Question: ?
At a bus stop:
A: "Excuse me , but don't you recognize me?"
B: "Do I know you?"
A: "Don't you remember me at all?"
B: "Can you refresh my memory in some way?"
A: "Don't you remember last year around this time?"
B: "Can you add something more?"
A: "Were you not at Navy Pier at the fair?"
B: "Which fair are we talking about?"
A(sarcastically): "How many fairs are there at navy Pier?!"
B: "Do you mean the book-signing one?"
A: "What else do you think I was referring to?!!"
B: " ...and you were...there..?"
A: "Do you remember a fat guy in the line ahead of you?"
B: " The one all were making fun of?"
A(beaming): "And do you remember what you said to him?!"
B: "Are...you....that....fat guy..?"
A(exasperated): "Do you remember what you called him?"
B: "Is that going to help me here?"
A(animatedly): "Don't you remember someone seconding you?!!"
B: "You mean, the one who also called him a....?!!"
A(beaming strongly): "How's it going?!!"
B: "Are you okay now?"
A: "What do you mean?"
B: "Didn't that fat guy pummel you that day?"
A(a little scowl on his face): "WHAT?!!"
B: "Didn't that guy assume you were the one who said everything to him that evening?"
A: "Why would you say that?"
B: "Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that what cut short the book signing that evening?"
A: "Are you sure you remember me correctly?"
B: "Didn't I see you limping a little later?"
A: "WHAT?!!"
B: "Was that not politically correct?"
A: "What's wrong with you?!!"
B: "Did I exaggerate?"
A: "Are you trying the same trick you tried that evening again now?"
B: "Are your testicles all intact now?"
A(Red in the face): "GOD, why did I have to find this nut of all people from that night?!!"
B: "Are you praying now?"
A(getting irritated): "Now you're all innocent, is it?!"
B: "Why are you getting angry?"
A(enraged): "Are you now suggesting to me how I should react when a moron such as you is spewing the kind of nonsense you are now?"
B: "Can you repeat the question?"
A(fuming wild): "Are you trying to make a joke here?!"
B: "Why would I do that with a perfect stranger?!"
A: "WHAT THE #$%# DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!!"
B(ignoring A): "Hey, isn't that my bus?"
A: "WHO THE #$%&* DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DEALING WITH HERE?!!"
B(preparing to leave): "So, when are we meeting again?"
Wasn't that odd?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Of Cats and Dogs
It is often the case that two people in a chummy relationship come across the first occasion when their points of view diverge. Sometimes this separation is apparent and both can see it coming. But sometimes it can spring upon them like a cat on hot bricks.
Now in this latter situation, what with the divergence being so sudden, a debate of sorts can emanate. And as any good debater will tell you, it is not what you are debating about but how you do so that matters. So oftentimes, we come across really heated debates between two really good friends on topics that range from the idealogical (" 'I think men are smarter than women', 'Certainly not!' "), political (" 'The Democrats are the best hope for our country', 'Of course not!' ") personal (" 'I don't think you should meet that %^*$% anymore', 'What do you mean?! I will!' ") and sometimes even going into bizarre territory (" ' Mammooty (The Malayalam star actor) is a big pidingi ', 'You don't know what you are talking about!', 'Oh, so you think he isn't?!!', 'Of course not! I know he is!! But you are prejudiced in saying so!!!'").
This afternoon I had a debate with a very good friend of mine of the contrary gender as my own. This friend and I normally see eye to eye on many issues and so it was a bit of a surprise to me that she and I seemed like antipodes on this particular topic. So different were our points of view that the debate ended nowhere.
But let me add that this debate did not lead to a dog- cat fight of any sort.
Into what category would this classify? Well, it touched upon an ideology, is in some sense personal, and could well be rated bizarre by most. So let me not put a tag to it; I'd rather let you decide.
Now I am quite the pet lover. Actually to be accurate, I am not your rabid, raving pet lover. I am simply not averse to the idea of having a reasonable (and by reasonable, I mean a properly sized, domesticable, and cute mammal) pet at home. Of course this description could have been more tersely reduced to saying 'a dog or a cat'.
Between these two, somehow my preference lies with the cat. To me, there is something more likeable about the cat. Before the dog lovers come after me with a hunting crop, let me explain: while i certainly do like dogs, i just think i would prefer having a cat. A cat somehow embodies a strong sense of independence. Cats don't like being petted against their will, are not needy animals in the sense that they don't crave human attention, are less messy, easier to maintain, eat and poop less, and are in short, low-maintenance.
I told my friend that at one point of time, i had a plan to have 3 cats for company. She visibly winced.
She seemed to be more of a dog-lover. That is alright; after all, we all have our preferences. But a few seconds later came a more candid statement from her:
"It's not that i really like dogs either; its just that i dislike cats!"
From a person who possesses several cat-like features, this admission seemed a little too ironic. Was it dislike or general disinterest? My curiosity was aroused like that of the proverbial cat.
" Well, to be frank, I hate cats! The darned animals!!"
Now this was taking it a step too far. Not only did she clarify that her position was not misunderstood, she now opted to take the extreme end opinion leaving no room for any doubt whatsoever.
usually such an extreme reaction is correlated with a strongly experienced bad experience, especially as a kid. Was there any such....?
"Well, not really...Somehow i have never liked these things at all!"
Now her language cast the cat from the status of 'darned animals' to 'these things'! i had to intervene. If anything, i had to bring it back to the status of 'darned animal'.
Now one method in advertising that works most of the time, is to emphasize upon the positive aspects of the product that is being endorsed. Now i really don't think of cats as particularly useful animals though there was this one time when a pesky, over-animated kid was terrorized by my sister's cat, Mo. Nothing else seemed to control the kid other than the thought of otherwise spending some time with Mo as his sole companion.
The mention of this somehow did the argument no good. If anything it made matters worse! For now my friend seemed to sympathize particularly with the kid. Mo now really appeared to have become Mogambo.
Realizing that i was barking up the wrong tree, i decided to change tactics and now move from the specific to the generic. After all, who can resist a cat that comes looking to be stroked?! a cat brushing against us with its tail upwards and its raised head, waiting, nay, asking to be petted?! or its cute purring? and.....
" Oh that is another thing i hate about the darned animal! It comes suddenly acting so cute and all that!"
another jolt from out of the blue. But at least we were back to the 'darned animal'. But it now seemed like the idea of neutering all the cats of the world (no more cats!) would have appealed to her immensely. This had to be neutralized.
In a manner that might have done the ancient Egyptians proud (well, not really), i rallied in favor of the feline but the female seemed equally strong in her opinion. Soon one thing seemed pretty clear:
My friend + a cat = Catastrophe !
One thing however transpired. It appeared she was spooked by cats for some reason and i think Hollywood and Bollywood have their share of blame in all this. What's up with equating cats with devils and witches and all that?!! The cat has suffered at the hands of these people for way too long! It also has to fight the tag of being a selfish being, as opposed to a dog which is all faithful and man-friendly! Ahaa! its all to do with man and being man-friendly! A cat wishes to live life by its terms and suddenly it is an embodiment of evil!
The day did end with both sides (mine and hers) not relinquishing their stands.
But there is still hope for the cat. I do believe that one day the cat will capture a place in her heart when she sees the cat in the manner i do. and why do i have this hope? because i believe that one good example can change one's mind. She isn't an unreasonable person. I said this aloud.
She believes such a thing (namely, a cat wooing her) is not possible but i reminded her that stranger things have happened. After all, a couple of months ago, the two of us were perfect strangers living half the world away from each other and in a couple more months or so, we would be husband and wife! if that is possible, so is anything!!
As John Cleese once said ('Fawlty Towers'), Long live the cat! Hurrah for the cat!!
It is often the case that two people in a chummy relationship come across the first occasion when their points of view diverge. Sometimes this separation is apparent and both can see it coming. But sometimes it can spring upon them like a cat on hot bricks.
Now in this latter situation, what with the divergence being so sudden, a debate of sorts can emanate. And as any good debater will tell you, it is not what you are debating about but how you do so that matters. So oftentimes, we come across really heated debates between two really good friends on topics that range from the idealogical (" 'I think men are smarter than women', 'Certainly not!' "), political (" 'The Democrats are the best hope for our country', 'Of course not!' ") personal (" 'I don't think you should meet that %^*$% anymore', 'What do you mean?! I will!' ") and sometimes even going into bizarre territory (" ' Mammooty (The Malayalam star actor) is a big pidingi ', 'You don't know what you are talking about!', 'Oh, so you think he isn't?!!', 'Of course not! I know he is!! But you are prejudiced in saying so!!!'").
This afternoon I had a debate with a very good friend of mine of the contrary gender as my own. This friend and I normally see eye to eye on many issues and so it was a bit of a surprise to me that she and I seemed like antipodes on this particular topic. So different were our points of view that the debate ended nowhere.
But let me add that this debate did not lead to a dog- cat fight of any sort.
Into what category would this classify? Well, it touched upon an ideology, is in some sense personal, and could well be rated bizarre by most. So let me not put a tag to it; I'd rather let you decide.
Now I am quite the pet lover. Actually to be accurate, I am not your rabid, raving pet lover. I am simply not averse to the idea of having a reasonable (and by reasonable, I mean a properly sized, domesticable, and cute mammal) pet at home. Of course this description could have been more tersely reduced to saying 'a dog or a cat'.
Between these two, somehow my preference lies with the cat. To me, there is something more likeable about the cat. Before the dog lovers come after me with a hunting crop, let me explain: while i certainly do like dogs, i just think i would prefer having a cat. A cat somehow embodies a strong sense of independence. Cats don't like being petted against their will, are not needy animals in the sense that they don't crave human attention, are less messy, easier to maintain, eat and poop less, and are in short, low-maintenance.
I told my friend that at one point of time, i had a plan to have 3 cats for company. She visibly winced.
She seemed to be more of a dog-lover. That is alright; after all, we all have our preferences. But a few seconds later came a more candid statement from her:
"It's not that i really like dogs either; its just that i dislike cats!"
From a person who possesses several cat-like features, this admission seemed a little too ironic. Was it dislike or general disinterest? My curiosity was aroused like that of the proverbial cat.
" Well, to be frank, I hate cats! The darned animals!!"
Now this was taking it a step too far. Not only did she clarify that her position was not misunderstood, she now opted to take the extreme end opinion leaving no room for any doubt whatsoever.
usually such an extreme reaction is correlated with a strongly experienced bad experience, especially as a kid. Was there any such....?
"Well, not really...Somehow i have never liked these things at all!"
Now her language cast the cat from the status of 'darned animals' to 'these things'! i had to intervene. If anything, i had to bring it back to the status of 'darned animal'.
Now one method in advertising that works most of the time, is to emphasize upon the positive aspects of the product that is being endorsed. Now i really don't think of cats as particularly useful animals though there was this one time when a pesky, over-animated kid was terrorized by my sister's cat, Mo. Nothing else seemed to control the kid other than the thought of otherwise spending some time with Mo as his sole companion.
The mention of this somehow did the argument no good. If anything it made matters worse! For now my friend seemed to sympathize particularly with the kid. Mo now really appeared to have become Mogambo.
Realizing that i was barking up the wrong tree, i decided to change tactics and now move from the specific to the generic. After all, who can resist a cat that comes looking to be stroked?! a cat brushing against us with its tail upwards and its raised head, waiting, nay, asking to be petted?! or its cute purring? and.....
" Oh that is another thing i hate about the darned animal! It comes suddenly acting so cute and all that!"
another jolt from out of the blue. But at least we were back to the 'darned animal'. But it now seemed like the idea of neutering all the cats of the world (no more cats!) would have appealed to her immensely. This had to be neutralized.
In a manner that might have done the ancient Egyptians proud (well, not really), i rallied in favor of the feline but the female seemed equally strong in her opinion. Soon one thing seemed pretty clear:
My friend + a cat = Catastrophe !
One thing however transpired. It appeared she was spooked by cats for some reason and i think Hollywood and Bollywood have their share of blame in all this. What's up with equating cats with devils and witches and all that?!! The cat has suffered at the hands of these people for way too long! It also has to fight the tag of being a selfish being, as opposed to a dog which is all faithful and man-friendly! Ahaa! its all to do with man and being man-friendly! A cat wishes to live life by its terms and suddenly it is an embodiment of evil!
The day did end with both sides (mine and hers) not relinquishing their stands.
But there is still hope for the cat. I do believe that one day the cat will capture a place in her heart when she sees the cat in the manner i do. and why do i have this hope? because i believe that one good example can change one's mind. She isn't an unreasonable person. I said this aloud.
She believes such a thing (namely, a cat wooing her) is not possible but i reminded her that stranger things have happened. After all, a couple of months ago, the two of us were perfect strangers living half the world away from each other and in a couple more months or so, we would be husband and wife! if that is possible, so is anything!!
As John Cleese once said ('Fawlty Towers'), Long live the cat! Hurrah for the cat!!
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
An interesting blog I 'saw'......
" ' Well, this nice gentleman handed me this pad and requested that I write him something, anything. Why me?! and anything?! wow!
'What could i write about?! really?! '
'for starts, i feel good today, pretty good! .......'
'hmmm.....write something, write something nice....'
' Well, one of my friends, this Indian guy (i'll spell his last name for you - really long one: Balacahanadaran!) who i knew from my college days just dropped by to say hello and just gave me this book to read; It is a collection of Indian mythology tales...well, they have so many gods there, i guess you couldn't simply say "O Lord!", without creating a traffic jam of sorts in the heavens above!'
'incredible!'
'anyway, the first story goes that there was once a king called Hiranya who wished to be absolutely invincible. So through severe penance and meditation, he acquired a boon that he could not be killed during day or night, by a human being or animal, and neither inside a house or outside it.'
'that sounds pretty airtight, right? And yet as the story moves on, you get to see how there is manner of death that beats all these clauses, totally counter-intuitive!'
'boy, this is complicated....no wonder Indians are taking away all our jobs, they have been exposed to this kind of complicated stuff right from childhood....weird stuff......'
' i should write something about myself? hmmm....write something about myself?'
'I was born in Dayton, Ohio. I went to the Ohio State University during my under-graduation, landed myself a job, a couple of years ago. life is good, pretty, pretty good!'
'I was going to be an engineering major, majoring in mechanical engineering at one point but later i changed my major to Math. many tried to change my mind saying i was nuts to do that, but today i have the last laugh.'
'I remember having had an Indian TA in one of the quarters there for, let me see, Math 152, it was. I guess. Funny sort of chap, has always been a very big help to me. His last name? It went like Balahacadaran - i am not sure though if i've spelled it right though i could pronounce it correctly. its been a while since i met him now... he used to joke about his last name saying it was more or less, a maze to many people! but he then said that one way out of it was this: if in doubt about the next letter, throw in an 'a'!!'
' I later landed myself an actuarial job. Its pretty interesting...'
'What more should i say about myself? say about myself.....'
