Right or Left?

One side-effect of the economic downturn is that the blokes left hanging(on a single thread if I may add!) on Wall Street like yours truly have a lot of time to while away. Projects have been scrapped and funding withdrawn and the few people that are being tolerated, because some critical element is linked to them, are usually just waiting around(and hoping) for some disaster to happen so that they can be jerked out of their boredom into doing something constructive.

So what do you do in your spare time apart from reading depressing news on Yahoo finance and discussing US elections ?

Yes and No!

Yes - Faltu surfing on the net is the activity of choice.
and No - That does not include MSDN and other technical sites(alas! I could never be the model IT person)

So then what do we surf? Apart from exchanging health articles, (the resident obsession of my workmates), and reading up abstract concepts on this world(my past-time exclusively), we take a whole lot of quizzes. You know the types that explain all screw-ups in your life by giving it a fancy medical term? Or the really insightful ones like - What you were in your previous life (guess who I was - Pablo Picasso!)? What is your personality type? What colour are you? etc. etc.

Facebook has a bulk of the quizzes and the rest are at tickle.com. They are quite amazing and a good timepass.

I took an interesting test yesterday that determines which side of the brain is dominant in your personality. The left is the analytical and logical side of your brain and the right is the creative, abstract and emotional side. The left is more detail oriented and the right looks at the larger picture. In most people one side dominates. But there are a small percentage that work with both sides. It seems that I belong to that rare tribe of people with balanced brains. This means that the left side and the right side of my brain are equally dominant.

To pause for a minute, isn't it fascinating? The brain is analyzing the brain!

Anyway, that explains a lot of things. It explains the dichotomy between an unsatiable desire to seek the larger picture, to expand the canvas and put things, people and events into their true context and a constrasting fetish of seeking and analysing minutes details. I am a lefty(with the hand and not politically- duh!) yet I use the right hand for a large number of my tasks. I write and eat with the left and play badminton/tennis and harmonium with the right. It also explains why I am always on the 'other' side in any kind of grouping . For emotional people I am too analytical and practical and for analytical people I am too emotional!

What really strikes home though in the last part of the analysis. Here is what it reads

"The down side to being balanced-brained is that you may sometimes feel paralyzed by indecision when the two hemispheres of your brain are competing to solve a problem in their own unique ways."

Aha.. now it all makes sense. The fence-sitters of the world are redeemed. I can now happily blame all my indecision on the balanced brain. So all you folks, if you spend 20 minutes deciding which toothpaste to buy and 20 hours deciding what you want to do on the week-end and 20 years deciding what to do with your life, do not despair... it is just a very balanced brain that sits in your skull!

Here is test : http://web.tickle.com/quizzes/compare/3022

I have setup a poll. I would be curious to know if the visitors on my blog are left brained, right brained or (off)balanced like me!

Here is my brain analysis

Balanced-brained

That means you are able to draw on the strengths of both the right and left hemispheres of your brain, depending upon a given situation.

When you need to explain a complicated process to someone, or plan a detailed vacation, the left hemisphere of your brain, which is responsible for your ability to solve problems logically, might kick in. But if you were critiquing an art opening or coming up with an original way to file papers, the right side of your brain, which is responsible for noticing subtle details in things, might take over.

While many people have clearly dominant left- or right-brained tendencies, you are able to draw on skills from both hemispheres of your brain. This rare combination makes you a very creative and flexible thinker.

The down side to being balanced-brained is that you may sometimes feel paralyzed by indecision when the two hemispheres of your brain are competing to solve a problem in their own unique ways.

Video Tribute to Priya

A small collection of Priya's memories put together by Srinivas Ganti. Her pictures, her voice and her thoughts....all that we have left of her now.

Seasons in the Sun - Goodbye My Dear P

Snapshot of SKS - By Arunabha Roy

This is a snapshot of SKS (Sangeet Ke Sitare) that Dr Arunabha Roy had created. It makes a delightful and nostalgic read for those who interacted on the forum in those days. Arunabha, you being my friend, I have taken the liberty to post this without asking for your permission. I hope you do not mind.

This links to the tribute to Priya
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "asroyus"
Date: Thu May 8, 2003 8:23 pm
Subject: Snapshot of SKS


No, this isn't one of those literal adobe-acrobat-doctored "snapshots"
that are so common on SKS nowadays. Just thought to myself: amidst the
smorgasbord of topics discussed on SKS, certain patterns emerge and
repeat at regular intervals to the point where they remain entrenched
in one's mind. I've put together a typical sequence of SKS posts which
in my mind forms a representative sample of what SKS is all about. No
offence is intended to anyone, just take it lightly.

- Arunabha

------------------------------------------------------------------
Everybody, please vote for your favorite male singer.

Kishore is the best - why even ask ?

You must be kidding -Kishore sings loud songs. He is not even in the
golden era.

No. Just listen to Kishore's songs for Husnalal Bhagatram and Anil
Biswas and you will revise your opinion. Here is a clip.

Oooh ! What a song by the master ! AB rules !

I like Talat.

Ya, but only when you want to go to sleep. If you want to charm the
women, get Hemanta. No woman I have met has been unmoved by his singing.

