June 2009 – Page 2

The Terms of Affection

Bhanu Prakash Singh in a CNN-IBN debate says this (emphasis by me):

Nearly 50 per cent of India was formerly princely states. So how can one stop the people from calling Rajas, Ranis, Kunwar saheb? These are sometimes even terms of affection.

Now I can imagine this conversation from the Rajah era:

Man 1: I love my Raja so much so that I never even go one kilometer near his sight and lay flat in the mud when I hear the noise of his palanquin bearers!

Man 2: I love my Thampuran so much so that I don’t mind that my would-be now bears his local administrator’s child!

Man 3: I love my Naadu Vaazhi so much so that I didn’t say anything when he killed my younger son for questioning him!

Man 1: Wow! Such love & affection!!

******

And the Congress party has asked all its members to discontinue using any feudal titles. Discontinue using fuedal titles. End of statement. Is that all, Madamme?

The graffiti inside the toilets in our trains usually have vulgar language and/or sexual graphics. In India, the public toilet is the kind of place where people get to release their closeted sexual perversion or desires through graffiti. But never in the recent post have I seen any message of love in such places. And on last Sunday I saw a very peculiar message of love, on the walls of toilet in the Mangalore-Trivandrum express train, while I was on my way to Trivandrum from my hometown Thrissur.

“I love my Pedali” – that was written all over the four walls of the toilet in that train. In different ways. Now those who are used to the wall graffiti in India may not find that interesting enough, but what captured my interest is the name “Pedali“. The word “Pedali” in Malayalam means the side of the neck. So I wonder, who would be so much self-obsessed with his Pedali that he took the effort of filling in the toilet space with his love for his Pedali? 🙂 Or is there actually a name called Pedali? Anyways, this guy/gal really really loves his pedali! 😀

Pedali, he really loves you! He even has a rose for his pedali!

He loves you pedali! He really loves you darling!

New website for Audio India

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Hello! We have a new home for Audio India, a directory of music bloggers from India. Check out the new website at http://www.musicblogsindia.com with many new features which makes Audio India a one-stop-shop for all music blogging listeners. Also please update your feeds accordingly.

http://musicblogsindia.com/feed/ (for posts)
http://musicblogsindia.com/comments/feed/ (for comments)

A little bit of history for those of you who are new to Audio India:

The idea of a complete directory website for Indian music blogging community was suggested by a regular listener of music blogs from India. He said that he didn’t want to go and check every music blog to see if they have got any new updates. Neither did he want to subscribe to all those RSS feeds just to know if there has been any update. That is how Audio India, a music blog to track all updates from music blogs was born, in 2006.

Music blogging was started in early 2005 in India. Since then, the community has grown up from a handful of music bloggers to almost a hundred music bloggers. The first version of this music blog was hosted in Blogger and the new version is a WordPress hosted site with many new features which makes it a one-stop-shop for all music blogging listeners.

New Features:

Rating for posts: Now you can rate a music post and the top rated posts will be shown in the side bar. This will help to encourage music bloggers to continue treating you with their songs as well as to improve themselves.
Discussion Forums – Discuss anything and everything about music blogging – ask/share where you get the karaoke tracks from, the glitches of home recording, recording tips – whatever you need to discuss about music blogging.
Song Requests – You can use this page to request a music blogger to sing your favorite song (however it is the music blogger’s discretion whether to consider or reject the request)
Tips & Tutorials – Some great tips and tutorials from the people who have been music blogging since a long time. This will help those of you who want to know what kind of effort goes on behind every music blog post.

That’s all for now. Browse through our pages and let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the Audio India feed.

Aussies, Bollywood, Racism etc

rajesh_khanna These are scary times for the Indian students in Australia. The fear of being beaten up, or the vehicles being torched etc still prevails and its all in the name of race. The racist attacks against Indian students in Australia have sparked widespread protests in India and abroad. The most noted protest came from the old showman of the so-called Bollywood who refused to accept an award given to him by the Aussies. And the Bollywood joined in this protest against racism.

Yes, against racism. Now before I go further, wouldn’t you agree that Racism, Casteism and Prejudice are cousins? If yes, let us rewind the news a little bit. There we see the Bollywood star of the yesteryears, Rajesh Khanna, publicly mouthing against South Indians.

I had a hearty laugh when she said that when a person retires he or she gets lifetime achievement award. I disagree. Probably she doesn’t know the word (in) English, she’s probably from south (India).

So Mr. Khanna believes that the south Indians do not understand English. Now either I can go ahead and point out at more than a thousand examples of known or not-publicly-known individuals from South India, or ignore his ignorance. And I prefer the latter. What I cannot ignore however, is this kind of prejudice that prevails among us, the people of the same country. But the old Mr. Khanna can be excused since the south Indians themselves have such prejudices against each other.

Coming back to our protest against racism, we Indians seem to have easily forgotten our Desi version of it – Casteism. And as much as we like to deny it, some reminders keep popping up from time to time. Like this, for example. The 11 year old Dalit servant boy who was made to sit and eat under the table, while his masters enjoy their meals on the dining table. The image of a dog comes to my mind, that sits under the table of his master. We even have a popular name for this set of people now – The slum dogs. And talking of slum dogs, this is about how you would treat the people who belongs to the lowest step of the caste and economical ladder.

