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.

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!