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.

old radio dreams

There are two films I've seen which have wanted to make me do Radio. One was Good Morning Vietnam where Robin Williams plays a DJ stationed in Vietnam who makes the soldiers' lives more meaningful through his radio show. The other one is an old Christian Slater starrer called Pump Up the Volume about an angsty, rebellious teenager who starts a private radio station to vent his angsty, rebellious feelings. Both were different movies, in theme, in treatment, and in their overall feel, but one thing that both movies did remarkably, was to demonstrate the power of radio. How a disembodied voice and somebody else's music can mean so much to so many people.

The beauty of Radio is that, it's much more intimate and personal than television. Somehow when the VJ is speaks to the camera, it never seems like he's talking to you, but when the DJ's voice comes out of the speakers, she's always talking exclusively to you. Then there's the unpredictability factor, the fact that you don't know what song is playing next, and the possibility that it could be a song that you love. When the song that you love comes on, it's a steering-wheel thumping, head-nodding high that can give rise to concerned looks from fellow motorists. There's also the fact that on Radio, your threshold of happiness is much lower, even a song that you'd stopped listening to years ago, or a song that you like, but not enough to buy the CD, can sound magical when it's coming out of the Radio.

Last week the CD player in my car started acting up, so i've been forced to listen to Radio, and I've found an unlikely saviour in All India Radio FM (102.6 Mhz, Delhi). When I drive to work, there's a show called the 'Matchless Music Hour', which plays classic rock and pop as well as old Hindi songs, so a sample playlist would be Peter Frampton - Lata Mangeshkar - Hot Chocolate - Deep Purple - Elton John - Kishore Kumar...works for me! In the evenings, while on somedays it is contemporary crap, I've encountered world-music, salsa, meringue, Reggaetón, some Youssou N'Dour and so on. They have jazz nights every Friday, and I've even heard some modern rock a-la incubus, offspring etc., Just listening to AIR, an unusual industry where the public sector institution wallops the private sector competition (i guess the lack of profit-motive helps), I can't help but feel my old radio dreams coming back to life.

Updates:

Sunday - Queen, The Police, Duran Duran, Abba
Monday - Queen, Lata Mangeshkar, Neil Diamond
Tuesday - Vital Tech Tones (Victor Wooten, Steve Smith, Scott Henderson), SD Burman, Thin Lizzy

I think Delhi is beginning to rock!

Missed Connections

I sat on the sand with someone at night, a long time back. We talked about a lot of things, for a long time, and I think there was chemistry, a connection. But I was not allowed to have a connection then. So there was no connection.

That was some years back. There was a connection. I think. I guess that's how it works. Everyone has these missed connections. You were probably seeing someone then. Or you thought you'd do something about it but didn't. Maybe she thought she'd do something about it and didn't as well. An inconvenient coincidence.

If life was a cheesy hollywood movie then you'd probably meet again, at the frozen-over lake at Central Park, and you'd look like John Cusack. But you don't look like John Cusack. You look like "store attendant" (number 38 in the credits) and so there's no reunion.

And one fine day when you've got a little time to yourself (a very dangerous thing), you rue them. Nothing would probably have come of them, but when you gotta rue, you gotta rue. And you form a neat laundry-list of lost opportunities in your mind and analyse it in desperate detail. If you're stupid you'll call one of them. Just don't be stupid!

Is this au revoir?

(image copyright: soccer-europe.com)

There's a magician that all of us Arsenal fans can't quite get enough of. His name is Thierry Henry. He's a ballet dancer, a sprinter, a gymnast and a wizard, and oh yes, he plays football. He's soft-spoken, articulate and intensely controversy-shy. On the pitch he waltzes past defenders and drifts into space to chip the ball into the net with the bare minimum of fuss. After the departure of the commanding presence of Patrick Vieira, Henry accepted the Captain's armband and did a splendid job of marshalling the young, injury-stricken, inexperienced Arsenal squad and fashioned their resurgence in the latter half of this season.

Off the pitch he's a quiet, unassuming, family man and try as they might, the English gutter-press for all their resourcefulness and fourberie, have not been able to come up with a single scandal of worth involving arguably, one of the all-time greats of the English Premiership. His rise in the premiership, after a dismal stint with Seria A giants Juventus, has in no small measure been on account of the genius of Arsene Wenger, the French coach of Arsenal. Having given Henry his debut at the age of 17 in AS Monaco, Wenger plucked the despairing Henry out of Italy, where he was struggling to find his touch playing on the wing, and brought him to Arsenal in August 1999 for 10.5 million pounds. In every season since, Henry has justified the confidence placed in him by being the top-scorer for Arsenal (and the top scorer in the Premiership in four of them) and winning the hearts of the Highbury crowd.

