Adieu!

This blog has been dead for a while now, despite my multiple attempts to resurrect it. So today, I decided to call the dead spade a dead spade and move on.

Why now? Well, every now and then, I stumble on a cool blog while searching for one thing or the other and I binge-read their blog only to find that one fine day the blogger simply stopped posting, or worse, completely vanished. I never thought (or realized) I was doing the same to my blog. No, not the cool blog part, just someone on the internet you relate to suddenly vanishing and making you feel just a little lonely. You know, like when you search for an obscure computer issue and there is that one guy on Stack overflow who had the exact same issue as you, but nobody responded, and you so want to talk to the guy and say "Hey I hit the same issue too. And what happened to you? Did you ever resolve it?" but obviously that guy is long gone and you are screaming into internet nothingness.

If anyone ever stumbles on my blog, I don't want them to feel shut off. Hence, the proper Goodbye.

When I was actively blogging, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the discussions with my readers and the often surprising responses (um, compliments) I got from my readers in real life. Thank you for your support! :)

I haven't written much in a while, for various reasons that I have only recently begun to explore. So I do not know if I will even return to writing regularly (I hope I do). If I do so, I will add a link on this page to wherever I move. I tried Medium but something about it (the platform? the UI? the existence of so many trashy Medium articles?) prevents me from writing well on the platform. So I will have to find some other location. I also prefer customizable backgrounds and so forth, so that will be a factor, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

For now, I will be making comments moderated on this blog (assuming Blogger still lets me do that). This should allow people to leave comments but filter spam , given that spammers and bots have been the only ones commenting lately, and I will leave the blog on life support for as long as Google hosts the platform.

So, without further ado...
Adieu!

(Get it? Get it? I am proud of that one =D )

You might very well think that....

After a long wait, D-Day has arrived. HoC Season 4 is on!! (Unfortunately, this isn't a review. A related topic, rather.... )

You see, I am not much of a TV watcher. I can watch mindless comedies while doing chores, but I am sort of a TV commitmentphobe- cannot be loyal to any series, watch it everyday, etc. However, occasionally, circumstances collude and I end up watching one. Two years ago, I started watching House of Cards.

At first, I was thoroughly impressed by Spacey and his lines. Spacey is, no doubt, brilliant. Robin is great too. She is sexy and power-hungry and magnetic all at once. I was not a big fan of Kate Mara or Russo or the Dunbar lady, but then Jackie and the Russian President guy were spot-on. I liked the Season 2 Mrs.President too, too lazy to look up her name now.
Of course, the focus is not the characters. It is the lines. When Spacey delivers his words, even in an act of unpardonable evil, you agree with him "Yes, yes, a matador. Never a doormat!". 

Yes, yes, the Netflix House of Cards is awesome. But..

Wedding Diaries- Part 4

You know how some wise person said all that people care about a wedding are the pictures.. (And the getting married. But that comes second really!)
The hassle about picking the right location, theme or not theme, if theme then choose decoration.. (oh wait, my writing sounds like code now. That is definitely not a good sign. Should. write. more. often), from picking the right saree/outfit to choosing the matching mojari (aka sherwani sandals) - every step of the process is simply a coin dropped into the bucket of "the pictures should be good" and what will my Instagram 
followers think".

Knowing this on some level, I figured that what really mattered in the long run was finding the right photographer and finding the right clothes.


First the clothes.
I had about 2 weeks to shop. I wanted to be there for the shopping, and one might say I brought it upon myself.... but the two sarees I let someone else pick were such utter disasters that if I didn't want to look like a cross between Godzilla and Christmas lights, I better pick my clothes myself! The downside to that was walking up and down the streets of T.Nagar trying to find good sarees.

Apparently, the minute you breathe the words "wedding" or "bride" people see you  like this:

Plus, saree shopping required a bunch of tricky constraints to be met. You want a good silk material and potentially some sequin work or whatever, but not so much that it would be unwearable in the Tamil Nadu heat. But then again, it should meet the grandeur scale expectations, which in many people's minds translates to social status - so if you wore something a tad simpler they would think you were begging in the streets of Dharavi or something. With my natural instincts primed to pick sarees that would go well in board rooms of conservative East Coast banks, it was more than an ordeal for me narrowing the right one. And what with inadvertently mentioning the word "wedding" in the stores, the store guy would insist I try on each saree I even vaguely considered. But that's not it.

I don't know which bride had the brilliant idea of color-coordinating clothes with the groom. (Of course, it was the bride's idea, however much the nerd-looking-sarcasm-spewing-feminist-inside-me complains!) But that has spawned off a whole other set of shopping difficulties. Love a purple saree? No, can't do- a purple sherwani would look like the groom came straight from Bombay circus. Found a beautiful bottle green? But that doesn't go with the rest of the theme. And then there were the traditional no-nos of white or black, apparently Indians like the gray areas a lot more (trying so hard not to make an India-bashing joke here).
So finally after spending endless hours in endless stores and clogging practically all of the T-mobile international data bandwidth with saree pictures, I had a good mind to call it all off and walk in with a T-shirt and good ole denims. Ha, I wish...

With all that effort going in, one would think I would have escaped the Bridezilla fate and come out stunning on D-Day. I say it again "Ha, I wish".

(To be contd.)

