Crowd sourced decisions, anyone?

With the DRS being lambasted by everyone these days, especially in light of some horrendous decisions in the ongoing Ashes, here's an idea that the ICC could consider.

Crowd-sourcing umpiring decisions.

Let's face it. Real-time media like twitter has cricket fans/commentators/ex-cricketers pouring over opinions about the nature of a decision(out/not out) the moment they catch it live anywhere - stadium, television, internet, etc. They opine their own POVs after watching replays/snicko/hawkeyes. And this operates in fantastical real-time. So, why not make use of it?

The idea I think is for ICC to invest in such a decision making mechanism that lets users vote on every decision *only* when given an option. Of course it goes without saying that everyone gets only one vote per decision.

Some points to consider:
1. What if there are not enough voters?
2. What if you can "fix" the outcome by hiring a load of people to work for you?
3. How quickly?

(1) I doubt if this would be the case given that these days most(okay, I don't have a statistic to back this up) of the cricket watching public spends time online too. Also, the commentators, ex-cricketers are all active in this space as well.
(2) Well, I think there are enough mechanisms already to fight this - like assigning ratings to users based on their past voting history. A good start to such a scheme could be to enlist ex-cricketers, commentators - who are *trusted* - and eventually rope in the general public.
(3) Say 30-40 seconds should be good enough once the replays/hawkeye/snicko show up on TV. Umpires seem to need this time anyways in the current DRS scenario.

Of course, this system is far from perfect but atleast the idea of a single decision making authority making a blunder could possibly be alleviated.

And why shouldn't people have a say? It's their game too after all.

Do we actually cherish photos?

533, 345, 478 , approaching thousand...

The numbers are the sizes of the photo albums posted on Picassa, Facebook and other online photo repositories that I am privileged to see. The sizes are colossal, the events are diverse - friends meetup, baby shower, baby born, marriage, random trip, random clicking, etc. On any normal non-album viewing day, I probably have to register about 40-50 images of the surrounding milieu on my retina (I am not going to scientifically prove the validity of this claim). But 300s and 400s is a tad too many, good enough to create retinal chokage. I can't help but feel exhausted around the 40th or 50th photo (see what I did there?). To alleviate boredom, I then switch to thumbnail view of the album to quickly scan through photos. That way I can completely ignore one set of similar looking photos and quickly shift focus to the next set of similar looking photos. Our eyes are so powerful to grasp these differences, you see. In one instance, a friend of mine actually posted their honeymoon photos which had detailed shots of the interior of the cottage that they were staying in, including the restrooms. Apparently, when they entered it, it was all so neat and nicely laid out. But let's not kid ourselves here, this is no Burj Al Arab's Royal Suite.

After the viewing session is over, I get pings on chat - "Machi, endha photo irukkardhuliye range?" or "Check 186th photo, andha scenery chance eh illa" or "Dei..andha photo la avan semma comedy". The responses to such questions/observations undoubtedly lie in the assumption of me having had a whole-hearted viewing of the album and that the answers are at the tip of my typing hands. But I know that's not true. So, then begins the unenviable task of second-viewing of the album, looking for specifics. Especially the questions concerning photo numbers are tricky because online albums don't number their photos in the thumbnail view(a feature which ideally you would want). So, now it turns into a math problem that I have to solve.

"Hmm...5 photos in a row,  so.. 5 3s 15, 5 7s 35, 37th row, okay 186.."

Let's set the facts straight, we are in an era of uninhibited clicking. It's so mandatory these days that you aren't ready to buy a phone that doesn't have a camera in it(the phone-activity on the phone forms hardly 1% of its usage). The point-and-shoot-ers and DSLR-ers are running amok with the things that they can do, especially the latter, whose actions were hilariously captured by a witty blogger. And the results are there to see.

"Cha..I shook it..". Click.
"I closed my eyes..". Click.
"I want my side view..". Click.
"I am not in the centre..". Click.
"Align me in the corner..". Click.
"Need another one, just the bust". Click.
"Machi..Semma kevalama irukku..". Click.
"One more..". Click. "Just one more.." Click. "Last one..". Click.

