Rain- (Un)Forgotten love

          And there she came.. Disturbing the silence of midnight, sneaking slowly into the gardens, tickling the tree tops, she settled strong with her Marylin Monroe skirt spread over korea by a radius of 400 km. Sanba is too sweet a name by Japan Meteorological Agency for a shrewd typhoon like her. Reports said that she entered our campus by around 2:00 AM when everyone including the dogs, except taxis was fast asleep. I woke up by the hysteric whistle blowing through the crevices of my bedroom. Struggling with my sleep laden eyelids, I realized that samba overtook my alarm by half hour. The following lazy 10 minutes of sleepless hither thither cuddle within the width of single cot gave better satisfaction than the full night’s sleep. I finally hatched out of my laziness and lurched over the cold tiles to refresh myself. I looked at the mirror, sign of ageing is slowly creeping into the face, and there I stood within the bathroom of an alien land (yes, they have given me an Alien card), far away from the soil that hold my roots firm.

          I came out to the balcony, infinite nozzles of cold air puckering into the sudden gooseflesh hairs wiped away the residual sleep I was carrying within. The rain was strong, slender transparent needles descended down causing small pools of water near the front door. Lost in time, I kept watching, surrendering myself to the past, remembering the june-july monsoons of nagercoil, I continued watching. The images of rain I saw just stopped in front of my eyes and automatically got translated to a different vision of past. I was the same, though compressed in size to fit the skeleton of an over grown 10 year old boy. Warming my palms over the thick tumbler with half-drunk light coffee, I was sitting on the cold cement verandah, watching the same transparent water threads falling down from heavens. Waiting for my dad’s hug, the damp news paper laid there still unread. I was looking at the clouds with infinite questions when my sister squeezed close disturbing the tranquil moments of higher thoughts investigating what lay above those chameleon clouds. And we fought for the millimeters of space she had invaded into my invisible territory on the cement verandah. Soon we were bored of the fight and fell silent, again started to fight on who will take the coffee tumblers back to kitchen. Dad’s appearance and his bulky spread with the news paper straightened us; we became timidly silent, then got up and walked slowly with our respective coffee tumblers to kitchen.

           “The rain will be severe, don’t let the children out”, dad’s strong voice travelled across crashing our hopes, the hopes of enjoying the holiday, hopes of renting a bicycle for an hour and the hopes of drenching in the rain and a secret view of the river, which we were never allowed without an adult’s accompaniment. Our rainy day, a lazy local holiday for schools to save the kids from cyclone began with our dad’s departure. I just stayed in the sofa, gazing outside enjoying the chill breeze brought by the rain. The television was pleasant, with no sulking from switching channels as we had only one doordarshan, the black and white Raj kapoor miming for the magnetic voice of Rafi in R.D.Burman’s music entered the picture tube, the details unknown then, hardly interested in hindi movies or music, yet watched them without choice. “Why don’t you do something, why are you wasting time?”, mother’s voice came out of the kitchen mixing with R.D.Burman. ‘Do something, aint i? am watching TV’, the response held within the throat, I just switched off the TV and cuddled with a blanket and children’s magazine. Soon, I lost interest in the magazine and there came my sister with paper boats. The waste papers were made to better use. Every time I went out to lay the paper boat, the rain bent and teased me with her swift sprinkles. She purposely sunk my paper boats, just to draw me out. She might have been upset with my mom’s hot bajjis as we left her, ofcourse bajjis can’t last longer and we returned back. By that time, she was tired of showering and took some rest. We came out, dug channels to let the clogged water stream out to tributaries; soon our tributaries joined that of our neighbour’s. By the end of the rainy day, I was always happy with the cold wind, the mud laid trousers and the hot snacks of mother. The rain was also very cheerful; I had heard her giggles when she came down, the merriness and joy she is accompanied with.

             Today I watched her again, she hasn’t aged, she is still the same, and I stood in my balcony longing for a hot cup of tea, R.D.Burman music and a blanket with no work ahead. Startled at the pace of my watch needles, I quickly packed to office. She was waiting for me to come out and she wanted to hug me tight with her wet hands. This time, I avoided her with an umbrella, protecting my formal shirt, hiding my cellphone and wallet from her, I walked. She might have been upset, I no more hear her merry laughs, but her moans, a feeble cry within her forceful typhoon whistle. I walked straight pretending not to hear, testing my new umbrella against her. She hugged me from behind, may be to hide her tears; I was wet, yet I didn’t look at her. I carefully watched my steps over the streams, not remembering the childhood tributaries, not remembering the joy the same streams gave me in splashing them, I walked straight to my office. As I settled with a hot tea, she kept banging my windows “what harm did I to you? Why did you stop loving me? “.

