NYC

Of the many things that i admire in New York City three stand out. NYC Subway, American Museum of Natural History and Central Park.

Jagjit Singh

More than two decades ago, even before i understood what a ghazal was, i was attracted to the voice of Jagjit Singh singing the title song of Neem Ka Ped, a serial on Doordharshan. I have always liked songs that have touched me emotionally and even though i didn't understand a word of it, i felt very close to the song. Later as my life took me to the north of Vindyas i learnt more about Jagjit and other ghazal singers and ghazals.

This morning when I saw the news that Jagjit singh passed away, it felt very sad. I have listened to songs from Saath Saath and Arth (they were in the same cassette) many times over during the time when i was at IIT Kanpur.

Candid Conversation

The following is a conversation Amrapali heard today at the post office.

Woman: What Candy is that?

Man: The last one.

Woman: I would rather let you have it than me.

Man: Me too.

Sivaji on BIG screen

I chanced upon this article on The Hindu where the author had the following description of Sivaji

"But, it's something else to behold this actor on the big screen. In the living room, his out-sized emoting shrunk to the size of the television monitor, he can often appear ridiculous to the modern eye. To see him up there is to see a lion freed from the confines of a cage and in its natural habitat. It's where he belongs. The big screen so easily accommodates his big acting."

I couldn't agree more.

Ilaiyaraja #3: Productivity chart

Raja used to score music for lot of movies at the same and still could give lot of great songs. In these days when a single song gives a music director a few years of film music career, raja would multiple hits from many movies released about the same time. I am not saying all the songs would be good, but at least 50% of them in each movie would be really good.

As he started becoming more and more popular starting from 1976, the year Annakkili was released he started scoring more and more movies each year. I wanted to plot this in a chart and that is what you see below.

The last year he had one of his multi film hits around same time was in 1993. This is when all the so called big banner directors deserted him. By this time he had already scored music to ~ 600 films. The right hand side scale shows the cumulative # of movies, which hits a plateau around the same time. In my opinion there is a distinct sound that appears in his songs for a given period of time, which is approximately 2-3 years, after which you will see a paradigm change in the way he scores the music. More about this later with examples.

I recently discovered some great blogs that analyze Raja's music thread bare. You can see them on the side bar amongst the blogs I follow.

Rahul Dravid

There is an excellent interview with Rahul Dravid at Cricinfo about slip catching. Rahul Dravid is one of the greatest cricketer ever to have played for India. I have always felt that he was always under appreciated and it made me sad that he has not been considered for the 2011 WC squad. He has done everything that has been asked of him in ODI. The last question of the interview aptly brings out the true personality of Rahul.

Do you remember all 200 catches?
I can't remember every one off hand, but if you show me the scorecard I will remember.

I have no doubt that he will sure be able to point out the exact context of the catch.

Even though there is lot of criticism about money having invaded cricket in the last two decades, but it has also given some of the most committed students of the game in Indian cricket. To name a few, Sachin, Rahul, Saurav, MS Dhoni.

Ilaiyaraja #2

This past week I was watching Uthiri Pookkal, a movie directed by J Mahendiran based on a story by Pudumaipithan. The last time I watched this movie was in 1987 or 1988, i don't remember clearly. It was shown on Doordharshan as a Friday late night film. I vaguely remembered the climax. The movie begins with a title song by Ilaiyaraja " Hey indha poongathu". You can see this song here via You Tube.

I heard this song for the first time in my life and it affected me deeply. I generally like songs that Ilaiyaraja sings. He brings lot of emotion into the song and a sense of real worldness to them. You might have noticed it in the version of Thenpandi Seemayile from Nayagan that he has sung. Uthiri Pookal is an absorbing movie and as i continued to watch, later in the movie Ilaiyaraja has used the tune of the above mentioned song as an humming background by SP Sailaja. The humming starts at 2:27.

I am finding it very difficult to get this humming out of my mind since last week. I was able to find it on Youtube.

I personally like music of the kind that leaves me wanting/yearning for more. Like "Sili hawa choo gayi" from Libaas by RD burman or the innumerable Ilaiyaraja songs.

It really pains me to a great extent that Ilaiyaraja never received national award in his first 7 years of music direction.

