Bombay Jayashri

I have no Music knowledge. Can't identify the Ragas like Venkat and don't know the difference between the thalams. In fact there is a complete ban on my singing at home, apparently my singing does not sit in sur(am), don't know what that means either!

But, what I know is that I Love Music, almost of all kinds (except Rap and the technosounds that are unfortunately being bandied as Music). Like most of you, some song keeps going on inside my head all the time.

Bombay Jayashri is one of my favorite singers, I have tons of her songs (thanks to Visu for some of those CDs) and she keeps us company when we have this torturous travel to and from office, fidgeting inside the metal cage. I simple love her dark and husky voice, which is very different from most of the classical singers (which is fairly exploited by Harris Jayaraj and co). At the same time she easily scales those highs too, with the clarity and crispness of the winter breeze. There is a soothing, soul stirring quality to her voice. Listen to her sing Ehi Murare or Katyayini and you will understand what I mean (btw, the complete Salokyam album is outstanding and so meditative).

So, when my friend Prashant informed about a Bombay Jayashri concert and offered the tickets, I was ecstatic, to put it mildly.

We left early to hold on to the best seats, up close and bang in front. I could literally see the whites of the artists' eyes. The hall was very basic, but it did not seem to bother the singer or the fans. The program was scheduled to start at 5:15 and it did start precisely at 5:15 and for the next 3 hours we (the Rasikas!) were transported to a different world. A magical world that was full of joy, spirituality and wholesome goodness. During the entire duration, she did not say a word (except for some polite conversations with the accompanying musicians); she did not pause to take a sip of water. She just came, sang, conquered and left.

Pictures here are some that I managed to sneak during the program - the light was not very good and I was nervous, to be sitting just in front and shooting with a camera (even if I was really careful not to disturb).

The Fight

There is savagery

in their bloodshot eyes.

Dilated to see it all,

In those eyes you search for fear.

They go around each other

One waiting for the other.

Waiting to kill,

It’s a fight to finish.

As the volcano erupts,

You see blood on their hands.

Is it the other man’s blood?

Or, his own? You’ll never know.

This urge to succeed

The lust for power

The power that grabs you

Like quick sand.

It’s a search of glory

The glory that’s brought by gory.

This is a battlefield

We mindlessly walk through.

We prepare

To give everything

Including our last breath

For that gloomy Nothing.

Sitting around in the arena

With great delight

We watch, as the Romans did.

We haven’t changed much.

The cry of the dying man

Suppressed by the howl of the survivor.

Sounds stained by blood.

This is our history.

He now waits to take another

And so it goes on

Until everyone is taken,

And till the last one falls.

Jagjit Singh

I had a great collection of Jagjit Singh's ghazals during my college years and used to hear his songs regularly. Especially, on the morning of an exam day, I would have his songs plugged on to my ears (good old sharp walk man - with auto reverse!). His voice had a soothing effect and I found/find it very meditative. A percentage of my good(!) final year marks can be attributed to Jagjit Singh.

His voice is so heavy and beautiful, just listen to this later day beauty from Sarfarosh… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAh4bqBUGkY (even if you don’t understand the meaning it is fine. May I suggest that you get, if possible, a CD or the mp3 and listen in a good system with the volume a bit higher than normal to feel the heaviness of his voice, the humming portions are so magical.

The lyrics… most of the ghazals are in urdu and are inherently beautiful. This song in Sarfarosh talks about the magic of love and goes something like this (to the best of my borrowed knowledge):

Hoshwalon Ko Khabar Kya
Bekhudi Kya Cheez Hai
Ishq Ki Jaye Phir Samajhiye
Zindagi Kya Cheez Hai


Person who is in his full sense will never know
how it feels to lose oneself (to love).
Fall in love and you will understand
What life is all about.

Irshaad comments that most of the Ghazals are about love or wine... It is true, while most of the songs are about the Nasha of Love or wine (they sure know what to celebrate), many songs are quite philosophical and about some fundamental questions too.

Jagjit Singh passed away this October 10th.

The Palace of Illusions

The Palace of Illusions is Mahabharata told from Draupadi's perspective; she is the Protagonist. Given this premise and given that the Mahabharata is the most complex story ever told (wiki: With about one hundred thousand verses, long prose passages, or about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana), this could have been a magnum opus by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (CBD). Unfortunately CBD falters after a great start.

The initial phase of Draupadi's tale, her interactions with her brother Diru and friend Krishna, are told with great sensitivity and style. As Draupadi grows up and gets married, she sounds more and more like an ordinary human (with 5 husbands, of course). Much worse is that Draupadi keeps cribbing (I agree that she had many reasons to crib) and page after page yearns for the forbidden love of Karna. Although these feelings towards Karna (and vice versa) are hinted in other versions of the Mahabharata; the palace of illusions talks about it in almost every page, which kind of gets annoying – ‘for heaven's sake, the human race as we know is getting erased and millions are getting killed in the great war and here we are crying over love’, is what you want to say.

