Just Jo – Page 10 – Just being myself

Religion / spirituality as a paid service

The other day I was reading the news of Sri (x 2) Ravi Shankar’s satsang in Alappuzha in Kerala, where he was asked by the journalists his opinion on selling/marketing spirituality (Ravi Shankar was accused of commercializing spirituality by a Communist leader in Kerala). He said that he was indeed selling/marketing spirituality, yoga and ‘Indian culture’. I was astonished that he admitted this openly. But in the very next sentence (as reported by Mathrubhumi daily) he said that the profit he gets from this business is ‘smiles’ from the people and not money. That was a huge let down. I mean, why are the spiritual gurus, religious heads etc hesitant to admit that they are providing a service which we have to pay them? We all know that is the reality but why wouldn’t they admit it and why the word ‘money’ is so evil to them when they have no qualms in receiving it in loads?

Let me tell you about another incident. This is from the last weekend, on January 5th on my second brother’s 16th death anniversary. I had paid for some spiritual services for that day about a month ago in our parish for which I got the receipt (as per the rule I should show the receipt before the service is done or I would be denied the service, even in a possible case of misplacing the receipt). When I got there with my entire family (all of us would get together every year on that date for the service and thereafter for breakfast and lunch in my house) I’d found out that the second morning mass was canceled for that day. The cancellation was announced a week ago on a Sunday, but I did not go to the church that Sunday. But my booking was done about three weeks ago and nobody in the parish office notified me on this. So there were three services for which I had paid and I was ready to let go off two as a compromise. But the parish vicar denied me these services. He said I could choose one of the three services which he would decide, but I wasn’t ready to accept it. I told him that I was ready to let go the other two but one must take place because the entire family had come for this day and this special service and it cannot be postponed.

I also told the priest that I had paid for these services, which got him furious. Furious to a level that he even threatened that “I will show you” for which I responded “let’s see”. I don’t understand this. Why get furious for mentioning money? Especially when there is a practice that the priests would do the special services only upon presenting the original payment receipts? If they are so ashamed of the mention of money, or if money is so evil, then why demand the pay?

There are a couple of things that people who practice religion can and should do about this. First, remove the ‘holy’ or ‘divine’ element when you demand these services, as long as you are paying for it. Respond to the priests just as they respond to you; you wouldn’t find ‘holiness’ in the way that most of them, like our parish priest, speaks. Then demand the service as you would in case of any other paid services in this world. And, I am not sure if it already is and if not, bring the spiritual/religious services under the consumer court. A first step to deal with this this kind of issues is for the spiritual/religious heads to admit that they indeed make money (and not just smiles) out of special spiritual/religious services, and then the believers/consumers should see it as yet another paid consumer service (with a ‘divine’ element if you’d like, of course).

What can you do?

The Delhi rape and the subsequent outrage against it has prompted many responses. Responses which looked at the issue as a problem of ‘the other’ and never ours. Some of those comments which came from the religious gurus and communal organizations have been so weird. So more than the candle-light vigils and placard-holding rallies (I’m not undermining the importance of collective responses though), what is the least thing we can do about the issues like this or the root cause of it all – gender equality? We speak about it at length, but what do we do about it, starting from our own families?

So here is a questionnaire/check list that we can use to see how we are scaling ourselves. We need not publish the answers for the public, but just think about it for ourselves. This is just an initial step, but still would be a good beginning.

– do you do your own laundry?
– do you iron your own clothes?
– do you serve your own food?
– do you do your part in cleaning the floors?
– do you do your part in other house-chores?
– do you do your part in parenting?
– do you do all of the above when you are living with the womenfolk in your family, and not just when you live alone?
– do you do all these by ‘favor’ or by a feeling of equal responsibility?

Good riddance, 2012!

Every new year brings with it the hope of doing something new or going to back to doing something you have been doing and the hope for a better life. But 2012 was not a great year at all. One good thing from 2012 was to see some friends and fellow Blogswaraites debuting in the mainstream music industry. More power to them and music.