I have been wanting to write my very subjective interpretations of Ilaiyaraja's music and what it did to me when I was growing up and what it does to this day.

I hope to meet him one day and ask him about some of his music that literally leaves me in tears like the one above.

Roger Federer: (Un)arguably the GOAT

Whenever I see an article that says RF is Greatest of All Time (GOAT), there is always a qualifier "arguably". I don't know what else the guy can do. Anyway I myself don't believe in GOAT, but he is the best I have seen since I started watching tennis 25 years ago. There is also this constant comparison of him and Sampras, but I think that is a wrong comparison. The person he should be compared with is the great Ivan Lendl. In the chart below I show how Federer compares with Lendl, Sampras and his greatest rival, Rafael Nadal. Though i personally don't like Nadal kind of play, I like the intensity he brings in to the match.

In the chart below, winning percentage(# of matches won/total matches played) in a season is plotted vs the year (Year is normalized to reflect the total year they played as professional tennis players). Notice the longevity of Lendl at the top of his game, only partly matched by Federer. Federer's greatest years were undoubtedly 2004-2006 when he was always above 90%. Only Lendl has 5 years above 90%. Federer may not be able to match that, but he is the only player apart from Lendl to have lost the Year end # 1 ranking and regain it, Federer doing it this past year.

It is interesting to note that Sampras never had even a single year with winning % above 90. Clearly Federer is towards the end of career as per the historical data shown in the chart. I only hope Nadal curve doesn't fall of precipitously.

As somebody noted, since 2004 Australian Open, Federer has lost in a Grand Slam event only to the eventual winner. I hope he breaks the 286 weeks record as #1 currently held by Sampras. Of his 62 titles, 16 are GS and 16 are Masters.

I hope I can get to the US open this year to watch him play.

Central Park, NY

I have never driven in NY city, but this time during the thanksgiving weekend when my friends were here, we drove to the city and it was very good. I was able to take a picture of the upper east side buildings in the evening twilight from central park and i really liked the picture.

Top Down Approach: Never Works

I read this very nice quote from the book of Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond in her website "Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable, or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers" which is from her book The Right to Learn

Meeting KJ Yesudas

As i was waiting at Gate D10 at LaGuardia Airport, i thought I will go and get a cup of coffee. While waiting in the line to pay for my coffee I saw KJ Yesudas walking with his traditional white dress and i smiled at him and he smiled back at me. I couldn't resist and went and talked to him. Since i had to pay for my coffee, he told me that he is at gate D6. After paying for my coffee, i went and talked to him.

It was a very pleasant conference. I told him that his is a "theiveega kural", meaning divine voice. He was curiously asking me about my research related to the hard disk drive. When i told him currently we are working on a problem he commented that in science a problem is not the problem in the manner in which we refer to it in everyday life, but rather a problem whose solution is not yet there.

He said that it was mostly God's gift that he is able to sing. He was telling me about the meaning of word "kadavul".

Of the many songs i have in my collection, i could only mention the following three to him

1. Theivam thantha veedu
2. Mandhiram idhu mandhiram
3. Neeyum bommai, naanum bommai

Actually I told him about a "sirappu thenkinam" i heard when I was a 8 years old on vividh bharathi, in 1982 and referred to him about a comment he made about the song that his son vinod likes. He told me it was "En iniya pon nilave".
Usually i don't fly out of LaGuardia, as the flights invariably get delayed there. I am thankful that I did chose LGA this time around.

First Email

This is our one year olds' first email, sort of :-)
eeeeeeefvf nfffffffmhy khhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
dcbnffffffffffffffffffvvvvvvvnv
PS: Actually he was helping his mom when she was writing one.

Existence

Sri Govinda Bhagavad Pada: What brings you here?

Sankara: I come to you seeking refuge, to resolve the enigma of existence.

Sri Govinda Bhagavad Pada: With this mortal body how can you cross the ocean of existence?

Sankara: 'Body' is subject to birth and death, not Atman. The unreal has no existence, the real never ceases to exist.


(From the movie Adi Sankaracharya by GV Iyer)

fir chhidee raat baat fulon kee

I have always felt that Khayyam's music sort of pinches my heart like no other music. Only some ilayaraja songs do that to me, but most of Khayyam's songs do it. Recently I have been continuosly listening to the song Phir Chiri Raat baat poolonki. I really like the flowers on the hair of women. To me it is not something that is symbol of some status. To me it is very etheral. I like smells of things and people and flowers.

