Gulabi Dal

They wear pink saris and go after corrupt officials and boorish men with sticks and axes.

Full story here --

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7068875.stm

winter wonderland - season's first snow

Reno

facebook

"Once upon a time the darlings of Silicon Valley were companies making things like chips and software, computers and networking routers. Hot shops were Cisco Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Then came Netscape. Then Google. Right now it's Facebook, a sort of corporate version of Paris Hilton--a company that's famous for being famous. Soon it will probably also be rich, though right now nobody quite knows why."
-Daniel Lyons

Niagara

..

" The Poet does not invent, he listens"
- Jean Cocteau

yikes

reading

" My favorite thing to do is read. I love my books, they are my precious possessions. I would be lost without them"

-Uma
Journal entry- 9/17/2007

JBJ

It has been a long dry season without any good music releases. I saw the posters for JBJ and heard about its music being directed by SEL and gave it a wide berth, see my last few purchases for Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have been heart breakingly bad. The trio was so talented and the mediocre scores have been becoming a constant source of depression for me.

However, this weekend, I made a trip to the panjabi market in Vancouver and heard a the JBJ song - quite inadvertently- there isn't much you can say when faced with a formidable Panjabi kuudi with fake lashes and paranda, is there?

But, I was intrigued with what I heard and went on to get a copy of the CD. Let me say- it is the best they have been since BnB- and in some respects I think the music is one of the best scores they have ever produced - In one respect they have pulled all stops- the singer list is quite impressive- Neeraj Shridhar, Rahat Fateh Ali, Vishal Dadlani, KK, Sukhvinder, Sunidhi, Alisha Chinai and Vasundhara Das ...quite a list wouldn't you say? Shankar sings one version of the title track -


Jhoom
Shankar Mahadevan
The title track sung by an itinerant jack sparrow meets baoul is an attempt to keep fragmented narrative of the movie seem somewhat contiguous. The sound track does not pay heed to the number of people enacting the song to the number of the playback singers- leav alone trying to match voices to the personalities – apart from Shankar Mahdevan and Amitabh in the various tempo's of this song. Shanaker Mahadevan is very good-he would have given Mohd Rafi a run for his money with his lovely punju accent. I was astounded :) The song is a typical SEL song - lots of synth and a strong beat - with a very good baritone provided by Shankar. The carpenter technique of over laid vocals is very successful in lending dimensions to the song.

Ticket to Hollywood
Neeraj Shridhar, Alisha Chinai
I love the slightly nasal -echo-ey voice of Neeraj Shridhar- the lead singer for Bombay Vikings. I can never forget the 'Woh chali -' in his voice, still makes me go weak in the knees. The song is played as a pleading- conversation between the two - somewhat like ' ‘panch rupaiya barah anna'. Alisha Chian is a perfect foil to the male voice and the transitions are handled nicely with the single time beat and the repeating refrain of 'Ticket to Hollywood'.

JBJ
Zubeen, Shankar Mahadevan, Sunidhi Chauhan
One part of the multi part dance competition song. It has a re-mix-y touch to it with super-imposed beats and vocals.The song required strong vocal chords, what with the overpowering beat and background- Sunidhi , Zubeen rise to the occasion beautifully, there is a section where the two pass the baton, so to speak, with the title phrase - 'jhoom- jhoom barabar', reminds me think of a two duelers bowing before they jump in - Shankar's voice is mostly relegated to the background echo vocals- as always adding a nice dimension to the track.

Bol na halke halke
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Mahalaxmi Iyer
Love the way the song starts off … the same beat cycle playing over and over again, each time around a new instrument is added - you hear the harmony building - ghatam, synth, jal tarang, flute and the final round the voice of Rahet Fateh Ali. His voice is like a caress, very well matched with Mahalaxmi's dulcet soprano. The only song that can be called -hindustani in the olde world Indian classical music sense, it uses a lot more instruments than I have heard in a typical SEL number- there is a fairly heavy reliance on synth and guitar- still. The song is given to transitions as it relates a whole story of the two young lovers; it is perhaps the only song in the album that relies on the vocals as much as it does. The strange attempt to show old-age in the last few lines by morphing the voice to some weird back play is tacky. The song shines despite it though.

