An Artist's Borders?

I listened to the original of the "Aadat" song from Kalyug last evening. Opinion warning! The charm I sensed in the original was somehow lost in the more popular re-done version. The simple, non-extravagant orchestration in the 2004 production carried the emotion of the lyrics more effectively, in my opinion. The lyrics themselves were humble and inelaborate as reflected in fewer perfect rhymes, probably because they did not have to be part of a soundtrack of a Hindi movie. Atif Aslam, the Pakistani singer has performed both songs with the same ease and the unique scraggy feel he usually brings to the stage. I was enraptured by his rendition of "Woh Lamhe, Woh Raaten" from Zeher earlier. My only whine would be about his diction; when he says "mujhko", it sounds like "mudzko" (video here, around 0:35), or "jaane" becomes "dzaane", "juda", therefore, is "dzuda". That is probably ok to overlook as an accent or, more likely, my ignorance of the Urdu language. The raw quality of his voice has its own addictive charm. Individuality of voice is a so true a characteristic of quite a few other singers from Pakistan that have made a name in India. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Nazia Hassan, Adnan Sami, Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali Khan, even Noor Jehan from ages ago have enthralled the Indian audience with their style and peculiar (sorry for that word) voice. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's songs have recently been refreshed in my mind by singers who emulated him in Sa Re Ga Ma and Amul Voice of India programmes on Zee TV and Star TV respectively. Two of his non-qawwali songs that are in my all-time favorites list are "Ankhiyan Nu Chain" (video looks suspicious, music is the right one) and "Piya Re". Who can deny the voice that took over the Indian pop scene in the 80s? Nazia Hassan with Biddu's music made some very memorable numbers - Aap Jaisa Koi Mere (original, remix), Boom Boom (original, remix), Disco Deewane, etc. Shafqat Amanat Ali has a more mainstream voice as demonstrated in Mitwa from KANK. Adnan Sami sings hit songs in Tamil and Telugu these days along side the other cross-over regulars - Shreya Ghoshal, Sadhana Sargam, Lucky Ali, Sunidhi Chauhan and Udit Narayan. Asha Bhonsle collaborates with Adnan Sami. I will desist from commenting about Ghulam Ali Khan or Mehdi Hasan as I know next to nothing in ghazals. Jagjit Singh is about the limit of my knowledge in that area. When we listen to these singers deliver hits after hits in the music styles of our choices, what comes to our minds first is not the nationality. Am I right? For most, it is our ability to embrace and appreciate the tune of the song that gets us first, after which we start pondering about the lyrics which were served to us so aesthetically by the song, which movie that song appears in followed by the people behind it...mmm...usually the singer, then the music composer, the lyricist, etc. On the other hand, when it is not appealing art, the "offender's" nationality suddenly jumps out. Since love or hatred is so subjective, is it even fair for us to judge anything? In a debate, it is common to pick talking points selectively to win the argument. How about art? Can we judge art fairly? How come the boundaries, regional or national, become significantly important factors for the same people recognizing talent? Restricting ourselves to even a single sample in fine arts i.e. music is sufficient to prove us negative. Hypocrisy's residual is that fine talent becomes a matter of opinion and the mighty usually have their way in using media to promote what suits their agenda. Ok ok ...when I begin to gloss over like a million topics in one blog, I realize it is time to stop. I urge the readers, nevertheless, to think about nationalism, parochialism, and media hype/marketing when it concerns art forms - music, dance in particular.

Early attempts....

Checkout my article from 1995 at

http://essessblogs.sulekha.com/

Any first impressions?

Hmmm..we are good at some sport

Read and revel in pride.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/06/stories/2007100655521900.htm

Chess was invented in India says Wikipedia. That was ages ago. Presently, for a sports star starved country (think Olympics), it may be worthwhile raising a new breed and increasing the media focus on chess to build a stronger tradition like in eastern Europe and Russia. Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Shirov, Khalifman, Topalov, Ivanchuk...the list goes on. Intellectual ability and simplicity have a special place in the minds of Indians. Not to trivialize issues, but the glamor of chess is therefore relatively easy to cultivate with media's help. Corporate sponsorship (i.e.money and publicity) always goes a long way in bolstering sports. Chess is not the only sport waiting to be "glamorized". While this can degenerate into a discussion of long-term strategy for fostering and sustaining all the different sports, the point to take away to ponder is how best to motivate youngsters to choose the less popular sports; in other words, any sport but cricket. Any thoughts?

