People who make life worth living: Prem Panicker

This is a third post in my series of people who make life interesting or worth living. If you are wondering whether Prem Panicker belongs in the same league as Manohar Shyam Joshi and Gulzar, well, this is purely written from my perspective and Prem has had as big an influence on me as those two other personalities.  Again, I have never met Prem in real life but I am so immersed by his work, his views, his thoughts that sometimes I feel as if I know him like a close relative.

When did I first discover Prem Panicker? The answer is when I first seriously discovered internet or rather when internet became a part of my life as was television or radio before that. That was around 2000 after I moved to US. It appears very short period, isn’t it? But that also tells you how fast the world has changed and internet has changed it in last 10-15 years. 10 years back, when I was working in India for Infosys, getting high speed internet was a luxury, even in the office. The page would take forever to download, and this was the case in the world headquarters of the most admired tech company in India. So what changed in 2000. I moved to US and with that a lot of things changed. My life style changed. I could afford a computer, in fact multiple computers at home, all of a sudden. It was another year before high speed internet would become common place, but at least I had a dedicated dial up now which means 24 hours internet connection.

Another thing that changes was my need to stay connected to India, by every means I could and that’s where I discovered Rediff as a handy tool. But if I discovered Rediff by chance or through friends, what made it sticky for me and many others was their cricket writer with a name with 2 P’s in it. Soon I realized that I was spending 80% of my time on Rediff reading Prem and it was the same for many people in my demographic. I started looking forward to Prem’s match reports with as much curiosity as  people used to for the release of a new film back when cinema was the only form of entertainment.

To assess the real impact of Prem on my generation, we would have to take into account the prevailing conditions in the cricket world in and around 2000. We as fans had pretty much lost the faith in the cricket teams and the cricket world, after the match fixing scandal. All of sudden, everything looked fake and fixed. Couple that with my own situation of moving to a new country where cricket was known as just another insect, threatened the religious belief I had grown up with.

Enter Prem and he pulled us back into the cricket world. He made the cricket reports cool with his lucid and interesting style of reporting, almost playing the role that the good commentators did, back in the radio days. We couldn’t watch matches on TV, no problem, we would get to enjoy them even more in the next day’s reports on Rediff. In a single role, Prem revived the game for cricket for millions of lost fans like me, energized Rediff and made it the most popular internet destination for desis to hangout at and set the standards for cricket match reports. Cricinfo followed and soon took over the cricket market on internet due to their superior technology and ball by ball commentary, but even today their match reports seem to follow a pattern that Prem set, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Prem was applying good, old school writing skills to write describe the happenings on the field of a sport. He was telling us a story, with live believable characters in it. However, the problem was, here was a writer par excellence, who was soon discovering for himself and millions of his fans that he is probably doing injustice to himself by limiting to just cricket. He soon delved into writing about Movies. Those pieces were good, but nowhere as good as his take on cricket. Besides, Rediff had better writers on the cinema page, people like Dinesh Raheja who would write tribute pieces and Raja Sen who joined later for reviews. We were losing Prem as he appeared less and less on Rediff’s cricket pages. For a while, he managed a blog page for rediff about cricket but it was all confusing for the readers, we weren’t sure who was writing those pieces.

Then I discovered his blog, aptly titled Smoke Signals. That’s when we discovered the real Prem, the multi-dimensional one. He was writing on Politics, general current affairs, cinema, cricket and mythology and what was common all along was the sharp writing skills and his command over words. His re-writing (Prem likes to call it translation of M. Vijay’s work) of Mahabharata story from Bhim’s point of view was addictive, to understate it. I have the full Bhimsen in PDF format sitting on my latptop and every now and then I open it and start reading it from anywhere. I soon realized that I was commenting on Prem’s blog, very few blogs where I every commented, being the lazy reader, even though I read a lot of them.

