features the concept of "Free Hugs" (read Arnold's first (zeroth?) hand report on the same). I wonder if I actually saw him in the video?
news courtesy the arrahmanfans yahoogroup
kuch din pahale samaachar patr me.n paDhaa avashya thaa...ki calcutta me.n tiis-chaalis hazaar paagal unkaa darshan karne aadhi raat #Dum Dum airport# pahunch gaye thé.About 30 years later, nothing has changed.
::R.P.Ramprasad Dasharathprasad Sharma
Like fellow British scientist Richard Dawkins, he's an outspoken atheist with a knack for saying outrageous things.Like Dawkins, Wolpertis one of the leading biologists of the 21st century (not bad for a man who first studied civil engineering). But unlike the hawkish Dawkins, Wolpert seems to look more kindly at the nature of 'belief', which is summarised in a very interesting book that I'm reading right now.
This post is not about the contents of that book, but how its author's books have great titles. This book has a wonderful name: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, referring to the exchange in Alice in Wonderland where the White Queen reveals that to be her secret regimen in order to believe in impossible things.
Wolpert's previous book studied depression, of which Wolpert was himself a sufferer. Its title, in astonishing crispness, captures the essence of the ailment. It's called Malignant Sadness.
I'm not from Bombay. I belong to a place to its south-east, a place known (and sometimes ridiculed) for its smallness (of its size, of its ambition), its insipid rains, its lack of drive (and drive-ability), its surfeit of action-less opinions, and its cynicism. In short, its un-Bombay-ness. But it suits my temperament.
I've lived in Bombay for a total of 9 years. I don't understand the people there very well, the things they do to live in a place like that. But neither did I understand why my step quickened as soon as I set foot on its roads, why I never worried about how I would get to place B from A at any time of the day, or how friends there seemed a lot more willing to take on everyday grit. I don't know anything about the city's phantoms that get invoked each time something goes wrong, but how about something called 'the idea of Bombay'? That exists for sure. Anything that's been around for that long develops an all-permeating idea that its citizens buy into.
That idea is worth protecting, just as other good ideas are.
Set a reminder? An entry in your diary? A big X on your tear-off calendar?
There's a lot of anger. Distress. Finger-wagging. I'd like to blame people too. But I'd like to start with myself.
I do not participate in society's affairs beyond the usual limits. But is that such a bad thing? I'd like to lead my life the way I want to. All I ask for is the security and freedom to do so. I pay my taxes by means of earning an honest income. I have voted in every election since I turned 18. I am aware of traffic rules. I even sign online petitions when the urge takes me. Sure, I don't stand for elections or participate in rallies. I don't know what it would take for me to become more 'activist' - perhaps I never will. But I'm making a reasonable contribution to the land I happened to be born in.
But I do forget easily. Leave aside doing something about them, I don't even know what the progress has been in previous cases of distress to affect India. It fades away from memory. Who do you blame? Life is perennially news-worthy, so the news-men have to write about those things. My own life demands my attention like an impatient child. So who is awarded the contract to keep track? We think those faceless bureaucrats and in-your-face politicos ought to. But I can't tell if they are doing a good job or not - perhaps they foiled 99 major attacks, perhaps they were incompetent enough to let through the only attack ever attempted. I simply don't have all the information.
A tattoo! That's the answer. (Stop it now - don't be flippant).
So I ask myself: how will you not forget? How can you blame the others if you don't even remember to finger-point? It's quite possible people 'out there' are keeping an eye out, on my behalf. As a member of the un-involved masses, I'm going to try and change my own state of ignorance.
People have been saying: "we will not forget", "We will be there every week". I hope they do. But I find it hard to believe they will, and cross a certain critical threshold. Unless their lives change fundamentally in order to accomodate this zeal. It's hard to be that possessive about anger. So all I, inert participant with the limited means at my disposal, will try to do is this: each month's 26th, I will write a short post on this blog, summarising all that I will have read and tracked about in that month about what is happening re: the November attacks. I'll also try to note what the others, who have promised to remember, have done. I have no idea where I'll begin, for I have no capacity for primary research here. Perhaps on most occasions, I will only announce, yet again, my failure to do even this simple task. But I will try. If this menial task is beyond me, why speak of loftier goals?
The day in 1949 the Constitution of India was passed? Nope.
For me, 'terrorism' could be anything that scares me out of conducting my life in a reasonably independent manner. In essence, rioters, dangerous traffic conditions, gun-toting extremists, do all this. Of course, one is unlike another, and for most people, an external threat is more dangerous, with a bigger outcry. If the people of Bombay could show us how to tackle big demons, perhaps we little cousins might summon up the initiative to take on our lesser evils.
