Dhobi Ghat

The last time I reviewed an Aamir Khan film, it was the first post on this blog.  The film was Rang De Basanti, an over-the-top, uber-masala bollywood blockbuster that I enjoyed tremendously.  If there is an antithesis to Rang De Basanti, it must be Dhobi Ghat.

All aspects of the film from the writing to the cinematography, the acting and the editing eschew Bollywood norms.  The drama in the film is not propelled along by 'powerful' lines, intense camerawork or urgent editing.  The stories are allowed to unfold at their own pace and have the unevenness and ragged edges of real life. The one cardinal error in the film is casting Aamir Khan as one of the four protagonists of the film.  Not only is he unable to cast away his superstar persona and get in the skin of the mercurial loner-painter that he plays, his acting is without finesse and overly loud in this otherwise quiet film.  It is by no means a terrible performance, but it just doesn't fit.

The film tells the story of four individuals in the city of Mumbai, all immigrants in one way or the other.  The characters have only the amount of depth required for the story to be convincing, but this is not a critical failing, as the acting performances of both Kriti Malhotra as Yasmin, the muslim woman from UP, and Monica Dogra, as Shai, a parsi investment banker from New York are utterly believable.   Prateik as Zoheb/Munna, an aspiring model/actor is somewhat inconsistent but mostly excellent.  

The plot employs coincidences and chance-encounters in abundance and if you aren't already seduced by the film, you may feel hard done by, but the film had already sucked me in so I was willing to be indulgent.  The equations between the characters are delicate and finely crafted.  The easy camaraderie between Shai and Munna, punctuated by the unselfconscious selfishness of the investment banker and the alternating eagerness and propriety of the dhobi boy, is some beautiful storytelling.

The film's subtitle 'Mumbai Diaries' was obviously a canny attempt to market the film as a 'Mumbai' film as they seem to have a currency all of their own.  Dhobhi Ghat is not a Mumbai film.  Mumbai never rises above anything more than mere backdrop. It creates the context for these immigrant lives to collide, but so could any other city that welcomes immigrants.  Aamir's toast to the immigrants of Mumbai in the opening sequences is perhaps an (unnecessary) attempt to drive this aspect of the film home.

The other recurring theme of the film is the visual medium, whether it is Shai's photography, Aamir's painting or Yasmin's videography.  It's a theme that is just out there and open to interpretation, but it is an interesting interplay and adds substance to the story.  The rain also plays a bit-part in the film.  As drink-mixer, home-intruder, intimacy-creator and general mischief-maker it plays more of a role in the film than Mumbai does.

This is a film that you enjoy during the 95 minutes that you watch it in the hall and in the time that you spend thinking about it and pondering the director's intentions and ideas with regard to the characters and their relationships.  It allows the viewer to fill in blanks and extend storylines and imagine some of the off-screen action.  Gustavo Santaolalla's soundtrack and Tushar Kanti Ray's cinematography complement the mood of the film perfectly and make Dhobi Ghat, Aamir Khan excepted, a consistent and enjoyable whole.

If I had to give a score I'd give this film 7.8/10. 

So much has changed!

So the last post was more than three years ago. There's so much that has changed since then that I am not going trouble myself with listing it all out. I do feel older and wiser. I suppose it would be a shame if you got older and you didn't at least imagine that you had gotten wiser in the process.

I don't have anything in particular to say, but I'll report some of the less significant of the changes that have occurred in the three years since the last post.

I've resumed reading. Books. From cover to cover. What a lovely feeling it is to finish a book, and particularly if it's been a good book. For many years I've been barely reading books. On the rare occasion that I'd start a book, I would almost certainly not finish it. So pathological was my inability to finish a book that I'd read a 500 page book and stop reading it with about ten pages to go. Now I'm finishing more books. And some have been utterly lovely, like Haruki Murakami's "South of the Border, West of the Sun", Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem", and Greg Milner's "Perfecting Sound Forever".

