Myself, Travel

My Big Fat Spanish Vacation: Barcelona Day 1, Half Of It

I landed at Barcelona airport on a Friday morning, with a tingling feeling in my tummy. Excitement – because I was going to have an awesome time. Mixed with trepidation – what if it rained? What if I got ripped off by cab-drivers? And a bit of semi-happiness seeing a random guy reading a copy of El Jueves. Most of the worries were taken care of in the first few minutes. It was a sunny day and according to the Information Kiosk at the airport, the path to my hotel was straightforward, involving a bus ride, a train ride and a short walk. I hadn’t reckoned with my luggage and the subway system in Barcelona. You see, I was carrying contraband of a graphic nature. Among other things, the one-volume twentieth-anniversary edition of Bone, a monstrosity of a volume that threatened to unplug my shoulders after a few meters of walking around the subway station at Plaça de Catalunya. Add to it the fact that the station was arranged across a horizontal spread, with multiple routes. It took me some time to find my correct line. It would have been a breeze without the luggage, but add the weight and the slightly air-conditioner-deprived underground, and I was rattling like a dehydrated marmoset. My stop was two stations away, and when I was out, I was like – fuck it, I can’t walk anymore. So I got a cab. Good thing I did too. Because pal Horacio, who came by the hostel for lunch, was about to leave after hanging around for some time. We met just as he was coming out. Pleasantries and Hellboy pages were exchanged – well, I gave him the page I was transporting for him. Horacio and i hit up a Catalan place for a late lunch near La Rambla, the tourist hub of the city. On the way, he showed me the Barcelona cathedral, pointed out the MACBA, the Barcelona museum of Contemporary Art – and most importantly, the comic-book shop he frequents in the area. It was closed, but the posters of Los Muertes Viventos (that’s the Spanish version of The Walking Dead, amigos) on the display window made me grin. Horacio left just before dark, because he had to take his son out to football and running late. (“my wife has run away with another man, Satya”, he remarked sadly, as his fifth phone call went unanswered, and then both of us burst out laughing. ) I decided to head back toward Catalunya again, because I had to pick up my friends from the airport – they were flying in from Cluj to spend the weekend with me. The Plaça was lit up brightly. People everywhere, sitting on benches, outside cafes, some even singing. It felt good. I sat down near the fountain, a little away from the crowd, breathing in and watching winter smoke swim out of my mouth – something that never fails to amuse. A young girl next to me, reading and smoking, turned out to be a veterinary student in her second year. She put her book down to talk, finished her cigarette, and then offered me some oranges. We looked at the fountain for a bit, and she told me how she loved and hated the crowds at the same time, how this time of evening for her was special because she could read in peace. She asked me to look her up anytime I am back. “How will I find you?”, I asked. “I am always here in the evenings”, she laughed.

(to be continued)

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Life

A musing

Listening to an album with the cross-fade off is an interesting experience. What does it say about my life when three seconds of silence between tracks makes it feel like something is not right? I had to look at the iPod twice to make sure it didn’t switch off or something.

But I’ve to get used to the silence every once in a while. Sometimes it feels good to unplug the earphones and listen to real life passing me by.

I turned 32 last month. A magic number, this one. The second last power of 2 that I will cross in terms of human age. Assuming nothing changes with the program, and Our Lady with the ankh does not land an impromptu date with me. I spent the day with friends, in two cities I had not been to before. In Spain.

This trip came about because of stubbornness and a promise. I knew I would come to Spain. I just didn’t think it would be this soon. I knew I would enjoy my trip, I didn’t realize it would rock so much. Perfect weather – sunshine with a hint of rain, the wind at just the right temperature to make you want to venture out, interesting conversations with friends I had known for years but had never met in real life, food that made me want to freeze my taste-buds just so I could remember the taste forever, languorous days and hyper-active nights. And oh yeah, I managed to squeeze in some work as well, which is always a good thing.

I am in Cluj now. It’s insane how many memories I have associated with this bustling Romanian city, how comfortable and happy I feel among the people I know here. I managed to attend the office Christmas party here, and went out every single night. I leave tomorrow evening, and while Los Angeles has its own charm, I will miss Cluj. I always do. Though I really wanted it to snow and it didn’t.

I do not know what home is, any more. Or if it ever existed.