From a crow's egg to inside a kid's head

I watched two incredible movies the last weekend. So I am going to break the wedding diary series and put this piece in. Both movies were amazing- both were about children and both were funny and intelligent and wonderfully entertaining. In fact, it is only as I type that I realize they are in completely different languages, with drastically different budgets, and depicting almost different ends of the economic spectrum. The first movie was "Kaaka muttai" (Crow egg) and the second was "Inside out". (Interesting/funny-moments non-plot spoilers ahead!)

"Kaaka muttai" is a movie about two kids living in a Chennai slum. When a new pizza store opens in the neighborhood, they want one and decide to save up  (300Rs=~6$) for it. The story revolves around the little schemes they do to get the pizza and whether money was all they needed to get it.
"Inside out" is a Pixar creation and about what goes on in a girl's head when she moves to SF from Minnesota- the typical struggles of a regular kid who moves to a new place and faces change. of course, the main brainwave (no pun intended) was in showing her emotions as quirky characters in her brain who are trying to control her actions- and how they interplay as she eases in.

The Wedding Diaries- Part 3

Ya I know  it's been a millenium since my last post. You see, right now I am part of a scientific experiment at my job where they keep loading me with more work and every two hours they check if they have managed to kill me yet. And every time, I go "Surpriiiise, I am still alive!!"
So in order to keep my sanity, I thought I should go back to blogging. So, here goes....

(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)
 
Long story short, at some point everyone involved agreed that the wedding was going to happen. (I will get to the whole reason-arrange-marriage thing at the end.) By this time, I thought the "difficult" part was mostly over. Everyone was on board, after all. If this were a cartoon , this is the point where the devil would be lurking in the corner saying "You wish" and grinning evilly.

Yes. Wedding prep.

I knew that entire wars have been fought over wedding details and the carcasses were enough to send Asoka to Buddhism, so I thought I shouldn't be too involved. In fact, I started out with the naive idea that I didn't care too much about this stuff and I would not worry about making the choices. (After all, I got to make the biggest choice aka the groom) And things would have gone on fine......

But once I saw a sample invitation that came in dirty violet with golden tassles and yellow-green text, I realized I did care about this stuff on some level. I did want the pretty invitations and beautiful text- an invitation that was elegant, minimalistic and somehow had a tinge of wedding-grandness at the same time. To quote Meryl Streep....

Turned out I was.

After a few whatsapp and gmail threads with loads of pictures, I realized one thing- the perfect ones were either too expensive or just too high maintenance. The ones that appeared to be in my league were either "good-but-not-my-type", "meh" or "really terrible, I cannot believe I am even considering this. I must be getting desperate". In the end, I just realized you have gotta pick one anyway and hope that it would work out in the long run.
Yes, yes. I am still talking about the invitations. Not. The. Groom.

Anyway, after that fire was put out came the invitation text. I am sure I drove the printing guy crazy with my grammar nazi-ness by having 4 reprints of the prototype. In my defense, I could obviously not have my name spelled "suchira"  (with the 's' in lowercase') or Irvine spelled "Inwine". Seriously!

Then came the menus. As a food lover, I thought I should have a say in this even though everyone insisted I wouldn't be getting to eat much of it.
So I was trying really hard to include items that different sections of guests would appreciate (or at least to serve the principle that nobody should go home hungry!) But then our original caterer bailed out because our mandap wala said "No buffet" (I know, what is up with THAT!?! That too in a place with a characteristically Western name - Salem.) So we had to settle for a South Indian caterer who promised to make Naans and some paneer thing (I forget what), but from the minute I saw his menu written in Tamil, I knew he was one of the types to spell Gobhi as Gopi and my expectations spiralled down. 
I still had to ensure there was at least a mix of dishes in the menu and that the chef  didn't put anything that was technically correct but practically incriminating like fake meat. Not that that helped. On D-Day most of his dishes reminded me of hostel food anyway. 
Of course I had to repeat the charade again for 2 more receptions- and also ensure that they didn't all look the same. If someone is thinking I should have written a script for generating menus - I agree. I don't know why it didn't occur to me then.

You know just writing this out is tiring. And that's not even midway. We still had the theme and decorations, clothes and all that other stuff to go..

(To be contd.)

---

Oh, the reason for not liking arranged marriage. I am thinking I will make it one of those things like the face of this lady:

We'll keep mentioning it, but probably never reveal it.. :D
So, for now, That's all folks!

The Wedding Diaries- Part 2

Whew. Part 2 is finally here...

I have a confession to make. I have never been a fan of marriage. Sometime when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I decided never to get married. The idea of spending one's entire life with a stranger simply freaked me out. This was perhaps because of the kind of marriages I saw then. (They were all "arranged marriages". Dating was a word unheard of in our circles, and "love marriage" was a term used with tones worse than "murder" and "embezzlement".) Most marriages involved two people meeting once (ONCE!) and talking for about half an hour before deciding to get engaged. At the time, this sounded too scary- with half an hour of conversation, I wouldn't even be able to say if someone would make a good friend or not, how was I to decide whether I could live with them? What if the person I met didn't like Enid Blyton? Or didn't know what treacle tart was? (By the way, I have never actually tasted treacle tart in my life. It just sounded delicious when Blyton wrote about it. So did apple pie and fresh strawberries and cream. In fact, I think Enid Blyton is partly to blame for my sweet tooth and general love of food. The rest is probably genetics. Oh wait, I digress.) I think my worst fear then was that I would get married to someone who liked DragonBallZ. (Little did I know my worst fear would come true!!)

