Its my Indyeah!!!

TV has become boring off late. Most of the time I'll be surfing music channels and news channels. And I do miss VH1, what with V and MTV ruled by the likes of Himesh. The only show I watch regularly is 'My India Report[MIR]' in V. Its a really cool concept with 6 youngsters selected from various parts of India travelling all over India. During this journey they discover different cultures, path breaking thoughts, shocking truths and share it all with us. As far as i think, this show is conceived as an amalgamation of the themes of 2 popular films-'motorcycle diaries[MD]' and 'rang de basanti[RDB]'. The idea of a country round trip from 'MD' and the idea of the nation awakening from 'RDB'. There were so many interesting thoughts that came out from their visits to various cities.

The team comprises of an interesting mix of people including a lady bartender and an artist based in Canada. Every episode, they'll be posing some questions to some random people they see on the road. In Varanasi[India at its religious best], they surveyed about belief in God among the youngsters there and found that most of them were god fearing but not mad about the religion they follow. This should serve as an eye opener for some 'religiously' political parties in India. One taxi driver gave an interesting discourse which would put even well known philosophers to shame. These are the things which tell you that you should never underestimate anyone. In Kolkata, the team found out that Che guevera is more popular than sourav ganguly. Is it the 'MD' effect or the good old love for communism? Yesterday, they went to Shillong, India's rock music capital. This city was in the news recently for showcasing the largest guitar ensemble in the world as 1730 guitarists strummed together for the Bob Dylan classic "knocking on heaven's door". Its told that almost everyone you meet on the road is a musician. There are more than 100 rock bands in the city alone. After meeting up with some bands and musicians, the team went to an NGO. There they met a woman who suffered a lot in her life. She was a servent in a household and her master sold her to other men. She somehow rescued herself from a brothel and helped the police to bust a big racket which specialised in human trafficking. According to her, more than 300 girls were rescued from there. She and other women like her are being given a chance to live a new life by the NGO.

Besides these interesting and sometimes touching anecdotes and opinions, what I found interesting about MIR is the nice camera work. Wherever they go, we are treated to some amazing visuals which really make us wonder whether there are such places in India. These visuals sometimes remind me of the great BBC documentary 'The story Of India'. I downloaded this documentary running close to 7 hours some months back. I would recommend it to those who want to see some unseen but breath takingkly beautiful visuals of India. Coming back to MIR, there are still some more episodes to go. Those who have missed it, try to catch it at 7.30pm on thursdays. Am not telling that all of what is shown on MIR makes sense. Sometimes they do sound absurd. But most of the time its really good and shows us some little known but interesting things about our motherland

PS- In MIR, there is so much talk on the lack of values and too much of skin show on television. It might be an irony that all this happens in a channel which has shows like Pia's beach diaries, where you have an anchor wearing just a bikini and strolling along the beach and 'India's hottest' which awards people based on how hot they are.

your crusader Praveen

Faceless...
Here's another song.. wrote this during today's class on infosys quality standards...These are my thoughts on terrorism in the heavenly kashmir valley.

**********Faceless*************
Shrouded by the dark cloth,
Is it the veil of ignorance?
Fighting for the devil's cause
Yours is a venomous death dance.

Snowy fields in the divine valley
turning red time and again.
Unholy flags of your holy jihad
fluttering like vulture wings.

Brainwashed morons on a killing spree
dreaming of a better morrow
throw their lives away for the dirty work
taking lives for a final ride.

Life's a full metal jacket
burning away inside the barrel.
Faceless u came,faceless u go
as your ashes pollute the serene lake.

22/11/2007

your crusader Praveen

Superhuman

Indian filmdom has a long history of stories of normal men producing superheroic acts onscreen. Most of the time we are left scratching our head or banging our fist on a nearby hard object, after such an onscreen assault. Rajnikanth is credited with pioneering this exotic art form of executing actions of unimaginable impossibility. But long before that, the great malayali actor Nazir have done some awesome tricks on screen. Its a little known fact that the bullet dodging trick that the whole world watched with gaping mouth in matrix was actually done years before by our very own Nazir. That too, without the help of slow motion, wire trick or stop motion cameras. In the original bullet dodging scene starring nazir, he comes off cooler than the one and only Neo. Our hero sees the villian firing the bullet from a distance. He raises his head and with his trademark doubtful look with the hands on his chin mouthes the dialogue-''vediyunda aanennu thonnunnu. Maarikkalayaam"[seems like a bullet.Let me move aside]. And he moves aside. Whereas poor neo had to bend backwards within milliseconds of the firing and couldn't even speak a single word eventhough the bullet was coming in slow motion.

