Revolver 41, Part 1

In this article we take a look at The Beatles' Revolver, which turned 40 last year. I started this last year, but then it got too long, and I got too tired, so I shelved it. I'm finishing it now finally, and bringing it out in four part. This one deals with the album's genesis, and talks about Paul McCartney's songs. Revolver...Now that's a name to conjure with. Before Sgt Pepper's, with this 1966 album, the Beatles had already made a bid for immortality. Even if they didn't put out another musical note after that, Revolver, coupled with Rubber Soul, would have preserved their myth. Probably the first batch of pop songs to deserve the epithet 'album', Revolver carried on the exploration of sonic frontiers that had started with Rubber Soul. By '66, the Beatles were happier recording in a studio than performing live. Following a torrid year of stadium shows, death threats, hectic politics and the ever-present wall of screams every time they went on stage had dimmed whatever desire they had of playing live. As George Harrison said countless times in latter interviews, there seemed to be a riot happenning in every city that they toured- be it the US, Japan or the Phillipines. Later that year John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" quote was to lay bare the fine line between mass adulation and hatred. The record burnings in the predminantly white southern Christian evangelical states in the US channelled all the racial tensions on that one quote. It was a dangerous time to be playing in the States, with Civil Rights workers being killed every day and racial bigotry reaching new levels. The Beatles' outspoken critiques of racial segregation at their concerts on one hand and the Vietnam War on the other only added to the fragile situation. They played that entire tour in fear of a sniper in the massed audiences.The Klu Klux Klan threatened to stop their concerts using whatever means possible. This, after facing protests in Japan and the wrath of Imelda Marcos's dictatorial regime in the Phillipines, they were relieved when the last date of the US tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco rolled around. As they revealed in Anthology, they even took pictures, knowing that this was it. Their personal lives were changing as well. The individuals were emerging from the 'four headed monster' that they were in the public conciousness. John Lennon spent more and more time in his Weybridge Mansion, tripping on acid and devouring everything from Allen Ginsberg to the I Ching and the Tibetan Book Of The Dead to Oscar Wilde. Paul McCartney was immersing himself in the London avant garde music scene, playing with tape loops and listening to John Cage and The Beach Boys. George Harrison married, and in between his honeymoon and being a Beatle, became more and more obsessed with Indian music and spirituality. Ringo Starr rested on his laurels, being a family man and raising his son. All of them were, of course, young stars about town, going from clubs like the Speakeasy to the Bag'O'Nails and partying with the who's who of London princes like Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Burdon, Keith Moon and Eric Clapton. Back in the Abbey Road studios before the final round of tours, under the watchful eyes of producer George Martin, they tried to distil everything happening around them into a coherent artistic docuent. The Beach Boys had recently released Pet Sounds. McCartney, for one, was keen to top that. Revolver showcases the full flowering of Macca's songwriting talents at the time. The cello-violin vibe of 'Eleanor Rigby' was a first. It did not sound like a rock song, more like Baroque meeting Pinter. The lyrics plumbed emotional depths unheard of within the contemporary two-minute pop format. 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' seemed like a generation away. Here was a song about a homeless woman and an ennui-ridden priest: "All the lonely people Where do they all belong?" His other songs were gems too. Even Lennon acknowledged the fact that his songwriting partner was writing the better songs. Formal experimentation is probably the best way to describe McCartney's songwriting at the time. There's the wistful paen to his girlfriend Jane Asher 'Here There and Everywhere'. A simple song with a very retro 1920's kind of arrangeent, it highlights McCartney's formidable melodic gifts. Its touching without being trite, one of the best love ongs he ever wrote. Then there's 'Good Day Sunshine' the quintessential Sixties sunshine pop song, with McCartney singing over swinging, swelling piano chords, "I need to laugh, when the sun is out I've got something I can laugh about" Macca revels in the tune and swamps the sound with reverb to ive it a decidedly bloated, foggy haze. As Ian McDonald talks of in his "Revolution in the Head", 'Good Day Sunshine' was probably the first of a number of songs in pop that year celebrating the summer of 1966, which had been a bright hot sunny one. (Hear The Kinks' 'Sunny Afternoonh'; The Stones' 'Paint It Black'; The Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream' among others.) Meanwhile McCartney had still not given in to Lennon and Harrison's enthusiasm for for LSD and his drug of choice was still marijuana. His homage to grass- 'Got To Get You Into My Life' is another highlight on the album. He sings joyously and raucously about his new-found love, " Ooh, when suddenly I see you Ooh I was meant to be near you Say we'll be together everyday Got to get you into my life" Macca always approached drugs expecting profundity. When he smoked his first joint-rolled by Bob Dylan- he decided that he had found the answer to life, the universe and everything- "there are seven levels", he wrote on a scrap of paper. This song is a homage to a love that has lasted him these 40 years. It was also his homage to his other great love- Motown. Like the other three, McCartney was smitten by Americn R&B acts like Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Marvelletes, Marth and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye etc. The loud bouncy bass emulating the sound Motown sessions man James Jamerson was getting out of his instrument, the horns and the high soul vocals are pure Motown. Even Ringo's little backbeat was as crip as 'Dancing In The Street'. And then there's 'For No One', probably one of his most affecting compositions. A poignant love song about absence and loss, McCartney uses his limited knowledge of the piano and turns out a confident descending C progression (being a bass player primarily, McCartney's melodic idea seems plausible) and a beautiful solo by London Philaharmonic trumpetist Alan Civil.

Rented House, Live at the Market

What is it about guitars and the middle class? Rented House played their second gig on Saturday, 13 October. It was marred by neighbours with problems with our "morality", cops who tried to bust us, and sound levels which yo-yoed all over the place. I've been agonising these past two weeks about how to get the music on my blog. Now thanks to our friend Emmanuel who hosted the show on his server all the way out in Kent State University, here's the music. That's the best I can do right now.
The stories will follow in the next post.
Enjoy.

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~edechena/rehearsal.htm

The set list:
Caravan (Soundcheck)
Mystery Train
Lovin' Cup
It don't mean a thing (If it aint got that swing)
China Cat Sunflower/ I Know You Rider
Sweet Sue
Moondance
Minor Swing
John Henry
Holiday
Folsom Prison Blues/ That's All Right (Mama)
Bird Song/ Dear Prudence
Memphis Tennessee...and then there were cops
Manha De Carnival
Sweet Virginia
Route 66....
....And the cops came again...and we had to end.

Reds, Whites and Sicilians

When the chef says “Capiche” and then points his finger at you cheerfully and says “bang bang”, you somehow guess that he is either from New York or is an Italian. Quite marvelously, not only did the chef turn out to be an Italian and a Sicilian to boot, but from Corleone! Happy Enzo (even the name was perfect) is THE mafia cook you’d want to cast in your favourite mafia movie technicolour daydream fantasy masterpiece ever. Not only does he animatedly move his hands as if he’s trying unsuccessfully to conjure up a butterfly, but he also has this deadly habit of shifting from a cheery, goofy grin to dead seriousness, short of pulling a gun from his apron.
This happy man was one of my hosts at the launch of a Sicilian wine brand, Calatrasi, yesterday. The other man was another Sicilian- the Don Vito to Enzo’s Luca Brasi- the urbane, “ciccatore” pronouncing owner of Calatrasi. I resisted the urge to whisper “Carabinieri” at him, out of a nagging suspicion that he might make a dash for it…Come to think of it, there’s a CBI-Interpol conference happening in the city. Wonder what the spooks are up to?
Anyways, back to the launch. The Indian businessmen at the do- partners in Calatrasi’s Indian odyssey- were suitably bland, as if they thought the assembled journos expected them to be bland. Which is probably true, as the journos
a) didn’t know about wines- some didn’t even drink
b) didn’t give a damn and
c) had an Englishman in their ranks- which was funny cause his paper had sent him to cover this shindig as he was a foreigner.
So they all disappointed the good Dr. Antonio (as Vito called himself) by showing no interest whatsoever in Corleone, or in the Sicilian palate. So he had this strange conversation with himself:
“You’ve all seen ze Godfather, si?”
Silence. Some people nodding their heads knowingly.
“Ah so, don’t be afraid of the mafia.”
Drunken titters. Anxious Indian partners looking at their watches, or at the women.
“They are gone, poof, vanished, mamma mia!”
Since he threw up his hands in a conjuring gesture- and with a mic in his hands, looked like a slim Phil Collins – when he said this, one of the more inebriated lady journos winked at him and grinned invitingly. Which probably threw him a bit for he said,
“Indian women are like Sicilian women, si, very jealous.”
And then,
“In Sicily, we respect the mafia.”
Silence again, so he hastily added,
“But no more!”
“They are not heros, they betray us!”
I thought his passion was going to make him cry at the betrayal. I half expected the gates of the restaurant to be locked and machine gunners let loose in retribution. But all that happened was a happy Sardar asking him, if the Dr. had been paid hush money to say this.
The audience giggled, the Englishman gulped down his second white wine and reached for a red. I hastened to emulate him. Never forget your priorities.
Later on, post lunch and the general industry-media bonhomie, I was trying to set up a photo shoot of the wines along with suitable food. Enter Enzo, and his translator Debashish. Debashish is the top chef of the restaurant- Tapas bar at the Vasant Continental- and joshingly kept saying “Godfather bam bam!” to the bemused Enzo, who sometimes looked like he was going to attack Debashish with a bit of pasta. Inbetween all that, Debashish found the time to confirm that I was a Bengali, and proceeded to be helpful. Times like these, I wonder who needs the Sicilians, certainly not the Bongs! We’ve several secret codes of our own! Anyways, it all got done between me and Enzo having fine incomprehensible conversations with each other- at one point he dangled his hand like a sword over his head and then stuffed a nostril with some parsely- and drank copious quantities of Terre di Ginestra (a fine full-bodied red, so I was told, and also the most expensive of the three). Enzo was happy with my choice, and grew redder with wine with every passing minute…good show, in all, right down to a bottle of white “with compliments from…”
P.S. The Englishman had long retired hurt and had rushed back to his office for a piss.
P.P.S. Vito was suavely chatting up some girl at a televised interview (also drinking copiously).
P.P.P.S. Debashish could not convince me to stay while he cooked me “special” lunch, so he was joshing Enzo again, who in turn was posing for my photographer Shekhar, with a plate of pasta in one hand, and a glass of red in the other, looking very much the regular Roman orgy-retiree.
P.P.P.P.S. Its all true, though some stuff is cleverly manipulated.
P.P.P.P.P.S. The wines were excellent, and cheap too!