'say about myself? well, i'd rather write since you have the benefit of being able to assort your thoughts and not keep writing vacuous drivel. While in college, i knew an Indian guy - he was my TA, Mr. Balacadaharan. He used to chide some of us for writing long sentences without purpose... I've learned from him that it is important you write in precise terms because if you don't keep things terse and to the point, then most of the time people reading what you write won't know where you are heading after where you've started. that is silly.'
'well, i'm feeling good, pretty, pretty, pretty good.'
'huh, that isn't much; i'll collect my thoughts and write something concrete about myself, now...'
'Something concrete about myself?well, for starts, I'm feeling good, pretty pretty good!'
'well, i work for an insurance firm. the pay is good and just last year, i married this amazing woman, Cynthia. Life has been great all the while and i couldn't have a better life as such...well, there are some ups and downs....sometime back (can't recollect when exactly), i had this car accident. well, i'm covered in all sorts of ways, so no problem with the medical bills! the car was totaled though. Cynthia? well, god knows where she is right now, i wonder whats keeping her...'
'maybe i could write some more a while later, maybe after she gets here...'
'Cynthia? why would she come here to my office? doesn't she have work to do?'
'this is a hospital? why?! i feel pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good! i can't recall ever having been sick or anything, except this one time i had a car accident. did i ever mention that? i had this huge accident, hurt my head apparently. Cynthia, my wife was with me at the time. I can't recall as such, what happened after that...'
'anyways, whats this whole thing here? have I written all this?! i hardly think so!! this must be one of those April Fool jokes...that's it, shall do this writing, no more...'
'writing no more, just signing off here...'
Sammy Jankis "
" ' Well, this nice gentleman handed me this pad and requested that I write him something, anything. Why me?! and anything?! wow!
'What could i write about?! really?! '
'for starts, i feel good today, pretty good! .......'
'hmmm.....write something, write something nice....'
' Well, one of my friends, this Indian guy (i'll spell his last name for you - really long one: Balacahanadaran!) who i knew from my college days just dropped by to say hello and just gave me this book to read; It is a collection of Indian mythology tales...well, they have so many gods there, i guess you couldn't simply say "O Lord!", without creating a traffic jam of sorts in the heavens above!'
'incredible!'
'anyway, the first story goes that there was once a king called Hiranya who wished to be absolutely invincible. So through severe penance and meditation, he acquired a boon that he could not be killed during day or night, by a human being or animal, and neither inside a house or outside it.'
'that sounds pretty airtight, right? And yet as the story moves on, you get to see how there is manner of death that beats all these clauses, totally counter-intuitive!'
'boy, this is complicated....no wonder Indians are taking away all our jobs, they have been exposed to this kind of complicated stuff right from childhood....weird stuff......'
' i should write something about myself? hmmm....write something about myself?'
'I was born in Dayton, Ohio. I went to the Ohio State University during my under-graduation, landed myself a job, a couple of years ago. life is good, pretty, pretty good!'
'I was going to be an engineering major, majoring in mechanical engineering at one point but later i changed my major to Math. many tried to change my mind saying i was nuts to do that, but today i have the last laugh.'
'I remember having had an Indian TA in one of the quarters there for, let me see, Math 152, it was. I guess. Funny sort of chap, has always been a very big help to me. His last name? It went like Balahacadaran - i am not sure though if i've spelled it right though i could pronounce it correctly. its been a while since i met him now... he used to joke about his last name saying it was more or less, a maze to many people! but he then said that one way out of it was this: if in doubt about the next letter, throw in an 'a'!!'
' I later landed myself an actuarial job. Its pretty interesting...'
'What more should i say about myself? say about myself.....'
'say about myself? well, i'd rather write since you have the benefit of being able to assort your thoughts and not keep writing vacuous drivel. While in college, i knew an Indian guy - he was my TA, Mr. Balacadaharan. He used to chide some of us for writing long sentences without purpose... I've learned from him that it is important you write in precise terms because if you don't keep things terse and to the point, then most of the time people reading what you write won't know where you are heading after where you've started. that is silly.'
'well, i'm feeling good, pretty, pretty, pretty good.'
'huh, that isn't much; i'll collect my thoughts and write something concrete about myself, now...'
'Something concrete about myself?well, for starts, I'm feeling good, pretty pretty good!'
'well, i work for an insurance firm. the pay is good and just last year, i married this amazing woman, Cynthia. Life has been great all the while and i couldn't have a better life as such...well, there are some ups and downs....sometime back (can't recollect when exactly), i had this car accident. well, i'm covered in all sorts of ways, so no problem with the medical bills! the car was totaled though. Cynthia? well, god knows where she is right now, i wonder whats keeping her...'
'maybe i could write some more a while later, maybe after she gets here...'
'Cynthia? why would she come here to my office? doesn't she have work to do?'
'this is a hospital? why?! i feel pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good! i can't recall ever having been sick or anything, except this one time i had a car accident. did i ever mention that? i had this huge accident, hurt my head apparently. Cynthia, my wife was with me at the time. I can't recall as such, what happened after that...'
'anyways, whats this whole thing here? have I written all this?! i hardly think so!! this must be one of those April Fool jokes...that's it, shall do this writing, no more...'
'writing no more, just signing off here...'
Sammy Jankis "
Monday, March 26, 2007
..........
I really don't think a title was necessary there; yes, everyone is talking about it and i just wanted to add a little something that isn't on everyone's lips already.
India, as we all now know is out of the World cup - ousted before the 'real' cricketing action begins. To give India company is our good ol' neighbor, Pakistan. So, this is I guess as close as our two countries will get to really being brother-like!
I don' see any point in ranting here; of course i was livid on the day and it in fact, took in a couple more days for the fact to really sink in. Since then we have seen several reports and blogs by famous and unknown indians, dissecting, analyzing and apportioning blame. personally i see little point in adding to all the ranting. what is that going to achieve? apart from letting my fume out, it serves very little purpose. but i have been collating some thoughts on this and what i am about to unleash on the reader who has reached this blog willfully or by error, is simply a precis of that, if you will.
I will focus on 3 individuals here. I'll start off with the one who deserves the least blame for this debacle. Mr. Greg Chappell, ladies and gentlemen.
What sense does it even make, baying for his blood? it was in fact in very poor taste to ask him if he considered his security adequate, especially in the aftermath of Woolmer's murder. But it is easy to blame him, since the hard-nosed aussie hasn't exactly said things people like to hear.
To start off, when his 'experimentation' was in full swing and India went through a phase where it seemed like they could do no wrong, people grudgingly nodded assent to his methods. And then came India's tour of the Windies, where that period came to a rude halt and then suddenly everyone started talking about the experimentation being 'too much'. I cannot recall any instance where Chappell actually said, this is what i was aiming for. I think the closest statement to that that actually emanated from his lips was something to the effect that we are now on the track he envisioned, which was that the players must not be stuck into certain roles within the team. The more flexible the team's structure, the more resilient its character.
Finally there is only so much a coach can actually do. it makes no sense to say, he has to go now since he was being paid so much. what does that even mean?!
the next individual is one who needs to cap some of the blame even though i'd hate to put some on his head. Mr Sachin Tendulkar needs no introduction anyway.
in all the previous outings (World cup games) where India seemed to possess some tooth, most of that tooth was largely on account of this gentleman. Of course, he wasn't exactly a gentleman there; he more or less resembled an angry tiger in those games and we all know what happens when you get too close to angry tigers! The Indian team in 1996 was pretty ordinary in my opinion. But at that time, Sachin was in such magnificent touch that it mattered little. even in that infamous semifinal against Sri Lanka, no one realized that the pitch was so difficult to bat on while he was around. 2003 again saw him reprising that role to great effect. though the India-Pakistan game would have to be the defining game for Sachin's batsmanship in that world cup, to me it was the sheer manner in which he played most of the games. For instance, the one against New Zealand. though we had lost a couple of quick wickets, he had decided that Oram (or was it Twose?) was going to get whacked that day! And only a truly fantastic catch saw the back of him.
the past few games have seen the team 'think tank' allotting him the role of 'sheet anchor', 'team shephard', 'the guide' and other ridiculously nonsensical roles which is far from the way the man has played his game. while his body has certainly been weighing him down, i think the manner in which he has been playing (and please do not quote recent statistics on him now!) has brought him down to being very mortal on many occasions when just last world cup, he was that sachin again! he may know what is wrong and so on, but i think that indian cricket now has to look for serious replacements for sachin. and by that i don't mean that he be sacked from either the ODI team or the test team. It's just that if he falls cheap, we are still almost like lost sheep. and till we find a suitable replacement where Sachin can go and play the way he has played his game for most of his cricketing life, this role allotment nonsense is no solution at all.
the third and final individual is John Q Doe, you average Joe, the next door neighbor, your common indian individual.
what has he to do with this world cup debacle? in my opinion, his contribution (among these three) has been the worst.
o.k. suppose we sack these 11 (or 30, whatever) and usher in an era of 'youth, energy' and whatnot. will that settle the problem?
certainly not. because all this has already been done.
When the betting scandals rocked the cricketing community in India, many Indians suddenly were disillusioned with cricket as such. and then came that India-Australia series with Laxman's piece de resistance. and suddenly cricket became popular again.
Episode 2: India losing a series of finals and several games to lower rated teams. come Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell, exit Ganguly. the next period was almost a honeymoon era in Indian cricket. we had a record sequence of wins chasing and suddenly, the youth brigade had appeared.
then why are we back to square one?
i think that John Doe has been instrumental in the amount of money, attention adulation and everything else that you now generally associate with cricket. All the endorsements come these cricketers' ways because JD will buy it happily. if we are the kind of people who can elevate someone to a pedestal on day one and then bury them deep the next, the players would have to be raving schizophrenics to deal with this on an everyday basis.
yes, their heads are addled quickly, but why?! that is a natural consequence of all this attention that comes their way and that will continue with any new players too. people fell for Dhoni's looks and batting and unfortunately, the loss to Bangladesh saw in its aftermath, his personal property being vandalized by nutjobs who have no bloody right to do anything and who are incapable of anything else.
so, these players might cap all the flak and everything else and maybe the new team India will see a lot of new faces. But take it from me: this situation is bound to reoccur unless we as Indians let the players do their job and not elevate them to the status we have given them.
the real culprits here are in my opinion, the BCCI. these stinkers run the show, are money-grabbing scum who care little about the game, worse, know even less. they encourage all the endorsement crap since it brings them all the more revenue. A cricketing board whose market share is nearly 33% of the world's cricketing revenue has no excuse whatsoever in not being able to provide the right practice conditions. make better pitches, not the feather-beds on which our batsmen roar, but cower in pusillanimity when confronted with bouncy wickets. let them survey all the cricketing countries and make a sample pitch in India which resembles the kind of pitch you might encounter in each of these countries. this has to of course, be periodically revised, but yah, the BCCI has deep coffers too!
these scoundrels who run the game will do nothing of that sort and all they are actually capable of is passing the buck and labeling someone scapegoat. if the average Indian fan has to be livid with someone, it really ought to be the BCCI. but who raises these questions?
and a final word about the players' attitude. This again is something that goes towards all Indians. We seem to, by and large, harbor the notion that hard work is something 'anyone can do', and that it is talent that is really the key to anything. it is my feeling that this mental attitude is largely present in most Indians and that is due to faulty reasoning and high prejudice.
even most kids in school will tell you with a glint in their eyes that the only points they lost were on account of 'silly mistakes'. the teachers feel that that is a totally rectifiable situation and the students here feel that since they had the answer almost right, they possess the inner ability or talent and are happy. and the 'silly mistakes' remain till at one point these people become only that: silly and asinine.
the virtues of working hard are never stressed anywhere, and this has nothing to do with sport in particular. We have always been the elegant batsmen, the stylish classy players who don't need to earn our runs, the safe pairs of hands who don't think it necessary to dive to prove high levels of fielding and all that load of crap. who in his right mind would make a statement about 'strategically fielding certain players in certain positions so as to mask some inabilities some players might have'?!
it is the same thing that happened with Indian hockey. we were all about elegant stick play that we never adapted to astro turf. and now, while teams like Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Korea find the new surface to their liking and their way of playing, which is basically running their opponents hard, we come back with weeping players after a dismal performance in the world cups, the Olympics, the champions trophies and what not. i personally think that it is something right in our attitude and till that mentality changes, we will continually attempt to square the circle without realizing that it is impossible.
I really don't think a title was necessary there; yes, everyone is talking about it and i just wanted to add a little something that isn't on everyone's lips already.
India, as we all now know is out of the World cup - ousted before the 'real' cricketing action begins. To give India company is our good ol' neighbor, Pakistan. So, this is I guess as close as our two countries will get to really being brother-like!
I don' see any point in ranting here; of course i was livid on the day and it in fact, took in a couple more days for the fact to really sink in. Since then we have seen several reports and blogs by famous and unknown indians, dissecting, analyzing and apportioning blame. personally i see little point in adding to all the ranting. what is that going to achieve? apart from letting my fume out, it serves very little purpose. but i have been collating some thoughts on this and what i am about to unleash on the reader who has reached this blog willfully or by error, is simply a precis of that, if you will.
I will focus on 3 individuals here. I'll start off with the one who deserves the least blame for this debacle. Mr. Greg Chappell, ladies and gentlemen.
What sense does it even make, baying for his blood? it was in fact in very poor taste to ask him if he considered his security adequate, especially in the aftermath of Woolmer's murder. But it is easy to blame him, since the hard-nosed aussie hasn't exactly said things people like to hear.
To start off, when his 'experimentation' was in full swing and India went through a phase where it seemed like they could do no wrong, people grudgingly nodded assent to his methods. And then came India's tour of the Windies, where that period came to a rude halt and then suddenly everyone started talking about the experimentation being 'too much'. I cannot recall any instance where Chappell actually said, this is what i was aiming for. I think the closest statement to that that actually emanated from his lips was something to the effect that we are now on the track he envisioned, which was that the players must not be stuck into certain roles within the team. The more flexible the team's structure, the more resilient its character.
