2017 beckons

So, as it turns out, it had been a while since my customary new year post happened. I remember only the last 2 new years when I was hanging out with friends, incidentally at the same place. The last year was slightly more memorable since it was right after a gig. Well, ok. A bad gig.

After much deliberation, I must admit that I don't remember the most important events in this year. Maybe there aren't much important events that have happened. Maybe it was just another year of failed hopes, failed goals. But what I know is that it was one step closer. You know like when people say I don't see anything constructive happening and you retort back saying that you are laying the foundation to make sure the skyscraper rises really high. Maybe its just that. Or, maybe another failed hope.

All the emojiless sarcasm apart, I think this year was fairly good, on many notes. And fairly bad on many notes. Its like how you see a half filled cup. Emotions and life does that to you. A good state of mind will make you think that the cup is half full and on the other hand, a bad day would make you see how much emptiness the cup has. 

Workwise, there has been a lot of ups and downs, lot of running around and stress. To which I attribute the reducing levels of creative thinking and memory. Well, you really need to find a defence point. That's how life works. Over the past few days, I guess (and hope) that I've found a way to beat it. It has gotten a little better. I don't lament that I don't remember at least. 

Musically, a lot of things have (not) happened. Plans got stronger and the desire to get close to making them happen got stronger as well. There are two people who have contributed to this. One who keeps telling me that I just plan and don't DO, and the other who is always surprised that I've not given up on them, yet.

I see these (intentionally funny) posts off late about a list of people who turned strangers in 2016. I have never thought of it that way. Found it extremely rude. Yeah, coming from a judgemental, arrogant person it isn't rude. But really, I never thought that people could turn into strangers just like that. Maybe there were two things to it - one is that I really take a lot of time to warm up to somebody to know if I need to give them enough importance or not, and the other thing is that you never really understand a person. You understand only what you want to. Never is an effort made to understand who they really are. So, obviously when something happens, you get all worked up saying things like you didn't expect such things and so forth. Here's where being judgemental helps. But mark my words, it isn't fool proof.

Despite that, I really look forward to more memories, more lamenting about not meeting goals, more confusion and anarchy, more helpless states of mind. I also look forward to more meaningful relationships, more happiness, more sharing, more love and of course, more mystery and suspense, which may or may not be coupled with Music.

I'd like to thank all of them who have been through my rough and best times. I'd like to thank all of them who set goals for me this year. I will admit, I realised none of them. I'd like to thank a few people for just being there, and at times being more than just 'being'.

Happy new year folks, hoping (yeah, the bitch is back) that it would be better!

PS. Someday I'll have a New Year bash with meaningful people all around, making merry, raising toasts, having fun and all that. Oh wait, I should wait to sleep, to dream.

Happiness

Well, the new redesigned blogger. Honestly, didn't bother checking it. But that font stole my heart away. The font that says Blogger. *Melts*.

A pleasant chilly day in November. November. Makes me think that already the year is about to end. I know, the next month by this time, I'd be writing something about what all happened in this year and all that, you know - my version of thanksgiving. So, I'll just let that be, my usual routine. Today I was mostly thinking how violent a place this world has become. 

When I say violence, I don't mean bombs or religious attacks necessarily. I mean the states of mind of people. I mean the impatience plaguing us everyday that forces us to honk at empty roads or the "slow moving car" that's constantly 30 metres away from us. Then, there is a justification. What if someone comes all of a sudden? What do I do then. Its better to honk than be sorry. Let's us please not leave it at that. Oh, this is a narrow road. Let me get in even if I see a big car coming from the opposite direction. Why? Dude! I'm in a hurry!

Wanna try something magical? Its called patience. Wanna try something better than that? Smile. Its called being courteous to a stranger. And I can say this, try it and it will come back to you sooner than later. Like most people know, I have completely given up on honking. Sometimes when I wait for an auto to pass in the narrow road, I come across an unexpected "Thank you!" from them. Yes, from auto drivers. Yesterday, three vehicles (one was mine) intersected at a T. All 3 of us stopped. Looked at our faces, smiled that we all stopped urging the other one to go. Ended with a curt nod. 

Happiness is smiling at a stranger. Happiness is helping out a person you don't even know. Happiness is putting an end to the violent thoughts you just experienced from some unprecedented corner. Inside you, you'd probably be bubbling with pain, something that you'd want to share. But you realise that you need to be strong only because telling about it would make matters worse for you or for someone else. In such cases, its always better for one person to suffer, than matters getting out of hand.