The Dance

An old tune fades into being
Those silver stairs fade back into being
The cigarettes are relit
And forgotten
As lovers sigh and fall to passion
The skeleton piano keeps pace
The bass muscles its way
Into the velvet night
Up step the horns
And the reign of sound is renewed
Will you come to me now?
Send a shiver down my soul
And fling me to the sky
A million stars glitter and fall
Are reborn
A call to arms then
The night throbs with electricity
As the tenor blows blows
Snake on horn man
Slither across rooms
Down eager fingers
Waft gently from parted lips
Flow down breasts heavy with desire
Through fine hairs
Explode into starlight
Be the world, the universe
Endless
Flow like tears in the rain
Clad your ship in the sails of darkness
Burn lamps to light the way


The cadences fall
The misty beat of cymbals grow silent
As a new melody is prepared
A call to the night birds from their nests
And moths to flames
The long forgotten knight of the east awakens
Under a silver moonrise
Shades dance a slow number
The white and black keys
Tumble down the wells
In swelling waves of sound

Dance with me love
Dance away death, ruin
Dance the jig of life
Dance the dance of beauty out of time
Dance with me love
A dance of wild steps
Quick pirouettes

Blow man blow!

This last dance holds all creation
In the palm of my hands
In my wild hair
In the sweat, the pain
Come dance
Gather your breath, move slow

Foreheads touch, arms encircle
The heat remains
Come taste my skin
As we sway down the floor of the night


Whisper
Breath
In
My
Eyes
Mist envelops my mind
As the skeleton crew gives up the tune
And the tenor man gives a final blow
And is still

The lights go out, the stars are dim
Exhausted we lie
In each other’s arms
A new day will arise, passing fair
A day of soft, velvet mornings
We’ll remember the night
And the graceful dance of the nyads
The dance of the dervishes
A kind of blue

-Beq

Friends

I was just reading Sue's blog about all the people she knows who've left the country and have left her that much poorer. It strange when that happens to people, especially when some of the people leaving are close friends.
Nothing such as this has happened to me. Almost none of my closest friends have gone abroad, and yet so many are away. Some are right here but we don't talk much. But I guess that doesn't matter.
In the beginning there was Rajah. We became freinds when we were in school and quite inseparable ones at that. Mostly people found him difficult, pompous, self-obsessed. But show me one teenager who isn't. But what was cool about him was that he was interesting. He had this innate sense of style that was unapologetic and an intelligence that shone through his shades. We loved the Beatles, we hated the Stones, we rapped Kerouac to each other and shared books. We smoked our first cigarettes together, rolled the first joints, drank the first beers. What a guy, I hope every kid has such a friend to grow up with. Today I don't even know where he is. He's been missing for the last six years or so. It would be fair to say we drifted apart. While I opted for the cool joys of JU and Rajah took some disastrous career decisions. He was unhappy and lonely, while I was enjoying myself too much to care. So he fell off the map, and today I doubt he'd want to know me. I don't know if I'd want to know him either. I'm scared of who he might not be. So there's that.
Then there was Arj. He was the sleeping partner in the triumverate at school of which me and Rajah were the other members. He was the loosest cause he loved people so much, and people loved him back. He was easily the most popular guy in school by the sheer dint of his personality. He never held any posts, did not have any myths about a lady-killer(though he was that as well) and he was the most wonderfully random boy to talk to. You could rap about anything with him, and he'd match you blow for imaginative blow. He laughed uproariously, gave nicknames to people weirder than what I could think up, loved Douglas Adams. Its even unfair to begin to describe him. When I went to JU, he left for Presidency, and we formed our rival gangs of cool people, which loved having wild parties with each other. And so he is today, an MBA later, an executive in Bombay, who I believe in the heart of hearts, doesn't really give a damn. He continues to love and be loved, and I miss him and his madness. These days, he even has a secretary!!
Then Boz. Ah Boz! What a collossus of the imagination! He is the one person I know who was so desperate to have a lost weekend that he literally codeined himself to a weekend-long stupor from which he emerged on a Monday in college with his tattered sports bag, and his mad scientist hair and his dusty jeans and his scruffy beard looking like a Jerry Garcia of the Indian night. We were great pals in school and that friendship deepened into a form of unconcious telepathy when in college. Chewing his lips, shaking his head vigorously, making mad dashes across 2000 km to woo some girl, making a mythic monster of his nice dog to scare us, going into the sea in the buff in Goa to meet the dolphins...ah where do I stop. He started out a rocker, with his cheap Fender copy reading "Mark (Knopfler) and I", decided that we didn't appreciate Chinese tones, and so chucked it all to seriously get into photography. Today he's finishing off as a cinematographer in FTII, and making promises to come meet me and go to Manali for some hash! All the while he's dodging adoring women, proposing drunkenly and running away the next day, helping yet other women find their roots...he is the candle!
And now Rudder. I hated him for a while as a freshman. He had the temerity to say REM were better than the Beatles! But it was a ruse, really, when all he wanted to do was do cool things and have sex. He metamorphosed into a kind of living fertility symbol, who could cook, play football, swim, run, win awards at academics, go for treks, and make a succession of women swoon over him. Oh Rudder, they'd coo, and we were all the richer for it! He was my alter ego, which in a strange way he still is. We would share stories of exploits, behave like weird twins by saying the same thing together, bum condoms from each other, rap Kerouac (again!). I was in the same band as he, so we also had the music. Later, when I came to Delhi, there was no question about it. We would stay together...which we did, for a while. He's still here, and I'm still here, moving in different orbits, making the same mistakes, being ourselves and in a way reminding each other of all the things we are; all the things we have become and all the things we yet could be. We're still in a band.
And finally, Sue. She was a fresher when I was in second year, and I was floored. She wasn't glamorous, she wore her pyjamas to college and was mortally afraid of anyone touching her. But she was hot! I bumped into her down a staircase, and devised devious means to get her to go for films (with Rudder's help), get her to sing with me...when I hugged her once, she was shivering. And yet she was free. She had her own opinions, and she'd never give an inch. I pined and I kicked walls in fustration- she was with some country yokel down in Vizag- I threatened Rudder to back off when he evinced interest. Then I read her Borges at Kharagpur and told her about the fair greens of Lothlorien. In a few months we were together...a mythical Beq'n'Sue in college, the same person, always together, singing together. I guess only we knew the truth to it, and thankfully it was so complicated. I became a lover with her, I became me, I lost my arrogance, I got rhythm, and she was freed once and for all from all the chains that bound her. But after three years of (almost-though-not-quite) bliss, we had a falling out, as lovers often will. But I guess we both gained a friend in the parting. She lives in Cal with her V and the wonderful little Wee Kiddo, trying to be a good mother and a thoroughly cool human being. We have our jokes and each other, in a weird fractious family where everyone is king!