Finally there is only so much a coach can actually do. it makes no sense to say, he has to go now since he was being paid so much. what does that even mean?!
the next individual is one who needs to cap some of the blame even though i'd hate to put some on his head. Mr Sachin Tendulkar needs no introduction anyway.
in all the previous outings (World cup games) where India seemed to possess some tooth, most of that tooth was largely on account of this gentleman. Of course, he wasn't exactly a gentleman there; he more or less resembled an angry tiger in those games and we all know what happens when you get too close to angry tigers! The Indian team in 1996 was pretty ordinary in my opinion. But at that time, Sachin was in such magnificent touch that it mattered little. even in that infamous semifinal against Sri Lanka, no one realized that the pitch was so difficult to bat on while he was around. 2003 again saw him reprising that role to great effect. though the India-Pakistan game would have to be the defining game for Sachin's batsmanship in that world cup, to me it was the sheer manner in which he played most of the games. For instance, the one against New Zealand. though we had lost a couple of quick wickets, he had decided that Oram (or was it Twose?) was going to get whacked that day! And only a truly fantastic catch saw the back of him.
the past few games have seen the team 'think tank' allotting him the role of 'sheet anchor', 'team shephard', 'the guide' and other ridiculously nonsensical roles which is far from the way the man has played his game. while his body has certainly been weighing him down, i think the manner in which he has been playing (and please do not quote recent statistics on him now!) has brought him down to being very mortal on many occasions when just last world cup, he was that sachin again! he may know what is wrong and so on, but i think that indian cricket now has to look for serious replacements for sachin. and by that i don't mean that he be sacked from either the ODI team or the test team. It's just that if he falls cheap, we are still almost like lost sheep. and till we find a suitable replacement where Sachin can go and play the way he has played his game for most of his cricketing life, this role allotment nonsense is no solution at all.
the third and final individual is John Q Doe, you average Joe, the next door neighbor, your common indian individual.
what has he to do with this world cup debacle? in my opinion, his contribution (among these three) has been the worst.
o.k. suppose we sack these 11 (or 30, whatever) and usher in an era of 'youth, energy' and whatnot. will that settle the problem?
certainly not. because all this has already been done.
When the betting scandals rocked the cricketing community in India, many Indians suddenly were disillusioned with cricket as such. and then came that India-Australia series with Laxman's piece de resistance. and suddenly cricket became popular again.
Episode 2: India losing a series of finals and several games to lower rated teams. come Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell, exit Ganguly. the next period was almost a honeymoon era in Indian cricket. we had a record sequence of wins chasing and suddenly, the youth brigade had appeared.
then why are we back to square one?
i think that John Doe has been instrumental in the amount of money, attention adulation and everything else that you now generally associate with cricket. All the endorsements come these cricketers' ways because JD will buy it happily. if we are the kind of people who can elevate someone to a pedestal on day one and then bury them deep the next, the players would have to be raving schizophrenics to deal with this on an everyday basis.
yes, their heads are addled quickly, but why?! that is a natural consequence of all this attention that comes their way and that will continue with any new players too. people fell for Dhoni's looks and batting and unfortunately, the loss to Bangladesh saw in its aftermath, his personal property being vandalized by nutjobs who have no bloody right to do anything and who are incapable of anything else.
so, these players might cap all the flak and everything else and maybe the new team India will see a lot of new faces. But take it from me: this situation is bound to reoccur unless we as Indians let the players do their job and not elevate them to the status we have given them.
the real culprits here are in my opinion, the BCCI. these stinkers run the show, are money-grabbing scum who care little about the game, worse, know even less. they encourage all the endorsement crap since it brings them all the more revenue. A cricketing board whose market share is nearly 33% of the world's cricketing revenue has no excuse whatsoever in not being able to provide the right practice conditions. make better pitches, not the feather-beds on which our batsmen roar, but cower in pusillanimity when confronted with bouncy wickets. let them survey all the cricketing countries and make a sample pitch in India which resembles the kind of pitch you might encounter in each of these countries. this has to of course, be periodically revised, but yah, the BCCI has deep coffers too!
these scoundrels who run the game will do nothing of that sort and all they are actually capable of is passing the buck and labeling someone scapegoat. if the average Indian fan has to be livid with someone, it really ought to be the BCCI. but who raises these questions?
and a final word about the players' attitude. This again is something that goes towards all Indians. We seem to, by and large, harbor the notion that hard work is something 'anyone can do', and that it is talent that is really the key to anything. it is my feeling that this mental attitude is largely present in most Indians and that is due to faulty reasoning and high prejudice.
even most kids in school will tell you with a glint in their eyes that the only points they lost were on account of 'silly mistakes'. the teachers feel that that is a totally rectifiable situation and the students here feel that since they had the answer almost right, they possess the inner ability or talent and are happy. and the 'silly mistakes' remain till at one point these people become only that: silly and asinine.
the virtues of working hard are never stressed anywhere, and this has nothing to do with sport in particular. We have always been the elegant batsmen, the stylish classy players who don't need to earn our runs, the safe pairs of hands who don't think it necessary to dive to prove high levels of fielding and all that load of crap. who in his right mind would make a statement about 'strategically fielding certain players in certain positions so as to mask some inabilities some players might have'?!
it is the same thing that happened with Indian hockey. we were all about elegant stick play that we never adapted to astro turf. and now, while teams like Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Korea find the new surface to their liking and their way of playing, which is basically running their opponents hard, we come back with weeping players after a dismal performance in the world cups, the Olympics, the champions trophies and what not. i personally think that it is something right in our attitude and till that mentality changes, we will continually attempt to square the circle without realizing that it is impossible.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
A cricket related post now.
The World cup has just started and cricket is of course on all cricket lovers' minds. but what i am going to write about here is something which is more of an 'off the field' matter.
Gavaskar recently went on an admonishing spree saying in print and possibly even on the tele that the Australians need to change the way they behave on the field. Ricky Ponting responded in acerbic fashion drawing to attention Gavaskar's own record for throwing tantrums and so on, as if saying, 'look who's talking!' and also made a reference about all knowing 'how India plays the game now'. I guess he was talking about India's abysmal playing record and of course, Australia have been doing so well for nearly 7 years now that, that point can get no retort.
Sunny responded as is his wont, this time talking about how the late David Hookes got into a brawl outside a bar in Melbourne which led to fistfights and how he succumbed to the injuries that ensued the brawl.
At this point, most Aussies were livid and starting talking about how Gavaskar was totally off his limits here and how his remarks, especially about the late 'Hooksy' were totally inappropriate if not in outright poor taste. That is the current scenario. One can find all the relevant stuff and who-said-what-to-whom from cricinfo.
Now, personally i think Sunny is a person who speaks what is on his mind, without sometimes
thinking to see if it is entirely relevant or not. The Aussie behavior (at least that is the impression i get in general) is a lot better now under Ponting's captaincy than it was under Waugh's. I certainly think that talking about an ex-player's death from some rowdy incident outside a pub,which automatically means most people there are speaking in an inebriated fashion, is to suggest that he sort of deserved what he got and that is outright offensive. Another point about Sunny is that he is a biased individual in general; for instance, Sachin Tendulkar can do no wrong! There might be a very nice shot being played by some player and if Sachin fields the ball, Sunny would get to talking about how accurate his throwing from the deep is, or how committed he is as a player and so on, it gets rather annoying after a while. Gavaskar also sends forth this strong pro-marathi feel. i've heard him criticize bowlers like Srinath several times for rubbish bowling while not really doing the same with Ajit Agarkar, who is inconsistency personified! So this was indeed an instance of Gavaskar putting both his feet into his mouth as far as the Hookes incident reference goes.
But when i see what the aussie media and some of their players have said in response, i think i see what Sunny is actually alluding to.
For starters, let us see what Ponting said in response. He could have attacked Sunny and that would have been tit for tat. but no, he had to say, 'we all know how india play their game' deriding India's track record. so, what he really is doing there is lashing out at the current indian team without provocation. Why?! i guess his intent was to somehow say something hurtful, thats all.
Allan Border followed it up by saying that Gavaskar missed an important point; that it is very much a cultural thing. and that something that people, say in the subcontinent, might find unsavory might not be the case with the Aussies in general. And Darren Lehmann followed it up with, "I came into the international arena a few years after he (Gavaskar) had retired. He was a player I admired. Not any more."
now, Border has a valid talking point but i think he TOTALLY missed what Sunny was talking about in principle. well, he is not entirely to blame there since what Gavaskar did refer to, was said in a very attacking manner to begin with. and as i said, his bias against the aussies has been fairly noticed for quite some time now.
Firstly, the potty mouthed players largely come from three countries - Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. the aussie influence on each of these countries is very large (New Zealand is like Australia's backyard and when SA were banned from the cricketing arena, many of their players migrated to australia and so on and in fact, SA - Australia have played several bilateral series for a long time now). so i think that when Gavaskar talks in particular about blaming it on the Australians, he is kind of justified there. furthermore, if players from other countries have started verbal volleys and stuff, the influence is distinctly australian, so if Sunny is talking of the influence on younger players as such, i think he is spot on.
talking about cultural differences, if 6 of the 9 test-playing nations think some kind of language or behavior is offensive, then it ought to be considered officially offensive! in the initial days, these 3 countries carried more financial and political clout, but that is not the case anymore. and if the people with the money and power feel that such behavior isn't keeping with the image of the game as such, then culture be damned, keep your traps shut!
to drive home this point finer, let me cite two examples. when the McGrath-Sarwan incident got ugly, Pidgy was of course hurt since Sarwan made a nasty reference to Pidgy's wife who was at that time battling breast cancer. of course, an extremely stupid thing to do but then Sarwan later apologized saying that he said all that in the heat of the moment and i guess it was an instance of alls-well-that-ends-well. But here's an important question: Was McGrath hurt because of his wife's condition or was he hurt because Sarwan said something about his wife?
now if it is the case of the latter, then him being hurt is plain hypocrisy considering the kind of nonsense he lets off his own mouth. i personally don't think that is the case; it seems very much to be the former.
But there's the point: you think talking something like that about a sick person is out of line, right? so you do believe that there is something called crossing the line. why should that point of 'losing it' necessarily be connected to someone being sick or ill or whatever? why didn't McGrath (and the aussies in general) think that whatever he did say (probably to taunt the batsman or disturb him or whatever) could have hurt his feelings as much as what Sarwan said hurt himself? Why can't the Aussies understand that other cultures don't tolerate the same kind of bantering which is probably common in Australia?
here's my second instance: When Steve Waugh and several others called Sourav Ganguly snooty and stuff because Sourav made him wait at the toss, he became a sort of hero in India. he became the man who stood up to the Aussies and delivered an appropriate punch on their faces. yes, what he did was unethical, but not against any cricketing laws, i guess. Likewise there might be no laws that say you can't start bantering and bandying words on the field but when foul language is involved, it simply becomes distasteful.
Even a normally reticent Sachin Tendulkar had a go at McGrath. This doesn't happen even in India-Pakistan encounters (except the More-Miandad incident) which are generally so highly electrified situations, all that is needed is a little excuse to start a major showdown.
I guess what I'm saying is that while i love the aussie attitude, the way they play the game, and most of their cricketers, i think they are bad losers and that is exactly where all this stems from. If i were to say that this is indeed what is to expected of people coming from generations of dangerous british convicts, thieves and rapists, then i'm sure all the aussies would be mad at me, as they ought to. I personally don't know any australians and some of my friends who do, indeed assure me that they are a very friendly lot who just don't necessarily come off as being respectful of tradition or orthodoxy. This whole incident of gavaskar talking crap could have simply been an instance of him starting these verbal bouts in order to unsettle the Aussies and it certainly looks like he has been successful on that count. While the aussies do this all the time before each series, why didn't they simply treat it as merely one such taunt and get along with their game?! it is because Sunny said something that hurt them as much as it does every time to their opponents when they start letting their big mouths off.
it is here that i think Gavaskar has the correct larger perspective. And while i don't generally agree with his comments, i think he is spot on regarding the larger question of using unparliamentary language in public display.
finally, as regards Lehmann's comment about Sunny, all i'd say in sweet Australian is, mate, who gives a f*** what you think?!
The World cup has just started and cricket is of course on all cricket lovers' minds. but what i am going to write about here is something which is more of an 'off the field' matter.
Gavaskar recently went on an admonishing spree saying in print and possibly even on the tele that the Australians need to change the way they behave on the field. Ricky Ponting responded in acerbic fashion drawing to attention Gavaskar's own record for throwing tantrums and so on, as if saying, 'look who's talking!' and also made a reference about all knowing 'how India plays the game now'. I guess he was talking about India's abysmal playing record and of course, Australia have been doing so well for nearly 7 years now that, that point can get no retort.
Sunny responded as is his wont, this time talking about how the late David Hookes got into a brawl outside a bar in Melbourne which led to fistfights and how he succumbed to the injuries that ensued the brawl.
At this point, most Aussies were livid and starting talking about how Gavaskar was totally off his limits here and how his remarks, especially about the late 'Hooksy' were totally inappropriate if not in outright poor taste. That is the current scenario. One can find all the relevant stuff and who-said-what-to-whom from cricinfo.
Now, personally i think Sunny is a person who speaks what is on his mind, without sometimes
thinking to see if it is entirely relevant or not. The Aussie behavior (at least that is the impression i get in general) is a lot better now under Ponting's captaincy than it was under Waugh's. I certainly think that talking about an ex-player's death from some rowdy incident outside a pub,which automatically means most people there are speaking in an inebriated fashion, is to suggest that he sort of deserved what he got and that is outright offensive. Another point about Sunny is that he is a biased individual in general; for instance, Sachin Tendulkar can do no wrong! There might be a very nice shot being played by some player and if Sachin fields the ball, Sunny would get to talking about how accurate his throwing from the deep is, or how committed he is as a player and so on, it gets rather annoying after a while. Gavaskar also sends forth this strong pro-marathi feel. i've heard him criticize bowlers like Srinath several times for rubbish bowling while not really doing the same with Ajit Agarkar, who is inconsistency personified! So this was indeed an instance of Gavaskar putting both his feet into his mouth as far as the Hookes incident reference goes.
But when i see what the aussie media and some of their players have said in response, i think i see what Sunny is actually alluding to.
For starters, let us see what Ponting said in response. He could have attacked Sunny and that would have been tit for tat. but no, he had to say, 'we all know how india play their game' deriding India's track record. so, what he really is doing there is lashing out at the current indian team without provocation. Why?! i guess his intent was to somehow say something hurtful, thats all.
Allan Border followed it up by saying that Gavaskar missed an important point; that it is very much a cultural thing. and that something that people, say in the subcontinent, might find unsavory might not be the case with the Aussies in general. And Darren Lehmann followed it up with, "I came into the international arena a few years after he (Gavaskar) had retired. He was a player I admired. Not any more."
now, Border has a valid talking point but i think he TOTALLY missed what Sunny was talking about in principle. well, he is not entirely to blame there since what Gavaskar did refer to, was said in a very attacking manner to begin with. and as i said, his bias against the aussies has been fairly noticed for quite some time now.
