Sankarabharanam. Oh, what a movie. A bold and flamboyant movie at its time, it was a gigantic risk that the director K. Vishwanath took, and one that paid off beautifully. Everyone has heard of that one band whose first gig was almost empty and then the five guys that were drunk enough to walk in would be amazed out of their inebriation to hear the band, and they’d text all of their friends and the next hour would be jam packed: well, according to the internet, this movie was one of those. It released to a near-empty theater in a remote place on a contract with the theater that was supposed to last for a week. A week later, people were fighting outside the Royal Theater in Hyderabad for tickets as the film was screened to packed hall after packed hall. Vishwanath had broken the formula, and it had come out in flying colours (literally. Technicolor still continues to annoy me, with the specks of color moving about on the screen). More importantly, a million people got a slap in their face when they saw the scene with a photo of Sankara Sastry and his accompanyists becoming smaller and smaller and fading out and a cutout of Bay City Rollers fading in and enlarging—a rudimentary, no doubt, but extremely effective way of getting the point through.

The rest—the sequel, Sagarasangamam or Salangai Oli; and SPB’s newfound way of rendering songs; and music directors including classical songs even in movies that didn’t seem to require them for the next thirty five years—is, as they say, history.

***

When I was in the seventh grade, I was coaxed into watching this movie. Moser Baer DVD’s were trending, and dad saw this movie on display in the little shop. He pounced at the two-VCD pack viciously. Fifty bucks poorer and with a smile on his face that could only be childhood memories revived, he took us back home with me giving longing looks at “Azhagiya Tamizh Magan” as I was whisked out. (yes, I was a bit of a Vijay fan then. I was young, don’t judge me. Argh)

We went home and turned on our computer and slid the disc into the CD drive. Our large-for-its-timeline 17” screen lit up with telugu words. To be honest, I was a little disappointed, and more than a little sleepy. The movie progressed, and the longer it ran, the lesser I understood. I could barely understand the concept of a prostitute when mentioned directly, and since it was all a metaphor here, I had absolutely no idea why everyone were giving Sastry scandalous looks as he took the horse-driven-open-air-carriage ride home with Tulasi opposite him. I gave my parents quizzical looks, but like any responsible Indian parent confronted with a conversation about sex, they shushed me. After the first CD, I told mother I was sleepy. Dad shot me a look. I quailed. The second CD was on. During the long-drawn romance scene in the temple, I literally fell asleep and had to be woken up.

Six years later, when I was bored one day before a Chemistry exam, and my head was filled with righteous(?) anger about people who boycotted a series of concerts in my college, I decided to watch this film again. I downloaded the movie—god bless the internet and god bless BitTorrent—why not, right? And I literally fell asleep again during the romance scene.

You realize your childhood is lost when you understand the movie completely.

I understood most of the metaphors this time round, though some still confound me. But the second time round, some scenes stood out simply because of the brilliant portrayal of the characters by the respective actors.

***

The first of the scenes that impressed me immensely was the scene where Sankara Sastry (Sastry from here on) returns home after his singing was rudely interrupted. Our egoistic protagonist was hitting a beauitiful high note when somebody in the audience drags a steel chair on the concrete floor. SS shoots one scandalized look at the person; scandalized turns into enraged in the blink of an eye, and he walks out in anger, leaving the audience gaping. On a funny side note here, I found some of the reactions to him walking out, hilarious. This is the percussionist performing beside him.

And this is the guy who interrupted him.

The movie then cuts to Sastry’s home, where the maidservant who cooks in the home and the percussionist are talking about how angry SS is going to be, and wondering what in the world could pacify him. Sastry’s daughter Sarada overhears this. SS storms out of his carriage, and walks in to hear a Tambura strike a note. Slightly bewildered, he goes on into his house to see his daughter playing it, and humming the sa-pa-sa, with a smile of perfect serenity. And in one instant, Sastry’s annoyed frown turns into a smile that mirrored his daughter’s. And that, in my opinion, was the most beautiful scene in the movie.

