AR Rahman, Music

Two songs

Two songs by two of my favourite Indian composers –  AR Rahman’s ‘Dilli 6’, from the movie of the same name was released in 2009 and Amit Trivedi’s ‘Dilli’, from No One Killed Jessica came out last month. I haven’t heard the first in about a year, due to a self-imposed hiatus. The other’s been on my playlist the past few days. Both songs are written and composed around the same city – Delhi. (d-uh!) Both of them feature a melange of vibrant sounds that one would not really associate with the idea of a song about the capital of India. Rahman goes in for a chill-out/club-music vibe (French lyrics! an analog synth groove!), while Trivedi layers his track with screaming distortion guitars that occasionally meander into Indian classical/prog-rock territory.

Female voices begin each song. Tanvi Shah’s velvet vocals, heavily processed, introduce us to ‘Dilli 6’. Her inflection of the words has a distinct accent, “yeh Dilli” comes out as ‘E Delhi’. The languorous vibe of the song is broken by Benny Dayal and Blaaze’s chanting, and from then on, the song gives us a series of pleasant musical surprises – syncopated rap in French, a very effective use of the beat and a scratchy fill that punctuates key phrases.

‘Dilli 6’ is about the city, or rather, an introduction to the city. Come hither, the city is great. ‘Bas ishq mohabbat pyaar.’ Right, the city is just perfect for the lover, for the artist, it embraces you tight and scolds you soundly. But obviously, if you are practical enough, you should make sure you have your seat-belts fastened, there is enough cash in your wallet and the air-conditioner is switched on.

‘Dilli’ is from the point of view of one who lives in Delhi. Sure, he loves the city, but it’s love-tinged-with-irony, the casual cruelty reserved for the lover without whom you cannot do with, but resent her presence and her effect on you all the same. ‘Mera kaat kalejaa Dilli, mui Dilli le gayi’  – ‘it has cut my liver out, Delhi has’ goes the main refrain. Trivedi’s musical aesthetic, as I have noted before, seeks to bring out a raw scruffiness that is usually missing from mainstream Indian cinema, and ‘Dilli’, head-banger of a song though it may be, is a perfect example of this. It aims for the gut. From the scraping, echoey intro guitar loop that warns you of yet another day in a city that sucks the blood out of you, the song, once it starts, is breathless – the female voice ( Aditi Singh Sharma, a Trivedi regular) rat-a-tats the word ‘Dilli’, the drums and the male voices – Toshi Raina and Shriram Iyer sing the bulk of the song in unison. All three singers get their Delhi vibe just right – no pan-Indian song, this one.

On a side, there is this new wave of Delhi-centric movies that get the city. I am not really sure I am qualified enough to say this myself – I have passed through Delhi every now and then, and all my interactions have been through the filter of close friends. Remember Sarfarosh and Dil Se, which were  set in the city? The only time you recognized Delhi as an entity was the morning shots in the fog at Connaught Place. Not so the post-Dibakar Bannerjee era, where the city becomes real – its inhabitants are the inhabitants of the capital, speaking the vernacular, not pretenders from Film City. Which reminds me – go watch Band Baaja Baarat. It has its flaws, but I had fun. End aside.

I could be wrong – but is the Dilli in the Rahman song addressed as a male (I know most of the lyrics just refer to it as a city, but the lines ‘badaa kaske gale lagaata hai’ personify it, I thought), while the one in Trivedi’s song is the bitch-from-hell lover?

Rahman’s song has an epic build-up moment. At a point, as the male voices chant the ‘yeh Delhi hai’ refrain, the bassline throbs, Rahman makes his way through ear-friendly chords,  heavily-processed French horns and timpanis pronounce euphoria and grandeur. No such moments in Trivedi’s composition – the only ear-friendly portion comes when all three voices come together in magnificent harmony.

I played ‘Dilli 6’ again just now, and I notice that this song, as well, has a subtly recurring guitar riff. Nice.

