Great Indie-an Acts

(This was originally published in Entelechy Edition 34, March 2012)

With Synapse a few weeks old, the constant Raghu Dixit songs are starting to fade away from the hostel corridors. Except when we hear bands live, or are aware of an upcoming concert, Indian artists aren’t given much ear time. Bollywood dominates too much. But a growing independent music scene is flourishing in India, mainly due to rising economic levels and more people willing to pursue their dreams. Here are some great Indian artists that I’ve recently liked. Vishal Shah and Indian Music Revolution are instrumental in introducing some of them.

Advaita

I first heard of Advaita and Swarathma in ”Hindi Hein Hum”. Advaita term themselves as a ‘Rock/Eclectic/Organic Fusion’ band from Delhi and are similar to The Raghu Dixit project. Finding their music is extremely hard, both legally and illegally because they haven’t launched their music on Flyte, and everywhere else is too expensive. I’ve been resorting to streaming from Spotify, but finally caved in and ordered one of their CDs from Flipkart (low-tech maybe, but also the cheapest). Not much is known about them, but they are an octet (geeky?) who had their breakthrough when John Leckie selected them (and Swarathma) as one of the four Indian bands in the India Soundpad project.

Their debut album is Grounded in Space, released in 2009. Ghir Ghir is an amazing number on this album. Advaita makes very good use of some Indian classical vocals and raagas, while injecting western instruments and sound structures with the tabla and sarangi. In fact, Ghir Ghir has parts which wouldn’t sound out of place coming from Dream Theater.

Perhaps their best song is Mo Funk from their latest album The Silent Sea (2012). Vocals (by Ujwal Nagar) and tones that would make my (stuck-up) school music teacher very happy, layered on a background score that is like trance or house music make this 6 minute piece a must-listen. 4 minutes into the song, western vocalist and acoustic guitarist Chayan Adhikari takes over and culminates the ‘Funk’ part of the song.

Other songs to start with are Tremor (SS) and Drops of Earth (GiS).

Swarathma

I think I’ve already introduced Swarathma in the previous section :) Swarathma is a 6-member ensemble from Bangalore (out of which 2 crack PJs). They’ve featured on The Dewarists Episode 7 with Shubha Mudgal.

One of their SoundPad project compositions – Yeshu, Allah aur Krishna – goes “Sant Kabir aye dharti pe, …, jo socha tha woh reh gaya sapna …” and seems to reflect the band’s philosophy. Techies, B-school grads and other achievers, pursuing their passion and making their dreams come true. Their only album is self-titled and released in 2009.

Leader Jana Kahan Hai Mujhe is about “choices we face at each step in our lives, and we are frequently at a loss when called upon to make a decision”. In contrast to Advaita, Swarathma has restrained instruments, a slow, low chord guiding the vocals, and a splash of tabla here and there.

My other favourite is Ee Bhoomi. Kannada must be a happy language indeed, to produce gems like this one and Raghu Dixit’s Lokada Kalaji. This upbeat song describes the transformation of the Earth to Paradise (… bhoomi swarga …) as you let Swarathma wash over you.

Peter Cat Recording Co.

In a case of last but not the least, PCRC is the band I’ve actually been listening to the longest. They remind me of the 60s and 70s when Rock was being born and could be happy and everyday, not having to force melancholy or abstract ideas to be appealing. I’ve been a fan before they had a released album and were tracks on SoundCloud, and these guys doubled that by distributing both their albums ( Sinema and Wall of Want) free for download. The New Delhi quartet describes their music as “Gypsy Jazz to Ballroom Waltz to Midnight Moonlight car chase music”.

Sinema is their older and better album. All the songs have a grainy distortion throughout as if playing from vinyl, although whether this adds to their charm or not is a personal opinion. To quote Helter Skelter:

That it screams ‘SEX SEX SEX’ right under the ‘Free Download’ link for their album Sinema on the Peter Cat Recording Co. web site should be argument enough for you to go ahead and download it.

