Ulsavam Musings

(I had published this post elsewhere, earlier in April 2015)

 

Some fifty years earlier when I was first taken to that temple my paternal grandmother quickly wrapped a towel round our shorts to make us comply with the man-made dress code at the temple that was dispensed to us in the name of the Lord himself.
 

Fifty years later we did the same with our twin nine year old sons, quite like the hundreds of many other faithfuls that had come to see the ulsavam at the Sri PadmanabhaSwamy temple.  Well, OK not all of them were perhaps faithfuls.  Same difference.  Define a faithful to me unambiguously before you join issues with me on the extent of faith of all those

.

Lest anyone be in doubt on where I come out on this matter of Faith, I am a big believer in God in any form.  I am not sure what God is supposed to do, what, if any, am I supposed to do for Him and what my relationship with Him ought to be.  But I am convinced that the Lord exists.  Further, I am convinced that all that we do is His bidding.  I also turn to Him routinely for various transactional benefits.
 

The principal agenda for everyone assembled there was seeking the Lord's blessings, the Lord being Sri Padmanabha Swamy, the presiding deity and his two other incarnations Sri Naramsimha and Sri Krishna.

For some it may even have been an ostensible reason for being there because what one witnessed there was a small social gathering too.

 

Most people seemed to know each other.  This is where the city of Trivandrum appears to have not lost its quaintness. Every year many of its residents leave for the larger cities in search of livelihoods, careers, even fame and fortune, changing the composition of the population permanently, irreversibly.  A few migrants from elsewhere take their place in an ever growing wave of urbanization. 

 

Yet everyone including those that remained and those that had moved in, all seemed to know each other in spite of the new-fangled social media that elsewhere in the country seemed to be turning neighbours into strangers.
 

Many among those gathered at the temple greeted each other warmly, even intimately.  Some of them were explaining they had been absent for an extended while because they had been visiting an offspring in Bangalore or Delhi.  Much news was exchanged. 

 

There were young men and women throwing me back to my own youth forty years earlier.  Mine was a very different world though, a world of cold war, of oil shocks, of Mrs G’s dirigisme that was driven across the country from Delhi in the name of centralized planning, and Sakhavu Achyuta Menon’s dias non and the hushed ripples on campus of the secret war that Comrade Ajitha’s compatriots were waging in the hills of Wayanad against the establishment. 

 

Beside me, on the sands of the temple a very religious looking young man was debriefing his friends about a difficult encounter that his friend had had with a young lady who had apparently slapped him (the friend) over the latter's inappropriate attempt to win her affinity.
 

As I stood there taking in these sights and sounds, I realized that in all these fifty years, the faces had changed.  Political circumstances had changed, making the erstwhile ruler of Travancore further remote from and less relevant to the rough and tumble of contemporary power politics than he had been in the seventies, soon after Mrs G had abolished their privy purse.

 

To the faithful, the temple and its ulsavam remained a central piece of their social life even today, a source of much conviviality.  That in a sense seemed to be the spiritualism that the religion of Lord Padmanabha tried to imbue in the faithful, through the institution of His temple, as a place of community worship:  Having been born into this world being caught in the web of life was inevitable.  But weave every bit of your life around the Lord.  Implant the Lord in your heart however perfectly as you can, however imperfectly as you might.  You might then hope to be liberated from the cycle of birth and death someday.
 

As I stood reflecting on these thoughts, trying to dissolve some recent worldly pain of my own making, I heard the distant thud of the kettle drum heralding the arrival of the Lord.  The conversations stopped and all eyes turned to the direction of the sound, eagerly awaiting the sighting of the Lord on the tall, broad, spacious, imposing circumambulatory path of the temple, all hewn in eternal stone.

 

Nanni.Namaskaaram

The Bands of Kerala

(I published this earlier elsewhere in July 2014)

 

Kerala has always been big on music, a similarity that they share with Bengalis.  I am not sure though that they produce the kind of seriously rigorous classical music of the level of sophistication that one sees in Chennai or Hyderabad or even Bangalore or Mysore for that matter. 

