Rock de India 2008

It was a cool, misty night on Nov 8 2008 in Milpitas, California. Music was in the air. Two San Francisco Bay Area bands - BOOMM (Bunch of Oddly Musical Misfits) and Antariksh, deluged and delighted the audience with a wide variety of genres of Indian music - Rock, Pop, Bollywood, Kollywood, improvised semi-classical and adapted jugalbandis to shake their heads in agreement with the melodies and tap their feet; and also a lot of 'run of the mill' dheen-chak Bollywood numbers to shake their booties on the floor.


BOOMM went on the stage first. The BOOMM crew was as follows:

TN Arunagiri - Vocals/Percussions
Padmanaban Ramasamy - Drums
Rahul Nim - Lead and Rhythm Guitars/Vocals
Shantanu Swaminathan - Keyboards/Saxophone
Shwetha Pramod - Vocals
Sridhar Narayanan - Flute/Harmonica
Sunil Ramesh - Vocals/Percussion/Keyboards
B Vasant - Bass

BOOMM's song order (each title is hyperlinked to the respective streaming audio recording):

1. Dhoom Pichak Dhoom (Euphoria)
2. In Dino (Life in a Metro)
3. Breathless (Breathless)
4. Sax/Violin jugalbandi (Armaan) - BOOMM adaption with Guitar/Sax/Flute
5. Mann Ke Manjeere (Mann Ke Manjeere)
6. Aditi (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na)
7. Vellai Pookkal Improvised (Kannathil Muttamittal) - Tamil. BOOMM adapted it and added rhythmic and melodic improvisations to it, using the pentatonic raga Hamsadhwani (Huns-dhun).
8. Kholo Kholo (Taare Zameen Par)
9. Aaj Kal Tere Mere (Bramhachari)
10. Adiye Kolluthe (Vaaranam aayiram) and Punnagai (Alai Payuthe) - Tamil medley
11. Tauba Tauba (Kailasa)
12. Socha Hai (Rock On)

Videos of the all above songs are available here: http://www.youtube.com/user/rhnimu2


The Antariksh crew was as follows:

Amber Sharma - Drums
Anand Kannan - Vocals
Anuja Bellare - Vocals
Mahesh Kumar - Bass
Prasad Bhandarkar - Flute
Pronob Ashwin - Keyboards
Rajesh Harekal - Vocals
Satyajit Sahu - Guitar

Antariksh's song order is given below. I do not have access to individual audio tracks. However a few videos have been uploaded by Anand. Go here for videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/anandk199

01- Mit jaaye (Kidnap - rock version)
02- Alvida (Metro)
03- Naina (Omkara)
04- Sanwal (Mekaal Hasan Band)
05- Yeh tumhari meri baatein (Rock on)
06- Mobius Strip (Antariksh)
07- Yeh Sama (Antariksh)
08- Never (Antariksh)
09- Jhok Ranjhan (Mekaal Hasan Band)
10- Tere bin (Atif Aslam)
11- Sinbad the sailor (Rock on)
12- Zehrille (Rock on)
13- Dard e Disco (Om Shanti Om)
14- Sajnaji (Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd)
15- Mauja hi mauja (Dus Bahane mix) (Jab we met)
16- Beedi (Omkara)
17- Desi girl (Dostana)

Last: Bhool Bhulaiyya (B.B.) performed with BOOMM.

Last but not the least, the Sound Engineer by whose grace we have the recordings today is Ramana Turlapati. Thanks a million to Ramana's 'sound engineering', we had great sound from the stage monitors - it was a sheer pleasure to perform for a wonderful audience!

Review: “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce” – Getting High Over a Hobby.

This is Paul Torday’s second novel. But with a degree of certainty, I can say he is comfortable writing about the maladroit outsider. Over the last few years, the outsiders have been methodically glamorized by indie pictures from America. The employed narrative relies on black humour with a soundtrack filled with world music and along the way personality quirks are shoveled down the audience throat. However, the outsiders in Paul Torday’s world are more accessible men, whom you are sure to encounter in your workplace. They are also middle class men, who have achieved a degree of success in their chosen field.

The Irreversible Inheritance of Wilberforce could be disappointing, if you go in expecting another satirical angle on a nation and human condition. There is not much of a story. In fact, you know the ending at the end of the “first vintage”. Only half way though the first vintage, I realized Paul Torday has discarded all the ingredients, which made his first novel (Salmon Fishing in Yemen) eminently readable. This material is much somber.

