Category: Notes

Meanwhile in Delhi…

The writer was searching for ideas to write a new book. By the time he had already used the themes he knew best – the upper/middle-class, elite educational institutions and middle-class romance – and didn’t know what to write next. He had no idea that Writer’s Block would be such a big deal. Happens to all great minds, he told himself. Yet, the pain was unbearable to him. ‘Help me god’, he prayed. ‘ Please do something like you did in my novel’. There was no answer. But just as he moved to grab a cup of coffee to serve the late night internet time, the phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello Ketan’, said the Dolby 5.1 voice on the other end.

‘OH.MY.GOD! Is this really happening? I never thought that something like this could really happen!’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. I’m just stuck with ideas. I’ve run out of topics to write. Tell me please, what can I do? What can I do?’. The writer was on the verge of breaking into tears.

‘Stop being a sizzy, Johnny Fontane.’

‘Who?‘

‘Nevermind. Open your eyes Ketan, and look around. What do you see?’

‘I see Arnab Goswami on TV!‘

‘You’re so hopeless, Ketan. Look around again.’

‘I see Arundhati Roy!‘

‘Bingo! Tell me now, what do you think you should do when you have nothing to write?’

‘Write about politics! Oh my god, I’ve never been clearer!‘

‘I know that part, but what do you plan to write about politics?’

‘Liberalism, Maoism, India-China friendship?‘

‘You’re being hopeless again, Ketan. That territory is already occupied’.

‘Hmm… How about going just the opposite side? Towards the right of the politics?‘

‘Well thought. But your fanboys are from urban India and they don’t know yet if they are on right, center or left.’

‘Now I’m confused!‘

‘Just like thy fans Ketan baby, but that’s okay. I will give you an idea. Write about something that is political yet you won’t be straight political, something so populist and appealing to the middle and elite class yet you will touch an emotional note with the rest, while ensuring you poke nose into someone more famous than you for a bit of TV time and in the effort you also get in the company of powerful people’.

‘Wow, that’s a lot to do, god! Is that even possible?‘

‘Like I said, look around you, boy. What do you see? Now don’t tell me the name of that Arnab fellow again or am gonna put you straight in an interview with him!’

‘Fair enough. Okay, I see Narendra Modi.‘

‘And?’

‘I see Amartya Sen and he is saying something about Modi.‘

‘And?’

‘If I write against Sen and support Modi, I will be even more popular and mine and Modi bhai’s target audience is almost the same!‘

‘Dumb, dumb boy. How do you then relate to the other class?’

‘Hmm… so should I speak on behalf of young Indians in general than myself?‘

‘Just because you have put an old photo of yours in that blue T everywhere from your book covers to Twitter background, doesn’t make you look young or the youngsters’ representative (get that T changed, BTW. You have Photoshop these days, you know).’

‘Then I will probably write against Sen saying he doesn’t know what the poor India wants.‘

‘Poor, of what kind?’

‘The ones who can’t attend a decent college or get a decent job?‘

‘And you know them because… you’ve spent your academics in IIT/IIM and then you got a job as an investment banker in Hong Kong and you stayed there for 11 years?’

‘But who’s going to think about all that? This is young urban India that we are talking about!‘

‘Super cool. You’re smarter than me.’

‘Kai Po Che! Gotta hang up now. Twitter time!‘

 

And so the writer began to tweet.

 

Of puppies and the Men-behind-the-drivers

The puppy is silly. He makes his passage not knowing that the next car on the road might just hit him. He may not have realized that the next car could be ‘the’ car. The car comes and it hits him hard and crushes him under the wheels. There is a driver. And there is a man behind the driver. He is asked by someone, “do you regret what happened”? Plain question. The answer could be a Yes, or No. But the man opts to draw an analogy instead. He does not say that ‘I should have hit the brakes before it happened, but I couldn’t’ or ‘I wish I could save the puppy’s life but was unable to do so’. He also does not say that it was the puppy’s problem altogether which could have revealed what he thought of the puppy’s action. Rather, he puts the analogy of another puppy.

The question of whether the driver or the man-behind-the-driver regrets what happened still hangs in the air. Even the person who asked the question doesn’t seem to have noticed that.

Ref: http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/07/12/interview-with-bjp-leader-narendra-modi/

Motivationals or Biographies?

