music & me - final part 2

ok due to popular demand by the few nice people who read my blog im back for the final installment of music & me.
The pop phase went on till i think i was 14 /15. Yeah it didnt last too long due to the aforementioned 'search for depth'. Thats when MTV happened. Not the lame ass nonsense that is MTV now, but i like to think of my childhood MTV as a real education.

Course 1: How to rebel without a cause and look really cool while doing it - taught by kurt cobain, Chris cornell & eddie vedder

Course 2: Lateral thinking: the coolest ever channel Id graphics. MTV taught me the basics of how to say one thing in the most number of superbly cool ways

Course 3: how to hallucinate and elevate without being drugged - the one and only TORI AMOS , lifelong friend and secret lover

and so continuing on..

Phase 4: teeteering 'over the edge'


My earliest memory of watching MTV was afternoons once i got back from school and noone was home. Sneakily watching MTV when i was supposed to be doing homework or something and one day catching a video set in a grungy basement filled with teenage kids head banging in slow motion to one man's pain stricken voice. I remember very clearly being struck by the orange yellow dusty feel of the video and the 'anti' cheerleaders in black dresses. it smelled like teen spirit and it was heady. then on began the grunge obsession, accompanied by spells of bad poetry scribbled behind red line notebooks apparently an expression of my 'angst'

i still have those notebooks.

Phase 5: my first brush with hallucinations


in the middle of all those brown & grey boys with voices that sounded like paper tearing, a girl with flaming red hair wearing a red tulle dress stepping in and out of windows making love to a mystical piano entered my life. she's still in it , she's still making my hair stand up and showing me 'peices of things ive never seen'
tori amos , sometimes absurd, mostly kind of pretentious when she isnt singing, but always intense and cripplingly beautiful when she is, walked in and took me over. suddenly it seemed like some secret world existed with a secret language and now i was permanent resident of a dark fairytale wonderland.

suddenly am reminded of raggity and the cloud. i miss that book :(

Phase 6: 'adult alternative & mehfil -e -electronica


ok all grown up by now, the grunge/alternative/tori phase defining most of my teens and early 20's i landed up at my first 'advertising job'. discovered a lost cousin from my mom's side - mihir living in boston. thanks to the web we started chatting and realised we were like music twins or something. the newest, coolest music came to me direct from amrica courtesy mihir , here i was with silly smile on my face zoning out on death cab for cutie, phish and the like. Till of course, i heard psychedelic trance. extremely sceptical but pushed by the urge to at least try it, i did. it started with 'this is great work music' (the earlier commercial shit) to 'hmm there seems to be something here' (morning) to 'this is incredibly visual and strangely moving' (parasense).

Am somewhere still there now except with the brilliant addition of IDM (intelligent dance music) and trip hop fellows like rum pistol , prefuse courtesy the BASAK - art partner and grphic artist. between our secret language (which noone else at work seems to understand) are the scratchy, twisted sounds of IDM making the work seem sort of more than what it is. here's to that and to music. for making my world spin.
:)

music & me - Part 1

i'm a 90's child. but unlike most 90's suburban mumbai kids, i almost never heard any hindi/bollywood music as a child. thanks to musically evolved cousins who stayed across the road, i grew up on a healthy diet of pop, rock, grunge and when MTV hit it was 'alternative' courtesy 'alternative nation' a show with jerky camera movements and a dark almost dingy set, hosted by VJ sophia who brought her very special brand of cool to the entire experience. (or was it danny? , there were two of them alternative nation and over the edge)


phase 1: Sunday Mornings with the Fab four.



