Wedding 1.0.1 (beta) – Green Edition

The weekend was filled with weddings. So what does one do when in the midst of Paruppu Usili, Silk sarees, loud bursts of Getty melam and a whole load of “I also have a son who is a very eligible bachelor” type social networking? One dreams up possible uses of technology to

1) Spice weddings up.

2) Make then Greener.

ps: When I use the word “spice”, it’s not like “They added an item song to spice the movie up”. It’s more like “They used modern technology as one would use a fluorescent marker, to reinforce and highlight the the relevance of ancient traditions”.

I Indian Weddings are the very much flower liking.

The Tradition

Elderly folks at weddings are usually handed flowers which they go on to bless and then exercise their rotator cuff muscles to hurl aforementioned plant reproductive parts in the hope that the blessed object will make contact with the couple seated on the medai and initiate a benediction transfer process.

The problem

1. Only the front row (often occupied by the oldest of the old) has a reasonable chance of ensuring that their blessings reach the couple. The ones behind can do no better than throw flowers on the people immediately in front of them (because of 1) poor throwing arms 2) air friction). This means that there is a very inefficient transfer of benediction to the couple. Random people in the crowd are getting blessed while the couple is being short-changed. In this tough world of work pressures, bad software and T-Nagar shopping megamalls, couples need every flower to make direct contact with their heads.

2. Old people are unnecessarily straining their shoulder muscles and incurring wear and tear, thereby increasing the probability of today’s leech like hospitals swinging into action (or would that be “crawling” into action?) and stealing precious savings from these poor old people in the name of bone scans, MRI scans and physiotherapy

The solution

There are thousands of cannons lying around in museums, gathering rust and dust. And on top of that, their minds are wracked with the guilt of all the death and destruction they have caused in the past. So why not give them a new lease of life and chance to dole out something positive?

II Clear and Present Danger

The Tradition

Every wedding has a designated Gift Collector (usually a close cousin) who is in charge of collecting, documenting and accounting for all presents, both cash and kind.

The problems

1. Financial irregularities – The gift collector can very easily manipulate the Who gave what record and make a tidy profit in the bargain

2. The gift collector can do nothing about those lazy attendees who recycle the same tea set/cutlery set that they received at their (or their children’s) wedding.

The Solution

RFID tags can be used to identify and track gifts. So a small loudspeaker system that announces “Mr and Mrs So-and-So have gifted yet another tea set” should discourage people from being lazy gifters in the future.

ps: Moi-Man is a Tamizh term referring to the person who is in charge of keeping gift records.

III Thaamboola Pye 2.0

Traditional Contents

1. One miniature coconut that, after the fibrous skin is removed, has about a table-tennis ball size worth of actual usable material.

2. One sweet lime with skin that is as difficult to remove as a burkha in Saudi Arabia.

3. One mouth-cancer causing packet of betel nut pieces mixed with industrial chemicals.

4. All the above placed in an environmentally unsound plastic bag with the wedding details printed on it for posterity

Suggested contents

1. One 2 GB flash drive. I am sure it will cost slightly less than a miniature coconut in some time. You could even pre-load it with a screensaver that has wedding photos moving around in a landscape filled with green meadows, mountains and clouds (Yes. Same special effects generally used by the video guy at the weddings)

2. Jute or paper bags instead of plastic

3. Small packet with cloves and elaichi instead of betel nuts.

IV Green only I am liking the colour

There are several things one could do to reduce the carbon footprint of our weddings.

1. As already mentioned, Jute and paper bags instead of plastic. Paper cups for filter coffee and water.

2. Recycle wasted food. A huge amount of food gets wasted at every wedding. And the solution for that is – Cows.

All Kalyaana Mandapams must maintain some cows so that weddings can save a lot on fuel and milk costs.

3. An insane amount of jewellery is usually on display. So I think solar panels that can trap all this jigna and generate electricity will help cut energy costs.

4. Wedding halls should provide absolutely no parking space, so that it will force people to use public transport.

V Respect Da Music

My amateur musician heart goes out to all the Nadaswaram and Thavil brothers who are cruelly mistreated and their music blatantly disrespected at every Tambram wedding. They are all too frequently interrupted and asked, willy-nilly, to stop their passionate alapana in Thodi and instead, play an unmusical stream of noise called Getty Melam.

