Of Obsessions and Anger Bursts

Have you ever been so angry you wanted to break something? And then you HAVE broken something? Not somebody’s nose or limb or some such atrocity, but incurred loss of some kind all the same, because you couldn’t bear to harm the one who caused it? Because you are so aware of your physical strength?

At the end of the first year of any new situation or a change, I seem to vent out all my frustration on a personal belonging. Is it the impulse and the happening-to-be-around-ness of an object that leads to what follows? Or is it my inability to use sarcasm, a good old slap, or a cab to get out’a the situation?

It's a pattern: the things [three in a span of 10 years] that I detest or am bored of for a while have faced batter. Minor instruments that have lived their lives with me and I’m stuck with after a while, meet their fate at such moments – my first set of spectacles when Lavanya irritated me to the end of my wits; my first cell phone, when I couldn’t stand guilt trip spiels form the ex who gifted the instrument to me, and now my last phone. For a 25 year old, I’ve lived a rich life as far as phones are concerned, a new one each year since the 3rd year of undergrad – after my latest buy, six in all (including one borrowed for a while).

Since a couple of weeks I had been contemplating buying a new piece. But stopping to use the old one hurt – considering Papa got it for me when I first moved to Bombay. A lot of sentimental value was attached. Like the pens he’d gifted. Each one maintained and used with a lot of love and emotion. But the need to change my phone persisted. The tugs of emotion and vanity was beginning to get to me. The silly superstition that the phones I bought myself never stayed with me for long was gluing me to my sleek little brick device beyond imagination – it had begun to hang like a monkey - both literally as well as technically!

not only have I tolerated it, but even found it a little endearing

The mention of a game being the reason for my agitation was unacceptable to quite a few, including he who mentioned it. He’s been following it for as long as I’ve known him and before. And not only have I tolerated it, but even found it a little endearing. All of a sudden though, it began to get to me. Why must it occupy so much of one’s psyche that it is put on the same pedestal as classical music or good weather in a conversation?

In recent times, I’ve been less and less fond of cricket and I’ve even met some who’re are crazy about the game yet find it demeaning in its present state. What’s more, the craze seems to pervade all time slots vulgarly – work, recreation, outing, quiet time, sleep, meals … how do you explain its intrusion into other people’s tired end-of-days that look forward to something less obsessive-compulsive? Why can’t it be kept to oneself? Why can’t it be more understated and unspoken?

Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps I’m touchy. Perhaps I’m one of those who don’t know the game so act uppity about it. Or maybe the idea of pursuing this obsession, even though other than pursuing one's profession, like a habit sounds vanilla boring to me.

Whatever the case, March has been a month of angry moments for me. And the chief cause is that wretched Indienne Parasite Le grande. It may be easy for many to dismiss this sudden outburst as uncalled for or laugh off as something of an eccentricity. But really, are the lines between passion and obsession blurring?

Smooth by Santana [feat. Rob Thomas]

It’s Friday night and even though I’m reporting to work early tomorrow, no way am I gonna miss tonight’s Remmies. All I wish for is a dance party that peaked with the drunken heavy vocals of Rob Thomas’s This Night Ain’t Good Enough!

When the song released in ’99, I was still a school kid with little English music behind me. Cassettes were still the order of the day and Dida’s bestie, Ruma gave her a decent copy as part of a compilation for her birthday. Neither of us was a dancing queen back then, the tape was only played on the other side – classic numbers from the ’50s and ’60s.

It was for an interschool dance competition that I finally inaugurated Side A. We never ended up dancing to the song [Ricky Martin was the hottie back then – of course, that no one understood Thomas’s song was the real reason], but it caught my fancy. The next best thing to dancing is making out. The next level of rhythm – movement. Heavy percussion, the vocals and of course, Santana’s intricate guitar work are intoxicating. It’s like guzzling a few पटिअलाs and then reading Faiz.

The fever obviously mellowed in a few months’ time… The third time I visited my Ahmedabad guy, bang in the middle of a make-out session in progress, his Windows Media Player bellows Smooth! Something happened. Like a rope snapping from a crane that lets a heavy slab of iron fall from a considerable height – the distance being a build-up to the massive blow when it lands.

As in the case of most of my favourite songs, the hattrick-1999-Grammy-winner has come to be synonymous with blood-red nail paint, the LBD, white wine, cheap thrills, skinny dipping and all things risqué. Despite a definite vagueness in lyrics [which practically sound nonsensical to say the least], the show-stealer sent even my retro-loving dancing partner at Hawaiian Shack in a fit of renewed dancing vigour [and me in a right state of screaming & hooting].

Smooth must play at ANY party this weekend!

"Idoling" away on a "holy" day

Wednesday was a holiday for me. Ram Navami. Turned out to be a blessing, considering I had decided to put me through the ordeal of auditioning for a reality show. By the end of this post, I’m more than sure you’ll know as to what programme I refer.

Apart from all the melodrama of “When you enter, shout and show your madness for the show [even if you’re not really crazy about it],” and “at the count of three, shout ‘AAMCHEEE MUMMBAIIIIIIII!!!!” I began to realise what television reality shows are all about.

