Camera

         The next time you are balancing on one foot and manually focusing on a flower in some random building and a kid walks up to you from behind, calls out ‘camera uncle camera uncle’, makes you loose your balance and your focus and then instead of apologizing, laughs at you and then requests you to take a photograph of him and his friend making cool salman khan poses, just take the photo.

          And oh ya, if you do not want to be mocked more make sure you undo all the amateur ISO and shutter speed adjustments before you click. Take the photograph, show it to the kids and make sure it is clear. And please for god’s sake do not try to reason that the photograph has more depth in black and white. Just shoot it in full auto. Then stop waiting for a ‘thanks’ and quietly walk away and enjoy the immense satisfaction you get from hearing the kids bragging to all his friends that ‘camera uncle’ took a photo of them…

the kids in question

         Over the last few weeks I have been roaming around with my dad’s camera and trying to figure out what each button on the Canon EOS 400D does. Now trying to take photos teaches you a lot, but most of the stuff it teaches you isn’t about photography. For a start you begin to see how other people perceive you. A camera to me maybe a device to take photographs, but to someone looking at me, it is merely an ‘accessory’ I are wearing. Let me explain. I was at ‘Gokul’ a bar in Cloaba and a drunk man on a table nearby called me a ‘foreign return’ (that is an abuse incase you had not figured already) cause I was carrying my friends camera. And the other day I was offered cocaine on causeway by some sidey dealer who thought I was a druggie because I was trying to take a shot of a taxi through a cluster of flowers (really, is that so weird?). But things aren’t always so bad. I was allowed to walk into the Taj and use the toilet purely because I looked like a tourist with my camera.

         I learnt a bit about other people as well. Never take a photograph of a rich person regardless of how beautiful his/her house is. They are all adamant and haughty people who think that you are out to make money by taking photographs of them. As a rule, the less well of a person is, the more willing he/she is to pose for or appear in your shot. They are also generally more amiable and friendly. I started this piece by taking about children and how they love to appear in a photograph. It is sometimes irritating to be constantly troubled, but like I said before something as simple as a photograph can make a person really happy. I noticed a few quirky things as well. For example if you walk into a really crowded place and point your lens in some random direction at least 50% of the people around you will look in that direction. And random people smile at you when they see you sitting on the footpath and trying to take a photo of a flower on the road (someone will inevitably step on the flower and disfigure and discolour it though, so don’t get to happy). You begin to notice things around you much more keenly. I have lived at C2 Jolly Highrise Apartments Pali Mala Road for the past nine years of my life but in the past one month I have discovered two abandoned ‘bhoot’ bungalows merely 50 meters from my house, one mini-community which is really well hidden, have finely begun to appreciate the lighting on Pali Hill and for the first time in my life have begun to notice flowers everywhere (to my fathers great surprise).

another photogenic kid

         Today I find myself spending more and more time on National Geographic website and I only now discovering how so many of my friends are extremely talented with a camera. I hope that photography doesn’t turn out to be just another temporary hobby for me. But even if it does the last month has been a really good fun.

Lyrics

Whenever I go to a new city I look to explore a few things. I have an obsession with public transport, (while in holiday in London I used to give travelers directions in metro stations), I always notice the street –name boards, (my favorite are the big yellow ones in south-India), local cricket stadiums etc… Another thing I inevitably check is the quality of local radio stations. I was in Chennai recently and hence decided to go through my city checklist. I was born in Chennai so I know the city decently well. The radio stations were the only things I was too young to remember. So while in my friend’s car I decided to check them out.

I hate Bollywood music but that is unfortunately the ‘genre’ that dominates our countries’ airwaves. Blame in on my ignorance if you like, but I hardly expected Chennai to have anything different (a little Tamil music as well of course).

So it was a pleasant surprise when I tapped onto 104.8 Chennai Live and was greeted with thunderous riff of ‘Another Brick in the wall’. The 30 minutes of FM I listened to that afternoon was far better than anything I had heard on any Indian radio station before. As we drove past Marina beach I had the pleasure of hearing along with Pink Floyd, Audioslave, Pearl jam and the new Foo Fighters album. Also interspaced were less memorable performances by many pop and hip-hop artists whose names sound like a large alphabet soup attached to adjectives. And this stark contrast is what I focus on today.

