...Of A Week In Rehab

A week ago, when my finals were cut short mid-way and I was sent home because of the deteriorating security situation, I was none too pleased. This was in contrast to most of my classmates who thought that after a tough and slightly dispiriting start to the exams, a break was just what the doctor ordered.I however, didn't like a break in the tempo that I had grudgingly built up over the previous 20 days or so, plus I thought of a 10 day hiatus as only dragging the misery to beyond stretching point. On top of that, the elaborate plans I'd made for the post-exam holidays were in danger of getting mangled, most importantly the biannual pilgrimage to Lahore.

Therefore, I came home grumpy and planned to stay that way for the duration. There was, naturally no plan to study the first few days, and I was hard-pressed to come up with something to do over these ten days. I knew I could read two or three books over the next 5-6 days, but 20 days buried nose-deep in books had put me off the printed word for a while. Going out was out too, with every day bringing news of further bloodshed.

That's when I decided to go on a binge.

I have been downloading movies incessantly over the past six months or so, and with supply dwarfing demand, a huge backlog had built up. Plus I had several new ones on download too. The problem I have with movies is the same one Bill Bailey has with jokes, I lose commitment and tend to bail out on them. I have stacks upon stacks of DVDs, each chock-full of stuff I've downloaded but haven't had the time or the perseverence to sit through them. This was the perfect time however, to take the plunge. I substituted my 18-hour study sessions with 18-hour movie marathons, re-watching old favorites and discovering new ones. It is safe to say that I have absorbed more genius (and done more irreparable damage to my eyes) in the last 5 or 6 days than I've done ever before.

Now, as I head back to my hostels to get back to the nitty gritty, I can take stock of all the stuff I've watched and congratulate myself on so successfully flushing all the medical nonsense of the last 20 days clear out of my head, leaving me fresh and ready to finish the task ahead.

Here then, in a semi-organized form, is a list of everything I've watched in the last 6 days.If anyone wants a copy of any of these, I'd be very happy to oblige, after my exams are over, of course.

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

1. House MD, Season 6, Episodes 1-5

2.Parks & Recreation, Season 2, Episodes 1-5

3.Up

4.Coraline,Henry Selick

5.The Nightmare Before Christmas,Henry Selick

6.Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea,Hayao Miyazaki

7.Mien Liebster Friend-"My Best Friend",Werner Herzog

8.La Salaire De La Peur-"The Wages Of Fear",Henri-Georges Clouzot

9.The Battle Of Algiers,Gillo Pontecorvo

10.Do Bigha Zameen,Bimal Roy

11. The Apu Trilogy,Satyajit Ray

12. Awara,Raj Kapoor

13. The Usual Suspects,Bryan Singer

14.Glengarry Glen Ross,James Foley

15.Network, Sidney Lumet

16.Double Indemnity,Billy Wilder

17.High Noon,Fred Zinneman

18.Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny,Liam Lynch

19.A Fish Called Wanda,Charles Crichton and John Cleese

20.Ryan Giggs-True Red

21.Barton Fink,The Coen Brothers

22.Fargo,The Coen Brothers

23.O Brother! Where Art Thou,The Coen Brothers

24.Airplane, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker

25.Observe And Report,Jody Hill

26.Office Space,Mike Judge

27.The Apartment,Billy Wilder

28.My Man Godfrey,Gregory La Cava

29.The Third Man,Carol Reed

30.Rear Window,Alfred Hitchcock

31.King Kong(1933),Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoesdack

32.Frankenstein,James Whale

33.Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956),Don Siegel

34.Cool Hand Luke,Stuart Rosenberg


Cheers, and do spare a prayer for my exams !!

....Of Splendid Isolation And Selfish Indulgences

 One of the (many) perks of having a blog with limited readership is that I can indulge myself without having to worry about alienating/impressing/provoking a sizable number of readers. I'm sure the 4 or 5 people who do occasionally glance at my blog won't mind if I post what are quite possibly my three favorite Youtube videos of all time. Actually it's two videos,with one split in the middle.

  First off, here's Ustad Salamat Ali Khan singing one of Baba Ghulam Farid's kaafis in Raag Sindhi Bhairvi. What makes this video priceless is first of all the performance, with Ustad sahab clearly enjoying every wonderful note and Shaukat Ali Khan giving some inspired accompaniment on the tabla. But the icing on the cake is the audience...Ashfaq Ahmed sahab, Shahnaz Begum, a very young Pervez Mehdi, Ghulam Ali, Rajab Ali, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan and a clearly emotional Masood Rana....and the way they respond to every nuance, every embellishment of the performance. I've been watching this performance at least once a day,every day for the past two months, and I have no plans of quitting.