Why is this important? Not a single person in the world is trust worthy. The person who you trust the most would be one of the firsts to deceive. The rest would follow suit. So no matter how, no matter what, we are all alone. There will be temporary company now and then. But at the end, nothing will give you the same happiness that you get when you help a stranger on the street. And, people are known to have perspectives. They always do. Few people bitch about you behind your back. Few people discourage you on your face. But every person, mark my word here, every person mocks you. They will continue doing so till they get busy with some other work or something else. Because even success isn't a measure for such sad souls. The best cure is to stay by yourself, create a world sans the violence that the world encourages you to create and try and spread some happiness each day. 

River of thoughts

It was a few years back, the initial days of the band when one of my bandmates came up with a song called River of Thoughts. I wasn't paying much emphasis on lyrics those days so I really can't say that the song changed me completely or deeply influenced me. But I remember the name. Very vividly. Especially today.

For starters, I'm ok with getting arrested if expressing my views is a crime in this country. So, that's where I'd be if you don't hear from me for a very long time.

Now for the subject - No one owns water. It is extremely disheartening to see people squabbling over water. I'm not taking any sides. I'm not saying who has to do what. Its not my position to say so, without knowing the complete story. Like how there are issues on one side, there will be issues on the other side as well. It is quite but obvious that human nature will force you to take sides. Sadly, this gets on to classify people based on their religion, culture and language.

Every solution has a problem. Its easy for me to sit at home and say this. Farmers who protest are very valid in their claims. But targeting people purely based on any of my afore mentioned parameters is just plain simple boorish.

I'd restrained myself from talking about all of this so far. From talking about all the crap that the so called news channels promote as news. From talking about public refraining from all the violence that we saw a few weeks back. From basically having a biased opinion, because it is wrong to comment without knowing any story completely. I saw a video today on a social networking site. Promoted by a news channel as well. I can't find enough words to express how disgusted I am with it. I'm really sad that I commented on it and tagged a friend on it as well, something that I should remove right away so that the post doesn't get promoted. Ok, so that is taken care of right away.

You don't make videos where you belittle people from other cultures. And the bloody news channels shouldn't promote something like this with great support and the numerous hashtags. Solution to sharing is always something that is amicable. Because, duh, its called sharing. The solution isn't to hit people, it isn't to create arson, it isn't to create such shitty videos which come up with the lamest things on the planet - We all know the dispute is between which states over which water source here. There is a line that says Kannad gothilla, something that is oft used to mock the non native Kannada speaking "North Indians". So what if it isn't related. Let's make a video anyway. We'll get our share of fame for as long as the subject is in discussion. Pains me. Just pains me. And using a medium of Music for this. People, just quit. Music is definitely an expression of your rebel. But I'd definitely take offence if your song lyrics say - "Hit the people, sack the people and hit them till he bleeds."

I'm disgusted. Appalled and too much in shock.

Human brain

This thing keeps me intrigued. Like really.

I come from a time when even owning a computer at home was termed a luxury. And soon after a considerable folk started to, the middle aged men who would meet up at social gatherings would keep repeating (like most always do) about their brain being a hard disk that stores a lot of information and it never gets erased. It was some reference that the person who made the joke would laugh louder than the ones who heard it.

Well, humans. We all age, we all wear out, we all rot. If that joke didn't catch up on people, it was probably because of this.

But technically, I sometimes feel if its a hard drive or a RAM. I honestly am in no capacity to discuss in these technical terms, so I'll get rid of the jargon before I say something stupid.

The point I'm trying to make is, we all absorb a lot of information. Some extremely essential, some luxurious and mostly unwanted - the stuff we could do without. And then, who keeps recalling this information time and again thereby making the present situation a pain to live in? The brain. Some information that would have been essential at a point of time would somehow wear out in importance. 13 years down the line, when such an incident is called upon, the brain pulls out the information in exactly the way that it requires. A sad thing, it never happens for most of us when we write exams of any kind, at any level of maturity. I know the technical stuff - things that we want to remember, things that are dear to us, we make sure we remember that. Does that mean you erase off the rest? You don't! At that point, that information is probably useless and its stored in some deep storage. When the situation comes back, if at all it does, the brain pulls it out and presents it to you. How many times would each of us have experienced this! Just imagine, information of this degree, of this size - even if its stored in a computer, we would lose track of what to pull out when and from where. Despite its size, the brain simply sits and works, organising stuff in the head and neatly stacking them up. To a degree where I wonder if we control the brain or the brain controls us.

Nostalgia

One of those times when you plan to write so well that you know the title even before the blog ranting begins. But plans never work out, do they?

I don't intend to write about good old times and sound like a 70 year old, but surely about things that influenced me around when they were meant to happen. By that, I'm obviously referring to one of the most important things in my life - Music.

I guess it was during my 10th or 12th that we got a computer at home. Winamp that was installed on it had a few songs on its playlist. Rather than the song itself, it was the song playing on a software that had caught my fancy. Little did I would realise that I'm listening to a song that about 15 years later, is still on my list of songs to cover. But my knowledge of western songs wasn't that rich then. Not like it is now, any way.

