Sound of music

This time when I went to India, my dad asked me to pick out any cassette tape I wanted from the tape collection we have at home. He told me that I was the only one in our immediate family circle who still owned any kind of tape player. Everyone else had long since moved on to CD and MP3 players and dad was trying to free up space by giving away our (once upon a time) big cassette collection.

Before you conclude that I belong to the Stone Age, let me explain. One of the cassette players I own is at home and is a part of the CD/radio/tape boom-box I bought in 2002. The other one is in my car. However, I usually use neither of them - preferring alternate music players at home and the radio in the car.

Until now. In India, taking up on dad's offer, I picked out a few of the branded usual suspects (old gems, nice movies etc). But mostly, the cassettes I chose were ones which were customized song compilations lovingly done by my sister and me during our school days and early days of undergrad.

Recently, I have been listening to these cassettes. Some of the songs are long forgotten ones which were extremely popular back them (I am a bachelor, anyone?). Some are songs which I love even now (O sanam - wow!).

Irrespective of their current favor level, each song reminds me of the time my sis and I watched various music channels and carefully noted down the names and movies of songs which seemed interesting. Then we would locate friends/relatives/acquaintances who had tapes of these songs. Finally, using our dual cassette deck, we would record the songs. When the mood struck us, we would even make colorful labels for the cassettes (an idea directly borrowed from dad). Voila - our own customized compilation was ready!

These cassettes would then find good use both at home and whenever we went on any journey by car (the ensuing arguments between us and our parents on the choice between new and old songs to play is a different topic :-D).

For the past two weeks I have been using my cassette player as my primary source of music at home as well as in the car. It is kind of strange to not be able to easily skip songs at will. However, it is rather nice to go back in time and brush away the cobwebs from my memory :-).

Amazing how something which was super common just a couple of years back is now so firmly entrenched in the realms of nostalgia!

p.s. Of course, I still make custom CDs and iPod playlists. But I no longer put in the kind of effort which went into making those cassettes!

*****

Speaking of music, on Saturday, I went to the 2007 edition of the Indian Ocean concert. As in the previous year, the concert was wonderful. It went on for more than three hours but I still thought it was too short. The performance was mesmerizing, the audience response was fantastic and the general mood in the hall was upbeat. Midway through the concert it struck me as to how lucky the band members are. They are able to bring so much happiness and joy to so many people every time they perform :-). That must be an awesome feeling!

p.s. I know I have used way too many gushing adjectives in the previous paragraph. But I really think they deserve all of it. Here is the concert calendar for Indian Ocean. If you are able to, you should certainly try to catch a performance.


*****

All ye Harry Potter fans: If you haven't already done so, go watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in the theatre. I think that is the best movie so far in the series :-).

The Sound of Silence

As I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I am a hard-core music listener. I generally like listening to music playing in the background, in parallel with other activities like eating, reading, cooking, working, cleaning etc. etc. Given that, when I joined grad school, the first technical thing I did on my Linux machine (meant for research) was to configure its sound card and then download a player to play my CDs :-).

Similarly, when I joined my first job (as an intern), on the first day, to give an impression of being "serious" about my job, I dressed up in semi-formal clothes and tried to maintain a "serious" attitude. BUT - I took my head phones to work and plonked them right onto my head as soon as the orientation was over. It never even occured to me that there might be some policy against listening to music at work or that my manager might not appreciate it. As it turned out, no one cared and I happily continued my "listen to music while working" policy.

At work, usually it is when I particularly want to concentrate on something that I make a point of wearing my headphones and tuning in to music. This morning, I worked away to glory to the background of "Dhill" songs.

Then we had a meeting. When I got back to my cubicle, I put on my head phones and clicked on "play" on the monitor. No sound. Not even static. Nothing at all. Oh no! Maybe my headphones had given up on me finally - but they are new. Then I borrowed by colleague's headphones to check my theory. Nopes, still no sound. I then had to go out for lunch and so abandoned my debugging.

When I got back, I settled down to work and clicked on "play" again. Only to hear the deafening sound of silence. Then I remembered. Oh no :-(! The next ten minutes saw me sprawled on the floor under my desk testing various inputs and outputs. Still no sound. I had too much to do and couldn't spare any more time to debug sound sources. With a sad sigh, I climbed back onto my chair.

Then I remembered. My ipod! I recharged it only last night and had remembered to bring it to work too. Yes, yes, yes :-D! So I pulled it out of my bag and turned on my ipod. To my horror, I could not hear any sound from it either. For one scary moment, I concluded that I had gone stone deaf.

Then it struck me, I had been able to hear my colleagues' conversation quite normally during lunch and hence couldn't have gone deaf. Phew! A little more patience and I realized that my regular headphones were still on my head - not the ipod ones. Phew again! I soon corrected that.

As the music started to stream, I gave a blissful smile and got back to work.

p.s. I have yet not figured out why my computer has stopped singing. Any suggestions? Before anyone asks, yes, I double, triple and quintuple checked that the "mute" button was not on and that all the right connections were in place.

Just a post

Okay, I really don't have anything even halfway interesting to say. Still a post is a post (ah, this pearl of wisdom needs to go into the Great Quotes Hall of Fame).

• I think I am in love all over again. This time with the soundtrack of the movie Mozhi. All the songs have been playing on a continuous loop at both work and at home for nearly two weeks now and I am not yet sick of them. I think all the songs have super awesome lyrics (thank you, Uncle :-)) which add a LOT to their beauty. Thanks are in order to my friend A who first pointed me to the soundtrack. Some more thanks to the absolutely so-so (at least that's what I think so far) soundtrack of the movie Sivaji which prompted me to switch over to listening to other soundtracks. p.s. Question for all you Tamil speaking readers: What does madanthai mean in Tamil?
• I finally resumed my fitness classes this Tuesday. Thanks to my India trip and my LASIK surgery, I think this is the longest break I have had from them in two years - a total of seven fitness class-less weeks! As expected, I discovered that my fitness levels currently suck *sigh*.
• Why is the California weather so unpredictable? After having mostly glorious weather for the past two weeks, the past two nights have been super cold. In spite of me wearing socks, sweater and the works before sleeping. Of course, my body decided to show it disapproves of this abrupt weather change and I am down with a sore throat today. Am busy taking preventive measures before it can turn into anything full-fledged. Also bunked my fitness class today - so much for proudly resuming them! Sheesh :-(!
• I watched Alaipayuthey again the past weekend after ages. Maddy looked absolutely adorable :-). However, though I still found the first half of the movie very cute, I found a lot of holes in the logic in a lot of places. Whatever happened to the movie which I thought was unqualifiedly great? Maybe I have grown up now - hmm!
• This year, I finally called up my friend V on the correct day to wish him for his birthday - I am proud of my improving memory! Though I admit I used a reminder. But hey, I at least had entered the right date in the reminder system! Ah, third time is always lucky :-)!
• Did you know toasted sour-dough bread with olive oil and freshly ground pepper tastes awesome? It does, try it.
  

I can't think of anything else to bore you with. So ciao and hey, weekend is almost here :-)!

Movies, movies

What's a vacation without watching movies? Past five weeks, I caught up on a whole bunch of them, mostly on the plane, a few on the big screen and absolutely nothing on TV/DVD. Among all kinds of blog posts, writing about movies is probably the no-brainer-iest of the lot, and probably the most perfect topic to write about on a jet-lagged Wednesday evening.

Mozhi - I simply loved this movie. True, the end dragged a bit, but barring that, this movie was wholesome entertainment and fun. Everything was so naturally done that I felt like I was a part of the cast too. Swarna Malya could do with losing a bit of weight though. Even Jyothika looked kind of thin beside her (now that's something!)