Though we all dismiss these kind of tricks on screen as crap and all, these very scenes turn out to be the most viewed in video sharing websites like youtube. Its a debatable fact whether this popularity can be attributed more to the heroism or the comic element in it. It makes me laugh my head off to think that the directors are actually making such scenes with some serious situation in mind. Still, they are doing us a great service. After doing lots of assignments or sitting through boring sessions, these type of scenes can lighten you up like anything. The most popular one here at present seems to be another bullet trick scene, but of a kind which even neo would find hard to reproduce on screen. This stars Vijaykanth, another tamil actor who is popular for his superhuman scenes. The villian fires the bullet at Vijaykanth and he bravely shows his chest to the bullet. The next moment we see the bullet going in the opposite direction with double speed and it hits the villian who fired the bullet and he dies on the spot. Now the frame shifts back to vijaykanth and the great secret is revealed. He opens the top button of his shirt and removes a steel plate[the same thing we use to eat dosas from wayside eateries]. Its time the government gave a steel plate to all politicians and make it mandatory to place it inside their shirts. We can save millions of money that we spent on security for the politicians every year.

Another very popular man on youtube is telegu actor Balayya. His scenes ranges from moving a train just by pointing his finger to singlehandedly fighting and killing a whole building of pakistani terrorists in pakistan. Though I have watched all these scenes many time before, I still laugh real hard when I see it again. Most of the time in discussions on such scenes, the blame always fall on south indian films. But to tell the truth, Hindi films have produced a long list of such movies, right from Amitabh bachchan through Mithun chakraborthy to shakhrukh khan. Not many would've forgot shahrukh's action scenes in dumb movies like 'main hoon na'. Though the general advice for those who are going to watch such movies is to leave their brains at home, its real hard for even a no-brainer to tolerate such scenes for a whole movie, which happens mostly in the case of tamil superhero movies starring vijay,ajith,Rajnikanth etc. But, these small clippings can really cheer u up. So, enjoy with these no-brainer dumbos until my next dumbo post...

your crusader praveen

Here is the song i wrote in class today...

LOST IN TIME
Tracing back the footsteps
that I first took as a child.
Racing forward on my mindscape
with a blissful world to recapture.

Breeze brushes my time-worn face
blowing away the maple leaves
that line my way back home
rushing into me the times of old.

Cradled by the innocence
that i lost somewhere back in time.
Its time for reminiscence of the days
when the clock stood still.

I never cared to look back
on my all conquering selfish march.
Until this day, when i lost everything
with just the memories to fall back on.

20/11/07

your crusader praveen

I AM BACK

So atlast the hiatus ends long before than expected. Its been more than one month since my last post and supposedly the last one in about 4 months. But, here I am much before that to bore you with more of my thoughts. The last one month been exciting having joined my job at a really wonderful campus at infosys, Mysore. The sheer enormity and elegance of the buildings and the greenery all around mesmerised all of us. Though the training is a bit hectic, we do enjoy every moment of our life here. The activity that we spend most time on is sleeping. The air conditioned classes and the boring powerpoint slides are an added bonus to sleep starved people like me. After many years of constant bunking, sitting everyday in class is a little hard. And after years of experience as a regular late comer, reaching class at 9'O clock is also a tough task. So, last week reminded me of my college days as i scored a hatrick in late coming and was thrown out of class for 3 consecutive days. The attendance tracking system is also a tough nut to crack. On any given day, you have to swipe in and swipe out your id card in the morning and evening. Then, there is an attendance client installed on our computer which has to be operated with your four fingers pressed on specific letters on the keyboard, all at the same time, four times a day. And the thing is active only for 30 seconds, to prevent proxy attendance. And then there are the daily assignments,module tests and projects. STILLL...we r enjoying...

