Sunday, September 28, 2008

Maya


Art Gallary:-

First painting - showing a woman with a huge pair of melons.

Second painting - showing a headless woman with three melons, the third one is seen in place of the missing head.

Third painting - showing a man with a cannon between his thighs, and other men looking at him with awe.

Fourth painting - showing a woman with a globe rolling inside the dark hollow between her outstretched thighs.

STOP IT. STOP IT. IT'S GROSS. GROSS. GROSS.

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Plato had said that art imitates nature. I am not sure about that, or the reverse of that, but art does attempt to capture the elusive, the mysterious, the indescribable, and the unspeakable.

It is often politically incorrect to speak the unspeakable. It is often indiscreet to hold mirror to an ugly face, especially when the face is pally with a pair of punch-happy hands. In the mentioned case, with or without vulgarity, our artist is accused of depicting human bodies in a distorted fashion. But he was not depicting human bodies as they are made, but as they are seen, and as they exist in our collective consciousness. Can you dare to differ? Is human attention evenly distributed over a human body? Don't we make a fetish of female breasts, and don't we worship male members? The truth is that the distortion happens in our mind first, and only then in an artist's works.

When we convict him of 'sickness', we should remember that out-of-proportion involvement with anything is a sickness, which distorts our vision, our understanding, and our judgment. And this holds true for anything and everything.

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That - distortion of vision, understanding, and judgment - is called Maya - one of the million ordinary words of our colloquial language which contains extraordinary depths of philosophy within. There are other connotations of this word, but those are beyond the scope of present discussion.

In my limited understanding, Maya is caused by the following -

1. Ignorance -- Watch Matrix to understand this.

Our mind is narrowed by the immediate and the instant. A holds the tail of an elephant and gets convinced that it is a rope. B claims that it is a pillar. C believes that it is a wall. They don't listen to one another. And they conclude wrongly.

Even listening to other doesn't help. In a Panchatantra tale, a farmer listens to thugs and gets persuaded that the goat that he is carrying on his shoulder is a dog. In the end, he loses his goat to the thugs.

We are ignorant, and we pay for our ignorance throughout our life. But we hardly think. We defend our sloth and attend to the most immediate practicality. Few 'impractical' daredevils told us that earth was not flat, and they told us that it was earth that revolved around the sun and not the other way round.

See! What we see is still the same, but our sight is lighted by knowledge. We grope in darkness and make ourselves miserable. And suddenly a flash of light shows us the truth - that it is an elephant and not a rope, a pillar, or a wall.

2. Attachment -- In Geeta, Krishna warns us of two things - A. Ego (sense of agency), and B. Attachment. It is attachment which is source of anxiety and fear and then anger, which clouds our judgment.

How ironical it is - we place value in things, and then the same things start to control and dominate us!

I'd read the line written above once again - we place value in things, and then the same things start to control and dominate us!

Most of the things we think we need are the things we don't need. We run after those things that are wanted by people around us - gadgets etc. Similarly, we don't give up something that we don't want because we fear that someone else might pick that up and run away, making us stand like a fool. But we make a fool of ourselves by running after things we hardly care for, and holding something we would rather be dispensed of. Without being unselfish, we live for others. Well not for others, just keeping others in mind. How many things we do are things that we would do without letting others know?

Our crowd mentality is further aggravated by comparisons and competitiveness. The award system and myth of something called success further confuse, and control, our already scattered thoughts.

It is important to realize that success is not a condition for happiness. From pure happiness point of view, success is not always better than failure. Sometimes, it is worse than failure. The pursuit of success leaves the senses paralyzed. No wonder a successful man is a miserable man, because the ambition needed for success is nothing but a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy.

This feeling of inadequacy makes up one's ego, which needs to achieve a goal to feel adequate - therefore attachment - therefore Maya, and misery.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Have Fun


The wait is over - this Friday is FunGaMa day. (Applause)

It's good to have fun, and John wants you to have fun. So all of us will have fun. (Applause)

OK. Let's discuss the plan now. The fungama will begin at 9.00 AM sharp. I want everybody to be in the campus by then. Don't be late, and Don't be absent. John himself is coming with us and he will be there with us for the whole day. (Applause) Managers will make the roll call and make sure that their team is present, and present on time. I don't want to hear any excuse.

