Too much of a good thing ?

Is regular exercise really good for your long-term health and happiness ?

Consider the evidence :

1

•     Specimen A : A friend that runs up and down a hill near his house every evening (note to Mumbaiites – a proper hill, not Pali hill or Mount Mary or Malabar Hill). One evening he was on his run as usual and concentrating on increasing his speed, so focussed that he didn’t notice something lying across the path, took a tumble, broke his wrist in multiple places and had to get steel pins inserted in the wrist. Need I mention he was housebound for about 6 weeks ! Yes, running can be injurious to health.
•        Specimen B : A friend who swims regularly, and does other exercise too; not only does she watch her weight, she even likes giving friends that drop in a healthy snack – say a home-made soup or salad, or dry fruits. Though her conscience is clear and her halo glows bright on such days, her popularity wanes, until she makes up it by calling people over for indulging in copious quantities of vindaloo and biriyani.
•        Specimen C : A friend that has a bench and weights at home and lifts weights everyday, even though one of his wife’s favourite party tricks is to ask the little son to imitate daddy huffing and puffing while exercising.
•        Specimen D : A friend and her husband are very careful about extra calories and think that the best way to not-give-in to temptation is to ensure that no fatty stuff stays in the house; so after every birthday party / anniversary / religious festival, they either give leftover desserts / mithai to the servants or throw them in the dustbin (yes, I feel it’s sacrilege too, they could give it to me; I’m even willing to wear a tux and serve the guests).
•        Specimen E: She gyms regularly and is proud of her flat abs and well-toned arms, so proud that she often mentions her arms in casual conversation !

Need I say more ? Whether you’re measuring health, sanity or popularity, intense exercise is not good for you.

Me, I stick to sedate walks, strolls actually – I value long-term physical and mental health, holistic wellness I call it .

;-)      (a well-rounded personality would be another way to describe it)

Zen 

Maths, Physics and Chemistry

Last week, I shared an interesting article on singularity that I came across on facebook (thanks for sharing it, N) with a bunch of friends. You can read the article here.

This is how one of my friends (who wishes to remain anonymous) responded :

Don't know physics and can't do the numbers
You send me these reads that induce more slumbers
What about something a tad exciting
Think about the opposite sex stripping

A man's a beast and it all bears out
Over numbers he'll flip for a pout
So save this sophistication for the women
Oh woman! Why can't your kind be more like men

Emotions : Part 3 – Contentment

Sitting on top of a hill in the monsoon season, lush green below, blue-grey sky above. Looking at rain escaping the clouds and rushing down towards the earth, inhaling lungfuls of the fresh wet earth smell.
By,
Zen

Emotions : Part 2 – Despair

Same road, a hospital at the end of it. Observed just outside the hospital’s gate :

A young guy – 15-20 years old. Thin, not too tall. A face that started out being a rectangle, when the jaw bones suddenly dissented and decided to be sharp and angular instead. Mop of curly hair. Dressed shabbily – frayed jeans, faded top.

In the grip of some strong emotion which has been tightly reined in and suppressed – the effort is visible from the way he has clenched his jaw tight and from the muscles flickering in his cheek and temple.

He has a matchbox in one hand. He takes out one match at a time, strikes it against the matchbox, intently watches the flame flare and burn down, and tosses the match away just before it would have started to burn his fingers. Does not actually move his shoulder in the throwing gesture, just bends his arm at the elbow. Continues to do this with several matchsticks, does not look up from the matchbox and matchstick, as if it’s important to concentrate on every minute detail of this repetitive task. This simple task must be done to perfection. Each time.

Kchrikkkkk – flare – hold – stare
The only thing holding his sanity together.

By,
Zenobia Driver

Emotions : Happiness ! or Optimism.

A broad road fringed with tall trees, the pavement littered with branches that the BMC has chopped off prior to the monsoon. Some of the trees have creepers with big pink flowers growing on them, these give out a characteristic strong fragrance that defines this stretch of road during the flowering season. At a certain time every morning, the fragrance is obscured by the stink from the garbage collecting truck, it has an open top and dirty green maws from which streams of garbage hang and sway like so much spittle as it comes trundling down the road.

On most days, the garbage collecting men perch inside the truck’s cabin or on top of the body, in faded uniforms, shoulders slumped, faces downcast, hating their work and their fate. But today is different.

One of the garbage collectors is a young man, tall, dark and hefty, round-faced, with curly hair. His attire hints at his attitude - he wears a dark brown shirt with a mustard print, the first few buttons open – ishtyle hai bhai ! Around his neck he has a locket on a black string, from his hip pocket hangs a dark blue scarf.