Today, the assignment load is much less. So i found time to write this bit of nonsense. And surprisingly, the boring slides didn't put me to sleep in the morning. So i found time to scribble a song too. Am posting that too. Am missing the newspaper here. I only have the news channels to catch up with the latest news. But most of the time I end up watching endless clippings of the same news on every other channels in the 30 odd minutes I sit before the tv everyday. Rest of the time is spent in roaming around the enormous campus, playing one game or the other, eating at one of the food courts or just sitting somewhere and watching everybody. My walkman phone is a constant company without which I'd already've gone mad. So, life here is like a box of chocolates[forrest gump style]....

Hopefully, i'd soon find sometime to write on some serious issue[which is the purpose of this blog]...

Your crusader Praveen

100th post-A small goodbye

before the last show with Stoneage...
the last show......


100

This is gonna be a special post in many ways. After years of huffing and puffing and a slow down as the mark neared, I completed my long awaited century. yes, 100 blog posts. And this one gonna be the last one before i join my job at infosys in mysore. Last week been one of the most hectic ones that I ever had in my lazy life. It all started with the preparation for my last show with the band. And as always, we went for it with the last minute practise. thank god, we were able to put up a decent show[hope so]. Its hard for me to leave this band, which's been a part of my life for a pretty long time now. And I really hope these guys would continue for a long time to come and conquer some unchartered territory soon.

After my last show, it was a mad rush all week long to visit all my relatives and old gurus. And some trips did bring many nostalgic memories.

I gotta cut this blog short now...Since am running outta time...

From morrow, am gonna miss lots of things which been part of my life for a long time. My 'miss'list would read as follows... parents, band, friends, my bike, long chats in yahoo...and this blog too. Its ironic that my 100th post here is about something personal. As you all know, most of my posts here have dealt with issues that are not even remotely personal. And now, here I am, shedding 'blogtears' on the things am gonna miss...

thats it 4 now...maybe, my last post in 4 months...

A big thanks to all those who supported me all along in writing this blog...I dedicate this milestone post to all those who commented, to all those who criticised, to all those who advised and to all those who have read atleast one post of mine...

cheers...bye...

with love, your crusader Praveen


checkout some more pics of the last show-
http://picasaweb.google.com/blazeofglory2007/Stoneage

Rama sethu-aerial shot

History or 'His'-story
So, we got a new historian to teach us 'Ramayana'. Karunanidhi with his thoughtful comments questioning the existence of Lord Rama has added another chapter to his efforts towards national integration. He even asked 'which university did Rama get his civil engineering degree from'. Going by this comment, we can very well guess that all the egyptians, Romans and the guys who built Taj Mahal must have got their engineering degree from Anna university. And as a result of his worthy comments, the saffron army went on rampage and attacked his daughter's house and also torched a Tamilnadu transport corporation bus. After the incident, Karunanidhi commented that these incidents showed the culture of Ram sevaks. Talking about culture and such acts of goondaism, Karunanidhi has proved his mettle in this field too. Not many have forgotten his men's tirade against sun tv, which resulted in the death of some people. Also, DMK men been regularly torching buses and unleashing violence on the streets, from time immemorial.

Am not supporting the attackers in anyway. But Karunanidhi has no right to talk about the attacks. Its his own inflammatory comments that resulted in this backlash. For a long time, he been muscling the central government with his MP strength into doing things in Tamilnadu's own selfish interests. Its no secret that the DMK ministers at the centre been exclusively serving their state. Serving ones own place is understandable, but sometimes this has crossed limits to damaging the interests of neighbouring states. For eg, in the Salem division issue, they took away more than 500 Kms from the Palakkad division and gave back just 59kms, that too from the metre guage portion of madurai division, which will only add to kerala's woes. They were not even ready to give that. Now, they are planning to cripple the Trivandrum division by taking away nagercoil from under its jurisdiction. Another recent issue is the Mullaperiyar dam, where Tamil nadu stood adamant on its stand to raise the height of the dam, even after it was scientifically proved that the move will cause serious damage to the life of lakhs of people in Kerala. Such high handedness and arrogance from ministers at the centre is a violation of the Indian constitution. It also will cause serious damage to India's unity. One should never forget that we are all Indians first, state borders shouldn't be turned into LOCs.

