Ripples on the brain

As usual Ram does a neat and prompt job of describing the place we visited last weekend and putting up some good photographs of the visit. You can find them here.

Since I had visited the Golconda Fort earlier this year in Hyderabad, I had assumed that climbing the Gingee fort will require almost the same effort. It turned out to be false; it took almost an hour for us to climb up and around 45mins to get down. Also, I couldn’t climb the entire fort in one go (since I had also driven from Chennai), and had to take breaks in between. Though this fort is huge (situated on 3 hills spread in a large area) and has more buildings when compared to the Golconda one, I must say AP tourism has done a far better job in maintaining Golconda. They even have a light and sound show in the evening for the tourists. Its Gingee counterpart on the other hand is hardly maintained. The only person manning the fort seems to be the guy at the ticket counter.

I don’t understand why the Chennai city crowd is fascinated with the ECR (East Coast Road). A road with a toll of Rs.45 even for a short distance, a road without a median (when most highway accidents in the country happen due to head-on collision that also causes the maximum casualities)/service lane/pedestrian crossing, a road with single lane each way which when combined with the absence of median should make driving in the night nightmarish pales in comparison to the national highway 45 (extension of the GST road) that almost runs parallel to it.

As we found out last weekend, driving on NH 45 till Tindivanam is an absolute pleasure after Singaperumal koil. It is a two-lane one side road with ample and green median and the road meanders through some beautiful scenery of hills and lakes that gives one a feeling of driving somewhere in the US. In case one travels the entire stretch of the road which is about 150kms, the total toll (at two different places) works out to be Rs.40 one way. I sincerely recommend this road to the drive-loving public of Chennai. There’s of course one sore point - to get to the beautiful stretch of the road that I described, you need to tackle the traffic till Tambaram and after which might be one of the reasons why ECR is more popular.

Karan Thapar is continuing to impress me with getting the right people at the right time for his programme “Devil’s Advocate”. This time he got hold of Dr. Anbumani Ramdoss. Just the perfect questions that the public wants to ask Dr.Ramdoss and as with Karan’s other guests, the doctor struggles.

An article in the Chennai edition of the Hindu yesterday (October 28, 2006) talks about India’s wrong assumptions in its fight against AIDS. Since I am not able to find the link to that article, I will quote the relevant portions of the article here:

“India is making perilous mistakes in its fight against AIDS by assuming the HIV is being spread overwhelmingly by sex and especially by prostitutes, a study warns….”

“…According to India’s National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), 86 percent of HIV infections are from sexual transmission, and according to three studies that have helped underpin the country’s AIDS strategies, prostitutes account for 27% of the total…”

“…The total estimate of infections comes from hospital staff, who report routes of transmission for patients admitted with AIDS. But many personnel routinely assign cases to the category of sexual acquisition without asking if the patient may have been exposed to infection through blood, the authors say…”

“…the official tally of prostitutes in India, their number of clients and the frequency of clients’ visits are probably over estimates… Its best estimate is that prostitutes account for just 2% of HIV infections…This means India is ignoring threats from other sources, in particular re-use of unsterile instruments in hospitals, dental surgeries and tattoo parlours…”

I have previously mentioned about the effective advertisement campaign against AIDS in the past. However, I don’t have a similar opinion about the “Right Ranga” campaign that is on presently because it tries to achieve more than prevention of AIDS due to unhealthy sexual habits by trying to preach morals to the society (by advising people not to engage in casual sex at all).

While as a society (and especially in Tamil Nadu), sex outside marriage would be something that we would like to campaign against vociferously, whether we can misuse the funds allocated for fighting AIDS for this purpose is something that we need to ask ourselves. In that respect “Right Ranga” is not focussed, is a step backwards from the “Pulli Raaja” campaign and, in my opinion, will not achieve its purpose. We must remember that the funds allocated every year to fight AIDS is limited and there are infinite causes associated with AIDS for which the fund needs to be allocated - free AIDS control drugs, tax sops for AIDS drugs to make them cheaper to the patients, sponsorship of further research/studies on the diesease, creation of opportunities to improve the lives of AIDS patients, prevention of AIDS through different means (campaigns etc.) etc. Therefore, care must be taken while devising campaigns to make them as effective as possible in controlling AIDS rather than to pass on moral instructions.

The article above, though, questions the whole logic of anti-AIDS campaigns in India. Instead of being unifocal on unsafe sex, it suggests that we also need to spread awareness about the other means of tranmission of AIDS.

Music Forum has been started, among others, by Kalaimamani Dr. Sunder. The objective of the forum is to increase the rasika (fans) base for Carnatic music and allow it to be transferred to the subsequent generations by demystifying the art form. As Dr.Sunder (a medical doctor and a practising Carnatic vocalist) put it, “Today I see most rasikas with either grey hair or white hair or no hair. This is an effort to change that by bringing in proportionately more younger crowd to listen to concerts”.

