Guruwrites celebrates 86th post

On this occasion of the 86th post from the Guruwrites Inc., the Gregorian calendar has moved on to 2009. 'It's incredible that the commencement of new year has coincided with the landmark 86th post from Guruwrites', said a beaming author of this blog. '86 is a significant number. Remember the 86th amendment. Remember 1986', said the author while commenting on the significance of 86th post. However, not many, including the author, understood what the previous statement meant.
In the aftermath of Mumbai terror attacks, the 86th post celebration has been low key. But that did not deter noted citizen journalist Rishikesh from speaking his mind to the media people. 'This is a historic moment in the history of the Indian Right', said Rishikesh while addressing a press conference. This has triggered a wave of speculation in the national and regional media about the political incilination of this blogger. 'Rishikesh is a respactable citizen journalist. If he thinks this is a historic day for the Indian Right, then this would mean the end of secularism in this country', moaned noted secularist Ms Seetalwad before emitting a shrill tone which shrill tone analysts believe was an unrelated call to defeat Narendra Modi in whichever election possible in whichever country.
When asked to comment on the controversy, the author of Guruwrites had only mathematical chutzpah to offer. '86 is 14 short of hundred. 8+6=14.', said the Guru. Since nothing much could be inferred from that, nothing much was inferred. Wish you all a happy new year.

A pointless post

A few days back, much to my surprise, a couple of readers of this blog(whose readership hasn't made much headway since the days of single digit readership and has stayed in single digits despite such avant-garde, path-breaking, historical, thought provoking, laughter-riot-inducing, heart-wrenching writing), asked me why I am not updating my other blog. The one about music which I started in my typical I-know-about-everything style and stopped after 3 brief posts with one of them being an introduction. (Quite laughable indeed.) Despite being pretentious sometimes, I am also honest. So I said, 'En bareebeku gottaaglilla, adakke barililla' (For the English-knowing-Kannada-gottilla readership of this esteemed blog, here goes the translation. 'I didn't know what to write. So I didn't write').
Truer words have been spoken, but this too was quite true. I assumed myself to be connoisseur of music and started that blog. A connoisseur who took twenty four years of his life to discover Beatles and consequently realize their greatness. This was such a laughable discovery that I almost wanted to write a post, 'A random-passerby Harish declares that Beatles were great - a good 38 years after they shut down as a group'. This being the case, what shall I write in a music blog(although I read almost everything that's there in the wikipedia about Beatles)? Ok, to write about music, knowledge about Beatles isn't mandatory, especially for a person like me who really couldn't differentiate between jazz, rock and pop for a long time. Ok, what do I know about Indian music apart from my failed attempts to learn violin.
I started learning violin when I was a nine year old much like musicians of yore. Instantly made, Chowdiah as my inspiration - a person whose performance I had never heard. Took less than a couple of years to move on to varNaas before I discontinued. This I attributed to creative differences with the teacher. No, I actually I didn't like they way it was taught in Vijaya College Of Music and I didn't know where else to go to learn Violin. Then, 2 or 3 years later, I suddenly remembered my pledge to become Chowdiah whose violin rendition I had still not heard. Consequently I decided to resume learning violin. And where did I go? To the same teacher at the same school. It continued for less than a year or so and again creative differences arose and I left with my pledge not yet redeemed. Status - 2 or 3 varNaas. 2 or 3 years later, I had forgotten my pledge as also the fact that I had still not listened to Chowdiah. Being a man who can be very easily swayed sometimes by propaganda, I went back, at the start of my engineering, to my learn-violin adventure after I heard so many people say that, 'Harisha, jeevandalli hooby anta iTTkobeku. Adralloo sangeeta. Manassige santasa koDutte. Nee kacheri koDbekaagilla. Maneli nuDiskobahudu. Ningidu eega gottaagalla, munde gottaagutte'(Here goes the translation - 'Harisha, in life, you should have a hobby. That too music. It gives you happiness. You need not give concerts. You can play violin at home itself. You won't realise it now, you will realise later'). This time I found a pretty good teacher who taught really well and I made dramatic progress and in 2-3 years completed most of the syllabus for the junior exam. Lost interest suddenly. Left
learning. And became a software engineer.