 

But in recent times several new bands entered the scene, each introducing a variant of what was available in the market, mixing a little bit of various other pre-existing genres. 

 

Agam is a classic example of this trend.  They claim to perform what they call Progressive Carnatic Fusion Rock.  Their fusion is smooth and seamless, yet they are deeply rooted in Indian classical music, mostly the Carnatic variety.  Listen to this piece for example, which got me started off on listening to these bands. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_pvwVLv4os.   

And another signature piece is here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7iW2X9AVmQ. 

The best thing about Agam is the way they work traditional Carnatic pieces into a rock orchestra in the background.  No one else does it as well as them.  I guess they are able to do so because they seem to know classical music well.  To that extent they literally own the genre they claim to have created.   

 

I guess the other nice thing about them is their lead who is quite talented.  But as a singer I think Harish is over-rated.  His voice delivers flights easily.  But it is not as solid or deep as that of many other lead singers.  Listen to this rendition for example where he seems to be out of his depths (sorry, pun intended.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlJ9Gde2S4

The rest of the band is also mediocre except the lead guitarist.  The drums especially are pedestrian. 

 

The Job Kurian collective is another band that seems to have caught the fancy of the young adults in Kerala with Padayaatra.  Follow this link to the listen to the song. 

 

But the rest of their songs did not catch my fancy.  Job is a good singer.  I do not see the band itself making waves for long. 

 

The whole band movement seems to have started with Avial.  Alas they are not around any longer.  These guys were truly awesome. Rex Vijayan the lead guitarist is something else.  Their drummer is pretty decent. 

 

Overall, the band creates a terrific pulse even with some ordinary songs.  I guess it is all the result of their lead singer Anand Benjamin Paulraj (ABP).  Listen to these two songs to understand what I mean.  Pay attention to the lead singer and Rex Vijayan in particular.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnV9q1hOOGg

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISqhTrll5lg

 

The other thing you may have noticed is the sheer economy of the use of instruments by Avial.  It proves something that I believe about bands.  It is not about the number of instruments in the band.  It is how you bring them together that matters.  There are bands that seem to have so many instruments leaving you wonder if they are all adding to the melody or turning the music into cacophony. 

 

While I do not know why the band went out of existence, I think the band did not get its lead singer act together.  ABP  seems to have migrated to the USA.  To get a sense of how critical he was to the band, watch this video and look at the comments below.  You will see that the band lost much of its mojo with the departure of ABP.

Watch this video at the link below to see how the band mismanaged the lead singer part of its show.  The same chekele by Tony is a poor comparison.  Also see the comments below where the audience is rooting for ABP.  Elsewhere on other videos you read the same refrain - Avial just did not have enough good lead singers.  And Tony did not seem to realize that he is not quite the right lead for numbers like chekele where you need the volume of ABP's huge barrel of a torso!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcyhsAho8b0

 

For aspiring bands in Kerala there is much to learn from the history of these bands.

 

The ruling king of the pack, going by the number of concerts in and out of Kerala is Thaikkudam Bridge. While the band has some great guitarists and percussionists, I somehow never felt lured into wanting to listen to them. The band seems to have no character that gives them an identity as a brand of music, giving them the appearance of a music troupe of yesteryears.   

 

Listen to these videos to understand what I mean. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUxetheUJVs 

 

Thaikkudam is also an example of a lot of instruments making a lot of noise, leaving you wondering where the melody is.  I keep going back to Agam’s songs notwithstanding many things about them that could get better.  I just don’t feel the same attraction towards Thaikkudam.

 

The newest kid on the block is  Masala Coffee.  Here are a series of videos of the band. 

 

Masala Coffee seems to have gone about their entry strategically. They seem to have addressed every department of their music offering methodically – a deep bench of good lead singers, good guitarists although there is none that is outstanding, wide range of percussion and a combination of covers and their own songs. 