Anyway, my biggest qualm with marriages (or "arranged marriages") was that I couldn't commit to marrying someone I didn't know well enough. I knew most people around me were OK with doing that, but I wasn't. And the Sujatha short stories of women who got married to intellectually incompatible men didn't help. (Mom, I hate to admit it, but you were partly right all along. The books WERE to blame!) Nor did the K.Balachander notions of "love"- by which he often meant "connecting with" a person, not stalking them after seeing them once in a city bus. (Aside, I am sorry that no other Tamil director ever picked that idea up. Tamil heroes still think stalking a woman till she relents is ok, and Tamil movie love is still mostly about "eye candy", not compatibility.) Anyway, I didn't think I could live very happily if my husband didn't "get me" and the chances of finding someone who did, didn't seem very high.

Of course, as I grew up, I expanded my definitions of the marriage process. More people talked about having things in common and talking/meeting multiple times before getting engaged, so it wasn't half as bleak. But during that time, my expectations grew as well. By the time I was 20, while I no longer cared about having the same favorite authors, I did care about sharing common goals (do we really want to buy a house before 30?)  and values (are we put on Earth with a higher purpose?), conflict resolution (can we find a good method to decide who does the dishes?) and most of all, about understanding the way each other thinks. Which, to me, meant an even lower probability of finding Mr.Right over a few conversations.


This is also the time I realized that if I was skeptical about marriage in general, I was 100 times more skeptical about arranged marriages. I barely made friends with people, how was I going to find someone who could be much more than a friend to me? Plus, finding someone who I liked, who understood me, and who fell into the same stratum of society that I did, while coming from a family that my family would get along with and happen to run into during the process of "searching" was like trying to find prime numbers larger than a googol. And unlike mathematics, I didn't have infinite time on my hands nor did I care enough to spend that much time on a search process. But more than anything else, I didn't see this kind of search as practical in my family. I could picture exactly what would happen after I said "No" for more than 3-4 horoscope matches:
(The following conversation is imaginary and a tad hyperbolic. No offense to my mom.)

Mom: Now what was wrong with THIS boy? Why did you have to reject him? (Sounding a lot like Ambi saying "Enaku oru concrete reason venum, Nandhini").
Me: This is not going to work out ma. We are just not compatible.
Mom: What compatible? IITB and Harvard MBA. He is earning so well. You can live like a princess. And he looks so good also, ajanubahu-va, fair-a Hindi actor maadhiri dhaane irukkan.  
Me: It's not about being fair ma. He doesn't like reading and his idea of trying new cuisines is molagootal. I don't even know what to talk to him about. We just won't gel. 
Mom: What gel, paste and all..  Last time the boy's profile said he likes reading and you still rejected him.
Me: Amma, that guy was too mature. We had similar interests, but there was no chemistry. We would make good friends, but that's about it.
Mom: What chemistry, physics and all, talking like Vijay TV anchors! Are you going to participate in Maanada Mayilaada after marriage? Why do you need chemistry?
Me: I don't know how to explain it, amma. The spark wasn't there. We had a lot in common. Maybe too much in common.
Mom: Now you are talking like KamalaHassan only. It feels like you are saying something, but nobody can understand what you mean. See our pakkathu flat Ananya. She married the first boy her parents found and now her son is going to preschool in Boston. I think all your reading is spoiling you.
...

Which brings me to a different point altogether. "Chemistry". Also called the "seeing someone that way". I cannot imagine ever explaining that to anyone, definitely not my family. I have interacted with many men with whom I have a lot in common, yet I couldn't possibly consider getting married to any of them. However, in the arranged marriage process, I was bound to run into a few "perfectly fine" people whom I would have to refuse , and provide explanations to my family about; all the while feeling a little guilty and wondering if I was letting good opportunities slip through my fingers. It sounded too stressful to me.

But beyond all of this, I had one big reason why an "arranged marriage" would never work for me. It was the same reason I didn't think "dating" would work for me either...

(To be continued..) 

P.S: The title has been changed from "The Marriage Diaries" to "The Wedding Diaries" after someone pointed it out. I started out the series hoping to write about the "marriage" but it's only been a few months and the series is mostly in the wedding territory, so changed.

The Wedding Diaries- Part 1

I have been married for more than a month now- technically, a month and 13 days. That is, a month and 13 days when I started this post, not when I posted it. By the time I posted it I had been married 2 months and 21 days. Procrastination and all that....

For a long time, I thought I would refrain from writing about my marriage. I do not really agree with the line of thinking that marriage is the most important event in your life, just as I never agreed with our teachers' vehement insistence that "Class XII is the turning point of your life" (TBH, every year of school, teachers said THAT year was the most important school year. Much like mankind in general deludes itself into believing we are at the turning point of human civilization, our generation makes a tryst with destiny and so forth. Anyway, I digress. As usual.) My point was - I don't need to really dedicate a post (or a series thereof) to marriage.