Speaking of sound, I've acquired a vice in this three year period. It's called audiophilia. I've gone through what can be described as three completely different setups in this period to arrive at the Stereo that I have now and love to pieces. The CD player is a Marantz CD63SE (12 years old, heavily modded with capacitors, op-amps, clock and power supply upgraded), the amplifier a Topping TP20 (that uses the legendary Tripath TA2020 chip) and the speakers are something called the Odyssey Epiphony, designed and made by this chap called Alain Courteau in Canada. It's quite magical what this stereo does with music. If you think this stuff is bunkum and your ipod sounds better then I'd happily invite you home for a listen. And if you persist with your foolish ideas I will look upon you with scorn or pity, or perhaps both.

And speaking of music, I've picked up the guitar again. I have a new Yamaha acoustic guitar, and my old trusty Tansen eletric. A bunch of friends and I have been jamming of late and are calling ourselves a band. It's perhaps a bit premature to call ourselves a band, but we're having a blast making music that we love. We hope to someday write and produce an original musical (a rock opera, if you must). I also composed a few bars of a song, after many many years. It's a happy feeling. I also realise that I've become a slightly better guitarist in the course of this long hiatus. I don't quite know how. But I've decided to teach myself the fundamentals of the guitar, so that I can be a proper guitar player and not just someone with a few random bits of skill.

This was just to get rid of the blogging rust. Maybe I'll post again soon. Or maybe it'll be another three years. (Nothing like some mystery to keep the audience intrigued)

ALL NEW Riff Cafe

Featuring a new look, new (and utterly brilliant) contributors including the one and only Sunil Chandy of Thermal and a Quarter (and Lounge Piranha), new features (erm...label menu :-P), new and very exciting content covering areas as diverse as music during Apartheid, Carnatic music, pop-rock and an equally diverse variety of writing styles and perspectives, and lots of interactive content including videos, you must MUST visit Riff Cafe, because even though I say so myself, it is a brilliant, but criminally under-read, collaborative music blog.

A snapshot of what's available on Riff cafe now:

Mayibuye - In the struggle against apartheid, the call "Mayibuye!" took on rallying proportions. Mayibuye means, literally, "let it return" or "may it come back"...










You are in the Kyoo, Please Vait - Mallu rock Video, Band: Avial; Track - Nada Nada Nada





The Reluctant Genius - ...Wafting through the speakers of the little Phillips cassette player was the most quaint and extraordinary Sankarabharanam I had ever experienced. Each phrase was distinctly Sankarabharanam, but was still nothing like I had ever heard anywhere...







And LOTS MORE. So fuck off from here and go to riff cafe.

Goodbye Gurgaon

Hello? No one's reading this you tell me. So what? I'm writing anyways. I'll be that tree that falls in the forest that no one hears, or the virtuoso violinist in the DC subway station, only not quite virtuoso and not really a violinist (not even a tree, come to think of it, but let's not dwell on technicalities...oh!). Pffft.

I've left Gurgaon. Gurgaon, my bete noire, my bugbear, my heat and dust and biting cold, my too littleness, my revolt-me, my nightmare, my disillusionment, my displeasure, my disgust and my despair (With deep, heartfelt apologies to Salman Rushdie). Gurgaon crept up on me and took me by surprise; nasty, nasty surprise. My first taste of Gurgaon was for a month in 2003, after which I declared it "the asshole of the world"and vowed never to come back. Circumstances conspired and I landed in Gurgaon again in August 2005, this time without the mercy of a known exit-date.

Now, with immense relief, a little more than a year-and-a-half on, I've left the 'asshole of the world' behind. Temporarily I continue within the boorish confines of the NCR (National Cattle Region), whiling away time in Delhi, while the logistics of my move to Chennai (and civilisation) are worked out.

Gurgaon of course has left an indelible impression on my mind and has served, if nothing else, as as a low-water mark for urban experiences. Those who know me would have heard me complain repeatedly about the lack of transport, the state of the roads, the rubbish power-supply, the insane drivers, the godawful weather, the lack of culture, the lack of courtesy and civic sense among the people, and such other irritants. Each of these individually, or in a cluster of 2 or 3 might have been bearable and probably exists in almost all cities in the country, but the sheer comprehensiveness with which Gurgaon sucks is astounding. What Roger Federer is to tennis, Gurgaon is to horrific urban experiences.