Call me biased, but I think a large portion of ‘popular’ and ‘hip-hop’ music today is absolute rubbish. Our current ‘artists’ have realized that any song that involves auto-tuning, David Guetta and lyrics about sex, money, and sex for money is going to be a huge hit. A large part of my day is spent either listening to music or trying to play music. Yet I have no qualifications to make any comment on the quality of any song’s music, so I decided to concentrate on lyrics instead, an area that is more easily accessible to all of us.

So, back to my car journey. One of the songs I heard that day was ‘Do the Evolution’ by Pearl Jam. When I first heard this song as a kid I absolutely loved it even though I could not understand a word of what Eddie Vedder sang, but now I understand the lyrics and the song is so much more amazing. Unfortunately I also heard a track called ‘TIK-TOK’ by a certain Sean Paul and Bob Sinclair (rappers make it a point to announce their presence ‘in the house’ at the start of each of their songs, it allows the listener to distinguish between their identical styles, satisfies their egos and also conveniently adds to thirty seconds to their song). What I am going to do today is put forth the lyrics of both these songs and briefly analyze their lyrical quality and the topics they explore.

So first DO THE EVOLUTION

Woo..
I'm ahead, I'm a man
I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah
I'm at peace with my lust
I can kill 'cause in God I trust, yeah
It's evolution, baby

I'm at piece, I'm the man
Buying stocks on the day of the crash
On the loose, I'm a truck
All the rolling hills, I'll flatten 'em out, yeah
It's herd behavior, uh huh
It's evolution, baby

Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, he's my clone
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
This land is mine, this land is free
I'll do what I want but irresponsibly
It's evolution, baby

I'm a thief, I'm a liar
There's my church, I sing in the choir:
(hallelujah, hallelujah)

Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, admire my clones
'Cause we know, appetite for a nightly feast
Those ignorant Indians got nothin' on me
Nothin', why?
Because... it's evolution, baby!

I am ahead, I am advanced
I am the first mammal to make plans, yeah
I crawled the earth, but now I'm higher
2010, watch it go to fire
It's evolution, baby
Do the evolution

There is not much left to say, but I will try to be as un-biased as possible. Vedder talks about the human psyche and how we place ourselves on a pedestal. He is critical of the relentless expansion of human habitation and also exposes the ruthless and careless attitude with which we exploit our planet and the poor. The satirical nature of the lyrics makes it a pleasure to read. The song is also memorable for the brief choir singing in the middle. The refrain ‘Admire me…’ is quite haunting and goes really well with the riff Vedder sings over.

Next TIK TOK

Bless up and there aint no stressing! You heard it clear! Sean Paul longside Bob Sinclair! Buaaaa Yow Tik Tok Tik Tok Yow Tik Tok Tik Tok Yow Tik Tok Tik Tok Yow Gal if you give me the sexiest wine Gal_ if you move your body pon time Gal if you give me the sexiest wine Tik Tok Tik Tok The sexiest wine X2

Yow,Its a Friday a yuh birthday
Girl,wild out_ cause dis a not your work day
You a hype one,gal,you a right one
gal just keep on swing it all night long
Just free it up gal..???...

Chemistry,from groove to the vybe and Roll_ to the fiction,roll to the gwat,to the pear ready-ready Thats alright,man Hey girl,ill be your hype man Hey girl,you a me like and You a me type and you a me right and Never leave by my side,gal you tight and Gal you neat and you fit And i wanna take you back home for the weekend Fit,till you fit..brown skin Girl gimme that brown thing

Chorus :
Gal if you give me the sexiest wine
Gal if you move your body pon_ time
Gal if you give me the sexiest wine
Tik Tok Tik Tok The sexiest wine
X2

Girl,if_ you ready fi have a good time Gal,if you give me the sexiest wine When me a spit pon di track Gal bounce it like that,cause di bluffing every rhyme So me tell her she's fine And me want me and her to combine Give her the time,combine it.. Livin on Cloud NINE ::To-deh To-deh:: Bear shot... ::To-deh To-deh:: Bear shot... Speezy the girl over-eazy You eva gwan keep it LIVE None one them can flop me show,stop me do...

