Dear Aniruddha Bahal, It's Not Funny

Dear Aniruddha Bahal,

Not a week passes in my life without I mentioning strongly recommending Bunker 13 to people I come across and who seem even remotely interested in reading among those. If I were deeply religious, one would have observed that I go back to Bunker 13 more often that I go to the religious texts. Of course, one needs the kind of madness that made MM the man he was. When I die, I will be glad that I introduced you and your writing to a lot of people around me. While I most eagerly look forward to another Bunker 13 and another MM from you, I really can't understand the need for you to invent Tony M at this moment. Yes, we Indians are starved for quality humour and what we are being served now does no justice to our discerning intellect, but I will remain skeptical of this attempt of yours till I watch the said show and find out if it really deserves you. Tehelka was excellent work and I admire you not only for what you brought to the rot to light, but also how you withstood all the persecution that followed. I really admire Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra for the same. Please convey my best wishes to them and to Tarun as well. One need not look beyond you guys for inspiration on how to fight back in the face of all odds and come back and come back doubly strong. You started Cobrapost much before those of us in the web 2.0 infected world starting throwing about terms like RSS feeds and news aggregators. For all we know, Cobrapost might just take off and make a strong comeback if you spend more time on it that trying to humour us by being Tony Bhasand. And what is this? Is this what Aniruddha Bahal has become?

Is your absurd sense of humour your forte?

Humour is not the fort. If the truth in the joking then the peoples laughing and spreading all over out from the Naini fort on the river.

I really hope you and your publisher are working on another Bunker 13 and you won't disappoint your followers and readers. Maybe your following is a billionth of that of Sharukh Khan and you are not Arundhati Roy, reading whose work kids think they become intellectuals overnight and go around telling the entire world about it. We are you fans by choice, not by the lack of it. Hope you know that.



Maybe I'm over-reacting just on the ten questions you answered for the Outlook interview. But I hope you understand that you are at your best when you are either stinging or you are writing. And please don't meet Vipul Shah or Akshay Kumar, otherwise we'll soon be watching a movie titled Stingg is Kinng, with the unnecessary extra alphabets and there is also the threat of them wanting you to write the script.

Hope to see you back to writing soon.

Regards,
Nikhil


PS. I must mention here that I immensely enjoyed reading A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Just a note that you now have some competition in fiction writing about military, politicians, war, spying and espionage in the sub-continent.

Image Credit: Outlook

Koel - Kahaan Gayi Teri Boli?

[Promise to myself - This is the first and last time that a post is entirely about a celebrity]

Maybe this post was supposed to be about Rock On!! Or it was supposed to be about my our music story or about Vajra, our college band comprising of Mrinabh, Joji, Chinsi and Shubam which I briefly managed during our final year. No, it's about none of them. Instead, turns out that it's about Koel Purie. I'm no style or fashion expert for I still don't understand all the brouhaha over Vidya Balan's sense of dressing or even the apparent lack of it and surely will never understand it. But I can definitely see how worn down Keol appears now, compared to her Everybody Says I'm Fine days.

Dear Koel,

Congratulations on your new TV show - On the Couch with Koel. Definitely helps when you have a father like him,, doesn't it?. If you are listening, can you please clarify this for us? Were you drunk or high on drugs while interviewing Salman Khan on your show? And what's with that forlorn look in Rock On!!? For God's, discerning viewers', your followers and my sake, you looked like Purab's mother in the movie! Did Niharika Khan have some evil designs for you?! Please take care of yourself and your appearances in forthcoming TV shows and movies. We are watching you. Hope you are listening to us.

Regards,
Nikhil

PS. Rock On!! is good. And sorry guys, I downloaded the songs. But then I have the lyrics of all songs except Zehreelay by heart and have made at least ten people around me listen to at least two songs each from the movie. Hope that makes it up for downloading the songs. I'd have been really glad if you guys made the album available for free download and recovered the money on the music by touring across the country and performing with Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. That perhaps wouldn't be BIG money, but you'd have done more than your bit to promote good music in India and encouraged other musicians to try and work towards a better solution to end piracy.