Since I'm saying goodbye I won't forget the bits I've liked about Gurgaon. The variety of good (albeit expensive) eating places was a blessing for the foodie in me (Oz, China Club, Coriander Leaf, The Great Kebab Factory, Chor Bizarre, Sweet Obsession &c., take a bow!). Good accommodation is relatively cheap, and security deposits are an affordable 2 months' rent, unlike the usurious 10 months that they charge in Bangalore or Chennai, or the completely arbitrary, yet staggeringly large amounts that they would charge you in Mumbai. Hmmm. I think I've run out of positive things to say. If I remember any more, I'll update this post.

On the whole Gurgaon is an eminently avoidable experience. There were, of course, factors that made my stint there invaluable for me professionally, but in every other regard Gurgaon was utter rubbish. If anyone's considering moving there, for non-personal reasons, do remember that the cow that you ram your car into can cause enough damage to wipe out the increment in pay that you might be getting by moving there. Drive safely!

Thank You (a year in the life of a blog)

Yup, the blog is a year old. 53 posts old (this is the 54th). That's an average of a post a week, although averages can be deceptive, and I've not been anywhere as regular as that, and some posts have been just a line, like the one below. I know this is an excellent opportunity to write a long post about random things that happened in the past year, with a bit of gloss and a dash of glamour, and to make broad sweeping statements about broad sweeping matters. But i'll resist, and just say thank you.

Thank you.

Feel

To feel what I feel now, is to feel everything there is to feel in the world. Everything.

More Bass on the Drum Monitor (The rambling saga of a mediocre band)

Apologies for cross-posting from Riff Cafe

Warning: Random

The Strawberry Fields crew had an award, we called it the NL Mitra Award (after our then Director). That was to be 'awarded' to the first band to speak those immortal words through the microphone...."er...Mike/Sidney/Dinakar.....could we have some more bass on the drum monitor please."

In those days we were not cool, and didn't play in bands, and didn't know that, as a matter of fact, rock bands always need more bass on the drum monitor. Heck you need more bass on every monitor, more important than anything, the bass is the fucking foundation, the bass gives you the rhythm, as well as the melodic (chordic?) base (ahem). I needed more bass on the monitors because the lead guitarist (apart from being a genuine maestro of the guitar) believed in the philosophy that rhythm guitarists were to be seen and not heard, and rhythm guitarists definitely did not deserve to hear anything but the virtuoso sound of the lead guitar.

And when we had the sound exactly as he wanted, we'd all merrily fuck up, because we couldn't hear anything except him playing. Yes we even managed to fuck up 'Breaking the Law.' I want to hear the bass and drums dammit, I can do without hearing the lead guitar and the vocals.

And once, when the sound guys (god bless you Shanthala Musicals) 'messed up' and we could hear everything on the monitors, the band ripped the place apart (okay, exaggeration there, the band concluded its set without any major faux pas). JD and I even pulled off our short twin-lead rather nicely. So the moral of the story is that we all need more bass on the drum monitor.

If we'd spent as much time on practising, as we spent on arguing about the name of the band, and various other even pettier issues, we might have been a decent band. But we didn't and so we weren't. We were called Grade Point. Ya, sucky name.

After immense amounts of cajoling, and applying liberal doses of maska on a certain Prof called Smiley, we got a storage room emptied of most of its contents (we still had to share it with a Godrej cupboard and some old CPUs and monitors), and converted it into a jam room. LLM classes were conducted above the storage room, and therefore we could not make noise while classes were going on, which, on account of our collective carelessness, we once did and got shouted at for.

I will not talk of the relative merits of the various members because, except for JD on lead guitars, we all pretty much sucked at what we did. Which did not stop us from doing covers of incredibly complex songs like 'Breaking the Law.' (if i hear that riff one more time, I will kill someone). But in our more inspired moments, we've jammed on bits of Iron Maiden's 'Revelations' and Ugly Kid Joe's 'Everything About You.' We covered CCR's 'Proud Mary' in which we sometimes even managed (gasp!) the harmony vocals. We helped Nair reach his feminine side by doing a cover of Tracy Chapman's 'Give Me One Reason.' Somewhere along the way, mostly thanks to JD, we even had a few original compositions, one of which was actually rather good.

We played a show at St.Johns where I opted out because I hadn't had time to jam with the band at all. That day I got to handle the console for the band, because Dinakar had to go to the loo. I felt incredibly powerful, and I moved the sliders and knobs around, even when it wasn't necessary. And the band loved the sound I gave them. Okay fine, the sound that Dinakar gave them, and I did nothing to spoil.