If a professional photographer is hired to capture the essence of an occasion, you would expect him to go about doing this business of serial-clicking and finally filtering out the ones that captured the best moments. Logical indeed. But regular lazy people that we are, we don't have the patience to sit and sift through all those that we have clicked. So, as long as my Picassa account allows, I shall just load it up with all that I have clicked and when I am out of space, I shall create another google account and start doing the same. I shall also send these albums to my friends and families for their viewing, ignoring the fact that the sheer number of photos don't cover up for the lack of any sense of aesthetic appeal that the album might have or the weariness that the repetitive nature of the photos might cause.

This is not a polemic owing to my not being a part of some of these photo albums, though I don't deny it partly is. But let's face it, how many of us are so full of enthu to repeatedly look at albums of events that even you were a part of? Most of our viewing happens during the trip/event itself on the 2.5'' - 3.5'' camera LCD screen and towards the end we are already full of it. And finally, it's all "I'll just go home and dump everything online".

I sometimes wish we get back to the good old roll-camera days when albums were a physical possession not a virtual one. We took photos because we wanted to not because we simply could. There was a price associated with photos, literally and figuratively. But now, it's a case of abundant availability resulting in negligible value. There's simply no time nor interest to put an effort into making an album minimal these days, convey it's essence to the people who you want to send it to. It's not as if we did all this before the advent of the digital camera. We didn't have to maybe because we didn't we an option but then we were content with whatever limited number of images we could create. Why can't any event be captured in 40 to 50 different frames? Isn't that enough to gauge how it went and check out the people and the places they were in?

For now, photos is just "yet another online thing we do".

Excellento! Bravo!

Quite an achievement for mainstream media, considering competition all round.

Just begs the question on why we never saw a tweet/blog/news report that went

"Received request from a corporate media manager to broker for them regarding a cabinet post. Refused. Will not be part of lobbying."

Why is self-trumpeting selective?

My contribution to why Harris should never be written off..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUz8CbrVcM0&feature=related

Daemonizing a script in UNIX

There are occasions when you would want to execute a script as soon as your OS boots.
The point of interest is a script my_good_work written in your favorite programming/scripting language. I have taken the example of a Dtrace script and so my_good_work becomes my_good_work.d for this post.

I describe how you do this in a UNIX based OS (Solaris to be precise)
Demonizable scripts need to be placed in /etc/init.d/. In my case, I created the boot-driver script dtrace which does nothing but sets up the command line for running my_good_work.d with its runnable parameters. The dtrace script plugs into the OS's boot framework. You need to specify actions that need to be taken when the script is executed with start and stop as command line arguments.

For example, I did (in bash)

case "start"
                 // start my_good_work.d script
                 // /usr/sbin/dtrace -s ~/my_good_work.d

case "stop"
                 // kill `pgrep dtrace`
              
esac

You can find a plethora of examples to do this in the /etc/init.d/ folder.

After this, you need to create a hard link to dtrace and place it in one of /etc/rcN.d/ folders. It really doesn't matter what N is (as far as I know). You need to create the hardlink as [S|K]NNdtrace.
S - Use this if you want to execute the script during startup
K - Use this if you want to execute the kill the script during shutdown
NN - Sequence number that is used to specify the order in which the scripts are executed.

In my case, I did

# ln /etc/init.d/dtrace /etc/rc2.d/S09dtrace

And you are done!

Note:
- Creating a copy and renaming it instead of creating a hard link will most likely won't work, neither will a soft link
- You need to be root for doing this entire exercise, because messing with boot options is not a joke!

Revival...Veraivil

Settling down, be back

Funkiness

In the midst of intellectual tumult, do come such wonderful gems (so, I say since there is none else to say)

cReAtEd him, iNiTialized to JoiN me but he didn't yIeLd. I lOcKeD him up, sElf . He uNloCkEd and eXiTeD. I had to cAnCeLl and TERMINATE.