The Clown on the 22nd floor sets the mood for the album, with old hindi movie clips tacked on to the end. The album crafts a series of love affairs that end badly. Suryakant Sawhney’s rounded drawl adds warmth to the songs, while clever lyrics mingle girls and philosophy. Coming from a band obsessed with humour and subtlety closer Tokyo Vijaya’s lyrics just go ‘AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ against a dense instrumentation of drums and dragged out guitars ending the story inconclusively. PCRC is a band that aims big and delivers funny.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

I first saw DH2 on Friday night, and my thoughts after watching it were:

On Wednesday night I saw it again, determined to find out why I disliked it so much, and whether I was just being too hard on it. Interestingly, most Potter fans seem to have liked it this time, which was not the case before. Mike Patterson though has this interesting writeup pointing out in very specific instances why the movie was bad. I myself have only raised my rating a couple of notches. Seen independently, the movie is decent, but after multiple readings of the book and ten years of association with Harry Potter it is plain bad.

To get the good parts out of the way, the Prince’s Tale was beautifully done, Alan Rickman brings his marvellous portrayal of Snape to a great ending. The movie was visually pretty good, and Hogwart’s defending itself was well done, though a bit artificial in the performances of the professors.

But in the bid to add action and drama to the movie, certain themes of the book were pushed aside, and that made this movie just another action thriller. There was some weak acting in places and just terrible situations too, but to focus:

Imperio

We start at Gringotts and Harry casts the Imperius Curse on the goblin. To lend some perspective, use of the Unforgiveable Curses is akin to murder in the Muggle world. Harry has demonstrated countless times before that he is not comfortable with hurting others (Expelliarmus anyone?). In fact, it is Griphook who has to put the idea in his head.

“Act now, act now,” whispered Griphook in Harry’s ear, “the Imperius Curse!” – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Page 531 of the US edition

and

And another memory darted through his mind, of the real Bellatrix Lestrange shrieking at him when he had first tried to use an Unforgivable Curse: “You need to mean them, Potter!” – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Page 533 of the US edition

The use of Imperio in the book is an act of desperation, because certain things are simply evil, even in the magical world, and making a person go against his will is one of them. In the movie, we aren’t even shown Harry’s face as he casts the spell, and when Ron casts it again in the depths of Gringotts, he does it trivially. Obviously you cannot explain thought processes on screen, but a touch of hesistation, an expression, goes a long way into conveying the seriousness of the act. After all the goblin does die in the movie due to the curse.

Wands

Wands are the crux of the books, the one way humans get access to magic. They are ‘alive’, and bond and grow up with the wizard. Wands are respected, even Death Eaters don’t just destroy their enemy’s wand. The breaking of the holly and phoenix feather wand is immensely important. That wand has kept him alive 6 years. Its breaking is also symbolic of how Harry has to sever connections with Voldemort to defeat him. The re-joining of his wand is the last thing Harry does in the book, signifying a new beginning. Where is the holly wand in the movie?!

Now to turn to the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, a wand with more lore than any other. The scene in the Headmaster’s office in “The Flaw in the Plan” is to show that Harry has the selflessness to give up that power and accept Death, but he still does not destroy it because it is an artifact, and Harry realizes that and puts it back in the grave, aware that its power is not really neutralized just yet.

In the movie, he just snaps it and throws the pieces away. You DO NOT snap a wand!

The Kiss

“Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly… – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Page 625 of the US edition

Ron and Hermione do not kiss because they destroyed a Horcrux! The Kiss serves multiple purposes in the book. Tension between Ron and Hermione has been brewing since Book 3. Ron has always been attracted to Hermione, but she holds back, unsure of Ron’s seriousness. Book 6 and 7 are about Ron maturing and starting to think about others. Ron abandoning Harry and Hermione and then returning is the test of his growth.

Meanwhile Hermione has always been the one to watch out for others. She also has a fanatical desire for equality of all species. Rowling clearly wanted to point out against discrimination in our society, and what better way than to use a Muggle-born girl with no pre-conceptions. S.P.E.W. is just her being formal, but all through Book 4-7 Hermione has stood up for the down-trodden – even when Kreacher is lying she supports him.

Ron remembering that the house-elves need to be rescued flips the switch. It convinces her that Ron truly has changed and is capable of the compromises required in a relationship. Second his acceptance for something she supports is crucial for her to commit.

The Kiss was not spontaneous, it was building up for 4 books. The only thing spontaneous was the absurdity of the situation. All of this was lost in the movie.

