About me : part III : music meri jaan

There are quite a few things that I derive pleasure from, but in those things I find immense joy. So may be total measure of pleasure remains a constant!! My heart really swells with joy when I listen to very good piece of music, particularly Indian Classical music. Even closest people in my life don’t believe in my penchant for music, my brother himself teases me by telling that he can give me competition in singing!! My love for classical music goes back my childhood. I don’t now why but even as a child, I would be attracted to classical dance and music. I remember one incident when I was probably in class 8, and a show of Indian classical dance was aired on Zee TV for the new year bash, and my sister switched the channel to Star plus because that was showing performances by film stars. And I got upset and left the room. In the morning, I told my sister,”apni sanskriti bhi nahin samajhte”!! Today, when I think of this incident , I can only laugh and smile. This think was indeed unfathomable with regard to a 12 year old boy. I hardly knew the difference between Bharatnatyam and Kuchhi pudi or for that matter between sitar and sarod!!

But things have changed today, over the years I have been listening to variety of music. Now I can identify people like Pt. Ravi Shankar and Ustad Bismilah khan by names and by faces too. Even though I have never touched a sitar, veena or santoor, but still I can distinguish between them when I listen to them. I can almost always identify the singer if it is Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhonsle or any known voice or the one that I have been listening to and I like. I love singing as well. I may resemble Sweety of Hum Paanch serial in the sense, that the way she would open the door of her home always with a song, I also take bath with variety of songs, which invariably include Vandematram and Mile sur mera tumhara. So people staying around my room get this feeling that they are having a distorted version of DoorDarshan around them!!!!

If all this is not my love for music, what else is it then? I also like non classical stuff, including Bryan Adams, pop music, and film music as well. In fact, most of the times, I like to listen to sitar that plays the tune of some good song that I have heard , may be in some film or elsewhere.

I like dancing as well as is reflected from above, but I have seen very less of classical dance or any dance for that matter because such things are not kept much on our LAN of our IITG, as these things aren't quite cred. But still when I listen to good dance music , again particularly classical, then I feel the vibration of my feet, I start dancing with steps that I feel are good. I at times feel that I am more of a performer than an audience. Whenever I see a good performance, then this thought in my mind of appreciating the performer is as intense as the feeling of going to the stage and doing the same performance myself.

Mixed doubles and School

The 2 good movies i watched today. Well good is a relative term. Even for one person, the same movie feels good in one frame and sucks in another. But both the films were good time pass, reason being they are not the regular hindi movies with the same old crap of cheap humor or skin show or some stupid tune of emotions and related crap. Mixed Doubles had very earthen feeling, 'coz acting of all the characters was very natural. I could very well find similar dialogues in our daily lives during my stay in Delhi, particularly those of Naseer and his wife!! I hardly felt I was watching movie. It was enjoying seeing the arguments between the parents of Konkana sen. Though Konkana sen and his husband formed an urban couple, but I guess I have similar ones , I could relate to them. Their son was again very much like I would find in my uncles' homes. All in all nice movie.

School. God it tried to take me back to school days, or to my future. The scholl was an Airforce School. Again here the acting was pretty good. Don't remember the name of the principal, but it seems he does very nice work, and has really refined himself as an actor over the time.

I guess now I can generalize that low budget movies are the ones that are liked. Atleast for me, this generalization does hold true.

India in the western veil

These days ,Indian companies make it a point that they have pics of non-Indians in their advertisements,billboards, posters etc.. One can only speculate their intentions behind this non sense. They may be doin this to attract people, thinking that Indians have always been attracted to fair skin or to foreigners (coz some of them are Africans or American blacks as well), so this will make their ads eye catching. But they often say that that they want to show off some kinda diversity in their employees and clients, that they are serving people from all over the globe , that a substantial percentage of people working in their company are non-Indians. But those guys forget that majority of them are Indians. The Times of India and the Economic Times always ensure that their articles somehow contain a pic of non Indian thing even if that thing has got almost zero relevance to that article. I am not chauvinism or xenophobic, but I am Indian. Globlalisation is indeed the order of the day , but forceful globalisation and blind aping and appeasement is not.