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I was happily working away today when I got this IM from my friend Onkar, “Dude, listen to Dheemi Dheemi at 2:53″. (from the movie 1947-Earth)
By this time, I was pretty sure Rahman must have done something weird there, but I more curious as I seemed to have missed it in my few hundreds hearings of the song. When I finally discovered the hack he made, I was almost kicking myself for having missed this !
Anyway, here is the song. Hear for yourself at 2:53 :
Not all readers are musicians, so here’s a gist of what is going on :
The interlude by Hariharan that starts with “Yeh tera tan badan .. ” is compressed in terms of singing – the singer doesn’t take any beats to relax, which gives a running flow to the song. The lines are recited in immediate succession. Now it’s a 4 beat rhythm going on. After a few such compressed lines, the singer is about to begin with the verse, but now he is singing with the 3rd beat as the sam (first beat of the rhythm). The bass guitar gives this away immediately, because it has a continuous riff, and the singer’s main beat does not coincide with the bass guitar’s. So Rahman cuts the bass riff after 2 beats, and starts with it afresh at the 3rd beat. In effect, the whole rhythm has shifted by 2 beats.
Slyly done.
But here’s the catch. The piano riff is left as it is – I still can’t figure out why he didn’t adjust the piano track (my guess is the piano track just slipped away unnoticed. The effect being – the piano riff at the start of the song is reversed by the time it ends. This was how my friend discovered something had gone wrong somewhere in the song.
*
Rahman is known to play around with beats, like the chorus part of Ghanan Ghanan in Lagaan, so this doesn’t come as a surprise.
But it was immense joy to discover this.
Thanks to Ashish J. for pointing out Shekhar Kapur’s new short film – ‘Passage’. It is based on Swarovski’s Passage, and has music by A.R. Rahman.
This is a marvelous little film, not to be missed. The theme is passage while the plot is open ended and left to the interpretation of the audience. The music by Rahman is refreshing (especially the use of an unlikely instrument for the given setting – sarangi), and we deserve this after Blue.
The winner, though, is the cinematography – the visuals are spellbinding. Never before have I seen a movie where each frame seems like it has been painted by an artist, at leisure, relishing every stroke. It has some very creative use of every aspect of the cinematography – lighting, focus, shape, orientation. You should watch it for the visual effect alone.
The movie is freely available for viewing in HD here. So you don’t really have any excuse to miss it.
Internet speed is one, but I’ll give that only to South Indians.
I found these 2 videos recently :
The original video of Purani Jeans by Ali Haider (via Zainab K)
I am sure everyone has heard the song a million times, but few (non-Pakistanis) have seen the original video. It is a low budget production, and a literal representation; but the music makes it work. Enjoy.
Oh .. I also discovered the more popular video of the remixed version here. The electronic track is annoying in this one and the dance is embarrassing, but the video is more polished. I also notice that Kim Sharma has acted in it.
I blame Pakistan for sending her back (okay, that’s the only reason why I mentioned the remix).
Second is a Ganpati visarjan video forwarded by a friend from NID and created by some ex-students as an animation assignment :
I loved the video, but still can’t figure out exactly how the video was created (in terms of software, hand-drawn paintings, sand-animation or something altogether different). I can ask and let you know if you’re interested.
If you have been annoyed with those multi-starrer comedies full of crass/below the belt/homosexual/infidelity jokes, you need to watch this one.
No theme whatsoever, wafer-thin plot, but it just works after the first 20 mins. The assumption here is that you enjoy PJs – the movie is full of them. After a long time, I laughed as hard, so I strongly recommend this movie.
Just to play spoil sport, it’s not a great movie, it’s just entertaining – that’s what that matters if you think about it. Music-wise, there might be one decent song; acting-wise – Ajay Devgan and Sanjay Dutt are decent, Fardeen Khan is torture, Mugdha Godse needs to work on her accent, and Bipasha – I am still coming to terms with the fact that so many people find her attractive. On the contrary, the side characters do pretty well.
Touching the Void is “a documentary film based on the book of the same name by Joe Simpson about Simpson’s and Simon Yates’ disastrous and near fatal attempt to climb the 6,344 metre (20,813 foot) Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985″.
It had been on my to-watch list for a few months. I first heard about it when a friend sent the link a couple of days before I was leaving for my first ice-climb - Mt. Shasta – and specifically asked me not to watch it until I was back. With hindsight, I can vouch that Shasta was a cakewalk compared to it, but you should have guessed that already.
I find it very difficult to judge mountaineering movies (rather any movie set in the mountains) in an unbiased manner. So I can’t really say how good it is a movie; but as a story, exhilarating !
The story of Joe and Simon is well-known in mountaineering circles. Simon is also known as “the guy who cut the rope”, a rather harsh judgement passed by people in my opinion. You’ll know why he’s called so when you see the movie – I don’t want to reveal too many details. Being discreet, I can say that it is about 2 mountaineers, who faced multiple accidents on their descent, tragic circumstances, nearly hopeless situations, an improbable return and the ongoing internal fight about morality, ethics, religion, god and hope. You know they’re alive, as they are narrating the story, you just don’t see how that could be possible !
