Rang De Basanti

We watched this movie just now. I thought it was well made until the intermission. Beyond that, the director has kind of managed to cancel out any point he was trying to make. Random violence, plus the camera was literally not handled properly during the chasing scenes. The music was ok, though it was Rahman. Maddy had a meaty role in it, though it was cameo. Siddharth can look forward to some pretty good stardom with this movie. Hope he doesn't become another Rahman and stop looking south.

What's the whole point of five college kids killing a union minister. The killing is justified, but they should know better than to think that, the assasination will change the situation. Come on, they are all educated people. If this is the kind of message that is sent to people, should they all resort to such methods? But then, the consolation is that people don't really get inspired from such things. You can get inspiration only when you are looking for it. At this movie, we are made to focus on one thing - the death of so many pilots who drove the M16 fighter jets or something. Apparently this was caused because of the negligence and corruption of the defense ministry. All said and done, it is indeed appalling that more than 200 fighter jets have crashed in the last 15 years. It simply means that nobody has cared to learn from their mistakes. What can you do in such a situation?

Anyways, in the second half, they resort to some violence and kill the minister. It still doesn't solve any of their problems - I would have said "Duh!". The minister gets away as a nice guy in history. Siddharth kills his father (that's something). They finally decide to announce this in radio. What kind of a stuff is that? To add to all this, the police force thinks that these are terrorists and just shoot them all to death. That kind of sucked. It is not like they died of a great noble cause - yeah, in one sense they tried to save their friend's name. To that extent, you could say that they died a noble death, but then what a waste of life? They could have done much more with it, isn't? May be constantly try to expose the corruption or something. I guess one point Siddharth makes "we couldn't take it any longer". I would have to agree with that - I am sure there are times when your mind automatically resorts to violence because you are too emotionally disturbed to make any rational decisions, not that it is justified.

Also, what was that scene which showed a whole bunch of college students changing and getting inspiration from this story? That's completely cinematic and has absolutely no realism. I mean, so many things happen everyday and we all have access to news, but who really cares? Nobody gives a damn. Several school children died in a school fire couple of years back. I am very sure everyone felt very symphathetic and sorry for that, but I am sure it is now long forgotten. By that I mean that absolutely no measures would have been taken to avoid such fires in the future. I am pretty sure there will be more such news in the future. Now, all the college students trying to get inspired by this, etc is all total B.S. A person's gate of change can only be opened from inside and not from outside.

This is where Maniratnam excels! His movie Ayudha Ezhuthu had amazing content and it had an amazing ending, where he has kind of shown that people don't really change all that much. He has shown that changes in India can occur only over a period of time and not overnight. He has suggested that people join politics and slowly get into that system whereby they can bring about a change over a period of a generation. My respect for him has grown even more after I watched Rang De Basanti. He's the guy - the great one. He should make more such movies. It is really very hard to find fault with Mani's movie - it is just so mature and well handled. It can come only from somebody who is very philosophical, strong and yet gentle. He must have gone through some crap to come out so clean like this, I am very sure.

Music rehearsals

We haven't started rehearsals for the upcoming event in April. Even though it seems far away, I am very skeptical of our efficiency during rehearsal sessions. It is going to be comedy. My work has quadrupled in volume since I volunteered to do this show. So, how I am going to manage both these things remains to be seen. I am afraid that I won't have time to do anything else. I wanted to travel this year, but that seems tough too. Everything seems tough and nothing seems easy at this point. I am beginning to get stressed out. It's been a while since I have felt this way. Wonder how it is all going to unfold in the coming months. So much aggression is required to just book the auditorium for rehearsals. I have to compete with all the other sub leads of the event - they all want whole days and weekdays, leaving very little room for me and my team to do our stuff. Well, I guess I'm going to learn a whole bunch from this, at of course a very expensive price - my free time. Brace yourself for the upcoming zero gravity drop!

Bach Concert

What could be more rewarding than attending a Bach Concert on Mozart's Birthday :) This was one of the jokes that the conductor made. Coming to the point, I had one of the most wonderful Friday evenings on Jan 27th! We attended a 2.5 hour long concert in the San Diego Symphony Hall. It was just Bach Bach and Bach! Somehow they picked all my favorites (of course it's not an exhaustive list) - Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, Brandenburg Concerto No.2, Concerto for two violins, Orchestral Suites #3, Wachet Auf...., etc. Imagine how it must have been. The conductor made it much more enjoyable by giving a nice and funny description of all the pieces. He emphasized the five part harmony Bach used in the orchestral suites by requesting the first violinists, second violinists, violists, cellists, the wood wind instrumentalists to play their part separately at first and then allowing them to combine all of them. Imagine that - you'll have no idea of harmonically rich his pieces are. This was all composed in the late 1600s- early 1700s.