Honestly, this experience was to know first hand the behind-the-scenes of reality TV. To say the least, it turned out to be fun. They made sure no one was waiting too long – not in one place anyway. First it was an hour outside the gates; the about half an hour inside; another two hours on the stadium steps and finally less than fifteen minutes in the final lap. The heat was bad enough, so they couldn’t have got too many retakes on stampeding crowds or youth shouting the name of the show or the name of the city to which they belonged or were auditioning from.
Some of it was plain inane. Some of it was plain touching. Most of it, as I said, fun. Winners of the first season came in to talk to the crowds and cheer them, sing with them, dole out clichés such as “Singer के लिए गाना ही खाना होता है” and rubbish time-pass like that to discourage people from being seen eating thepla or opening biscuit packets and sipping on Frooti on camera.
I learnt two important lessons though. If you wanna do well on a new-singing-talent reality show, you’ve got to know “कुछ new Sunidhi-Shreya fast songs” [or whoever the male equivalent is for the men] and these shows aren’t looking for good singers so much as great performers.
Here’s an excerpt of my conversation with a pal post-audition, who guided me on my choice of music – this is not to begrudge him.


Piyush: how did it go?
Priyanca: pretty fun
met so many weird people man
loved it
Piyush: what kinda weird?
Priyanca: people who'd appeared for auditions in other cities and had come here just to see how it was here
one from ahm
one from kolkata
these toh i met
many more from outside
people from all sorts'a chhotu places who'd travelled just for this ya
plus i have new found respect for tv crews
Piyush: being part of a tv crew is rather painful
Priyanca: ya
and to be so patient and courteous to people
SO MANY PEOPLE
the kind'a functions they have to carry out
the way they take care of people
the way they communicate
they all know it's all fickle
it's all downright dumb n stupid
and yet
Piyush: :D
Priyanca: and the kind'a things that bother people
procedures
and washrooms
and... staircases
:)
Piyush: :)
Priyanca: such innocent people...
Piyush: thy are all lured to be the bait u know
the audience on this side of the TV rates it high seeing so many ppl


I’ve done this before, but that was another time, another era - when music shows still preferred to test people on their vocal chords, not their suitability to camera angles, “base”, whether they know what are the latest chartbusters on FM radio.

I’ve been asked often why I wouldn’t go in for something like this, and I’d always dismiss it with “Who wants to be insulted in public by a bunch of show people who don’t know jack shit about music?” Today I can probably give a more substantial answer. Who has the patience? The waiting can get to you. People will get friendly and when you’ve exhausted conversation, they’ll ask, “आप इतना book क्यूँ पढ़ते हो?” And one really searches within for a satisfactory-yet-not-offensive answer. And to listen to a woman repeating a dozen times in half an hour, “toilet जाना है” is NOT FUNNY.

The heat gets to you. The waiting gets to you. The cameras get to you. Like all miraculous things in life, this too has no real criteria for who’ll be The Chosen One.

Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Na Karo, Farida Khanum (orig.) & Asha Bhonsle (recon.)

Perhaps the simplest, yet the most heart rending ghazal of the 20th century, AJKZNK (pardon me for making it sound like a film title - but agree with me, it has potential, na?) - the Yaman Kalyan - Rupak taal number leaves nothing to the imagination of the listener on the face of it. But isn't that the beauty, you wonder, when you listen to it. I first came across the song in Monsoon Wedding - the Meera Nair crossover.

"I HAVE to find this song," I thought. The original played fucking hard to get - and the internet, a spoilsport as usual. I found the CD in Twara's house! Her dad's a huge fan, and lent me his Collection. Talk about गोद में बच्चा गाँव में ढिंढोरा!

Listen to the number with your eyes closed and the lights off, let the dim light of your laptop pervade the calmness with a Breezer or green apple vodka-Tonic. And if you have a good pair of earphones, carry it with you on your next long trin trip too. It should be the last song you hear before you get off the train in the middle of the night on a little-known station, as the rain pours and and the cold seeps in.

Asha Bhonsle sang a reconstructed version a couple of years back in a private album. A fair deviation towards jazz, I prefer this one for its technical excellence and proximity to perfection. As a film singer, Asha obviously has the upper edge, but it stops being the artist's song and stands more on its own merit in the recent redo. Asha and the sound editor together seem to have polished the sharp edges into a more rounded piece.

The taal is in order, the aalaaps introduced by music arranger Somesh Mathur are fabulous and the minimalist beats as opposed to the thus-far-flurry of the sitar-tabla-harmonium is a relief, to say the least. While I wrote this piece, I was looking for the arranger's name and came across quite a few negative reviews of the song. The argument being "we are Indians", no saxophone for us, please.

Who said? It's such a perfect night song. It's the truly global make-out song for heaven's sake. The eternal song of parting - perhaps in the league of Chandni Raatein or Tanhaii, Aaj Jaane Ki is made for those who appreciate classical music in its beauty for technique, not the accompaniment of instruments and quality of voice and the eminence of a particular singer (or its lack).