PPS. Technically, this post still remains about Koel, right? Post scripts aren't considered a part of the main post, are they?

Hazaaron Khwahishein Nahin, Bas Ek Khwahish

Dear Kirkireji,

I hope you, like I do, believe that this is your best song till date. I do not say best song ever because I believe, hopefully you also do, that there are many more such gems to come from you, both as a writer and a singer. It hurts me no end when I see such a beautiful composition being trivialised by being used in a television commercial*. I understand that perhaps you did not have as much say as folks at Virgin Records or at PNC, but this is still something we find hard to digest. Not music to our ears, if I may say.

I earnestly request you not to hurt your fans henceforth by letting your songs, either sung or written, be used for purposes other than for reaching musical ecstasy. Yes, there's an odd aberration like this one, but we know you're back in tune after this. Your songs, like this one, are music lovers' secrets, and only those in the know of it really understand how valuable they are. Please let them remain that way.

Please convey my regards to Jhingranji, Shantanuda and Mishraji.

Regards,
Nikhil

* The television commercial in question is the new Airtel+Nokia ad featuring Abhay Deol and Raima Sen. Glad that it's not up on YouTube yet. Glad that I'm not linking to it from my blog.

Happy Independence Day - II

I only have this to say. If it takes a jazzed up version of the National Anthem to market our national anthem to our youths , then God save our country instead of the Queen. Maybe I am a little old-school, finding such an experiment with our National Anthem hard to digest. I'm definitely not against any form of display of patriotism that happens these days, which is nothing but wonderfully disguised marketing campaigns, but this one is taking it a bit too far. There's a sense of aesthetics associated with any National Anthem and this new experiment trivializes that feeling. At 00:43, it has to be Gaahe Tava Jaya Gaatha and not Gaaye Tava Jaya Gaatha. If one's looking for a mistake, there you go. That's one for you. All the best Nokia, may you have more youth, feeling all the more patriotic, thanks to your initiative download more ringtones and buy more phones from you. All the best MTV. And Thank You for reminding our youth that we have a National Anthem. Be glad India, your youth have finally found you, thanks to MTV and Nokia.

Happy Independence Day

So it will be a Happy Independence Day after all. The Box Office is keeping producers of this movie happy and that the lead character's name is Happy is only, well, a happy co-incidence.

Abhinav Bindra's win at Beijing has exhausted all possible phrases with the word gold in it. With so many (more) news channels and newspapers(and some more) around, no wonder everything looks and sounds the same. So this Independence Day, all of India, which, to the news channels consists of everyone in their air-conditioned, glass-walled news studios and those whose who overwhelm them with text messages and emails will celebrate the arrival of India on the world scene (Have you already forgotten the nuclear deal?) and the emergence of a confident, self-assured youth here in India. Thank you Abhinav, if not for you, we'd have had a very gloomy Independence Day celebration or so our newsmen and women would have liked us to believe. Left with nothing but the increasing inflation and rising costs, they would have perhaps shed a tear or two(damn, it's already raining, why add to people's misery?) about the floods down South or would've gone on about how freedom is not all that happy as a certain government is making others dance to its tunes, rather not to dance to any tunes.

Rabbi's second album is out and Bilqis(Jinhe Naaz Hai) perhaps captures my sentiments best. I still remember talking about the short public memory with Sap while the Satyendra Dubey episode was making the headlines and I now wonder if any of us still remembers him. What I did not know was about Navleen Kumar. A social worker fighting for the land rights of tribals in Nallasopara, Thane District, she died on receiving 19 stabs on June 19, 2000. She was fighting against the powerful Thakur family which has built nothing less than an empire in those parts of the Mumbai suburbs. Strange enough that I did not come across this earlier, as Nallasopara is very close to Boisar which I (used to) visit quite often. Rabbi remembers her in Bilqis(Jinhe Naaz Hai) along with Shanmugan Manjunath and Bilqis Bano. Here's the video -




We're still a young country and have a long way to go. And long way in the life time of a country usually means centuries. Neither are we going to rule the world tomorrow nor will we cease to exist as a country the day after. Someone please go tell that to our media persons. Or am I asking for too much from them? What the hell, I'm free to think and wish in this country and that remains my wish for this Independence Day. That we try and nip this obsessive celebrity following and excessive consumerism in the bud or we'll end up as something else. Now, that's for another post. Enjoy the extended weekend. Did someone say Independence Day? What's that? Isn't that on July 4?