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna - I saw this on the plane (seriously, if hadn't watched it for free on a boring 14 hour flight, some 10,000 feet up in the air, I don't think I would have ever watched the movie). SRK and Rani Mukherjee play the two most annoying and boring people I have ever had the misfortune to meet either in reel or real life. While the story line itself sucked (ditch your marriage if you find someone else who you think *might* be your true soul-mate), the fact that SRK's and Rani's characters had actually found anyone at all to marry them initially had me stumped.

Deepavali - For a movie in which the lead characters are named Billu and Susi (and neither of whom are, like the names would have lead you to expect, dogs), this one could have turned out a whole lot worse. As it was, likeable characters, hummable music (except for the hair-pull-inducing Pogadhe song - music directors insisting on using their own horrible voices for singing songs should be made into a jailable offence) and a casual attitude made this movie just about watchable.

Khosla ka Ghosla - Nothing very remarkable. Nevertheless, it is a cute and tidy movie - can be watched once!

Corporate - Madhur Bhandarkar's movies are nowadays cast into a rather predictable mould. Nevertheless, this movie was still a decent watch in its own right. I thought Bipasha Basu did a rather decent job of portraying a high-flying business women. This is a general question: if a woman is doing well in her professional life, does it automatically imply that she is a little unsound morally in her personal life? At least that's the image that is usually painted by our desi movie-makers - wonder why!

Pachchai Kili Muthu Charam - This movie made for a gripping watch till sometime past the intermission. Then it all came unwound. Lots of dishoom dishoom where the hero (a middle class salesman) vanquishes about a hundred men single-handedly to emerge the victor turned it into a routine, logicless, mindless, time-wasting movie.

Night Time at the Museum - I think the producers got so carried away by the concept that they forgot to write a story. I remember watching trailers for this movie last year. That time I mentally noted that I should watch the final version. Too bad that the hundred minute movie did not have much more to offer than what the five minute trailer did!

Imsai Arasan 23-am Pulikesi - Who would have thought I could actually watch a full length movie featuring the loud Vadivelu? But wonder of wonders, I did and what's more, I enjoyed it! A big pat on the back to the director for also making use of a tale set in the days of yore to refer to some very much relevant current issues!

p.s. I realized just today that last week this time I was still in India. This is a rather obvious conclusion if you know that I left India on Thursday night last week (March 22nd). The reason why the realization took me by surprise is because I feel like I have been here forever. In fact I seem to remember my India trip as a vague series of incidents. Have they started doing memory wiping procedures during immigration :-O?

To do or not to do!

Almost at the brink of the long weekend. Eeeeehaw :-D! For a change, I refused to succumb to any kind of peer pressure ("Oh, you are not doing anything for the long weekend" followed by a weird look) and have decided to sit at home for all three days. And I am actually looking forward to it :-D. A lot :-D!

However, I doubt there are other similar-thinking souls around. If you are one of them, here are some things you can do whenever you can spare time from eating and sleeping! I know all the reviews here are old news - if you missed on any of it, do it :-)!

Omkara: I watched the movie. I was not bowled over by it (I can never be bowled by movies which are depressing and this movie sure is depressing with almost all lead characters kicking their various buckets at the end). It is a very well made movie though. Watching the movie is upto you. However, do, do, do listen to the music! Every song in that movie is worthy of repeat listening. I become more obsessed with the music the more I listen to it. Now I am onto the "decipher the lyrics" stage for the non-item songs. I like the saccharine "jag ja re gudiya" song A LOT - you can almost hear the love in the song. The two jataaak songs have me tapping my foot involuntarily. All the slow songs have wonderful lyrics. Yes, I am in a state of musical bliss!

Sillunu oru kadhal: I think of late its been the duty of every self-respecting Tamil-music listening blogger to rave about the music of this movie :-). Like with all A R Rehman music, it took me a while to get used to and start liking the songs. However, the New York song is a winner from the word go! ARR has sung it awesomely well and every listening prompts me to listen to it once more. Most of the other songs are good too - but the New York song has warranted special repeat listenings all by itself.

