It feels good to be back. Back to watching endless TV. Back to waking up to the smell of coffee decoction. Back to being chided for the most unexpected of things. Back to the cliched "hustle and bustle". Back to a more familiar existence. Back to Bangalore. Back Home.
I was reading the newspaper the other day, (Yes! One exercise I'm so glad to be back to doing!) as usual peeved by the almost pornographic front page of Bangalore Times. With their surveys that tell you how couples in Bangalore are "spicing their bedroom up" and pictures that irk your sense of decency, this is one newspaper a parent would shudder to find his kid reading! But the truth is, we still buy it, we still read it. At home, we ourselves have tried to switch to a different paper time and again. It simply doesn't work! Sadly, Indian Express, Deccan Herald or Hindu can't seem to cope with the variety and resourcefulness of the TOI and its supplement editions.
Its a pity that we have to stare at half clad women every morning before we can get to the Speaking Tree. (A column that appears everyday on the Editorial page; its your dose of philosophy for the day) Its high time we got a newspaper that's a fun, clean read. Where I can solve a nice, stimulating word puzzle in the morning, read about the elections, read my horoscope prediction and also know what sale is on at Safina Plaza. If I want to know the latest in fashion trends, I should have to buy a fashion magazine. If I want to know who partied for whose birthday at the Windsor, then God save me!
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
The Sound of Music
Since I've talked about my love for music in one of my previous posts, it wasn't going to be long before I wrote a post on the subject. So here goes. Of late, I am constantly reminded of my music student days. This thanks to my roommates who are equally interested in the same kind of music as me. We can spend hours on end singing, listening and exchanging "notes". :)
As a seven year old, I was enrolled into a music class that my Mum had found out about after extensive consultation with the Maamis of our neighbourhood. Of course you know that a Maami refers to the quintessential Tam-Bram Aunty who is well informed about schools, music teachers, dance teachers, summer camps and what not! My teacher was a locally well known AIR artist who performed at kachcheris (concerts) conducted around the city. But what nailed the choice for my Mum was that my teacher was the sister of a world famous violinist. Why look further! Like in any other art form, in music, lineage is of prime importance. Since my teacher was related to this hot shot violinist, it was guaranteed that the school of music that I would be trained under would be widely accepted and hence, I would turn out to be a good singer. Quite straightforward actually. They refer to this lineage as paaNi in the Carnatic world.
And so I obediently began attending music classes twice a week. The start was pretty good because my teacher certified that my voice was decent enough to be trained in the first place. Moreover, I was grasping stuff rather quickly. So all was well. The first few months were spent in familiarizing with the notes - swaras as they are more technically called. Many a time I've been spanked for not singing in tune to the shruthi (the pitch) or messing up the taaLa (the tempo). I don't blame myself. Seven is not really an age to start mastering multitasking! Nevertheless, only after perfecting these fundamentals, did I progress to the next level where I was taught to sing "songs" - ones which had sahityam (lyrics).
It was probably around this time that I began to subconsciously hum to myself. I would walk back from music class, humming the tune that my teacher had just taught me. Gradually this escalated to a level where I began to hum any song that I might have heard on the TV or in a movie. The humming continues to this date. Only, it has gotten louder, much to the annoyance of the people within earshot!
Five years into Carnatic music and I fell in love with it. And it was as though my voice approved of this love, for, it just transformed from its nasal, timid self to what it is in its present form - loud and mature. Naturally, my guru was the first one to sense this change. She capitalized on the metamorphosis and immediately got me to sign up for the state level junior music exam. After five months of rigorous practice and no ice cream, I gave the exam. Whats more, I did really well on it further cementing my bond with music. By now, I was the star singer of the family. Something I didn't really enjoy! Any function in the family, I would be asked to sing- my Mum egging me on to sing each time, and me glaring at her, vowing that I would not take this kind of embarrassment ever in the future. All in vain of course!
Sadly enough, my dream run wasn't going to continue forever. Once in high school, I simply couldn't give music as much time as it deserved. It would sometimes be weeks between two consecutive practice sessions. It was terrible. Thankfully, my humming habit helped me stay in touch. While in the shower, I would practise one of the many kirtanams (devotional compositions) that I had learned and try and improvise. :) It wasn't much. But it was just about enough to keep me going.
It has been about 5 years since I discontinued music classes. But, I still believe that I am a student of music. Learning something from each song I hear. Even today, if I feel down and out, I sit in a corner of my room and practise. To me, this exercise is more liberating than any other. It elevates me to a state of complete satisfaction. There lies the true beauty of this art. Its an asset nobody can steal away from you. It is yours for posterity. Whether you decide to flaunt it to the world or you use it to better yourself, its yours!