Next comes another classical performance, from the same TV show;Nikhaar, that used to air during the mid-seventies from PTV Karachi,hosted by Ashfaq sahab and with the choice of audience just as inspired as the performer. The performers are the incomparable Ustads Amanat Ali-Fateh Ali Khan singing "Kab Aao Ge Tum Aao Ge", accompanied once again by Shaukat Ali Khan on Tabla before an audience comprising Ashfaq Ahmed sahab, Asha Posley, Ghulam Ali,a very animated Shaukat Ali, Nasir Kazmi, Qateel Shifai and Mallika Pukhraj. The contrasting styles of the two brothers fuse perfectly to define the Patiala andaaz of gayeki. Another bit of essential daily viewing, this video is made more poignant by the fact that this was Ustad Amanat Ali Khan's last recorded performance before his very untimely death. One can only imagine what more magic these two brothers would've created together, given the chance....

بہار ...

پھر لہو رنگ ہوئی ہے میرے گلشن کی بہار 

آگ برسی  ہے پھر اس باغ  کی  سیرابی کو 

برق اتری ہے ہر اک بام سے، ہرغنچے کا لب

پھر  سے  دہرانے  لگا   قصّہ  بیتابی  کو

لالہ  و  گل  کا  یہ رنگ ،  نوحہ  سرا  یہ  بلبل 

یہ  سماں  اہل  چمن  کے  لئے  نیا  تو  نہیں 

لیکن  اس درد  کا  یوں  حد سے گزرتے جانا 

 روز  اک  سروِ  قد   افروز  کا  گرتے  جانا

یہ تو ممکن ہے کہ اس درد سے  بے حس کردے

لیکن  اے اہلِ  چمن ،  بے حسی  دوا   تو   نہیں

اب کے  جس  طو ر سے  یہ  خونیں گھٹا اٹھی ہے 

یہ  تو  ممکن  ہے ذرا  دیر   سیاہی  ہو  گی

پر  نہ  گھبراؤ ، بہت جلد اسی   باغ  سے  ہی

لاکھوں  قندیلیں  لئے،  اہل  چمن   ابھریں  گے

بلبلیں پھر سے سنائیں گی وہی پیار کے گیت
دامنِ شب پہ ستاروں کے گہر بکھریں گے

اور ان سب کی ضیا، درد کے ماروں کے لئے 

ایک  بے  داغ  سویرے  کی   گواہی   ہو گی 

 

P.S ... The Map To The Goldmine

I wasn't much of a believer in Manna descending from the sky these days, but as The Monkees sang, I'm a believer now. Around two months ago, I stumbled on a goldmine, and not just a tiny prospect up in the mountains where ages of prospecting would ultimately point fruitless. Oh no, what I found was the mother lode to end all mother lodes.

It's called Spotify, and while a complete description can be found here and here, the brief rundown is that it's a streaming music player that lets you play tracks from an immense library of artists and albums, and when I say immense, I mean GINORMOUS!!!

With legitimate deals with the record industry, Spotify lets you access the complete catalogues of almost any artist, from the Stones to Neil Young to Hank Williams to Fela Kuti to ..erm, well to almost anybody I can think of. This in itself is ultrabrilliant, but what clinches the deal for me is that spotify boasts almost the COMPLETE EMI PAKISTAN CATALOGUE !!!!

Starting from the early 50's, there are pristine, high quality recordings of artists as diverse as Maai Bhaagi,the Sabri Brothers, the Fringe Benefits, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, Naseem Begum and so forth. In all, 170 of the 206 artists currently listed at EMI Pakistan are at Spotify. The number of old favorites I've heard and the hours and hours of brilliant new music I've discovered is, quite literally the best thing that happened to me since I discovered Dylan.

But as with all treasures, there's a catch. In this case, Spotify is currently only available in  Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. Although they've promised to make it available over most of Europe and the States pretty soon, the complex licensing issues mean that we can't expect it in Pakistan any time soon.....which is a MAJOR bummer.

However........

I happen to have a way, which it's taken me quite a lot of time and effort to find. It's involved a lot of false starts, frustration and some unexpected help from those guardian angels who lurk quietly in internet forums. It's a slightly convoluted way, and not entirely legal, but for someone who considers p2p an integral right of all those willing and perfectly law abiding folk who can't access their favorite stuff legally through no fault of their own, my conscience is clear.

So if anyone's willing to spend 15 minutes following the trail across a bunch of websites and downloads that ultimately leads to the treasure that is Spotify ,here we go ...

1.Go here, and follow all the pretty simple instructions while you sign up, but here's the first pair of catches;
      Only fill the compulsory fields in the form.
      Follow ONLY the first 5 instructions on the page.