Hour Of The Wolf

I knew of Ingmar Bergman only as a rumour till last year. I was never really that crazy about films- music does it for me- but, all that changed last August. Without a home, I was backpacking my way through people’s houses, while filling up the time with freelance work here and there, which was always quite interesting, but never financially too rewarding. It wasn’t a happy time, and I often despaired. Often I felt like chucking it all and going home, dunno why I persevered. And then, in the second house that I was passing through, I saw Hour of the Wolf. I was mildly interested by the name, but nothing prepared me for it. From the very first shot of Liv Ullman standing on a windswept northern island with that unearthly daylight grabbed me. And of course it got better.
Liv’s character Alma tells the story of her troubled artist husband Johan Borg, played by Max Von Sydow, who had gone missing a few months ago under very strange circumstances. Its one of Bergman’s few horror stories, but as with all films by him, its not just that. We get to know of some strange creatures on the same island that the couple lives in. There is the fetishistic Baron who lives “on the other side of the island”, and his strange family of assorted debauched creeps. They are obnoxious exploitative people, but Van Sydow feels they are worse…that they are monsters. One, The Birdman, apparently turns into a raven, another, The Hat Lady, threatens to take her hat, and with it, her face off. But how do we know? Through the Johan’s diaries, where he writes about his daily encounters with them on his painting trips. He even draws their monstrous images.
But is it true? Is it just that he is going through a delusional breakdown brought on by their loneliness? And what of that unsettling story of a vampire boy that Johan kills one afternoon? As the movie slowly carries with its stark still images of horrible beauty, and the occasional startlingly hideous juxtapositions of the real and the imagined, Alma starts sharing her husband’s delusions. She wonders at the end if it is possible to love someone so much that you start inhabiting their madness? One surreal day, the couples’ fragile world comes crashing down in a real/imagined sequence of utter horror and beauty when the creatures- we see their true selves at last- bait and claim the artist. But is it true? Or did he just commit suicide, or was perhaps killed by his wife? We’re never told. But the centerpiece of the film is this beautifully taut scene of the night before the fateful day. Johan is afraid of going to sleep and stays awake till dawn, with the only light coming from a candle. His drawn out, exhausted face seems etched in stone. Alma stays up with him, looking at his face with a fragile, helpless, despairing gaze. Then, after what seems like an eternity, at the still hour before dawn he diagnoses his own madness and the nature of despair…or maybe he voices his fear of the night and the shadows that inhabit it. He says that this is the crucial hour, the hour of the wolf, when most people die, when children are born, when monsters creep out of our nightmares and become real. It is as poignant as it is chilling in its portrayal of the couples’ helplessness in the face of this vast unknown. I was hooked. I think I saw it another three times in a row. Sometimes I wished that the couple had some faith. That they could steel their resolve. In fact the artist does, promising to protect his wife and their unborn child, but it is in vain. It just tips him over the edge. But I knew then, as I know now, how difficult it is for faith to be born in the face of despair. But the failure of the artist and his wife to battle their demons- real, or imagined- gave me the strength to face mine.
Now I know that it is one of Bergman’s lesser known films. Since then I’ve seen and grown to love his classics like Wild Strawberries, Persona, and The Seventh Seal. But none have touched me as profoundly as has Hour of the Wolf. And to think the Bergman passed away in that very same hour, makes me feel strange. I remember him, the fondness for movies that his films gifted me, and the way he moved me. Rest in peace.

Yea Korea!

A food review...here's the unedited version:

Korean food often suffers in comparison to its more glamorous siblings- Chinese and Japanese. That and dark rumours of dogs in your buffet have long kept punters off this delicious branch of East Asian cuisine. Not that I'd ever had Korean food before this, but that's more for a lack of choice than inclination. Armed with the smugness of an official review for my magazine, I headed to a newly-opened Korean restaurant called K2 in Gurgaon. Designed in sleek noir ish colours of chrome, red and black, with high backed red leather chairs, the restaurant makes you feel that you've stumbled into Kill Bill and the widow's going to emerge from some corner. But anyway, it does not take away the limelight from the the USP of the restaurant, which is the food. Apart from a variety of standard Chinese fare, K2 offers a large selection of authentic Korean food. These range from staples like the traditional Kim Chi to grilled meats like pork and tenderloin. Koreans like their food uncluttered and unfussy, so with most dishes you will get a helping of steamed rice or noodles. K2 also offers a wide seafood selection, ranging from prawns to cod to shark-fins! But these are prohibitively expensive (anything between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000) and even the office's expense account didn't embolden me to try out any of these.
We ordered a kind of Kim Chi called Kim Chi Chige and an intriguingly named Jea Yuk Dap Bop. The former is a slightly sour stew of pork, diced cabbages and onions and comes bubbling in a nice stone pot. You also get a separate bowl of steamed rice to eat it with. Its a fermented dish, which accounts for its distinct sour taste.
Jea Yuk Dap Bop is a sweet dry dish of pork cooked with red and green bell peppers, sliced cabbages, black peppers, carrots and tomatoes and sprinkled with sesame seeds. This is a traditional form of grilled meat called Bulgogi (or “fire-meat”). Again, the dish comes with steamed rice. The restaurant is generous with the meat and the food is, quite frankly, delicious.
Vegetarian dishes are not their forte though, yet the restaurant does offer a large enough selection. These range from the one we ordered- Jab Chea- to bean curd dishes. Jab Chea is a dish of fried vegetables and glass noodles in soy sauce. Traditionally Koreans don't do separate vegetarian dishes, so I suspect that most of the dishes in the veg section are actually converted non-veg dishes.
The restaurant is also a Karaoke club with many tunes to choose from, including four different versions of “My Girl” and a strange sounding song called “Shoot the chicks”. These Koreans must be crazy.
If you include soup, and some drinks, then a meal for two will set you back by Rs1,500 to Rs 2,000. Of course, if you go for shark fin, the bill will be a totally different kettle of fish.

Leaving hills

Kings of the world, raise your great white heads and laugh. I look up the blue-vaulted sky around me and I see you. I see you all, from east to west, a wall.
Long after, when I’m leaving, you recede at a stately grace. Down from your head to your chest I slide, along winding roads I descend. Clouds below me part, and re-form above me, far above me. There I was, by that crag, on that cliff…but its already ten minutes in the past, and I’m leaving your presence. A fall.
Now I descend to your knees. The folds of your skirt undulate slowly, surely. Down them I slide inexorably.
You’re gone now, a few miles to the east. An unending wall of dark grey, black. Clouds far up your slopes, hiding your face, like frozen breath. You will become ghosts soon, then a distant outline, like a myth at the margins of that road. Far along the horizon you’ll form the dream line to your echoing magic kingdom.
Kings of the world, I close my eyes and remember your proud heads of snow.

In name of the fahter, son, and the holy mook, I now prescribe you can and jipe. May you always moon each other for the rest of yer harried life and love, blemish and have to hold (the derriere) till bad breath do yer apart. If any horse present should think this couple should not neigh then gargle now or forever hold my piece. Oi, fella, you may now…damn…yer should’ve waited now!!

A pointless tale

The moon had not yet risen and the distant vapid chatter of Café Coffee Day wafted in the air. A group of old ladies huddled around a pet dog who was finding it difficult to pee because of the peer pressure. He went ahead anyway, for every canine will do his pee.
“Gimme your hand”, said Rudder to Mandy.
“Um…er…shouldn’t you ask first?” Mandy looked suitably stricken.
“hmm…phew…wheez..give me the hand anyway.” Damn, thought Rudder, what the fuck am I doing?
But the hand came, and the ring was gently-hopefully- pushed up the little finger.
“Mandy, will you marry me?” asked Rudder.
“Its small,” said Mandy. Damn, she thought, keep your fool mouth shut.
“Shit, really? Let’s go to the shop,” said Rudder, wondering, is her little finger thicker than mine?
The dog barked a couple of times, and Mandy said yes. Someone in Café Coffee Day laughed loudly.
Oh my GOD! Thought Mandy. Who do I tell?
“Um…let’s have dinner,” said Rudder

xxxxx

And now it was time to tell. They got to Rudder’s house. The ground floor door was open. Sandeep was sitting devouring a packet of sweets. Rudder decided to be cool and let Mandy do the squirming.
“Sandeep, we’re getting married!!!” squealed Mandy.
“Fuck really?” Sandeep asked between mouthfuls.
Mandy showed him the ring.
“Nice, lo, mu meetha karo.” The packet of sweets was brandished. “On second thoughts, I’ll do mu meetha for everyone’s sake.” More gobbling.
Rudder was being cool, grinning mysteriously. Nobody fell for it.
Brudder came down the stairs, mumbling something in his usual unintelligible way.
Rudder was still being cool.
Mandy, brandishing the (small) ring, “guess who’s getting married?”
Brudder blubbered, mumbled, smiled weakly and half raised his hands in surprise. Rudder kept cool, and glared. Mandy simpered happily.
“Ok don’t say a word. I’m dying of embarrassment,” said Mandy and shut the door on the mumbling Brudder.

xxxx

Driving back, Mandy called Prachi. “I’m under your house. Come down quick, I’ve got to show you something. Quick quick quick!”
Prachi sleepily, “what is it?”
“Uff, come down!”
Prachi wandered down, looking sleepy and grumpy. “Why did you have to call me down?”
Mandy’s words weren’t heard due to a passing car horn. Later there were squealings.

xxxx

“Beq, I’m under your house, come down! I’ve got to show you something.”
Beq was trying to hold down a ferocious jet of water which had half inundated his kitchen, even as his landlord was calmly brandishing a wrench at it.
“You’ll have to come up, I’m drowning in a flood…aargh.” The water escaped his ministrations and gargled into his mouth. Mandy heard the wheezing, and came up and showed him the ring, grinning like an insane marionette.
Wet Beq, “Fuck, really, hang on.”
The landlord worked his magic with the wrench and politely refused to use a black towel that Beq was trying to swathe him with.
The rest of it was an anticlimax. There was a good deal of smirking. But who cared? Rings were in the air.
A pale gibbous moon rose outside. Mandy began to change…

