jhootha hi sahi

ARR is back again with this wonderful album. Prolly its Abbas tyrewala's directorial debut and he manages to get Rahman work for him hard. Beautiful fusions jazz and classical. I'll be waiting is probably the most intriguing song - how seamlessly it flows from jazz to pure classical with the awesomest vivid lyrics. Rashid Ali recreates his kabhi kabhi aditi magic twice over again in Call me Dil and Cry Cry. Maiya yashoda is a crazy interpretation - wonder how that fits in.The whole album is a blast! Movie shouldn't disappoint either. I'm glad Sonu nigam sings for ARR again tho the song Do Nishaniyaan disappoints a bit.

what are the odds?

of attending a south indian instrumental classical concert in iowa city, when
- you went to the city for completely unrelated and in comparison, uninteresting reasons.
- it was your first visit and you didn't know a single soul in the city.
- you never knew there was such a concert.
- you were wondering how to kill the evening in the boring city.
- you meet a known writer from bangladesh during the morning breakfast.
- the writer (apart from telling his stories) also tells you that there is an evening concert in the town.
- the writer also kindly shows you a flyer with the pictures of the musicians.
- your old acquaintance from grad school was playing the ghatam.

The concert simply brought me home that evening in the unknown city. The coincidences followed. Another musician guy playing the mridanga has his home less than a mile away from mine. The dinner with them had more in store - one or more CS phd turned musicians and tv producers, one of more stories of lost and regained romanticism. The night was brought to a hasty end by the heavy rains.

All morning flights canceled due to fog. Unsurprisingly, we meet and dine again at the airport.

I don't find anything wrong in believing in randomness/serendipity. Its all well-planned. :)

Just put the new ARR jhootha hi sahi on the player. Getting drawn irresistibly.

P vs NP: Mass hysteria

This is fun. Rocking fun. If I'm going mad just being an observer, I wonder how the author or even the close readers would be surviving. Call it an India-Pak cricket match for lack of an analogy.

Vinay Deolalikar  circulated a proof of P != NP to a private group on Friday, which found its way to the online media, slashdot, et al. He has updated the proof document 3 times since then, starts with citing Gita and matri-pitru rin, and connects first-order logic with fixpoints with freezing phenomena in statistical physics to get the proof done. Its an epic size drama in the world of mathematics and computer science: a lone guy against a world of hardcore detractors and a not-so-few bunch of sympathetic well-wishers. The odds are 101% against him, and yet he's fighting it out.

What is particularly new and awesome to this event is the amount of crowd sourcing that it has attracted.
An up-to-date wiki with all changes/discussions/objections to the proof methods, media coverage, ..:
http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Deolalikar%27s_P!%3DNP_paper

Richard Lipton's blog with hoards of discussion inside comments:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com

I'm still not sure why I'm fascinated by all this. Perhaps being able to appreciate some aspects of the proof is driving me crazy. Perhaps because the proof is so accessible and elementary. Perhaps, the sight of a crowd of knowledgeable geniuses scattering their knowledge for free is incredible. Perhaps, because talking about such apparently deep stuff in a strikingly dinner-table fashion smells of a new world. I don't know, but I'm completely taken in.

A collaboration of such magnitude, where no one guy is able to understand the whole deal (and moreso, wants to spend min time to find an counterexample) - Vinay D (~ Dev D:) ) is partly to blame cos he did handwave at multiple places. On another note, feels like a bunch of advisers helping this doode out for his journal submission - I bet he would be most "simultaneously advised" guy in the whole world right now. Wonder how many he is seriously listening to. Perhaps, they should update the wiki with the necessary and sufficient list of papers to read  to prove/disprove the result - that will surely accelerate crowd-sourcing even more.

What I find distressing in this whole saga is that a large proportion of detractors (even highly knowledgeable ones) are not making crisp statements about the fallacies or the hand-waving. Instead, many of these comments (.e.g, on lipton's blog) appear to be merely their egoistic manifestations (as is common in usual intellectual conversations) of the learned commenters without allowing Vinay D the benefit of doubt, even though they haven't read the document properly. The really targeted crisp objections, on the other hand, are put quite gently, allowing the author plenty of room to adjust and argue. This (despicable) facet of intellectual conversation will probably never go away.