As a seven year old, I was enrolled into a music class that my Mum had found out about after extensive consultation with the Maamis of our neighbourhood. Of course you know that a Maami refers to the quintessential Tam-Bram Aunty who is well informed about schools, music teachers, dance teachers, summer camps and what not! My teacher was a locally well known AIR artist who performed at kachcheris (concerts) conducted around the city. But what nailed the choice for my Mum was that my teacher was the sister of a world famous violinist. Why look further! Like in any other art form, in music, lineage is of prime importance. Since my teacher was related to this hot shot violinist, it was guaranteed that the school of music that I would be trained under would be widely accepted and hence, I would turn out to be a good singer. Quite straightforward actually. They refer to this lineage as paaNi in the Carnatic world.
And so I obediently began attending music classes twice a week. The start was pretty good because my teacher certified that my voice was decent enough to be trained in the first place. Moreover, I was grasping stuff rather quickly. So all was well. The first few months were spent in familiarizing with the notes - swaras as they are more technically called. Many a time I've been spanked for not singing in tune to the shruthi (the pitch) or messing up the taaLa (the tempo). I don't blame myself. Seven is not really an age to start mastering multitasking! Nevertheless, only after perfecting these fundamentals, did I progress to the next level where I was taught to sing "songs" - ones which had sahityam (lyrics).
It was probably around this time that I began to subconsciously hum to myself. I would walk back from music class, humming the tune that my teacher had just taught me. Gradually this escalated to a level where I began to hum any song that I might have heard on the TV or in a movie. The humming continues to this date. Only, it has gotten louder, much to the annoyance of the people within earshot!
Five years into Carnatic music and I fell in love with it. And it was as though my voice approved of this love, for, it just transformed from its nasal, timid self to what it is in its present form - loud and mature. Naturally, my guru was the first one to sense this change. She capitalized on the metamorphosis and immediately got me to sign up for the state level junior music exam. After five months of rigorous practice and no ice cream, I gave the exam. Whats more, I did really well on it further cementing my bond with music. By now, I was the star singer of the family. Something I didn't really enjoy! Any function in the family, I would be asked to sing- my Mum egging me on to sing each time, and me glaring at her, vowing that I would not take this kind of embarrassment ever in the future. All in vain of course!
Sadly enough, my dream run wasn't going to continue forever. Once in high school, I simply couldn't give music as much time as it deserved. It would sometimes be weeks between two consecutive practice sessions. It was terrible. Thankfully, my humming habit helped me stay in touch. While in the shower, I would practise one of the many kirtanams (devotional compositions) that I had learned and try and improvise. :) It wasn't much. But it was just about enough to keep me going.
It has been about 5 years since I discontinued music classes. But, I still believe that I am a student of music. Learning something from each song I hear. Even today, if I feel down and out, I sit in a corner of my room and practise. To me, this exercise is more liberating than any other. It elevates me to a state of complete satisfaction. There lies the true beauty of this art. Its an asset nobody can steal away from you. It is yours for posterity. Whether you decide to flaunt it to the world or you use it to better yourself, its yours!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Caught in the Web
Until a few years ago, the first things I set my eyes on when I awoke in the morning were one of these - the poster on my wall that cried "NEVER GIVE UP", the tumbler of coffee that my Mom threateningly left on my study table saying "This is the last time I'm heating this coffee for you! You better get out of bed!", the clear blue sky outside my window (In India I lived on the 6th floor of our building, so there wasn't much to obstruct the view of the lovely sky) and sometimes if I woke up really really late (read 10 AM or later) then I was most definitely woken up by our maid servant sweeping the floor of my room. Ah, those were the days!
Nowadays, I invariably wake up to one sight - the desktop background on my laptop! In fact, my laptop is closer to my bed than my cellphone, or even my spectacles! Subconsciously, the first thing I do when my eyes open up in the morning is to boot my laptop up, login to Gmail hoping to see some unread messages in my inbox. :) This is followed by some other inboxes, facebook, the news, some music and back to more facebook snooping before I can actually drag myself away from my computer!
Its funny how much all of us are dependent on the internet. This other day, one of my friends missed a call on his cellphone from a number he didn't recognize. This friend I talk about is quite a slave of the internet. So, instead of calling the number back, he "Googled" out the number! Turned out that the number was one of those promo offer numbers from the service provider and in fact, there was a forum online that had discussed how annoying the calls from that number were! Man! Gone are the days when you used a 1000 something page telephone directory to painstakingly find the number of the local restaurant so you could reserve a dinner table for your big, fat family on a Saturday night. Now you just google out the restaurant and what's more, some of them allow you to check the menu online, so you can order over the phone itself!
