Personal blog

After the first video from Coke Studio season 6 was released I got a message from one of my friend Fantastic …. http://youtu.be/6StD5G12vjM Par dukh di gal eh hai ki Pakistan te India waale coke studio baaki countries de singer te musicians lai rahe. But not of each other. It’s really painful for me.., Both talk about shrinking boundaries. But not between themselves. So sad !!! That indeed is a bitter truth. In Indian version of the Coke Studio this year there were few non-Indian artists but none of them was from Pakistan. Similarly in this season of Coke Studio Pakistan there are many artists from other countries like Serbia, Turkey and many others but no-one from India. In the last reason one song by Rabbi Shergill was recorded but it never went on air. God knows the reasons. ...

Have just been trying to understand the opening verse of Diwan-e-Ghalib. Finally after looking at few of the books and translations, it is making some sense to me. So here is what I understood of it. Poets generally start their work by remembering the God and praising him for creating this world. Waris Shah opens his epic qissa Heer with: awal hamd khuda da vird keeje, ishq kita su jag da mool miyan ...

Beautiful words and sung equally beautifully sung by Jagjit & Chitra Singh pehle to apne dil ki raza jaan jaiye phir jo nigah-e-yaar kahe maan jaiye (raza - will, desire) pehle mizaaj-e- rahguzar jaan jaiye phir gard-e- raah jo bhi kahe maan jaiye (mizaaj - temperament, rahguzar - path. gard - dirt, raah - street) kuch keh rahi hain aapke seene ki dhadkanein mera nahi to dil ka kaha maan jaiye ...

Call me moderately patriotic or not patriotic at all but I am not the one who would post “ proud to be Indian” and “ Jai Hind” messages on 15 Aug and then on the very next day would be jumping red lights and throwing garbage on the road out of the window of my AC car. Well….my TL on Twitter and FB is already full with one-day-patriotism messages pictures . ...

I am writing a music review of an album after really really long time. The last one I wrote was on Mar 3, 2009 for Collaborations 2. I am not really the one who was eagerly waiting for this album but actually this post is a mix of two posts; ie music review of this album and some in general stuff that I have been thinking about Gurdas Maan’s performance in the last few years. I am sorry if this post sounds like a too critical one. So lets get going with the music review first. ...

Q: Favorite show ? A: Roadies. Q: Aim in life ? A: To be a Roadie. Q: Ideal ? A: Raghu sir. Q: What are you up to these days ? A: Sir, preparing for this season of roadies. Q: Is this your first time ? A: No. 5th time sir. Q: If we don’t select you ? A: Will come next year again sir. WOW !

We are in Delhi, attending a Sufi music festival and a singer abc from some xyz country is singing Bulle Shah’s poetry “tere ishq nachaya kar ke thaiya thaiya”. Some hooligans get on to the stage and start raising anti xyz country slogans and obviously the performance is disrupted and the scene is totally different now. Who could do such a stupid act at a Sufi music festival ? . . . . . I think most of you would have guessed the country by now. Let me tell you the event and singer’s name: Sanam Marvi singing at Sufi Sindhi festival. And those murdabaad torch bearers were Shiv Sainiks. ( Here is the link to the piece of news in Hindu) ...

This topic has been in my mind since long but never got to write about it. And it is not only about Punjabi language. It applies to any of the regional languages. And here we are talking about the people who live away from their native regions. I have lived in Delhi for six years. There is a sizable Punjabi population in Delhi and Punjabi has got the second language status. But one thing that is very much noticeable is that generally the people you see speaking Punjabi are all above 40 years of age. No one from the newer generation speaks Punjabi. In fact the reality is that can’t really speak even if they want to. Leave few broken sentences that they might be able to construct and speak. ...

So here I am sitting at Paris Airport for the second day waiting for my flight to Madrid… I had to fly from Delhi to Madrid and there were no direct flights. So I booked the one via Paris. It was my first experience with a connecting flight as I always try to take direct flights and haven’t had even the experience of a domestic connecting flight (where the things obviously are less crazy than an international one). All was well till I landed in Paris to find that the connecting flight has been cancelled . There was another colleague of mine who has to come from China and board the same flight to Madrid. She reached well before me and had already done the research and asked the Air France guys to put us on some other flight. It was snowing like heck in Paris and so many flights were cancelled. Almost everything was messed up. Long queues at all the desks, people running around to get their flights changed etc. Finally that guy put us on another flight that was 2 hours later but it was departing from the other airport (Orly). And as we were boarding a different flight so we needed to collect the luggage manually and check in again. When the time is bad everything you touch goes wrong. We followed the process to claim the luggage manually and got the luggage ticket. We went to the corresponding Air France desk (after asking 3 or 4 guys) and the reply we got was ! “We have got too much of luggage collected over here, we aren’t handing over any luggage. So you need to tell us the address where the luggage has to be sent.” . In the mean time a lot of time was wasted and there were not much chances of catching the flight in which they put us. So both the luggage and the flight got missed ! ...

Magical ! kabhi aah lab pe machal gai kabhi ashq aankh se dhal gaye ye tumaare gham ke charaag hain kabhi bujh gaye kabhi jal gaye (lab-lips, charaag-lamp) main khiyal-o-khwab kii mehfilein na baqadr-e-shauq sajaa saka teri ik nazar ke saath hi mere sab iraade badal gaye (baqadr-worthwhile, irada-desire,intention) kabhi rang mein kabhi roop mein kabhi chhaaon mein kabhi dhoop mein kahin aaftaab-e-nazar hain wo kahin mahataab mein dhal gaye (aaftab-sun, mahataab-moon) ...