Back to the idea of Bombay. Cities change over a period of time, but Bombay's ideas have been steadfast. Others in the country seem to be (regrettably) leaving behind their own ideas and copying some of Bombay's. But all the more reason to nurture the original, for who knows what will take its place if that idea goes missing.
Finally, I'm not from Bombay. But there must be some traces of it in me. I was born in Bombay. On the 26th of November. The latest entrant to a list of dates that will live in infamy. But forever? Hopefully, some day we won't need to rememeber.
The men behind the mixers are easy to miss in the glories of the music director. Think of the crisp and crystal soundscapes that you associate with the music of A.R.Rahman and one of the people you are silently tipping your hat to is his designer H.Sridhar.
Here's an obit from The Hindu of the multiple National Award winner.
This blog for instance is classified as ISTP - The Mechanics with the description:
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.(Ahem.)
Anyway, it's an interesting exercise in text classification and I wonder what their training data was. (The folks at LingPipe had that same question when they pointed to this link).
As it turns out, this story and three others tied for the top spot. The tie-breaker left me in the last spot (apply clichés about cookie crumbling'/'biscuit breaking'/'shrewsbury slicing' :-)).
Congratulations to all the winners (quite a few of them). Pats on back to organisers for seeing this through, and for making judging comments available.
One judge mentioned some trouble interpreting the 2nd last sentence, which I didn't realise at the time of writing (I meant one wife and two girlfriends only, present company included. The implication of who hired the man was intentionally open-ended, but in my mind, it was the wife.). I wish I had had another 50-100 words, because I had to skip past a few binding agents to fit it in.
Many congratulations to the winners and other selected participants.
I was able to send in a little story this time based on thinking about isolation and human beings. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, so I grope my way in the dark when it comes to such topics. Hopefully, the process and output has shown improvement since last time.
Selva, who's kind enough to organise this contest, has also collected some thoughts on what should be there in a creative science writer's toolkit.
If not, I bet you have not watched ESPN or Star Sports in the last week or so. Because these channels have been running a huge announcement logo beginning in the top left and working its way down. It encroaches so much real estate that your local cable-wallah might feel a little embarrassed if he did that to show ads.
It is either a sign of desperation or inanity, for these channels are usually viewer-friendly. But now football scores on the top right are painted over. You cannot tell what a tennis ball is doing on the left hand side of the court.
Why not put the logo in the middle and have a little inset on the top left for the sports?
To give you some idea of what we're talking about:
The Pakistanis invented the reverse sweep (Hanif or Mushtaq Mohammad), reverse swing (Sarfraz, Imran, that generation, perhaps even earlier), the doosra (Saqlain Mushtaq). The Aussies invented day-night cricket in ODIs (Packer et al.), slow bowling in the death overs, the zooter (if you believe it exists), (perhaps) trying to score at 4 rpo in a Test. The New Zealanders, usually an innovative bunch, had Mark Greatbatch taking advantage of the then new 15 overs restrictions, Martin Crowe and lot invented "Cricket Max" that eventually inspired Twenty20, not to mention opening with a spinner in ODIs. The English had the googly, Bodyline (besides, they did invent the sport!), Duckworth-Lewis, TV innovations, switch-hitting. The South Africans brought in fielding revolutions and earpieces and (seemingly) choking. The Windies used pace attacks (that was enough), and the chinaman (probably). The Lankans invented dual pinch-hitters and now re-invented the carrom ball (and flex elbows). Zimbabwe seems to have invented wicketkeeper-batsman-captains! (let's see: Fletcher, Houghton, A. Flower, Taibu).
The closest that we could think of:
1. Srikkanth's over the top hitting in ODIs (a little weak, because it wasn't sold as a strategy - he was an opener and that's how he played)
2. (Harish) Sending the top batsman to open in ODIs rather than shielding him in the middle order (as with Sachin Tendulkar)
3. Playing a spin trio? (was a strategy, but hardly any alternatives existed)
4. (Harish) Perhaps the paddle sweep?
5. Day-Night cricket for a first class game? (unless it has been done elsewhere before the 1994 Ranji Final at Gwalior)
As you can see, we're clutching at straws here. Innovations often happen as a response to constraints or as a product of careful thought that challenges existing conventions. That rules out "the Great Indian batting collapse" as an entry.
Ranji: you win, unless we can come up with something better.
Update
How about "Mankading"?