Firstly, the potty mouthed players largely come from three countries - Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. the aussie influence on each of these countries is very large (New Zealand is like Australia's backyard and when SA were banned from the cricketing arena, many of their players migrated to australia and so on and in fact, SA - Australia have played several bilateral series for a long time now). so i think that when Gavaskar talks in particular about blaming it on the Australians, he is kind of justified there. furthermore, if players from other countries have started verbal volleys and stuff, the influence is distinctly australian, so if Sunny is talking of the influence on younger players as such, i think he is spot on.
talking about cultural differences, if 6 of the 9 test-playing nations think some kind of language or behavior is offensive, then it ought to be considered officially offensive! in the initial days, these 3 countries carried more financial and political clout, but that is not the case anymore. and if the people with the money and power feel that such behavior isn't keeping with the image of the game as such, then culture be damned, keep your traps shut!
to drive home this point finer, let me cite two examples. when the McGrath-Sarwan incident got ugly, Pidgy was of course hurt since Sarwan made a nasty reference to Pidgy's wife who was at that time battling breast cancer. of course, an extremely stupid thing to do but then Sarwan later apologized saying that he said all that in the heat of the moment and i guess it was an instance of alls-well-that-ends-well. But here's an important question: Was McGrath hurt because of his wife's condition or was he hurt because Sarwan said something about his wife?
now if it is the case of the latter, then him being hurt is plain hypocrisy considering the kind of nonsense he lets off his own mouth. i personally don't think that is the case; it seems very much to be the former.
But there's the point: you think talking something like that about a sick person is out of line, right? so you do believe that there is something called crossing the line. why should that point of 'losing it' necessarily be connected to someone being sick or ill or whatever? why didn't McGrath (and the aussies in general) think that whatever he did say (probably to taunt the batsman or disturb him or whatever) could have hurt his feelings as much as what Sarwan said hurt himself? Why can't the Aussies understand that other cultures don't tolerate the same kind of bantering which is probably common in Australia?
here's my second instance: When Steve Waugh and several others called Sourav Ganguly snooty and stuff because Sourav made him wait at the toss, he became a sort of hero in India. he became the man who stood up to the Aussies and delivered an appropriate punch on their faces. yes, what he did was unethical, but not against any cricketing laws, i guess. Likewise there might be no laws that say you can't start bantering and bandying words on the field but when foul language is involved, it simply becomes distasteful.
Even a normally reticent Sachin Tendulkar had a go at McGrath. This doesn't happen even in India-Pakistan encounters (except the More-Miandad incident) which are generally so highly electrified situations, all that is needed is a little excuse to start a major showdown.
I guess what I'm saying is that while i love the aussie attitude, the way they play the game, and most of their cricketers, i think they are bad losers and that is exactly where all this stems from. If i were to say that this is indeed what is to expected of people coming from generations of dangerous british convicts, thieves and rapists, then i'm sure all the aussies would be mad at me, as they ought to. I personally don't know any australians and some of my friends who do, indeed assure me that they are a very friendly lot who just don't necessarily come off as being respectful of tradition or orthodoxy. This whole incident of gavaskar talking crap could have simply been an instance of him starting these verbal bouts in order to unsettle the Aussies and it certainly looks like he has been successful on that count. While the aussies do this all the time before each series, why didn't they simply treat it as merely one such taunt and get along with their game?! it is because Sunny said something that hurt them as much as it does every time to their opponents when they start letting their big mouths off.
it is here that i think Gavaskar has the correct larger perspective. And while i don't generally agree with his comments, i think he is spot on regarding the larger question of using unparliamentary language in public display.
finally, as regards Lehmann's comment about Sunny, all i'd say in sweet Australian is, mate, who gives a f*** what you think?!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The unexpected pleasure that is teaching
I have now been a teacher/tutor for nearly 6 years. Well, if i count all the years when i have helped my classmates or my sisters with some of their difficulties in math, it would probably go a little longer than that. And during all these years, i have certainly experienced very different kinds of emotions.
By and large, i now regard teaching as something that earns me my bread. I remember how i would come back after teaching feeling exhausted and also a little dejected because in the very first quarter of teaching when i did so from 2:30-4:30 in the afternoon, i had noticed a lot of students simply not interested in what was going on. The cultural difference accounted largely for the difference between a classroom environment in India and one here in the US. and oftentimes i would come out with a feeling," why in heaven's name am i sweating it out for these dumb-heads anyways?! I have better things i could be doing!"
Soon, a sort of phlegmatic attitude arose since the dejection of teaching began to affect my overall mood. I then viewed the act of teaching as something i needed to do to get my income and that it was going to be something i did for that period of 48 minutes, thats all!
but such an attitude usually takes out any energy or enthusiasm you might have for teaching. so all i did was this: i always imagined that i was an interested student sitting in the audience and so all i wanted to do was teach that version of me !
teaching as such is an art; there is no denying it. and my mom has always been a very energetic and passionate teacher. my mom also tells me that my dad loves to teach too, so i guess it is there to some extent in my genes too. so if i have the enthusiasm to teach, i guess i could be a reasonably good teacher. usually you don't get anything out of it except that you wish to see the student evaluation forms showing you in slightly good light. that is the only thing you get to take back with you.
But there have been a few occasions when some there is evidence that you have somehow touched some students' lives and when that comes to your notice, it somehow makes up for all the displeasure associated with the profession.
I have had 5 such instances. i'll describe them in chronological order.
The first time was while i was waiting at the airport and this girl came up to me asking me if i would mind filling out a questionnaire for god-knows-what. since i had nothing better to do and the girl seemed a pretty attractive looking one, i okay-ed. after the questionnaire was complete, she thanked me again for taking out some time from my "busy schedule" (god, how little they know me!) and helping out with the form. All part of the usual, but then she thanked me further for all the help i had given her in the tutor room. apparently, she was a regular student in the tutor room and that i had on several occasions helped her complete her homework or whatever! i just didn't even remember her face! i had no idea, she'd be thankful for it at all!
the second instance came literally on the street. i was out to the grocery store and one guy called me by name. i, naturally surprised, turned to see this bearded chap standing and giving me a friendly smile. i greeted him and then he introduced himself as a former student of mine, now working somewhere in Columbus. i unfortunately didn't place him properly, told him that and apologized for the same. he told me that in all his years of college life at Ohio State, the TA hours for Math 151 with me were his most enjoyable ones and that he had always hoped to get me as a TA for another course, which didn't happen anyway.
the third case is probably the most long-lasting one. this was a student of mine who was also the best student in the class and seemed reasonably smart. He later came to my office in a subsequent quarter and asked me if i could help him out on some problem in a different course. soon he came to me with lot more questions and then the questions changed from particular problems to general math and then general stuff, philosophy, music, politics and so on; he is still a pretty good friend of mine. and he changed his major from engineering to math and is now looking to a masters degree in applied stat.
the fourth instance was brought to my attention through this guy. he once asked me suddenly if i remembered a particular name and a student by that name. of course, i couldn't. it turns out that my former student and friend met this guy in some orientation program somewhere in the university and that this guy too was a math major student applying for a masters program elsewhere. everyone there was apparently asked if they had any particular role model or someone who motivated them in any specific way. both these guys had mentioned my name and named me as a reason for changing their majors to math!
and the last instance came in the form of a thank you e-mail today. this guy says that he intends to be a professor one day and that he considers me as a major role model in that direction.
It might appear to be an instance of me blowing my own trumpet on my supposedly superior teaching abilities though that is not at all what i wish to emphasize upon. all these instances have only made me feel incredibly elated that i have in some way or other managed to touch some of my students in some way. maybe i might not be an academic at all. but the joy that these little bits of revelation bring about is something that cannot be conveyed in words. They have also made me feel a little more humble and respectful of the truly great teachers of all time, and the indeed noble profession that is teaching.
I have now been a teacher/tutor for nearly 6 years. Well, if i count all the years when i have helped my classmates or my sisters with some of their difficulties in math, it would probably go a little longer than that. And during all these years, i have certainly experienced very different kinds of emotions.
By and large, i now regard teaching as something that earns me my bread. I remember how i would come back after teaching feeling exhausted and also a little dejected because in the very first quarter of teaching when i did so from 2:30-4:30 in the afternoon, i had noticed a lot of students simply not interested in what was going on. The cultural difference accounted largely for the difference between a classroom environment in India and one here in the US. and oftentimes i would come out with a feeling," why in heaven's name am i sweating it out for these dumb-heads anyways?! I have better things i could be doing!"
Soon, a sort of phlegmatic attitude arose since the dejection of teaching began to affect my overall mood. I then viewed the act of teaching as something i needed to do to get my income and that it was going to be something i did for that period of 48 minutes, thats all!
but such an attitude usually takes out any energy or enthusiasm you might have for teaching. so all i did was this: i always imagined that i was an interested student sitting in the audience and so all i wanted to do was teach that version of me !
teaching as such is an art; there is no denying it. and my mom has always been a very energetic and passionate teacher. my mom also tells me that my dad loves to teach too, so i guess it is there to some extent in my genes too. so if i have the enthusiasm to teach, i guess i could be a reasonably good teacher. usually you don't get anything out of it except that you wish to see the student evaluation forms showing you in slightly good light. that is the only thing you get to take back with you.
But there have been a few occasions when some there is evidence that you have somehow touched some students' lives and when that comes to your notice, it somehow makes up for all the displeasure associated with the profession.
I have had 5 such instances. i'll describe them in chronological order.
The first time was while i was waiting at the airport and this girl came up to me asking me if i would mind filling out a questionnaire for god-knows-what. since i had nothing better to do and the girl seemed a pretty attractive looking one, i okay-ed. after the questionnaire was complete, she thanked me again for taking out some time from my "busy schedule" (god, how little they know me!) and helping out with the form. All part of the usual, but then she thanked me further for all the help i had given her in the tutor room. apparently, she was a regular student in the tutor room and that i had on several occasions helped her complete her homework or whatever! i just didn't even remember her face! i had no idea, she'd be thankful for it at all!
the second instance came literally on the street. i was out to the grocery store and one guy called me by name. i, naturally surprised, turned to see this bearded chap standing and giving me a friendly smile. i greeted him and then he introduced himself as a former student of mine, now working somewhere in Columbus. i unfortunately didn't place him properly, told him that and apologized for the same. he told me that in all his years of college life at Ohio State, the TA hours for Math 151 with me were his most enjoyable ones and that he had always hoped to get me as a TA for another course, which didn't happen anyway.
the third case is probably the most long-lasting one. this was a student of mine who was also the best student in the class and seemed reasonably smart. He later came to my office in a subsequent quarter and asked me if i could help him out on some problem in a different course. soon he came to me with lot more questions and then the questions changed from particular problems to general math and then general stuff, philosophy, music, politics and so on; he is still a pretty good friend of mine. and he changed his major from engineering to math and is now looking to a masters degree in applied stat.
the fourth instance was brought to my attention through this guy. he once asked me suddenly if i remembered a particular name and a student by that name. of course, i couldn't. it turns out that my former student and friend met this guy in some orientation program somewhere in the university and that this guy too was a math major student applying for a masters program elsewhere. everyone there was apparently asked if they had any particular role model or someone who motivated them in any specific way. both these guys had mentioned my name and named me as a reason for changing their majors to math!
and the last instance came in the form of a thank you e-mail today. this guy says that he intends to be a professor one day and that he considers me as a major role model in that direction.
It might appear to be an instance of me blowing my own trumpet on my supposedly superior teaching abilities though that is not at all what i wish to emphasize upon. all these instances have only made me feel incredibly elated that i have in some way or other managed to touch some of my students in some way. maybe i might not be an academic at all. but the joy that these little bits of revelation bring about is something that cannot be conveyed in words. They have also made me feel a little more humble and respectful of the truly great teachers of all time, and the indeed noble profession that is teaching.
Friday, March 02, 2007
"Weapons of Mass Deception" (WMDs)
Well, that interesting title isn't originally mine; it is the title of a documentary movie i saw tonight, or rather, yesterday night, made by Danny Schechter, "The News dissector". Basically the movie takes a critical viewpoint of the media's role in general (print, television, film or any other) in not making any serious attempts to dispel the myths about the Iraq war, and in fact acting as a device by the government to propagate a false story, one that has caused people to overlook the actual cause(s) for the US going to war in Iraq. A pretty good movie in my opinion and is definitely worth a watch. probably not as attractively packaged as a Michael Moore film, but nonetheless very good content.
There is also this terrific documentary called "The Corporation" which takes a critical look into the nature of a corporation and how such a legal entity possesses almost all the typical features of a psychopath! these two documentaries made for an interesting round of discussion with my friend as we leisured over dinner.
What i am alluring to specifically is a parallel strain of thought that i had sometime back about the corporate world as such. basically it appears to me that all corporations are there in the market to make profits, to make money. and that is the only real motive.
Now, what are you selling in the deal?
it depends; after all, even the entertainment industry is an industry now, right? that is, it has all the internal workings of a typical industry. what it produces eventually is something that aims to entertain people, thats all.
but if we look at the real money earners, the ones that are really scooping it all up, then it looks like what they aim to sell is something far more fundamental in nature.
One might probably learn in any economics course (personally, I've never had any formal economics course - it just lasted one class and i was out of there!) that the most profitable sale is of something that is most in demand, something that people really want. It also makes sense if what you sell is something that can't go out of demand, so that you have a market that is there to stay.
to look at what people really want, we have to look at what is really necessary but of which there is always a shortage of. there is rampant ignorance, (even among the rich) hence there is a need to educate; people need good medical care, most people need life insurance to help them in case something bad turns up, this list goes thus.
But then it also has to be something that people with money would want ; obviously, there is abundant hunger and poverty in the world but then you can't make any sale on that avenue!
if we look at the major players addressing some fundamental needs, it seems to me that there is a very clever ploy underplay here, because none of these corporations are really helping anyone out there, are they?! I mean, it appears like one would want to help people get what they want, and so the people pay you for your help, .......no!!
most of these companies seem to play on one simple trick: if there is something that people really need, then there is an associated sense of vulnerability that people experience therewith.
that sense of vulnerability, that measure of insecurity is the path towards the inner linings of their wallets and that is the terminal stop!
let me take the example of education. if you wish to educate people with the hope of alleviating ignorance off the world, then noble as the deed and intention might be, there is no Goddess Lakshmi anywhere there, despite all the blessings of Saraswati.. if you wish to make money through the field of education, look at, for instance, ETS.
Since their tests have now becomes standardized in America for admissions into any college here, one needs to give the appropriate exams, pay fees, prepare for these exams and so on. And since ETS is the only one that is the most appropriate source to seek any of those, all that money goes into their coffers, even though the exams they make you write have nothing to do with your years of education, or lack, thereof.
consider another example: to drive around in America, it is federal law to possess insurance on the vehicle. Why? In order to help the common man? of course, not! it is solely to help out all these insurance companies! I don't think any insurance company believes that it exists to ease people's sense of insecurity - rather, their motto is: if this is something that makes people insecure, then there is money to be made here!
so, i conclude with the following idea: if you can think of something that people really need (that is necessary in order to project a 'noble cause' front) but which in reality is something people need because its lack makes them feel insecure, inadequate or paranoid (thats the best option!), then let me know quickly; there's a lot of money to be made there!