For the uninitiated, Getty melam is a loud, unmusical interlude designed for the express purpose of

1. Getting the audience’ attention to something important going on (like the thaali (noose) being tied etc)

2. Drowning out any inauspicious sounds that may be emanating from the audience.

Frankly, in today’s world, it is an insult to the musician to ask him to play the role of a megaphone. So this is what I propose:

Why interrupt a musician’s flow when the Bose G1000 “Getty Monster” amplifier/speaker can be used to generate 100 dB attention gathering getty melam sounds.

VI Videography

The problem

Many thousands of rupees are wasted on capturing a video of the marriage proceedings. Not only do these guys only capture the most boring and insipid moments (It’s hard to get invitees to be spontaneous with the equivalent of a solar flare in ones face), they are also rather immobile, what with miles of wire trailing them and a camera the size of a bazooka.

The solution

Honestly, how many times does a wedding video ever get watched? Once? Here is my suggestion. Get 10 of your friends to roam around with their 3 megapixel camera phones and shoot several interesting snippets from the entire wedding. Apart from 2 or 3 angles focussing just on the main event, others can focus on the canteen, where one can catch little kids struggling to stop runny rasam from leaking over the edge of the table and soiling their brand new miniature sherwaanis. Some can be deputed to focus only on the parents of the bride and groom and capture their faces go through a gamut of emotions ranging from frustration, joy, rage and relief throughout the day. And others can point their camera phones occasionally at the kitchen, capturing the caffeine addict maama demanding coffee with extra decoction directly from the chef.

In the end, one will end up with several short, highly watchable, youtube style videos that could even be posted online for non-attendees to watch in the comfort of their home.

VII Saree Matters

It is estimated that about 70% of elapsed time in a Tambram wedding goes in the bride changing 7 sarees during the day. Well, RMKV and Kumaran have already come up with path breaking innovations such as 4-in-1 and Zip-pallu sarees, so why not just come up with a 6-in-1 Kalyaanamegasaree that can morph from a breezy Oonjal saree to orthodox Madisaaru followed by homely Grihapravesham to chilled-out Nalangu, an ubergrand reception and a cheevidunga first night saree?

And since time = money and money = paper and paper = trees and all that, I think RMKV and Kumaran need to make this happen now if we are to have a chance of saving our forests.

Twinkle twinkle annoying stars bleat "Baa baa" all the time

Did you know that the closing lines of the one of the older versions of Baa Baa Black Sheep went –

Two for the master,

one for the dame,

but none for the little boy

who lives down the lane.

And sometime at the turn of the century, some women suddenly realized something and went “Wait a nimit for 10 minutes” like Raju in MMKR, and decided that the master couldn’t get away with two bags of wool without a fight.

So the gender-equalized and child-considerate version of this rhyme, the one that we are familiar with today, goes

One for the master,

one for the dame,

and one for the little boy

who lives down the lane.

But people had nothing more useful to do since the 1990s, so they decided to invent political correctness. And since “black” has race connotations, some schools in the UK started teaching,

Baa baa rainbow sheep,

have you any wool?

Eh? Rainbow sheep? So would that be – One for the master, one for the trade, one for the fashionable guy, at the gay parade?

The interesting thing of course is that the original rhyme that dates back to the 13th century has no racial connotations. It was intended as a satire on a tax imposed on wool by the king. A third of the wool had to go to the King ( the “Master”), a third to the Church (the “Dame”) and the farmer (the “little boy down the lane”) could keep the last third.

But I am not interested in nursery rhyme trivia and political correctness. What interests me is the fact that there were several versions of this rhyme and each was influenced a little bit by the era in which it was set in.

So how could we derive our own version of this nursery rhyme? Perhaps we could, like the 13th century English folk, hint at our own frustrations with people in high places.

Baa Baa black sheep,

Have you any shame?

No sir, no sir,

it’s part of the game.

One for the minister,

one for his valet,

one for the office boy,

it’s bribes all the way.