          With the buried love, I continued pretending not to hear her, like most of the world………

Wolves ate our goats, but we blame Lions

            I don’t know whether I hold a view of less popularity when I condemn Aseem’s cartoon displaying the lions of our emblem as blood thirsty wolves symbolizing the corrupted politicians. It’s true beyond trial, that the country is drenched in corruption when we have lost fastidious honest politicians in history. It still remains a mystery and a topic of debate whether corruption can be uprooted completely from the country where we start bribing as early as we are born, with a tip to the nurse for the good news of birth. The answer to the debate can be understood only in the future, like time answered Swami Vivekananda’s thoughts of economic liberation to abolish castes or Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence for complete ‘Swaraj’ or Martin Luther’s dream of racist free USA, when they always had critics to advise that their goals are too lofty to achieve.

         There occurs no second thought on the status quo of nation’s corruption and there is no refusal to the sincere yearning by every fellow Indian for a corrupt free state, though they don’t demonstrate austere commitment to the cause. But, the intensity of the problem is never an excuse to sacrifice the self dignity. The demonstration, even for a social evil, if done without poise, fails fundamentally and without purpose. It is sacrificing one ideal to gain another.

         Now, the caricature of the national symbol portraying the Lions as wolves, no doubt nails the message quite hard: - no doubt about it. The intention is unquestionably pure to shame the shamming politicians. By fighting against corruption, are we not fighting for the truth? Are we not fighting for the ‘dharma’? And look at the tool Aseem has chosen, the national identity symbolizing ‘dharma’ which quotes ‘Satyameva Jayate’- ‘Truth alone Triumphs’, one of the greatest philosophical symbols which every Indian needs to be proud of, an iconic representation to the world that we had always believed in virtuous ideals even at a time when most part of the world were still in barbaric state. Disrespect to such a noble emblem for the problem we are still a cause is like killing ourselves to feed us. In one of the debates in a website on Aseem’s arrest someone has sarcastically commented “Yes, screw the nation, but protect the emblem”.  Unfortunately, emblem has its root so deepened in the nation and an insult to the emblem is definitely an insult to the country. If the emblem is not that sacred, why we have one? People may change and their problems too, but not the ideals of a nation, which is hardened and synchronized with its identity. How many of us will be comfortable if Aseem portrays ‘mother India’ as a prostitute to create awareness on the social problem of prostitution?

        What are we teaching the children? We teach them to be virtuous in kindergarten and we fail to carry the values, worse we demonstrate and patronize the massacre of virtues by supporting such open shame of national symbol under the pretext of noble intention against corruption. And what are we conveying to the people of the world? We, as a nation have failed to establish a corruption free country, have poisoned ourselves in corruption and exhibit least constructive actions against the cause, but try to abuse the holy constitution, holy national symbol because we wanted to convey a message. Forget corruption for an instant, can any of us atleast comprehend the message we have conveyed?

         I don’t support corruption, like I don’t support other social evils like reservation or child labour or forced prostitution, and above all I also don’t support mad irresponsible actions and demonstrations hiding under the sheep skin of noble cause. 

abstract thoughts

The mark of maturity is the geriatric gestation of going back to childish innocence. So the big question is, are we wasting our life just to go back where we started? Well, the answer is as simple as the question. Innocence of the child is inherited, but that of matured is achieved. The importance of what you have, whether innocence or wealth will be understood only when you earn it and not when you inherit. It is true that we grow, mature and realize that we haven’t found anything new. But it requires tremendous amount of effort and sacrifice to understand what we already know.