All that said, I am really impressed by the way Trivedi’s been carving his own path, refusing to stick to a single style – for all my talk of his rawness, the soundtrack of Aisha was the only IFM soundtrack that has been consistently on the iPod all year, and the polish of it gives me a quick kick to the rear my trying-to-find-patterns inner critic. Right now, I am fixated on ‘Shaam’, the under-rated song of the album, shot in the film in a style that fits its stoner roots. I have not heard Udaan properly yet, (and haven’t seen the film, either) apparently No One Killed Jessica has usurped its place on the Trivedi queue.

Read: Aadisht’s lovely examination and deconstruction of what makes the Dilli 6 song tick, where I am also mentioned.

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Fiction

Soon, you will rule the world

You have promise, young one. You remind me of myself at your age. But you still have much to learn, and your impatience will be the death of you.

If you have to make a long speech to someone, shoot his kneecaps first. Every evening, remember to change the oil in your chainsaw, sharpen your knives, reload your gun. Increase the soundproofing in the basement. In the event of a family massacre, it never hurts to throw a grenade under every bed. Get an accent – an English one is good, a European one exudes class. Once every month, kill a henchman, preferably the one that’s quiet and flinches every time you laugh. Never forget to wash the blood off your shirt. Remember to dispose of the bodies. Nobody wears kevlar sunglasses, eye-patches or masks. Make sure that cutting the red, blue or green wires does not stop the countdown. Dress carefully – keep an extra gun in one shoe, and a knife in the heel of the other. Learn to smile without crinkling your eyes. Use stronger passwords. Vaseline makes it less painful, but it makes you look weak. If you are trapped with nowhere to go, whimper, blame your childhood and promise you will change. Or play dead. When in doubt, blow shit up. Get yourself a right-hand man. Keep him busy –  when the time comes, he can take the blame for everything. There is no such thing as a fair fight, or a noble enemy. Collateral damage is your friend. Overkill is under-rated.

Press the red button thirty minutes before the scheduled countdown. Kill your master. For added insurance, kill the other students as well. Destroy all your childhood photographs, especially the ones in your High School year-book. If you have children, force them to watch; if they blanch at the sight of blood, they’re not worth it – and you can always make more of them. It’s better to control the man who rules the world instead of ruling it yourself. Shoot first, and never ask questions – it’s more fun to make up your own answers. Read a lot of fiction, so you know what mistakes to avoid. Always get the last word in. Nothing says “no-nonsense” like a swift kick to the family jewels. Never use elevators. Keep a baseball bat with you during meetings. All strange sounds can be silenced with a semi-automatic. If you are in a nightclub, keep two women on either side – they tend to distract, and make good shields. When tracking your quarry, check the the air-conditioning vents and the attic. Hostages make good witnesses, make sure they lose their eyesight before you release them. Fire at the count of two. Video-tape everything. Hang up the phone after 1 minute and 59 seconds. Keep multiple escape-routes ready. Always remove the utility belt first. Retreat if you must, but do not forget to activate the super-virus in your mainframes. Learn to reload in ten seconds.

What was that again? Your kneecaps hurt? It will all be over in ten seconds, don’t worry.

(inspired by an email sent to a friend on his birthday. )

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Comic Art, Comics

Collectible-lust: The Rocketeer Artist’s Edition

To people familiar with the independent comics boom of the eighties, the name ‘Dave Stevens’ is synonymous with dazzling artistry. Stevens’s most famous creation is The Rocketeer, a throwback to the pulp movie serials of the 1940s. Fans and industry professionals alike swooned over his lush yet delicate brushwork, the seemingly effortless way his storytelling not only paid homage to the past, but created something that was unique and contemporary, a heady mix of cheesecake nostalgia and crackling adventure. Even though Stevens never managed to complete the story he had started – the reasons being a mix of delays caused by his painstaking perfectionism, his professional commitments outside the comics industry and in the later stages of his life, a battle with cancer – his limited body of work includes a number of comic covers and movie production art. A cover drawn by Dave Stevens, regardless of who wrote or drew the content within, or the quality of the comic itself, would sell extremely well, people cherishing the chance to view another example of this man’s sublime talent.