***

Vishwanath also dabbles with women empowerment a little here: even though he isn’t brave enough to add some sensibility and sensitivity to the role of the veteran prostitute, Tulasi’s mother, he is brave enough to make the daughter—who shunned the mother’s profession and dreaded the day she had to step into her mother’s shoes—a powerful character. The depth that has been lent to the character is something every director of Today’s Telugu movie, with the female character who does nothing but let the action hero fondle her, should learn. And this character breaks all the stereotypes that there were about women in general and female characters in movies in particular. Her love goes transcends the huge barrier beyond materialistic love, physical love and romantic love, and breaks into the region of unconditional respect to the man she accepted as her teacher even though the teacher hadn’t accepted her as a student: an Ekalavya of sorts, though in this case the teacher didn’t know of her existence. And more importantly, she is independant. Now this, needs godlike proportions of bravery and guts to portray in 1979 India, and man, she does it well. But most importantly, she has flaws. Her respect is so chaste and naive that she never realizes that her presence would be interpreted as a dirty indulgence of Sastry’s—not until it was too late to save his reputation.

***

Another wonderful thing about this film is the little things in between. You’d always think that the lawyer—the comic relief—was bluffing about the age when Sastry used to cower before him, but then there comes the scene where the lawyer goes “I’m real tired of your bullshit, man” when Sastry rejects marriage proposal after marriage proposal for his daughter, and the only scene where the lawyer gets actually angry pans out to a Sastry who is, for the only time in the movie, afraid of the lawyer’s anger: which proves beyond doubt that there indeed existed such a time. And then comes the scene where Sastry comes to the lawyer to ask him to argue Tulasi’s case, and the lawyer’s wife brings in two glasses of buttermilk. The lawyer asks her which glass has lesser salt, and hands that glass to Sastry, which is a brilliant touch, because I interpret it this way: In south Indian households, salt in food is usually supposed to be associated with dignity and respect. “I do add salt to my food, you know,” is a common response by a person who thinks his respect is being compromised. And in this scene, even though the lawyer agrees to take up the case, and even shouts at his wife for reprimanding him for working for a prostitute, he is a little disappointed, and his respect for Sastry becomes a tad bit reduced when he learns the mess that Sastry had gotten himself into. Another one of the little things

***

Undoubtedly the most badass of the scenes was the one where Sastry bashes the neighbours for their ignorance, disrespect and mindless worshipping of pop music. The little pseudo-band’s lead becomes very indignant and says that pop music is something Sastry could never figure out, and that his carnatic singing talent would be of no use in reproducing the “complex” art of yodeling. And this, dear boys, is why you don’t mess with a carnatic singer.

http://youtu.be/zGqdIVnd3w0?t=3m37s

***

The film does have its flaws that were born out of the fact that there were some tried-and-tested formulas that the audiences of the age lapped up, and the formulas were so lucrative that even a visionary like Vishwanath found them hard to resist. One of those formulas was “the” romance scene. I think the reason that some brilliant Indian films didn’t fare well in international forums is the existence of needless, drawn-out, boring, and pointless romance scenes. And oh, they make you sleep. Two of the most brilliant movies I’ve seen are Karnan and Sankarabharanam; and if the fifteen minutes of stupid screen time occupied by running-around-trees style scenes were removed, they would have been award worthy. I have seen good movies, I have seen bad movies and I have seen Vijay movies, but none of them exceed the pointlessness of the scene in the temple where Kameswara Rao meets Sarada and falls in—oh look, here’s a predictable story—love at first sight with Tulasi. And this love scene led to the point where the film stops making logical sense—the marriage proposal. I’m not even going to say anything about how illogical it was for a guy who can do raaga aalapanas singlehandedly and perfectly, to mispronounce Kaapi as Coffee, no matter what sort of pressure he is in. And worse, the scene basically proved that Vishwanath’s knowledge was extremely half-baked and his research was incomplete: of all the music-related disastrously humorous scenes he could think of, he invents one in which a guy trained in carantic music mispronounces raaga names. Brilliant.

My hypothesis is that any scene that does not involve Tulasi directly is a scene wasted, and it is verified by the half hour that was the creation, downfall and subsequent success of love between Sarada and the Rao fellow, which was an incredible drag and did nothing to add to the story of the movie.

Apart from that, it is my father’s opinion that the movie absolutely and irrevocably ruined “Dorakuna”. I am not knowledgeable enough to accept or reject it, but even if it was acceptable, I can’t imagine a single reason why somebody would mess with a song that is two and a half centuries old. The original version of the song, rendered by masters like MDR, was a beautiful piece of music, and while I can’t pass judgment on this film’s version, I can safely say that modification was needless.

***

Beyond its flaws, though, the film was an eye-opener to millions. While many people swear by the brilliance of the film for difference reasons, the film itself, though, had me impressed in the first forty seconds. Before the movie starts, the director goes on about music being universal and all that, and before he ends his rant, he says one thing: “Entaro mahanu bhavalu, antariki vandanamu.”

