BP and UC

While skipping through the photo galleries of the protest against BP oil spill in America, I saw the following slogans:

BP = $ Over Life
BP profits: The planet & people pay

For a moment, I thought about UC (Union Carbide) and the Bhopal verdict that came out recently. 25 years taken for a weak verdict to come out. It is a shame on us by itself. Add to that the reports of our own Government tried to help Warren Anderson escape the country back in ’84.

Now that the oil has spilled over to the shores of America, killing 11 workers and many species, and demanding BP to clean it’s shores of the USA, would the American Government now understand what it means to a country that lost 20,000 people and the chemical exposure of over 500,000 people in the Bhopal gas tragedy? And help put Warren Anderson to trial?

Social networking, in the real world

Web 2.0 has given us so many tools to keep in touch with each other. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Foursquare etc, you know what is happening in your friend’s life, where he/she is standing right now, what he/she does or thinks right now and see the photo records. Then you can let others have a peek into what happens in your life too. BUT – does that really satisfy your need to interact with real people in real life?

I remember this once incident from a New Year’s eve an year back. I was single, all my friends have had other engagements or parties to attend and I had no one to keep me company to celebrate the New Year’s eve. And I felt so lonely. I logged into Gtalk, Twitter, Facebook and Orkut – but none of them seemed to matter and they just appeared to be a strange world. The whole virtual world seemed to be fake, an illusion without a human touch.

I had this thought particularly when a friend called me last Saturday and told me how lonely he felt that day as he was alone at home. He saw some of his old friends in the neighborhood and he said they also seemed to be lonely in a kind of way and he felt the need to network in the real world. Those neighbors were his childhood friends with whom he lost that touch in the course of time and he said now he understands the value of keeping a good network in the real world.

Sometimes, the virtual world seems to be throwing information overload (links! links! links!) and its kind of losing that personal touch that we all crave for. The vast network that it offers and the way it redefines the word “friend” (everyone you meet on the social networking sites is a “friend”) are beginning to seem very boring. And it makes me want to go back to that smaller world of friends that I had many years back. Smaller but thicker. These days, I am trying to spend an evening on every weekend with the childhood friends and it gives a lot of comfort and free air to spend time with them, sharing even idiotic things, laughing it off. It is so comforting. And when I see the rush of people to add more and more people to their friends list just to showcase “I’ve got N number of friends!“, I wish that they understood the value of networking with real people, in the real world. Or keeping in touch with the real thick friends they have, how small it might be in numbers.

Radhika singing in Telugu films

Around the same time, back in 2008, I had the opportunity to introduce a wonderful singer to the music blogging world – Radhika Sethumadhavan. Radhika had then moved on to study music in A R Rahman’s school in Chennai. Now she has made her entry into the film music with two songs in the Telugu movie, Pappu.

Listen to the songs (Mellaga, Pappu) at Raaga and let her know what you think. You can also listen to her songs in her music blog – Radhika the Musician.

Arikathaayaaro (cover)

Phew! It’s been a long time since I have posted some music here. As much as I love music, I have to admit that I am getting sick of posting karaokes. I just don’t feel much enthusiasm that I had during the initial days of music blogging to do the karaokes. I feel like a ghost of someone else when I do karaokes. People have a tendency to compare your version with the original regardless of how much you try to put your own signature to the song. And that makes me sick. I don’t want to be a ghost anymore. And that might perhaps mark the end of my online singing pretty soon if I don’t get to do the originals. (Yes, I still want do an album of myself with the original songs, composed and sung by myself, but I don’t have a producer yet). But still, the karaoke singing at least helps me keep up with music – singing – because otherwise I don’t seriously sing anything, so this is sort of a practice medium.

The song of the day is from the Malayalam movie Bodyguard, composed by my favorite music director Ouseppachan and sung by Ranjith. This is a pretty tough song that challenges the breath control with it’s fast pace and the plans that comes in between. Here is my try anyway.

Movie: Bodyguard (Malayalam)
Music: Ouseppachan
Original singer: Ranjith
Covered by: Joseph Thomas (Jo)

Download “Arikathaayaro” (3.77 MB)

(image courtesy: Sify.com)

I don’t know…

I don’t know whom to believe any more.

Some say that Maoists are fighting for the tribals because of the abuse they face by the corporates and government. Maoists seem to be a group of people fighting for a cause.

But then I see Maoists killing people, jawans and civilians alike, and that makes me think how can such a group of killers ever fight effectively for a just cause.

Then some activists, including some ex-Naxalites, sign a press copy saying that they condemn the heinous acts of Maoists. They say that both the state and Maoists are abusing the tribals. They say that the fight against the mining industry was born even before Mao himself. And if Maoists have any sincerity in the matter, they should first fight the mining corporates than just plainly taxing them for business.