I stay in a place where i can't get jasmine to be handed over to my wife. What a pity? Till then

फिर छिड़ी रात बात फूलों की
रात हैं या बरात फूलों की

फूल के हार, फूल के गजरे
शाम फूलों की, रात फूलों की

आप का साथ साथ फूलों का
आप की बात बात फूलों की

फूल खिलते रहेंगे दुनिया मी
रोज निकलेगी, बात फूलों की

नज़ारे मिलाती है, जाम मिलते है
मिल रही है, हयात फूलों की

ये महकती हुयी गजल मखदुम
जैसे सेहरा मी, रात फूलों की

Roger Federer and discipline

Yesterday I saw one of the most over-hyped tennis match between John Isner and the player I admire the most, on par with Ivan Lendl, Roger Federer. This guy Isner comes with his 6'9" size and the only thing he does is serve. What irritated me the most is in his post match press conference he says, after the first set Federer lifted his game. Excuse me. I felt very insulted. Isner didn't even attempt a few shots yesterday, with a sense of arrogance, at least in my opinion, and after he got the first set in tie break he had the audacity to comment that Federer lifted his game.

The thing i admire the most about Roger is the kind of goals he seem to set during the course of the match. Imagine in the kind of situation that he was yesterday, he decided not to make any errors (unforced errors) and he precisely did that for the 2nd and 3rd set. I can write many posts on just his discipline. I was really pained to watch him play Rafa at French Open this year because he was making all kinds errors on his fore hand. Anyway, another of his amazing quality is his ability to move on.

I really want to meet him and sit down and talk to him.

I just love this guy and of course his tennis.

August 28th

The Pleasure of finding things out

I happened to chance upon this classic Feynman documentary made by BBC in 1981. It is a five part program. I am providing link to each of them below.

• Part 1
  
  
• Part 2
  
  
• Part 3
  
  
• Part 4
  
  
• Part 5
  
  

Sachin Tendulkar

I think Sachin just played his last test innings at Lord's cricket ground. It is a sad thing that he might retire without having scored a century on this ground. Not that people who have scored a century here have all been greats. It is something that adds to your resume, so to speak.

I think he might also retire without ever having won a cricket world cup. I really feel sad for him.

At the same time, I feel that he should retire sooner. Today he should have stayed. Both the innings he was lbw. I didn't see the match, I wonder whether he tried playing across the line.

ghuffa huffe

It was sometime in '83 or '84 during which period i was in 5th or 6th standard. The movie had been released in Apsara theater in Vellore. Ravi and Ram had seen the movie. Reji Paul had seen it twice (his father is a trained Karate expert). Santhu of course had seen the movie, as did so many others. In school I couldn't participate in any discussions of how great the training was and how we all could become defenders.

Finally appa let me and my brothers to go and watch the movie. There was a huge rush for the movie. And finally I too had seen it. I remember practicing the water carrying training, with out the knife, of course. It was really painful to keep the fingers bent at their tip like they do in these kung-fu movies. The sounds of 'ghuffa huffe' used to fill the house. It was supposedly practice.

This past weekend, I purchased my first DVD in life, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Gordon Liu who plays San Ta in this movie was Pai Mei in Kill Bill. I learnt that QT is a big fan of Gordon Liu and he wanted him badly in the Kill Bill movies. I am a big fan of Quentin Tarantino.

I also came to know another link between myself and the 36th. One of producers Run Run Shaw, of the Shaw Brothers, sponsors a lecture series at Stony Brook University where I did my Ph.D.

This DVD is going to be one of my prized possessions.

Listless Federer

It was really sad watching Federer play against Nadal today at the French Open. Today's match resembled the matches between Venus Williams and Serena Williams. I felt that the fans deserved a match at the least.

Imagine more than two-thirds of Federer's unforced error were fore-hand errors. That sort of sums up his game today. He rarely lobbed the ball. You can't keep Nadal on the baseline. Atleast not in his living room, Phillippe Chatrier, that is.

To be fair to Federer, Nadal really didn't win the match today. It was given to him on a platter by Roger. As a fan of Roger it was really sad to watch him play this way.