my impressions from watching Jaane tu ...

NOTE: Spoilers ahead!
Maybe I'm watching too many random hindi movies. But really, you have to agree that this is a currently popular Bollywood movie, which is many steps ahead of the rest.
Ratna Pathak is a widow who's not, lo and behold, graying and wearing a white sari! She is struggling to deal with her past, tradition, loss and trying to do whatever she can for her (and her son's) future.
And guess what! The girlfriend doesn't actually turn into a vamp the moment she is dumped. She's in a really sticky situation and she says - I'm alright, I'm the way I need to be - and if you can't deal with it, so be it. Without you, my world won't end, Surprise!
I liked the brother too. They all called him crazy and then finally ate their words. People are different and everyone cannot fit into the mold. His obsession with his art, his fascination with the rat - were all very endearing.The exchanges between the aforementioned girlfriend's parents are downright disturbing - but you don't see her getting too melodramatic about it.
When the hero finds out about his father, he's not wailing or weeping!These are all people with very serious, very real problems. But they're not painting the town red. People go through severe, brutal personal tragedies and still go on - if they didn't it would cost them their sanity. Besides, maybe I needed some of that thing too ...
D'uh, of course the movie was cliched. And puh-lease, you cannot call it great art. Besides, it's Bollywood. It's bashing the Box Office! But you know what! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie for all the little things that it was able to say under the garb of a Bollywood hit.

TED Talks

i have a tendency to keep telling the same people about TED Talks. and so i always start with - did i ever tell you about TED? so i'm going to stop this practice - by writing a post on www.ted.com. Ted Talks is an online resource for talks/presentations by people who participate in the annual TED conference. their catch phrase is - Ideas Worth Spreading and their method is by getting people worth listening-to to talk.

it all began with Larry Lessig talking about creativity in these times in an awesomely creative way.



another talk on creativity and education - this one is positively hilarious.

Majora Carter speaks on Environmental Activism - and her story is truly amazing, and so is she.



i have seen really amazing stuff on TED - a wonderfully inspired view of the world. my recommendation is - click on this, register, sign up for weekly updates and - i promise that sooner than later you will find your own favourite 10 talks that appeal specifically to your interests.

i watched the following talk recently - the most beautiful statistics i've seen - presenting an amazing picture of the world the world we live in.

happy watching :)

Taal Refresher

I seem to have lost ability to connect taals with their names. It's been quite a few years since I gave exams in which I effortlessly mugged up n taals, complete with their bol. Anyway, it's past time that those days are back, so I'm writing this refresher that I hope will clear things up for good.

When I got back to music, the first composition I learnt was in tivraa tal which has a cycle of 7 beats. To my mind, 7 is a really odd number. How can you possibly cycle repetitively in rounds of 7 without yielding to the temptation of adding just one beat!

तिवरा ताल
धा धिं ता तिट कत गदि गन
ताली दो तीन ताली दो ताली दो

It didn't simplify matters to realise that the taal with seven beats that I was previously familiar was called roopak.

रूपक ताल

तिं तिं ना धिं ना धिं ना

खाली दो तीन ताली दो ताली दो

The second source of immense confusion has been the fact that ek taal and chau taal have the same number of beats in a cycle - 12. The number 12 is not really a problem, except that I can never which is which.

एक ताल

धिं धिं धागे तिरकट तू ना कत ता धागे तिरकट धिं न

ताली दो खाली दो ताली दो खाली दो ताली दो ताली दो

चौ ताल

धा धा दिं ता किट धा दिं ता तिट कत गदि गन

ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो ताली

It turns out that if you surgically remove the second dhin taa from chau taal, you actually get sool taal which has 10 beats. Like so ...

सूल ताल

धा धा दिं ता किट धा तिट कट गदि गन

ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो खाली दो तीन

Btw, jhaptal is also 10 beats, but it is very easy to identify and pretty common too.

And then, there is dhamaar with its 14 beats. The compositions/the style with which this taal is played are also known as dhamaar. The lyrics of these compositions usually descrive the charm and beauty involved in the raas. I do keep practicing keeping these odd beats in my head - but it is never enough somehow.

धमार

क धि ट धि ट धा - ग दिं के दी न ता -

ताली दो तीन चार पाँच ताली दो खाली दो तीन ताली दो तीन चार

Just for the sake of completeness (?), two simple taals are daadra with 6 beats and teen tal with 16. You could look these up at http://www.swarganga.org/taalabase.php or http://www.chandrakantha.com/tala_taal.

To moderate or not to moderate

A friend had left a comment and I had totally omitted to sign in and check if there were any comments to moderate. I had setup an alert so that I respond immediately to any new comments but it turns out that I get an alert only After I approve the comment. The irony is that the reason for setting-up comment moderation was essentially to moderate my (own!) tendency to react too quickly without pausing to reflect.

Apologies!

not a sure-footed blogger yet ...

i've always been pro-choice. or so i thought.

in a utopian world, choice would come out of some unknown distribution that is a function of an individual's constitution and nothing else. unfortunately, an individual's constitution is also a function of socio-cultural influences that they accept or oppose. as a result, Choice turns out to be a function of socio-cultural trends and influences, rather than conscious radical, tailor-made stands taken as per individual characteristics.

so, where am i going with this? choice is, unfortunately, shaped by trends and cultural backgrounds. therefore, when someone says 'matter of choice', i'm compelled to smirk snidely.

as one of my professors sometimes says - do i believe what u just said?

Find of the day!

Check out this link for the most hilarious comments on things that captured our

popular imagination as kids!

Ps: u can tell i have an exam tomorrow ;)
Pps: reminded me of a certain mr. caulfield from a long long time ago...

waiting ...