By now, you should have guessed what this means.

In any case, something that can help to figure out
1. I am a grad student.
2. I have an assignment deadline to meet tomorrow.
3. I still have to go the distance.
4. It's crapping time and what better place than Facebook to share crappiness and get recognised for it too.

So, there you go...

Still can't figure out?
I can't help iy, Google definitely can..
Go find it!

Inspiration

Sample this...

If you'Re not faiLing eveRy now and again, it's a sign you'Re not doing anythiNg veRy inNovative - Woody Allen

One of the most insightful quotations that I have come across in the recent past.
I happen to notice it being quoted from one of my old colleague's blogs. So, it's thanks to him!

Inspiration, seldom can, not be generated through such amazing wisecracks.
Absolutely loved and loving it. At 1:19 AM early morning with a paper commentary beckoning, this should push me, hopefully :)

PS : I am a proud ".com" domain owner now. Thanks to the constant pestering of my room-mate Uday who wouldn't let me go without lapping it up.

What to call 'em

I came up with this today, spotting a Nissan Teana, a grandiose car on the road.

Austria capital Vienna
Nissan Caru peru Teana
Asin ah Nayana?
Adhunaala enakku enna palana?

"Mudila machan" - I know!!

When India triumphed in the T20 World Cup in 2007, this was my song of success

Indha team ah gavani
Captain peru Dhoni
Vuttadhu World Cup Sani
Thodarattum ivargal pani
Ye! Dandanakka..Ye! Danakunakka

Summa..toooo much la :P
I know!!

Goodbye 800, Welcome i-20(s)

More than 13 years ago, we bought the Maruti 800, India's first budget car, the one which swept across the country's automobile industry for its simplicity, comfort and affordability. Owning the Maruti was immensely pleasing as we were among the first in our street to have a car. I was not bothered nor aware of other cars in the market back then. Apart from 800, the ones that I knew were Maruti Esteem and Maruti Zen. Infact, it took me about 3 years to question what the "800" actually signified. I simply didn't care!

Thirteen years later, it was time to move on. Senility and outdated technology of the petite car forced us to think beyond. The natural inclination was to have a bigger and improved hatchback. A hatchback is the most preferred choice that fits well into the Indian transport and parking space set up, a constraint that any middle-class car owner will acknowledge. Inquisitive about the car market these days, and with the multitude of information available on the internet, I looked to shortlist the best cars in the class.

The market is teeming with a variety of budget models - Maruti Swift Diesel and Petrol, Hyundai i-10 and i-20, Maruti Swift Dzire Diesel and Petrol, Tata Indica and Indigo. Apart from the existing ones, some new models that caught the attention were Honda Jazz and Maruti Ritz.

Choosing a car in this segment turned out to be quite a task, nevertheless an enjoyable one at that. Swift Petrol, though the initial favourite, returned poor mileage figures and both variants(diesel and petrol) ultimately lost out to the "toad-like" body image. Again, the sprawl of the bumper on the Swift was uninviting, as though the toad setting himself up to launch upon his prey. Tata was not a natural choice for a home car since their models have been widely popular only in the Taxi domain. And both the models weren't attractive either. Honda Jazz, not yet launched in India lost out to the risk factor with Honda never having known to manufacture budget automobiles.

Coming to Ritz, Maruti's hatchback offering against its extremely popular and ubiquitous Swift. My first look at the design of the car was enough to put me off. It looked as if the Dzire's back was beaten flat and then dented in the middle to shape the Ritz. There is a popular Mallu line that goes - "Adichu Ninde Shape Eh Nyaan Maathum", meaning, "I will thrash you that your body will change shape". Fitting! It did have its "butt flattened"(a phrase that might cause JLo's insurance company to panic).


A look at that car and you will know what I mean.

