The Adventures of Darth Vaadhiar, episode 1 – A New Hopelessness

Darkness descends.

The Imperial March plays. With a slight twist. And 2 extra sangathis to boot.

 

Junior Jigubugu Vaadhiar: What an unexpected pleasure, mama. What brings you here unannounced?

Darth Vaadhiar: Spare me the pleasantries. I am here to get this homam back on schedule. I was doing my extended morning Sandhi, that makes me strong in the force

Junior Jigubugu Vaadhiar : You and your extended Sandhi. We have to keep with the times and these practices of yours are archaic. For one, I would never do an extended Sandhi because my mobile phone will ring, and hey check out my new ringtone -  “Iyer Ground” by UB40 (Unemployed Brahmins of 40 South Mada St), the seminal street band from Mylapore.

The lyrics go

Every hour and every day, I am drinking more,
without which in this Chennai sun, I’ll burn to the core.

Unless I know the vedas, I’m not going around
digging deeper into some Iyer ground.

Darth Vaadhiar : (using the force to cause Jigubugu vaadhiar’s poonal (sacred thread) to coil around his neck and elevate him from his seat, asphyxiating him like a hangman’s victim) I find your lack of faith…..disturbing.

JJV : That’s your problem Vaadhiar. Times are changing and you still think you can throttle people with their sacred threads and force them to observe rituals for which we don’t even seem to have convincing sounding reasons any more. If we are to survive in this century, we have to reinvent ourselves. Look at what we have become. Impoverished, low end contract workers who never moved up the value chain or from the 200 sq ft cubby hole we call home in North Mada street.

Realize it Darth. We have a fundamentally flawed business model in a target market that’s increasingly changing its attitude towards religion. We need to move away from peddling low end homam, marriage, tarpanam services and sri-sri-ize our core philosophy.

Darth Vaadhiar : And what (Sounds of heavy breathing) is that?

JJV: We need to go New Age. We are still Old Skool.

Darth Vaadhiar: Are you telling me that we need to freestyle rap our mantras? Wear Rudraksha Bling? I will not cheapen myself. (Sounds of heavy breathing).

JJV: No No. Thats not what I meant. I don’t think you understand the sri-sri-fication of religion thats going on. Let me explain. Religion has always been the toll free helpline that gives answers to life’s difficult questions, such as “Why is this happening to me?“, or “Will Arasi die in the next 3 episodes?” etc. And our past tactic of diverting people’s minds by the constant enforcement of mind numbing ritual has worked well, but is way past its time now. People don’t blindly accept ritual without a rational explanation, and hey, rationalism was never our strength eh? Look at all the New Age gurus. They make billions by providing what seems to me to be common sense answers cloaked in a thin veil of ancient wisdom to the current crop of urban problems – stress, information overload and soap serials.

That’s where we need to be Darth.

Our metaphorical business tyre is being punctured while you are bicycling to your next Ganapathi Homam. In the words of Friedman, today’s world is flat, but our tyres shouldn’t be. Some of our brethren seem to have understood this and have diversified into organizing Veda chanting classes and Horoscope exchange meets, but that’s not enough. Our job is outsourceable. In a very cynical sense, our skills are nothing more than memorization followed by obfuscatory diction. I’m afraid T-Series could release mantras, DRM free, on iTunes and we are done. And when one web-savvy vaadhiar uploads DIY videos of all rituals to Youtube, we might as well join a computer course and get into the Indian IT industry. Like every one else.

And why do I say Srisrification is the way to go? If there is one skill that has never ever been outsourced in our planet’s history, it is the application of common sense to tell people what they should already be knowing. It’s called consulting. And the billing rates have never fallen.

Darth Vaadhiar: (Sounds of heavy breathing) (More sounds of heavy breathing). I will think about this.

To be continued…..

Episode Glossary

Update: Corrections pointed out by the Rt Hon VS Srinivasa Sastry

Jigubugu – An adjective I heard from my maternal grandfather to describe tag along priests who would start strongly with Shuklaambara-dharam…, become generally hazy in the more complex mantras, and chime in strongly during the Namahas and Nivedayaamis.

Imperial March – The original Vader theme. Listen to it here. The Vaadhiar theme here features me on the violin and bass recorded on Garageband. Listen with headphones preferably and keep the volume low. I was too lazy to mix it properly.