Golmaal: This was a movie I went to with absolutely no expectations. Basically my friend K and I went for it since all the tickets for Omkara were sold out. And for a change, we got lucky (you should know that past "lets watch the movie just like that" movies included massive I-will-never-recover-from-it headaches like I Heart Huckabees and Joggers Park). This movie was good fun! It was absolutely logicless but the lead actors were having so much fun that it was impossible to not join in and laugh. Sometimes, even the not-so-funny jokes were elevated to higher levels by the spirited performances. Worth one watch for sure. Perfect for a rainy afternoon when you need some cheering up.

Pride and Prejudice: Nothing I say can ever express my appreciation for this book enough. I have read it many, many, many, many times now. I finished reading it yet another time just day before yesterday and it felt good. I read all the dialogues with greater concentration than before. Were Victorian people really able to come up with such gems on the spur of the moment? It is such a treat to read! I guess though that this book will appeal to female readers more.

Sloppy Firsts: Yup this is the book by Megan McCafferty which Kavya Vishwanthan famously "internalized" and which caused such a huge brouhaha in the literature world. This book is a "diary" by high school attending American teenager, Jessica. I must tell you, I cannot identify with most of the situations Jess faces. I might have gone to high school on an entirely different planet for the number of similarities I can see. Are high schools in India and the USA really so different? Nevertheless, it's interesting to take a peek into American high school life (the reviews tell me that the experiences American high schoolers face are more or less similar). Again, due to its very subject, this book will appeal to female readers a lot more.


Fried Green Tomatoes at Whistle-stop Cafe: I chanced upon this book by Fannie Flagg in the library. The library had a display of books made into movies and this was one of them. I picked it up on an impulse - I guess the whimsical title made me curious. And wow! Really, this is one of those awesome books which pull you right into the world it is set in. Everytime I closed the book I had to reorient myself as to my actual location. Again, wow! I simply loved reading the book.

I can write about many, many, many more things to do on a "sitting at home" day. But reading other people's lengthy blogs isn't one of them. So I shall stop now :-).

Again, eeeeehaw, its Friday :-D!

A.R. Rehman, here I come!

Just like my long-time dream of learning French (which I finally fulfilled about three years back), another long-time dream of mine has been to be able to play the keyboard. I was never musically gifted. Sure, I love listening to music. But my short stint at learning Carnatic music sometime during my childhood convinced my parents that, unfortunate though it was, the next M.S. Subbulakshmi was definitely not going to emerge from our household. Still, I harbored hopes of at least mastering some musical instrument. For a time, I thought of learning to play the veena (my cousin S, who was learning to play the veena at that time was the inspiration behind this). However, this thought was never backed by solid action.

Next, my instrument of choice became the keyboard. The very first keyboard I learnt to play was a miniature toy "piano" bought during a trip to Darjeeling. Most of you must know what I am talking about. The mini-piano had exactly 7 keys in it which were numbered. It came with an instruction sheet which told you which numbers pressed in which order would produce the tune of which nursery rhyme. Within a few days, I became very accomplished at playing demanding pieces like Happy Birthday to You (1-1-2-1-4-3), London Bridge is Falling Down (5-6-5-4-3-4-5), Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (1-1-5-5-6-6-5) - yeah, such an expert I was that till date I can still remember the number combinations! However, knowing a total of 5 nursery rhymes on a 7-keyed mini-piano doth not a musician make! My actual musical talents still only extended to appreciating good music.

When I was in my ninth standard, I decided that that would be the year in which I finally learnt to play the keyboard. The Tamil movie Roja had released around then and all that magical music in the movie apparently came mainly from a keyboard! I had to know for myself.To this end, I coaxed, cajoled and nagged dad till he agreed to buy a keyboard for me. After all, my heartfelt declarations of becoming the next A.R. Rehman if only I knew how to play the keyboard had to have some effect ;-)!

The keyboard arrived - an nice Yamaha keyboard - all the way from Singapore. For quite a few weeks, it was the cynosure of all eyes. I admired it. All guests to our house were treated to the splendid view by me too. My cousins turned green with envy and I was busy showing off the various mixers, sound effects etc. which came with it. Only one minor glitch - I still did not know how to play it.