Bach must have been a terrific mathematician. If he were given one more birth, he would have been born as a great mathematician.

Mozart's Birthday!

Mozart and I were born in the same month, but that doesn't make me Mozart! It's his 250th birthday and he has lived a life that speaks for itself - people playing his music all over the world. What a life! Only 35 years and look at the number of things he has composed - not just the number, but the quality! What more can I write - just listen to his songs today and be at peace :)

I want to say "Happy Birthday Mozart, I love you very much". I only wish! 250 years and still going strong. He has lived a much better life after his death. How many millions of people he would have amused with his light but heavy pieces of music :) I owe a significant part of my music appreciation abilities to him. Only he can impress anybody with his music - it is so easy to understand and yet very difficult to analyze and play. They say playing Mozart's piano concertos is very difficult - it would expose any error easily and there is no mechanical way of just playing it. Bringing out the grace is the key - if there ain't no grace, then the pianist is not a good one. I wish he had lived to see the world celebrating him so much. He died as a poor guy - these are some of the "thiruvilayadals" of God I suppose. I sometimes think that God was so selfish that He wanted Mozart to come and compose for Him instead of allowing him to amuse fellow humans :)

ihome

This is another ipod accessory - you could dock the ipod into this one, set the alarm, wake up to your own music and do whatever. I found the reviews at Amazon and I couldn't stop laughing! Apparently the alarm is so loud that it is no longer a 'gentle awake' for the people. It goes from 0 to 85 dB in 3 seconds! people have written that, their neighbor banging on their door to reduce the alarm volume is not how they want to wake up every morning! This goes back to the highest volume in the morning however low you keep it in the night and there seems to be no way to control it apparently! How funny!

Auditioning

This is the first time I am auditioning a bunch of people and needless to say, it sucks big time. I just want to get past this stage asap and concentrating on the rehearsals and picking the songs, etc. I hope that happens soon. The music audition is cool - we get to meet lot of nice talented people. The problem happens when they are all good or when they can't take the disappointing news that they have not been selected. It is indeed impossible to make everyone happy, so I just hope that people take this in the right sense and move on. Secondly, they may not have any idea of how long the rehearsals take if the singer is not a trained professional. They need not be professional, but having proper beat sense and the ability to listen to the actual song and pick up nuances is very crucial for shows like this.

I am watching curb your enthusiasm as I am typing this :) Larry David is funny. These episodes also feature Jason Alexander (more popularly known as George Costanza)

Less enthu

I have not been blogging with major enthu in the last few days. I don't know why. I know that it is just a matter of opening up this editor and start typing something. Even that requires some effort, seemingly! But I have not been in the greatest of moods in the last few days. I have been overwhelmed with work and the thought of not being as productive as I could be and I should be. I have to select the singers for the music show today. I wonder if I can carry this through till the end. I know I have to and I somehow will, but the lack of enthu from other instrumentalists is concerning me a little bit. In particular, I am kind of convinced that I can't be in a show that I like without a great drummer being there who can also play the octopad and stuff like that. Some people are just too attached to the acoustic drums. I totally respect that, but it'll be nice if they are versatile and accommodating enough to play the octopad. That would enable the inclusion of a lot of new songs which just can't be replicated on stage without a synthetic drum machine. There are enough keyboardists. It is going to be a logistical nightmare to coordinate all this. That would require a lot of energy. I can see why the past band leaders have kind of taken a back seat this time. The singers are all enthu. They kind of assume that everything else is taken care of. They are like actors in the movie sets. The director and his crew takes care of everything. The actors just come and act. Now they may argue that it's a big deal to act - I don't deny that, but they have far less stress than the director. Oh yeah, then that makes me like a director! I need to coordinate things and make sure that quality is maintained. Ok then, I'll take this as a great opportunity to do my best and evaluate the outcome. It should be encouraging. I am kind of concerned about the other regional songs. We will have a clearer picture by the end of this evening. I'll keep posting the developments.

What else is happening? I have to check out some gift for my friend. I haven't put too much thought into this. I have to do that also. Plus I may have to work from home. May be watch "Curb your enthusiasm" tonight. I haven't seen any episodes in that. I should like that 'cause it's by Larry David - the guy who co wrote Seinfeld!

