Although, this is my personal blog, I avoid listing my personal issues here, since I know that won’t interest anyone. Yes, Big B can do it generating hundreds of responses each day. But that is another issues, he, being the very good writer and the rare Bollywood celebrity he is, can do so as long as he may wish to. However, this was out of blue and made me lose my emotional composure without holds. It also made me laugh a little while later. I still won’t disclose the core issue here, but the manner it came across me, reminded of the Internet’s prowess and threats both.
While checking out my site stats, I came across a web-designer’s forum this evening, where I used to hang around several years ago, and from where the hit to my blog seemed to have originated. The thread in contention was started by some lady into her mid thirties. The chatter was about teenage web-designers vs oldies. While those in their 30s and above, including this blogger, made deep, thoughtful remarks, the teenagers and 20-some hanged around smiling. Then I fumbled upon something I had spoken of a personal crisis in those days that I thought I had buried way ago. It was not in reality though, and I lost my emotional composure for a good while. The crisis had disrupted my life in those days and made me feel having drunk the toxins like Lord Shiva had during Samudra Manthan (ocean churning), which earned him the sobriquet Neelkanth, the one with a simmering, blue neck.
While surfing through the same thread I had some good laugh a little later, when I bumped in a, then 50 plus and now nearing 60, web-designer’s witty remarks. Hmm…..as they say life comes full circle, so does the Internet, hence be careful in posting your matters online.
I thought this article, written by Pritish Nandy, who has seen Kishore Kumar from close quarters during the latter’s last years, needed to be showcased here. If you enjoyed reading the other article (rather interview) by Nandy I’d linked in my blog earlier, i.e. Hilarious Kishoreda Interview, you should also be reading this one. The earlier one was penned by Nandy in the mid-80s, while starting his journalistic career. In this one, he remembers the undiminishing Kishore Kumar in 2009, and how familiar it all sounds, with KK’s trademark humor and the unparalleled genius had had underlying throughout this story.
Besides, read this one by Lata Mangeshkar as well:
Btw, I was saddened for the first time learning Kishoreda’s desire to sing for a pan-world audience, which I believe he thoroughly deserved since his “Main Hoon Zumroo” yodeling, and unfortunately remained unfulfilled. I’ve argued for long, the music lovers outside India have missed listening not only to him, but also several other greats from Hindi music from the 50s onwards. This was the reason I was not fully appreciative about the recent Oscars to Gulzar and Rehman, even though they fully deserved it. Yes, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)…(hmm…how shortened a name!)….has to follow norms before giving Oscars, but equally stark should also be the facts that not only the above duo did not deserve to be the first Indian composure and lyricist to be there – there is a long list of DAADUs from the 50s onwards that can easily fill that bill – nor they were awarded for their best works – they have done far better things previously.
Should stop this whining for now though, and let you read Nandy’s article on KK.
This mainly concerns with the Indian AdSense publishers, who are yet to receive their first pay-check from Google Inc. Google sends its publishers money via BlueDart, and misses many a recipients in the due course. The reason of this waywardness could be traced in the chaotic urban growth that has taken place in the Indian cities.
For example, my present abode was surrounded by farming lands, when I landed here in 1991. Town-planners had not yet started finalizing maps for my vicinity, and hoards of cows, buffaloes and street dogs could be noticed wandering alongside the few housing colonies built by then. Eighteen years on, and how rapidly my locality has grown, with well-paved roads, mutli-stories, and commercial establishments strewn all over my neighborhood. While the postal department has not forgotten my location all these years, courier services have failed badly in this context.
The niggling issue here is, Google doesn’t allow AdSense publishers to describe their complete address. They would allow a limited space for street1 and street2 information, which does not help much in the Indian scenario. Neither does Google share the contact numbers of its clients with BlueDart, so that they can contact the recipient on failing to locate them. It is left on the AdSense user therefore to start actively pursuing BlueDart from the day payment was issued.
I decided to personally travel half the city away this time to receive my AdSense pay-check from BlueDart’s regional office, after having missed it on two previous occasions. I had to keep a watch on BlueDart’s website from the day my AdSense account added a Payment Issued link. You can remove the “0″ from check (reference) number and use it to trace your shipment on BlueDart’s website. It takes several days before they will hand over the shipment to BlueDart. However, things can move pretty fast once the shipment is mentioned on BlueDart’s website . Unless, you were assured of the delivery by BlueDart at your place, you should start speaking with them by emailing your complete address and contact number, and even try dialing up their support line, if they did not respond you within 12-16 hours. You should then ask if you should personally visit one of their centers to receive the shipment, as it won’t cost you much in time and money in India. I paid roughly a dollar on travelling five kms to receive my 160 odd bucks, and the whole process from starting to speak with them to receiving my shipment took me hardly an hour.
