Simply Thought

Old Memories Ignited

2011-10-11T14:56:00.000+01:00

The passing away of Jagjit Singh, and a conversation about him with my friend Sanjib Ganguly last evening, rekindled some fond old memories. “Jagjit ko sun kar gham ghalat kiya karte they”. “Bahut saath diya tha Jagjit ne apna.” :-)

Those were the days when Jagjit Singh played in our room for most of our awake time. There wasn’t much gham then, just that we would make ourselves ghamgeen to immerse into his rendered ghazals. Animated lyrics from his ghazals often barged into our conversations, usually with humorous effect. There was no situation to which Jagjit could not be applied then.

My collecton of Jagjit, which wasn’t too bad, sadly got misplaced one of the times I was to travel abroad. That was also the time when the world had started to move away from Cassettes-CDs to mp3s, and as life got faster paced, melancholic ghazals started to take a back seat for me as well. Post ‘Sarfarosh’, I hardly listened to any ghazals anymore, I still cannot reason why.

Ask me ever to sing a song (not that you would want to ask), and I can bet you will get to hear ‘Yeh Zindagi Aaj Jo Tumhari’ from the album ‘Insight’. As a collection, ‘Face to Face’ remains undoubtedly one of my all time favourite albums; every ghazal equally pleasing, not one of them out of place.

Here’s wishing Peace to the Melodious Maestro’s soul. He may be no more, but his soothing immortal voice will continue to live with us and bring us joy for ages to come.

Blog focused on Ads

2011-09-06T18:45:00.000+01:00

I have created another blog, focused on Indian Advertisements. Please visit http://ad-quotient.blogspot.com/. This blog 'Simply Thought' will continue to be updated, probably more frequently than what it has been so far. Please keep coming back.

To Tea or Not To Tea

2011-08-18T13:00:00.002+01:00

I am off to England with a bottle of Cinnamon essence, to experience the tranquil of the hills of Darjeeling. Do I seem like I have gone mad? Mad I was, with the experience I had. Never had one given me an explanation this lame, so confidently. I was laughing (at the explanation) and crying (on being the chosen one to receive it), at the same time.

There's a coffee shop near my place that I believe in patronizing. One, it is a good concept - coffee and coffee table books, together with good stuff to munch on, in a relaxed minimalist setup. Two, it was an entrepreneurial venture - who knows it could have been me behind the counter trying my hand with Espresso. Almost for the last 2 years since it was founded, and since I found it out, I have been a regular there - most of the baristas recognize me, or so I guess.

Today, for a change, I thought of trying some tea, something I usually prefer over coffee, unless I am in a coffee shop that is. It was a debate between the aroma of Darjeeling against the strength of Assam. After lengthy deliberation that only tea lovers are capable of, aroma won over strength and I opted for the D-Tea, specially brewed to get the flavour of Darjeeling.

To say I was taken aback to see that the 'special brew' was only a tea bag in hot water is an understatement. But what really got me mad was that the tea bag read 'English Breakfast'. For so much of deliberation and anticipation, I was served an 'English Breakfast' tea bag under the guise of 'special brew Darjeeling'. Any guesses what would have been different if I had opted for 'speacial brew Assam' instead?

Not the one to let go such lapses, I checked with the Barista what would have been different if I had ordered Assam tea.

He : "The flavour sir".
Me : "Fine then, and I suppose it would be the tea bag that gives it the flavour"
He : "No sir, the tea bag would have been the same". The series of lies start here.
Me : "So is it the water that adds to the flavour?"
He : "No sir, both the tea bag and the water are the same in both teas, only the flavour is different"
Me : "So, something has to introduce the flavour. If it is not the tea or the water, and since sugar was already at my table, can you please tell me what is making my tea 'Darjeeling'?"
He (pointing to a counter) : "Sir, the flavour is kept there. I added it when 'preparing' the tea"
Me : "So you added it to the water?"
He : "Yes sir, I added it to the water."
Me : "Please can you show it to me, and also show me the one you add to make it 'Assam'."
He (pulling out a bottle from under the counter) : "Sir, I think we have finished the Assam flavour, this one is for Darjeeling."

