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 !!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
P.S ... Dr. Strangebeatle, Or How Peter Sellers Outfabbed the Fab 4
There's a lot of hubbub over the recent re-invasion by the Beatles. With the new Rock Band:The Beatles game and the release of the remastered catalogue, the internet's awash with posts related to just about every aspect of the Beatles' lives.
As a lifelong fan (George's my favorite, in case anyone cares), and someone who idolizes Peter Sellers, I can' let this opportunity slip by. So,for your viewing pleasure, here are three of the Beatles' greatest tunes, "covered" by the inimitable Peter Sellers...
A Hard Day's Night
Can't Buy Me Love
She Loves You
As a lifelong fan (George's my favorite, in case anyone cares), and someone who idolizes Peter Sellers, I can' let this opportunity slip by. So,for your viewing pleasure, here are three of the Beatles' greatest tunes, "covered" by the inimitable Peter Sellers...
A Hard Day's Night
Can't Buy Me Love
She Loves You
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
P.S ... The First In A Series Of Pretentious Tagging Posts
With ONLY two days' rest before I start prepping for the finals, there's not enough time for me to cook up a "pwopah" post, so I'll be having fun with some of the interesting 'tag' memes that pop up on various blogs and social-networking sites.
Here's the first, off Minerva, who in turn got it off AJOBA, "N" (two VERY good blogs) and although I have one or two fundamental problems with it which I'll mention at the end, it's a pretty good exercise.
Off we go then !!
THE BBC BOOK MEME
Apparently, the BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the books listed below. Here are the rules:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag a few people you think would enjoy sharing similar information about their book interests.
I've tweaked the concept a bit by adding extra x's depending on how much I like the books....
Here's the first, off Minerva, who in turn got it off
Off we go then !!
THE BBC BOOK MEME
Apparently, the BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the books listed below. Here are the rules:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag a few people you think would enjoy sharing similar information about their book interests.
I've tweaked the concept a bit by adding extra x's depending on how much I like the books....
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen – x (I was very young ,can’t be blamed)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – xx (The phrase “well-thumbed copy” is an understatement)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte – x (The perfect mix of Gothic and sappy)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – xx (Potterhead to the core, I can still remember the 8-hour marathon reads when the new ones came out)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee – xx (A book that’s funny, moving and makes you think of Gregory Peck, my idea of heaven!)
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell – x (Thoughtcrime doesn’t entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death!)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens – x ( I prefer the original, starker ending to the revised, happier one)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – x (The 1933 movie version, with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March, like totally rules)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller –("I’m not ashamed,’ Yossarian said. ‘I’m just afraid.")
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - + (Does 70% count?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – xx (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with Larry Olivier as Maxim, Joan Fontaine as the 2nd Mr. Winter and the spine-tinglingly good Judith Anderson as the housekeeper; the 1940 movie trumps the book)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – xx (Probably the most fruitful purchase of my life,The Hobbit,The Lord Of The Rings and the first two Potters – all for 600 rupees in 2001)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger –x (Seems a lot less depressing at each subsequent re-read)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell – (Does the movie count? I don’t think so)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald – xx (The Jazz Age in it’s greatest interpretation, read with Louis Armstrong playing “Tiger Rag” in the background)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – x (Exhausting, but oh-so-very rewarding)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – xxx (Oh fruddled Gruntbuggly, thy micturitions are to me…; Genius!!!)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky – x (Who hasn’t identified with Raskolnikov at least once in their life)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck – xx (The mind-numbingly stark beauty of the book is brilliantly equalled by John Ford’s masterly film version)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – x (…and”Through The Looking Glass”, who needs LSD when you’ve got Alice)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame – x (What an utterly brilliant children’s book, and what an utterly brilliant TV show)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy –x (Gets more depressing with each subsequent re-read)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens – x (Dickens’ de-facto autobiography)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma-Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – x (Doesn’t make up for the fact that Milne was, to put it lightly, a twit!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell – xx (The book I’ve got 20 copies of, to distribute among random strangers)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – x (I apologize. In the words of Stephen Fry,” Complete loose-stool-water.
