Saturday, December 10, 2005

Life Is : Classical Music

Recently I happen to attend pune's "Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahostava". This was my first ever classical concert. I am not a classical music buff. It all started when the Art Circle from my organization "Persistent Systems" organized a classical event from "Mrs. Aarti Ankalikar". This was on a sunday. I was looking out for something to spend my sunday evening and a collegue of mine invited me to attend this event. I always had respect for Indian classical music but never had a chance to listen anything. Grabbing this oppurtunity I went to the auditorium to listen to the artist.

The experience.....Amazing. There were no words to describe the experience. I do not have any understanding of the ragas and taal's. But what I experienced was that I could still enjoy the music to its best. I could feel an aura around the hall that was created where people were hypnotized by the aura of the singer and the musical instruments accompaning the lyrics.

This inspired me to attend the "Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahotsav". This fortunately was just starting 5 days from the entralling experience I had on Sunday. I got the tickets and went to the location.

The aura... continued. Some of the greatest artists performed at the concert. It was pleasant to listen to all different ragas in different styles. On the very first day of the festival Pt. Jasraj delivered a mind-bogling performance. There was such a strong hold on the sur and taal that he could virtually go to any level and come back in the same breath.

The concert is still on and I shall write more about the performances from the artists as I get to enjoy more.

While I was listening to this great performers, I cherished one more reason to celebrate "Incredible India". The culture, ethics, vitality, depth,knowledge, devotion that India and the Indian culture holds is uncomparable. The more I happen to learn about India the more I cherish. with all this in mind if I look back in history to imagine the India with all this good things at their peak, I had no doubt about the fascination the world had about this great nation.

Another important thing I noticed in these artists is the utter devotion. Most of the artists had more than 9-10 yrs of experience behind them. This however reflects so transperantly in the kind of hold they have over what they perform. They had almost master the basics and the good point is that they just stick to the basics. They just maintain the same "lay" and "sam" and the result is marvellous. Unlike many of the other artists they don't need to reherse. They are spontaneous and sing with their soul. Once they are into themselves one could clearly watch the experessions on the face clearly stating the submergence.

I know this would not be the right thing to do, but being from software Industry, I tend to compare everything with that :-). Today we talk of various quality levels like CMM and Six Sigma. I could see the level of precision far more than six sigma in the performances. There were hardly any errors what-so-ever. Also the kind of co-ordination between the singers and the whole range of musical instruments....never needed a CMM-I :-)

Strong basics and utter devotion can take you places. Indian culture has shown this may it be music, yoga,literature,knowledge.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Life Is - Nature's Beauty

Lohgadh - Nature's Beauty. We explored this beauty of nature in dripping rains this sunday. The experience - Awesome :-).
Started at 5 AM in the morning, we(deepali and myself) reached at the train station at around 5:20 only to figure out that venkat who
was suppose to join us has reached to pune station instead of shivajinagar which was the official point. prash
ant and deepali were worried.
Prashant, though, didn't reveal that he was worried (he did that later :-)). But venkat was intelligent to call up and we could explain him the scene.
He mangaged to board the train. I travelled in the old MEMU train after quite sometime (The last being in my college days when I use to move from Baroda to Anand regularly).


The journey in the train its
elf was simply fab. Nature was at it's best. Lush green sahyadri (mountain ranges) were decorated by tons of waterfalls to enrich their beauties.










We reached Malwali (near Lonavala) in around 40 mins. I wanted my boot-up tea and so did the rest. We had some good snacks and hot tea at the stall. Even before we finished, the rains gods were ready to accompany us on our trek. It started pouring heavily.

We reached "Bhaje".This is the place from where the real trek starts. We started on our way at around 8:00 AM. Just as we started we saw a real mighty waterfall gushing on the way. We were tempted ..... Lots of water and we wanted to get drained. But somehow we controlled ourselves promising the water to enjoy his company when we return (And we indeed did keep the promise :-)).

The fun continued. We continued moving ahead and enjoying the ro
cks and the greens......

We were accompanied by this tiny little dog from "Bhaje". Earlier we thought, he might be finding us newbies and might be following us. Little one was not ready to leave. He was determined to trek with us. This was indeed a different experience. He literally followed us and followed us right from the start till we reached the top... and the story does not end here.. he did followed us back at the foothill when we reached back. One very interesting thing happpened there was that at one place there was a very steep climb. Little doggie could not climb that.. He was not happy about it. He tried his best but could not succeed. There was another path-way to reach to the top though. We just signaled him about the alternative path and bravo.... He did understood and manage to catch up with us once again. Later we figured out that he had his home at the fort upstairs and that some fellow living them takes care of him.... So we thought, he might have appointed him as a marketing manager to attract customers to the top for snacks (Zumka-bhakar etc).

Journey is still on... we have now reached about the half-way mark and started getting exhausted.....And wow.. we had a drive-away there.... A small shop (tapri as we call) and we are all set for a cup of hot tea to feel some warmth from the pouring waters.... And there our hero prashant, got a unknown sms wishing him "Happy Friendship Day".... wow... Nobody did that to me ever :-(.... Prashant used all his memory to recollect and figure out who she was (of-course we take this by default as she ).... We had a good time pulling him while we had a cup of hot tea and continued on our way ......

Now we had reached the fort and we had to climb those big steps to reach to the top. We wonder how the kings and the soldiers in those old ages could have climbed the steps which were so big :-)

We reached at the top and now could see the clouds passing by. But due to the cloudy sky misssed the lovely view of pavana river and the dam......

Lots of greenary all around surrounded us......everywhere we went.....

On our way back we played a lots of games and sang some memorable songs....which might be quite a good memory for a few of us for quite some time.........We had good nagging between swapnil and deepali both trying to pull each other down and the result.... fun.......

We had some good lunch in a small hut who provided us with the extra facility of fire-place to warm ourselves.... Ajit was worried since he wanted to reach home before 6... Do you know why.... No... then ask Ajit :-))

Finally we arrived at the bottom. Of course had some real good fun in the waterfall before that. The whole experience was simply memorable.