Seattle’s Rain Song

I transferred to Seattle from India exactly six months back. The move wasn’t on the card for me. I had four months to convince myself out of it. And I almost got convinced. There were many naysayers and Seattle baiters back home. Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) of “Sleepless in Seattle” fame led the charge. The matter of factly told, “It rains nine months out of twelve in Seattle” was often quoted to me by friends. Thoughtful gifts of Vitamin D supplements were given by well-wishers (so as to compensate for the lack of sunlight). Others, with Machiavellian glee, cited grunge metal & Nirvana as ironic, yet positive outcome of the depressive and grey Seattle. Some gave self-help books on suicide.

I took the transfer anyways. Since then my experience in Seattle can best be summed up by listening to this song and that.

However, the dark side of Seattle continued to haunt me. Like a tempestuous lover, every now and then, she would remind me of her presence. But she would always be a million miles away. Forbidden love indeed.

On August 29, 2015, the met department warned of heavy gusts and rainy conditions. I had no major commitments that day. I already had a nice lunch followed by a siesta. Around 5PM, I was debating whether to wrap up Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” or watch Steve McQueen’s ‘Bullitt’. As I parted the blinds, and peered outside, I could see ominous clouds and rain. I thought of settling down for the movie with a cup of hot chai.

However, forbidden love is a mighty thing. An old friend was beckoning me. I decided to go for a run instead.

I changed into my running gear, my Miami Heat pull-over, my trusty old iPod and took off. To me running is meditative. Its one of few experiences which lets me be in the scene and not passively observe it from far. I am a lazy runner. I rarely push myself beyond 8.5minutes / mile pace. The preference is almost always outdoors – mostly the nearby Myrtel Edward park. With it’s winding trail (mostly tarmac but also soft earth with cider chips mixed) and ocean front, a run through the park is always good for the soul.

That day the park was deserted. I didn’t meet a single soul in my first couple of miles. Not even the old man who I pass everyday around 6:15pm. As a ritual we smile, greet (a fist bump) and run off in opposite directions. By 6:30PM that evening, the wind was howling. A tree had been knocked down and was blocking part of the trail. I deftly jumped over it and kept running. I could hear the ground rumble – it wasn’t an unfamiliar feel. The railroads were right besides the trail. I could see four dull orange colored, Amtrak locomotives lurching and pulling the bogeys. The wheels clattered and screeched as they hugged the rails near the bends. As I have done many times in the past 6 months, I set out on an impromptu race against the iron giant on the rails. It was a short run – but a magical one. As I sprinted my lungs out, I felt I was a child once again. That the locomotive was a diesel one and not electric was my only grouse.

The wind had picked up by then. The waves were now battering the rocky shores. The ocean surface was becoming increasingly choppy. In the distance, I could see a seagull struggling to hover at its spot. I was starting to hear the howl of the wind over the music playing in my earphones. The skies were a hazy shade of grey. The rain was starting to hurt me on the face. I picked my pace.

And that’s when my shuffle program selected Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song“. Even though I had heard the song a million times before, at that moment, I was overwhelmed by the sadness, darkness and broodiness of the song. My knees wobbled. I staggered to a nearby bench that overlooked the dark skies and the ominous ocean. The song played on. I gazed into the far.

At that moment, I knew that an unknown but old friend had finally entered my life. And I was happy to have met her.

Dance of the Jackass

The mechanics of dancing intrigues me. Mostly I don’t get it. In the past I have done control experiments to test my hypothesis about it; like muting the sound while watching “dancing with the stars” and checking whether the accompanying music is a necessary condition for enjoying the dance (I found it hilarious). Other times, I would play music and wait for dance to flow – I would patiently wait for something rhythmic to churn in my core. I even did a “Rock Lobster” to myself – played the song in continuous loop so as to stimulate my primary motor cortex & cerebellum to get me moving. You can imagine my shock when once, after an hour of being “Rock Lobstered“, I felt my right little finger twitch to a C Major. While medicos would dismiss it as a simple case of muscle fasciculation, I almost shouted Hallelujah.

