What's in a song?

Yesterday I was at a concert by one of my favourite Carnatic vocalists, called TM Krishna. My mother was with me for this concert and was whispering at the end of nearly every song that he had not sung any Tamil song so far. It’s a thing with the Tamil audience. Although we appreciate the fact that most of the songs sung in these concerts are bound to be in Telugu or Sanskrit, we expect/hope that the artist will sing at least one Tamil song. The concert was nearing the end, and TMK had already announced that he would be singing 2 more songs. Someone in the audience asked for a song by Subramanya Bharathi (or Bharathiar as he is popularly known), since it was his birthday yesterday. TMK obliged with one of my favourite songs by the poet, called ‘Chinnanchiru Kiliye’. He sang the song in a set of ragams different from the usual way it is sung. All the way back, my mother and I were talking about this song.
Bharathiar was known for his patriotic poems mostly. A very forward thinking person, he wrote poems about an independent India even before it became a reality. Bharathi was also a believer in the equality of women and men and spoke openly against casteism. We are talking about the early 1900s so it is easy to understand how revolutionary these thoughts were at that time. There are numerous sources about the man and his life. So I am not going to go into a lot of details here.
People interested in Tamil poetry have an emotional attachment towards Bharathi and his poetry. Although I never studied Tamil as a subject in school save for one year when I learnt the alphabets, my mother ensured that my siblings and I were taught the language at home. I was fascinated by some of the poems (or at least what I could make of them) by Bharathiar at a very young age. Some of these poems were used in Tamil films too.
Bharathiar wrote extensively on both nationalism and on religion. His favourite deities were Shakti and Krishna. And on Lord Krishna (or Kannan), he wrote various poems. Unlike any other poet, Bharathi imagined Krishna in multiple forms – a friend, a child, a daughter, a servant, God, a lover (male and female) and so on. This song I mentioned above is written treating Krishna as a daughter. I am not very good at translating poems since the beauty of any poem is not just in the meaning but also in the words used and the feeling it generates cannot be fully replicated while translating from one language to another. You can check this thread for an approximate translation.
This song represents a lot more than just a song for many of us. I remember my sister’s wedding. My senses were still dulled and the fact that my sister was getting married had not struck me at all. And then she walked out all dressed up for one of the ceremonies and my aunts were singing this song and all of a sudden it hit me – my kid sister who had been a child till then, was going to leave the childhood behind for good!! And tears welled up in my eyes. My mother who heard the song started crying too. For many years, every time she heard the song, she would immediately start thinking of my sister or me. Today the song reminds her of my little niece and gets emotional every time! I cannot sing the song without feeling a little emotional myself.
I have held my niece often from the time she was 10 days old and I cannot believe how beautifully Bharathi has captured the feeling of holding/hugging one’s daughter (‘Unnai thazhuvidilo Kannamma Unmatham aagudadi’ – When I hug you, I feel beyond myself). And I understand the feeling of bursting with pride when anybody praises my niece and Bharathi has experienced it too (‘Mechi unnai ooraar pugazhndal meni silirkudadi’ – When people praise you, I get goosebumps).
The song is so close to my heart that I am extremely possessive about it. I find it difficult to brush it aside as a ‘nice song’ or ‘nice lyrics’. The only version of this song that I can admit as being close to what I feel about it is the violin version by the genius Lalgudi G Jayaraman. So when TMK sang a technically perfect version of the song, my intellect was telling me to nod in my appreciation and my heart was telling me that this one shares the words with ‘my’ song, but it was not the same. The words were there, the tune was good (though not the same), but the emotional prowess that the song has, was missing.

Dear Santa Thatha

Hello Thatha,
I hope you don’t mind me addressing you in this manner. In Tamil, Thatha means grandfather. It can also mean ‘Give’ (Tha) repeated twice. Since this letter is essentially a wish-list, I thought this mode of address would be most suitable.
I wish I could be broad-minded and selfless like women winning the beauty pageants and ask for world peace or eradication of poverty or terrorists turning to peace lovers from December 26th 2011. However, from what I hear about you, I guess you already know that I am not a selfless person. I am one of the many people who are in equal (or unequal) parts God and Devil (and this idea definitely did not come from the song in the tamil movie Aalavandan*).
This list may seem silly to you Kris** Thatha, but do not doubt my intentions. As much as possible, I will give you options to pick from in each item of the list. The choice of picking the easier (marked E for your convenience) or tougher one (marked T for your convenience) is up to you (and I hope you see the goodness behind this idea and give me prorated extra points for being a good girl). The easy options may at times seem a little cruel and mean – again, the intentions are purely noble and (mostly) selfless. Here is my list:
a. Good roads that don’t dissolve in rain water in Chennai (T) (or) special magic car that can spot potholes underneath the puddles and can grow wings and fly at those spots alone (E).
b. Drivers with common sense who understand that cars are equipped with low and high beams and that low beams work most of the time (T) (or) a super powerful torchlight (that is more powerful than the stupid halogen lamps some of the morons on the road use for headlights), that I can use to blind the offenders for a microsecond at least.
c. Good eyesight to people who walk past me when I am waiting in a queue for the lift or to get my coffee as though I don’t exist (and much as I would like to think of this as proof of my exercise regime working, I know this is not true) (T) (or) the mental fortitude to push past them in exactly the same fashion and pretend they don’t exist (E).
d. Good conscience to people who spit and eject other bodily fluids on the roads (T) or a magic spell that I can utter which will have these people slapped on their faces every time they even think of such a thing. (E).
e. Good sense to people who spend 5 full minutes in front of the attendance swipe machine thinking that staring at it will shame it into changing the swipe-in time to 10 minutes earlier than the current time (T) (or) installation of Smart attendance machines that will kick the person away if he/she spends more than 1 second in front of it or will sense the person’s attendance based on biometric data.
f. Make me immune to spelling and grammar mistakes, love stories written by 10-year olds (T) (or) embed Spelling and grammar lessons in each person’s DNA before they are born (E)
g. And lastly, make me thick skinned and more accepting of faults in others (T) (or) Give me a magic wand that I can use as a vigilante to mete out justice to the wrongdoers and cleanse the world of evil (E).
Eagerly hoping you are real.
Love
Me
*A song that goes in badly translated English ‘Equal parts God and Beast – I am a mixture of the two’
**I know your real name since I have watched ‘Miracle on 34th street 4-5 times.

The Wire

Probably as a result of watching umpteen movies while growing up and the trauma resulting from watching even those movies starring stellar actors like Vijaykanth, Ramarajan, Satyaraj and other such horror-heroes, by the time I turned 25 (that should be less than a year back!), I have become very picky about watching movies and television shows – to the point of being called snobbish by my own mother (- I wonder about this usage though, why ‘own’, do ‘rental mothers’ exist?). I have become increasingly as intolerant towards pretentiousness in art as in life. I have stopped treating movies as ‘just entertainment’ and thought of them as art. This of course does not mean I enjoy watching neo-realistic nonsense movies that think showing paint dry is art. Like I said I can’t stand pretentiousness anywhere and can stand snobbery only when it is mine So much for being just!
Anyway, this post is not meant to be a sample of my obsessive navel-gazing (and contrary to what people may assume by that term in the context of Indian movies, I am using it in the usual sense of the phrase!). I have said it before and I will say it again – thriller/horror and comedy are the most difficult genres in art. With the deluge of entertainment we are faced with every day, impressing people with art – especially movies and television shows is becoming next to impossible. I am very very sympathetic towards the creators of today and totally understand their helplessness, but as a viewer I can not help being underwhelmed by most of their efforts.
I can’t believe I have written almost 3 paragraphs as prologue, so let me start the topic here at least. In my quest for good movies/television shows/ books, I am grateful for any recommendation from people who share at least some of my interests in them. Two years ago, my cousin had spoken highly about a HBO show called ‘The Wire’. She had heard about the series and had ordered the first season through Netflix. She was hooked and could not wait for Netflix to ship the remaining seasons. So she purchased the remaining seasons, just so that she could finish watching them as soon as she could. Recommendations don’t come better than that!
I started watching ‘The Wire’ about 3-4 months back. This was when I had just finished watching the last season of Dexter – another awesome series about a ‘good’ serial-killer. The next season of Dexter was to start in November and I did not want to wait between episodes to know what happened next. I was thinking of ‘The Wire’ as a filler. And boy, I was hooked!!
The series is centered around Baltimore, Maryland. There are 5 seasons in total with each season focused on one aspect of the city. Each episode has multiple story-arcs and the narration shifts between them almost seamlessly. Rather than talk about the actual plot(s) of each seasons, I think I will just list down some of the features that I found impressive and loved. (With this constant urge to put everything down in bullet points, I wonder if I can really talk in paragraphs!!):

