Ripples on the brain

Yaay!!! We won, we won…Wish I were India at this time joining the celebrations all around

It’s amazing how brain works sometimes. Subconsciously, my mind associates some specific songs to some specific events. Those songs then become sort of favourites for me for sometime and whenever I hear the songs later I vividly remember the events with which those got associated in the first place.

I visited New York city for the first time some 4 years ago. I remember we hired an 8-seater car and travelled on I-95 to New York. The city skyline that presents itself after one crosses New Jersey was an awesome sight for me as I had never seen anything like that before. At that moment, the song “Aval Ulaga Azhagiye” from “Lesa Lesa” was playing in the stereo system and my mind made an involuntary connection between these two disconnected things. Later, not only did the song become a personal favourite, but whenever I heard the song, I automatically recollected the sight on the drive to New York. Last week, the converse happened. I was on a cab traversing through the streets of New York and I automatically started humming the song. It required a puzzled look from the Egyptian cab driver beside me to stop me from humming .

During my engineering college days, I became fond of a lot of songs this way. During one of our annual alumni meets (when I was a student), a senior sang “Sangeetha Megam” so well that I got hooked on to that song. On another occasion, this non-descript song “Naa saltkotta, nee saidapettey” (from the movie “Pennin Manathai thottu” or some such crap; Prabhu Deva and Raju Sundaram dance for that song) played at one of my friends’ room on the eve of semester examinations. At that time, this song appeared to be soothing admist the stress we all underwent and it got added to my favourites list so much so that I used to force my friend to play it every single day during the study holidays. I listened to the song “Konjum Mainakale” (yes, Sadhana Sargam killing Tamil while singing for a character in the movie that was supposedly a Bharatiyar fan) from “Kandukondein Kandukondein” just before I was to appear for my campus interview for my first company. The interview was successful and the song became associated with it.

During my ISB days, we had these music nites when we all got into a studio and sang all through the night. We had a couple who used to sing exceedingly well together. During one of these nights, they rendered “Sangeetha swarangal” from “Azhagan” and I fell in love with that song ever since. At my first job, like any other fresher in the IT industry, I used work on every other Saturday and we used to play songs loudly during those times. One of the songs that I admired at that time was “Melliname melliname” from Shahjahan which used to loop continuously in winamp. Now on Saturdays, we also used to have these amazing Aloo paranthas with curd at a restaurant near Stella Maris (I forget the name of the restaurant). So, this song got associated to those laid back weekends and aloo paranthas

At other times, there have been some songs that people I know or whom I’m aware of mention as their favourites and those eventually become mine too. A famous blogger once mentioned about “Malarndhum Malaraatha” from “Paasamalar” in his blog and I immediately downloaded that song and couldn’t stop listening to it for some days. The story about the song “Vaazha meenukkum” from “Chittram Pesuthadi” is even better. A friend at ISB pointed us to the song when it was playing in one of the channels. He said he liked the simple picturization of the song and predicted it would be hit. At that time, the movie was just released and the song was no chart buster. We all booed him down that day and a fornight later learned that the song and hence the movie was actually a hit in Tamil Nadu.

Just yesterday, as I was looking at the collection of Thiruppavai, I observed that Ariyadkudi Ramanuja Aiyangar has composed the first five verses in the following ragas: Nattai, Gowlai, Arabhi, Varali and Sri - the same sequence of ragas that appear in the Pancharatna kritis of Thyagaraja!

On October 23, 1966, MS Subbulakshmi, gave her now famous concert at the UN. I was listening to the speech delivered by the then UN Secretary General U Thant after the first portion of the concert had ended. He appreciated MS and her accompanists without naming them. He also later thanked T.Sadasivam who was among the audience.

I found it ridiculous that he didn’t name MS’ accompanists (V.V.Subramaniam, T.H.Murthy and Vinayakram) in the concert but chose to thank a person who was among the audience (though I understand the speech may have been written by someone else and Sadasivam’s name would have been added by possibly CV Narasimhan, the then Under Secretary General).

A report on the concert can be found here.

I think Sachin’s knock yesterday was very significant. There have been very few big successful chases (test and one dayers included) in which he has played such a significant part. I was hoping somebody points that out in the post match interviews or press conferences. It was the same old cliches of Sachin being a great player and so on.

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Just before Kalam had retired, Swami had forwarded me this piece about Kalam. An excerpt from from the piece:

Now another revelation — so far kept under wraps at Rashtrapati Bhavan (under presidential orders): In May 2006, President Kalam’s relatives from the south decided to descend on him (as relatives tend to often do). On instructions of the president they were welcomed by his staff at the railway station, and were looked after right up to the time they departed. But the Controller of Household was under strict instructions to keep a meticulous account of all the expenses incurred on behalf of the relatives — all 53 of them. Not once was an office vehicle used for any of them.

It was made clear by the president that he would pay — not only for the transport of all his relatives to and from Delhi, and also within Delhi, he would also pay for the various rooms occupied by them at Rashtrapati Bhavan and the food that was consumed by them — the rooms at the prescribed rate, the food on the basis of expenses actually incurred.

When his relatives left after a week’s stay, the president was of course sad to see them all go, but he was also lighter in his pocket: the total expenses debited to his personal account was Rs 3,54,924! As we practising lawyers often say in court “the facts speak for themselves”: President Kalam has set a high benchmark of rectitude in public office — worthy of emulation.

Last week, Kalam was the guest in the “Walk the talk” programme with Shekhar Gupta. Read Kalam’s response when asked about the story:

• Fali S. Nariman wrote an article in The Indian Express while you were leaving Rashtrapati Bhavan and he narrated an incident. Fifty-three of your family members came to Rashtrapati Bhavan and you told your staff to keep an account of what was spent on them. Three and a half lakhs.
No, it was less, but I paid everything.

• But you did not want anyone to know about it. It was only Fali Nariman who spilled the beans.
The staff know what happened, so the word gets out.

• But does it mean that the president’s family can draw no benefit from the president?
Well, staying at Rashtrapati Bhavan itself is a benefit. That doesn’t mean Rashtrapati Bhavan has to foot all the expenditure.

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September 1st this year marked a decade of my entry into my engineering college. In more ways than one, my college life was a very significant milestone in my life. It taught me a lot about staying by myself, finding friends that really mean a lot to me, managing disappointments etc. But, I must admit that college passouts in the last 6-7 years or so have it really easy with the booming economy. One thing that I will always be disappointed with myself is not having worked harder and learnt a lot more than what I did.

A fortnight ago, in our college yahoo groups, we had started this discussion about the funny incidents that happened around the time we joined 10 years ago. It was such a relishing experience to embark on a nostalgic trip and recollect all those funny moments.