The narrator, Mr. Wilberforce is a successful software developer, who is now reduced to being an alcoholic on expensive wines. He has been a loner his entire life and decides to create a social life for himself. He falls in love with a much engaged Catherine. He is seduced to Francis Black’s wine collection in his undercroft, though he has not tasted even lager. He is fundamentally naïve, speculates the other modes in life, underestimates the value of his software business built over 15 years and overestimates the value of friends he makes late in his life. His every decision is impetuous, including the selling of his software business to buy the wine cellar from Francis Black and his short lived marriage to an engaged women. His life becomes much like the “hobby” he is drawn towards.

‘That is the most wonderful and the most frustrating thing about wine: it is a work of art, sometimes a work of genius, that has taken a lifetime of experience to create and has matured for ten or fifteen years in the bottle in order to be ready for you to drink. Then, as soon as the wine is opened, it begins to die. In twenty-four hours it is dead.’

Paul Torday has once again drawn a portrait of a modern working man, who despite satisfying work and protected innocence seeks happiness elsewhere. In ‘Salmon Fishing in Yemen’, Dr. Alfred Jones quiet research life is taken for a ride through a scientifically unsound project from Prime Minster’s office. Paul Torday also has a dim view on modern relationship. The marriage between is Dr. Alfred Jones and his wife is loveless and is a financial arrangement between an academic and a corporate executive. Here, Mr. Wilberforce is unable to cultivate any sort of friendship in his office and relates his emptiness to the lack of a hobby.

In his first novel, the lackluster is provided buoyancy by the underlying satire. But in his second novel, the straight narrative is plodding and ceases to be a page turner. Besides that, Torday’s description of a software (‘language of numbers”) profession is a bit shallow. To his credit, Torday manages to withhold just enough information (including “his visit to Bogota”), but they seem completely absurd in the end.

Review: "Gorilla" - Rechristening and Running

“For years, I had felt a small thrill at the sight of the sentence, `I read all morning.' The simple words spoke of the purest and most rewarding kind of leisure. It was what I did now: I read all morning..."
- Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering

The central disappointment of my life has been my inability to read Tamil literature. My reading life is restricted to English translations, which can never express the subtleties in the original. One of the finest novels, I have read this year is Anushiya Sivanarayanan’s English translation of Anthony Jesuthasan Shobhasakthi’s Gorilla. The book made a quiet, undistinguished entry into bookstores and was not loaded with the now obnoxious bollywood-like publicity seen for every popular novel. In her review of Gorilla, Subhashree Desikan writes, “Tamil readers can enjoy the additional aspects of the original, such as the musical quality of the spoken Jaffna Tamil, which is used by the author.” This is mere consolation for the deeply created void in me.

Gorilla is disturbing and provides a graphic account of a LTTE child soldier and his subsequent attempt to get political asylum in France. I opened it with trepidation, that it may sound glamorous as Chimamanda Adichie, “Half of a Yellow Sun”. The prose is stripped bare of emotion and does not sound preachy. By his own admission, diaspora writer sounds too elitist and Shobasakthi calls himself a “refugee writer”. Sivanarayanan calls the narrative technique employed as ‘auto-fiction’ or fictionalized true story, where the author is the narrator and the protagonist and he “employs the creative license of fiction”.

There is something unique about critical writings on Tamil Movement in Sri Lanka, in that there is not much insider material available, except biographies mostly written from an Indian perspective. Unlike, the reactionary prose of Latin America or writings about drug lords of West Africa, not many Tamils have survived or escaped the ideology to write censoriously from outside. This may be the first instance, where a Sri Lankan Tamil is almost critical of the functioning and recruitment program of the LTTE. The autofiction style arms Shobasakthi to quote leaders from his group and write about the hierarchical structure of the organization.

The story begins in Mandataivu, Jaffna, where several groups are vying to spearhead the Tamil Eelam Movement. Fifteen year old Rocky Raj, works as a pamphleteer and a speech writer. He is credited with introducing the phrase “Salute Valorously” into Tamil Eelam. Deep ideological hatred among groups lead to slow death of several groups and sometime in 1983-84, LTTE (referred to as Movement) announces itself as the true leader behind Tamil aspiration. At around the same time, Rocky Raj wants to escape his abusive father, who is referred to as Gorilla in his neighborhood. He volunteers himself to the nearest training camp.

