My uncle from Kathmandu passed away on Friday.

He was a cartoonist in a famous newspaper in Kathmandu, and he was a genius. I met him thrice in my life – I know that sounds strange, but my father and his elder sister couldn’t meet each other for fifteen years, because she and her husband ( my uncle ) shifted to Kathmandu and my father was in Assam. One fine day, when I was about 16, there was a knock on the door, and this timid-looking lady asks me “Is this where *my father’s name* lives? It was them!

When I met him the first time, he appeared so eccentric and absent-minded. He was very startled to see my comics-collection, and (I learnt later ) it was because he had collected comics too, when he was young.

He would sit quietly on the living room sofa the whole day, occasionally reading, going through old newspapers and cutting out important bits of news.

He loved old Hindi songs. I made him listen to AR Rahman ( in Tamil ) and he just couldn’t stop smiling along with Paarkadhe and Mama Madurai.

It was the Golden Age of DD2, when Turner classic movies used to show every Friday night, and Buena Vista movies on Saturdays. He would ask my mom to let me watch the Friday movies ( my Board exams were getting closer, and TV was strictly verbotten ). We watched them together, movies like Robin Hood and Three Musketeers and the next day, he would draw scenes from the movie from memory.

When he left, three weeks later, he gifted me a small cardboard box, filled with newspaper clippings, his artwork and some books on nude photography by Andre de Dienes(with strict instructions not to inform my parents, it seems the books were part of his boyhood collection in Shillong) .

The next time I met him was in Kathmandu, after my boards. He showed me around his office, the walls of his tiny room which was covered with cartoons and posters and newspaper clippings and awards. Then he showed me around Kathmandu. Though I stayed inside the house most of the time, poring through his cartoons and clippings ( he happened to have a newspaper clip of JFK’s assassination, among others). He had created this entertaining comic character, a combination of Nepali folklore and Mandrake the Magician, called Samanta the Tantrik. He gave me all the original strips, and a lot of drawing paper from Japan, and asked me to continue the story if I had the time.

The third time was again in Kathmandu, two years later. But I had gone with my friends, and he was busy, and we didn’t meet too much.

I thought I would meet him next year.

I love you, peha. You were always an inspiration for me. Rest in peace.

for the weekend, so I went and bought those books last night.

Almost committed a social faux pas with the MR book stall guy. He normally prices books very high, and is quite happy (I think!) to give me a 20% discount on whatever I buy. And yesterday, me and sasi go there – and to my surprise, he refuses to lower the price by anything more than 10 rupees.

“This is unfair”, I say. “I thought you would give this to me for less!”

“Arrey, sir, you won’t find these books anywhere else. This is the best price I can offer you.”
“No, no, no!”
“Yes, yes, yes!”

and so on and forth.

And the problem was, those books were really good. Top of it, I saw something else on the shelves. The Tintin Companion by Michael Farr, one of the best books ever written on comics, or so the legends say. And it was priced (in terms of Market Price) very decently – 650 rupees. The book sells in Walden for 1395. So I ask him, “How much would you sell that for?” , with just the right amount of nonchalance. Meantime, I am trying hard not to pant with lust. He says he can lower the price by 50 rupees, not more. It was getting to be a frustrating deal. And all the time, the guy was saying things like, “Take them. Take them. You can pay me later, and if you don’t like them, you can return them, no problem.” That’s the usual modus operandi to get me to buy books even when I don’t have the money. That guy knows a junkie when he sees one. He has seen me for the past…four years.

So I got frustrated and angry. There were other customers waiting. Sasi was getting restive too, we had two more places to go, to get cds and check out some more books. Gave him 500 rupees, as a deposit and took everything I wanted.

Right.

a vcd-buying spree, then a trip to the MR stall at Abids ( the other one, the one I went to first, is at Panjagutta), and suddenly we realise that we left some cds back at the Panjagutta stall. Called him up, and said we were coming by.

We reached the stall again, and just as we got the cds, this guy smiles and gives me a consolidated bill of how much I have to pay. I note, with surprise, that he has priced them with quite good discounts, even though he was saying otherwise.

And then it hit me.

There were other customers around then! Poor chap, had I persisted, most likely the other people would also have asked him for discounts, and of course, he can’t say things like “beatzo is a privileged customer.” and he would have lost out on a lot of sales.

Sometimes I tend to think the worst about other people. I tend to think too much on my terms and my perspective. That has to change, really.

So finally, the books I bought:-

1) The Tintin Companion – Michael Farr.
2) Fantasy Masterworks:Elric of Melnibone – Michael Moorcock.
3) The DreamThief’s Daughter:A Tale of the Albino – Michael Moorcock.
4) The Complete Guide To Middle Earth – Robert Foster
5) The Mammoth book of new Sherlock Holmes Adventures.

Orion books has done an amazing job in reprinting some hard-to-find titles in sci-fi and fantasy under their Sci-Fi Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks imprints. Most of the books ( all of them described here ) are available in Best and MR, so will just have to buy whatever I want ( what I want are the fantasy ones, the latter books of the Amber series by Zelazny, the Conan books by Howard, Philip K Dick and Richard Matheson )

I also finished reading Philip K Dick’s Dr Bloodmoney last night. Probably it will be the only book I read in which a benign tumour ( a benign talking tumour) saves the day. Really weird shit, and I loved it. Nuclear paranoia, a guy who was supposed to have been the first human settler on Mars, and is now the last DJ on earth. ( he plays readings of Of Human Bondage for people from an orbitting satellite), talking dogs, musical rats and other animals. Very funny at parts, especially when a horse (named Edward of Wales, ha , ha, i found that hilarious) gets eaten by hungry hoboes when he has been parked near a boathouse.

