I always get a bit irritable at the approach of diwali. I think 'Oh no! another night of noise and smoke.' This year with the two month old baby I was specially dreading it. And we were invited to someone's house in the evening for a 'surprise' party. The surprise was spoilt by a muppet who smsed the girl who was meant to be surprised, apologising for his absence. Anyhow, it was loud and noisy outside. Kiarna, wasn't looking too happy and as we drove back home through the dust and the pollution, I was decidedly getting grumpier. Wondering what the scene at my home would be I was very pleasantly surprised. My neighbours had lit a whole bunch of little lamps on their balcony. We had a very irritable 2 month old with us, but my heart suddenly felt a bit peaceful. No noise from these lights. A wisp of smoke. No sparks. No multi-coloured sensory pillorying. Just peaceful light from these lamps. What Diwali is meant to be I'm told.

Somewhere it's written, 'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.'

Ignorance is... umm... what?

Victor Lazaro, 29th Oct 2005

I think I've finally got it! Everyone's been trying to identify Thermal and a Quarter's genre of music. Mostly we give a cool post modern repartee saying the idea of genre itself is too constricting. But needs must. Especially to an audience which is from all over the world.

so here it is gentle ladies and men!

Thermal and a Quarter the kings of...

Curry Rock

ah yes... well... you may respond

This city is soaked to the core. And inept planning and execution means: clogged drains, no drains, flooded houses, bad roads, stressed out commuters... and the list goes on and on. We're safe for the moment. But everybody is vulnerable. Nature doesn't discriminate.

things work out strangely. I had mentioned before about the RC 20 in the previous post. I'd kind of wanted it, in fact I used the word lust. Today was the day it was to go back to the owner and I went and met him and... (deep breath) he just gave the loop station to me. Whaaat.... He'd prayed about it and decided it was the right thing to do. I feel a bit small and a bit humbled. I hope to do some justice to this act of goodness... Thank you God, and thank you friend...

I've borrowed a brilliant toy for a few days.

The problem with borrowing is that it ensures the lust, the craving of ownership.

This little Boss RC 20 is really cool. It's basically a loop station. So I can play a bass line, loop it, then dub some chords on top, loop it and then play a melody on the top of that. It's quite amazing. On top of that, (no the bass doesn't go that high) you can reverse the loops, which means you got real cool sounding stuff, coming out of a lowly four-string piece of wood.

I want one. The problem is, a good heart, a strong will, and good teamwork won't do it. Not without MONEY.

and so I'll quote my daughter 'Waaaaah!'

Thermal and a Quarter joke of the month.

Rajeev, our drummer, went to Hong Kong, and bought a china. Musos laugh!

(Others who understood, laugh. Those who don't understand, ask. It's generally a good policy in life (not insurance).)

I'm planning to start a new band. I've decided the genre is going to be acapella death metal. Since the genre is quite new and rare I shall explain a bit. Death metal is typified by growls, snarls and loud heavy guitars. One death metal song that I remember by a Christian death metal band, (yes, they do exist), goes like this:

(In extreme intensity of voice)

Verse 1:
Death,
Death,
Death,
Death,
Death,
Death.

Verse 2:
Life,
Life,
Life,
Life,
Life,
Life.

Simple little ditty isn't it? Observing the passage of death to life.

Acapella is a bit more complex. There you have interesting syllabic utterances like
'do-wop',
'shoe-bee' 'wah'
'bum-bum-bum'
with sudden squiggly note production like Whitney Houston or Robert Martin or even Thomas John. The last one is a Malayalee if you haven't noticed!

Anyhow I plan to merge both the genres and hence acapella death metal. This is my vision of a performance.

5 Long haired vocalists with piercings all over dressed in silky white satin, come on stage moshing (head banging) and clicking their fingers.

The song (an own composition) goes something like this

Verse 1
DEATH! shoo-do wop
SHOO death do wop
KILL KILL
oohhh baby
yeah! (the squiggly note bit, a la Robert Martin or Thomas John, (the last one is a Malayalee by the way))

Verse 2
Instrumental solo

Verse 3
BLOOD AND GORE!
love you babe, you're my sugar, bum-bum-bum
SWEAT AND TEARS
you're my all in all dobedo

At this point 2 of the vocalists hug each other and start choking each other...

and so on...