His unsatisfactory stint at the camp begins on the first day of induction, where the trainers are addressed to as ‘Sir’. The induction also begins with erasure of the birth name and rechristening. The narration is brusque and the humour is understated. And to not lose credence from the original, Sivanaraynan’s punctuation is sparse and I think she has carefully avoided unnecessary embellishment.

“As the trainers called out the names, the boys would hurriedly write them out on the form. Though however carelessly the ones in charge came up with new names, there was a connection of sorts between the right hand name and the left hand one.
Reagan – Jimmy Carter
Rajini – Kamal (The two superstars of Tamil Cinema, who throughout the late 70s and 80s were seen as markedly opposite to each other in terms of look, attitude, and the roles they played.)
Manian- Akhilan (Two writers from TamilNadu who were seen as two opposite poles of popular Tamil literature.)
Malli – Nangi (Sinhala words indicating younger brother and younger sister, respectively)”

Rocky Raj is given the name Sanjay (Gandhi). But soon everyone calls him Gorilla. Besides, he is posted at his home village to work at the sentry point. He gets frustrated at seeing his father abuse his family and is also wrongly framed for stealing a buried cylinder explosive. His subsequent torture and incarceration by the local leaders of the Movement leaves him disillusioned. He flees to Colombo and finally finds his way to Paris. Gorilla is primarily about identities and slur cast on an individual on the basis of given name. Rocky Raj repeatedly tries to disassociate himself from his Sri Lankan name, but in a pivotal moment in Paris, he realizes the “Gorilla” continues to haunt him.

Abhinav Bindra - Shooting to Fame

Abhinav Bindra has shot to fame - yes, quite literally!

Yesterday, as I watched the Indian Tricolour being raised up on the laptop screen via CNN-IBN News Stream, a young Abhinav (sharing the podium with fellow athletes from China and Finland) with a Gold medal dangling around his neck, the Indian National Anthem was being played in the background. That immediately brought another Indian to my mind - AR Rahman and the project Jana Gana Mana.

The commonalties between the two men are striking:

1. Both of these men have made it big in their mid twenties. Rahman was 24 years old when he shot to fame with Roja. Abhinav is 25 now and an Olympian.
   
2. None of us knew who Rahman was (then Dilip Kumar) when he composed jingles. Similarly, no one bothered about Abhinav's performances in Commonwealth and other games.
   
3. Both the men are reserved. They do not talk much. Instead they divert that energy to more meaningful tasks, like winning an Olympics Gold medal.
   
4. They both are the pride and joy of India. While Rahman breathed innovation and life into our National Anthem through the project Jana Gana Mana, Abhinav made the world hear it live through his stellar performance in the 10 m shooting range at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

India wishes Abhinav good luck. May his tribe increase!

Before I sign off, here is a soulful composition by Rahman called Vellai Pookkal (white flowers in Tamil) from the movie Kannatthil Muttamittaal. Lyrics have been pennned by Kaviarasu Vairamuthu. This song won Vairamuthu one of his 5 National Awards for the Best Lyrics; one other prominent one being for the song Tamizha Tamizha from the movie Roja).

Vellai Pookkal: Composed and Sung by: AR Rahman; Lyrics: Vairamuthu

My lousy translation of the award winning lyrics:

May white flowers bloom all over this world
May the next dawn on the earth be a peaceful one
May the beautiful yellow sunlight bathe the soil once again
May the flowers lose their laziness and bloom
May the infant wake up in mother’s warm lap
May the world brighten by the infant’s toothless little smile

Verse1: Could the breeze’s grand melodies and the music created by raindrops, provide the joy that one gets in silence?
Would a million compositions and words penned by poets, be as meaningful as a drop of tear shed?

Verse 2: Where a little child stretches out its hand, oh beautiful white moon, won’t you appear there?
Where the human race stops war and shedding blood, there, won’t a white Cuckoo sing her songs?

Review: "The Yacoubian Building" - Cravings in a Downtown Apartment

Novelists write for themselves. In certain situations, Novelists write in their native language with elements added to make it appealing for a wider readership. Fiction writers from Islamic countries have repeatedly been forced to address the issue of Islamic fundamentalism and over the last decade, homosexuality in Muslim societies. One could argue that one of the roles of fiction is to present prevalent social mores in an imperceptible manner. However, this has smothered a fine novel like Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building.