The Flaw in the Plan…

was badly dealt with.

So there is the most powerful wizard of all time, he has the most powerful wand of all time, WHY would he try to rip out Harry’s face with bare hands?

And why would you show both Bellatrix’s and Voldemort’s bodies as some kind of container for their souls, so that once the curse hits, they just disintegrate? Voldemort was after all, only human and the falling of his frail body with “mundane finality” was supposed to indicate this.

Then the theme of love and remorse that is a cornerstone of the book is never raised. That Voldemort’s spells are no longer binding on anybody because Harry has effectively ‘pulled a Lily’ on everyone is skipped. That love and sacrifice defeat Death is ignored. I would have loved to see Voldemort scream “Accidents” like he does in the book, to show his ignorance of “house elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence”.

Expelliarmus and Avada Kedavra, Harry and Voldemort’s trademark moves were for a reason. For Voldemort it represents his conviction that Death is the worst damage you can inflict, while Disarming fits Harry’s character of not wishing death even to his attacker. In the movie the spells were never uttered (and we know that Harry is bad at non-verbal spells). The spells seemed to be different too, since Avada Kedavra does not disintegrate the body.

Dumbledore

Ah, were to start with this. Book 7 took this great great man that was Albus Dumbledore and tore him down, producing the flawed human every one of us is. Harry and Dumbledore are two characters shaped by death and Dumbledore’s reaction proves opposite to Harry’s reaction for a while. Dumbledore is the man who campaigns for equality, non-discrimination and all other things that are Voldemort. He is the character who brings out the deeper flaws in the wizarding world to casual readers. And contrary to being all this through wisdom, Rowling gave him these attributes by making him a man filled with remorse.

Rowling is trying to show throughout the books is that its the choices that matter!

If that wasn’t enough, Dumbledore is linked to the Hallows and Horcruxes and essentially scripts this entire storyline in a very high-level manner. His theories about the connection between Harry and Voldemort and how Magic is connected to conscious phenomena like Love is the only channel the reader has of deeper insights into the Wizarding World. To drop all mention of Dumbledore in the movie was representative of Hollywood’s bid to add only action and bling to known blockbusters, creating movies that do not make the reader think or disturb them.

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, Chapter XIII.

In re-reading this article, I feel I haven’t been fully able to convince the reader due to a lack of writing skills. I’d take that up in specific comments if any :)

Summing it up the books are about death and love and innocence and good and evil, but also about moments and small scenes that create intricate characters in our minds, and frame unspoken laws about the world of the book. You cannot make a good movie without keeping those in mind.

Posted via email from nikhil's posterous

Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon is a crime novel. Except it's written from the point of view of a 15 year old autistic boy.

This book was actually released in 2003 so I'm a bit late for the review, but I just stumbled upon it a few days ago at a friend's place. And the bright colour and really long rambling title really intrigued me.

So, meet Cristopher Boone, who wants to be an astronaut, loves animals more than humans, has a photographic memory and brilliant logic but can't tell what other people feel and has no notion of metaphors and cultural references. Unlike many of us he cannot follow the 'I am thinking about what you are thinking about what I'm thinking' process that often happens. The only concept of emotion he has is a list of emoticons expressing common faces.

Haddon does not try to invoke pity, Christopher is in no way purposely projected as someone worse than us. He lives with his Father and thinks his Mother is dead. When his neighbour's dog is killed he sets off to find the killer in an independent manner, in the process escapes to London and comes to reality with the fate of his Mother.

Since the story is told from his view, and his lack of emotion and future projection means that he has no reason to lie leads to a very truthful story, even to the point of making normal readers squeamish. He writes about poo, and sex and swear words with no change in tone than if he was talking about the weather. He doesn't feel death when he narrowly misses it and when he gets an A grade in his Math A-levels the only thing he feels is

At 134 pages the book is a quick read and there is no actual crime-solving but Christopher's need to fit into the world is very well written and a window into the mind of autistic people. At the same time it lets us marvel at the beauty of our brain to reject so much information and yet generate so much of its own with no bindings to any law.

Along the way the book has a sprinkling of math, including naming all chapters with prime numbers. Christopher almost always goes on cubing natural numbers or mentally calculating powers of 2 just to overcome nausea.