Don't Blame That Miss Teen South Carolina Contestant

Now this is something we're more than familiar with.



Maybe this video will help us put that into perspective.



On a slightly related note, I'm a little skeptical of Rupert Murdoch's continued domination of the media world over.

Chess Olympiad Teams Will Be Topless

How scandalous? And it's the Indian Chess teams we're talking about.

Are they making the right moves? Will they get pwned? Will they find out what is it to be a knight rider? All puns intended. Read on.

Chess Olympiad Teams Will Be Topless

Thank You DNA and congratulations. You win today's battle for the most absurd news-story/news headline. But you still have a long way to go before you even think of getting close to CNN-IBN. All the best!

Viva la Vida and Brian Eno

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends sees the coming together of two brilliant brains, Coldplay and Brian Eno. Having briefly worked with Coldplay on their last album X&Y, Brian Eno has gone on to produce Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends for them. And by the looks and the listens of it, and as Guy Berryman mentions in the interview to Rolling Stones, they've gone into exploring newer territories and they've come up trumps. It might take a while for the music to be digested, but once it is, it just gets into the system smoothly.

Coldplay performing Viva la Vida at the MTV Movie Awards 2008



Rolling Stones India



It needs another blog post to do justice to the genius that Brian Eno is, but I was introduced to him through this song from The Son's Room. I can not remember a more perfect use of a song in a movie.

Here's the song -

The Truth About India

Now, after traveling some eight thousand miles around the country, I know approximately as little as I did on my first arrival. However I've seen a lot of people and places, and at least somewhat more detailed and precise idea of my ignorance than I did in the beginnning.

Paul Bowles in Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue, an excerpt from which is carried in India In Mind, edited by Pankaj Mishra.




Not surprising at all, an opinion like this coming foreign traveler. But it holds equally true for an Indian traveler like me. The more one discovers India, more is the feeling of having known nothing at all about this magnificent place.

PS. The book is put together well. It is a collection of pieces from books by foreign authors and travelers about India. Also, LibraryThing doesn't seem to be working. Anyone fans of the website and missing it as much as I am now?

Earth Day Barkings

And one was under the impression that today is Tuesday. With each day being gobbled up for such causes, one wonders if 365 days are enough. So while Google does very dull logo change, the message is gotten across by our good friend Hutch. Such a gentleman he is. Tough, and very hard for him to resist it must be in a place like Bangkok. Every possible pun intended, in a very earthly way. His status message on GTalk -

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.
~Cree Indian Proverb
Happy Earth Day!!!

Well done, my boy. But that's not enough. One needs a more powerful message from an even more powerful messenger, our Boss. No wonder he has the veto power, the power to say yes while everyone else is in opposition and the result is still in his favour. Such is his power and that of his veto. Power, by the way happens to be another creature who doesn't have anything to say on this. Here's Boss's message on World Earth Day through his GTalk addressing system-

♫

today is earth day lets piss on the plants and shit in the fields...give back to mother earth

Short, actionable and powerful. Your words are our orders, Boss. Come, let's hit the fields right away.

Learning For The Day - Rukmini Devi Arundale

Till today, in fact a few hours before this post, I was unaware of the existence of Rukmini Devi Arundale.

Funny earlier and it's a life fact now that, as one discovers and comes across more things unknown, it appears one knows a lot lesser than what was thought earlier. That's the joy of discovery and learning.