The Yacoubian Building begins as a delightful read. Khushwant Singh would have said, “Finally, RK Narayan with lots of sex”. The characters (a whole dozen of them) are introduced with a felicity associated with a finely tuned screenplay and the pieces in the ensemble are given enough room to develop. The several introductory sections seamlessly narrates the present lives of the residents and people who hold offices in the Yacoubian Building, while throwing in enough hints of their past. The recounting of there past is not deliberate and one waits anxiously for the characters to reappear after few pages to continue the story arc. Al-Aswany does not disappoint and their paths intersect and crisscross each other. The initial section is a lot like the first fifteen minutes of a Wes Anderson movie and a Raymond Carver story, where the characters are set up and fancifully judged. Unsurprisingly, the film adaptation was Egypt’s entry to the Academy Awards in 2007. I am quite eager to see how the innumerable sexual set pieces (homosexual and heterosexual) were filmed.

The story is set shortly after the gulf war. The underlying theme is the transformation of the Egyptian society through the lives of the people who inhabit Yacoubian Building. Despite being set in 1990, the protagonists’ vaguely refer to the 1952 revolution by Gamal Abdel Nasser as the pivotal point in their lives.

Zaki Bey, the promiscuous 65 year old son of former prime minister whose life is carelessly overturned by the movement and “his obsession with sexual pleasure”

“Zaki Bey studied engineering in Paris. It has been expected, of course, that he would play a leading political role in Egypt using his father’s influence and wealth, but suddenly the Revolution erupted and everything changed”

The description of Hatim Rasheed’s (the closeted homosexual) family before the revolution also recalls a much more “peaceful” time

“The family lived a life that was European in both form and essence. Hatim could not remember ever seeing his father pray or fast. The pipe never left his mouth, there was always French wine at his table, …”

And later after dinner with a lot younger, Busayna, Zaki harangues,

“The damage he did to the Egyptian character will take years to repair. Abd el Nasser taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunist, and hypocrites.”

The Yacoubian Building is also about dreams and desires, which are constrained and achieved by the very qualities mentioned by Zaki. However, the days of there lives are presented in a colorful, humorous tone, which almost ridicules the desires. When are frank self-observations made on human condition? Is it after satiation of one’s desires or the failure of the same? Yacoubian Building provides several answers to chew on.

The twin burdens of a novel from Islamic nations- religious fundamentalism and homosexuality seem to have artificially plugged in into the narrative. The transformation of the son of the doorkeeper from a pious Muslim to an extremist through student gihad organization has been tread upon numerous times and is filled with clichés.

“We do not want Islamic Nation to be either socialist or democratic. We want it Islamic-Islamic, and we will struggle and give up our lives and all we hold dear till Egypt is Islamic once more”

Aswany meanders on these two issues and does not provide a fresh slant and perspective. The swift disappointing end includes a suicide bombing, a surprising marriage, and a murder (a result of excessive desire). Despite this, the book is to be devoured for its insightful first section written with a cheerful, mocking third person narrative.

Remembering RD Burman...

Here is a link to a blog on Pancham i.e. RD Burman by my friend Rama (Ramakrishnan Sadasivan). Rama is a fellow enthusiast of the beautiful, futuristic music that flowed from the golden heart of Pancham.

The simplicity and terseness of the musical phrases that Pancham used in his compositions, are so full of character - completely soul satisfying to say the least. He never was grand in orchestrating nor borrowed heavily from Indian classical ragas like Ilaiyaraja did. But Pancham did have a vision that is also shared by Ilaiyaraja, in that (a) a composition will have a strikingly-rich-character-laden melody line throughout the song - be it a guitar riff (Phir Wahi Raat Hai from the Gulzar directed movie Ghar) or the use of tablas tuned to the notes of a raga (Tere Bina Jiya Jayena again from the movie Ghar) and (b) the composition will sound futuristic. In fact, even after 30 years or more, the compositions dazzle us and sound so very modern!

Have fun reading, watching and especially listening to the anecdotes that lyricist Gulshan Bawra narrates about Pancham's antics while composing a song. Without further ado, here is the link to the blog...

Remembering RD Burman

After you are done with above, take a listen to an unplugged version of the classic ghazal Huzoor Is Kadar composed by Pancham from the movie Masoom. This unplugged version is an attempt by my band BOOMM.