I don't follow Hindi but this Hemanta song is so nice. I
wish I could spend the entire day just listening to these songs. But
then I wouldn't accomplish any work, sigh. Anyway, got to stop
listening now, the people around me are giving me strange looks.
Anyway it is raining now and ....

I am willing to jump off the second storey if I can have access to all
of Kishore's work. (Really, I did this in college, so don't challenge me)

Where is Sathya ?

Hi everyone, just uploaded a rare NJ song.

THANKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!

FYI, that song was composed by Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, composer of
immortal melodies for Noor Jehan during her post-partition stint in
Pakistan. It was composed on May 12, 1961. Recently these feckless
companies have come out with jhankaar beats-enhanced remix versions of
Madam's songs.

New wallpaper of NJ uploaded.

Another wallpaper uploaded.

And one more !

Really, what beautiful photos ! Which software did you use ?

Guys, have you heard this song at www.musicindiaonline.com/blah/blah
? It's awesome. Rafi rocks !

LOL ! It's actually Mahendra Kapoor singing.

You call Mahendra Kapoor's "singing" singing ?!!

Naushad replaced the dogs of the Tamil original with Mahendra
Kapoor. Wonder why ?

Terrible song, but Mukesh shines.

Mukesh degraded beyond recognition in the 70s. It didn't help that LP
composed songs to drown out the melody in raucous dholak beats.

Yes, the bridge over Godavari suffered permanent damage during the
filming of the Milan songs. Appeared in the TOI.

Guys, what are you talking about ? LP and raucous ? I guess it has
become fashionable to diss L-P at every available opportunity. They
were the uncrowned masters at their game. Even with Asha who was never
their mainstay they have 200 gems !

LP were single-handedly responsible for the degradation of Hindi film
music as we know it today. Compare them with Jaidev or Khaiyyaam, who
showed that it was stil possible to compose quality music in the 70s.

Jaidev ? Pshaw. He composed for a mere 23 films. LP did 1000 !

Yes, but we are talking of quality here, not quantity. LP always
catered to the masses.

Sigh. So it's the classes-versus masses argument again, isn't it ? A
specious argument if I ever saw one. If for every song Jaidev composed
LP composed 50 in the same time, doesn't it stand to reason that
Jaidev could create a better tune ?

Yes, but that's the point ! Jaidev's tunes ARE better !

But LP have composed 10,000 songs !

Jaidev made great use of classical and folk tunes. Talking of catering
to the classes and to the masses, there is one and only one composer
who managed to straddle the two effectively - SDB.

We have the SDB mantra available for free download, at
www.sdburman.com Download it and cure your schizophrenia and all other
ailments. Madeline O Brien take note.

What does SDB say in that song ?

I don't know, it sounds like Bengali.

Even Bengalis don't follow what SDB sings in Bengali. SDB Rules !

Was SDB Bengali ? I thought he was from Tripura.

No, MDB was from Bengal. She composed all his songs.

Guys !!!!!!!!! You won't believe this ! Did you know that it was
actually RDB who composed "ruup teraa mastaanaa ? What a revelation !

SDB won the most votes in the recently concluded poll. Take a look !
Three cheers for Old Man !

That's only because he is in the top five of everyone's list ,
aged 10-100. And no one's No. 1 choice. Just combining the various
people's votes, he gets the first spot. The average is always a
misleading measure of the sample.

Bandini is superb. He deserved the Filmfare award for that rather than
the tepid Abhimaan.

Abhimaan is my favorite SDB soundtrack !!!

These awards don't mean anything. Anilda didn't get even one and LP
got eight ! Do we then understand that they are 8 times superior to
Anilda ? And don't even get me started on CR ....

Well, but even Lata, when she selected her ten best songs on her
silver jubilee of singing in films, chose zero AB songs, one by LP,
and two by Madan Mohan.

See, I told you. In the final reckoning, Madan Mohan is the
best. Classical, ghazal, qawalli, fun song, cabaret, you name it ....

Returning to Abhimaan, I must take back what I said earlier. While
"meet na milaa re man kaa" sucks, "piyaa binaa" and "ab to hai tum se
" are actually quite good.

Lata was way past her prime in Abhimaan. He should have got Asha.

"Way past her prime". What do you mean by "past one's prime" ? After
her so-called primes she sang .... (list of twenty-five 80s and 90s
songs, ending with "so gaye hain") If after this you claim she is past
her prime, I have no more argument.

Lata's voice has soul, Asha's voice has body.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Do you mean to say Asha's singing lacks soul ?

Here's an easy quiz : an extra in film f1 utters a bit of dialogue.
This dialogue becomes a title of an extremely popular song in the 2003
film f2, picturized on the son of the actor who played the villain in
film f3.Film f3 has a heroine who is related to the real-life father
of the bride in film f1, as well as to the stunt-director of film f4.
film f4 and film f2 share a common phrase in their titles.

Got it ! Solved it in 0.3 seconds ! It is blah and blah-blah and
blah-blah and blah. Waiting to crack the next quiz :-)

is newsgroup me.n ko_ii ghazal me.n dilchaspii rakhataa hai ? agar ho
to mai.n kuchh arz karuu.n ? mere aziiz ghazal gaayako.n me.n Ghulam
AliKhan saahab aur Jagjit Singh-ji hai.n

Mehdi Hassan beats Ghulam Ali by a mile.