Kiss of Love
Vishal Dadhlani, Vasundhara Das.
This unexpectedly is my favorite song in the album and the credit goes to Vishal( of the Vishal-Shekhar fame). The raspy voice and no holds barred rendition is one of the best I have heard him do... the first time he says ..
Oye baand kar le, oye baandkar yaara dake dalti aakhe!!
makes you want to jump up and join him in the hoarse plea.
Thoroughly danceable, This is one of the songs in which Gulzar's genius shines thru- simple words twisted to match the beat and yet they convey the passion ... Vasundhra is usually pretty good and she holds up her part in the song - but she cannot match the ferocity of Vishal's voice.
The Oompha Lumpha warning starting and ending song is kinda nice - it does end abruptly - but it is too impassioned and simmering down the tone might have been lot worse than the abrupt edge.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
KK, Sukhvinder Singh, Mahalakhsmi Iyer, Shankar Mahadevan
Part deux of the dance competition song- delightful. The lyrics are amazing - nutty imagery and wordplay-- Gulzar had a ton of fun writing this- so must have the music director and the singers- it is foot-stamping-longing to dance-rhythm. The puckish guitar and the strong bhangra beat ( with the authentic drums) plays amazingly well with a ton of synth work and reverb- effects.
Mahalaxmi sings at a lower octave - she is unrecognizable - I have only heard her render the higher octaves of mellifluous soprano so this comes as a complete surprise. A lovely one I must say.
KK and Sukhvinder Singh are amazing as is Shankar who appears midway thru the song ( as amitabh's appears half way thru the song) - changing the pace of the song- very smoothly done!

Jhoom jam -
Passable instrumental jam of all the songs -

Over all the album is a look at how SEL is maturing - using varied vocals and moving away from the synth and guitar based accompaniment - while keeping their signature strong beats and a frothy spirit. Very nice effort indeed- this album has not quite redeemed the unqualified disasters a few of their last albums have been, but the star is on the rise again.

I wish the movie and the choreography was as inspired as the music – alas!

'arry potter!

The fever is on where ever I go ( I only go places online, if you must know), I see images of the scrawny boy with untidy black hair. Speculations about what is going to happen in the final book 'Deathly Hallows' - does Hogwarts re-open? is Snape evil or good?
is Albus Dumbeldore really dead? does Harry destroy the four horcruxes and Lord Voldemort ? Who Dies? and who lives?

Harry potter is a phenomenon- a world wide phenomenon. Teachers and parents are grateful to the books for making kids be interested in reading. Each of the book has been widely publicised and has, in my opinion lived up to the hype. It has been quite a ride- one about to come to an end with the publication of the final book.
I have heard of such age and race defying obsessions - star wars, star trek and even lord of the rings to some degree ... But this is the first time I truly am part of one. I feel I am much to old to be so anxious of this book, but I am, I read the last two books of the series and I have been seeing Hogwarts in my dreams for the past three nights - I know my inner nerd is showing.
I grew up in the post feminist era - with no flower children, no bra -burning and in a very balanced and focused family- there was no time for obsessions and manias. I am little off- kilter with this, my first one. It is almost as good as being in love :)
So, I will be at the book store midnight on Friday, getting my copy of the book - and then spending much of the weekend ( to the dismay of the folks around me) sneaking off to read at every chance I get.
I will be back next week raving about the book.
But most of all I will have all seven books on my book shelf next to my famous fives and what Katie did, waiting for Uma to read them- and for me to read them again with Uma - thanks to these books, I will never forget what it is to be a child.