In search of Jaya Madhavan on a sunday morning

My friend, Ram is an ardent fan of Jaya Madhavan, a columnist in a leading newspaper. One day he came and told me,”You and Jaya Madhavan have a lot in common. Both of you write a lot about piss and shit”. That doesn’t mean that I’m columnist. I’ve made few amateur attempts in writing and my poor writing standard is one among the list of remaining few uncommon things between me and Jaya, which Ram had decided not to mention.
Since then, I’ve read several of Jaya’s columns, mostly through Ram and I fell in love with her writing (believe me, definitely not for Ram’s reasons). Since we were subscribing “The Hindu”, a proud symbol of educated tamil Brahmin family, I never had the pleasure of reading Jaya fresh on paper. Usually, Monday morning breakfast conversations would be dominated by Jaya and Ram. Ram used to send the link of her column even before reading his office email. Every Monday, I decide to buy her daily next Sunday so that I need not be dumb, stuffing tasteless office idlis when Ram discuses in detail about her article. Whether you like an article or not, when someone else, that too who irritates you by his presence six days a week asks, “oh, you haven’t read that?”, you automatically loses the power of your presence and I hate that.
Recently I got an opportunity to win over Ram. It was an early Sunday morning and I was waiting in the bus stop for my friends with whom I had planned to attend our mutual friend’s marriage. The sky was still dark with patches of orange flashes struggling to break their cocoon clouds. A small shop opposite to the bus stop was busy with people sorting the dailies. Sundays are painful for them as most of the dailies have lots of magazines and they have to be carefully inserted. Sundays are also blissful for them as many stingy young men who generally on other days depend on office subscribed newspapers to update their poor general knowledge buy newspapers.
The first thing that flashed in my mind was that I’m going to read Jaya’s columns fresh and the immediate second thing that occurred was that I can confidently talk about it next day. I crossed the road swiftly and paused in front of the shop. The lady, busy in sorting magazines looked at me. I asked, “India today please”. She turned around and gave me a magazine. I was waiting for a daily and shocked to receive a magazine. I said, “Not this, India today news paper”. She looked at me differently, yes differently. Ptchth ‘India today’ is a weekly magazine, not a daily. Clad in decent formals, I looked like a joker to her as I, though appears to be educated, didn’t even met the basic expectation of knowledge in newspapers. I have already made the damage. Now I have two options (1) to pretend that I had actually intended the magazine only and buy it from her (2) think for a while to identify the correct daily. Both the options were not going to repair my lost image to the shop keeper. The former one would cost me a magazine and I would still be devoid of Jaya’s column. So I attempted the 2nd option; brooded for a while trying to remember all the newspapers I knew. Only name that repeatedly circled my mind was “The Hindu”. Damn this tamil brahmin pride of Hindu paper and filter coffee. I haven’t seen anything other than that throughout my life. I wanted to ask her “please gimme the newspaper with jaya’s column”, but ended up asking, “there’s some other news paper with India..”. She looked at me as if she had stamped over roadside dog shit (now, I was actually not keen for the metaphor of dog shit, but wrote it out of my respect for Ram). She didn’t expect a well educated man coming an asking a shop keeper for an English news paper without even knowing what he is asking for. My total confidence reached its avalanche limit and my inner heart felt loose like phlegm. I just wanted to get rid of the place as soon as possible. The lady took ‘Times of India’ and handed over it to me. I shared a thanking smile, hurriedly paid her and walked back to the bus stop without a second look. I’m sure she might have had a topic for her dinner “These days young IT guys… I donno what they are.. they are just a useless junk…and ….”.. (Sorry my dear unknown friends of IT; public attribute any stupid attitude of this generation to IT professionals and unknowingly I was one of the recent damaging elements).
After reaching bus stop, I thought of diverting myself with Jaya. Shit… She had not written anything on that Sunday. My entire image staked for an unwritten article. How will I cross the road everyday? Won’t the lady laugh at me every time I cross the shop? Won’t she share the joke among her fellow friends and won’t it spread to the neighborhood. I suddenly started imagining myself in the centre of the busstop and whole velachery crowded around me laughing at my lack of knowledge of newspapers.
I couldn’t stand there anymore. My friends called me every ten minutes to tell that they were on their way and would reach in five minutes. I stood there rigid for more than 40 minutes and left the place in the first bus with my friends. And for forty minutes during my stay, I hadn’t turned towards the shop.
I came home tired in the afternoon and briefed my anguish to my younger sister, when she asked “Are you referring to Jaya madhavan of Indian expre