Two years ago, when I first came to the US, I never took the internet seriously. I would check my email once in a day. My instant messaging stints were limited to 5-6 line conversations. I didn't know the first thing about ordering stuff online. A big jerk came when I learned that most of my courses' study material was online. That was then. Now, I check my email every five minutes. I chat with my friends incessantly about the most trivial subjects. I've ordered everything from airline tickets to backpacks online. And for the most embarrassing part - I borrowed five books from the library last month in an effort to do some self studying. Ironically, I've been doing all my self study from online resources while those books gather dust in my living room! And if you think this is a lot, I know of people who take music classes over Skype. Beat that! :)
But I wonder where all this is taking us. How much more virtual can we get? I do have an idea in that direction actually! It occurred to me the other day when I was video chatting with my Mum while cooking. I wished I could communicate to her the aroma that was emanating from the food that I was cooking! That was the only thing that was lacking in that whole conversation. My Mom could see what I was cooking, she could hear the crackling and spluttering of oil. Hopefully, there will soon be a day when she can smell it too! Atleast then she'll believe that I'm a decent cook. :)
Nowadays, I invariably wake up to one sight - the desktop background on my laptop! In fact, my laptop is closer to my bed than my cellphone, or even my spectacles! Subconsciously, the first thing I do when my eyes open up in the morning is to boot my laptop up, login to Gmail hoping to see some unread messages in my inbox. :) This is followed by some other inboxes, facebook, the news, some music and back to more facebook snooping before I can actually drag myself away from my computer!
Its funny how much all of us are dependent on the internet. This other day, one of my friends missed a call on his cellphone from a number he didn't recognize. This friend I talk about is quite a slave of the internet. So, instead of calling the number back, he "Googled" out the number! Turned out that the number was one of those promo offer numbers from the service provider and in fact, there was a forum online that had discussed how annoying the calls from that number were! Man! Gone are the days when you used a 1000 something page telephone directory to painstakingly find the number of the local restaurant so you could reserve a dinner table for your big, fat family on a Saturday night. Now you just google out the restaurant and what's more, some of them allow you to check the menu online, so you can order over the phone itself!
Two years ago, when I first came to the US, I never took the internet seriously. I would check my email once in a day. My instant messaging stints were limited to 5-6 line conversations. I didn't know the first thing about ordering stuff online. A big jerk came when I learned that most of my courses' study material was online. That was then. Now, I check my email every five minutes. I chat with my friends incessantly about the most trivial subjects. I've ordered everything from airline tickets to backpacks online. And for the most embarrassing part - I borrowed five books from the library last month in an effort to do some self studying. Ironically, I've been doing all my self study from online resources while those books gather dust in my living room! And if you think this is a lot, I know of people who take music classes over Skype. Beat that! :)
But I wonder where all this is taking us. How much more virtual can we get? I do have an idea in that direction actually! It occurred to me the other day when I was video chatting with my Mum while cooking. I wished I could communicate to her the aroma that was emanating from the food that I was cooking! That was the only thing that was lacking in that whole conversation. My Mom could see what I was cooking, she could hear the crackling and spluttering of oil. Hopefully, there will soon be a day when she can smell it too! Atleast then she'll believe that I'm a decent cook. :)
Friday, November 7, 2008
Weekend Majaa
I have always looked forward to and waited for weekends. Come Thursday and I start making weekend plans for myself. No, no, its not what you're thinking! I'm not a party animal by any standards (my friends will tell you that I'm one of the most boring people my age). But barring this one last year as a "poor graduate student", my weekends have been exactly what they're supposed to be - FUN!
As a ten year old, my only agenda each weekend was a visit to Eloor lending library on Infantry Road to pick up the next batch of Famous Fives, Nancy Drews and Amar Chitra Kathas. The four of us - my parents, Ajay (my b(r)other) and I - used to leave home on Saturday afternoon after a heavy, typical South Indian meal and drive across town to Eloor. I vividly remember sitting in the passenger seat of our Maruti 800 having trivial fights with Ajay about keeping the window open or some such thing. All this while my parents would have discussions, sometimes heated, most times casual, about happenings or developments in the family. Gossip basically. :) My Dad's office was in the same complex as Eloor. So, for more reasons than one, he would encourage us to spend more time reading and picking up books while he caught up on that something he had left unfinished on the previous evening because my Mum had ordered him to leave office immediately. :D
Once in high school, my plans were focussed more on things I could talk about with my friends when I went back to school on Monday morning. Peer pressure indeed! Sometimes we would go watch a movie at Galaxy Cinemas (Its a pity they shut Galaxy down. It was my favourite among all the cinemas in BLR). Chomping on corn puffs and swigging down a tall glass of Mirinda, I would meticulously form opinions about the actors, their costumes, the music and all those things that make or break a movie. Sometimes my cousins would accompany us on such movie outings and it used to be all the more fun then. After the movie there would be a long drawn debate about "Where do we go for dinner?". Most of the time my Dad had his way. Nevertheless, we enjoyed dinner and got back home cribbing that we had a whole week of school to deal with before the next weekend!