Came across her profile in the India Today's special issue of 60 Greatest Indians. An interesting fact - she was offered the Presidency by Morarji Desai which she declined. Would've been good to have a danseuse as our President. Unlike the present one, who doesn't quite do justice to her more illustrious lineage . Hope there's no dent to the President's honourable chair during this term. So far so good, Smt. Patil-Shekhawat has been. No action is also good action. And as the elections draw close, I feel India is terribly missing Mr. Pramod Mahajan. That will be another post, but Mr. Mahajan, India needed you and one moment of insanity took us away from you. You were the best Prime Minister our nation never had. Rest In Peace, Pramodji.

The State Of Indian Politics - Post Gujarat Elections

The state for now is definitely Gujarat. Much has been said, written, heard, spewed, vomited, acted, faked, dramtised before, during and after the elections in Gujarat. There was never any doubt about Narendra Modi's victory in Gujarat. Perhaps what was to be keenly watched during this election was Modi's victory margin, in Maninagar constituency where he was facing Union Minister Dinsha Patel and the overall assembly tally. Both the results have given enough fodder for the analysts and experts to stuff their mouths with and shut them. Funnily enough, they still go on. Perhaps it's the TV studio lights or the press printing machines that are to be blamed. I don't think the English language media that Ms. Ghose refers to, gets it. The average Gujarati, definition of which may vary and is open to discussion, doesn't watch any of the English language news channels, leave alone sit through the analyses and the debates. He doesn't even read the English newspapers, leave alone read the complex and sometimes fanciful Op-eds and guest articles. This of course, is in addition to the national media brand of reporting carried in the regular articles. The average Gujarati is a very real person, more concerned about what's happening with him and around him. Perhaps that little time spent through flipping Gujarat Samachar or Sandesh, the time spent through catching on a bit of ETV Gujarati or Alpha Gujarati or time the spent in the trains to and from work is his window to the external world and a source of knowing what is the world saying about Gujarat. The Prannoy Roys, Barkha Dutts, Rajdeep Sardesais, Arnab Goswamis, Karan Thapars, Yogendra Yadavs and soon to come, Vir Sanghvis (with or without Gangulys) are nowhere on his radar. These media men and women seem to have missed this point completely.

What makes Narendra Modi different from the other political leaders is that he's more real and if one were to use that phrase, in your face, than most of them. Compare him with the Gandhis, the Vajpayees or the Karats, and you find there's something enigmatic about them, as if they're only meant for those rare appearances, with the people that is. In contrast, Narendra Modi is everywhere, with his SMSes, ringtones, masks( Tehelka, of course, had an issue even with that, literally. The cover story was titled The Mukhauta Campaign) and even YouTube videos. While he's able to widely connect with his audience at the grass-roots level, he remains being very subdued and measured in his public appearances. Just being seen is not enough, being there is important.

Now that the General Elections are drawing close, we are in for some entertaining times on TV and in the papers. New phrases around actresses will be coined, like BISPASA it was the last time around. Social and political scientists from JNU, Made-Only-For-TV leaders from all parties will join the presenters and the reporters in entertaining us. But what makes me wonder is that if I, and perhaps Seth, are the only ones who seem to know the possible truth? That the country did neither vote the Congress to power because of its aam aadmi campaign nor did it vote the BJP out for its Indian Shining campaign. What helped the Congress, rather what is now known as UPA, were the huge victories in Andhra Pradesh(with TRS) and in Tamizh Nadu (with DMK), some deft coalition cobbling by M/s Ahmed Patel and co. and the Left's compulsion to align with secular forces and not communal forces like the BJP. That is all, nothing more nothing less. And Mr. Advani, you lost some respect when you recently said about the India Shining campaign being a mistake. In fact, it made a lot of us feel good about the state our country was in then. And the feeling wasn't just restricted to the urban middle-class people. Blaming the campaign for your defeat wouldn't be the right thing to do. Let's see what else is in store for us like he said in that movie - "Pichchar abhi baaki hai mere dost". But Mr. Khan, that's movies and this is politics. And politics is real.

To Ms. Suhasini Haider, Senior Anchor and Correspondent, CNN-IBN

Dear Ms. Suhasini Haider,

Warm greetings. I'm writing to you regarding comments made by you during the night bulletin you were presenting on CNN-IBN on Dec 6, 2007.