The dress code for fungama will be ... (pause) ... a Smile. (Applause) Make sure you wear a smile on your face. That's mandatory. (smile) If we catch any of you without smile, we will make him or her dance. Dancers don't have to be happy, they will have to sing. If any of you find anyone without a smile, report to the fun team. The fun team will make sure you dance and sing throughout the day.

I would like to congratulate the fun team for their tremendous effort. (Applause) You can see the fun schedule on the home page. There are many fun events, and your participation is mandatory. There are exciting prizes for winners. John himself will give away the prizes. Let's see who takes away the titles of Mr Funny and Miss Funny this time. No, you can not get both, can you? (smile) Losers? Well, they will have to do what winners want them to.

The fun team has laid out a funny rule this time, which we will follow. As soon as you hear the command - Have Fun!, you have to start having fun. But before you start having fun, you have to wait for the command. Nobody will have fun before hearing the command. You can not have fun in your own funny way.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Sense of Nonsense


A friendship of childhood is enduring friendship. Only children make good friends, adults make networks. If that's true, what to do to make friends? It's simple - be a child.

I agree that mutual respect is the root of every human relationship (ignore commercial or political alliances for a while). No relation can survive without respect. But being touchy about it hardly helps. We must not confuse criticism with disrespect. We often do that, don't we? And we must not judge after passing the judgment. Once a person wins our respect, we should relax and let the person relax. After all, none of us is infallible, and all of us need to be forgiven.

I often think that we get mature without knowing what maturity is. Maturity can not possibly mean doing non-serious things seriously. Growing up can not possibly mean being petty and selfish. If it is like that, then what's so mature about it? Also, we forget that we are ageless; adulthood is only a state of mind, which can be (and must be) suspended for a while. We must allow ourselves a parole, to go out of our cells and handshake with other inmates.

I have realized that there is lot of sense in nonsense. At least it makes sense in friendship. Two people make good friends only when they do lot of nonsense together. No wonder we make good pals in our graduation and fail to do the same in our post graduation.

Monday, September 15, 2008

On Dating


Three things torment people who are otherwise not tormented - 1. Boredom, 2. Loneliness, and 3. Memories.

If we take care of the first two, the last one takes care of itself. You forget nothing, but you learn to live with it.

Boredom is a petty emotion. It is a sign of sloth, mental as well as physical. And sloth is a sickness that can not be cured by bed rest. It is cured only by activity, which is followed by an interest (in that activity) and enthusiasm, the antithesis of boredom.

A bored person is an empty person who craves for something to fill his emptiness, someone to entertain him. He lacks imagination. A bored person feels lonely (as long as he is alone*) and desperate. So 'something' could be anything, and 'someone' could be anyone. Boredom is promiscuous; it lacks character.

On the other hand, a lonely person feels lonely, but not bored. He sometimes gets bored only in company of boring people, but not in isolation, not in his own company. Loneliness is not empty; on the contrary, loneliness is a longing to share. It is a longing to share all that have been earned in long lonely nights - the stuff poetry is made of. It is a longing to share bright thoughts and stupid dreams with someone who can understand. It is a painful longing to express, to be understood, to love, and to be loved.

Loneliness is the stinging tail of solitude. It is painful, but it has passion, it has patience, and it has character. It is a choice that few deserve and fewer make.

But, after all, being lonely hurts. And there is nothing noble in it.

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Loneliness is a congenital problem, but it has been further aggravated by modern lifestyle. How?

With the number of channels on TV, and the types of personalities have multiplied manifold in recent times. We are what we see. We are what we choose. Among so many options kept on shelves, we choose some at the cost of many others, knowingly or otherwise. And we know little about the options we don't choose, and we know little about the people who choose them. In case we do know, we look down on them. And in case we look up to them, we hold a grudge against them because we have to look up to them. They are either strangers to us, or adversaries.