The BlueDart itself is an efficient and competitive courier service and you can hope to get the best support from them. What newbie AdSense users should not do is to start blaming Google Inc. or BlueDart for undelivered shipments, and start actively pursuing the later instead, soon after their payment had been released. Hope this would help a few stranded AdSense users from India.
Image courtesy of Osho International Foundation, New York, USA.
I’ve often wondered, if there is anything we could describe as final truth in life. Whatever we might speak now should have no credibility tomorrow. I’ve seen this happening in my own case. All my past assumptions about this world and my life, which seemed faultless when I made them, have proven incorrect over the years. I had irrefutable reasons to believe in them, and they too seemed helping me at various stages of my life. However, as life passed on – and how steadfastly, intensely and uniformly it did so – so did my ideas about rights and wrongs dilute in air.
But, why should this inability of mine surprise anyone? Don’t we all face similar predicament in life at various stages? This is why many say perhaps they are learners in life until they breathed their last. The nature and expanse of this existence is so vast and so unpredictable, and the human mind so insignificant in comparison, that even to think about the so-called absolute truth is fundamentally flawed.
Even modern physics seems to have noticed this human error, and invented the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics to make its own life easier. (From wikipedia:) “According to Uncertainty Principle, it is, for instance, impossible to measure simultaneously both position and velocity of a microscopic particle with any degree of accuracy or certainty”.
It further adds: “This is not a statement about the limitations of a researcher’s ability to measure particular quantities of a system, it is a statement about the nature of the system itself as described by the equations of quantum mechanics.”
I disagree with the second part though, at the cost of being termed unscientific! The uncertainty, in my opinion, is not due to any of the system’s faults, but due to man-made limitations. The reach of human mind is limited and so is the scope of science, in contrast to the infinite existence surrounding us. In summation, no matter how rigorously one attempted to to understand the fundamentals of life, they won’t succeed in achieving that target ever.
What Osho Spoke about Truth
Now osho’s magical words on truth. I shall quote the following two paras from two different resources to convey Osho’s point of view.
Remember the first preliminary of Atisha: truth is. You need not believe in it for it to be. Your belief or your disbelief is not going to make any difference to the truth. Truth is truth, whether you believe or you disbelieve.
But if you believe in something it starts appearing as true to you at least. That’s what the meaning of belief is: belief means to believe in something as true – you know that you don’t know, you know that the truth is unknown to you, but in your ignorance you start believing, because belief is cheap.
To discover truth is arduous, it needs a long pilgrimage. It needs a great emptying of the mind, it needs a great cleansing of the heart. It needs a certain innocence, a rebirth: you have to become a child again.
Only very few people have ever dared to discover truth. And it is risky, because it may not console you; it has no obligation to console you. It is risky: it may shatter all that you have known before, and you will have to rearrange your whole life. It is dangerous: it may destroy all your illusions, it may shatter all your dreams. It is really going through fire; it is going to burn you as you are, it is going to kill you as you are. And who knows what will happen later on?
The experience of truth is neither a thought nor a feeling. It is a vibrating and a throbbing of all the vital components of your entire being. It is not in you; you are in it. It is your whole being, not just an experience that is happening to you. It is in you yourself, but it is larger than you because the whole of existence is included in it as well.
You ask me for a definition of truth? There is no definition of truth. How can one’s self define one’s self? Pilate asked Christ, “What is truth?” and Christ simply looked at him and remained silent. Truth has no words, no sounds. Truth is an experience of the extreme depths of the self. It is total identification with what is.
Truth is not the opposite of untruth. The opposite of untruth is still untruth. All extremes are untruths. Truth is the mean between extremes. In other words, truth transcends all extremes.
As I see it, mankind has lost all sense of direction. And this has happened because man has chosen investigation of the physical world over exploration of his own inner being. Nothing should be more important to a man than himself. His first and fundamental inquiry should be into himself.