No, I think Ghulam Ali is more mellow.

Here are the top ten romantic songs of all time. (Long list and
descriptions)

I amazed that there are some non-Noor Jehan songs you have included in
the list !

Just yesterday they had a program on NJ and they said she sang for
five years and then went to Pakistan. As if she did nothing after
that, sat at home, you know ?!. What an insult to the greatest singer!
Really, meraa khuun khaul rahaa thaa.

Relax, those announcers are lazy, ignorant bozos, and are just
indulging in self-fulfilling prophecies. Madam sang this disco song in
91, just listen to it !

In ghazals, Lata-Madan Mohan were the best. Better than your Anil
Biswas, CR, Jaidev and everyone else. Madan Mohan was an excellent
cook -whether in the matter of tunes or songs. Lata sez ! (in this clip)

Yes, but he did not use Asha at all.

Or Geeta ! She was the singer with the most expressive voice. What
fabulous bass ! And a lilt all-too-endearing. According to me, she was
better than Lata, Asha, and everyone else. Literally clear-as-bells
quality to her singing. Lata and Asha's singing is so studied, dry and
academic in comparison.

Let us compare Geeta Dutt and Noor Jehan. Both emoted so well in their
singing.

Emote ? Asha mentioned in the legends tape that Geeta Dutt couldn't
laugh while singing. So SDB made her sing instead for both of them.
Asha's comment is in such poor taste. Couldn't she find anything good
to say about Geeta Dutt ? These legends tributes really suck.

Humanity sucks. I am going to Mars.

After listening to this song, I am beginning to feel that Martians
have good taste.

Oh, they have excellent taste !

Check out the photo of the do jasoos together with Naushad.

I could not see the photo - where is it ?

It's at the SKS main website. Click away and go crazy !

Why does Naushad look petrified ?

It's because I have CR's paw around his neck.

Dev Anand is off to make his hundredth film based in Chicago "Love at
Sears Tower" He says it's going to be a very "different" romantic
film, with a totally modern feel. It's a historical moment in the
timescape of Hindi film cinema, folks. Please celebrate the great man
and his achievments!

Sheeesh ! Will he never cease being an embarrassment to his fans ?

Dev Anand has fans ? That's news to me. Who are these people ?

Dev Anand was the most dapper and well-dressed person of his times.
Always young at heart and always a thorough gentleman. Like SDB. Any
woman would love to have him !

And countless guys idolize him, too. He is a role model. What style,
what charisma, what consummate suaveness ? Who cares if he dons red
frilled shirts and blue tweed trousers ? Or even blue frilled shirts
and red tweed trousers ?

Please vote for the ten best songs of Anilda.

I refuse to vote as I cannot choose only ten representative songs for
Anilda.

"jaa mai.n tose nahiin boluu.N" is missing in your list of ten songs.
How could you !

My word, to my utter chagrin I discover that you are right. How COULD
I ? Anyway, please do vote.

"jaa main tose" deserves to be ranked among the best classical songs
in Hindi films. Lata was unparalleled in her classical singing. And
Manna De among the males.

No, I think Kishore Kumar was without a doubt the best male singer
when it came to classical. And ghazal. And bhajan. And qawali. And
chhe.D chhaa.D. And romantic song. And sad song. And...

Kishore and classical !! Well I never ! Name even one song. Can he
even compare with "man taDapat" or "duniyaa ke rakhwaale" . Did you
know Rafi's throat bled while recording the latter ?

On the subject of classical songs, does any one happen to have the
beaut "baa.Ndh preeti phul Dor" by Lata ? Lata sang it before Bade
Ghulam Ali Khan was to appear on stage at a concert. Such was the
effect, even after BGAK took the stage, people were clamoring for Lata
to sing instead of him.

If I want to listen to classical, I'll listen to Kishori or Bhimsen
Joshi or Amir Khan.Not hindi film music !

So you don't care for HFM, is it ? Too low-brow ?

Oh no ! It's all a matter of mood- you see, on day 1, Kishori Amonkar
and Amir Khan. On day 2, Mehdi Hassan and Iqbal Bano.on Day 3, SDB and
SDB,.On day 4, Jaidev, Roshan and Nadeem Shravan. On Day 5, Bappi
Lahiri and RDB. See that way I emerge feeling happy at the end of the
week. Music of all moods, that's the key.

Kishore is the best. No one says that you need to be able to sing
classical in order to be a film singer. dono.n apanii apanii jagah
kaayam hai.n

PSmith says the following on the subject of work :
....

Oh, I love PG Wodehouse. Do you ?

What, you haven't gone to sleep, yet ! It must be 4 am there, naa ?

Please send me the source of your article on Khaiyyaam,, i.e. which
website did you cut and paste from , i.e. which site did you point
your mouse and double click, wait for it to load, then copy the
selected text, go to SKS, and click on paste ?

Grrrr. I know what you mean by the "source of the article" !

Sahir was the best.

But Shailendra is the man after my heart. Shailendra's writing had the
mysticism of a Sufi poet.