This was me at maybe 5? or 6? something like that. My folks had this record player and every sunday morning the Beatles LPs' would rock our house. those days we were in no hurry to switch on tubelights so the perfect sunday morning was spent with the fab four singing 'hard day's night' and all four of us dancing and goofing around in the little bits of sunshine. ( i think thats where i got my fascination for sunrise trance from)


phase 2: Bowing down to 80's royalty



mid 80's. it started with watching madonna's like a virgin video and feeling creeped out, excited, and longing all at once. my first crush i think she was. i was too young to understand the references but i knew it was soemthing dangerously cool. Cut to me watching her performances on pirated VHS tapes goggle eyed , cut to lame mimicking of jackson's thriller moves cut to humming prince's purple rain cut to speech bubble inside my brain going 'this guy looks kinda weird, but damn this music is strangely beautiful'

apparently also somewhere in the middle of all of this was an arrogant 10 year old girl who thought peter gabriel was god and snootily snubbed everyone who didnt know who the hell he was. (god knows when this happened, but one of the snubbed friends confirms this)

Phase 3: Going Radio Ga Ga


Now to say i am a bit embarassed by this part of the music history is an understatement. Radio came into my life at this point. and so did pop music. not the madonna kind. more like the ace of base/amy grant one hit wonders kind.

so here i was in my early teens, when i decided radio and pop music was fun. No more 'borrowed tastes' i'm going to discover my own music without having to go across the road. so i started stealing No 1's from the weekly top 10's off the radio and by the end of it i had a drawer full of - you guessed it - mixed tapes. of course then i took it all too seriously and promptly rejected the entire movement because
'the lyrics dont mean anything' and 'my life is more complicated than silly love songs'. Of course what was complicating my life at 13 , ill never know.


coming up: phase 4: in search of the 'alternative', phase 5: trip hop & indie
phase 6: electronica takes over.
and then the forever top 10

small town indian lady seeking rhinoplasty

so i happened to meet this small town lady. she was a neighbour at a friends place where i was bunking in between work stuff. one day in the afternoon when i happen to be home, she walks in hesistantly asking me if i could answer a few questions for her. so i said ok. so she says do you know any thing about plastic surgery in Bombay??

! - no other symbol could explain my reaction better. here was this seemingl simple rajasthani lady come from small town india, who stays at home all day with two little girls and has no friends to speak of - here was this sterotype doing something completely unstreotypical. she was asking me about 'rhinoplasty' and saying she read on the net that nowadays girls in delhi and in bombay are doing this a lot. i have to say i was impressed.

till of course she told me her reasons.

Her neice apparently has a 'bad' nose and isnt getting any proposals despite being qualified working independant etc.. so of course, why not just fix the problem. anything to get her married , money etc no problem. and why not ask the 'bombay girl' for advice? its amazing hwo she compltely missed the irony of it all.

Anyways it was awkward for me. on one hand i kept thinking i should be discouraging her from thinking about surgery and on the other i figured she had a right to know if she wanted to. education never hurt anyone. so i decided that its best to give her all the info so at least she knows the risk.

and then the situation turned a bit. uncomfortably so. she asked me tentaively in slightly hushed tones about breast surgery. now she kept sayins its for some other neice but err one could easily see how the information could be used for her own benefit. well by this time i was kind of expecting this so i just helped her out.. even sent her some links ( yeah she has an email id, she surfs google for info , chats on yahoo with her sisters and soon im sure she willhave a twitter account)
apparently her husband likes women who are well endowed. sighh..

cant help feeling a bit queasy though about the whole thing.

100 years of

one hundred years of darkness later
the sunlight dances on my toes

one hundred years of despair later
i am moving slightly to morning music

one hundred years of scrutiny
& i discover everything is going to be ok

one hundred years of battles later
i am finally home

new blog!

ok i started a new blog

its called http://bornurban.blogspot.com
its about being born and raised in and by the city

please check and let me know what you all think. i got nice
header art also from deviant and a world clock across five cities!
i am very pleased with that one :)

also would like to invite anyone who reads this to
share their own on the blog. if youve got something to write about your city please get in touch and ill put it up with credits.

all these people

all these people.
who shrunk me with their
holier than thou

who kicked me harder when
i was down who broke me choked me
raped me , turned me out
into the cold

all these people.
i watch them from a distance
their miserable tiny lives
growing smaller by the second
caught in time's stranglehold

tighter & tighter
sharper & sharper
cut bleed gasp burn
veins peircing through the flesh
screams for anyone someone...

