Rising Sun

Music can be relieving. We all know this, but there are some times when we realise this and believe in this more than ever. There is one kind of music that soothes you as it plays. You relax, it relaxes. End of worries. There is this other kind. It does not play along. You are made to plunge in and swim. The tune, words and arrangement become the temperature, depth and current of the water. One way to add more to the experience is to consider the singing. Try listening to the effort put in by the singer, either directed or through improvisations, and the appreciation could increase considerably. This is true for music across all the ages. It is rarer, but definitely not absent, in modern music.

We started with relief. And there is relief indeed, literally, when you listen to the synonymous singer - Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. A present day heir to one of the richest musical families, he has not buckled under the pressure of responsibility. He has, in fact, added some more to it - seamlessly adding his flair to light singing in modern film songs. The compact training and base stands guard, the softness plays in front. You can just watch the duel in amazement. Putting his songs on play does a lot of good to me at times when things are not what I want them to be. It also proves to me that art and artists can never fade from this world, it is only the trends that decide what we get everywhere. Here's saluting a real treasure of our times with traits that I look for in my favourite artists - humility, softness, devotion. And they can sing live and create the same magic without the technology blanket of the recording studio. And my favourite artists smile as they sing.

Attaching two live snippets from two of my favourites from him. Sheer magic - takes time to believe someone can sing like this.

Mann ki lagan



Naina

Glorified Tears

You need not be tearful when talking about tears. Poetry - the traditional and old-fashioned type is what I like - has this uncanny ability to turn the most depressing emotions sweet. This song from Naya Kanoon is one such example; it keeps talking about the tears without a mention of the crying. Hasrat Jaipuri shows us why lyricists of the golden era were poets as well. Madan Mohan keeps his musicians off this track to give the total attention to the lyrics. They had to resort to - no surprises here - Rafi Sahab to deliver the goods.

Here goes the words -

Unhe qissa-e-gham jo likhne ko baithe

To dekhe kalam ki rawaani mein aansoon

Ye anmol taare, ye ulfat ke moti

Unhe humne bheje nishaani mein aansoon...

Unhe hum kahaani sunane na paye

Unhe daag dil ke dikhane na paye

Ye aansoon hamare bade kaam aaye

Zubaan ban gaye be-zubaani mein aansoon...

Na samjho ke aansoon hai gham ki kahaani

Ye aansoon hai ulfat ki pehli nishaani

Muqaddar ke qaatib ka kitna karam hai 

Ke likkhe hai meri kahaani mein aansoon...

Zamane mein taqdeer sab ki judaa hai

Tujhe kuchh mila hai, mujhe kuchh mila hai

Udhar hai teri zindagi mein khushiyan

Idhar hai meri zindagi mein aansoon...

Unhein qissa-e-gham jo likhne ko baithe

To dekhe kalam ki rawaani mein aansoon.

Still marvelling at - zubaan ban gaye be-zubaani mein aansoon!

West-side Story

Completed seven days in San Jose today. Even though the work, workplace and colleagues are pretty cool here, there is something amiss that calls for this post. Here are seven reasons why I did not quite like it here till now -

• Would you want to move out of a place where you have just had the best of times with the best of friends? Feel at home, loads of fun, weekend trips, dinners, movies - almost every day? I, for sure, won't. This could be reasons 1 through 7 - but let us have the other ones as well.
  
  
• You check in to your hotel - a pretty neat one at that. And a notice waves at you - "This facility contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer and birth defects... " Not a nice thing.
  
  
• People who do not talk much with everyone like to see others talk. What then, if there is hardly anyone around you?
  
  
• Not the right place if you do not drive a car or plan to buy one. The public transit is not quite there. Reminds me of path trains, subways, trains, NYC Taxi, water taxi... 
  
  
• It takes a lot of time aligning yourself to spend time by yourself till late in the nights everyday. After getting there, you possibly do not want to do the same during the day as well.
  