Well, that interesting title isn't originally mine; it is the title of a documentary movie i saw tonight, or rather, yesterday night, made by Danny Schechter, "The News dissector". Basically the movie takes a critical viewpoint of the media's role in general (print, television, film or any other) in not making any serious attempts to dispel the myths about the Iraq war, and in fact acting as a device by the government to propagate a false story, one that has caused people to overlook the actual cause(s) for the US going to war in Iraq. A pretty good movie in my opinion and is definitely worth a watch. probably not as attractively packaged as a Michael Moore film, but nonetheless very good content.
There is also this terrific documentary called "The Corporation" which takes a critical look into the nature of a corporation and how such a legal entity possesses almost all the typical features of a psychopath! these two documentaries made for an interesting round of discussion with my friend as we leisured over dinner.
What i am alluring to specifically is a parallel strain of thought that i had sometime back about the corporate world as such. basically it appears to me that all corporations are there in the market to make profits, to make money. and that is the only real motive.
Now, what are you selling in the deal?
it depends; after all, even the entertainment industry is an industry now, right? that is, it has all the internal workings of a typical industry. what it produces eventually is something that aims to entertain people, thats all.
but if we look at the real money earners, the ones that are really scooping it all up, then it looks like what they aim to sell is something far more fundamental in nature.
One might probably learn in any economics course (personally, I've never had any formal economics course - it just lasted one class and i was out of there!) that the most profitable sale is of something that is most in demand, something that people really want. It also makes sense if what you sell is something that can't go out of demand, so that you have a market that is there to stay.
to look at what people really want, we have to look at what is really necessary but of which there is always a shortage of. there is rampant ignorance, (even among the rich) hence there is a need to educate; people need good medical care, most people need life insurance to help them in case something bad turns up, this list goes thus.
But then it also has to be something that people with money would want ; obviously, there is abundant hunger and poverty in the world but then you can't make any sale on that avenue!
if we look at the major players addressing some fundamental needs, it seems to me that there is a very clever ploy underplay here, because none of these corporations are really helping anyone out there, are they?! I mean, it appears like one would want to help people get what they want, and so the people pay you for your help, .......no!!
most of these companies seem to play on one simple trick: if there is something that people really need, then there is an associated sense of vulnerability that people experience therewith.
that sense of vulnerability, that measure of insecurity is the path towards the inner linings of their wallets and that is the terminal stop!
let me take the example of education. if you wish to educate people with the hope of alleviating ignorance off the world, then noble as the deed and intention might be, there is no Goddess Lakshmi anywhere there, despite all the blessings of Saraswati.. if you wish to make money through the field of education, look at, for instance, ETS.
Since their tests have now becomes standardized in America for admissions into any college here, one needs to give the appropriate exams, pay fees, prepare for these exams and so on. And since ETS is the only one that is the most appropriate source to seek any of those, all that money goes into their coffers, even though the exams they make you write have nothing to do with your years of education, or lack, thereof.
consider another example: to drive around in America, it is federal law to possess insurance on the vehicle. Why? In order to help the common man? of course, not! it is solely to help out all these insurance companies! I don't think any insurance company believes that it exists to ease people's sense of insecurity - rather, their motto is: if this is something that makes people insecure, then there is money to be made here!
so, i conclude with the following idea: if you can think of something that people really need (that is necessary in order to project a 'noble cause' front) but which in reality is something people need because its lack makes them feel insecure, inadequate or paranoid (thats the best option!), then let me know quickly; there's a lot of money to be made there!
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The weather in Columbus
I have seen quite a few cold winters now, and by cold, i mean COLD! There have been cold winters, snowy winters, icy winters, windy winters, winters with not much 'winter' in them, and also some hot winters! This winter has somehow been a total enigma and is not really classifiable as any of the aforementioned types. This is not so much a local phenomenon, here at Columbus as this has indeed been with large parts of America. Thus, it has spurned on lots of discussions about Global Warming and such.
The winter started off almost like it was spring here or like an indian winter. the weather was so good, it seemed bad that it was so good! But towards the end of January, the weather began to assume a different form.
OSU has closed only thrice in the past 25 years, on account of bad weather because the state government and the facilities at the University are well equipped to generally deal with excessive snow, which is quite the norm here in Ohio. For the first time, OSU closed for two days in succession - yesterday and today.
The overall nature of the weather here has been such that our definition of what constitutes clement weather has taken a dramatic turn. our expectations from the weather gods have dropped drastically. we have now been used to having sub-zero (celsius) temperatures throughout winters. over the past week or so, all we really asked for was: Let the temperature stay above -10 C, thats all!
in fact a couple days ago, we (myself and a couple other friends) went to visit a local lake, in a place called Antrim park which is one of the few really nice places to see in Columbus. this is a lake with a border walking/jogging trail of 1.2 miles, so you can imagine how big it is. the whole lake was frozen solid! we walked ON the lake, took a few pictures and even had an idea of walking across the lake. but better sense prevailed and we decided against doing so, since this lake is quite deep. just a few feet away we saw a warning sign that told the tale of an unfortunate dog that had gone frolicking on the lake; its body is yet to be fished out.
starting day before night, there was suddenly an increase in snow precipitation. i went out today, off my usual trajectory of apartment-dept and vice-versa, to visit the local grocery store for a few essentials. perhaps they could have waited, but there is no use in cribbing over that now. what's done is done.
The first thought that occurred to me as I looked out was, That's why they say, 'as white as snow'! It was so white, it was blindingly bright! the whole terrain seemed completely altered. It seemed like i was now in the middle of a new place, with no idea about which parts are treacherous and which ones are friendly.
As, i got out onto the street, I saw for the first time, frozen snow. What i mean is this: when you walk on overnight snow, it is akin to walking on sand; the feet sink in just that wee bit and you have to literally raise your feet to shake off the loose snow, so to speak, before you make your next step. that is one of the pleasures of walking on snow for the very first time.
now, as i stepped on snow, my feet remained steady and firm on the snow; it didn't give way! i was literally walking at least 4-5 inches above the ground. and suddenly, the icy snow cracked and my foot sank in around 4-5 inches, so that my socks were now completely in snow. as i made the next few steps, i created a huge fault line. it was as if i would be held responsible for some huge disaster, so i decided to step onto the road instead.
the problem now was that, i just wasn't sure, where the road began! only the middle of the road had the tyre marks but the peripherals were so blurred with thick layers of snow, i just couldn't tell. there were no cars in sight; most people here heed the local news warnings, which seems to me now, a rather sensible thing to do. i saw a few of them trying to warm up their cars and start them but it seemed such a difficult task! to move a car out of where it was parked (along the street side) appeared like such a huge task, i was glad i didn't own a car myself!
walking here was now literally an exerting exercise; you had to raise your foot at least a couple of inches to make your next step. as i came back home from the grocery store, i had the feeling that the morning exercise routine had been totally unnecessary; i had burnt more calories making this trip than i had purchased from the store now!
the winter storm warning has been recalled for now, meaning, they do not expect any more heavy snow over the next couple of days. But a wind chill cautionary has been issued which basically forecasts temperature dipping to as low as -25 F!
it is indeed ironic that my mom - a woman who has spent most of her 58 years in places like Vellore, Chennai, and Hyderabad - found this winter, a particularly enjoyable one!
I have seen quite a few cold winters now, and by cold, i mean COLD! There have been cold winters, snowy winters, icy winters, windy winters, winters with not much 'winter' in them, and also some hot winters! This winter has somehow been a total enigma and is not really classifiable as any of the aforementioned types. This is not so much a local phenomenon, here at Columbus as this has indeed been with large parts of America. Thus, it has spurned on lots of discussions about Global Warming and such.
The winter started off almost like it was spring here or like an indian winter. the weather was so good, it seemed bad that it was so good! But towards the end of January, the weather began to assume a different form.
OSU has closed only thrice in the past 25 years, on account of bad weather because the state government and the facilities at the University are well equipped to generally deal with excessive snow, which is quite the norm here in Ohio. For the first time, OSU closed for two days in succession - yesterday and today.
The overall nature of the weather here has been such that our definition of what constitutes clement weather has taken a dramatic turn. our expectations from the weather gods have dropped drastically. we have now been used to having sub-zero (celsius) temperatures throughout winters. over the past week or so, all we really asked for was: Let the temperature stay above -10 C, thats all!
in fact a couple days ago, we (myself and a couple other friends) went to visit a local lake, in a place called Antrim park which is one of the few really nice places to see in Columbus. this is a lake with a border walking/jogging trail of 1.2 miles, so you can imagine how big it is. the whole lake was frozen solid! we walked ON the lake, took a few pictures and even had an idea of walking across the lake. but better sense prevailed and we decided against doing so, since this lake is quite deep. just a few feet away we saw a warning sign that told the tale of an unfortunate dog that had gone frolicking on the lake; its body is yet to be fished out.
starting day before night, there was suddenly an increase in snow precipitation. i went out today, off my usual trajectory of apartment-dept and vice-versa, to visit the local grocery store for a few essentials. perhaps they could have waited, but there is no use in cribbing over that now. what's done is done.
The first thought that occurred to me as I looked out was, That's why they say, 'as white as snow'! It was so white, it was blindingly bright! the whole terrain seemed completely altered. It seemed like i was now in the middle of a new place, with no idea about which parts are treacherous and which ones are friendly.
As, i got out onto the street, I saw for the first time, frozen snow. What i mean is this: when you walk on overnight snow, it is akin to walking on sand; the feet sink in just that wee bit and you have to literally raise your feet to shake off the loose snow, so to speak, before you make your next step. that is one of the pleasures of walking on snow for the very first time.
now, as i stepped on snow, my feet remained steady and firm on the snow; it didn't give way! i was literally walking at least 4-5 inches above the ground. and suddenly, the icy snow cracked and my foot sank in around 4-5 inches, so that my socks were now completely in snow. as i made the next few steps, i created a huge fault line. it was as if i would be held responsible for some huge disaster, so i decided to step onto the road instead.
the problem now was that, i just wasn't sure, where the road began! only the middle of the road had the tyre marks but the peripherals were so blurred with thick layers of snow, i just couldn't tell. there were no cars in sight; most people here heed the local news warnings, which seems to me now, a rather sensible thing to do. i saw a few of them trying to warm up their cars and start them but it seemed such a difficult task! to move a car out of where it was parked (along the street side) appeared like such a huge task, i was glad i didn't own a car myself!
walking here was now literally an exerting exercise; you had to raise your foot at least a couple of inches to make your next step. as i came back home from the grocery store, i had the feeling that the morning exercise routine had been totally unnecessary; i had burnt more calories making this trip than i had purchased from the store now!
the winter storm warning has been recalled for now, meaning, they do not expect any more heavy snow over the next couple of days. But a wind chill cautionary has been issued which basically forecasts temperature dipping to as low as -25 F!
it is indeed ironic that my mom - a woman who has spent most of her 58 years in places like Vellore, Chennai, and Hyderabad - found this winter, a particularly enjoyable one!
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Music and Language - an interesting nexus
I am not about to deliver a discourse on the nexus between music and language - that is way out of my league in any case and i have neither the knowledge, nor have I done enough research to propound theories. but one of the many advantages of writing a blog is that you are free to think out aloud.
Rather, I have here some interesting (in my view) questions that occured to me as i was walking back home this afternoon from the dept (the somewhat unfavorable weather rendered it almost impossible to have a desire to get back to the dept). and some loud thinking as a consequence.
many people have commented about a specific composer's work in several languages. in today's entertainment industry in india, it is markedly visible since some (film) composers have been able to cross the 'language barrier' while some others, though extremely appreciated by some have almost gone unnoticed by the others. if music were really universal language, why this anomaly, if anomaly is what it is?
in some sense, the 'appropriateness' of the score to the language seems to be entering the equation here. for instance, tamil and telugu, two languages i am well conversant with, almost form a clique of sorts; what works in one language (musically), works almost all the time in the other too. hindi seems to be a sort of antipode. of course, punjabi, gujarati, and some other 'north indian' languages probably would elicit the point better but i don't know any of those languages. bengali music is something that has almost gone synonymous with 'Rabindra sangeeth'; the influence of Tagore's work there almost seeps into all modern forms of bengali music. I am not sure how relevant my points might be in reference to music scored in bengali. but for the time, i shall concentrate on the tamil-telugu pair in contrast with hindi-urdu.
1) It is quite clear that music written in a classical carnatic mode works well for tamil-telugu but almost never for hindi, and almost certainly never for urdu. why?
2) An interesting counterpoint: carnatic music and its principles work well in the context of sanskrit, which is in many ways quite close to hindi. why this difference? note that while telugu in its literary form borrows liberally from sanskrit (so that the comparison between chaste telugu and sanskrit is appreciable), tamil does not. tamil and sanskrit are so distinctly different languages - any linguist will affirm the same -and yet the same principles (of carnatic music) work well in both langugages. why?
conversely, hindusthani music might work quite well in tamil-telugu (i haven't listened to any serious attempt in this direction, but it seems to me that it just might). why?
obviously i do not know the answers to any of these questions. nor am i attempting to answer them. i just wish to understand my questions a little better, invoking Polya's principle: if there is a problem you cannot solve, there is a simpler problem you cannot solve.
getting to carnatic music, one of the most important features of this style of music is of course, the presence of gamakas or what are called microtonal infuxions by musicians, especially in the west. This, of course is an attempt to describe what a gamaka is but it is my contention that this is not a very precise definition, despite the vagueness of language. Rock musicians certainly play a lot of 'microtonal influxions', especially on lead guitar (listen to some of Slash's work for GNR and you will know what i am talking about). but these, though terrific pieces of musicianship and no doubt exhilarating, will not qualify as gamaka-playing, so i guess my discontent with this description is not totally unfounded.
to understand what a gamaka really is, i make an analogy. while one lets the tones slip by freely (drop or ascend), one gets the feeling that the musician is tugging or reining his voice at certain places in a stronger fashion than at others. and it is there that the gamaka is really experienced. so i wish to define a raga per se as the following:
A raga is a ordered list of closed balls (as sets) of frequencies, each centered at a distinct frequency with the properties:
a) the last frequency = double the first frequency (though that is not necessary),
b) Each closed ball has a distinct set of distinguished frequencies.
condition a) is clear.
the closed ball reference is basically this: while we let a smooth transfer from one frequency to another, we allow for 'errors' within the context of each swara. this is not merely to allow bad singing into the equation! it is my experience (while playing on the keyboard) that sometimes a different key brings the flavor of the song better, even though the different note is not a part of the original raga. That is probably why, carnatic musicians feel the need to have 16-22 notes to describe all carnatic material, when the even tempered clavier model of a keyboard allows only for 12. i am also not being precise about how much of error is permissible because that would involve writing some concrete numbers here, and i don't. i am merely going by intuition.
the distinguished set for each note refers to frequencies where you sort of 'rein' in, or abruptly arrest the smooth flow. It is in these abrupt arrests that a gamaka is felt and that set of distinguished frequencies shall be called the set of gamakas.
this viewpoint has certain benefits. it explains why a certain raga can sound different from its parent raga, although they share the same set of notes. it also explains why two different ragas which share many similar notes are yet different in their renditions. for instance, it is easy to spot that one is singing/playing Kalyani and not Sankarabharanam, even without the only different note, namely, Ma(1 for Sankarabharanam and 2 for Kalyani) does not feature for a while. it also explains a point prasanna once made on his FAQ section: one of his readers had asked him why, the hawaiian or fretless guitar would not be a more appropriate instrument for playing carnatic. prasanna answered saying that the microtones are better brought out only with a fretboard - in my terms, i guess a fretted guitar can bring out the abrupt arrests better than a fretless guitar and i guess that is what prasanna too was saying.
so if we share this belief, a verse is better suited to carnatic music if in its flow, it allows for abrupt seizures.