In the moonlight, on a magic night

Its always tough to take the stage. No matter how perfect the sound balance is and how well you know your songs, there always are several big IFs. Will the strings break, will the guitars need tuning after every song, will the neighbours call the cops, and if they do, how do we prevent a bust?
But in a way its good. If anything, it makes the experience edgier…and if the people you’re playing for are having fun, then the set might just raise itself a few notches and be visceral. I can’t say all this was going through my mind when we lined up on Saturday night for our debut gig. AND WE STILL DIDN’T HAVE A NAME!!! It was a toss-up between “Monkey Business” and “Slinky”, but well, neither really stuck. So we could be both or neither. Anyways, after half an hour of strumming and tuning and arranging for beers- (and changing into gig-worthy clothes)- “Sweet Virginia” kicked off at nine. I wasn’t even looking at the crowd…in fact, I had my eyes closed, trying to whistle. Let it be noted that first songs are hardly the best songs, but it does help to get your foot in the door and relax. The night was right for relaxing too. Nice lamps, a starry night, and a bright bright half-moon. And no, the neighbours weren’t complaining. But nor were the people dancing. Dunno what they expected…maybe (shudder) Dire Straits. “Sweet Virginia” was important, as it is pretty much a microcosm of all that we do. From Brudder’s beautiful bass-lines to me and Rudder trying to sing in harmony, to the Professor’s melodic lines…not to mention my own scratchy guitar skills. And it didn’t help that the guitar’s kept trying to escape our hands with a little help from the humidity. AND my guitar strap trying o slip off my shoulder.
Really, it wasn’t as fraught with danger as I make it out to be. It was, for lack of a better phrase- quite cool. I even had a Russian World War II cap on.
And on to “Man Of Constant Sorrow.” A perennial favourite and what’s more important, a song that drives….and I missed the opening cue! O well, thankfully we were all stage-wise enough. Along came an extended intro, and “In constant sorrowwww, all through his days!” It was good, and the people were enjoying it. Some were smug, knowing what to expect from the band, while the others were gratifyingly goggle-eyed. Us working stiffs, as the Professor puts it in an article, were not doing too badly.
Now the real fun stuff- the swing stuff. And one of our favourite songs too- “Sweet Sue”. I love the sentiment, Rudder loves the tune, the Prof loves the melodic lines. Brudder, probably, just likes the groove. Anyhow, you can’t miss. And we didn’t, a rompin’ and stompin’ product. And we were grinning by the end of it.
It was getting hot under the cap, and the beer was flowing. Not for us, not yet, but the guzzling and appreciative yells had begun…not to mention grown men demanding that our bassist strip. Wonder how the Prof would react if someone asked him to strip. Quite intense is he, the Prof is. I still had my eyes mostly closed. I was still trying to sing you see.
If we do some swing, we have to follow it up with some bluegrass. Please don’t ask what that is…look up Wikipedia. But the song in question is a classic- “Deep River Blues”. Right from the Prof’s metronomic bass notes to the quicksilver country picking of Rudder, its an intro we all enjoy. And it gives me a chance to jangle the tambourine- a big yellow mother! It was fast and melodic, and I must confess I fluffed up a couple of lines but it was another good one. The rhythm was rock solid- in a big way due to Brudder- and this is a rhythm song. Some of the slackers even danced, and they all loved it.
We couldn’t play “Minor Swing” soon enough! I mean, it must have been the one song that we’ve played without fail all of this past year or so. And it shows when we play it. Me and Rudder grin, I also try to dance, Brudder closes his eyes, and the Prof concentrates like a maniac. It was a short version we played, but the song works best in short bursts. And its purely musical. There’s nothing to that song but sheer musicality.
Finally I speak to the crowd. “The next song is a lovely little love song.” Yeah, lame. But, by then, we really didn’t need to speak to the crowd. The music was doing its bit, and the crowd had long gone past feeling happy because we weren’t playing Dire Straits, and by now were really grooving. And so to “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Another swing standard, and the rhythm somehow turned reggae! But the song was good enough to don the new mantle with as much ease. The Prof played some great licks, and was eventually called a “sexy beast.”
“Moondance.” A lovely song, but a tough song. But what the heck! Bash bash bash, we went, at least I did, and the moon did the rest. The howls of approval when we finished it lit us all up. Not to mention the dropping jaws. Exhausted, it was time to mingle and drink some. So we took a break.
Banter heard between songs: “Take off your clothes”; “Mama, Van Morrison!” a shrill “Awesome!” I was asked to play “I put a spell on you” by a past fan, but it just wasn’t that kind of a night.
Mingling over, we limbered up to our corner, a little tipsy perhaps, but glowing with all the love. Why be bashful? Its true.
Now for my little party piece- “Holiday.” I can’t deny that I loved playing it before all these people, and it was especially nice when the Prof came in towards the end and decorated the song with some pretty frills. There will be a better version yet, but this is a good way to go.
And then “John Henry”. There are a million and one insider jokes in this one, but thankfully we didn’t go that way, though we DID fuck up….by ending the song too early. We hadn’t even got to the best bit in this folk song! The Prof said we should play it again. I thought we should play it after a different song. A quick vote, and we moved on to “Route 66”, and I fucked up again…missed the cue that is. I was too busy banging that tambourine you see…I have an ugly blue bruise on my thigh to show for it! Anyway, got to the next cue and got the song going. Then it was Rudder’s turn to do the middle eight. What a whopper! Great fun. However, a minor problem. How do I get to the mic to sing my bit without shoving Rudder out of the way? Had to sing over his shoulder for that one. A long rambling song, with everyone taking solos, and even even Brudder- now shirtless- the grown men having had their way with him, got in a nice little walking bass solo. And the tambourine kept time just fine.
And then back to “John Henry”. A far superior version, and it rocked! Drums? Who needs drums? The crowd roared, and danced!
More of Rudder singing with “Folsom Prison Blues”. It drove with the speed and subtlety of a freight train, and the tambourine proceeded to batter my thigh a bit more. Rockabilly must be one of the greatest forms of music to play, its certainly my favourite, so when we segued from “Folsom” to “That’s All Right Mama” I was grinning like a kid.
It was time to change tracks, and the most difficult song suite yet: “Bird Song/ Dear Prudence”. Who was to know, that the Prof, Rudder and Brudder would conspire to make it a Grateful Dead-worthy jam clocking a respectable 11 minutes? I had my usual singing problems with “Bird Song”, from scales to lyrics, but the grandeur of a long-winded, snaking two-guitar and bass jam, quite took my breath away. And when we changed to “Dear Prudence” is was absolutely fabulous. I’ve always loved singing this song, but never quite realized its power to hypnotise. During the song I once opened my eyes and looked around, and most of the crowd had their eyes closed!! Fabulous. When the song finally crashed and burned with its driving, rising finale, it was time for another time out.
There are some songs that never go away from your set, though you hope that you don’t HAVE to end up playing them. But on they come, through sheer bloody-minded perseverance, and you go ahead and play it. Such a song is “Dark Hollow”. Well, there’s nothing at all wrong with it, nice melody, simple chords, some harmonizing. But heck, what is “Dark Hollow” compared to “Minor Swing”? But it’s the first song that me and the Prof picked up, so it does have some nostalgic value, and as a song it is not without its charms. So, after our second break, when we looked at the set list and found the song daring us not to play it, we went ahead and played it. It wasn’t great, but it was nicely ragged, just as the Dead play it. Well, the crowd wanted an encore, so we give them an encore. Which ones? The danceable ones, and the moonlit ones. Yes, “Sweet Sue” and “Moondance. The former was turbo-charged and none the worse for it, while the latter was minus the shrieks and howls. It reminded me of a friend asking me, “Do you sing that song with romance on your mind, or murder?” Well, why can’t you growl while romancing, I ask? But I didn’t, in this version. “Sweet Sue” was a repeat delight, even for us. And then the closer, “You Gotta Move”. It’s the epitome of what me and Rudder really like to do- play the slide, and scream. I can’t play the slide, so I scream…and I realized, that to do the screaming harmony bits in this song, I didn’t need the mike. As a result we sounded good together, with the Prof’s short sharp blues licks keeping it together. Later on, in the pics I look like I’m having a paralytic stroke, but then, that’s what the blues do to you. And I totally dig! We ended, after two and a half hours of successive highs and the moon set. The party flowed over three floors, and other music, and hunger, and fights over cabs, and, in some cases, love. But a splendid time was guaranteed for all.

Note: I might have got the running order a bit awry, but you get the point.

Summer days

Summer days are here again as the birthday trumpet blows
I've had my highs, an lord forbid, I've had my lows
Simple are the joys of summer, and the plight that seasons bring
How many bullfights have you fought my son
At world's end?

Lucy's Wedding Day

[To celebrate 40 years of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I'm republishing one of my old posts]

Pepperland, full-sun day

As I look up from my rocking-horse pie and wander about, I see Johnnie Boy on the crest of the Natung-La hill with the sun in his eyes. He smiles as a tune floats down, "Day after day, alone on a hill, the man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still." Sucking on a sugar cube, I start to climb. Many hued creatures poke their heads out from behind stones shot through with colours and smile at me. Its Lucy's wedding day and the guests are busy fixing a hole in the sky letting the rain in. The only light comes from Johnnie Boy's eyes. Must be quite bright, I remember thinking. The garden east of the thunder is full of rain and Billy Shears leads the worthies to the canopy where the lemonade is being sold for one hit a miss.