They had a session today as a part of a series that will be conducted every month to meet their objective. The session went on for more than two hours in the Raga Sudha Hall, very close to Nageshwara Rao park in Luz. Though there were a lot of things spoken by Sunder and later by Isai Peroli VijayS iva and Mannakoil Balaji (a mridangam player), these were my takeaways from the session.

1. Sunder and Vijay Siva: Let’s treat Carnatic music as an art form and enjoy it as we hear it. Though people claim that Carnatic music rasikas are the blessed ones (”romba punyam panni irukanum“) and performing musicians are incarnations/will attain instant mukthi, we don’t know if all that is true. So let us treat it as an art like anything else and hear and enjoy it whenever we need. Let us also not force ourselves or others to listen to this art form.

2. Why can’t a brief description be given about a krithi when it is being sung in a concert?
Vijay Siva (and I don’t totally agree with what he said): There are three states of sound - speech, music and silence - where music is considered better than speech and the state of silence better than music. During a concert, the vidwans would want to remain in the states of silence and music and not come back to speech because that would affect their performance later. Rasikas should not impatient and should note the song down and find out the details at a later point of time. Doing that will also let them enjoy the krithi as it is and help them retain whatever they learn about the krithi as mostly they forget the details if they are revealed during the concert.
Sabha secretaries can think of having an electronic display that can provide the details when the vidwan starts singing a krithi so that it can avoid any disturbance to the singer and also quench the rasikas’ urge to know the details (apparently, this is actually in vogue in a sabha in Coimbatore). Sabha secretaries could also think of getting the cell phone numbers of the rasikas before the concert in SMS the details (provided the cell phones are in silent mode).
Later Vijay Siva mentioned that during the concerts abroad, the artistes do announce the details about the krithi as rasikas there are neither as informed nor do they have the sources that we enjoy back home (debatable).

3. Why is Carnatic music associated with the Brahmin community with both the majority of the singers and the listeners from the same community.
Vijay Siva: At any point of time, in a particular region, history has shown that an art form is practiced and appreciated by a community. Most of the people who learn nadaswaram in Trichy are from the muslim community, most of the people who learn Carnatic music in Kerala are christians, most cricketers from Tamil Nadu who attain national fame are iyengars, most good batsmen from Maharashtra belong to upward caste, most of the pace bowlers are from the same caste, most cricketers from Hyderabad are muslims and so on. This happens because the particular art form had a trend-setter who inspired his community, unintentionally in most cases, to follow his footsteps. In the above examples, Sheik Chinna Moulana, Jesudas, Srikanth, Gavaskar/Manjrekar, Kapil Dev, Pataudi/Azhar were those leading names that created a revolution of sorts in their community.
This is a reason why, at this point of time, Carnatic music is associated with a particular community. There is nothing to either feel proud or ashamed by this fact. This will change in the future and we have to accept that change.

4. Most of the krithis in a concert are not in Tamil. They are in Sanskrit, Telugu and Kannada. How will I appreciate if I don’t know the language?
Vijay Siva: Language should not be barrier in listening to/appreciating Carnatic music. In fact it is not a barrier to music at all. HMV sold 3 lakhs+ (forgot the exact figure he mentioned) cassettes on the first day of the music release of “Hum Apke Hain Koun” in Tamil Nadu. Singers have found that the number of listeners have not increased appreciably even if they sing Tamil krithis alone. There have Tamil concert festivals and people have discovered that the same set of listeners turn up there too and the listener strength doesn’t improve in that case. Many composers have composed music in other languages and singers have to sing those compositions. Many tamil composers also composed music in other languages just like writers like RK Narayan wrote in English. However, many singers consciously include Tamil songs in their concerts.
He asked among the audience who were all tamilians as to how many wrote personal letters in Tamil in the last 5 years. Only 3 out of 70/80 put their hands up. He concluded by saying that the language rule should not be applied to Carnatic music alone as it is a general trend.

5. Vijay Siva: The best way to know if a concert was good or not is to listen to yourself rather than hear what others say or see what critics write. If the concert was successful in inducing tranquility in you and you had a good night’s sleep after the concert, then it mostly meant the concert was very good. Though musicians read and listen to critics, they take it as an opinion and nothing more or less.

6. Balaji for his part repeatedly emphasized that identification of the ragam or learning to appreciate the alapana will not happen over night and it requires a lot of practice over the years to do them correctly. Vijay Siva also mentioned that though Rajaji liked Carnatic music, he could not identify/distinguish between ragas till he was 75. So, identifying ragas and finding fault in an alapana is not a prerequisite for becoming a concert listener.