Now back to the Sethusamudhram issue. The Rama setu[or Adam's bridge, as the non Indians call it] may or maynot be man-made. If its man made as the Hindu organisations claim, it is certainly a thing that should be preserved under the archeological laws of India. And if it is not man made[natural], as the 'well-educated' historian Karunanidhi claims, then also it should be preserved as it may be to serve some purpose. Last week, some scientist was claiming that this bridge could've been a factor in reducing the effect of tsunami in the Kerala coast. Am not sure, how much of this is true. But still, destroying the bridge could produce certain negative effects on the ecology like damaging the coral reefs and affecting the small sea creatures. The Sethusamudhram project is aimed at reducing the shipping time by a few hours. Other than this, it serves no purpose. So destroying a historical or natural formation, spending a mammoth amount of tax payer's money is out of the question.

And Karunanidhi would do well to give his tongue some rest. The same goes with arrogant ministers like T.R.Balu...Also Mr.Karu should brush up his history lessons. Making unguarded comments against Rama, whom the whole of India reveres and who is considered as the perfect human being can cause serious backlashes which may even result in Karu's head rolling on the ground. People still worship Rama even thousands of years after he walked or the face of earth[or belived to have walked]. Karunanidhi is in the evening of his life and his name will be forgotten within 10 years from his death. And 'his'-story would die with that. But not real 'history'.

your crusader Praveen

Rage- Making Chennai bang
Yeah..am at it again. Writing another concert review. After I wrote the report on Motherjane concert, someone commented, ''That is the most Amateurish write-up that I have read in my whole life about a concert''. So, here is another amateurish stuff on an awesome band coming your way.

Rage, the band been ruling the kerala metal kingdom for sometime. No one played the way they played their covers. Over the years, they've built up a legion of fans all over the state. And it was just a matter of time before they crossed the boundaries of the state and won fans beyond the borders. And cross they did... with a majestic show at Madras Christian College[MCC]. As we all know, MCC is a place where almost all the top bands in India have performed at some point or the other. And, so Rage getting a call to play at this very same venue is a matter of pride to its loyal fans down here. So, we [me, raja, nikhil, pappu, jk] decided to go with the band to chennai.

We reached there on Saturday morning, the day of the concert. The campus, with its vast greenery blew us away. In the morning itself, Biju chettan and pramod chettan were called upto judge some acoustic competition. The other rage fans like govindan potty arrived in the afternoon. The soundcheck started around 3 30. And tell you one thing, the whole sound system was a piece of shit. The band had a hard time getting a presentable sound out of it. The soundcheck took close to 2 hours to complete. After the soundcheck, the local band Udaan performed. It played some Hindi rock stuff, somewhat like 'jal'. The band got ample support from their home crowd. It was over in less than 30 minutes, and now it was time for the all out attack from our very own RAGE.

The crowd was slowly building up when the band got on stage. Most of them preferred to sit in the gallery at the back. Only a few were standing in the front. And then, rage started the blast with '2 minutes to midnight'. In 2 minutes, the whole scene at the grounds changed. People were rushing to the front and banging their heads in tandem. The crowd was composed mainly of guys from the north east, whom we all affectionately call 'chinkis'. In recent times, the Chennai scene was dominated mostly by funksih bands. And Rage was a whiff of fresh air for them, as one of the students there told me. Biju Chettan was the most active on stage, running around, jumping and displaying all his 'Dickinson inspired' mannerisms. Abi chettan and Pramod chettan competed with each other in coming right to the front and proudly giving a wavy display of their long locks. Nithin Chettan preferred to let his guitar do all the talking, cutting out all the show off. Mithun chettan was all smiles as he attacked the drums with all his might.