The truth is that I am not much in favor of motivational books or how-to books anymore. Not completely shut myself to them, but. I used to like them because I thought that it could really help. Because the root cause of the problems that they laid out were what I could identify with and the solutions seemed plausible. It is mostly about ‘pushing the limits’ in the direction that the author has set in but at most of the times, in a general case, there is a limit to the limit that one can push (or so we hardly believe). Obviously the author can’t identify this borderline because he knows only his own and asks us to push, push, push. ‘You will succeed if you push further like I say’, they would tell you. So we read the book, happy that the author rightly identified the problems, assured that we would succeed if we followed as he/she had said, close the book and comment “what a great, useful book” and get on with our lives without using any of the techniques that the author explained about. In the end, it becomes useless, though it ‘inspires’ you, or you think it’s great and practical.

I would rather go for biographies. They draw a different problem in each of them. Sometimes, the same problem but different solutions that fit each individual towards working out that same problem. How ordinary people got into it and came out as extra-ordinary people. How they pushed their limits within their limits. The examples that other ordinary people could follow.

Every great thing must come to an end

They say every good thing must come to an end. So must Blogswara. Yes, we are going to put a full stop to our project after 6 years, 7 albums, 65 songs and a whole new bunch of amazing singers, lyricists, composers, orchestrators and mixing engineers.

Interestingly, we’d never thought past a single music album. Those were the good old days of music blogging and many singers were just beginning to find their listener base online. We thought of bringing all these musicians together under one umbrella and that too, to create a set of original songs and music. Thus was born our first album. And that was four months before Facebook opened up to public.

The journey went on. What we thought would come to an end after the first two albums had kept going on strong and in the meanwhile new platforms were born. A whole new world of social media exposure was waiting for the artists to explore them. Still, we went strong. We produced seven music albums. We inspired people and similar projects/websites. It is truly a moment of pride. But over the years, the momentum was slowing down. There are richer and easily accessible platforms that handle the publishing and sharing aspects easier than ever, like Facebook or YouTube.

That was obvious and inevitable, by the way. You don’t have to get stuck in time with a project that was a need of the hour when there was none but to continue to do it when there are better platforms does not make sense. Now if there is an amateur singer who wants to make his voice heard in the public can create a network through social media and make himself heard. We realize that and it is one reason that we are leaving for good.

We are proud to see that some of the artists whom we had introduced through Blogswara have made it big in the mainstream. Divya S Menon has made her mark with the song “Anuraagam” in the Malayalam movie “Thattathin Marayatthu”. Shyam, Praveen and Prasanna of TSJ Studio have made their debut in the Tamil film music industry with the album “Kamban Kazhagam”. Praveen Lakkaraju, Sreenivas Josyula and Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam made their entry into Telugu music industry with the movie album “Hormones”. Sunny Sanour made his entry as a music director to Telugu music industry with the songs in the Telugu film “Swamy Ra Ra”. We are so happy and proud of these wonderful musicians.

Blogswara is a project that is so close to my heart. The project had taught me that regardless of many differences – regional, linguistic, caste, creed, religious, political etc – people can come together to create something that will make everyone rejoice in music. Most of us have still not seen each other or spoken to each other, yet we have built a relationship strongly rooted in music that continues to the date. It is music that binds us all, which is why I chose the tagline “United in Music” for Blogswara.

Personally too, Blogswara has helped me learn many things. The early lessons of leadership and organization, the pains and pleasure of it, came through Blogswara. I can proudly say that I have never succumbed to the pressures that would compromise the very founding principles of Blogswara. There were times when the pressure was mounted up on me to bring in the commercial aspect to Blogswara, or to bring in the religious fervor to it through the songs but I have resisted all that. I would rather see Blogswara vanish to thin air than deviating from it’s founding principles. Of the free/open music culture with CC licensing and the secular nature of the project. Of bringing in people of diverse cultures and languages in an effort to appreciate music. I can proudly say that I have been successful in that.

Another moment of pride was when Jessica Keyes, a student of Department of Music in University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada chose  music blogging with a primary focus on BlogSwara for her academic defense. Her paper titled “Blogging Music: Indian Musicians and Online Musical Spaces” presented an ethnography of the Indian music blogging community and a critical analysis of the historical and technological foundation for music blogging.