I doubled 2's in my head because it made me feel calmer. I got to 33554432, which is 2²⁵, which was not very much because I've got to 2⁴³ before, but my brain wasn't working very well.
-- Christopher Boone

But at the core the book is humourous with Christopher's long rambling sentences and attention to details leaving you chuckling. Mark Haddon has done an excellent job.

Deathly Hallows: The end of an Era

Now that I'm over the initial shock of the book, its time to put my thoughts.

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD

First of all Deathly Hallows is amazing, and to the few fans who disliked it, they are missing JKR's point of view.

Second, Deathly Hallows is dark, very dark. Not only are their constant fights and ambushes, but people close to your heart die. Remus, Tonks, Dobby, Fred, Snape and Moody. Once you finish reading and everything sinks in, the sadness of losing them will be just as heavy in your heart as the happiness of Voldemort's death.

Deathly Hallows is very well assembled. JKR has managed to unite almost every loose end. It is also very quick. DH begins with an escape from Privet Drive to the Burrow. This results in Moody's death and George losing an ear. Fred and George's humour is evident even here, where George remarks that he is saint-like (holey!). After a short hiatus of Bill and Fleur's wedding ( which nevertheless leads Harry on the path to the Deathly Hallows ), the action begins again. Harry, Ron and Hermione have to run away and try and destroy all the Horcruxes. What I really liked here was the friendship, yet the palpable strain on it due to disappointment.

The Deathly Hallows are a collection of three objects (Harry's Invisibility Cloak, the Resurrection Stone (Gaunt's ring) and the Elder wand) which give the owner control over Death, although this concept is never really totally used.

The grand finale is at Hogwarts, where Harry, Ron and Hermione arrive to find the final Horcrux. Hogwarts has already revolted with an underground movement lead by Neville Longbottom and other DA members. The Room of Requirement, thought to be introduced merely as a location, assumes prime importance in the seventh book. Voldemort leads the assault (but doesn't actually fight) with Death Eaters, Aragog's descendants, Giants and his fear. Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks and Fred Weasley die during the battle.

Snape gives his memories to Harry in his dying moments, explaining his connection with Lily and whose side he is really on. The memories also reveal that Harry has to sacrifice himself.

Deathly Hallows ends with a strange union between the living and the dead when Harry goes to the nether world to commune with Dumbledore, yet remains alive, tied to Earth by his blood in Voldemort's veins.

The secrets of the Elder wand and its ownership finally lead to the downfall of Voldemort.

When you finish the book an overwhelming sense of peace permeates you, yet gloom that this is the end of one of the greatest stories of all time. You also have a new perspective of Dumbledore, and his imperfections.


The Epilogue on the other hand is bad, plain bad and I expected better from Rowling. She merely completes the circle by depicting Harry and Ginny's kids getting on the Hogwarts Express nineteen years later. I was expecting something about what all the main characters did for a living, what was the state of the wizarding world, the attitude towards lesser beings. I would also have liked a bit of the immediate aftermath of the end of Voldemort, I mean there has to be a lot of cleaning up. Harry and the Dursleys meeting again would have helped.

Considering that this was the last book a decent 700-750 pages would be better, perhaps she could expand more on the fifty who died, and what the other members of the Order where doing when the trio were zooming along the countryside. A bit of contact with their friends could have really helped them.

Kubuntu 7.04: Disappointing

Yesterday I downloaded Kubuntu 7.04, expecting an amazing release from the reviews I had read. But I was very very disappointed. First let me mention that I have been using linux since 4 years and so this isn't some tale of a Windows user suddenly jumping to Linux and thinking its crap.

I have very generic hardware, and Kubuntu had no problems detecting it, except my ViewSonic widescreen which no distro has managed to get working in widescreen resolution. Most problems where due to unnecessary scripts and 'safety-nets' created for new users by the *buntu teams.