I think I mentioned the twin-lead before, hmmm, ya JD and I played a twin-lead interlude before the bridge on our OC 'light of my life' (yup, we were very original and groundbreaking when it came to naming songs). It was nice, I could step away from my mic, and JD would step away from his, and by the time we walked towards each other, the twin-lead would be over. But it felt good to be playing lead, instead of crummy rhythm. Second fiddle. Thoo.

I could bore you more right away, but maybe I'll save it for another instalment, or, if I am feeling especially benevolent, I'll lock it up and throw away the key.

Kinshasa

They said the man's name was Gold. I don't know if this was in any way connected to his real name, or whether it was some sort of nickname. He came in a poorly maintained yellow Toyota Hilux of indiscernible vintage. He travelled alone and I was surprised to see that he was not flaunting a large automatic weapon as appears to be the fashion in these parts. He was slimmer than I expected, better dressed than I expected, and on the whole failed to live up to my mental image of what a man named Gold ought to look like.

He asked me if I had my papers, and I pulled them out of my folder to hand them to him. He gestured with his left hand to keep them with me. He asked me to get in the van. I got in on the passenger side, and sat gingerly on the grimy rexine seat, which had clearly seen better days. I reached for the seatbelt to discover there wasn't one.

I was surprised to see he made no motion to start the vehicle. Instead he reached under his seat, pulled out a handgun and pointed it at me.

I realised I was fucked. If this were a movie, he'd have hammed a bit and delivered a few lines of dialogue, which would help you understand why exactly it is that I am in this mess. But this is real life, and I'm about to die. Fuck.

frustration

literary ambition does not its equal have in literary skill. there's a verse in my head that's searching for words to form itself. the idea is clear, the message couldn't be clearer; the words and meter unfortunately, fail to turn up for the party....like fuckers....who don't turn up for parties.

Riff Cafe

It's a music blog that a few of us have started. It's called Riff Cafe. It has music-related writing on it. Check it out http://riffcafe.blogspot.com

Do read. And comment.

And if it doesn't bore you to death, do spread the word. And if you are so inclined, join up as a contributor.

Bangla Rocks

The first Bangla rock I heard was in law school, when my room-mate started going out with a girl from Kolkata (yes girl from Kolkata, I've stopped referring to you as a mad Bong woman). Like the copybook romantic, he started learning Bengali, listening to Bengali rock, and referring to fish as a bhejjytable. We listened to tapes of bands like Ark and Taj Mahal, who sang 'missionary-position' (thanks kareem) 80s rock in Bengali. If you didn't listen too carefully, you could be forgiven for thinking they were singing in English. Of course, as time went by, the girl from Kolkata introduced him to Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen and the Doors and John Lee Hooker and so on, and somehow or the other no more Bangla rock played in our room.

Even in the brief period for which I was a 'boy from Calcutta,' I didn't manage to listen to any more Bangla rock.

Until last week that is. Week before last I'd picked up an assorted Bangla Rock CD from Cal since it cost 38 Rupees, and I had never seen a CD that cost 38 Rupees before, I wondered how bad the music would be to justify the lack of self-belief evidenced by the price, and just had to find out.

I didn't play it for a few days because a 38-buck CD doesn't really cry out to be played. And then the Robot visited, and on a lark I popped the CD into my system. And it proceeded to blow my mind.

If you like 80s rock, in all its powerchord-driven, melodic-harmonic, guitar-wankeried over-the-top glory, chances are you'd be happy with this record. The tunes are catchy, if a little derivative; the vocals and guitars are excellent, and the song structures are classic 80s rock (Van Halen, Mr. Big, Europe style). The production is average, and some of the guitar tones sound a little digital. The mixing, especially when there are multiple vocal and guitar tracks, gets a little sticky, but on the whole everything is clear enough to hear. There are some comic interludes, especially when they try to bring in some English, like this backing vocal that goes "ah wanna steal your bardy, ah wanna keel your daddy"...yup...

I can't tell you any more details about the record, because all of the information on it is (in true Bengali fashion) written only in Bangla. But from a close examination of the script, we could make out that the bands Cactus and School, are represented on the record. If you want to get your hands on it the exact same way that I did, then head over to the "City Centre" mall in Salt Lake, walk into the Planet M and look for a slim, black card-paper cased CD that costs 38 Rupees. (the store attendants might help, if they're not too busy playing on the X-Box 360 demo piece that's been set up in the store).