There has been so much negativity all around the last year. Blame it on the system, government, people, media or yourself/myself. There were ‘movements’ that didn’t move anything at all. From Hazare through Ramdev to others. Short-sighted people with vested interests banking upon sentiments of the common man and the common man happily playing into the hands of them gave them both the obvious results. Media however benefited largely from these circuses.

Seeing all this, I feel I should shut down the computer, go off the Twitter/Facebook radar and listen to music, eyes and ears shut to the outer world. But how long? This moment or the other, this very system, people, government or media is going to grab me at my feet and toss me away. One can never escape from his environment.

So here is to hoping for a better year or the years to come in both personal and social life. Happy New Year everyone.

From Raga to Rock

My story on contemporary Malayalam film music scene written for the December issue of Sound Box magazine. Here is an unedited version. You can read the e-magazine from here (go to page # 36 to read).

Ask any Malayalee what genre of music he or she likes and the instant reply you would get is melody. Even though the word ‘melody’ has somewhat different meaning in music, the average Malayalee uses it to refer to the soft and soothing music. Malayalam film music has played a big role in developing this ‘taste of melody’ among the Malayali audience. Like many other film music industries in India, Malayalam also did not have much exposure to the various genres of music outside the Indian classical music system. As a result, it contained itself to be a simplified version of Karnatik and Hindustani music systems for the past several decades. The equations however are changing and fast.

The old school

The lighter version of the various Indian classical music schools went very well with the audience too, thanks to the lyricists like Vayalar Ramavarma and P Bhaskaran who used simple words to convey the ideas through songs. Their words and the lighter forms of classical music stayed with the audience. Composers like G Devarajan and M S Baburaj were a supreme influence of this era. Singer K J Yesudas was another big factor and his voice had set a benchmark to the singing aspirants of Malayali society. But there was little life for popular music outside the film music scene that got stuck to the style of Karnatik music. Then came music composer M G Radhakrishnan who popularized a music genre called “Light Music” in Kerala. Radhakrishnan who was working with All India Radio before he entered the film music had helped this genre to become mainstream. Parallely, Yesudas had also begun releasing light music albums under his own recording label Tharangini. Be it in popular music (that consisted of light music) or film music, Yesudas found a massive fan following.

“In an industry where a lot of music has become formulaic, often bcos the producer tells the music producer exactly which hit song to copy ;), I think filmmakers who are experimental enough to approach indie artists are looking for something different and thats what they are getting. I’m sure the audience can make out the difference and appreciate it. – Suraj Mani, singer and ex-vocalist of Motherjane

Late 80s and early 90s saw the Malayalam film music going back to it’s classical roots with much vigor that was not seen even in the early days. Thanks to a new trend in film music called ‘semi-classical’ which was made popular by music director Raveendran. The trio of composer Raveendran, singer Yesudas and actor Mohan Lal made these films and genre extremely popular. This has in a way helped bridge the gap between the general public and Karnatik music but it did not change much for the Malayalam film music.

The pace hots up

Meanwhile, a younger generation of Malayalees was growing up, listening to the fast paced Hindi and Tamil film music. The ‘dappankuth’ genre of fast paced Tamil numbers had taken over the Malayali youngsters so much so that every orchestra or every single Malayali musical programmes had to have a few Tamil numbers to mark a grand closure of the show. TV channels were flocking with requests from Malayali youngsters to play fast-paced Tamil songs. Indi-pop singers like Daler Mehndi also had a huge fan following here in his heydays.