However, deep within, I knew that being a “dance atheist” wasn’t an option. You see my wife was slowly discovering that her husband couldn’t dance to save his life. She would observe me intently during social functions – and had often caught me doing “punch the air” routine in lieu of dancing. According to evolutionary biology, the male members of a species would exhibit behaviors like bragging, fighting, screaming and even dancing to woo attractive female members. I was fast realizing that from an evolutionary standpoint I was screwed.

Recently the stakes got higher. My wife’s youngest sister (an awesome lady) who had no interest in getting married was hypothetically expected to get married in 3years, and it was my wife’s decree that she and I do a duet dance in front of a million judging relatives the night before her marriage. And the song she chose for the duet was – “Dard Karaara” from Dum Laga Ke Haisha. Needless to say I was scandalized & horrified even to contemplate doing that dance. I always considered myself as a Van Diesel, Bruce Willis kind of guy (grunt, punch, brood). Unfortunately, my wife, and I suspect most women, thought there was a Patrick Swayze in me. Utter codswallop!

And that’s when Carmen Amaya happened. The first time I saw a grainy, black and white video of her fiery dance, I was hypnotized. I recall weeping with joy. Often described as the greatest flamenco dancer of her generation, the one thing that strikes you is her fierceness and the sheer passion of her movements. At once fluid and masculine, Carmen Amaya was a goddess and my inspiration.

So that night, it was just me and the legendary Carmen Amaya. I had on me a white shirt – I had kept a few buttons open to get into the character of a love stricken Spanish Señor & a tight blue jeans which were a size smaller (and really tight around the crotch). I put on my boots. I turned on the video of Carmen Amaya on my UHD TV. And then I let go of my body. The toque and the pitos got me into a state of happy delirium. My passion rose. I could see music and hear love. The palmas goaded me to push the envelop. I pirouetted, I twisted and I tapped my boots to a frenzy. I was one with Carmen. Mysterious, inexplicable forces had possessed me and I was dancing! I jumped, I lounged, I stamped my boot harder on the wooden floor! I could hear the beat; I could hear my boots. It grew louder. And louder. But hold on – it was no more rhythmic! It was a dull beat. I was dull thud. And suddenly I realized, it was somebody banging my door!

I woke up from my delirium. I paused the Carmen Amaya video and opened the door.

“You Jackass! You better stop all the stomping and jumping on the floor in the middle of the night! I can’t even sleep you moron!”, shouted my neighbor.

For a second I was stunned. I profusely apologized. As the guy was shouting, I could sense I had developed a tunnel vision – his face was zooming in and out. Strangely, at that moment, I was acutely conscious of my really tight fitting jeans. I promised myself that I would never wear leotards and because you wear leotards when you do ballet, I also promised not to do ballet. As the night became blacker and I was alone, I knew I was converted. I was a believer in the art of dance.

Oriya Style Chicken Curry

I invited some friends over for dinner last Saturday. My plan was to serve homemade chicken curry with white rice and salad – chopped cucumber, diced carrots, tomatoes with squeezed lemon juice. I mentally debated on the merits of preparing Punjabi style butter chicken masala against Oriya style chicken curry. Loyalty to the mother land won – I decided to prepare the later.

There was another reason for choosing Oriya style curry. I am staying in Seattle right now. While I love the multitude of world cuisine here – the Mexican, Vietnamese, Italian, American and all, the heart always longs for food from home. Great food is often great because of a simple reason – they are inexplicably intertwined with great memories. That hot fish cutlet savored with your best friends by the road side probably would score high on your list of yummiest food ever – because there was so much of good memory associated with it!

As I was embarking on cooking, I had one aim – recreate good old memories – get as close as possible to the ultimate Gold Standard of good cooking – my Mom’s chicken curry.

I did a mental check on the required ingredients – cloves, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, cumin, turmeric, ginger, garlic, red chili powder, tomatoes and fresh coriander leaves for garnish . I also had chicken masala and mutton masala from MDH. Being a bit of a purist, I decided against using readymade ginger-garlic paste. I always felt readymade pastes gave the curry a slightly sour after taste. I knew I was missing a few key spices – green cardamon,coriander powder and dried red chili; I wasn’t too concerned.