At the outset, let me share something with you, which hopefully, you will be glad to know. A lot of young people in this country watch you on national television, and one day, hope to become what you are. They form their opinion based on what you say, based on what you show them and based on what you make guests on your shows say. That's a fine art, putting words into people's mouths, and you and your brethren in the media seem to have perfected that. These young people, being impressionable considering the age they in and the age they are of, appreciate that fine art as well. Stupid as it may seem, they take a lot of what you say very seriously. Hence my humble request to you is to be measured and balanced when you say something on national television.

On Dec 6, 2007 while referring to the exhumation of dead bodies at Nadigram you said - "It is still not known which party the dead belonged to" The dead, Ms. Haider, are dead. Please do not politicize their death. Those young boys and girls, you see, will talk about it in their college, talk about it during their bus and train commutes, talk about it during their numerous hang-outs and chill-outs and soon they will come to believe that the dead need to belong to political parties. Such is the power of your work and the profession industry you work in. Please use it responsibly.

Regards,
Nikhil Kulkarni

No Hyphen No Fun

Hyphens, are were fun. Sad, they've killed some 16,000 of them. That's leap-frogging leapfrogging into the past. Huh. Perhaps CNN-IBN themselves(now, this one is with the hyphen) could definitely pick up a thing and a quarter from here.

Death Of A Great Brand Or Birth Of A Greater Brand?

Change is good. Definitely. Hutch is now Vodafone. Good? Not very sure. More than its SIM cards made it into our mobile phones, Hutch - the brand, had made its way into our hearts. Not entirely impossible, but it will be very difficult for Vodafone to replace Hutch. Let's see. We'll let the brand do the talking. Of course, we'll do the talking ourselves. Using their phones and services, that is.

It was an interesting experience last night, being a witness to perhaps one of the biggest brand transitions of our life time happen on the ground. Transition it was, of the Hutch signboards being replaced by those of Vodafone.

The Hutch signboard. Perhaps one of the very few still left in the city at that time of the night.


Loosening Tied Ends - I


Loosening Tied Ends - II



Call Disconnected


Dialing A New Number


Connection Established!


Call Continues


New Up, Old Down!


New Connection Firmly In Place.


While I was taking these pictures, the owner of the shop of which the board was being replaced was giving me a very menacing stare. Apparently, he was under the impression that I was from Hutch/Vodafone and was agitated with the fact that his shop's name was wrongly printed in the signboard! Talk of a deal running into billions of dollars and not enough attention to such important details! Hope they get it right soon.

Rebranding at this scale always comes with some very amusing stories. That of UTI Bank Axis Bank, for example. Do not know how much the re-branding exercise cost them, but it definitely cost them much more in Karnataka. Everyone saw the Axis Bank boards with a certain patch covered and over-written by hand, due to a mistake in printing of the boards.


PS. Here's the Hutch Is Now Vodafone TVC. Decent, but not as nice as the Hutch commercials. Wonder if there will be any at all, as nice as the Hutch commercials.

Filmosophy

Apart from those well spent 2-3 hours, one of the best things about watching movies is that one discovers interesting connections between the characters in the movie philosophers.

• In A Fish Called Wanda, Otto's favourite philosopher is Nietzsche.
  

• In Little Miss Sunshine, Frank is America's Number 1 Proust scholar. [Marcel Proust] And Dwyane is shown reading Nietzsche in the movie .

• In The Namesake, Gogol is named after Nikolai Gogol. Gogol's The Overcoat is an important character in the movie.
  

Then, do good films like these and philosophy go eye in brain? Just like romantic movies and Mills and Boon books go hand in hand? Or probably something else in something else? Wouldn't want to get into the innards of this now!

The Root Cause Of All Evil

To read the Kannada text, please download the Kannada font from here and install it.

Had this moment of realization while traveling through the dry green (now, because of the rain) fields of North Karnataka, that the root cause of all evil is the tongue. Like all of Shri Purandaradasa's padas (¥ÀzÀUÀ¼ÀÄ), the greatness of this particular pada lies in its simplicity and the earthly appeal.

