Elysian fields

On the Inexorable Onset of an Exceptionally Delayed Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:26:00 +0000

The geese fly in circles drawn on snowy skies,

While they cackle and howl in an agony of sighs.

El Nino gave us a November too warm,

But December now stings the forlorn white swarm!

Now the wind whistles through naked willow trees

Where once grew a leafy blanket of maroon and gold fleece

Now a rabbit staggers around with vacuous eyes and a drugged gait

Gives a mournful look that says, ‘Tis time to move on and hibernate’.

You were fooled by Nature, do not despair

The master dissembler has sunk mightier foes fair and square.

The verisimilitude of spring, is but a fanciful dream

Even nature cannot of a November an April forever make!

(penned on paper in the first week of December 2009, I want to express my gratitude to a friend whose written letter inspired me to revisit the luscious pleasure of composing with a pencil and a paper)

The Subway Exit

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:53:00 +0000

The Subway Exit

.............

Catatonic bodies and flaccid faces, surround

Commuters with stoic expressions, that run aground

Iron seats with peeling paint; a clutter of jarring rhythms

Of metal wheels on metal rails; these grinding staccato schisms

Inject a numbing chill up my spine. Morose subway cars!

A screech and a jerk! A station showers antiseptic neon light

To signal the proverbial flight of Icarus into his agoraphobic plight?

I stumble into the Hades below Canal Street. An aimless frenetic

Pulsating crowd has me blindsided. Sucked deeper in this caustic

Thoracic cavity, where are the mouths of this hell? The exit!

Seeking salvation, we are but blind mice in an underground maze,

The haze clears momentarily, reveals a fragmentary phrase

‘Wisdom of Crowds’, a desperate surrender to demonic zombification

Delivers me to the mythical moving stairway of absolution,

Spit out on the sidewalk; uvula, au revoir. I am articulate and individual again!

.............

Photos Courtesy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/helloturkeytoe/ / CC BY 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yunheisapunk/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:51:00 +0000

We have landed on a distant shore

Of sandy beaches and golden soil,

What brought us here is our toil,

And tales of riches that were our lore.

A brave new world they said it was

Land of opportunity, fair and square

Fortunes are built from only sweat here

Dreams to make us migrants pause.

The tales describe hoary towers of ivory

And temples of learning standing tall

Where impartial science reigned in halls

Bedecked with Nobel Medals. What livery!

If only the fair people of the Indus decide

Our very own grand cathedrals to legate

As pillars of industry and mortars of trade

Will we be delivered our miles of golden seaside!

-- Nikhil K ( 20 November 2009 )

In Memoriam of In Memoriam

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:33:00 +0000

Lord Alfred Tennyson embodied the spirit of the Great Victorian poet. His poems have rhyme and rhythm, lyricism and deep insights into human nature. While growing up, he was my favorite poet by far; his work still is amongst my personal favorites. Amongst all his thousands of poems, In Memoriam holds a special place in my heart. It has sublime structure and was written over a seventeen year period. It starts off by Tennyson mourning the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam in Europe and goes on to ramblings on the vagaries of life and finishes with a resounding affirmation of human endeavor. As a tribute to this magnum opus, I will be writing a series of short pieces with the same rhyme structure 'a-b-b-a', that alternate with extracts from In Memoriam.

The complete original text can be found here: http://theotherpages.org/poems/books/tennyson/tennyson02.html

Starting off:

In Memoriam

VII

Dark house, by which once more I stand

Here in the long unlovely street,

Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more–

Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

-- Tennyson

Dyson's Heresy

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Science is an industry. It is a teeming and dynamic ecosystem with memes flying all over the place. One of the strongest undercurrents in the scientific ethos of the last decade has been the idea of global warming and catastrophic climate change. From a hypothetical future it has been transformed into a dogma, something taken for granted. Terms like ice cap meltdown, greenhouse effect, carbon footprint etc are being casually thrown about in even liberal art circles.
I too, had until a few months back, accepted the arguments at face value. If so many scientists are repeating something so vociferously, then it has to be true. Or so I thought, till I read this thought provoking article in the New York Times in March this year ( also this follow up article ). Freeman Dyson raised a small but powerful dissenting voice. He did not negate the claims that temperatures, in an absolute sense, are increasing or that the sea levels are rising. But what he did was ask for a pause to recollect our thoughts in this mad scramble to save the earth's climate. He questions the inherent reliability of the prediction methods, which stands independent of the outcomes of those predictors. Also, Dyson blasts the separation of the biome modeling form the atmospheric climate models and claims that we are losing the bigger picture. More damningly, he doubts the effect of human actions since 1950 on the ensuing climate change. When the choice is put starkly in front of me, wholescale human emancipation in India and China versus massive efforts to prolong the sinking of the climate ship, I balk at taking hasty and extreme measures. Perhaps, we should burn coal now and raise a billion people out of poverty than ban coal and significantly set back global development by decades. Food for thought?

La Chaim!

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:32:00 +0000

Whither Auteurs?

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:03:00 +0000

On the eve of the Oscars this Sunday, The New York Times has a thought provoking lead on the relevance of this whole annual rigmarole ( interestingly, it shares column space with another article singing paeans to Rahman's magic ). It makes the claim that Oscar's have become a side-event, an irrelevancy. Look at the factoid that leaving aside Slumdog and Benjamin Button, the next three biggest Oscar nominees have a combined gross less than that of Paul Blart : The Mall Cop. Why should the public opt for a movie so singularly devoid of any shred of artistic merit? Why should Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino garner more revenues than any of his noteworthy previous roles?

This disconnect between the expectations of the auteurs and the cinema audience has resonances for Indian cinema too. It acts as a raison-de-etre of sorts for the dumbed down mish-mash that Bollywood serves us. Give the public hounds baying for spam their due. And leave the finer points of cinematic appreciation to the denizens of the film festival circuit. As I hail from Pune, which is a culturally awakened town, I never had a shortage finding compatriots to accompany me to shows of the Citizen Kanes of cinema. But, it is easy to imagine the sufferings of a poor person who has to endure hours of watching the antics of Karan Johar, Ajay Devgan, the comic hero films and thier ilk for the sake of his peers.

But, I can see signs of a change coming along. In the United States, in Europe and even in Pune, there is a growing awakened class which actively seeks out the sort of cinema which doesn't demand that you remove your brain and keep it on the seat besides you. When I had gone to see Slumdog Millionaire in Minneapolis, it was being shown only in one distant small theater in an affluent suburb. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the audience for what was then a fringe movie almost fully consisted of Americans, with a sprinkling of Indians. And the crowd showed a frank appreciation of this exotic fare being dished up to them, even to the extent that hardly anyone stood up to leave at the end because they waited till the credits and the Bollywood dance number ended. The audience looked pleasantly baffled by the cinematic style and content, but they had an open-mind approach. It is this readiness to sample new things which led to Slumdog being given a nation wide release a few months later.

As long as there is this vibrant and growing core audience willing to support brave new cinema, I hope the Junos, Little Miss Sunshines, Sideways, No Countrys and the Slumdogs will keep coming.

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:12:00 +0000

Poem

On Roaming the Deserted Corridors of EECS, some Late Friday Evening

Fond Memories of those Serendipitous Nights

Solitary steps echo off glazed walls

Men of the night-watch are afoot

Unreal city!

Thoughts swirl, turbulence. What spouts

Unbidden, unbeseeched

Ideation in action, tangential arcs

of logic stretching away

ad infinitum

The hazy mist, that master obscurer

Lifts

And, In one clean swoop, reveals

Pristine valleys of convex minimae

Lost worlds, now Unlost

Beckon to the weary traveler

And murmur

Let go, Let go

Let go and sink in this new found light

Of a thousand shining suns.