This young man chooses to ride the garbage truck with attitude, like he’s at a rodeo, or shooting stunts for a film. He jumps on to the side of the truck as it starts off, and hangs there whistling a happy tune, chest thrown out, head flung back casually, scarf fluttering gaily in the wind, as if he has not a care in the world.

The tale we read in school was true – Aadmi khushi khoj lega ! (A man will find happiness)

Sounds familiar ?

One of my objectives while planning a vacation in Dehradun was to visit Mussourie, be at the Cambridge bookshop on Saturday evening when Mr. Ruskin Bond is reported to visit, and get one of my books autographed by him. Unfortunately, we ended up being in Mussourie on Friday, and even though we optimistically trotted off to the Cambridge bookshop, Mr. Bond wasn’t there. Shaken, but not stirred, we bought a Ruskin Bond book each at the shop, I picked up one titled ‘Rain in the Mountains’.

A passage from this is reproduced below, it reminded me of one of my bird-watching friends, she must be related to Sir E in some way.

Someone asked Sir E if he could shoot a bird on his land at Ramgarh. The man wanted the bird for dissection in a biology lab. Sir E refused.
“It’s in the interests of science,” protested the man. “Do you think a bird is better than a human ?”
“Infinitely,” said Sir E. “Infinitely better.”

Does the sentiment sound familiar to you too ? :-)

By,
Zenobia Driver

About the Mountains

An extract from ‘Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen :
The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself : the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no “meaning”, they are “meaning”; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.

The best part of armchair discussions

A holiday at ‘Ivy Cottage’ on the outskirts of Dehradun; a quaint cottage with a beautiful garden full of flowering plants and trees, surrounded by hills, clouds scudding above.

Picture a group of five people with broad grins basking in pleasant sunshine - we are sitting around a breakfast table laden with empty plates and used cutlery, replete after a mammoth breakfast of eggs, sausages, toast, butter, jam, juice, fruit, gobi parathas and french fries. If you have sharp eyes or a strong imagination, you can see a shimmer of lazy contentment hovering around us and slowly expanding.

What do we select as an apt topic for conversation, sprawled out in our chairs, rendered nearly immobile by the amount of food we have gobbled – we discuss true stories of incredible hardship and adventure. ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer’ and ‘The Climb’ by Anatoly Boukreev – both accounts of an expedition to Mount Everest that ended in disaster; ‘Touching the void’ by Joe Simpson – another soul-stirring story of an expedition to the peak Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, and how Simpson survived in spite of numerous injuries; ‘Endurance : Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage’ by Alfred Lansing – about a trans-Antartic expedition by sea in which the ship sank, but the entire crew survived in hostile conditions for almost two years before finally journeying to safety.

At some point in our discussion, a few expressions turned sheepish and some of us lost a degree of animation as the contrast between our current condition and the stories we were discussing sank in. But then, as M pointed out, to admire something one doesn’t have to be experiencing it, neither to have experienced it oneself in the past. In fact, one’s admiration of those facing adverse circumstances is enhanced with the distance from the same.

Think of eating samosas at a nice cosy place, say Samovar (Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai), while reading one of these books; biting into the crispy part at the end and hearing it crackle just as you read about the crackle of ice on the Khumbu icefall (after Base Camp, Everest); imagining the cold at Everest’s feet while safely savouring the heat and crackle of a crisp samosa – the best of both worlds, wot ?

(Links to info about the books here :
Into Thin Air
The Climb
Touching the Void
Endurance : Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage )

By,
Zenobia Driver

Yoga, but not Yogi

I started yoga almost two years ago. A teacher would come home twice a week for an hour-long lesson. And that was the beginning of my journey. I started with hatha yoga – which is basically using one’s body and doing simple exercises or asanas. My teacher though, was catering to the modern power yoga students that Mumbai is brimming with, rather than focusing on traditional asanas. “Power yoga helps lose weight you know”. I was not in particularly good physical shape, exercise for me had been an evening walk couple of times a week, so she had me tired. She had a predilection for repetitions and insisted on counting – so I was programmed to do 8 counts of this, 16 counts of that, and I would be huffing and puffing away. Simply put, I was a lazy lump of lard.

Yes, having the teacher forced me to do my classes as she would show up at home at the preset times. But, my teacher was an illustrious Gujarati businesswoman as well, running businesses from India and abroad and this kept her away at points of time from taking my classes. I too, had some travelling to do or at times running late at work (yes one class day was an evening class on a weekday!) and this kept us away at times from each other and our biweekly classes.