That quote, my late grandfather’s favorite, and also the first line of a Thyagaraja pancharatna kriti, translates roughly to “There are many mahaans (great people) in this world. I humbly bow down to all of them.”

It is my opinion that nobody should grow up without watching this movie, and nobody should grow old without understanding it.

Before I begin, I’ll just quote a few examples and statistics I’ve gathered from happenings around me.

The first of them is a facebook post by a sympathetic soul: “when never heard of bands from manchester come, we google and download their songs and forcibly become a fan just because they perform in our college.

when the number 1 artiste of a genre (indian) comes to our college, people dont turn up. Sadly, we have to promote our OWN culture in our OWN country.

(SPIC MACAY = Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth). We have a mindset that we dont like classical

without even attending a concert or a performance. give it a try guys. im sure it would be more meaningful than ela rose.” (I give up punctuation for authenticity, it’s a direct copy-paste)

The second of them is another facebook post, this time by a college senior: “I do understand the frustration that you probably have because of the low attendance during the SPICMACAY program. It was decently advertised, good hoardings were there and enough publicity was also given. Yet, people didn’t turn out. Why? People don’t get the classical things. In fact unless you have had some prior knowledge in the roots of music or dance or any other artforms, you cannot enjoy any of what was performed. I did not come for that exact reason. I have seen how people enjoy this kind of artform. Frankly it just ain’t my thing. I don’t understand it. It’s a liking of a person. You can’t point fingers or go all mad because of that. Respect how people are - even if they be assholes. Respect their interests. Just because they don’t concur with you doesn’t make them imbeciles you know.”

The third of them is a quote from a website, www.icarnatic.org : “iCarnatic is a not-for-profit organization formed in 2010 for promoting Indian classical music, dance and arts through education, events, concerts etc. iCarnatic has been approved as a Section 501(c)(3) organization. Donations to iCarnatic are tax deductible under US Federal Income Tax.”

The fourth of them is a quote from a “photographer” : “Being a die hard Rock fan, I knew that ‘Amplifier’s performance would be the showstopper.”

What kills me, is the fact that a website based in USA with the objective of promoting a completely unrelated genre of music to their own, gets donations from a population of which less than one in a million people have the aforementioned “Prior Knowledge”.

It is easy to justify yourself for neglecting the right thing to do because you did the “cool” thing. It is easy to say that you had no prior knowledge about classical music, and hence you wouldn’t understand it. And this claim, I am going to refute on two bases: First of all, what the HELL do you know about rock music? Do you know what a riff is? Do you know what Garage Rock, the most common form of current alternative Rock, came from? Have you heard more than five Nirvana songs? Have you heard more than five Led Zeppelin songs? Screw that, have you heard more than five classic rock songs? You know nothing about the history, you know nothing about the technicalities, and yet when there’s a rock band performing, you come along and headbang at all the wrong moments. (No honestly. You wouldn’t find anybody head-banging to alternative rock except in India where people try to be cool. Really, people. Know the difference between rock and metal. Know when to shake your hands, and when to bang your heads.) (And on quote number 4 and 1: I frankly don’t think even the most die hard of rock fans would have heard about the band ‘Amplifier’ . It’s a band from Manchester rooted in anonymity with frankly mediocre music and very justified in not becoming famous. And yet, associating yourself with a band nobody has ever heard of is still more cool than recognizing Indian artistes.)

Second of all, how much did you think I knew about Carnatic music when I went to my first concert? It’s easy for you to assume, “Oh, he’s from Chennai, all of them learnt music.” NO. I had absolutely no background in classical music. But I chose to give it a chance. And that made all the difference. Leave me alone. Popular mandolin artiste U Srinivas performed in Chicago to an audience of 500. How many Chicago people in a random gathering of 500 do you think knew carnatic music? And yet, they gave it a chance. And they were captivated and glued to their seat until the very end. ( http://www.indiatribune.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2359:captivating-mandolin-concert-by-srinivas-rajesh&catid=25:community&Itemid=457 ) .

And here’s where the “uncool” part comes in. It’s uncool to provide patronage to your own countrymen. People who perform their hearts out to meagre audiences. People who have practised, performed and perfected their art from a tender age. People who have given up their personal lives for their art. People who deserve a lot, lot more respect than they get. And people who are, in my opinion, more talented than all of these goddamn rock stars put together. Don’t take me wrong, I have nothing against rock. In fact, I do love a rock song every now and then; not everybody can keep listening to serious classical music all the time.