And Then There Is Apocalyptica

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:54:00 +0000

I have listened to rock. I have listened to classical. But, I never really knew either one, till I listened to Apocalyptica. My flatmate, who is a fan, bought tickets for their show when they toured Minneapolis last week, and I went along out of pure curiosity. Till the day of the concert, I was just too lazy to check out their music, which was perfect in hindsight, as what I experienced was well nigh a revelatory experience. Apocalyptica is a Finnish band, and consists of three cellists and a drummer. The cellists are the alumni of the Sibelius conservatory in Helsinki. They know their Bach and Beethoven alright. But, the staple of the band is instrumental renditions of covers of rock songs, like those of Metallica and a few of their own. The performances are chock full of inspired bravado and instrumental finesse. In a blink, Cellos are transmogrified into electric guitars and then into pianos and flutes. Like Deff Lepard threw about their guitars, Apocalyptica play the cellos raised high over their head, held aloft in a single hand. Then, there is the surreal feel of trademark let-your-hair-down routine where the two lead cellists swirl their long locks in symmetric circles in tandem, while their fingers gyrate on the cellos. This is a terrific show these guys put on, don’t miss out if they tour your city.

Can't Quite Lay My Finger On It

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:52:00 +0000

I have a funny feeling. A few years ago, I had read a book, a twelve volume book. And in the middle of one of those volumes, I had stumbled upon a phrase, a metaphor, which lingered at the back of my mind for months. Now, something happened which brought back that idea, ingrained in a long paragraph in a book long since forgotten. And I want to reread that, desperately. I want to read over that paragraph, savor the feel of the tongue rolling over each word and chew out the crux of that message. The book is A Dance To The Music of Time. And the quote is about the commonest topic of them all, vicissitudes of life.

A Musical Triptych: Panel Two

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:20:00 +0000

Circa Mid 2000s

On the very edge of the same Deccan Plateau is the city lovingly called the Queen of The Dakkhan, Pune. It’s a dainty place swarming with schools of Indian music, and thousands of savants of Hindustani music. In late December, the population of music lovers quadruples. It is the time that Sawai Gandharva is held. If anything deserves to be called the Woodstock of Indian Music, this is it. The festival was started and is carried on with the blessings of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the greatest of them all.

Once it starts in the late afternoon, the festival goes on through the night, ending only with the mellow light of dawn. There is a never ending line of magicians marching onto the stage, and the crowd is the most music literate one you will find. Thousands of aficionados cheering on the greats is a sight I will not forget soon. The venue is the grounds of New English School Ramanbaug and giant tents are erected under which a swarm of people sprawls in relaxed poses. At the last festival I had attended, Pandit Bhimsen’s performance was in doubt, he is old, frail and has a fragile constitution. But, at the end of the third day, he tottered onto the stage and proclaimed, I will never not perform at this festival in honor of my Guru. And then he tested his voice, and before long, I was lost in a mystic journey into an otherworldly musical nirvana. A world populated with soaring pinnacles and grand canyons, with rolling valleys and gurgling mountain streams, with the clash of lightning and the lashing of waves. Only the thunderous applause of an inspired throng alight on their feet made me come crashing down onto the earth.

A Musical Triptych: Panel One

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:15:00 +0000

Circa Early 1990s

In the fort city of Bijapur atop the arid Deccan Plateau, there was once a noble sultan of the Bahmani Dynasty. His name was Sultan Ibrahim, the Adil Shah. Unlike his barbaric ancestors, Ibrahim was a lover of the Arts and a budding musician. During his reign, he transformed into reality his dream of establishing a city devoted to music. His creation was christened NavRasPur, the city of the Nine Rasas of Indian Music. If you happen to wander into the prickly bush covered outskirts of Bijapur, you might stumble upon the mammoth ruins of desolate palaces of fine art, of bramble covered fountains and porticoed courtyards. (See Photo of Sangit Mahal). If you listen hard, you can almost hear the lilting melancholy tunes of the court musicians. But, I recommend that you go there during that one special week, when the Navraspur festival is in progress. I have been there twice, many many years ago..