The other disappointment is the characterization of Kunti and Yudhisthir; both are portrayed as one-dimensional cardboard characters and in fact Draupadi treats them with disdain throughout. There is a bit of remorse in the end, but that is probably too little too late. The mother in law - daughter in law interactions between Draupadi and Kunti are so clichéd and you wonder, if the author wants to portray Draupadi as a stong and extraordinary women, born to rewrite history, then why does Draupadi get into these petty trappings?

The good aspects are: the book keeps a good pace, the narrative is easy and does not have the usual complications of a tale of this complexity (probably because the book is targeted at the western reader, CBD lives in the US), yet it covers most of the critical happenings of Mahabharata - with a few liberties taken here and there, like the two marriages and nine sons of Karna are never revealed, probably to keep the romantic angle alive.

For me, the highlight of the book is the Krishna - Draupadi relationship, it touches a few philosophical notes of man-god relationship.
Sample this:
When asked by Draupadi: "Can't you ever be serious?' Krishna replies: 'It's difficult, there's so little in life that's worth it’.
In the end when Draupadi is about to die, Krishna explains the futility of her remorse and tells her that she is just an instrument, this is probably taken from the essence of the Gita itself, but it is a good discussion.

If there is a God, I wish he is like Krishna, ever playful, ever intriguing, great philosopher and charioteer for the righteous (and in the process bends the rules here and there).

Wisdom Paradox

This post was trigged by a coincidence; I got a mail from Venkat about this blog while I was reading ‘The Wisdom Paradox’ by Elkhonon Goldberg; the coincidence is that the blog and book are on a similar theme – Dementia or the atrophy of the brain. It is a known fact that our brain atrophies as we age and eventually most of us will lose some and an unfortunate few will lose most of our cognitive abilities. This topic is of great interest to me since I have recently crossed the milestone 4 decades of existence and every now and then I worry about the possibility of me spending the last years of my existence wearing a bib and trying to recollect what I did a minute ago!

The book; The Wisdom Paradox is a paradox in the sense that it gives you hope and at the same time it reconfirms your fears about aging too. The bad news first -after the initial stages of development and maturity (till your thirties) our brain starts to degenerate, starting with the newly evolved neocortex that make us who we are, humans (neocortex controls the working memory, speech and language) and the right hemisphere deteriorates more than the left. So you will have issues with new learning, analytical ability and creativity. Your ability to learn new languages will be affected too (there goes my goal of learning French this year).

The good news is that what you lose in creativity and novelty you gain in wisdom. Wisdom is an acquired response to recognized patterns. So during the early stages of our life we assimilate new information and develop neural patterns. As we age, the brain begins to atrophy, losing about 2% of its size per decade, but we reach insightful conclusions intuitively based on the lifelong collection of the neural patterns. This, you see, is the strength of leadership. The experience accrued over a lifetime being used in decision making, esp in abstract situations – like running a nation or an organization.

The point to reflect is that this wisdom can’t dawn overnight when we become old, we need to collect various experiences in our early stages of life and build the neural patterns that would help in achieving this wisdom, even when as we lose our analytical and learning abilities. So, spend your early years hunting for knowledge (like reading this blog :)) that can be turned into wisdom later.

The Blog; I believe that the overall, degeneration (cells dying as we age) would be of little consequence – so it does not matter that, ‘You had more brain cells the day you were born than you’ll ever have again’. You definitely had less brains when you were born than you’ll ever have. Also, it is very complex, elephants have double the neurons as humans, and if you are talking about the brain to body ratio, then birds have a better ratio… I am sure you will agree that we have better cognitive capabilities compared to elephants and birds (of course, can’t say that for everyone I work with). So, it is difficult to say why you will lose your mind -whenever that happens; but you can be sure that it is just not because of reduced cells. It is worthwhile to note that research has not established the reason or medication for, say, Alzheimer more than 100 years since Dr. Alzheimer described it first. So I find this article to be assuming too many things and making it simplistic. It is possible that dementia is more of genetic in nature and probably has no cure or prevention. And your cognitive skills at the ninth decade would probably be thanks to the strong genes provided by your parents (and generations before them).

I agree that the brain needs constant stimulation (not the one provided by TV) that allows the neurons to form new connections. We should constantly try to learn new skills, improve your social interactions and broaden our knowledge (browsing the net does not count) and ponder about them (hence, having a mid-life crisis is probably a good thing for your brain).