[Chorus]:
Gal if you move your body pon time
Gal if you give me the sexiest wine
Tik Tok Tik Tok The sexiest wine X2
Yow,Oh Oh Oh Oh OO FYAH Oh Oh Oh_ Oh OO FYAH Oh Oh Oh Oh OO FYAH Oh Oh Oh Oh OO FYAH

Outro:
YowTik Tok Tik Tok Yow Tik Tok Tik Tok Yow Tik Tok Tik Tok
Sean Da Paul Bob Sinclair
Du-Dutty yeah Buaaa

I shall begin with the positives. For a start TIK TOK’s lyrics merit mention due to their sheer complexity. I have just read the lyrics three times and am still quite lost.

As far as I can tell the song is set in a club on a Friday (it is not a work day as the lyricist clearly states) and is about a girl at a club who the singer finds attractive (she is ‘neat and fit’). The singer then goes on to describe how he and the girl make a good match (they have a ‘chemistry’, they are ‘tight’). Not surprisingly the singer then asks the girl to do a few things for him like ‘bounce that stuff’. He reveals his feeling to the girl by telling her that he wants to see her ‘brown skin’ and spend the weekend with her. My sincere apologies to anybody reading this blog but despite my best effort I cannot for the life of me understand the words of the chorus of this song - ‘body pon time’, ‘sexiest wine’ et al. If anybody makes this linguistic breakthrough please let me know, I am very curius. Well the song is pretty much like every other rap song and I suppose the video has a lot of extremely attractive girls who are dancing for Sean and Bob (quite tame names don’t you think? No adjectives like ‘Li’l’ or letters like ‘T’). Another interesting thing about the song is the amount of words it contains that spell-check does not recognize. I am inclined to believe that ‘Yow’, ‘Do-dutty’ and ‘Buaa’ do indeed have a meaning that is not limited to toddler-talk, unfortunately I have not yet discovered their linguistic depth. I also have no idea what TIK TOK has to do with anything, well is suppose it adds energy to the ‘rhyme’. So before displaying any more ignorance is shall end here. On a parting note though I would like to point out the absence of the word ‘shawdy’ in this song. Now that is indeed a surprise.

So I have evaluated the lyrics of both these songs. I do not intend to impose my opinion on anyone, but I doubt that my opinion (at least in this case) requires any imposing. But if any reader does indeed voice his/her disagreement it will be a cause of happiness for me. Sean Paul would have become the first celebrity to read my blog.

Rowdy

‘Sabse Bada Hindustan’

‘Bhosad me Gaya Pakistan’

As I sat in my friends car at approximately 2:30 in the night in the middle of nowhere in Mahim these were the words that I heard enthusiastically chanted out by the testosterone-pumped youth of my city who were parading the streets waving the flags of India (and not so surprisingly) that of the MNS.

So what was the occasion?

Well such completely uncultured sentiment and obscene language cannot be justified by any occurrence but sensing the strong anti-neighbor sentiment you would expect something extremely violent and momentous to have occurred. We won a war? The Pakistani government unjustly killed Indian fishermen? POK problems? Ok its Mumbai, small things flare up and communal undertones are omnipresent. So lets say a riot? Maybe even a fight in a volatile area that got out of control? It is hard to control the crowd’s emotions and communal feelings are always lurking near the surface. The smallest trouble and someone is bound to bring up the Pakistanis. But there was not trouble on April 2^nd 2010.

For on that particular night Mahim was not erupting in anger, rather it was outpouring with joy. The momentous event that had driven us so mad was a sporting victory. And it wasn’t just any sporting victory.

India had won the cricket world cup after 28 years, an event that could revive the stock market and even reduce pressure on our faltering government (not to mention provide my family with cheery and conveniently un-awkward dinner conversation for the next 2 weeks). So the abuse was not justified after all. The match wasn’t even against Pakistan. Now even the fiercest of sports fans amongst us cannot argue that insulting Pakistan when we had defeated (sorry calmly, convincingly taken care of) Sri Lanka is not really called for. ‘So why the angry chanting?’ you wonder. Mob mentality. Partially true, but before we get right into the issue lets explore the whole situation a little.

Any public gathering in India either involves dancing or shouting (usually adorned with a little eating in the middle). So my advise to any budding entrepreneurs out there – start a liquor store, fuel our country’s vocal chords and enable them to enjoy in a manner which seems decent only when one is intoxicated. With Daaru profit is guaranteed (and if you are having problems getting a permit call me, I know this junior minister…). Another national pastime of our country is being unruly. We love to be rowdy. I have often behaved in this way and whenever I look back at my foolish actions in hindsight I feel a very painful shame. And this shame is exactly what most of Mahim should be feeling right now. Indians are often racially targeted abroad because we are perceived to be boisterous and unruly. I hate people who take indulge in such racism, but we cannot deny that we are often over-the-top.

You may argue that we like to have fun, to ‘enjoy’ ourselves. I think this ‘enjoy’ is a very misunderstood word. You can enjoy a cricket match by admiring the maturity with which Gambhir and Dhoni batted and being elated by the fact that the best fast bowler at the world cup is actually Indian (let me remind you, Saurav Ganguly has opened the bowling for us in a test match and VRV Singh was once a regular on our squad so seeing Zaheer get wickets against the top batsmen in the world is a very heart-warming sight). Or you can enjoy cricket by loudly beating Dhols, screaming for sixes when caution is required and dancing a lot. Before you think I am pseudo-firang let me inform you that I have enjoyed cricket in both these ways and have come to see the merits of both. I have danced with my boarding school Dhobi when James Hopes lost his nerve and India won its first ODI series in Australia. I have (unfortunately) screamed when Sreesanth dismissed Gilchrist in the T20 world cup, I was intently following the hindi commentary on the radio when Bhajji got that final wicket and we defeated South Africa in the 2^nd last over of a test match. (I was with a Hindi teacher so the ensuing celebration was inevitable).

I have gotten into enough trouble for being boisterous, being unruly, being loud and generally being a nuisance. So it’s fair to say that I know what am I talking about. I understand the urge to have fun, but what we often construe to be ‘enjoyable’ is often at someone else’s expense. I feel very ashamed and embarrassed when my behavior has caused others discomfort and always think that I have become a ‘rowdy’. That’s a little how I felt on the night that we won the world cup.

So lets get back to Mumbai. How did the transition from ‘Jeeteyga bhai Jeeytega’ to ‘ Bhosadi mein gaya Pakistan’ occur? Well it must have been something like this. We won so understandably 95% of India (including me) was jumping around in pure happiness and disbelief. ‘Go India’ would have quickly given way to Hindustan ki jai. Let me make a quick diversion here to point out that India always becomes Hindustan when we are playing ‘shout-shout’. I don’t think it is a coincidence. Ever been to the Wagah border? The marching is amazing, but seen that DJ/host/sentiment-promoter there. He plays ‘India is better than you’ songs (not best, better than you), praises Hindustan a billion times and even slyly promotes the crowd to boo Pakistan. Do we really need we enjoy like that? I am patriotic, but isn’t that jingoistic? The same logic applies here. ‘Jai Sachin’ would have become ‘Jai maratha’ and soon the streets were covered with cars waving not just the Tricolor, but also orange flags.

I do not write this piece to tell people to stop enjoying or supporting India. I love my country and have spent a large percentage of my schooldays watching or listening to our team play. But I think it’s time we realize that we need to mature a bit. We usually mean no harm, but a few anti-social elements tend to get the better of us and make us look foolish and rowdy. Indian crowds used to appreciate a good shot from the opposition; that is another trait that seems to be disappearing. When Australia (I mean Steve Bucknor) defeated us in the infamous Sydney test the world (including ex-players) shunned them for their unruly behaviour. We don’t want our country’s sports-fans to be given the same label. I would have liked to make a much larger point regarding herd mentality and our drop-of-the-hat communal tendencies but I was not comfortable enough writing about such an intense topic. Yet it is important for use to see how this mentality is manifesting itself.

So lets stick to ‘Jeetega bhai Jeetega’ and chuck all the ‘Sabse aagey hoonge Hindustani’ nonsense. After all we are the number one team and there is no need to feel insecure about it.