Abstractness during a train journey

22nd Sep 2009 to Hyderabad

Train crossed the Ashok Leyland factory, like a jet piercing the clouds, leaving behind a white trail. My heart jumped to tell someone beside, “hey my factory”, but condemned the anxiety as childish. Well, many of the childish happiness nowadays are beyond reach due to consciousness of self behaviour.
I went towards the compartment’s exit to smell the gushing air kissing the steel sheets skirting the train. It was drizzling and the setting sun appeared behind the rain. It appeared as if the great orange ball is encaged behind the vertical water bars of rain. The sun, a ball of dazzling pure orange started sinking in the clouds beneath like an innocent victim of quicksand.
I felt helpless and inert, like my inertness towards corruption, inertness towards filthy politicians, inertness towards victims of social harassments and many other things in society. I then realized that my inertness was actually born out of my inability, a shameless failure of my will power. The so called inertness, a witness of helplessness made me feel abashed; the sorrow, heavy by itself climbed my mind and up to my brain. My neck couldn’t bear the additional emotional load above and my head hung down automatically.
My eyes then capsuled the green fields spread across halfway till horizon. Like nodes of a finite element mesh, the shrubs buttoned itself into the clay submerged in the sheet of water. The sun reflected its rays of hope from the cloud’s quicksand. The elongated orange rays from sun laid down on the sheet of water reminded me again of my muteness towards sun’s request to retrieve it from the cloud’s claw.
The train later passed a power plant, the flames as high as the 50 feet danced brilliantly. A sense of bliss and achievement was visible in the fire when it looked around the charred building, contentment over its dominance. Above the chimney, black soot rose and slowly, very slowly diffused into the transparent air.
I looked above; the sun has descended further, yielding itself to the power of clouds beneath. A great realization stuck me again, the whole sky, dark now must have been formed from the constant burning of the purest form of fire, the sun. I looked back at the fire in power plant, its notorious smile while vomiting the smoke was evident. I looked up again; the realization filtered the knowledge contained within. The evil smoke vomited by the sun in the past billions of years has formed the great sky and it has now re-formed to quicksand to kill the sun in the evening.
The heavy headed flames in the powerplant continued sending black smoke, without realizing that one day, all these smoke is going to engulf the very flame which had produced it.
It is very similar to our life. Every bad conduct sends a poison from us to the outside world. It quickly dilutes itself with the society. Haunted by our everyday activities, we fail to notice both its emergence and disappearance. One day all the poison emitted by us will definitely kill our soul and or our body.

Slum dog- a perspective

Every one, by now might have read, heard or written enough reviews about the recently launched movie, Slum dog Millionaire (henceforth shall be represented as SM). Still I attempt one as the commercial movie hitting the top review columns, suddenly have taken an icon of Indian patriotism after Oscar ceremony.

We, Indians are thrilled even to learn that our movie is nominated for Oscar, perhaps we live by the adage, “competing is more important than winning”, or may be because we know the worth of our movies and are pleasantly surprised by its entering the international arena. I remember one actor's interview (there are millions of interviews by thousands of actors in hundreds of channels, so dont remember who), "we are using the cameras ditched by hollywood and our people want 'Matrix' like actions in all the movies.

Coming back to SM, I too, with the enthu inflicted by multiple sources, watched the movie with great patriotic feelings. The movie was nice overall, a good theme, but i was disappointed. First of all, someone please tell me whether its a hindi movie or english movie. First half or rather the childhood days of Jamal is in hindi till suddenly they jump from a running train and whole india speaks british accented english. The childhood slum days can never be depicted in english, but once the phase is over, the director conviniently came out of hindi. However, the well known hindi actors under very common indian cicumstances, when speak a foreign language in screen, the aberration is incorrigible, especially after a wonderful start of slum hindi.

The hindu-muslim riot and killing of Jamal's mother is an emotional force-fit for the simple question of 'what does lord Rama holds in his hand?". Similarly, when Anil Kapoor tried to cheat Jamal with wrong answer, Jamal is arrested for cheating case. Such scenes are aimed only to pull the emotions of viewers and built with no logic.The original book from which this movie is adapted doesnt have such illogical situations.

Talking about the theme, the social crimes of child abduction, prostitution and gundaism...A definite answer which director might have got from any indian across a coffee table. The director doesnt seem to have researched on any of these, for the scenes move too rapidly even to register or create an impact. The theme have lot of potential to exploit the emotions, reality and the real sufferings, but went till Oscar unexploited.

In one of the reviews I read that Oscar is under pressure to recognize india, but their ego prevented them to call upon an Indian director on stage and hence have found an easy route. Though the argument may convince all those who didnt appreciate the movie, I do not completely agree with it.

Few months back, I read a couple of novels by Khaled Hosseini describing the miseries in Afghan since USSR's invasion and for those who have had a first hand feeling about Afghan cant stop praising the work. But if an Afghan goes through it, he may not see anything interesting as he himself is a part of system which makes others eyebrows life in surprise. We are in a similar state of mind, being a part of the system, we couldnt appreciate it.