But, then again, just as Jon Stewart gets constantly tempted to mock Fox News,  Rajkumar Hirani cannot resist adding father-daughter senti, Kamal cannot stop mentioning rape* and making fun of Tambrahms (or using "Pallaandu Pallaandu in his songs! :-/ ), Nolan cannot help hiring Michael Cain even after he becomes a tottering old man, and Krish Ashok has to fall back on TR any time he cannot think of anything else** and ... oh, well, I got lost along the list, didn't I? I meant to say that writers and artists tend to go weak in their knees when they see obvious material, and I am no exception! Even though I think marriage isn't all that big a deal, there was so much involved that had to be written down for eternity (or until whenever the Google servers last), that I couldn't resist.

Music. And kids. - Part 3

(Continued from Part 2. Part 1 here.)

The reason most kids enjoy taking classes for a skill or a sport more than they enjoy school is because the rewards are quicker. Education seems pointless to most kids because it involves a great deal of effort for 10-12 years but does not seem to produce anything more substantial than smiling parents during that time. Winning a match or giving a good performance in front of people (even if they are just your neighbours) gives a sense of achievement.The problem for Carnatic music, of course, is that it is as much of a long-term penance as school education. With 6 months of cricket coaching, one would start playing small matches. With 6 months on an instrument like the guitar, one can play "Nenjukulle" when family friends visit. In comparison, Carnatic music is an anti-climax. In 6 months, one learns multiple combinations of SaRiGaMaPaDaNiSa on different scales and some geethams, which sadly do not even qualify as thukkadas in concerts. Any Tambrahm kid can tell you there is no applause for singing "Sree gananaadha".. in fact, the visiting maami/maama is bound to interrupt you during the anupallavi and ask their eldest son to sing a good pancharatna keerthanai preluded by a solid alapanai.

Oh, that reminds me. Most maamis/maamas would not condescend to making corrections in a film song. (In fact, I know some who would not even listen to light devotional music- "Too populist, I say"). But no self-respecting musical Tambrahm would desist the from making the most minute corrections in the Carnatic song a kid is singing. This, even if their own voices are no longer functional or they have forgotten most of the song and/or they have lost touch. The younger the kid, the more emphatic the corrections. I remember protesting to someone once with a feeble "But this is how our paatu miss taught us" and was snapped back with a stern "Unga paatu missku onnume theriyaadu". Of course, I was smart enough not to repeat that statement anywhere around said paatu miss.

Anyway, the point is that rewards are slow with Carnatic music, however sure they may be. And more often than not, a kid is bound to meet more obstacles than encouragement on the way. It should be no surprise then that many kids switch over to learning guitar/keyboard after 6 months of Carnatic. And might I add, thoroughly enjoy it. Of course, there is a "coolness" factor associated with the guitar, and new age tambrahm parents don't necessarily frown upon playing "kanda kanda cinema paatu". But that doesn't discount the fact that Carnatic music is, by design, complicated and more of a marathon than a sprint. 

Interestingly, that is precisely what makes it both beautiful and enjoyable. The inherent complexity, the structured approach to music theory and the strong emphasis on basic training makes Carnatic a pretty formidable tool in the hands of a good teacher. (Cutting the fancy MBA style sentence out, I just meant to say that I believe even donkeys can be trained to sing well with this disciplined an approach!) While some part of that journey requires innate talent, a lot of it is just grit.

Which means that there is a lot to gain from redesigning the incentive system of Carnatic music. Like most dieters and marathon trainers would say, focus on small wins. Music teachers sometimes teach small bhajans in the first year of training, but often they are too small/light for the kid to feel a sense of achievement. The key is to strike the balance between overstraining the voice (a serious debate among opera trainers that I won't talk about today) and oversimplifying songs. 
The other aspect to the "wins" is that adults around should encourage the learning process instead of using the opportunity to prove their own virtuosity. It might also do some good for teachers to admit that Carnatic music learning is a structured long-term effort and to reiterate that the rewards are at the end of the tunnel somewhere.     

As for the fidgety 5 year old kid who thought it was a chore to learn music, her parents persisted and encouraged her long enough for her to continue learning. But more than that, strangely (and somewhat luckily), something deep within her appreciated the beauty of the intricately interwoven swaras and made her stick to it till the end :)

Glossary
Unga paatu missku onnume theriyaadu- Your music teacher does not know anything!

kanda kanda cinema paatu- random(?) song from a movie. The "random" has a mild negative tone here. 


P.S: During the entire series, I have not talked about kids who actually did the fancy neravals :P Partly because their story was too obvious to discuss. But mostly because I believe that a few success stories do not imply that a system cannot be improved.

Music. And kids. - Part 2

(I know it's been a while since I put up part 1. As usual, couldn't find the time to edit Part 2.  By the way, this piece became too long and spilled over to a Part 3.. Knowing my great sense of punctuality, I hope to put that up before these musical kids become adults ;) :P )

When I was 5 (and probably for most of my school life), everyone around me hated math. Sadly, I loved it, or worse, was in love with it. By the way, notice I didn't talk about aptitude. I used to think I was good at math until I talked to a real mathematician in grad school and truly understood the phrase "it's greek to me"! Anyway, this star-crossed love for math often put me in a bad spot on friend-group-hierarchies, but more importantly, it surprised my kid-brain a great deal. Here was a subject that needed minimal studying/memorizing effort once you got the idea and I dared not tell reveal this to any soul in school because they seemed to share a singular hatred for it. Of course I hadn't heard of "Damnant quod non intellegunt" at that time.
Like that proverb effectively states, the reason people hated math (and the reason I didn't care too much about music classes) was fear.

