Harry Potter. The Multibillion Dollar Underachiever!

Hi,
    This is going to be long, rambling and will contain quite a bit of vitriol. It is a sentiment I have always felt but have never expressed in print, although I would whenever a discussion of said topic arose in the context of a conversation. I am talking about Harry Potter, the multibillion dollar franchise, based on the story of the boy wonder (??) wizard who fought against all odds to defeat the greatest dark wizard of all time in an amazing one-on-one contest, in a series spanning seven books and some more movies (8?? 9?? Not sure, not going to google either).

   Despite the premise always being there in my brain, it has been thrown into sharp contrast thanks to the latest giant in the realm of fantasy, George R R Martin's 'Game Of Thrones' < A Song Of Fire And Ice, for those who have read the books>. The books, and the subsequent TV series are as different to the J K Rowling's masterpiece, in that, despite being set in the realms of fantasy, GOT has far stronger storylines than HP. Good and evil are actually evenly matched in the series, and there is regular proof to show just how nasty and evil the bad guys can be. Granted, the HP series is targeted for children, so maybe all my arguments fall short on that simple premise, but since I am well into adulthood, I shall air (my) greivances about my intelligence getting insulted.

   Without drawing constant comparisons with GOT, let me launch into my laundry list of complaints. The final image of the series is the fairy tale happily ever after for Harry. He's married to the girl he likes, he has kids with the girl he likes, he names said kids after people who have died so that he could marry said girl and father said kid. The initial image of the series, is of a scrawny unloved kid, who's abused by his guardians and a bully of a cousin, who has a lightning bolt across his forehead and tends to perform unexpected feats of 'magic' under duress. So obviously, this is the story of one boy's trials and tribulations to restore some respect and normalcy into his otherwise difficult life.

    That's where it loses it's charm for me, this boy is touted as 'The Boy Who Lived' and 'The Chosen One', (which are amazingly good names to have on your business cards). Yet, all he works towards is being as normal, nondescript and mediocre as possible. It doesn't make sense, the responsibility of a whole world is on you, a world which is clearly non-human, since they have a separate word for humans ( Muggles, you muggles), and yet, all his goals and dreams are distinctly human (and middle class) in nature. I have a gift that not many people possess, I have been blessed with talents within the realms of that gift which not many people possess, I have the blessing and well-wishes of the best of the race to support me at every turn, you know what, that's too much pressure, let me just make sure that they all disappear (read die) so that I can marry my girlfriend and have kids and pay their fee from the wealth my parents left me, because I was so desperate to leave the confines of these people who wish me to be better that I dropped out of school to escape the whole gimmick altogether. Ya, what does Harry Potter do in adult life?? I'd like to bring in a common sentence from my own life here..
What do you do now??
I'm a pro-musician.
Yes, but what's your job?

   He knows from the time he is 10 years old that one of the most skilled dark wizards is out to get him, the fact that he's an orphan is because of said wizard, the fact that he has a wicked permanent tattoo is because of this dude, yet, HP has never felt any urgent compulsion to open a book and learn a few things that might help in his massive quest to defeat 'He Who Must Not Be Named' (Can you imagine that guy's business card?). Now, there'll be people jumping to his defence saying that he has passed all his tests at Hogwarts, and some of them with above average grades, but to them I say, the dude didn't know how to mend a cut at the start of the last book, how to mend a cut. There was a high chance of him bleeding out before he would have even met Voldemort for the final showdown. Tetanus was as big a scare for HP as The Dark Lord. All those months of hiding amongst different forests and so on, thank god Hermione was with him, he wouldn't have lasted more than a day without her.

    So let me talk a little bit about her, everyone thought, including Dumbledore, that Harry would bag Hermione, but true to his underachieving form, he went for Ginny Weasley. She already has a crush on me, and isn't clearly superior to me at first glance, even though she grows far greater, so I'll choose her. Snare em while they're young Harry, I mean for a guy who lived in a cupboard, you got game.

