Cribbing

This is one of the most bored/depressing weekends. I don’t know if it is the weather today or the recent happenings in my life or a sum of all these that makes me feel blank today. I felt like crying and I thought twice before I just wrote “I felt like crying”. Shouldn’t I have put up a Macho face or a smiley face here instead of writing that?

Why is it so that when you are depressed you do not think about all the blessings that you have but what you do not have? Why is it so that you don’t thank God for the present and worry about the future? Why is it so that you want to hold your pain to yourself and not share it even with your close ones?

But I am thankful for all the wonderful people out there. Friends who SMSed me, called me, emailed me and said “you can talk to me if you feel like it“. Some of them are people whom I never met in my life. I’m also thankful to those who did not call, as I had written to them not to call because I did not feel like talking back then. I am also thankful to my mother who understood me and supported me throughout the recent events.

I have lost much focus on these days. I have lost my day dreams of the future and I need to come back to it. So now I am sitting up here and jotting down things just to remind myself of the things that I think I should do, or I think I want to do, I need to do or things that I really want to do. This is a self-notice post, so it may not be interesting to you at all.

  • I want to do more with music. I want to do a music album. Composed and sung by myself. I want to give it my best shot. And as I remain an amateur singer, I would probably name it “The Bathroom Album“. 🙂
  • I want to do another album where I would only compose songs and get my friends and other music bloggers to sing the songs in it.
  • I want to get a job that would let me come home at the end of every workday. I envy people who can go home on every evening after the day’s work. But I think I should consider many other factors before I decide on this.
  • I think I should learn how to be happy with the present situation (on all fronts – personal and professional) while not being stuck with it for a long time.
  • I think I should stop feeling too much homesick.
  • In a few years’ time, I want to stop working for companies and do business of my own. I want to start a web services company. I want to start it by myself and then slowly extend it to a small sized company of 10-20 over the years and keep it growing.
  • I think I need to invest some more of my free time to achieve the above. I think I need to expand freelancing a bit more and get a steady flow of clients. Work on a bit hectic night schedules for a better future.
  • I want to live and work in Bangalore for a couple of years.
  • I want to live and work in a foreign country for a few months or a couple of years.
  • I want to try different professions than IT, but need to check if it pays enough to pay my bills.
  • I want to become a Radio Jockey.
  • I want to get off Internet, job and take a very long vacation. I want to go on a trip, visit many places in India like Delhi, Bombay, Shimla, Kolkota, Haridwar, Jaipur etc. I might visit some of these places in the near future. I aso want to visit Africa, America, France, Germany, Russia, England and Switzerland (I have no particular reason why I mentioned these places).
  • I want to fall in love. I should not force myself to it and it should happen naturally, even without me knowing that it is happening.
  • I need to prioritize the above mentioned things and read it everyday and do a fact check on a half-yearly and yearly basis.

And I feel so much relieved after writing this! 🙂

Happy Birthday Bapuji

mahatma-gandhi-1

Many people world over love him. Some people in his own country hate him. Those who once hated him now use him for their own political benefits. Some say he was a showman. Some say he was the new age messiah of peace. Whatever he was, there is one thing that nobody can deny. When the whole of this country needed a leader so badly – a leader who could bring the people of diverse languages and cultures in India under one roof and lead them together in a fight against colonialism – there was no one else, but Mohandas Gandhi.

He is truly missed not just on this 141st birthday of his, but through the entirety of the independent India.

Nothing Holy about Hollywood

I like Roman Polanski for his artistic talents. I think he is a great director. I loved his films like Chinatown, Bitter Moon, Death and the Maiden and The Pianist. They go straight in to the list of my all time favorite movies. I remember the first time when I went to see the movie “Bitter Moon” in Raagam theatre in Thrissur when I was in college. I didn’t know anything about Hugh Grant or Victor Bannerjee (who appeared in a guest role) but it is the Adult certificate that was displayed in the movie’s posters that caught my interest. But when I came out of the movie hall, it was not the nude scenes but the movie itself that haunted me for days. There is no doubt that Polanski is a great movie director. I would rate him to my top favorite directors at anytime.