Dr. Sunder elaborated the concert structure that is in vogue today through two of his students (a girl who sang amazingly and a guy, her brother, who played on the flute still better). He explained the two basic types of content in a concert - the compositions (sungs as the singers have learnt them) and the manodharma content (consisting of the alapana, neraval, kalpana swaram and thanam in a ragam tanam pallavi, where the artiste is free to explore within the confines of some broad structure and the content is spontaneous).

It was pleasant to find the senior citizens who formed most of the audience doing a lot of CP’s (class participation) both during the session and during the question sessions. One lady complained to Dr. Sunder that elder people are always classified as “senior citizens” and though they make an effort to come to the concerts despite their physical ailements, they are unwelcome every where. I could understand her concern. Sunder responded by saying that he’d replace that term with “experienced listeners”.

Some elders made typical smart-ass comments when Vijay Siva was speaking. It was to his credit that he didn’t lose his calm and handled all the questions very politely. The elders also digressed from the topic a lot of times and repeated their questions even after Vijay Siva answered them which proved to be minor irritants in the entire session. Overall, it was a very enlightening session and I look forward to the next one to be held on the third Sunday of next month.

Even now many South Indians wake up to the voice of MS Subbulakshmi either chanting the Vishnu Sahasranamam or the Venkatesa Suprabatham or singing Bhaja Govindam written by Sri Sankaracharya. I was no different my childhood. Among the three I liked Bhaja Govindam a lot because of the way MS sings it.

I recently got a booklet from Ramakrishna Math that had the translation and transliteration of Bhaja Govindam (by Swami Nikhilananda). I learnt that the one sung by MS is not the complete version but has verses selected by Chandrasekharendra Saraswati (I remember reading about this some where but could not confirm it).

As I read some verses and their meanings in the booklet, I couldn’t but wonder as to why Adi Sankara (himself, who drank the ocean of gyana, as Rajaji would say in his introduction) was pessimistic and negative in a lot of places while writing this. For example, there is this verse that is also sung by MS:

Yavad vittoparjana-sakta-
Stavad nija-parivaro raktah
Pascat jivati jarjaradehe
Vartam ko’pi na pracchati gehe

which translates to:
While a man supports his family,
See what loving care they show!
But when his aging body falters,
Nearing the time of dissolution,
None, not even his nearest kin,
Will think to ask him how he fares.

To me, this verse looked no different from the early dramas that used to be telecast in the Doordarshan where the elders are shown to be abused by the family members and helpless. Not only this verse, there are many others (not sung by MSS) that show wives and sons in bad light. These make me wonder why Adi Sankara should write such things even if he wanted people to abjure grihasta.

Yesterday (October 10th) was R.K.Narayan’s centenary birth anniversary. You must have already read Hindu’s article on the same. R.K.Narayan is very special to me as he introduced me to books. Not that I was transformed into a voracious reader (I still read very lightly), but whatever interest I have is thanks to him.

Unfortunately, N.Ram does not mention Bachelor of Arts, my first and also the most favourite of RKN’s novels/short stories, in his article. I just loved the way he describes the miserable life of club secretary at college and Chandran’s attempts at waking up early and studying for his exams. The moment I like the most in “BA” is when Chandran manages to get up early one morning and reprimands his younger brother for wasting his time . It was hard to believe that the novel was written 60 years before I had read it simply because the events in a college student’s life that he depicts in the book have not changed much even today.

Waiting for the Mahatma and his memoir, My Days, are my other favourites of his writing. I could associate almost all the characters of an R.K.Narayan with some person that I already knew. I like the way he captures the fluid state of his characters’ minds. His language was tight without being flowery. and the fact that he didn’t try to pad his short stories with unnecessary conversations helped in establishing the characters in the readers’ minds. The content in many of his novels were autobiographical which revealed to its readers RKN’s ability of record the events in his life to the last detail and identify the innate humour in them.

Long live his creations…

I am kind of pissed-off with the way in which the Tamil Nadu state government provides concessions to the Tamil Film industry. This post is a response to the Film fraternity’s so-called thanks-giving to the Chief Minister. This seems to happen once every 5 years and every time the incumbent CM is hailed as the only saviour of the industry and a mega event is held to thank him. This becomes a very good revenue generator for the television channel that supports the ruling party.

All the problems that the industry faces are not unique to it. These are faced by other industries and movie industries of other regions as well. Piracy is not limited to this industry alone. Though they have not been 100% successful, others have found ways to overcome/limit its impact. When piracy was initially detected in the industry, different ways like not releasing the movie VCDs/video cassettes in Malaysia and other countries(as was the normal practice), making proper arrangements to avoid copy of original print before it reaches the editor’s desk (this was how video cassettes were copied before the arrival of VCDs), making original VCDs/DVDs available within a fortnight of movie release etc. were suggested to overcome the effects of piracy. Though some of the solutions (like making original DVDs available within a short period of a movie release) were not feasible without the consent of other parties like the theatre owners, the industry failed to even have a cursory look at these solutions. Right now it is not even able to incentivize the theatre owners who are part of the industry as such to stop blatant recording happening in their movie halls. It went around appealing to the public conscience and the police to avoid piracy instead of finding means to avoid making the first copy that mostly happened under its nose . Obviously once the first copy is made, there is no fool-proof way of stopping that from proliferating.