    Going back to straight facts against Voldemort. Simply put, there is no way he wins that fight. I cannot even begin to express in words how stupid that outcome is, one of the most underwhelming fights of all time. Just to put some perspective on the situation. Severus Snape, clearly the greatest occlumens of all time since he fooled both Voldemort and Dumbledore under their noses, never picked a direct fight with Voldemort. When Voldemort was a spirit in the jungles of Albania, people still didn't assemble forces to go seek him out because they were still scared, case in point, Prof Quirrell. He found Voldy, and Voldy conveniently consumed him. That's how strong he was even while he wasn't human. When Voldemort came back, and was having issues with wands and so forth, Snape still didn't pick a fight with him, for he must have known he'd clearly lose. Why I mention Snape is because, in Harry's fight against Snape, he was severely, severely outclassed, so far that Snape in fact suggested that he go and learn some more. He was slower than Snape, and in everyway inferior. Yet somehow, in every fight he has had with Voldemort, he matches Voldemort for speed. I just can't believe that. In Voldemort Vs Dumbledore, Harry clearly has a hard time following the quickness of the spells and counterspells. He could feel the force of Dumbledore's spells as they went past him, and Voldemort more than matched him, so he obviously had similar power behind his blows. I'm supposed to believe that Harry Potter, who couldn't open a textbook to learn a spell to heal a wound, has the same willpower as Voldemort to hold onto those spells everytime their wands clashed. Potter, who at the end of the first fight is heavily fatigued, and full of cuts and scrapes, and bleeding, and emotionally wasted and drained, seeing the deaths of so many, and seeing how Snape saved his butt on several occasions, has enough reflexes to match a fresh Dark Lord, but of course it wasn't that. It was some convoluted trickery and wandlore nonsense that killed the Dark Lord.

   Also, yes, I get that The Dark Lord chose him, and put some of his qualities into him, clearly, hard work and willpower and respect for magic wasn't in the list, and you just can't spin that anyway for me. His arrogance is beyond legendary. If you're a worthless git who doesn't appreciate the value of things, then just keep them safe. What gave you the right to throw the Resurrection Stone in the forest for anyone to find, or to throw The Elder Wand (the same wand with the convoluted trickery and wandlore nonsense which saved his ass) away, for anyone to find. Those are amazingly powerful magical objects, the stuff of folklore, people go through entire lives on quests to find those objects, and you were enough of a prick to throw them away. And he's supposed to be a Horcrux too right?? Weren't those things supposed to be full of dark magic? I mean one of them nearly took Dumbledore's hand off, and of course accelerated his death. What did Harry ever do that was amazing in it's self-defence? Fainted, put his hands on another man's face, broke an arm, got lucky with a sword and phoenix tears, fainted again, learnt a Patronus charm that he couldn't execute to save his life.. Literally, he couldn't, read the books, Rowling put in a nice bit of proxy there to save Harry's pox-ridden ass. He shot out golden sparks from his wand once, that no one, including the best wandmaker alive, could explain. That's what it took to save him, clearly stating that this is out of everyone's area of expertise. Oh, and if you thought Harry knew a secret spell for Golden sparks that'll keep Voldemort at bay, no sir, he didn't know how to mend his own cuts.

   Now, the final nail in the coffin, because this is literally that. The number of people who passed away to save his miserable worthless little behind isn't even funny. Off the top of my head, his parents, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, one of the twins, Severus, Mad-Eye, Neville's parents went insane, Hedwig ( a damn owl did better than him), Dumbledore, Cedric, old man guarding Voldy's paternal home. Now those from the other side who died because of fighting in this stupid battle. Bellatrix, Crabbe, Goyle, Voldemort of course, amd many more whose names I can't remember, because the writing doesn't focus on them that strongly. They said the dark side was getting stronger, but they said it in one sentence without any real implications being shown to the readers, because little children don't want to read about bad guys killing a lot of innocent people. Voldemort is the real hero, he kept repeating, I don't want to waste magical blood, please stop the fighting. He is the one who actually cares about the race at large. Harry just wants a normal life with the girl he snared while she was young (yet made out with quite a few before she finally settled for him), and wants to learn how to parallel park. I'm surprised he even put his kids at Hogwarts, and seriously, what's his job?

   All these amazing people, who've spent years getting to be amazing, all gave their lives up for this one jackass. I mean I quiver with rage everytime I think about it. Good vs Evil, and the triumph of good vs evil, but my God, this wore thin real quick. The series should be named, Harry Potter, and the kick up his backside that he should have received a long time ago. No Harry, but seriously, where do you work?

Just a thought about something viral.