I can't see Paulie, but I hear him singing somewhere with the frog chorus, "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering where it will go."

I guess he's leading the horse fixers on a flag march. Rehearsals are necessary. After all, the wedding card had promised- "A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed For All".

Hari-baba is romancing a gap-toothed fairy under the cinnamon bush. He kisses her hand, his beard flying in the wind. "What do you see when you turn off the lights?", somebody, maybe Mimi, shouts at him.

"I can't tell you," he winks, "but I know its mine."

The hole fixed, the sun appears, skipping wheels of rhyme as the foggy ruins of time wash off its luminous sphere. There it goes, skidding across strawberry fields. A thin, dim figure chases it with a flashing stick. Its Johnnie Boy, that's who, weilding a slumping wedding rod shouting through the freshly minted mint leaves.

But where be the master of ceremonies? He had said that he'd be found navigating his yellow submarine through the sea of holes if anyone cared.

"That's it!" exclaimed Eleanor exasperatedly. "He's feeling left out once again. What did you say to him this time Paul?". This she asks the young mustachioed gallant fiddling with a bagpipe beside her, the one with the frog chorus.

"Well," said Paulie, "Rich wanted to go see Mr. Henderson ride a dragon to the Mumley tree and back and I said why not act your height and do summersaults on solid ground? He got peeved and went off in a huff to his paramour Octopussyfooting saying that I'm always trying to be taller than him."

Paulie then produced a bit of paper from behind Eleanor's left ear and and taking a long drag on the bazooka he was smoking, scribbled 'there are seven levels' on it. Winking slyly he looked at Elly and said, "You're a big mother, want to see my marguerites?" So faded the scene, amidst giggles.

A tinkling music slooshes through the hills surrounding Natung-La. Mr Henderson and his Fiery Frederick touches down in a swish of wings and a sniff of brimstone. He does a pirouette and and alights gracefully, a green hat in hand. "Hoom," he says, says he.

"Where be Rich, Manny?" asks Johnnie Boy through his nose, snorting away the bluebottle fly trying to find a suitable spot on his nose.

"Oh, count your lucky Starrs," hoomed Henderson, "cause Richie has put his little tiff with Paulie behind him and now wears it for a tail."

"He's trying to be big about it is he?" sniggered Paulie from under the giggling Elly.

"Far out," says Johnnie Boy and shakes a thought from his sleeve and looks at it with kaleidescope eyes. Just then Hari feels the ground move beneath him, and rolls off the lap of the fairy and lights a joint in one motion. As he exhales, the blue smoke clings to the mountain air and Rich appears, big nose and all, clothed in blue. He's reading the news. WE BECOME NAKED, screams the headline, over a picture of Marianne and Margerie buttering up their hams.

"Where the hell you been Rich?" drawls Hari, serenely smoking.

"Well," says Richie lugubriously, "them sea of holes turned out to be in Blackburn, Lancashire and being so far away from here, I had to worm-hole my way. I'm all smoky as a result." Someone tittered, maybe Paulie.

And so everyone was together again at the Chemycal Wedding of Lucy and Cristian Rosencreutz. The lights were right, the sangria laced and the meat marinated. As the boys told cool jokes and the girls smoked bongs, a cheer went up in the vales. They all looked up. Oh the marvel! Shimmering in white, riding an obsidian Olyphaunt, and ringing the wedding bell, there was Lucy in the sky with diamonds!!!

Songs that eat

There’s a very interesting list taking shape on the website of the Guardian on food themed songs. I thought I’d list some of my own favourites:

Savoy Truffle- The Beatles: A wicked wicked song. George Harrison weilds a mean pen to mock his good friend Eric Clapton’s sweet tooth…and the fact that after going through a menu of cherry cream, pineapple tarts, cream tangerines and a ginger sling, bloozeman Clapton will have to have all his teeth pulled out, just when he finishes the savoy truffle. To underline the threat, Harrison’s lead guitar is tweaked to make it sound like a water drill! Standout line:
“Coconut fudge, well it blows out the blues!
But you’ll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy truffle.”

A Taste of Honey- The Beatles: A lilting tune by Herb Alpert, this wide-eyed little ditty compares the woman in question with honey which tastes sweeter than wine.
Standout line:
“Oh I will return, yes I will return
I’ll come back (he’ll come back)
for the honey (for the honey)
and youuuuuuuuuuu.”

Coffee And tv- Blur: This lo-fi classic celebrates the joys of the beverage- coupled with the idiot box- for this guy who’s had it with society. He’s jaded, faded, antisocial, and makes a fervent plea to his girlfriend to give him some coffee and then maybe marry him.
Standout line:
“So give me coffee and tv, easily
I’ve seen so much I’m going blind, I’m braindead virtually.”

English tea- Paul McCartney: Very twee. Really, the song is rather sweet. This is homey Macca, inviting you over for a cuppa and some crumpets, while he gazes serenely into the middle distance and plans to buy Sussex.
Standout line:
“As a rule the church bells chime
When it's almost supper time
Nanny bakes fairy cakes
On a Sunday morning.”

One Meatball- folk song: Yes, it is about hunger. Its about a man looking at a menu and salivating…knowing that his meager money won’t get him anything but one meatball. The words have a surreal quality to them, like when the other diners stare at him for ordering just one meatball. It’s a song which makes you hungry, and which hints at the black pit that is unrequited hunger.
Standout line:
“The little man felt ill at ease,
Said "Some bread, son, if you please."
The waiter hollered down the hall
"Ya gets no bread with one meatball!"

Reading Horror

Let’s try to find a way out of this mess. When the severity of your trauma could only be rehashed by the temerity of your long-playing LP, her eyes opened ala Andelou and out poured a variety of ants, from the humdrum to the mythic. But that was the day before the sickness that is raging in your head came to light. On that day you woke up feeling cold, eyes dead to the world, with a mouth cold, harsh, dry and sticky. Where was the water? But the day carried on. There were walks in the relentless sun; and walks in the relentless moon. There were howls and horns, destroyed minds and fragile kindness wafting like the pulsing heat-wave in your mind.
Oh well, that was then, and yet here we are today and this needs to be done. Let us start by going to the exhibition. There will be paintings there you know, and you are to chew each one of them carefully….till you get the colours tied up to you…till all you become is colour and bits of gilded wood. There be monsters in the closet-haunted dreams of crashing pirate bones and grinding sea ice. But the colour is there. It will always be there…and the sun the horror the beauty of the gilded throne.

Quiet Nights

Mountain curves down river’s bend
Riverman just laughs and says
All was forgotten with my name
Articles on fallen stars
Harps, cellos and guitars
Riverman just smiles and fades away
Into the night

Songs on fires have been sung
Ferris wheels and broken drums
All smoke and mirrors in the sun
Suddenly the clouds appear
Rain filled voices everywhere
A little play of lost days and a gun
Ends today

This world was made in seven days
While you were busy being misled
With moonlit eyes and curling screams in the night
To avoid the serpent’s tongue
We’ll make amends, ‘ere long
Take this gift darling, I loved you well
Through it all
-Bibek Bhattacharya

Midweek musings

And so Liverpool won against Chelsea (again!) in a Champions’ League semifinal, and I couldn’t even watch it. The pretty cool thing is that such an overpoweringly ‘red’ club won on Labour Day. Though that’s where the similarity ends really. The rampantly capitalist Reds are as far a cry from Marx as Groucho is from Richard, but there’s a sweet irony in there somewhere. Pity I couldn’t watch it though.On a weather vein, its lovely today. The first inkling was a surprisingly cool, windy morning with a weak sun…as the day has grown older, dark clouds have veiled the sun resulting in a much-needed respite from the inferno of the last one week or so. It was a fabulous bus ride to office, which was after the office rush. Everything peaceful, a cool day, and me reading a wonderful companion to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Life could be worse. As I always do when the bus passes Nizamuddin, I look up to catch a glimpse of Humayun’s Tomb. Most days it blazes in the sun…today it was a cold thrill against a dark sky. The old Mughal buried in there would have liked it. And so it goes.