And there it was, a bottle of Cinnamon. To rest any doubts that the label did not read what was inside the bottle, I reconfirmed that it was actually Cinnamon that he added to make my tea 'Darjeeling'. And would I not know if there was even a minute trace of Cinnamon in my drink?

Well then, am I ever returning to this coffee shop? But of course, why would I not? But before you think I have actually lost my senses to go back to them, let me tell you, I am returning to let my displeasure known to those who run it. They can't take their customers for granted, at least not me.

Phir Miley Sur

2010-01-29T05:30:00.000Z

I have always felt about authors that their first successful book is usually their best. The sequels are mostly an attempt to cash in on the fame from the original, trying to milk every possible penny that the original thought or concept was ever worth. The same applies to movies too - how many times you may load and reload 'The Matrix', can the sequels ever get more original than the original?

'Phir Miley Sur' is another case in point. For someone who can still recite (right or wrong) the original lyrics in most of the languages it was sung, in almost the same sequence that it was played, and recall most of the 'Icons of India' who contributed to the original, Phir Miley Sur was a huge disappointment, to say the least. The original composition had a message, a meaning, a sequence, the right representation, and a passion in rendering the message through. The duplicate is just a lame commercial excuse of a copied message, with no representation and absolutely no passion.

To start with, did you ever know who produced the original; honestly, did you even care? It was the messsage that mattered then, and the fact that it was on the lips of everyone who had seen or heard it once. The makers of 'Phir Miley Sur' of course are all over the TV, appropriating credit and free fame to cash from the original. What else explains a full day coverage of 'Making of Phir...." on Zoom, when they did not even put enough thought into getting the representation right?

So what was wrong with the representation? Firstly, there is more to India than just Bollywood. If it was only the tunes of Bollywood that met, it made sense, but the spattering of 'icons' from other walks of life makes one feel that the rest of India is miniscule in comparison. And whoever said India was the World's largest democracy, with a growing industry; a sporting nation, rich in art, culture and scientific research?

Amitabh Bachchan, who probably is the only link between the old and new forms of 'Miley Sur', obviously does not need to justify his Icon status, but watching Abhishek And Aishwarya romancing to the song, sounded like a retake of the silly Lux ad they air these days. May I ask what special Aishwarya or Abhishek have done to represent the country? Or for that matter Priyanka Chopra, Shahid Kapur, Karan Johar or Deepika Padukone? Both Khans - Salman and Amir - had positive messages to give, but none that no one else could have given. And the third Khan, Shahrukh, should be thanked for agreeing to shoot in a Mumbai backdrop and for not insisting on a Swiss locale for integrating India. Ideally, the three Khans (with the fourth Saif, who was conspicuously missing) could have shared screen space to proclaim aloud 'bury your hatchets, think integration'.

Can we forget the role of industry in the nation's growth? Where are the NRNs, Nandans and the Premjis that a host of Indians look up to? Or can you forget cricket which binds the nation like even Fevicol can't? It was disappointing not to see a Tendulkar, a Sourav or a Dravid, that a plethora of young and old try to emulate in cricket and outside of it. And did we not forget Vishy Anand, Leander Paes, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Major Rajyavardhan Ratore, Abhinav Bindra et al. What about the likes of Abdul Kalam who still ignite the sparks in the minds of the nation's future. Politicians are a different brood, but could not the Icons of the major parties stand together for once, to give a message of unity?

Fine, the makers got the representation they could best muster. But could they have not got these 'representatives' to show more passion than drama? For the likes of Aish-Abhi, Deepika, Shahrukh and Priyanka this seemed to be a platform to continue showing their dramatics; their expressions sorely out of tune with the message. Compare this with a non-glamorous Bala Murali Krishna or a Lata Mangeshkar or a Kapil Dev, who in spite of being non-actors, did complete justice when it came to showing their passion.

