Making statements

After the previous one about Woodstock that I had to struggle to find words to write, I realized there are a lot of things I feel very deeply about, but don’t have enough to write to make a propah post, or am just not able to completely articulate. There are statements I want to make, but am just not able to get the timing right.

This is essentially the post to end all posts, in a way of speaking, as the erratic server prevents me from posting more frequently. Often, I think thoughts that ‘just have to blogged about’, but it’s always that they come all so suddenly and all at once that by the time I get to writing them all down, they’re stale, passive thoughts not worth talking about.

Okay… now to some samples of passing thoughts I have taken the trouble to take seriously:

Warning: Highly opinionated statements ahead.

• The Beatles seriously rock. I mean, who else writes world-famous songs just to console their colleague’s son who’s down due to his parents’ divorce? And who else can scribble down stuff they muttered during an LSD trip and make a perfectly great-sounding song? And who else can claim to be more popular than Jesus?

• Indi-rock needs heck loads of encouragement. And the right exposure. I think I am right in thinking we can never have another Parikrama or another Alms for Shanti or another Indian Ocean. Talking of Parikrama, they might be the greatest Indian rock band, but wish they’d come up with more new stuff. I mean, thirteen years of existence and only five originals, of which only two have had videos. Open Skies was an awesome instrumental, and Rhythm and Blues was one of the greatest collaborations I have listened to… and left me wanting more. I guess one of my top moments was when I got to meet Sonam Sherpa and Chintan Kalra when they played at Inci-05. I don’t think we’ll ever have another Colonial Cousins, either. I’m really waiting for their next offering. It’s the only sort of music my dad and I can listen to at the same time without me saying he shouldn’t be stuck to just one or two channels on Worldspace when there are over 40 to choose from, or he tuning into something else.
• I sincerely regret not having taken my classical music training seriously seven years back. I also wish I’d had music teachers who were qualified to teach, who gave their students just the joy of music and a bit more, not just taking it as their life’s ambition to produce Vidwat scholars. Most kids aren’t aiming to be one; it’d be really great if they just got the right bit of exposure to Carnatic, one which doesn’t flaunt it as something unbelievably tough, one which can’t be appreciated in idle moments, something that needs to be revered beyond all else.
• RadioCity 91 FM, Bangalore. It formed the basis of my musical education, and provided the background music to my Boards, JEE and AIEEE prep. What I really don’t get is that how Bolly-crap and remix-ultracrap can be more popular than Floyd and GnR, or Linkin Park, so popular that the pioneer private radio station in India chooses to switch to playing only Hindi music. And why the newer radio stations in Bangalore choose to back this funda too. If you don’t expose people to different types of music, how are they going to know what is good? The main reason for RC’s success was that they presented new types of music people hadn’t really listened to in such a way that they became part of people’s lifestyle. I am not exaggerating when I say that the number of people who listened to international music increased after the advent of RC. I guess the newer radio stations are trying to keep things simple – if people are given only Bolly-crap to listen to, they’ll say it’s good due to the absence of a viable alternative. Yeah, there’s Worldspace, but not everyone craves for variety in music enough to spend Rs. 1400 on a subscription, even when it’s only once a year. People would like to be spoon-fed quality music, and according to me, it is the damn responsibility of the damn media to provide it. No matter what else. You’ve got to create class for the masses. Parting shot on this – we are having a dumbing-down phase on our tastes thanks to consumerism and sensationalism in the media.
• I don’t at all understand why ISKCON [International Society for Krishna CONsciousness] have to open a branch in a place like Udupi where the main attraction is another Krishna temple. THE Krishna temple. Where people can’t be any more conscious of Krishna than they already are. Where Krishna isn’t just a concept to be emulated, but one which people live.
• Shashi Tharoor is one amazing writer. Much better than Rushdie. No magic-realism nonsense which doesn’t make any sense even five times after you’ve read it. No inane humor of Upamanyu Chatterjee. Sample this:

An Angrez in colonial India is demonstrating his knowledge of Hindustani:

“There was a cold day”

“There was a banned crow”

“Hard to get which one will get someone to open the door, and which one will get someone to close it.”

For the less receptive of you, they are transliterations of Hindi sentences.

I really don’t understand why his books are not more popular than they are. I guess he’s one of the few writers who’ve kept in mind the sensibilities of the discerning reader, and who understand that writing is just a medium to get ideas across. When he’ll be the UN Secretary-General, am I gonna miss his writing, or am I gonna miss his writing.

• Gay and happy is an oxymoron, as some people I know informed me. I take this opportunity to educate the more ignorant of those reading this on a few facts. Gay men need not like pink or flowery patterns. Gay men can be macho. You can’t be ‘inspired’ to be gay, as some of my friends feared ‘My Brother Nikhil’ would inspire alternative sexuality in some of us. Gay men are not necessarily perverts. And for heaven’s sake, IT IS NOT A DISEASE! And if you say being gay goes ‘against the laws of nature’, be assured that drinking milk does, too, as do plastics and concrete. And Karan Johar’s sexuality is his business really, and I’d prefer it kept that way. He has enough publicity coming from other angles that something like this needn’t be made an issue to ensure that his flicks sell.