In most of the cases in the past years, it has clearly been demonstrated that well-made movies with good subjects and acting have always been hits at the box-office irrespective of the piracy problems and have benefitted everyone who has been associated with them.

The other main problem is the technicians and the lower-rung workers who deal with dangerous activies like managing explosives, stunts etc. getting hourly-pays and not even having life insurance. Now I don’t understand who is to blame for such an issue. Aren’t such workers present in every other industry? Shouldn’t the industry itself tackle such issues by restructuring the way in which the riches are distributed? Actors like Trisha, who appear as guest artistes in 3-4 songs in movies where they claim to be lead heroines, I learn, charge 1 crore for each movie, which is neither commensurate with their talent in acting/dancing (which is close to zilch), nor with the work they put in any movie (they appear for not even 10% of the whole movie). The green dhavani that appeared in Saami has continued the association with her for atleast 3 other movies. Now such actors are definitely commodities even if the characters they play are indisposable in a movie. By commodity I mean, X can very well be replaced by Y without affecting the end product. In such a case, what is the reason for most of the lead actors getting such high pay-cheques? Doesn’t this point to mis-management within the industry itself? Even if this is ignored, how will any external concession help in this scenario? Will the money that the producer makes due to concessions ever trickle to the last worker given this structure?

The concessions provided by the current government were atrocious to say the least. For getting the concession extended to movie with tamil names, Jillunu oru kadhal kathai became Sillunu oru kathal kathai, Emden magan became Em magan, Something something unakkum enakkum became unakkum enakkum. I didn’t know that the word Sillunu was more “tamil” than the word Jillunu and also that Em is a meaningful Tamil word. Obviously the current CM, who is hailed as Tamizh himself knows better. It is another story that most of these movies marketed themselves with the original names and only registered with the changed names. Apparently that didn’t affect the concessions.

Every concession provided by a Chief Minister is not from his own funds; it is from the coffers of the State Government which is the sweat and blood of honest tax payers. Transferring that money as a concession to an undeserving industry (any industry for that matter) is akin to abusing the sweat and blood of the tax-payer. Just because he/she is connected with the industry doesn’t give him/her any license to utilize public funds, which have high opportunity costs, for such lousy purposes and does not make him/her a hero irrespective of what people claim on the day of the mega event (which they conveniently change depending on who’s calling the shots).

I was pleasantly surprised to find some literature on something that I experience very frequently but had thought it to be something crazy and never explored it further so far. Though this has been happening since as far as I can remember, I seem to have grown conscious of it only for the last one year or so; from the time I was in ISB, to be precise.

The experience is this: It generally seems to be initiated by a bad dream, not a real nightmare, but an unpleasant dream that I want to run away from. At some point, I realize that it is a dream and return to consciousness, but only partially. My eyes seem to open, but as I get out of my bed and start walking, I realize that my body is not moving with me. When I was a kid and was sleeping along with my parents, I tried to scream at this point and after sometime wondered why they weren’t responding though they were sleeping near-by. Nowadays, mostly because I realize that I am sleeping all alone and also because I have experienced this over and over again, I close my eyes one more time and open it again and check if I have regained control over my body (by trying to move my hand or leg). This check does not happen very easily because if i try to move, I get a feeling that I am out of the bed and walking most of the time before something makes me realize that my body is not out of the bed yet. If I open my eyes again, I see the same thing (either the fan, if I sleep facing upwards, or the table/stand nearby, if I sleep side-ways). I try to get up again. This process repeats till I am convinced that my body is moving with me.

There are actually different variations to this. Sometimes, even as I realize I am in a dream and try to open my eyes, it takes me to a different situation - say to a busy road or school or something - when I realize that I have not woken up as I ought to be sleeping in my bedroom if I am dreaming. So, I close my eyes again and open it and repeat this process till I am convinced that I am back to reality.

All this while, I am conscious enough to
a) realize I was only dreaming
b) see the real things, i.e., my eyes start functioning. I can say this positively because even when I regain full consciousness I see the same fan or table in the same position before I move my neck. When I am partially conscious, I can see in a single position only; I can neither move my eye-balls nor my neck.

Though I vow to talk to some one about it everytime I experience this, I forget all about it the next morning. Hence, I was surprised to find some material on this topic. I was, in fact, more surprised to read the case-studies where people quoted experiencing the same things that I experience. On an average, 1 in 10 people claim to have experienced this. So I am not alone.