Through his blog, Prem covered some of the details about his personal life. He reposted what he had written on Rediff about his dad when he passed away, an extremely sentimental and brave piece, brave because he was pouring out his heart, without losing his objectivity. If any of my kids wrote an obituary like that, I would be proud and willing to die multiple times just for that. Through his postings on his personal life, he shared information with us about his childhood, the lessons he learned while growing up, the influence of his parents on him, the dos and don’ts of parenting even though he himself doesn’t have kids.

I am not sure if Prem is aware of his impact he had on people like me and thousands of others in my generation. He seems to have a lot of fans on his blog and his posts are full of comments, some of them very insightful and Prem also actively participates in the debate. To me, Prem is one of those people who make life interesting by creating newer stuff every day through their God given skill that inspires ordinary mortals like me. Long live Prem Panicker!

You can read Prem at his blog here http://prempanicker.wordpress.com/.

Radio, 1170 AM

1170  AM, Desi Radio in Bay Area

Back in 2000 when I was waiting for my H1 visa to arrive, I used to have long-distance conversations with the HR head of the company I was about to join (this is for you Sampath Sir). One of his key selling points to me used to be about the quality of life for a Desis living in California, particularly in San Francisco Bay Area. He used to talk about how everything that a Desi needs is now available in a nearby desi store. The example he gave that excited me the most was about Bidi. Not that I used to smoke Bidi when I was in India, but the idea that even bidi was available in the far away land called America, made me feel so excited at that time.

Despite all the reassurances from Sampath sir, we still brought dals, spices and Maggie packets in our suitcase when arrived. Wife was following her cousin’s prophetic advice who lived in Minneapolis, a land of primarily white people, very different from sunny California. A year or two later when we were returning from our second trip back home, the custom officer at San Francisco airport asked “Do you any jeera in your suitcase sir?” It was so creepy, I tell you.

Anyway, here we are, 10 years later, in the land of opportunity, with our hits and misses and still surviving. The latest addition to our desi life in bay area is a radio channel, our own radio mirchi. We first learned about it from our nanny and I dismissed it immediately as my previous experience with Desi radio wasn’t as exciting. There was a Hindi radio that used to run on weekends at 1450 am and it was pathetic. The quality of programming was really bad, the RJs were horrible and most of the programs were filled with ads of Naaz cinema. But I gave 1170 am a try anyway and was pleasantly surprised.

It was sweet to hear old Hindi songs on Radio again, kind of reminded me of those days when power used to go out and we used to listen to radio in the dark, Vividh Bharti and all. And, surprise, surprise, the quality of programming was quite good. So far, I have mostly listened to Morning Masti with some Mitra as the RJ and Sham ka safar with Seema Mahajan, both very good at RJ’ing. Both of them do a professional job, have good voice quality and their impromptu comments are very good.

It’s also quite interesting to hear real desis calling into the station and making random comments. The other day some old uncle called in and was telling stories of the day when they had to book a long distance call, once a month to call India and how the call used to go through trunk calls booked through New York-Bombay, Bombay Nagpur and all. He the ended the story with how he used to cry every time he used to make that call every month. It was quite heartfelt.

The only downside of the radio station 1170 am is the prominence of dentists as the advertisers. There is Pannu dental giving his comments on air (or Panny real estate, which I believe is the same guy, who changes profession depending on the day of the week).  There is Dr. Uppal on some days and Dr. Dhuppal on other days, all of them dentists, and they do take the liberty of connecting everything from heart disease and depression to teeth problems. I hope they will keep the ads limited and mainatain the quality of the programs.

If they even maintain the current quality of the programming and Mitraji and Seema Mahajan are kept on air, 1170 am is here to stay.

People who make life worth living: Gulzar

Previously published on Passionforcinema – http://passionforcinema.com/people-who-make-life-worth-living-gulzar/

It’s hard to explain  what a special place Gulzar saab has in my life. I have never met the man, not even attended any concert like event where I could see him from a distant, yet it feels as if I know him personally. Unlike my previous post on Manohar Shyam Joshi, (which you can read on my blog here ) Gulzar saab as a personality is much bigger and better known. He is a public personality and yet, very special for me just like his work. When did I start paying special attention to his work, I am not sure exactly. I think I was in my engineering college when I first heard of a song from Khamoshi that sounded special and different from the rest of the Hindi music, I had ever heard. The song was Humne Dekhi hai un aankhon ki mehakti khushbu. Soon, I realized that I was not alone in feeling touched and transformed every time I heard to lyrics like these that transcended the physical world and appealed to something deeper inside us, something pure and original within us. Then I started my journey into a new world, a world where Gulzar saab existed in flesh and blood, as a living being in and around my daily life, even though I have never met the man. I met friends who introduced me to more Gulzar songs, the songs from Aandhi and Mausam, the evergreen classics composed by RD Burman, sung by Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Bhupinder. Around that time I heard Dil Dhoondhta Hai, a song that has stayed with me and remained fresh even today. If I dare say in Gulzar sab’s words, “nazm kabhi budhi nahi hoti…”. It definitely applies to this nazm for me. I can listen to this song anytime, day or night, irrespective of what mood I am in and it takes me to those places he describes in the song, the terrace on a hot summer night, the valley on a cold foggy winter day, the sunny porch on a balmy winter morning, the song immediately takes me there and back and soothes and touches my heart.

With a friend of mine, I once listened to the song Kis Mod jate hain, almost 10 times non-stop just to understand the full meaning of what Gulzar saab was saying and it blew our minds. Imagine those days when you had to press a button and keep it pressed to rewind a song if you want to listen again, so smitten we were that we kept doing it and almost broke the head of the Panasonic stereo player my friend had in his hostel room. Eventually I would get to hear, watch and even read more of Gulzar sab’s work. I accidently picked up Pukhraaz, gulzar saab’s poetry collection from a book sale in Mumbai. The book just lived with me for some time, ignored in a corner and slowly started to come alive. This was for the very first time that I was not only reading a poetry book, but understanding it and re-reading it. It became an obsession over time and stayed an obsession for considerable amount of time. When I fell in love, I wanted to read the book to my girl friend, which I did and bored her to death many times. If there is only one poetry book you want to read in your life, I would recommend this one. For starters, you may already know some of the poetry – the song about death from the film Anand that Amitabh Bachchan recites to a dyeing Rajesh Khanna, the song Dil Dhoondhta Hai, with all the antaras and some more and of course Kis Mode Se Jate Hain, a completely different version, much deeper and full of many meanings. If you thought the song version of Kis Mode Se Jate hain was difficult, wait until you try this one. But every penny worth it! There is an audio version of the raw poem sung by Bhupinder that came out few years back and it’s a gem. He sings many non-liner unstructured nazms of Gulzar saab and does full justice to them, interspersed by lines in Gulzar saab’s baritone voice.  There are also the collections of Gulzar saab’s poetry, composed into beautiful music by Abhisek Ray.

The book Pukhraaz also contains portraits of many personalities such as Meena Kumari, Ghalib or Puncham, and Gulzar’s heartfelt poetry for his daughter bosky.

If millions like me worship Gulzar, Gulzar seems to have a special place in his heart for Ghalib. He has created songs out of two line shayaries that Ghalib wrote. The first two lines in Dil Dhoondta hai are by Ghalib and he also used Ghalib’s lines in a song from Dil Se. Gulzar saab has even written an autobiography of Ghalib in his own words, a book that I have looked all over but haven’t been able to get my hands on.

I think Gulzar saab also inserted Ghalib in his most famous item song i.e. Kajraare. Gulzar and item song! But the maestro has proven that there isn’t a type of song that he cannot write lyrics for. I first saw this form of Gulzar in  Chaiya Chaiya, a fast paced song. He brought grace and elegance to fast paced item numberish songs like Chaiya Chaiya, Kajraare and Bidi.

Gulzar saab has touched my life and made it more livable by appearing in his many avatars, song writer being just one of them. Even his films have been unique with real-life middle class characters and situations, similar to Hrishikesh Mukherjee school of film making, except more intense and with stronger emotional content. His most intense film was his best as far as I am concerned, i.e. Hu Tu Tu. It was vast in canvas, super strong in characterization and we saw a very cynical, almost angry side of Gulzar saab. Another aspect of Gulzar sab’s films was the almost novelish style of narration where it almost feels like as if you are reading a really good good book. This style is particularly evident in films like Namkeen, Mausam and Aandhi.

This was not meant to be a tribute to Gulzar saab, it cannot be, I don’t have the ‘aukaat’ to do justice to a powerhouse of talent like Gulzar saab. There is a dedicated website to his work at www.gulzaronline.com, the internet is full of footprint of his work in films and outside films, fans and fan clubs paying tribute to him in various manners. Type his name in youtube and you can spend hours living his poetry and immersed in his world of words, nazms and imaginations that are so profound and so startling at the same time.  This is just my acknowledgement and my way of saying thanks to him for making life that much more worth living for me.

Finally, I have been writing on PFC for more than a year now. After some chiding, a little ridiculing and a lot of encouragement from so many of you, I felt confident enough to start my own blog. Simply because there are times, when I do not have a full blown article to write yet yearn to share a quick thought with like minded individuals. Also, there are times when i do not have much to write on cinema but have something to say on other topics. As I have acknowledged many time before, I am not much of an expert on cinema unlike most of the other writers on PFC. I started writing about cinema simply to express the joy of an ordinary audience member, and will continue to do so as long as the editors at PFC allow me to do so.

People who make life worth living: Manohar Shyam Joshi

There are times when we find life extremely difficult to live. Vortex of life carries you away and churns you around so hard that you almost feel like giving up. These are the moments that make you wonder, is it even worth fighting for? You feel as if every ounce of strength has been drained out of you and you find it hard to even get up and stand straight. No, I am not one of those who feel suicidal at times, in fact far from it. In fact by God’s grace, I find a good reservoir of strength within myself and even in the darkest moments, the thought never crossed my mind. But I do understand and know people who took their own lives. There were two very close people in my family who took their own lives. One of them was my sister and the other was a niece. Both of them were amazing people, very strong, very loved and admired by all of us. They were definitely not the people whom you even wildly imagine that they would take their lives. But they must have found it hard, way harder than we can even imagine, that they decided to take their lives. I wasn’t big enough to fully understand it when my sister died, but even till date, I meet people who say she was the best among all of us siblings. Not sure, if they say it because it makes sense to talk good about people who are dead. But in case of my niece, I can definitely say it was true. She was one of the best kids I had met in my life, very beautiful, very charismatic, had an amazing grace and presence that made people feel good about themselves. We all had high hopes of her, until we heard one day…..people die all the time, but taking your life…that doesn’t happen every day. Dear N., for whatever reason you did it, I understand it, may God give you peace wherever you are.

I am sorry, this post is not about suicide or darker side of life, but shinier, more beautiful aspects of life. It’s about the book you love to read again and again, the song you like to hear again and again, the shayari or composition that you hang on to every word of. It’s about people who create those moments, those words, those compositions that touch not only you, but countless others. You know that they didn’t just did it for you, you are part of the masses they touched through their creations, yet you feel special, you feel happy being a part of the masses.

My first such tribute is to Late Shri Manohar Shyam Joshi.  Even though Joshi ji touched almost every life in India through his two legendary pieces of work Hum Log and Buniyaad, I feel a special connection to him because of one novel of his – Kasap, a novel that I have read 45 times, cover to cover, the most I have read any book in my life. I was a bit young and didn’t have access to TV when Hum Log was on but did watch every episode in a rerun and was amazed at the grasp Joshiji had on the psyche of middle class Indians. Hum Log didn’t become a big hit because it was the first fully Indian soap opera , it deserved to be a big hit because of the quality of writing. The characterization, the situations that resembled our day to day life a bit too much and the straight slice of life style of presentation connected it to people. I was old enough to understand and watch Buniyaad, but didn’t get to see much of it because of lack of access to TV. Kakkaji Kahin was another serial that was very popular, but again never got the opportunity to watch it. I watched some episodes of Humrahi and Mungeri Lal ke haseen sapne. The Ekta Kapoor generation may not understand it but Joshiji was the pioneer of the great Indian soap opera, making TV programs that could run for ages, yet he never resorted to cheap gimmicks, maintained quality of writing, situations and characters remained real.

But the reason I worship Joshiji is not because of Hum Log or Buniyad, but because of Kasap, the best Hindi novel that I ever read. I first came across Kasap in one of the roadside bookstalls in Delhi in around 1995 and got so enamored by it that I couldn’t pick up another book for nearly six months. There was something about this Hindi novella, something Devdasian that touched my heart. The novel is essentially a love story of an orphan boy brought up by relatives and a rich girl named baby who is the youngest sister of 4 brothers and a learned man named Shastriji and belongs to a rich family. Through this poor boy, rich girl love story, Joshiji weaves a tale that moves from remote villages of Kumaun to the campus of Berkeley and the studios of Hollywood and the by the time the book ends, you realize you have read a sweeping tale of coming to age, generational love story that has depth of philosophy and breadth of science and technology and rooted in centuries old superstitious society that can still be found in any part of India.

Imagine a book in which the climax of the story is set on a cliff in some remote sleepy hill station, near some dank bunglow where the hero is sitting with legs dangling and just crying. The last 8-10 pages of the book analyzes why the character may be crying and  makes you feel sad and happy at the same time, of course assuming that you have read the entire novel by then.

I have read all kinds of book and I used to re-read many of them, particularly when I ran out of new titles to read. But I never got so crazy for any book before or after Kasap. The only other book that even came remotely close was Catch 22, that I just loved simply because  I could pick it up and start reading from any page. But my fixation with Kasap was something different. At times I wondered if my crazy fixation with his book was in part because of the parallels with my own story. Like the lead protagonist of the book, I was brought up by relatives and just like him, I made my journey from a remote village of Uttaranchal to California and may be because I do know some of the pahadi rivers, the temples, the customs  and places in Uttaranchal that the author has used as metaphors.  But that’s where the similarities end. I wasn’t an orphan and wasn’t brought up in abject poverty as the hero was, in fact the relatives who brought me up were very nice to me and I owe them a lot. And I am not a Hollywood celebrity like the character in his novel, just an ordinary software industry worker, like thousand of us here in Bay Area.

But then I shared the book with two friends of mine, from totally different backgrounds, but big book worms and they loved the book almost as much as I did. Baby is the best heroine character I ever read, so modern, so ahead of its time, keeping in mind the fact that the story starts in 1955 and ends in 1985.

So, who is Manohar Shyam Joshi. His biography states he was born in Ajmer, even though he must have been a Uttaranchali , reflected by his grasp and command over Kumauni cultural milieu. But then, he displayed an amazing grasp of Punjabi sensibilities in Buniyaad, not the Yash Chopra style Punjabi, but the more earthy, real, Punjabiyat, particularly of the generation that came over from Pakistan and got known as refugees in India, where they now make the most affluent class. Joshi ji did try to make forays into films and I even watched Papa Kahte Hai, simply by seeing his name as writer, but he was probably not good enough for the high writing standards displayed in our films. He seems to have received fair amount of breaks in Hindi cinema, even with great Ramesh Sippy in Bhrashtachar, but not sure what went wrong because none of the films he worked made a mark. But then, even the greatest ever Hindi writer  Premchand was supposed to have failed in Hindi cinema.

But Joshiji seemed to fully understand the medium of television, up until the media explosion happened and Ekta Kapoor arrived.

Back in 1995 I learned that Joshiji was living in an apartment complex in Delhi where my then brother in law had bought an apartment. It was my dream to meet Joshiji face to face, but remained a dream forever after I read about Joshiji passing away in 2006.

Thank you Joshiji for being who you were and creating the work you did and touching my life and fulfilling it in a unique way. You definitely made my life a little bit more worth living.