Despite such a lengthy learning, I really didn't know much about Carnatic music that you could really write about in a serious blog on music which I wanted my other blog to be. And what about Indian film music? Well pretty much the same case when you consider that I came to know of one of India's best composers Ilayaraja only 3 or 4 years back. I should thank Arjun though for introducing me to Ilayaraja's music. (That Ilayaraja worked in G K Venkatesh's music troupe made me proud as a Kannadaiga). Instantly became so impressed by Raja sir's music that I wanted to download all the songs he has composed in all the languages and I did download few songs in Telugu and one in Malayalam apart from many in Kannada and Tamil(this despite me not understanding any of these languages apart from Kananda). What wonderful music!
And I proclaim that I am a big fan of A R Rehman's music, a fan who stumbled upon one of Rehman's best compositions - 1947 Earth - only earlier this year.
Even if we assume there's no need for any knowledge to write about music you should atleast know how to write about music. Whenever you ask me to write about a song I like, it shall usually contain two or three words/phrases like, 'melodious', 'superb orchestration', 'excellent background instruments'. If I am the most creative I might use mellifluous. In that way I might destroy songs by writing about it and making people go away from those songs. So I didn't write. Instead concentrated on writing extremely opinionated posts on significant political events apart from humour. Yes, I wrote this entire post to essentially say what the previous sentence said. Thank You.

Why don't we find columns like these in more mainstream newspapers?

Read This.

Hindu

Difficult times these are for our nation. Inflation, economic slowdown are facing us. The threat of terrorism is has engulfed the entire nation. As if these weren't enough, just based on the arrest of a Sadhvi, against whom no allegations have yet been proved in a court of law, Hindus are being branded as 'terrorists'. Hindus have been discriminated and humiliated in this country but nothing more damning and insinuating and unjust was said about the Hindus until now. If Hindus were terrorists, India wouldn't have been a multi-religious, secular nation.

Hinduism is probably the most liberal religion. Believers and unbelievers are accomodated even amongst Hindus. Budha revolted against certain aspects of Hinduism and formed his religion. Yet Hindus treat him as one of the ten avataras of Vishnu. Within Hinduism too there are so many diverse philosophies that preach everything from monism to dualism to even Charuvakas's epicurean atheism. And the beauty is that this dissent has been given due place in our epics too. Arjuna's initial rebuttal of whatever Lord Krishna said is very much part of Bhagavad Gita. Vaali's condemnation of Lord Rama for shooting him from behind is very much part of Ramayana. Charuvaka's materialistic way of life as opposed to the spiritualistic way of Vedanta, too is given a space without being dismissed as anti-Hindu. Without this tradition of tolerance ingrained in our every thought, this country wouldn't have had the capacity to embrace so many religions.

Such a glorious religion is today being defamed beyond the wildest of imaginations. This slander is based on things that aren't even proven. Words like 'Hindu Jihad' are unthinkable for any Hindu. Even if one or two individuals are found guilty, painting the entire community as terrorists is blasphemous. There is no mainstream Hindu organization that trains people to target people of other faiths. Such a thing is an anthema to Hindu thought. Hinduism is fundamentally too different to be compared with other religions which have waged wars to assert their supremacy. If this isn't realised by our 'secular' brethren, the future doesn't bode well. Hope this Deepawali brings light to our 'liberals'.

Happy Deepawali To You All.

PS: Here's an excellent article by Tarun Vijay. Please read it.

Financial crisis, Internet Crisis, Judgement Crisis

How about internet crisis similar to the financial crisis? One man wakes up one fine day and downloads the internet. Virtually everything that's there on the world wide web from google to mindry.in. To store such huge amount of data, he would need all the servers on this planet that currently powers the internet. So with both content and the servers, practically he becomes the internet. Clever. Right?

How about judgement crisis? Suppose judges find that they have too much time and decide to give judgements to cases that are yet to be moved in the courts. Such prescience on the part of judges would mean that there would be no proceedings in courts. Even before a person moves a court, he would have the judgement. No lawyers, no judges and no law minister then.

That's it then for this seemingly lame post. Good bye.