Swift Dzire Diesel and Hyundai i-10 were very strong contenders. While Dzire was ably backed by a strong fuel economy, the necessity to switch to a diesel engine was always going to be a question mark given the limited driving that we do. The additional one-lakh for the diesel engine made sense only if the usage matched the investment, which in our case, didn't. The i-10, from the outset looked like the Big Brother of its cousin Santro, a car which I felt was too tall and flat both in the front and rear. The need of the hour was a stylish, trendy and curvy automobile.

The i-20, designed for the European market came across as the car to beat. No bumpy headlights, lots of boot space, sleek, sophisticated, the Korean maker's impressive interiors, lovely add-on features and Hyundai's reliable record in the Indian market. The car's performance was reasonable not considering statistics like the time taken to reach 0-60 km/hr and the mileage was comparable to some of the other diesel cars.


Having booked the car and waiting for its delivery, I am reminded of the fact that, co-incidentally, there are a couple of I-20s that I am eagerly awaiting for right now. One coming all the way from the States and the other from Europe. Both have caught my imagination in equal measure.

Go, Uber Cool!

Some car related technical jargons that I have deciphered
Hatchback - The typical small car like the Swift, Santro
Saloon/Sedan - Three compartments clearly delineated - the bonnet, the seating space and the boot - Corolla, City
Limousine - A chauffeur driven car with a separator between the driver and sitting cabins
SUV - A Hatchback with larger boot space and a boxy design - Innova, Qualis

Meter correction?

I am gasping for breath as I realise, for the third consecutive office<->home trip, I ended up paying 54/-

Questions that throng me now are
1. Have ridiculously priced auto-meters been cracked down and normalized?
2. Is this another common-man-friendly election stunt?
3. Am I simply over-reacting to this?

I tried googling "bangalore auto meter correction", "auto meter bangalore government rectification". No luck with the results.

Somebody please help here.

Nallavanukku Nallavan indha auto meter

On any day, if I take an auto from home to office, the near 8 k.m. journey would cost me 65 rupees on an average. In theory though, I would have required to pay only 7/- per k.m and should ideally be 56/-. But, coming to the world of autos, auto-drivers and auto-meters in Bangalore, things would be "normal" only when you are quite lucky.

The last 2 days had forced me to catch an auto during the terribly traffic-y peak morning hours. To my surprise, on both days(yesterday and today) I paid a miserly sum(it's the actual rate btw) of 53 and 54 rupees. Considering that I have hit 90 rupees on some occasions for the same distance on high-speed,super-speeding autoed-meters, this was a revelation!

The moment I get inside an auto in bangalore, I can't help but start staring at the meter. I roughly know when the meter should start ticking from the "minimum charge" of 14/-. The meter should starting inching up and above when I cross the Airtel showroom on 100Ft. Road, Indiranagar. Yesterday was quite a surprise. The meter remained still even at that point. I readied myself to tell the auto driver that the meter might not be working(Sometimes I am tooo generous!) I had reached the start of the Domlur flyover. That's when it happened. I saw the transition to 14.50/-. "Good god! This fellow should have the best, untinkered, untampered meter in the whole of bangalore.He is the best auto-fella."

What followed was an on-the-dot inspection of critical milestones at which I know what rate to expect. The flyover loop exit, Cambridge-Airport road Signal and two other "strategic" points. Sharp the meter was!It was always 2 or 3 rupees below the actual rate.

A cheating meter and the driver would definitely be greeted with a sulking countenance. I was wondering if this fellow should be congratulated for maintaining a "legal" meter and charging me the exact amount that I am supposed to give.
Getting down,I realized I am always ready to give a mouthful when someone cheats but should I commend this fellow just for doing his job right which is the minimum quality that I should expect from him?

I paid the exact amount with the change and walked...

I opined

Following are links on "The Hindu", where I voice out my personal(or popular??) opinions

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/06/06/stories/2008060654470802.htm

http://www.thehindu.com/2009/04/22/stories/2009042254740801.htm

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/02/stories/2008100255731003.htm

FRIENDS maniac

Last week I completed 10 rounds of 10 seasons of FRIENDS. Quite a landmark achievement! Roughly calculating the total time spent considering 21 minutes of each episode and 24 episodes in a season,

10 * 10 * 24 * 21 = 50400 minutes or 840 hours or 35 days.