But just take a good look at the beautiful music here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY0c1fdL5Qk

Just look at him go, man. You know what the beauty is? The guy playing the saxaphone meets the lady playing the violin ONE HOUR before the concert. And they don’t rehearse. They just plan with each other what they’re going to play, and just sync up on stage.

And yet, it all goes unappreciated. Simply because they aren’t “cool” enough. They don’t dress up in leather jackets (men) and nothing (women). They don’t quicken the pace of their music just because you feel impatient. You can take your girlfriend to a carnatic concert, but you can’t do anything with her there.(Oh, don’t look so scandalized. You either already do things in rock concerts, or you would if you had one.) You can’t impress a girl by learning a carnatic song on guitar because it basically cannot be learnt in five minutes by looking up tabs online. You have to sit still in one place for at least an hour, which means you can’t pretend you have attention deficit disorder. Oh yes, you are absolutely justified in ignoring the pride of our country.

While the artistes play to near-complete apathy in our country, people in other countries are begging them to visit them more often. And slowly, like the engineering students of our country, our artistes will also move to places where they are better recieved, better respected, better promoted and better recognized. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them. No matter what sense of loyalty I have towards the land that I grew up in, if I knew anything worth performing, I wouldn’t keep performing it in a land where I have been branded uncool. And while the selflessness of the mentioned artistes far exceeds mine, I think it is waning.

PS: On a side note, there are many admirers of tamil/telugu film music that I know. To them, I just want to say this:

A song by AR Rahman, inspired by classical music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNkF9pTxSmM (based on the raga Chala Nattai)

A song by AR Rahman, inspired by trashy hiphop beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAOKMzQZ_Nw

You choose which one you like better. :)

PPS: And my sincere apologies for dwelling on carnatic music; there are many other beautiful fine arts indigenous to our country, but I have gained a fair amount of knowledge only on this particular genre.

“Write,” I tell myself. “Write, and it will all go away. You’ll be sucked into the depths of your non-existent plots, you’ll obsess about how bad you are at it, you’ll remember that you said it yourself: When you’re angry, take a piece of paper, for it will distract you for long enough that your problem seems insignificant.”

And yet, here I am, attempting to pour out my heart to “Untitled - Notepad”, and failing to do so. It was only when I realized that the pretentiousness I so despised was taking a hold of me, that I decided that enough was enough and that I should return to things that marginally please me. It really is heartening to realize that there are things in the world that give you joy, and that you’re the architect of those things.

I have said this before, and I have good reason to say it again: there are multitudes in this world who have no problem apart from the fact that they are painfully normal. While “painfully” is a harmless adjective, the things they do to convince themselves that they are not, in fact, normal, are definitely not harmless. Attention-seeking is absolutely understandable, to be honest, since I’ve found myself guilty of indulging in it; but attempting to convince the world (and hoping to convince yourself in the process) that you aren’t normal, isn’t.

And here I go again, spewing criticism all over the place the moment I get a chance. Perhaps I am comforted by criticism; perhaps it helps me condone my flaws, finding flaws in others—but it definitely doesn’t make me universally loved, that’s for sure. The urge to criticize, is like the expanding ego-apple that Britta in Community so inaptly characterizies. While it feels nice in the beginning—and some would even go as far as to call it a nice thing to have someone there to criticize, so that they could keep themselves in check—when left unchecked, it turns you into this monster that is extremely easy to hate. And while people are capable of convincing themselves to love where it is not-so-easy to love, they jump at the opportunity to hate, when it’s easy to do so. And hence, you are strictly confined to a friend-circle comprising only of people who can see through this monster—which is the good thing that comes out of being almost-universally-disliked.

But then, criticism is one of the basic things that make me who I am: it gives me something to write about. And as my best friend says, “It doesn’t matter. Write something else. Write crap, gibberish, just get it out.” Anything that gives me something to write is something I’d cherish, mindless of what it turns me into.

Pearl 2k13 was brilliant. And I hated it with all my heart.

“Hope. Hope is bad. Not arbitrarily bad, it’s bad because it leads to that demon, expectation. And once you reach there, you’re at the pinnacle of the vicious cycle.”

I had hoped this college would redeem itself in my eyes with Pearl. And that led to the expectation that Pearl would be wonderful. And therein lies the key to my downfall, the reason why it sucked so bad for me that I couldn’t even get myself to get out of bed and walk to the venue of the events and the pro-show in the last night.