The sound system was the one bad element in the whole show and any other band would have wilted under the pressure, but not Rage. The guitar lead parts were getting somewhat drowned because of the improper mixing and the sound system's limitations. The S & M version of 'one' gave keyboardist Biji his own time under the spotlight. It was all going along well until Nithin chettan's cable got separated from the processor towards the end. It happened when he, in a spirited mood, tried to come on to the front seeing the frenzied crowd. And, for a minute Pramod chettan's guitar[the processor was having a bad tone], the keyboard and the drums were the only things audible. But, they somehow pulled it back and ended it. Another untoward incident was the breaking of Nithin chettan's string towards the end of 'Master of puppets' lead. Barring these two incidents, there were not much human errors to speak about. And that is a huge credit to the band, since the whole show happened in trying conditions of sweltering heat and a sound system that could boast of nothing.

They also belted out 'Holy wars', 'aces high', 'back in black', 'gets me through', 'caught somehwhere in time'. The crowd were screaming out the names of all their favorite songs especially from Maiden and Metallica. Maybe, they thought that this would be their only chance to hear such near perfect covers which even the original bands themselves find difficult to perform on stage. Some nu metal fans were obviously in the audience as there were calls for 'killing in the name of', 'toxicity' etc. The crowd had a great time swaying to all the songs. Biju chettan and abi chettan played their part in bringing the crowd to its feet. Biju Chettan even hurled a bottle full of mineral water at the audience, a really thoughtful move considering the crowd who were getting tired with constant screaming, banging and jumping. And, so the show came to an end by 7pm, which was the time limit set by the college authorities. After that, there was the band interview with SS music, which also covered the entire show. Those who missed the live show should try to catch them on SS music sometime soon.

Thus, Rage has made a mark outside the state too. Hope many more big concerts come their way in the near future. Best of luck to the godfathers of metal in Trivandrum...rock on RAGE..\\m//

your crusader Praveen

God's Own countries
Haven't written anything in a while. Been busy with onam, mainly eating, hanging out and visiting relatives. So, I thought I'll post something here today. And here it is, a song that I wrote some weeks back. Our band was having a practice session without our drummer. So we decided to do some funny acoustic stuff. And our bassist Mahadevan came up with this idea of ''God's own countries'', about kerala and guys like us...and thus this song happened. Since we din't record the song properly, the song can't be uploaded here. As an onam special, am posting the lyrics here.

***God's Own countries***
We were born to rule the world
With not a care for the ways of the herd
It may all sound so weird
But we sure will burn you red.

We ride the boats of freedom
Our lips taste the smelly toddy
We search for lips to share the taste
But we end up sharing more.

So you hear our words coz we r writing this
The song of nothing.
The song of nothing

We r the god's own countries

We spit fire..
We ride the storm..
We kill the flies..
We r the god's own countries...
We r the god's own countries...


Once we believed in those grandma tales
where white clad damsels ruled the roost
Now we write our own stories
Ready to end up in history..

We have the world at our feet
Ready to bang to our beat
We never tasted defeat
So this is for you to repeat...

We spit fire..
We ride the storm..
We kill the flies..
We r the god's own countries...
We r the god's own countries...



Thanks for reading that load of crap.....Happy onam to everybody

your crusader Praveen

\m/otherjane- The homecoming

They Came...They rocked...and they conquered... That would aptly sum up Motherjane's sojourn in Trivandrum. Titled 'The coming home' tour, this was really a coming home for the band after having conquered more than 100 venues all over India and being featured in numerous international radio stations and compilation albums. Its a little known fact that their first album 'Insane biography' have sold out. Now with the second album 'Maqtub' ready for release, the band is at the threshold of even greater success. Even before the 2nd album released, everybody knows all of its songs by heart. And that was evident from the crowd singing many of the lyrics alongwith them yesterday..

So..Here is a brief description of the day. The day started with me and Raja going to Hotel Maurya, where Motherjane was staying. After meeting them all, we went with them for the soundcheck at Nishagandhi in the afternoon. Sooraj chettan satyed back nursing his sore throat. John Chettan had already gone there. A glance at the stage had all of us laughing. It had a broken bullock cart, many small pots[like folk dance set] and some raised platforms made of cardboard at the back. Motherjane's great sound engineer Fali got to work. After tweaking it all around, the band started the soundcheck. We got a sample of what to expect when they played 'broken', 'chasing the sun' etc. They kept on doing it until it all sounded perfect. After the soundcheck, me, Nikhil and Raja returned to the hotel with them. Baiju chettan enlightened us with some great tips and some interesting anecdotes. Deepu chettan was his usual self cracking some really intolerable jokes that made everyone burst into uncontrollable laughter. Sooraj Chettan was radiating positive energy all around although he was suffering from some throat problems. The band had a private meeting behind closed door before leaving for the show. Once they came out, we posed for some snaps with them.