I believe that tamil-telugu have that sense of staccato effect in speech and sound which is probably the reason why carnatic music works well in these languages. i suppose the same is true for sanskrit too though i have to think a little harder to justify the same.
what then, is the problem with hindi?
hindi is probably influenced more by urdu/persian which probably slice away at some of the 'sharp ending sounds' of sanskrit. urdu is as such such a soft language which is probably why the mode of 'ghazal-writing' is only for urdu. that should explain perhaps why carnatic music might work on tatsam hindi but almost never with urdu.
of course, i haven't proved anything but am just suggesting a line of argument. it would be interesting to have counterviews on this.
I am not about to deliver a discourse on the nexus between music and language - that is way out of my league in any case and i have neither the knowledge, nor have I done enough research to propound theories. but one of the many advantages of writing a blog is that you are free to think out aloud.
Rather, I have here some interesting (in my view) questions that occured to me as i was walking back home this afternoon from the dept (the somewhat unfavorable weather rendered it almost impossible to have a desire to get back to the dept). and some loud thinking as a consequence.
many people have commented about a specific composer's work in several languages. in today's entertainment industry in india, it is markedly visible since some (film) composers have been able to cross the 'language barrier' while some others, though extremely appreciated by some have almost gone unnoticed by the others. if music were really universal language, why this anomaly, if anomaly is what it is?
in some sense, the 'appropriateness' of the score to the language seems to be entering the equation here. for instance, tamil and telugu, two languages i am well conversant with, almost form a clique of sorts; what works in one language (musically), works almost all the time in the other too. hindi seems to be a sort of antipode. of course, punjabi, gujarati, and some other 'north indian' languages probably would elicit the point better but i don't know any of those languages. bengali music is something that has almost gone synonymous with 'Rabindra sangeeth'; the influence of Tagore's work there almost seeps into all modern forms of bengali music. I am not sure how relevant my points might be in reference to music scored in bengali. but for the time, i shall concentrate on the tamil-telugu pair in contrast with hindi-urdu.
1) It is quite clear that music written in a classical carnatic mode works well for tamil-telugu but almost never for hindi, and almost certainly never for urdu. why?
2) An interesting counterpoint: carnatic music and its principles work well in the context of sanskrit, which is in many ways quite close to hindi. why this difference? note that while telugu in its literary form borrows liberally from sanskrit (so that the comparison between chaste telugu and sanskrit is appreciable), tamil does not. tamil and sanskrit are so distinctly different languages - any linguist will affirm the same -and yet the same principles (of carnatic music) work well in both langugages. why?
conversely, hindusthani music might work quite well in tamil-telugu (i haven't listened to any serious attempt in this direction, but it seems to me that it just might). why?
obviously i do not know the answers to any of these questions. nor am i attempting to answer them. i just wish to understand my questions a little better, invoking Polya's principle: if there is a problem you cannot solve, there is a simpler problem you cannot solve.
getting to carnatic music, one of the most important features of this style of music is of course, the presence of gamakas or what are called microtonal infuxions by musicians, especially in the west. This, of course is an attempt to describe what a gamaka is but it is my contention that this is not a very precise definition, despite the vagueness of language. Rock musicians certainly play a lot of 'microtonal influxions', especially on lead guitar (listen to some of Slash's work for GNR and you will know what i am talking about). but these, though terrific pieces of musicianship and no doubt exhilarating, will not qualify as gamaka-playing, so i guess my discontent with this description is not totally unfounded.
to understand what a gamaka really is, i make an analogy. while one lets the tones slip by freely (drop or ascend), one gets the feeling that the musician is tugging or reining his voice at certain places in a stronger fashion than at others. and it is there that the gamaka is really experienced. so i wish to define a raga per se as the following:
A raga is a ordered list of closed balls (as sets) of frequencies, each centered at a distinct frequency with the properties:
a) the last frequency = double the first frequency (though that is not necessary),
b) Each closed ball has a distinct set of distinguished frequencies.
condition a) is clear.
the closed ball reference is basically this: while we let a smooth transfer from one frequency to another, we allow for 'errors' within the context of each swara. this is not merely to allow bad singing into the equation! it is my experience (while playing on the keyboard) that sometimes a different key brings the flavor of the song better, even though the different note is not a part of the original raga. That is probably why, carnatic musicians feel the need to have 16-22 notes to describe all carnatic material, when the even tempered clavier model of a keyboard allows only for 12. i am also not being precise about how much of error is permissible because that would involve writing some concrete numbers here, and i don't. i am merely going by intuition.
the distinguished set for each note refers to frequencies where you sort of 'rein' in, or abruptly arrest the smooth flow. It is in these abrupt arrests that a gamaka is felt and that set of distinguished frequencies shall be called the set of gamakas.
this viewpoint has certain benefits. it explains why a certain raga can sound different from its parent raga, although they share the same set of notes. it also explains why two different ragas which share many similar notes are yet different in their renditions. for instance, it is easy to spot that one is singing/playing Kalyani and not Sankarabharanam, even without the only different note, namely, Ma(1 for Sankarabharanam and 2 for Kalyani) does not feature for a while. it also explains a point prasanna once made on his FAQ section: one of his readers had asked him why, the hawaiian or fretless guitar would not be a more appropriate instrument for playing carnatic. prasanna answered saying that the microtones are better brought out only with a fretboard - in my terms, i guess a fretted guitar can bring out the abrupt arrests better than a fretless guitar and i guess that is what prasanna too was saying.
so if we share this belief, a verse is better suited to carnatic music if in its flow, it allows for abrupt seizures.
I believe that tamil-telugu have that sense of staccato effect in speech and sound which is probably the reason why carnatic music works well in these languages. i suppose the same is true for sanskrit too though i have to think a little harder to justify the same.
what then, is the problem with hindi?
hindi is probably influenced more by urdu/persian which probably slice away at some of the 'sharp ending sounds' of sanskrit. urdu is as such such a soft language which is probably why the mode of 'ghazal-writing' is only for urdu. that should explain perhaps why carnatic music might work on tatsam hindi but almost never with urdu.
of course, i haven't proved anything but am just suggesting a line of argument. it would be interesting to have counterviews on this.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
The genre of Humor
This time, instead of trying to say something humorous, i shall attempt a serious essay on how one might write humor. This is of course based on my own points of view and is by no means 'Humor writing for dummies'. and i am not the first to try any such thing too; Scott Adams writes a wonderfully humorous essay on how he creates humor in his extremely enjoyable, 'The Joy of work'. I am probably not going to say anything new here; rather its my take on the genre itself and what i think makes something funny.
as such i am not talking of humor in the visual media because you could have a very funny visual and that makes a line go funnier. for instance, when Kramer (in Seinfeld) looks at his face, gone awol after being subject to several hours of heavy smoking and goes, "but Jerry, my face is my livelihood!", the line is all the more funny because Michael Richards does such a great Kramer that his face itself makes you laugh. However there are still many instances of humor that work in well written sitcoms (Yes minister/Prime minister, Seinfeld, Fawlty towers, Arrested development). i refer to some of these too because the lines there are v funny.
Humor as such is not considered a mainstream genre for fiction writing. somehow it is always seen as something more frivolous, or in the fringe, so to speak. I cannot recall how many people who predominantly write/wrote humorous fiction were actually awarded in some way (Nobel, Pulitzer, Booker etc). So i guess humorous writing has always been regarded by most serious writers as something in the manner of a temporary stage in their career. and to some extent it is sort of true. but that doesn't mean it is not artistic or cannot be made artistic. i hope the distinction is clear.
I somehow have always found humorous writing extremely engaging. i just love P G Wodehouse; the Wooster series is thematically almost a one-liner; bertie gets engaged while trying to help one of his loony friends, jeeves saves the day while mostly making an ass of this guy. but the writing is simply fantastic. RK Narayan is another writer who writes serious stuff which are more than suffused with humor. 'The world of Nagaraj' is one book with no theme at all; its almost just a collection of the protagonist's random thoughts on the few things that
affect his life. in terms of content the book might be nought but in humor terms i would rate it v highly. i've read almost all the books in the Jeeves series and all RKN's books.
I have always felt that if i would/could do some writing, it would largely be in the genre of humor. because sometimes to write humor you don't need a theme; all you need to do is doodle in some fashion and all that can be good humorous writing too. but the doodling is done with some method. and i have a take on that.
some wise person (probably several wise persons) once opined that comedy and tragedy are both two sides of the same coin; it only depends on whether you choose to engage yourself with the character or view things in a disengaged manner. for instance one could talk about someone so ugly at a zoo that the hippos refused to come out. now this line stated in just that fashion could work if the one facing the brunt of this joke is a nameless, faceless guy or someone on whom you do not really wish to shower any sympathy. and also no one(including the animal rights people) is generally offended when u call a hippo ugly because it really is.
but if that same character is someone who is conscious of his/her bad looks or someone in whom you have invested a few redeeming qualities, the same remark becomes very rude and hurtful. so, in general, to tell jokes it is necessary to see who's facing the music. if the person is someone whom all dislike then the extent of comparison can go further and further. i mean if u said that u dreamt that osama bin laden's beard catches fire when one of his own honchos turns the telescope towards his beard and the lenses worked the sunlight on them, most would find it funny since OBL doesn't have much sympathy in the sane world.
or atleast not from the people who read my blogs.
else i'm in some serious trouble!
scott adams gives a very interesting idea while talking about his methods to create humor. humor always has an element of exaggeration. if something gets exaggerated to the extent of it becoming ridiculous, to the point that it looks like you can't exaggerate further, go one step more! the trick always works!
one technique of creating something funny would be to make absurd comparisons. i usually prefer to make/say things that would be relevant lines in a more serious situation but are inappropriate in the situation under discussion, than vice-versa, i.e., say something totally silly in a tense situation, like with the James Bond one-liners. usually thriller movies resort to the later trick and i sort of find them annoying; i prefer the former since it seems a more difficult thing to pull off successfully. this is also something that i've observed in many good sitcom episodes. for instance in Friends season 2(i think) in the episode where Monica is stung by a jellyfish the dialogues resemble lines from the last act of a murder thriller where all the beans are being spilt, when chandler, joey and monica narrate the episode to the others.
one great idea for humor (though it works not in writing but very well in parties and such) especially when you have someone who is easily amused in the following. When a lousy pj is told and no one else laughs except for the easily amused one, all the others are at first confused about what this person is laughing at. sooner or later, it triggers a laugh in most people. i've seen this in many situations. basically the absurdity in the joke is transferred to the absurdity of either the one who told the joke or is directed at the person who found it funny in the first place. sometimes it is possible to have the absurdity transferred to the notion of trying hard to discover something funny that the attempt at trying itself becomes funny. this is analogous to what scott adams calls the technique of broken logic.
clever humor is something i have always loved, especially when what is funny, is so on a few levels. generally, it helps if there are good puns around; then usually things take a turn towards getting 'punnier'.
self referential humor is another technique of very smart humor. when you can remember everything that is said, the impact of humor increases multifold. one such great instance is in fawlty towers or more recently in arrested development. in fawlty towers the line, "He's from Barcelona" about Manuel, gets extremely funny as the series goes into the later episodes. the same trick was used with multiple such lines in AD, with lines such as "Come on!", "I've made a huge mistake", and so on.
another technique which was employed to great effect in the Yes minister/prime minister series was the use of verbiage, especially when the matter at hand is extremely mundane. since it increases the absurdity of the description, it works great. the more mundane the situation, the loftier the language.
RKN's books have a totally different brand of humor to them. they generally consider some common observation and view them from such strange points of view that sooner or later, the absurdity of the analysis gets to you. its more or less the same way seinfeld's standup comedy works; he does stuff which is 'all about nothing'.
i've noticed that it always works better when you use several different words to describe something and not repeat yourself. while this is also pleasing as an intellectual exercise, it makes for more humorous reading/listening. i guess this is an inspiration from the language of george carlin.
i have many a time tried to understand why i laugh at something. and reverse-engineer it to see if there is a technique to it. sometimes a situation itself provides all the absurdity you need. but good humor usually means you see the funny stuff by stretching your imagination in some way.
personally, i don't have enough nerve to take a crack at some of the people close to me because you never know when you are crossing the line of their tolerance. So to me, teh safe way out is that i prefer writing about some absurd things that happened to me, or absurd things i have done, or imagine absurd things happening to me or finally, simply take a dig at myself. either the humor works or i get some sympathy! i win both ways!
in general, whenever we hit upon a new philosophy about what feels absurd, we have a new humor technique. and if it can be used in conjunction with any of the others, then the complexity goes up as well.
This time, instead of trying to say something humorous, i shall attempt a serious essay on how one might write humor. This is of course based on my own points of view and is by no means 'Humor writing for dummies'. and i am not the first to try any such thing too; Scott Adams writes a wonderfully humorous essay on how he creates humor in his extremely enjoyable, 'The Joy of work'. I am probably not going to say anything new here; rather its my take on the genre itself and what i think makes something funny.
as such i am not talking of humor in the visual media because you could have a very funny visual and that makes a line go funnier. for instance, when Kramer (in Seinfeld) looks at his face, gone awol after being subject to several hours of heavy smoking and goes, "but Jerry, my face is my livelihood!", the line is all the more funny because Michael Richards does such a great Kramer that his face itself makes you laugh. However there are still many instances of humor that work in well written sitcoms (Yes minister/Prime minister, Seinfeld, Fawlty towers, Arrested development). i refer to some of these too because the lines there are v funny.
Humor as such is not considered a mainstream genre for fiction writing. somehow it is always seen as something more frivolous, or in the fringe, so to speak. I cannot recall how many people who predominantly write/wrote humorous fiction were actually awarded in some way (Nobel, Pulitzer, Booker etc). So i guess humorous writing has always been regarded by most serious writers as something in the manner of a temporary stage in their career. and to some extent it is sort of true. but that doesn't mean it is not artistic or cannot be made artistic. i hope the distinction is clear.