I'll be in Cal in a couple of weeks and I plan to stock up more on Bangla rock. I'll also try and find out more details about the records and where else they may be available. If you are interested in the info please feel free to mail in at revengeofsmith@gmail.com.

what colour is the ocean?

is it the slate-black from the airplane window? the muddy-brown at the beach? the copper-sulphate of a coral reef? the crashing silence of your loneliness?

it's rust from a passing steamer; the stench of rotting fish; the crack of dried seaweed breaking up; the calm, flat endlessness from the deck of your oil-tanker, awake, when you're heading for Spain....

must be the clouds in your eyes!

Cassette Nostalgia

(Warning: Geekazoidical)

I was checking up to see what Varahagiri Venkata Giri actually looked like (on account of this) and in this endeavour I had hopped to those fine folks at Wikipedia, and ran into this piece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette as their featured piece on the home page, and it opened up a whole lot of memories (since I am a sentimental fool).

I think most people of my age group (kids in the 80s, teens in the 90s) would have grown up listening to music on cassettes (unless their folks were either cool enough to have a record player, or progressive enough to have a CD-player). From the early days on the folkses Sharp GF8989 boombox, music to me equalled tapes. The first tape I ever owned was Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' bought in 1992. (yes yes, I confess I was a Michael Jackson fan, and still am). Through the years of Madonna, Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Learns to Rock and so on the tape was the highly frustrating medium on which all music was served. Tapes broke, tapes tangled, tapes got fungus on them, and most irritatingly tapes disappeared, but like Doordarshan and Indian Airlines in the 80s, we really had no choice.

To be fair to them they did a fairly decent job of playing the music, and at that age, in those times (and on those systems), the 'fidelity' of the recording really didn't make much of a difference to me. Plus they were infinitely involving to the geek in me. Hours were spent opening up fungus infected cassettes, swabbing fungus off the reel with earbuds and ethyl alcohol, carefully replacing the reels and rollers on the base of the shell, guiding the flimsy tape across the transport notches and grooves, and resealing the shell with a Phillips screwdriver, and playing it over a few types to 'really clean it up.'

Further more hours were spent transplanting the tape reels from a broken shell to an intact one (thereby making an MS Subbalakshmi tape play Michael Jackson), involving all the delicacy of the previous operation, plus the added frustration of tangling tape, and what to do with MS Subbalakshmi's innards after the transplant.

Grand felonies committed included recording malayalam film songs from Radio over parents' ancient recordings of Pritish Nandy's poetry (which they never listened to anyways, but for which I got the shelling of a lifetime). Crimes on humanity included recording my own singing and playing of percussion instruments such as the Bisleri bottle and the cricket bat. Silly fun included 'high speed dubbing' [where tape to tape recording happens in a dual deck system where the source and destination tapes move at approximately twice the regular speed] which made all music sound like "the chipmunks," which I liked, and which spawned the idea in my young entrepreneur's mind to make a collection of "High Speed Dubbing Hits", songs that sounded good at double speed. However, as the capital and infrastructure was lacking this concept never took off.

Then of course, the regular excitement of head cleaning, applying earbud soaked in nail-polish remover to magnetic head, capstan, pinch-roller etc., etc,. to make the sound sparkle.

My folks got a CD-player in 1995, but CDs were still too expensive to completely replace tapes, and so throughout school and most of college (before MP3s came and knocked everything for a six) tapes were all I had and most of my tapes are still lying aroudn in shoeboxes at home (pssst....shoeboxes were DESIGNED to store tapes....no kidding....try it out). Tapes went up from costing 40 bucks for Michael Jackson's dangerous to 50 bucks for Europe's Greatest Hits, to 75 bucks for Michael Learns to Rock, to 100 bucks for Blood on the Dance Floor to 125 bucks for Best of Mr. Big to 150 bucks for Best of Ocean Colour Scene....and that was the last tape I bought.

Simmi Post

Simmi, I'm alive and well thank you very much. Was kidnapped by work aliens for a bit, but they've sent me back to earth for Diwali, with a promise to return to captivity on Monday. And since you've given me so many things to write about I thought I might as well!