 

What is striking about one of their lead singers, Varun Sunil.  This guy is one helluva versatile fellow.  Just look at the range of things this fellow does.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?nnotation_id=annotation_388016381&feature=iv&list=PLDa8YieoG1-SurVbvJi9Sskik7wZcenPV&src_vid=B3hlqsBY0Qk&v=lH070wberCY

 

They also do a decent job of oscillating between the rapid and the slow numbers. 

 

What I miss in them of course is a signature that characterises them as a genre, unlike Avial or Agam. 

 

The other interesting thing about them is their ability to deliver Hindi numbers with nearly the same authenticity as any North Indian troupe. This is an interesting contrast to the feeble attempt by Harish of Agam to perform a Hindi song that we saw earlier. 

 

I can go on and on.  I must stop for now.  God willing I hope to spend more time getting to know these bands, their origins and their stories for its own sake.  There is a veritable explosion on the band scene.  And with luck I do hope to write another piece where I sum up my thoughts from listening to these bands for a long time. 

Nanni….Namaskaaram…

From "God's Own Country"......1

(I published this post elsewhere on April 4, 2011)

From "God's Own Country"......1

We landed at Trivandrum this morning, my favourite corner of Planet Earth. We were greeted by the festivities of electioneering, the peaking of Kerala's daily political life.

Trivandrum is where I was born and raised for many years, in different spells. Other than the temple of Lord Padmanabha I am not sure if Trivandrum is famous for anything else. That does not matter to me though. It still is, and will always be, my favourite place.

Whatever one might say about Trivandrum, or one might not, it is hard to imagine any other place as the political capital of the state of Kerala. I cannot tell you quite why, but there is something about it that makes you feel it is the location for the capital of God's Own Country. There is that smell about it, when you walk by the Secretariat or its relaxed looking rain washed streets, that you do not sense in Kottayam, Kollam or Kozhikode. You certainly do not get that sense in that upstart commercial capital of the state called Kochi. More about Kochi in another post, till my keypad screams for mercy!

Interestingly, not much of what happens in Trivandrum politically gets decided there. It all happens in two or three major epicentres of Kerala. There is Central Kerala where the Christians rule the roost. Then there is the North, popularly known as Malabar, where the Thangal and his Muslim League hold darbar, unchallenged. Woe betide anyone who tries to challenge their political writ. And there is the rest, which is mainly the rag-tag geography of Kerala, formerly known as Travancore.

Nearly all of that happens in Kerala is the result of the dynamic jostling that takes place between the powerlords of the North and Central Kerala.

Yet, neither of those regions has been able to establish that the road to Trivandrum passes through their own heartland. Unlike the folks in UP who seem to have successfully persuaded the rest of the nation that the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow. In that sense democracy in Kerala is far more real than democracy in India as a whole.

How could it be any other way in a state where every man, woman and child would like to lead and not follow? No part or region of the state would be allowed the kind of political hegemony that the states of UP and Bihar have usurped from the rest of the India.

We were greeted by the sounds of electioneering as the train sped through Kerala in the early hours of Monday morning. More electioneering and more window pane shattering noise followed, with stacks of loudspeakers mounted on the ubiquitous white Ambassador, as we reached our home. It was the last day of electioneering before the state went to the polls.

The day we landed was significant for another reason: On that day the incumbent political patriarch of Kerala labelled a prominent leader of the opposition an "Amul baby". When it comes to biliousness you got to hand it to the Mallus. Anyone other than a Mallu may have chosen any other expression that is more strident or less hard hitting, but definitely nowhere as memorable.

The Amul baby metaphor is more than just a political repartee. To put it in Marxian dialect, an Amul baby is is symbolic of a social class that is distinct and cut off from, if not inimical to, the toiling proletariat. Amul milk is what the wealthy mothers of Kerala have brought up her children on. The toiling mother's child suckles at its mother's breast, if it does not go hungry.

The use of the metaphor is yet another instance of how Marxism is alive and kicking in Kerala, whatever may its bill of political health look like elsewhere in the world. Well, Marxian rhetoric surely is, even if one were to be a little skeptical about the health of Marxian thought or philosophy, given the schism within the party cadres.