There are so many people to thank. Narayanan Venkitu and Ajith Gopalakrishnan to start with. Senthil (Sen) for the spark of Blogswara. Ganesh D for the name Blogswara. Abdul Shafeeq for the initial art work and CD covers. Gopal M S for the name ‘Trunk Call’. Murali Krishnan of Connexions, Chennai for the initial support. Jyothis E for the continued support with web space through many albums. Nandu Mahadevan for bringing in a process in place. Roshan Ravi for the cover art of Blogswara’s album ‘Trunk Call’. Legendary Tamil writer Sujatha for his piece in Vikatan, Karthika Thampan of Manorama News, Asha Anilkumar of Indian Express, Shilpa Nair Anand of The Hindu, K Santhosh of The Hindu, Anita Iyer and Aparna Joshi of Sound Box Magazine, Sankar Radhakrishnan of Business Line, B S Biminith of Mathrubhumi, Deccan Radio, Poornima for Radio Mirchi Chennai coverage and bloggers like Amit Verma, Kiruba and Neha Vishwanathan of Global Voice Online etc. And many thanks to all Blogswara participants and member without whom this project would never have happened.

And thanks to you, our listeners, who have encouraged us and helped us grow. We will still be online if you wanted to hear our songs again. It has been a great ride and it couldn’t have gotten better. Peace and music to all!

Funerals

Attending a funeral is something that I dread almost all times. The situation demands you to pretend that you are sharing the grief of the loved ones of the deceased, when you know that you cannot share someone’s grief by just attending a ceremony. I hate doing it but I know that I must do it, as is the societal norm. The biggest part of the funerals is pretension.

It is sort of interesting to observe people in such situations. At a funeral, your sorrow, or the pretension of it, depends on the others. You look at the others and observe what face they are putting up and accordingly make up yours. You observe those who come and go and wonder why a stranger looks more sad and why a family member of the deceased doesn’t look so sad. Later, it could even become a talk of the town that the family of the deceased did not cry out loudly and what could be the reason behind it. And if some family did cry out loud, the same lot would say that they were so ‘village-ish’.

Then there are some ‘special’ people. People who would be ranting on how strong a relationship they have had with the deceased and how much the deceased meant to them. More often this rant is just to convince the others of how much they meant to the deceased so as to indirectly say how special they are compared to the rest. The more famous the deceased is, the more the numbers in this lot would be.

Funerals are also about numbers. If you miss attending a funeral, you would be offending the family of the deceased no matter how good or supportive you have been to the dead when they were alive. You gotta be there. At the end of the funeral or after a few days, it would be the numbers that matter to the family of the deceased. The grandness of the ceremony is defined by the total number of people and V.I.P.s attended the function.

What funerals are not about, at many a times, is the deceased.

The year of 3, and 3

2013 is the year of number 3 in my life. This month end will mark the 3rd year of my marriage and by end of the year my son will be 3. The bigger 3 of them all though, is today as I just turned 33 years old.

Personally, last year was the most unproductive year of my life ever since I got in to music blogging. I have lost interest in doing the karaoke songs and with the little one around, it has been tough to record anything without his ‘music’ accompanying. But I realized that doing karaokes is my only option to keep singing, so I might be getting back to it this year whenever I can. I have also taken some personal resolutions which I intend to stick on to in this year, just to test myself and see how strong I am as a person. As I struggle to keep on to some of it, I realize how fragile I am or how fragile we all, the humans, are. But I will do my best. There is no fun in giving up.

The white strands of hair that was spotted on my beard last year have found a few more friends this year. Pure white, not even grey. I know these guys are growing in numbers and soon will occupy the entire area. Increasing weight was a concern last year but I could bring it under control by the end of the year. Lost about 3 kilos and am happy about that. Small things, but it makes you happy to know that you are still the chief-in-charge of your body.

But what is it really about a birthday? It’s not really about looking back or forward (there are many other occasions in life that makes you do that). It’s not even about the numbers. It’s just another reason to celebrate, yet you don’t know what you are celebrating. The march so far or the march forward? I think it is the ‘marching’ in itself that we should be celebrating. That’s the pure beauty of life – living, right now. It ain’t worth stopping.

Enough of crap for this day. I will stop now.

Good riddance, 2012!

Every new year brings with it the hope of doing something new or going to back to doing something you have been doing and the hope for a better life. But 2012 was not a great year at all. One good thing from 2012 was to see some friends and fellow Blogswaraites debuting in the mainstream music industry. More power to them and music.

There has been so much negativity all around the last year. Blame it on the system, government, people, media or yourself/myself. There were ‘movements’ that didn’t move anything at all. From Hazare through Ramdev to others. Short-sighted people with vested interests banking upon sentiments of the common man and the common man happily playing into the hands of them gave them both the obvious results. Media however benefited largely from these circuses.