Wanna Woodstock

On this day, 37 years ago, was the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival at Bethel, New York. I guess you can call that a never-before-never-again event. With the sort of commercialization there is today, I don’t think there can ever be such a celebration of gaiety, freedom and Art. The most interesting thing about it was that

<extract from wiki>

Though the show had been planned for a maximum 50,000 attendees, over 500,000 eventually attended, most of whom did not pay admission. The highways leading to the concert were jammed with traffic and people as they abandoned their cars and walked for miles to the concert area. The weekend was rainy, facilities were overcrowded, and attendees shared food, alcoholic beverages, and drugs. Local residents of this modest tourist-oriented area gave blankets and food to some concertgoers. However, no violence was reported and the fact that attendees were remarkably well behaved was particularly noted.

</end of extract>

Wish I’d been there, listening to The Who and Jimi Hendrix……….instead of spending half the day today stuck in a traffic jam for nine hours in the middle of a forest.

The First Week

It hasn’t even been a week since I got back to college, and somehow the days don’t feel empty at all.

I got here on Saturday, and moved right in. Thank God mum was with me, else, I don’t know how I would have managed. By the way, my new room’s really nice, airy, with lots of light, and thankfully full mobile signal [such a relief from last year when I had to lean on the window to speak and wave my hand outside the window everytime I wanted to send a message] and the only thing that dampens my spirits are the various species of six-legged freaks I find dead on my table each morning.

Talking of insects, I seem to find loads of fireflies this time. I really wonder where they were the two years I was here. The first time I saw one, it was sometime in the middle of the night when I just opened my eyes, and thought my roommate had dropped her cell and that it was ringing on silent. They seem to have this weird electronic glow around them that first freaked the daylights out of me.

I seem to have some nice subjects this semester, not muggu ones like last semester. And I’m hoping they really are nice and fulfilling, unlike last time when the only 8086 microprocessor codes we were taught to write were ones to calculate the nth fibonacci number or to find the GCD and LCM of two numbers. We’re actually being taught by non-ALs [AL=Assistant Lecturer, and at NITK, is a vile curse ranging in intensity somewhere between 'illegitimate offspring' and 'perpetrator of fraternal incest'] this time, which is quite a relief after the nightmare that was last semester.

Now, it’s official that I can speak Japanese. I’ve got a certificate from Dr. Katta saying so, that’s how I know. All I can say is Domo arigato gozaimasu. And I mean it. Pun intended.

One of my favourite people has come up with the mother of all sorts of all things. Way to go, woman.

Last year this time, I was curious about my juniors, and was appalled by their bad behaviour and all that, but this time all of us don’t seem to care one bit. Why, I don’t even know who they are! Which is a big surprise as far as someone like me is concerned. My roommate happened to check out [and just that, nothing more, trust me. She can't hurt a fly for all the money in the world] her juniors [party fundae and suchlike things], and to our shock, they were running scared of us, and just excused themselves pleading illness and assignments to be submitted. And… the only interesting things I’ve noted about them are that one of them’s this Tamilian girl who speaks flawless Assamese, and another’s called Loon [yeah, Loon, really.... I'm not kidding or exaggerating here, Gawd, do Manipuris have weird names or what!]. Somehow them getting scared of us doesn’t give me a superior feeling or anything like that, which some people seem to crave.

While we’re on the subject….. Twelve second-years have been asked to vacate the hostel on counts of inappropriate conduct with juniors. Well, here’s wishing them all the best with their disciplinary action.

And I read Kaavya Vishwanathan’s magnum opus. I am pretty surprised Chetan Bhagat hasn’t joined in suing her… FPS and HOMGKGWAGAL both feel like the same book,-same walking-metaphor characters, un-taut plot, unfunny humor….. all essentially read-once-and-throw material.

SPIC-MACAY’s started off full swing, and I just spent an hour listening to our Faculty Advisor, the Convener and a few seniors telling us all about how good the movement [SPIC-MACAY's a movement, not an organization] was, so good that they couldn’t explain it, it was to be experienced. They turned emotional, and words failed them. Rather, their vocabulary.

I guess I’ll get to watch the club recruitment tamasha early next week as I’m not going home for the long weekend. The posters have started to come out, and we won’t have to wait long for the overdose of Photoshop. Already, I’ve been quizzed about the ‘specialities’ of each club, what skills are to be possessed to get into each ‘tech’ club, whether you need to know HTML to get into CSI, how important all these are for the placement interviews, and what sort of questions to expect at a club interview, what to write on the resume, how to project yourself in an interview and a dozen other things that make me want to yell “Oracle and IBM are not gonna take you just ‘coz you screwed around with Photoshop for IE!”. On second thought, maybe they do, I don’t know.

I think this will be my latest post for quite some time to come, coz we haven’t yet got Net in the rooms, and the GB Net Centre has a one-hour restriction, which doesn’t at all give me a mood conducive to writing. Apart from that, the speed is really really slow this time, and the airconditioning doesn’t work, which makes even five minutes in this place highly unbearable.

Addendum: I wrote all this earlier in the evening, and now it’s 10 pm, and I’ve just discovered that my system has crashed. I don’t yet know what’s wrong with it, and nor can Poo, our resident software storehouse. The BIOS can’t seem to detect the hard drives! I’m hoping the problem disappears overnight, and the only other thing in the horizon is that the Acer guys will be laughing all the way to the bank.

I can’t help smiling, though. I’d just finished making backups coz I was planning to install XP and Ubuntu.