Of books and such

Mom got me a few select books this time. Chetan Bhagat has become a house hold phenomenon in India and I knew nothing of him. So I hastened to fix the lapse.
Over the past two days I have read two of his three books, Five point something and One night at the call center. There is a third book, not by him, but I have had enough; I am not going to read the third book.
He writes coming of age books for middle class Indians. One is focused on IIT, a dream that every for every middle class parent dreams for his child. And the second about a call center, a place where the highly educated, perfectly accented 20 something’s work thru the night helping the ‘dumb Americans’, making as much as a burger flipper in MickeyDs.
the books
He writes in first person present. The book feels like an enlargement of a very low res picture. He skips any in descriptions of surroundings, state of mind anything that would be passive voice. No delving into whys-- just a description of what, sometimes how.These are plays. To be specific a screen plays for a bollywood movies. I could compare it with DCH and fine them comaprable.however DCH brough nuances and depth to charecters by association and suroundings and the actors. The book does nto have this option. You don’t love characters and are only mildly moved by them. The entire 270 page story could have been told in 30 odd pages.
the characters
It might be because I did not go to an IIT or work at call center, but the treatment to me seems very cursory. He wants you to believe that Alok and Ryan and Hari are real. They might have been based on real life people, but they are either based on a single myopic aspect of a person or many people. Allusions to Ryan’s errant sexuality are interesting as is abuse in Hari’s past but Alok's whinny parents take over. The dialog inside the guys head is funny and fairly appropriate, but the female charecters are stereotypical, perhaps that is how women appear to men. The set of values these guys use to judge each other are black and white. Ryan's hidden hatered of Hari and Hari's love for Ryan or all that Ryan represents... interesting angle, but it goes no where.
the language
American idioms with a generous sprinkling of crap, damn and fuck thrown in. No hindi words in English, some of the comments are a complete translation. Some of the constructs are very indian, but no trnaslated words. Wonder why he did that, does it make the book more readable for non -indians? but it does not carry enough descriptive material to be something that a non -indian eng would read to, say findout more about IITs or life in delhi or IITs. Most people would read this for nostalgia, college ke woh din, and what a strange time it was when friends were closer and we lived without the wand of parents for the first time, they would miss the hinglish, No? Or is it IITians and call center folk do not speak hinglish ?
The narrative is inconsistent. Hari starts with ‘acknowledgement’ that indicates that though this is the story of the three of them (and what of Neha?) he had to have his way because the other two could not ( or would not) write …. And yet includes a chapter by each of them. In the second book, he starts of in narration mode… yet he starts at the beginning of the evening and somehow never ties up the thread of narration at the end. And the epilogue is depressing cliché.
I am a little surprised at the 50th reprint. The books are dismal. When I compare it to Interpreter of maladies or Incantations or Arranged marriage, Chetan Bhagat’s books are a sad comparison. The other three are short story collections written by people of Indian origin about their view of the Indian experience. I compare each of these short story collections with CB’s three books because to my mind each of his novels is really a bloated short story.
The question that comes to mind is why is each of these short story collections not ubiquitous as the five point something book?
The snob in me says that is because it is easy to read, no need to think or concentrate and you have read a book. The realistic part of me says that it is an approachable book, with images and characters we know and identify with, evil bosses and professors and parents whose expectations we cannot meet. and familiar is good. it highlights the good in each charecter with a naive optimism. It is tangible and has no lofty aspirations. The credentials Chetan Bhagat possesses, lend him an air of authenticity, he went to an IIT, even if it was not IIT - D. And then he made it to an IIM, IIM - A no less. In the post-independence area, meritocracy is the new royalty. Even the snob in me relents, it takes a lot of mugging to get there :)
All in all a pretty decent effort, but it will be forgotten.

opt out?

I am a single mom, who works fulltime to pay for her child’s private school education and the suburban house mortgage. I have been working my entire adult life, having been brought up with the notion ‘women in no way are inferior to men as far as intellect is concerned’, it was a brutal blow when I was told at the highly coveted job at campus recruiting, even though you are the most qualified for this job we cannot hire you because you are a woman.
That was the beginning. Since, I have seen a lot of subtle and not so subtle ways in which I have had to work hard in a market place that is almost entirely comprised of men. It has been harder since I had a child. I have known days when I felt like I was living surrounded by Neanderthals, what happened to the so called post-feministic era? And I have often wondered, enviously I might add, about those lucky women who 'opted out' to be moms.

And apparently I am not the only one who wonders.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2007/2/Graff.asp
Do they really opt out? Or are they getting a little help from the system?