It sounds complicated, because it is complicated. We are living in complicated times. The profusion of options in market has brought the finer elements of our personalities on fore. And we link our ego with the things we consume. We have bar-coded ourselves. We talk about Identity. We talk about Taste. And these things matter to us like never before.

I have already talked about Identity in my earlier posts. The pursuit of identity ends in a frozen isolation. And taste takes a toll on our tolerance. Taste comes in pair, the other being distaste. Taste means judgment, and discrimination. I have a taste for old Hindi film melodies, and I can not stand rock at all. My hatred to noise is uncompromising, and unconditional. Worse, I am helpless in my hatred. And that hardly makes me very friendly to my friends.

I mean to say that no matter how cosmopolitan we may be, our personalities are more defined, and more confined, than those of our parents. And that makes us lonelier than they were. This situation is not helped by other things, like cut-throat competition, aggression, ambition, and our all-consuming working hours. We stay away from our family, we never see our neighbors except in morning (in the parking lot), and our interaction with our colleagues is strained by professional discretion.

And then nights come with a darkness stretched all over. Never mind the networking, but when we want to talk, we hardly find anyone in our entire contacts list. I have seen myself browsing through my list and then tossing the phone on bed in frustration. I have realized that cell phone is useless when we really feel like talking.

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Since modernity is inescapable, the antithesis of loneliness can only be found within the same set of premises.

I will come directly to the point. It's late and I've to sleep to wake up to go to office.

A few days back the topic of dating popped up, and it was met with disapproval. I wondered what's wrong in it?

Dating is a western concept, isn't?

True, it is. But then so many things are. So much so that it is hard to say what is ours and what is not. In a mixed (and messed-up) culture like ours, what is ours anyway? Considering our work-style, fun-style, and the whole lifestyle, the argument against foreign doesn't hold too much of a relevance.

At the same time that does not mean that we should run after everything exotic. That would be equally idiotic. The point is - that is not relevant here.

The point is - things change with time, and values that are incompatible with lifestyle will be idealized, and idolized, but will not be adopted. Suppressed by society, individuals will resort to corruption, deceit, hypocrisy, and perversion. Don't we see this happening everywhere?

Dating - hunting women, isn't?

That's not the right word. It can not be denied that there is some youthful playfulness in dating, but youth can be playful without being disgusting and malicious. Besides, youthful playfulness is better than middle-age perversion. It is better than post-marriage regret and breaking-up of family. And for us Indians, nothing can be more disastrous than that.

Dating just means meeting a person of opposite sex to see if it can work out. Since we are different people, with different values, taste, and aspirations, it is not easy for us to bump into equally different person, especially in our busy everyday life. And so it is not easy for us to step into a committed relationship, which requires certain compatibility to keep two people together in this crazy age of liberation. Result -- loneliness.

It's time dating is taken seriously by young urban India, and by their parents. It's time it is not just tolerated, but understood. It's time it is allowed, encouraged, and institutionalized by our society. Let's not be sneaky about our most compelling desire - the desire for a human touch. Dating can solve some of our problems if it is carried out properly. I think its time has arrived.



* which means he does not feel lonely. A bored person confuses boredom with loneliness.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Sajjad Hussain - The Mystery Musician


Sajjad Husain was one of the most interesting music director in the Indian Cinema. His contemporaries agreed that he was the best of the best! So great was he that even Madan Mohan lifted a tune from Husain's old song, and that Madan Mohan song went onto to become a great hit!

He was no ordinary talent. Such people come rarely and show flashes of genius before they become victims of their own eccentricity. Ghulam Mohammad, Pakeezah's Music Director was another. The text below is taken from this page, with a view to popularize the story and the genius of Sajjad Husain - the only Original music director that Hindi Cinema ever saw!!

Two incidents which best explain Husain's personality and genius:

One: how, during a recording, he called out tartly to Lata Mangeshkar struggling at the mike with one of his intricate compositions, "Yeh Naushad miyan ka gaana nahin hai, aap ko mehnat karni padegi."