The End Of All Songs

It seems we live our lives in miniature these days. Call it generational ennui -though I’ve never heard that term before- or what you will, but gone are the days when JRR Tolkien would feel like a sore loser if he hadn’t penned at least one voluminous letter through the day. Blokes like me sigh softly, rather, if they go for a month without adding another inconsequential entry on their blog. But what to do? Everyone ain’t an Oxford don sneering at “Beatle-type bands” down the street creating a ruckus. Dear me, am I baiting Tolkien? I guess its envy at that man’s perfect isolation than anything else. It was still possible, at the beginning of the last century, to live in your own private Hobbiton and derive your bread from it as well. I don’t think its possible now. At least, the number of people who can still do so must be tiny indeed. And really, does it matter, when everyday I shiver at the thought of the havoc we’re wrecking on nature?
Sometimes when I’m listening to the Amelie soundtrack at night, I see scenes from a train, as I sail through an imagined French country-side, with green downs flecked with vineyards. Till a year ago, I could feel happy at the thought that even if I were never to see it, it would probably exist forever. Perhaps my children would see it. Perhaps someone I knew would see it. And now I think that in a hundred years even that imagined world might not exist. France could be a desert and my great-grandchildren dying of starvation. I don’t even need to look at imagined paradises. Right now, I’m dying to go to the Himalayas, because in thirty years, who knows what those mountains will look like? No glaciers! Imagine that…I really feel like crying. I remember feeling this sense of utter loss when I read of the fading of the elves in Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s lament for the vanishing of the natural was coming from a very different place, yet, it now seems so chillingly similar! When he was working on the book, it was during and in the aftermath of the second world war, the most hellish depiction yet of what man can do. Though as far as I know, Tolkien never acknowledged that to underpin his thoughts, I’m sure it did…after all, he had served in the trenches during the WW1. And yet, all those horrors seem so insignificant now that we are so dangerously near to a total destruction of nature, of all that teaches us awe. I think I first felt awe while approaching the foothills from Siliguri. I was almost a baby then, so that memory is more of an instinct now. And, I think of my first view of the sea, an impossibly immense expanse of water water water suddenly revealed as the car I was in crested a rise in the road in Puri. That view of the Bay of Bengal. My god was it strong enough to make me shiver…a shiver which is probably encoded in the genes of all humankind. Beyond that immensity, there could be nothing else. And now I know that the seabed contains volumes of methane so high, that driven to it by rising temperatures, that blue monarch could one day burp enough of it into the atmosphere to make this world another Mercury, another Mars.
And no, I haven’t even seen “An Inconvenient Truth”. I don’t need to see a film to comprehend my utter spiritual terror at the shit we’re in.
As Lothlorien would fade, Galadriel reckoned all the memory of the elder world would be gone with it. What Tolkien unconsciously hints at is that a new world, a new beauty would arise to fill that gap. Now its naïve to have even such indirect indistinct hopes. The world ends here ladies and gents, and its enough to make me inarticulate with dread.

Shayri II

Far away in Shayri’s grove, I sit and think of home
A dream in her wake, a dream that her shadow stole
You were a hidden across the river where the wildflowers wept their fears
Taking flight you flew on by unseen, unheard
In a cold land with the scent of streets covered in frost
Shayri did you find the lines between your life and mine?
Tell me what the ocean said as you flew overhead
Did you laugh your giddy joy, swept down and soared again?
Your jingle-jangle ankles spun the threads that caught the clouds
You picked a flower, I gave it a name
The colours that spun the sunlit gold
As I sat in your grove and thought of home

Lylic It!

What do you do when you want to sing a song- say a folk tune with many verses- but you don’t necessarily want to learn up all the lyrics? Well, you resort to lylics. No that’s not a typo, but a state of mind. Lylics are those lyrics which you have to make up yourself because you can’t remember the original ones, or you can’t sing the given words right. Now, they change with the kind of genre of song you’re singing. Its decidedly difficult to lylic rock songs, or songs with a particular format, like say, Broadway standards or even Hindi film songs…but if the structure’s flexible, well, the sky’s the lylic…sorry limit.
There’s a driving unionist song we do called John Henry. My nitpickin’ friend who commented on the previous post might be able to give you a better history of this violent ditty, but this is the basic idea. Ol’ John is a dyed in the wool unionist who will resist mechanization at any cost. To resist the steam drill, he’ll die with the hammer in his hand, as he puts it. From what I know, this used to be a standard union sing-along in the US during the turbulent days of its post-war industrial intensification. Its been done by many a folk icon, from Woody Guthrie to me, and like all singalongs, the emphasis is always on the final line of each verse. Now therein lies the problem. For one, there is no ONE reliable set of lyrics. Seems to me, every successive version had been happily lylicing the song. The first verse is fairly straightforward…about ol’ Hurray Henry being a lil’ toddler getting roughshod lessons in worker’s rights from his working class father. (A minor aside: This song could also be read as an ongoing Thor family saga, what with every successive generation having a male who loves to sing his hammer. This brings us to an even more minor aside: the funniest Thor joke in any medium is the bit in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, where Thor says this little gem to impress the cat-headed Bast- an Egyptian goddess- “Would you like to rub my little hammer? It grows bigger”). Ok, enough minors…the song, incidentally is not on a minor scale but on E… (which brings me to another minor aside: the Brit rock band Verve were sued by the American jazz label Verve over name copyright issues, so the lead singer of the band Richard Ashcroft joked about “Dropping an E for America”…you may know that E is Ecstasy which partakers often “drop”, as the lingo goes, instead of “consuming.” They didn’t drop the E, but added a “The” before their name.)
Ok, it seems I’m hijacking my own piece (which might be seen in the same connotation as Thor’s hammer…hammer…piece…get it??) ENOUGH!
Where were we? World Wide Web? MAN THIS IS INSANE!!!
Ok fine. So the first verse is okay. But then we fast forward some 30 years and Henry’s holding a conversation with his Captain- so he’s on a ship. All fine and dandy. But then what the hell are they talking about? Difficult to say. The gist seems to be that according to Henry, a man ain’t a man unless he’s swinging his hammer (but we already knew that) and then the Captain says something equally empowering to Henry. But how to sing it? Again, there’s no reliable blueprint. So you lylic it. Make up your own little conversation piece as long as it veers close to the subject in hand (no, not the hammer).
After all this strum und drang, comes the violent bit. Again, it’s a narrative jump. Suddenly we’re told that Ol’ John Henry had a girl called Molly Brown. We’re not told what the exact relation is, but therein hangs a tale. Now, Molly Brown- bless her heart- probably got fed up with Henry’s grandstanding and failure to put the money where his mouth is (and historically, men with large hammers aren’t made for good lovin’) and one fine night, while Henry’s sleeping, “ she drove steel like a man”. It’s the best bit of the song, and definitely the most enjoyable bit to sing, but what do we make of it? Did she drive a large and pointed and sharp kitchen knife through the heart, or did she do to him what he failed to do to her with his hammer? Anyway, whether its death by knife, or by too much sex, John Henry dies as he had lived- by the sword…oops, by the knife…er, by the hammer? Dunno if he died with the hammer in his hand, but hopefully Molly wasn’t wielding a steam drill.
Imagine what you want, and just lylic it.

The Fashion Thing

The fashion thing is a strange animal. It likes clothes, but it hates clothes that look like shit and cost the earth. It likes the flighty flutter of the scene, but not the models- most of who go through life with a perpetually baffled expression on their faces.
The fashion thing finds things to be at their strangest when it’s trying to get a magazine issue on fashion going. To be fair, the fashion thing isn’t the only one in this predicament. Three other souls share its dilemmas, but as it can’t vouch for them, here’s its version of the dirt.
It found that women are the easiest to deal with while sourcing clothes. They understand things easily and don’t treat clothes as if they’re bombs about to go off. And store managers can be actually charming, even if you’re not buying their clothes. Some say “si” with the perfect Italian accent though their names make you think they’re men. Others get the necessary permissions with a minimum of fuss, and help you pick the clothes. Our shop-girls are coming of age, it seems. Their male counterparts are another story all together. They start off looking as if they’ve just swallowed a hot potato, and then they ask you why you can’t shoot at the shop! They treat a simple requisition as if it’s a state secret and are at pains to get multiple permissions from a hundred bosses. It becomes their personal promotion lollipop. And after a few days of cloak and dagger, a second executive calls up from another city and begs you to be careful about the brand. His job, he says dolefully, is on the line. Disgusted, the fashion thing drops the brand. Pooh!
Then there are the models who act as if they’re posing for their personal family album. They grin like buffoons and are so stiff you can hear them creak. Some are steroid kids, while others are two-dimensional. Then the stylists come on all la-di-da (they alternate between trying to get passes to the Fashion Week, and crying to their mothers, and calling up their ‘partners’ for movie tickets). Then they run away when they’re required to do some styling. So the fashion thing and Co do it themselves. There are some hard working stylists as well, but poor guys, they seem forever marginalized. They are the ones who get into Fashion Week through hard work. So that’s cool. There are some infuriating models who carry off everything beautifully. Even if you’re shooting for fashion faux-pases they look gorgeous in the clothes. It sets the fashion thing’s teeth on edge.
And then we come to fabrics. There’s cotton (from cotton), linen(from flax), and cashmere (from goats). But then there’re chambray, tweed, denim, corduroy, etc etc etc under cotton, and worsted, micro-lite, Australian, Kamchatkan wool!!! For linen you get Italian, Irish and other anglo-saxons you don’t want to know, and then some more. Suits are not just suits, but micro-lite, worsted and cashmere (Fat lot the fashion thing cares!)
But yes, clothes are fun…as clothes. I guess couture is not the fashion thing’s cuppa but it ain’t the cuppa of most of the various fashionistas the fashion thing had the pleasure of observing. Badgering store owners for the right to click pics, the fashion thing took with him a jovial Bong and photographed the sky over Connaught Place instead….then another day, it went and took pics in a retail store through subterfuge, but while subterfuging, forgot to take the down the prices of the clothes photographed. So when the crunch came, the fashion thing spent most of the evening badgering the store attendants- over the phone!- to hunt out the mannequins in question and give out the prices…needless to say, it was tickled pink. Even better was when it called up various stores and posed as a harassed buyer who dunno what to buy and ask for prices. Shop attendants probably like the dumb buyer, because they fell over backwards to provide the information. As the fashion thing writes this, the entire fashion experience as embodied by the magazine is yet to go to press. So there are tense moments yet. But what a month. OOOOH those linen pants! They’re so, like, in!!!