And this nice little idea has burrowed itself into my head right now. To spend every birthday in a different city in the world. You know these hypothetical questions you ask yourself, about what you would do if the world would end tomorrow or if you knew you were to die in a few days? My answer to that was – to rent a plane and go meet every person i’ve ever crossed paths with, either in real life or online. To go meet them, say goodbye, hug the ones I liked and the ones that got away, resist the urge to punch the ones I disliked, and generally make a melodramatic ass of myself. But we all know that the world is going to end for every one of us, sooner or later. So why not begin that process right away?

Knowing me, however, there is a fair chance I will change my mind by next month or something. Just saying.

But  there are too many things to talk about, for the last 4 weeks. I need time, I need patience, and I need to process those photographs, both real and metaphorical. Miles to go before I sleep.

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Music, Weirdness

Download Blues

Today morning, I was on the bus playing one of my Spotify playlists, and suddenly I had this urge to listen to ‘Masakali’. One of the cool things about Spotify is its extensive library, and sure enough, ‘Masakali’ came up in the search. But not the original version, this was from Mohit Chauhan’s unplugged sessions, and a brilliant live rendition it was. I began playing the complete Unplugged – Mohit Chauhan album, and by the time the acoustic version of ‘Dooba Dooba’ was underway, I thought I should tell people about it. Spotify, like any self-respecting application nowadays, allows you to tweet about what you’re listening to and I did, accompanying it with a handy link. Of course, none of the people in India could access it. And then I had to google for “mohit chauhan unplugged 320” which brought me to a handy download link that I could share. (That’s a hint for you, in case you want to listen to something and torrents are not handy at the moment)

And they wonder why people pirate. Seriously, what does a guy have to do in order to share music? Send Youtube links, sure. And if I can do that, why not anything else? What, in this day and age, explains the stupidity of disallowing applications from working in certain countries? Fuck you, music companies, I am not asking for free music. All I need is a way to painlessly recommend music and listen to music others are recommending without having to jump through hoops. You are not “restricting” anything, you are just adding an extra step to whatever it is I have to do. The logic and economics of this escapes me.

Paying for Spotify has removed the need to (illegally) download – and manage – a huge library of music. I do not need to carry my external HD around. The app really has everything, or close to it. Sure, not all of Rahman, but I am discovering a shitload of new music every day and I don’t need to worry about storage. Or even being on a network all the time, because the handy “offline” feature just downloads the songs to the phone. Something like this was long over-due, because I am still not happy with 99 cent downloads. I do not need to own or store all of the music I have, just be able to listen to it where and when I want.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to another of these questions that do not really matter to anyone but me. You see, I use Last.fm fairly extensively. Not the radio station, but the site’s excellent mechanism of storing scrobbles. It gives me a neat way to keep a record of what I am listening to and to track this data historically. I therefore get a little anal about tagging tracks properly. [aside: Fucking piracy sites. Every one of these sites have serious ego issues about proving ownership. So the artiste-name becomes “www.downloadmeh.com” or whatever the site is, so does the album-name. WHY? Isn’t it enough to just sign the comments section of the ID3 tag, fellas? This means I have to spend time cleaning up the tags before I listen to the songs, because I really do not want to know that I am listening to a track called ‘songs.pk – songs.pk – Hawa Hawa(songs.pk)’.]

With Indian film music, however, we have a problem.

Take any film track. You have the composer, the artiste and the lyricist. Whose name should go onto the <Artiste> field? Sure, I put in the name of the singers, but I lose the information that this is an AR Rahman song I am listening to, unless Rahman is singing the song himself. This also adds a peculiar kind of chaos, where we have no fixed way of noting different artistes in a track. For example:

  • Sukhwindara Singh/Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya
  • Sukhwindara Singh, Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya
  • Sukhwindara Singh & Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya

Which one of the above do you use? Currently, last.fm treats all of these as different artistes and not as individual artistes separated by a symbol. Like I said, this screws up the historical scrobble data in a bad way. Not only are every one of these differently worded artiste names treated differently, there’s no correlation between this track and one sung by Sukhwindara Singh by himself, or with some other singer. Sure, I could just replace the singer name with AR Rahman, but what happens if I want to know who the singer is? The only solution I could come up with is to rename the track as – AR Rahman – Chaiyya Chaiyya (feat Sukhwindara Singh & Sapna Awasthi), but that adds to the title of the song, which is pretty stupid once we get into songs involving 4 singers or more. Let’s not even get into the confusion that arises from Indian singers changing names every other year for numerological efficiency. As of right now, I have no idea if Sonu Nigam is called Sonu, Sonuu, Nigam or Nigamm. Or if he has dropped a vowel or two.