With discussions about music spanning from region and language, I heard (thanks to my hostelites in engineering) music like never before, spending time with just my sony walkman (with extra bass boost, mind you), moonlight and audio cassettes that my friend would get every week, from home. With the ample time we would get during semester breaks is when I had an upgraded computer then, with a DVD writer, the 'in-thing', then. Mp3s that I had were neatly segregated, CD covers were printed out clearly mentioning how many tracks were in each album and the total number of tracks in the CD.

Storage spaces in computers grew, hard drives became the trend, computers without CD drives started coming out, metal and rock influences happened and most of the songs just died down. It was the same set of songs that I could talk about endlessly on a train journey with a friend, it was the same set of songs which initiated a review over an 'STD call' to Tumkur from a friend in Bangalore (let me please mention - from his landline to my hostel landline).

All this kinda came back over the past few days now. I don't have a fancy car that supports carplay or android auto. So, a good old CD player is still in place. I had kinda given up on listening to songs while driving after one of the rear speakers died, but realised that it was way too silent to conjure up weird things in your brain. So, I had company with a certain Mp3 CD titled "Music 6, Tamil". Tamil is in italics, by the way. Such gems. Such songs. Can't say I grew up on these songs, but I have lot of memories associated with them. First, the exposure to such a richness. Second, the influence that all these songs had, that came at a time when probably a musical change was happening inside my head. Metal found its way in, so did Rock. But it all translated to an amalgamation of sorts that still stays today. It has turned out to be a phase where in all this applies to anything that involves me contributing musically to a self initiated venture or a collaboration or just a suggestion. Such was a norm then to get excited seeing the name of a favourite playback singer on the credits. The only reason why I learnt to read Tamil. They all still remain favourites, but there is a irksome faulty trend in the composers who are trying too hard to act cool. I mean, if you are 40, you understand you are 40 and stop wearing tees that college guys wear. At 40, you'd have the knowledge and experience that the college goers might not necessarily have. I don't know what propels these guys to lose their shit that way. I guess its all about following the trend which is not true. Its about creating a trend. If a person has created a trend before, there sure is much potency to repeat that. But with time and insecurity, one robs away that opportunity from oneself only to 'stay with times'.

I guess the ranting about this could go on and on. But what I really missed is that over these many years, there were a few voices that I was really looking forward for when I would see a new release. Few have fallen out of touch. Few have maintained their voices and their sanctity, if I may. The saddest thing is that few of them aren't even physically there. Its not really nice to talk about people who you idolised some many years back in past tense. I'd like to mention Swarnalatha and Shahul Hameed, although the latter had passed away even before I discovered him.

Nostalgia indeed. Couple that with evolution. On a second thought, let's just not. 

Life. Its as simple as we make it.

Meandering between daily chores and the prime reason for mankind to suffer - coveting, we often tend to, ok, cancel tend to there; we forget to acknowledge the mere existence of things around us. I was just thinking and discussing with a friend how we end up with loans for everything today. We have easy monthly instalments for an iPhone, for a bike, for a car, for a house, for everything. Things are packaged and shown across so well to us, the poor consumers that we give in because we want all of it. Its very rare and indeed hard to draw lines with materialistic possessions.

To each his own there. I mean, the world wouldn't be as colourful without as many perspectives. There wouldn't be a zillion consumers being taken for a ride every single day. All that apart, we all already have in possession, a lot of things. These are the things that we don't notice every day. These are the things we take for granted. These are the people we take for granted.

If, for a minute or two, each single day, we zoom out of the morbid whining from the arc of oblivion we all create for ourselves, we see that we have a life! And that, its a life that's not so bad. We could obviously choose to cry about umpteen number of things, but when will we actually learn to appreciate? We have a life. Its just hidden under the various covers we draw over it ourselves, giving in to peer pressure, situational demands, or very simply because someone told us that leading life is to happen in a certain way. If all of us led life the same way, the world would be void of the many scientists, artists, doctors and beautiful people like you and me. There is no formula for life. There is no equation to be followed. There is no preset 'way' to lead life. If there is any, it should be the one you and I create. Not blindly follow a herd because 'it was told to them so'.

Life is beautiful. Its upto us to choose to take each day as a blessing or go to bed whining. If any formula, its just how simple it is. How simple it is for us to make it.

Faith, God and Religion

There is something that has to trigger, somewhere, sometime.

Perspectives change all the time. Life, itself is very dynamic that way. What or Who is important to us at a point of time will cease to exist a little later, or a long time later.  Its not that it would be with an experience so bad that we'd like to severe ties with it, but it just changes. Things just change, over time.