But the clutches of classical music stayed on in Malayalam film music and not many tried to break the barrier (agreed that there were one-off attempts at western music by music composers like Devarajan) until a new music director came into the scene. Jassie Gift became a household name among Malayalees with a single song called “Lajjavathiye”. The song was a massive hit not only in Kerala but in other south Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and heavily contributed to the success of the movie that featured the song (which was then remade into other south Indian languages). The song with it’s Rap intro, heavy beats and a different style of singing by Jassie himself had drawn much criticism from the purists of music but nevertheless enjoyed a huge success. Alternatively, another music director, Alphons, was also experimenting with different genres of music. One of his compositions in Malayalam film “Manju poloru penkutti” had an English number that featured one of the best voices in the contemporary Malayalam film music industry, Sayanora.

But still, a bigger change of genre was just waiting to happen. Musicians like Jassie or Alphons had to work with an older generation of movie makers, a fact which might have drawn limits to their experiments in music. This applies to almost all new entrants in the Malayalam film music industry. But a new era of young and vibrant film makers in the industry has dared to take the film music score to a new level of experiments. Parallely, the Malayali music bands like Avial and Motherjane were making waves across the country and abroad.

Leading the change

Director Aashiq Abu was probably the first among these new age movie directors to introduce the Malayali rock band Avial in his popular film ‘Salt N Pepper’. The song was used for the movie’s online promotions, but Aashiq Abu could not feature it full length in the film or let the band compose the score of the film. So while the movie and songs were scored by another young music director Bijibal, the Avial song was played at the end of the movie. Sameer Thahir, another young movie director, went a step further and roped in Avial’s lead guitarist Rex Vijayan to set score for his debut venture “Chappa Kurishu”. The change was clearly audible in the music of the movie. Rex’s second film music project was for Aashiq Abu’s third flick “22 Female Kottayam” and this also has made a mark in the industry. He has also composed for the film “Second Show” with his band Avial. It would be interesting to note that Rex Vijayan had said in an interview that he has no idea of raagas. This is in a music industry that has it’s roots gone deep in the classical music system and it clearly shows the sign of a transition phase.

As a band, Avial was already a popular up north , not so much so down here. But, with ‘aanakallan’ (the song from the movie ‘Salt N Pepper’) they became household names in Kerala and that year we did a lot of shows in Kerala for colleges and Govt. sponsored shows and corporate events. – Neha S Nair, playback singer and vocalist of Avial

The raaga to rock journey in the Malayalam film music industry couldn’t get more visible than the entry of internationally acclaimed rock band of Malayali origin, Motherjane. Motherjane sang the English theme song “Jehad” for director Amal Neerad’s “Anwar”. But it’s not just the local musicians alone. The X-Factor fame Piyush Kapur has sung an end title song in English for the movie “Asuravithu”, which is in a pure metal flavor.

This could well be the beginning of a new era of diverse experiments in Malayalam film music. With a new set of film makers, music composers and a changing audience, the scene is definitely bringing up multiple genres together in Malayalm film music. There couldn’t be a better time and audience for such a change in the indie-music scene nationally and Kerala also seems to be marching in that direction.

Death call again

One more gruesome case of rape has been reported from Delhi. One more round of protests by citizens, and another round of promises from the administrative officials. The circle goes round and soon all these will be forgotten until this happens again.

This time, there is one change though. I looked at the photographs of the protests against rape and I saw many placards which had ‘death for rapists’ written on them. Even those who were silent when it was about terrorists like Kasab or Afsal Guru, have now come out in open to advocate the death row, regardless of the gender, religion, and locale. That somehow made me uneasy. Yes, the same me who thought that death row for Kasab was justified (but the discussions that followed after the Kasab hanging incident made me think about the issue of capital punishment again). So basically there are three things to discuss here. One is about rape and other such sexual crimes, the second is about social/gender inequality and the third is about capital punishment.

