Ketaki Gulab Juhi..

Some time back one of my friends had posted a video link in Facebook - of that of 'Lambada' band in the 'Idea India Rocks' finale. The performance, for many of us, was nothing short of spectacular!
It has been quite some time now that I have consciously abstained from active-television-watching, partly influenced by my parents' complete disregard to "child's" TV watching needs, however every now and then, I do see some wonderful and talented people who perform at various levels.

This guy from the Lambada group ( Jasraj Joshi) is fantastic...
Listen to this track :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBq7vGasoM4

Now, as much as I try not to, I can't stop drawing parallels to the original. A lot of you would curse me for trying to compare the 'old' with 'new' ; the 'orthodox' with the 'modern' so on and so forth... 'yeh apple wali baat nahi hui' some would say !

But ki kariye .. control nahi haunda.. Check this track :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBIX3a84v8g

This is from the movie 'Basant Bahar' - 1956; Bharat Bhusan, Nimmi starer, music by Shankar-Jaikishen. This song ( Ketaki Gulab Juhi) was sung by Pt.Bhimsen Joshi and Manna De.

Panditji would have been 34 years when this movie was released. Not sure about Jasraj's age.. may be late twenties. Similar age.. I would say, when both sang the song. What amazes me is the starling difference in caliber and voice quality.. what finesse ... what class.. wonder how many zillion hours of riyaz would have gone behind scenes to create such gifted talent... Bharat Ratna in the true sense. ( OK agreed.. this tribute is 102 days late.. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi died on 24-Jan-2011)

Not satisfied with the information available in the Internet about the song, I called up my friend in Delhi.. he is an RJ... he is a treasure trove of knowledge!! He gave me some interesting trivia about the song :

- It is based on raag 'Basant'
- Shankar ( of the SJ duo) had quite a liking for Manna De and hence you would notice that many of RK songs were sung by Manna De, before, due to some strange political reasons, it became a complete Mukesh bastion.
- When Manna De came to know that he has to "compete and win" against Panditji , he developed cold feet and wanted to chicken-out. His mallu wife ( Sulochana Kumaran) apparently coaxed ( reprimanded, I am told) to go ahead.. and the song went on to become a hallmark of the 'golden era of hindi film music', albeit the irony !
- The irony, which Manna De ( and rest of music loving world) would not have ever imagined, if not for the 1968 Sunil Dutt starer Padosan, where the legendary Manna De had to suffer defeat in the hands of Kishore Kumar ( ek chatur naar). Ignominy.Indeed. Irony.Indeed.Karma. Indeed...

You never get to choose anyway.. So why bother!

Reminds me of a little story when I was little.

It took some serious coaxing, continuous studies, and recommendation from mom to get my first hockey stick. I still remember dad bought me the stick, without taking me to the shop -- it was my earliest enlightenment of how you should never let your parent buy anything for you. It looked like an ice hockey stick instead. I hated it from the very moment I saw it. I still remember, it had a band-aid like thing pasted on the bottom edge (lest I erode the stick). It took me exactly 5 mins to break the stick and probably 5 more months to get another one. This new baby was an angel. Perfect curve, the right balance and weight. It was called 'Service' ( I still have it in my attic), as though to remind me that it should last forever.
The first day in school with the new hockey stick was amazing. At the stroke of 12 (Tiffin time for us ;) ) .. I rushed to the ground along with my friends .. my strides were by far longer than others, my new acquisition was gleaming. All of us threw our weapons on the ground. The priest sat in front of the weapons, with another helping him go in a trance. With the power vested upon him, he carelessly threw the hockey sticks, two at a time, in opposite directions. Before you knew, teams were created, battle lines drawn and war would begin. This continued daily .. there was a romance in the rudimentarism. Never did we care about the results (well almost) , never did we care about 'who is playing in my team and who is not', never did we care about the sun ( or rain sometime).. What was important was the game.. the feeling of being in the game !

Our lives are also like the hockey game.... The sticks are like situations in our lives, we don't get to choose them. At first it looks like some random blind guy throws them on us without any logic.. hurridly just as to finish the activity and join the game. Sometimes in our overt adulthood we think that He is just too eager to play the game Himself.. but we forget.. ta ha .. He is the game !
It takes a near lifetime for us to realise that we neither choose the sticks nor the playground nor the results…what is important, is that we ought to play !