Huzoor Is Kadar (Unplugged) - Piano: Zameer; Guitar: Prakash; Vocals: Sunil and Arun

Ilaiyaraja: A Beautiful Mind

“The only way that I will ever be great to myself, is not by what I do to my body, but what I do to my mind.” – from the movie/documentary “What tнe #$*! Dө ωΣ (k)πow!?”

There is Eastern mind and there is Western. The East is always looking into within and the West without. East is apparently full of inertia exploring the internal, while West teems with go getters and earth movers, bringing technology and affluence (which has never been without help from the East, whether today or during colonial times). So how does one reconcile the disparate methodologies of the East and West? I believe this division and debate will be endless for some, while for several others, there never was a debate to begin with. They have realized the importance of both and can reconcile and imbibe one without diluting the other.

If Johan Sebastian Bach invited Tyagaraja to his house for Christmas, how would he have honored his guest? Bach would have probably arranged tulasi dalamula composed by Tyagaraja in Raga Mayamalava Gowlai to be played for the highly discriminating German audience in his town. In the interludes, Tyagu would have enjoyed playing his veena alongside the pianists and violinists, making sure that the grammar of the raga remained resolved throughout. The grand orchestral arrangement would have sounded something like this:

Chamber Welcomes Tyagaraja from the album How to Name It.

And perhaps this is how Tyagaraja would have discussed with Bach, his Partita No. 3 in E Major. Tyagu would have begun with a sprightly Hamsadhwani alaap, because it naturally leads into the beginning of the Partita and then gone into splitting each phrase in the Partita and dug out Shankarabharanam, Charukeshi and Shanmukhapriya and also would have sung the notes himself as the conversation went on.

I met Bach...and we had a Talk from the album How to Name It.

The above are just two examples of the many other innovations, that were conceived in a beautiful mind called Ilaiyaraja. Hats off to you Maestro, for reconciling the East and West, the heart and mind…we shall forever remain indebted to you and celebrate you through your music till the day we forget ourselves.

Review: "The Hungry Tide" - Men Chase Women and Woman Stalks Irrawady Dolphin

Indian fiction writing in English falls into two distinct phases. The RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh, and Raja Rao era between 1940 and 1980 treated fiction as it was meant to be. The characters were genuine, simple yet troubled, spiritual without being exhortative, and also came with honest alcoholism and loads of sex. However after Salman Rushdie, Indian writers have had this fixation with developing a narrative around political and popular uprising. While the causes were genuine, the narrative and voices always sound concocted. RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh, and Raja Rao wrote for themselves and lived in an era, which was unaffected by market compulsion. The post- Rushdie writers suffocate their characters in an attempt to make them consumable to the West.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is set in the mangrove islands of Sunderbans, West Bengal. The Hungry Tide explores refugee resettlement in the forest reserves of Marichjhapi, Sunderbans and the complex Man-Animal relationship in the archipelagos ecosystem. The book makes for a fast reading because the characters do not throw any new light on the two issues.

The central characters are Mr Kanai Dutt, Ms.Piyali Roy, and Mr. Fokir. Mr Dutt is in his early 40s, single, and runs a profitable translation service in New Delhi. He employs his polyglot skills to mollify his ego and charm women. His life is sexless and preys on unsuspecting, yet intelligent women. His aunt, Nilima Bose compares his preying instincts to the “Tigers in the Sunderbans”. He is called by Ms Bose to Lusibari Island, Sunderbans to read his deceased uncle’s unopened notebooks.

Ms. Piyali Roy, a cetologist from Seattle is in Sunderbans to do a research study on the last surviving group of fresh water dolphins- the Irrawady Dolphins. Mr. Ghosh’s description of her research sounds dubious. She spots and then stalks dolphins, makes some disparate entry in her data sheets and notes the GPS reading. God forbid, the journal, which takes her manuscript. Mr Dutt flirts and calls her a “brave woman” for her often lonesome work. Ms. Roy is mostly self-pitying throughout the story.

“Kanai, tell me, do you see anything easy about what I do? Look at me: I have no home, no money and no prospects. My friends are thousands of kilometers away and I get to see them maybe once in year, if I’m lucky. And that’s the least of it. On top of that is the knowledge that what I’m doing is more or less futile.’

Mr. Fokir is the boatman who has a preternatural understanding of the Sunderban waters. He rescues Ms. Roy, when she drowns herself, while going out in a forest department’s launch. Despite hampered by language and experiences, Ms. Roy and Mr. Fokir communicate seamlessly with each other.