Unless a man knows himself all his knowledge lacks authenticity. In the hands of an ignorant man nothing can be creative, but even ignorance can become a creative tool in the hands of a knowledgeable one. If a man can understand himself, can master himself, only then will his other achievements have real merit. Unless this happens he is simply digging his own grave.
While conceding, most Kishore Kumar fans will find all his songs priceless without any doubt, one still wonders, if KK sang better than himself ever at some point of his own career? Was he more at ease, more in Mastee, more romantic, more sentimental and more transcending ever for his listeners compared to his other times?
While making it amply clear, the following is a personal opinion and carries no academic study as such to back it up, I’d be tempted in believing, Kishore Kumar sang his best from circa 1970 to 1979, more so during the mid-70s, i.e. 72-78. There is something special about his songs from these years – the depth, intensity and flare of his voice, and the intensity of emotions and the romance he sang would often leave you ecstatic. His voice blended well with all kinds of recording methods and instruments being used in those days. He could more easily and more often transcend you, take you into an out-of-world experience through his amazing artistry. He often seemed deviating from the rehearsed compositions only to come back more exciting, overwhelming and pleasing to one’s music sense.
Did events of his life help him sing better during this period? Was he living on a different plateau during this era? He lived single from 1969 to 1976, after Madhubala’s passing away. His marital life with Yogita Bali, which he later called “a joke” in an interview, lasted just for two years from 1976 to 1978. Could it be that he was living a detached and burden-free life in emotional sense? Men often climb up their intellectual and creative summits in around their 40s. This may start from the mid-late 30s until they managed to carry on with their jobs (this may not apply to all cases, though). You can notice most greats giving their best renditions from the late 30s onwards. Bachchan was at his usual best from his mid 30s to mid-40s. Dharampaji’s prime acts, including Sholay, came during his mid-late 30s and the subsequent years. Shahrukh Khan has given some of his most successful movies in the same age-group. Even Rafi and Mukesh seemed to have evolved more after their late 30s. I’ve found their last numbers more audible compared to their earlier works.
Kishoreda’s Best Period (Random videos. No Order Of Songs, Moods And Years Selected)
Same Nokia N72 camera, same angle, same photo-storytelling. Though briefly, it rained heavily last night and I could not stop from uploading these images. Besides there is more about greenery post monsoon. Here, have a look at it.
Time to remember the other golden era legend Mukesh Chand Mathur now. Critics say he sang substantially fewer Hindi movie songs than the other two greats – roughly 900 – however, most of these became immensely popular, and going through the following list might also affirm this belief. Song-after-song, you can see a string of bygone era hits here. I’ve taken all these tracks from Dishant.com, which also suggests, the latter’s well-being will directly affect this thread.
Let me add this more before winding up this introduction. The more I look into the 50s, 60s and the early 70s, the more I find Rafi and Mukesh having better poetry to enthrall audiences. It came down to average during KK’s tenure, more so before his demise – of course, his genius apart from Lata, Asha and RD Burman ensured the interest of music lovers in the Hindi cinema music did not diminish away. But, where is the poetry today? What are they trying to suggest by writing “Bhootni Key” and “Teli Ka Tel” (respect to Gulzar Saheb though, he has adopted well with time). You will find , on the other hand, a whole lot of human stories and emotions studded in the following songs.
The following videos could not make it online in time. The first one is that of the much awaited showers in Gujarat in the second-leg after a yawning gap. It came at a crucial time when the state government had begun measuring the worsening drought in Gujarat, and thus helped defuse the impending water crisis in many areas to an amicable extent, if not fully. The other is that of Ganesh Visarjan Yatra passing through Jodhpur Gam, Satellite in Ahmedabad, where I live.
Unlike Deepavali and Uttaraayan, Holy and Ganesh Chaturthi had always had a low-key presence in Gujarat. But, it all changed since the infotainment boom of the early 90s and the subsequent years. This period consisted of the emergence of television channels, multi-plexes and mall-culture. A cultural nationalism in the from of Hindutva and the BJP’s rise in politics, had also begun taking Gandhinagar and Delhi by storm, thus providing an impetus to the indigenous culture and faith in Gujarat – a welcome sign for many. Holy and Ganesha Chaturthi have since then been celebrated with a greater fervor in my state.
Is there a frontier beyond this physical world? Is there a course to be followed after one had passed away? May be yes, may be not for the deceased, however the journey begins sooner than expected for those around after death. This blog post deals with the same death to funeral recount of events I had been part of since Wednesday evening after one of my female elders in my extended family had passed away peacefully. As the relatives, family members and friends gathered to decide the course until the next morning funeral, life had started rolling in different shades, shapes and metaphors.