By now I had run out of excuses as to why I had still not learnt to play the keyboard. I guess it all boiled down to me being too lazy to hunt for a class and join it. Anyways, after getting star treatment for quite sometime, the keyboard finally became a part of the room decoration (kamre ki shobha badathi hai types).

So, recently, when I found that the Adult Education Center quite close to my house offered keyboard classes at convenient timings, you can imagine how excited I was. Here, finally, was the chance I had been waiting for all along. I promptly registered. Today was the first class. Our teacher is an elderly lady - but she is very sweet and patient and seems to have a genuine passion for teaching and music. We had an hour of theory followed by an hour of practice.

In the theory class, I learnt a lot of musical jargon. Now I can throw around words like G-clef, octave, whole notes, bass, measure, legato etc. etc. with gay abandon :-). Even as the class progressed, I was feeling sooooo good :-). A long-time dream beginning to come true. Yaaay!

During the practice session, we got a piano each to practise on. The instructor walked up to each student individually and gave tips. When she came to my piano, she went "My, you have nice long fingers, dear. Ideal for playing the piano." And immediately, out of the blue, a scene from the Tamil movie Singaravelan in which Kamal, in order to butter up Manorama, looks at her hands and asks "You have such beautiful fingers. Do you play the veena?" and then taps each of her fingers with a "ding, ding, ding, dong" sound, popped into my head and I had to resist a sudden urge to laugh. But it felt good to know that at least something was right. I could play decently enough one hand at a time. But together, my hands got thoroughly confused and wound up messing up :-(. Sigh! I need a lot of practice.

But - I am finally on my way :-D. A.R. Rehman, watch out ;-P!

MJJ

Michael Joe Jackson - my very first major celebrity crush. I was in the seventh standard when I first started listening to MJ songs with more than just a passing interest. Soon, I was totally hooked and wanted to own all of his cassettes (no, CDs weren't popular then). Shilpa was my primary partner in this madness. Both of us used to gift each other MJ cassettes for birthdays and other occassions - so that our combined collection could grow. I think together we owned tapes of almost all the MJ collections available in Chennai at that time.

We transcribed the lyrics for most of his songs and exchanged notes about it. We knew the lyrics by heart for almost all the songs in his Thriller, Bad and Dangerous albums.We argued over whether it was "pleasures" or "plow-shares" in Heal the world. We could compose entire essays with just the titles of his various songs. We watched his movie Moonwalk (did anyone else even know about the existence of this movie?) plenty of times. Yeah, it was total, complete insanity - we were SO smitten!

When my dad got transferred to a different place when I was in the ninth standard, S's parting gift to me was a huge poster of MJ. I faithfully stuck it to the wall of my room in the new place. That was the year when Michael Jackson was supposed to come to India. The newspapers had contests - I think BPL was the sponsor - if you won one of those, you could get free tickets to MJ's concerts. My eyes sparkled at the prospect. I forced my mom to let me send out four different entries just so I could increase the probability of winning (my mom's grumbles about wasted stamp money fell on deaf ears). Of course, that was the tour which finally got cancelled at the last moment. So, other than the Indian postal service, nobody else benefitted much.

I don't know when exactly the crush ended. I think it just came on gradually. One fine day I just took the poster off the wall. And with that stopped the obsessive tracking of anything related to MJ. Oh, I still liked listening to MJ songs, but that was about it.

When I was preparing to travel to the US for the first time, Bad and Thriller found some of the precious space in my suitcase. Once I landed here, I managed to locate the songs and get them on CD. I still listen to it from time to time (and now have it on my ipod too) - and I still like them a lot. Sadly enough, MJ's life has turned into a topic for ridicule now for quite some years now. But I still think it does not take away what he has contributed to the music world.