The preparation itself was simple. I took roughly 1.5 pounds of dressed chicken and marinated it for an hour with a pinch of turmeric powder (it gives color, kills that meaty odor and gives the dish a subtle earthy flavor), salt and red chilly powder. In parallel I diced a fair sized ginger and a whole bulb of garlic. Ideally I would have made a rough paste of these ingredients – dried red chili, ginger and garlic. However, as I didn’t have a mixer, I had to manage with roughly chopped (a bit chunky) mix. Not surprisingly, I found dicing garlic pods the toughest – I just couldn’t get the thin skin off the individual garlic pods! Later when I spoke to my Mom, she advised that I just smash the pods lightly with the handle of a knife or a pestle. On researching I also found out that you could ‘shake‘ the skin off – take all the pods in a sealed container and shake the container hard for a minute. That should do the trick.

I also had fun dicing and slicing the onion – or let’s say I had fun hacking “the Onion”. Almost the size of a small pumpkin, it took me 10mins of innovative dicing with my German steel chef knife to get the texture I wanted. Next I diced a couple of tomatoes – I always ensure I remove the gooey, pulpy seeds of the tomatoes; I don’t have any scientific reason for my action. A note here – readers might often hear chefs do SWOT analysis on using tomato than substituting it with curd. While both are equally good, I have a personal inclination for chopped tomatoes. I heard the red of the tomatoes gives a healthy glow.

With all the raw ingredients nicely chopped and handy, I took the dry spices – cloves, cinnamon sticks and cumin seeds in a mortar and ground them to a rough mixture. In a pan, I heated some olive oil (any vegetable oil would do; mustard oil works best) and thew in a pinch of sugar. Yes – you heard it right. Sugar. The rich golden brown color that you admire in Oriya and Bengali dishes is the work of sugar caramelizing. Once the sugar had melted to a glob of brownish caramel, I poured in the dry spices and bay leaf. I was careful not to burn the spices (watch out for the oil smoking or the cumin seed turning black).

After a minute of spluttering, it was time for me to get into operational excellence mode – the boring part of cooking. I poured in the diced onions and tossed it around in the oil till it acquired a brownish tinge. Post that I thew in a pinch of garam masala, chicken masala AND meat masala! While at it, I also tossed in a pinch of turmeric & red chili powder (yellow + red = yummy golden brown). At that point I should have thrown in some coriander powder too – but I didn’t have it.

After a couple of minutes (just before the masala becomes too dry), I poured in the diced garlic, ginger and tomato. A couple of minutes more and in went the marinated chicken. I mixed the chicken well. I added salt for taste. Post that i covered the pan with a tight lid and slow cooked the mix for 10-15 minutes. That should be enough and you could give high-fives to whoever is watching you prepare the dish. The chicken (if not the frozen variety) should give off enough water. In case you want to have a lot more gravy, you could pour in a cup of water. I poured in a pint of water and had to spend the next few minutes evaporating the extra water.

Once I knew the curry was ready, I chopped some coriander leaves and sprinkled it on the dish. I also added a teaspoon of garam masala for extra aroma and flavor (and to compensate for not having added cardamon and coriander powder). I turned off the heat and let it slow cook.

Readers might use the same technique for preparing mutton curry – Oriya style. Perhaps the only extra steps would be a longer marination process (overnight) and putting a couple of potatoes for a unique flavor. Mustard oil is highly recommended in lieu of olive oil.

Farewell to Upgrades (at least for sometime now)

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Author C Clarke.

Being a child of the 1980s, I had my share of magical moments. The now ubiquitous color television was one of them. In 1988, my Dad got an Onida color television – I still recall my utter amazement when I realized that Sita’s saree color in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan was pale yellow! Transitioning from a black & white television to a color television was as magical to me as to a blind person emerging from total darkness to a Technicolor world!