Hi,
    This post is about something that has taken a lot of public attention and interest in the last few days. A teenage girl was molested by a group of males for half an hour in the streets of Guwahati. Now almost everyone knows the details and so on and they are all truly truly despicable. There is no rationale whatsoever for the girl to be deserving the atrocities committed towards her. And I am not going to glorify the sorry sorry fools who enacted out this heinous crime.

   Facebook has championed the cause of the girl and the public outrage has jolted the police into action and has resulted in a number of arrests. Which is a very good thing, for these criminals must be tried for the full extent of their crimes. There is a video on youtube which details the plight of the girl which set the social media ball rolling. People have been posting photographs on their walls/timelines of those who were involved in the act, and surely that has helped a lot. A lot easier to identify someone when there are millions searching.

   However, there is something that has caught my eye. I didn't see the video on youtube and neither do I want to, since there can be absolutely no good in watching the clip. The video has been used to identify the criminals and that is the only good that comes out of it.

 Two photographs however are still bothering me.

 I don't think there is any need to share any photograph which shows the girl being abused by the victims. You want to abuse the criminals, do that, abuse the crap out of them but do not glorify their act by sharing the pic of the helpless girl in their clutches. She has been through enough, she does not need to relive those moments over and over, and she just might wind up doing so at the rate at which people are sharing those pics. Nobody needs to see that anymore, nobody should see her in that indecent state.

The second pic is that of one of the culprits, and it shows him wearing a cap and standing next to his car, maybe taken from his Facebook page itself. This man was on the run and has been arrested in Orissa. The pic has a message which contains a fair amount of suppressed anger and sarcasm, but you are calling this man a rapist. Yet the picture you share of him shows him to be enjoying life, with his cap set at a jaunty angle, next to a car. In my mind it send the wrong message and is misleading. The only pic that should be shared is him in his jail cell while serving his sentence. No other pic will do justice. There should be no glorifying his evil deed by showing him in various modes of enjoying life. The widespread talk about the incident should not give those hungry for attention yet another outlet for their impotence. The propaganda should serve to remind everyone that the strictest measures are in place for those who do not value the decency of human dignity, not to glorify their acts and set precedents for others. They are worse than animals and should be treated such.

Surjo

What's the World coming to!

Hi,
   This is something that I wrote in my diary just over a year ago.. Life has changed a lot in the last year, but I read this and found that my opinion on this particular subject remains unchanged. So here it is. From ink to the keyboard.

Growing up there are no shades of gray. Black and white, right or wrong, truth or a lie. Out of the 7 sins, there are a few that children have, and those which stay throughout their life. Jealousy, selfishness and covetousness are ingrained in the human psyche. Kindness is a virtue which has to be taught and developed, I didn't have a great deal of it because I wasn't shown a great deal of it.

What we are taught is what we learn and we are taught the wrong things in life. Look out for yourself, above all else. Save your soul at the expense of another, both eyes for an eye, and break the jaw for a tooth. I find it surprising that people always want a free ride for as long as possible but take offense when the free ride is at their expense. The fundamental problem that goes unseen is that if you participate and win the rat race you'll still be a rat. It wasn't called a lion's race, lion's don't race to save their lives, they just turn around and whoop ass!

Choice is a privilege of the rich. I stay in a place surrounded by those less fortunate than I. A world riddled with poverty, relative ignorance and reality. Everybody's world has reality in it, but the reason why I state it so vehemently is because their life has very little potential for dreams.

I see people around me trying to figure out what they want to do, positively unhinged at the thought of what it is they like to do. But these people near my house, they don't suffer from any such hallucinations. Their anxieties are more real than just a figment of meandering imagination.

Now there are a few reasons behind this, and it's time to analyze that. The importance of education is highlighted here, because it gives you nightmares. In today's world, there are so many choices which can be made, so many career options, all of which can be realistically pursued and turned into life sustaining activities. Now, a person who isn't educated, simply doesn't know all of these options and therefore doesn't carry the insane burden as far as just choices go.

Picture an average well-to-do family, when they have a child, would shower every imaginable toy within their grasp on their child. The result is that the child grows up getting a lot of things that give it pleasure without any real reason other than the affection of a parent. One major feature of humans is then triggered: greed/ The child wants more, if it sees a toy or object it doesn't have, it covets that object and why?? Simply because it doesn't have it. Now, if the parent obliges, then the cycle continues, but most parents have limit, not to their affection but to the depth of their pockets, and that's when the greed turns intosomething in the range of moodiness and tantrums. Now, that doesn't mean that kids who don't get any toys don't cry or throw tantrums, I mean they're kids, it's in their CV to be thus.