Arse-gravy of the very worst kind.”)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – xxx (I read it when I was 15, way too young for it. Thankfully I’ve never completely recovered)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins – x (A personal milestone, the first book I ever pinched from a library!)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel – x (Brilliant, but everyone I’ve recommended it to seems to hate it)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens – x (I seem to have read a lot of Dickens, lucky me!!)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley – x (One of my prize possessions, a First Edition from 1932)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon – x (Heard it as a play on the BBC, read it 4 years later.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – x (With characters named ‘Saint-Amour’ and ‘Escolastica’, I was hooked before I began)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov – (Even if Kubrick,Peter Sellers and James Mason hadn’t done wonders with it, it would still have been brilliant)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas – x (Revenge is sweet)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac – xx (Liberating like nothing else I've ever read)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville – x (The Great American Novel)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens – x (Slightly anti-Semitic, but Fagan is teh man!!)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker – x (I never drink . . . wine)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce – x (Joyce took the English novel and split its head open. Thank heavens for that)
76 The Inferno – Dante – x (I wonder which circle of Hell Machiavelli would’ve been in)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens – x (What can I say…..)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro – x (The dark side of the Wodehouse world, with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins straining to do their characters justice)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert – x (anyone who wants to know what a perfect sentence reads like MUST read Bovary, and take notes)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – xx (The Complete Illustrated Collection, awesomeness!!)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad – x ("The horror! The horror!")
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – xxx (The greatest book written for children. Period.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams – x (I can’t thank my folks enough for keeping me away from Enid Blyton and giving me Watership Down when I was 9)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole – xx (“My valve has closed” – brilliantness!)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas – x (Am I a perve, or are there serious homoerotic undertones in this book?)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare – xx (I finally found out where half of all the English quotations come from)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl – x (Screw political correctness, the Oompah-Loompahs RULE)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo – xxxx (Talk about reading the right book at the right time. I owe a lot to Jean Valjean, Threnardier and the Bishop)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – xx (The phrase “well-thumbed copy” is an understatement)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte – x (The perfect mix of Gothic and sappy)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – xx (Potterhead to the core, I can still remember the 8-hour marathon reads when the new ones came out)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee – xx (A book that’s funny, moving and makes you think of Gregory Peck, my idea of heaven!)
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell – x (Thoughtcrime doesn’t entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death!)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens – x ( I prefer the original, starker ending to the revised, happier one)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – x (The 1933 movie version, with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March, like totally rules)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller –("I’m not ashamed,’ Yossarian said. ‘I’m just afraid.")
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - + (Does 70% count?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – xx (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with Larry Olivier as Maxim, Joan Fontaine as the 2nd Mr. Winter and the spine-tinglingly good Judith Anderson as the housekeeper; the 1940 movie trumps the book)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – xx (Probably the most fruitful purchase of my life,The Hobbit,The Lord Of The Rings and the first two Potters – all for 600 rupees in 2001)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger –x (Seems a lot less depressing at each subsequent re-read)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell – (Does the movie count? I don’t think so)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald – xx (The Jazz Age in it’s greatest interpretation, read with Louis Armstrong playing “Tiger Rag” in the background)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – x (Exhausting, but oh-so-very rewarding)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – xxx (Oh fruddled Gruntbuggly, thy micturitions are to me…; Genius!!!)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky – x (Who hasn’t identified with Raskolnikov at least once in their life)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck – xx (The mind-numbingly stark beauty of the book is brilliantly equalled by John Ford’s masterly film version)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – x (…and”Through The Looking Glass”, who needs LSD when you’ve got Alice)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame – x (What an utterly brilliant children’s book, and what an utterly brilliant TV show)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy –x (Gets more depressing with each subsequent re-read)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens – x (Dickens’ de-facto autobiography)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma-Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – x (Doesn’t make up for the fact that Milne was, to put it lightly, a twit!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell – xx (The book I’ve got 20 copies of, to distribute among random strangers)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – x (I apologize. In the words of Stephen Fry,” Complete loose-stool-water.