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Source: This amazing blog. Was truly overwhelmed by the interest in Kannada literature.

PS. Details of the trip coming soon. Bangalore->Dharwad->Bagalkot->Bijapur->Basavkalyan->Bagalkot->Dharwad.
That was close to 1600 km in three days!

Too Much Is Too Bad

Sometimes it rings so true, what our grandmothers used to tell us and we never used to listen. Too much is too bad, isn't this what they used to tell us?

Once upon a time, there was social network utility named Facebook which was known for its simpicity, ease of use and uncluttered look. And then the big young man announced the FaceBook Developer Programme, which let developers create different applications for Facebook's users. They said Facebook would be a social OS, some said it could even be the next Microsoft. Wait, some even called it what? A data black hole. Then came applications which let users let their friends know of their moods to applications which let throw sheep at their friends. Great, they said. Initially, driven by the hype and interest, they lapped it up. And then, they started removing these application one by one.



What happened after this? We'll know soon.

PS. How many of you are on Facebook? More importantly, do you visit it regularly? If yes, what is it that makes you visit it regularly?

PPS. Too much isn't too bad when it comes to blogging. Here's announcing the launch of CircusMouse, a blog which I'm not able to come up with a description for. Promises to be lot of chaos, fun and entertainment. Check it out and let us know!

PPPS. Have you checked eye5 lately? Regular posting has resumed there as well. Planning to revive 10+3i. Hopefully, some good news on that front soon.

What's This Stupid Internet Thing? Shut It Down

Sir Elton John wants the internet to be shut down. And pray, why is he singing this tune? In his own words -

"The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff.

Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision."

The next gem is truly humbling. Because I was under the under the impression that my blogging was to change the world and according to Sir John, it isn't quite so. Thank You Sir for enlightening us.

“We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet."

"Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging."

I say dump your key-boards and get on the street, we're going to protest against the internet now. Imagine everyone using the internet out on the street shouting Internet Hai Hai. Or, Mera broadband connection waapis le lo. . Blogging, Wogging nahin chalegi, nahin chalegi.

More gems from Sir John in this Sun article. That's not music to our ears, Sir. The Sun reporter is better at puns. Joining the chorus with Sir John to give us more gems, she ends the article with - I guess that’s what Sir Elt would call a net loss . .

Net loss, indeed it is. A Rolling Stone article on the decline of the record industry has some real eye-openers. Some interesting points from the article -

• Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far -- and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion.
• In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the U.S. sold a combined 60 million copies; in 2006, the top ten sold just 25 million.
• More than 5,000 record-company employees have been laid off since 2000.
• About 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003

And wonder when will the industry executives start looking at technology as an ally and use it effectively, like EMI offering its entire music collection DRM-free on iTunes. While physical album sales have declined, digital sales are growing as the numbers from the article indicate.

• Digital sales are growing -- fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ringtones -- but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall.

More such DRM-free offerings, more labels entering into license agreements with YouTube, innovative models like Amiestreet is the way ahead. And people talk about shutting down the internet.

The record labels just seem to be in a hurry to squeeze as much as possible from all possible revenue sources. No wonder then that all internet radio stations in the US went silent on June 26 to observe the National Day of Silence protesting against new royalty rates.

While music on the internet in India is still in its early stages, the situation isn't very different with the odds highly stacked against those who use branded content and wanting to do it legally. Hefty license fees, very hazy regulatory body structure, use of every possible opportunity to extract that little more money, rampant piracy and the inability of the powers that be to effectively control it. is threatening to kill internet radio in its infancy in India. Remember that story in which the greedy owner kills the goose laying golden eggs? Looks like another case of the same. Hoping to come up with a more detailed piece on the scene here in India. In the meanwhile, Naa Bajega Baans, Naa Bajegi Baansuri! Isn't this what they say?

For Shrimati Sonia Gandhi and her co(terie)

Related post - All The Presidents Were Men

Related not as in brother-in-law or someone's husband. Well, not really.