Raja n me with John chettan

Me, Nikki n raja with Mother

And, now it was time for the real show. We reached Nishagandhi around 7pm. The crowd was only starting to build up. Maybe beacuse of lack of ads in newspapers and banners at the venue gate, the crowd was not as big as expected. Anyway, I was really happy when I got my prized possession, the Motherjane t-shirt. I saw some of my non-rock friends among the crowd. They all became Motherjane fans recently after the wide coverage in rosebowl. The screen which was set up in front of the stage was constantly playing the motherjane rockumentary produced by rosebowl. At around 7 30, the band appeared on stage sending the crowd into a frenzy. They all rushed to the front. If not for the wooden barriers, they wud've stormed onto the stage. Sooraj chettan started the show in a thoroughly professional manner with some pep talk and then bursting straight on to 'Disillusion'.

Baiju Chettan on the lead was the cynosure of all eyes. The crowd was chanting 'baiju, baiju' everytime he started one of his legendary leads. John chettan with his brown tinted goatee was not giving any respite for the hapless drums as he pounded on it mercilessly. 'Mindstreet', in the new version with heavy eastern influences was a favourite with the crowds. Not to forget, the now cult classic 'Broken' from the new album. One quality which i found with this song is that everyone who heard this loved this song[including those who never listens to rock, even my mom]. Clyde chettan, though not at all talkative off the stage, was attitude personified on stage with his bass doing all the talking. Deepu chettan with his infectious smile, provided the rhythm support and also was singing all the songs along with sooraj chettan. Sooraj Chettan carried the show wonderfully well and no one there would believe that this man was nursing a sore throat all day. He punctuated the introduction of each song with some wonderful anecdotes. The one I loved the most was about 'Walk on'. A foreign guy having cancer used to listen to this song everyday because this inspired him. After his death, his brother wrote a letter to the band thanking them for giving his brother hope while he was alive.

'Maya', the song about a girl of big dreams, who ends up as a prostitute also struck a vibrant chord with the audience. My other favorites were 'Chasing the sun', 'Questions' and 'soul corporations'. The innovative 'shh..listen' had the audience hissing 'shhh' all the time. The band also belted out 'prison chains', 'blood in the apple'[about 9/11] and 'karmic steps'. But the ones i missed the most were their 2 short songs... 'An Ode to life' parts 1 and 2 from the 1st and 2nd albums respectively. Both the songs consists of only just 4 lines each. But the story behind the songs were amazing[saw that in the rockumentary]. 'An Ode to life' is about losing loved ones to death and it was written after the death of sooraj chettan's mother. 'An ode to life 2' is about new life. This was written after the birth of his son. These songs are an example of how much you can convey in an one minute song. As soon as the last song ended, I held out my hand at Baiju chettan asking for his guitar pick and he promptly obliged. Now, that is a souvenior for life.

sooraj chettan n baiju chettan

And so that was the story of Motherjane conquering their home territory after a long journey out of the state. An analysis of what endears them so much to everyone, we can find many reasons. The strong eastern influence in baiju chettan's guitaring, the underlying melody in all of their songs, the thought provoking lyrics or the innovative progressive stuff, the reasons are just too many. But the thing I find most remarkable about them is that they were able to pull in some people who have been known rock haters. I salute them for that single achievement more than any awards or recognition won abroad.

PS- After writing this post, I happened to read today's Indian express and found that the opening line of this post matched word to word with an article on motherjane that appeared in it. It read , ''They come, they rock and they conquer''. And mine went, ''They Came...They rocked...and they conquered''... Needless to say, I was astonished at the similarity. Maybe a case of great music bringing the same thoughts in two different minds. ..


For more concert pics, checkout my online album
http://picasaweb.google.com/blazeofglory2007/MotherJaneRocksTVM

your crusader, Praveen