In that brief annual flowering of Navraspur, the thorny scrubs of the chaparral are burnt to the ground, and replaced by clean mattresses. The wizened stones which were once the pedestal of the Adilshahi durbar are now the stage. And on that stage underneath the glare of bright lights perform some of the most promising Hindustani musicians in India. It is a dreamscape, the milky moonlight, the soothing cold desert winds, the murmured wah-wahs of the crowd and the trance like vocals of the maestros on stage. All this transported me back into the darbars of those kings of yore.

A Musical Triptych: Prologue

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:14:00 +0000

Indian Classical Music is one of those things which make life worth living, a few CDs can keep me contended on my desert island. But there is a very pronounced social stigma associated with it, your appreciation of Raagas is not something to brag about in a posse of teenagers gabbing about Rock , Roll and Metal. So what attracted me to it? Here are three vignettes of the changing appeal and the morphing settings of music, especially of the Indian Classical kind.

Places I Have Been To

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:31:00 +0000

The last three weeks have been full of hectic traveling and unparalleled adventure. Here is a list of all the places I have been to in the past few days.

New York, NY
Poughkeepsie, NY
Mystic Bay, MA
Boston, MA
Lehigh Valley, PA
Annapolis, MD
Baltimore, MD
Las Vegas, NV
Hoover Dam and Black Canyon, NV,AZ
Red Rock Canyon State Park, NV

Travel is fun. But only if you do it with an open mind. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When I travel, I enjoy going local. It is as much about the people and the culture as the places. I like unplanned forays, minimal itineraries, unexpected meetings, and happenstance experiences. Those are the brightest spots you will treasure forever. Here is a sampling

Getting off at the wrong station at 2 AM on the way to Poughkeepsie. And from the last train.
Drifting into the shadiest area in Baltimore, and being accosted by a stranger who demands you help in buying him a cigarette. Locking all the doors and windows after that.
Wandering the streets of Little Italy, listening to lilting Italianate accented English.
Trying to ask directions from Chinese fishmongers in a China Town. And in sign language, English is a alien language there.
Stumbling into many jovial Greek women at an European Cafe in Times Square and hearing praises about Indians and their 'culture'.
Going into a Neon-tube covered Diner, in the heartland of Americana, and eating pancakes and fish and chips, while waitresses croon melodiously in the background.
Stopping at the MIT dome after midnight. To go to the restrooms.
Turning into a oneway, inadvertently, and dodging some angry taxi drivers, coming at you headlong.
Marveling at the Bellagio musical fountains swaying toPavarotti's Con Te Partiro, and then doing the same thing from atop the Eiffel tower, and realizing that they are designed in 3 D.
Stumbling upon a whole patch of brilliantly purple, red and yellow wild desert flowers in the middle of the godforsaken Cactus scrubland of the Mojave desert.
Scrambling for seats in the notoriously busy New York subways, and fondly reminiscing about Bombay, every few hours.
Chatting with the colorful guide at Hoover dam, who kept cracking jokes about the "Damned" River and "Damn" Tourists, and who took us to see the Stairway to Heaven.
And many many more......

Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:55:00 +0000

It is that magical time of the year again. Grass peeps out from underneath that cold shroud of snow. and little rivulets of icemelt run off the sidewalk in tiny jingling cascades. Flocks of geese are flying in formation, heading northwards. On this Saturday morning, the first day of the break, lazy undergrads lie sprawled on deck chairs in their front lawns, soaking in the heat of the new born sun. People walk with a peppy spring in their steps, and a beatific smile on their faces, joy bubbling over. Nature has said, nay, hinted, that the tough times are gone, and some days of rest and rejuvenation in the balmy early days of spring are upon us. Soon, Spring will dawn in all its magnificence, and I would want to be nowhere else but in lovely Minneapolis.