I became familiar with Stevens’ work through ad inserts for The Rocketeer in other Pacific comics that I bought in the mid-eighties. Getting issues of Pacific Comics Presents (the comic in which the character appeared for the first time) was tough – I didn’t manage it until 2007, when I found copies in a comic-shop sale in Mountain View, for 50 cents each. But the funny thing that I realized later was that I had seen Stevens’ work a long time before I heard of the Rocketeer. This image, in particular.

Yaaaaaa! Sheenaaaaaaa!

This is one of Stevens’ most iconic works, and was used without credits or permissions to grace a 3-D comic called Jungle Ki Rani published by Diamond Comics. Diamond Comics ( not to be confused with Diamond Distributors)  is an Indian company that started off publishing Chacha Chowdhury, Pinki, Billu and Tauji – somewhere down the line, some of its titles became thinly Indianized versions ripped off from American comics. Some issues of Mahabali Shaka were panel-by-panel copies of Phantom and Tarzan stories from the sixties, a title called Chimpu had a story that was a shameless remix of Tintin and the Black Island and Tintin in America. And anyway, Jungle Ki Rani. Don’t believe me?

Sheesh...

And hell, I loved this image. I think I even wanted to buy a copy just for the cover, but my father got me something else instead probably because it was too risque.I finally read the complete Rocketeer on scans, sometime around 2004-2005. I was not so impressed, probably because I had outgrown the swashbuckling men’s adventure genre by that time. No doubt I would have been completely in love with it had I read it 10 years ago, but it felt a little dated, a little too innocent.

Stevens passed away in 2008. In late 2009, IDW Publishing released a collection of the complete Rocketeer stories, recolored by award-winning colorist Laura Martin (Planetary, Astonishing X-Men). This was the first time all of Stevens’ Rocketeer work – published over 13 years by different comic companies, including Pacific comics, Eclipse and Dark Horse – was collected in one volume. I was in LA during the release party of the book, but it was a weekday evening and Golden Apple Comics, the store where the party was being held, was on the other end of the city. Apart from the standard paperback, there was also a deluxe hardcover edition, with 100+ pages of bonus material, including unpublished sketches, script excerpts and original art scans, limited to 3000 copies, all  of which sold out in a matter of weeks.

But editor Scott Dunbier – a Stevens fan and an avid art collector – had more plans in mind. Comic art aficionados love Stevens’ work; the few pages that the artist sold are in offer-proof collections, most still reside with his estate. Dunbier came up with the idea of an Artist’s Edition of the Rocketeer, aimed at the same art-collecting crowd that paid extra money to get an insight into Stevens’ creative process by buying the Deluxe edition. One could argue that this was like finding excuses to make money off the same body of work, but then again, the end product was a complete labor of love. Dunbier, before he left DC/Wildstorm and joined IDW, was the guy who came up with the idea behind DC’s Absolute Editions, oversized, special-feature-laden archival hard-cover versions of series like Planetary, Watchmen, Sandman, and The Dark Knight. To call him a marketing genius would be selling him short – the man knows his shit inside out. He sold art to Graham Nash and Stephen Stills, for god’s sake!

The idea behind The Rocketeer Artist’s Edition was this – every page was scanned directly from Stevens’ artwork, at the same size as the original pages, making the book a super-sized 12 by 17 inch item. Some people said that Stevens the perfectionist would not probably like the flaws in his work to be laid bare. But there was no denying the fact that if there was an artist who deserved a release like this, it was probably Dave Stevens. And for a comic collector who does not have the means to own one of Stevens’ original pages, this is a brilliant way to pore through the intricacies of a master draftsman’s sequential art. The idea is not original – there have been similar projects in France, where legendary artist Franquin’s Spirou books received a similar treatment, but it’s a novelty for the American market. It was also a gamble for the fledgling company, because comic fans are notorious for not putting their money where their mouth is.  1200 copies were printed, and Dunbier talked about it on forums and comic sites, noting that the experiment would also be a worthwhile way to find out if other books could get a similar treatment as well, if this one sold well.  And boy oh boy, it sure did. The release at Comic-Con this year saw a large percentage of the books sell even at the hefty price-tag of 100$, while a glowing forum message by inker Scott Williams ensured that the remaining stock sold out by the end of the next week. I was in two minds about buying a copy for myself, I was on a book-buying hiatus, and shipping charges to India would bring the price to 150$. But it was Williams’ message, and the fact that Madhav was in the US at that time that helped me make up my mind. I think I probably picked up one of the last few copies from the site.