Don't know if the proof is going to survive for long. But the event is an historical one, and I'm glad to be a closeby observer. Also, some thoughts on obscurity vs clarity in math presentation:
http://www.jmilne.org/math/tips.html

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity.

---Nietzsche.

khatta meetha

Being not well has its advantages. I could slip back into a more relaxed mode - finished watching once upon a time in mumbai and khatta meetha. Once.. is well-made with wonderful dialogues balancing both dialoguebaazi and poetic form. KM is a pure priyadarshan epic - an ensemble of grey characters, awfully cunning, rendered with unemotional, unforgiving brazenness. The gangster movies bring out lot of depth in the characters, priyadarshan never has time for that. He takes the ordinary, mixes it with as much dirt and filth he can imagine (or has seen?) and just blurts it out on the screen.

Overall its done with such finesse, and fitted within the standard formula. But still, I remain dissatisfied. Its a core-dump, a mega brain-dump of the director/author. It has the formula, the message, plot, justification and everything else you could imagine bundled into one. Perhaps somewhere, it touches you too but it fails to move you - which is dissapointing given the movie contains so much depth and detail. Couldn't we avoid this fast-fwd rendition and focus on the core ? Perhaps what is missing is the elegance of portrayal - maybe the frugalness of presentation? I don't know.

I perhaps noticed this fast-fwd style of rendition in Mani Ratnam's Bombay first - Roja was also done in that hurried way, and later on Yuva too (Guru didn't seem so jarring, though). I earlier shrugged off the fast-fwd genre in priyadarshan movies by attributing the style to his penchant for slap-stick; now, it appears that perhaps he has been meaning more - perhaps he has been trying to put across his message stealthily. I admire his way of putting it across if that's the case - but then do it more beautifully, do it like munnabhai, not like a braindump.

Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya

The title means something like jump from heaven and come to me :) I came across this recent ARR album and the title song is clearly of the vellai pookkal genre. Mannipaaya is lovely too moving beautifully between Shreya and ARR.

Rajneeti is getting good reviews. Mora piya is classical khayaal fusion - I'm surprised how easy it is to intrigue the audience over and over again - Aadesh Sh. used the same stuff in tujh sang baandhi dor and baawri piya ki - in fact, I think mora piya is nowhere up there - perhaps ranbir and katrina jodi on screen makes the goosebumps persist. I'm yet to absorb the other two numbers - ishq barse and dhan dhan dharti.

I heard nice things about MM Kream in Vedam. I find only the last two tracks Vedam and E Chikati (the best one) worth listening. I seriously don't like heavy arrangements of the above kind whether it comes from ARR or anyone else.

and yes, I'll be at the ARR concert on June 12th.

love is an illusion?

I found this writeup on analysis of love - don't know why the guy chooses/needs to reason in/out of a doode called Schopenhauer. Still, interesting set of arguments. What I found more exposing was a comment to that post, which I inline here.

Romantic love is two people projecting onto each other, and mirroring that projection, for so long as it takes a child to be born and raised.
Think about it: the “honeymoon period” subsides when the bonding chemicals do, which is typically up to two years, long enough to get pregnant, maintain the pregnancy, and birth the child. (All periods when a woman’s mobility is reduced and she requires more food for functioning = therefore needs a protective, hunting, man.)
Unfortunately, the way we’ve set up nuclear families in our society, the expectation is that two people will live physically and emotionally closely for 50+ years; long after the bonding chemicals have subsided. To me, this is absurd – and pointless.
Romantic love is a high, anything after the “honeymoon period” ends is a mutually advantageous contract for raising children in *our* society (it’s preposterous that child-raising falls on the shoulders of one person in Western “civilisation”), an obligation, and more often than not a habit against loneliness that is rewarded by governments and peers.
There’s nothing wrong with that — but I wish people wouldn’t pretend that it’s otherwise.