  
• Can you possibly reign in your system so as to feel hungry before 9:30 PM every day? More so if you are not cooking at home? You can possibly go out - but that would just be to take a walk.
  
  
• When the total package is incomplete, you tend to quesiton your intentions. Makes you feel you are so away from home just for the money.

Signs

"Do you believe in signs?" I was not prepared for this question from my friend. All of a sudden, when we were talking about something entirely different on chat. Still not sure what the question actually meant, I had to resort to a terse reply, "Not really." In a moment, she explained the relevance of the topic - she has been reading Paulo Coelho of late. A kind of rediscovery of the author of one of her, and mine as well, favourite books. The Alchemist is indeed the best example of how one can write sense in the simplest of ways. A novel-sized fable if you will. Anyways, without any more diversion, let me talk about the things she said next.

When life on this earth started, there were just a few souls, but as time moved on, the souls increased.. the explanation given in the book, is that when the soul moves on, it splits into two, a male and a female. And then they split into two, so on and so forth. The soul always splits into a male and a female. Have you ever thought about why we say soulmates? This is the reason. A soul always becomes one again, if people are able to find their soulmates.

Though I could not quite say that I believed in this theory, I had to admit that this explanation was indeed nice and simple. Pretty neat too. I found too many assumptions in this theory and did not quite get the concept of a male soul and a female soul. A soul, if there is one, cannot have a gender. It is just the essence of life in the body. A body without a soul is dead. A soul without a body is potential. A soul-mate, for me, is a super-set of all partners - whose compatibility transcends the limits of the body and the mind.

As I thought of all these things, it struck me that there is always many ways to look at the same thing. My thinking was based on the way I think, the things I have realized till now. Anyone else might have a different realization of the same thing. And when you start realizing things, truth and untruth no longer matter. To talk about a commonplace example (that is what you can expect from me), if you are not satisfied with work, whether the work actually offers possibilities or not does not matter. You stay stuck at your realization. Likewise. It is perfectly alright if someone relates to things that are not obvious. And when that happens, one can relate to signs, destiny or the supernatural.

I believe that even a thousand opinions can exist without interference. Without getting into the merits of each individual opinion, one can choose not to overlap with any of them while forming one's own. You possibly cannot ignore when Paulo C writes. But you are absolutely free to smile at the triviality of this post.

Ghulam Ali Can't Dance

It was just yesterday that my mother told me that I am very fortunate to have friends like the ones I do. I had no reason to differ; she had none not to realize this. Not every mother can see her son off and - before she can even come to terms with the geography separating them - in no time hear him beaming on the phone, "I am perfectly fine. Staying with a friend, eating at another friend's place." The momentary pause at this point is just to gather the names of everything the friend cooked for dinner, the warmth shown by her and her husband and the good times with other very good friends. Now, when the night is contemplating handing over the keys to the sun, I look at the four people sleeping about in the house. It reminds me of similar settings in Hyderabad and Calcutta - and the times I have felt a happiness growing inside. I re-assert the observation that I started the post with.

All good things are actually better, but you have to look beyond the surface. Many people have friends and there are instances of friendship that has moved on to folklore. What makes my case even more curious is the fact that all this love and care is for someone who is just a little better than the furniture in the room as far as interactions are concerned. Put an occasional smile to the chair at the corner - that's me. This amount of cordiality for someone who is a permanent fixture in the Liabilities column of any journal is indeed rare.

Each time we are together, more so when everyone is having a great time, my friends realize the ineffectiveness of my participation. After all, what can you get from someone who listens to music that from the stone age, whose speech is as limited to that of the neolithic man as well? Someone who cannot sing a line or dance a step? And on each such time I, on my side, realize the futility of any suppressed wish that says - "When will this guy change?" If my incorrigibility was made of gold, it would have been 24 carats.