What is in between heaven and earth?

Ooh deep, I don't do deep very well, I'm shallow you see. So I'll pass this question!

What book would you take to a deserted Island?

The problem with this question is that I almost never re-read books, if i've read it once, it's unlikely i'd want to read it again, and even if i do, I don't enjoy it that much the second time, and in the great world of books that I haven't read, I really don't know what would be worthy of taking to a deserted Island, but if I can do a sneaky lawyerly thing, I'd probably take the Encyclopedia Britannica....since I'd also need material enough to read till I am rescued, and a novel or something of a few hundred pages may not last me long enough.....but leading off from here, I think I'd name my top 5 desert-island discs...not in order (at the moment, it keeps changing):

1) Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
2) Mr. Big - Japandemonium -I (Live in Japan)
3) Dream Theater - Images and Words
4) Queen - A Night at the Opera
5) Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds of Silence

Of course, if it weren't so uncool, I'd take 'Best ofs' since they'd have all my favourite songs, and they'd have more songs than single albums...but that's not allowed for Desert Island discs....so..

Who would you take to a deseted Island?

Hmm....interesting question....there's no one at the moment who occupies the 'love of my life' position....so I'd probably take M, since she was the last occupant...and she's still the closest thing to a 'love of my life' right now.....

Whats your favourite food and post the recipe?

erm....too many things here.....Appam with a Chicken stew or something.......recipe? hahaha.....I know the recipe for nothing!! oh wait I know the recipe for something we once made at the Bappi's place.....we called it the Scarborough Omelette.....you'll understand why.....it was to serve 5 stoned souls and two sober ones (SS and me)....with lots of bread.....

Ingredients

12 eggs
Chillies
Onions
Tomatoes
Parsley
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme (yup.....all of this was available at the Bap's house)

Method

Erm.....beat the eggs together..........put some oil on the pan.......when it gets hot...put onions, chillies and tomato on it......sautee it for a bit.......then pour the eggs over it.....and then dump the parsley, sage , rosemary and thyme.....while singing the canticle in the background.....put salt and pepper to taste......put in some tomato sauce if you are so inclined.....flip it around and stuff.....and it's ready!

Your worst nightmare?

Nothing of note.....

and what do you dream of?

Bizarre things......always bizarre things....never the same things....familiar characters in unfamiliar settings , or unfamiliar characters in familiar settings....always doing incomprehensible things.....with lots of magic and lots of fast movement.....warp-speed.....lots of evil and tragedy......lots of love and excitement......monsters, magicians, ......somtimes it's just some prsosaic events with familiar characters.....with just one vital thing odd.....for instance there's no ground beneath our feet.....or no one's wearing any clothes......or no one has mouths....or something....

Tagged art thou

yippee....something to post about......finally.......Starry has tagged me.... now although the rules of the game are not very clear, from what i can gather, i am supposed to put up a silly picture of myself.....now starry herself has set the standards pretty low because her silly picture is not really that silly......and since i have very few pictures of myself.....the silliest one i could find was this....it was a bitterly cold November night.....a friend's wedding in Najafgarh.....which, according to the collective estimation of the bunch of us who set out on the expedition, is approximately 3 kilometers short of the Line of Control with Pakistan (which would explain Sehwag's cricketing skils). So we spent about 2 hours getting there......spent 20 minutes at the wedding , in which time we managed to say hello to the bride, eat dinner, not wait for the baraat to arrive, and cut. In the middle of all this I had soup.....which caused me to lose my inhibitions and do this little rapper impersonation.....which my good friend SS (from Khalistan via Ernakulam) managed to, rather ineptly, capture on my Fujifilm Finepix E550.

Now apparently i am also supposed to tag other people......hmm.......let me tag some tough ones.....here goes:

• "Me"
• Simmi
  
• Boomsa

Hmm......I think that's it.....if even one responds.....i'd consider it an achievement.

The MC/BC Horn

As of today it's been one year since I landed up in Gurgaon. And in one year of driving around in the city, and learning the jat way of driving, I've always felt a constant need to be more like my jat brothers and abuse the hell out of everyone on the road, but the problem in an air-conditioned / heated car is that yelling at someone involves the effort of opening the window, sticking your head out and actually delivering the abuse....by this time the 'moment' is usually gone, and most often you just can't be bothered, making the effort.