Lewis Fry Richardson came up with a scientific take on this popular rhyme during the explosion of scientific breakthroughs in cosmology a century back.

Twinkle twinkle little star,

I hardly wonder what you are,

For by spectroscopic ken,

I know that you are hydrogen

And brilliant physicist George Gamow had this to say when Quasars were discovered,

Twinkle twinkle quasi-star

biggest puzzle from afar

How unlike the other ones

Brighter than a billion suns

So perhaps in our version, we could ask our celebrities to stop hogging the news while farmers still continue to commit suicides in several parts of the country.

Twinkle Twinkle annoying star,

why do I care who you are?

Up above in your flats so high,

Stay out of my news, I bid you good-bye.

Commenters. The floor is yours. Contemporary Indian nursery rhymes, and if they come out well, we could try publishing them like this.

Bisibelebaath

It was a bright, sunny day in Veggieland, and there are some simmering tensions in the air as a result of some foreigners arriving in town.

Elsewhere, it’s life as usual.

The hierarchy is well-defined. Size does matter. As does colour.

Discriminations abound.

And nobody likes the elites.

Very often, inter-clan tensions can reach boiling point.

Violence is never far away.

Tragedies are common.

But there is always the wise philosopher, who tells it like it is.

And in this case, the philosopher is totally right.

And the Bisibelebaath was delicious. I am off to my Sunday siesta now.

Ramayanapedia

A couple of weeks back, I saw something in Landmark that provided fodder for this post – A DVD box-set of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana. A couple of days back, I saw a DVD-rip torrent of the same thing on the web, and that was when I realized that while Mr Sagar had actually done the people of India a great service by making that televised version, he had actually done great disservice to the epic itself. Not because he was inaccurate, but because he managed to convince most of our population that his version is the seminal, authentic version.

We are a diverse country but yet, at times, I am not entirely sure if we well and truly cherish that diversity. For instance, a lot of people would like to believe that our oldest epic is really one powerfully common story that connects all of us and gives us a unified sense of identity and provides us a clear delineation between good and evil. Like Mr Sagar’s version.

But,

according to the Dasaratha Jaataka,

Rama, at his father’s insistence, takes Lakshmana and Sita, and decides to spend a few years in the forest, generally chilling out, shooting game and making deer jerky and barbeque. News then reaches them through a Pushpaka SMS that reads “Dsrth is ded. pls cm hm”. Sita and Lakshmana flip out, start grieving mightily, shed bucketloads of tears and generally behave like characters in a Tamizh soap serial on Kalaignar TV. But Rama remains expressionless like Ajit in Billa and refuses to let grief overwhelm him. This is because, he is merely the Buddha in one of his many earlier births. He notes with characteristic detachment that all lives are impermanent, and goes on to lecture his sibling and wife on the need to conserve water by learning to keep ones tears in the thanni lorry of one’s mind. Later, all three return to the kingdom, where Rama-Buddha rules justly for many years.

According to Krrtibaasa’s Bengali Ramayana,

Rama was a Vaali-backstabbing, wife-dumping character who finally faces his 2 virtuous sons, Lava and Kusha, in battle, after the twins had dispatched Bharatha, Shatrughana and Lakshmana like VVS dispatches deliveries on middle and leg. While jackals and hyenas were enjoying full meals on the battlefield, Lava and Kusha proceed to humiliate and insult their father for trying to avoid fighting with his own blood (‘Ada chee, dialogue nirutthittu sanda podu nainaa’). Rama goes into a rage but ends up losing and still manages to wallow in some kshatriya pride despite falling to his own sons. He is happy that he has never been defeated by somebody from another lineage.

According to Bhavabhuti’s Uttararamacharita,

Lakshmana sends an IM message to Rama and Sita – “Dudez, you gotta check these Youtube videos out” and proceeds to share a bunch of video links, each of which show a different version of the story of the Ramayana. In some Rama is a hero and in some he is just another unscrupulous mortal. Some of the stories are about Raavana’s side of things, about how he rescued a willing Sita from an abusive husband and the tragedy that befell his family as he was pulled into an unnecessary war of aggression featuring bridge-constructing simians and invective spouting north indians (UPites) shouting – “Abe madraasi, baahar aaja” outside his gate. One other tale involves Sita jumping into Raavana’s funeral pyre after expressing disgust at Rama’s doubts about her fidelity. At the end, Rama reflects on all these versions and learns from his mistakes and becomes a better man.