But I have seen these kids, parent have no money, barely keeping a roof over their head, yet they are constantly playing and smiling. No tantrums, no acting like a sourpuss, and they have toys too.. What amazing toy is this that always keeps a kid smiling?? A mere pebble, that's it.. nothing major. One pebble gets them going for hours, or maybe a heap of sand, and the joy on their faces is something to behold.

Coming back to the very top, choice is a privilege of the rich, and here's why. If you're poor, then you can't spend your time thinking about what you could do to fulfill yourself and your potential as a person. You simply want to survive, to make enough money to ensure that there will be a meal the next day. No choices there, do the first job that comes your way, then the second and if you're lucky the third as well.

Lack of a proper education often means that they jobs they get are one of the daily wage variety, so the more the merrier. They have problems, they use the confines of their homes only to sleep in at night. The entire day is spent outside. Even the children, the reason why they stay outside is simply because their house is not as comfortable as what is outside. Even during the summer afternoons when the temperature is reaching up to 46' C. That itself is testament to their poverty. Their entire house is painted using the leftover paint from when my room was being painted.

But the bustle and chatter that categorizes their day is akin to the happiest families you'll know. I think because in their eyes, this is the best they can do, and that is something very commendable. How many of us can look at our lives and know that we are living upto our full potential? Very few, in fact that is the constant complaint of the youth of today. The fact that they shall not work hard enough in that direction, but shall blame it on all and sundry is something that never ceases to amaze me. If I can't do something then it is strictly my fault, maybe just on one level, maybe on multiple levels.

That's all I had written, so that's all that there is here, not going to try and complete this train of thought.

Take care
Surjo

Album Review: Indus Creed- Evolve!

Hi all,
    Been a while since I've written something here, been busy writing words to songs. Nevertheless, jumping right into it, I just ordered and heard the latest Indus Creed album 'Evolve' and thoroughly enjoyed it, and am still enjoying it. So here's my two cents worth about the album.

    For those who claim to love rock music in India and do not know of Indus Creed, take that rock you have been living under, and then smash it on your head. They are the originals, the innovators, the grand-daddys of all that is rock and pure in India.Starting out as 'Rock Machine' morphing into 'Indus Creed', and re-inventing themselves for numerous years (Alms For Shanti during [V] Jammin' anyone?), till the inevitable re-union and here they are. Jurassic Rock indeed.

    Firstly, I must say this, I ordered the CD off flipkart and it was well-delivered, so kudos to the band for arranging that. The CD cover is a lovely graphic of a human diving into blue ether and the inlay contains similar themes interspersed with snapshots of the members, besides all the normal acknowledgements and text that a CD cover has.

   Do remember this, that 'Indus Creed' is a rare band that can boast the individual strength of each member, all the members are experienced musicians, veterans in their own right, and extremely skilled. You can only imagine what happens when all this meets under a karmic headline. The result is 'Evolve'.

   The first song of the album is 'Fireflies', and it sets the tone beautifully for the rest of the album. IC might just have to write a book on 'How to write Choruses', what with the anthems popping out one after the other. The song not only gives us an idea as to the tone of the album in terms of musicality, mix and direction, it emphasizes the evolution of the band from previous albums, which was still flirting with pop-rock. This time around, they are comfortable in their skin, in their styles and move through genres effortlessly. The sound is ambient yet tight, straight-forward yet textured, melodic yet intricate. Like I said, these guys know what they are going. 'Fireflies' is the kind of song you are going to listen to in your car on loop. Don't trust me?? Try it, I dare you!!

   Next up is 'Dissolve', and 7:38 minute epic that starts off with a majestic, soaring melody that had me thinking of old Indian kings, and just when Tipu Sultan hit my head, they launch into this groove which loops in 20... 5,3,5,3,4!! Just awesome, and something which pricked my ears immediately. Being a big 'Rush' fan, movements like that always get me going, and they launch into a massive chorus, followed by a keyboard section with a lot of tremolo goodness. The chorus comes in to save my life again and just when I couldn't be feeling any better, Mr. Tinaikar launches into what can only be called pyro on guitar and now I want to dive into blue ether. A melodic bridge follows and then the song follows it's steps to the end. Sweet, definitely one of the pillars of the album along with 'Fireflies'.