So, on this momentous day, when my sons asked me their first questions about elections and politics I could not help start the 101. I could not think of a more auspicious place or time. In Hindu tradition place and time make all the difference between failure and success.

With prayer on my lips that I might be sowing the seeds of political awakening in their tender minds and that they might keep alive the Mallu legacy of being politically aware, if not active, I started on how elections work and finally give some people the right to rule over the others; in other words just tell them what to do - the essence of political power struggle.

Hopefully, I said to myself, before long my sons will realise the interchangeability of money and political power in India, well before they learn about the interconvertibility of mass and energy.

The elder of my twins tried to relate it to his world of cars and races and asked me: So that is like a race and someone wins, right? The younger one had a glimmer in his eye. He asked me with his signature shy smile: So if I win an election I can ask you and Amma and Vinayakan to do whatever I want?

I was happy to see the making of a 21st century Indian political leader. Amen.

Nanni. Namaskaaram

On Measurement and Immeasurables

Ever since I attended business school thirty five years ago I have been obsessed with measurement.  That is one thing business school does to you.  It teaches you that you cannot evaluate what you cannot measure.  And, at the risk of oversimplifying, management is all about evaluation or assessment.  So it teaches you to measure all kinds of phenomena.

So over time I took my tendency to measure to new levels of obsessiveness.  Long before we were invaded by fit bits I used to count the number of steps I walked.  I measure with great effort the time it takes me to chant various slokas and I have carried out extensive analyses of the speeds at which I chant the many slokas I know by heart and the time it takes to complete each of them at the various speeds I chant them. 

I measure the number of shaves I get with each disposable razor and therefore the cost of each shave.   I have a meter running in my head that calculates the cost of each shave. 

 

I estimated the number of cups of tea that I needed to make on the new water heater that I bought for making tea in my office for Rs 900.  Each time I make a cup of tea I remind myself how many more cups I need to have made before the heater would have paid for itself.  I reset this number for the fact the price of a cup of tea in coffee shops increased even while I was recovering the cost of the heater. 

 

Let me also remind you that before I bought the heater I had figured out that the time taken to make my own tea was less than the time in going to the lounge for having tea.  And this did not include the time I spent often in unproductive gossip at the lounge.  When I worked out the time spent on such gossip it would often prove to be even more costly as I took time to work out the emotions that would get stirred up on getting to know things that I would have been better off not knowing.

Before I bought my new scooter I worked out the number of trips I would need to make to my office to recover the investment I would make in a scooter that I wished to replace my car with for my office commute.  I did this under multiple scenarios depending on when I would sell the scooter in case it started giving me a back-ache.

Although I am a terrible penny pincher myself, occasionally I give away a minuscule fraction of my relatively meagre earnings to some people or causes I consider deserving.  I keep track of every paisa of it, right in my head.

I guess you get the picture – I am one helluva measurement monster.

Now that is not without many other collateral costs.  It makes me a miserable spouse, father, son, son-in-law, sibling, nephew, colleague and whatever else.  I can go on.  Luckily for me and the women of this world I have never been a boy-friend.  Imagine the reaction of this woman who realizes that I had been measuring the cost per unit of intimate moment that I spent with her by dividing the cost of an evening out by the number of minutes I got look at her beautiful face or hold her delicate hand!

 

I pressed on with my counting, remorselessly.  I have believed that life would be one unstructured financial and emotional spaghetti if one did not measure.

 

But out of the blue, some weeks back this question struck me like a bolt:  What would I do with the results of all those measurements?  

 

This question crossed my mind a few weeks back when I had occasion to interact with this super wealthy benefactor.  He is a fairly old man. I first said to myself that the measurements that this man would have to deal with would be well beyond my puny, tiny brain. 

 

But then just as instantly this other thought started bothering me: What would happen when he left this world, as indeed he would have to some time?  How relevant would all that measurement be to him once he ceased to be in this world?