Sony BMG rants...

Check this posting out on Slashdot, and read some comments to see where people (readers of slashdot) think this is going.

Quote of Day

Have been following the news, for the last couple of days, about a UF student who was tasered during a QA session with Sen. John Kerry. Then I came across a site with this quote -
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."-- Noam Chomsky.
What a remarkable observation & strategy for control! Any opinions? Gotcha! :)

PR

For those not forced into hectic developments caused by USCIS' bulletin releases, you should know that the tribulations to achieve the coveted permanent residency (PR != Public Relations) have set a threshold unheard of. The first bulletin on June 13th announced that priority dates for all employment based categories have been made current and therefore those seeking to apply can start to do so on July 2nd (1st was a Sunday). There was a deluge of appointments at the local civic surgeons' clinics, affected candidates and their spouses (!!) were flying internationally, the registrars' offices in India received requests for birth certificates or non-availability certificates, loads of paper were frantically used up for copies, etc., enough to make some one outside this circle of inflicted wonder if they were missing something critical. If you do not have an advanced degree, I empathize with your inability to understand the complexities in this domain. For your own good you are referred to http://www.murthy.com/ for more information. Continuing my rant, this sudden news release was amidst activity in the government regarding naturalization process for illegal immigrants. Around June 27th, it was known that the bill favoring the above was defeated in the Senate. Soon, we started to hear rumors that the visa bulletin would be superseded by a newer one. But surely it happened on July 2nd, breaking at least 350000 hearts. I intentionally tie these two events together because I (and many others) believe they are connected. No doubt that all these decisions have political grounds. Immigration is a sensitive issue in many parts of the world and US is no exception. In comparison, US has done fairly well on the whole. A positive concomitant of this fiasco was that a previously clammed up community of highly educated workers found strength to speak up and tell the government that they did not like this whimsical behavior. Of course much of this "fight" was led by lawyers and immigration specialists, since they had invested a lot in the prep towards submission of their clients' cases, many from companies worth 10s of billions of dollars. Under legal pressure (there were going to be several classes of law suits) and having heard some noise about a broken and unfair process, USCIS reversed its decision on July 17th with the following month's visa bulletin. The struggle continues for the skilled worker especially since the next month will be a time to gather paperwork from birth to now, get medical examinations done, and file the cases hoping for a favorable outcome in the next 3-4 years. Yeah...the wait is going to be at least that long, since the number of immigrant visas has not changed as far as I know. Additionally, people need to stay grounded for some time as travel restrictions apply (check with your lawyer). So, while I would love to be proved wrong in this assessment, I am confidently pessimistic as of now. Some other good sites for tracking the changes in immigration policies - http://www.immigration.com/, http://immigrationvoice.org/, http://aila.org/. I refrain from providing the USCIS website link because it is harder to find information in there. The other sites I mentioned have dicussion forums where similar minded folks parse the abstruse messages and present to the rest of us non-lawyer types. Many that I know are stuck in various stages of the PR process and are hoping for deliverance from this mess as soon as possible. As for me, the wait is about to start ....

Birth and Resurrection

Yeah...I am actually back! Much of the last few months were spent preparing for imminent life changes. And on June 25th, it happened! The joy of our life came into existence and took over our lives. It sure might seem matter-of-factly for the experienced. For the uninitiated, the lead up to the moment is challenging and full of questions. Anxiety becomes second nature and doubt engulfs you. What eventually transpires then frees the mind and the clouds clear subsequently. Of course, a different kind of fear then takes over. For our mind invites, if not breeds, worries. But let us revel in the happiness that is due to this time of our lives.

I plan to regularly update my column from now on; resurrecting it so to speak. Rebirth is an oft spoken topic among Indians. How many times have we engaged in confabulations that ended or began with "...agle janam mein..."? I wrote a satirical article a while back (circa 1995) that had some fun things to say about the circle of life and ties it humorosly to rebirth. I intend to post this sometime soon. As of now the only thing that is getting a new lease on life is this blog. Keep reading and posting comments.

The melting....