Rape and other such sexual crimes are committed against the ‘weaker’ section of the society (‘weak’ as in not physically or in a derogatory tone but how the society and the world order has made it). When we talk about rape, we usually refer to women alone but this category would involve women of all ages, boys, financially under-privileged (and thus less influential in the social strata) and dalits. All of them are easy preys for the culprits and a combination of any among these could make it even more dangerous than the individual parameters. For example, a lower-caste young girl stands a bigger chance to be sexually assaulted than a higher-caste urban woman. Or a financially under-privileged boy would make an easy prey compared to a boy from an affluent family. The culprits are looking for the weakest, and the weakest of them all are, generally saying, women and children.

When we dig deep into the roots of this issue, keeping the above points in mind, we would find that the problem lies in the social order of equality. A part of this social inequality is complimented by caste-ism which is why it doesn’t take to many candle-light vigils or death row calls and N number of public protests when we hear the news of a dalit girl from a rural area was gang-raped by a group of men. And among that social inequality lies an even bigger issue – of gender inequality. This is everywhere (though the world has moved forward a lot compared to the older times); right from the family, culture, community, religion, anything.

So to fight this problem, of not just rape but all such sexual or other crimes against the weakest is to standby and support the weakest and give them an equal space and rights. And one major thing to start doing in that direction is to change our attitude towards the powerless and that has to start from the family and the responsibility is on men as they are the major culprits in these cases.

When it comes to capital punishment, we can see that it hasn’t curbed crimes. If that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t have to order capital punishment again and again. Hanging is more like a federal state taking revenge on behalf of the individuals. A lawful and civilized state doesn’t have to take care of personal revenge. It’s duty should be to curb crimes, ensure a civilized justice is offered to the victims and the criminals are punished. So the best way to punish a criminal would be to give him a life-sentence and ensuring that he serves his time in full. While in jail, his labor could be made use of for the betterment of the society. I understand that many people wouldn’t be supportive of this because we believe that the criminals would use the loopholes in law and would skip the full term and get back to society. But that is why we have to demand a stricter law and order that ensures a convicted serves his full punishment period. Instead of calling for blood and death and still call ourselves civilized.

Malayalam film songs of 2012 – My picks

It is that time of the year again, to rewind and count the best songs that I have heard this year in Malayalam movies. If 2011 was the year of singer Shreya Ghoshal, 2012 is the year of lyricist Rafeeq Ahamed. Most of my favorites from this year were written by him.

A new generation of music directors and singers continue to rule the scene and top the charts, though the veterans still contribute to the hits. More actors have taken up singing in the movies this year – like Biju Menon, Lal, Remya Nambeeshan and Mamta Mohandas – and among them Remya and Mamta have proved themselves to be good singers. Actor Mohan Lal too had a popular hit with the song “aattu maNal paayayil” on which he collaborated with music director Retheesh Vega. Indie musician/music blogger Harish Sivaramakrishnan has made his entry into Malayalam film music with the song “maRayumO” from the movie ‘Jawan of Vellimala’. Though different genres have been tried and tested, ‘melody’ remains as the popular genre in Malayalam film music.

So here goes my list of favorites from 2012. You would note that this is in no particular order.

Song: Mazha Kondu Maathram
Movie: Spirit
Music: Shahabaz Aman
Lyrics: Rafeeq Ahamed
Singer: Vijay Yesudas

I don’t think there has been better lyrics written for any other Malayalam movie in this year than the movie ‘Spirit’ written by Rafeeq Ahamed. Each and every song in this movie is sheer poetry written without verbal/grammatical jugglery. Kudos to music director Shahbaz Aman who has composed aptly supportive music score without killing the soul of the lyrics. Also checkout the other songs in this movie such as “maraNametthunna nEratthu” or “EE chillayil ninnu”.

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Song: Kanninullil Nee Kanmani
Movie: Trivandrum Lodge
Music: M Jayachandran
Lyrics: Rajeev Nair
Singer: Najeem Arshad

This song became an instant favorite when I heard it for the first time. The music, vocals and visuals are all beautiful in this song. The kids who acted in the video were also sweet. I thought it was Shankar Mahadevan when I heard the first verse but later realized that it was Najeem Arshad’s voice. Don’t know if that sounding-like-Shankar part was intentional or not.