Working within these constraints, the guru-shisya team did make some progress and I proudly reported to those who cared to listen that I had succeeded to do the Utthita Padmasana. A posture that involves sitting in Padmasana, and then elevating yourself off the floor with the support of your two palms. It made me feel surreal, as though I had transcended into another world, I had crossed some standard of yogic practice.
My teacher – I told you she was into power, pop stuff- asked me to moon walk one morning. Moon walk – why, I asked myself, that’s what MJ made famous and me no aspiring MJ. I soon realized it was a simple knee and ankle bending exercise, nothing as glamorous as it sounded. And so the classes carried on and I crossed some new milestones like learning the Surya Namaskar in the midst of other frantic ‘post modern yoga’ (term patented by me) practice.

Then, at some point a few months ago, I discovered the Yoga Studio whilst browsing the Sunday Midday. Set in chimbai village in bandra, I went to take the one odd class there, hoping to discover something more. The studio is hip – wooden floors, healthy salads served in kansha bowls and the ambience nice to lounge around. The teachers are ‘very bandra’ – wearing harem pants and with well-chiseled model like bodies. What I learned in these one off classes – was how to add grace to the yoga asana. “Like dance, enjoy the pose, move your arm with grace almost like you are performing, though for yourself…and listen to what your body says. If it feels like doing something today, do it, if not perhaps it will oblige you another day.” Grace and enjoying the beauty of the pose – was the aha I got from this yoga class.
To my delight, pretty soon I figured I was actually beyond basic in yoga – so apart from being ‘bandra- priced’, these classes weren’t stretching me enough either. It could also do with the fact, that now I was doing yoga a little more seriously than before.

A month later, inspired, I gate crashed into the Iyengar Yoga institute, the mecca of yoga. I had been trying to get admission here for more than two years. Every time I went I was made greeted by an elderly semi-toothless man who asked me to record my contact details in a book, (much like those we used in school) that ran into pages – with names of wait listed students. Finally, mind made up that I had to join; I arrived during the evening class hours, with yoga clothes packed into my jhola and requested to speak to the teacher.

She was considerate and flattered too I think, that I had been visiting the place for 2 years now, and allowed me to join the class from that very evening.
I was looking for advanced, boy, I got advanced. Or super advanced. Iyengar yoga as a philosophy is hatha yoga but with the aid of props, teaching one how to hold a pose to perfection. ’Hold’ and ‘perfection’ being the key operative words. So the teacher screams instructions like – “expand your shoulders, open up your thoracic area, put your arms by the rib cage, turn your buttocks in and your pelvic region outward to face the ceiling” … and as you try following one instruction, the earlier one inevitably slips and you try to balance it all furiously recalling your bio classes from school, only to hear her thundering “ and why are YOU,YOU,holding your breath, continue to breathe normally…” Give me a break I want to say, but I am so immersed in holding in my buttock and out my pelvic region, that speaking is totally out of question.

And when I think the worst is over, and it is time for Savasana – ah, the relaxation posture where you lie on your back and relax all your muscles; she bellows “ all of you, now hold the two ropes and walk up the wall and then invert yourselves into sheerasana…” and at this point I am sitting with my mouth open (it is my third class so I am excused from this attempt), as 30 adults hold the ropes and really start walking up the wall only to invert themselves and stay like that for close to ten minutes. Wow!

It will take me this lifetime to inch toward becoming a yogini, but as you can see, it has been an interesting journey thus far, from moon walking not quite MJ style, sprinkled with the grace of dancing, to walking up the walls super hero style…
As for you, next time you’re headed to PVR, ditch the superhero flick, hop over to the Iyengar class instead and watch the real superheroes in action; and who knows, you may start the journey of a superhero yogi yourself!

By,
Soma Ghosh

First Rains

I was sitting at marine drive before sunset one evening in early June and starting listening in to a dad- daughter conversation amongst the all the other banter of hawkers, lovers and Gujju families.
The young lady it seemed, worked in Mumbai, and now that her dad had come to visit, she was proudly showing off Mumbai; drawing a contrast to Kolkata (her hometown), whenever she could. Her dad glancing nervously at the dark sky kept proclaiming that it was time to leave. Young lady kept negotiating with dad saying few minutes longer would do no harm.
It was the evening Mumbai would get its first rains.
Amidst the chatter, I sat dangling my feet, allowing the blackening sky and cool breeze from the darkening water to envelop me. Ah a pleasant change from the concrete skyline coming to consume you. Dad finally called the shots, “it’s getting dark my dear, we must go now”..with that our young lady reluctantly gives in. With them, I get up too… thankful for my short tryst with nature marine drive ishtyle. Minutes later, the rains come swooping down.
Mumbai is a ruthless city, but can be tender too. In the monsoon, you can let your scattered thoughts go – the sea absorbs them unto itself, giving you a relief, albeit a temporary one.