But, he has been accused of abusing a 13 year old girl almost 31 years ago. He has reportedly drugged and had ‘unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor’. Would I not blame Polanski just because he is an artiste, a great artist at that? Would I not blame him just because he has contributed so much to the world cinema? The answer is NO. Polanski, the person is different from Polanski, the director. The person who has committed a heinous crime has to pay the price, no matter how much time has passed since. He was trying to escape after the incident, fleeing from country to country.

It is pitiful to see the directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch etc have signed a petition calling for an “immediate release” of Polanski. The French cultural minister said “he is a wonderful man”. I don’t understand what these people are thinking about. Are celebrities above the law? If Polanski is innocent and if this case has been made to corner him, he has to prove it in the court, rather than feeling from country to country. The very fact that he was trying to escape from the case all these years make us suspicious about the man.

Many say that the girl (now a woman) has withdrawn the complaints against Polanski. Even if it is so, the law has to take it’s course. And what really prompted the woman to say that she wants this whole thing to end? “Decades of publicity as well as the prosecutor’s focus on lurid details continues to traumatize her and her family”. Now should the man be acquitted of the charges because of this? I had high regards for directors like Martin Scorsese, but now I have lost my respect for them. There is nothing really Holy about Hollywood.

Related reading: Unforgivable Roman Polanski

(Image courtesy: Guardian.co.uk)

Iniyethra Naal (original composition)

I am not an expert in music and I don’t have even the basic ideas of the raaga/classical system. However, I love to compose songs occasionally. The first time I composed a song was many years back. It was a devotional song. It happened this way – our Church choir had an A grade in those days at All India Radio, Thrissur station. We were occasionally invited to the AIR studio to record songs for Easter or Christmas days. The songs had to be original works.

Once we had an invitation to record for the Easter week. Our main composer, George chettan, was kind of busy with working for albums and he could not do all the songs. There were about 5 to 6 songs scheduled for the recording session. So he asked if anybody had any songs composed and ready to orchestrate. My friend Lindsie knew that I had composed two devotional songs and she mentioned that to him [I owe you for that, Linu! :-)]. I presented the songs before him, both which I wrote and composed. He liked the songs and agreed to orchestrate it.

The recording on that day at All India Radio, Thrissur is an unforgettable moment of my life. It was my first studio experience ever. The AIR studio used (I don’t know if they still use it) old recording techniques, so there was no studio softwares or punch-in options. If you misspell even just one word or go out of tune in one place, you would have to sing the entire song from the beginning to end. I was totally nervous (as I always am when I sing) but somehow managed to sing the songs.

I was so happy that day that I could sing my own song at AIR. I was even more happy when I listened to the song at my neighbor’s house through their radio (we did not have a radio in our house then). My heart nearly burst out when I heard the announcer saying my name and the song’s name before the song was played. I wanted to scream to the world that this is my song that you are hearing through All India Radio. The song I wrote, composed and sang [ Listen to the song here – not the original version, re-recorded many years later]. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get hold of a recorded version of the original. After many years, when I went to learn Karnatik music, I made my teacher listen to the song and he said that the song was based on Hamsadhwani. I had no idea of what raaga it was.

Now that’s a long introduction. Coming to the topic, I composed a song recently for a short film being directed by a friend’s friend. Here is the situation of the song as I learned from my friend:

The girl hasn’t met the boy yet. She has only heard so much about him. He is a revolutionary kinda person and she develops a heroic crush towards him. He is in jail. Even though they haven’t met each other yet, she begins to love him after she learns a about him from his family etc, and waits for him to return from jail. So this is not a sad song. This song is about waiting, but involves the pain of love. So I kept all of these in mind when I composed.

The song is written by Retheesh from Malappuram. I met him first at my house when he came in with the lyrics and explained the song situation. His beautiful lines inspired me to come up with the tune in a short span of time. He made several changes to the lyrics on my request. Orchestration was done by Rajith, a keyboard player who also owns a small studio in Thrissur. He has done an awesome job and made this song to what I had imagined it to be. When I requested Divya S Menon (who needs no introduction to the music blogging world) to sing the song, she happily agreed and did a wonderful job on the vocals. My thanks to all of them.