but im not there.
im not there anymore. no more

my newest find

pile on.. it a free for all here

i am home again in borivali after weeks. the new house is lovely and living with unnati is real nice :) there's a lot of lounging around in the front room, talking and playing something or doing nothing just sprawling on sofas .. very relaxing. my dark circles have reduced :)

but i am home in borivali today .. greeted by hyper the dog. which was superb having a dog in the house again! went a little crazy playing with him and then was getting ready for television ( since i dont have one in the andheri house, sundays at home are Tv days ) ..

but of course all this niceness was interrupted by uninvited guests. a regular feature in my house since i was a kid. if it was sunday it meant someone is going to show up. so the cupboards are promptly stocked with snacks. and the house is cleaned up in anticipation and im sulking as usual cause i have some sort of univited guest phobia , especially uninvited guests who im supposed to recongise but never do and realy dont care about AT ALL. pretending to be all nice and interested just bores the hell out of me.

well anyways, these people are still here., and its been about 1.5 hours. i usually shut myself out and everyone thinks im a real snob probably cause i am. but this time these fellows started talking about how 'the christians in your area are really quite unbearable' in that typical snooty stupid 'very marathi' air of superiority. women and men like that i really hate. its an intense sort of hatred. people who pretend to be superior when they have absolutely nothing to show for it. god knows how my folks can even stand to talk to them or reason with them.

besides i don undersatnd this coming over uninvited funda. is this a generation thing? i never ever go anywhere without calling first. why do people think its 'okay' to drop in on people on a bloody sunday evening? the day for tv and conversation and reading of TIME magazine and sunday papers RUINED. that too by self righteous bigots. superb i say. simply superb.

B.L.O.T

basic love of things. See them here www.blot.in and here www.blottin.blogspot.com

Discovered them through a friend who recommended the music. Found Blot on facebook and now i have a brand new DVD sent to me by them.  which by the way is supercool. I highly recommend. Not that anyone reads my blog.

Also have a fantastic poster which will sit happily above my work station in new chutney office.

All this connecting with the world through the web makes me very happy.

Thank you internet for my life.

Thank you Avinash for the DVD. Music and the movies are great. I loved discovering the cities like that. Come to Bombay and perform sometime soon.

Back to life

once again .. the voices come calling
and i think what a time it was, what a life it was. how ive changed . from that to now.

i am lack
of imagination
of joy
of secret ideas
of resolve


how do i go back into that secret place,below the bridge in the muddy water
here i was free lurking in the corners watching them go about thier business
and me making copious notes of eyes darting this way and that and feet slipping , hands outstretched reaching out to the moon


dancing girl
singing girl
hidden in the shadows of my
dreams
how do i talk to her now
how do i awaken those eyes
that went to sleep
and forgot about me


when did i decide to come out and be them and mingle instead of staying indoors, watching the babies playing in the snow. teach me how to build dreams on this song
to be surprised by the words i find hiddin in their breath under the smog inside drains over puddles, between towers & bridges and bliss

the unspeaking trees of far away call my name
brown wet dirt lies in wait to gather below naked feet

book buying adventure & the call of kari

so i went to landmark to kill some time and the mission of the day became instantly clear as i saw the gothamesque book city rise up in front of me (somehow everytime i walk past the glossy foreign magazines and step into BOOKS, i feel like im plunging head first into the brightly lit but still overwhelming unknown - ( i love to adventurize everything)

so the mission was - find books i had read & loved but lost somehwere inside my head and discover at least one new writer.

today was my lucky day. after a slow leisurely walk down "literary fiction" i found old lovers - bluest eye and brave new world and newest crush "everything is illuminated" by jonathan safram foer with elijah wood showing off the sky in his spectacles on the cover. New York times called it a wild indelible first novel. so of course i put it in my little red riding hood red plastic basket and happily strolled along to the graphic novel section..

this is something i always do. its like a ritual at landmark. the graphic novels have to be seen, touched, fantasized about and then given up on after you see the exorbitant prices. Batman & robin in monochrome for 1000 bucks. some new japanese graphic novel for 900 bucks..

sigh.. but then. i saw kari. sitting between batman & some other much too expensive comic book , somewhere on the side... where nooone would notice her.
i like to think she found me.

there was of course just one copy. very romantic :)

Kari is a graphic novel by artist + writer Amruta Patil. inside the book on the first page left is a synopsis. i cant explain it any better than that so i am just going to reproduce a part of it here..