There you go, there's a decent sized paragraph :)

There ain't no quick fix!

In Covey's words:

Quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time. If you become impatient with the other person's apparent lack of response or his seeming ingratitude, you may make huge withdrawals and undo all the good you've done. "After all we've done for you, the sacrifices we've made, how can you be so ungrateful? We try to be nice and you act like this. I can't believe it!"

It's like reading out my thoughts exactly!

It takes so long to ruin some relationship or frienship - why would it take only a couple of days to fix it? Building of trust is the key - the more trust you build, the more you'll be forgiven for your small mistakes in a relationship or friendship. If there is no trust to begin with, even the slightest of mistakes are hugely amplified and remembered. There is no forgiveness. Self trust is also essential. Being accountable for decisions and the awareness that life will be full of ups and downs is extremely crucial for a long and satisfying life.

Couldn't help but think of Kramer's advice to Elaine (in Seinfeld):

Kramer: "Now see the two of you need to work on trust... and then and only then will there be a free exchange of sex and discounts.. Cornerstones of a healthy relationship....and now if you would (taps twice on the door) excuse us. We need to get to bed."

Habits

Stephen Covey says that private victory has to precede public victory. One has to be first disciplined and principled before he starts to expect this from others. Something that we may all know, but when he says it, it comes out so nicely. He has a lot of nice observations in this book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" - he says that we can't get away from the problems we behave ourselves into. Self mastery and self discipline are the foundation of good relationship with others. Then I wonder, is it entirely possible to have good relationships with others if others don't think the same way? What applies to you applies to them as well!

One other profound statement he makes:

"If you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short term, psych-up, superficial way".

Obviously he is quite an experienced man and is regarded by many as a great motivational speaker. Still, the book will talk to you only when you want it to. In other words, the gate of change is within us and it is us who has the power to open it. Others can't do it for us. Only you can eat for your hunger - others can't. One other great quote I got from this book:

"There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity".

It does take so much to trust others - for that you have to trust yourself. You'll very much reflect how your mind thinks. A person who is politically motivated will only see others as doing politics. He won't see and appreciate the good in them objectively. Similarly, a person who doesn't trust others very much thinks that the others don't trust him either. A person who is cunning and crafty sees the same in others. How indispensable trust is, for a relationship! In essence, it is all just giving a slight benefit of doubt to the other person - "Oh, he may not have meant this to be like this" or "I know him, only circumstances would have forced him to do a thing like this, he wouldn't mean anything bad for me". All it takes is such good thoughts. It highly comforts the other person. It might be great for him/her to feel forgiven.

Coming back to habits - Covey claims that habits can be learned and unlearned. One may argue about this. This may be true in the extreme case, but I really wonder how this can be practically implemented. One has to be so disciplined to get there and learn new habits. Or be extremely patient. Take up piano playing for instance - by now I am convinced that if you learn it at childhood, there's nothing like it, as opposed to trying to pick it up at the age of 25. This may have to do with our physical nature which evolves over time, as much as our mental state. We may have firmly ingrained habits by that age. How do we go about changing it. You may play the piano everyday, but still not learn the habit of picking up tunes by the ear and playing them without mistake the first time itself. To achieve this will require awareness and consciousness everytime you press a key on the piano. Your mind has to learn to recognize the note for what it is everytime it is played. Slowly internalize it over a period of time and do it consistently. This surely requires a lot of dedication, but that's what it takes to form a new habit and that's what habit is, by definition. It is something that you do subconsciously, only this time you are making sure that it is a good thing.

Let me face it

Let's face it. In another couple of months, I should be ready with a band that will perform songs from different regional languages of India. I have gathered a bunch of people who can sing and all that. But I am not really sure how good they are. I'll have to hold an audition sometime next week to find out. Also, I need to talk to the instrumentalists and find out what they are comfortable with. The slowest person will determine the pace of the group. So far, a percussionist seems to be the bottleneck, although one of my good drummer friends has agreed to play. If he becomes busy or something, I would like to have a back up, but I don't have a choice at this point. Now, the last year when we performed for the same show, I kind of joined after the songs have been decided - they were all Hindi songs and there was no questions to be asked from my side although I did end up giving a lot of input. This time, I am kind of concerned about the song selection because I don't know all the other languages. I want to have only popular songs that are not more than 15 years old. I want to bring freshness and make the audience dance for our songs. At the same time, I require that the song has some decent musical complexity so that all our participants have a chance to showcase their talent. We will have to see how this goes. I wonder whether all the participants will share the same enthusiasm as me. I have to be the bad guy this time, beating around people to do their work after office hours :) Hopefully, the show I am going to put up should top the previous year's show. We shall see and I'll keep this blog updated on the events.