Still, if they were pushed out, why would smart, professional women
insist that they chose to stay home? Because that’s the most emotionally healthy
course: wanting what you’ve got. “That’s really one of the agreed-upon
principles of human nature. People want their attitudes and behavior to be in
sync,”

The article has many interesting ideas, like, what propels the moms-go-home campaign ? The usual suspects are lowered opportunity for women who are moms, high barriers to re-entry and a family hostile workplace. But there is another, interesting though very intuitive co-relation-

the all-or-nothing workplace. At every income level, Americans work
longer hours today than fifty years ago. Mandatory overtime for blue- and
pink-collar workers, and eighty-hour expectations for full-time professional
workers, deprive everyone of a reasonable family life.

A recent snarky book about French women I read mentioned the oh – so unbelievable work ethic of the French; with 6 weeks of paid vacation and so forth, but what we often forget is how hard and how much we have to work here in the good ol’ land of opportunity with the most family-hostile public policy in the Western world.
Out of 168 countries surveyed by Jody Heymann, who teaches at both the Harvard School of Public Health and McGill University, the U.S. is one of only five without mandatory paid maternity leave—along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.
Good company I would say!
So, while I write my treatise on ‘ Zen and the art of work life balance’ which helps me work without tuning out or burning out, and not being trampled penniless by the charging herds of corporate America, I take hope in knowing I am not alone pondering the way out of this madness.

It must ha' been ...

There is a curious lull in life right now, last couple weeks were crazy and I was sick which made it worse and suddenly when this week dawned, the frenzy went away...
And as I do with most of my un-frenzied moments I pick up a book that I have wanted to read for a long time, but didn't because the time was not right. Last such lull got me thru Swann's Way. This time is it good ol' DHL.
He (or his characters) talk at length about love, most despise it. The book is of a time when the industrial revolution was new, and romanticism had been replaced by world weary cynicism. Idealists and puritans fought over what is the crux of the relationship between man and women was ...
In a conversation one of Clifford's high brow friends exclaims

"I like talking to women, and when I know a woman thru a
conversation the desire vanishes. I cannot have sex with a woman I have a conversation with."

It baffled me as it baffled Connie, she has a very holistic view of love and sex .... a view which drives her to and contradictorily, also away from the gamekeeper. All encompassing view of a person, and of love, someone without boundaries, within and without.

It is idealistic and a little naive, or is it wise? To know that one cannot compartmentalize one's angelic and animalistic urges, and it is possible to love someone with all of you, or maybe until all of you loves someone something, it is not really love?

And what is love anyway? Like Auden says, is it a selfish exposition of the way it makes 'you' feel? is it what you want? is it what you give? is it desire? tenderness? passion? or all of them together? how much of it is you and how much of it is the one you love? or it is the connection between the two people, a connection that transcends explanation, understanding? It is as Joesph Campbell says, a way to experience something greater than you and your loved one, it is knowing that the whole is much much more than sum of parts?

I am not thru yet, thru the book I mean, it evokes in me a faint understanding of what it is like to be in love. Though that love is no more and I see clearly the faults, I know that it was love.

And perhaps for the first time in my life truly understand what they mean when they say 'don't cry because it is over, be glad it happened.'

Are we there yet?

I realize I like this thing, this thing called going older. I don't know how many of us have this experience. No, not of getting older, I am sure the entire human race has this experience, where they watch their mortal body reach its peak and then start to decay. It is a sad thing to watch, because it is very human, this penchant for not noticing the reaching of the peak and being at the peak, it is when the body starts dropping away from the peak, that one thinks of it, and then the mourning sets in.
The experience I spoke of earlier is not that of noticing or mourning the body’s decay. It is the experience of knowing myself, I find myself noticing my reactions. Most of these reactions accompany a feeling of Deja Vu, especially the strongest ones. When I say reaction, I am talking of a response that occurs without you thinking about it. The flush of anger, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, butterflies too. As my senses react to someone, some incident and my thinking mind says,
"Ah ha- caught you!"
And then they both proceed to laugh.