Imagine a film where: Salman is a dreamy singer...Clearly, Subhash Ghai possesses a one of a kind, not to mention dangerous, imagination. I tried very hard to pull off this impossible task, but couldn't. I don't know how much success music director A.R.Rahman and lyricist Gulzar had, but we'll take this album as their best shot. I've tried wrapping my head around this soundtrack for a while, but continue to find it a mixed bag. I blame Subhash Ghai - I think he's finally got to Rahman, whose clever ploy of working at odd hours kept the Guy out of harm's way during previous collaborations. This one must have been made in broad daylight, which Ghai channeling Laxmikant-Pyaarelal. The result is a very confusing medley of styles and songs, and a subdued Gulzar.
Katrina is a leading musician...
Zayed grooves to a chaotic disco sound...
Anil Kapoor enjoys only classical music...
lat uljhi...manamohinii more (Vijay Prakash) is the stand-out. Rahman has often thrown in western orchestrations for classical numbers, which coupled with the singer's assured singing, makes this an excellent song. The contemplative zindagii zindagii (Srinivas) is so mellow that it is in danger of being disregarded by listeners. However, it is one of the few songs in the entire album to feature some Gulzar sparks, and so worth getting on the playlist loop.
For me, the Gulzar-ARR partnership has always been successful when they have connected on an elemental level of 'sound'. Unlike the Vishal-Gulzar duo, where the music reinforces word semantics in a snug fit, Rahman's music reacts best to the onomatopoeia of the great man's words. In this album, Mastam Mastam (ensemble) achieves this in its orchestrations and sonorous lyrics. This is in the vein of ooh la la lah (Minsara Kanavu/Sapnay) and shabbaa shabbaa (Daud), and worked for me.
The recipe of dil ka rishta (ensemble) , though rich in musical themes, is a throwback to Ghai's idea of a 'musical' , with every bit of the soundscape painted mercilessly. shaaNo shaaNo ("Beware Blaaze" alarm) provides a basis for similar complaints. tu meri dost hai (Benny Dayal) has a simple melody which only improves when Shreya Ghoshal and Rahman take over in the end, while in tu muskuraa has Alka Yagnik touching Castafiore-ian scales.
Stay away from mai.n huu.n yuvvraaj (can't imagine Beethoven doing a jig at finding his name coupled with Herr Salmon) and the shaaNo Remix (to be honest: didn't bother listening to this. Why do I want to?)
I suppose all this bias is because a wise man once said: always be suspicious of any film that contains:
1. Salman Khan
2. Zayed Khan
3. Subhash Ghai
4. Blaaze
5. Anyone 'playing' a musical instrument in the proud Bollywood tradition of torturing it into revealing its octaves by giving it a good massage
6. Katrina Kaif
7. Any film title with superfluous letters, especially an extra 'v'
But: somehow, the changing faces of Pune make me uneasy. It's hard to put a finger to it. I think it is because life becomes increasingly unfamiliar. It causes a discomfort that is hard to nail down. I catch myself being disapproving of certain ways some people speak, behave, flash. I instinctively seem to blame non-Punekars for being responsible for this. And for some of our own people for changing colours so easily. Was this tendency always there? I don't like these people changing the way it used to be. Luckily, there are still places I feel comfortable with and things that I can go do. If that goes, what do I do?
I thought I am (was) tolerant? But how can this be reconciled with the above paragraph?
I can't balance comfortable stability with drip-drip-drip change?
Wednesday is the Se7enth Day
I found A Wednesday infuriating - it could have been so much better. For one, this film should have been even shorter. Instead of packing the first segment with overdone character introductions and superfluous humour, it should have forged on ahead. I was put off by such unnecessary scenes where Anupam Kher (a welcome return to a hard-as-nails posture last seen in Rang De Basanti) gets his men to make macho statements at high decibels. Or how the police commissioner insists of making confidential statements in open corridors or in front of about 50 people. Worst, I smelt the ending too early to enjoy any surprises at the end. (There was always going to be just one possible ending).
But on the positive side, the ratio of fat to muscle was much less in this one, with no songs to break the pace. The biggest saving grace was Naseeruddin Shah's sizeable monologue towards the end, which salvaged the film for me. His motivations reminded me of Se7en (but without its superbly fuzzy morals). However, this film ended days too early for it to be in the same league.