All those interested please contact chandybass

leave details on comments

His face is familiar. Staring moodily out from a T-shirt, almost looking through you, seeing everything. Mysterious, intense, passionate... all words that can be used or misused for Che. Che symbolises much: youth, rebellion, revolution, left wing ideology, anti-establishmentarianism, anti-imperialism... all the things that youth find so cool. And though he or his image is being commercially used and sold all over the world against the principles he held so dearly, he is still fascinating.

There's another face. Older, and probably more well known and yet unknown. No one knows what he looked like. But he stares in a far more intense manner, gazes of extreme suffering, solemnity, power and love. He too spoke against the establishment of his day. He too, is often hijacked for assorted ideology and power games. But his revolution is far more subversive. Like Che, he shouts against injustice. But crucially different, he presents non-violence in bare nakedness. Instead of Che's beret, he has thorns stuck in his head, a cruel joke...

His revolution is incredibly slow and difficult... but... I would like to be part of his revolution...

those who read stupid rock shows will recall that my keyboards got wet. This is the story that occured following that. Our drummer Rajeev escorted the keyboards in his Ford Ikon (not Escort) back to his place. Normally instruments are left in the car for the night before taking it back to the practice place. However since they were wet, it wasn't the ideal thing. I completely forgot like a dipstick and called up around 10.30 pm. 'Machcha, please can you take the keyboards into your house and dry them'. The gentleman that he is Rajeev walked down from his apartment to his car. He took the keyboards dutifully and proceeded to walk back sleepily to his apartment. Now comes the crunch. Normally the house key would be on his car key bunch. But they weren't.

(Switching tenses for effect). So good hearted drummer is stuck out in the rain with two keyboards. But all is not lost. He just needs to hop to his parents place and get the spare key. Clever, organised chap this drummer. So he leaves the keyboards in the porch and quickly reaches his folks place and... they have given all the spare keys to their neighbours and they are not there! Brill! So poor drummer comes back to his place picks up the two keyboards and spends the night at the folks place with the two relatively bemused keyboards.

Next morning work beckons, work items are still stuck at home and the neighbours are back, Phew! But they're asleep. After waiting till 9 am The Rajagopals try a three pronged attack by

1. calling landline
2. calling mobile
3. banging heavily on the front door

...simultaneously!

Thankfully it worked. After 25mins.

So keys well that ends well. My keyboards found a dry home, Rajeev got to work, and our friendship is still intact.

What friends do for their friends...

Bbaug(maj)13 prounounced 'B flat augmented major thirteenth' is an experience not to be undermined. And it's a very keyboardist experience as well. Guitarists normally can't play it. Ooops! Now Bruce will find a way to play it. Anyway, most normal guitarists can't play it. Cause it's got 6 different notes and those in the know, know that guitarists can only use 4 fingers to get their notes. Some cheat by using their thumb but we all know where that'll end up. (No, not the thumb).

Bbaug(maj)13 is a beautiful crunchy chord, replete with innuendo. Innuendo in the sense, that within itself it has many hidden chords. In that sense, it represents to me the wondrous nature of a punny chord. Now I'm not going to Bach about my knowledge, but it's something that everyone should try!

Here's to the wondrousness of Bbaug(maj)13...

PS Guitarists actually can play it, but they need a bassist! Hail all bassists!

Once stuck in a desert, the deserted deserter hungered for something to eat and proceeded to the sand which is there...

I made a sandwich for Luiza the other day. It was simple and to the point. It was a sandwich. Here's the recipe...

1 badly cut tomato (uneven extremely thick slices)
a cube of cheese 3cm x 3cm x 3cm
too much butter
two pre-cut pieces of bread
mangled slices of cucumber

put the first three items on the bread, in that order. The cucumber has to be forgotten and added in later. Present to the wife. Observe the surprise, the irritation, the exasperation and love on her face. To the question 'where's the cucumber?' act surprised and add it in.

Here's another

a lot of marmite
butter
cheese
tomato
some slices of old chicken
pieces of pre-cut bread as required

Eat in any order. After all it's a creative sandwich...

Any others?...

the lovely Kiarna

The following I write purely from a Christian perspective, so no offense meant anywhere.

I like to think that the Bible is God's blog. Like a blog it reveals a lot about a person, sometimes more than when you're with them. Other people come in and comment on it, much like the people who wrote down scripture in response to God's actions or the action of his people. And of course like a blog it is meant to accesible anywhere.