The staggering figure is over a 3 year period since Jan 2006. It was my 3-2 at BITS. I was averse to sitcoms before this. Even now, any other series doesn't elicit the same amount of enthusiasm as FRIENDS does. Getting used to the new characters is awkward having been accustomed to the 'Sooper Six' and I tend to draw out comparisons between the characters which is quite unfair on my part.

After ending each round, I would tell myself to stop this addictive behaviour, the results of which have been devastating since the "break time" between successive rounds has only kept decreasing till now.

So, why this craze?
One thing is for sure - Easy access. I secured all 10 seasons while I was in BITS. So no need to hunt for them now. Youtube does have it but in bits and pieces which is quite a mood killer when you want to watch a sitcom.
Useless TV programs - Entertainment on TV has become horrendous oflate. Nothing more terrible than poor 'Dada' forcing to judge dancing girls to cheerlead his team. What a waste of intelligence, time and money! And our NEWS channels continue to make an overkill of whatever story they are able to get.

Small pockets of entertainment with a good dose of meaningful humour served by FRIENDS is a major highlight. Moreover, watching a series just once doesn't give you the exposure to appreciate all the jokes. This is quite true as every time I watch the repeated episodes I happen to listen to a new joke that I haven't understood or missed before.

So, gearing for the eleventh round? Of course!

The Curious Case of the Melting Ghee

The traffic overwhelms...
The signals perpetuate...
The mind wanders...

Thoughts, in thousands, surge across as the multiple gruelling waits for the GREEN leave me rattled. With nothing to do but wait, I find myself cogitating on the worthless but interesting topics :-)

This was conceived at the Airport-Victoria Rd signal today, a lengthy one at that.

The curious case of the Ghee being served melted
Yesterday at a typical South Indian restaurant, where I was having lunch, ghee was offered for the paruppu saadham. I took it. It was the melted, flowing version of the ghee.

"This is not ghee", I thought to myself. The viscosity was simply not there. It flowed like water or oil. I have been a NeiPriyan throughout, not so much for the sweets, but with food - YES, especially rice! Ghee is one of the most inviting savouries that has been discovered that can add intense flavour to the charismatic white rice.

Ghee is to be preserved in its semi-solid state for serving with rice. The definition of semi-solid needs clarification. Typically, it's the state between the fridge-frozen to the free flowing summer version. At room temperature, during summer, the consistency is ideal. While the frigid version is good to heat on a cheenchatti/vaanali to make a pongal or a payasam, it's no good to be served with steaming rice. The point being, it kills the mood to have to wait for it to melt and mix with the rice. Analogous to this is the case of trying to splosh frigid butter on the mildly toasted bread slice. On a hurried morning trying to gobble whatever you get at hand, when the butter refuses to co-operate, the frustration only compounds. There is no time to heat. Bad still, you don't like the taste of it when heated because it cooks into a ghee-ish taste. Alas! Only if I had decided early morning that bread-butter-jam was going to stave off my fast that morning and having finalised it, I had kept the butter out for it to cool down outside the fridge(oxymoronic?)

But things don't work out the way especially during its-getting-late mornings. Coming out of the analogy, the most relishing way to begin the lunch course, is

Plain steamed rice + Ghee (semi-solid, ablity to melt on rice) + boiled paruppu.

It should be mentioned that the viscosity of nei matters much here because, after this serving what follows is the ritual of cupping the palm and receiving the ghee and lickin' away. And that's not possible with the free flowing version.

The ideally ghee suited, to be mixed with items are
1. Sambhar - For arachu vutta sambhar, it adds to the already smoking hot manam & gunam. For podi potta sambhar, its ability to elevate the taste reaches the pinnacle. But for the ghee with it, I would have disliked podi pota sambhar to the core.
2. Rasam - The combination is good not great.
3. Morkootan and Vethakozhambu - Average to medium

For some reason though, ghee doesn't go well with Molagootal that makes me wonder why so....

