Entries from February 2010 ↓

Loops not notes are the building blocks of modern music. The 19th century composers had their ‘theme and variations’ for days when they were feeling lazy. The modern composer has canned, fast-food loops. Every third song you hear these days gives you that ‘where have I heard it before’ feeling. Here’s a recent ‘déjà vu’ – what do the tracks “Gadbadi Hadbadi” from Rocket Singh and “Nenjathilae” from Pirivom Santhipom have in common? The composers zeroed in on the same loop to begin their song:

1. Gadbadi Hadbadi (Composers: Salim Suleman)
2. Nenjathilae (Composer: Vidyasagar)

We were a snooty lot at St. Stephen’s college. While other colleges had ‘canteens’, we had a Café. One of the first things you encounter there as a vegetarian, are the cutlets. They are served with a small helping of inedibly (or at least that what your taste-buds conclude at the first encounter) sour chutney. Then begins a journey which ends with you liking the chutney so much that you begin to wonder if you should be asking the chef for the recipe. It’s a rite of passage a bit like college life itself. Entering college after more than 12 years in the same school is a bit unnerving. Your first reaction is to want to flee! But then days go by, you begin to soak in the new routine in a new environment and importantly, you make new friends. Then at some point in time, you actually start enjoying college so much that when you look back at those days a few years later, it is not without the touch of a degree of mistiness in the eyes.

I say this because all of this applies to a certain bookshop at Bangalore – Gangarams. I go there to buy stationery (which has happened just once – when we were looking to buy hand-made envelopes to put our wedding cards in) or computer books (which happens quite often). You take the staircase all the way to this huge room on the third floor with rows of tables on which the books are kept with their spines facing up. Only 2-3 tables are relevant for someone looking for computer books. You patiently browse and try to locate what you are looking for – O’Reilly publications get a significant chunk on one table, Manning another, Microsoft Press and Apress take up the remaining significant area. Pragmatic press books make an occasional appearance on, what I call, the O’Reilly table. Chances are you won’t find what you are looking for, so you’d ask one of the ‘helpers’. They’ll give you a significant look and reluctantly amble to that old machine running DOS, look up the book’s coordinates and fetch it for you. It is easy not to be intimidated – because the place somehow has an air about it that reminds you of your college library – complete with curmudgeonly librarians. Within a few visits however, a switch inside you begins to flip. You actually begin to start liking the place! The old-worldly pace, the reluctant but often effective helpers, the portly middle-aged proprietor of the shop telling someone on the phone about having to import a book from Singapore thereby justifying the ludicrous exchange-rate defying price the customer at the other end would need to pay for it. But most of all, you learn that magical incantation which gets you 10% off the book’s price!

Before joining Cricinfo, my interest in the game was a casual one. Sure, I’d sit glued to the TV (back at my parents’ home where I had a TV) whenever India would play an ODI, but Tests were something that only greying (or balding or both) uncles watched. It must be that I am fast transitioning to the aforementioned stage of life because I cannot wait for the South Africa v India Test series to commence!

The hot-off-our-CMS match preview by Sidharth Monga nails it:

Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir play for the same club, same state, same IPL side. Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel play for the same franchise in South Africa. Sehwag and Gambhir are close friends, Morkel calls himself and Steyn best friends in the team. Sehwag and Gambhir run on intuition, their batting styles compliment each other. Morkel goes for raw pace and bounce, Steyn goes for swing, presenting a varied attack. Sehwag and Gambhir are the best openers in the world, Morkel and Steyn the hottest new-ball pairing going around.

Can we fix the toss for the first Test to ensure we start the series with its biggest selling point? Gambhir and Sehwag v Morkel and Steyn. Morkel knows how to build it too. “It’s going to be a very good challenge,” he says. “Gambhir and Sehwag have played very well for India. Myself and Dale are pretty new with the new ball, and it will be a big test, especially in Indian conditions. Luckily, the challenge is going to be for them too at the end of this year in South Africa. It’s not going to end here.” Imagine the first morning of the series, three slips and a gully, a fresh pitch, and Zaheer Khan bowling to Ashwell Prince. What a dampener it will be.

That was before I met Injkyji. And now I tend to notice them. Which is not such a good thing because the ratio of bad lyrics to good lyrics is about the same as the ratio of planets in this universe to the planets that can sustain human life.

I am not sure what the present state of pop lyrics is. If I were to judge by the limited exposure to contemporary pop through iTunes, I’d say it is as bad as the 90s. Back then boy bands were the biggest culprit. I am thus reminded of this wonderful example of timeless lyric writing by Backstreet Boys:

I don’t care who you are,
where you’re from,
what you did
as long as you love me.

Sounds like someone was living inside a dog’s head for one full year.

…the 80s were the goofiest years of human civilization.

The tracks on this disc oscillate between the memorable (Ninnu Kori Varnam) and the utterly forgettable (Botany Class). All in all, you cannot help but exclaim – we’ve come a long way!