UB40 and Higher ground – Here

Saroja Gulaal Nikaalo

Hello Everybody,

Howareyoufineaa?

Advance apologies for a generally rambling, pointless, rudderless, multi-topicked post on many things in general and nothing in particular. Since the seminal “How to attract blog readers and influence millions” told me that individual blog posts must be

• Focussed on a single theme like a sniper rifle on its target in order to be linkable – Blog aggregators (like Desipundit, Blogbharti etc) will have trouble writing summaries for your post if it deals with multiple, unrelated topics.
• Have a kickass start, six-pack middle and mind-blowing end in strangely reversed anatomical order.

I have decided to follow those rules religiously. So this post will deal with

• Holi,
• Concerts at Tambram weddings
• Fusion music

Friday was Holi, a spring festival where people throw coloured powders that symbolically contain Neem, Kumkum and Turmeric but really contain Lead Oxide, Copper Sulphate and Aluminium Bromide instead, on each other. Yet another fine example of the great Indian tradition of carrying forward the ritual meaning while leaving behind the rational significance of using real herbs to immunize people against the coming diseases of summer.

But hey, leaving aside the toxic chemical hazard, it is a festival of colours, a chromatic orgy of fun, games and bhang.

My friends in Delhi also inform me that it is also the one day when you can surreptitiously make physical contact with women without being accused of harassment or eve-teasing.

Do Holi colours also have subliminal psychological overtones? For e.g, does Rinku smear Bunty with a lot of green to suggest that she doesn’t quite appreciate his flirtatious overtures with Goldy? Or does Monty hint at his upcoming poor board-exam results by covering his father with red? I don’t know, but it’s an area that deserves some serious research funding.

And as somebody who knows a few design folks, all of whom suffer from an annual migraine at looking at the random, uncoordinated riot of colour that is Holi, I propose that we create a “Color safe Holi Zone” where there will be strict adherence to colour palettes such as

I can imagine conversations such as

Designer 1: Happy Holi (and attempts to smear a shade of bright green on Designer 2)

Designer 2: Hang on a minute. Is that #BCDD11? You’ve got to be kidding me. Did you even see the other colours on me? If you’ve got #E6FF0D I’m ok. Or even #D2FF00 for that matter, but #BCDD11 is a strict no no.

And on Sunday, I attended a wedding where the backdrop was provided by the bride and groom collecting gift tea sets from invitees and the background music was provided by Mandolin U Rajesh playing fusion music.

For the uninitiated, the definition of Carnatic Fusion music:

A genre of music where the brahmin carnatic notes steadfastly refuse to mix and harmonize with the non-brahmin western notes and instead, continue to live in the agrahaaram of the usual Raaga alaapanaas and kalpanaa swaraas while the rest of the band tries to figure out if Am and Dm go well with Natabhairavi.

But to be fair to U Rajesh, he is an incredible instrumentalist and it’s not really his fault. There were two problems there:

1. The is a difference between Carnatic and Western music that most musicians seem to completely ignore – Let me explain that with a graphic.

So, carnatic notes slide around on roller skates performing acrobatic pirouettes called Gamakam and Brigaa while the poor western ones are stuck with plain old legs. And in party where there are people who wear both plain old shoes and roller skates, I’d imagine that there will be quite a few unseemly collisions.

And that is usually what happens at most “fusion” concerts.

2. The whole thing about concerts at weddings: Picture this.

• Musical notes are are sent out from U Rajesh’ instrument go on a bold journey to the listener’s ear.
• Non-musical notes such as discussions about Soap serials, the birde’s saree, the quality of filter coffee, and the upcoming annual 22-yard Monsoon (the seasonal rain that arrives in Chennai as soon as an international cricket match is announced) form a loud, chaotic queue in front of the listener’ ear.
• Musical notes plead – “Please let us pay a visit to the Shrine of the Ear”
• Non-musical notes retort – “Get in the queue. We ain’t done yet”.
• So while the A minor scale and Natabhairavi wait in queue, a particularly nasty non-musical note whispers “Did you have dinner? Please have dinner before you go” into the listener’s ear.
• Listener leaves to go eat some food (and waste a lot), leaving behind disconsolate notes that wither and die a sad death

So I strongly urge people to stop these wanton deaths and instead, play a CD at weddings.

(black) race to the white house, part #1

Remember Loo. Su. Mani and Pay. Mani?