Ayudha Ezhuthu Coming True!

Well, this is what Mani Ratnam has achieved. I am rather sure that he was not directly involved or influence the decisions of these IIT guys who have formed a political party called Paritrana. There is a wonderful article about this in Youth Curry. Check it out. In particular they talk about identifying the inner voice. How amazing and what a coincidence! This is what people call Synchronicity (I hope I got the spelling right). It takes so much courage to follow your inner voice 'cause the society may not fully understand it when you deviate from the norms set by them to lead your life! Everyone knows how exactly the other person should lead their lives, but seldom take a moment to stop and think and listen to their own inner voice. Youth Curry has beautifully articulated this - it is what I have been thinking also:

"Deadly thing, this inner voice. That's why most folks pretend they can't hear it. Or choose to drown it out. Because listening to it may mean acting in ways which are strange and unacceptable in society."

Looks like this guy - Sidin has finally decided to give up consulting for writing. That must have taken some courage. I didn't know that this is the guy who wrote that wonderful and hilarious article on "Travails of Single South Indian Men". People are doing this all over the world, it seems like and I don't want to be late in listening to my inner voice :) There is another great website that I found for all these - Metavoice.

Time to do something about it, eh?

Thoughts on a Friday Morning

It's Friday already. It's already Jan 20th 2006! I wonder what all will happen in another 10 years in my life. Will it be stationary? Or will it move on significantly? One of my uncles is very ambitious - he always takes the risks the conservatives don't take - he switches jobs at the age of 40, 50 and so forth. He has been very successful in his career. He has had a steady growth.

I read this article on how to do what you love. It is a great article, by Paul Graham. He correctly explores and analyzes the events that happen in childhood and how they are responsible for our skewed perceptions. He is absolutely right. In fact, everything a man or woman does can be described by her childhood experiences. The childhood, in my definition, ranges from birth till the point where you don't depend on your parents, emotionally or financially. I might have written earlier that we don't have the power to choose the conditions of our birth - we can't choose our parents, nor the family in which we are born or the country in which we are born either. And scientifically, there is evidence that states that your brain pretty much gets moulded by the time you are five or six years old. Until then, it has this immense capacity. Based on the environment where you grow in, certain neurotic connections get strenghtened over time and just stay as they are till you die. The ones that are not given proper stimulus by exposing them to the appropriate stuff, wane off and die. That part of the brain capacity has just gone a waste. For instance, if a child is never subjected to music in its formative years, chances are that, the particular part of the brain which can relate to emotions stirred by music will remain unused. So, the overall brain capacity available to the child is also less. It may never think musically or it may never develop the musical abilities that seasoned musicians have. How hard is it to expose a child to music? Not that hard. Ok apart from music, what all can you expose the child to? If the parents are interested in dancing, chances are that they would send their kids to dance classes. What about businessmen - what do they do with their kids, assuming that they have the time to do all that?

A child absorbs the essence of the environment it grows up in. For a person, home is where he has grown up. Only that can stir the absolute nostalgic memories. When your brain had no information in it, when it is ready to take on information, it tends to remember the first bits of info. I wonder how a person can live totally peacefully in a country that's different from where he was born. I guess life these days is so busy that people don't have the time to contemplate such things. Their life gets consumed by the daily urgent activities they have to do.

Speaking of which, there are several things that we do everyday that are deemed unimportant. A phone call, for instance. We always attend phone calls regardless of what we are doing at the moment. So, it only means that the phone call takes precedence over anything that you are doing. There are exceptional people of course, who don't attend the phone call immediately. Still, they may take a note of who is calling and do call them back. But there are still more exceptional people who don't even do that. They just don't care. They are rather convinced that you are of no use and not worth calling back! These days, I find people not returning phone calls or replying back to emails. I am pretty sure they have the time to do it. In fact, they may be reading that email multiple times and wondering what to write. Can't explain why people's behavior changes all of a sudden.