By,
Soma

Waiting for the Rains

(an old post by Suchi that is apt to read today)

It is 42 C. That is about 108 F. Dry heat. The kind that attacks your skin and sucks out every little bit of moisture from the depth of your bones. People go back and forth in their preference for the kind of heat – - dry or humid. Madras and Bombay, the temperature is in the late 30s, but humidity so high that breathing is difficult. Stringing one’s thoughts together, in either kind of heat, is a challenge.

Summers are a reminder: Of the frailty of the body. Of dependence on electricity and water. Of the longing for the rains. Even the word ‘monsoon’ has such a lovely feeling to it. It rolls off the tongue, with the languorous ‘soon’ at its end, a whispered promise. The bringer of life to farmers; their fortunes dependant on the vagrancies of winds and clouds. But it is also the city-dweller who eagerly checks the sky for changes, waiting day after day for the unrelenting heat to be washed out.

6.30am in a doctor’s waiting room. “It is pouring in Hyderabad.” “And Bangalore is cold – - remember what cold is?” Such is the conversation these days. Somebody remarks about photographs in the local newspaper of the rains in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. “How do you know those photos are of this year? Could be old photos. Media playing with our minds to prevent water riots” says a critical lady. Just then clouds cover the sun, and a calm is restored.

There is a deep sense of anticipation. A collective holding of breath. Close examination of the clouds. Soon, soon, the monsoons will be here. No wonder so much music and poetry was written for this Indian season.

By,
Suchitra Shenoy
(read more posts by Suchi here)

Birder Bladder and other tidbits

Being one of those that have a few birding – fanatic friends, I am able to relate how this species is physiologically and attitudinally different from the regular couch potato homo sapiens. Note : the following changes have been observed only in fanatic birders, not in the armchair or amateur variety.

1. Birder bladder : XXL size, can continue for long intervals of time without needing to use the amenities

2. Birder vision (a) : can visit forests, deserts, mangroves, rivers etc and notice only the birds, nothing else. Not a beautiful sunrise or sunset, not a picturesque boat-ride through the backwaters, only the birds.
Birders can even venture enthusiastically into grassy areas where bunches of men are going for their morning job, and unabashedly focus binocs and cameras wherever a bird flutters. I was on one such trip recently, and while I was a bit embarrassed, neither the birders not the men were; the presence of a bunch of women did not even deter a guy who was in the middle of an open field !

Birder vision (b) : Crop everything out of photos except the bird - leaves, flowers, trees, all extraneous.

3. Lifer over Life :
(Lifer : A first-ever sighting of a bird species by an observer – courtesy Wikipedia)

Only one idea at birding time – have camera, will click. Even when it goes against basic survival instincts !

While on a bird-watching walk inside a sanctuary in East India, we saw a tribe of wild elephants grazing not far from us. Our guide requested us to walk in single-file in absolute silence; the forest guards were visibly frightened, one of them tried to load his antique gun but could not, adding to our fear. So there we were, walking quietly, not even taking deep breaths; when the trigger-happy camera-club could take it no more and nonchalantly focused their weapons and…..Whirrrr clickkk clickety-click whirrrrr. And continued even as one massive elephant swiveled his head, fixed his beady eyes on us and started moving forward !!

4. Aversion to bright colours – only black, grey, brown and dull green allowed while bird-watching. Large part of my time preparing for each birding trip is spent in finding clothes of the aforementioned colours in my wardrobe; my argument that birds sit on trees with bright flowers and therefore will be attracted to bright colours falls on deaf ears.

5. Birder G.K. – whether the Grimett is better than the Salim Ali and why

6. Birder GK useful to non-birders - Hanging out with birders helps you win in games like name-place-animal-thing. Who else would think of a ‘zitting cisticola’, 'yuhina', ‘temminck's tragopan’ etc ?