But everyone recites Sahir's poetry at parties. Think of any romantic
song and it's likely to be Sahir's.

True, but Sahir appealed to a very select high-brow intellectual
cross-section of the public.

Here's a slightly more difficult quiz this time .... this singer sang
only once with this singer (OK, I'm almost sure of that)....blah-blah
singer...blah-blah ... film..blah.... director...blah....singer ...
and this actor and actress were paired only once ever in hindi films
(OK, I'm reasonably sure of that) ...film...blah..singer...Sharda...
blah......

All your clues were wrong! X also starred with Y in the Z-grade film
"Samundar Aur Ek Machhli" A sang the duet with C in 1958 P-grade film,
"Bijli Ki Sansanahat" Anyway I have still cracked the quiz. Here are
the answers !

Damn. Those were red herrings intended to throw you off the track.
Didn't work, I guess :-(

C also sang in this film with A !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and so on .....

"chalataa rahe ye kaaravaa.N,
umr\-e\-ravaa.N kaa kaaravaa.N"

Seasons in the Sun - Goodbye my Dear P

It is sobering to know the true value of a moment sometimes. The difference that a mere moment can make to your sense of equilibrium is mortifying. It it gets demonstrated time and again in life, yet nothing prepares us for those moments when they come on. It is only a sense of deja vu that runs through the veins when the mind and body go numb. I ask the same question I have asked many times. Why doesn't nature prepare us for these moments. Why isn't a tolerance hard-wired into our beings? Why does it hurt as much every time?

Shocking News, was the title of the e-mail that peered out from the mail preview window on the google home page. It was morning time, the mad rush and the usual hazaar chores dancing in the head. I had paused by the computer to pick up my charging iPod. Suddenly the whirl paused. Shocking News - looking at the mail I knew that this was not some random forward but real news... and bad news. My heart thumping loud in the chest, I clicked on the link. The wait till the mail loaded seemed to be like eternity... and then it showed up.

"I am not sure if you are aware of this. I have been informed of this tragic news by a friend of Priya Gainneo's. Priya met with an accident last week and passed away."
And there it happened. The moment that shatters your sense of equilibrium. I sat down with a thump, my breakfast, bus all forgotten. Priya Gainneos? Priya? my friend P? Dead?. No this cannot be true. It has to be a mistake, a miscommunication. Priya cannot pass away. Maybe she's met with an accident, is critical, but she has to be still around. Priya... come on, she cannot just go away.
What followed was a whirlpool of emotions shock, anger, denial, sorrow, trying to understand what happened, how it happened, befuddlement at the lack of any information anywhere. Priya had been away from e-groups for a while. But is public memory this short that there would be no mention of hers anywhere? Life on all e-forums seemed to have been conducting itself merrily completely oblivious to this tragedy.

Cyber relationships are such, that your handle to it is nothing but a couple of electronic switches, a couple of bits and bytes in form of of an email id or a profile_id. Phone numbers are exchanged, but seldom used and rarely updated. It is difficult then to accept and come to terms with things like death. It is surreal. The email exists, the profile exists, how can the person be gone? I pinged Priya's email, found her id on Orkut and Facebook and even send friend requests! Hoping from somewhere that a rumour that no one could confirm was false and she would accept the friend request.
But, nothing of that sort obviously happened, gradually as we got in touch with folks from her real life, the truth finally dawned. Priya was truly gone. She had met with an accident. She slipped and fell into the backwaters of Cochin. The same beautiful backwaters that she has promised to show me when I visited Cochin...
Priya! I had been out of touch with her for a while. She had moved on to Hamara Forums and I was consumed by work and real life related activities and seldom went to groups, our days together on SKS were long over. SKS - Sangeet Ke Sitare, a motley online gathering of passionate music lovers that once flourished on Yahoo Groups. Even though it was a forum to discuss music, off-topic conversations thrived in merry abundance. It was a vibrant, warm and friendly group. An easy camaraderie prevailed amongst it's members and unlike most newsgroups people were not just a profile_id with a musical opinion but real people. Most active members on the forum came with their musical Gods and had much fun defending and ribbing each other about their idols. Yours truly was present there with Dev Anand(DA) and SD Burman(SDB) and Priya held the flag high for Asha Bhosle and Noor Jahen(NJ). We teased and pulled each other about our favourites much like school friends rib each other over their crushes. SKS was a fertile ground on which many online friendships took seed.

That fertile ground is now barren land. The old group and the many people that inhabited it have moved on, the group itself has moved on to swankier locales on Orkut. The old SKS on yahoo lies like an old abandoned house, falling apart, desolate, its archives an aching reminder of it's past. A few stragglers post there once in a while, but its glory is long gone.

In a virtual world with virtual friends there are no pictures, letters or real tangible things through which you can seek solace when grieving a death. The only thing that remains are the same bits and bytes stored on some remote server. In my quest to connect to Priya I had no other place to go but to my emails and the SKS archive.
A strange feeling enveloped me when I navigated to SKS. One has been so busy moving ahead, that one barely looked back upon this time. There was a time when I was here everyday, five times a day. Sometimes after every 10 minutes discussing, teasing, fighting, gushing and bonding. The portals of SKS seem to reveal a faint strain of music....a song....Asha Bhosle.