My second “aa-ha” moment came in late 1990s. A rather affluent friend of mine had brought a handy, black walkie-talkie, cordless kind of phone to the school. Initially I thought it was the handset of a Beetle cordless phone. But that phone was different – it was a Nokia phone. Having never heard of that brand I asked what that device was. That’s when my friend coolly punched in some numbers and handed me the phone – I got a shocker when I heard the phone ringing and then hearing my Mom on the other side! I remember accusing my friend of playing a prank on me. That recess, I futilely searched for the “mother device” for the cordless handset named Nokia. That was the first time I used a mobile service in my life! Magical again!

Round about the same time – late 1997, I recall seeing a large sign next to the nearest “Xerox” shop back in Cuttack. It said in bold – Internet – Rs 75 / 15 mins. World wide web was a simple place back then. Pages were not dynamic, HTML was still king and XML hadn’t become mainstream. Hotmail was the only cool thing. Back then there were ‘portals’ – sites which aggregated information. I remember being addicted to http://www.yahoo.com -it was magical to see color CTR monitor in Cuttack!

And how can I forget my first search on http://www.google.com? Like any teenage boy I searched for “Pamela Anderson”. And needless to say I thought Google was truly magical – it identified exactly what I had wanted! In fact, I still remember espousing and defending Google as a better search engine than the Yahoo or Rediff / Sify portal during that time! Google’s first evangelist – Larry Page – Are you listening?

And my first BASIC program- I still remember the dimly lit computer lab. Back then we were instructed to take off our shoes before entering the lab. Again, for me the blinking cursor on C:\\ command prompt was magical – and I remember my utter delight on writing my first working code – no surprises there – it was “Hello world”! And I also remember my first computer game – Prince of Persia. By God – that pixelated princess in flowing white robes was surely my first major crush!

Another such magical moment was the advent of Facebook – a very good friend of mine who was studying in a University in US told me about a cool site where you could hangout – I also remember the only catch – to be in Facebook you got to have a valid .edu email ID. I didn’t have one at that time. So naturally I joined Orkut. And that’s how I got inducted to social media – right at the very start!

In light of such a magical journey, today, somehow, somewhere I am feeling lost. I am feeling bored. I feel there is no magic out there. Everything I see around me existed in some form 10-20 years back. The CRT TV is now a LED TV with a higher resolution. There are more transistors on a chip now than there were 30 years back. Mobile phones are more powerful, but they still do the same things. 10 yrs back mobile phones became smart. Today they are smarter. A mid-sized car gave 15 km per liter mileage 10 years back and its giving 16 KM/L now. Boeing 747 is till there as it was in 1960s. Nuclear power plants still use fission instead of fusion to generate electricity. Internet is faster and wider and richer. But its still world wide web.

And the worst -kids still learn e=mc2 – as were kids before them 80 yrs back!

Frankly speaking, I feel the world has lost its magic.

Which brings me to a weird dilemma – if you were Author C Clarke what would you do? Would you take a time machine and fly back to the golden 1940s when all these magical technological concepts (internet, nuclear device, mobile phones etc.) were dreamed of or would you prefer to zoom to 2050 when finally we will break out of our incremental evolutionary slumber and do something truly revolutionary – and thus truly magical? Hmmm.

As for me – I am not upgrading any damn phone. They are all the same. Notwithstanding what Steve Jobs or Mr Tim Cook want us to believe.

Not so Desirable Maruti Dzire

I have always appreciated a more austere design philosophy. Design should exactly reflect an object’s utility and nothing more. Design objective should be to give it’s user a pleasing & useful experience. Think about the Dieter Ram’s Braun designs, IBM’s ThinkPad or the original Seiko classic watches. Another example of good design would be the Kindle Paper White eBook reader – the device makes you live the book and not the device. Meaning, while using a Kindle you are not distracted by its design – the shiny surface, chrome finish etc (think iPad). It’s just you and the author.

Lately I have been sucked into a torrid love affair with designs which are meant to be just beautiful. What purpose does the Eiffel tower serve? Many think of it as a naked lattice of iron & steel without any useful purpose. Or the Millau Viaduct. This bridge spans a valley in the picturesque of town of Tran in France. The bridge’s tallest pier is a mind boggling 270 meters tall! Incidentally, there was no need to make something that spectacular – they could have just built a “functional bridge” at fraction of the cost. But maybe the architects wanted to create a monument or a temple where the pilgrims could pay their homage and marvel at the prowess of man and his imagination.