With Angel, Lazarus and the girls of crystal palace forming the chorus to her song, Kari explores the dark heart of smog city - loneliness, sewers, sleeper success, death and the memory of her absentee Other.

I took to kari instantly. I dont know how to write reviews and i dont intend to. Its a personal thing. or more truthfully a selfish thing. im not sharing the inexplicable connections and discoveries i made with anyone. i love it, is all im going to say.

incidently the book ( probably cause its a graphic novel ) smells ever so slightly of paint. Intoxicating me as much as the writing & the art itself.

read more about amruta patil - the writer here http://amrutapatil.blogspot.com

home

im back from home and im headed home.
just got back from a 4 day holiday in goa courtesy my company who generously took us all for a much needed end of year break. for everyone else it was vacation time
for me it was like going back home. Goa is special.

But a lot of things are different now. the 10 pm deadline for instance. of course anywhere else in india its super strict but goa alwyas had its own set of rules for things liek that. ever since scarlet happened though, its all gone. The freedom is finished. terribly sad. killing off the free spirit of goa isnt going to solve the scarlet and related issues. any idiot can see that.

But even without the 10 pm deadline, goa tourism isnt doing much to improve the overall goa experience. for example , its almsot impossible to find a doctor in the night except maybe at panjim. anjuna has only ONE 15 bed hospital mostly filled with drug OD cases. Directions & street lighting is abysmally poor. ive gotten lost on those crazy roads many times and at night believe me its bloody scary. Although bikes are cheap and great , to travel long distances with luggage means hiring a taxi, which turns out terribly expensive. a taxi to the airport from morjim ( north of anjuna) cost us about 1000 bucks. pretty ridiculous and no amount of bargaining works.

plus the locals are real pain. try going to a rave. the koli ladies selling chai and spreading mattresses all over the only sitting space may seem 'exotic and charming' to the foriegners but they are con artists, rude, mean and really painful to deal with. plus the chai SUCKS. you end up buying the crap they sell just cause you want to shut the hell up and let you rest your tired legs.

wow. this has become a rants post. i actually love goa. i end up tolerating all the above mentioned nonsense only because the beaches are incredible and the feeling of freedom is unmatched anywhere in india. exploring goa on a bike is the next best thing to lazing on a sun bed all day. in my explorations with friends ive managed to uncover some amazing places and things to do.


here's 5 of the best

1. Morning at a rave
there's nothing in the world like sunrise at a good party. thats all i can say about that :)


2. English breakfast at Munches - Anjuna, star co junction
Fantastic juices , great frankurters
its open 24 hours too.


3. Lazing on Morjim/ Ashwem beach - north of anjuna , after siolim
these are some of the most fantastic north goa beaches. untouched , clean
laidback and lovely. whooever goes there, if i find out that uve taken a boombox
blaring bollywood music and ordered for paneer tikka at the shack, im coming after you with a loaded rifle. apparently you can hire a boat here, go fishing and also watch the dolphins and the sea turtles - if you can wake up early morning that is.


4. Biking it
There's nothing as fun as hopping on one of those deo's and riding away whrever
the hell you feel like. provided its in the day of course. dont try this at night unless you dont mind getting lost or you knwo the ways pretty well. the roads are designed for these bikes and its super super fun. try going all the way to south goa and lunching at martin's


5. Nine Bar from 6pm or Loodas
nine bar for electronic music in just the right setting
- a cliff overlooking the beach, try this on a saturday or friday - the DJ might be better than the one i had to endure.. but it dosent matter cause the place itself is brilliant.

or Loodes/ Loodas for pyschedelic live rock - a band that played original music for
hours non stop


this super long post is done. for photos visit my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/trippyhippy07/

will keep adding more there

peer pressure

its a saturday evening. i havent been feeling too well ( i hope my mother dosent read this ) . but there's nothign to do except write this post.

things are changing. a friend has left town. another has left work. yet another writes about me ( http://plasticgunner.blogspot.com ) . one is 25 today and another got married last week.

its liek the world is turning another color. or there's some imperciptible shift in the order of things that i can only sense but cant put my finger on. it scares me a bit. i am wondering what abotu me? am i supposed to change too? in some way?

hwoever old you grow i guess you always wanna fit in soemhwere. if everynone 's life is changing mine should too. no matter how great it is right now.

or is it?

i wrote a half of a story

so i wrote half of of a short story. its not complete yet. but its my first real attempt i think. i always have a tough time finding an ending for the story so i leave them like that and never finish them. i hope this one will be different.

i hope this one will be a first.

i got one bad review though from the one person i showed it to. that made me a bit unsure. but then i decided its not for the world its for me , in typical rejected writer arrogance. hehe

i think this is one of those ' here world, this is how dull my life is ' post .bbut i promise you on the 34th line your world will change. everything will ve revelaed. the truth is out there. stay tuned yahoo and all that jazz.

the truth is i am incredibly bored. people who know me have heard this much too often. i thought about it pretty hard one day. all the synapses in my brain were buzzing around like bees on ecstasy. and then i discovered. I am the kind of person that needs to wake up and have an adventure every single day, mental , physical , emotional any flavour will do. When i dont i get depressed, annoyed , angry , irritable etc etc.

so now you know. it came out lot sooner than the 34th line, but hey thats a good thing. i felt i had to write down my big discovery so i dont lose it inside my head.

so now you know.

many days later..

here i am. many days later. in the new year.

i had a new year party last night. a sort of spontaneous ,unplanned house party.
lots of indulgences into the night i started the usual 'propounding of nonsense theories' usually associated with consumption of large doses of things your mother warned you to stay away from.

here's the latest 'nonsense theory'
yknow Y2k? well the whole world thought systems would breakdown
but in actual fact, unknowingly people broke down. and THAT'S how "motherfuckers gonna drop the pressure" became a hit song.

yeah yeah i know. moral of the story: if you cant be the life of a party try not to be the fool. i narrated this very dramatically to an audience hoping for me to do soemthing really stupid and end up becoming one of those great 'new year party silliness stories' ..but the joke fell kinda flat ..hmm i wonder why..

anyway it was nice. friends , laughter, actually LOTS of laughter at nothing at all and a warm cosy sleep afterward. ive slept all day today. indulging in the one thing i usually get very little of. i love sleeping int he afternoons. its a family tradition. all holidays we eat a great full meal and promptly make the right arrangements for a very long very relaxing siesta. my aunts, parents, cousins , me all stand guilty as charged. and how we love it.

oh and by the by, i went to bangkok in december. work + holiday. work days i hardlky saw the city but after that i did a lot of roaming around. a friend with the common love of walking aroudn cities went with me to chinatown and the shopping mall (yes, malls are the new parks, its the only place to walk anyway )

chinatown was mad. i have pictures of unidentified eating objects hanging from street stalls looking strange but delicious, and of a bizarre HUGE school bus with the most fantastic japanese illustrations..!! ok im just gonna put up the pics now




weird food.



more weird food!



bangkog city. reminded me of bombay all the time



patayya walking street!!!! the sex street with all the mad shows . totally overhwelming monstrosity of neon , ladyboys, weird animals and live huge seafood



the awesomely cool japanese school buses


everyone who reads have a great happy happy new year!!!
ciao now dahlings!

little lotta & pokemon

once upon a diddly doo Little lotta met Pokemon
and together they were happy & free

but little lotta carried her weight wherever she went
at first it was kind of cute & Pokee felt the belly was
like a really fat flute

but then too much became three much
& one fine day she went boom
blew up to the size of two balloons

then lotta began to feel an itch
inside her heart and it made her soul twitch

She couldnt quite figure out what it was
and lots of soul searching left her with naught
She found herself stuck in limboland
wishing alice would take her to wonderland

Pokee couldnt quite figure out what it was
he talked and yelled and worried a lot
but Lotta was stubborn as an ox
her mind wouldnt give no matter what

then one day, poke told lots..
"you better get happy or im gonna get lost!"
lotta felt a shiver of fear
creeping down her back like an electric razor

So she tried and tried..
distractions and addictions
super glue and quick stick
but her broken part would just not mend , dammit!!