Rehearse your conversations

In the last three weeks there has been, at least, two occasions where I repented (in retrospect) what I said. When I played back the conversations again and again, in my mind, I realised that there were only one or two sentences (and sometimes words) that twisted the conversation. Wrong words, wrong sentences, wrong phrases, wrong body movement, wrong facial expressions are like tipping point for an avalanche. It is like school bells-- once it rings you can never stop the children gushing out... Its a like a raging river, a sedate and serene 'pharan' can thus become a death defying experience…. and most of the time you don't come back alive, every time your conscious dies or worst still you add an additional layer to your skin ( making it thicker than it was earlier).

During the conversation you need to remember two things... 'who are you' and 'where do you want this conversation to go-- the purpose of the conversation'. Conversations go awry only when you are not clear about these two things.

'Where do you want the conversation to go' is a relatively easy question to answer. There are three stages here :
- I am very sure of what I want
- I don't know what I want
- What I want is a function of how the other person behaves during the conversation

‘Being sure of what you want’ is a state of mind that is so profound and overwhelming that you don't have time for inconsequential expression of emotion. Have you ever see a worker bee smile / frown while it is at its purpose. It is so sure of its purpose, that it does not have time for such expression... the advantage of giving such examples are , you can never go wrong... someone needs to really get stung by a bee to prove me otherwise. .. hehehe !!

I am very sure of what I want -- is the ideal state. All of us have gone through this stage (but may not have realised it).
Every time a woman smiles after she has trounced your foot with her stiletto heels... she is very sure of what she wants -- "Mercy without saying so"

How we react to the women who trounced our foot, will help us understand the stage that we are in:
i) I am very sure what I want -- "If you give me your number I can send you my medical bills" (and depending on 'who you are' the intent would be to get the ‘number' or the 'medical bills' or 'both')
ii) I don't know what I want -- "High heel pehen ke bus mein aaney ki kya zaroorat hai "
iii) What I want is a function of the how the other person behaves during the conversation -- a) A bomb-shell in stilettos -- koi baat nahi madam ; b) Otherwise -- choicest invectives.

Ok, now quiz time ... "amongst the two stages 'I don't know what I want' and 'What I want is a function of how the other person behaves during the conversation' which one is more miserable” ..tik tik tik tik

'I don't know what I want' is conscious incompetence. In such scenario, the first best thing to do is to introspect. Try to find out the purpose of your conversation. And if you are unsure, it will not be deemed as your cowardice should you refrain from any further conversation. On the contrary, if you are not sure of what you want and still continue the conversation, it could lead to dementia!
"What I want is a function of the how the other person behaves during the conversation" --- You pretty much don't have an opinion and wouldn't mind swinging either ways ! Every conversation has a purpose, and if you don't take control of the purpose, the ‘purpose’ (often adverse of what you want) takes control of you. Hence instead you controlling the conversation, the conversation controls you!

Of the two, the second one is more miserable and takes longer time to heal.

Now, let’s come to the next big topic: "Who you are" in the conversation.

What you do is always a function of who you are, but most of the time we conveniently confuse it to be a function of the situation (paristhiti). Hence, if you believe, that you are the "bigger" person in the conversation.. you would never want to trounce the other person, rather the surety within you would allow you to patiently listen to the other, not being pugnacious, but would still have the panache to get what you want out of the conversation. The easiest way to understand this, is to trace your conversation with someone 'lower' in the hierarchy. I must quickly add that conversation has nothing to do with hierarchy or levels. It has everything to do with ‘who you think you are’ in the conversation. It has everything to do with your surety of your purpose.

Hence to get maximum out of a conversation, remember the two things .. 'who are you' and 'where do you want this conversation to go-- the purpose of the conversation' . Before you begin the conversation.. ALWAYS REHEARSE. With every word, every sentence, every phrase, every body movement, every facial expression rehearse it in the backdrop of these two, to validate each nuance of your conversation. And once you are absolutely sure... only then start speaking.

Rehearse till it becomes innate and immutable.

Aapke jumma chumma ke daddy !