They are lower rung party workers (and part-time poster designers) and have given their bodies to the soil and lives to their leader (Udal Mannukku, Uyir Thalaivarukku).

They recently had a discussion on the upcoming US elections, and I had the privilege to eavesdrop.

LSM: What brother ?(Ennannae?)

PM: I am well, brother. Thalaivar’s posters stuckaa?

LSM: Yes yes. From Ennore to Vandalur, our leader’s benevolent gaze confers bliss upon the city.

PM: Good good. Did you hear about the elections in America?

LSM: Yes yes. Some primary election is going on no?

PM: Yes. To choose who will run in the election in November.

LSM: Oh. For that also, election aa? Whatay waste of money ya. Why don’t they just choose a leader after the election? It’s not as if a single person runs the government right? So how does it matter who that nominal figurehead is?

PM: No no. America is different. They drive on the wrong side of the road and eat super-sized fries with diet Pepsi. They are different.

LSM: Oh. Appidi (like that). So what are the key election issues?

PM: Abortion

LSM: What? Why is a woman’s private decision a public matter?

PM: I don’t know. Something to do with a culture of life.

LSM: So scientists cannot throw away petri-dishes containing live bacteria in the lab?

PM: Yes.

LSM: Oho. And what else?

PM: Same sex marriages.

LSM: Oh. What is that?

PM: For e.g, 2 men getting married to each other.

LSM: So what’s the problem? Let them do that no? Doesn’t it save money on jewellery?

PM: I don’t know. Something to do with the sanctity of marriage.

LSM: Oh. As if they are putting marriage in a temple and doing abhishekham daily. Don’t most marriages in the US anyway end in divorces? So where is the sanctity really?

PM: I don’t know much about America but when I try to imagine a gay Tambram wedding, I can see a lot of potential administrative issues. For instance, what happens to the Kanya Dhaanam in a man-man marriage? Or all those mantras urging the couple to be fruitful and multiply? Will they now change it to “May you adopt many male children“? Which of the guys will go for the Kaasi Yatra? Will they both tie thaalis to each other?

LSM: Hmm. Complex issues.

PM: Yes. I have always wondered about one thing though. How do they do booth capturing in the US? Does it work the same way it does here?

LSM: No saar. In America, they don’t need to capture booths. They simply capture software. Specifically the one that powers these things.

PM: Oh I see. By the way, did you see the rediff.com article on the US elections?

LSM: Oh? There was a rediff article?

PM: Yeah. And as usual I just completely skipped reading the article and went straight for the comments section. That’s where all the profundity usually lies. See here. The wisdom of the crowds in action explaining the key issues in the US election.

LSM: Hmm. Profound indeed. So do you think Obama will win the nomination?

PM: He should, but it’s a tight race.

LSM: I feel Obama needs better posters. American graphic designers seem to lack the ability to deliver a punch.

PM: What do you have in mind?

LSM: This.

Sodha Akbar says "Salaal Mugamaddhu baai, veg biriyaani ready"

I had an eventful week. I saw Jodha Akbar and then went on a short 2-day business trip to Charlotte, NC.

The business trip seemed shorter.

So the moment I got back to IST, while my biological clock is still sightseeing somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, I decided to, in the interest of public service, to shoot an email to Ashutosh Gowariker asking him to shorten the movie to something less than the time it takes a medium sized star to turn into a white dwarf.

But I didn’t do the shooting, for 2 reasons

• I did not have Ashutosh Gowariker’s email ID
• A close cousin got married and I had to discharge several critical responsibilities (such as eating breakfast, hogging lunch, guzzling coffee and tucking into dinner)

But since this is a blog with a fairly tenuous connection to the restricting limitations of real life, let us imagine that I actually did send this email to Mr. Gowariker.

And the ideas I’ve handpicked are:

The Tansen Fan club of Teynampet

We are ok with the movie till the point where Jodha marries Akbar. After that we find, to quote Lord Vader, the lack of Tansen disturbing. Remember the scene where Akbar is in the Diwan-e-Aam (Sofa made from Mango tree) and this important event is interrupted by strains of Jodha singing “Man Mohanaa”? The emperor then declares the session closed and joins his lady love in singing some Krishna bhajans.