Well, my translations might be a tad unnecessarily contemporary, but the main point is that there are several versions of the Ramaayana in India, from the well known, mainstream versions (Valmiki, Tulsi, Kamban etc) to the richly diverse folk tellings of rural India. Sort of like Linux, you know. A more or less common kernel with a thousand or more flavours evolving over a period of time. It’s almost as if the Ramaayana was composed open-source style. Perhaps there was somebody like Jimmy Wales who set up a wiki (short for Walmiki in those days) platform and invited poets and bards from all over India to collaboratively author the epic.

I can imagine that certain pages were very busy in terms of debate and discussion.

Perhaps they had some editorial guidelines as well,

And yet, some of the edits probably violated the Neutral Point of View guideline.

and perhaps, some of these spirited fights made it to the front page of digg in those days, along with other important news items of that age.

Guide to Rendering Yeoman Service to Rasikas By Writing Formulaic Carnatic Concert Reviews in The Hindu

Bollywood has The Formula and it involves shirtless, six-packed heroes, shampoo-model bimbettes and graceless music. Jerry Bruckheimer has The Formula and it involves car chases, lots of explosions and cliched dialogues. Back in class 12, even I had The Formula and it involved mixing Toluene and concentrated Nitric acid in the vain hope that I could mass produce TNT. Carnatic artistes have The Formula, and it involves RTPs, tukdaas and thani-aavarthanam coffee breaks.

But did you know that The Hindu Carnatic concert reviews also had The Formula?

This blog has been offering useful career advice, no, wait, let’s try saying that in thehindusanctimoniouswindbaggy style. It has been rendering yeoman service to the blog-reading public on alternative careers.

So let’s straight get to the Guide to Rendering Yeoman Service to Rasikas By Writing Formulaic Carnatic Concert Reviews in The Hindu.

We first need a title. It must be short, sweeping and entirely uninformative. For mostly positive reviews,

• Brilliant Collaboration
• Lingering Effect
• Stirs the Intellect
• Rich Tapestry of Emotions
• Of Harmony and Melody
• Strict adherence to Baani.
• Fast tempo settles intro sober stride

For a slightly censorious effect,

• Needs more refinement
• Touched the intellect, not the heart.

In case the reviewer, i.e. you, fell asleep during the concert and didn’t pay too much attention, best to play it safe and stick to details you clearly know, like,

• Talent from Bangalore
• An evening of beauty

Now that we are done with the title, we proceed to the meat, sorry, the curd rice of the review. Make a list of song verses and raaga names, and use the following sentence constructs around them.

• The artiste set a fast tempo and then subsequently settled into a sober stride with {Song}
• {Artiste}’s exposition of {Raaga} was {evocative/solemn/filled with emotional hues}
• Longish phrases and full of catchy brigaas
• {Raaga} with its intrinsic melancholy filled the air with a solemn feel.
• Extrapolation at {specific verse of song} backed by emotional hues and varying streams of kalpanaa swaras.
• The gradual development by {Artiste} surfaced several of the bhaava-loaded angles of the raaga with a few touches of fast-moving brigaas included in between.
• {Artiste}’s voice easily traversed all the levels
• {Artiste}’s aalaapana in {Raaga} always steered clear of unwanted flights but strong and solid phrases progressing step by step by emphasised the core of the raaga
• It was a fluent, breezy aalaapana, very brigaa-oriented, the notes clearly emerging from the depths of {Artiste}’s throat.

And at the end of the review, add a few words about the able accompaniment of the violinist/percussionists and you are done.

And now, it brings me to the obvious question. Why? Why does The Hindu do this? Why this formulaic, politically correct insipidity? Why don’t we have English equivalents of Subbudu? Not that I completely approve of that man, but imagine the sheer entertainment value.

ps: For the uninitiated, Subbudu was a legendary Carnatic critic whose reviews were mostly droplets of concentrated sulphuric acid masquerading as Tamizh words. His wit wasn’t just biting, it was a T-Rex. A hungry one.