'Phir Miley Sur' - the name itself sounds so sore. So the tunes meet again? What tunes? The musical improvization at every nook and corner, and the drama in expressing it, make it so much out of tune with the simplicity of the original, that one begs to scream 'where is the Sur?'! And have we been out of sync all these years till someone decided to bring us all together again? Did anyone ever hear the original being called 'Miley Sur'? There was no need to brand the song those days, it was the message that mattered; what has changed now?

I may seem to be romanticizing the past, but the makers of the sequel seemed to have grossly missed the point in understanding what originally touched the hearts of millions of ordinary Indians like me.

Beeecause beeecause.....

2010-01-27T17:00:00.000Z

Finally, after months of slumber, I make a comeback to the blogscene.

It took me ages to get started, and only a couple of months thence to pause. Somewhere in my short blogger's life I underwent a severe writer's blog ('block' said in Malyalam). Thoughts were plenty, just that they didn't find an expression. Many blogs were mentally written, almost one everyday; what was missing was the meeting of the fingers with the keyboard to type them out. There were a few that got typed too, but then never got published. I revive one such 'draft', with the promise to myself, and the hope, that I will continue to publish my thoughts.

I love to speak of the real incident below. It may sound a bit of a cliche to those who have heard it from me. But then, if you are one of those who heard it, I am sure you are one of those who wouldn't mind hearing it again. :-) And if you are one of those, to whom I hadn't had the opportunity to narrate this earlier, please read it for yourself.

Original draft written a few months back
Picture this. I come back home all tired after a long day at office. I get rid of my coat and slump in front of the TV trying to catch some breath before proceeding with the rest of the evening. I feel a slight rustle at my feet, someone taking a measure of my shoes. I bend down to see my little daughter Disha trying hard to figure how the lace is to be pulled.

Me: What are you doing sweetheart?

Disha: I am taking your shoes off.

Me: Why are you doing that?

Disha: Beeecause... Beeecause...I want to take it off.

Me: But why do you want to take it off?

Disha: Beeecause... Beeecause...... "I love you sooo.... much!".

Could the evening have got any better?

Making more sense

2009-03-19T00:30:00.003Z

On your marks, get, set and go
The gunshot seemed to have told us so
We started running our respective run
We were all running the marathon.

Started off the blocks, from the word 'Go'
Rules of the race kept changing though
Laps got added as I ran
Behind me was not a single man.

Running on this track I was the master
But everyone seemed so much faster
Running around was so much ease
But why is everyone ahead please?

High time, I thought, I raised my gear
To a level no one else could bear
But why cannot I go for the kill
Oh am I not running the treadmill!

Woken up thankfully from my dream
On this message light threw its beam
If there's something to make more sense
Only change the frame of your reference.

Profound Babble

2009-02-28T02:04:00.001Z

Not so long ago I stood in a queue
Happy without any hesitation,
Drenched in the rain waited for a train
Always so late at the station,
Times were then slow, oh so mellow
There wasn't a News caused sensation.

Lives now differ, the clocks seem stiffer
That something has caught my attention,
Running a race, getting further into a maze
Now the favoured occupation,
Crime and War, and binging at the bar
Seems to be the state of every nation.

Pondering the case, dizzied by the pace
I sought a doctor's prescription
The doctor's advice, stop running like the mice
You only need bit relaxation
Take the chill pill and pay up the bill
Just forget you had an affliction.

Why pay the bill, doctor making a kill
Is there any justification,
Pay up and you leave, hurry, patients I receive
I am in no better situation,
A costly medicine, but went home with a grin
Impatience wasn't it my creation.

Disclaimer:
The lines that I write, let make your day so bright,
Else the poem has no rhyme or reason

Written entirely in a lighter vein. Not meant to mean much. Thanks for reading through.