Sajani Was Right

Trees. Sajani and I are probably among the few zany ones who look at trees like other people look at Naseeruddin Shah or Sean Connery. We look at their personalities. Their characters. Their patterns and elements and dances and calm.

I was on the motorbike with Nishant this morning. Quite unusual – we weren’t talking while he rode. Usually I regale him with all my inanities all the way. Today, I was solving the Sudoku [which turned out to be so easy I left it midway]. Useless only men [in true ma-ka-pao style].

Anyway, the trees.

The trees.

The queers grow around strange things. Electricity poles, concrete homes from a couple of decades ago, stone walls from another era – these trees wrap themselves around whatever’s available. Or rather whatever comes in their way. Almost unobtrusive, they leaf and flower and slant not by the position of the sun, but wherever there’s room. Bombay’s trees aren’t manually prunes into their places. They’re just allowed their space. Like all of us singletons – who are subjected to innocent statements like “I haven’t seen you in a while” implying “where [the fuck] were you????”

And this is true of all parts of Mumbai most sought after - whether it’s the embankment area down the harbour side, the eastern-most vein of urban Bombay, or the busy western suburbs or just the good old South. I’ve realised that these towering oldies add not only add, to an otherwise busy and uninteresting road, shade, but also a sense of prestige therefore. The breeze that sieves through the leaves along with specks of sunlight translates into the romance of an introspective walk – not necessarily a lone one.

Sajani was right. She was right about the trees. They follow no rules. No directions. No regulations. They don’t hinder – neither block nor destruct. Their job is no more the take-in-CO2-fart-out-O2 rigmarole. They’re beyond routines.

Like Paro Anand’s Gulmohar, their innocence is deep rooted. It finds ways to thrive.

Nobody does it better, Carly Simon

Nobody does it better is not one of those songs that strike a chord with you immediately. It’s a context-song. It’s what you listen to repeatedly among many songs, and then one fine winter afternoon, just begin to treat as “your song”. It says all that you want to say… it wishes for you… it even mourns for you, and then praises the love of your life. Just the words…


The Spy Who Loved Me may not have been the most well-known or even the most popular of Bond films, but none of the other Bond OSTs beat the melody of NDiB. The song conjures not a feeling of having been composed for the film, but quite contrary – as if the film was conjured around it (although how Roger Moore could give anyone any competition is still a mystery to me - Brosnan, why weren’t you born sooner?!!).

Where NDiB lacks the general techno-ness of other Bond OSTs, it makes up on technical prowess of composition. The harmonies, the crescendos and falls... No wonder then, that it went on to being nominated for the Oscars that year for Best Song.

The Mozart-inspired Hamlisch ‘Golden Single’ may have found top places in practically every chart it entered. Way after the weeks it stayed there, it’s also flagged a special place in the minds of those of us who heard the number much later.

This is probably the “cleanest” post-first-time-sex number I’ve come across. It’s the kind’a song you associate with making love, actually. I’d probably start with it and then go on to You Can Keep Your Hat On, Smooth, You Sexy Thing, Strokin, and The Heat is On. I recently sent it to someone for a love-filled-éclair moment over the email. Wrap up your day with this croon for a love hangover morning-after!

…cuz… nobody does it better…

Ab Mujhe Koi, Rekha Bhardwaj

राख रे रूखी

कोयले से काली

... is how I describe Rekha Bhardwaj's voice - also the lyrics of her debut तेरे इश्क में. Dark, grey, velvet, powdery; haunting, content, melancholy, patient. Probably one of the only voices I've followed right from the beginning, Bhardwaj's voice is like listening to an inner voice. Her's is the voice of our generation. Like a rock icon. Like John Lennon. One would imagine a light-'n-shade larger-than-life photo of hers scanned onto a t-shirt worn by a mass of students who find intellect in sound. She's the Che Guevara of Bollywood music, one might say. Only, deeper.

A follower who has risen higher than her god, Rekha says in an interview, "Lataजी is my Saraswati." The ash-voiced singer is the humility of अब मुझे कोई.  This is perhaps a rare song where I shall not do-to-death for the nth time, Gulzar's ponderous lyrics or even Vishal - Rekha's husband's minimalist tune. For a celebrity so picky, RB's worked with "interesting characters" in recent times, not to mention, delivering the goods quite accurately.

But back to AMK: there's a rawness about the song that's hard to ignore. Never besura it cuts at the edges. Like a trained singer humming in the kitchen while cutting veggies for slightly creative instant noodles. And the mood, oh! the mood. The song changes moods like a chameleon. Not on its whim, but on yours. Just split? Dating someone new after ages? Enjoying the March late evening breeze? Walking on the beach? Got a new job? It's like सब बन्दर के व्यापारी.

And yet, when I first heard the number, I was dumbfounded. It is so pure it takes a few sittings to soak in. I couldn't figure out the emotion immediately. It left me admiring yet wondering.

Tonight, sync Ab mujhe koi for peace. For love. For a good weep.