By,
Zen

Wildlife Ahoy

Who says you have to go to a nature reserve for an encounter with interesting wildlife? Sitting right here, in a city of about 4 million people, we have encountered the following:

1) Some months back, a family of mongoose, who would trot across the top edge of the gate, in decreasing order of size. As though aware of what a show they put on, they didn’t look sideways at their audience, or down at the ground. “Just passing through”, they seemed to say.

2) A cat gave birth to her kittens on our living room chair (I wrote about that experience earlier). They have moved out, but every once in awhile, the cat returns, almost as though to check that we are behaving as we should be

3) Three to four different kinds of birds hop onto the window sill of our dining room every day and complain vociferously if an over-ripe banana has not been placed for their royal consumption

And today, reporting live, I bring you two eye witness reports:

4) A one-inch frog (it is the monsoon after all) that hopped its way across the bathroom floor. Reaching the bathroom door, it had nowhere to go. Pausing to consider his next move, he spotted a thin crack between the door and the wall. Not worrying about size and fit, he turned around, pushed his butt in, and slowly eased himself into the crack. Since then, there have been no sightings. Stay posted though, we might have breaking news, any moment now…

5) A small cute looking mouse: She leapt off the shoe-rack this morning and vanished by diving into some old newspapers under the staircase. ‘Ah well’ we thought. It turns out, however, that this mouse has a good sense of theatrics. Having received shrieks (of what she probably took as appreciation), she has taken to repeating her feat – - crouching unseen on the shoe-rack and leaping off when an innocent human is trying to reach for their chappals.

So the next time you want to spend big bucks on a safari, save your cash… just come and stay with us instead.

By,
Suchitra Shenoy
(read more by Suchitra at http://dosomethingbeautifulthebook.wordpress.com

This and That

This week’s post consists of interesting things I read / saw / heard and wanted to share. Am just adding brief notes to pique your curiosity so that you click on the links given. So, without further ado:

1. A part of this article by Neelesh Mishra in the Mint Lounge yesterday. The article is about Vishal Bharadwaj and his journey to success makes for interesting reading anyway, but the anecdote reproduced below really grabbed my attention.

‘You could say that where Bhardwaj is today is the result of a journey he began hesitantly with a script in his hands, pitching it to Shabana Azmi a few weeks after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, asking the veteran actor to play the role of a witch. Azmi’s response wasn’t quite on expected lines. “Why are you doing this to yourself? If this film fails, then your career as a music director is also dead,” Bhardwaj quotes Azmi as having said at the meeting that became a turning point in his career.

If he was thrown off balance, it didn’t show.

Bhardwaj asked Azmi to imagine a man on the 90th floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, who has just come in to work and has switched on his laptop. He sits back and begins sipping a cup of coffee when, outside the window, he sees an aeroplane coming right at him. “Poof! It’s all over in the next second! We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute. We have to live our dreams as much as we can.”

Azmi agreed to act in his debut film Makdee.’

Dream On !

2. This article titled ‘Thank God for Politics’ by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express yesterday defended Dr. Manmohan Singh and his recent press conference. Being a big fan of the good Dr., I had to include it in this post. I really liked the way Shekhar Gupta defended Dr. Singh’s speaking style :

‘His style is like that of a professor caught in the complex detail of a problem rather than that of an expansive Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And his method and moods? I have often said that even at the best of times Dr Singh seems to come across as Rahul Dravid batting at 39 for 3. He is not given to flourishes of any kind whatsoever………………
can you deny that Dr Manmohan Singh is honest, capable, well-intentioned, wise and, most importantly, re-electable? So what if you do not exactly find him to be a rock star in front of the camera. That was never promised to you in the first place. But one thing you can be sure of. Whatever his countenance and style, like the dour but indispensable cricketer we compared him with, he is at his best at 39 for 3, which is how the scoreline looks for UPA 2 right now. You can trust him when he says he isn’t going anywhere midway through this innings, and you can also be sure his party will now cut all the clutter and confusion and work with him rather than at cross-purposes.’

3. As some of you may have figured, am a big fan of weekend newspaper reading. And I recently found out that the Hindu is now available on the same day in Mumbai. So now Sunday morning newspaper sessions can be spun out longer with the Hindu too. (Surprising that the paper has such stiff and turgid prose on a weekday but is thoroughly readable on Sundays.)

4. Watched Raell Padamsee’s production of the evergreen ‘Sound of Music’ at NCPA yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Delna Mody as Maria ably held the play together; Marianne D Cruz Aiman as Mother Superior was sensational in the song ‘Climb Every Mountain’; Dalip Tahil as Captain Von Trapp was a total surprise – he looked dapper and handsome and quite unlike the villain of so many Bollywood films of the 80s and 90s, and he sang really well too. Where have these people been hiding and why don’t we have more musicals being staged in Mumbai ?