An interesting back story to Mr. Fokir is provided by the notebook left to Mr.Dutt by his uncle, Mr Nirmal Bose. Mr Bose, a dreamer and a poet, upon retiring as headmaster of a school in Lusibari is restless. On hearing about the refuge resettlement and protest against government on a nearby island his youthful communist ideals are brought to the forefront and springs into action. But the uprising is not his only draw; he is also drawn towards Kusum, Fokir’s mother who is part of the settler group from Bihar in Marichjhapi. On meeting the group’s leader in the island he realizes he has nothing to offer to the movement. He writes this in the notebook he leaves for Mr. Dutt.

‘There’s only one thing I know to do,’ I said.’ And that is to teach.’

‘Teach?’ I could see he was struggling to suppress a smile. ‘What could you teach here?’

‘I could teach your children about this place that you’ve come to: the tide country. I have time – I am soon to retire.’

I’ll teach them to dream.’

In the notebook he bemoans his life spent in Lusibari, but hides everything to indicate his love for Kusum.

" The true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late."

In the middle section of the book, Mr. Ghosh alternates the narration between the research trip and the Mr. Dutt’s reading of his uncle’s notebook (written in 1979). While he may not possess the delectable simplicity of Mr. Naipaul, Mr. Ghosh smoothly and effortlessly changes narrative voices within a chapter and at times within a page.

Besides an all-revealing, confessional notebook of Mr. Bose, the other characters lack depth. And when they do talk there voices sound inauthentic. Alright, all Indian characters speaking in English lack authenticity. Ms Roy, despite doing captivating research, digresses into loneliness of her work on every conversation, which last more than two pages. However Mr. Ghosh correctly assesses the persona of Mr. Dutt and his depiction of a Bengali man from New Delhi is accurate. Besides being forced to read the drivel by his uncle, he creates opportunities to flirt with Ms. Roy, until Ms Roy acknowledges his companionship.

The conversation between Ms. Roy and Mr. Dutt are pretty vacant. It is quite surprising to read Ms. Roy’s thoughts on Man-Animal relation in a difficult ecosystem are naïve. In addition, Mr. Ghosh unashamedly suggests that illiterate can also fall in love. This and the settlement issues are straight pandering to the west. The west loves to read about anti-governmental agitations in developing countries.

The attractive part of this book is the nonfiction description of the Sunderbans. The secondary research done on the mangrove forest by Mr. Ghosh is highly commendable.

Of auditory perceptions, Truth and St. Tyagaraja

In the din and turmoil of life in the fast lane, we remain oblivious of the importance of our sense perceptions in helping us relate to the external world. Of the five cognitive senses, the sense of hearing is the most important to gaining knowledge. Imagine looking at a rose and not knowing that it is a rose every time you look, because no one ever told you that it is a rose. But we all can recognize a rose as a rose, because we have heard the name rose associated with the form rose at some point in our lives.

Again, roses may vary in terms of shape, color and fragrance. However, the name or the sound to describe every flower still remains same; which is rose. So what you learn from seeing, tasting, touching or smelling will not be complete, until you simultaneously hear the sound in your mind, corresponding to every cognitive sense perception you use. Hence hearing is very important and serves as a direct means of attaining true knowledge.

What is Truth? Truth is that which does not change, ever! It is not limited by time, boundaries between nations or material things. Truth is self-evident and effortlessly enjoyed. So what is it, that is an expression of or rather, is Truth itself, which is self-evident and simply enjoyed through our sense perception of hearing? Music.

So let’s set the ball rolling with a piece that salutes all those men and women of wisdom, who live life with greatest simplicity and hence become simply greatest.

endaro mahanubhavulu, andariki vandanamulu…a melody composed by St. Tyagaraja (1767 - 1847 AD), in Raga Shri, Adi Taalam.

Here is John Anthony from a Chennai based band called Karnatriix, jazzing it up on the guitar for us and making it sound so out of this world. John has an impeccable sense of laya (tempo setting and maintaining) and plays this kriti without gimmickry (see how he does not move at all from his place throughout). Kudos to Karnatriix for bringing the orthodox and unorthodox together and demonstrating how they can complete (and need not compete with) each other.

I bet St. Tyagu will be smiling and saying “besh besh, Karnatriix romba nannaa irukku!” (wah wah, Karnatriix rocks!).