I went ahead looking for more theories and definitions. Here is a contrasting claim from yahoo answers.

Love is not an illusion. It is the Greatest Gift that Nature has given this Universe. Love is the Inherent quality which is keeping this Universe afloat.

Love represents a range of human emotions and experiences related to the senses of affection and sexual attraction. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction. This diversity of meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.

As an abstract concept love usually refers to a strong, ineffable feeling towards another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." 

shankar bona fusion

It can't get better than this.

Happy New Year!

with a long awaited format update. May the new year be as interesting as the last year and all previous years!

the music of ishqiya

The album is no doubt a masterpiece.  A perfect new year gift. Two songs on pain, one innocent, and the  last one wild-silly. Rekha bhardwaj excels at expression pain - raat ye bhi guzar jayegi (chachi 420), rone ko jiya kare (maqbool), and she is no less here.  

VB's patterns are to essentially take it slow, stress and elongate words, fill them with different laykaari all the time, but never sound dissonant. The album in general is strong on vocals, of course no arrangements can stop  Rekha or Rahat's voice from piercing through. Still, feels like we are getting back to basics again. Quite a bit of the blast-from-the-past thrown in.

rekha bhardwaj - rustic, frugal, meditative.

ab mujhe koi  (Rekha) - very rustic ghazal. beginning sounds like tujhe ae zindagi hum door se. unable to fully place it in memory. mostly supported by piano and strumming, arrangements pick up in the para. watch out for the classical guitar interlude. Love the para 3rd-4th lines. 

ab mujhe koi intezar kahan,
wo jo behte the aabshaar kahaan. 

aankh ke ek gaaon mein, raat ko khaab aate the.
choone se behte the, bole to kehte the.
udte khaabon ka aetbaar kahan. 2

jin dinon aap the, aankh mein dhoop thi.
jin dinon aap rehte the, aankh mein dhoop rehti thi
ab to jaalen hi jaal hain, ye bhi jaane hi wale hain (?)
wo jo tha, dard ka karaar kahan. 2
(VB's unique style of stressing via hamming notes "jo tha", "kahan". The expression in wo jo tha dard ka karaar is terrific.)

badi dheere jali (Rekha) - more wild imagery, very ostentatious arrangement. very unique composition, perhaps only people like zakir hussain could compose such numbers. variety of percussion, tanpura, veena. beautiful how the initial classical mood blends into a ghazalish (?) mood. its set in a common raag, wish i could tell which one. 

badi dheere jali raina, dhuaan dhuaan naina. 2
raaton se haule haule, khori hai kinaari.
ankhiyon ne taaga taaga, bhor utaari.
khari ankhiyon se, dhuaan jaaye na.

badi dheere jali raina (love the groovy return-of-beat here)

The imagery is goose-pimplish. Gulzar did some taaga-dori pull of chaand in Satya too, and who knows where else also. The para starts with the percussion getting bold, but suddenly shusshed. 

palkon mein sapnon ki agni uthaaye, humne do ankhiyon ke aalne jalaaye. 2
dard ne kabhi, loriyaan sunaayi to, (boring here)
dard ne kabhi, neend se jagaaya re.
bairi ankhiyon se, na jaaye, dhuaan jaaye na.
(love the way base kicks in at dhuaan)
badi dheere jaldi raina...

dil to baccha (Rahat) - accordion+strumming introduction, waltz beat. colored laykaari with staccato flat ends. expression of rahat out of the world - switching between softness, innocence, breeziness, irritation,  staccato - all done seemlessly. The raaa ra..(rara rara rara) structure is present at multiple places. accordion can do things which violin can't - very good choice. Again, very complex arrangement - arabic interlude added for free. Periodic drift of innocent, playful accordion into suspense modes. The lyrics are a treat, though I'm too tired right now to put them here. 

remix done well except that rahat's softness is somewhat out of place with the rough arrangements - yet quite coherent/consistent in itself. made me somewhat uneasy after a while but i guess listening to the remix after the original was my mistake. the change of beat is very well done. 

ibn-e-batuta (Sukhwinder, Mika) - lovely shehnai backing, reminds me of dev-d. its sukhwinder let loose - unbelievably let loose to twist the song to his full potential. and of course no furrrrr can be enuf for the audience. remix is traditional and boring - could have been done much better. the song is full of gems like:

dono taraf se bajti hai ye, zindagi kya dholak hai, 
horn bajaake aa bagiyan mein
thora aage, gatirodhak hai.

dil to baccha hai ji

The promotion of Ishqiya is gaining momentum, the gaali-galauj and the censors adding to its publicity. It has three of most superb, outstanding actors and favs of mine. Outside "tumhara ishq ishq aur mera ishq sex", here is a refreshingly innocent song just out from the movie.

Its a VB-gulzar gem rendered with his characteristic innocence and mithaas by rahat fateh ali khan. (just see how he enunciates dil-too-baccha-hai-ji). The sound is that of an oldie-classic set to a waltz beat (think dil ki nazar se, nazron ke dil se), with the crispiness of a modern recording.

aisi uljhi nazar unse hat-ti nahi,
daant se reshmi dor kat-ti nahi,
umr kab ki baras ke safeyd ho gayi,
kaari badri jawaani ki chhat-ti nahi

vallah ye dhadkan, badhne lage hai,
chehre ki rangat, udnee lagi hai,
dar lagta hai tanha sone mein ji.

dil to baccha hai ji.
thora kaccha hai ji.

Very passionate artists in the making of the song. Or maybe they resonate with me more than others do :) The para could have been composed better tho.

saari jawaani katraa ke kaati,
peeri mein takraa gaye hain,

dil dhadakta hai to, aise lagta hai wo,
aa raha hai yehin, dekhta hi na ho,

prem ki maare kataar re.

Plenty of usual gulzarisms - I bet he doesn't have to try hard, just bring in a new thought and let it flow with the usual metaphors. There's an interesting moment at 7:44, where VB cues raahat, which he conveniently (and with some guilt, a moment later) ignores and continues with his style. The song is a masterpiece. Awaiting the audio release (there is at least one sukhwinder song too).

Actually there is more. Here is this song in a promo, and another one ibnbatuta. Look at vidya balan man! mujhe is shareef-zaadi se ishq ho gaya hai. :)

rdb

a nice video remembering rahul dev burman. 

paa, again

Paa is a roller coaster ride. Extreme wit, full of irony and poignancy. Its perhaps one of the best native scripts after khosla ka ghosla, altho in a different genre. The bum jokes, the crazy giggle, the unfailing wit and sarcasm, boiling with irreverence, and of course the title song. The film does have its digressions - well the story teller needs his space. R Balki (I don't know what he was doing before) upps his cheeni kum humor interleaving between his childish and mature modes - the writer's source of craziness is a complete mystery for me. his sense of humor is unfailing - wonder how many more (deeply humane) slapsticks he's hiding under his belt. and seriously, i fell for vidya balan all over again.

and if this and this don't send you crazy, nothing else can. naseer and arshad put together, casting couldn't get better. add vidya balan with all her oomph and cold, you fall short of words. the latter RGBG is another crazy ensemble. The trailers give me butterflies :) I am hooked.

paa

Paa's music has been out for a while. The title song rendered by AB is only next to Maa by shankar mahadevan, though in an entirely different genre. Beautiful lyrics by swanand kirkire. Illayraaja has been recycling tunes from his non-Hindi movies for sometime. Paa too is one of them - here is the original sung by Illayraaja himself from a recent Tamil movie. Illayaraja doesn't sound as cool as SDBurman tho :) The older version has multiple string instruments in the interlude, while the newer version relies on a more complicated percussion. But the real credit for this song goes to AB for his mindblowing rendition.

and it couldn't get more difficult to distinguish between real and contrived than this speech by Om Puri.

tum mile

Just finished watching Tum Mile, review here. Far more mature version of love aaj kal in terms of depiction of the relationship. Has its flaws, but very well done. Vishesh films has quite successfully created its own genre, ever since they discovered Emraan Hashmi. I wish his face and voice expressed a bit more. Soha Ali Khan looks old in the movie, I was surprised she is 31. Its almost a crime to look so beautiful, more so if you are redoing it in the second generation.

Mohit Chauhan's new album Fitoor doesn't fail to recreate his sound. No praises enough for the nasheela voice immersed in the characteristic staccato style of singing. Already performed babbaji (the fact that i completely fail to understand that song makes me like it even more :), looking fwd to challeya. I wonder what language (peshtu?) that interlude blabber (in challeya) is in - never mind, the song can be done without it too. 

rediscovered songs

now that's not a good excuse to write a post but then..

so there was this shelved (?) movie called DUS (98), which was probably one of the first shankar-eh-loy's movies. two songs chaandni roop ki, and piya piya lived with me forever. chaandni roop ki is so amazingly meditative; its incredible how such compositions could be brought to life.

there's a relatively unknown ARR movie vishwavidhata (97). hariharan's zulfein ghataon si is so breathtakingly beautiful - both poetry and rendition.

I realised that the two songs above are similar in theme. Sandeep chowta's mitti (?) had this beautiful groovy song khoobsoorat hai tu - the song sung by sukhwinder (+mahalaxmi?) is very hypnotical in composition, and the fusion between classical vocals and the groovy base is exploited to its best. I was surprised to find its video here and after watching the video I'm pretty much at loss of words: I guess people have their own clever ways of visual hypnosis. :)

I liked YMI, don't know if I wrote earlier. what's ur rashee is supposedly boring - still haven't got hands on it.

road, the movie

It's abhay deol's next. it has tannistha chatterjee. and the promos look splendid. a better one here. i don't know when its going to be released but it would def be a great watch. Its a desi "country" story done very slickly - among the few in 'we need to tell our stories' genre.

Interesting that dev benegal is directing it. I watched split wide open in 2000 in calcutta on a random occasion perhaps by mistake. It remains to date, one of the wildest movies (dark comedy, in particular) I've seen. I used to think that dev benegal was some sort of cinematographer - turns out he has directed only three movies in his lifetime of 30 yrs. I've always wanted to watch english august but could never lay hands on it.

Read somewhere that Phir Kabhi is lovely. Waiting to watch it.

ishq mein tere

Ishq mein tere kee karta main
haay, Ishq mein tere kee karta main
Khaali peeli mar gayaa

Ikraar-e-junoon mumkin na tha,
Ikraar-e-junoon mumkin na tha to
Tujhko hi tanhaa kar gaya

Bekhayaal tujhe jo karna tha
Bekhayaal tujhe jo karna tha, fir
Teri ulfat mein kyu tar gaya

amazing composition, isn't it? all copyrights reserved :)

to write abt

diaspora call center based movies - they're being creative but cant avoid cliches. the other end of the line, karma calling (just watched), and a couple more of them.

imitiaz ali definitely a portrait of a dedicated film maker. tho love aajkal was even more commercialized than jab we met. i wish he gets dissociated enough to make a movie like socha na tha again. i wish i could distance myself from the papers as soon as the first draft is ready :)
from PFC: Imitiaz Ali continues to show certain talent with dialogues, ‘creating moments’ and extracting natural performances from his cast members. love aajkal, inspite of its short comings, is still a delight to watch.

and of course, the origin of kaminey (the title, the phrase and the sentiment) lies with none other than gulzar himself. here is VB's confession.

i'm surprised that I didn't mention shekhar suman's tedhi baat earlier. the doode plays new characters every other day so effortlessly that its unbelievable. the script writers do ham but watching shekhar suman get into each and every character so wonderfully is a treat. won't mind gurpal ji showing an emotion or two. 

awaiting : kaminey (this friday!!), sikandar, antaheen, what's your rashee, ...