When I used to drive in Cochin, with the windows open, all I needed was simple middle finger to get the message across, but my jat brothers can only understand the language of lustily delivered verbal abuse and this lack of communication with my brothers has been a serious impediment to my integration into the jat community at large.

To remedy this situation, I've come up with an invention known as the MC/BC horn (MC/BC referring to a particularly popular set of abuses in this part of the world which makes a not-so-subtle reference to the oedipal/otherwise incestuous tendencies of the recipient of the abuse). This would require a very powerful set ot speakers to be mounted within the engine bay of the vehicle, powerful and clear enough for a human voice to carry loudly and clearly across the din of traffic. These speakers would play recordings of choice abuses, at a sufficiently loud volume, at the press of a button, mounted on the steering wheel, so that the drive can remain in the air-conditioned/heated comfort of his vehicle and using merely a finger (the finger again!) communicate with his brothers in the language that they understand the best. This will also save the effort of having to yell the abuse yourself.

The MC/BC horn will be fully customisable and should be able to carry at least a dozen abuses, which can be selected by way of a rotary selector similar to the blower-speed selector.

I can see a tremendous market for this all over North India, and I am waiting for an angel investor / venture capitalist to read this post and come knocking on my door to take this concept to the market. Vinod Khosla, are you listening???

Random shit

Yup, this is what you get when I run out of inspiration. And since I've been out of inspiration and/or time for the last month and a bit, and waiting for inspiration and time to strike together could be the perfect recipe for the death of this blog, here I am posting random shit. Let's see what random shit I can put together today.

The last three books I read

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance - Beautifully written, blindingly depressing, thoroughly absorbing book. Literature from another era, almost. The characters are so vividly sketched that you'd feel fairly confident of what to order if they were coming over to your house for dinner, or what to get them for Christmas. The stories of the various characters are told very well, with the minimum amount of fuss, and their convergences and divergences are totally natural. Their happiness makes you happy and their tragedies can break your heart. Solid! (Warning, if you read Such a Long Journey and thought that was depressing.....this is ten times as depressing)

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five - Excellent whacky anti-war novel. Not quite in the league of Catch-22, but close. Very entertaining, witty and sad at the same time. But Vonnegut's masterpiece is definitely Cat's Cradle, this one doesn't hold a candle to that!
Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down - My favourite writer (yes, my tastes are 'base'), Hornby has come up with another masterpiece. Like Mistry's characters you get to know Hornby's characters as intimately, but with far fewer words, and decidedly minimalistic brush-strokes. Also, these characters you'd like to call home for dinner, unlike Mistry's, who'd probably come and depress the shit out of you. This one's about four people who are contemplating suicide and meet up at a popular suicide spot on new year's eve. I know this sounds like a recipe for a cliche-ride, but in Hornby's assured hands, this story is steered well clear of all possible cliches and is the most refreshing take on contemporary urban life that I've read (but then I haven't read much, so!) .

The last three songs I got hooked on

The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset - Fabulous song. Ray Davies's songwriting genius on full display. The melody is plaintive and beautiful, the instrumentation is spare, and the lyrics are fantastic. Feast your eyes:

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I dont need no friends
As long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine

Terry meets julie, waterloo station
Every friday night
But I am so lazy, dont want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I dont feel afraid
As long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine

Millions of people swarming like flies round waterloo underground
But terry and julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And the dont need no friends
As long as they gaze on waterloo sunset
They are in paradise

Waterloo sunsets fine

Now go download the song!

INXS - Afterglow - INXS has that new chappie that they found through the reality show handling the vocals and while this song really isn't classic INXS, I love the Indian sounding rhythm section and the simple melody. Plus it's sung at a vocal range where even I can sing along through the entire song, happily.....and that's a rare pleasure!

Gillian Welch - My Morphine - M introduced me to Gillian Welch. Other people who I played this song to said she sounds a little like Suzanne Vega. A fantastic voice singing a slow, haunting melody laid out over a solo acoustic guitar....blissfully relaxing!