Wooh! Too much for this signal now. I continued towards Richmond with another interesting topic in the pipeline.......

A temple has to be a temple

After a long enough stay to warrant the title of an insider in bangalore, one thing(among many) missing was a visit to the famous ISKCON temple. Situated, comfortably in the old locales of bengaluru, it was a whole task getting there from the outer reaches of the city. A pre-paid auto ride that claimed much more than the normal avaricious auto driver was a surprise.

ISKCON temple was gleaming with gold literally. A markedly different construction from the usual south Indian temple styles was noticeable. They followed a nice crowd management tactic where the people waiting in the queue needed to proceed along a path laid with tiles each projected form the floor which could contain only two feet at a time. And the norm was to stay in that square for a whole "(Hare Rama)(3)Hare Hare. (Hare Krishna)(3)Hare Hare" that was being played. There were people who were devotedly following this while others really wanted the crowd to move quickly.

The idols of gods and goddesses in gold showed richness. This was in the main hall that housed the shrines of Radhe-Krishna. The exit route from there till the gate was painstaking. All of them had to mandatorily go through series and multiple floors of books, photos, photo frames, jewellery. Get this over with and you see another section with an absolutely wide array of sweets and savories - jamuns, rasmalai,rasgulla and what not. And on the top of it all, the actual FREE prasadham was being served after all this. In between all this there were bursts of pop-corn, ice cream, fizzy drink stalls.

A theatre multiplex inside a temple? Hmmm...it did seem that way. People licking away snacks after visiting the deity doesn't constitute a good spiritual experience. The beauty of Indian temples lies in the divine presence that you feel inside the huge walls once you are under the gopuram. Sadly, it could not be experienced in here for reasons mentioned above.

Leave temples and devotees alone. Business and temple sanctum need not be mixed. They don't jell. That was the feeling as I came out.

Horror!

It was gripping to see pictures of hotels, streets, railway stations in a state of mayhem. Terrorists have intruded very comfortably these days. It's clear. Anyone of us is a potential terror target in our country these days. It stuns me when I think about the mind setup of the terrorists who decide to bomb people whom they don't even know and who are not even remotely related to the supposed cause they are fighting for. What do they really want? Nobody can tell. But they, for sure are creating big inroads in the society.

Entering railway stations armed with Ak-47 and shooting people as they like is a very sorry state of affairs in the country. Innocent people, people who had no idea what would befall upon them the next minute are getting horrendously inflicted with pain and death.

I am speechless literally. This year has been on top of the disaster chart in terms of terror attacks and all big talk from the government after each and every attack is highly unconvincing. It's is not possible to exterminate terror attacks at all places. But some action from the government is necessary.

In the end, all the lost lives hurt.

A thousand elephants and not a thousand colors

Voila!
Just in my previous post, I had mentioned that Harris needs to come out of the Karaharapriya, Natabhairavi closet. And I see traces of Charukeshi in the charanam of "Ava Enna..." (Vaaranam AAyiram), Karthik in the vocals. Nice to hear him sing a beautiful song after a pretty decent gap in tamil. The song is kind of a sequel to Minnale's "Venmathiye...", the feel being the same. The interesting thing about the song is that, it is expected to be set for the dappankuthu genre when it opens. But Harris rarely gives you an outright dappankuthu. There is always a feel of a class in his songs, purely because of his chord exploits.

Since the Minnale and Majnu days, Harris has proved to be an outright melodist. At present, I think he is the king of melodies in tamil movies. Even otherwise, Harris doesnt experiment much with the range of his songs. The experimentation that he does is primarily on ways to innovate his own numbers!

