Ripples on the brain

I really forget when I sang last in a stage. I remember the setting though. It was in Varasidhdhi Vinayagar temple in Besant Nagar. I was to sing a devotional song on Lord Shiva “Gangadheeshwaram Sankaram…”. I was in 9th or 10th standard at that time and my voice was at the stage of breaking(I was becoming an adult and was losing the shriekness in my voice). I was low in confidence because I could no longer reach the pitch in which I was singing comfortably not long ago. I was the first singer in the competition; the sruthi box was set and as I started I missed the rythm and pitch and what not and the whole performance was a forgettable one.

That was the last time I sung in a competition. I felt this was not my cup of tea and never bothered to formally learn music again. It’s more than a decade now. When I look back, I feel I made a mistake. How many times in life do we avoid doing things that are close to our heart (be it singing, dancing, asking sorry to a friend) just because we are not comfortable/embarrased doing it at that moment and later realize how wrong we were.

Today as I was in stage in ISB for a inter-section music competition, I felt so happy to be there. I may not be singing so well or getting the nuances right. But I can still appreciate good music and enjoy myself singing. Whenever I sing, I forget everything else around me and attain a state of bliss for a moment. Today we sang a piece called “English notes” made famous by Madurai Mani Iyer. This piece also features in the famous Tamil movie “Thillana Mohanambal”. We didn’t get a long time to practise it, but four of us put up a very co-ordinated effort and it was received well by the audience. It was a tribute to the group that we learnt the piece so quickly and made it look good despite the mistakes that we made. Among the four of us Mani is an accomplished singer of Carnatic music, Shankar is learning Carnatic music from his wife (who’s a great singer and winner of many awards; she also teaches Carnatic music to students at ISB), Murali is a born genious (it’s hard for people to believe that this bloke didn’t learn music formally at all; he gets his pitch and rythm right all the time and sings the nuances beautifully) and myself, probably the least accomplished among the four.

To me, the greatest learning from today’s performance was that I love singing and no matter how badly I sing, I just cannot live without music.

Vijaykanth launched a new political party in Tamil Nadu yesterday. I have lost count of the number of politicians who have tried to cash in on their popularity in films by joining politics, but I feel Vijaykanth’s is a good try. Vijaykanth has been the tool used by my Telugu friends to counter me whenever I make fun of dances, songs and the general “colour” of Telugu films.

I was impressed with some of his actions in the recent past. When the infamous Neyveli Cauvery agitation of the Film Association happened (remember Barathi Raaja’s “Unarchivasa Padubavan thaan tamizhan” speech against Rajni kanth and Rajni’s fast in Chennai two days later?), the only person on the dais who spoke some sense was Vijaykanth. He said that with political people like Sarath kumar, Napoleon and SS Chadran occupying some position in the Film Association, it had lost its ability to speak in one voice as each person was trying to appease his party bosses whenever he speaks. So, this was hampering the unity of the association. I don’t know if he is going to resign as the head of the association now.

More recently, when he conducted a procession in Chennai, to gain publicity for the new party, he rented a marriage hall and conducted it there, as he said, he didn’t want to disturb the traffic outside. Hope, he stand up to the hype that he has created.

He has stood against corruption in many movies in recent past and I’d believe that he wouldn’t want to sully that image he has built up. But you never know how politics can change you. We will wait and see how it unfolds…

You ask a question in class, it could have been the silliest of the question to ask on earth, you receive looks from people as if they are looking at the greatest fool they have ever met, the Professor says you are the a model (”nomoona”) for the dumbest person possible, 85 people laugh at you, how’d you feel? You don’t remember feeling so low ever before, and don’t know if you’d ever open your mouth in the class again…

Pasting from Bharani’s blog

Close your eyes and think of someone very close to you. Now imagine someone:

- Piercing this person’s ears with hot rods
- Puncturing this person’s eyes, gouging them out
- Inflicting burns on his body using cigarettes
- Breaking his bones and teeth
- And after torturing him in this brutal fashion for over 22 days, shooting him dead.

This is what the Pakistani army did to Lt. Saurabh Kalia of the 4th JAT Regiment of the Indian Army during the Kargil war. Imagine the plight of the old parents of this young man who received his body in such a state, imagine their rage and helplessness.

We talk so much about the power of the blogosphere. What use is that power if we can not help these parents by raising this issue so that it is heard by International Human Rights Organisations? We have seen instances of main stream media in the US championing issues that were raised by bloggers. Why not in India?