Finally, the reason for many of us to hate SM could also be because, the movie which is such an ordinary depiction of India won an international applause under a foreign director and not one among our millions. :)
(Image source: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1571460352/tt1010048)

Kite Runner- Book Review

A captivating brilliant novel from Khaled Hosseni. The advantage of its being in first person made full justice to the emotional extract. The story is about two friends, Amir and Hasan (though Amir couldn’t accept till the end that he was a friend to Hasan) in Afghanistan. Amir and his baba leave Afghan due to Russian invasion in Afghan and flee to America. After several years (after Amir’s baba’s death due to cancer and after Amir’s marriage with Soraya)Amir goes to Afghan and bring late Hasan’s son to America as an act of repentance for a cowardy betrayal he had done to his friend in his childhood days.

Usually, many novels bring out innocence when the subject is about an infant and end up forcing the author’s thoughts through the child. There are definitely some rare pieces where the child is brought out in its original form, a very difficult task, say Lucy the pisher in “The Burning Summer” by Claire Raine. Even in those rare pieces child is depicted as an embodiment of innocence. It is true that under the milky skin, hiding beneath the innocence a child can be cruel to the core; however since innocence is the basic character, the cruelty sometimes lead to compunction like Amir in Kite Runner.

Amir’s baba rocks throughout the novel. Though the author thought of surprising us by telling Hasan as illegitimate son of his baba, he had left enough hints right from the beginning and I was not really surprised.

I saw a lot of me in Amir, his tastes, his thought process, may be because he had flaws and so am I and I believe so are everyone. Reading through this I felt little uneasy as my wrong deeds of the past pricked me. But I adore Rahim khan’s statement to Amir that only purity in character can give you guilt feeling. As you said, there’s always a way to be good again. Thank you Rahim for that. .

Escape from Exile

Escape from Exile- by Robert Levy

4^th march 08

On a dry Sunday afternoon, amma drove me out to flouring mill. As I sat next to the poorly maintained flour mill shouting at its top gear, I noticed an old book store beside. Scanning the whole rack for half an hour I found nothing. On my way out when I was trying to pull some book, one stack of books fell down and when I tried to rearrange those, I got hold of a nice old book, “Escape from Exile” by Robert Levy.

The image in the front page was so captivating with a wonderful sketch of a boy clad in fresh bottle green uniforms hiding behind a rock along with an impalpable animal watching a red uniformed soldier on horse back. I was sure that it is a fantasy adventurous novel, may be prescribed for children.

I didn’t want to leave the book which cost Rs.15/-. You won’t believe me, the 180+ pages novel I finished in a single working day. A very interesting adventure of a little boy Daniel, who suddenly is lost from this world and reaches another world called Lithia, which is still like the medieval age. There is a conflict going on in Lithia for ruling the kingdom. Like most stories one of them is a good natured and other is the villain. Daniel, got a unique ability of talking to animals and he befriended a horse, a poisonous snake and samkit, a strange animal. The story is that Daniel helps the good natured one to regain the land. But he was originally with the villain and the story is mainly about his escape to reach the hero (heroine. The good natured Lauren is a lady). Finally Daniel after his work returns to world and only while returning he understood that he was taken to that world for a purpose of saving samkits from extinction.

A good one to read, I recommend to all those who love reading tinkle, chandamama, gokulam etc. J

A train to Pakistan

Train to Pakistan

A wonderful story capable of squeezing every drop of blood in any heart. Its unbelievable that it’s a novel. Kushwant singh is indeed a great story teller. Till reading this novel, I didn’t have great opinion about Kushwant singh. In fact, I had associated him as a talented obscene writer. But I was really moved after reading the novel. The sufferings of post-independent India and the communal ferocity and clashes; its difficult to find a fiction to describe it so realistically. And the story is about a village where muslims and hindus were at peace, undisturbed by the clashes outside. A murder at the village followed by a train full of dead Sikhs disturbed the peaceful pages of the novel. I just loved the climax where a rogue (who incidentally can be called a hero) gives his life for his lady love.