As expected, all songs are good in VA. My favorites are Ava enna, Anal Mele, Adiye Kolluthey. The rest remind you of a Oru Maalai, Mudhal naal Indru- his earlier hit compositions. Anal Mele is no different from Munbe Va, Vassegara or Enadhuyire. It's Natabhairavi alright! But I primarily like the song since I happened to hear and see it the first time while watching the movie. You can call this song as one of the most fitting and relevant numbers to the feel of the movie. So even though the tune is a rehash, Sudha along with the picturisation of the song have had a good influence on me. A kind of song that you would want to listen to reclining on a cushion sofa with your headphones on a late night sojourn.

And on a subject totally unrelated, I coined this saying today morning - felt good about it.

"For today's middle class, luxury is a mundane affair and the ordinary is an elusive retreat"

Harris! Please leave Karaharapriya alone

Mr. Harris Jayaraj! This is a sincere request from me to leave Karaharapriya and her cousin Natabhairavi alone for sometime. You have other zillions of swaram combinations to explore. Agreed that you have given us wonderful melodies using these 2 ragams. But it's time to move on sir. Its been too much of late. And you are trying to make the same note sound different each time using different rhythm patterns and some interesting interludes. But, yeah, after a point, it has become so repetitive that I might lose interest. You are capable of giving us great songs. So, next time let us not hear the same set of swarams set to different beats. My petition is that since you are the sole melody king in the tamil film world now, please provide some quality music to live up to your name.

Some suggestions:
- The Bombay Jayashree-adi thondai-natabhairavi genre could be put to rest for sometime
- Explore swara patterns other than SR2PM1R2S, R2PM1G2R2S, M1PN2PM1R2S (surfeited karaharapriya and janyas)
- Try something in a Prathi Madhyama ragam. I think, the only prathi madhyamam that I have heard is your "Mudhar Kanave", that too only as a baashanga in Natabhairavi, your favorite.
- Retain the melodious interludes but again, in different ragams.
- Compose something in Sindhu Bhairavi, Mayamalavagowla, keeravaani, charukeshi. Expand your repertoire.
- How come you have not composed anything in Hindolam, Mohanam or a Kalyani(atleast to my recollection). These are music director's all time favorites. I want to hear your techno blend with ragams like these.

Sincerely
Manojh

rock on - again

I am coming back to the wonderfully crafted album by SEL - Rock on!

The songs in the album religiously maintain the construction of any typical rock song - i.e. the song has only a pallavi, which is repeated over and over again with distinct lyrics ofcourse, the tune being the same. Typically, there are no charanams. The pallavis are separated by guitar, keyboard interludes. The song gets its variation purely because of the variety in the orchestration employed.

This is something new that we haven't seen in Indian film songs. Infact,here, all songs fit the above description. Having said that, is there variety that is in offer?
Yeah. Sure.

'Socha Hai' is a wonderfully paced, would-make-you-dance song. I especially like the song's lyrics and the way Farhaan has sung it. He seems to ease through the song with a natural flair. Also, I feel this song is more peppier than 'Rock on', the title song. The two probably could have interchanged their places.

'Rock on', again by Farhaan is pretty good throughout. But a defnite zing is missing here when compared with Socha Hai.

'Ye Tumhari Meri', sung by Dominique Cerejo is easily the pick among the slow songs. The whole song has the chord Ri-Pa-Ma-Ri-Sa-Ri-Ma-Pa(all major notes) consistently flowing through. Again, the keyboard, guitar's prowess come to the fore. Accompanied by a wonderful voice, this song has already made me addictive.

'Pichle Saath Dinon' is easily bolstered by the electric guitar and Farhaan. The song's, 'Kaise Boloon...' phrase is very catchy, departing from the rock feel of the overall song.

'Tum Ho Toh', is good for its interludes(esp. the ones with the organ), not so much for the voice as Farhaan lack of proper training shows. Nevertheless, yet another good song.

The freshness in this album is probably comparable to DCH, RDB. No wonder they were chartbusters. Music of a movie reflects the thought process of the director and his penchant for the kind of songs he wants to have. The best of songs seem to come inextricably from the best of the movies. No wonder then, the director has a major role to play in the selection of songs that a music composer offers.