There is a big difference between bus and train journeys now and a decade plus ago. It is the mobile phones (just mobile moving forward). No let me correct that….it is the people with mobiles. A decade ago, the big nuisance would be people talking loudly or worst-case loud snoring if the passenger next to you happen to sleep. I don’t include the crying of babies since these journeys are
Focus of the series is to dig up not so often heard gems of IR compositions. Based on time I may start treasure hunt on other composers also (yes, this is a threat 😀). Disclaimer: I am a music listener. I don’t have much understanding of technicalities of music. For me, the composition has to connect, stir something inside, call it feeling or emotion or just pure joy. Nitham Nitham
Focus of the series is to dig up not so often heard gems of IR compositions. Based on time I may start treasure hunt on other composers also (yes, this is a threat 😀). Disclaimer: I am a music listener. I don’t have much understanding of technicalities of music. For me, the composition has to connect, stir something inside, call it feeling or emotion or just pure joy. Manitha Manitha
Not everyone gets to live their dream. Few lucky ones do. I hit upon a 1979 radio interview between Abdul Hameed (the man with lovely golden voice 😍) and Ilayaraja (IR). When Abdul Hameed posed the question IR’s future goals, he touches upon his desire to compose a Western Symphony. In 1979!! That is the trigger for my first line. With Valiant, he has lived up to his dream. To
Every family has someone who will claim times were better under British before independence. They don’t have to be above 60 or 70 years of age. Even few youngsters mention it – they would have borrowed that opinion either from their elders or some ideological propaganda. Of course, now it is fashion to say bad things about Gandhi, and Nehru. Soon, Ambedkar will join the list of Gandhi and
While we keep getting catchy tunes and interesting compositions, not all songs have appreciative lyrics. We like the songs for combination of things – music, orchestration, melody, singer’s voice, emotion, and lyrics. Rarely all these come together in a song. One such song, which I keep going back to, is Life of Ram from 96. Music, lyrics, emotion come together. For me it is the lyrics that stand out. They
2024 election outcome gave a mixed feeling. Happy because the alternate outcome of brutal majority would be worse. Happiness with disappointment because we need to survive these two, Modi and Shah for another 5 years. I was debating the caption for this writeup, It could have been worse, All is not lost….yet, A reprieve for democracy, A sliver of home amidst disappointment, Blessing in disguise for the functioning democracy. Couldn’t
As per Indian subcontinent mythology, there are seven worlds below our feet – அதலம், விதலம், தலம், கபஸ்திமல், மகாதலம், சுதலம், பாதாளம். We get our food and water from there. We can’t see them. Similar to those seven worlds below us, are there worlds within our society we are not aware of? We see different classes of people daily but never stopped to ask how their life would look like. We may
When I heard the news about Uma Ramanan, the first song that popped out of my memory is Aananda Raagam from the movie Panneer Pushpangal. Then the other songs flooded out. Songs make us remember events from our life. Songs from late 70s and 80s always take me to my hostel days at Guindy engineering college and bus rides between Madurai – Virudhunagar and Madurai – Chinnamanur. Our mess eating
After the news came out that Israel deployed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to pick their targets, we were bombarded with so many articles with blaring headlines with AI in it. Fighting for eyeballs media makes the headlines catchy and sensational. Many a times the headlines end up giving misleading information. If the reader is not savvy enough, they will walk away with wrong and problematic conclusions. Samples below: