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.