आपके जुम्मा चुम्मा के daddy ! - Yes that's the way we were introduced to Harivanshrai Bachchan when we were in school by our Hindi teacher Lal Bahadur Singh.

LBS was a great influence on us. Before I go to the real topic (Bachchan), I owe a small tribute to LBS --the legend that he was. I heard, recently, from some of my friends that he died some months back. Isn't it strange, sometimes, how it takes a death, for pachyderms like us, to revere brilliance?

How else would you describe someone who managed to engross a whole bunch of adolescents into the subtleties of निर्गुण निराकार और सगुण साकार ब्रह्म की साधना, while he effortlessly described the two major branches of भक्ति युग, with such unbiased balance. Bhartendu, Agyay, Dinkar, Hariaudh, Kabir, Surdas of the yore seemed so less intimidating then. The sheer brilliance of the man is best ascribed by the fact, that, a ‘40 out of 100’ like me, whose knowledge of the language can be comfortably documented in a post-card, dares to write a blog such as this।

He had a sarcastic sense of humour—he would call us ‘देवता’ !
“Scent पहने हुए देवता” . इन पक्तियों की सप्रसंग व्याख्या करूं तो सिंह साहब, खुसरो से, रहस्यमयी चिंतन धारा के कवि लगेंगे ! ( for those who are curious, call me to find out what it really means)

Back to Bachchan :

Must begin with some of my all time favourites by the master: from Madhushala -

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बजी नफीरी और नमाज़ी भूल गया अल्लाह ताला
गाज गिरी पर ध्यान सुरा में मग्न रहा पीने वाला
शेख़ बुरा मत मानो इसको , साफ़ कहूं तो मस्जिद को
अभी युगों तक सिखलाएगी ध्यान लगाना मधुशाला
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दर दर घूम रहा था जब में चिल्लाता, हाला ! हाला !
कभी न मिलता था मदिरालय कभी न मिलता था प्याला
मिलन हुआ पर नही मिलन सुख, लिखा हुआ था किस्मत में
मैं अब जम कर बैठ गया हूँ, घूम रही है मधुशाला
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मदिरालय जाने को घर से चलता है पीनेवाला,
'किस पथ से जाऊँ?' असमंजस में है वह भोलाभाला,
अलग-अलग पथ बतलाते सब पर मैं यह बतलाता हूँ -
'राह पकड़ तू एक चला चल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला।'

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Madhushala, Madhukalash, Madhubala.. are some of his popular creation ( read – as those creation that we hear AB reciting in some of the commemorative kavi sammelans )

Will introduce you to some of my other favourites :

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आँखों से यदि अश्रु छनेगा,
कटुतर यह कटु पेय बनेगा,
ऐसे पी सकता है कोई, तुझको पी मुसकाना होगा!
विष का स्‍वाद बताना होगा!
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मेरे पूजन-आराधन को,
मेरे संपूर्ण समर्पन को,
जब मेरी कमजोरी कहकर मेरा पूजित पाषाण हँसा!
तब रोक न पाया मैं आँसू!

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खोया सभी विश्‍वास है,
भूला सभी उल्‍लास है,
कुछ खोजती हर साँस है, कितना अकेला आज मैं!
कितना अकेला आज मैं!

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Read on, I promise this man is a genius (and the irony is that he needs someone as inconsequential as me to introduce him to the uninitiated). AB is not that humble, just that his father is so towering that humility seems such a natural and logical emotion.

‘The Barber from Tirupati’ -- Am reading three books at a time!

I grew up with this impinging anecdote that my father would thrust on me, every time I moved to another activity without completing the earlier one. In Tirupati people get tonsured as mark of respect to the Lord. And predictably there are whole bunch of barbers who tonsure a million heads. Apparently, there is stiff competition between the barbers (spirituality and commercialism shamelessly intertwined). To ensure customers stick to a particular barber, the barbers have an amazing trick. They take 5-10 people (customers) in a row and partially begin tonsuring each. This leaves 5-10 customers half-tonsured, hapless and helpless. The concept of ‘vendor-lock-in’ shines brilliantly in the mid-day sun. The locked-in customers wait for their turn, while the barber glides through his temporary slaves and completes the ‘job’ with his own fuzzy logic.

