Meel ka paththar

This blog turns ten years old today, and I’m stunned by this.

Constancy is not a trait I’ve associated with myself, tending to think of my serial obsessions as something I latch on to and then detach myself from after I have rapaciously extracted their potential.

Blogging was THE thing to do when I started this webpage – a band of energetic, voluble, articulate speakers had sprung up all over India. It was an exciting time – these blogs seemed to raise us beyond ordinary eye level to make eye contact with other people ‘like us’. But gradually, a large number fell off – off blogging, at least. Many decided to save their words for the books they would write, or maintained them as repositories for work written elsewhere. Among the not-so-ambitious, many tired of keeping it up... blogs died and, to my sorrow, were removed.

People’s reading lists no longer include blogs as they used to, reader counts have dropped, and in the ten years between today and 8 Oct 2004, audiences have fragmented rather more severely. In 2004, you had some sort of an elevated stage on which you played out your part; social media has democratised that to such an extent that all people now exhibit much like street musicians – to passing crowds who might stand diverted, perhaps for a minute or five.

Oddly, I’ve stayed on, blogging almost unfailingly every month this decade. I tried to examine this – why do I blog? The fact is, I enjoy it. It’s not about being widely read, though that, when it happens, is very pleasant indeed. It’s that a blog post can be about anything or nothing, as serious or flippant as I wish, it could be one word or five hundred. It’s about putting it down and putting it out. It’s wonderful to be seized by an idea, write it and share it.

I had said once, when I was being self-conscious about this website, that this was to be a mosaic of posts from which a picture of me might emerge. But that, now, seems absurd. How can that be?

Sandra Simpson puts across the impossibility of it in a wonderfully poetic haiku:

trying to make

myself understood —

the sun in a spoon

The most that can be achieved is a record of a certain type of chatty mood. Still, it is here, and ten years old. Happy Birthday, Blog! 

Jumpy

Sheetal is on pins and needles, pins and needles!

Yogaratova...*

In his address to the United Nations, PM Modi yesterday suggested we have an International Yoga Day. The idea is still trending on twitter and I added my mite by linking to a couple of things Sadhguru has said about yoga.

(Oh, wait, why don't I link to it here? The Isha Foundation Blog has a section called Yoga and Meditation and there is super stuff there - on why yoga, the technology, the lineage, the technique, why the the nitty-gritties matter, the approach, what's wrong with the way it's approached, taught and practiced these days.... in fact, everything you wanted to know about yoga.)

I am, of course, a neo-convert to yoga and consequently rather fanatical about it. It has worked magnificently for me - the kriyas and Hatha yoga together keep me so well lubricated in body-mind-spirit, that one day without feels like I haven't bathed. But this is now.

When I was initiated in 2011, some time after, I met a close childhood friend who had been doing and teaching Hatha Yoga for years. And for all her enthusiasms, Pri hadn't infected us with the passion and now suddenly I seemed to be advocating it to HER and I think she was a bit nonplussed. We were meeting after a gap of a year or two, and she said, "I didn't realise you were this much into yoga." I told her, in a burst of candour, "I'm not into yoga, per se; I'm into this man. If he asks me to stare at my big toe, I will." That was why I went into yoga - because my Guru said it would help me, it would help him help me.

But seriously, I think it is time to bring it back. With due respect, for the right reasons, with the right attitude. Enough, I think, of sidelining of this heritage. We need to reclaim it before this knowledge disappears altogether, before the links evaporate in the harsh climate of cynicism and neglect.

PS. It is a pity to have to add a disclaimer but perhaps I should say my views are not about right-wing Hindutva. It's not a religious thing, it's not about Hindu Chauvinism. Yoga is the path this land's heritage shows us towards higher consciousness and it works for ALL human beings.


__________

*From Adi Shankara's Bhaja Govindam:
Yogaratova bhogaratova
Sangaratova sangaviheenah
Yasya brahmani ramate chittam
Nandati nandati nandatyeva
By way of yoga, or by way of bhoga, through the path of discipline or the way of pleasure, in company or without... somehow make it. It doesn’t matter how; the important thing is you get there.

Still standing

Sheetal has stubbed her toe against her ego.

Pointing...

... to posts on my other blog:

On the return of the Muslim Social and an update on that trend. And while on the subject, a link to this old post: Kise pesh karun.