Well, I've been a believer of faith since a long time now. Not at all into religion, but slightly into God ever since I remember. I wonder who really created religion and for what good. It was really not done in a good taste, I must say. With God, however, which eventually (sadly) turned out into becoming an extension of religion, I maintained different views. Classical music, which I have been exposed to, since a kid, is primarily resplendent with a lot of compositions from saints who were staunch devotees of some particular God. Add to this, the exposure of starting anything new with a Ganesh stuti, to make sure things would go on alright. Obviously, since a kid if this is the background you'd be brought up in, then it would influence you. Its only the perspectives that change later on.

A very recent incident made me think very strongly about religion. With God, however, all my discussions with like minded people has been limited to the force being a positive energy, something that also has an equal negativity to balance the world with good and bad. I gave up long time back on praying to God before doing any good because of the simple reason that when people say its God who you have to ask, I'd reply saying - 'If he really is the all-knowing, he'd know what I want.' Religion, however, I discovered is just human made bull shit. One badmouthing the other. I really want to go back in time and see how it worked then, because it baffles me. And what hurts me the most is that in 2016 if someone were to come and give a discourse over religion. I'm pretty sure there is not a dearth of populace of that kind. 

I was seeing this movie yesterday - Lagaan. When the team's performance in the cricket match wasn't all that rosy, they turned to God. A 5 minute song praising God, asking for help, with tears and all, saying 'Ok, listen up dude. I agreed to do something. I fucked up. Or I might. Please help me.' Well, this is what it appeared to be. The following day, no balls are bowled, catches are caught on the boundary line, the team who prayed, won.

Perspectives. I'm not sure if there was an easily accessible God in earlier times who would come down and help you out. I honestly don't know. The perfectly plausible explanation to me would be this - We are all capable, to degrees we ourselves don't know. When things go out of hand, we all get worked up. All it needs to be done is to take a step backward, a deep breath, and an analysis of situations. Perhaps, a smile would help as well. Its basically you telling yourself that 'Dude, look at it from another perspective before fucking it up anyway'. Maybe temples were that. Maybe they just helped to get us in a calm state of mind. For me, the sea would do it. Help me get all philosophical and introspective. It could be anything. It is just a time and a change of place that is needed at that point. This, I feel has been vaguely misconstrued as God's hand.

Food for thought. 

The year that was (and that will be)

Happy new year folks!

Yes, that's it. No meandering bullshit about philosophy, no sulking about new year celebrations, no nothing. I thought let me at the very least, start this year's quota with a happy note. Note. Touché.

I wanted to start off the first blog of the year on a very thought provoking discussion about some crap that I came up with when I was driving to work a few days back, but I guess the topic wasn't strong enough. That explains why I forgot about it. Duh!

Coming to what I crib about, every year - the new year celebrations. This time, it was something that I'd never done so far. The band had a gig on 31st, albeit it didn't spill through midnight. We were out for dinner and random talk till 3 in the morning. All this, with people who mean the most. So, kinda no cribbing about that.

As for the year that went by, it couldn't have been a better coincidence that exactly an year back, I was a part of a band that released an album. Something that all of us worked on, something that had been a very dear project, something that was well delayed. No regrets on how it turned out to be, at the outset. But yes, there is always scope for improvement. Its as dynamic as life itself is.

Early months of the year was a bag of mixed emotions. My first Aero India show not even as a visitor, but as an exhibitioner (thanks to my ex employer). It was exciting. I recall staring at flights when I'd gone to HAL from school. Now, it was with a more informed crowd, involving a more mature discussion and with a more sophisticated Russian crowd (read that as chicks, please). This, along with a terrible accident a very dear friend went through which thankfully didn't escalate matters beyond the band losing a few gigs. Drummers are the life of the band, didn't anyone know? 

4th and 5th months. A sea change of perspectives in life. Starting from life itself, to God, to religion, to music, to faith, to belief. Probably came by as very dramatic for people who had to bear the brunt.

Mid year. One of the best decisions of my life to join a startup, help my friend to grow his company. No more details on that, not now at least. September - the most dreaded month turned out to be not so bad with my brother's (now bigger) family reminding that I'm indeed an uncle now. Mid October - a long yearned dream possession, finally. 

Culmination - two gigs back to back in the last few days of December.

There. That took less than ten minutes. I'm sure I've missed out on a lot of stuff. I'm sure I'm hiding a lot of ideas I've got there as well. I somehow feel thanksgiving must have been on 31st Jan rather than some weird day in November. I think I should make it a customary at least to do it, then.

A lot of things have happened, a lot of shit has happened. Let the bad things be, and so be the good things (I really can't forget anything important, bad or good). Whatever happened was for at least one good reason, which I don't know in entirety as of today. And for the people who made it all happen, most of who won't even read this blog, I owe it all to you people. You guys are the best.

Quite a new year blog there. Phew!
Had to make it a little different for entering the 8th year in succession.