Oh, and what was the occassion that Khanna ji made his remarks against South Indians? IIFA – The so-called International Indian Film Awards. about which I had written about in my blog on various occassions (Not in Our Name and Indian Awards, Given Abroad) and of which our old angry young man, who refused to accept the Aussie award in protest against racism, is a leading ambassador.

Kandu Njaan – from Abhimanyu (cover)

Here is a rough recording of one of my favorite songs. I did not try to edit out the breathing noise or lip movements. Just wanted to sing it, since I love this song so much. 🙂

Song: Kandu Njaan Mizhikalil
Movie: Abhimanyu
Music: Raveendran
Original Singer: M G Sreekumar
Covered by: Joseph Thomas (Jo)

Download MP3 of Kandu Njaan from Abhimanyu (3.49 MB)

Kandu Njaan (unplugged) | Online recorder

Music of Lal Meri

I got hooked to this band and their songs for the past few days. The band is Lal Meri, a fusion band with a Trance/Lounge touch. Listen to their songs at Lal Meri’s website or in their MySpace page. My most favorite tracks from the album are Dreams of 18, Sweet Love & Mausam. There is also a remix track of the Hindi song Oh Lal Meri. Their lead singer Nancy Kaye has got an addictive voice that will leave you in a trance by just listening to their songs.

And now here is the video of one of the tracks – Dreams of 18. Grab a copy of Lal meri if you can, even if it’s for the above mentioned 3 songs.

Eenam – A free music album in Malayalam

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Following the foot steps of Blogswara, a group of Malayalam bloggers have teamed up to create eeNam – a freely downloadable Malayalam musical album. EENAM 2009 has 9 Malayalam songs of different genres falling into Folk, Pathos, Philosophical, Festival, Semi Classical, Lullaby, Melody, Duet, Fast Campus Song categories. The album is scheduled to be released by the end of June 2009. The EENAM team is also planning to release and distribute an audio CD version for Rs 50.

I will be singing a solo song and a group song in this album. The song teasers have been posted at the EENAM website. Do check it out.

The Job Hopper

I read the following article posted in a website by a senior HR executive. I’m not sure if this is for real or a work of fiction. However, most of what Mr. Job Hopper said would make sense to many employees. Some companies don’t care much about people who are loyal to the company. It looks like to get a good pay hike, either you have to be a chamcha of your boss or get an offer letter from another company and negotiate. But why waste your time playing all those dirty games?

Anyways, before you start job-hopping after reading this article, keep a few things in mind.

== Equip yourself with the latest technology in your area of expertise – Be the best.

== Not all companies hire people like Mr. JH – Some companies which prefer long term association and look for people who have stayed for at least 2-3 years in their previous companies, may not be quite impressed with such a CV.

== If you prefer comfort level rather than money, consider that before you start job hopping.

Now go ahead and read. 🙂

Some, rather most organizations reject his CV today because he has changed jobs frequently (10 in 14 years). My friend, the ‘job hopper’ (referred here as Mr. JH), does not mind it…. well he does not need to mind it at all. Having worked full-time with 10 employer companies in just 14 years gives Mr. JH the relaxing edge that most of the ‘company loyal’ employees are struggling for today. Today, Mr. JH too is laid off like some other 14-15 year experienced guys – the difference being the latter have just worked in 2-3 organizations in the same number of years. Here are the excerpts of an interview with Mr. JH: Continue reading The Job Hopper

What is that?

“What is that?” is a Greek short film directed by Constantin Pilavios made in 2007 and it tells the story of relationships. The movie is short, simple yet so touching. Check it out.

(Thanks to Sandeep Raja for the link)

Do we want blood on our hands?

This news from Times Online, comes as shocking to me. India, instead of supporting the proposal for a war crime inquiry by UN Human Rights Council, decided to thwart the process along with China and Russia. I do not support the LTTE and it’s ways and I do not think that they are what the Tamils need in Sri Lanka, but when 1000 people were killed each day, which makes the civilian death toll to above 20,000, shouldn’t the Sri Lankan government be held responsible? Or at least have undergone a UN inquiry? With it’s crucial role in the sub-continent, shouldn’t India have supported this inquiry? Our hypocrisy is wide open, because we supported a war crime inquiry into Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip but chose to thwart a similar inquiry in Sri Lanka.

Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said that neither reason justified failing to act when the Red Cross warned of an “unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe”. India “could have saved many lives if it had taken a proactive position — and it would not have affected the outcome of the war,” he said.

Sam Zarifi, Asia Pacific director of Amnesty International, said: “India . . . simply chose to support the [Sri Lankan] Government’s notion that it could kill as many civilians as it would take to defeat the Tigers.”

India says that it provided Sri Lanka with non-lethal military equipment and sent officials repeatedly to persuade the Government to protect civilians. “We’ve consistently taken the line that the Sri Lankan Government should prevent civilian casualties,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

However, President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka told NDTV: “I don’t think I got any pressure from them. They knew that I’m fighting their war.” [Via]

The Congress government at the center needs to answer for the murder of 20,000 civilians in Sri Lanka. We have blood on our hands.

(Thanks to Vassan for the links)

Month: June 2009