Well, that was one of the reasons. The last night was also supposed to be the “DJ Night”, the concept of which I can’t grasp to save my life. A DJ does some dance music stuff, and all the guys make a separate circle, all the girls make a separate circle, and dance. Somewhere in the middle are all these couples. Maybe it’s because I’m south Indian and our minds are weirdly twisted and we are universally hated, but I don’t see dancing in a huge sausage fest among other boys while music of a genre you don’t appreciate plays at deafening volume. On a slightly unrelated note, many bear fantasies of getting lucky on DJ Night—I am yet to find a single girl walk alone in a cultural fest. The girls either walk in tightly knit groups of more than four you cannot approach and start a conversation with even if you have balls of steel—or they walk with their boyfriends. Some would say it’s about bro-bonding, well, I just don’t get it.

Coming back to the point I was trying to make, though: I expected too much out of it. Well, not too much: the right way to put it would be, I expected something different.

When I was in high school, cultural fests to me, meant something else entirely. Also, they did not include competitions of the ability to stick your breasts out as you walk. My high school cultural fests were amazing fun to me primarily because they had events that tested the ability to think fast. And now, well, it is too late to sorely miss AdZap, Channel Surfing, Voice over, Shipwreck, plain ol’ Creative writing, lexicon, dumb charades—all of which were primary reasons for me kissing the cultural secretary’s ass so that I could get a pass to bunk school to attend these events, and none of which were present in Pearl ‘13.

It is true that I shouldn’t expect these things to be considered worth having in a fest, north of Chennai: but I can still sorely miss them, and I can still have an OPINION that a fest would suck without them.

The only redeeming factors, and the only events that Pearl had that I have some nostalgic fondness towards, were the quizzes and JAM. And while JAM was screwed-up because the moderator chose to pick on me to improve his general standing on the extremely judgmental college-popularity-scale, the quizzes were fun to lose.

Also, a friend told me that college cultural fests are all about the nights, the pro shows. And this time round, it was nobody’s fault but mine. I had gone to Mood Indigo, IIT-Bombay’s cultural fest, where Simple Plan had performed; and I had gotten around to expecting a certain standard from pro-shows organized with low budgets.

The first pro-show was a Carnatic-Hindustani jugalbandhi, featuring Embar Kannan. Delighted as I was, I went and sat down. They started off with Vaathapi Ganapathim. I soon realized that it was going to be a very long night, because the crowd assembled had absolute zero knowledge and were clapping at the randomest of moments. But well, I pretty much lost all hope when there was thunderous applause after the madhyamakaalam, and someone behind me was saying “itna tez baja raha hai”. There were ten people who knew what Carnatic music was in the audience, and a maximum of thirty who knew what Hindustani was. As much as I hated that, I couldn’t help but be among the few who cheered madly when Embar Kannan started playing “Sundari, kannal oru seidhi” from Thalapathi. And hence, what should have been a beautiful concert was spoiled by a crappy audience, and Pearl was off to a bad start.

The second night—oh, what a disaster. I had expected so, so much from Junkyard Groove, and it was such an utter disappointment. You don’t just turn up so high you can barely keep yourself standing up, and say “Do they teach you nursery rhymes at BITS?” and follow it up with a rock song called “Twinkle twinkle little star”.

The third night was marginally better. Amplifier were better than Junkyard Groove, but I don’t blame the world for it not being a recognized band. They have this nasty habit of going way too conspicuously silent suddenly in a song, and then picking up with deafening beats after four or five seconds of silence. At first, it was awesome; after two songs, it was cute; when they started doing it for EVERY GODDAMN SONG, it just became annoying.

And well, like I said before, I couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for the fourth night because it was going to be a bollywood singer singing Hindi and Telugu songs. I can’t honestly say anything about Nikhil D’Souza but my friends say he was great and I shouldn’t have missed it, but honestly, I had gone past the stage of giving a damn about Pearl.

So well, I’m just going to add being in a college with a cultural fest you’re ashamed of, as just another one of the demerits of living in Hyderabad.

It’s back to mundane life now; back to sleeping at four in the morning, waking up for labs, being lazy, hating college, hating studying, hating your CGPA, having few respites from a crappy life, being addicted to the internet and spending way too much time on the laptop: and I’m thoroughly going to enjoy not pretending to enjoy a fest.

Awesome. That’s all I’ve got. When I heard the songs, all that was going through my mind was that I LOVE Green Day’s new styles.

Amped-up, jazzed-up, get-those-power-chords-on, I’m gonna chase a girl ‘cause I ain’t sleepin’ alone tonight kind of music, and I lapped up like a dog outside a car window on a rainy day.