Suggest you give this play a dekko if you liked watching the movie as a child, or if you have a young child at home.

p.s.I couldn’t find any clips from Raell Padamsee’s version of this production, but just for kicks, here’s a video of an unusual performance of Do-Re-Mi, for a commercial by Belgian brand VTM in 2009.

By,
Zen

Mindful Musical musings of 2010

I had a slow start to 2010 and I used the time to make a number of resolutions – conscientiously as I do every year. Like many, I seldom keep any beyond the first weeks, but I kept one resolution in 2010, that was to enjoy my music again.
From when I can remember, I have loved listening to music…it has been my companion from my school days and then in college and thereafter. In fact when I was an obnoxious teenager I would listen to music on my walkman turning up the volume so high that I could block out what was happening outside. Music had been my peace, my escape, my love.
In the last few years, in the busi-ness of life, I had forgotten the glorious happiness that music used to give to me. It took me a number of years and a few life interventions to realize what this lost companionship had cost me.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not that during the last few years I have not been listening to music…of course I have, there are some favorites that I heard from time to time, I listened mindlessly to radio countdowns and of course the latest hindi music albums that caught my fancy either through the count downs or through flipping channels on tv. It’s just that I had stopped being mindful in listening to music.
2010 was different, hence I want to share my top music musings for the year (has nothing to do with releases in 2010), many that I will carry through with me into 2011 and perhaps longer. There were many that I had to cut down to keep to the top few but this was also the fun of writing this list – so many that I had to sacrifice when they were jostling for a top ten slot.

1. ‘Forever Young’ by Bob Dylan
Reassuring
I am surprised it took me so long to really discover Dylan and Forever Young. It is a strong contender for my song of the year. It was my chicken soup for the soul song for 2010 – listening to Dylan’s raspy voice singing (saying) “May your hands always be busy, may your feet always be swift….May you have a strong foundation, when the winds of change shift” never fails to give some old fashioned inspiration….And poetry this, “may your heart always be joyful, may your song always be sung, and may you stay forever young”…
On searching I found a book devoted to an illustrated version of this song…a perfect gift for young impressionable minds. As for me, am planning to get my hands on the Dylan documentary now to understand better the person behind the song.

2. ‘Here we go again’ by Ray Charles and Norah Jones
Unwind
What an unusual combination of folk in a duet, ‘genius loves company’ indeed. Bluesy, slow and meant for an evening when you want to switch off the lights, switch the lamp on and have a glass of cabernet for company.

3.‘Uff teri ada’ from Karthik calling Karthik.
Joi de verve
“jogi nach le...rang rach de…lehra ke balkha ke tu duniya bhulake naach”
Javed Akhtar wrote pretty lyrics for this song and Shankar Ehsaan n Loy lent stunning music. I wanted to turn up the volume and dance all night. The on screen visualization of this song also added to the feeling … My highly perceptive driver turned up the volume when this song played on radio and that’s when I realized I had been spending too much time in the company of my driver!

4 & 5, Undiscovered genres – ghazal and Hindustani vocal.
I pride myself on being someone with clear likes and dislikes and the two things in music that I was sure I didn’t like were ghazals and Hindustani vocal music.
I read somewhere that circumstances just reveal yourself to you…and my revelation was that I loved ‘Aaj jane ki zid na karo’ by Farida Khanum. You may have heard this song in the background if you have watched ‘Monsoon Wedding’, but listening to the full version is altogether something else. I heard this song, and then I heard it again, and again to realize that I had fallen in love with a ghazal! Gawd! The sheer power of Farida Khanum’s voice capturing emotion like no other and minimalist accompaniments makes for an incomparable listening experience. Later in the year, someone sang this song at a friend’s house and ironically everyone left immediately after the song was sung.

