Coke Studio

Indian classical songs and music seem to live in its own bubble. Whenever I try to visualize them, I can only see people clad in traditional attire, very seriously singing something in the accompaniment of a tanpura. In most cases, the songs are totally devoid of words, they are just some notes. There is an aura of seriousness always hanging about the musicians. Everyone talks about how hard they have to practice and how much dedication they have. Even though I like classical music now, I really don't understand how and why people so ardently admire the songs. I feel utterly bored listening to them and to be very honest they don't sound very nice to me either. I also don't understand why the whole ambiance has to be so boring.

Then I listened to Coke Studio. They looked like the typical MTV teenagers at first, until this girl started signing Miyan ka Malhar. It was so unexpected! The first pre-req of listening to fusion music is to have an open mind. Especially in Coke Studio they fused ancient classical songs and very common folk songs from all over India into something very creative. Rock music like guitars and drums don't really match with our idea of tradition but my point is, why not try something different if it sounds good. The main goal of songs is to sound nice, isn't it?

Miyan ka Malhar

A girl clad in a short dress with motorbike gloves don't look incongruent next to a girl in saree in this Coke Studio set-up. Nor does a Buddhist monk and an Arabian Nights style girl sound crazy in a duet. I very much like traditional values, but I love it more when traditional things go through a test of time, change forms but still keep on charming us. When A.R. Rahman sings a rabindrasangeet in Bengali and when an African musician accompanies a Pakistani singer singing a song almost five centuries old I really feel that music definitely is beyond any sort of barriers.

Indian politics

I had never been as busy as I currently am. For some reason, the days and weeks and months seem to just fly away. I love staying busy, so that's not really a problem, but that dropped blogging to the tail end of my to do list. Also, if all I am thinking about is work, it is difficult to find a suitable blog topic. Agile and scrum methods for software testing or how to test web service calls would not make the right type of articles for this blog. Anyway, what happened yesterday (or rather the night before that) in Indian politics brings me to my first political post for my blog.

Narendra Modi.

I didn't think much about him, to be very honest, I didn't have much information other than he is the current chief minister of Gujarat and that he is a strong Hindu nationalist. After the landslide victory and his party emerging as the single majority after thirty years, I started looking up in YouTube for his interviews. The first one I found was him interviewed by this guy called Arnab Goswami, who apparently can make seasoned politicians stammer. If I didn't watch any other political debate that Goswami had conducted, I would think of him to be a very docile and mellow person because Modi seemed to be the one who was dominating the entire interview. This is not the first time I am seeing any Indian politician speak, I have been brought up in a family that closely follows politics and we discuss it all the time. What struck me about Modi is that - he makes complete sense! His thoughts are clear, his speech is very simple to understand and he speaks to the point (which itself is a great virtue considering politicians).

Bengalis are known to be "seculars". I don't mind being secular if you actually take the word in it's true meaning. Why I put quotes around it is because in so-called "liberal" Bengal, "secularism" has become a synonym for bashing our religion of Hinduism. That is what I object to. For those people who are calling him communal just because he openly projects his religion, I just want to ask a question - is it bad to love one's religion? In the so very democratic country of USA where everyone has the freedom to pursue their own faiths (much more than they have in India) the people are proud of the country being founded on Christian values and they say "In God we trust". Can we do the same in India, ever, without being called "communal"? I see no problem in him bringing Hinduism up front. He is a follower of Swamiji, so why shouldn't he do it? And why should we complain and cringe if he brings up our traditional values? Isn't that what we are proud of, as Indians, our roots? By the way, Wikipedia says that Modi decided to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar. If that is indeed the case, then I hope the unbiased leader is very much visible.

He is a great orator and coming from a humble background, I hope he will be able to better relate to our masses than any other person brought up in a lavish, royal style family. I really like his vision and his way of thinking about the entire country on issues like infiltration from neighboring countries. Have we ever heard any Bengali politician, let alone a non-Bengali one saying "mera Bengal"?

It makes me feel really good when I see the youth getting involved in politics. They are the future so shouldn't they be the ones to take major decisions? It is them who would benefit or suffer based on the current decisions. On Facebook, I see most of my friends and young relatives happy about the change.

Leading India is probably one of the toughest leadership tasks in the world. So we shouldn't be expecting too much out of Modi just too soon. However, if he really does concentrate on economic growth and putting the corrupt politicians in jail, I think we would be on the right track.

PS: I can't help but think of Netaji when these sorts of things happen to our country. What he thought of in 1938 hasn't yet been implemented. Shall we ever get a leader of his stature? Are leaders like him made these days? I wonder...