Jaded

It has been a prosaic day. It started with some hint of grumpy impatience, but I reined that in. Since I had errands anyway, I sought additional help from the shops – a couple of new garments and choosing of incense sticks for the upcoming celebrations of Dasara lifted my spirits. But otherwise, so ho-hum, so neither here nor there. I spoke to my sister briefly on the phone and we shocked each other by having nothing to say.

Sadhguru said once, “If you die of excitement, it’s all right. Such a magnificent creation and you die of boredom – that’s a crime.” I see and take his point. Mea culpa. There is nothing wrong with the world. Just, the chemical soup I am today isn’t making it easy.

I used to be very fond of worry-stones at one point and had started quite a collection. Now I don’t know if it’s true but new age lore claims that crystals possess a host of healing properties. There was one stone, and one power attributed to it, that I’ve always wished upon: Jade, it is said, opens the wearer to perceiving greater beauty. Isn’t that fabulous?

That’s what I need today – a touch of Jade. Or perhaps I should bring out the big guns. Darken the room, pull back the curtains to let in the night, and let some Bageshri sweeten the air.

Mukammal jahaan

It is almost time, I hear, for the next season of Coke Studio – the material is ready even if the airing is postponed indefinitely due to the political turmoil in Pakistan.

Mixed feelings. I wish the new team well but I expect, I fear that they cannot match the genius of Rohail Hyatt. Nothing lasts forever and I am happy that the end of CS as propelled by this man tapered down not due to a dilution of music or integrity but other circumstances. So easily it might have happened, as it all too often has, that corruption seeped into the show. It didn’t here and that heartens me considerably.

Anyone who followed and listened to the previous season will know that Hyatt took Season 6 to a new level altogether. Hitherto, these had been studio sessions – not entirely jam sessions – but well-rehearsed, well-constructed pieces that were recorded all together. This brought a remarkable synergy to the music and I was a bit doubtful when Season 6 started with the concept of recording disparate strains in various locations that would be later put together on the console. What would the difference be then between Coke Studio and, say, AR Rahman or any number of Bollywood composers who take this structuralistic approach as well?

I had reckoned without Rohail Hyatt. In Season 5, he had experimented briefly with the idea with Koi labda. With the band Symt laying out the overall mood and theme but leaving preplanned room for an insert, Hyatt had Sanam Marvi record an aside later. This was so neatly integrated with the main recording as to appear seamless. Technicalities apart, the song is sheer pleasure, and one of my enduring favourites.



Season 6 went international. Serbia and Italy provided entire orchestras, and individual musicians from Nepal, Turkey, Bangladesh, Morocco and Norway were roped in for small accents and airs. So then these were songs that were created between some overall controlling vision and the fluidity of so many inputs – the lyric and the tune were the choice of the singer, the basic voice recording was made, sent to the orchestras who then clothed them with sounds of their choosing. (The relish, the delight that coursed through these video conferences was palpable and very contagious.) At the end, I imagine it was Hyatt who put the song together – muting out whole tracks, adding here a touch of flute from the Bangla artiste, here inserting the finishing chords from the heavenly Oud. Inordinate attention seems to have been paid to every sound, every note on these songs – the result is a set of polished pieces that will endure any number of listens. The synergy that I feared would go missing was very much there, but in a different way. What was once smooth was now textured, interpretations were unusual, listeners found something old, something new... Parts of the experience were somehow meta – ‘is this how the Serbian brass section sees this tune?!’

With Rohail Hyatt leaving, he will obviously take this work aesthetic with him – for, unless they are very evolved and supremely devoted to their craft, the new team will want to bring themselves in. They will want to change, assert, leave their stamp. Already the website www.cokestudio.com.pk has been shorn of its archives – I tried to find credits for Season 6 and couldn’t.

Nevertheless I am excited. New energy, a new way of doing things, a new season.

===
The title is from Nida Fazli's sher:
Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahaan nahin milta
Kahin zameen toh kahin aasmaan nahin milta

कभी किसी को मुक्कम्मल जहाँ नहीं मिलता
कहीं ज़मीं तो कहीं आसमां नहीं मिलता

No one has ever achieved a complete perfect world,
Here the earth eludes us, there heaven

In Koi labda, Symt uses this as ground, expressing the inadequacies of our lives.

Distance la moonu moonu...

...moonu colour-u white-u!

So this dashami of the shukla paksha in the month of Bhadrapada, I caught the moon through some romantic coconut fronds. Lovely, no?!