Getting started and Installation

So I burned the CD and booted from it. What takes place next is 30 minutes to go from boot to desktop. On my Pentium 4 2.4Ghz with 256mb of RAM most liveCDs do take atleast 15 minutes, but 30 was too much. The second thing was that the bootup was not stable. One of the gripes I have had with newer LiveCDs is their loading of laptop battery management modules even when running on a desktop. I would prefer a prompt asking me what kind of computer I am running and then loading the modules. So anyway, the power manager crashed on bootup. And for some reason this prevented KDE from booting properly. So I restarted the machine. This time KDE loaded but there were no icons present in Kicker. So I went to a virtual terminal and restarted KDE. This time there were no problems in starting up. But the system is slow, excrutiatingly slow. It took 5 seconds to display the context menu.
Deciding that perhaps I would get better performance if I installed it on a spare partition, I launched the installer. This took another 5 minutes. After that each of the install screens took 2 minutes to load. At the partitioning screen I was again disappointed to see that my IDE harddisks were being reported as SCSI and had the path /dev/sdxx. Assuming it was just a small bug I moved on and clicked on the 'Advanced' button on the last screen.
Since I have an unconventional setup of two harddisks, one with Windows and one with Linux I always need to specify the bootloader to install in the partition itself. This is were it really hurt. The Ubiquity installer is meant for newbies. Now if a newbie encounters the message I encountered what is he going to do, hate Linux undoubtedly.

Insert bootloader documentation here

was how it went. And below that their was a single text field to enter the boot loader location in the standard GRUB (hdx,x) format. It seems like someone forgot to check one dialog. Unsure of what to do, since I did not want to take a risk with the Windows bootloader being erased - especially due to the confusion between sdxx and hdxx in the partitioner, I rebooted, disconnected the Windows drive and started the install again. This time the bootloader location was set to (hd0, 3) and everything went fine, even though the whole process took an hour and a half.

Post install

I booted from the hard disk and after getting the Arch GRUB configured right booted into Kubuntu. The hard disk startup was fast and smooth, almost as good as Arch's. But this time kdesktop crashed. Ofcourse no harm done so I just ran kdesktop and continued to use Kubuntu. But what does a new user do. Does he know about virtual consoles, and that running kdesktop will set everything right.

Need guidance

I launched the modified Kcontrol, or so called Guidance control panel, to set up networking. I have a static IP and set it up. I launched Konqueror and tried to browse, nothing. I went back to the configuration to find that the IP had been set to something else, automatically, and that the gateway had been wiped to 0.0.0.0. I tried resetting it every time. Finally sick of it I just edited the configuration files by hand and used ifconfig to launch the interface manually.
Noticing that the connection worked now, I just shutdown the computer.

Thoughts

Seeing that its been 3 years since the Ubuntu project was launched, I expected much better. It is highly likely that this was a stray incident, since most reviews are good. In fact it is well known to me, that me and and Ubuntu version don't mix. I have never had success with Ubuntu, ever. But what disappointed me was that the Ubuntu series is the pinnacle of Linux on the Desktop. Such experiences not only ruin it, but bring a bad name to the Linux and FOSS movement. I have given up using Kubuntu, even after taking so much pain to get it running. I hope that they improve the situation. For now I will just stick with Arch, it might not be newbie friendly, but the straight forward systems are just what is needed.

Dream Linux 2.2

The February issue of LinuxForYou included Dream Linux 2.2. The LiveCD booted really fast in comparison to other distros, perhaps because it uses a light XFCE environment.

But for its weight it sure looks amazing! A highly Macish look and feel with Engage completing the Dock. The applications installed are also a good mix of commonly used to niche ones. Overall I found Dream had taken the good points of quite a number of distros, put together a nice control panel and easy installer.

So I jumped ahead and installed it on my spare partition. Installation was quite fast with just 7 steps, including partitioning, installation, installing bootloader, which I skipped and creating the user accounts.

DreamLinux too had a common problem I've faced with LiveCDs. The non root user's password is often not set properly, which means when you boot from harddisk, you can't login. Not a nice way to start with Linux. For someone in the know its easy to do a Ctrl+Alt+F1 and change the password, but for new users it can be harrowing.

Overall DreamLinux is a really good distro. Though Arch will still remain my primary distro, since I have it customised to heavily, it is one whose progress I will watch closely. If you are new to Linux I would highly recommend it. If you are not, you already know what you need. With a little tweaking Dream could easily become a Distrowatch top 20er.