The binding on the book is surprisingly sturdy. Each page is printed on high-quality paper. The pages still contain pencil markings, splashes of white-out where the artist corrected aspects that he did not like. Yes, they are in black-and-white. But even an art-luddite would be awed by the magnificence.

Some pictures:

Though the book is technically out-of-print at the IDW website, you can still get copies, though at a small premium. eBay USA sellers are asking for anything between 140-200$ ( shipping extra). Online retailer Reed Comics is selling copies at 125£ in the UK.

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Books, Life, Weirdness

Book Fair Adventures Part 2

It amuses me to think of how many, and how very strange memories I have of the Guwahati Book Fair.

This happened when I was in the ninth standard. It was the last two days of that year’s fair, and a bunch of us friends decided to meet up in the afternoon, go to a resort and do some go-karting, head to a pub, get smashed and find ourselves a bunch of girls to hang out with. Well no, it was fucking 1994 and there was no go-karting in fucking Guwahati, and definitely no pubs. My city was the kind of place where, if you went to one of those dimly lit bar-cum-restaurants and ordered a drink (if you drank, that is. I didn’t.), chances were the manager would come to you and ask if you were so-and-so’s son, and  it would turn out that you were distant relatives and oh dear god you were going to be in so much trouble when you went back home. The only time we would hang around with girls was in school, where if anyone got too interested in a girl she would come and tie a rakhi on the guy. So yeah, what we planned to do  was to meet at the Book Fair, and go buy books and head home at 7:00, which is when most of Guwahati fell asleep.

What happened that fine day was something else altogether. Post-noon, I had that pleasurable flutterby feeling in my tummy that heralded the arrival of fine bibliographic pleasures on the horizon, and I distinctly remember playing ‘Koncham Nilavu’ very loud while getting ready to go. (For a very long time, ‘Koncham Nilavu’ was my default let’s-do-this-shit-yo song of choice) I headed out just at about 3 ( we were supposed to meet at 4), the perfect time to adjust for a bus delay. As I walked out the gate, there was a dog sleeping nearby – not an uncommon sight by any means, and my motto in life at that time being ‘Canis Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus’, I sidestepped the noble animal and proceeded to my destination.

The bitch jumped up and bit me on the thigh! It wasn’t one of those Stephen King Presents Cujo-level bites with a lot of gore and ripping sounds of muscle and tissue, neither was it a playful Disney Dalmatian-level nip – the bite was just enough to make me holler. My shout made the dog let go of my thigh and growl loudly, and I did the most logical thing possible – I kicked it twice and ran back inside the house. Not forgetting to lock the gate.

I admit to being very panicky, and hoping that there was no blood. Ran to the bathroom, switched on the light, took my jeans off (remembering to thank my lucky stars I had worn jeans and not a normal pair of trousers). Nope, a little scratched skin, but no trace of blood. My Junior Red Cross training kicked into gear (most people thought the JRC was nothing much beyond singing campfire songs, ogling at girls from other schools and designing blood donation posters. I disagree) and I washed the wound thoroughly with detergent and lots of water to make sure no trace of the dog’s saliva remained. By then, my panic levels had lowered themselves to sustainable levels, and I was beginning to worry about the fact that I had lost about  fifteen minutes and I should head to the Book Fair as soon as possible. And that’s precisely what I did, remembering to take a stone along just in case the dog was around.

And I wore the same pair of jeans, of course.