2. This will direct you to the download page where you can download the actual piece of Spotify software, which you install on your PC like usual.

3.Once Spotify's installed, it's practically ready to use, but there's another catch.
     What we've done is registered ourselves as French residents so we can access Spotify, however the software isn't as easily dupe-able as that. It has a built in code that detects the country the user accesses it from. Once it has detected that the user is infact from outside France, it rather goodnaturedly assumes that he has just popped out of France on a trip and will be back in a couple of days. However, this innocent assumption can only be kept up for two weeks. If two weeks after the first login, the user hasn't logged in once from a French IP, the software is blocked/

4. To overcome this is the slightly harder part of the trail, if only for the neophyte. Go here, and click where it says "Download Now For Windows" to download UltraVPN, while you create your account from the link given immediately below the download link. Setting up an account is pretty simple.


5.Once you've downloaded and installed UltraVPN, you'll get a desktop shortcut. Clicking on it will open the program in the bottom-right Taskbar. Right click the icon and click "Connect". This opens a window where you enter the username and password you selected in (4)

 6.It takes an average of about 50 seconds for UltraVPN to connect. What it does is to re-route all your internet data through a server in....you guessed it, France.

7. Once it has connected, you open Spotify, enter your username and password and login, thus bypassing the country detection. After you have logged on, just right-click the UltraVPN icon again and Disconnect.

8. All you have to do is to connect through UltraVPN just ONCE every two weeks, you can login normally otherwise.

9. Enjoy.

10. To a techie, all that I've related above is probably as simple as ABC, but for everyone else, I've tried to simplify it as much as I can so it doesn't take more than 15 minutes to set the whole thing up, and you can trust me on this.... it's a hundred thousand times worth the 15 minutes.


If there's any problem, query or difficulty, please write it in the Comments....although I'm afraid I won't be able to reply for the next month or so what with the exams, but if you're patient, I'll get down to it as soon as I get done.

Cheers !!!

P.S ... Tagging Meme 2.0

  With only ten days before the start of my final exams, things are starting to look very desperate indeed. I'll be heading back to the dorms in a day or two, when the real squeaky-bum time will begin, but I just have time to post another of the listy-taggy posts that I was tagged in over the past few days. This one comes from a friend off Facebook, so most of my contacts there would be tagged too. Here we go..

Okay, here are your instructions.

(1) Turn on your iPod or MP3 player(or the music library on your PC). Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(2) Write down the first 25 songs that come up, by artist and song title
(3) NO editing/cheating, please!
(4) Choose an appropriate number of people to be tagged.
(5) It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.

1.Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen.
2.Dil Ka Bhanwar Kare Pukaar, Mohammad Rafi
3.Mr. Henry, Tom Waits
4.If You Want Me, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
5.It's Not Easy, Walter Horton
6.If You're Mean To Me, Billie Holliday
7.Na Jaao Saiyyan, Geeta Dutt.
8.Lovey Dovey Lovey One, Earl Hooker and Junior Wells
9.A Lyin' Woman, Phillip Walker
10.Whiskey And A Good Time Blues, Big Bill Broonzy
11.Heartbeat, Buddy Holly
12.Lotta Love, Neil Young
13.Why Women Go Wrong, Lonnie Johnson
14.(You're So Square)Baby I Don't Care, Buddy Holly
15.What's The Matter With The Mill, Muddy Waters
16.Zindagi Ke Safar Main, Kishore Kumar
17.Nothing Was Delivered, Bob Dylan
18.Blind Child, Levon Helm
19.Mera Saya Saath Hoga, Lata Mangeshkar
20.Ride On, Louisiana Red
21.All By Myself, James Booker
22.Tangay Wala Khair Mangda, Masood Rana
23.Road To Peace, Tom Waits
24.Mujhe Tum Nazar Se Gira To Rahe Ho, Mehdi Hasan
25.Here We Go Again, Norah Jones/Ray Charles

-------------------------------------------------------------

Well well, that's quite interesting. The two or three things I can see in the list are,
1) 9 of these songs are blues songs, ...(Aizaaz FTW!!!)
2) Only one song each from the entire discographies of Springsteen, Dylan and Neil Young; while Tom Waits gets a pretty respectable 2.
3) Four classic Bollywood tunes,while only two from Pakistani cinema.... major collection overhaul needed.

All in all a slightly surprising selection, but if you cast a line for 25 out of..let me see, 8911 songs, you're bound to come up with a pretty eclectic mix. I'm gonna do some affirmative tagging on my blogroll and let's hope they find time to compile their lists and tag back...and while you're tagging, please do say a little prayer for my exams.

Cheers !!