At this point, we believe Tansen should intervene and point out that Jodha is way off the original Raga in which the composition was set. He then goes on to demonstrate how it should be sung and Jodha is shamed and decides to go back to her Paattu maami to start over from Sarle Varise. Akbar then goes on to marry 700 more women and lives like every other Mughal emperor. Some harm and a lot of harem.

Length of Movie – 30 minutes.

The Gardening Club of Kotturpuram

Akbar wins lots of wars. He then decides to marry Jodha. His army throws a bachelor party and invites Sufi singers to sing “Khwaja Jee”.

As anybody can clearly see, this is a plot by the Gardening Club of Panipat to assassinate the emperor for his reckless laying waste of gardens and nurseries in Panipat in 1556. This is exactly why the singers are symbolically wearing flower pots on their heads. Once the song finishes, Akbar joins in the Sufi trance and at that moment, one of the potheads releases a King cobra which goes on to kill the emperor with a deadly bite.

Of course, it’s not historically accurate, but hey, neither is your original movie.

Length of movie – 25 minutes

The Cookery Club of West Mambalam

We are OK with the movie till the point where Aishwarya Rai serves the emperor a lavish self-cooked Rajasthaani meal. Now, imagine a former Miss World cooking a palace meal. Now, we are not doubting that she could rustle up some Maggi noodles or perhaps microwave some MTR precooked meals, but hey, a full meal for the palace? Here is the shortening (not the culinary type, he he) that we recommend.

In the process of cooking Rajasthaani Kadhi, all the L’Oreal and Revlon cosmetics she is wearing mixes with the food. In addition, her diamond studded Longines watch falls into the mix.

So when she serves Akbar and Maha Maanga demands that it is customary for the chef to taste the meal in front of the emperor, she does, and ends up fainting as a result of a lack of a digestive enzyme for L’Oreal face wash. Maha Maanga says – “See I told you so”, and Jodha is banished from the kingdom and Akbar lives happily ever after eating Lamb Biriyani.

Length of movie – 45 minutes

The Murli Manohar Joshi School of Revisionist History

This movie is not only unnecessarily lengthy, it is also a blatant distortion of history. Our problem with the movie is scene nr 1 – Akbar’s battle with Hemu. When Bairam Khan attempts to behead Hemu, his sword breaks into two and Hemu is unscathed. Bairam Khan is enraged and attempts to behead him again with another sword. That one also shatters. Hemu then reveals himself to be an avatar of Vishnu and everyone in the battlefield is humbled and the Mughals go back to their native Uzbekistan.

Length of movie – 5 minutes

The SuperUltimateSupremeIlayaDalapathiStars Fan Club of Saidapet

When Jodha lays down conditions for her betrothal with Akbar (No conversion to Islam, Krishna shrine etc), the emperor’s thoo-neelaam-oru-ambaley type docile response is despicable. In our world, Superstars, Ultimate stars and Supreme Stars usually say – “Ei. Saridaan Podi” (Hey. I request you to take your leave) and go on to do heroic acts and make the heroine fall at his feet at the end of the movie and beg for his mercy and agree to be ahangaaram-less and get married unconditionally.

Basically, most important scenes involving Jodha can be cut and only the hero can be focussed on.

Length of movie – 2 hours.

The World Wide Fund for Nature

We are OK with the movie till Akbar’s attempt to tame the wild elephant. It is a complete insult to the elephant’s leg-eye-trunk coordination skills when you show it missing Akbar many times. Elephants are physically more agile than humans are. Here is what we propose. The elephant raises its foot to crush the emperor. It doesn’t miss.

Length of movie – 30 minutes.

Do read Maami’s post on the real Akbar and Greatbong’s take on his nama.

Moosee Dee Louwre

We Indians have a strange, ambivalent attitude to art. Our goddesses are voluptuous, occasionally blood-thirsty, often decked in a lot bling, sometimes even naked. Our gods are multi-hued, sometimes sensuously dancing or in some cases even transgender. Even our wedding mantras ask us, in the immortal words of Woody Allen, to be constantly fruitful and multiply.

But we, on the other hand, mostly tend to be prudes, demanding that our women dress conservatively, our epics be interpreted in one narrow-dimensional way, and that MF Hussain’s portrayal of Hindu goddesses is sacrilege of the highest kind (conveniently forgetting that till very recently, clothing was entirely optional on most, if not all of Hindu iconography). Art students like Chandra Mohan even get arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments by the wicked use of his paint brush.

