You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2010.
I finally gathered the time to give the sountrack of Raavan a patient listen. I was rather kicked about writing a music review after a long time — but the music was disappointing, so I don’t have much to say. The songs of Raavan might just make more sense when seen in the context of the film.
The song that excited me in the trailer is Beera, which is one of the only two songs in the album I liked. The second is Khili Re, but just for Reena Bharadwaj. She is the female who sang the fabulous Yeh Rishta from Meenaxi. Pity she doesn’t sing more often.
That being said, I wouldn’t count out the other songs as yet. I’ve liked songs by Rahman months after listening to them.
Salil Tripathi has a piece in Mint on the South Park-Muhammad controversy, where he makes a good point :
There is a story Vivekananda recalls, of the swami being angry over the destruction of a temple by Muslims, when he hears the goddess ask him:
Am I here to protect you, or are you there to protect me?
Divinities are strong enough to look after themselves. Artists and writers aren’t. They need our protection.
Well-put, although I do realize the irony in rebutting the logic of those that follow no rationale.
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LA Times has a piece, and I liked this bit :
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said that although he sympathizes with the predicament faced by Comedy Central, the network has potentially empowered other extremists by how it has chosen to handle the situation.
“The consequence of this position is that the thugs win and people have more incentive to be thugs,” said Volokh, who teaches free speech and religious freedom law. “There are lots of people out there who would very much like to get certain kind of material removed, whether religious or political. The more they see others winning, the more they will be likely to do the same. Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated.”
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I’d rather live in a society where everything and everyone is lampooned, than in one where I have to be scared of offending others — because taking offense has no lower limit.
Idiot Iran cleric blames earthquakes on women who do not dress modestly.
Smart women decide to hold 26th April as the Boobquake day, a day where women across the globe dress in their most revealing outfits to prove aforementioned idiot wrong.
Taiwan experiences tremors on 26th April.
Fun, no ?
Tehelka does sensationalist journalism again. This time — it’s about kids having sex.
Writing for any other magazine is skill, but writing for Tehelka is art.
Link via Mukta M.
The Pune IPL team will be called the Sahara Pune Warriors.
Bad name?
Or worst name ever?
And what kind of a people add the sponsor in the team name ?
Probably the kind who say It is my happy birthday today.
Thanks to everyone who sent in this link.
Dhanashree Pandit-Rai gave a talk on Indian classical music at TEDx Mumbai recently. It is fascinating — but only if you have no idea about Hindustani classical music. I’d even go ahead and say that some of the things are just wrong. That said, the approach she takes to introduce Hindustani music to a layman is the one that works best.
In a way, her talk is exactly how I was introduced to Hindustani classical music. The aha moment occurred whenever I discovered the raga of some known song or piece. I have no formal training, and most of the knowledge I have is courtesy the internet, watching concerts, listening to hundreds of hours of music and some academic projects where I got an amazing insight into the world of Hindustani music. My most treasured possession is a raga encyclopedia that has information of around 400 Hindustani ragas. I still carry it with me. I often use it as a reference to discover and play new ragas. It is incorrect to say that I play ragas — because I don’t think I do. I like to play and experience only a very tiny aspect of ragas which are the notes. Ragas are far more deeper, and I am not qualified to play or experience that depth.
This talk is not intended to show the depth of Hindustani music; it is meant to fascinate. And it does that well. Some bits are gimmicky too. I don’t necessarily agree with many of things she says, but I won’t hesitate to recommend the talk. So here you go :
P.S. : For those interested, some specific bits that I talk about in the post :
Saying Dhoom Machale is in Bhairavi is incorrect. So are some other examples, because ragas — as she herself elaborates later — are much much more than notes. The gimmicky bits are English songs sung in a classical base.
Nita Ambani, owner of Mumbai Indians, visited Tirupati the night before the IPL finals. An excerpt of the report :
She dropped two suitcases filled with currency and a duffel bag full of gold ornaments into the temple’s hundi (donation box), sources said. They suggested the total donation could be anywhere between Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore.
But the Chennai Super Kings had stolen a march over the Mumbai team. Sources said CSK owner N. Srinivasan had recently visited the temple and donated Rs 2 crore in cash and an equal amount in gold. His team triumphed in tonight’s final.
Balaji could hardly have satisfied all his IPL devotees. Officials and owners from various teams — including the Delhi Daredevils, Kolkata Knight Riders and the Deccan Chargers — had visited the temple. Vijay Mallya, who owns Royal Challengers Bangalore, had been one of the earliest IPL visitors this season. He donated Rs 2 crore.
This reminds me of the search business. Google is way ahead of competitors not because it does a good job with common queries; it does a phenomenal job at the uncommon queries. That is one of the reasons an antitrust law is being invoked against Google in the famous book deal case that is ongoing : Google can leverage its access to obsolete content to help improve its results in the tail of queries.
The same applies to the IPL. If every owner visits Tirupati, it is obvious that the god there is not going to decide the fate of the match. If he had the powers and he was fair, the best option for him would be to not do anything. Donating more money would lead to an auction-like situation. But given that this is god we’re dealing with, it would be in extremely bad taste were he to favour the team that donated most.
I think the ones who decide the fate will be the gods and temples that are seldom visited for something like an IPL match. A great example — temples at the forts of Maharashtra. Almost no one will visit these, so they have the maximum chance of influencing the outcome of the game.
Make sense ?
is this :
Number of India’s poor falling: report
In India, the number of such people living on less than $ 1.25 a day is expected to go down from 435 million or 51.3 per cent in 1990 to 295 million or 23.6 per cent by 2015 and 268 million or 20.3 per cent by 2020.
Whoa ! At that rate, India will get rid of poverty by 2050, no ?
No.
Not accounting for inflation, $1.25 in 2020 is like less than 50 cents today, and I’d argue that far less than 268 million live on that today.
The question of the day was asked by some dude of Media Quest in a post-marriage interview with Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza :
Media Quest: Why Sania did not smile in reception?
From the artistic sentence formation, he also sounds like the kind of guy who would ask for a girl’s fraandship on Orkut.