Seeing all this, I feel I should shut down the computer, go off the Twitter/Facebook radar and listen to music, eyes and ears shut to the outer world. But how long? This moment or the other, this very system, people, government or media is going to grab me at my feet and toss me away. One can never escape from his environment.

So here is to hoping for a better year or the years to come in both personal and social life. Happy New Year everyone.

Onams of ‘salt carpet’

One more Onam passed by. As usual the television was filled with stories of nostalgia – celebrities talking about Onam of their childhood and how much it has changed over the years. Stories of plucking flowers and playing on the swing etc. In my childhood, we seldom had a traditional floral carpet for Onam. We did not have any flowering plants in the yard and we could not afford to buy flowers from the Onam market. So what we did instead was buying crystal salt and packets of color powder that came cheap.

The first and probably the best artist of the family was my second brother Varghese who is not in this world anymore. It was him who started putting floral carpets for Onam and cribs for Christmas. We all would wake up early in the morning of Onam day to help mixing the color powder with crystal salt while my brother would be drawing the structure on the yard with a string of thread and chalk. We would occasionally put up a real pookkaLam (floral carpet) with Mosantha flowers which were found aplenty in one of the neighborhoods. Ladies of the family would get busy in the kitchen by the time we finished the pookkaLam. Next thing to do would be eating the boiled banana. After that we would head to the neighboring houses to watch TV. There were not many new movies on TV in those days and there was only one Malayalam channel by Doordarshan, but one of the neighbors would play VHS tapes of Malayalam movies that they brought from the gulf. The ‘celebrations’ would mostly end with sadya at noon, though we did not have more than 4 items for sadya.

The ‘salt carpet’ was also a regular in my school, S N Boys High School in Kanimangalam because most of the students there came from ordinary or poor lower middle class families. The kaLam there was much bigger than what we put in our houses. It filled an entire class room bordered with the wooden benches. One kaLam design I remember is of Hanuman bringing the sanjeevani and it was the largest kaLam from my memories. The salt carpet has a disadvantage though. A salt carpet is easier to put the design together than a floral carpet but it would begin to melt after sometime and the colors would merge with each other, But it was a work of art.

Times have changed and I don’t see the salt carpets anymore. The flower market now thrives in the Onam days and there are ‘flower kits’ which is a mixture of all flowers and it costs much less than what you buy in kilos, so nobody prefers the salt carpet anymore I guess. Crystal salt also seems to be a rare thing these days as people have moved on to powder salt. I wish I had a camera or found someone who had one to take a photo of the salt carpet,  which I would call the poor man’s pookkaLam.

Dear Valentine

It does not matter how rough the weather is,
How turbulent the waves could get,
How far the shore is or how long we must travel.

What really matters is that we’ve come this long,
Rowing this boat of life together,
Having you by me and I by you.

(The photo was shot at Alappuzha, Kerala, during the Nehru Trophy Boat Race season in 2007.)

Reality bites

You know, sometimes reality strikes us harder than the reality television. Some real life stories would make you wonder if its really happening. I heard such a story last week from a friend. A story that made me think where we are headed.

It is about a troubled young man trapped between his parents. His father is from a humble background and mother from a wealthy family. Mother’s family had helped the father to start a business and everything was fine until the father became a drunkard. Eventually the business was gone and the family had to struggle. So the mother, at 45, had to flee to London for a job leaving her husband and son alone. She kept sending money back but the father drank it all up. He would not go for a job or take care of his son. The boy stopped going to college and began wandering around the city. His regular ‘day’ was from dusk till dawn.

The mother eventually stopped sending money when she learned that the money was going to her husband’s booze fund. This made things even worse. The father started selling things he had at home to find money for booze. When the relatives sent him money, he spent it on booze than food. The boy kept wandering around more often, and many a times without food. Then one day he was bitten by a dog in the neighborhood. People in the apartment says that it happened when the boy tried to steal food from the neighbor’s dog’s food plate. Relatives learned later that the dog had died and the boy did not go to a hospital.

The boy is trapped. His mother tried to take him to London but the father would not let him go. Because the father knew that the only reason that his wife sent him money was their son. The mother is not ready to leave the job at London to come back to India to be with her son and she blames the relatives for not taking care of him. The relatives do not want to accommodate the father and the son, because the father is a complete drunkard and the son has been acting like a psychopath these days. They do not trust them both to share their house with.

I don’t understand how could parents go after money, jeopardizing their family and children. How could people put their ego, convenience and comfort over their children. Leaving them to chaos, letting them be criminals and psychopaths. Perhaps this story explains the growing rate of crime in our society.