Anyway, this post is not an educated, well-informed and heart-felt rant on Indian hypocrisy when it comes to art, for the simple reason that I am neither well-informed or educated enough in artistic matters to be qualified to rant.

And ranting, in any case, is so Blogosphere circa 2003.

So instead, this post is a conversation between the Aasthaana Director of the Mylapore Moosee Dee Louwre (hereinafter referred to as Dir) and Post-Doctoral Scholar on the Violation of Indian Culture in Western Art (hereinafter referred to as Doc). The museum, founded in 2010, specializes in showcasing both Indian and Western Art in a unique way.

The two men are discussing a new plan to showcase some Western art that the institution has purchased from museums in Europe.

Doc: Director-vaazh (for the uninitiated, vaazh is a very formal word for macchi), do you remember Shakespeare’s famous quote on art,

Dir: Ah yes. “I think thou art an ass”

Doc: No, not that one. I am referring to the one about Art holding a mirror up to Nature.

Dir: Oh. That one. ok. What about it?

Doc: Art can hold a mirror to real life in the West, but in India, we must only use a small, completely unusable mirror like the ones women give each other during Sumangali Praarthanais. (For the uninitiated, Su Pra is where women clamour ‘I want to die before my husband’ ardently and give each other small, unusable mirrors for some reason)

Dir: So what you are saying is that we must censor Western art?

Doc: No no. Censor is a bad word, and the public does not like it. It is also a movie made by Dev Anand, and the public most certainly does not like that. So Like Mr Thomas Bowdlerized Shakespeare, we must Bajrangize the Leonardos, Michelangelos and Botticellis.

Dir: Hmm. What exactly do you have in mind?

Doc: Take Venus De Milo for instance.

Dir: Isn’t that The Birth of Venus?

Doc: How do you know that?

Dir: He told me.

Doc: Anyway, Milo or Birth, it is still karmam karmam. Botticelli couldn’t afford her a Rs 300 saree from Pothys or what? If not Pothys, at least he could have draped her in a Kerala style white saree. Those don’t even cost Rs 200. And hmm. that actually gives me an idea. Say, do you remember Ravi Varma’s

Dir: Wait. Is that even Ravi Varma’s? It looks too corny to be his.

Doc: What do you mean? I did a Google Image search for Ravi Varma and this was on the front page of the results. So it has got to be his.

Dir: Oh. Ok. I must be mistaken. Pray continue.

Doc: So here is my recommendation. Get our museum artist interns to borrow one extra saree from above Chechi’s wardrobe and restore some honour and dignity to Venus.

Dir: Hmm. Sounds proper to me. What else?

Doc: What about our dear friend Leonardo from Vinci? Did you know that his model, Lady Gioconda, was married?

Dir: Yes, I did. To some Florentine merchant, Fransesco Del Giocondo, I believe

Doc: What sort of married woman lets her hair virinjufied like some 1970s rock star and wears no pottu (bindi) or (shiva shiva) thaali?

Dir: What to do? Those decadent 16th century European values, chee chee.

Doc: Eggjactly. Don’t you think she really needs to look lakshanamistic like this?

Dir: Yes yes. That’s the way…

Doc: Aha aha.

Dir: I like it.

Doc: Aha aha. Now we move on. That karmampudiccha Frenchman, who has a name that sounds like a car?

Dir: You mean Renoir?

Doc: Yes. That one. His painting La Promenade

Dir: What about it?

Doc: What will happen to our Indian culture if we display such blatant groundnut putting scenes in our good museum? Already our Romeos and Juliets are infesting Marina Beach and irresponsible bloggers such as this jobless bloke are aiding them. We must take a strict stand on this, I say.

Dir: What do you have in mind?

Doc: A policeman.

Dir: Er. You have a policeman in mind?

Doc: Yes. No couple in the city of Chennai must be allowed to roam around unchaperoned by our good men in Khaki.

Dir: Aaha. What would the museum do without you? You ability to constantly render yeoman’s service is astounding. What do we do about this one?

Doc: Aah. The troublesome one-headed creator. No problems. Michelangelo’s other creation provides us inputs to turn this guy into Brahma.

Dir: Doc, I think we are all set now. Let us go grab some Keera Vadais from Karpagaambaal Mess.