I am the barber these days. There is always a time in my years of reading books (I wonder if it follows a cyclic pattern) when adequacy of my inner confusion leads me to sleep with multiple books together. I am currently reading – The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga ; Sea of Poppies by Amitava Ghosh ; and A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton

The White Tiger – By Aravind Adiga:
Aravind Adiga - Yes the quondam correspondent of Times Magazine, yes the man who shares his last name with multitudes of roadside eateries in Bangalore and yes the man who won the ‘Man Booker Prize’ for 2008.

I always like a book which has nice paper. I always like a book which has comfortable fonts and liberal spacing between sentences. I always like a book that tells a story of my land. The book is all this and just a little more. Breezy & ruthless is the pace of the story. Could not keep the book down after a point in time – page 124 “The main thing to know about Delhi is that the roads are good, and the people are bad. The police are totally rotten…” to be precise. A fantastic first person narrative of Balram Halwai, who, through his letters to the Chinese Premier vivisects the Indian under-belly. Intelligent concoction of Fables & Facts, Perception & Truth. I like the part where he describes the ‘Rooster Coop’ – “ …. It’s because 99.9 per cent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market. The Rooster Coop doesn’t always work with miniscule sum of money. Don’t test your chauffer with a rupee coin or two – he may well steal that much. But leave a million dollars in front of a servant and he won’t touch a penny. Try it: leave a bag with a million dollars in a Mumbai taxi…. Why doesn’t that servant take the suitcase full of diamonds? He’s no Gandhi, he’s human, he’s you and me. But he’s in the Rooster Coop. The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy”

I believe that it is also a superficial view of the many Indias that we know. There are so many alternative, uncontacted and unheard India, and Adiga would do well to dwell on those in his subsequent endeavours.

Sea of Poppies – By Amitava Ghosh:
The last (and the only) Amitava Ghosh creation that I read was ‘The Calcutta Chromosomes’. Sea of Poppies is part of trilogy by the author. He weaves an intricate story around myriad characters. The story meanders around the Ganges and the characters, with the passage of pages, pile-on to the Ibis - the ship that would make the journey to Mauritius Island- with a predictable alacrity to the plot. By the time you reach page 375 the Ibis resembles the Noah’s Ark. One can see one each of one variety in the characters that embark Ibis. A remarried woman, a bankrupt zamindar, an American sailor, a French girl who has an Indian muh-bola-bhai, coolies, convicts – all become jahaj bhais ( ship-brothers)
What stands out in the novel is the excellent detailing of mid-Nineteenth century India, the research to recreate & describe the poppy trade and the strange use of the language (many of the words are Hindi, Bhojpuri, Bangla).

A Search in Secret India - By Paul Brunton:
Paul Brunton (‘PB’) is probably one of the earliest westerners who cared to delve into the mystic beauty of our land. ‘PB’ tells the story of his search of secret India. He tries to unravel the spiritual mystery of the land without compromising his western rationale. He meets different kinds of people ( Sages, Sadhus, Yogis, Rishees, Babas) in his travails - some honest , some outright thugs. He documents, fairly emotionlessly of his encounters till he meets Ramana Maharishi in Arunachalam. He submits .. “I perceive with sudden clarity that intellect creates its own problems and then makes itself miserable trying to solve them”. Never before, have I read a book, where I had to always keep a pen and paper ready lest I miss noting an invaluable comment. Am in page 149, about halfway through and without a shadow of doubt I can vouch, that there would be multiple times in the future that I would be half-way through this book.

Mumbai bleeds - Bridge the imbalance

The attack on Mumbai . Over 150 killed , hundreds injured. 20 odd terrorists held the city at ransom. The politicians have sanely (and strangely) shown restrain and have not retorted to mudslinging.. for how long is what the question is. The resilience of Mumbai has been challenged yet another time and oddly enough, we don’t hear news such as ‘Mumbai will bounce back’. People are scared. The army, the Police and the NSG become heroes and so would the terrorists in their respective ‘nations’. Sons became martyrs, husbands became heroes, children became hostages, the suave became pedestrian, the whites became blacks, the bearers became bystanders, ratans became helpless, and I became someone who kept watching TV for longer than what my wits would permit.