In one of my first few music classes (I changed teachers quite a bit, partly because my family moves around every few years), the teacher just opened the contraption called shruti box and said "What shruthi should I keep? 5?" For all you know, I might have thought shruthi (scale) was another synonym for age. As any nice Indian kid was taught to, I politely agreed. Nobody actually told me what an octave was, what pitch meant and how it was different from loudness/volume until we studied high school physics. I know some of these sound too basic to be explained. And they are basic, but not to a 5-year old. And of course, a few years later, I was taking way more advanced lessons and it was too late to ask what pitch meant.

You might argue that Carnatic music, like most traditional Indian arts is taught by the ear- you hang around for sometime and you learn to identify when you are singing out of scale. Fair point. In fact, I even think that music teachers expecting kids to pick up stuff on their own is fine if they would also encourage questions just in case. Did I just say questions? I was in the heart of conservative India.. who am I kidding? Obviously, if you do not know something (even when you are 5) and dare to ask, the teacher would scornfully announce you are not only too stupid , but also too impolite. Lest you think I am exaggerating, one of my music teachers actually lamented to us about how "kids these days" come to music class without even knowing what "mela kartha" means. You can imagine a 5-year old mustering the courage and pointing out to her that it was part of her duties as a teacher to spread that light of knowledge...

Wait.. you say.. that's just a lot of regular Indian-education ranting. After all, if all you wanted to say was that there is no freedom to ask questions in India and people use your lack of knowledge (or your thirst for it) as their own power, why bring up Carnatic music?

And yes, you are right. All of that applies as much to math as to music. But there is more to this tale that might apply to math but is mostly particular to Carnatic music...

(To be completed..)

7 years. and counting.

Before I say anything else, the part 2 of Music and Kids will be published later this week. Sorry for not publishing earlier, I fell sick sometime last month, plus got very busy.

Now that that's out of the way.

It's exactly 7 years since I started this blog. 7 years. Seems like a long time. It is, when you realize that the iPhone had only been released a week before, Instagram was non-existent, the US had never had a non-white President until then, and the last Harry Potter book had not yet been published.

To some extent, I don't even remember what I used to be like when I started this blog- I know I started on a whim because I liked the date (you  know, for a sense of symmetry- 7/7/7). I remember typing from a Pentium 4 (our first desktop) and I intended the blog mostly for poetry (and feminism, but I never got around to writing much feminism). Clearly, things didn't happen as planned :D

I was mostly using what was then called SMS-language, something that I now think is a way of butchering English. (Talk about growing old, huh!) I used to mostly write on paper first (and later MS word), partly because I felt my thoughts would flow better on paper, but mostly because the internet was both slow and expensive- every minute was to be taken seriously.  My topics and style tended to be serious as well- I wanted to treat the blog as a medium of social change (something that never happened, and of course, an idea usurped by Twitter, which was barely a year old then, by the way).

Anyway, while I am still not as regular with posting, I have enjoyed every bit of it. To be honest, when I started I did not have much of an idea of what I was getting into. The blog was mostly a way for me to write in an eco-friendly manner. Given that I wanted to write more serious and socially-relevant material, I did not expect to have many readers. I did not know what SEO was, and social media was an infant (I did not even have an orkut account at the time, and orkut will be gone in a month!), so I wasn't trying to publicize actively. But slowly, I got more readers, mostly friends, but some from outside as well.

I have since realized that writing is not an individual process. Yes, the idea is created in the writer's head (especially with fiction), but the very act of writing involves a reader, if only an imaginary one. With each comment I have received, I have felt more motivated to write. And I like to believe my writing has become better in the process.
So, thank YOU.

Actually, let me repeat that for emphasis. Thank YOU.
For commenting, for liking these posts on facebook, for making me a better writer and a better person in so many ways. 

But mainly, for reading. 
Thank you for keeping that magical connection between a writer and a reader alive...

Music. And kids.

If I have not mentioned it a million times by now, let me mention once more- I am into music a lot. Any kind (depends on my whim that day), but my close-to-default option is Carnatic. It's probably because I am always able to find one raga or other to suit my mood-of-the-day and Carnatic music has almost never failed me. However, as a kid (and sometimes as an adult) I really think I have failed Carnatic music.

In fact, for a long time, the only thing I wanted to ask fate (if it was a person and it appeared before me like Brahma in Sunday morning mythological dramas) was why I failed Carnatic music. One half of me thinks that I should have put in more effort at it as a kid (I know I tried my best not to). The other half thinks that the effort may not have helped anyway. While I can sing enough to keep an audience entertained (or enough to satisfy golu-keeping, you-must-sing-before-I-give-u-sundal type maamis), I cannot jazz it up- no fancy neravals or manodharmams. No sangathis that land back into the charanam with panache. Hell, I can barely sing a thyagaraja krithi without him turning in his grave, or should I say cursing me from the heavens, and I can identify a shankarabharanam or a sahana with little more than 50% accuracy. After all those years of training, it is disappointing I tell you...
Anyway, I continued to be bothered by the fact that I didn't pay enough attention to the kaishiki nishadas* and chatushruthi rishabas that my different music teachers were talking about. Why, I would ask myself- why?