At this crucial juncture, when Arsenal is set to move into the gleaming new 60,000 seater Emirates stadium at Ashburton Grove, every single Arsenal fan, in every corner of the world has only question in his mind, will Thierry stay? Every one of us wants those two minutes to speak with him, to explain to him how essential it is that he stay; how the rotation of the earth, the evolution of the species and the fight against global warming are all entirely dependant on his staying back at Arsenal FC; how
unbelievably important it is that he stay at our theater and he perform our brand of ballet to dazzle the world and bring tears of joy to our eyes; how crucial it is that we have his leadership so that the dazzling young talents like Fabregas, Hleb, Flamini, Toure, Eboue and Walcott are not left orphaned.

But Henry has served Arsenal magnificently. With goals, with crosses, with those glorious touches and that unforgettable finger to his lips; with his loyalty, his dedication and his guts and his blood. No Arsenal fan will grudge him what his heart desires. Like an estranged lover who has given his all, and to whom the debt of gratitude we owe is too large to bear thinking, we must let him do whatever makes him happy. We would wish him well, and we would wish him the glory and the success and the happiness that he so richly deserves, at whichever club he chooses to achieve them at.

We still wish he'd stay.

Art

Same note book, different art form. Unlikely that anybody, including classmates, would find it easy to decipher entirely, but to those of you make the effort, I think it'll be worth it. (Click on the image to see a larger version showcasing the stunningly high resolution and the spectacular macro-shooting capabilities of my Fujifilm E550). The content is primarily Bappi's and mine. I think Appu might have contributed a bit. The combination of our deft drawing skills and brilliant humour will undoubtedly leave you speechless. Such a well-rounded legal education we had. (Warning: Unfamiliarity with characters such as Shondy, Monkey, Kyara, Cindy Crawford, Mogo, Scorpions, "the Scorpions", the flying sikh, Vodka, cee pee cee, "not regular tobacco", and so on might detract from the seamless user experience somewhat)


PS. Indulge me, this is just nostalgia! alternatively... abuse me in the comments section.

Poyum

Update: A picture of the poyum as originally scrawled!

I've kept with me a notebook from law school, which has very little in the way of actual notes, but a lot of assorted junk including song lyrics, cartoons, strawberry fields band schedules, and the following poem scrawled in the neat Bappi script (Please note that he omitted to mention the name of the poem or the poet, so that at least the lazies among us might attribute it to his genius!):

William Butler Yeats - He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I'm not an expert on poetry, hell i've hardly read any poetry in my life, but this little verse has a bit of magic for me. Maybe it's the plaintive tone, or the fact that it speaks of a kind of fantastic devotion that we have all, at some time, believed ourselves capable of. Maybe because it speaks of a power that someone else has (as certain people always do) over our happiness, which is uplifting while at the same time discouraging. Or maybe it's just because it's scrawled on the back cover of that bloody notebook from that chapter of my life.

PS. Step 1 to blogging street cred - include poetry...any poetry....CHECK!

The Magic Numbers

In a crap place like Gurgaon, to take your mind off the stupid, rude, inconsiderate people and the intolerable weather, you need things like good music, and my most recent saviours in musical guise are a bunch of guys (and girls) who walked out of a talk show for being called "fat." Fat or not, The Magic Numbers have made the nicest new record I've heard since I heard Coldplay's 'Parachutes' in February 2001 (remember, Boomsa? yup this one's at least as good!!).

60s pop meets modern rock instrumentation, CSNY meets Supertramp and Coldplay, ya I know it's lame to compare bands, but I need you to know what kind of sound to expect. The sound isn't path-breaking, but it really stands out in the noisy, electronic junk that's passing itself off as pop music these days. Many of the songs are about love and longing and the usual pop-fodder, and it works! While I don't care much about lyrics I do require that the lyrics don't jump out and irritate, and 'the numbers ' have beautifully ignorable lyrics, so that I can concentrate on their excellent musicianship. The songs are proudly melodic with some fabulous harmonies and good clean vocals. The arrangements are compact and support the melodies admirably, although a little flourish here and there might have added some zing to the record. The solo violin on 'This Love' is an outstanding exception though!

The picks of the lot are 'Love's a Game' and 'This Love', but only just...all songs are very catchy and hummable and melodic and would have worked as singles. And of course tremendous value for money, 13 enjoyable tracks in one album....woo hoo....let the good times roll!!!

Dhanaulti Rocks Music Festival

It's unlike any other (rock) musical event in this country. It is not run by a college, or a corporate or a magazine with pots of money. It's run by a bunch of people in a beautiful Himalayan hamlet called Dhanaulti. It's trying to feature a lot of goods bands, and it promises to be an experience. It's from June 2-4, 2006. Do check out http://www.andijis.com They need money, support, and warm bodies. Do pitch in!

....i can smell the scent of strawberry fields.....

Alphabet soup

A - Alabaster
B - Burlesque
C - Crunch
D - Delicate
E - Elegant
F - Fold
G - Glow
H - Helium
I - Iridiscent
J - Juicy
K - Kindle
L - Lush
M - Mellow
N - Navigate
O - Opal
P - Please
Q - Question
R - Rock
S - Sieve
T - Trenchant
U - Usurp
V - Valiant
W - Work
X -
Y - Yield
Z - Zephyr