  'The Money' coming after 'Dissolve' falls a bit flat with it's marching band style movement. The lack of atmospheric keyboards that were dominating the tone in the previous songs was fairly evident and definitely needed. Not sure if this is one those songs that complete the numbers, but it's almost electronic edge seems to be off-putting (to me atleast), although the keyboard solo is cool.

  'Take It Harder' boasts another massive chorus and the suitable atmospheric vibe that returns it to the general theme of the album, another pillar. Relevant lyrics talking about the violence that is omni-present around us, and the angst and astonishment that most should feel if they did take 2 minutes out of their lives to think about it. Do wait for the guitar solo, is a good one.

  'No Disgrace' starts almost sounding like something from Pink Floyd but the syncopated drum bursts quickly dispel that feel and off we launch into one of the coolest riffs of the album. Mr. Benegal talks about the rat race that needs no introduction, and the pressure that all of us feel, and assures us that it's cool if you didn't win the race. Lyrics with a lot of meaning, although set in a rock-environment. 'Did they take your dreams, Doused them all with kerosesne. From the ground you watched it burn, Maybe some day they all will learn.' The song has a very neat bridge which is followed by some more wizardry from Mr. Balporia and Mahesh. The keyboard solo sounds like it could have been in any Dream Theater song, from the choice of groove, to the choice of notes, to the style of rhythm on the guitar, to that change of key in the middle of the solo. I'm not knocking it, I actually really really enjoyed the solo. :)

  'Come Around' starts with a guitar and vocals. Uday talks about (a person) who he seems to hero-worship. Someone who could 'Fall again, off the edge of the Earth. Were you wrestling lions, or diving for pearls.' Poignant lyrics, understated and has it's own beauty. Settles into a lovely groove. If you find me using too many superlatives, well that's because the music and words are that good. As it turns out, the person he is hero-worshipping is his Dad who walked out on him and his mom while he was a child.

  'Bulletproof' next, and this is my favourite song in the album. Short, snappy and with a lot of cool thrown around, because they can!!! The pre-chorus has the best riff of the album period. This song has me doing cartwheels in my head.

  Last and not least, 'Goodbye'. Another good chorus, amazing guitar placement on the stereo spectrum, tells a story in itself.

   Things that have not been mentioned but need to be mentioned now, the superlative bass and drum work by Rushad Mistry and Jai Row Kavi respectively. Like I said, they are all giants on their respective instruments and it shows, the playing on the album is just spotless. The vocals of Uday should be the blueprint for young singers who want to learn how to sing their own style rather than being an imitation. Another thing, the mix by Tim Palmer is just pure bliss. Drum-heavy, (which works out great when your drummer kicks ass), atmospheric, lush and warm, this is one good-sounding album. Very progressive in nature, and in my humble opinion is a return of superlative songwriting to the Indian rock scene, not seen since 'Maktub'. In short, buy it, and listen to some of the best songs that have come out in a while. All the talk about mixes and so on would fall to the wayside if the songs weren't good. They are, so order now.

A big thank you to Indus Creed for this album. 17 years in the making and boy did they make it.

Cheers!
Surjo
 

 

54th anniversary of the Munich Air Tragedy, and my tribute to the Busby Babes!

Hey all,
Been a long time since I wrote something here, and it is fairly fitting since the topic of discussion has been a long time coming. For more than a year, my good friends at http://bigfourza.com/blog/ and I have been mulling over the idea to incorporate some hard-hitting music into their product. For those who don't know about the product, them good folks run a website concentrating on the top 4 of the Barclays Premier League, and they are refreshing because they don't take themselves too seriously.
You have a number of websites that give you kick-for-kick coverage and tonnes of statistics and so on, without really any opportunity for the viewer to do anything except absorb. These websites assume a higher moral ground and we are oh-so-blessed by their presence. BigFourZa, on the other hand, is supremely interactive, funny, has enough facts to keep you interested, and enough fiction to keep you bemused. It would be a great product for women to come in and express their views about their favourite football player, except that women don't know it exists. This is possibly one of two football places in the world, where cooing over CR7's looks might be acceptable, the other being CR7's bedroom.
I digress. The main point being, that they wanted to have music, specifically to do with the top 4 clubs of English football. So, being a Manchester United fan, obviously I move to that first. For those who claim to be football fans and don't know about the Munich Air Tragedy, my words to you are.. "Have you been living under a rock?" This great tragedy that befell football, has in my opinion, changed the game entirely and took it onto the direction we see today. From small towns supporting their own teams to millions across nations finding the qualities they most admire in their favourite clubs, the landscape has changed. The Busby Babes were one of the major contributors to this evolution.
The comeback that was staged by the Red Devils in the next ten years, is probably the greatest of all time, and still serves to reinforce our tenacity on the pitch, our most recent showing against Chelsea being another prime example of the fire in our guts. So, naturally, a very powerful event, needing some pretty powerful music. This song was made over the period of a year, the music was good but the lyrics weren't, and then my singing wasn't good, then I got busy, then the lyrics got good but my singing wasn't, and then finally it was done.
So I hope you take the time to listen to this creation. There will be more football oriented songs for other clubs in the top 4 to look out for, but it gives me great pride to present 'Red Devil'. You can listen to it right here on the blog, top right hand corner, big widget with BigFourZa written on it. Head over to their website and 'like' their Facebook page too.

Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/bigfourza

So there you have it, will be writing more about a few certain things, as of right now, life is good, and I sure hope it is going good for you too.

Sayonara!!

My trip re-making memory lane!! Oh and I played a show as well!

Hey all,
Hope things are going great for all of you. They certainly are for me. Well, on the 26th of this month I was scheduled to appear in a show as the guitarist for Shilpa Rao. As it so happened, the show was to be in Darbhanga, this most legendary of places. This place has provided me with great stories and greater friends and I was very keen to finally get there and see what the madness was all about for myself. The rest of the band and I were driving up to Darbhanga, which is a fair distance away from Jamshedpur. Somebody told me the Nepal border isn't far off from there. My dad reminded me of the time he and my brother had to undergo a 36 (yes 36) hour bus journey to get there for answering an engineering entrance exam. But that was 10 years ago, the roads have improved and we had a very competent driver.

Well, we started late night and made excellent progress, got to Ranchi in 1.5 hours (against a normal time of 3 hours). My own health was little bit of a downer as I am not used to long distances inside a closed car, obviously couldn't keep open windows for it was fiercely cold. That aside, all went well and we were well into Bihar till the next morning.

Then the legendary madness began. Before you think of this as some great expose`, please be forewarned. I am just using saucy lines, the stories aren't that crazy. We were some distance off of Samastipur when we encountered this massive traffic jam. Time brought curiosity and we found out that earlier in the morning a truck ran over a hapless motorist killing him instantly and now the villagers have blockaded the road in an effort to get compensation for the victim's family from the state government. One man in a car ahead of us suggested paying Rs.1500 to the villagers so they'd clear the road. I'm not sure whether that sum was the gentleman's value of human life but the comment was in poor taste, at the very least. We were already running a bit late and decided to step out of queue, reverse and head back the way we came from. The villagers, who had by now decided to walk down the queue of vehicles, asking them to pay up to be let through, spotted us and started running after us. Of course they couldn't catch us, this car got to Ranchi in 1.5 hours. What ensued was driving through a village dirt-track through fields, cattle-sheds and so on for around 45 minutes till we got back on any kind of tarred road again. After a fair amount of asking about, we finally landed on familiar territory and went right through to Darbhanga, and then asked our way into the hotel. The hotel was actually situated in the premises of an old fort, and the accommodations and service too was from another time, but that is just an observation. I stayed there for less than 10 hours, I really didn't care much about the standard of accommodation, although the bathroom could have used a shower.

More fun after the gig, we packed our instruments in, our driver safely napping away in the hotel room (he was the one driving through the entire night after all), and as we are to leave the venue, one of the tires gets punctured. Nobody apart from me had any clue what to do and I was rusty at best. There I was, in the Darbhanga night, 12 midnight actually, lying down beneath the car trying to get everything in position. A lot of hard work and a couple of mistakes later, finally it was all done. Took a long time though. Got back to the hotel to realize they stop dinner after 10 or something. Thankfully somebody from Shilpa's entourage had ordered a lot of food as back-up and we didn't go hungry. Anyway, at around 2 in the night, after 11 odd hours in Darbhanga, we got back in the car. Went off to sleep, knew that they stopped somewhere to try and repair the puncture in the tire. Anyway, was awoken at 7:30 in the morning to be told that..... the tire was punctured, the same one!! Ha ha, what fun! And it turned out, on the previous occasion, the tire wasn't punctured, the air just went out. Go figure! Anyway, there I was in the middle of the highway on my back again. Thankfully, the driver was a great help, and we got through this quickly. And he had blazed through the night because we covered a huge distance in a very short amount of time!! For that I was grateful. From there on it was pretty much routine, albeit a little delayed as the guys were intent on making random stops! Nevertheless, an action packed 36 hours. Yes, by this time, my dad was getting to Darbhanga. He he.