chaandan mein

Wonder what that title means or well it really means what it seems to mean. Kailash kher is back with his new album chhandan mein after kailasa. To say its beautiful would be understatement. He's severely toned down on his high-pitched vocals or maybe smoothened them with harmonies. His shrill cries in the past have always been a pain to listen to (more so, listen to others sing those songs) and in my opinion have severely undermined his music's potential/acceptance. The guy (and the group I guess) has done his homework with electronic accompaniment. It  feels as good as Hariharan's Kaash, although Kaash was more ghazalish and this one is more folksy+bhajanish - their respective fortes. I really get kicks when they manage to create well-placed fusion.

There is this na bataati tu peecha, dha dhin nin na song, which I really want to figure out but can't make head/tail out of it. tere naina is almost like a lori.  All the songs are consistenly nice with their lyrics.

And of course, there a couple of songs in feminine form, which are fantastic. Few can take over the feminine form so effortlessly as kailash kher and render those songs with utmost comfort.  chaandan mein, teri yaad mein, piya ghar aavenge, ishq ho gaya, albela saajan - more than half of the songs fall in that category with lovely lyrics by the doode himself. 

and yes, there's an unreleased madan mohan tracks album tere bagair released by the madan mohan family. digitially remastered - they even display the lost line from a track on the covers. such a wonderful family (: i'm glad some of songs retain the madan mohan touch unlike most in veer-zaara.

kaminey

the soundtrack for kaminey is out. VB-gulzar never disappoint, so this one's another one of its kind. the most beautiful number to me is definitely the title song where VB romances with the word kaminey. Gulzar gets more imaginative as he ages (or maybe i was born too late :). sometimes I felt the out-of-the-world poetry was let down by the music, esp. the song pehli baar mohabbat (mohit chauhan). besides, I really hope mohit chauhan doesn't get stereotyped with these kind of songs.

anyhow, the album is a masterpiece, with multiple soon-to-be desi anthems. and of course, the movie shud be mind blowing desi cult never seen before :)

gulzarisms:

dil nichode, raat ki matki tode, 
koi 'good luck' nikaale -> aaj 'gullak' to fode

-------

and fatak is probably the first time sukhwinder and kailash kher get on mic together. very impressive abstract poetry/song colorfully decorated with the voices of two great singers (and mandolin? base).

jitna bhi jhooth bole 'thoda' hai,
keedon ki basti ka 'makauda' hai.
ye raaton ka bicchu hai kaatega
ye zehreela hai, zeher chaatega.
darwaazon mein kunde do,
dafa karo ye gunde, ye shaitaan ka saaya re.

----------------

I would need to write a separate post to fully praise and dissect the title song kaminey. i can hardly express the emotion that this song thrives on. the lyrics convey the stoic pain and pathos tastefully - i don't know if i've heard this particular metaphor (cf. sthayi) before. the composition however, goes far far beyond the lyrics. VB caresses the song with his own genius, very out-of-the-box (though we saw the style in the title of U, me aur hum).

kya karen, zindagi, 
isko hum jo mile.
iski jaan, khaa gaye,
raat din ke gile.

meri aarzoo, kameeni.
mere khaab bhi, kameeney.
ik dil se dosti thi,
ye huzur bhi kameeney.

kabhi zindagi se maanga,
pinjare mein chand la do.
kabhi laalten leke,
kaha aasmaan pe taango.

jiska bhi chehra cheela,
andar se aur niklaa.
maasoom sa kabootar,
naacha to mor nikla.

kabhi hum kameene nikle,
kabhi doosre kameene.

meri dosti, kameeni.
mere yaar bhi, kameeney.
ek dil se dosti thi, 
ye huzur bhi kameenay.

the song climaxes into a violin ensemble, marinated by VB's crooning :) Its just remarkable how he so aptly embedded the last four lines into the western classical ambience - such a made for each other feeling.

well, i really can't recall if i've heard the metaphor before. somehow it leaves me craving for more - they should have hit us harder, no?