So what next she wonders
maybe its time to deflate the balloon
if i get thin again, will it be ok then?
Maybe hidden inside the layers of fat
is the monster thats making her sad

So thums down to colas
& no more crisps or fun golas
just pass by the chocoalte candy
and give a miss to the beef burgundy

wake up at 5 and walk instead of drive
run on the sands of time
and hope everything will be allright

f@%* the world

fuck the world

i feel
like a rebellious
16 year old boy
with a guitar crashing in my head
and the devil on my mind

i want
to smash a window
and break a few bones
and climb a tree
and just be free

i wish
i had a natural brilliance
maybe i could paint
or draw
or write
or play a sport
or make movies

fed up
of being me
and ranting and raving
and crying into my pillow
and drowning in self pity

somebody save me

the pursuit of "wow"

i hold me back
everytime, raise me this high
and no more

blame it on circumstance
or the wrong choices
or karma?

is it a hole that i cant plug?
im afraid
what if its never enough

im tired now
searching for too long
its either this or that
all or nothing

ready to run away
ready for the big bang
anywhere, somehwere
anywhere but here

chronicles - 4

Chronicles of a dickhead – part 4
- how samosa killer aka bad ass mofo aka as yet untitled met the king of good minds – Idea the bulb …..

(note : all wrongs reserved, any multiplication of this monstrosity will invite sever punishment in the form of listening to the opera for 3 hours, or the hit indi puke song “eh papi” ( for the unitiatied – papi means sinner and not some hybrid or feminine version of the Punjabi _ pape, although with words like kudi and chak de its an easy mistake to make ) whichever is worse at a given time

in one of his oil filled fantasies ( to note at this time – these chronicles gave been passed by the board of smoky soirees and sordid stories and has been given a pg rating) the great and giving Sk found his answer to all problems his talcum powder to cover his sweaty odors, his foot cream to get rid of the samosa sores rising rapidly on the inner sole of his left toe , his tongue cleaner of those oily love stains from his beloved samosas… oh you get the picture !

he found the insult giver , the bad boy of brainy behavior – idea the bulb!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(the board of unnecessary and completely nonsensical crap has authorized more than three exclamation marks behind his name and hence the same has been applied )

Idea the bulb had helped him before. Once warming his stomach when in a somewhat odd manner sub zero temperatures hit Hawaii when SK was taking is annual solar skin purifying hydration oxymoronic treatment. The warmth from idea the bulb kept the samosa flavor alive and SK found his will to live and eat again…

Why oh why had he nto thought if hime before? Especially before stuffing his face 3000 samosas in the desperate hope to reach level 6! Purrrrr.. a pussycat meowed from his rear...

So idea the bulb dimmed and cracked a few times especially when bad ass mofo appeared , the stench did cause some discomfort to the bulb causing it to oscillate between turning vomity yellow – green to just cracking into blue billion barnacles..

Eureka!!!!! ( actually the bulb said ‘fucking mother fucking shit!! but that’s been censored since this a pg rated blah blah blah.. psst… who reads this crap anyway?) so idea had an idea and all the world looked super sexy again. He announced in stops and starts , the light and dim language of the ancient Mesopotamian bulbs that they would have a Doobie DooBie doo!!!!!! – the challenge of the stony stars!

The challenge was to correctly demonstrate how a doobie is smoked and the rules do doobiedom. Will the stenos be upto this challenge? In happiness, SK did a few samosasaults ( it’s complicated so don’t ask) while choking on his puke.

Next : return of the stenos – counter theorizing with the master - HYPER BLEE..

despair

despair
despair is like disease. you need external help to really get rid of it. and like disease you wait till the last minute before you go to the doctor. By then you cant sleep, youre too tired to do anything, you're crabby, whiny and painful for everyone around you. You demand attention, love and you know its annoying being so clingy yet you seem to feel like somehow you deserve it.

but you dont go to the doctor, because of some vain 'ill solve this myself" attitude.so it doesnt go away.

and it starts to itch under your skin
right there in between your eyes
and inside your mindso you go

and do something stupid
and utterly silly
you feed the monsteronce again
till it mutates

despair is an addiction
like the meth stories ive heard
the clawing & scratching
till slowly there's a hole in your brain
and venom in your heart