I sent this song to two of my close friends in the field of music and both of them gave me positive reviews. One said that the song fits the description very well and the other said that I should quit my job and become a full time music director. My thanks to you guys for your kind feedback. 🙂

Now, I leave the song to you guys to listen. Let me know how you like it. When the music video gets ready, I will post it here.

Song: Iniyethra Naal (Malayalam)
Lyrics: Ratheesh
Composed by: Joseph Thomas (Jo)
Orchestrated by: Rajith
Singer: Divya S Menon

Download the song here

Decisions

There are times when you would have to take a decision – a harsh decision that you know if taken would hurt all the people close to you and even yourself. And if not taken, it would hurt yourself and the other party so much more. What’s worse is that it was my fault (a big fault at that) that lead to this decision.

So now I have to tell you this. I am an asshole. I recognize it and admit it. I deserve so much pain. A lot more than what I feel now.

PS: That new phase of life I wrote about will not happen now.

Austerity is Expensively Inexpensive

For you, to think about.

Ms Sonia Gandhi’s trip to Mumbai, accompanied by SPG, meant that the first three rows of the economy seating area were not available to regular passengers. Mr Gandhi’s train journey to Ludhiana required 200 policemen each to be deployed at New Delhi and Ludhiana stations. In spite of that, the security risk was not fully averted as there was stone pelting on the return journey. Also, there can be little justification for the 77-year old foreign minister S M Krishna to undertake a four-day visit to Belarus and Turkmenistan on a commercial carrier. [via]

A whole new phase

I know that the frequency of posts in this blog for the past week has been very low. I also know that it has been some time since I have posted a song here. The reason is that I am preparing myself to enter a new phase of life, which seems a lot exicting and even more terrifying when I come to think of it. I am talking about marriage. 🙂

Being an individualistic person (not that I am very proud of it), I always needed a lot of private space in my life which I never cared to share with anybody, not even close friends. You can tell that by the way I live now; living alone in a guest house room, without sharing the space. I do not regret living that way, because this private space has given me a lot of time and energy to do creative things. It gives me a lot of freedom.

And in a few weeks time, somebody is coming in to that space. Someone whom I am only beginning to know. And then will come a whole new phase of life. Part of it is exciting, of course. Part of it though, quite terrifying. But as the days go past, and after talking to friends and taking tips from them, I have a feeling that everything would work out well gradually, even though I know that I will have to change/compromise/adjust in certain areas of life. One thing that I am certain of is that I am not going to kill the free bird that nests deep in my soul, but okay to control it whenever needed.

Learning about the other person who is going to partner with you is an interesting thing. You even learn a couple of things about yourself in that process. Which makes you look at yourself and wonder if you knew yourself well enough. But the whole preparation for the ceremony and arranging every material thing needed for it (including money) is a hectic process. I don’t know if there is any other phase in life which seems so exciting and boring at the same time.

So right now, life is busy. I focus more on freelancing when I come back to my room after office hours. It helps me to save a few bucks, using which I could buy a Zune player last week and going to buy a good external sound card for my home recordings. So it is good, though sometimes freelancing drives me crazy with lack of good sleeping hours.

That’s a lot of ranting for now. Before I stop, I promise that I will try to be more frequent and will try to post a couple of songs before the big day. And to you I would request to wish me luck. 🙂

Zuning the music

I have been using iPod to listen to music and it has been a great experience so far. The one I had was an iPod Nano 4GB which was gifted by a friend. But as the music kept stacking up and 4GB was not being enough, I was planning to upgrade to a newer version of iPod. Then I researched a bit and talked to friends and Sijo, who uses a Zune suggested to use Zune instead of iPod. A couple of others who have used both was of the opinion that Zune gives a better audio experience. So when Sijo went to US related to work, he bought this piece of beauty for me. This is my new Zune 120GB. I am yet to begin experiencing it (MS asking for Windows updates now when I tried to install the software!) and am looking forward to it.

zune