As I attempt to describe what happens inside me, I find myself personifying these thinking and feeling parts of my being. Sometimes I like to think of them as my conscious and subconscious, one thinks and the other reacts because it feels. With every attempt to explain what I mean, the feeblity of this language drives home. But for now, this will have to do.
Back to the two parts of the being, they drive each other, argue sometimes over who gets to dictate my reaction, but as I get older, I find them more in accord, as though they signed a peace treaty.

Thinking back on my late teens, and early to mid -twenties, I passed years in a funk! A funk introduced by a series of reactions - enamored by a concept, or a person, crushing mind and body to achieve a principle. I operated out of the subconscious, feeling, experiencing, part of my being. Everything, well almost everything was a reaction. Very little was understood, everything was experienced. I guess you need to be young to take on that mode of being; you are always out of balance. But, by golly, you are alive!

It is different now, I react, and participate and live, but my thinking mind is ever present, part of me is always centered.
It is amusing to watch yourself get off kilter and then recover, the recovery gets faster and faster as I get older, and a sometimes, I can actually watch the stimulus, and smile without reacting to it. It is like my unconscious and conscious mind are stand facing the situation like co-conspirators. It is an epiphany , every single time it happens!
Sometime I ponder, what has this self knowledge brought me, do I live better by standing at the edge of the precipice and not jumping in? Where is the experience, what happened to being alive, to living? You can theorize all you want but until you jump, you never know what joy or terror is…
This is when I get a peak at the answer; the next step to self knowledge is to reacting with knowledge. To jump from the precipice with full knowledge. Choosing when you jump, choosing the experience because you want to, rather than being thrown into it willy nilly by a herd of stampeding hormones or fears or hopes and dreams.
And I do jump. And it is so much better than being thrown in …
They say life is a journey, a journey whose purpose is not the destination, but the journey itself. Anyday now, I will understand that and stop saying, Are we there yet?
Till then, I will continue my walk towards the horizon.

French men ...

In one of its weirder moments, windows live offered this article up to me:

French men don't get caught
In America, a lapse in monogamy ruins marriages, bankrupts couples, and condemns families to divorce-court hell. In Europe and elsewhere, infidelity is considered a bump in the road, if it's considered at all. Here's why.
By Jardine Libaire, Best Life

With the world largest divorce rate, where over half that marriages end in divorce ( 17% of them cite infidelity as the reason). It is a very interesting topic.
There are a few interesting hypothesis offered.

First Americans have higher expectation of marriages

In the ideal American marriage today, we are told to look to
one person for everything—sexual, spiritual, financial, intellectual,
emotional—we need. It might be that the way our perception of marriage has
evolved leaves little room for marriage to thrive.

So because we want have such lofty ideas, the marriage is pre-destined to failure?

Second Most Americans think of a heightened sense of autonomy as a threat or an abnormality.

We compulsively look to media, to society, to our partners for our own
self-esteem, without ever stopping to wonder how our self-worth ended up in
someone else's hands.

This carries a little more weight with me, as long as you are looking for that someone else to complete you, you are bound to failure. However it is the presumption that Europeans have an edge over Americans in their ability to reckon with one's own soul, that irks me.

Third Most other countries women have lower powers.

..in other countries women have fewer rights. Men cheat, and women have no
leverage to stop them or to complain. It's not a matter of tolerance but of
unequal freedoms. He reminds me that in some countries, women are stoned to
death for adultery.

Even as I wince at this one, I know it to be true. Not for Europeans however. So there is that.


All in all an interesting read, some holes, but this is a tricky area to offer theories on, and it is very American to offer theories and recognize pattern definitely. Next time you are at a book store ( or at amazon) look at the number of books that will help you detect that your mate is cheating.
Maybe the question is what fidelity is and what is love, Is it too much pressure for your spouse to be your soul mate? it is normal for a human being to be monogamous, is it the price to pay for the security of a marriage?
Maybe it is….

Google?