Arse-gravy of the very worst kind.”)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – xxx (I read it when I was 15, way too young for it. Thankfully I’ve never completely recovered)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins – x (A personal milestone, the first book I ever pinched from a library!)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel – x (Brilliant, but everyone I’ve recommended it to seems to hate it)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens – x (I seem to have read a lot of Dickens, lucky me!!)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley – x (One of my prize possessions, a First Edition from 1932)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon – x (Heard it as a play on the BBC, read it 4 years later.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – x (With characters named ‘Saint-Amour’ and ‘Escolastica’, I was hooked before I began)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov – (Even if Kubrick,Peter Sellers and James Mason hadn’t done wonders with it, it would still have been brilliant)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas – x (Revenge is sweet)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac – xx (Liberating like nothing else I've ever read)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville – x (The Great American Novel)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens – x (Slightly anti-Semitic, but Fagan is teh man!!)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker – x (I never drink . . . wine)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce – x (Joyce took the English novel and split its head open. Thank heavens for that)
76 The Inferno – Dante – x (I wonder which circle of Hell Machiavelli would’ve been in)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens – x (What can I say…..)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro – x (The dark side of the Wodehouse world, with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins straining to do their characters justice)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert – x (anyone who wants to know what a perfect sentence reads like MUST read Bovary, and take notes)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – xx (The Complete Illustrated Collection, awesomeness!!)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad – x ("The horror! The horror!")
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – xxx (The greatest book written for children. Period.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams – x (I can’t thank my folks enough for keeping me away from Enid Blyton and giving me Watership Down when I was 9)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole – xx (“My valve has closed” – brilliantness!)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas – x (Am I a perve, or are there serious homoerotic undertones in this book?)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare – xx (I finally found out where half of all the English quotations come from)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl – x (Screw political correctness, the Oompah-Loompahs RULE)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo – xxxx (Talk about reading the right book at the right time. I owe a lot to Jean Valjean, Threnardier and the Bishop)
My score : 52/100
Not bad, but there's things fundamentally wrong with the list above. No Wodehouse, no Vonnegut, no Updike, no Bellow, no Poe, and worse of all...no Mark Twain. I mean, come on !! wher's Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer?
Anyhoo, anyone who reads this is automatically tagged, but since that only includes me and a bicycle repairman named Majid, I think some affirmative tagging action is necessary.
Movies Of The Week ; The Hangover,District 9, Eraserhead,Blue Velvet
Music Of The Week, Zubeeda Khanum
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
P.S ... A Post Exam Poem
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
This one doesn't.
Thirty-one days
Drinking cockroach-brew
Was Musi pleased?
No he wasn't.
Now that I've read it
A couple of times
Despite what I said before
This thing actually rhymes.
Cheers !!!
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
This one doesn't.
Thirty-one days
Drinking cockroach-brew
Was Musi pleased?
No he wasn't.
Now that I've read it
A couple of times
Despite what I said before
This thing actually rhymes.
Cheers !!!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
P.S ... Of Infernos
Dame Nellie Melba announced her retirement from singing opera in 1920, announcing she'd go on one final farewell tour. She completed that tour, then another one, then another one and then at least a dozen more "farewell" tours until finally giving her last performance in 1928.
When I wrote the rather hastily written farewell in my last post, I had an inkling that I might have to reconsider. I am in the process of reconsidering now and any and all of these, my "Melba farewell" posts will be in the form of postscripts till the either/or situation of me giving up for good/writing actively again arises.