I have now need of extremely light-hearted reading, and so I have taken up The Princess Diaries vol 1 by Meg Cabot. Needless to say, the storyline has very less in common with the movie. Who cares?

Just back from a panipuri spree at Abids. Yes, this is a weekday, and I am supposed to be in the office, but some temptations are just too hard to resist. Sni wanted to buy a cellphone, and she wanted it today, so off we went. The post-shopping celebration was, of course, a panipuri treat.

I had 25.

Right now, my mouth feels like if I hold a kerosene-doused stick near it, and go “foooooooooo” , with just the right amount of pressure, the stick will go *whump * as it bursts into flame.

I also dropped in at MR book stall. They have two new Michael Moorcock books, an Elric SF Masterworks edition and another one. Also the Definitive Tolkien companion, all for 70 rupees. I fled before I could find anything I couldn’t resist.

please please god stop me from going to MR again today evening,….

Most overlooked Indian Soundtrack albums of the past decade:- (One)
Bandit Queen OST
Label: Big B Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Roger White I believe this was Big B’s first release. Interesting story behind how I got the cassette. There was a Quiz I attended when I was a kid, a pretty swanky quiz and the QM was giving away free cassettes for every audience question answered. I got one, something to do with the Batmobile, and the QM calls me onto the stage and gives me a Bhupen Hazarika album. Ugh. So the next day I go to a music store and spin some C&B about my idiot-of-a-sister buying a cassette I already have, and that it hasn’t been opened yet, so could I exchange this one, please.

Maybe the “please” did it. He asked me to take my pick , and I asked him for Nusrat’s Sangam. “Hmmm.” he said, “Sangam might be little difficult for you to follow. Why don’t you try Bandit Queen instead?”

So Bandit Queen it was, and when I got home and listened to it and listened to it again and the goosepimples just wouldn’t go away, I decided he was right, after all.

The Indian version of the Bandit Queen soundtrack had four Nusrat songs, three on side A and one on side B. The rest of side B was background music, or rather, a part of the background music, with a song called Chottie Si that plays during the titles.

Ankhiyaan Noon Chain Naa Aawe – the most popular of the tracks, the only one that was aired on TV, with scenes from the movie. There’s a bass and synth line leading the tune, with synthetic drum-beats for the percussion.

More Saiyyan To Hai Pardes – very upbeat, almost frisky at parts. very passionate lyrics. the tabla complements Nusrat’s voice extremely well. a little long, though, with the female voices repeating the same choral line over and over. which is a complaint generally associated with Nusrat songs. I mean, c’mon, Dum Mast Kalandar is almost eight minutes long, with no variations.

Saawnrey Tore Bin Jeeya Jaaye Na – “Haunting” would be the word an average reviewer would use, and since I am not any better, I will do the same. A throbbing bass-line. Nusrat’s voice, with just the right amount of reverb added, sings the first part. The female voice sings the antaras, with Nusrat weaving aalaps, and yes, he does that in a higher scale than the female singer.

Sajnaa Tore Bin Jiya Mora Naahi Laage – A little kitschy. Uses the Sarod (or is that the Mohan Veena?) and something that sounds like a bad Casio keyboard. But the lyrics and the voice make up for the bad beginning. There is a line where Nusrat actually has to take a breath in the middle, and you can make out that part. Amazing composition.

The cassette mentioned that the female voices were Sunita and Humera Chana. A look at the credits of Bandit Queen shows that Sunita is the name of the kid that plays the role of the young Phoolan Devi in the film. Dunno whether it’s the same girl who sings in the OST,and even if she does, it’s just that bit of Chottie Si….

All four are, well, love songs. All about pangs of seperation and what not. Most likely it alludes to the doomed affair between Phoolan and the character played by Nirmal Pandey. None of them feature in the actual movie, of course, not even in the background – Shekhar Kapoor would have been a complete moron to use songs in that movie. So I kind of wondered if Nusrat had composed them specifically for the movie, or were they just add-ons for us song-loving Indians.

Once Big B went bust, I couldn’t find the cassette anymore. I specifically remember buying one for a friend, but that was a long time ago. The hiss on my cassette, of course, increased exponentially with time. And none of the mp3s could be found, except Ankhiyaan Noon. So I waited, and hoped….

Last year, something wonderful happened. I discovered the virtues of Amazon.com. Bandit Queen was listed there, with a very low “Used and New” prices. Thanks to nevermind1980 ( old friend and senior), it was delivered to me last December.

Now this was interesting. The cd had 26 tracks, all background music, and the credits read music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan(with Roger White). Ah HA. So the dark, brooding background music wasn’t by Khan sahab alone.

Even then, I missed the songs, those three songs that came with the cassette and I searched high and low for them.

Recently, I was on a cursory trip to Music World with Mons. She was looking through the Nusrat cd stack, most of them 60 rupees reissues by this new company called Nupur music. My usual predictable ramblings about Bandit Queen and the lost three songs followed. She asked me the names of the tracks. I told her. And whoa! One of the albums, Ahista Ahista had them, the three songs together.

Thus, for sixty rupees, a major item in my Want List was ticked off.

Lessons learned:
1) Get Mons to accompany me to every Music Shop I go. (Which shouldn’t be too hard.)
2) Tell everyone about what’s on my Want List. Never know who might find what, and help me out.

P.S That’s exactly what I am doing right now.