Athlete...

...is a brit soft rock/pop band that I have been listening to recently. I saw the video of their song "Wires" and went ahead managed to get their whole album. They are a very musically inclined band. As in, they are very similar to Coldplay, lots of piano, soulful melodies and lyrics dripping with emotions and feelings.

Their latest album is ‘Tourist’ and the song ‘Wires’ will get to you immediately. The song is about the singer’s new born daughter lying in the ICU of a hospital. The song is pretty horrific in the sense that it is about a new born all hooked up in the ICU but at the same time there is a lot of hope in it and also something very enduring about it. It goes:

You got wires…going in
You got wires…coming out of your skin

Running down corridors, through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through

Some of the other songs that stand out are Chances (the chorus ‘Those first steps that I can't calculate’ is really nice on this song), Half Light, Trading Air (It has these lines ‘someone better hit the alarm…set it off’, that I found really intriguing!), Twenty four hours (this song has a beautiful & haunting chorus). The striking thing about ‘Twenty Four hours’ I think is that the song could be about just about anything, anything that someone is anticipating anxiously...

"If I was asked to wipe tables I would ensure that I was the best table wiper around"

This is what someone who I used to report to at one point and have a high regard for, told me once. To the same effect, yesterday, I read a really beautiful and inspiring story written by Satyajit Ray.

The story is about a man in his early fifties who many years back used to be an active stage actor and was really good at it. But he had given up acting long back when he moved to Calcutta in search for a better job. He had eventually lost the job and ever since has had it tough to make ends meet.

One day suddenly his friend gives him an offer to act as a walk on in a commercial film which has a famous director and a very famous actor. The role is of a person who the hero of the film bumps into and then walks away. He is told that the role does have spoken lines. Excited at this prospect he tells his wife about how he began his stage career acting as a dead body on stage and this role might bring about a similar change in his life.

The next day he shows up on the film set and finds out that his spoken line is ‘oh!’ He is very disappointed and irritated that the role is just one word, in fact it is not even a word it is just a sound. Unsettled he stands in the shade in one corner waiting for his shot to come. He is really unhappy but then the words of his mentor, when he was a stage actor, come to him. He remembers in reverence how his mentor used to say that no part is small and it is one's responsibility to make the most of every opportunity. He then starts thinking about ‘oh!’ and quickly realizes that there are many different shades to say 'oh!'. Standing there he calculates how different emotions can be mixed to come up with different ways to say ‘oh!’ He figures out his ‘oh!’ requires 60 parts of irritation and 40 parts of surprise.

When his shot comes along he even musters up courage to suggest to the director that in the scene maybe he should be reading a newspaper while he bumps into the actor. He is given a newspaper and the shooting starts. He does his best as he bumps into the hero harder than he had anticipated and manages to exclaim ‘oh!’ with 50 parts of anguish and 25 parts of surprise and irritation each. And just like that his work is done. He is asked to go wait in the tea stall for his payment.

At the tea stall he sits contently and has a sense of deep satisfaction. He knows people on the film set would not appreciate or even understand the effort he had put in and then he thinks about how much his payment would be 10, 15 or maybe even 20 rupees. Even though he needs the money badly, at that moment a thought strikes him 'what is twenty rupees when measured against the intense satisfaction of a small job done with perfection and dedication?'

The end of the story is that someone from the film set comes to the tea stall to hand over the payment and finds that this person is gone…

The story gives the same message as what someone put to me in a different form that no matter how insignificant you feel something on your hand is, always strive to put in your all and do your outmost best.

The story is really simple but I think it is a masterpiece and I really loved the story and also the way it is written. It is so simple yet capable of having such a huge impact on our attitude in life, whether it is in our work or in our personal lives…

Tea, hold the milk please...

It seems tea loses all its wholesome benefits as soon as you add milk to it.

Tea has a protective effect on the cardiovascular system. Black tea significantly improves the ability of the arteries to relax and expand thus accommodate increased blood flow. Tea exerts antioxidative, anti-inflammatory and artery dilating effects, which give protection against cardiovascular diseases.

All this is wiped out when milk is added. This is mainly due to some protein in milk that prevents the ingredients in tea to have the much desired biological effect.

The Apple iPhone rocks!!!

Looks like Cisco already has a resitered product called iPhone and has sued Apple but apart from that just look at the features...

• It’s a combination of iPod, Phone and Internet device.
• Screen size is 3.5”.
• Has Mac OS and full Safari. Safari is Apple's web browser.
• All functions are through touch screen. No stylus, just use your fingers.
• iPhone allows the user to glide the finger over the screen to activate it.
• Glide your finger up and down (or left and rignt) to scroll the screen.

Turn the iPhone to horizontal position and the display will automatically change to horizontal (landscape).

This is just so damn cool!!!!!!!!!!!

• SMS is more like a IM where you can track the messages as threads...in bubbles.
• Struck deal with Google to provide google maps on the phone.
• Struck deal with Yahoo to provide push email for FREE.
• It also has widgets…stocks, weather…etc.

Had a lot of fun at Mood Indigo this time again after missing it for lots of years.

Parikrama, who have played at MI 7 or 8 times, again played their regular set. Then I was able to catch Pankaj Udas, KK and Kailash Kher. Also caught a dutch blues/jazz guitarist named Jan Akkerman who was pretty good.
Then saw a play "Sa Hi Besura" directed by Makrand Deshpande. It was a decent play but felt it was a little too long.

One of the most spectacular things I saw was the next version of lighting cigarette lighters during slow songs/ballads. When KK was performing his slow song Pal, instead of the lighters going up, hundreds of cell phones went up!!! It was so impressive seeing those cell phones flickering their tiny lights all around the open air theater and it went really well the touching song "Pal". In fact KK instead of ending with his latest hit did an encore of Pal and asked the rest of the lights to be dimmed and requested everyone to "do that thing with your cell phones". Sadly I don't have a photo of that but it was a really stunning sight to see...you can do that in the next concert you attend :)

And then there was this on the MI'06 mural... :D

There was a really impressive rangoli display at Mood Indigo. Here are some pictures and it is just so hard to believe that these are rangolis. The attention to detail is simply amazing...

Amitabh from the movie "Sarkar".

Portrait of a man...

Zakir Hussain

Software Geek aka Superhero!

Huh?
I just found out that Parikrama had recorded a song for the launch of some Microsoft products. The song is called "Superhero" and the tagline is "Celebrating the Indian Developer". The song is nothing great, its a jingle at best but still worth a listen and read. The first line of the chorus is quite catchy. He’s no less than a super hero!

It is so strange and weird to have a song about us, software developers and that too a "Superhero" song...LOL!
Song and lyrics available at:


He’s no less than a super hero! :)