Weekends during the four years of engineering were most hectic! We lazed around the whole week attending classes and writing "lab record" and hence had so much fun to catch up on over Saturday and Sunday! :) Another reason why it got as hectic was that now I had to deal with multiple outings - one with family and one or more with friends. Saturday evenings were spent entirely with my Mum. She and I used to go shopping in the most crowded of places picking up a lot of stuff each time, mostly for me. Clothes, shoes, bags, junk jewellery, books, music-you name it, we shopped for it! Alongside, I had a bunch of crazy friends from college who always made the most bizarre plans. Lunch here, movie there and then coffee at CCD somewhere else! Phew! I was mostly reluctant to join them in their escapades since it was likely to create a hole in my Dad's pocket eventually! :) But having said that, I'm not really hard to convince, especially in matters of fun. So I used to tag along after all.
Each and every one of those weekends was thoroughly enjoyable! It was not as though I was toiling during the week so as to crave for them that much. Still, they got me to feel good about life in general :) It is the exact same feeling I'm getting as I wrap this post up. I hope to get back to that kind of a carefree weekend routine soon. And this time its going to be a totally new experience for me since I'm going to be away from home and family. I'm sure I'll figure out something to do! :)
In the meanwhile, hope y'all have a great weekend!
As a ten year old, my only agenda each weekend was a visit to Eloor lending library on Infantry Road to pick up the next batch of Famous Fives, Nancy Drews and Amar Chitra Kathas. The four of us - my parents, Ajay (my b(r)other) and I - used to leave home on Saturday afternoon after a heavy, typical South Indian meal and drive across town to Eloor. I vividly remember sitting in the passenger seat of our Maruti 800 having trivial fights with Ajay about keeping the window open or some such thing. All this while my parents would have discussions, sometimes heated, most times casual, about happenings or developments in the family. Gossip basically. :) My Dad's office was in the same complex as Eloor. So, for more reasons than one, he would encourage us to spend more time reading and picking up books while he caught up on that something he had left unfinished on the previous evening because my Mum had ordered him to leave office immediately. :D
Once in high school, my plans were focussed more on things I could talk about with my friends when I went back to school on Monday morning. Peer pressure indeed! Sometimes we would go watch a movie at Galaxy Cinemas (Its a pity they shut Galaxy down. It was my favourite among all the cinemas in BLR). Chomping on corn puffs and swigging down a tall glass of Mirinda, I would meticulously form opinions about the actors, their costumes, the music and all those things that make or break a movie. Sometimes my cousins would accompany us on such movie outings and it used to be all the more fun then. After the movie there would be a long drawn debate about "Where do we go for dinner?". Most of the time my Dad had his way. Nevertheless, we enjoyed dinner and got back home cribbing that we had a whole week of school to deal with before the next weekend!
Weekends during the four years of engineering were most hectic! We lazed around the whole week attending classes and writing "lab record" and hence had so much fun to catch up on over Saturday and Sunday! :) Another reason why it got as hectic was that now I had to deal with multiple outings - one with family and one or more with friends. Saturday evenings were spent entirely with my Mum. She and I used to go shopping in the most crowded of places picking up a lot of stuff each time, mostly for me. Clothes, shoes, bags, junk jewellery, books, music-you name it, we shopped for it! Alongside, I had a bunch of crazy friends from college who always made the most bizarre plans. Lunch here, movie there and then coffee at CCD somewhere else! Phew! I was mostly reluctant to join them in their escapades since it was likely to create a hole in my Dad's pocket eventually! :) But having said that, I'm not really hard to convince, especially in matters of fun. So I used to tag along after all.
Each and every one of those weekends was thoroughly enjoyable! It was not as though I was toiling during the week so as to crave for them that much. Still, they got me to feel good about life in general :) It is the exact same feeling I'm getting as I wrap this post up. I hope to get back to that kind of a carefree weekend routine soon. And this time its going to be a totally new experience for me since I'm going to be away from home and family. I'm sure I'll figure out something to do! :)
In the meanwhile, hope y'all have a great weekend!
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