Manic Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:48:00 +0000

A beautiful weekend crammed with hectic fun making is a notoriously difficult thing to recover from. It takes a lot of will power to show up at the lab on Monday morning. And even when you do, there are the inevitable hours of Facebooking, Orkutting, Gtalking and Emailing. One way to avoid this dilemma is to work through the weekend. It may sound drastic, but it isn't so bad if you somehow manage it so that you will never know what you missed. Or else, you should have a set of rituals which make it easier to slide back into the routine, like 3 cups of coffee and a early morning 8 AM class. Or, use the metaphor of entering a swimming pool. You can start off by hesitantly dipping your big toe, jump back and screw your face into a magnificent frown of distaste, then dip your right foot, jump about in agony, and finally totally immerse yourself. It is painful. Or else, you can come running and dive headlong into the cold clammy water, a brief moment of agony, which transforms into obliviousness, is all you need to endure. The choice is ours to make! ( I will make mine after I call up a few friends, clean up my desk, organize my music collection and say hi to colleagues in the neighboring lab :) )

ps. This is the 200th Post on this Blog!

Striving

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:19:00 +0000

bungling, that jump inelastic;
A shiver 'mongst the cherry branches,
grasping, those two furry fingers;
A tiny cloud of disturbed snow on the ground,
swooping, the graceless arc of that striped tail;
The shrunken cherry being reached trembles,
holding on, its grasp of the twig steadfast;
The shaken squirrel peeps up at its quarry,
Unfulfilled longings in desolate winters,
why all this
Striving?

On Hanging Out at Starbucks

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:46:00 +0000

The singular importance of Starbucks in US is that is often treated as an American equivalent of the desi campus kutta; the place where you can drop into and be sure to meet some regulars and some old friends. It negates all those other gaffes, the blatant corporatism, the lack of free internet, the marginalization of local coffee shops and the stubborn refusal to advertise their “short” size ( which has a interesting history : check out this Slate Article.)

In Pursuit of Chapati

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:35:00 +0000

When I was a kid, there was a flurry of programs on TV in which smiling chefs daintily concocted exotic dishes like Salmon en croute with sauteed spinach and dill and mustard cream sauce or Chicken Fricasse and peppered roast pork fillet with apple rissole, coriander carrots and Madeira sauce. Then there was the witty show 'Yan Can Cook' with the tagline "If Yan can cook, so can you!". I was smitten by the exotic dishes on display but one thing nagged at me, What do these people eat these dishes with? How can one have a proper meal without a trace of any variety of bread? It took me many years to realize that only Indian cuisine demands that the main dish be eaten with a side bread. And what a cornucopia of bread varieties! We have rotis, parathas, naans, kulchas, puris, bhakris, bhaturas and the queen of them all, the chapati.

The chapati is made from “kaNeeka” which a moistened unleavened wheat dough. And as anyone who has tried to make a chapati will gloomily attest, it is a road full of pitfalls. First of all, you need to mix exactly the right amount of water to get the required consistency of the dough, then you have to roll the chapatis into something resembling a circle using a “poLapaaTa laaTaNa”, while maintaining a uniform thickness, and as if this was not enough to occupy a normal mind, you have to fold the chapati over itself to create a two layered creature. This is called the “padara”. Assuming you have reached this stage without any major disaster, next you will fry the chapati with the right amount of oil to get a golden brown chapati with a few black crispy speckled patches and a soft aromatic core.

But, to my regret, in the world of graduate students, the chapati is an endangered species. No one has the skills and the time necessary to make an attempt at chapatis. So what do you do to get your quota of Indian bread? You do some import substitution, yes, its that same enlightened philosophy of the Golden Socialist era which led the Indian government to introduce aluminum electrical wires as copper ore is a rarity in India. When I first landed in United States, I was a part of the crack team of roving Indian eyes sent to the local supermarket on a mission to get Chapati lookalikes. Over the past year and a half, many discoveries have been made, all of which can be summed up in one line, “ No Chapati No Cry “. But, in this fight for survival of the species of Indian Grad Students, the following items deserve a vote of thanks.