I am making this post with a very clear intent. I want all those who read this post to please raise this issue on their blogs. I realize, making a general appeal like that and expecting others to post will not work. Very specifically, I would like you to raise it on your blog and make two of your friends responsible for publishing it on their blogs. If everyone does that, geometric progression will take care of spreading it to all blogs in the Indian Blogosphere.

If nothing else, just sign the online petition of Lt. Saurabh Kalia’s father.

Links:
Online Petition by Lt. Saurabh Kalia’s father
Geocities Page on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Rediff Article on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Dilip D’Souza’s Post

Original link from Sumit Dhar

Last week, when I was browsing randomly I landed on a webpage that listed some of the path-breaking Bollywood movies. “Kaho naa Pyaar Hai” was listed among movies such as “Zanjeer”, “Anamika”, “Bobby” and so on. Though many wouldn’t agree “Kaho naa…” to be bracketted in the same category as the other aclaimed ones, this made me go back to my undergraduation days when two movies, that I feel, were all-time hits only because of my hostel folks.

The first is a Tamil movie, “Kathalukku Mariyadhai“. This one was released when I was in the first year of my college. We had a rule in the first year hostel that prior permission needed to be obtained from the warden before leaving the college campus for any reason. Though many times, students used to come up with apparently genuine reasons, there could never be any reason to leave the campus at 8pm and come back at 2 in the night, other than going for a late night show (”II show”, as it is called). So, instead of finding ways to convince the warden, our guys did something different. My college was situated in a hilly region and didn’t have a boundary wall everywhere. My hostel itself was covered by a hastily built fence. Our students created a way through it and called it “The Royal Path“. This path led to a bushy, rocky and dark terrain that had to be crossed before we reached a bus-stop that was a couple of kilometers away from ours. The modus operandi was to finish the dinner and when the security took his dinner, run in batches though the path. Make sure you have a jacket and a cap to cover yourself, so that even when the security spots you you can keep running till the darkness takes over and the security cannot identify you even if he runs behind you. The release of Kathukku… was the first time the path was to be tested officially. After dinner, we all saw from our windows, our enterprising class mates (around 25-30 of them) crossing the Royal Path to glory (”This is a small step for a man…”). They came at around 2am and woke up all of us to tell its story.

“Machan, wonderful film da”.”The director has shown each and every step in the development of love and the lead pair has acted very well”.”The hero doesn’t even touch the heroine till the end”. Though the last one sounds silly, this had an impact in the Tamil audience. In the week that followed, my whole hostel saw the movie atleast twice over and the movie was a big hit. It was released like any other normal movie on an normal friday (friday is when most Tamil movies are released, and big banner movies in Tamil are always released on Pongal, Diwali or Tamil New Year’s day). Vijay wasn’t a great hero then - he’d acted in some inconsequential movies - and I’m sure the whole film unit didn’t have any great expectations on it. It proved to be a big hit, the songs of Illayarajaa were the most hummed ones in my hostel.

The second movie was “Kaho naa Pyaar Hai“. I’d seen the trailers of this movies (among hundreds that are shown in every other Hindi channel) and thought it to be some ordinary movie with new comers (new faces were tried out in every movie released at that time). I watched the movie on first week of its release. Though, there was no initial hype for that movie, I could see that people liked something about it. The songs were a hit (the songs have to be a hit in Hindi, if the films have to do well. But giving hit songs in Hindi is not very difficult - make sure the songs start with chorus “aaaaaaaaaaaah” or “lalalalalala…”), Hrithik’s dance was an advantage and Amisha did well for an new comer. Sure enough this movie was an all-time hit too;two new faces, a sinking director and an unknown music director were catapulted to glory.

There were other movies whose success or failure I could predict based on the response of movie buffs from my hostel (like “Minnale“, where the song “Vaseegara..” became so famous after the audio-release that there were high expectations, but they fell flat on the face when picturization was pretty ordinary; that movie didn’t perform as well as expected, or like “Mugavari“, which the guys felt was very good, but had a climax had something that they couldn’t digest-the lead in the movie wanted to be a music-director, loved a girl, but had a family with an ailing brother that he had to support. In the climax he was shown as walking to the office with his suit-case depicting that he chose the third one and was prepared to wait for the first two till he earned some money; it so happened that, that was reaction every where in Tamil Nadu and the director changed the climax, showing that the hero achieved everything he wanted - the heroine, music director’s job and through it lot of money for the family!!!), but the first two movies are the ones that keep coming back to my mind for the sheer hype that they created in my hostel.