You know what we need? Standards, that’s what we need.

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Movies, Weirdness

Rockstar as Speculative Fiction

Imagine Hum Aapke Hai Kaun never happened.

For those who came in late, this was the 1994 film that brought a decisive end to the Curse of the Eighties plaguing the Indian film industry. Hum Aapke Hai Kaun brought back family audiences into movie theaters, which had by then become seedy outlets for vapid, formulaic movies. A year later, there was Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge, which cemented the resurgence of the family film and convincingly continued the trend. Indian cinema found new life, Bollywood became cool, and two decades later, here we are, where movie theaters are now very posh outlets for vapid, formulaic movies.

In a world without HAHK, this wouldn’t happen. People would not venture out to watch DDLJ, KKHH, K3G and the rest, Bollywood would continue its spiral into bankruptcy thanks to video piracy. Within a few years, film-making in India would have truly entered the Dark Ages. Movie theaters would only show soft porn, catering to the lowest denominator ponying up prices for movie tickets. The only kind of films that would be financed specifically for Indian audiences in such theaters would be soft porn – with titles like, I dunno, Junglee Jawani.

Bombay would fade away. Not economically, no, but the degeneration of its film industry would create a shift in the currents that brought people this city. In that vacuum, it is but logical to assume that India’s political capital would also become its cultural capital, the power center of the next generation of creativity. Delhi is where Indian pop culture would realign itself.

What would flourish? Music, of course. In the absence of Bollywood’s all-encompassing genre-mashups, music – and musical tastes – would evolve. Western classical would find favor in the halls of institutions like St Stephens, where theater students would perform to Bolero-inspired compositions, and Indian classical musicians would find renewed relevance. In addition to attaining wealth and honor that’s their due, classical musicians would also become mentors and star-makers, the equivalent of the A&R divisions of music companies, the ones with the power to decide the Next Big Thing.

What kind of music, you ask? Private albums, with music drawn from various genres and sources. Out-of-work film music composers become ghost arrangers, on the look-out for the next face that can highlight their antiquated compositions and arrangements. Electronic music, no longer surfing on Bollywood’s ear-friendly adoption, would fail to find acceptance on Indian shores.

Oh, and rock and roll. The North-eastern influence in Delhi ensures a vibrant atmosphere in which college festivals feature rock as a major highlight. Indian rock music evolves beyond 80s hair-band tropes, especially after investors from Europe’s new cultural capital, Prague, ensure that quality is given precedence. Audiences all over the world begin to appreciate songs in alien languages, and Indian compositions are no longer just sources of memetic mirth.

Imagine a world like that, a world where Hard Rock Cafes actually plays Hard Rock, where audiences in Indian rock concerts sing along to missing phrases. Where every track and album release is not accompanied by a club mix. Where sexy backup dancers and garish music videos are not necessary to market musicians and their compositions. A world where the posters you see on the street do not have actors or cricketers, but musicians. Where young college-going kids aspire to be Jim Morrison, not Shah Rukh Khan.

It is in this alternate world that the story of Janardan “Jordan” Jakhar is set. It is in this world that ‘Rockstar‘ makes sense.

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Life, Myself

The Marina on a Foggy Evening

Winter’s almost here, and the season in LA right now reminds me of Assam. My kind of winter. A delicious chill in the air after dusk, and the rolling mist makes everything seem muted and somber – lights, passing cars and the boats.

The perfect weather to go walking and to take some pictures. It was brilliant, and as I went around the complex, part of me hoped that somewhere in the fog, I would come across a vendor selling roasted peanuts in a cart. And I would start to pay him and then realize that – shit, I have only dollars in my pocket, and paying a dollar instead of 5 rupees for a bag of roasted peanuts would be sacrilegious. I was glad I did not meet a peanut vendor, finally.

But there were only solitary people walking their pets, joggers panting as they thudded past me; strangely, a pig squealed from afar – I have no idea why, and I could hear sounds of laughter from the buildings nearby, presumably unrelated to the squeals. The air felt clean and fresh, I smiled at people, and they smiled back at me, and I came back home. Where there was Thai lemon and chicken soup, roasted duck and Thai iced tea to wash it all down. Was your evening better than mine? I don’t think so.

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