We are back to normalcy, weather-wise at least. I heard airline schedules have jumped back on track as well. Overpasses are safer. I can see the grass now. The ice is melting. It is chilly outside but not depressing. Sort of what triggers nostalgia. I was listening to an old time favorite song of mine I found on YouTube. It is from a Telugu movie called Geetanjali made and released around the time I was in 10th standard back home (circa 1989). I believe the movie won some popular awards for all-round entertainment. The feel of the movie is very romantic/nostalgic/dreamy sprinkled with hard-hitting tragedies. It was remade in Hindi later as Yaad Rakhegi Duniya starring Aditya Pancholi (Panscholi??) and Rukhsar. Don't know if it captured the magic of Mani Ratnam's original. The BGM and songs in Geetanjali were phenomenal. One technician Mani stopped working with soon after that was ace cinematographer P.C. Sreeram, who along with former started the effect of glistening faces in dimly lit foreground and bright backgrounds in movies. Went really well with the hardly-open-mouth dialogues in Mani Ratnam's movies - anyone remember all the whispering and throaty dialogue deliveries in Roja and Dil Se?:) Anyways, check out scenes/songs from Mouna Ragam, Agni Nakshtram, Nayakan to see what I mean. Today is a designated living-in-the-past day....

Brrrrr...

Its crazy cold here today. Some office campuses are closed. My office had about 25% attendance today morning; I expect it to get thinner by afternoon. I don't know what happened to the MLK walks and marches scheduled around town.

Today is Makar Sankranti in many parts of India. It is also Pongal, a harvest festival, for the Tamils. Pongal literally means "boil over", figuratively means "overflow"; and the hope is that a good harvest will result in abundance all year round. The days around Pongal (both before and after) have special significances that I only wish I knew. Usually in times of doubt, I resort to two of my good friends - Google and Wikipedia. Here is the Pongal page on the latter. Helps when we know so little about our numerous traditions and festivals. In Maharashtra, where I grew up, we greet each other with "tilguL kha aNi god (pronounced 'goad') god bol". tilguL - sweet sesame balls, kha - eat, aNi - and, god - sweet, bol - say. Needless to say, tilguL are a rage this time of the year in Maharashtra. Someday, internet and time willing, I hope to understand the variety of language and traditions present to this day, much of which I follow without, at all, understanding the background and basis.

It is amazing how much information one has on his/her fingertips today. Plus there are perspectives and opinions to learn from as well. I always find good opinions on Slashdot. Folks, by and large, give intelligent comments. But it would be unfair to mention only that. It is amazing how there are a ton of opinions and a zillion ways of expressing these. Each opinion has a unique flavor that encourages an equally individual way of thought. This is especially good (works for me) for a person conditioned by experiences to think in a couple of different ways only, and therefore effect a restricted look at everything around; sort of like a horse with blinkers. Sometimes, at work, during meetings, we go around the table discussing the merits/demerits of a certain project, and I notice how the same opinion I have is effectively delivered by someone else by careful choice of words and convincing sentence constructions. Those in turn trigger a better, more intelligent discussion with wider ranging corollaries. If you have seen/experienced this before don't forget to leave a comment. Too cold and grey outdoors for me to continue....later folks.

Shubhaarambh!!!

I received a mail from Sushil today prodding me to blog. We had talked sometime back about elevating group thinking to the next level while providing a forum to share knowledge. Inertia is an immense force to battle. Plus, talk is cheaper. There were other apprehensions. When you write you suddenly become conscious of being judged for your intelligence, where as when you talk informally in a group, you can make up with emotion, hand gestures and voice modulation what you lack in depth of material. So, for me, blogging is going to be, among other things, an exercise to convey through the written word not only what I know, but also how I feel about something.

I hope to post (and discuss) on pretty much any topic of interest. Suggestions are most welcome. There are some areas closer to my heart than others, and I may be able to give better perspective on those. That I hope will not stifle my dabbling in other topics - those that I have relatively no knowledge, but want to learn more about.

The stars have aligned, the time is right!

So here's my first post. Check out the radio programme on Indian Mathematics by BBC. Not the best (I will define "best" as I continue blogging) in my opinion, but certainly a decent discussion
and an introduction to the interested one to "Google" away the terms and keywords.