1. Nuclear family:

“Like a nuclear bomb and it won’t be long till I (whoo) DETONATE!” -cue awesome guitar solo- . Need I say more? So much energy. So much punk-pop. Let’s get it on: our hero’s in the scene. And like the chinese company conspiracy, the nuclear family shall fall — er, nobody cares — well, alright. I’M A NUCLEAR BOMB, then, and because I’m Green Day, I can make music out of a bloody countdown. Hell yeah. [Buildin’ it up]

2. Stay the night:

And so, he walks into the bar, scopes the chicks—and who does he see? It’s that one. The one that never worked out. The one that got a way—well, no, she hasn’t gotten away yet; she’s right here. Well,darling, let’s get out of this joint, go back to my place where we can count the circles ‘round my eyes. Stay the night, won’t ya?

I love Billie’s voice in this one. It’s so mellow and the image of girls swooning at it would be enough to move on to the first mini-failure of the series of albums. [Buildin’ it up]

3. Carpe Diem:

I would still take this song to YOLO—any friggin’ day—but the point is, this song sticks out like a sore thumb. The motion is appreciated—but the mood doesn’t come out right. It lacks the energy that made me love the last two songs. They tried a christie road part 2—and it didn’t work. It’s okay, guys. You have your successes, you have your failures. [Bringing it crashing down]

4. Let yourself Go:

I love this song to the point of quoting it frequently in real life. Quintessential Green Day fuck-you. After so many like Platypus, F.O.D and so on, this one goes to that mixtape I’d give to that ex-girlfriend I’d like to give the ultimate SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP: If I ever find anyone deserving of that, that is.

“I’m sick to death of your every last word
And I don’t give a fuck anymore!”

[Buildin’ it up]

5. Kill the DJ:

Big disaster. Every band goes through this phase where they feel obliged to do “a catchy tune”. In other words, a brain worm. This goes, gets stuck in your head and doesn’t leave. Catchy, right? If only the music and the lyrics weren’t so crappy.

Green day have found their mindless sequel to boulevard of broken dreams and 21 guns. [Oh, crap.]

6. Fell for you:

Relatable song. Seriously. This is why I love punk music. They are the champions of glorifying what you feel you should be ashamed about.

Waking up in a pool of sweat because he dreamt of this girl who si out of sight but not out of mind; no, he isn’t going to give up on this chick. Not just yet. Not after he’s spent the night in denial, making paper planes. He’s crashed into this girl, and he isn’t gonna let her go just yet.

[Buildin’ it up]

And now would be a good time to tell you—every song in this album except “Fell for you” has awesome guitar solo’s. When they said they wanted to go down the route of 80’s AC/DC, they weren’t kidding. And every one of the solos are amazing. No? Matter of opinion. I think credit has to be given for this new, epic style.

7. Loss of control:

This is what the album does to you. It takes you up, just to throw you back down. It raises your hope, and then crashes it with a song like “loss of control”.

Musically, the song is nice. It’s nice background music for when you are plotting someone’s gruesome murder after which you’ll proceed to piss on their grave.

“I’d rather attend a funeral than this high school reunion”.

But lyrically, it’s a bit redundant, to be honest. I’d rather listen to “Let yourself go” followed by “Rusty James” than this one. [Bringing it crashing down]

8. Troublemaker:

Another reason I love Green Day. They can pull off singing “Hey, you have excellent tits with a tattoo of a pig sniffing glue”. The beat is catchy as hell, and this time round, you love it. I’m beginning to think this album is about a girl he is chasing—and he loves her, he hates her, he wants to spend the night with her, he calls her a stupid motherfucker… and now he loves her BMW ( ;) ) and admits to her that he’s not straight, but bent-out-of-shape. [Hell yeah]

9. Angel Blue:

We’ve all been there. That one girl that looks and acts so goddamn incorruptible and innocent that merely looking at her seems like a violation of the indelible rules of purity. “You’re a princess, I’m a fucking clown” pretty much sums up the girl who refuses to get rid of her teenage traces.

It’s not a song I appreciated as much as the others and it was a bit of a let-down after troublemaker, but there was still an ounce of hope, just enough to stomach one more song… [Meh]

10. Sweet 16:

And… Best song in the album. Stay the night comes the close second, but there is no surpassing Billie’s voice in this one. He sounds so bloody sublime!

Some say this song is a teeny-tiny screw-you to Adrienne Armstrong that she was far from the only woman in his life and that he was dreaming about a brown-skinned girl for a long, long time.