And perhaps it is the same reason why we have the Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari’s & Maserati’s of the world. These cars are a testament to man’s love affair with beautiful engineering. A Ferrari cornering at 200 km/hr is beautiful – both at an aesthetics and engineering level. Just imagine the V12 engine enabling a controlled explosion of sorts – the 12 pistons firing up in perfect harmony making your Ferrari roar past God almighty Himself!

It really doesn’t matter that a Ferrari can seat just two. Frankly there is nothing functional about a Ferrari – with its millage of a battle tank, the passenger capacity of a bicycle and price tag of a villa in Monte Carlo. The super car was designed for the sake of being spectacular & not for being functional.

From a culture perspective, I have always admired the aesthetics of the Japanese. Take Sushi for example. You can dissect Sushi down to its bare minimum ingredients – the raw fish, vinegary rice and the wasabi – its simplicity personified. It’s up to the aesthetics of the chef on how the sushi feels & tastes. Here I strongly recommend a documentary “Jiro dreams of Sushi” – its the story of a Michelin 3-star octogenarian chef who conjures magical and beautiful sushi dishes in his rather nondescript restaurant in a basement of Tokyo.

In light of my deep admiration for the Japanese aesthetics,I have been hurt & mortified ever since I saw the latest iteration of the Maruti’s Swift Dzire. (Maruti & Suzuki partner to make cars in India).

You need not be a rocket scientist to appreciate the basics of aesthetics in design…If there is a flare or a line or a curve, it needs to conclude logically & beautifully. It can’t just abruptly end like the rivers emptying into the Aral Sea & the Dead Sea! You just don’t botch up a design for the heck of it!

A cursory look at Dzire will deflate the libido of a hot-blooded man. The front grill, the body (the front & sides) are more of an evolution over Swift. I am not a fan of flares and muscles in cars – but the designers working on Swift did a good job (I grudgingly admire the car). However, with the Dzire, in their ludicrous & bizarre aim of  giving it a boot, they added a strange protrusion to a normal Swift! I just don’t get it folks. If you are keen to give that vestigial appendage kind of a protrusion to the rear of a car, why make it so abominably ugly? Were the designers on pot while they were designing??

I am sorry so say, but I can only conclude that the Japanese (or whoever designed the new Dzire) were unduly inspired by the buttocks / ass of male baboons in heat . And I can bet my two cents on the fact that only baboons would love a baboon’s ass (or anything that looks like it).

Ghosts of my happy memories

I smiled at the pretty air hostess, rechecked my boarding pass and placed the bag in the overhead bin. My iPod was playing my favorite podcast, I was wearing my favorite T-shirt. I was happy – you see I was going to my favorite destination – my Home!

I mentally ticked off the things I wanted to do in my limited time in Orissa. Eating dahi vara aloodum, chat, vada & aloo chop near Mangalabag, Biryani from Deepak Hotel, visiting Mangalajodi to test my new super telephoto lens. In short I was excited and charged up. Especially for the displaced, a visit to your home can be the most therapeutic experience ever.

As my thoughts jumped from one task to another, I felt very nostalgic about the delicious potato fry, lentil & rice made by my grandma. I had wonderful memories of the entire Mahapatra clan sitting on the floor and gulping the wonderful dishes prepared by my indulgent Grandma. I immediately made a mental note of visiting her in our ancestral village.

Happiness has this ephemeral quality about it. It gives you that moment of utter delight, it makes you realize how beautiful life is and how blessed you are to have your loved ones around you. Sadly my moment of happiness ended just as quickly as it had started. My Grandma had been there for me all my life. I had taken her presence for granted. Her presence was so ingrained in me that, for that brief moment I had forgotten that she was no more in this world. She had passed away a year back.

I felt as if somebody had poured a bucket of cold water on my head. I realized that no matter what I do, I will never see her again. All that I would have, would be her memories. I realized the irony of life.