All these memories came flooding back tonight. It being a quiet Friday night, I was reading a book and watching bits of Minnale (for the nth time - I find some of the Vivek comedy in that movie too funny). Then suddenly it struck me that I could search for long unwatched Tamil videos on youtube. I watched a couple of favorite Tamil videos when a typo brought me to a video of MJ performing live for the song Billie Jean. As I watched the video, I remembered how crazy I used to be about the famous "moonwalking" step and realized how superbly MJ does it (obviously, he has to - its his invention I guess!). Then, obviously, I HAD to search for other MJ videos too. So Liberian Girl (which I have never seen before), Black or White and Remember the Time followed. Man, those videos are simply awesome. So much thought (and money I guess) has obviously gone into it and every frame of each video shows that!

By now I was completely hooked and had to find more videos. And I continued to watch. It was then that I discovered the video for the 1988 live performance of The Way You Make Me Feel at the Grammys. OMG! I never thought I would see that video again! That was the very first time I saw Michael Jackson in action - I remember being very impressed by the super dancer. At home, we used to tape the Grammy awards regularly. So we used to have a video cassette which contained the Grammy awards ceremony from different years. This particular performance (the bit where MJ and a group of guys dance in complete sync) used to be a favorite with all of us kids and that portion of the tape became quite worn out due to the constant requests for encore! I don't know where the tape is now or if it is even in existence...

Seeing the Grammy performance reminded me of another very favorite video - Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy. The song is very uplifting and the video is funny! We used to watch this video over and over again too on that cassette. There is this one particular step where all the three guys featured in the video hop around on one leg in a single file. In eight standard, my friends and I used to try to do those steps during free periods in the classroom. It used to be major fun :-D - ummm... my wonderful eight standard life *happy reminiscenses*. And guess what, I found that video on youtube too :-). The link to it is right here if you want to see it :-):

Ah well, to all those generous souls who put up this stuff on youtube: May you live long and happy lives (btw, is uploading videos legal? Regardless, you still have my good will ;-))! I had such a lovely trip down memory lane :-)!

BTW, trivia for the day: This is my 100th post...yaaaay :-D! Just so this post doesn't feel left out, I am putting up an image marker for this one too!

Indian Ocean

Okay, looks like everyone is going to be "treated" to all the happening events of my weekend ;-)! So after yesterday's momentous meeting, today was concert time.

About three weeks ago, I came to know through one of my friends that the Indian band "Indian Ocean" was coming to town. I have heard of Indian Ocean before because one of my friends, V, is a very big fan and had once asked me to get a CD of the band when I went to India. So I promptly told V about the concert and he was very excited and all set to go. He asked if I was going to go and I was like "Hmmmm... let me see". Then, another friend S also heard about the upcoming concert and was all praise for the band. S looked incredulous when I told him that I was still wondering whether to go - what was there to think about!?!

Oh well, I have always enjoyed the concerts that I have been to and all the sample bits of music of IO I had heard so far were pretty decent. So I decided to go. Then, me being a very generous and altruistic person ("the whole world should get whatever happiness I get" is my motto ;-)), started spreading word around about the concert. Finally, eight of us were all set to go.

Today dawned bright and sunny. Ooops - make that cloudy and rainy. Nevertheless I landed up at the concert hall about the time they were beginning to let people in. The show was sold out. Of the eight people who were supposed to turn up, I could see only yours truly. I anyways went inside the concert hall, and in true Indian tradition, put my sweater on one end, the program on the other and then sat in between those eight seats I had "blocked", waiting for the others to show up.

Two more showed up but of the rest five there was no sign. They called and said they were on the way. Grrr - I just hate it when people maintain Indian Standard Time. Anyways, the show started. The music was simply awesome. Especially listening in a concert gives music a "feel" which is out of this world. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Unfortunately, my enjoyment was marred somewhat by the fact that every 2 minutes one of the organizers would come and ask us whether the 5 empty seats were taken. And we would be like "Yeah, those people are on their way". After some ten times of this, it was hard to decide whether I was more annoyed with the organizers or with my unpunctual friends. Nevertheless, I made a mental note to kick V hard when he and his friends did show up.