But this is the point where the protagonist decides that he has to leave his old days far behind. He has a shot at this brown-eyed girl that’s throwin’ down a bottle of Old English; and he decides to take the shot, because it’s stabbing out his heart like a dart-board. [Buildin’ it up]

11. Rusty James:

Green Day decided to take all my emotions about the current music scene and make a song out of it. This one is a plea of anguish. Where the hell is the old gang at? Where the hell is the old, beautiful music? This new batch of crappy people—fans and artists included—don’t even know what song they’re singing. GD regrets the fact that they have transcended into an era of crappy music and crappier admirers of music. They want the old scene back—the brass knuckles are rusting out in the rain. What happened to punk? What happened to saying screw-you to the conventions? I guess there is no return to 86. [I love green day for this song]

12. Oh love:

I don’t know what to say about this song. Seriously. It’s a little tedious, and after all the build up, this is what you end up doing? Going and crying at the girl’s feet, begging her to rain on him tonight? As a single, this song was really nice, but in the album, it totally pissed me off. It was the biggest let down in this album though it was one of the best songs. Music-wise, this was a beautiful song. GReen day’s new style is lovable, and it is certainly something I could get used to—but boy, oh boy, was this a disappointment! [It was too good to last]

There was a movie that my parents used to love, and hence I got around to watching a lot, as a child. It was a commercial failure, and the only reason it is remembered is for AR Rahman’s music, especially Nithyasree’s “Sowkkiyama” and Shankar Mahadevan’s “Varaga Nadhi karai oram”. Even though I thought Manivannan’s performance in Sangamam deserved more credit than it got, the point of the film was very profound, as I now realize. When I was a child, I didn’t understand. The guy who dances effortlessly, unbridled by the crazy rules, the man of the masses, the guy who has got the rural background and the obvious underdog is the cool guy, right?

As I grew a little older, I started realizing that the bharatanatyam family wasn’t so bad, at that. I began to realize that the ways of the folk dancer were just a cultural shock to them—not unlike the ways of district 12 to Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games; and I realized that there is a certain bit of ‘cool’ness in rigour and discipline, too.

And when I finally grew old enough to understand the title of the film, and its (clichéd) ending, the understanding stemmed from understanding the barriers that make one art form underestimate another. With life as a kid who grew up going to Carnatic music concerts, and coming back and listening to film music—or Led Zeppelin and Guns N’ Roses, when I was older—I was fortunate to have the means to appreciate two highly contrasting styles of music.

And like the two factions in the movie, the Carnatic rasika’s would always frown upon the rowdiness of the western music fans, and the metalheads would laugh at the pretentious ways of the high-and-mighty classical aficionados.

Now, I do not portray myself as a person who is above both factions; I am simply somebody who sympathises with both of them.

And before I move to the song, I shall tell this much about the fans: while one set considers their loyalty great enough that they throw their hands in the air and scream the artist’s name, the other considers their respect great enough that they dare not make a noise, and ‘disturb’ the artist. No, don’t get me wrong: it is not that the artist cannot perform if there was a noise; it is just the fans’ way of showcasing their admiration through silent respect. And I would consider both of them equally sincere. Silent admiration or gut-wrenching admiration, the respect remains the same.

And at the end of the day, it is the artist’s wish that the fans go home thoroughly satisfied. Satisfaction is what keeps them going, no matter what the remuneration is. At the end of the day, the artist performs his heart out, to give his admirers everything he has got, to pull out every trick in his bag, to heighten the senses of every person in the room or in the open air theatre—to make every fan appreciate the paradise that is music. And it doesn’t matter whether he sits in front of the mic, or dances-the-Axl-rose-dance in front of it, it doesn’t matter whether he sings a ‘kriti’ in perfect silence complemented by a soft violin, or screams a metal song in deafening noise complemented by a jarring bass: the song remains the same.

But it is the route to this magical place that differs. While rock music reaches out to you in high volume, crowded fields with sweaty headbangers, most of them drunk, Carnatic music reaches out to you in quiet rooms with experienced people silently teaching the novices to follow the ‘tala’. And you would be gravely mistaken if you think you know more than those that have experienced it. So, when an experienced rasika asks you to please stay silent so that you could appreciate the song more, listen to him. You won’t regret it.

Why, indeed?

I consider it a pity that I asked myself this question. I really do.

There used to be a time, not long ago, when I wrote because I wanted to write. This isn’t as significant as Mallory saying “because it is there” to conquering Mount Everest—but the fact remains that I wrote because I could, I wrote to give vent to my feelings, and most importantly, because I bloody well wanted to.