The unkindest cut

We feel that the local man in charge of our regular power cuts has given over to megalomania. We used to have them initially in two-hour slots spaced out considerately for households needing to use kitchen gadgets for the day's meals and such, for harried people leaving for school and work as well as others doing their morning kriyas. (Electricity is strictly not a requirement for this activity but it helps, of course – the buzz of household gadgets keeps other intruding sounds away, and there is always the menace of mosquitoes that can be held at bay with a breeze propelled by electric power.) Of course this also served for everyone requiring to charge their tech paraphernalia.

The first cut used to occur promptly at 10.30am and was restored at 12.30. As humans, whose thing in life is adaptability we, accordingly, adapted. Early in the morning, we fought over power plug points, made our chutneys, sent off last minute mails at 10.25 and sat back in somewhat of a smug attitude. In the break, we puttered around the garden, caught up on the bird scene in the neighbourhood, read the newspapers, and some even going so far as to read a book! It was idyllic.

At 4.30 in the afternoon was our second cut of the day. Walkers would reach promptly for their shoes, others for grocery bags, the colony uncles chose to huddle for leisurely powwows. Dusk would gently fall, leading some to make quite a to-do about their sunset pictures. With normal life restored at 6.30, the populace would withdraw indoors to prayers, television and dinner.

Now this is a thing of the past. The man at the switchboard has lost his rhythm. Sometimes, at 6.30am, when most of God’s creatures and snuggling in their razais, dreaming their last dreams of the night, they are awakened most rudely by a cessation of fan-blades. Now having thus dragged oneself out of bed, there is no easy method for obtaining hot water for one’s ablutions, the overhead tanks have not been filled and plans for breakfast must be altered very quickly to include Spencer’s wheat bread. You will note that I said ‘sometimes’. For, at other times, it is another time. Sometimes, 7am, sometimes 7.15, once 8am, occasionally 11am and now he has passed over the morning slot altogether. For two days now it has been 12-2pm and 4.30-6.30pm, which gives us barely two and half hours in between to get the fridge cold again. Food is spoiling and for persons who worry about laptop batteries forming the wrong kinds of memory, this is bad indeed.

Although I have described vividly the torments of unexpected cuts, I have not yet touched on the other kind – the torment of uncertainty and hope! What happens when the citizenry is expecting a power cut and it doesn’t occur? As a sample, I studied my father. At 10.40, it becomes clear that the schedule isn’t being adhered to. Having put off eating so that he can maximise on the router being available, he is famished. Should he have breakfast anyway? Or perhaps he should fit in one more response to an email in the next five minutes before it might be shut down? He teeters, Dear Reader, between work station and kitchen in the most piteous manner. But worse, when we have braced ourselves comprehensively and nothing at all happens. “Is it a festival today? Or some holiday?” Why, we wonder in private, aloud and during every interaction, has there not been a power cut. Having no faith in free lunches, we wonder what retribution will be like.

The maid discusses the cuts as much as she discusses the weather: “Ee rozu teesinadaa, akka?” and then tells me how it was in her locality these past 24 hours. We have concluded that we have a control freak on our hands. Our lives will run, he imagines, on his say-so (as indeed they do). Do you think he breaks out into maniacal laughter every time he pulls the plug? Or that his eyes gleam when his hand hovers on the button and then withdraws, knowing well the consternation he is spreading?

As I write this, my father has been wandering around the house muttering to himself. Tufts of hair stand upright on his head, and he wears a pinched look. There has been no cut today.

Being single

As I read the whole set of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, I came across this throwaway sentence, a succinct argument for the single state.

"Fending for one is not so hard as fretting for two."
~Ellis Peters, The Raven in the Foregate

Yes, no?

Rabba Rabba mee barsa

Praise be, it’s raining! Coming down purposefully, bounty intended in every drop.
August is nearly ending and it seemed as though the winds had died, the clouds were no longer drifting and we in Hyderabad haven’t received even half our allotment!

But a good, prolonged shower (accompanied with thunder and lightning, if you please) dampens those complaints – the ixora is looking up, the car looks scrubbed in a way we can’t manage and I have occasion to share this video (via Sowmya) that is many kinds of smart. Indeed, what is the right way to conduct ourselves when caught in a sudden downpour?



And, whyever not a haiku?

reaching
where the hose won’t —
summer rain
Harriot West

Pursish-e-haal

"It was a mistake, perhaps, to ask him how he did."
 ~Ellis Peters, Dead Man's Ransom