Hello - 9 inches to the left

Mine has been an incessant attempt at keeping on writing whether anyone reads or not. It felt great, then, when someone chanced upon this blog yesterday and said it was nice. He had an immediate question - 'Why no post on A?" He was justified in saying that. After all, this person had sent too many chills down our spines at one time. And he has indeed left with us an unending treasure trove of laughter, to the extent where just the mention of his name brings to mind his myriad antics, and plunges us in waves of unadulterated laughter.

To get the context, we need to rewind to the early years of this century. Eight years ago, even I used to be enthusiastic - embroidering dreams on ambitions all day. It was in such a setting that my brother introduced me to the two people I mentioned in the last paragraph - the initiator and the protagonist of this post. In no time, a legal document pronounced us 'Partners' in a firm. 'A', he told, was a programming exponent with superb 'contacts' and an undying hunger for entrepreneurship. The other partner, let's call him 'B', was into graphic design which is so essential for what we were going to do. Fancy websites, to be precise. Being still in college, I came without any specialization. Three of us (3 is a number that both 'B' and I detest now), thus, started a journey on a not-so-auspicious day. The name of this association was also ironical. We called it Destination Future. 'A' was cool, he called it DF.

Anyways, in a couple of months, we could indeed complete a couple of nice websites solely on the basis of some neat user interface. Then we got some more. The clients were happy, some cash started flowing and I picked up some HTML and JavaScript. At the end of the first year, we ended with a positive in the balance sheet. After college and on weekends, we would assemble in the 'office' and 'B' and I would arrive at the correct design and alignment of the webpages after numerous iterations. Our man, however, did little in these things. He said he could hardly wait for the programming work to come, smiling to show his betel-stained teeth; with an eye on an equal share even on the refreshments that came.

Days passed and soon things fell into perspective. The attitude was, afterall, just a failed attempt to hide the ineptitude. Writing programmes was like asking for the Ganges in Rajasthan - he could not even write a few correct lines in an email. Upon close observation, we realised that the time he spent at the computer was on chats, games and emails to nondescript ladies in, as far as, Australia. Emails that lied through their teeth. 'Too hectic a schedule, am working 20 hours a day.' 'I lost my laptop since I did not lock my car. All my data is gone!' 'Microsoft, IBM - all are running on losses, we will also need some time to pick up.' One would have thought he already had his photo on the cover of The Times - they were waiting for him to date the issue.

It made us restive and angry. Each time he showed his teeth, we gritted ours. It was imperative that in such a setting, Destination Future had all but a future. Time passed watching him arrive late everyday, leave early offering the lamest of excuses, shoot arrows at balloons before they could rise up the length of the computer monitor, write 1000-line emails (sorry not progams) and take numerous phone calls. Talking of phone calls, I must tell you about his peculiar habit of saying many hello's whenever he got a call, bending 9 inches to his left for each greeting. Often, when the caller finally greeted him, his ear would almost touch his knee. He would keep talking in that position.

In some time, we canceled the agreement and decided to move on. Having gained tremendous confidence in his PR skills that now matches his design skills, B carries on with a setup of his own to this day. Having failed at a similar attempt with a few of my friends in college as well, I decided to take on the oft-treaded path of employment. Having done nothing, 'A' decided to continue doing nothing. It is impossible to write everything about him in this post. 'B' and I still have a great time bringing him up in our conversations and laughing out loud. We still start laughing everytime we are together or on chat - when anyone gets a phone call, someone says programming or some incident creeps out from the dungeons in the mind. I don't know of anyone else who makes us laugh more than him.

There he came and said he was a nerd
But little did we know
In our pastures we just let loose
A rampant cow from the herd.

New Work

Getting up early, walks down the river side, sitting idle on a bench amidst an equally carefree (but not as lazy) wind, hurrying for trains that arrive to the minute of the schedule, 2 sides and 2 meats for 5.55... I am back to Newport. A setting sun still dazzling on the Manhattan skyscrappers reflect the good times I had before. The expansive serenity of the surroundings promise uneneding possibilities.