Two: how at a music directors' meet, eschewing the customary diplomacy of that era, he walked up to Madan Mohan and demanded belligerently, "What do you mean by stealing my song ?" ("Yeh hawa yeh raat yeh chandani" from his 'Sangdil' had just found a new avatar as "Tujhe kya sunaoon main dilruba" in Madan Mohan's 'Aakhri Dao'.)

These two hallmarks of Sajjad's identity -- his penchant for complex, many-layered compositions and his singularly forthright nature -- stuck to him like a second skin throughout his life. And they combined in a rather unfortunate manner to diminish the potential brilliance of a career that could have ranked among the most celebrated.

It was not the intricacy of his compositions that put Sajjad at a disadvantage -- he worked, after all, in an era that belonged to music directors with erudition and firm classical foundations. Where he lost out was in his handling of producers and directors, sometimes musical illiterates, who sought to simplify or alter his tunes -- his contemporaries dealt with such "suggestions" rather more tactfully than Sajjad, who would immediately [get] up and walk out of the film.

"He was an extremely talented man, very knowledgeable about music, but his temperament was his undoing," says Naushad. "Even if someone made a minor suggestion, he'd turn on him and say, 'What do you know about music ?' He fought with almost everyone. Because of this, he sat at home most of his life and wasted his talent. But the body of work he has produced, small as it might be, ranks among the best in Hindi film music."

Music historian Raju Bharatan, whose interaction with Sajjad goes back a long way, has a somewhat different insight into the man. "It's true he wouldn't let musically unqualified people interfere with his work,but the popular perception of him being stubborn is not right," he says. "Sajjad had a rational explanation for every action of his. You had to know him to recognise his tremendous erudition, the fact that he was far superior to every other music director in the industry."

This erudition, the cornerstone of Sajjad's work, is recalled affectionately by Naushad.

"He took pride in his ustaadi," he says. "He'd tell the producer, 'I've created a tune which even Lata can't sing.' And the producer would say, 'If Lata can't sing it, how do you expect the common man to sing it ?' But at the same time he did create simple, yet extraordinary, compositions -- for example, "Yeh kaisi ajab daastaan ho gayi hai" from 'Rustam Sohrab'."

Indeed, as far as Sajjad's formidable talent goes, there are no two opinions. Madan Mohan, when confronted with the charge of plagiarism, reportedly told him, "I take pride in the fact that I lifted your tune, not that of some second- or third-rater." Anil Biswas, himself hailed as a creative genius, declared in an interview that Sajjad was the only original composer in Hindi films. "All of us, including myself, turned to some source for inspiration," he said. "This, Sajjad never needed to do. Each note of the music he composed was his own." If Sajjad was known primarily for his film scores, there was also another facet to his art -- he was an accomplished albeit self-taught mandolin player who could stun even purists with his ability to play Hindustani classical music on this rather uninspiring western instrument.

His performances at concerts alongside the biggest names in classical music spurred rave reviews, and connoisseurs would be agog at his ability to coax the meend, for instance, out of the instrument of play entire ragas with the help of the tuning key. "In the hands of Ustad Sajjad Husain," said a review of a Madras concert in 1982, "the mandolin bore the halo of a Ravi Shankar sitar or [an] Ali Akbar sarod. His playing is that of a mighty maestro."

On July 21, the 79-year-old composer breathed his last. The leitmotif of his lifetime, isolation, cast its shadow over his death too, when, with the notable exception of Khayyam and Pankaj Udhas, nobody else from the film industry bothered to turn up to pay him their last respects. "It hurt," admits his son, "but what is far more important is that to the last day of his life, my father was happy. There was no bitterness, no regrets. He could have been hugely successful, made piles of money, but the only thing he wanted was to be acknowledged as a great musician, and to live life on his own terms. And I think he achieved that."

Read more about Sajjad Hussain here. And read what Lata Mangeshkar says about him here.