Thankfully, the rest of them all showed up some 30 minutes after the show started. The performance continued for a while after that and there was a break. During the break I bumped into some friends from grad school and some friends from my undergrad. There were tons and tons of desis there and so I guess my usually low rate of accidentally bumping into people I know got a big boost :-)!

Well, back to the performance. The second half was even more awesome than the first half. Their kind of fusion music is energetic and lively. I was tapping my foot and enjoying myself very thoroughly. I like their "Bandhe" (you can listen to it on Raaga from the Hindi movie Black Friday) and "Kandisa" renditions the best. It was mesmerizing.

All too soon the show came to an end. And it was time to leave. Which brings me to why I am putting this post up today. Apparently, Indian ocean is playing in Washington DC and Morrisville (North Carolina) soon. If you live in nearby areas and get the chance, do go and check them out! All the four players are immensely talented and the show will be worth your while. You can get more details on the Indian Ocean website.

Anyways, after the show, I bought a CD of one of the Indian Ocean albums (am listenting to it right now :-)). Post-concert, all eight of us decided to have dinner together. We managed to congregate at the correct meeting point and had a good dinner at a Thai restaurant. Perfect ending to a nice day :-). Now, if only tomorrow was Sunday instead of Monday ....

Can't get it out of my head ...

... Keith Urban's You'll Think of Me.

I love that song - the lyrics, the singing, the music, everything! Especially the opening I woke this morning at 4.00am... before the refrain begins. If I had a chance, I would tape just that opening sequence alone and listen to it again and again. For the time being, I just have to wait for FM Star 101.3 to play it. And feel happy when it does come on!

Keith has got an amazing voice! And with that wonderful voice, he sings with great feeling. Sigh! Alright, I am a sucker for songs which sing of heart-break (another such song I love is Engey enathu kavithai from Kandukondein KanduKondein). In case you are wondering, no, listening to sad songs does not remind me of my heartbreaks. Nor do they make me sad. Just that somehow, I connect to some of those songs in some unexplainable way!

I had never heard of Keith Urban before. I heard this song and just had to find out who the singer was. Even now I have'nt gone out of my way to listen to any of his other songs. Right now, You'll think of me is enough to keep me mesmerized!

p.s. I found this site where you can listen to the song for free.

Of languages and singers

One thing which annoys me a lot is this trend of getting non-Tamil-speaking singers to sing Tamil songs.Now don't get me wrong. I am all for national integration and the such. But I do draw the line at having to listen to miserable pronounciations when there are scores of singers who can do the singing with correct pronounciations. Yes, even if the non-tamil-speaking singer in question is so gifted that his/her voice sounds like honey. Every time he/she mis-pronounces a word, I can only hear the sound of fingernails scraping against a blackboard.

I have heard my parents complain about this from time to time. The first time I noticed it for myself was when I heard the "snehithiye" song from "Alaipayuthey". I thought that though the tune was nice, it sounded curiously clipped. It took a while before I realized that this sound-effect was caused due to Sadhana "lightly" pronouncing the words (to mask that she was not comfortable singing in Tamil?). Till date, I can't listen to the song without wondering how it would have sounded if someone else who was more familiar with Tamil had sung it. Apparently, not everyone shared my opinion. I am not sure if this is true or not, but I think that the popularity of this song heralded the era of getting non-Tamil-speakers to sing Tamil songs.

Most of the songs of "ayutha ezhuthu" were spoiled for me - I think the "sanda kozhi" song was the most terrible of the lot. I know there are a lot of Sadhana Sargam fans out there - in fact, I too think she sounds pretty decent in Hindi. But in Tamil, I really dont think that her voice is such great shakes that it enhances a song in any way. If ath, for me, bad-enunciation of words decreases the desirability of a song. And I am not even a tamil phonetics expert.