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Song: Mozhikalum Maunangalum
Movie: Padmasree Bharat Dr. Saroj Kumar
Music: Deepak Dev
Lyrics: Kaithapram
Singer: Haricharan

This year, music director Deepak Dev has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. He has been accused of stealing Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt’s music and using it in his movie album “Urumi”. Loreena had filed a case against Deepak which I think is still on-going. However, this particular song is one of the best songs of the year. Deepak couldn’t have got a better team than Haricharan on vocals, Embar Kannan on violin and Sanjeev Thomas on guitars for this song.

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Song: Vaathilil Aa Vaathilil
Movie: Ustad Hotel
Music: Gopi Sunder
Lyrics: Rafeeq Ahamed
Singers: Haricharan

It is singer Haricharan again who has teamed up with music director Gopi Sunder this time. Gopi is known to have made peppy songs with heavy use of guitars, electronic keys and stuff but this song is like a cool breeze floating in the air with a soft aroma of Haricharan’s vocals that makes you close your eyes, inhale deeply and enjoy the bliss. Okay, I understand that I’ve gone overboard but you know what I meant when you hear this song 🙂 (the video below has dialogues from the movie that might be a distraction to enjoy the song). The movie is also a good watch, by the way.

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Song: Shalabha Mazha Peyyumee
Movie: Nidra
Music: Jassie Gift
Lyrics: Rafeeq Ahamed
Singer: Shreya Ghoshal

Jassie Gift is most remembered for his hit song ‘Lajjavathiye’ but the man has composed many beautiful melodies right from the beginning of his career. You would remember his song “thooveLLa thoovum ushassin” from the movie ‘Saphalam’. This song from the debut directorial venture of Siddharth Bharathan is also a beautiful melody, sung by Shreya Ghoshal. Check it out.

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Song: Muthuchippi Poloru
Movie: Thattathin Marayathu
Music: Shaan Rahman
Lyrics: Anu Elizabeth Jose
Singers: Sachin Warrier, Remya Nambeeshan

This whole album is so far the best work of music director Shaan Rahman. This song particularly lingers in my mind with beautiful visuals and Sachin Warrier’s beautiful vocals. I don’t like Remya Nambeeshan’s vocals in this one though. The songs in the album are written by a 21 year old techie and it is her first work in the movie industry.

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Song: Aandelonde
Movie: Ivan Megharoopan
Music: Sharreth
Lyrics: Kaavaalam Narayana Panicker
Singer:Remya Nambeeshan

This folk-ish song has marked actress Remya Nambeeshan’s debut as a playback singer and it became immensely popular. Remya’s voice and treatment gave this song the right feel. With the veteran lyricist Kaavaalam’s lyrics and Sharreth’s music, the song is an absolute delight to listen to.

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Song: Nilaa malare
Movie: Diamond Necklace
Music: Vidyasagar
Lyrics: Rafeeq Ahamed
Singer: Nivas

Beautiful composition, vocals and orchestration. Vidyasagar gives one of his melodious best with a new voice.

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Song: Azhalinte Aazhangalil
Movie: Ayaalum Njaanum Thammil
Music: Ouseppachan
Lyrics: Vayalar Sarath Chandra Varma
Singer: Nikhil Mathew

Another top composition by national award winner Ouseppachan.

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Apart from the above mentioned Malayalam songs, there are a few other language songs which were playing in the loop in my playlist. The following songs were played perhaps more times than any of the songs listed above.