I somehow have always found humorous writing extremely engaging. i just love P G Wodehouse; the Wooster series is thematically almost a one-liner; bertie gets engaged while trying to help one of his loony friends, jeeves saves the day while mostly making an ass of this guy. but the writing is simply fantastic. RK Narayan is another writer who writes serious stuff which are more than suffused with humor. 'The world of Nagaraj' is one book with no theme at all; its almost just a collection of the protagonist's random thoughts on the few things that
affect his life. in terms of content the book might be nought but in humor terms i would rate it v highly. i've read almost all the books in the Jeeves series and all RKN's books.
I have always felt that if i would/could do some writing, it would largely be in the genre of humor. because sometimes to write humor you don't need a theme; all you need to do is doodle in some fashion and all that can be good humorous writing too. but the doodling is done with some method. and i have a take on that.
some wise person (probably several wise persons) once opined that comedy and tragedy are both two sides of the same coin; it only depends on whether you choose to engage yourself with the character or view things in a disengaged manner. for instance one could talk about someone so ugly at a zoo that the hippos refused to come out. now this line stated in just that fashion could work if the one facing the brunt of this joke is a nameless, faceless guy or someone on whom you do not really wish to shower any sympathy. and also no one(including the animal rights people) is generally offended when u call a hippo ugly because it really is.
but if that same character is someone who is conscious of his/her bad looks or someone in whom you have invested a few redeeming qualities, the same remark becomes very rude and hurtful. so, in general, to tell jokes it is necessary to see who's facing the music. if the person is someone whom all dislike then the extent of comparison can go further and further. i mean if u said that u dreamt that osama bin laden's beard catches fire when one of his own honchos turns the telescope towards his beard and the lenses worked the sunlight on them, most would find it funny since OBL doesn't have much sympathy in the sane world.
or atleast not from the people who read my blogs.
else i'm in some serious trouble!
scott adams gives a very interesting idea while talking about his methods to create humor. humor always has an element of exaggeration. if something gets exaggerated to the extent of it becoming ridiculous, to the point that it looks like you can't exaggerate further, go one step more! the trick always works!
one technique of creating something funny would be to make absurd comparisons. i usually prefer to make/say things that would be relevant lines in a more serious situation but are inappropriate in the situation under discussion, than vice-versa, i.e., say something totally silly in a tense situation, like with the James Bond one-liners. usually thriller movies resort to the later trick and i sort of find them annoying; i prefer the former since it seems a more difficult thing to pull off successfully. this is also something that i've observed in many good sitcom episodes. for instance in Friends season 2(i think) in the episode where Monica is stung by a jellyfish the dialogues resemble lines from the last act of a murder thriller where all the beans are being spilt, when chandler, joey and monica narrate the episode to the others.
one great idea for humor (though it works not in writing but very well in parties and such) especially when you have someone who is easily amused in the following. When a lousy pj is told and no one else laughs except for the easily amused one, all the others are at first confused about what this person is laughing at. sooner or later, it triggers a laugh in most people. i've seen this in many situations. basically the absurdity in the joke is transferred to the absurdity of either the one who told the joke or is directed at the person who found it funny in the first place. sometimes it is possible to have the absurdity transferred to the notion of trying hard to discover something funny that the attempt at trying itself becomes funny. this is analogous to what scott adams calls the technique of broken logic.
clever humor is something i have always loved, especially when what is funny, is so on a few levels. generally, it helps if there are good puns around; then usually things take a turn towards getting 'punnier'.
self referential humor is another technique of very smart humor. when you can remember everything that is said, the impact of humor increases multifold. one such great instance is in fawlty towers or more recently in arrested development. in fawlty towers the line, "He's from Barcelona" about Manuel, gets extremely funny as the series goes into the later episodes. the same trick was used with multiple such lines in AD, with lines such as "Come on!", "I've made a huge mistake", and so on.
another technique which was employed to great effect in the Yes minister/prime minister series was the use of verbiage, especially when the matter at hand is extremely mundane. since it increases the absurdity of the description, it works great. the more mundane the situation, the loftier the language.
RKN's books have a totally different brand of humor to them. they generally consider some common observation and view them from such strange points of view that sooner or later, the absurdity of the analysis gets to you. its more or less the same way seinfeld's standup comedy works; he does stuff which is 'all about nothing'.
i've noticed that it always works better when you use several different words to describe something and not repeat yourself. while this is also pleasing as an intellectual exercise, it makes for more humorous reading/listening. i guess this is an inspiration from the language of george carlin.
i have many a time tried to understand why i laugh at something. and reverse-engineer it to see if there is a technique to it. sometimes a situation itself provides all the absurdity you need. but good humor usually means you see the funny stuff by stretching your imagination in some way.
personally, i don't have enough nerve to take a crack at some of the people close to me because you never know when you are crossing the line of their tolerance. So to me, teh safe way out is that i prefer writing about some absurd things that happened to me, or absurd things i have done, or imagine absurd things happening to me or finally, simply take a dig at myself. either the humor works or i get some sympathy! i win both ways!
in general, whenever we hit upon a new philosophy about what feels absurd, we have a new humor technique. and if it can be used in conjunction with any of the others, then the complexity goes up as well.
In Venusland
I have never been a fan of astrology, palmistry, numerology, face-reading and such like. maybe there might be something to them - i don't know for sure but most of the people who preach them are quacks and don't admit to the fallibility of the system. they think that it undermines their point while in fact the admission that they are only reading some probabilistic stuff might lend them a lot more credibility.
One area where people tend to get very sentimental about the aforementioned is when it touches what they all consider their Achilles' heel. and now i am just about to go over one of those areas where, from my current record, i have failed miserably.
i don't really know what the stars have ordained for me; i'm sure there is some system which reads, "very favorable playing conditions, home pitch advantage", etc. but my history shows that when it comes to interacting with the ladies, yours truly has always been likened to a tailender indian bat on a fiery bouncy Perth pitch, without a helmet on.
let's review some facts first and then we can talk.
some might say, the start was all right; my mom tells me that on the 24th of Dec, 1977, i was the only male born in the entire ward that afternoon in CMC, Vellore. that should have been a real B-12 shot in the arm, you'd think. but in reality my tour in venusland has been DoA.
why?
though, i was the only male born there, the nurse said it with those first words(apparently) i'd possibly heard when i was brought to my mom's side: Here's Santa Claus! and that brings home a very important talking point.
now, don't get me wrong; i have nothing per se against santa as such but it takes away a lot when you are compared to an eternally old man, whose face is hardly visible behind all the hair. if he were an Adonis of sorts, it still makes for good comparison but methinks santa has had too much of milk and cookies over the years. heck, if that is all you ever eat and all the exercising you do is to be a postman only on Xmas eve while travelling on a reindeer sleigh, you'd have as rotund a structure as santa. Also, he's sending these mixed messages all the time: he is generally kind to animals and such, but he's covered in fur, you know what i'm saying?
well, to be fair to the man, i can't blame him entirely. As i'm sure one of the fellows in {Shakespeare, GB Shaw, Freud, Nietzsche} must have surely uttered atleast once, you must take responsibility for your own fate. As a kid i was extremely shy and never talked much to any girl. some of my cousins keep taunting me now saying (personally, i think they are embellishing a lot) i have avoided even talking to them or worse, even avoided their gaze.
One story goes that when my cousin sisters encountered me on the road, i very quickly crossed the street to avoid talking to them. while i insist that it hardly sounds like the truth, most people who knew me well enough then would put their money on my cousins' words since it seemed so much like me at the time.
i remember another time when i was walking along with my elder sis and talking and stuff, when she playfully pushed me and i tripped and brushed against a couple of girls walking on the sidewalk. not only did i apologize immediately, i even quietly took in all their scolding and swearing at me till my sis, who'd have no more of it came forward and took it upon herself to wage the battle from there.
another thing that has worked against me entirely is the brother syndrome. to all the girls that i ever knew then, i was always one of an elder brother, younger bro, cousin bro or worse, a brother figure. now the last one is the real killer, and unknown to myself, i possessed tons of that stuff. i am yet to figure out what it actually is because as my sisters will readily testify, i have never done anything in the classical brother mode.
during school times, i remember not ever talking with any of the girls in my class ever, unless it was something academic. somehow i'd break into a cold sweat if someone wanted to say something to me which had nothing to do with school work at all. i know, what a dork!
one of my most embarrassing moments in school was while we had to take turns and read the lines of a play(which was one of the English comprehension lessons). and when it was my turn and i had to say," dear,..." (or maybe it was darling!) to the wife character of the play (whose lines were read by a girl in our class), my face apparently turned quite a few shades of red (of course, it didn't help that all my blasted classmates who were awaiting that line were already sniggering).
come classes 11-12, i was busy in the world of Ramiah, a world that compelled an obsession with the IITs that it certainly sounds alarming to most people in the sane world. Since my class was filled with only X-Y chromosome paired ones and no X-Xs, that was it. nothing to report. nada.
the next phase was while at ISI. again, not only were there no girls in the program the year i made my entry into ISI, there would be no more girls till i actually left the institute. most people, including a few professors, were glad that i graduated merely by that count. so again, my record says it all.
next comes phase 4, when i came to the States in the landmark year of our times, landmark on several counts: numerological, literary significance and geopolitical importance: 2001.
though i haven't had too encounters with the contrary gender as mine here too, i think the initial cold feet situation has disappeared. most of my school friends have distinctly remarked (in recent times when they have either seen me, spoken to me or chatted with me on email or something else) that i have changed a looooot! and somehow i think they weren't entirely referring to the lifebuoy i have developed around my waist. now i am certainly more confident in participating in conversations and stuff but age has been busy playing catch up too! and with age, the brother figure thing is only progressively getting stronger.
with each new year, new things keep happening. i don't know what this new year has in store for me. it is then that i wonder what role the stars, my face, feet and other 'readable' body parts have had in all of this; i am yet to fathom those mysteries.
its easy to blame my fate here, but being a man, i'm ready to share the blame;maybe its the influence of those stars or maybe its partly me; i still don't know. but i get the distinct feeling that if my record in interaction with the fairer sex is not bettered, it wouldn't be because i've been a doofus. i have evolved as a social being (counter that, Intelligent-design-ers!).
To most inappropriately quote Martin Luther King here, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God."
I have never been a fan of astrology, palmistry, numerology, face-reading and such like. maybe there might be something to them - i don't know for sure but most of the people who preach them are quacks and don't admit to the fallibility of the system. they think that it undermines their point while in fact the admission that they are only reading some probabilistic stuff might lend them a lot more credibility.
One area where people tend to get very sentimental about the aforementioned is when it touches what they all consider their Achilles' heel. and now i am just about to go over one of those areas where, from my current record, i have failed miserably.
i don't really know what the stars have ordained for me; i'm sure there is some system which reads, "very favorable playing conditions, home pitch advantage", etc. but my history shows that when it comes to interacting with the ladies, yours truly has always been likened to a tailender indian bat on a fiery bouncy Perth pitch, without a helmet on.
let's review some facts first and then we can talk.
some might say, the start was all right; my mom tells me that on the 24th of Dec, 1977, i was the only male born in the entire ward that afternoon in CMC, Vellore. that should have been a real B-12 shot in the arm, you'd think. but in reality my tour in venusland has been DoA.
why?
though, i was the only male born there, the nurse said it with those first words(apparently) i'd possibly heard when i was brought to my mom's side: Here's Santa Claus! and that brings home a very important talking point.
now, don't get me wrong; i have nothing per se against santa as such but it takes away a lot when you are compared to an eternally old man, whose face is hardly visible behind all the hair. if he were an Adonis of sorts, it still makes for good comparison but methinks santa has had too much of milk and cookies over the years. heck, if that is all you ever eat and all the exercising you do is to be a postman only on Xmas eve while travelling on a reindeer sleigh, you'd have as rotund a structure as santa. Also, he's sending these mixed messages all the time: he is generally kind to animals and such, but he's covered in fur, you know what i'm saying?
well, to be fair to the man, i can't blame him entirely. As i'm sure one of the fellows in {Shakespeare, GB Shaw, Freud, Nietzsche} must have surely uttered atleast once, you must take responsibility for your own fate. As a kid i was extremely shy and never talked much to any girl. some of my cousins keep taunting me now saying (personally, i think they are embellishing a lot) i have avoided even talking to them or worse, even avoided their gaze.
One story goes that when my cousin sisters encountered me on the road, i very quickly crossed the street to avoid talking to them. while i insist that it hardly sounds like the truth, most people who knew me well enough then would put their money on my cousins' words since it seemed so much like me at the time.
i remember another time when i was walking along with my elder sis and talking and stuff, when she playfully pushed me and i tripped and brushed against a couple of girls walking on the sidewalk. not only did i apologize immediately, i even quietly took in all their scolding and swearing at me till my sis, who'd have no more of it came forward and took it upon herself to wage the battle from there.
another thing that has worked against me entirely is the brother syndrome. to all the girls that i ever knew then, i was always one of an elder brother, younger bro, cousin bro or worse, a brother figure. now the last one is the real killer, and unknown to myself, i possessed tons of that stuff. i am yet to figure out what it actually is because as my sisters will readily testify, i have never done anything in the classical brother mode.
during school times, i remember not ever talking with any of the girls in my class ever, unless it was something academic. somehow i'd break into a cold sweat if someone wanted to say something to me which had nothing to do with school work at all. i know, what a dork!
one of my most embarrassing moments in school was while we had to take turns and read the lines of a play(which was one of the English comprehension lessons). and when it was my turn and i had to say," dear,..." (or maybe it was darling!) to the wife character of the play (whose lines were read by a girl in our class), my face apparently turned quite a few shades of red (of course, it didn't help that all my blasted classmates who were awaiting that line were already sniggering).
come classes 11-12, i was busy in the world of Ramiah, a world that compelled an obsession with the IITs that it certainly sounds alarming to most people in the sane world. Since my class was filled with only X-Y chromosome paired ones and no X-Xs, that was it. nothing to report. nada.
the next phase was while at ISI. again, not only were there no girls in the program the year i made my entry into ISI, there would be no more girls till i actually left the institute. most people, including a few professors, were glad that i graduated merely by that count. so again, my record says it all.
next comes phase 4, when i came to the States in the landmark year of our times, landmark on several counts: numerological, literary significance and geopolitical importance: 2001.
though i haven't had too encounters with the contrary gender as mine here too, i think the initial cold feet situation has disappeared. most of my school friends have distinctly remarked (in recent times when they have either seen me, spoken to me or chatted with me on email or something else) that i have changed a looooot! and somehow i think they weren't entirely referring to the lifebuoy i have developed around my waist. now i am certainly more confident in participating in conversations and stuff but age has been busy playing catch up too! and with age, the brother figure thing is only progressively getting stronger.
with each new year, new things keep happening. i don't know what this new year has in store for me. it is then that i wonder what role the stars, my face, feet and other 'readable' body parts have had in all of this; i am yet to fathom those mysteries.
its easy to blame my fate here, but being a man, i'm ready to share the blame;maybe its the influence of those stars or maybe its partly me; i still don't know. but i get the distinct feeling that if my record in interaction with the fairer sex is not bettered, it wouldn't be because i've been a doofus. i have evolved as a social being (counter that, Intelligent-design-ers!).