Yehi woh jagah hai, yehi wo fizaayen yehin pe kabhi aap hum ko mile the"

The voices get louder

"Look P, I chose an Asha Bhosle song"
"Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so you have finally realised what good taste is all about" "Only for you P"
.......... "P? P? Priya?"
Priya is gone..... she is only in the archives now.
I type 'Priya' in the archives search box. A bunch of posts come up. mostly from the recent past. I don't find anything I can connect to. Priya loved Noor Jahen (NJ ). I type NJ this time. I get a series of posts talking about New Jersey. Useless. How do I get the key to those days? The archives are vast, navigating through them will get me nowhere. I try again "NJ SDB". I start seeing the posts now, voices start filtering in from the past, I am back to the old SKS....
There seems to be some commotion, a thread titled 'Geeta Dutt Jaimala' has seen a series of Noor jahen uploads from P. When Priya would start uploading NJ songs, she did atleast ten together (and this was from her slow dial-up connection in Cochin)
Me: P dear, what is this, you entice us with a mail titled Geeta Dutt and torture us with NJ? This is taking undue advantage of your moderator position.
Priya: Jealousy the green eyed monster--we all know what would happen to SKS if you took charge..... it would become Do Buddhe.[two old men]
Another thread

Me: Waise.. I am on an SDB sabbatical these days. I will hear anything but him..so you can initiate a session on anyone else you want.
Priya:
Ok am dispatching some NJ songs at once.
P_helpful

P and I were both Virgos and typical ones at that. We loved our battles of wit. She would rib me incessantly for my interest in two old men (SDB and Dev Anand). "Atleast they are men", I would retort. "P your obsession for two old women is not healthy at all, find your self a male idol" . Ofcourse I love Sachin Tendulakar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, she would protest [any communication with her came with a minimum of 50 exclamation marks]
I had once defended Dev Anand's diminishing charm with the gallant argument. "He is not old, real men don't age, they mature like fine wine". Well that was it. After that Dev Anand came to be christened as "Wine Anand" and thereon referred to as 'Wineji' by P. I navigate to the SKS Photo Folders and see a Album titled 'Wineji'. I never got down to telling Priya that I finally realised my dream of meeting 'Wineji' in Bombay. Neither did I tell her that the 'wine' turned out to be more like 'sour vinegar'. She would have squealed with mirth at that one. "See I told you....". She had gone out of her way to get Dev Anand's rendezvous with Simi Garewal recorded for me by a friend since I could not see it in the US. When I asked her how it was, her answer 'Quite intolerable, but a fan like you still might find some value'. That was P for you.
You know the song that is twirling in my head now P?
We had joy we had fun
we had seasons in the sun
but the wine and the song,
like the seasons have all gone.

Priya always dreamt of meeting her idol Asha Bhosle someday. A dream that went away with her. Maybe she was spared of a great disappointment. After all our idols are humans at the end of the day, they can never live up to the elevated image we fans build in our minds...
Back on SKS, in another thread, Priya and I seem to be making truce on some NJ, SDB battle (now you would ask what our old monk from Tripura has in common with Mallika-e-Tarranum? In the SKS of those days, everything would find a connection.)

Priya: I think SDB and NJ must be laughing over a cup of coffee in the grand place over us dumbos.
Me: NJ and SDB enjoying coffee together! Unimaginable. Not even up there. First.. SDB and coffee is unimaginable then NJ and coffee is unimaginable and then SDB and NJ completely off mark.!
Priya: Oh but then they might sample paan together. That will bond them. And then SDB will compose a tune and NJ will sing it. Oh but Meera may not allow such fraternising with beauties.
Me: P Dear Please do not corrupt my Old Man. Let him be happy running after Kishore in the celestial woods singing 'Jhingala ho'!
Priya : Yeh sab kya hai Ritu? Once someone said DA is not straight and now U say SDB runs after men in woods!!!! People in glass houses should not throw stones. ;)))

aha.. P wins this round. We were such kids. Some more searches, some more posts...There is one post where I am defending P against someone who has attacked her for uploading too many Noor Jahen songs! "I don't generally download the songs she uploads, but she has all right to upload them and it is very generous of her to do so" I defend.
In another post P is defending me. Someone has insinuated that my contribution to SKS is basically begging for songs with a beggar bowl :). "Ritu does ask for songs sometimes but her contribution to SKS is not limited only asking for uploads, even though she likes to write about only particular artists(read DA and SDB), her posts are well-researched"
I chuckle. The only kind of compliments we Virgos can disburse are back-handed ones. We were like peas in a pod in that respect. Priya used to have a comrade-in-arms in Pulkit, another Noor Jahan fan. They were referred to as P & P on SKS. P & P loved to upload NJ songs regularly and every else loved to pull their legs. We have compared NJ to all singers possible during those days. Imagine an evaluation of NJ Vs Geeta Dutt!
I usually called her 'P Dear', especially when we were having our fun moments. I type 'P Dear' in the search. Another few posts come up.

Ganti: The way both of u fight, I wonder if you were sisters in pichla janam. Or maybe saas and bahu :)
Me: Well I like the latter. I would love to be P Dear's Mom in law. ....... P Dear if you had some male idols I would have even adopted whoever you fancied. But the idea of mothering NJ or Asha is so horrific that I shall abdicate from MILship.
Priya : Ya and the thought of having DA as surrogate sasur!!!!! Enough to send one fleeing to a nunnery!

Priya would love to make wall-papers for the SKS Marquee (a couple of them are in the photos section below). She would good-naturedly put up with all the leg pulling regarding her choices of singers and photographs. She had a strongly impish streak. She once got back at Samik for ragging her on NJ, by morphing his photograph with that of Madam Noor Jahan in a 40s style romantic pose. Poor Samik. As a birthday gift, she once sent me morphed pictures of myself with SDB and DA. Her mirth knew no bounds when I fumed that the picture in which she juxtaposed my head on a rotund RD Burman's body was mistaken for a true picture of mine! Knowing how much of an allergy Robin Bhai had for Asha Parekh, she made a nice romantic picture of his with Ms 'Choti-si-Aas' Parekh and labeled it Sharma Na Yoon. I managed to find a couple of those pictures tucked away in a corner of my inbox. They are in the photos section at the bottom of the post. Some of those pictures like the one of NJ and Samik are lost in cyberspace now.
Priya and I used to chat on a lot of non-musical topics and a lot of them on SKS itself. One such topic pops out from a thread.

Priya: Everyone here (In Kerala) thinks I have such outlandish tastes
Me : Don't worry anyone with a music taste like yours will be considered outlandish anywhere. Kerela ho ya US :)
Priya: [continuing, ignoring my barb] They keep asking me, why do you like Hindi songs, are you a North Indian, how silly na?

Despite the barb I understood where she was coming from. We were kindred souls in the respect. Both of us were attracted to a culture and art that was far placed from our immediate context . She a Malayali, whose soul connected with the Punjabi robustness of Noor Jahan and I a Delhite of UP origin who was fascinated with the sweet strains of Bengal. To a certain degree we were both outsiders in our own surroundings and were often niggled for it. For me, given my inherent sense of elitism, all the niggling was water off a duck's back. But she would get hassled sometimes.
We would chat about many things. I was always fascinated with her life in a sprawling colonial bunglow in the beautiful Kerala backwaters and she with all my travelling and the life I lived here. She loved travelling too and was a great animal lover. She had a couple of cats. We always made plans when I would visit her we would explore the backwaters of Cochin and she would visit me in Delhi and we would see the Delhi that Dalrymple wrote about in the 'City of Djinns'. We had a common favourite in William Dalryample. She was doing her PhD in English at that time and had even written to and received a response from Dalyrmple.
She would talk about getting a job and moving into her own little place once her parents retired and she finished her PhD. Later, I was told that she did finish it and got a job as a lecturer in the university.
I search for some more snippets on SKS
We have moved from the old SKS to the new SKS, members are ribbing that we leave the NJ wallpapers behind.
Arunabha: Since we have two SKS's running concurrently, how about all the NJ stuff occupying one forum. In that case, we can safely steer clear of it and carry on at the old one :-) Oh, that some government would ban NJ forums ! :-(
Shakeel: I have a suggestion, if all members of the new group agrees to it. Why don't we change the name of this group to DNA Group?????
D for Dev Anand
N for Noor Jehan
A for Asha Bhonsley
Priya: Or maybe SAND?
S-SDB
A-Asha
N-NJ
D-DA
But see --remove NJ and the grp will be SAD!!!! :))
Another unrelated thread.

Samik : Its good that Madame P. is back after such a long absence.We were almost tempted to sing: 'P been suna jee '
[it was a joke then, a poignant reality now]

A couple of posts down we discover that P has been missing from SKS for a while because her computer crashed. No, it was not a virus, but ants.
Priya: My Pc is gone for several days--most ridiculous :((( Ants got into my hard disc!!!!! Howbizarre. :(((. .... I found these creatures travelling inside. They laid their eggs in the hard disk.
There is much mirth around the forum on this revelation.

Ajit : "Is it because of the sweet Noor Jahan songs"
Sajjad: It has an opposite effect on my PC. I keepNJ/Saigal's MP3 to keep the bugs away from Rafi collections
Sathya: Generations of ants to come would scarce believe that such a one as Priya existed in flesh blood. Who so generously provided her computer for new generations of ants to spring forth into this world. So what if a little hard disk became non-functional. Look at the larger picture ! You have so nobly, perhaps unconciously, aided in the Cycle of Ant Life to continue.
Priya: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Grrrrrrrr. How could I forget that. Priya loved to er... Grrrrrrr. She used it when she was happy, when she was excited, when she was annoyed and when she lost a point. She had come to be known as 'Ms Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr' on the forum.
I search for 'Grrrrrr'. Many many posts come up. As I had expected all the posts have Priya in her element. I randomly pick one thread. There are peals of laughter going around the group. A little digging in reveals that an earnest post in which Priya was exploring love, marriage and parental decision through the prism of NJ (who else?) and her film Anmol Ghadi, she has made a killer faux pax. Instead of Anmol Ghadi (Priceless watch), she has typed 'Anmol Gadhi (priceless she-donkey). Everyone is rolling over laughing and P is protesting vehemently. The truth is that Atul, aka Atku Miyan has played a trick. Priya had typed it correctly but he changed it just to get some laughs.
Priya: Nahin Nahin....Our creepy friend changed the words. I checked with my sent folder. Catch me doing that to my beloved NJ
Jurm-e-typo ki hamein log saza dete hain
Kaise nadan hai yeh GRRRRR ko hawa dete hain....
P_in Dharam paaji swearing mode baying for Aktu mian's blood ;)

I laugh out loud reading this thread. The fun and camaradarie of SKS spills over with this exchange. Everyone around had their own idiosyncrasies. There was Kiriko Fukuyama a dutch woman who adopted Japan as her home country and loved Indian music. She loved SDB's singing and thought 'Sun Mere Bandhu Re' was 'Ullu Mere Bandhu Re' (I thought Dada was an animal lover she explained), there was Robin Bhai, with his number crunching and wondrous posts on LP and Anand Bakshi, KCP, Sathya, Samik, Ummer, Ganti, Nimmi, Kamaal, Arunabha, Ajit, Pulkit, Satish Uncle, Atku Miyan, Sajjad, Tadatmya, Naresh,..... many different people with their own choices and opinions all bound through a common love for music. And there was Priya ofcourse, funny, witty, generous, nutty, impish and very sweet.
I suddenly snap out of the reverie. The stark reality stares straight in the face. Those days are past, P is gone, she is never going to come back and Grrrrrrr again. It is all over. These archives are nothing but an illusion. The realisation still does not quite seep in somehow. After all how different is it to read the archives today or to have read it when the a post was originally made? You read it then, you read it now. It is not as if you were interacting with a flesh and blood group then and it is not the same now. Everytime you read the archives those times instantly spring to life. Yet it is not the same. It was a different point in time and different 'me' that was there.
Online friendships are such, they have a sinusoidal wave of activity. We get busy with the concerns of our real life and the virtual life takes a back seat and then suddenly out of nowhere the people pop up come back again in your life. Somehow the only feeling I can summon is that Priya has taken a sabbatical. She is still there somewhere floating in the realm of cyberspace, busy with her life but connected. She will be back soon. The ants got my hard disk.. I am not going anywhere... grrrrrrr
P do come back. Do tell me that the ants really got your hard disk. P, please.....
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Links

I am putting up some links of a couple of threads from SKS that these reminiscences are culled from (I have taken the liberty to edit and proof read some of the exchanges, to get the gist of the conversation). If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can follow the thread and the various sub-threads it takes.
Thread1, Thread2, Thread3, thread4, thread5, thread6, thread7, thread8
Arunabha's famous snapshot of SKS

Some Pictures


The only pictures of Priya that could be located. If you have any please do share them

[Updated: 09/22/2008 - A small video tribute to Priya was put together by Srinivas Ganti with input from all her friends. You can view it on youTube ]

Tribute to Priya - Video

Here are some of the wall-papers P excelled in creating. Do note, the letting-my-hair-down picture of Asha. I would rib her incessantly about Asha's propensity to wear flashy clothes




















The rest are in the archives and can be found here
Here are some of P's naughty tricks.










Sharma Na Yun - Robin Bhai with Asha Parekh













Oh my God.. is there no escape? - Dev Saab with Madsji










Yours Truly with Uncle Dev

















Made for each other!
















Pyara Parivar - I as Asha's MIL




The wine and the song like the seasons have all gone........
Good-bye to you my trusted friend!

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Mourning for Priya

P, I have to still come to terms with your going away ... the more I think about your departure the more difficult it gets to accept it. You did not deserve the deal God doled out to you. Farewell my friend, you are in a better world now.

Grappling with Cowardice

I feel relieved. A situation that I had been dreading to face is over. Not really over but I have conquered the first and the most difficult step.
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I am the youngest member of a large Hum Aapke Hain Kaun kind of family. I have lots of uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews. A 'close family only' affair in our setup usually means a minimum of fifty people. No, we don't sing 'Dhik Tana Dhik Tana in the lawns of palatial houses, or play cricket with dogs as goal-keepers and we bicker more often than not over many small and petty things, yet we still stick together. esp. in times of crisis. Crisis such as illness, misfortune or deaths.

Death. The inevitable. The inescapable. The ultimate truth. It has to happen and happen to each of us. Everything and everyone around us is transient. Yet, coping with death is the most traumatic thing for a human being. I often wonder why nature did not make us immune to death. Why have our genes not evolved so that, the emotional knowledge of death is hard-wired into us. The truth is that emotionally an average human being lives as if death does not exist. Why this delusion? It is because of this head in the sand temperament that every time death happens it causes trauma. If death is as true to existence as breathing, then why has nature not built the mechanism to not get affected by it? Is there some divine design in there?

Ever since I have been a child I have seen that deaths are times when you rally together and show support through continued physical presence. In the earlier days a death in the immediate family meant packing your bags and going and spending as much time possible with the bereaved family. It was through this extended social circle that people coped and healed. A crutch that is unfortunately disappearing in our isolated life-styles in the new world. Through family conditioning, I have learnt that this is normal and expected social behaviour under such circumstances. That is the 'right' thing to do.

However, I am also the youngest. That made me into a socially redundant kind of creature. Every time there was a call for a social duty, my presence was considered superfluous. She's a kid, she does not need to go. Or even if I did go, I was not required to offer any words of condolence. I was just to sit quietly. Rarely ever did I have to go anywhere and offer condolence as an individual. There was always someone else better equipped to do it. Thus, I grew up without having to face and deal with such situations myself.

I don't know if it is the conditioning or my basic nature that makes me into a coward. I have always been scared to face someone who has faced a tragedy. I don't know what to say, how to behave and though I feel a strong degree of continued compassion for a person in trouble, I don't know how to express it or console them. The only thing I know is to give a tight hug. But you cannot do that to everyone. Thus, there is always a conflict within me. My value system says that I need to go out of my way and be there for the person and my cowardice says run away, you are useless anyway, why face a difficult situation.

After growing up and developing a social circle of my own, away from the family I have had times where I need to face such situations. My usual escape is to take the support of common friends. I manage to get by.

But there is another more sticky side to my existence. Since I live away from the family here in the US I have become a representative of the family back in India. I need to be present at places and that too most of the times alone. This is where things get very very difficult for me. The last time a tragedy happened, I shirked and then made an extremely belated appearance. No one ever held it against me, but I still regret it. I should have picked up the courage and gone for the funeral.

This Tuesday, I was faced with the same dreaded situation again. A distant relative living here in the US suddenly passed away. Even though we were not closely related, she was a fine lady. Extremely sweet, helpful and full of life. I rarely made an effort to keep in touch, but she would call me regularly and enquire about my well-being. She carried none of the expectations and baggage that inevitably get added the moment you say 'relative'. I was genuinely fond of her. When her son called me early Tuesday morning to break the news I was shocked and distressed. My initial reaction as usual was emotional. I don't know what I said to him, but I think I said the right things.

However after that my old problems resurfaced. I went into the terrified mode again. I need to go and offer my condolences to the family... as a gesture to my bhabhi who lost her aunt, and as a gesture to the family with whom I had established an independent relationship. The truth is that unless you reach out and express your concern, no one ever knows how strongly you feel for the situation. Yet, that reaching out and expressing is what gives me nightmares. I have always been better at expressing through gestures than words. For a person who talks nineteen to the dozen and writes long articles it sounds strange. But that is true.

I have been putting off making the dreaded call since Wednesday morning. I found many excuses... they need to break the news to the father, they need to be left alone to cope, they need to be left alone to deal with the logistics... when the mind decides to conjure up excuses, it can give PC Sarkar a run for his money. The whole of yesterday I dillied and dallied.

Today morning when I woke up I knew I had to call as soon as possible. There was no way out. But the coward that I am, I put it off till afternoon, giving myself the excuse of a heavy work day. From afternoon I pushed it to early evening. Finally, in the evening something inside pulled me up harshly and said.. NOW!. I must have taken ten gulps of water, clicked on my email's 'send/recieve' button another ten times, hoping an important mail would show up to give me an escape route. But nothing happened. I finally picked up the phone and dialled, my heart thumping against my chest. The phone rang, and rang.. and deep within I hoped it would keep ringing. That would assuage my guilt complex of not having called and also relieve me of doing the talking. And that is exactly what happened. I got the voice mail. I was so relieved. I left a message and hung up.

Then in the evening, he called back.... the son. My heart thumping again I picked up the phone. 'I wanted to know when the funeral is', rushing headlong to the point and fumbling stupidly. 'Oh we did the funeral yesterday', he said simply. 'um.. a.... are you going to be performing some pooja in her memory then? I really want to be there', I know I was sounding extremely fake. 'I don't know', he said, suddenly sounding very vulnerable. 'I have no idea what needs to done, I am just following whatever instructions my aunt gave to me'. My heart went out to him. Here is another person who has suddenly found himself in a situation and he has no idea how to deal with it. Suddenly he has been pushed to a position of responsibility. I felt an instant kinship with him. Death here in the US, for many families is far more difficult to cope with. The therapeutic effect of the houseful of people in India is underestimated. It is a lonely battle here.

That broke the barrier. After that we spoke ... easily and naturally. The last time I must have spoken to him must be three years back. I hardly know him. Yet, he spoke. He spoke of his mother's last moments, her intuition about her death, his fathers reaction, how he and his brother handled it. I offered him all the inspirational support I could, straight from the heart and without any guile of 'duniyadari'. When I put the phone down, I felt sad, but I felt good. I had done the right thing.

Just before his call, my neighbour had popped in for five minutes and I was whining about how difficult it is to deal with such situations. How much I am not looking forward to making the drive on the week-end. 'Listen, I have never bought a house before, but I am going through the process of buying it, aren't I? So, even you need to do somethings for the first time'. Strange logic. But it made sense.

So, this week-end I shall make the drive. It is not going to be easy, but winning over my cowardice is making me feel like a better person. Truly, there is no other way to deal with a situation than to face it!