How do you do "Cocaine" ?

This should be one hell of a handy D-I-Y.

First of all, you take this white powder and...Ah well, who am I kidding ? The lyrics are here and the chords & tabs are here. And this is how you put it all together :

#1. First things first, no matter how confident you are, you actually have to have some idea about music. If scales, chords, tabs, tempo, etc. do not make any sense to you, it's just not worth the effort. Trust me, it isn't.

#2. Make sure you've got the right systems in place and the right crowd. By that I mean the acoustics and the hardware. No pun intended please. The guys on the instruments also go a long way in making you the rockstar that you actually aren't. So make sure they are credible. On second thoughts, the wattage is immaterial, it just depends on how "high" your audience is.

#3. Not that I need to mention this, but don't ever, EVER mess up with the lyrics. At least not right at the start. A correct start is crucial. It's the difference between "Hey, this guy can actually sing" and " Oh no, who's this jackass ?"

#3. Get your timing spot-on. No two ways about it. Start and end exactly when you're supposed to and don't get carried away with the guitar riffs that you've probably heard a million times before anyway.

#4. The coolest thing to do is to introduce the band one by one just like Clapton does. No Alan 'Hurricane' Clark? no Mark Knopfler? not even Katie Kasumi and Tessa Nyles on the backing vocals? No problem, the real names would do just fine. Trust me, it works.

#5. Let some of the more enthusiastic members of the audience mob you if they want to. It helps you to buy time to get ready for the next few lines and more importantly, makes for a wonderful photo-op for seedy guys with even seedier cellphone cameras. You're going to have grandchildren to tell stories to one day, won't you?

Well, future grandchildren, here you are:

How incredibly true

" Baatein hi kuch aisi hain, ke ab jinke sabab se
Apne pe mujhe hazrat-e-Ghalib ka gumaan hain,

Ghalib ki tarah karz mein hoon main bhi giraftaar,
Ghalib ki tarah mera kiraye ka makaan hain " !!!

Priceless !!!

What if...???

Came across this sometime back. It is somewhat kitschy but I'll have to agree, it does have a bit of soul in it. It also made me think, somewhat tangentially : What if the Partition of 1947 never happened ?


My interests in politics can at best be termed apathetic so I wouldn't like to dwell on the serious aspects of the question. The million people who got killed in the aftermath, the mass exodus on both sides of the border and the never-ending tensions for the past 60 years have all been and will be endlessly discussed and documented for a long long time. But this question, often bugs me. From a idle day-dreamer's point of view, that is. Here's why :

For starters, we could' ve had the absolute best cricket and hockey teams that would've beaten the crap out of most teams for most of the last 60 years. Imagine the number of World Cups and Olympic gold medals we missed.

Number two, two words, Pakistani women. Meera is scary, but then, so is Archana Puran Singh. Anyone with a half decent brain would accept that most Pakistani women are absolutely stunning. Imagine what it would've been like to see more of them on stage and screen, posters and adverts, newspapers and magazines.

We could've had the finest intermingling of literature, music and dance. And it's not just about bootleg videos of Pakistani plays and mujras that you can pick up at your friendly neighbourhood shack. Those are a bit like Boney M. We've all heard them and loved them but we would never accept that in public. Imagine Ghulam Ali, Mehndi Hassan, Jal, Fuzon, Strings...the list goes on. We could've called them all our own. We almost do it even now. Most of all, Nusrat sahab would've been ours as well. His qawwalis and live recordings are so difficult to get hold of in India. Even on the net, you have to really really search well and even after that, you still don't get all that you want. And you probably don't even know what more you are missing out on. That man can sing. I say "can" because he still lives. And rules.

Partition. Dammit.

Belated Happy Birthday, dear Blog

You have turned one !

Here's a little nifty gift. Your very own sitemeter.

Hope you like tracking people Vella enough to visit you.

No progress...

A month has passed...and my blog still remains unattended to. No new posts, no updates, nothing.

Nothing unusual considering it is MY blog.

ME.

The greatest procastinator on earth when it comes to anything that involves more than 5 minutes of activity. I have also managed to forget my username and password. I have realized I have too many passwords and too many usernames at too many places...

This blog is turning out to be quite like a nagging housewife...

Needs way too much attention for my liking.

Opening Bars

Taram-taraaaaaaa..... !

There ! By nobody's popular demand or eager anticipation, I finally have my own blog !

Whew !

I wonder if everyone who has been here before faced the same amount of difficulty.These blogspot guys ask for...

...a username

...then for a password (which is again a kind of name or a number, or both. For all of you with smarter ideas, sorry !! I'm still not savvy or scheming enough to include obscure characters in my password. And then again for...

...a display name.

That's three names in as many fields to be thought of, the different options weighed against each other and the seemingly best-fitting ones finalized !!! And I've still not gone through even one per cent of the layout schemes and other options that are available. I think I hate choices. I really do. Democracy has no place here. It only confuses. The take-your-picks should be for the nerdy geeky types who are used to such things. For people like me, it should be a straight take-it-or-leave-it offer. Anyway, I'll check all that up later...

I've joined classical music lessons, piano lessons and even a gym and never got beyond the first few weeks in any. This might turn out to be somewhat along similar lines. But what the heck, for the time being...

A new star is born on the blogosphere !

(Applause ! applause ! applause ! )

Hell…this is quite cool !