Of course the omniscient deity of the digital age (Google) gave me the answer today. (Actually YouTube, but still.) There was a recommended video of a paatu class where a middle-aged looking maami was teaching kids some geetham. The kids were probably 5-6 years old and the teacher was going on "Kids. Today we will learn ... geetham. This is set in ... ragam and ... thalam. The arohanam is ... and the avarohanam is .. this is the 65th mela kartha .. blah de blah" I guess the kids were pretending to listen because they had been told they were videotaped. One girl sitting in the front (short hair with an immensely cute hairclip, but I digress) was very obediently repeating the swaram after the teacher, but her expression gave her away- she was looking around like the stereotypical deer trying to escape from a lion's cave. And then I remembered.

At 5 (or 6), when I first started taking music classes, it was a chore (also rhymes with 'bore', but about that later). It was time taken away from hide-and-seek and the feel of the wind while playing on the swing. Music classes would usually be around 5 or 6 pm- prime playing time. In fact, you could hear the laughing kids from downstairs while the few of us unfortunate ones would be going "D S S D P M P.." So whenever the teacher started saying things that I knew she would never ask us about again, I would start dreaming about whether my friends were playing lock-and-key or not, how soon my mom would come to pick me up and if the girl (from a story book) who lost her red ribbon would actually find it or not. This list of things included most of music theory, because while teachers mentioned the mela kartha classification often enough, they wouldn't care as long as what you sang sounded close enough to the song you were singing (which is good in a way).

Music classes also came with the one question I dreaded the most (and had I known then, would have thought was worse than asking a PhD student about his/her thesis)- "Did you practice the last lesson?" Almost every teacher would start the class with that, and I would choose between saying yes (to mean I had sung at least once at home that week because my father made me) or yes (to mean I had really wanted to, but I was busy playing, and I will definitely practice the next time). Of course, as I grew up, I also learned the power of a positive no - it saved me from lying and the teacher wouldn't mind if I made mistakes, though she would definitely get into lecture-mode on how "practice is important and you should take music seriously" (something I learned to nod at- a skill very useful in the corporate world. As I always say, Tambrahms train their kids early for these things.)

Anyway, that brings me to the real trouble... 

(To be contd.. Scheherazade style :P)

-- 
Glossary:
Sundal- type of South-Indian dish made with chickpeas/beans
Krithi- composition
Maami- Tambrahm lady
*I really like the word Kaishiki. Its not as old-sounding as Koushiki, and has just the hint of Kaikeyi to make it interesting. If I were a Tamil politician asked to name somebody's daughter, I would name her that :P

The journal entry (a short story)

"29th May 2014

I spent the last five minutes trying to start this entry with one of my epigrams. But all I can think of is - I am 86 now. Well, I presume I can be lax and not keep up my "witty and profound style" in my journal entries. I am not deluded into thinking nobody will read this- I am certain somebody will find this 5 years from now and put it up on Twitter for all those silly people to read. Yes, I said silly. I doubt that ten years from now writers would have the courage to call their readers that. I doubt they can do it now, but at least there are a few Shaw fans still around so there is hope. Anyway, I think I can be lax because I choose to be, whether anyone ever reads this or not.

Getting back to business. Today was like any other day in the last 4 years since I lost my hearing. I went through my regular morning ablutions and breakfast and then sat at my writing table for an hour with a book review that I hope to send out tomorrow. Somehow, my writing seems to have mellowed with me, so it takes me much longer to write words that count. Not that it matters in this day. When any buffoon (I am actually thinking baboon here) with a phone camera is able to make it to a few hours of fame like a firefly, it seems moot to even to attempt to write meaningfully.

No, I am not a sour, grumpy, old man in general. I know have had my good days- getting out alive after a World War was a biggie (notice how I keep my language updated. Mr.Dickinson at grammar school would have considered that a sacrilege, but I am the adapting kind. Yes, I am no grumpy old man!), then there was the Pulitzer and more recently the Peace Prize nomination. I am sure I would have got that last one if they had not decided to give it to a politician before he did anything at all. Lest you think I care- I don't. Knowing you shall be one with the mud in a few years leaves little room for desire. When I was younger, I used to want people to think great things about me "after I am gone". Maybe I imagined that I would be watching from the heavens or something. It seems preposterous because it's obvious to me now that if I am not around to notice, how can I give a damn what people think about me.

I have had my bad days too. Death of a spouse, paralysis of one leg and so forth. But I don't want to drag this entry down with the weight of useless immutable sorrow.

I only have one desire. Something that shall not come true, but a desire nevertheless. I wish I had died a century ago. There would have been a quiet ceremony with just a few people that mattered. Of course, there would still be that neighbor Mr.Jones jumping around my grave trying to look like he was my closest friend and like he actually understood me. But at least it would have been just one person like that. The rest of the congregation would know I desire quiet and would leave me alone.
You see, all I desire now is to go quietly. I don't care if nobody understands my work, as long as the ones that don't, remain silent. I don't even care if nobody notices - I could be that tree that fell in the forest for all I care.

But as I said, that is not going to be. Millions of people are going to tweet away their "RIP"s- the ones that had never known me the loudest to proclaim the sorrow at my loss. There will be the auctions next, where men with wads of cash and vain old ladies with inheritance but poor eyesight would want to spend millions on my first published work and my first typewriter. To be honest, I'd rather someone just burn up all of my personal belongings or donate it to someone poor. That auction money could definitely be used better. A fan who wants to own my pen probably never understood that I never thought it was about the person. If someone understood my ideas, what do I care if they did not even know my name. 
Oh well, I assume I will have to put a clause in my will against the auctions one of these days, if I find it worth the effort to make one at all.

