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January 6, 2005

Happy Birthday Dude !! – AR Rahman

As South Asians took root around the world and their local movie culture avidly followed them, one could hear Rahman’s music even if it didn’t puncture the consciousness: as background music in restaurants and posh stores, in the very beat of certain neighborhoods, and of course in the movies that occasionally broke out of Desi ghettos. Lagaan, the insurgent epic centered on an Anglo-Indian cricket match, was nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. Again Rahman’s work went uncited — though not, by Western film cultists, unappreciated. As they discovered India’s pop cinema, they realized that along with the ferocious emoting and delirious dances, there was a master composer — the man Indians call the Mozart of Madras.

The column of Richard Corliss, That Old Feeling: Isn’t It Rahmantic?, appears to be a timely one. A fantastical testimonial of AR Rahman and his timeless compositions. A must read for Rahmaniacs on his b’day.

My bit is here. On a hot sunny afternoon, walking by the crowded streets of Tambaram, I stop by the corner of the road for a synthesised music blaring from an audio shop. I could even identify ABBA, Jackson, Eagles and Carpenters before that. But this music was soothing and very different. I’m not making nay comparions here. No exaggeration. True. Someone on the audioshop said the composer was a 25yr old guy. I bought the cassette not for the music but for Mani Ratnam. It was Roja. The year was 1992.

Since then I’ve been mesmerized by AR Rahman for good and never turned back. If I were to know a Rahman music album got released, I bought it blindly. I never bothered the crew and the cast. If it was Rahman, the cassette was mine. I even bought music of movies like Andhi Malai which never released. And yeah I closely followed ARR music release schedules. Would have posted them here if only there were blogs in 1995.

Rahman still continues to inspire a generation of people , around the world(is that politically right?) who are transfixed to his musical chords. And we should be pleased that a unassuming dude from Chennai is making the world dance to his HUMMA HUMMA.
January 6, 2005

A $100 TRY[Tsunami Relief and You]

This isn’t a spoof of CRY[Child Relief and You] but just a similar naming which flashed me while I was driving to office this morning.

If you appreciate this TRY[Tsunami Relief and You] and would love to use this name for you Tsunami Relief fund, go ahead. Pay me a $100 which I would donate back to TRY itself. Howzaaaat ?
January 5, 2005

State of Blogging

The US media is now bloated with the news about Blogs. A survey by PEW Inernet & American Life Project named as State of Blogging[PDF] in America, has done all the good to float the news about blogs and their mammoth growth in the year 2004.

Interestigly the report conveys,

Blog creators are more likely to be:
Men: 57% are male (An older report says bloggers are mostly women)
Young: 48% are under age 30
Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees

And as BBC sums it up –

Blogging in America –
Blog readership has shot up by 58% in 2004
Eight million have created a blog
27% of online Americans have read a blog
5% use RSS aggregators to get news and other information
12% of online Americans have posted comments on blogs
Only 38% of online Americans have heard about blogs

In India, its still a long way to go. In the urban India, we desperately need broadband available, broadly and ofcourse cheaply. Then let’s teach the kindergarten kids about googling. Even if they start blogging at 3rd grade, we can have some classy writers at teens. We are awfully short of children literature in India. In Tamil, the genre of Tamil Children literature is nearly extinct. Probably those teenage bloggers can bring that genre back to life. I dream of that.
January 4, 2005

My Sulekha Sojourn

I don’t frequent Sulekha anymore. Not like how I was hooked onto it four years back. Initially when I discovered Sulekha online in late 2000, it was a dream website to me. Then Sulekha was still growing and wasn’t as big as now.

Until 2001, I didn’t even know a word called Weblog existed on the internet. Then, Sulekha was my haunt. I went back again and again because Sulekha had writings of Indian Diaspora with whom I could relate to. It wasn’t like a column nor it was like an email sent by a friend. Its writings were somewhere in-between and were truly classy. To think back, sub-consciously, Sulekha was a big inspiration for me to start blogging. I never wrote anything on Sulekha but admired the writings. Newshopper and Coffee house where the places of my interest. Newshopper had the best of Indian news items that never weren’t headlines but were just good opinions.

These days Sulekha is cluttered and full of ads sprinkled. The good writing is lying there somewhere but then who has enough time to dig them out. Their weblogs section really needs a re-org desperately. To put it simply, they have just too many information on a single page and they are trying to sell them hard. A part of the right side is devoted to those gif advertisements which keep blinking at unexpected intervals and keep pestering click here…click here for those cheap $5 phone cards. Sulekha have grown over the period and probably this financial model is doing well for them. In this internet age of Weblog boom and neatly designed websites, they probably should also look into designing their site, uncluttered.

The point here is that, while googling for the Giggles bookstore, I came across this article, The Chennai Sojourn, written by Ranga Rangarajan. Yet another Sulekha gem. This, I believe this is a work of non-fiction though only the writer can say what percentage of fiction is involved. However, Rangarajan brings in front the contemporary Chennai that I see everyday. His observations finest and his detailing very vivid. As someone pointed out in the comments there is a sad undercurrent throughout the article but that only makes it a engrossing read. Do read.
January 3, 2005

Devar ‘Oscar’ Magan

Was watching Devar Magan yesterday on the SUN. It was as gripping as it was on the first watch. Also yesterday we had a visitor who kept saying that Devar Magan would have grabbed an Oscar in the foreign film category if not for the silly mistake that was made. Kamal Hassan, the Devar’s son didn’t shave his head and his moustache after his father’s demise and that was considered as inappropriate by the Oscar recommendation committee. Because as the Devar community custom, a son should tonsure during the last rites. I know that this is a silly hearsay that we keep hearing.

He was probably not aware of the dynamics behind Oscar recommendation and the lobbying that happens to make the Oscar committee to watch a movie. We saw that happening with Aamir and Ashutosh for their Lagaan. But it stunned me that he was so sure that about the fact(?!) and kept harping on that.

Few other situations that this rumour was in circulation were – Kamalhassan not shaving his armpit hair as a male dance in Salangai Oli( this hair issue seems to come in rounds), Tinu Anand using his dead father’s pistol in Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan as pistols should not be given to the family of dead policemen.

I ask the same question again, why do we need to send movies for Oscars Awards and also expect it as an critical acclaim for Indian movies. Moreover such excuses for not be awarded an Oscar seems to become a serious joke.

Happy Birthday Dude !! – AR Rahman

A $100 TRY[Tsunami Relief and You]

State of Blogging

My Sulekha Sojourn

Devar ‘Oscar’ Magan