Hindustani vocal by Ustad Rashid Khan. I heard Ustad Rashid Khan by chance. I have been in awe of Ustad Amjaad Ali Khan from class XI, in spite of this I have never had the chance to listen to the man live and this year I got my chance…but to listen to him play in the second half I had to sit through a vocal performance by Ustad Rashid Khan.I was not a vocal person (have heard some greats including Pandit Bhimshen Joshi, god rest his soul.. Kishori Amonkar and Ajay Chakraborty in the past and and an opera that I fell asleep in:-) . Anyhow ). So I braced myself deciding to deal with this before the real thing…and I was astounded.
I guess what I realized in 2010 was that I can’t discount any genre of music as not my type…

6. ‘Ragas Bhairav and Charukeshi’ by Ustad Amjaad Ali Khan
Divine
Ustad Amjaad Ali Khan is in a league that few maestros reach. The first thing that struck me was how distinguished he looked live on stage, (salt and pepper hair, sharp features, smile and gentle husky voice) adding to his 6th generation Bangash lineage. As he played ragas Bhairav and Charukeshi , the magic he made with the sarod elevated the musical experience to near divinity . If there is sadhana in music, it was this. Coupled with Ustad Rashid Khan’s performance in the first half; this made it my most outstanding concert of 2010.

7. ‘Goldberg Variations’ by J.S. Bach. played by Simone Dinnerstein.
Sublime
He is the greatest of them all, yet in the past years I have spent many more hours listening to Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. In 2010 I started to comprehend the matchless combination of musical engineering and profound expressivity that Bach possesses. Whenever I listen to this CD, I feel uplifted and ready to start on all my projects! I hear that ‘Godel, Escher, Bach’ is a fascinating book that explores the similarities between the works of the logician, artist and structured composer.

8. ‘Ale’ from Golmaal 3 – music by Pritam and sung by Neeraj Shridhar and Antara Mitra.
Anthem
This, I like to call my anthem for 2010. The most non serious song in my list and perhaps the most surprising entrant on my list, what I found endearing about this song to me was the lyrics that kept me company in some nights I had to spend traveling, transiting and stranded in various airports and locations in December on a NYC – Mumbai (flight) journey that lasted 6 days
“Duniya ki baatein waatein chhod ke, Gummo ki baahon ko marod ke
Khushi khadi hai jis mod pe, We got to go that way, we got to go that way”
If only I figured how to live this more often – ok am trying.

9. ‘Saajnaa’ sung by Mika and Chinmayi, from the movie Lamhaa
Deeper than love
The song of 2011 for me. Lyrics by Sayeed Quadri, music by Mithoon and sung soulfully by Mika and Chinmayi in the most beautiful way possible. Melancholy and optimism (is it only me who finds optimism in this song) fill every note at the same time …It’s not fair to pick any particular lines, they are all so lovely, but if I must, I pick “Haan tera saaya toh main hoon, par sang tere naa reh sakoon, haan is safar me toh main hoon, par sang tere naa ruk sakoon….. ”. It’s a song that someone described as ‘an excellent song’ and it is! This song gives me goose bumps each time I hear it.

10. Finally, a song by Tagore
Wisdom
The lyrics go ,“Tomay natun kore pabo bole, harai bare bare (2)
Oh amar bhalobashar dhan”

and in English
“In order to discover you (experience you) in a new way, I keep losing you again and again, my love.”
It is said that Tagore’s songs can be interpreted to be sung to God, or to your love …upon reflection, my hiatus with music (love) enabled me to discover and experience music in a new, more mindful way again. And perhaps discover a bit of myself in the process as well.

By
Soma

(1 ‘Mindfulness’, a concept found often in the context of Buddhism and in the domain of meditation , refers to being completely in touch with and aware of the present moment, as well as taking a non-evaluative and non-judgmental approach to your inner experience)

Catching up with an old friend - reply

I like the untidiness
The newspapers look well read,
The books lying where I saw them last
Maybe the familiarity makes me feel comfortable
I’m growing old you know

Remember, I’m a coffee drinker
Though I rather like the tea you make
Or the fact that you make it with the mint leaves
Can you make it black?
I’ve given up milk these days – it’s an experiment…
(In exactly what I’m not sure anymore)

Let me share with you my favorite songs
Many from the past, they will come back to you,
Some are new,
I will let the lyrics do the talking
To tell you how the time has been since we last met
Where life has made me go and made of me
Might do better than the words I will speak…

Tell me , how it has been
I want to know a little more about your story
Before I leave, who knows when
We will have this afternoon to share again
The two of us with this cup of mint tea,
In this sunlit untidy living room of yours.

By,
Soma

Catching up with an old friend

Welcome in,
Ignore the untidiness -
I haven’t changed much, you see.

Make space
Toss newspapers aside -
Always room for you here, somewhere.

Do you like tea ?
Or filter coffee ?
Some memories have faded with time, and age.

Listen to music
And slowly unwind,
Let’s not catch up with each other’s lives, not yet.

A remark
Or two, stray details,
Meandering conversation, so content.