Pickin' The Tune

Country- especially bluegrass- music always seemed to me to be an adolescent fairyland. I mean look at the lyrics. They are so simple-minded that its almost laughable. Especially now that my band’s performing Doc Watson songs and the like, the lyrics make me laugh from here to Tennessee. Believe me, its beautiful music, and the level of musicianship in crafting them is superlative. But the lyrics? That’s something else altogether. Let’s take this particular song that we’re doing… “Peach pickin’ time in Georgia”, by Doc Watson. Its his song, but could well be a traditional. It certainly is very topical. Its about this down-at-heels farmer, who’s looking forward to getting married, or, getting some sex.
“When its peach pickin’ time in Georgia
And apple pickin’ time in Tennessee,
Cotton pickin’ time in Mississippi
And everybody picks on me
When its roundhouse time in Texas
And the cowboys make whoopee
And way down in old Alabamy
Its gal-pickin’ time for me”
You can almost see the ol’ white Southern kid in a peaked hat hacking away at the cotton under the burning summer sun, while images of sun-kissed thighs flash through his mind. He thinks of Caroline somewhere in Arkansas and starts humming of his simple dreams of ‘gal-pickin’. Anywhere will do, it seems…and anyone. Oh those Denver doldrums, Alvah Goldbrook would say. It’s a silly song really. But like all silly songs, it makes you smile in spite of yourself. And there’s always Doc Watson’s voice. It could be the voice of one of the gents on Mount Rushmore. It could also be the voice Walt Whitman. It’s the voice of America, and when it yodels, it melts the cockles of your heart.

Note. For those of my readers who complain that I write of things very few people either know or care for, here’s some info to keep you pickin’.
The song’s by Doc Watson, a county-bluegrass legend who, at 94, is still one of the best around. Alvah Goldbrook is a fictional name for the poet Allen Ginsberg in Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road.’

Bus Rides

I do a lot of traveling these days. I always used to, but now I have to do so for work. As it is, where I work is about 15 km or so from my house, and then there's sundry going out and about to gather info, get photo-shoots organised, meet contacts etc etc...hence the traveling. Not that I mind, and that's probably because I'm still not sick of it. The upshot of it- as far as I'm concerned- is that I get to travel on buses. Yeah well, I can see many blanching at the very idea of someone avtually liking traveling on Delhi buses, but then again, you gotta be zen, or you won't like anything.
Let me tell you about some really nice/funny/dunno what things that bus travel afforded me to experience...

1. The seat with no backrest. Yeah, that was funny all right, and quite visually startling as well, when you consider that all the other seats in the bus HAD backrests. It threw people a bit. For starters, people couldn't figure out how to stand around it...see, te rationale for standing passengers is positioning, so that if someone nearby gets up, then you can beat some 3 other people to that seat...Now, as this pasrticular seat had no backrest, it opened up a bit of unexpected space. But you couldn't wedge yourself in there as it was still -technically- the seated passenger's place. So, people simply avoided it. To them it became a 'someone else's problem', and they happily gave it a wide berth. Lucky me, I got the seat...though subsequently I had to balance mysef by gripping on to the hand board as if I was windsurfing!!!

2. Another afternoon, I was returning from my friend's house near this place called Khan Market, when I caught a white line bus home. Its one of those which are always less crowded, due to the higher fares they charge. Anyway, another beautiful spring day, with the last echoes of a dull sun, and the trees gently swaying in the breeze. There were very few people on the bus, and by the looks of it, everyone was on their way home for a siesta, given the way almost everyone was nodding off. Then the driver- probably to stay awake- put on a tape of Kishore Kumar's greatest hits. It was one of those nice collections, with the cheesy stuff out. The effect on the passengers was like magic. Everybody started grinning, and the afternoon seemed to acquire a new glow. All the while that I was on the bus, some 5 songs were played, and everybody- including the driver, the conductor, and all new passengers- sang along, hummed along or just generally nodded their heads to the tunes and grinned from ear to ear. It was arguably one of my fondest experiences in the city.

3. What's a bus without some strange people. I can mention the religious ticket-checker or the sleeping conductor, but my favourite guy was this sadhu who hitched a ride one morning. He had no money, so he promised to entertain the driver in return for his passage. Which meant that he was only too happy sending himself up. Whether that involved hanging out of the bus window at every stop screaming "Cannoughttttt Placeeee, hahahaha! Chale ao chale ao!" or singing hindi film songs with modified lyrics praising the gods, or doing litlle tricks with his staff, which caused more consternation than entertainment. The charm wore off when he tried to crawl out the window of our bus and into another one....when the conuctor roundly abused him, he offered some hash as a peace offering. He was booted off nonetheless!!!

Amma

My grandmother passed away today after almost a decade of suffering. In fact most of my adult life I remember her either severely bed-ridden or hospitalized. Its probably good because it must have eased her suffering, but I can imagine how hard it will be on my father. They had never been on the best terms for as long as I can remember. I guess the last time when she was actively there in my life was before I turned 12. Those were the days in Purnia, in Bihar, before I started schooling in Cal. She never quite liked my mother and always, always gave her hell, and of course I hated her for it. She made it so difficult for my father- who loved her- she gave rise to such bitterness. I could never consider her a fair person, but then again, I know she liked me. Probably because I was a boy, cause she never really was very fond of my sister…
But I’d like to remember the nice things. I can still hear her calling me from the prayer room…to come and help her with the lamps, and the little cymbals, and the incense and everything. In return, I would get sweets. My favourite, I still remember was this crunchy sugar savoury called a batasha. But I had to wait patiently till it got over. She always told me about the gods, and read me little bits from the scriptures, especially all the heroic bits…like Krishna and Rama’s childhoods…every little boy’s favourite. Dunno what it was about that little prayer room, overlooking our large courtyard. It would fascinate me to see the little room get filled up by incense smoke quietly snaking up to the ceiling.
Sometimes she would get emotional and complain to me about something or the other. I could never stand people crying, but I was too small to understand anything, so all I could do was hug her and tell her it would be ok…thik acche…as we say in Bengali. I guess she never was truly happy since my grandfather passed away two years before I was born. She loved him, and I know she loved her little Bhullu (my father), when he was really little. Perhaps I reminded her of them, both of whom in their own ways had gone away never to return. She couldn’t speak these last few years. I wonder what she thought. I am unbearably sad, though I don’t know why. I hope she finds peace, wherever she is.
Tata amma, shob thik hoye jaabe,
Bublu.

My house

Finally, a house of my own! I thought I would feel like a new person or perhaps have some revelation, or perhaps die of shock....but none of these things happened. I moved in with a paltry few things, unpacked my clothes in over seven months on the road (somewhat!) had a couple of Pure Magic biscuits and watched the setting sun dazzle the spires of a Gurdwara. The feeling slowly sinks in...that I don't have to live with other people, see if they're available, be answerable to them, panic at the last moment cause there's nowhere to go...etc etc.
Obviously it still isn't a home like my previous house was one, but then I've been here only a couple of days. The main lock still throws me, and the local dogs want to know me better, but that's all right. I still have to work out the sun's trajectory vis a vis the house, whether there are any cats about that I can adopt, and what the faultlines are from which ants may one day emerge, but that's all right too.
You win some and you lose some. So while people drift away and I become used to not speaking for days on end, at least I have my house, and I love it.

You're It

I dunno why people tag other people. What's the point? Who cares what I like? But well, I've been tagged and I've got time to kill, so here goes:

Three things that scare me :
birds (aaargh those fluttering wings)
dreams where you're run for hours and never get to where you're trying to get to (plain horrible)
heights (cause the fall seems so inviting)

Three people who make me laugh :
Douglas Adams (cause nobody can write about the Krikkit wars like he does)
John Lennon (I'd like just to give you this Michael, on behalf of the British public)
Wee Kiddo (Cause he's so wee, and makes such funny faces and says "gooo")

Three things I love :
Norwesters in Bengal (You just have to see them coming up from the horizon and gradually filling out your view...and then your senses. You wait with bated breath for the first crack of thunder, and then its ecstacy)
Sex (Cause its there)
Mountains (I feel like a million emperors rolled into one, and as Tintin said, "the air's like champagne". They truly go to my head

Three things I hate :
Spoilt brats (cause they're so goddamn insensitive)
Loneliness (because too much of it, and you forget how to talk)
Long faces (cause you know, something should be done about it, but dunno what to do)

Three things I don't understand :
Why mountaineering is not an optional subject in school
Why people listen to Pink Floyd
Why nobody (including me) cares

Three things on my desk :
Books (Never make a home without 'em)
Music (Is Fab)
Pen and paper (I love scribbling)

Three things I am doing right now :
Wanting to sleep (couldn't sleep last night)
Wearing my multi-coloured sweater (I love it)
About to have tea (cause otherwise I'll die)

Three things I want to do before I die
Go on at least one proper expedition (nothing can be better)
Watch Wee grow (cause he'll be smashing)
Make an album (it easier than writing a novel)

Three things I can do :
Sing (cause I can)
Bum around (Its a skill, seriously!)
stare vacantly at nothing in particular (lots of practice)

Three things you should listen to :
The Beatles (they can be your best friends if you let them)
Me (Who else would you listen to?)
Rainfall (it tells you things you should know)

Three things you should never listen to :
Vogon singing (you'll die)
Sathe (cause he's a liar)
Cats (cause they're over-rated dumbasses)

Three things I'd like to learn :
driving (Ok I DO know, but haven't done so in years)
Lie convincingly
How to really play the guitar

Three favourite foods :
Bong food
Momos
Chicken Sizzlers

Three beverages I drink regularly
Tea (Heaven)
Rum (Dunno why. Probably cause its there)
More tea (why not?)