Oh there are other singers too. Everyone must have heard of the ruckus created over Udit Narayan's "kadhal pisasey" song in "Run". I remember Shreya Ghosal murdering some perfectly nice lyrics in the "Elangaathu" song in "Pithamagan". And they both are two of my most favorite singers when they sing in Hindi.

My contention here is not that non-Tamil-speakers should not sing Tamil songs. By all means, they should do so. After all, its a matter of pride when people whose mother tongue is not Tamil express the interest and desire to sing Tamil songs. But, is it unreasonable to request all such singers to make sure that they get their pronounciations right before standing in front of the microphone? I understand that for most people it is impossible to get every word right in an alien language (heaven knows how I have to specifically remember that Hindi differentiates between "th" and "tth" or how I struggle with the French "e") - still, should'nt at least the basic stuff be got right? Pronouncing "zha" as "la", "pani" as "panni" is really not acceptable. When you are singing in any language I do think its necessary to show respect to the sensibilities of the native speakers of the language.

Which are your happy songs?

Happy songs? What is a happy song? Well, since it is a term I coined myself, a dictionary is not going to help! But as you might guess, it refers to a song which brings back happy memories of some pleasant event in the past every time you hear it. Most of time the songs that trigger the memory do not have too much acoustic merit to them but I still like my happy songs because of the memory it recalls. It similar to smells which evoke memories. The scent of the first rain on a muddy road, smell of dinner cooking as you enter home...

Maybe having a song associated with a memory is not all that uncommon. But, I first noticed the happy song phenomenon when I realized that listening to some songs made a bad day better. There is this particular set of Tamil songs - whenever I listen to them I am transported to the wonderful trip to Mt. Shasta that I made with my friends. We did not have any CDs to play on the car stereo system except this one CD full of Tamil songs and we listened to it throughout our journey to Shasta and back. So when I listen to those songs, I can still see the picture post-card worthy snow-covered, white mountains looming in front of me. I can see the 4 of us in car, so tired out from finishing a stressful quarter, yet filled with enthusiasm to go snow-shoe-hiking. The snow-fight, which ended prematurely when one of us literally got buried in the snow under a relentless assault from the other 3, still brings a smile to my face. And then I remember how we spent the night in a cute cottage even though we did not want to, just because we paid for it and how we went to the movie-theatre because that small town with two main-streets did not have any other entertainment. Thinking of this on a hot summer day, sitting in front of my monitor makes the workday a LOT more bearable.

Then there is this other bunch of songs - which recalls a hike to a scenic lake like it happened yesterday. Five of us this time, water-less, food-less, nevertheless full of adventuring spirit setting off to finish a 4-mile strenuous hike. Reaching the top after a long-winded struggle and seeing a beautiful lake that made the upward trip worthwhile. And then the unending descent back to our car - when the anticipated 45 minutes trip dragged on to an hour and then an hour and half. Finally reaching the car and finding no place to buy a drink - pulling over at the first gas station and downing ice-cold Gatorade at such speed that we started shivering - man!

Not all of my memorable experiences have happy songs associated with them. And not all songs I like have a memory associated with it. But having a song subconsciously connected to a memorable experience is like finding a treasure when you aren’t looking - its an ordinary day and then, some strains of music and you are transported to a whole new world!

There are the bittersweet songs. There are a set of songs to which I can never listen to without feeling nostalgic and yearning for the experience to happen again. Those are mostly songs from my childhood - they bring back sweet memories of home but also the painful realization that I am no longer there. I guess that’s the case with every memory - depending upon the circumstance they either bring back wistful thoughts of possibly not experiencing it again or happy thoughts of adding on more such memories.

Happy and bittersweet, can sad be far behind? At least for me, yes, sad is very far behind. Maybe subconsciously, I don’t want to associate music with sad memories - bittersweet maybe, but not completely sad. So there is no antonym for happy song.

A happy song for me is like finding forgotten money in a jeans pocket, getting a hand-written letter or drinking hot chai on a rainy day. And it’s the closest I can get to paradise from my office cubicle, through my earphones.