New Friends at IIT hostel

We always crib about their michievious invasion at our rooms. Now its time to exclaim at their mutual love. (Shot by one of my hostel friends in IIT madras)

A music concert

28/09/07

Today evening, I attended a Hindustani concert organized by IIT madras music club. The concert was by Smt.Lakshmi Shriram, wife of a respected faculty in IIT madras. Last week, the same music club had organized a flute concert by famous artist Smt.Mala Chandrasekhar witnessed by single digit crowd. Hence, with no great expectation about the audience, I entered the MBA seminar hall, which to my surprise was packed with people. A mischievous thought crept into my mind “How come so much crowd for a not so famous person, especially after such a poor attendance for Smt.Mala Chandrasekhar. I thought, perhaps the vocalist might have invited all of them to attend and fill the hall”. I can't stop thinking stupidly; so I accepted and digested my thoughts and settled in a nearest cushion chair dressed neatly in a romantic red fabric. The stage was too big for the three, vocalist, harmonium player and the tabla player. The vocalist, who have already crossed her thirties was a tall lean figure draped in a dung coloured silk sari. The harmonium player, who was around 50 covered himself in a purple coloured kurta and pajama (if surf excel marketing get hold of him, they may use his kurta to show the whitening power of their product by labeling it as “before washing with surf excel”). To avoid my acrid criticism on whiteness, the tabla player sat there inside his saffron coloured kurta.

Inside the seminar hall, with black board background, the lean vocalist was singing with one of her folded legs perpendicular to the other, in a typical pose of Hindustani recital, allowing the big bellied tambura to rest in between. The pure sound of “shrudi” crawling out the moments following the vocalist’s slender finger plucking the stretched strings of tambura filled the air; a joyous feeling also spread along, like a fragrance of ‘cycle brand’ incense sticks in the study room, or like a tint of elachi in the evening tea. The ambience was softened by the cool breeze spit by the 2+ ton A.C machine. In the cozy cool atmosphere, I think even the dead skin of animals stretched in tabla also started hibernating; not yielding to earnest efforts and hammering of tabla player. The fine technology in the A.C started sucking more air than it pumped resulting in lack of air for harmonium. The harmonium player forced it to inhale and vibrate the swaras; I think poor harmonium was suffering from asthma like my ‘appa’; it was really suffering to breathe between its bellows.

Smt.Lakshmi was singing wonderfully; her beautiful vocal cords strainlessly reaching the fine gamakhas and swaras; I sat spellbound for some time. The nuance and finesse in her undertaking the greatest art was really appreciable. I don’t know anything about Hindustani music, other than my cousin’s bhajan “Krishna na diwani”, bhimsen joshi’s one old album and title song of “om namah shivaya”, I haven’t heard much to mention about. Normally, whenever I hear some good carnatic music, say by Sanjay subramoni or Aruna sairam, I imagine myself singing with them. Believe me, with shut mouth and complete silence in yourself and in pure imagination you can really feel like producing great music; silence is that much powerful. But, in this occasion, when I tried to imagine, my mind conflicted with my conscience, “stupid, don’t even imagine that you can twist your vocal chords like this”, such a powerful delivery in the decent silent crowd, generating heat to beat the A.C.

However, despite her great delivery, I felt some sense of incompleteness. Well, as an idiot, incapable of expressing my views in the technical terms, I would like to compare her with masters like Bhimsen Joshi or Abdul Karim khan. Well, she’s definitely not equivalent to great men like Joshi. It would be a sin in my part even if I attempt comparison. Had she been at least 1% equal to them, she would have been proportionately famous like them, about which I think she’s not. But, since I don’t have any other choice, I shall continue comparing. I would say that Joshis swaras and brigas are like a free turbulent flow; like a rocket piercing the blue sky challenging newtons gravity with its escape velocity. Whereas Smt.Lakshmi’s flow is like an intermittently choked flow, may be like electron flow in a high resistance wire. Something, something was missing. I dare not to identify as shrudi, may be something else failing to fill the gaps. I felt her like a new cyclist driving zig zagly without balance in a supposedly straight line. I may not reflect the reality as whatever I’m detailing is based on a emotional impact she made on my mind.There is a reason in my describing it as an emotional touch; I found Hindustani music sinking in my emotions than the carnatic music. Well, I would like to take an anology, if I take an investment brochure, I may dwell upon the better performing sectors, share market prices etc; but if the same thing is handled by my handsome nephew ‘ayush’, he would have wondered about the advertisement and bar graphs and would appreciate only those soft unimportant aspects. Similarly, I, an idiot in the technical details of Hindustani can’t enjoy the core Hindustani music, but can attempt to talk only about the boundary impacts it generates. I was telling that the vocalist was lacking some inexplicable details. But, so what? A humble music lover like me is like a hungry beggar; quite contented with any food, whether a swiss chocolate or previous day’s food demanding bio-degradation. It’s good to be an innocent hungry music lover like me, because

1. you are happy with any music you listen to
2. your expectations are either nil or very low
3. any music appears new and above all
4. You can’t find any technical mistakes in any music.