And I didn’t care how long my sentences were, and I didn’t care how confusing they could get, and I didn’t care about expressing myself freely. When there is not much to express, one tends to hide behind metaphors and complex vocabulary, but I still managed to give vent to my feelings, and that was the whole bloody objective.

And then suddenly came the “posh people”, as the people in this city would call them. Posh people who frowned at long sentences, posh people who reveled in calling me mediocre, and posh people who have no idea the trail of destruction they wrought upon a simple man’s life. For it is easy to make a person feel disappointed about himself. Give someone direct criticism, they either take it well, or give you the fuck-you, and there ends the matter for them. But seemingly praise someone, and prefix your criticism with the words “You know, you have so much potential. You would be much better if <insert criticism here> “… and bam, you’ve successfully gotten yourself in their head.

Every time I do the thing they criticized me for, their condescending face would appear in their head, with a voice oozing with seeming disappointment which masks utter glee (a parallel here would be the “Oh, Jeff” from Jeff’s mother in Coupling), saying “Oh, Arvind. You had so much potential, and here you are again, with hopelessly flowery language.” Or worse—they would make (in your head) the one noise that has the greatest ability to annoy the living hell out of you: the “ugh”. “Just… Ugh, man.”

And then came the day I realized the most depressing fact: much as I hated them, I found myself subliminally changing, to get that “ugh” out of my head. Every time I wrote a long, needless, more-rich-in-adjectives-than-need-be, or “flowery” sentence, the “ugh” would appear. And I would edit the sentence—for them.

And then came the realization—I no longer wrote for myself. Subliminally or not, the reason I wrote had changed.

And so, here I am. One article filled with utter nonsense. You can criticize me all you like for this article, and I won’t even listen to you. In fact, I won’t even ask you to comment on this. For a change, I’ll stop begging people to review or comment my pieces. For a change, I’ll go back to writing things in a syntax and method that pleased me, and me alone. For a change, I’ll go back to being the person who wrote for himself. A person for whom writing gave more satisfaction than laurels.

Obviously, I am going to have to go back to pleasing people—as easy as it is to piss them off, you’re going to realize that you have to go back to them because you need a favour—or worse, a review—but this one article: it’s for me. For once in this blog (or twice, if I write another article like this), I don’t care if people like this or not. For once, I’ll do the “uncool” thing.

/* This was my article for a competition that shows you an abstract picture and asks you to write a story or an essay based on that.  */

Many sing the praises of the countryside; and some are so vocal in their distaste for the city landscape that they fail to realize that not all beauty is scenic.

There is beauty in chaos. A mathematician would fervently nod his head in his vehement appreciation of that statement—but complex phenomena apart, there is a certain striking charm that only chaos can enthuse to the careful observer. And we are but slaves to this chaos—if you don’t believe me, try mastering the flow of traffic in a Hyderabadi flyover in the evening.

And yet, the shining lights of the vanilla twilight create a calming effect for those of us born and bred in the city. Some would say a visit to the seashore is calming—but I would say, why go that far? Just climb to the highest floor of a nearby building and watch the city unfold beneath you: the multitudes of human beings in motor vehicles going about their business like O’Henry’s cattle shepherded by the men in blue: and that insignificance that there is—the insignificance of your puny burden among those of the sparkling lights—is palpable.

As you look at the twinkling lights of the city, they create an image more profound than those of the stars above you. The silent sea knocking upon mankind’s door, the bright buildings with lights going out, window by window, the buildings whose lights never do go out (akin to our hostel rooms), the neon signs, the little slum on one corner, a homeless man settling under the still-busy bridge; a ferris wheel somewhere, just hidden from view, just beyond your perception (/*this wasn’t actually there in the picture. Hence the hidden from view. */); old buildings seeming to pale in comparison to towering skyscrapers, unfinished buildings shouting out the promise of a new life very soon… and it is the labyrinthine roads that strike you as the most profound.

Every man’s life could be told by these roads—twisting and turning to accommodate new changes everyday: those that break the concrete that you thought was an impregnable exterior, and those who heal it though it feels like an age has passed… and it is the crossroads that are a true show of human nature.

For when one man’s life crosses another, it is but human nature to need something exterior to mediate the exchange—for in a bridge that has space for but one car, neither man would consider the other worthy enough to back away even though he knows that one of them is bound to do it.

And if there could exist a crossroad without a traffic light, it would become the world Lennon Imagined: but alas, for such is human nature!

/* It is my blog, so I shall toot my own horn. I won second place in the competition for this article. */