Bread: It comes in multitudinous variations. White, dark, rye, fruit etc etc. It can be had toasted, or fried in butter in a flat frying pan or untreated.

Tortilla: Pronounced as torteeyaa, this is a gift from the braves of Mexico. It is made from maize or wheat but often has corn in it which lends it an unpleasant sour aftertaste. If you are crazy enough to mix rice, curds, beans and your chapati/tortilla, I will not stop you, but do not expect my enthusiastic approval.

Pita: After that round of applause to the Mexicans, its the turn of the Hellenii. Pita is the closest to the North Indian Roti. It is a Greek bread and has a kangaroo like pouch inside it where you can conveniently stuff all that awkward ugly looking stuff you want to eat. When had as a Gyro with some Teriyaki chicken inside, its yummy, but when had with Paneer Saagwala, I will reserve my judgment.

Pancakes, Waffles and the Like: Decent. But don't gel with Indian cuisine.

English Muffin: Stop right there! Don't you dare have it with anything except as a part of Eggs Benedict. Molten Provolone encrusting a pair of poached eggs sitting pretty on a slice of ham atop a English Muffin. Picture perfect.

Parathas, Rotis, Naans: These imports from India are available in the freezers of Ethnic Indian Groceries. Often they are a bit stale, but, hey, not a big problem.

Chapatis: ....... :) :) :). I will let you in on a lil secret. There is a contingent of Gujurati housewives in USA, whose gift to mankind is the uncooked chapatis they sell for around 20-30c a piece. Store them in the freezer and voila!

Alive, And Very Much So...

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:43:00 +0000

I was walking to the University when my eyes landed on that swathe of brightly lit mall. The thermometer read 10 degrees Celsius and after a week of sub zero cold and biting winds, it was a surreal sight. It is sunny in Minneapolis! Without any conscious thought my feet led me to the gigantic stairs of the porticoed entrance to Northrop Hall. I sat at the base of a fluted ionic column, my back resting against one of its cold concavity, the head titled back slightly and the warm wind rustling through my hair. Thus positioned, I could look the sun in its eye, I could dare it to work its magic before it disappeared beyond those tall buildings at the other end of the Mall. I drifted far away, and marveled at how I was caught up in all the irrelevant minutiae of life, at how the constant worries and pressures of day to day existence trap you into an enclosed artificiality. When you close your eyes and look at the sun, you can see the blood in your eyelids, you can see the meandering dead cells in all their splendor, you almost catch a glimpse of eternity in that blood soaked veil. Life, in all its vividness, it all its magnificence, invites you to experience the rich sensuous joy of being. I caught myself repeating over and over, muttering under my breath Leo Tolstoy's entry in his diary dated November 19, 1889, "...ALIVE, AND VERY MUCH SO..."

Freude! Freude!

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:53:00 +0000

There is something uplifting about Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in D Minor. It awakens dormant feelings and emotions in me and makes me feel perfectly at peace with the world. When you hear this ode to joy, how can you but not be happy?

Freude! Freude!

Tochter aus Elysium,

Freude, schöner Götterfunken.

This symphony has the power to lift you out of the dregs of sorrow, or if you are already happy, to deliver you into even more noble bliss. After hearing it for the twentieth time in the last ten days, I still want to hear it every waking minute of the day.