Coming back to the point, we do things that are totally unimportant. We have to be conscious of these things. Think about your life everyday - there is always a pressing need to do something immediately. We can never escape this. Be it grocery shopping or taking care of a sick child or taking care of your health or paying the bills or working on the deadline oriented project - we all have these urgent issues. How many of them are actually important for your life? How do you gain control over these things and finally say - "Ok, we need to do these things, but I am not spending more than 1 hour on a total, I am going to devote the rest of my 'free' time towards defining my goals in life". It is very hard. Your life can easily - I mean very easily get consumed by your daily affairs. When you turn back and look, you may already be 60. You may suddenly have a lot of time then, but will simply not have the resources to follow your dreams. So in essence, if a person says that he will make tons of money and then focus on his dreams - you know that he is just plain wrong - his approach is wrong. There is no end to making money. It is a necessary evil. Again, speaking of money, it seems so fundamentally important and something that we should all crave for. I really wonder if people stop a second and think whether they can lead a peaceful and comfortable life with the money that they have. I don't think they do. They just plainly believe that they need to accumulate wealth and often kill the things they love the most in the process.

It's Devil's temptation. Don't get me wrong - money is of course important. It is one language which every one in the world understands in the exact same way. At least to live in the society harmoniously, we need money and we need to be working for it. But I am beginning to think that I should take a step back and find out my purpose in life. May be I have enough money, but I have to acknowledge that the society expects more from me - the society expects more mediocrity from me. I have to be very courageous and break away from this if I need a more satisfied life. I should choose not to be ordinary and mediocre and convince the society that I can be helpful to them only if I am at peace with myself first.

A swamiji once said that people do everything for themselves only. They don't do anything for others. Though this sounds very arrogant and selfish, it is actually true. A person who does charity for instance - will appear like a philanthropist to the society. That is absolutely wonderful. But, thinking a little bit more, he/she is doing it so that they may feel at peace with themselves. May be it will cause them so much unrest in their lives to find an orphaned child or sick people without help. Doing charity work may be the only way they find peace with themselves. I read a book about prayers - the book says that even if somebody prays for others, he/she is indirectly praying for himself/herself. It is like they would feel happy for themselves if their friends/family succeed in something. You can never make another person 100% happy by just telling them your success stories, howmuchever they care about you. This includes parents, spouses, siblings and friends. This may come has a bitter truth, but it is what it is - the truth!

Trouble Trouble

Some people have this thing for getting into trouble all the time. It is almost as if they have to struggle so hard just to live. I have a friend like this. He is smart and everything and is also self-aware, but still can't somehow resist getting into these tight situations that really trouble the hell out of him and send him to depression. He is rarely in peace and it almost seems like things like this just happen to him. Of course, it is him that invites all these troubles. I am pretty sure he knows that too, but how can he be helped? He is super ambitious and actually has a lot of credentials. He has to face all these obstacles constantly before he can come out clean. He has helped me in some subtle but very important ways. I would very much like to talk to him and comfort him, but he is too busy for all these things. He'll be fine, but he has to hit the bottom before he can rise up again. Well, what can you do?

Lazy

I've been feeling lazy - didn't do much on what all I wanted to do today. I should hopefully do them at least tomorrow. I read an excellent essay written by Paul Graham. His essays are rather lengthy, but extremely good. If only people listen to him :) Looks like he has written three books or so. He articulates very well. He has written an essay on 'How to do what you love'. It is a must read. Check it out. Search for him on google and go to his website.

Best Blonde Joke

Check this out - the best blonde joke ever!

Traffic!

Yesterday I came to work like a breeze, in under 17 minutes or so. I felt very good. I thought it had everything to do with leaving at 8:45AM. Even in the evening, I reached home under 17 minutes. Needless to say, that felt really good. Until today morning - I thought I could extend the same performance in the future. I left at 8:46AM today and got caught up in the traffic pretty soon - only then it struck me that yesterday was Martin Luther King day and people might have had their day off and hence did not crowd the roads! The traffic happiness is short lived at best, in Southern California. I could reach no sooner than 25 minutes. Bach's Toccata and Fugue kept playing in the repeat mode for almost three times before I could reach! I guess this is still better than that one day when Beethoven's 9th symphony was fully completed by the time I could reach home. That was in LA though.

B'day

Today is my B'day! But nothing much is happening. I'm at work and I'll get back home in the evening as usual. According to Dilbert's author Scott, I'll become invisible to the society in a few years :)

DVDs I've lent

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Ice Age

Just as a reminder

Possible Vacation Dates for 2006

I don't want to keep checking the calendar. I can never remember when all I can possibly take off. This might come in handy for checking flight deals. Here it is:

February:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28

May:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

July:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

September:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

November:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

December:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31