Yes, every time I search for that wretched remote or the car keys; I am worried that very soon I may forget my own name, I am still not sure how to avoid it completely – let me try Sudoku or Rubik’s Cube or learn to draw and paint.

RX100

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself."

"In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming."

— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

When you move around in a car with all the windows closed, there are only 2 vehicle exhaust sounds that you would distinctly hear inside the cabin -one is, of course, the Bullet and the other is a Yamaha RX100. The sound is so apparent that my normally vehicle/gadget illiterate dear wife would stir and ask me, ‘That is a Yamaha, right?’ of course she is right (isn’t she always right?), for the heartbeat of an RX100 is very hard to miss. Whenever I hear that sound, I immediately go back by some 20 years, when I had the pleasure of driving around my very own RX100 -a black RX100 (I had to choose and would not take any other bike or any other color).

The day I took my RX100 to college, I became ‘somebody’. Guys I have never known before wanted to be friends with me; I became a sort of mini celebrity (yes, I am exaggerating a bit, but not much). But, one still has to capitalize on this newly acquired status, and I realized this couple of years later when a colleague, exclaimed, “I never thought YOU will be driving THIS!!!” A good way of thanking someone who offered a lift, in the middle of the night!

I took great pride and took great care of my RX100. Used to wash it and shine the chrome every day. Will be tuning and adjusting the idling or scraping the carbon off the spark plug. If I had to sit somewhere I would normally put my bike on centre-stand and sit on my Rx100. I took it to the best mechanic in town, who specializes in Yamaha and also someone who loves bikes (the second attribute was every important). Today, I sometimes wonder where that passion has gone; it is true that I am quite detached when it comes to my car and view it as just a mode of transportation. I am reminded of the quote I read somewhere, “Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul”; that probably explains!

Recently I had the opportunity to drive my old RX100 (I can’t say ‘my’ as it is currently owned by a cousin, who was kind enough to let me drive for a while – of course with a thumping heart I am sure), the old bugger was as good as it was 20 years ago. Obviously between the two of us the RX100 had aged more gracefully! They don’t make bikes like this anymore!

There are many memories associated with this bike (with great reluctance I call it with a lack of identity –Bike). I vividly remember the day I took my wife (then fiancée) out for the first time and it was on this very vahana. We went around from Nungambakkam to Greams Road and the bends around the crooked College Road is still fresh in our collective memory.

A quick anecdote to end this blog; one of those days when zipping down the Bannerghatta road at Blore, my best friend (Happy Birthday, Irshaad ) was sitting behind, tears streaming, he hollered, “I don’t know how you are driving, I can hardly open my eyes!”, and I hollered back, “close them, just as I have closed mine!!!”....

Cheers to those many rides.

Farewell Waltz

Just completed 'Farewell Waltz' by leading Czech author Milan Kundera. The 'Farewell Waltz' is a dark comedy at the outer layer, but, underneath, is a very poignant, political novel with a touch of magical realism. The original Czech version was published in the early 70’s but was banned during the communist regime for the political undertones in the narration till 1989.

The story unfolds over five days in a small spa town with 8 contrasting characters and has commentaries on relationship, religion, politics –all with lightness and a searing satire. The end was a bit sudden and sad (although Mr. Kundera does not delve on the sadness) but overall the book was a fine read. This is my first Kundera and surely not going to be the last.

Couple of quotes from the book (all of these are dialogues between the characters):

- 'To come to the conclusion that there is no difference between guilty and the victims is to abandon all hope. And that, my girl, is what is called hell.

-'There isn't a man in this world who isn't capable, with a relatively light heart, of sending a fellow human to his death. At any rate I've never met one. If men one day come to change in this regard, they'll lose a basic human attribute. They'll no longer be men but creatures of another species'.
'You people are wonderful!'... 'When you turn everybody into murderers your own murders stop being crimes and just become an inevitable human attribute'.

Both the quotes are in reference to the political situation in Czech during the 1970s; when uprising and suppression of these uprisings thru capital punishment was a norm. After a while the roles reversed the revolutionaries moved to power and persecution of the earlier rulers started, hence there is a blur of victims and the guilty.

Second quote is a dialogue between 2 characters when they discuss about human nature and how we will punish a fellow being with certain happiness (sadistic pleasure if you will); History is strewn with people who stand testimony to this statement.

And finally the most interesting, “All I know is that I could never say with complete conviction: Man is a wonderful being and I want to reproduce him”. Again, this is a dialogue between 2 characters in the book where one gives out reasons why he will never sire a child! What a powerful reason -I have tried this life, but do not find in good enough that I will recommend for someone else!

Feeling an emptiness that follows the completion of a good book!