I don’t know. The picture that I get from all these is of the state and its politicians who make way for some corporates to function smoothly because there is big money for everyone to make in those thick, dark layers of land. And a set of killing machines who kill people to overthrow a corrupt system to replace it with another more centralized and violent system in the name of revolution. And a state-sponsored militia that fights/kills/abuses it’s own people.

I don’t know whom or what to believe anymore. But I do know that I should thank God that I was not born a tribal. For, at the end of the day, they are the ones who are most suffered, abused and wiped out of history that we, rest of the people in this land, keep making. I should be happy that I am not one of those unlucky tribals. But then that darn line keeps ringing in my head:

“THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.“

The Malayali Factor

Today’s is a guest post from a friend, Sally Varma. Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

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On May 22, 2010, Saturday morning, an Air India Express plane from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at the Mangalore airport and plunged over a cliff into a wooded valley, killing 158 persons. There were 160 passengers and six crew members on board Flight IX-812. The passengers included 137 adults, 19 children and 4 infants. Eight passengers survived miraculously.

The whole of India was shocked with the news. I was at home watching TV and was going through the different news channels showing the news of the crash. I went through all the regional news channels first and was shocked to find a harrowing truth. All the Malayalam news channels only cared about the Malayalees in the flight. Among the 160 passengers in the plane, the only reports that were being shown was about the Malayalees who were in the plane. The newsreader kept repeating the same news of the number of Malayalees on board, the number of Malayalees killed, the number of Malayalees who escaped etc… It is a sad state that we live in where such bias takes place. Is this not a tragedy for India as a whole or is it in the viewpoint of all these Malayali channel’s ‘just a tragedy for Kerala’? What about the other people and their families, the non-Malayalees on that ill-fated flight? Don’t they too deserve the same prayers as the Malayalees?

I then switched channels and went to the Tamil news channels, which were faithfully showing the news of the crash with no partiality or bias towards only the Tamilian people on board. Also channels like CNN-IBN, Times Now, NDTV 24×7, were all showing religious coverage of the crash.

So, I think this shows the Malayali attitude of selfishness and regional chauvinism. And to think that all these channels and papers were criticizing Bal Thackeray for his comments on Sachin.  Bal Thackeray had slammed master blaster Sachin Tendulkar for his statement that he is an Indian first and then a Maharashtrian. If these Malayali channels can do this sort of bias while reporting news of a national tragedy like the Air India plane crash, then I think the comment from Bal Thackeray also can be justified.

It is high time that the Malayali media stop promoting such regional sensationalism and start to consider everyone as equal human beings.

In memory of the 158 HUMAN BEINGS who were killed in the Air India plane crash of October 22, 2010. May their souls rest in peace.

Brainstorming Blogswara

Blogswara logo

Starting from the year 2006, Blogswara has released 6 online albums with 61 original songs in 5 Indian languages (Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada) by 101 individual artists. So much effort has gone into the release of each Blogswara album by everyone involved in this project. What Blogswara aimed for was never a commercial benefit out of it, or to make a band of our own, but to promote amateur music and give a platform for musicians who otherwise would not have been heard in the public. People who have participated in Blogswara have dreamed of sharing the music for free using the power of Internet. Many people who have participated in the Blogswara, who have worked together on a song, have not even met in the real world but made music happen. It was proof that music can unite people. It was all this and much more that has kept the spirit of Blogswara going.

But we think not everything is fair. Our audience has been consistent but limited, considering the wide reach that the Internet offers. And I think that the Blogswara members / musicians deserve a wider audience for the effort they put in. And we tried to reach out to the world. We had our bit of media publicity too. But it seems that the best way to reach out to a wider audience is through tapping the offline audience that comes in huge numbers.

You need money and marketing techniques to promote an album offline. Since Blogswara is a non-profit entity, it is impossible to pour in money. The other way is to get your songs and the concept aired through the radio – but they don’t seem to be interested in broadcasting anything other than filmy music.

At this moment, I think the time has come to think of a revamp, a fresh outlook to the whole concept. Keeping in mind that the very idea of Blogswara came through various discussions with online friends, I request you to put your thoughts, answers or criticism in the comments section.

  • Do you think it is time to bid good-bye to Blogswara? A concept that has been widely admired over these years by anyone who have heard of it? If so, why?
  • What can be done to bring more life to the concept, keeping the founding concepts in mind?

Please take your time and give us your thoughtful inputs. look forward to that. Thank you!

The Unreported World

I’ve just gone through a series of videos by Unreported World and two of them struck me so much because it was shot here in India. You MUST checkout their series of reports from world over and particularly the following:

The Broken People
“We’re forced to eat rats, because we cannot afford to buy food”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc7iiFPDbDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leUEtR7ZUWk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiLFVuosdm4


The Land of Missing Children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Wm4nasexY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_fT-yQ6WnE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I4Lc-yDGJU