Even-though the deceased was elderly and on her last leg of her life, the first hour went into understanding the sudden vacuum created by her passing away. Although foreseen in advance, and to the relief of the deceased and those taking care of her to some extent as well – since they had fears of more painful end than what it transpired to be at the end – the emerging vacuum could still be felt by one and all. Her relation with other elders of my extended family was the chief reason for visiting them until now. That may not be the case in future though.
As people started visiting to pay homage, things gradually began shifting from the deceased to the bereaving ones. Some were meeting after a long break and needed to be updated about each other. There would be intermittent rush to the outside Verandah to receive cellphone calls and conduct unfinished business. An occasional gaze at the style of dressing, way of walking, looks, composure, a lack of it and things of various human interest would also silently creep in. I sat in a corner observing this and the rest with the like-minded and wondered at the manner in which the life handles itself even in/after death.
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 2
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 3
Two past incidents flashed in my mind at this juncture. One took place about two decades ago when I was 20-some years old and standing at a city bus stopover with a couple of young ladies. A funeral procession passed by us on that afternoon, and as the crowd neared I saw coffin lifters turning their faces clumsily to have a dear look on the ladies next to me. Quite embarrassing and awkward for others, not for the bubbling stuff though. They knew very well the meaning of this male gaze, the essence of this male lust, and enjoyed each of those stares, undeterred by the dead body on their shoulders. In doing so, the life had won, and death had been forced to retreat. The fallen, dry leave had been swept aside, and the new sapling given its own space.
The second incident happened in 2001, when Gujarat was struck with a massive earthquake. My city Ahmedabad had its own major scars. Several multi-stories collapsed as if they had been made of cards next to my own locality. More than 700 dead and scores others missing in my city alone (not to speak about the 12000 perished in Kutch at the epicenter). Doors and concrete slabs would be seen precariously hanging from top floors, low rise structures rising at acute angles marring the landscape. Bulldozers, earth diggers working 24 hours, bringing up rubble, rotten bodies and unbearable stench. And men and women walking down roads like zombies amidst all this nightmare. The worst part was, being forced to live on road-sides, since you did not believe into your own dwellings, your own sweet homes anymore. It was like suspecting your own mother, your own caretaker.
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 4
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 5
But, something subtle, yet noticeable started taking place by the third evening. A few odd eateries opened up, streets became more functional and for the first time in a hell that had lasted for 72-hours by now and was promising to continue for weeks on to come, men and women slyly began looking into each other’s eyes once again. This was the clearest of all signs that life was back to its normal course and death had been driven back into hibernation!
During the early morning, I sat by the deceased with three of her kids who are into their 30s and 40s and with their own growing up kids now. I could read the personal loss they just had from their faces. On some rare occasions, death can even leave some close ones crippled for life. I recently found Big B recalling his association with Shashi Kapoor, one of the most lively faces of yesteryear movies, in his own blog, and informing his extended family (blog readers and fans) how Kapoor had been living a reclusive life since his wife Jennifer’s demise. It is painful witnessing such a lasting damage after death. But life goes on as it is, in most other cases though. Mourners would get ready for the funeral on one hand, and young ladies would pass by in their best attires to the nearest Navaratri Celebrations on the other. A somber voice would recite Bhagwadgeeta for the deceased and the bereaving on one hand, and the enchanting sounds of Garba from the nearby Pandals would sink in from the other, thus unplugging life, death, spirituality and romance in one go! It is but, amazing experience! Life at its fullest!
We were at Antim Dham, an AUDA run crematorium in Thaltej area, a couple of hours later. The life after death kept me busy with observations until late that afternoon, and I decided to snap a few photographs to add to my story. What these photographs did not capture though, can be examined here: Four dead bodies lying around, one being cremated and three awaiting for their turn. Men counting hours with a heavy heart and minds elsewhere. Men including this blogger chatting about share-market, politics, movies and cricket. A few young romantic couples sitting intimately in bushes within the crematorium itself, and a group of poor kids begging for money as well. The rest can be witnessed through these jpgs.
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 6
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 7
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 8
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 9
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 10
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 11
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 12
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 13
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 14
Antim Dham Crematorium, Ahmedabad 15
And Finally, The Journey Back From Antim Dham In Ahmedabad, Through The Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway.
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