In The Divine Comedy, Dante mentions the 9 circles of hell, or "Inferno" with the 9th reserved for the most malicious sins imaginable. What he fails to mention is the secret 10th and most viciously horrendous circle "l'interrogatorio" - the examinification.
The 21 days spent preparing for them, the 11 days that I've been busy in them and the 10 days that remain have convinced me that there is no greater torture; mental, physical and indeed gastronomical, that can compare to examinations. And the absolute cherry on the cake is that these aren't even the finals. The mind boggles at what new horrors they will bring.
Ramazan has added another variable to the already tangled up equation making it necessary to mould the gargantuan study schedule around sehr, iftaar and hypoglycaemia. Add to that the nightly ritual of drinking the burnt-cockroach-extract that passes off as coffee in the hostel cafeteria and forces you to shower at least twice lest the steam building up between one's ears turn the already gumbo'd grey matter to an evanescent vapor, and you've got a furture looking as grim as a Weight-Watchers Sunday Picnic.
As half my hostel knows by now, I've rediscovered Qawwali in the last 2 months. With a little help from my friends, and the ever helpful internet, I've managed to gather some 6 gigabytes of brilliant recordings from what have quickly become some of my favorite artists. I was already quite a fan of the Sabri Brothers since childhood, with 3 or 4 of their qawwalis ubiquitous on PTV. But the absolute wealth of stuff I found over the internet has completely blown me over.
Another name that I was familiar with but hadn't had the chance to hear was Munshi Raziuddin Khan - a pre-eminent qawwal from the greatest gharana of them all, the "Qawwal Bacchhon Ka Gharana" from Delhi. When I finally got hold of some of his recordings, they were all that I had expected and much more. The Sabris and Munshi sahib currently share top billing as my favorite Qawwals.
Then there's Nusrat, about whom no words can suffice, so I won't waste any. I'm trying to upload one recording each from these three artists, and if there's no hitch, I hope readers (if any) can get to hear something that's been sustaining me over the last two months.
First, the Sabri Brothers singing Iqbal...
And then there's Nusrat singing Bulleh Shah...
There's nothing that perks me up more than something to look forward to, and thankfully there's plenty of those on the horizon. First of all, there's the mother of all things-to-look-forward-to, a new Dylan album. This time the old coot's gone and confounded everyone by announcing an album of Christmas standards in the vein of Elvis, Bing Crosby and The Beatles. A very un-21st-century-rocker move, but then Bobby's always been a tad old fashioned.
The second, albeit distant glimmer on the horizon is the upcoming Tim Burton production of Alice In Wonderland. I don't think I have to say any more than this.
1. It releases on my birthday next year.
2. Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter.
3.Stephen Fry is the Cheshire Cat......talk about perfect casting.
Even though when the movie is released, I'll be celebrating my birthday wearing 20 kgs of kit, doing one-armed push ups in a muddy ditch somewhere in PMA, the very thought that I'll have Alice to come home to will be a more than welcome birthday gift.
Finally, a word about the Wodehouse charity appeal that I posted 8 months ago. A ton of thanks to all the marvelous friends and relatives who've been generous beyond belief, you know who you are. With your ultra-Pickwickian benevolence, you've managed to a) Bring me to within 10 books of completing my Wodehouse collection, and b) make me your slave for life. I'll try and start finding ways to repay all those who've sent books, or directed me to bookstores or encouraged me, just as soon as my exams are done....
Finally, Munshi Raziuddin and Sons ...
Songs Of The Past Two Months, "Uss Bewafaa Ka Shehr Hai",Naseem Begum, "Can't Buy me Love",Peter Sellers
Movies Of The Past Two Months, "Aguirre:The Wrath Of God","Fitzcarraldo","Encounters At The End Of The World",Werner Herzog.
Books Of The Past Two Months, Don't ask.
When I wrote the rather hastily written farewell in my last post, I had an inkling that I might have to reconsider. I am in the process of reconsidering now and any and all of these, my "Melba farewell" posts will be in the form of postscripts till the either/or situation of me giving up for good/writing actively again arises.