I’m happy in being dumb in music. After all, I can appreciate the musician wholeheartedly instead of finding faults. After enjoying the aalapana, meera bhajan and kabhir bhajan, I left the auditorium longing for the next opportunity to listen some good music.

A book review

A book review

I wanted to do some light reading and after half an hour thorough search, found the thinnest book of IIT library between two other fat books. I was reading Nirad Chaudhri's "Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse". This is the first book of Nirad Chaudhri for me; though this was written in his ninety ninth age. For that matter, owing to my very poor reading habit, any book I read will be my first book of that author's. Usually, whenever I start a book, I open a dictionary before opening the preface of the book. Unfortunately, this book was opened when I was traveling and handicap without a thesaurus.

I thought it is a light novel and tried with enthusiasm. First few chapters of the book were very vague to me as I had no clue what the book is about. But one good thing about the book is that the author in every chapter explained all the meanings of the important word he uses and also the meaning he applies in the chapter. The three horses in the book represent individualism, nationalism and democracy and its influence in the fall of western civilization. In the initial few chapters, the author talks about his ideas, assumptions and lot of quotations from French books. There lies significant reference to the great "Pascal's" quotations. I was really amazed when the author talked about second law of thermodynamics and evolution of universe in a placid way.

The short book crisply dotted lot of aspects of decadence of western civilization. However, the author has quoted his earlier publication to fill many of its pages. While Chaudhri discusses about the factors of society and culture influencing the decadence of the civilization, I more or less felt like an usual old man's lament "in our days it was like that.. and the current generation have ruined". Of course, it is not nice in my part to make such an abrupt comment as the author have stated after his years of observation. But, still the reason for my comment on the author geriatric behaviour is because of his generous reference to India's culture in terms of its Hindu undivided family etc. If someone goes through his book, he/she may get a feeling that India's cultural decay doesn't demand so much worry as that of the western civilization. In fact chaudhri's observation on people's poor attitude towards family, sex, money etc is applicable to India also. In fact, I was expecting the author to charge on India's loss of tradition due to western civilization and also to discuss the question of how to preserve the tradition under the influence of western domination, which itself is under decadence. Chaudhri's reference to Bengali women and Hindu family gives me a feeling that Chaudhri loves India close to his heart. But a great lover should be equally pained by the decadence of its families and society. The author was discussing about sexual harassments, robbery, poor democratic government, crime etc. in Britain to a greater extent and lesser reference to India.Though there was one complete chapter to discuss the decadence of India, i felt it was not comparable to authors description of britian. Author accused people and culture of Britain than the government for England's decadence whereas somewhat reverse case for India.

One great thing about the book was the interest it creates in reading. I was actually disappointed when I understood that I was venturing into some serious discussion by Chaudhri. The artistic way of the great scholar's account on western civilization mixing individualism, philosophy with the early twentieth century history is great. One very evident fact bubbling through out the book is the author's vast knowledge in the area of the topic under discussion. The author's account gives a feeling that this topic is close to his heart and one could feel his personal emotions peeping out.

Another specialty worth mentioning is the language used. It is not a book where the author tried to vomit all the words he had mugged from websters. He used a very simple language, but difficult words decorate the passage only in appropriate places, driving the full impact the author expected. It is a boon for people like me as it is difficult to look at the dictionary ten times for a single line. Similar style I have appreciated in R.K.narayanan's works too; very simple yet powerful with tough words coming in between only in appropriate locations. I would like to point out a concept of strengthening mechanism in metallurgy. In metallurgy, it is a general practice to introduce some obstacles inside a metal to decelerate the micro level material movement, thereby increasing the strength of the material. Similarly, the tough words in appropriate places strengthen the image of the reader on the greatness of the author.

If you are interested in one century old history and also interested to talk about western civilization, it is a concise and interesting material to read.

My favorite lines in the book

"it is one of the disputable fact of history that friendship between nations is fragile, while hatred is ineradicable. In respect of strength, love can never be equal to hatred".