But they won't stop with the auctions. There will be the stupid blogposts- what Tamajong's work meant for racial equality, why Tamajong's loss is too big for mankind, and so on. Then the life portraits- "Tamajong moved into the US at a time of great strife", "He shall remain a beacon of hope for millions to come" etc. If I had any life left in me at that point, the din of insincerity would finish me off.

Actually, I don't mind what people would say about me half as much as what they would do to my writing. I do not want those memes with my quotes (and quotes of people I completely disagreed with) on them. And I definitely do not want people sharing a piece of my novel with "This story will make you cry and change your soul forever" (Notice how I started this sentence with "And". Mr.Dickinson is turning in his grave now!). I do not want the commentaries and the throwing around of my name at dinner parties where hosts try hard to impress upon their guests the idea that they are elite and well-read. In fact, I wish I didn't even have a name.

And if someone owns my first published article and think it is to be treasured, what d
" (the handwriting trails off here)

Detailed above is the text of Peter Tamajong's last journal entry. This page shall be auctioned on Sunday the 21st of June at the African-American Writers' Museum; the auction is open for the public. The offered price is 2 million USD but the bids are expected to go up to 10 million.
Peter Tamajong, considered one of the most remarkable writers of the 21st century and certainly one of the most influential, passed away on the 29th of May while writing his last journal entry. This newspaper joins the millions of fans in praying his soul rests in peace.

(Also see Page 4: Interview of Toni Morrison on Tamajong's demise,
Page 5: Fans assemble at the Tamajong house in LA for last tribute
and Special Supplement on Peter Tamajong: One small word for a writer, one giant leap for mankind)

Ironically..

Going back to the routine of posts based on stuff I read- here is something I read today: Why some people might be bad at understanding irony.

If this were an SOP, I would have started with "I have always been fascinated by Irony (and sarcasm)", but since it is not... oh wait, I just did. Anyway, let's just say that unlike the hyperbole, irony is my device of choice. Except that sometimes people don't get it. I remember one time in high school when I had to write a goodbye note to someone I particularly despised (I believe the feeling was mutual, but given the way we were all smiles on the surface, it is hard to tell..). I filled the note with cloyingly sweet compliments in the hope that anyone who read it would know that I really meant the opposite. To me, it was obvious that I couldn't have meant it at all , especially because I use to be much more parsimonious with compliments then, and I was very proud of my handiwork. To my disappointment, only about 2 people who read the note really got it! (I don't regret that anymore. Sometimes it is safer not to have people understand the exact meaning of your words, but I digress. )

Of course, later in life I realized that the best way to combat sarcasm (which is closely related) is to pretend not to understand it.* Unfortunately that knowledge is of no use to me because I simply cannot not get sarcasm/irony - it is one of those things that is hard to 'un-see' once you see it.

Anyway, it turns out that a good number of people don't get irony because it is more complicated than regular speech. I feel this should have been obvious if I ever gave it a little thought- understanding irony requires the brain to perform the additional step of noticing that the literal meaning of the sentence uttered is in fact untrue (while regular speech requires you only to understand what is being uttered). Obviously, this means that people with sociopsychological problems would find it harder to understand it.

The amazing thing about the link I read is that it actually shows how some ironic statements are better understood than others. Basically, some ironic statements are used so often that the brain processes them just like it processes regular sentences i.e. at the same speed. I find that kind of optimization in a system amazing, really!

Anyway, that brings me to the sentence I really began this post for (I should warn you that it is not great, just something too tempting for me to let go without posting :P )- It's ironic that a statement meant to be ironic is still processed like a regular statement, even when you know it is ironic! It almost defeats the purpose of making the sentence ironic.

Thankfully, there are enough new ironic sentences you could make that the brain hasn't had a chance to learn yet.. So there is still hope, folks! :P
 
--
*By the way, I am sure there is a comic strip about not-understanding-sarcasm being the best way to handle it, but I am not quite able to find the strip :(

Day ?

I just figured there is no point tracking the days anymore.. I wanted to do a post at least every other day, but that seems close to impossible now. It's funny how activities fill out time on their own, like a vacuum.

Two weeks ago, I had so much work and was still able to slip in an hour of reading and an episode of House everyday (yes, I am watching House NOW! That's how quick I am with watching series), not to mention the occasional 2 mile run. The first few days after my project deadlines dissolved I was close to restless because I suddenly has so much time in my hands. And then I did what I often did at Georgia Tech (and almost always regretted later!)- signed up for too many activities (courses, in the case of Gatech). Catching up with friends I haven't met in a while, finishing books movies and the like, app/game developing experiments, scripting experiments at work, blog challenge and then trying to get back to a regular running and cooking schedule. The bad part is that only about half of these actually happen, and now I find myself busier than I was 2 weeks ago- haven't touched my Kindle in 3 days, haven't logged on to Netflix in almost a week, and haven't run in more than a week. 

It is so ironical and yet, this has always happened to me. (Maybe this is one of my other fatal flaws). My worst semester in Georgia Tech was not one where I was trying to finish my degree requirements, but the one where I thought I had a lot of time left and signed up for more courses than ever. Admittedly, that is also the semester I enjoyed (and value) the most from my time at Tech- but if you had stopped me any time during those 5 months I would have said I was one inch away from giving up and running away from Atlanta.