Why standardization of peripherals is important

Choice is mostly good. I love the fact that I can chose between an iPhone, Blackberry or an Android. I love it when I can chose between a 3 cylinder and 4 cylinder engine in my car! I am glad I can chose between different mobile service providers – Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, etc. Of course, at times too many choices add to the decision making time (and the confusion). To give an order at Subway, I have to make so many permutation, combination in the head – like what bread, vegetables, cheese, sauces needs to go into my sub!

Recently I observed a different problem stemming out of choices. It’s about standardization of peripherals. My Blackberry 9860 Torch, for example is abominable when it comes to its battery life. At best, it can go on a single charge for 12 hours (normal talk, a bit of BBM & Maps). So the other day, with my phones’ battery out, I went around if anybody had a phone charger – colleagues volunteered their Nokia chargers, iPhone charger, Samsung etc. Sadly none of their charging peripherals were compatible to my Blackberry phone. Therefore till late last night I was stuck with a dead phone.

My predicament was not an isolated one. Especially during those long conference meetings, you get the creeps every time your laptop gives the battery low beep and the only colleague with a laptop charger lends you a charger of a different make. 

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the world needs to move towards standardization of peripherals. If plug points are standard across the world, why can’t the the peripheral pins be standard too? I am sure there are more positives than negatives for peripheral standardization. Let me list some of the advantages.

Reduction to manufacturing cost – With standardized connecting cables, plug-point, mass manufacturing can be taken to the next level. Anything mass-produced can lead of price reduction.

Positive environmental impact – With interoperability of peripherals, OEMs can ship less number of peripherals. This in turn would lead to better recycling options.

Better consumer experience – With standardization, the consumer has to pay less to buy a peripheral if he/she misplaces it. Today, OEMs are charging ridiculous amounts in case you and me lose a peripheral. Last checked, the price of an iPod connector was close to INR 1200!

The good news is, standardization of peripherals is already under discussion. Major OEMs are coming together to make this happen. I will keep my readers posted more on that news!

My Magical, Mysterious iPod Classic

I bought my first Apple gadget – an iPod Classic back in 2007. It didn’t exactly transform my life on day one. Being an old school audiophile, I was not a big fan of the way music was reproduced on iPod earphones – I liked the woody feel to my music. Also I missed the “on-your-face” features that a typical PC user typically expects. For example, for quite some time, I wasn’t sure how to turn-off the thing, nor was I sure how I could restart / reset the device!

But as years passed by, I started appreciating my iPod – first as a cool gadget and then as an inseparable companion. There are a couple of things I makes the iPod stand out from the competition – its software and build quality.

In my humble opinion, the era of people buying entire albums is gone. With the advent of internet & compressed file formats like mp3, aac (and peer to peer networks), music sales is driven by singles. In a way, this brings the record industry full circle – back in the days (Elvis Presley n all), record labels used to release singles and not albums. On paper releasing singles sounds great – listeners do not have to pay for an entire album when they love only a song from it. But the flip side to it was that people are not discovering new music anymore. I strongly believe that every album has a song that’s meant specifically for you. An album typically has one hit song and a bunch of other songs. I often find these “other songs” the most beautiful. I love the song “Another girl” more than any other song on the album “Help” by the Beatles! My all time favourite song by the Swedish group ABBA has always been “Andante Andante” from the album Super Trouper & not the other regular pop hits! It’s these hidden gems that bring a smile on your face. Singles kill that discovery process. 

However, the iPod by some mysterious algorithm acts as a wonderful agent for discovering new music. The algorithm is simple enough. What I am writing here is a combination of speculation & facts – so any Apple fan boy out there – don’t hold me against it! 🙂

To ascertain the kind of music that appeals to a listener, iPod tracks and analyzes the following behavior: How many times did you skip a track; How many times did you repeat a track; What’s the rating you gave to a song; When you are creating playlists on the fly – what kind of song mix you prepare; the frequency of listening to a song; the beats associated with two consecutive songs that you love; the genre, the Era, the composer, the singer…I am sure the list would continue further! The final secret sauce of this process is what Apple does with the data. If you enable the Genius service – Apple analyzes your usage data and extrapolates them against what others have been listening – across the globe! Genius then sends that feed to your iTunes to add further smarten the song selection process.