I couldn't tell if this was a film about the band (Luke Kenny and Purab Kohli's characters whimper along with hardly a feeling of being let down by the other two) or the Farhan Akhtar-Arjun Rampal situation. Prachi Desai fades off in the 2nd half. It doesn't help that the songs become a drag, especially with the musical abilities after the reunion conveniently taking off where they left - which for a recently promoted investment banker who has never hit a note in the last ten years and has so much time to practice, is just too easy. The climax reminds one of Jhankaar Beats, whose happy ending was a lot more palatable, just like its 'band issues'.
The lac (sic) of Magik is compounded by the silly attempt by Javed Akhtar to pass off random noun phrases as lyrical poetry, which overshadowed whatever parts of the music appealed to me. Unsurprisingly, my favourite track from the film is the mellow "Yeh Tumhaari Meri Baate.n" (Dominique Cerejo). Unlike that song, I didn't want the film - admittedly well made in some respects - to go on and on.
I have two stories in this list. These are entries 639 and 823 (both untitled - no words to spare for titles :-)). The former is about a cop who has to read someone's journals, while the latter is about a bored man in a local train.
The theme of the submissions was "Journal" (in part, this exercise is also aimed at promoting LiveJournal among Indian netizens). I struggled to come up with ideas for this topic, and somehow managed a few.
Anyway, all the stories have been put up because there is a "Community Choice Winner" prize based on public voting (public == LiveJournal account holders). I'm more keen on receiving feedback, so if you get a chance, please read the two stories linked above. If you are so inclined (== sufficiently jobless), you could numerically evaluate it using a score between 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) or textually by leaving a comment. But you'd need an LJ account to do either. So if all you want is to let me know how you felt, emailing me or leaving a comment here is just as fine.
You can also read the other stories (an index by entry id is here). Of the few that I've read, I thought #618 titled "The Quack" was very imaginative.
I never ventured into King-dom, not because of the mishap recounted above, but because I don't read horror. I like the movies though, so I read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, and after experiencing The Shining, I read about the Overlook. I wasn't too impressed. It was wordy, too long, and only occasionally did the hairs on my neck demand that I shut that book and try not too look outside at the blackboard night on whom someone was writing, slowly but with careful intent, my name in blood...
So it is strange that the first King book I've really liked is non-fictional. In On Writing, King takes a practitioner's view of writing. He feels blessed to be able to write and make money off it. He wouldn't probe that bit of magic too much. Instead, he makes sure he doesn't take it for granted and work at it like hell.
King begins with a brief autobiography - he thinks it would be good for me to know how some of that must have affected his work. He then constructs a toolbox for writing. It is suprisingly small (vocab and grammar on top, Strunk and White in the middle, organisation below). Just basic skills.
The last section is On Writing. If you had to read anything about writings, you should read this. He talks about themes, about the way he revises, about reading, about blocks, about ideas and flow. It works for him, but you don't have to do it that way. This section is written with great clarity and cohesion.
If I had to apply Strunk and White's mantra of "omit all unnecessary words", this post should read as:
"Read a lot, write a lot" - Stephen King, "On Writing".Cross-posted on our group lit blog
At any rate, it should be reasonably safe to go there since this fellow is unlikely to be "literally standing here in case you need anything".
Image courtesy Wikipedia
Nikhil Wagle may be shrill, but the guy has guts. Of all the people on all the news channels, he is the only one to do what he has been doing for a long while: dropping all pretence of pseudo-journalistic-fairness on a situation that demands none. He smells a conspiracy in what the local Congress and NCP govts are doing - letting the MNS steal the carpet from under the hapless Shiv Sena's feet. He also predicts Raj Thackeray is just the latest genie to be released out of the bottle. That the fair name of Maharashtrians has been sullied. The only one to loudly ask what Raj Thackeray has done in the four years since he began this so-called agitation. No representations to the Railway Board. It takes a certain culture to be democratic and the Thackeray household consciously leaves that out of the syllabus.
Finally, I notice that almost every bit of arson and rioting seems to be captured on video. I don't know if the rioters wait for the cameras to show up, or if there just are so many cameras around. A bit of both perhaps. So is it a good thing that people see every bit of this? Ordinarily, you think the publicity ("any" better than "none") would suit the MNS (arrested at 2:30 am, delayed court appearance, overnight jail). But would too much of it be counter-productive?
Finally, feel really sad for the poor chaps who came to Bombay despite knowing that people like them have been soft targets for several years. How desperate must the situation be at home? Sentence both Lalu and Raj T to one year's servitude to the family who lost their young son in this cross-fire.
In obvious tribute to M.C.Escher:
(Image source: Wikipedia)
(serendipitously, a chair was in the right part of the reflection)