Takes Three to Samba

2009-01-27T21:05:00.027Z

I am a dance aficionado. Don't get misled by the word; I am not another rising Brazilian soccer star in the horizon, preparing to crash my 2 days old, quid 200,000 Ferrari, walking away unscathed from it, only to replace it with a quid 350,000 Rolls. On the contrary, I cannot even afford crashing a 2 decade old INR 2,000 Bajaj Chetak scooter without having to face up with the consequences. No no.... this does not have to do with football at all. Its all about Salsa, as the title suggests; and I am a dance aficionado.

There are forms of dance I have perfected. Did I say 'forms'? I meant one form; I am talking of Bhangra here; the one dance I can dance to perfection, with two hands raised high up in air and kicking one of my feet upwards to see which of these limbs reaches the highest. I mean no offence to my Punjabi friends, but this is my version of Bhangra; perfected with a fractured leg years back. I am an excellent dancer of this version, just a notch better than my good 'old' friend Shoubhik from my B-school days, who would have both his hands and feet reaching up in the air every time he danced. (Name changed to protect his identity, commercial interests, brand value, and most of all to protect the comments page on this blog from his feared PJs). If this description of my dancing abilities was not enough, you only need to go back to read the title of this piece to know how well versed I am with any form of dance.

So, what business do I have writing about dance, of all things, and earning a few Brazilian and Punjabi 'friends', of all people. You got me all wrong....This is not about dance, this is about kompatibility!!!

You read it right! K.O.M.P.A.T.I.B.I.L.I.T.Y.! My Dubya spel cheque says I can at least spell the word write, if not right about it.

Having read about my dancing capabilities, I do not think you would much be interested in reading a junkful paragraph on my relationship credentials. Neither would I want you to know much about it, especially if you happen to be my wife reading this piece. So, let us skip that stuff, and move along with what I have to say about the topic.

What I present here is a formula for compatibility, not just marital (read martial), but for any kind of a team (and I am serious here). To keep it simple I restrict this formula to a 2 member team, but you could complicate and extrapolate it to a team of any size, particularly if the team achieves nothing, and you do not have Dilbert strips at your disposal to troubleshoot.

Please bear with me and accept my sympathies if you have a mathematical bent of mind and find it easy to see logic in any formulae, equations or numbers. I could at best offer help to explain what follows, though I am not too sure you will understand. For others, tadaan tadaan.....

As per Sagar's only law of compatibility,

C = A*B*CosP,

where 'C' is the effectiveness of a relationship. The parameters 'A' and 'B' are respectively the driving force and the driven force. 'P', the most crucial of them, and the most difficult to ascertain, is the Phase difference between the team members. Let me explain further (please, please, please....)

Driving and the Driven Force ('A' and 'B')
I know we are all driven by circumstances more than anything else, but there are times when a fellow team mate (usually your spouse or boss) could kick your rear side to launch you in an orbital path. This is what is the driving force 'A'. This usually comes as a threat, but depending on how positively you perceive it, this could also be termed inspiration. When you are faced by a question like 'What lunch?' (at home),'What raise?' (at work), you know it is the inspirational force 'A'.

Then, there is the driven force 'B', which is a direct measure of your capability (like hunger, desperation), not necessarily proportional to the extent of threat or inspiration from 'A'.

The most crucial parameter 'P'
While forces 'A' and 'B' are both equally important, the phase difference is the most critical of these. Assuming an unchangeable 'A' and 'B' (since we are what we are), it is 'P' that determines how well tuned the members of a team are to one another. 'P' is representative of timing of transactions, more than anything else.

Measured on an angular scale, P varies from 0 to 90 degrees, with 0 the best response and 90 the worst.

To refresh a bit of math, Cos0 = 1 and Cos90 = 0, with intermediate values for intermediate angles.

What the equation (C=A*B*CosP) means then, is that assuming finite potential for each member of a team, the team is the most effective when its members are well tuned to each other. Similarly, irrespective of having the best talent on the team, the net result can be zero (if not negative) if the members are not tuned to each other.

Well, It does take two to tango.

P.S.: Having presented this profound theory of compatibility that, I hope can miraculously change the way you have looked or not looked at relationships, I am on my way to Oslo for the peace prize this year.