Song: Shedding Skin
Album: Coke Studio @ MTV Season 2
Composer: Karsh Kale
Singers: Karsh Kale, Shruti Pathak, Shilpa Rao, Apeksha Dandekar and Monali Thakur

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Song: Sadaa
Movie: Shala
Music: Agnee (band)

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Song: Sara Sara Saara Kaatthu
Movie: Vaagai Sooda Vaa
Music: M Ghibran
Lyrics: Vairamuthu
Singer: Chinmayee

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The Android Corporations

This news, of Foxconn replacing humans with robots, should have gotten me excited about the possibilities of the future, the progress of technology and all that. Instead, it sends me cold shivers down the spine. Don’t take me wrong. I am still excited about the androids which we could make use of in our daily life. I was amazed at the technology when an ex-colleague told me that she uses a small robot to do the cleaning jobs in her house and how perfectly it cleans every nook and corner of the house. Last week, I was even planning to buy a toy robot for my son because I heard from a colleague that it responds to your hand gestures and even talks and the price isn’t too high. I liked Spielberg’s A.I. too, mostly because I knew it was fiction though the possibility of such a war between humans and androids stuck in my mind.

This news, however, changed all that. It may sound like I am panicking here a little but this truly scares me. It’s not the robots, but the humans who might use robots against other humans. This is like some humans taking advantage of the technology to use against the other humans instead of making it for common good. One million robots are going to replace the human workers in Foxconn’s factories, which means one million people would go out of jobs. I checked on the Foxconn profile in Wikipedia and this Taiwanese company already seems to have a record of ‘poor working conditions, insufficient overtime pay and workplace accidents may be common’. Foxconn also seems to have been in the news for their employee suicides. Wikipedia already has a separate page on the topic.

So what if this becomes a practice? When companies and corporations want to get rid of their ‘troublesome’ employees and their demand for pay hike and better work conditions? I am not ignoring the advantage of using robots in jobs which risks lives, but what about the situations like these? That thought truly scares me and this seems to be just a start of the android era. A war between humans and androids and android-owned humans doesn’t seem fictional now at all.

M-Pod update

M-Pod, the Malayalam podcast was temporarily down due to our old audio file host shutting down the service. It was a great experience with Podbazaar, our old host, and it is sad to see them go. As we move on our mp3 files have been now moved to Internet Archive. So the website has been updated with the new audio files. Do check out the podcast.

Nelliyampathy

Nelliyampathy is a hill station in our neighboring district Palakkad. I have never been to the place though it is pretty close (must be around 80 kms max to reach). So when my nephews planned for a trip to Nelliyampathy on last Saturday, I jumped right in. We started in the morning and came back by night. It was a fun trip with the young ones in the family.

There isn’t a lot to see in Nelliyampathy. It was a sunny day when we got there, yet there was cool breeze in the air. So the climate on that day was somewhere in the middle of being too cold and too hot. Our first stop on the way was Pothundi irrigation dam, but if you go there don’t waste too much time. There is a beautiful garden in the area and that’s a good place to relax a bit, but the dam in itself doesn’t offer much to see. There are some small waterfalls en route to the top of the hills and there was one place that we stopped by when we returned and spent a lot of time. It was a picturesque location and we enjoyed our time there. Another place to see is Seethaargundu view point. That place offers some nice view from the hills and is a major spot. There was another peak called Manpaara, but we didn’t go there.

Ours was a day trip but there are some nice resorts to stay if you go with your family or friends. But when you are outside, there isn’t any good restaurants to eat; at least we could not find any. Below are some photos from our trip.

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A beautiful church somewhere in a rural area with a huge Pietà replica; en route to Nelliyampathy

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A nice view of the hills on the way

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Another view on the way

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The team posing for a photograph en route.

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Pothundy dam

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Boys striking a pose at the Pothundy dam garden.

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Seethargundu view point – friends from the evolution period saying ‘Hi’. 🙂

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Lunch time for the old friends – at Seethaargundu view point

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A view from Seethargundu

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This tree must have been photographed a thousand times by tourists to Nelliyampathy. I have seen numerous photos of this on internet. This tree is situated at Seethaargundu.

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Taking my fair share of fame by posing with the famous tree

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The boys at Seethaargundu

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Literally scratching each others back 😉