Uma, what do you want to do for the science fair this year?
Can we do Crystal growing thing again, mom?
You already did that last year, how about i go do some research and get you a list of things you could do?
OK, mom. Mom, I can tell you how to do your research?
Yeah? How?
You can Google 'science projects for elementary school'. I am sure you'll find some great ideas!

This has to be it. Google has so arrived! My seven year old is recommending it now!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=elementary+school+science+fair+project+ideas

Corporate Athlete?

Work is tiring.
I am in a business where I do not have to move from my chair very often, the biggest energy expenditure of a typical day is a stroll down to a conference room or to the cafeteria for a meeting or a meal. Yet, at the end of the day I often feel like I have run a half marathon. I am exhausted.
When not at work, I usually find myself hiding under a rock, engaging in activities like painting, running, gardening, cooking, cleaning... most of them have very low people interaction requirements. My friends and relatives complain, we never hear from you!!
Early in my working career I made a rule, weekends are for recovery. A time to re-group and be ready for the next week. I have been working for the past 12 years, without a break and I have found that every time I break the rule, I head for a serious burnout. So, at the cost of having people hate me, I don't engage in catching up on the phone on the if the week was particularly brutal. As a friend would say, if I use up my 'quota' of words at work, I wait till the next week for the quota to renew.
This week has been especially harrowing. I was out on a business trip for the first three days of the week, the flying and customer visit and the sense of every free moment spent talking about work surrounded by my colleagues, had me ready to collapse by beginning of Friday, when I run into this article.

"The Making of a Corporate Athlete" Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz ( HBR, Jan 2001)

Sustained high achievements demands physical and emotional strength as well as a sharp intellect. To bring mind, body and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world class athletes already know: recovering energy is as important as expending it.

The High Performance Pyramid
Peak performance in business has often been presented as a matter of sheer brainpower but we view performance as a pyramid. Physical well-being is its foundation. Above that rests the emotional health, then mental acuity and at the top, a sense of purpose. The ideal performance state- peak performance under pressure - is achieved when all levels are working together.

Rituals that promote oscillation- the recovery of energy- link the levels of the pyramid.

They promote rituals as a way of creating the oscillations that take you between expending and recovering energy.
If executives are to perform at high levels over long haul, they have to train in the same systematic multilevel way that world-class athletes do.

The message is clear. I need to concentrate on recovery and built it into my daily routine. Not wait for the weekend, make the cycle shorter and consciously recognize when I am flagging, learn and train to institute cycles of recovery. The simile, awkwardly is weight lifting:
it involves stressing the muscle to a point where the fibers literally start to break down. Given an adequate period of recovery the muscle will not only heal, it will grow stronger. Conversely failure to stress the muscle results in weakness and atrophy. In both cases the enemy is not stress, it is linearity- the failure to oscillate between energy expenditure and recovery.

Here's to working in Corporate America, and surviving it !

Denim so distressed...

it is distraught...

- from A& F

Who, me?

met a few new people tonight, they were not very new, just new to me ...
It isn't very often I ponder my affiliations, but tonight I did. I am an immigrant, in this shiny land of plenty. Where I come from there isn't much, but it is my own land and tonight I wondered about how far I had come along in this journey. Many thousands of miles, in time and in space and the place where I am now is not quite the land I came from, and yet I am not ready to call this sparkling place my home. Not yet. Will I ever? And more importantly, will I ever be ready to call the land I left, not my home anymore? I know the land I left lives on in my mind and sometimes I wonder if it lives just in my mind? Was it ever really there? And the place that I am in now, what is it? it not very sparkly from where I sit... how many roads do I still need to travel before I reach my home? is it a distance I can make? for it is really a distance in my mind. Maybe I am already home, I always have been, I just need to be able to make others see it, the way I see it.

Happy New Year

Much of what happens in history", [Taleb] notes, "comes from 'Black Swan dynamics', very large, sudden, and totally unpredictable 'outliers', while much of what we usually talk about is almost pure noise. Our track record in predicting those events is dismal; yet by some mechanism called the hindsight bias we think that we understand them. We have a bad habit of finding 'laws' in history (by fitting stories to events and detecting false patterns); we are drivers looking through the rear view mirror while convinced we are looking ahead"