• I have never seen any movie or tv show with so many African-American actors in major roles as this show. And the roles they play are not the token ones they play in mainstream movies/shows nor are they the stereotypical portrayals (family loving, loud, gun-toting lowlifes etc). Of course the series has African American gangstas, but it also has the Greeks, Polacks participating in crimes and contributing to the ruining of the city. In that sense it is an equal-opportunity show!! Whatever the reason, I found this a very refreshing change.
• Memorable characters : It has been more than a month since I watched the last episode of Wire and I still cannot forget most of the characters. Full credit to creator David Simon to have created unique characters among the good and bad guys. Avon Barksdale, Omar Doolittle, Stringer Bell, Kima Greggs, McNulty, Daniels, Prybylewski, Lester Freamon, Bunny Colvin, Burrell – it is amazing how I am able to recall most of the character names without much effort after so many days. Excellently etched, completely rounded characters who, like real people are in equal parts good and bad.
• Language : The lingo is supposedly authentic street language and for the uninitiated, a little difficult to understand. I had to watch the entire series with the subtitles on. Although I watched the first few episodes by myself without troubling my parents, there were a few that I watched in the living room when my father was present. He was not actually shocked but sort of tired of only hearing colourful language and some form of the f word repeated at the end of almost each statement  by every character . Yet, the fact remains that the language spoken by the characters adds to the authentic and gritty feel of the show.
• Story, Editing, Screenplay etc. are just fabulous. I have not seen anything like this so far – not even in movies.
• Idris Elba : I consider myself fairly old fashioned in many ways. I rarely describe men (or women for that matter) as ‘hot’. I do describe many actors as cool and for me the actors I like most are those with a high degree of effortless coolth – like George Clooney (before Oceans 12), Robert Downey Junior, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Spacey (often, not always). I reserve terms like dignified and classy for actors like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington etc. However right from episode 1 of ‘The Wire’, I could think of no word other than ‘Hot’ for Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell in the series. I am embarrassed to admit, but I still cannot think of any other word to describe this guy. Maybe it is his role of a cool, confident, suave and ruthless gangster that made this impression, maybe like my mother says, I have this weird (according to my mother) fascination for African American actors (only) or maybe I am just normal ) In any case, when Stringer Bell was killed in Season 4, a part of me died (and later resurrected after my mind consoled it that while Bell may be dead, Elba is very much alive!!). I admire this guy!!

While I can go on and on about Idris Elba ‘The Wire’, a word of caution here. The series while wonderful is not for everyone. It is not a ‘wholesome entertainer’ meant for the family. It is dark, gritty and very realistic – which means that it does not end with all the cast members posing for a photograph with fake smiles pasted on their faces. The fourth season is particularly heartbreaking because it is about the school system and hence about how the children enter the criminal system – Kids who start out innocent and are constantly let down by the system, teachers who cannot be described anything less than God’s messengers who fight against all odds to try and keep the children away from the criminal life that their parents are pushing them towards, the politicians who see everything only as a means to stay in power. While one of the best seasons, this was the most depressing of all.
In the last episode, I was hoping for some miracles – hoping that all the children that we were introduced to in the previous system succeed in fighting the pressures of the world to succumb to the life of a criminal, hoping that they would realize their potentials and start believing in themselves. The ending is beautiful, sad and true to the spirit of the series. There is hope and there is despair. Some kids make it, many don’t. The last 10 minutes of the final episode is a montage of scenes showing the fates of different characters of the series and many of them mirror the lives of other characters at the start of the series – the (mostly bleak) message being that while the players change, history repeats itself over and over again and not always in a good way.
The only side-effect of watching ‘The Wire’ is that the bar is set very high, and it is highly unlikely for me to find any other TV show that is better than this one!! Highly recommended.

The Routine

Gal (Giggles, gives ‘cute’ looks!): Are you angry with me?
Guy (Appears surprised!): No.
Gal : Something is wrong, you are angry.
Guy : No, really, I am not.
Gal : I don’t believe you. You look serious.
Guy : There, I smiled, enough.
Gal (Now she is alarmed!): Now, I am sure. What did I do?
Guy (Still amused, not irritated): What do you mean - ‘What did I do’? About what?
(Giggling friends turn silent).
Gal : Why are you raising your voice? I knew it, you are definitely angry about something. (A little more alarmed!)
Guy (Thinks - “Friends are giving strange looks. Time to change tacks”). : I told you - No!! Hey, by the way, did you watch that interview with Kamal last night.
Gal: Why don’t you tell me what is wrong? Is it because I spoke to R today morning?
(Friends leave one by one, Gal’s voice trembles slightly)
Guy (thinking - Need to think of something soon) : Who cares about R? He is a rich guy, owns a car etc., obviously Girls will flock to him.
Gal (now with tears) : So you think I am one of them?
Guy: Oh come on. I didn’t say that!
Gal: So, that’s the way that is!!  Well, thanks for showing me your true colours today.
Guy: What did I do?
Gal: Nothing.
Guy (thinking - her smile is more dangerous than her tears. I seem to have screwed it up!) : Forget all this, this weekend is Abi’s birthday, what gift do we get?
Gal: I have not yet decided.
Guy: What do you mean ‘I’?
Friends return - No shouting, things seem to be okay.
Gal (ignores Guy, face lights up all of a sudden): Look who is here!! Hey R!! Long time no see!! Nice shirt!!
R (taken aback): Hey, what are you guys doing?
Gal: Oh nothing really! R, remember that module I was working on? I need some help with it. Can you help me? Please !!
R : Sure, I will come to your desk after lunch.
Guy: Hey, I can help you!!
Gal (ignores Guy, looks at R):  That’s so sweet!!
R leaves. Friends, watching this drama realize the next episode is about to start and slowly excuse themselves.
Guy: Are you angry with me?
Gal: No
And it goes on….
(Note : Heard the beginning of the ‘Are you angry?’ routine a few minutes back from a set of young people sitting near where I sit and my imagination took flight! Do I even have to add, that unless one is the ‘guy’ or the ‘gal’ involved, this routine is really annoying to those watching/hearing it??)

Parting with dignity

The word ‘death’ evokes different emotions in different people. For most, the word spells doom, the end of everything good, for a few it is something that happens to others, rarely to oneself or to those close to oneself. Hinduism says that death is merely a stop where the soul changes bodies and not the destination itself. In spite of all these logical and philosophical explanations of death, few of us like going anywhere near it. We are either scared of the dead people or disgusted with the idea of touching a corpse. Still death also means business for some people. I am not talking about professional hit-men here, who make it their business to cause death. I am talking about people who work with the dead all the time - the undertakers, the coroners, the employees at a funeral parlour etc. Rarely have I read a book or seen a movie that portrays the life of these people. The only movie I remember watching  that has a main character who works as a graveyard keeper is the tamil movie - Pitamagan. But the story was not about the profession itself, and the graveyard keeper was portrayed more as an animal like person than someone who understands deeply about death (and I was perplexed by the suggestion that he grew up that way because he grew up in a cemetery!), but I digress.
I am not a great follower of Japanese cinema. My only foray into Japanese movies have been some of the movies by Kurosawa (and I will be looked at with disgust if I say that I switched off ‘Dreams’ - the movie that Kurosawa considered his most personal one, midway - somethings should stay personal, I think!!) and more recently one called ‘Confessions’. I also watched one or two of the anime movies (Tokyo Godfathers and another one whose title I cannot recall). I had watched some of the remakes of Japanese movies - The Ring, The Grudge etc. One conclusion I had drawn was that as far as the crown for ‘creepy movies’ goes Japanese and South Korean movies had a stiff competition. In fact after viewing the highly disturbing ‘Confessions’, I had vowed to go nowhere near these movies for a while.  But thanks to Roger Ebert, I had been holding on to this Japanese movie called Departures (Okuribito) for a while now. After more than a year of non-cooperation, my mother had also slowly softened a stance against watching English and other world movies that she did not understand. On a sudden whim, I played this movie yesterday and I found it to be one of the more rewarding movie watching experiences.
The movie opens with a poignant and a strangely funny scene of Daigo Kobayashi, the protagonist working with his boss Sasaki in what is called encoffinment.  The title and the credits roll and we are taken back a year or so in time. The scene shifts to a ongoing concert in front of a largely empty hall. Daigo works as a cellist in the orchestra in Tokyo. Soon after the concert is over, the manager of the orchestra comes backstage and tells the band that the troupe has been disbanded. Daigo decides to move back to his village with his young wife, where he thinks he will find a job while living rent free in the house his mother left for him.
On seeing an advertisement  to ‘assist departures’, he answers immediately assuming that the job would be with a travel agency. He is hired on the spot by the boss, who only asks him if he will work hard. Only after he is hired is he told about the nature of his job. At first Daigo is reluctant. On his first day, he is asked to act as a model for a promotional video, in the role of a corpse while his boss explains the procedure of encoffinment.
Daigo initially hides the true nature of his job as he thinks his wife will hate him for it. Things get worse when the first body that Daigo is asked to help with, is that of a two week old decomposed body of an old woman who died alone. He breaks down at home, unable to share his thoughts with his wife.Gradually however, as Daigo watches his boss preparing the dead bodies with respect for the dead and sees how the kin of the dead people end up feeling grateful for sending away their relative with dignity, Daigo grows to respect and later love his job.
The movie is about this journey of Daigo and later his wife towards understanding the beauty of death and the job of encoffinment. A small note about encoffinment. When I saw this word in the subtitles, I thought this was one of the standard spelling mistakes you find in subtitled movies - a word coined when nothing else matches the meaning of the original word. Seems like I was wrong. Encoffinment is supposedly a Japanese ritual that involves ‘preparing’ the corpse for burial. The Japanese method of disposing (for the lack of a better word) off the dead bodies is interesting. It appears to involve placing the corpse in the coffin and then cremating the coffin in an electric crematorium.
The encoffinment process itself, involves cleaning the body with sterilized cloth, putting on new clothes, applying makeup etc. - all this in front of the family and then laying the body inside the coffin. While this high-level description sounds morbid and even perverse, if you think about it (and you will when you are watching the ritual play out in the movie), it is about how a loved one is remembered in the end. Most of the scenes involving the encoffinment were without any BGM and my mother and I watched transfixed. Strangely the whole ritual seemed somehow pure, serene and extremely beautiful!! All credit goes to the director for composing the scene so well and to the actors for enacting it with so much poise! Apparently the lead actor Masahiro Motoki studied this art of encoffinment in preparation for his role!
For all the seriousness of the subject, there are small moments of fun in the film too. The opening scene that I talked about provides some unexpected laughs. This scene, later continued in the middle of the movie, culminates is a very unexpected and poignant fashion. In spite of the subject (or maybe because of it), the whole movie is really life affirming and positive. It views as death as a gateway to the next life and that was fascinating . Dialogues were very good (at least what the subtitles read!!) and I was wondering if the impact would have been even better if I knew Japanese. One of them stuck in my mind. The assistant at the funeral parlour has this to say about coffins -  ‘Our last shopping in our lives is done by others’ (or something to this effect).
For those interested in offbeat movies and do not mind subtitles, this is a must watch.