By,
Zen

Requiem

Read this article by Salman Taseer's daughter yesterday. Thought it worth sharing.

Regards,
Zenobia

An Eye for Interesting Stuff

At the outset, let me admit that I am an Indian Express loyalist and have been one for years. Amongst the English language newspapers, they are one of the few that have resisted the temptation of transforming into a blingy-n-bright tabloid, and actually deliver a daily dose of credible news. They still stick to their superior investigative journalism, and occasionally re-open a decades old cover-up that all other newspapers seem to have forgotten about. To add to this, they have a local news and cultural events section that reports happenings other than page 3 parties. I think all this more than makes up for the occasional grammatical error and the poor print quality that sometimes leaves me with grey smudges on my fingers.

Last weekend, the Express gave me yet another reason to remain loyal – they expanded the Sunday supplement, the ‘Eye’, into a magazine. And a magazine that is perfect for a Sunday morning read –a well-balanced eclectic mix of topics, something that you won’t just skim through in a hurry to get to more interesting parts of your day, but will want to savour fully as you read from beginning to end of each article.

Consider last weekend’s articles. There were a few unusual travel write-ups, one where Bharath Moro tracked small bars in small towns from Koraput to Firozpur to Managuru (where the hell is that ?!!); another about two young American Muslims that travelled across America during Ramzan and break their roza every evening in a different mosque in a different city, another by Venita Coelho – a local’s look at the madness that is the tourist season in Goa. There were also a few articles on technology, a few on different industries, and then some current events / general knowledge stuff, politics - an interview of L.K.Advani (though his vintage is not exactly ‘current’), and economics - a blow-by-blow behind-the-scenes account of how India avoided a crisis in 2008, the key players, their actions and reactions. Also a very interesting article on the Salvis, one of the last families keeping alive the art of weaving Patan Patola saris .

A great read with a hot cup of tea / coffee by your side. Buy the Indian Express folks, at least every Sunday.

By,
Zen

Atmosphere

I like watching old Hindi movies of the Basu Bhattacharjee or Hrishikesh Mukherjee variety – think ‘Baaton Baaton Mein’, ‘Chhotisi Baat’, ‘Chupke Chupke’,‘Chashme Buddoor’, ‘Golmaal’ etc, often featuring actors such as Uptal Dutt, Om Prakash, Farooque Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Amol Palekar. Movies shot through with warmth, gentle humour and good music; the love story at the centre mellow, not melodramatic.

When I watch these at home in Mumbai, I sometimes find my enjoyment disrupted by a sense of impatience at the slow pace at which events unfold in these movies; a fall-out of the frenetic pace of the work-week in Mumbai, the urge to get things done quickly carries over into the weekend.

Recently I spent a few lazy days with friends at Panchgani, a hill station a few hours away from Mumbai. We went for walks, looked at the rain pouring down from the safety of the porch, admired tall trees in the garden, read books, chatted and basically indulged in aimless meandering activity. Even time spent carefully watching leaves fall in the wind seemed worthwhile, noting how larger leaves turn and spin multiple times in the eddies of wind on their way down, much like boats caught in a whirlpool must spin, I imagine.





One friend had brought along her small music-system. After breakfast and lunch, while others dozed away the heavy meals, we sat out on the porch and listened to music. Listening to ‘raindrops keep falling on my head’ while you’re watching the rain and listening to the wind ruffle leaves on the trees adds so much to the enjoyment of the song; ditto for ‘tiluk kumod’ with the background accompaniment of heavy rain. Or the Byrds singing ‘turn turn turn’ – a song about the cycle of the seasons makes so much sense and strikes a really true note when you’re amid tall trees that have seen many seasons change and weathered it all majestically.



I realised how much the atmosphere had seeped into me when I watched ‘Dulhan wahi jo piya man bhaaye’ for a bit on TV. The pace seemed just right, none of the dialogues seemed too verbose, though some of the emotions expressed were undeniably old-fashioned. Part of the reason might have been that at points in the movie where my attention flagged, the sounds I heard were not busy city sounds – traffic, hawkers, bhangaarwalas crying ‘papaarr’ – that reminded me of my task-list and time flying by, but unchanging unvarying sounds like the wind, rain, crickets chirping, etc, that had been and would continue to be around for millennia.

(Note : ‘Atmosphere’ does not seem to seep into guys thick skulls as much – they watched an action movie called ‘Kick-Ass’ at Panchgani and then 'Remember the Titans'.)

By,
Zen