To most inappropriately quote Martin Luther King here, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God."
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
`Yekkaling' - a lost Indian tradition
First things first: A happy New year to one and all!
As the calender pages moved on and we all got a wee bit older and wiser (myself-I indeed got appreciably older), it seemed appropriate to stop and muse awhile. And musing i shall do (in fact that is what my blog is called!).
As i entered the prime of my youth (again, there seems to be a little bit of controversy here - some people have argued, and quite cogently at that, that 31 ought to be THE prime of one's youth, but thats just splitting hairs), i just looked back to see if anyone could profit from my wisdom. and it seems quite clear to me that my vast experience with human nature can help all those people who have no, NO experience at all.
but on the flip side, no one else seems to be benefiting....
so, to strike a balance, i shall narrate an experience of mine, which, i believe, will also give you readers, a glimpse into what is indeed a mystical dying art. and it is sad that the master(s) of this are neither well recognized, nor, worse, even known to the public. they seem to be disappearing like a blur on the landscape....
the story unfolds in the year 1998, December, during my first 'educational tour' from ISI. We had an 8 day tour of Shimla, Kulu, Manali, and then a return to Delhi, where some of us got off while the rest carried on to what is now Kolkata.
i didn't realize before but that trip brought to my attention the fact that my mom's asthmatic troubles had been sort of bequeathed to me as well. And what better opportunity to discover that than having to chug along with a big piece of luggage in a rarified atmosphere!
though the trip was for most parts pleasant and indeed wonderful, it was the first time i was exposed to such low temperatures and also cope with my increasing asthma. and to make matters a little more competitive, one of my seniors had, in an attempt to help me out (bless his soul), inadvertently, broken my suitcase's handle.
so if i said that i wasn't exactly in the pink of health, i wouldn't be indulging in too much of falsehood. and on the last day of the trip, as we were about to leave Manali and get back to Kalka, i felt like i might get sick any moment. As it is, i have never been comfy travelling on the hilly roads in India by bus, and an entire day's traveling ahead seemed like the perfect way to bring me to a whole new level of misery. my friend karthik who sat beside me, got me something to ease the nausea but it felt like impending doom. waiting to happen.
but something else did, which sort of changed my life a great deal. at least in the way i look at life now.
we were seated in one of the last rows - possibly just two rows ahead of the last row which runs from side to side. and i took the seat off the window because i felt that my tendency to look out the window into the scenery might aggravate the nausea. and all this now makes sense in the big scheme of things.
as the bus started, some of the guys in the last row called for some antakshari - basically a 'string-a-song' game, where one sings bollywood numbers with the (n+1)th song starting off from the ending letter of the nth song. some other rules apply regarding what consonant changes are permissible if need be, and what constitutes the ending/beginning of a song, but let us not get bogged down by technical details.
though antakshari is played as a competitive team event, junta in the bus decided that they'd all participate without resorting to team-forming, so basically they had decided upon singing songs in sequence but adhering to the aforementioned rules.
as the bus made a couple of `hair-pin bends', i swear to having heard someone from the last row go, " shuru karo ustaad "! and as if on cue, the ustaad did.
now i didn't know most of the people in the last two rows since they weren't BStat/MStat guys; some were Mtech QROR and some others were MSQEs. and the only other bit of info i have about ustaad is that his last name was Yekkela.....or something..let's say Yekkela.
He might have been a gult, I can't say now. i can't even recall his face properly but i still can distinctly hear his tone.
There are several wonderful tales about music and musicians saving people from dying, bringing rain to a dry town, and such like. What i am about to say is something similar, since the man definitely saved the day for me.
one of the most fascinating characters in the Asterix comic series is Cacophonix. not simply because his voice is supposed to be bad, it is supposed to be subliminally bad! it brought rain, terrified the normans, scared hungry lions and tigers, .... the list just goes on and on. it always remained one of my curious desires to know what his voice might have sounded like.
Now some of you are probably forming a bad opinion on Mr Y. i must reiterate: Y's singing saved the day for me, o.k? remember that.
at first i just didn't pay attention but slowly, felt that something sounded off ; in fact, i can't put a point upon it....from the chorus one voice stood out, as something very unique. i felt like i was one of those characters walking into a 'ghost well' or something....
soon most people in the bus, especially those of us who were in the last rows could feel some vibes...sorry, vibrations. at first it was difficult to understand what he was singing. i have heard people go off key but nothing like this! this man made it difficult to spot the song, even after him declaring what he was going to sing next!
let me explain: one of the songs he sang was " dil mera churaaya kyun, jab yeh dil todnaa hi tha" from AHAK. after about 2 words, i was completely bamboozled; i just couldn't spot which word he was on. it was like in Crouching tiger hidden dragon, where the kungfu masters practice Wudang, only in this case, the dragon would be the song that was trying desperately to get out!
if the analogy didn't make sense, don't worry, it at least should have conveyed my mental reaction to the song on show.
after a while, i spotted some of his metric patterns.
for instance take the song from a popular govinda film
"main tho rasthe se jaa raha thaa,
main tho bhel poori kha raha tha,
rasthe se ja raha tha, bhel poori kha raha tha,
ladki ghumaa raha tha,
thujko mirchi lagi tho main kya karoon!"
Now Mr Y would sing it (metric splitting) in this fashion.
" main thooooooooooooo rasthe
se ja raha, bhel poori kha raha(?!)
teri naani ko mirchi lagi tho main kya
karooooooooooooooooooooooon!"
In this fashion, he sort of preempted some of the forthcoming lines of the song! and if he forgot some words, never mind, he'd throw in a few of his own, entirely improv! for instance the dil mera churaaya kyun- after a point he had forgotten some words but promptly came back with mujhse yoon moo ladaaya kyun(?!!)!!
Now i obviously cannot describe his voice.....bloodcurdling would be a good word because it is possible that one's blood might curdle upon prolonged exposure to this kind of singing, but that doesn't quite make the match. because you wouldn't want to listen to something bloodcurdling at all, but with ustaad we wanted more of it! its like this: remember the screeching sounds you get from chalk on a blackboard? now how would it be if you liked that noise?!! his voice was sub bass-meaning, even the bass singers couldn't actually reach his....well, pitch?(is that an appropriate word for him?). in carnatic music parlance, his voice was somewhere in the realms of 0.5 - 1 kattai ! and his voice wasn't one of those feeble and difficult to spot ones-no siree, it was fortissimo! yet not totally unbearable!
i felt like one of the insects that get drawn to these electric lamps only to get the shock of their lives. and yet, i was enjoying his song singing so much that i completely forgot about my nausea; the man saved my day and made it one of the best experiences I've ever had in a bus trip!
in the days that followed, many tried to take over since what he did seemed easy (heck after all, they figured, its just cacophony!); and how mistaken were they!
that was however, his last year in ISI. he was unfortunately, a senior that year and was graduating-the last thing i knew about him was that he was joining TCS and this info is more than 8 yrs old, alas!
the harder the hacks and quacks tried, the more annoying they got. and to themselves too. they realized that they were not able to replicate that unique sound in any way. none of the wannabe yekkalas, those vying for his post, could match up to the man's prowess. he was in some sense, the antithesis of harmony and rhythm and yet (like the devil!), extremely ear-friendly!
i then realized that there was a method to his madness and it takes a genius to create such noise! no matter what i write now, it would still fall woefully short of the experience of listening to him from up close. and since i haven't heard of his exploits anywhere i must assume that his talent has been lost to obscurity.
will the real yekkelas please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?
First things first: A happy New year to one and all!
As the calender pages moved on and we all got a wee bit older and wiser (myself-I indeed got appreciably older), it seemed appropriate to stop and muse awhile. And musing i shall do (in fact that is what my blog is called!).
As i entered the prime of my youth (again, there seems to be a little bit of controversy here - some people have argued, and quite cogently at that, that 31 ought to be THE prime of one's youth, but thats just splitting hairs), i just looked back to see if anyone could profit from my wisdom. and it seems quite clear to me that my vast experience with human nature can help all those people who have no, NO experience at all.
but on the flip side, no one else seems to be benefiting....
so, to strike a balance, i shall narrate an experience of mine, which, i believe, will also give you readers, a glimpse into what is indeed a mystical dying art. and it is sad that the master(s) of this are neither well recognized, nor, worse, even known to the public. they seem to be disappearing like a blur on the landscape....
the story unfolds in the year 1998, December, during my first 'educational tour' from ISI. We had an 8 day tour of Shimla, Kulu, Manali, and then a return to Delhi, where some of us got off while the rest carried on to what is now Kolkata.
i didn't realize before but that trip brought to my attention the fact that my mom's asthmatic troubles had been sort of bequeathed to me as well. And what better opportunity to discover that than having to chug along with a big piece of luggage in a rarified atmosphere!
though the trip was for most parts pleasant and indeed wonderful, it was the first time i was exposed to such low temperatures and also cope with my increasing asthma. and to make matters a little more competitive, one of my seniors had, in an attempt to help me out (bless his soul), inadvertently, broken my suitcase's handle.
so if i said that i wasn't exactly in the pink of health, i wouldn't be indulging in too much of falsehood. and on the last day of the trip, as we were about to leave Manali and get back to Kalka, i felt like i might get sick any moment. As it is, i have never been comfy travelling on the hilly roads in India by bus, and an entire day's traveling ahead seemed like the perfect way to bring me to a whole new level of misery. my friend karthik who sat beside me, got me something to ease the nausea but it felt like impending doom. waiting to happen.
but something else did, which sort of changed my life a great deal. at least in the way i look at life now.
we were seated in one of the last rows - possibly just two rows ahead of the last row which runs from side to side. and i took the seat off the window because i felt that my tendency to look out the window into the scenery might aggravate the nausea. and all this now makes sense in the big scheme of things.
as the bus started, some of the guys in the last row called for some antakshari - basically a 'string-a-song' game, where one sings bollywood numbers with the (n+1)th song starting off from the ending letter of the nth song. some other rules apply regarding what consonant changes are permissible if need be, and what constitutes the ending/beginning of a song, but let us not get bogged down by technical details.
though antakshari is played as a competitive team event, junta in the bus decided that they'd all participate without resorting to team-forming, so basically they had decided upon singing songs in sequence but adhering to the aforementioned rules.
as the bus made a couple of `hair-pin bends', i swear to having heard someone from the last row go, " shuru karo ustaad "! and as if on cue, the ustaad did.
now i didn't know most of the people in the last two rows since they weren't BStat/MStat guys; some were Mtech QROR and some others were MSQEs. and the only other bit of info i have about ustaad is that his last name was Yekkela.....or something..let's say Yekkela.
He might have been a gult, I can't say now. i can't even recall his face properly but i still can distinctly hear his tone.
There are several wonderful tales about music and musicians saving people from dying, bringing rain to a dry town, and such like. What i am about to say is something similar, since the man definitely saved the day for me.
one of the most fascinating characters in the Asterix comic series is Cacophonix. not simply because his voice is supposed to be bad, it is supposed to be subliminally bad! it brought rain, terrified the normans, scared hungry lions and tigers, .... the list just goes on and on. it always remained one of my curious desires to know what his voice might have sounded like.
Now some of you are probably forming a bad opinion on Mr Y. i must reiterate: Y's singing saved the day for me, o.k? remember that.
at first i just didn't pay attention but slowly, felt that something sounded off ; in fact, i can't put a point upon it....from the chorus one voice stood out, as something very unique. i felt like i was one of those characters walking into a 'ghost well' or something....
soon most people in the bus, especially those of us who were in the last rows could feel some vibes...sorry, vibrations. at first it was difficult to understand what he was singing. i have heard people go off key but nothing like this! this man made it difficult to spot the song, even after him declaring what he was going to sing next!
let me explain: one of the songs he sang was " dil mera churaaya kyun, jab yeh dil todnaa hi tha" from AHAK. after about 2 words, i was completely bamboozled; i just couldn't spot which word he was on. it was like in Crouching tiger hidden dragon, where the kungfu masters practice Wudang, only in this case, the dragon would be the song that was trying desperately to get out!
if the analogy didn't make sense, don't worry, it at least should have conveyed my mental reaction to the song on show.
after a while, i spotted some of his metric patterns.
for instance take the song from a popular govinda film
"main tho rasthe se jaa raha thaa,
main tho bhel poori kha raha tha,
rasthe se ja raha tha, bhel poori kha raha tha,
ladki ghumaa raha tha,
thujko mirchi lagi tho main kya karoon!"
Now Mr Y would sing it (metric splitting) in this fashion.
" main thooooooooooooo rasthe
se ja raha, bhel poori kha raha(?!)
teri naani ko mirchi lagi tho main kya
karooooooooooooooooooooooon!"
In this fashion, he sort of preempted some of the forthcoming lines of the song! and if he forgot some words, never mind, he'd throw in a few of his own, entirely improv! for instance the dil mera churaaya kyun- after a point he had forgotten some words but promptly came back with mujhse yoon moo ladaaya kyun(?!!)!!
Now i obviously cannot describe his voice.....bloodcurdling would be a good word because it is possible that one's blood might curdle upon prolonged exposure to this kind of singing, but that doesn't quite make the match. because you wouldn't want to listen to something bloodcurdling at all, but with ustaad we wanted more of it! its like this: remember the screeching sounds you get from chalk on a blackboard? now how would it be if you liked that noise?!! his voice was sub bass-meaning, even the bass singers couldn't actually reach his....well, pitch?(is that an appropriate word for him?). in carnatic music parlance, his voice was somewhere in the realms of 0.5 - 1 kattai ! and his voice wasn't one of those feeble and difficult to spot ones-no siree, it was fortissimo! yet not totally unbearable!
i felt like one of the insects that get drawn to these electric lamps only to get the shock of their lives. and yet, i was enjoying his song singing so much that i completely forgot about my nausea; the man saved my day and made it one of the best experiences I've ever had in a bus trip!
in the days that followed, many tried to take over since what he did seemed easy (heck after all, they figured, its just cacophony!); and how mistaken were they!
that was however, his last year in ISI. he was unfortunately, a senior that year and was graduating-the last thing i knew about him was that he was joining TCS and this info is more than 8 yrs old, alas!
the harder the hacks and quacks tried, the more annoying they got. and to themselves too. they realized that they were not able to replicate that unique sound in any way. none of the wannabe yekkalas, those vying for his post, could match up to the man's prowess. he was in some sense, the antithesis of harmony and rhythm and yet (like the devil!), extremely ear-friendly!
i then realized that there was a method to his madness and it takes a genius to create such noise! no matter what i write now, it would still fall woefully short of the experience of listening to him from up close. and since i haven't heard of his exploits anywhere i must assume that his talent has been lost to obscurity.
will the real yekkelas please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)