Time Flies

There is only one thing that never lies besides King Harischandra (of course, since if such a person even existed, he is long gone by now, so the present tense does not apply; also I am not sure if the King would want to be called a ‘thing’ (damn, I should stop this ugly habit of writing between the lines!!)) - the Mirror. So while our actors try to put on a bold face (and a rather stiff one, thanks to all the Botox), in front of their fans - the women wearing lesser and lesser clothes every passing year to divert the attention from their faces and the men hiding behind large sunglasses to hide their eyes and wearing impossibly warm suit buttoned up till their chins to hide the creases on their necks, at night, when they are all alone or with accepting (compelled to otherwise) spouses, the mirror tells them the truth. While we love to talk about how age is just a number, we usually say that to others who complain about old age. When we start growing old, we start complaining too and it is at that time, we realize that age is not just a number!!
Coming to think of it, I think every person’s life (or almost every person’s life) can be divided into two parts. The first where one  always wants to grow up and the second where one is wistful about getting what one wanted earlier ! It is one of life’s little ironies that the first half with a dream that can be realized is shorter than the latter with the impossible dream (unless of course you consider going completely loony as a return to childhood).
You may ask why all this talk of old age etc. at this point. (And may I humbly point out that ‘You’ are only one of the thousand plus readers of this post who may come up with this question!!). Is it because the blogger is growing old too? Does she struggle with the pangs of middle age (or old age)? Does she find herself frequently checking the mirror for signs of old age? The Answer? None of the above. This blogger is still at the prime of her youth, even if you may think otherwise looking at her or her experience. The reason I am writing this is because I am reading this book called ‘Time Flies’ by Bill Cosby and while I was reading the book, I was wondering how poignant humour can sometimes be. Before I start waxing eloquently about the beauty of growing old etc., a few lines about the author and the book.
My library is a very strange and enchanting place. In terms of size it is smaller than our kitchen (which is larger than many other kitchens!!). While most of the racks are filled with the popular paperbacks, organized by either author or genre - when the author is not popular enough (according to my librarian at least!!) - there is one rack that is full of books that do not fall under these categories. It is here that I often strike gold. So last week, I had gone to the library promising to get just one book for my mother, I started wandering (figuratively of course, since in my library, there is hardly enough space in each ‘aisle’ for one person to turn). I saw this book with Bill Cosby’s picture on the cover. The face - I did not recognize, but the name-I did.
I had heard the name Bill Cosby before (along with names like Bob Hope). I sort of remember reading somewhere that he is a very popular American comedian. I had not seen any of his shows, so I started reading this book with no preconceived notions on what to expect. I am glad I picked up the book!!
Time Flies, as the name indicates is about Cosby’s take on growing old. He had just turned 50 at the time of writing this book. The book is full of hilarious personal experiences and thought provoking comments on mankind’s fear of turning old.  For example, Cosby talks of getting his trifocals and getting intimidated by them, wondering which part of the lens to use, without knowing where the person he is looking at is in the room!! . This is one of the most hilarious episodes in the book (at least of what I have read of it). Other episodes are on his memory lapses, changed food habits where he is forced to eat celery stalks and other vegetables, his reduced athletic abilities, his struggle with his ever increasing girth and reluctance to wear a bigger sized dress. The part where he describes how he tries to fit into his size 15 shirt although his size has increased to size 17 1/2 is bitingly funny!
Besides his personal experiences, Cosby also talks about how as a country, Americans dread growing old and do all sorts of funny things like using beauty products, undergoing painful surgeries, herbal supplements etc to ward off the imminent old age. While this was probably true only for Americans at the time this was written, I think this is becoming a norm across nations - at least among those who can afford it. I remember this particular line he had written about a woman he knew, who applied the pollen of some flower on her face regularly - a sneeze from her would pollinate an entire garden!!
I may find fault with the Americans and America for a lot of things, but one thing I really like about them, is their ability to laugh at themselves. This is something that we probably lack as a country. We like laughing at people as long as we are not even remotely related to the targets of the joke.  Cosby’s sense of humour is different from the others that I have encountered and importantly, it has a sense of warmth along with all the humour. Cosby does not talk from a pedestal and the personal experiences, while being funny, also convey the confusion that a person would face at seeing himself change, without his noticing.  Middle-aged or not, it is easy to relate to Cosby’s writing. There is a lot of compassion and love in Cosby’s writing. And underneath all that self-deprecation, is genuine bafflement at seeing the man in the mirror change!!
I don’t know if my increasing interest in books/movies on humour is to do with my growing age. I do know that my ability to find humour in almost everything around me is definitely due to it. I also like the fact that unlike before, where I would find only a certain type of humour funny, I am able to understand and laugh at different brands  of humour - PGW, Douglas Adams, Fry and Laurie, Friends, Everybody loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Dexter (yes, it is gruesome, but also has dry humour!!),  movies by Tarantino and Coen brothers (same as Dexter ) etc.  (although I still don’t find Akshay Kumar and Govinda funny!!). I am learning to go beyond tolerance and have learnt to accept faults in others (and in me) with passing years. If these are perks of growing old, I would not mind old age at all