One bit particularly impressed me. Sitting in the crevice of a glacier with a broken leg, from where he couldn’t be rescued in a million years, awaiting death, Joe (a self-confessed atheist) says – At times like these, you wonder if there is someone out there watching everything. Someone, who’ll set things right. Every sound that you hear in that place, you wonder if it has some bigger meaning; if it is showing you the path; if there is some meaning to all this at all. But you realize, you have to fend for yourself and that you are just too small compared to the mountains. You cannot just sit there, you have to make decisions. Even if they are wrong.
This seems true in so many ways. I’ve said this before too – there is a strange connection between mountains and philosophy. When you’re up there with nothing but the nature, you start seeing things more clearly as they are, not how people have made them out to be. You realize that is how you were always supposed to see everything. You see your true character; you see others’ true self; you see a minuscule part of the earth in its raw form and can only extrapolate how mighty nature is; you see the countless stars at night and wonder how inconsequential your tiny-self is in the bigger scheme of things, if it exists.
No wonder mountaineers keep going back.
I am not arrogant enough to say that you won’t know yourself living life in society; but I’ll say that you will find yourself up in the mountains.
No seriously, how tough is it to look up Wikipedia ?
Reuters has an article about a Putin reference in this week’s episode of Family Guy.
The subversive award-winning show, which has featured bestiality, incest and stars Brian, the talking dog, centres around one-year-old Stewie who speaks in a faux upper class English accent and abhors his middle-class American parents.
If you know anything about Family Guy, you’d get the incorrectness. The description makes it sound like the American version of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai.
The first of the Characters stub of the Wikipedia page for Family Guy states :
The show revolves around the adventures of the family of Peter Griffin, a bumbling, but well-intentioned, blue-collar worker.
So Reuters – You don’t have to write articles on everything. It’s really okay if you skip the things you have no clue about.
Previous posts on the perils of not looking up Wikipedia here and here.
is Salman Khurshid, India’s Corporate Affairs Minister.
First, for suggesting that CEO’s should not get ‘vulgar’ salaries.
In India, the government has so far refrained from talking about controlling corporate salaries, but corporate affairs minister Salman Khursheed’s advice to companies on Sunday to refrain from “vulgar” salaries is sure to spark a debate on how much is too much.
(With the Mahatma’s picture on our currency, we can give up hopes of any kind of money ever being vulgar.)
Second, for his statement after Mukesh Ambani took a pay cut :
“Whatever voluntarily a person like Mukesh Ambani has done shows remarkable sensibility to the prevailing thought process in the entire country,” the minister said.
For those curious, Mukesh Ambani’s salary is down to 15 crores from 44 crores, apart from the fact that he owns a few companies here and there.
In Mr. Khurshid’s defence, he’s having a tough time as the Corporate Affairs Minister. Little did he know that he’d have to deal with the slowdown; he thought all he had to do was hook up with corporate women.
I just had dinner and hours of discussion with a few friends who are part of a mailing list. Usually at such meets, time runs out faster than the topics. Among the myriad topics that we spoke about, there’s one bit that I’d like to take forward here.
I gathered some scandalous bits about a legendary and respected artist (in a discussion about the evolution of music in Hindi films), but it occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t mention it among friends.
The reason being, I don’t think we see grey. From the ancient times to religious books to artists to cricketers, we are conditioned to seeing everything as black and white. Consequently, public figures have to remain white because any departure from white is black.
That is why a debutant scoring a century is hailed as the next Tendulkar, while match-fixing will always reside in close proximity to Azharuddin in every sentence.
I think most of us cannot decouple a person from the talent he commands in his field; a recent example being Roman Polanski. Innumerable artists and individuals supported him for he is an Oscar-winning genius of a director. He should be praised for that no doubt, but using that argument to shield that fact that he had non-consensual sex with a 13-year old girl is ridiculous.
Now as an example, think of your favourite singer or cricketer or actor, someone who is the most respected, legendary individual in that field. Assume you confirmed a scandal of the worst order about the said person.
What would you think of the person now ?
I read an article which concludes that internet speeds have reduced in South India :
Likewise, the south also seems to have slowed down where Internet speeds are also concerned. Karnataka showed a 13% drop in net speeds quarter-on-quarter followed by Tamil Nadu with a drop of 10%.
I have a theory to explain this :
Slower average internet speeds mean heavier load – which happens when more data is downloaded while surfing – that occurs when the images on a web-page are larger in resolution – and we know that the average South Indian actress is healthier now than ever before.
Totally pwned it ! No ?
So I humbly request South Indians to end their obsession with buxom beauties – it’s freakin’ killing the internet !!
Is the Intelligence Bureau, India’s internal intelligence agency, expected to predict assembly poll outcomes ?
Intelligence Bureau (IB) has predicted that the Shiv Sena-BJP combine will barely touch the 100-seat mark in the just-concluded elections to the Maharashtra assembly, thereby ruling out any chance of a saffron alliance government.
The bureau has predicted that the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) would return to power, even though it will require the support of independents, rebels and the Third Front to prop them up for a stable dispensation. The Congress-NCP combine will bag 137 seats, the bureau has soothsayed along the lines predicted by various exit polls.
Or am I missing something in their responsibilities ?