By the time I got to the fair, the fear had been replaced by boisterousness . You will have to admit there is an inherent coolness to replying – “Nothing much, got bitten by a dog”, when someone asks you what’s up. My friends snickered a little, one of them was a little worried, and talked about an uncle who had been bitten by a dog and ran around the house on all fours after a year, because he did not get any shots. You needed to take shots, each aimed at a precise point around your navel, or else you would be barking mad, quite literally, in a year. “Nah, not going to happen to me”, I said. “I cleaned it thoroughly, and there was no blood.” I came back home, very pleased with myself, at about 7:30. There were a bunch of people in the living room. They looked worried. Apparently there was a rabid dog in the neighborhood that had bitten some people, and they had managed to kill it. One of the kids that were bitten was in hospital. I figured it was high time I speak up about my adventure.

It was a long night. Lots of injections ( none around the tummy, thankfully), lots of weeping ( my mom), lots of murmurs about irresponsible teenagers who do not know about their priorities, and fuck, no meat for a year. Thanks to that stupid dog, I had to change my diet, I had to remember specific dates every month to go and get more injections, go visit some temples with my parents who were convinced that there was an evil spirit at work mucking about with my karma-lines, and miss a kick-ass school picnic. And to this day, everytime I see a sleeping stray dog, I mentally prepare myself to be ready to kick and run if the beast shows the slightest intention of lunging at me.

But I bought some great books that day, so it all worked out in the end.

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Myself, Weirdness

An Embarrassing Incident That I Need To Get Off My Chest

Ol’ pal Baruk left a comment on the blog the other day about an incident that I’d mentally filed away under “mortifyingly embarrassing childhood incidents that one should never bring up again”. But to my surprise, I can now think and write about it without cringing or  feeling embarrassed enough to make a face. (And that happens to me too often, I must say. I think of something that I did wrong, and I make a face. People notice.)

This incident occcured when I was in the seventh standard. Or as we used to call it back in those days, Class VII. Ms Deepali was our class teacher, and actively involved in extra-curricular activities. Baruk was a year senior to me, and the resident debate/speech/music god. We would team up for a quiz every now and then – I sucked at debates (still do), and the last time I participated in one while in school, I got so tongue-tied that I argued against my own team. But extempore speeches, the ones where you had to pick up random chits of paper on which teachers would write words like “cricket bat”, or “the President of India” – I could at least blather for a minute or two and try and be funny, and say things so blatantly obvious it made everyone laugh. It was okay. I even won a prize or two.

It’s been quite sometime, you have to understand, and the details are a little hazy. I do not remember whether it was I who saw the ad in the newspaper and went to Baruk, or if it was he who approached me, but I do remember both of us walking to the Teachers’ common room to speak to Ms. Deepali. There was an extempore speech contest, we explained to her, but it was during school hours, at 1 PM, and in order to be there, we would have to skip classes after lunch-time. Would it be ok if she spoke to the Principal and got us permission? We were convincing enough, apparently – permission letters were signed, the watchman at the school gates was told to let us out without any fuss, and we were off. Grinning from ear to ear, because the extempore speech was going to be held at the Book Fair.

Now, Guwahati in the 1990s was not a great place to buy books. It still isn’t. But there was one annual event everyone looked forward to, and that was the Guwahati Book Fair, organized every December at the centrally-located Judge’s Field. The timing was perfect – school would be over for the year, and the Fair was a perfect place to meet your friends in the evening, hang around eating panipuri and chaat, and of course, hunt for and buy books for which you would have saved money all year. Hell, my parents had an annual book fair budget set aside just for me, and every purchase during the year would be weighed carefully – do I buy something now, at full price, or wait for the 10% discount in December? As final exams would get over, I would literally count down the days to December 26th, and the first day of the fair would have my parents dropping me off at the gates at 11 AM in the morning, just after the inauguration, and not worry about me until 7 PM, when it would close.