In The Divine Comedy, Dante mentions the 9 circles of hell, or "Inferno" with the 9th reserved for the most malicious sins imaginable. What he fails to mention is the secret 10th and most viciously horrendous circle "l'interrogatorio" - the examinification.
The 21 days spent preparing for them, the 11 days that I've been busy in them and the 10 days that remain have convinced me that there is no greater torture; mental, physical and indeed gastronomical, that can compare to examinations. And the absolute cherry on the cake is that these aren't even the finals. The mind boggles at what new horrors they will bring.
Ramazan has added another variable to the already tangled up equation making it necessary to mould the gargantuan study schedule around sehr, iftaar and hypoglycaemia. Add to that the nightly ritual of drinking the burnt-cockroach-extract that passes off as coffee in the hostel cafeteria and forces you to shower at least twice lest the steam building up between one's ears turn the already gumbo'd grey matter to an evanescent vapor, and you've got a furture looking as grim as a Weight-Watchers Sunday Picnic.
As half my hostel knows by now, I've rediscovered Qawwali in the last 2 months. With a little help from my friends, and the ever helpful internet, I've managed to gather some 6 gigabytes of brilliant recordings from what have quickly become some of my favorite artists. I was already quite a fan of the Sabri Brothers since childhood, with 3 or 4 of their qawwalis ubiquitous on PTV. But the absolute wealth of stuff I found over the internet has completely blown me over.
Another name that I was familiar with but hadn't had the chance to hear was Munshi Raziuddin Khan - a pre-eminent qawwal from the greatest gharana of them all, the "Qawwal Bacchhon Ka Gharana" from Delhi. When I finally got hold of some of his recordings, they were all that I had expected and much more. The Sabris and Munshi sahib currently share top billing as my favorite Qawwals.
Then there's Nusrat, about whom no words can suffice, so I won't waste any. I'm trying to upload one recording each from these three artists, and if there's no hitch, I hope readers (if any) can get to hear something that's been sustaining me over the last two months.
First, the Sabri Brothers singing Iqbal...
And then there's Nusrat singing Bulleh Shah...
There's nothing that perks me up more than something to look forward to, and thankfully there's plenty of those on the horizon. First of all, there's the mother of all things-to-look-forward-to, a new Dylan album. This time the old coot's gone and confounded everyone by announcing an album of Christmas standards in the vein of Elvis, Bing Crosby and The Beatles. A very un-21st-century-rocker move, but then Bobby's always been a tad old fashioned.
The second, albeit distant glimmer on the horizon is the upcoming Tim Burton production of Alice In Wonderland. I don't think I have to say any more than this.
1. It releases on my birthday next year.
2. Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter.
3.Stephen Fry is the Cheshire Cat......talk about perfect casting.
Even though when the movie is released, I'll be celebrating my birthday wearing 20 kgs of kit, doing one-armed push ups in a muddy ditch somewhere in PMA, the very thought that I'll have Alice to come home to will be a more than welcome birthday gift.
Finally, a word about the Wodehouse charity appeal that I posted 8 months ago. A ton of thanks to all the marvelous friends and relatives who've been generous beyond belief, you know who you are. With your ultra-Pickwickian benevolence, you've managed to a) Bring me to within 10 books of completing my Wodehouse collection, and b) make me your slave for life. I'll try and start finding ways to repay all those who've sent books, or directed me to bookstores or encouraged me, just as soon as my exams are done....
Finally, Munshi Raziuddin and Sons ...
Songs Of The Past Two Months, "Uss Bewafaa Ka Shehr Hai",Naseem Begum, "Can't Buy me Love",Peter Sellers
Movies Of The Past Two Months, "Aguirre:The Wrath Of God","Fitzcarraldo","Encounters At The End Of The World",Werner Herzog.
Books Of The Past Two Months, Don't ask.
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