Moving on.....

2009-01-25T00:34:00.017Z

Cryptic writing forces one to imagine what is being read. There are interpretations galore depending on the reader's mindset and his/her perceptions of the writer. How much ever fun it could be, one also runs the risk of straying far from the intended message. My intention in the last post wasn't to keep the message ambiguous, but to tickle the reader's mind, and at the same time not sound too opinionated. I was also trying to use myself as the prop to speak for the species I belong. 'Look within' they say; well, I was attempting just that. Here I attempt just the opposite - pointing fingers and wanting to be precise. Heavy stuff as this too may sound, please bear with me.

I claim no expertise in the history of world politics or in the current geo-political situation, and have no desire to take sides between, or be judgemental about, Israel and Palestine. Each of them has its own insecurities and injustices to contend with, and its own justification for its actions. None of them though, justifies the mindless slaughtering of the last few weeks, of civilians in Gaza. With no routes to escape, and with the constant flow of rockets and missiles, death was an inevitable destiny for them. When the world needed to stand as one in abhorring the crime and those who caused and provoked it, sadly the reaction was a show of hypocrisy at its best, led by the uncharacteristic silence of none other than the US, and another failure for the United Nations in intervention. Goes beyond my imagination how the innocent lives of one country become more valuable than those of another; they are all people at the end of it, aren't they?

I hope everyone involved sees folly in the present ways, and finds a solution, bereft of motives of any kind, aimed at making the lives of the common man, irrespective of nationalities, allegiances and beliefs, more valued and honoured.

History is replete with examples of injustices, and in wishing to set few of them right, mankind is not doing any favour to itself. By wanting to play God, we are creating more injustices, pulling ourselves into a time warp that will only end in our extermination. In the interest of mankind, and in the interest of the people living in the present, we need to learn to move on, and strive to make the present world any better than what it was in the past.

It was this thought, along with the religious explanations for killing your own kind, that was playing hard on my mind, in my previous post.

Having explained myself and my cryptic post, it is time for me to move on as well, into other topics of interest and relevance. Stay with me dear readers, and please do leave your comments for what you think of my writing.

I Thought, Therefore I Was

2009-01-15T21:06:00.055Z

Don't know where it all started - some say I have always been there, and some say I was created and dropped here. And then there are a few who think I straightened up on my twos while jumping around on trees plucking fruits, and got my tail chopped and my brains sharpened in the process. Well, one truth prevails, I was different from any thing else that had walked, swum or flew on this planet. I was different that I could think, or so I thought. And I being superior of all, had this onerous task of demistifying life for the rest of the lesser mortals.

I do not remember my origins; there must be a higher force that created me, for I did not have it in my control to create life. In fact, was there anything ever that I could control? The thunder, the lightning, the rain, the fire, the day, the night, there had to be an explanation for it all. I realized how helpless I was and how ignorant. I should have known, since I was the one with brains. I could not see my own ignorance in its face, and so I covered it up by creating the term God; the one being, the one higher force I could associate it all to, and find solace in, and still feel in control, for I created Him.

There was one problem though, I was only a smaller part of MYSELF. There were other parts, each of them with its own explanation of life, and its own definition of God. How could my beliefs ever be true if not the whole of me accepted it? I was prepared to go to any extent to make my beliefs accepted as True. But so was everyone else.

I started to be at discomfort with myself. If I could not convince the whole of me, it probably made sense to make myself the Whole, and with this thought I took to the path of destruction, of eradicating those parts that did not agree with me. What I did not realize though, was that those I had undertaken to eradicate were as much a part of the Whole as I was, and the 'I' would not exist without any of these. In effect, I had become self destructive.

Today I am in no position to explain life, and bereft of it, I am in no position to explain the lack of it either. For all my thought and imagination, between life and death, I still remain as ignorant and unaware as I had begun. If anything, it was my thoughtless imagination that led me from a Being into a Been. I thought therefore I was.