The Killing

My cousin visited us yesterday with her 6 year old daughter. This niece of mine is a hyperactive kid and my mom has named her ‘terrorist’. She is the kind of kid who is constantly devising means of wreaking havoc wherever she is at that moment. She was unnaturally quiet and I thought it was probably because she was sleepy (as it was around 9 pm). We were chatting while my niece was rolling around on our bed. My cousin had mentioned a while ago that the kid’s class teacher had earlier complained that she was not  attentive in class and was not doing very well in studies. She later found out that the kid had a vision problem and got her to wear spectacles but the class teacher had not stopped complaining. So I asked my niece if she was being a good girl in class and if her teacher had stopped complaining. I was not thinking of anything when I asked the question, but the kid seemed a little shifty while responding. I took it simply as a sign of her feeling sleepy.After some time, my niece fell asleep.
Now two seemingly unrelated topics that we spoke about :
My cousin who seemed to be waiting for this told us that she (the kid) was very upset that day because of what happened at school. Apparently that morning after the first period, my niece felt uncomfortable wearing her shoes and removed it. She stuffed it in her bag and was going around in her socks. Her class teacher who taught English, noticed this and asked her where her shoes were and this girl said that she had not worn shoes to school that day. The teacher admonished her for this, wrote a note for the parents in the kid’s diary - things seem normal till this point. What she did next is strange - she complained about this to the principal, who then called my cousin and her husband to complain. Since she (the principal) was able to reach only my cousin’s husband, she started yelling at him for sending the kid to school without her shoes and for being an irresponsible parent. My brother-in-law was annoyed and at first protested saying that he was sure the girl had worn her shoes to school and on learning that it was the school’s principal who was yelling, controlled his temper and promised to be more careful.
As all good fathers do, he later chided my cousin for being careless. My cousin asked my niece why she had hidden her shoes and later lied to the teacher. The girl was in tears. My cousin gently told her that no matter what, lying was a bad thing.
As we were talking about this, she mentioned something else. In the recent exams, my niece had scored over 90 in Maths and Social Sciences and over 60 in other subjects except English where she had scored a paltry 45. This was strange, to say the least. She also recounted her recent experience in the PTA meeting at school, where the same teacher complained to my cousin in front of the other parents that my niece had torn a page off her English textbook and that as punishment her teacher had refused to return the book to her.
This happened in one of the most popular schools in Chennai. Although all of us felt that the teacher and the principal had behaved irrationally, for the sake of the kid, I advised my cousin to have a heart-to-heart chat with the teacher and see if things could be resolved amicably.
While I thought that my niece was wrong in lying to the teacher about her shoes, I also realized that all these problems probably had a common root. My niece seemed to be afraid of this teacher and that probably caused her to lose interest in the subject too.
Does this seem familiar to any of you? Most of us have had experiences with a certain teacher who hated us for no reason. I have seen a few in my school days. They would pick on one particular student and constantly tease him/her, insult the student, even destroy their morale sometimes. More often than not, the student ends up hating the subject in retaliation. In my case, my nemesis in school was a sports teacher. He hated the fact that I existed and tried to hurt me whenever possible. This probably explains my total lack of interest in any kind of sports. My aunt who was a teacher has even told me that one of her colleagues who often used to target a certain student in her class, confessed that she hated the sight of him and had no idea why.
The thought that the unreasonable hatred or dislike of a certain person can turn a 6 year old towards lying, to temporarily escape from the teacher’s wrath (as she probably thought that her teacher would blame the parents instead) and also develop a hatred towards a certain subject, deeply saddened me. My mother still cannot forget the taunts of a certain science teacher in school, due to whom, she lost all interest in the subject that year and consequently scored badly in that subject alone - an event that subsequently changed the course of her life.
Due to some unavoidable circumstances, my niece has to spend an hour or two all by herself at home in the evenings, since both her parents work and my aunt who usually takes care of the kid, is away from Chennai for a short while. I was telling my cousin to ask her to keep the door locked and not open the door for strangers. Although I was afraid to voice my fears, I told my cousin to be very careful with the kid and to warn her about lurking dangers around her. My cousin was telling me later that she was trying to tell the kid about good and bad touches from different people and that she had explicitly instructed her to report any mischief by others immediately. I was reminded of my music teacher in school, who would call the girls in the class to her room and ask us to be careful with the Art teacher. She would ask a few girls if he had touched them. I remember finding it disgusting then thinking that this lady was trying to take away our innocence and was corrupting our minds. Now I think she was only trying to look out for us, probably because she had seen and/or suspected something afoul. It was a government school and the politics played there are worse than the politics we see in our organization. The best she could do was to warn us in vague terms to be ‘careful’.
I was thinking about these things again and again yesterday night and in the morning. What kind of our world are our kids growing up in? I have just returned from a visit to my niece and nephew in Singapore and the thought that these perfect beings will grow progressively less innocent and more imperfect in order to survive in this world sends shivers down my spine. I would not want them to learn what bias means or what hatred means. I would not want them to know that in the real world, there are sheep and there are wolves in sheep’s clothing and externally they appear the same. But then how will they survive in this world? In the first incident, more than the teacher’s behaviour, I was deeply disturbed by the fact that the 6 year old kid could sense the teacher’s dislike and proceeded to lie over a small thing. I can see her gradually moving from the innocence of childhood to the deceits of adulthood. In the latter case, much as I would want her to trust every person she meets, the fact that I am seeing more and more reports on child molestation - with the minimum age limit of the victim going down every day- I am wondering if losing her innocence is the price to pay for her safety.
We lost our innocence too, but the age of losing our innocence seems to be going down of late. Kids are forced out of their innocence and childhood by the deluge of infotainment in the media, an overdose of sex and violence everywhere. Nothing seems to entertain or satisfy and the craving for more of everything seems to be the order of the day. While I look on, the children are oblivious to what they are missing. So is it a trade-off between innocence and survival? There are no easy answers. Meanwhile I feel really old and tired already.

Just Relax..

It had been more than a year since I last visited my sister in Singapore. In between, there was another cute addition to the family. So in addition to my dear little niece, I also had my tiny nephew to look forward to in this trip. Things were changing at work too and the likelihood of getting into a shepherding role was looming large and I thought it was the right time to take a break, forget all about work and office and get away from the madding crowd.

So we made plans - my parents and I, booked the ticket on Tiger Airways - the TNSTC (Tamilnadu State Transport Corporation) bus that flies. The cheap guys actually charge you for every checked in baggage and also for seat selection or even reserving overhead compartment space for cabin baggage. However, they had no idea of the genius of Indian brains when they formulated their rules. As a result, we paid for a single check-in baggage and smartly utilized all our cabin baggages and the usually-not-weighed handbag allowances to carry a mini-grocery-store to my sister. My darling niece had already requested (actually, ordered) us to get her a ‘Barbie’ or ‘Hello Kitty’ mobile phone and after hunting around in multiple stores, my dad had success in finding it in one of the platform shops in Mylapore.

Tiger Airways is called a budget airline and we were never allowed to forget that fact. In the Chennai airport, our check-in baggage was not even scanned. And actually it is an insult to TNSTC buses to compare them with the Tiger Airways flight, however my conscience was also telling me that you usually get what you pay for and so we settled uncomfortably in our seats. Once the plane took off, I saw a strange guy trying to put his head on my lap. I was shocked, but only for a minute, for I realized that the guy in the front seat had merely pushed his seat back and thanks to the spacious seats, he was almost on my lap. So I decided to do what any other sane person would do - I pushed my seat back to scare the guy sitting behind me!

I frequently criticize or make fun of people on their English but I didn’t try any of that on the flight. The flight attendants spoke in a language that sounded vaguely like English. The Singaporean accent is kind of strange to untrained ears. It is nothing like the American, British, Australian or French accents. To get some idea of how this language sounds, imagine trying to speak with your mouth full of marbles - much like Eliza Doolittle is made to do in the film version of ‘My Fair Lady’. Consonants seem to be hurrying on their way out tumbling over the previous guys and causing general mayhem!! After a while I gave up trying to understand the announcements and instead concentrated on my ‘Thuppariyum Sambu’ novel by Devan.

Since this was not the first time we were travelling to Singapore, all of us had become a little careless. As a result, we had forgotten to note down my sister’s address and happily put down the name of the town where she stayed in the ‘Address’ box in the immigration form. True to my unerring instinct to pick the slowest moving queue, we ended up in one all the while hearing passports being stamped in rapid succession in the nearby lines, while the ‘uncle’ in-charge of our queue seemed to be taking some sort of sadistic pleasure in reading the details in every passport and immigration form one tiny alphabet at a time and relishing each second of our agony. He took a full 2 minutes to read through my immigration form and then looked up slowly to tell me that what I had written on it was the name of a town and not the address. I gave him what I thought was the smartest possible answer - that I did not know the address, and added helpfully that my sister would know it, since she lived there!! Uncle thought for a while (seriously, I wished I had a fast-forward button for this man to make him move at my speed) and said that I had to at least write down the phone number of my sister, which I did on my form and then on my parents’ forms too.

We had already decided that we would not go sight-seeing on this trip and that our main source of entertainment would be the kids. So we kept our promise, the first half of it at least. However, we did go out often and each such outing caused a larger hole in our pockets (figuratively of course, since we were carrying the demon called Credit Card with us). I realized in the end that what used to be only luxuries once have sort of become habits - like perfumes, watches, clothes etc. and where once we shopped to meet our daily needs, we now shop for the pleasure of shopping - to quench an insatiable thirst, which only increases with every dose of shopping therapy. Needless to say, I safely had these philosophical thoughts almost always after returning from the store. But still, better late than never, right?

I have said it before and I will say it again - the public transport system was amazing. All places in the country are well connected by buses and trains and a single pass worked in all of them. People walked quite a lot. I spent more hours walking in these 10 days than I would have done in 3 months in Chennai. In spite of the high number of apartment buildings, cars, people etc., Singapore seemed to be wonderfully green - there are trees everywhere and it was quite a pleasant sight. The apartment complex that my sister lives in is what are called housing board apartments. These are supposedly highly in demand in the country. The apartment community is a sprawling area with open gyms, play areas, tracks for running, walking etc and a lot of well maintained lawns and plants.

People are health freaks and irrespective of the time of the day, there are people running around in shorts or shorter shorts. I was feeling good about myself till I went there and starting thinking that I was abnormally obese. Interestingly, there were restaurants all over the place and people seemed to be eating at all times of the day. And yet, they remain super slim and that remains a mystery!!

Another remarkable thing was how little eye contact people made there. 9 out 10 people had mobile phones/PDAs or iPhones in their hands and earplugs in their ears. In fact in one station, I was looking through the door as the train was halting and I thought that people looked like zombies or automatons with their lost-in-thought expressions and lips that never smiled. Singapore Indians (mostly Tamils) were easily identifiable with their gaudy clothes, jewellery and heavily made up face.

My 3.5 year old niece kept us constantly entertained by pretending to be our teacher and insisting on teaching my mom and me Chinese (although I strongly suspect that Chinese has more words than just ‘tse’ or something sounding like that!!). She would sing entire songs in familiar tunes using this single alphabet and insist that it was Chinese. Rebels were not entertained and I was constantly told by my teacher that I would get a smiley on my palm if I behaved well and a star otherwise. But as she did not know how to draw a star I always received only smileys . She learnt to sing ‘O Susanna’ and part of ‘I am a barbie girl’ and would insist on singing it 10-15 times in a row without getting bored!! My 8 month old nephew would hold long conversations using the ‘aa’ syllable alone for hours together as long as his nanny or mother was holding him.

All good things must come to an end and the same happened with our trip. I wonder about this concept of time. When I come to work on Monday, Friday evening seems light years away (and now don’t ask me how time can be compared with distance. I am emotional, try to understand!) and yet when I was with my dear niece and nephew, Friday seemed to come a millisecond after Monday morning . Anyway, the honeymoon is over. I will be meeting with my flock soon and my new role as a shepherd will start immediately after.