I got the same SMS from several people - “Forgiving terrorists should be left to God, but fixing their appointment with God is entirely our responsibility” ; asking me to Pass it on ! I realized that they have succeeded – they (terrorists) have managed to pass it (hatred) on!

Gandhian as I may seem, but I have realized that anger, hatred, revenge, tit-for-tat are so futile an expression, that vanity of its consequence does not need anything more than common sense as its catharsis.

It is impossible to eliminate the terrorists. Napoleon for one would not mind me using the word (impossible) . There is no better way to curb terrorism than to create an environment of conscience awakening. Imbalances always create chaos, sooner or later. It is the distance between the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the resourceful and the struggler that creates such imbalances. As countries search for innovative techniques to immunize themselves they forget to awaken their conscience. They forget to build the bridges as they are busy building walls. Break the imbalance and see the difference.

Quest for Knowledge

Quest for knowledge is the only relevant quest for man. For, in that (quest) lies the true meaning of life. The quest for knowledge is self-sustained and continuous

I tried to put this theory to test in the last year or so. Before you read-on through the passage, I must confess that the ‘realisation that I treaded the path of knowledge and that it would lead me to something was not a forethought’

I asked myself … ‘ when was the last time that I learned something new’ and realized that it was donkeys years earlier .. maybe sometime in college. I know that we keep hearing the phrases such as ‘life teaches you in every step’ ; ‘we learn something or the other everyday’ etc etc. There is a difference between this form of learning (which is to learn something new based on your existing knowledge) and the form that I am referring to .. i.e. to learn something new.. I mean from scratch….. just like when we were kids.

So, coming back to my story.. When I came to Bangalore I needed personal transportation , buying a car and driving it to office was the next natural progression ( for someone who drove the Activa at a little over 30 kmph in Delhi roads and who still does not know how to drive a geared two-wheeler .. you may call that as a ‘leap’ rather than a progression). Obediently, I enrolled myself in a car-driving school. It was a 10 day course .. 1 hour each day. The teacher , in his early 20’s, the best thing that could have happened to me – I thought – same age group you see !! Within 10 minutes of training on Day-1 I realized that the going would be tough. Somehow my Activa days were flashing in front of me as a monster that would not allow me to move forward ( > 30 kmph). The first gear was the toughest. At first the teacher was nice.. ‘you need to release the clutch gently, while you accelerate ( gently again)’ . The subtlety of the exercise was too much for me .. no less than doing a in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) with naked eyes. The teacher’s patience broke in the 9th minute.. thereafter he started dealing with me like a kindergarten kid. Each driving nuance was drilled into my head.. with absolute disdain to my ‘age’ or ‘stature’. At the end of 10 days I realized that my confidence level was exactly as it was in Day-1.

The second story started in office .. my colleague mentioned that he was going to learn Spanish .. I simply piled-on. It is easy I thought to learn a new language considering that I have a “finesse” to grasp new languages. The teacher on the first day mentioned that the ‘key to learn Spanish is to stop translating it from English’ – incidentally that is exactly what I do to learn new languages .. My most potent weapon was barred from being used. . Every time my Spanish teacher looks at me, I see in her eyes the words that say .. “ How can you be such a moron.. what you are learning now is something that children in Latin America learn before they join school”. Two months on and am still struggling. Not sure how many more years it would take to get there ..

These two experiences have left profound impression in me. When I am learning I keep my baggage of arrogance outside the class… All what I am outside the class in kept outside the class! If not anything, these two experiences have taught me to be more enduring and humble. To be child-like .. I say ! So the message to me was loud and clear .. keep learning .. for the quest of knowledge will keep me grounded and humble.

Many of us would begin to opine … and would ask .. If you keep learning all your life, when would you reap the benefits of what you learn.. or to put it differently .. ‘the measure of how well you have learned is the success it yields… ’ hence success is an essential element of learning or quest-for-knowledge. Where I differ with the above theory is .. Being successful or famous is the not the most important thing, 99 % of the people are not famous and it is stupid to have an aim / goal to be famous and successful.

The quest for knowledge is the most important thing .. Success is the by-product and it becomes so inconsequential when the journey (of learning) is so enchanting.