But that year (it was 1992) some people had a bright idea. “Why don’t we organize another book fair?”, they figured. “And let us make sure we make it so that it starts smack in the middle of the school season, in September.” The result was an event called the North-East Book Fair. It should have sucked, but it did not. The first time I went to the North-East Book Fair, it was a Sunday, and I nearly blew my yearly book budget buying out copies of Mad magazines. A bookseller from Delhi brought piles of comics that he refused to open the first day, despite my nearly-awash-with-tears eyes. “Come back tomorrow”, he said. “But…but…tomorrow is school-day.” “Well, come in the evening then”, he retorted. I gave up trying to explain that by the time the school bus got me home, it was almost 5 PM, and to come back to Judge’s Field when the fair closed at 7 was just not worth it, there would hardly be an hour of browse-time. Fail.

But the other bright idea that the organizers had, as part of the publicity drive for the fair, was to set up events every day of the week. There was a quiz competition – open only to college students, feh.  An art competition on Tuesday, for kinder-garteners. For school-kids my age, an extempore competition on Wednesday. The extempore competition to which Baruk and I were now enroute, having successfully convinced the concerned authorities that we would come back with shiny prizes and certificates.

When we reached the Book fair – and the school participation letter ensured that we didn’t have to pay for tickets, which meant another 10 rs saved for more worthy causes, hah! – there was already a shitload of like-minded, stage-happy students waiting to extemporize the shit out of everyone at the venue. Baruk and I sat for a while, and by the time the third or fourth speaker came on stage, we had had enough. We headed to the bookstalls, I happily attacked the pile of comics and discovered that it contained four volumes of Eastman and Laird’sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Yes, Ganja, this is the secret origin of how I got ahold of those books. You may stop reading now.) Baruk had his own agenda, and I believe he had a satisfying jaunt around the fair as well. The next thing we know, it was 2 o’clock, and the extempore competition was over. Our bags were still back at the school, so we had to go back. The only part we had to be clear on was – what do we tell the teachers?

Baruk suggested that we say that the Extempore speech was cancelled (or did he suggest that it was postponed to the next day? I don’t remember, honestly). I was not convinced – “why don’t we just say we participated and did not win anything?” We boarded a bus, discussing the merits of both the approaches, but neither of us was convinced. Somehow ( somehow?)  both of us got distracted by what we had bought that day, and when we landed at school, we were still undecided. I reached my classroom, and gulp, it was Ms Deepali’s class. “How was it, Soityojit?”, she asked. (I swear – every class-teacher I have had in school pronounced my name a different way. The way Ms Deepali said ‘Soityojit’ was a particularly English-accented Assamese that set my tummy aflutter everytime I heard her say it. That day it set my tummy aflutter for different reasons altogether.) I launched into a confident story about how the competition was really tough, and I had gotten “Crow” as a topic and had managed to say this and that. “What did Baruk talk about?”, she asked. Some corner of my brain said “Cheetah”, and I said “Cheetah – oh, you should have heard him, he was brilliant.” She listened with interest, a little disappointed that neither of us had won. I was about to go back to my seat when –

Baruk walks into the classroom, holding a note from his class teacher. Ms Deepali smiled at him, and asked – “So, how did it go, Baruk? Cheetah, was it?” Baruk blinked once, twice – and this, I remember perfectly, because my heart was in my mouth and I was frozen to the floor – he said “No ma’am, the speech competition was cancelled, and we just went around the bookshops, bought some stuff and came back.” Ms Deepali looked at me, and looked at him, and looked at me again. “What was that about the crow and the cheetah?” “Well, actually, they gave us the topics, and then they cancelled it because there were some problems.” “Is that right, Soityojit?” By this time, Baruk had realized that I had goofed up, and pretty badly at that, and after throwing a couple of dirty looks my way, he played along. Ms Deepali ahem-ed and nodded, with a half-smile on her face. Baruk left, glaring at me once again from the door. And then it was just me, staring at Ms Deepali and trying hard not to feel my ears to see if they were really burning. She stared back at me, smiling a little more, in that semi-dangerous teacherly way that could either mean I know what you did, and you better watch your back or you poor thing, you look so cute when you lie.

“Go back to your seat, Soityojit,” she said. I did.

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