When Lips don't meet

Warning : This post is about music !! And the title is not a gimmick!

I was listening to this album by Sikkil Gurucharan the other day and quite unlike the other times, I was paying some attention to the lyrics and to the swarams in between. Something was different about this song - not just the tune, which was very different from anything I had heard before, but something else, which was nagging even my not-so-knowledgeable mind!! I then heard the line ‘nInE harikEsha rAgjni’ and something clicked. I was not yet sure though, but paid more attention to the lyrics. Soon after I reached office, I did a Google search for the song and realized that my guess was right!! And I am such a shallow person that this made me very happy!! I heard this song again today morning and this post is a result of that!

This song is in a rare ragam called ‘Niroshta’ which literally translates to ‘No lips’ (Ushta = Lips in sanskrit). It was composed by a genius composer called Harikesanallur Muthaiah Bhagavathar. The ragam is so named because it does not contain the 2 notes - Ma and Pa (both requiring the lips to meet) in the scale.This by itself, is quite interesting, since we are talking about removing the 2 notes in the middle and calling this a ragam. Taking the Western Classical equivalent, this is like composing music in a scale that has neither the perfect 5th which is supposed to give some stability to the song, nor its neighbour, the 4th note. In simpler terms this is like a dosa or pizza without the center!! In spite of these limitations, the ragam is quite pleasant to hear and that is remarkable!

The beauty of this song is that the entire song is written such that the lips never meet, i.e., the labial consonants m and p are not used. Apparently the consonant v, as also the vowels “u”, “U” and “o”. “O” and “au” are also not used since this will cause the lips to meet . This is like being asked to write a short story or an essay in English with the constraint that the alphabets ‘e’ and ‘a’ are never used, i.e., extremely difficult. There are some interesting anecdotes about how the song was composed. Apparently Bhagavathar wrote this when he saw the Mysore Maharaja ill and had swollen lips*.Shri TN Seshagopalan has supposedly composed a ’tillana’ in Niroshta (which I have not heard), but this is supposedly the only song in this ragam.

There are a few other such experimental compositions in CM but this is the only one that I can recognize easily because I have finally managed to follow the ragam Like I had mentioned in another post, in spite of the fact that I can never make someone else understand my excitement or happiness on hearing a piece of music, I never stop trying!!

* http://www.rasikas.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=534&p=9887

Blogger Bares All - An Interview

Here is an interview - a tell-all type with a ‘popular’ blogger (the adjective was the blogger’s suggestion). For the dirty perverts who opened this post because of the phrase “bares all”, better read this post, now that you are here.

Q. Congratulations Ms.Blogger on your achievement.

A. Thank you. As I always say - Ellaa pugazhum Iraivanukke - meaning, all the fame belongs to God!

Q. Uhh.. Err… Wasn’t that what ARR said in his Oscar acceptance speech?

A. Oh did he? The bugger !! We traveled together a year ago by BA and I was telling him this when he claimed to be my fan! He stole my lines!!

Q. Rahman traveled with you? Your company sponsored a First Class ticket?

A. Does Rahman travel first class? Then it was probably someone else close to him, I don’t quite remember. You see, so many fans flock around when I am in public places, that it is difficult to keep track.

Q. You must be kidding? People flock around you??

A. Are you going to start asking some sensible questions?

Q. When did you first start writing?

A. I was around two, when my Mom decided that I would be the next Einstein. She tried again and again to make me learn the alphabets and numbers. But I could not get past the 1st alphabet Oh.. the memories….

Q. I meant, writing blogs - when did you start that?

A. When the company started the blog site of course.

Q. Who was the first person to discover your writing skills?

A. My lecturers in college. They were amazed that I could write pages and pages as responses to their questions without really answering any of them. I still remember the day one of them told me in front of the class, that I was spinning stories instead of answering the questions. That I could do it even in subjects like physics, gave me the confidence to get into serious writing.

Q. Some people think you use very long sentences and that your posts are also quite long. What do you want to tell them?

A. I will take it as a compliment and tell you how this came about. My first manager was a great guy. Every time I went to his cabin to ask him about my pay hike or promotion, he would start the response with - “See Ms.B, there are 2 things. First thing is..” and would say something totally irrelevant. After this he would have 2 things under the first thing of the first level and he would expand on the first thing in this level. This would go on for some 4-5 levels by the end of which I would have forgotten what I had gone in for and would beg to excused to get a cup of coffee and 3 aspirins. Also, the suspense of the various 2nd things made the headaches worsen.

So, what was the question again?

Q. I need a cup of coffee and 5 aspirins or maybe some poison?

A. Well, as I was saying, distraction and digression are keys to writing a good blog.

Q. What do you think of your most recent achievement?

A. What can I say? I was shocked.. I mean pleasantly surprised when a fan told me about it. I had not noticed it till then. But when my morning started with about 100 bouquets congratulating me, I thought someone was joking with me!!

Q. Really? You received 100 bouquets?

A. 100, 1, none - how does it matter? I know more than a 100 fans wanted to send me bouquets, but I requested them not to do that and send me the cheques instead. I can buy a bouquet a day for 100 days or buy that beautiful ‘Raaga’ watch that I have been ogling at for a month now.

Q. You have a 100 fans?

A. What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me that I create separate profiles and appreciate my posts myself? Are you insinuating that I don’t have any followers? Are you? Well, if you think so, it is not my problem. I know how IMG insisted on creating a separate mailbox only for receiving fan-mail and the only reason I am not mentioning it is my innate sense of humility. There, I said ‘insinuating’ and ‘innate’ in a single response. Let me see if you understand it, you ignorant slob, you piece of dirt, you sin of mankind..

Q. Wow.. wow.. wow.. are you swearing?

A. Tell me one word that is a cuss word. You belong to the group of people that don’t find my posts interesting. And everybody knows the intellectual capacity of those folks !!

Q. Well you know ‘Emperor’s new clothes’…

A. What do you mean? Is that a new boutique? But you end with a smiley and that surely means you are being sarcastic. Now, out with it, what do you mean?

Q. Peace. Back to the interview. Some people say you are heartless and that a person who cannot write verse does not deserve to call herself a writer?

A. Who says I can’t write verse? I don’t do it because I don’t want to be perceived as a threat to the poets in the blogosphere. Do you want to hear one? This one is on the ironies of life:

I woke up

in the morning,

And took my toothbrush,

out.

The toothpaste tube

was empty!!

How is it?

Q. Hmm.. is that a poem?

A. Here is one on everybody’s favourite topic: Love

I am quite

You are quite

Everyone quite

Heart is loud

becoz it is luv.

Q. Again, is that a poem? And what’s with the weird spellings?

A. So who do you think you are? The Shiv Sena? It is my poem and I have the rite to rite whatever I want. There - 2 spelling mistakes in one line. What can you do? Lady, this is love - feel it, don’t question.

Q. What should a person do to become a good writer?

A. Brush your teeth everyday. Drink lots of water. Wash your face often with cold water. You know the routine - cleanse, tone and moisturize.

Q. (Gulp) And these things make you a good writer?

A. Oh, you mean how does one become a good writer!! I somehow that you wanted to know the secret of my flawless complexion. People have been asking that for ages you know

Well, to become a good writer of blogs, you need to start reading ‘Tinkle’. It has some great stories. I still read them from time to time. You also need to be able to write from sources that cannot be traced. Above all, read all my posts especially the ones on . End all you snarky stuff with smileys. Be open to criticism, especially good criticism.

Q. What is good criticism?

A. There are some simple clues to differentiate good criticism from bad. Look for keywords like ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’, ‘awesome’ etc., in the comments. To make things appear fair, be sure to approve 1 or 2 mildly critical comments. The other comments can be safely deleted.

Q. Deleted? Isn’t that unethical?

A. It is your blog after all, how is it unethical? In fact, to ensure only constructive criticism, I intend to recommend to the moderators to introduce a ‘Like’ button on the blog - especially my blog. People cannot exit the page without clicking it. If they try to close the browser without ‘liking’ my post, their hard disks will crash!

Q. What will your future posts be about?

A. From a heartless person, I have slowly started understanding the need for a heart. I have requested for a heart transplantation surgery and the hospital has agreed. I intend to write on that four lettered word that makes the world tick!

Q. Four lettered word???

A. Not that one you idiot!! I meant ‘Love’!!

Q. What is your biggest strength and biggest weakness?

A. My biggest strength as you can see, is my humility and my modesty. I would say that it is my weakness too.

Q. One last question. Now that you have written 100 posts, what do you intend to do?

A. I will work for ‘World Peace’ !!

(P.S. After waiting patiently for the moderators and other lovers of good literature to interview her, the blogger was forced to request me, her alter-ego to conduct this interview. This, she assures me is out of compassion for the less fortunate souls who, she thinks, need to be elevated to her level of intelligence. Most questions were provided by her in advance. Except for the one on the secret of her beauty, all the other questions were asked. The secret should remain a secret, in my opinion!!)

Simple Math

Hours in a day : 24

Hours to be spent in the office : 9.5 (10 for those taking the office bus)

Hours spent in travel : 2-3 (on an average)

Hours prescribed for sleep : 7-8

Hours needed for necessary evils like eating, dressing up, ablutions etc. : 1-1.5

Hours available to live : 1.5 to 4.5 (6-18% of our time).