I pay my humble respects to this masterpiece which has made me laugh and cry, dance and shiver. I had formulated a theory many years ago that the music you listen to, becomes indelibly associated with the circumstances and the situation in which it was heard. That song played during your school gathering brings back fond school memories, the title track of Mahabharat is associated with the whole neighborhood and family crowding in front of the TV set every Sunday morning, the national anthem is those cold foggy mornings spent standing in long lines for the school assembly, the throbbing beats of "We will rock you" morph into morphinic nights on crowded streets during the Ganesh Visarjan nights , the gently grating voice of Bob Dylan is those long hours spent ruminating in my favorite coffee shop, the throbbing rendition of Bhimsen's voice can only recreate a shivering night spent on the grounds of the New English School at the end of which a frail old man held the strings of a thousand hearts in his masterful soaring voice. All these sounds, all those places, all those people I spent them with. Sometimes I am afraid they will slip away from my memory, leaving behind a void, but once associated with a song, the memory remains till you turn into dust. What will the Choral symphony remind me of?

Return of the King

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:14:00 +0000

I am back in Minneapolis. I am happy. No, I am unhappy. No no, I am happy. No no no...
Well, that about sums it all up. September 2007, its not even been a month but it feels like an aeon.

Hyderabad ( Impressions of India-4)

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:00:00 +0000

Hyderabad was a pleasant detour. The city is picturesque and looks like a phoenix of a modern technopolis rising from the ashes of the feudal Nizams.

The city is at its glamorous best at night. Jeweller’s shops in every nook and cranny of Nampali, the old city. They are lit up like soaring flares, the glam-sham of the gold and diamonds luring you inside.
Moti bazaar is a unique experience. The ‘pearl market’ is a dense haphazard medieval quarter of Hyderabad where pearls spill out of every little ramshackle building. White and yellow, king sized or micros, plain or dyed in rainbow colors, its possible to get pearls t suit anybody’s taste. Even fake pearls forced into you hands by brazen streetside hawkers are yours for the picking.
Char Minar, the heart of the city, sits imposingly at a crossroad and lords it over streets where the crowds are so thick you cannot glimpse the ground. The buildings are straight out of a sketch of Baghdad in the Arabian Nights and the hordes of burkha clad ladies, covered head-to-toe in black veils draw you into a secret medievalish fantasy land.
The Mecca Masjid is right next to the Char Minar and is one of the biggest and grandest in India.
Hussainsagar, the Lake of the Sultan, separates the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. It is a shimmering turquoise green reflection of Hydebrabad’s skyline. With a long promenade, landscaped parks and a mammoth statue of Buddha in its center, the lake lords it over the city.
Swarming lemon yellow autorickshaws are a speciality of the city. Buzzing all around you, this cacophony of rickshaw engines going phut-phut-phuta-phut and the swirling yellowish masses all hypnotize you in no time.

Impressions of India - 3

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:14:00 +0000

Things change. It is a law of nature, of fluxions. And looking back at change is one of the most difficult challenges life throws at you. Trivially, you may wonder why you ever liked Hindi remixes while you scold yourself for not listening to Bach sooner. From semester to semester, relationships are ever changing. Some friends are no longer friends, some fast friends are now just friends. Some new friends are made, unexpectedly, hidden facets revealed. A handful of treasured moments are stowed away, a few slip away into nothingness and leave behind a void. Meaningless emptiness coexists with rewarding raison-de-etres. You find a purpose in life and priorities take a roller coaster ride. But out of these chaotic experiences, there are sometimes those moments where you enter a time warp, where you just come back after a year and slip effortlessly into your past life. You become you, just time shifted a year backwards. A haven where you can shrug away the detritus of frayed humanity and come out rejuvenated, reaffirm your purpose in life, and look upon everything with a fresh perspective anchored in constancy. That place is home.

Yere Yere Pausa

noreply@blogger.com (Nikhil) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:22:00 +0000

Impressions of India : Episode Two

The monsoon deluge is on. It rains like it does only in India. The sky darkens from end to end and the clouds hang menacingly. Then it starts raining and doesn’t stop for a long long time. The red mud outside forms messy puddles. People walk on the streets with their trousers tucked up and the sarees held up meticulously in their hands. I sit on the porch having a steaming hot cup of chai and some khari biscuits and feel at one with the world streaming past.