Three TV shows/books I watched/read as a kid :
Johnny Soko and His Flying Robot (What joy! I can still do the hand movements)
Catch 22 (What a book to read when you're young!)
Vikram Aur Betal (I could never get enough)

Three people I would like to tag :
Daya (Cause she's so interesting)
Sue (Because she hasn't blogged in a long time)
KP (Because he's so goddamn secretive)

Wraiths

This empty season the cold is gone.
Mist walks the streets, I follow a wraith, unconnected, passing through.
Passing through?
Lucky people play a game of chance, warming the winter sun with smiles the size of kings.
Holy water sprinkles the air, clothes and eyes get damp, time to kill,
Why won't time be killed?
Phones ring in houses, in hands, in pockets, inside a dog's mouth.
Callers end with lover's greetings, promising the end of another long night
And the cold stays gone, breathing gently in dusty forests, as taillit jackets flash close.
In this city there're wraiths walking, sometimes in the alley, or riding a horse, or walking two dogs.
What will be the endgame?
Down in a well in the east, seven seconds of sunlight blind a broken man
It blinds him still, till he awakes and sees the dark, cold as labyrinths of the nameless ones.
I met a man of magic, a scar across his face.
A scar a scar a scar a scar
He noted he had walked quite far, from the ghost of Sesquehana to the bums of Times Square.
Once there were bums, and jazz and solitary jungle moaners in a dream of rainbows.
Now there are wraiths in a city, passing through like summer lightning
With marks on their faces or long black tails that bend easily.
Where is the fever? The cold fever of the biting wind?
Who knows where is the other life.
-Beq
29.1.2007

Jazz It Up

Watching Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter a couple of weeks back, I couldn't help the goosebumps. I mean, its HANCOCK and SHORTER for chrissakes! For a while I was just grinning, after which I strated paying attention to the music. Hancock started with a rendering of "Dolphin Song". Though I've heard that song only once, it seemed great...and then it began to sag. Herbie ol boy was evidently not trying very hard. I mean, for someone of his stature, to miff lines with a bunch of greehnorns of the Thelonious Institute of Jazz was not on. And all the instrumentalists kept playing in unison, resulting in a remarkably colourless sound. It was nice jazz, but not great jazz. A version of "Criss Cross" followed and I started wondering if perhaps Hancock doesn't care for the old material anymore...I mean, he plays with turntable players these days. But try as I might, I couldn't dislike it. I mean, here was the man who made "My Point Of View", perhaps my favourite jazz album!
But Wayne Shorter was yet to come and there was hope. Seeing the old man with his soprano sax was electrifying, and when he led the band through "Footprints", I was in wonderland again. Again, he wasn't doing much outside of playing around with scales, but the feel of the man! Fabulous. I haven't heard "1+1", his Grammy-winning duet album with Hancock, but the one they DID do was good, and perhaps that rescued the show. I mean, I'll always remember the occasion, if not the musical nous.
To round it off, a few days later I heard Kenny G on VH1. Ah, now at least I didn't have to see that midget-brain perform! Why? Why? Why do Americans like stupid white men?

Long Train Running

Many years ago, I missed a train. Its not as simple as it sounds. To date that is the only train I've missed, and also the most traumatic of all the train misses I never had. Confusing? You bet your left ventricle it is! Consider this scenario. You're 20, cocky but unsure, have no money and have missed a train to the East Coast from the West with no plan B. The only silver lining to this black cloud- the rain had a BIG part to play in the story anyway- was that I had for company three other cocky 20 year olds- ok, one was and still remains 18- who were more broke than I was. Blame it on them splurging on Goan spices, knicknacks, and industrial quantities of cashew feni...I was feeling good at the end of a stingy trip where I'd saved enough money to buy my girlfriend three good meals back home. And here I was, stuck in the wrong part of the country, the only guy with any money and the tail lights of the Howrah Mail dissapearing in the rain. I think it was Shurjo- the one that had the most feni- who expressed what we were all feeling as we battled swarms of wet humanity at Victoria Terminus to get to our train...BANCHOD!!!! BOKACHODA!!! (Sister-fucker, Foolish Fornicator). But to no avail. A few of the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants seemed shocked, but on the whole Bombay didn't care. She was probably chuckling smugly at a job well done. It was she who had so spectacularly seduced us with her looks and gobsmacked us with tea and pizzas at a posh Malabar Hills apartment with a view of the Arabian Sea. It was she who had thrilled us with the sight of huge waves crashing on the marine drive as a typical Monsoon storm raged. It was she who dulled us with delicious condiments in a warm house and then watched us swear our way through spectacularly conested traffic while the soothing melancholic strains of Coldplay's "Parachutes" played out.
"I never meant to cause you trouble
I never meant to do you harm."
So sang Chris Martin as Shurjo (again) occasionaly thrust an angry fist out of the Honda City- courtesy his rich relatives (he has them everywhere)- and cursed the city. We were worried but stoned enough and full enough to trust Bombay.
Which led to the vanishing tail lights incident.
So what now?
An hour later while I was being crushed between Shurjo's huge backpack and mine by enthusiastic local train commuters on the way to Kurla Station, I almost wondered if I shouldn't give them the slip, save my money and get my parents to bail me out. But where to stay? And what about pride? So, I reluctantly fished out all my money, and while trying to get past a seemingly station-full of touts trying to give us random tickets we rushed to the station master, who smiled sweetly at us and told us to get tickets from the touts. We said sorry, that we were students, so he said well, there's the Kurla-Howrah Express which leaves in an hour from the opposite side of town, if we were interested. Damn right we were, and hence the crushed backpacks. The commuters laughed at us, pushed us and encouraged us to push back. One of them also asked me seriously if Shurjo was from China. I think Shurjo had asked some stupid question. Rudder and Julius were more unlucky. In their rush and ignorace they had clambered on to the Ladies Compartment and given their "lean and hungry Cassius" and ominous backpacks, they came close to being thrown off the train by the cops. I think they managed to stay on because
a) Legitimate women would heve been thrown off the train as well, just to make way for all that baggage and
b)Some sweet college kids flipped over Rudder's cleft chin and pleaded with the cops.
When we reached Kurla, the crowds vomited us out....
...into the waiting arms of the auto mafia, who fought amongst themselves with knives and invectives for the right to kidnap us- get us to the main Kurla Terminus. What followed was a dogfight...but the guys who eventually bundled us in were the sneaky chappies who let the main contestants shed their blood while they got the loot. A careening ride through dark rainswept sewers followed and just when Julius was about lose hope-and temper- and get his rusty Rampuri Chaku out...wonder of wonders, Kurla Junction. I don't remember what we paid the Chota Shakeels of the Kurla Auto Association, but our objective was to get on that train even if it were our corpses that made the journey.
"Find the TT!"
"There he is"
"Sir, we're poor lost students. Not much money. Miss train. Please tickets."
Gentle smiles (from the TTs)
Grimaces(Us)
Well, we did manage to get tickets, albeit with broken feni bottles and seats all over one compartment. The train stopped on every station and by the time we got home FOUR(!!) days later, we were hungrier than Ulysses when he got to Ithaca, and we almost kissed the garden of germs, that is the platform at Howrah...but that's another epic.
"If you ever feel neglected
And you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons
And tell you eerything's not lost"

Looky

In the reason
Of a squaty
Inn the doherty
Good riddance

7.1.07

I'm extremely tired. My eyes are refusing to be coordinated (like a certain drunken cat I know) and my hands don't feel like moving, and my legs are numb. This is the worst possible time to type this out, but then again, it might be the best. I don't aim to be lucid.
Many of my friends have written some quite nice little things on the new year. Emotionally, I think they've covered it all. One, for example, was drunk, and the other had a baby trying to rage against the world while they wrote theirs, so I cannot say that my state is particularly trying. And I've had a nice, nice, nice day. Started the day with a vintage car rally, which was better than the dog show; and ended it with a tale of a dancing penguin which got me humming "Staying Alive" and jiving in my head. And I had some nice company. And yet, and yet...
As I start getting used to another year, I find that all the words of kindness linger on when I no longer need them. I read Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, and I know what its like to be free and be totally helpless at the same time. Like a man on an ether binge. Old Gonzo Thompson says that ether makes your body lose grip on reality. Everything's wonky, you're wonky, the laughing peon at the edge of the University green is a hyena, and you say "Good day, Jose" to a passing policeman. But you're brain's fine, and is a little curious about the body's antics. Hmm, he thinks, funny. Ether. It makes you free, but you're helpless, helpless, helpless. Hope this year's not an ether binge for anyone that I know, and that covers a lot.
And in the end the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.