And yet, our management thinks that most of us are interested in working less and getting paid more!!

(P.S.1 : Math is the American abbreviation while Maths is the British abbreviation of mathematics - can’t help being pedantic!

P.S.2 : This has to be my shortest post ever!!

P.S.3 : Tagging this as ‘Slice of Life’ is a cheap marketing gimmick!!!

P.S.4 : Watch the number of exclamation marks increasing with each PS !!!!)

Disclaimer : All numbers are only approximations. Actual numbers may be significantly more than the quoted figures, but rarely less.

Appreciating Art

'This CD has a wonderful Shubhapantuvarali kriti by TNS', said my friend.

'What ragam is that? Is there any film song that I know in this ragam?' I asked, for this was my initial way of learning to identify ragams.

'Well, Shubhapantuvarali is the ragam they play on Doordarshan, whenever a big leader dies', said my friend, only half-jokingly.

I started listening to the CD on my way back home. I was day-dreaming as usual while mechanically driving the car. I was jolted out of my reverie when the song began. Something was happening, something physical - like someone was choking me or like something was gnawing the insides of my stomach. I did not need any announcement to say that THIS was Shubhapantuvarali !!

Those were times when I was trying hard to learn to appreciate carnatic music. I would memorize names of a few ragams and one or 2 songs in each one of them and try to match aural patterns of new songs with those that I already knew. I was having a tough time understanding 'talam' (rhythm) and the mathematics involved in it.

Interestingly, although I had attempted to learn music a few times before that, I was not really interested in looking at it as a science. My approach towards learning music was to sound as close to my teacher's rendering of the song as possible and nothing more. However only when I was in the ideal geographic location amidst ideal friends (i.e., outside India amongst recently reborn Indians), did I start taking an active interest in classical music, primarily because I had a lot of time on hand with almost nothing to do.

My friends who took a keen interest in educating me on Carnatic Music and in making me listen to it with as much interest as them, were mostly guys who had developed such an interest fairly recently. They were mostly guys who had gone outside India for higher studies and were either still students or had recently completed their studies. As a result, the way I learnt to perceive music was the way they had learnt it. We spoke about the theory behind the music system. I would listen open-mouthed about how some ragams were pentatonic (although I initially thought that these discussions were meant to humiliate me!) and about parent and child ragams and what not.

When I came back to India and later started talking about these things as though I had invented them, both family and friends thought it was a passing fad. I was brimming with excitement and wanted to share my new-found knowledge and interest with all those I knew. I would talk ceaselessly, without bother, trying to tell people how 'Purvikalyani' and 'Pantuvarali' were very close (although if someone had bothered to question me on the actual similarities or differences, I would have been stumped!) and other such trivia that I had picked up.

After returning to India, I tried learning music from a few other people. Many of these attempts did not work out, often due to constraints with time, sometimes due to the approach towards music. One of my teachers used to hate the fact that I was looking at Carnatic Music as a science and was trying to find patterns everywhere. Her contention was that art was to be experienced, not analyzed.It used to remind me of my English teacher is school, who used to frequently state that people in the science stream did not have 'finer feelings' !!!

In the beginning my anxiety to share my joy was high. I tried my friends' methods with my siblings, parents and even a few close friends. I would gift my friends music CDs and concert recordings, play carnatic music all the time at home. But I could never get them listen to music in the same way I did.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I was wrong in trying to make a person feel the same way I do about a piece of art. After all, that is the beauty of art, isn't it? It evokes different reactions in different people. Who says that analysis and experiencing art cannot go hand-in-hand? And who defines how one experiences art?

Words are usually never enough to describe how a piece of art makes you feel. How do I explain the indescribable swelling of emotions when I hear 'Chinnanchiru kiliye kannamma' by Bharathiyar, played on the violin by Lalgudi Jayaraman? Or the instant connection and tremendous respect I felt when I heard an elderly maami sighing contentedly after a Todi alapana - 'Todiyum Bhairaviyum evlo daram ketaalum salikave salikaadu!' ('You can listen to Todi and Bhairavi any number of times without getting bored!')? Or the peace I feel within when the entire crowd is spellbound and experiences complete unison with the singer and the music?

A Sensitive Woman !!

I was growing restless. Things were better than before, ever since I had made a few friends and had my weekends planned out - movies till late at night, cooking dinner together which usually meant that I did all the cooking and the guys would dutifully say everything tasted wonderful and eat loads of the food, going out to some place nearby, going to the Indian stores, going to the Indian temple as a result of a sudden burst of conscience etc. What I missed a lot was singing. I had joined TaeKwonDo classes, but I wanted to do something related to art.

I lived in a tiny state - so tiny that most US maps would have an arrow originating from a dot to show the state. I was talking to an old friend Vina (the friendship was old, not the friend) who lived in NJ. She seemed to be hesitant about telling me about someone. She mentioned another friend a couple of times and that she was not very sure if I would want to be associated with a person like her (the friend). One day, she told me about her and said that she lived in CT which was about 2 hours away from where I lived. My friend also told me that this friend (let’s call her Meena) was planning to start an amateur music troupe and was looking for a lead female singer. This lady supposedly was an average singer with a very limited range and my friend asked me to speak with her if I was interested. She kept warning me though, that if I did not feel comfortable with Meena, I could always opt out without fear of offending my friend.

So I called this woman and she asked me to sing something. I was made to feel that this song was going to make or break my musical career. So while my roommate was looking on strangely wondering what was wrong with me, I sang a song over the telephone and Meena asked me to come down for the first jamming session to a certain address in CT.

I had a loyal friend Navin who would accompany me everywhere since he was alone and bored too. So, the two of us set off and reached this place. There were about 6-7 people there and Meena told me that we would have to prepare for 2 programmes - one was a new year celebration programme by the local Tamil association and the other at her university.

Having heard from my friend that she had been in college with Meena, I spoke to her with a familiarity which she found irritating (I later learnt). She introduced me to her husband - a cheerful man and daughter - a sad looking toddler. We started the practice soon afterwards. I was asked to sing a fairly complex Carnatic music based film song.

The practice sessions were planned for every weekend and I used to look forward to those sessions with excitement and dread. Excitement, because all the members there were very friendly and dread because Meena was extremely critical of most things I did. Right in the beginning, she told me that she was an extremely sensitive person and that she got hurt very easily. So I was extra-careful in dealing with her comments. I mostly smiled and said I would try to do better.

The good thing that happened as a result of her meanness was that all the others in the group started treating me extremely well. They would go out of their way to be nice to me and became very protective of me. Our practice was always at a friend’s house, who used to be Meena’s junior in college. This guy Harsh became a very close friend and Meena would often tell me that he was like a brother to her (and when I asked him about it, he would laugh like it was be biggest joke he had ever heard).

In between, another thing happened. My friend and her husband started attending these sessions too. For the programme in the university, we were supposed to sing 3 songs in Hindi, of which my friend’s husband and I were to sing a duet. It was the first time my friend’s husband was singing on stage and he was fairly nervous and I would constantly encourage him to make small changes and appreciated him for his effort. Meena was of a less forgiving nature and would call his voice ‘raw’ and would keep giving sarcastic smiles throughout the song.

Anyway, the program for the Tamil association went off without too many issues. Meena had invited all of us for dinner at her place the following weekend. I called her and offered to help out with the cooking and she readily agreed. My friend and I went in the afternoon. She gave me a large cabbage and asked me to chop it. While I was doing that, she came over to inspect and said that they usually liked their cabbage to be chopped finer than this!! I did not know how to react and simply apologized.

Next she asked to come into the kitchen and clean up the drawers and racks. She went to the extent of saying that she had never had any time to do it and was waiting for me to come and clean it up. My mother has never asked me to do it and here I was, at a stranger’s place cleaning up her kitchen.

We started talking about the programme and she said ‘Karthik (our lead guitarist) seems to be very impressed with you. He said you were very cool and fun to be around’. I smiled in acknowledgement. The smile did not last a second before she hastily added ‘I told him - What is the use of being cool? She ruined the entire show. She went off-key a couple of times’!! I was too shocked to react. My friend was seething with anger. No one in the audience or in the group had said that I had sung badly and this lady went out of her way to be mean.

The rest of the evening went as badly as the beginning. Whenever I appreciated someone, she brushed my comments away with - ‘He is ok, but.. ‘ followed by a lame excuse. She did not forget to add that the audience had requested for an encore of her song (although none of us had heard it).

We were forced to stay the night in her place and she was full of stories of Meena the great - the supreme sacrifices of her life, how noble she was and how much she was misunderstood etc. But the clincher of the evening came when I was going gaga over a song by SPB and she said that it was not that great a song and that SPB had recited it more than sung it. That was it !! Whatever little respect I had for this woman went for a complete toss!! She, who could not sustain a note for more than a second, had the audacity to comment on SPB, in spite of the fact that I kept warning her not to talk about him !!

After the 2nd program in the university, there were no major complaints on my singing, since people appreciated it before she could say anything. So that evening she called me and said that I should have worn a dupatta over my dress and that it was not good to appear on stage without one. Instead of asking her to mind her own business, like an idiot I was telling her that the model of the dress I wore would not have looked good without a dupatta.

