Bangalore Musings

Had been here for almost 3+ months now and that too sort-of-joyfully as a bachelor. Some observations about the city:

• Chennai has summer, Summer, and SUMMER and Bangalore has winter, Winter, and WINTER.
• Missing the old walk on MG road. Completely messed up by the Metro rail which looks like a dinosaur spreading its foot and walking on a main road.
• Good to see that Ramakrishna Lodge @ Majestic serves the same classy lunch at the grand old homely atmosphere. The area around RK lodge has changed so much that it looks like Stuart Little's home in between skyscrapers.
• The Bangalore Corporation completely trusts its people very much. People on self service mode to clean their roads and keep it tidy. Probably wants people to make their own manure since its a garden city.
• Amazed by the relationship between Chennai and Bangalore. Chennai remote controls Bangalore city's weather. When it rains in Chennai, it drizzles in Bangalore! Twin cities, these two!
• The best thing to happen to this city is the Blossom book shop which I would rate as the best in India. Thankfully most Bangalorians are blissfully unaware of its existence and hence the place is not as crowded as it should be.
• Uphara (Fast food joints) owners seems to be practitioners of Yoga. Currently most of them wants all their customers to stand in "attention" and eat. Would be good if they can spend a little more to buy a few chairs so that customers can sit and enjoy their food too.
• Hosur beware. Bangalore is fast expanding on all sides that soon Hosur (then vellore, Kanchipuram etc.) might be taken over by Karnataka!
• Rangashankara out beats all art movements in India in terms of maintenance of the theatre, quality of programs etc. Its punctuality is something alien to our Indian culture of procrastination.
• Intercity bus service far far better than what I had noticed 20 years ago. But some old steel also are running in the name of buses here.

As always, amazing weather, excellent auto drivers who do not charge a penny more  (Ok...sometimes they do charge 10 bucks more but not like their Chennai brethren who will charge 10 bucks an inch of travel), and great people.

Will share thoughts as and when (and if) it comes.

Hic Hic Hurray

 

Saw Carlsberg beer bottles getting loaded to a TASMAC van. 

Though I stopped drinking some months ago, thought “One small step for Tamilnadu, One big leap for the dazed up community”.

Digging Deep

We thought that he was a true Jedi master who would make his pupil the most accomplished one (or the Chosen One if you love prophetic words). 

But turns out that the Great Master himself has a lot to learn, especially on the power of silence.

 
The master here is a gentleman named Digvijaya and the pupil is a Gandhi in making. The more Digvijaya talks, the more we understand that he practices the ancient, secret, esoteric art called nonsensia!

This coke has lots of fizzzzzzzzz

At last some refreshing music.

After years of highly uninspiring, ‘custom –built’ music, Coke Studio (from MTV) which enthralled Pakistani audiences with exciting performances by top pop-quwalli talents including Atif Aslam and the likes is to open up its innings in India at 7.30 PM IST this Friday (17^th June 2011)@ MTV.

The difference between this program and the other music programs is that this program works on a jammin session mode wherein music is jammed live along when the singer sings. While other programs work on pre-defined notes, it does not often gel well with Quwwali and Hindustani music as singers are allowed to improvise.

That is why a live performance captures the soul than the studio music and that is why CDs of live performances are so much in demand. And this program does capture that soul well.

On line up for the Desi version are exceptional talents like Shankar Mahadevan, Kailash Kher etc.

How do I know vouch for the quality of the program? Go to YouTube and listen to the Pakistani version of Coke Studio. 

In this case, hearing is believing.

Singhism (From the dictionary of the silent one)

Coalition  Dharma: A new hybrid thought coined recently that is made to sound very Indian and very ancient. Refers to turning a blind eye when there is a theft, but neither the guard nor the thief is responsible for the act of theft.

Job: Refers to the work carried out as per coalition Dharma (See- Coalition Dharma above).

Coalition Partners: Refer to Mafioso (Mafia groups)

Corruption: Part of coalition dharma. Ok till not caught.

Economic Reforms: Any newer economic initiatives that has coalition dharma in mind.

Did you OPEN yet?

Sorry if that sounded like a bizarre Ad in a commercial newspaper (on a second thought, is there a newspaper other than commercial?)...

Did you check out the weekly Open Magazine from the RPG stable?

It is two week old and costs 30 bucks an issue.

I found the magazine to be much more closer (closer but not really there yet) to the GentleMan magazine of yesteryears from the Indian Express group.

A monthly, I used to luv Gentleman 'coz it was more offbeat, covering more about music, arts and lifestyle.

The magazine was blessed with an excellent editorial team which had the uncanny knack of publishing new stuff instead of stale news stories (like your regular weekly news magazines does).

But, Indian Express suddenly quit publishing the magazine in late '90s and I haven't seen anything closer to it till date.

Gentleman, had it been kicking alive today, would have been a decent answer to our eternal cravings for an magazine with a difference.

Whatever I have seen of Open in the last two weeks makes me feel that this magazine could fill that void, but still miles to go...

Random Poetry - Sangam poem by Kaniyan Poonkunranaar

Thanks to the website (http://www.cs.utk.edu/~siddhart/tamilnadu/POEMS/poem_yad.html), I have picked up the translation of my favourite Sangam poem (written between 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE) "Yaathum Oore Yaavarum Kelir" by Kaniyan Poonkunranaar.

The translation:
Any place is a city indeed, and all are kindred;
Good and evil do not proceed from others.
Suffering and soothing are to these similar.
Even death is not new. We would neither feel the thrill of
Calling life pleasant; nor would we out of spite
Call it unpleasant. Just as, when with lightning
The sky pours cool drops, uncontrolled,
Hurtling on rock, resounding, a raft is carried away
In the course of (a) great river of plenty,
In the course of Order is (our) dear soul carried;
Since we have benn enlightened by this vision of the wise,
We would not be amazed bt the great in their glory, and
We would even less despise the petty.

Thanks once again to the website and the translator Satyanad Kichenassamy.

To know more about Sangam literature, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature.