Category Archives: India

Long-distance vs. Local trains in Bombay

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Venkat has this lovely description of local trains vs. long distance trains in Bombay:

The first impression is from my first view of Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (VT) railway station in 1993, where I arrived to start college. The image that stuck in my mind was that of the rust-and-ochre local commuter trains juxtaposed against the long-distance express trains a few platforms away. In the bustle of VT, the local trains seem to exude confidence, competence, agility and intelligence, rapidly disgorging hundreds of passengers in minutes and swallowing hundreds more, before dashing back up the few dozens of miles to the terminii at the other end of Bombay’s north-south extent. Next to these trains, the express trains seem weary, lumbering and stupid. Clueless village mice to the local trains’ town mice. If you ride the express trains out of Bombay though, you will notice a subtle change in your impressions as you slowly chug out of the city. As you leave the outermost local stations behind, and the powerful engines start to open up in preparation for crossing the Western Ghat mountains into the hinterland, a sense of awesome power and peace envelops you. It is now the pert, darting little local trains, left behind at the last few dimly-lit stations, that seem somehow forlorn, tragic and doomed to a sad life within the confines of Bombay, forever denied the exhilaration of the open tracks that snake for thousands of miles across India.

The full article is about something else entirely, which is also interesting…

Hello, My name is Navin, and I am a practising numerologist

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…while part of me is ashamed of this, the rest is enjoying being cruel to idiots.

It all started when I wrote this supposedly humorous article titled ‘Star Numerologist Sanjay B. Jumaani to be awarded the Bharatt Rratnaa’. You would think, that to anybody with an IQ greater than their age, it would be obvious that this is not intented to be taken seriously. You would think that the first few commentors (Full2Faltu and Krish Ashok) would have convinced the doubters that this is all a job.

And you would be wrong. Things started going downhill from the 7th comment onwards. Incredibly, people managed to read past such wise cracks as ‘[Jumaani as predicted that] the astronomic rise of the Sensex in 2008 after it is renamed to Sensekks’ and then at the bottom of the same page, they started asking me for numerological advice. Seriously, what is wrong with these people?!

Anyway, considering the satirical nature of the parent article, I decided to give smart-ass / humorous answers to the questions. To the MBA student wanting to know whether he will get an ‘international placement’ I suggested that he should apply only to companies whose names start with a ‘B’ and he will get an international placement – in Bhutan or Burma.

But I also tried to work in some serious suggestions. To they guy who wanted to succeed as an entrepreneur, I bluntly said

Numbers don’t play an important part in your life. (Fortunately or unfortunately) success in your career will depend upon hard work and smart choices.

To the guy with terrible english facing ‘lost of problem in [...] life’ I suggested:

Based on the limited information you have given, I have the following recommendation: the numbers 8 and 3 are important in your life. Do a 3 month course on English speaking; it should include at least 8 hours per week. And after 8/3/08 your fortunes will improve.

I felt rather proud of having given useful advice in the guise of numerological humor. Apparently however, he was not interested in actually working for success and sent this follow-up: “Plz suggest how i become sucessful with the changing of name” and he ended this paragraph with “because u r the toperson to whom i can trust to take suggestion”.

At this point, I give up. I admit defeat. If you can’t lick them, join them. I have started actually giving numerological advice and making predictions about their life. I can see how writing this satirical article was actually divine intervention which helped me find my true calling in life. If people want my advice who am I to deny it? Young women want to meet me in person. (Seriously. Check it out for yourself. And I know that they are young because I know their birth dates! Ha ha.) This seems like a much better career choice than debugging C programs. So I am going to start using cold-reading techniques to guess their past and then predict their future. I am going to tout “scientific numerology” and design experiments for them to figure out their perfect numbers and colors and days of the week. I want to find out how easy it is to get ‘satisfied’ customers through pure bullshit. This is all of course, purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry and the relentless pursuit of knowledge.

And before you condemn my cruelty, remember that these people are asking me for advice on a page where at the top it says “Bollywood news for idiots. Humor for the rest of you…”, and at the bottom it says, “BasKya.com is a satirical website. Which means that all content is meant to be humorous and for entertainment only. It’s not true. If you cannot handle that fact, close your browser, and step away from the computer.” They are asking for advice in the comments of an article which says ridiculous stuff like Sanjay B. Jumaani is being given the ‘Bharatt RRatnaa’ for future contributions like “the complete annihilation of Pakistan in 2011 when he will go undercover as Arabian numerologist Sanj-e-Jumma-i-imaani and will give them bad numerological adivce.” And these are educated people. One is a doctor (who is presumably out there giving medicine to other people), and another is a lecturer (who is shaping the minds of our coming generation). Would you show any pity?!

Some of those reading this and who know me personally might be wondering whether my computer got taken over by my evil twin today. Because, I am a rather nice guy otherwise. My only excuse is that fact that somehow this set of doctors, lecturers and MBAs who are too stupid to be anywhere near the internet and who believe in numerology has just irritated beyond my normal limits. The way I think about it is that these people are such idiots that if I weren’t doing it, someone else would be doing it, and charging them money for it! At least, I am doing it for free.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S.

I am sure that after reading this article, some smart alecs are going to post more queries on that page asking for advice with the intention of pulling my leg. Don’t even think about it! I am an all-seeing, all-knowing numerologist and I can see through all the paltry tricks of your small minds.

The background score of Tare Zameen Par

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This is an (old) blog post by Aamir Khan about the process they followed for recording the background score of Tare Zameen Par which I found very interesting:

The work on the TZP background score is going rather well I think. We went surprisingly fast too. And interestingly we ended up recording live! Which hasn’t been done in films for around… what…15 years or more.

Let me explain. When we score for a film we look at a scene/sequence, decide at which point in the scene we want the music to start, were it should end, and were we want any changeovers in between etc. Now once all this is decided, and the creative is clear, the recording begins. Which now days can be quite a technical process. All keyboards are connected to a computer on which the picture is dumped. On that the start point is marked, a grid created, tempo tweaked around to fit the length of the music, etc, basically this means that a lot is done mathematically. All this as a result of the advent of computers. Not a very organic way to work in my opinion but definitely more controlled and practical. This is generally called sequencing/programming. So you sequence/programme a piece and then dump it in sync with the picture.

Going ‘live’ means that the musicians playing the instruments don’t peer and jab at a computer, instead they look at the screen as they play the instrument, with a conductor guiding them for cues and timing and intensity of playing. So they play live in sync with the picture. They don’t follow a grid, they follow the scene and the feel of what the characters are going through. Anything goes wrong you try it again. If the take doesn’t have the right ‘feel’ then you go again. Each take is different. Now this is how background scores used to be recorded 15-20 years ago.

In fact we went one step further, we were working without visual aides of cross marks on the scene to give ‘in’ points and ‘change over’ points. So the ‘in’ point was ‘felt’ rather than pre-marked and counted in. Not only that, the music was not written and never locked in, so when Loy or Ehsan or Shankar or Tubby (one of their musicians) were playing, they often were also improvising from take to take!!! At one point we decided we wanted a harmonica for one of the pieces. Not a synth harmonica sound but a real harmonica. Not a problem if you are in Bombay where a harmonica and a player are a phone call away. But we were in of course were in Panchgani. So Loy sends Sachin (my help) to the Panchgani market to look for a harmonica… which Sachin miraculously finds! Then Loy, who I discovers plays the harmonica rather well, goes on to breath life into that 8inch piece of metal and we’re cruising! Mind you all this is happening in a house not in a studio.

Actually since I’m doing this for the first time for myself (I’ve worked on background recordings when I was an assistant director some 18 years ago) I found this the most natural way to work. But Shankar, Ehsan and Loy were freaked out as they haven’t worked this way for ages, probably never. At first I suspect they thought I was mad, then they began really enjoying themselves jamming away.