I hope some day, some courageous director picks up the book, and adapts it into a sweeping love story. I bet if done well, the film will connect with masses and classes alike and could become a great classic by itself.

Dil-e-nadaan, Ghalib and Mehdi Hasan!

It’s amazing how many times and how many variations of this ghazal i have heard before yet right now I am listening to Mehdi Hasan sing it and he has taken it to entirely different level. Mehdi Hasan is probably unique in this aspect as he sings the same ghazal in many different ways, a shorter version, a longer classical version, an in-between version depending on which concert he was singing in and what kind of mood he was in. No one else comes close to him in this command and control, not even Ghulam Ali. Hats off, sir! You are Allah’s gift to the us all ghazal shaukeens.

Weird title to start a new blog with. But that’s what i started this blog for, for sharing my views, my opinions, my feelings with like minded people, without any inhibitions, without any pretensions, just like we share with friends. Hope this style works and i would soon see readers who are interested in topics, thoughts and views that I am interested in. Even if i am able to reach a tiny subsegment of the readers in the big, huge blogosphere, it would make the rest of the life more worth living. Of course, if this blog doesn’t take off and i do not find adequate readership, it will be a failure of my writing skills and my effort to promote the blog.

Back to Ghalib! At times i wonder what makes Ghalib so great. I have read many other Urdu poets who seem equally prophetic such as Mir, Zauk, Firaq and others, yet there is something unique about Ghalib that makes him so relevant for every generation. I have some biographies of Ghalib many times and in most of them he comes across as a very selfish, self centered type of person, who didn’t get along or care much for his wife, didn’t care much for the society at large, wasn’t patriotic in the times of intense patriotism i.e. 1857, didn’t even consider himself a Hindustani at heart, prided himself on being a Persian by blood. Yet, here is, immortal and still alive in the imagination of the entire subcontinent after more than 250 years. Ghalib is more famous than Bahadur Shah Zafar, the emperor who patronage he was fighting his entire life for, amazing how history judges peoples.

As for Mehid Hasan sab, i don’t know much except through his voice. I recently read somewhere that he is languishing in utter poverty, somewhere in Pakistan. Imagine, king of ghazal, a legend who was worshiped across Pakistan, India and Desis living everywhere across the world. The album that I am listening to is recorded in a concert somewhere in New York.  And the same legend doesn’t even have money to get proper treatment when he became too old to sing.

But for now, I enjoy listening to Mehdi Hasan sab, sing Ghalib in his unique style and bring out some additional nuances of the famous Dil-e-nadaan that Talat Mahmood, Begum Akhtar, Suraiya or Chitra Singh before him couldn’t express.

Hope whoever reads, finds something worth reading in my rambling, I will try to be more coherent in my next post.

Dil\-e\-naadaa.n tujhe huaa kyaa hai
Aakhir is dard kii davaa kyaa hai

Ham hai.n mushtaaq aur vo bezaar
Yaa ilaahii, ye maajaraa kyaa hai

Mai.n bhii muh me.n zubaan rakhataa huu.n
Kaash puuchho kii mudda kyaa hai

Jabaki tujh bin nahii.n koi maujuud
Phir ye ha.ngaamaa ai khudaa kyaa hai

Ye parii\-cheharaa log kaise hai.n
Gamazaa\-o\-ush{}vaa\-o\-adaa kyaa hai

Shikane\-zulafe\-amabarii kyaa hai
Nigaahe\-chashme\-surama saa kyaa hai

Sabz\-o\-gul kahaa.n se aaye hai.n
Abr kyaa chiiz hai, havaa kyaa hai

Hamako unase vafaa ki hai ummiid
Jo nahii.n jaanate vafaa kyaa hai

Haa.n bhalaa kar, teraa bhalaa hogaa
Aur daravesh kii sadaa kyaa hai

Jaan tum par nisaar karataa huu.n
Mai.n nahii.n jaanataa duaa kyaa hai

Maine maanaa ki kuchh nahiin gaalib
Muft haath aaye, to buraa kyaa hai