I wish I had something deep and philosophical to say......or maybe some highly exciting event in my life, but currently I am too busy with work to have time for philosophy or for any excitement. I did have a wonderful weekend in Kolkata where I stayed with an old friend from school, got blasted for not keeping in touch with her, and got to to explore a bit of this city that I love! I took some random photographs (with my Sony Ericsson K750i), which I am setting out below (none are very good!):

That's Park Street with a long exposure. As you can see, in Kolkata, nothing moves fast enough for there to be a significant blur!

That's Kusum Snack Bar off Park Street. People in Delhi/Gurgaon better hold on to your seats, because they are actually selling a chicken/mutton roll for SEVENTEEN BUCKS!!!

The following are random pictures of glitzy Gurgaon. We were discussing about how this part of Gurgaon looks like Singapore, and since Singapore stands for Simha Pur (Land of the Lion), Gurgaon should be called Gadhapore (Land of the Donkey).

That's the end of this random post!!

Bombay

They've hit Bombay, the bastards. I want to hunt them down, each one of them, and pump bullets into their brain. Fuck the trial, fuck due process, fuck rule of law; these monsters need to be disposed of outside the law.

I'm generally rational, and I try to be reasoble in my responses to situations, but this is one of the few of the occasions where I wish India were a bit like Israel, or Sri Lanka, and that Sukhois would take off from the nearest airbase and suspected terrorist camps, even beyond the LoC, would be pounded to dust, and that all known and suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives would be taken into custody. Fight fire with fire.

I am sincerely hoping that somewhere out there (Police, RAW, whoever) is a bunch of people sitting around a table, going through reams of data and intelligence, and vowing to themselves that every last one of the people responsible for these atrocities will be hunted down and killed.

My heart bleeds for Mumbai. But I know that Mumbai cannot be cowed down by such cowards. Mumbai will show them that their worst is just not bad enough. Srinagar will show them that they can't get away with throwing grenades at vehicles of innocent tourists. Inshallah, justice will be done and these scum will be wiped off the face of the planet. Godspeed to the people sitting around that table.

Bombay

Yes, I know it's been ages since I wrote anything. I've been alternatively busy, sick, out of town, and/or combinations of the above. But the good news is that a terrible sinus infection rendered me un-fly-able and I got to spend a lovely weekend in Mumbai (just before the really heavy rains hit). I also got myself a new Sony Ericsson K750i, with which I took some photographs of my beautiful Bombay, to look at fondly while I sit in my village.


The first one is a night shot out of a taxi at the signal between Oval Maidan and Cooperage Grounds. The rain's made the road a shiny dance floor for these automobiles to show off their moves.

The one on the right is one of those old buildings on DN Road, elegantly Victorian and defiantly beautiful against the deluge of glass-and-steel monstrosities from architects suffering from acute Bandra-Kurla complex.

Picture No.3 is Cafe Basilico, lovely Italian restaurant in Colaba; Superb cannelloni and cheesecakes, up-and-coming Bollywood starlets spilling out of their very litte clothes, one single "Best of Gipsy Kings" CD playing in infinite loop.

Colaba causeway, empty-ish on a Sunday afternoon, except for a lone BEST bus, one of those fancy new Tata Starbus buses. That red makes it looks really lovely, and it can't hurt that the rains are giving it a constant cleaning!

Of the tens of thousands of taxi drivers in Mumbai, I had to find one who'd had a traumatic photographic experience. Apparently the driver of MH-02 6135 had had a passenger who was taking a lot of picture of the American Consulate which landed him in a bit of a soup with the police and scared the daylights out of Mr. Taxi Driver. So he frantically told me to put my camera away, as soon as I'd snapped this one. It's a coincidence that there's another lovely Starbus in the picture!

And now for those who REALLY want to see a full three-quarter view of a red Starbus in all it's glory I present to you, posing in front of the Tea Centre (with the driver giving me a curious look):

The attack of the killer noses

Two great musicians, both great composers and lyricists, both standard bearers for the emotions of a generation, and both sadly reviled by certain perverse elements for their beautifully nasal singing, Bob Dylan and Himesh Reshammiya are collaborating on a fusion project called "Bald on Blonde", a play on Dylan's famous album title, and the popular rumour that Himesh, under that ridiculous cap, is actually bald. Both musicians were not available for comment, but our bureau has managed a sneak preview of the album cover for the proposed venture, and that's all we have for you today.