In the coming weeks, she got more and more irritated because her ‘brother’ and I were becoming very close friends and all the other members of the troupe visibly preferred me (as a person) over her (not that she had set a very high standard)!! She started acting in a more and more bizarre manner - calling up my friend and telling her that I should not be talking to her ‘brother’, calling up the ‘brother’ and telling him that I was dangerous and finally telling him that I was a bad singer.

My friends Navin and Harsh would constantly chide me for remaining silent when this lady insulted me unnecessarily. I finally decided that enough was enough and was all set to confront her when I got a great news. I was given an option to return to India and I jumped at the opportunity.

Ever since this incident, I am wary of people who call themselves sensitive, since they usually mean that they are quick to take offence, but are equally quick to give offence too. These self-proclaimed sensitive people have totally misunderstood the term ’sensitive’ since it also means to be aware of and respond to others’ feelings too.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, the saying goes. In my case, I think most silver linings have a cloud inside. After 5-6 years, I can think of these experiences and this woman with more compassion. I feel for the poor woman, for I now realize that all she wanted was (all) the attention of people around her. She wanted to be loved, appreciated and recognized and thought she could get it by demanding it. The days in the amateur troupe gave me a few friends, helped me while away my time doing something I loved and also made realize that being polite is not the same as tolerating nonsense.

She suffers from severe optimism!

I love it when I am completely surprised by a book or a movie. For all the talk about how important a proper script is to a good movie, once in a while, a movie comes along where, try as I might, it becomes difficult for me to describe the ’story’, but the characters become etched in my memory.

I was waiting for my flight at the Chicago airport. I had 4 hours to kill and I thought I would make best use of my time by watching a movie.The last movie I had seen a week ago was a movie called ‘Goodbye Solo’ by Ramin Bahrani. This was a fairly intense film about the bonding between 2 men who are complete opposites. I chose a movie called ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ by British maverick director Mike Leigh, who had been praised to high heavens by film critic Roger Ebert in more than one post on his blog.

The movie cannot be described in simple terms, since there is no real plot to speak of. It is about a hopelessly optimistic and cheerful Pauline ‘Poppy’ Cross and the people around her. The film is a series of vignettes in Poppy’s life. I am not going to talk about the plot of the movie here, as Wikipedia can do it better than me.

Poppy can be termed weird by some standards. It is difficult to imagine a person who can smile at every single thing in life, who can crack jokes even while lying on the hospital bed, who can find rude people funny etc. Sally Hawkins, who plays Poppy, however manages to make the character real and strangely relatable! She apparently won the Golden Globe award for best actress for her role and she deserves every ounce of it (provided awards can be measured in ounces!!)!

In the initial few scenes, I was only thinking that Poppy was mildly annoying and could understand why some people would find her insufferable. However her character grew on me the more I understood the character. Some of her actions are really funny but very often, she surprised me with her keen sense of empathy towards her fellow human beings. Poppy’s character seemed much more aware and sensitive about the sufferings of her fellow beings than the supposedly serious characters in the movie, who keep chiding her for being frivolous.

In one of the most poignant scenes I have ever seen in a movie, Poppy has a conversation with a vagrant one night while wandering around the city. This scene has to be seen to be appreciated. The insight that Poppy seems to have into people’s hearts and minds provides for the most emotionally touching moments in the movie.

I loved the track where Poppy inadvertently provoked her driving instructor Scott, who is perpetually angry and is a complete contrast to Poppy. Their interactions are in equal parts funny and potentially explosive. I was expecting Scott to physically assault Poppy any time, but the culmination of their relationship was wonderfully subtle and heartbreaking.

There is a track where Poppy takes flamenco lessons with another teacher in her class. This provides a beautiful and gut-wrenching scene involving the supposedly icy-cold flamenco instructor breaking down in front of the class quite unexpectedly.

The beauty of the movie lies in the fact that nothing dramatic happens to the characters at the end of the movie. Poppy’s friend Zoe does tell her to be less nice and she says so out of love and concern for her friend. However people cannot change their basic nature easily and Poppy ignores the advice too.

I have been saying this for a few months now. There is so much negativity surrounding us that I find it difficult to breathe at times. I feel ashamed of myself every time I read about the latest scams or Wikileaks revelations, for being a silent spectator of all these things, although I can not do anything about it. Watching ‘Happy go lucky’ I was wondering if such people really existed and if they do, will I be able to meet one such person. It requires a core of steel to be able to keep up a genuine smile at all times these days and I wish for my sake at least that such ‘Sunshine’ people exist.

In Baker Street and Botswana

I am a complete sucker for good mystery novels. I regularly pester my librarian to recommend something very interesting and offbeat but with no killings and every single time he is perplexed. I mean, who would want to read mystery novels that do not involve bloodshed? (Answer : Me !!).

I recently used a gift coupon that I was awarded for something (I don’t remember what!) for the Strands book store in Bangalore. Now my manager will tell you the kind of tantrums I throw every time he asks me to travel to Bangalore for a meeting. Trust me, it has nothing to do with the city itself. It is more to do with one of my many afflictions - inertia. I hate travelling (I hate it when Word insists on correcting MY spellings just because IT was taught incorrect English!!), as I have no doubt mentioned about 1 million times in my posts. However, this time it was different. The card was valid only for a year and I was dying to come to Bangalore and get a few books. My intention was to get only books on humour - and that is my way of saying only PG Wodehouse- but I ended up buying the entire Sherlock Holmes collection.

Sherlock Holmes was not my most favourite detective when I was young. I hated his know-all attitude and his regular habit of figuring out everything and revealing them to the unsuspecting reader and dear Watson*, with every intention to draw as many compliments on his intelligence as possible without appearing to do so (Did that sentence finally end?). I was never a part of his thinking process. It is a different thing that those days Hardy boys were my favourite sleuths. Nancy Drew lost her sheen when she started acting all coy and mushy in the later novels and also when I realized that she rarely solved mysteries without the help of ’strange co-incidences’. On television too, Byomkesh Bakshi was doing splendidly till he too had to fall for a woman and become a householder. It was a little later that I realized that Bakshi was modeled after Holmes in many respects including the physical appearance.

Now that I am all grown up (too much, I would say), I am able to appreciate Holmes a lot more than before (and that has nothing to do with the fact that ultra-cool Robert Downey Jr., played Holmes in the movie version !!). Thanks to PGW, I also understand the British sense of humour and sarcasm more than before. So it is no wonder that I am actually enjoying the book a lot. After a long long time, I was reading a book on the flight. Of course the other reason was also that stupid Lufthansa did not have individual TV screens on the flights to US!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s unlikely hero is as popular as he was when the book was first written primarily because the author has created a flesh and blood character. I love it when the characters in a novel/movie are flawed, because it makes them that much more relatable. Holmes is almost a sociopath and looks down upon most people. He shoots up cocaine regularly (as described in ‘The sign of four’) to compensate for his boredom. He is a misogynist and is upstaged only once (from what I have read so far) by a woman called Irene Adler, whom he ends up admiring for the very reason.

The author also explains the method behind Holmes’ madness. Holmes is what he is, because he assimilates information better than others. He even tells Watson that he sees and hears what others see but registers some things better. He has no interest in anything that will not help him in his profession, apart from playing the violin. His respect and love for Watson is almost surprising, given that Watson plays the role of only a loyal friend rather than assistant in Holmes’ adventures, nor does he appear to be an intellectual match for Holmes!

With passing years, I realize that I have a thing for sociopathic intellectual people - at least as characters in a novel or in a movie. Holmes, Mark Zuckerberg (as portrayed in ‘The Social Network’), the really rude genius Gregory House from House M.D (at least till he got all mushy and teary eyed - made me nauseous to see Hugh Laurie reduced to this!!), Jeffrey Deaver’s unlikely hero, the quadriplegic Lincoln Rhyme, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the wind (at least in the beginning) - these are probably people I would hate in real life, but simply love in literature or movies, since they add a lot of colour to the story.

The other series, which is also to do with a detective also features an unlikely protagonist. The ‘No. 1 Ladies detective Agency’ series by Alexander McCall Smith, has as its principal character an ‘almost-forty’ year old full-figured woman called Precious Ramotswe. The series is set in the South African country Botswana.

Precious Ramotswe is everything that Holmes is not. Her cases are not always high-profile ones involving murder or robbery. She handles cases with her emotions and intuitions. She behaves like most women would and does not hesitate to adopt non-traditional sources like grapevine for information. She empathises with her clients and as a result does not make a lot of money.

Although every novel in the series centres around a case, the series is interesting because they give a glimpse of life in Botswana, the customs and the people. Cases are not always resolved in the conventional sense and not all stories end happily for the customers of ‘No.1 Ladies Detective Agency’.

A host of colourful characters like Mma Makutsi- Mma Ramotswe’s assistant, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni - her fiance, who is always referred to by this name add more flavour to the novels. The philosophical musings of the protagonist in between are insightful and sometimes funny too.

I am right now reading the third book in the series - Morality for Beautiful Women. In times when feminism has come to mean arguing over trivialities and being different for the sake of it and when liberation has come to mean liberation from clothes and trying to please the very same set of people that we are apparently protesting against, it is really refreshing to read about a protagonist, who is a woman and who is very proud of the fact. Being a woman is not just incidental but instrumental in her approach to her work and to life in general. It is strange that a man had to write it though !!