It's the more authoritative, older blog.

The newer wacked out virus-infested blog is the church. But he still loves it...

Mad vegetables stalk the city!!!

Vegetables that have gone unbalanced in the head! Traumato, Cuckoomber and Potty-tato have caused the city much embarrassment and squirming due to their non-vegetarian desire for Freud eggs. It will take An Eon to sort this out, city officials say. 'They are Jung and impressionable so it's difficult to saute them out.'

Strange things have happened. What started out as a healthy relationship between a vegetable and a crustacean has resulted in a Crabbage. Doctors say that the impossible has happened. The media's role has been criticised. Media Spin, Ache caused. Says the curt government statement.

Mr. Bean has been called into help, in order to avoid further carriots. Police said that within a few days there will be a restoration of Peas.

Yup, this is a contest for the longest and most improbable but grammatically correct sentence punning the word pun. Puns should be more or less in the region of English but other languages can be used if there is enough currency. Criteria for longest is basically the most number of puns on pun and no repetition of the same pun.

This is what I came up with.

The punter at the pun-indian convention, punderously punned his way, punishing with punache and punch, the puny pundits, who punitatively expunged, his need to punder to his punny instincts

That's 13

some of us are racists, all of us are racially prejudiced

it's the simple truth brought home to me starkly by my marriage to a white Britisher. I thought that Indians with their multi-ethnic, multi-racial identities would be immune but nope I'm wrong. Politically correct Britian is as bad. The prejudice exists deep within us, a sign of the brokenness of humanity.

In India everyone expects my wife to be rich, American, and to have no family values. They also assume that she's completely ignorant of Indian culture, but they know everything of hers. In England I'm always praised for my 'good English' and am slightly condescendingly treated.

Don't get me wrong these people aren't racists. They are good people trying to make conversation, and in some cases genuinely wishing to make a relationship. But the prejudice exists; fed by sensuous, prejudicial media, stirred up by right wing politicians, reinforced by racist jokes; and more scarily something that exists deep within us: the exclusion of the other.

People laugh this off. But Bosnia, Sri Lanka, London, Los Angeles, and Belfast are all signs of this horror at work. The book 'Exclusion and Embrace' by Miroslav Volf is the brilliant treatise on this, so I'm not saying anything new.

But for me the sad thing is when we Indians speak of all whites as colonisers, and whenever a band does Western music or something that is Western, they're said to be 'licking white arse.' I was at an independence day celebration the other day and it was proudly announced that 'our culture is superior to others'. Constantly the refrain was made to the British pillaging and raping our nation. It just shows the lack of maturity in our perception of our history. What about our own desi rapists and looters? The claim that one culture is superior than others is one that the Nazis used with devastating consequences.

Consistently newspapers report the ignorance, the silliness and the stupidness of 'foreigners'. And consistently anything English and Western is considered anti-Indian. Our behaviour as a society shows otherwise. Surely India's greatness doesn't lie in rubbishing the West. Don't we have something more intrinsic in our nation to subscribe to?

My thoughts and concerns arise not only from my marriage to a Westerner. My new baby daughter is going to face racial prejudice wherever she is. Probably a bit less in London though. We'll just have to teach her to be strong and sure in who she is. Because I can't change prejudice.

being a musician in India is so wierd. went to perform for a show a couple of days back. Bad sound, good stage and no cover over the stage. Four songs through the bad sound, the sun sulked, the clouds bullied and we were drenched. My poor keyboards. One of the many times I've just wanted to quit it all.

They say that St. Thomas introduced Christianity to Kerala, the small strip of green on India's western coast. I come from a community which claims to be founded by him and whether it's true or not I've inherited his cynicism! (John 21:24cf)

Now cynicism could be used well. Cynicism ruins superstition, it blunts crappy media hype, and it never puts all eggs in one basket. And yet it can be debilitating when you lie awake all night, sure that your baby is going to wake any minute (while she sleeps peacefully for 5 hours!) or completely burst your friend's excited bubble when he wishes you happy birthday, by saying 'didn't find anything better to do?'

I would like to be a good cynic, hence the hopeful bit in the title. I would like to see through the deception but accept that there is actually something good and rosy out there somewhere. Cynicism is somewhere linked to seeing the truth and hope is... well... something that keeps us human