So what would a contemporary English Subbudu-style review look like? Some snippets.

If notes were goats, this artiste’s rendition of Karaharapriya would be the equivalent of a lost herd, roaming aimlessly in unfamiliar pastures, bleating plaintively for help from the shepherds in the audience who have already given them up for dead.

He went on to plead “Mokshamu Galada” and I was inclined to suggest that our chances might improve if he, in particular, stopped pleading.

Her attempt at the raaga almost made me stand up and ask her to stop and instead, ask the audience to play random ringtones from their cellphones in unison. One had good reason to believe that the random ringtones have a greater chance of hitting the right bhaava of Saaveri than her rendition.

It’s good that Vedanthaangal is far away from the Music Academy, because the migratory swans there might mistake {Artiste}’s dhwani as being the sounds of the enemies of Hamsas.

I would advise the singer’s voice to take some training from her hand. During the concert, it seems to reach greater heights with far more facility than her voice.

It was not Kalpana (imagination) swaram. It was Kal Banaa (Made yesterday) swaram.

Happy New Year

I don’t make new year resolutions. And I tend to be at a loss when people slip and lose balance over the steep precipice of making small talk by clutching at the dangerously tenuous branch of asking people what resolutions they made for new year. So I usually keep my garden pruning scissors handy to cut that strained branch and provide fodder for the crocodiles below.

The shady technology humour escape route.

So, any resolution for the new year?

12 megapixels.

Uh?

600 dpi

Eh?

The wikipedia research based confusion route.

Ennada? What new year resolutions?

Did you know that a resolution is a rule of inference leading to a refutation theorem-proving technique for sentences in propositional logic and first-order logic

Ennadhu?

And therefore a new year resolution is a rule of inference leading to a refutation of common sense in daaru-drinking logic leading to first-order tragedies like this

(curse in Tamizh that can best be translated as “Since I asked you, physical violence using footwear must be exercised on me with immediate effect”)

The Question-the-Question strategy.

Hellovanakkamhowareyouhappynewyear? (followed by vigorous shaking of hands)

What is so special about January 1?

Why, it’s the beginning of a new year.

Since when?

Well. Since a long time.

No.

Dei. Why so much rowsu? Just take the wishes and say thank you no?

No. I celebrate Tamizh new year in April. So I will accept wishes only then.

And so on.

Another interesting phenomenon is the use of technology to wish people a happy year ahead. So if you think that it’s an unnecessary use of one’s time to wake up at 6 am to visit close family and friends’ homes and wish everyone, you could call them on the phone. But then, that’s wear and tear for your vocal chords and if old people are involved, more than just a one-rupee local call. And hell, it could be STD or ISD too. So best to send an SMS message. It’s cheap and also provides a nutritious diet of vowels for the sender. But hey, it’s cheap but not free. So why not save that cost and send an email instead? One could even send colourful, midi-music playing e-greeting cards and one doesn’t have to pay a penny for it. But then, one has to waste time typing all the addresses to which the emails need to be sent, and that could cause carpal tunnel, so why not just post a message on Orkut or Facebook, where selecting friends is easier. But it still involves typing and therefore I would personally recommend Twitter, which restricts messages to 140 characters or less, and one doesn’t even need to choose friends to send to. People who are part of your network will receive the message automatically.

But in my personal opinion, we can do even better. Typing 140 characters is also tiresome. So one should keep the following sticky notes handy on the desktop. A few samples,

Wish you and your family a very happy, colourful, fun-filled and prosperous next 31,556,926 seconds

Wish you and your family a wholesome, lip-smacking, cashewnut-loaded, ghee-dripping Pongal with generous servings of coconut chutney

Wish you and your family lots of sundal and not much gastric trouble.

And so on.

Then one can simply copy(Ctrl-C) and paste(Ctrl-V) into Twitter for appropriate occasions. But wait, why must I expend a few neurons remembering these occasions or wasting precious time copying and pasting. So, one can use Remember the Milk, a free online to-do-manager service that can be setup to automatically send pre-configured Twitter messages (shown in the sticky notes above) on predetermined days. One stone, many mangoes. No?