*Incidentally, Holmes never seems to say ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ any time !!

P.S : I did buy a PGW collection and another novel by PGW with the money that was left. Or to be honest, I bought Sherlock Holmes because I had some money left

I need a wake-up call...

This happened more than 17 years back, when I was still a teenager - way too cynical about everything around me. I prided myself in finding everything that is wrong with anything - movies, books, people, places etc. My cousin visited us after many years. Now, when I say cousin, please do not imagine another teenager. My cousin was a couple of years older than my father. In a family as big as my mother, this was not uncommon, nor was it uncommon to find nephews and nieces who were older than me!

Anyway, this cousin was one of the most creative people in my family. My mother had often told me how he would create small wonders and show-pieces out of waste articles like toys from coconut shells, paintings on the ceiling fan to give a lovely effect when the fan is switched on and so on. He was also popular in the family for having changed the maximum number of jobs within a certain number of years.

He described with great passion his current job in a prawn farm - how the prawns were bred, ‘harvested’ and then processed through machines which smeared them in bread crumbs, roasted them, packed them in tins them and so on. The love with which he described the process would have made one think that he loved eating prawns, had one not known that he had never tasted any.

We were talking about my school and the subjects. I was talking with the same indifference that one often finds in teenagers about how the whole system was wrong and how the subjects were of no use. Without seeming to advise he started talking fondly about the subjects and suggested I keep writing as I read, for it was easier to remember what one writes down than what one reads.

It is strange what memories one tends to carry from one’s past. I do not remember a lot of things from that year. I don’t even remember the exact year. I don’t really remember everything we talked about. However I do remember that we watched a mediocre tamil movie (and I still remember the title of the movie) and as always, I was pointing out the various faults with the movie - how absurd the dialogues sounded, how stupid the costumes looked etc. My cousin on the other had, suddenly said how interestingly an actor reacted or some such thing. I don’t remember exactly what he said, only that he managed to find something good in a trashy film!!

I would not say that I was jolted out of my negativity. I thought for a few days. I discussed it with my mother and realized that this person had probably more reasons to feel negative about one thing or the other. All the time he stayed at home, he did not speak anything negative about his previous jobs, but spoke with interest on his current one. It is a different story that he left this one a while later too, but the crux of the matter is how much he lived and loved the present.

I have often thought about that evening. I have not changed completely as a person. I did not become a motivational speaker overnight. I still get frustrated at uncertainty and with a lot of people inside and outside of work. But this memory has often helped in some small degree at least in putting aside the negativity for a while at least, if not come completely out of it.

Of late it has become increasingly difficult to stay positive. Changes at the workplace and constantly hearing how we are all ‘resources’ for the company and not people, news everyday bringing out one scandal after another in the country and in my state, large hoardings of corrupt politicians smiling shamelessly decorating the roads that I cannot avoid on the way to work - there are countless things that fuel the frustration and depression. I really wish I get another wake-up call to help me come out of it. One that will jolt me out of my coma and make me feel alive again!!

Season diary - 2010

Timing is crucial in almost every thing and only when I see how often my well-laid plans go for a total toss do I appreciate once again the existence of God!!

I know I am starting off with my usual pseudo-philosophy, but then when one is dealing with situations beyond one's control, what else can one do but (pseudo) philosophize!! Anyway, back to matters actually at hand (or maybe already out of hand), it is a wonder how our customers, on-site and offshore managers - everyone really - know how much I look forward to ensure that I am in Chennai during December every year and precisely time my on-site visits at that time! I had to go exactly before the music season started - mid-November - and return towards the fag end of December(on Christmas really) so that I can go concert hunting half-groggy from jet-lag like a beggar goes after left-over food and lap up what I still can during the remaining few days. Yet surprisingly, I have managed to attend about 3 of them so far and am hoping to catch one or two more in the next 2 weeks.

However, this post is not about my on-site trip, the assignment, my achievements there or the lack of them etc. Nor is it a scholarly write-up on the concerts that I attended. It is more about some things that I noticed during the concerts - much like the post I had written last year about the same time.

• Audience punctuality - This is something we seriously lack and it is extremely frustrating to see people walking in to the concert hall anywhere from 5 minutes to a full hour later and disturbing the others who are enjoying the concert. People moving around in a concert hall does not make for a pretty sight. Also the shifting in seats to let the latecomers settle down and the entire settling down process itself is quite noisy and distracting - definitely to the rest of the audience, and may be to the artist too!! My aunt had been to an opera in NY and she told me that apparently the doors to the hall were locked once the show started and people were not let in if they were late. Why can't we do something like that?
• Audience discipline - Raga identification is a serious affliction most carnatic music aficionados suffer from. For some of them it is like getting hold of the newspaper first thing in the morning -the brain starts functioning only after reading the day's headlines. Similarly we have to identify the ragam of a song within the first 5 seconds of the song/ alapanai. It is a secret race that all of us in the hall know is on, but pretend otherwise. So while I understand the need to identify the ragam of the song, what I cannot understand is that buzzing sound that I hear even after it is identified. This time, during a concert by Jayashree Ramnath, two elderly gentlemen who sat 2 seats away from me, were oblivious to the rest of the people in the hall including the musician on the stage. They identified the ragam and then launched into some serious discussion on the technicalities of the ragam and so on. I tried glaring at them, vocalizing my irritating through 'tchh'es and sighs. But like I said, they were in their own world. I only wish that my world had not come in touch with theirs at that time!! I was grumbling to my mother all the way back home, on how horrible it was that these old men had to choose the same concert that I had and chose to sit in the same row too!!
• The Costume - Male artists can choose to be simple like Sanjay Subramanyan and his accompanists. They were clad in simple white dhotis and shirts. On the other hand, artists like TM Krishna come in different coloured kurtas and some young music enthusiasts come to check out Krishna's kurta along with the music! The definition of simplicity for Female artists on the other hand is very different. Jayashree Ramnath, the simplest of them all, still has to wear at least a silk sari with a broad zari, a necklace and flowers. The showiest of them all (and arguably more popular) Sudha Raghunathan on the other hand, comes to perform like a walking advertisement for a silk saree shop , gold jewellery shop and a florist. Her interviews in magazines during the season are also more on the sarees she plans to wear for the different concerts, how she has never repeated a saree on stage and so on. In CM world, one often uses the term 'ghanam' (heavy) often to describe some ragams, voices etc. Sudha's voice may or may not qualify as ghanam, but she definitely does. I am eagerly waiting for the day when a female artist wears a cotton saree and bare minimum or no jewellery and the audience can listen only to the music and not wonder where she shopped for this concert!
• The food - Technically my first foray into this music season started with food!! My mother and brother had already sampled the food at Narada Gana Sabha and had made plans for my first day back in Chennai. So I jumped directly into the season with a lunch at the sabha canteen on the same day I landed! The sabha parking lot was full and all along I thought it was for the music. Now I know otherwise!! My brother who still thinks that it is a crime to step inside a sabha, insisted that we should go to Music Academy on the 1st of January, because my nephew told him that the food at that canteen was great!! It turned out that the canteens functioned only during the peak 'season', i.e., December 15th to 31st, so we had to come back disappointed.
• And finally the Music - Although I could not attend all the concerts from the start of the season, I tried to make do with the shortened concerts telecast by Jaya TV which were available for viewing in the US too. But a live concert is so much more than the songs themselves and I had asked my father to get me tickets for Sanjay Subramnayan's concert on the day after I landed. Sanjay may come dressed very humbly, but the concert on the other hand was extremely colourful and joyful. Sanjay's enthusiasm on stage is often infectious and he was almost jumping with verve throughout the concert. My mother who pretends to not 'understand' carnatic music and often tells me that she does not particularly care for male singers, was with me during the concert and was enjoying herself thoroughly. The effort that Sanjay puts in for every concert is unbelievable. He was belting out popular and new songs with equal ease left right and center and in the final RTP (ragam tanam pallavi) segment, showered the audience with rarely sung Hindustani ragas teasing the audience with the swaras and then with his trademark sly smile giving out the name of the ragam. It was pure musical bliss and after the 3.5 hours concert we came out fully satisfied like we had had a ten-course meal! Jayashree's (popularly called Bombay Jayashree) concert which I attended 2 days later was a complete contrast. Her voice is soothing and weighty ('ghanam') at the same time and the overall effect was very pleasing. TM Krishna, who had not performed the whole season was the star of yesterday's concert. In Chennai music circuit, TMK and Sanjay are like Rajnikanth. They are both crowd pullers and can do no wrong in the eyes of their fans. TMK has a great voice quality and his concert was full of fireworks with many popular krithis in tamil, telugu and sanskrit.

So once again, Chennai's music season draws to an end. While I missed the better part of it, I still intend to catch a few more, even if it means missing work. Work can wait, music season cannot. Talkative mamas and mamis and insensitive audience members notwithstanding, a live concert experience has no equal. In every good concert, there is always a moment when the musician, the audience and the music become one and there is that microsecond of pure unadulterated bliss. This microsecond is worth any number of annoyances!!