Oh and btw, played a kick-ass show in the midst of all of that!

Cheers!
Surjo
_/\_

My best live experience: Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Pandit Ram Kumar Sharma!!

Hi all,
Hope everyone is in good health and enjoying life to the fullest. I want to talk about a performance that I witnessed this evening. Quite simply the best live performance I have ever seen with my two eyes. The artistes in question were Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on Mohan Veena and Pandit Ram Kumar Sharma on Tabla.

The evening started well as we reached the venue (Tata Auditorium) on time, the event was running a bit late so we actually caught the soundcheck as well. Now since I have performed around the city a fair few times therefore I know pretty much all the sound guys in the city, and to my dismay, one of the absolute worst was handling the console and sure as the sun shines everyday he was making a lot of errors. Nevertheless, the quality of the performers was such that he couldn't make much of a negative impact.

Well after the soundcheck and the introductions, it was time for the music to take centrestage. Before he began, Pandit Bhatt gave a small discourse to the audience, speaking of the movement within a raga and the tradition of performance followed in Indian classsical music. For those who don't know about the order, it is the alaap followed by main theme of the raag on a fixed taal (gat) followed by the final phase of drut gat where the improvisation takes the most brilliant turns and the call and response themes are evoked between the lead and rhythm instruments.

The choice of Raga for the evening was Shyam Kalyan. The alaap at the start itself was absolutely mesmerizing. It was of course an added bonus for me that the Mohan Veena is very similar to a slide guitar so I could understand all that was being performed in terms of movement and nuances. The tuning of the Mohan Veena initially sounded like an open F major sus2, although I couldn't be sure of that.. He did change it later to a 1-5-8 tuning on the lead strings. He had a small machine with him which made the sound of the drone or tanpura, so that was actually neat, since he was able to control the volume of the drone himself.

When the alaap was over, Pandit Ram Kumar Mishra entered the fray, Tritala being the rhythm of choice. His entry was on small call and response session itself, but that soon gave way to the fixed structure of the raga. Now my elder brother was a tabla player and a good one too, so I kinda know the basic necessities of technique and slight intricacies of movement that are needed, so that being said, Pandit Ram Kumar Mishra is the most astounding table player I have ever seen. The clarity of his thekas, the quickness of his fingers, the position of his wrists, his control over the dynamics of the instrument, he could take the thing from a whimper to a rumble in a matter of seconds. There was a section where he was playing 64th notes (1/64) continuously for atleast 3 minutes till the audience had to applaud his effort. As is true for all artistes, the two Pandits were temperamental, which I appreciated greatly, and they really loved the respect they earned from the audience. After every cadenza, the audience let loose a flurry of applause and both of them lapped it up.

After the madhyam gat came the dhrut gat and that is when things really spiced up, the call and response section was amazing and I am not going to even try and put it in words because you got to see it to believe it. Now as a pure experiment I was actually trying to bob my head to some of the stuff being played and funnily enough some of my movements were very similar to the rhythm for a headbanging experience. Which basically meant that even though the music sounded very serene, there was a lot of aggressiveness in some of the improvisations, especially in the final sections.

They finally finished with a huge flourish. I realized that they had played one raga for almost an hour, an hour on one melodic idea (let's call it a scale for the purpose of understanding), with 3 notes as the chords in the background. That is insane, that level of depth is available only to those who are willing to dig deepest.

After that he played 3 more songs, one was a "pahadi" song, then a request from the audience, I couldn't quite hear what the request was but I thought I heard Dilli gharana or something in there. And finally he played the composition that won him his Grammy. I really can't say much about all the other songs for 2 reasons, a) I recollect them all to be awesome, especially the Grammy winning piece. B) The raga had knocked me out.

The audience was standing, the applause was unanimous, and so was the smile on all our faces, and on the faces of the two stalwarts who made it happen. Best show ever.