 

It struck me at that moment that whatever we measure in life did not seem to matter in the larger scheme of things.  That said, I do not know what makes for that larger scheme of things. 

 

It did occur to me though that once I am gone what would matter is what I have done for those that I leave behind.  The joy I would be able to give them out of what I have provided them would matter I am sure to them.  The misery I would leave behind by the hurt I may have caused would matter just as much.

 

Ironically, school did not teach me how to measure such emotions.  Which is perhaps why we always talk about indescribable joy or immeasurable suffering.  If you cannot describe how can you measure?

 

Under the circumstances it appeared reasonably safe to say this about the larger scheme of things though:  What one can measure does not seem to matter.  And what matters, it seems, one can never measure.

Nanni….Namaskaaram…

That time of the year when...

That time of the year when...

It will be soon that time of the year when another set of young men and women say good bye to the campus.  The place that was school to them for a little less than two years would soon be alma mater, a somewhat vaguely defined relationship.  For many of them the alma mater would just be a bagful of memories.  For others it would be a badge of lifelong honour and pride.

I often wonder how many of them would miss the place as they head out to a world of expectations and promise.  Would they miss us teachers a good part of whose lives revolve around them?

It is our engagement with the students that defines or marks our calendars.  We plan our academic life around our teaching commitments.  And our families plan their lives around our academic lives.  Students have a larger impact on our lives as teachers than we might imagine.  And I am not yet talking about the feedback, which sometimes leaves evergreen memories and, on some rare occasions, scars that you wish you could forget.

Which makes me often wonder how much truth there is to what some of my colleagues claim: We academics are at the heart of an academic institution.  I ask instead:  What would this school and our lives as teachers be but for its students?

It will be soon that time of the year when the trees would have all shed their leaves, in preparation for the hot and desiccating summer of Bangalore.  To a more delusive or hyper-imaginative mind like mine it would appear that they do so in honour of the kids that are about to leave the campus.

Or may be it is their way of saying how much they will miss them.  Like the flora of Ayodhya that is said to have left the town to accompany Lord Rama to the Dandakaranya forest when His father banished Him.

These trees are like mute witnesses to the vicissitudes of life on the campus.  They stand there stoically for years and decades, watching the steady procession of people who live on the campus and then eventually leave as they graduate, retire or are snatched away by the Hands of Destiny.

I know most of these trees individually, as if they were animate creatures, and not the inanimate but living creatures that our science text books would have us believe.  They must have stood where they are for many decades, like Lord Tennyson's brook, even as men come and go.  I know how their leaves look, how their branches droop and the spread of their lush, generous canopies.

It will be soon that time of the year when the whole campus will go to sleep.  The students' halls of residences will be vacant once again.  Many faculty colleagues and their families will leave on their annual vacation, as if they wanted to say, What do we do here with all the students gone. 

It will be soon that time of the year that I do not look forward to.  In spite of being an old man I do not like transitions in life.  And I do not like milestones that forebode impending transitions either.

As I walk back home to the hastening dusk on the December sky I visualise that time of the year that will soon be upon me which will remind that I will be closer to completing another year of my life as a teacher.  It will soon be that time of the year when I will be one year closer to calling it a day as a teacher.

It will soon be that time of the year when I would have gone through another year of circumstances working their inevitable changes on my mind, ever so subtly that I would not even notice.  Until I run into someone from my remote past who exclaims how much I have changed over the years, how taciturn, morose, quiet, grumpy, cynical or humourless I have become.

But this year will not be just another of those fourteen years that I have spent as a teacher here.  I have been through some extraordinary experiences this year.  I discovered a latent emotional need that I had never imagined that I had - the need to be an elderly relative of a kind that I have not been so far.  But just as quickly I realised to my searing disappointment that this desire will remain unfulfilled.

It will soon be that time of the year when the strong arm of Rejection will have prised a piece of me away from the complex ensemble of personalities that my friends who claim to me know me well tell me I am - even though the rational side to me may have helped me come to terms with this unrequited need for belongingness.

Nanni...Namaskaaram..