What this results in is truly magical. I will give an example here – when we are towards the end of a song, your mind automatically goes to the next song of choice – if “Can’t buy me love” is the current track, my mind automatically goes to “lady madonna”. I can truthfully report here that over a period of time, my iPod has consistently been reading my mind and has been able to queue my favourite songs on the fly! And often the shuffle algorithm – perhaps by analyzing beats, genre, era of musician etc recommends an unknown song that just about fits the mood. The Ipod makes discovery of new songs a stroll through a park!

The other crazy thing I love about the iPod is it’s battery life. Even after 5 years of constant usage, the damn thing still gives me more than 20 hours of music play on a single charge! And not to mention the “hold” switch at the top – I have slid it a million times and it’s still as effective as on day 1.

Amazing indeed!

Cadbury Ganesh

Lord Ganesh, the portly, elephant headed Hindu God truly personifies kindness. I see him as a benevolent geek (he is a voracious reader – as many young students would attest) with an easy sense of humor.

While growing up in Cuttack, Orissa, it was a tradition to cycle across the city visiting the various pandals during Ganesh Puja. As the years progressed I saw Ganeshji reflecting more contemporary news topics. Instead of the crisp silk dhoti with a ladoo in his hand, you would see Lord Ganesh wearing military cargo, denim etc. During the infamous Kargil wars, in many a pandals you would see the normally pacifist Lord Ganesh in military outfits brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle chasing terrorists. During the heights of “Kaun Banega Crorepati”, you had pandals with Lord Ganesh playing contestant too!

The omnipresent Lord has become truly omnipresent. You find Him in temples, houses, on dashboard of cars & on movie production equipments & in gift shops. And the devotee have become audacious in their interpretation of the Lord. A couple of weeks back while I was strolling in Hyper city – a massive grocery store in Hyderabad, I stumbled across a massive idol of the Lord emblazoned with thousands of Gems chocolate! Delicious indeed. I could literally hear the benevolent elephant headed God chuckle bemusedly at the funny behaviour of his devotee.

Discovering ABBA Serendipitously

Serendipitous discoveries are more fun than the methodical ones. We all love the story of Archimedes jumping butt naked out of his bathtub shouting “eureka eureka”. Of all the instances of serendipity, the ones that I love the most are those of discovering music & friends.

I grew up in Orissa of the 80s & 90s. In Cuttack, there was only one record store that stocked english records. Every weekend I would cycle to College Square, go up to the record store and browse through the cassettes. There being no internet & MTV, my idea of international musicians was limited to the usual Madonna & Michael Jackson. I wasn’t even aware of their songs – just the names. Something that I was really fond of was music from the Middle East. I was particularly crazy about a song with distinct Arabic beats. I assumed that the singer was “Abba” – my logic being ‘abba’ sounded Arabic. (Years later I realized the singer was Khaled and the song was Didi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7ckKxxYYOw )

So with that arabic tune in my head and “abba” on my lips I visited my dear friend Mona’s house one afternoon. Rummaging through her cassette collection (Rs 75 for a cassette was too steep a price for a school kid) I discovered an old cassette with the name ABBA. I was ecstatic – I quickly read through its cover art, but couldn’t really find my Arabic sounding song. Still I borrowed it.

That night I played the cassette. I was disappointed. They were bunch of sing-along pop songs.

But fate had something different in store for me. That cassette being the only international album with me, I played the songs again. Magic happened accidentally. I happily & madly fell in love with songs like “dancing queen”, SOS, Andante Andante & Mama Mia!

That was 17 years ago. Since then I have listened to ABBA a million times. I have collected all their songs. The Definitive Collections, the Albums, the compilation. I have collected their concert videos & I have seen the movies based on their songs. I fell in love with Agnetha Flakstog and got depressed when I heard the news that Benny Andersson today could hardly recall his fame.

Some love stories have the most serendipitous beginning. My love affair with ABBA was one of them.

So I say thank you for the music, Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dcbw4IEY5w