Anyway, in light of the fact that I am trying to do too much with my time now, I am just going to go back to irregular posting... Sorry about that.. (But as I said on the description page, this usually means my life is getting more interesting, so maybe it's a good thing after all....)

Day 4- Kerala and women

(PW: This article is about women and abuse. Contains some adult material.)

It all started when many of my friends shared this post. It kept popping in my timeline and I kept avoiding it but then this morning it came up in a different conversation and I read it. It brought back so many memories. Mostly not good ones.

I lived in Kerala for 4 years. It is not a long time- I have lived in the US for 2 and a half already. But the difference is I lived in Kerala in those crucial years of adolescence, when one learns a lot of new things about themselves and the world, when a child has his/her first harsh clash with adulthood. For the most part, I have very positive memories of Kerala (if it were not cliched, I'd have called them green memories). Beautiful place, stunning after the rains, sweet sing-song language, etc. Our school was among the most conservative, but I didn't mind it all that much. So until this morning, when anyone asked me about Kerala, I had nothing but praise to say (it's my dream retirement place btw. It is so beautiful I'd love to go there when I want to relax and appreciate the beauty of nature, and would actually have the time to do it.) It is amazing that I had forgotten.

I had forgotten the extensive chauvinism that pervaded every inch of existence there. Now don't take me wrong, I am not saying that Chennai is by any standards less conservative or more feminist. But maybe it's because I talk about Chennai often, or maybe because the details blur in time, but it all came rushing back as I read the post. And the surprising part was not the reality I remembered, it was the fact that I had forgotten.

I find that amazing because I have not forgotten most of the details of my Kerala stay. From the streets to the junctions to the faces of the innumerable people I knew there to individual events and experiences- most of it is still fresh in my memory. However, it seems that when something is out of sight for a while, one tends to forget the nastier details in light of the overall good effect the place had. 

Now you might wonder- what could I have possibly forgotten or left unnoticed? Why did I mention chauvinism in relation to a place known for 100% literacy, high education rates among women, and especially known as traditionally "matriarchial"?*

Let's get to some details.. (all based on personal experiences, so the usual statistical issues of small sample set, etc. might apply)

Day 3- On Enid Blyton, the extended transferred epithet and religion

If I had to name just one person I spent most of my childhood with, that would be Enid Blyton. I remember spending whole summer months letting myself get sucked into her world- with flying cars and pixies and adventure lurking at every turn. In the early years I even wondered how it would be if all my toys came out at night and had little fights or skated on soap.

Anyway, there was one story (one of my favorites) about a boy who sees an enchanted book at a store. The book opens from both ends- each tells a different story. Both stories are about the boy's own life and what his future would be like. On one story, he makes his choices based on ambition- spends more time at his business, is often cruel etc. On the other- his choices are based on family and love, and though he doesn't make too much money, he is content.

As a kid reading the story, it was obvious which side to pick- the kind side. But you see, that's the problem with the stories kids are told. They have not one inch of the gray that fills real life, or to use the cliched phrase, they are too black and white. Anyway, that's not the point for today.

The thing I really want to highlight is how authors tend to bunch qualities together. In this story, for instance, the boy (when he grew up, that is) would not only spend too much time at business, but would also be mean to his customers and get angry all the time. Then the reader's mind would almost automatically associate the making money with the other "bad" qualities of being cruel, when in fact it is possible for a man to make money and still be a good person.
In contrast, if you pick a story like "Atlas Shrugged", there are the people who make money and sound cruel but are actually kinder through their actions. But there, Ayn Rand also has some fictional associations- like the fact that the smart people are all blunt, arrogant AND successful, while the villains are all not just evil and people-pandering but quite stupid; or the fact that all the "good" people speak the same kind of language and anyone who uses any amount of subtlety in their speech is some sort of conniving villain.

I see this as a very interesting literary device. It is very close to the transferred epithet in the sense that the effect (or our judgement) of one quality is actually transferred on to others. Which is why I want to call it the extended transferred epithet. But the reason it is interesting is because it is also very very powerful.

Take these verses, for instance..

"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."

"Know that a king who heeds not the rules (of the law), who is an atheist, who is rapacious, who does not protect his subjects (but) devours (i.e. mistreats) them, will sink low (after death)"

The first is from the Bible (Revelation 21:8) and the second is from a translation of the Manusmrithi (Ch8, Topic17, Verse309).

In both cases, a set of negative characteristics are combined with the "faithless" and the "atheists". Of course, with most religions "faithless" is bad enough to warrant prosecution- it is often considered evil by definition. But the subtle propaganda that lets religions persist, especially in the age of technology and information, exists in these places- in stories where the villains are evil AND non-believers, where the books proclaim that the faithless are also always immoral (conveniently skipping over the faithless moral human being). Religions are not only full of these; they are so prevalent that most people tend to actually believe them (like believing all faithless people are also immoral). Which is why I said it is a very powerful device.

Anyway, let me finish off today by saying that I think the extended transferred epithet is a beautiful literary device. It is convenient and powerful. But that's precisely why one should be wary of it.

P.S: There may be a real name for this literary device. I tried looking for it but couldn't find it. So I came up with my own name for it instead! :P