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.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
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?
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