That we spent our Christmas weekend at Orlando’s gorgeous theme parks is common knowledge now, thanks to, in Romika’s words, her “big mouth” and my “big Facebook account”.  We came back yesterday, having spent one of the most fun and memorable Christmas weekends in a long time!

So the surprise bit first. While we were geared for a splurge of splendidly designed, controlled experiences, we were in for a bit of what can be termed as a “real adventure”. For on the second day of our trip, right in the midst of a dark, confined and stormy water ride through the Norwegian seas, our boat, right after taking a massive plunge, just ceased to move. The voices of the “Spirits of Norway” that accompanied us on this voyage were suddenly replaced by an announcement saying “We are experiencing unexpected technical difficulties. Please remain seated and wait for assistance.”

Well there was no assistance for the next ten or so seemingly never ending minutes. We discussed if it was safe where we were and how long we could go on and if there was a way out of the tunnel that we could possibly take without falling into the water beneath. And how “different” the whole experience would be if the boat got stuck just a couple of seconds back in the middle of the steep forward plunge, in a near vertical position!

The only form of assistance that ultimately came our way was of course, an instruction to evacuate the boat and leave. We just had to figure out a way out of the water to the emergency exit door of the tunnel. All this while guess what Romika was saying! “This HAS to go into your blog! This is not something everyone gets to experience!”  I was a bit disappointed at having missed the backward plunge, a trademark attraction towards the end of this ride – Maelstrom at the Norway pavilion of Epcot  - that our boat couldn’t make. But well, the Dudley Do Right’s Ripsaw Falls at the Islands of Adventure the next day more than made up for the loss.

That apart, the three days were so unforgettably delightful that we had to spend most of our time on the way back planning or rather making wishlists for our next Orlando trip. There’s just so much we couldn’t do this time!

Our first day was spent at Disney’s Hollywood Studios where the popular Disney characters come to life! It was all vibrant and jubilant except that my knowledge of Disney movies is very poor. We loved the very colorful and musical enactment of the Beauty and the Beast, a childhood favorite.  We also rode the much hyped Rock and Roller coaster and the Tower of Terror, the former being my first roller real roller coaster experience ever. The Tower of Terror is all about anticipation not quite as “terrorizing” as claimed.

This park and the Universal Islands constantly made me wonder if we have any similar themed experiences for fiction and cinema back in India. For instance I would totally love a theme park based on R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi on the same lines as Harry Potter World, having grown up enjoying the vivid portrayal of this imaginary town closer home in so many stories and novels! Not sure if it would resonate with the children of today.

Our first day’s account would not be complete without a mention of the moment of surprise! We went straight from the airport to Disney in order to save time and in the process were told by several people that  we would have no place to keep Romika’s suitcase at the park; that the lockers do not hold anything that size. We had made up our mind to take a shot anyway and if it didn’t work, we would simply drag it along and skip the rides! It seemed a better option than wasting three hours going to the hotel to keep the stuff.
Our scream of delight when the thing actually went into the locker startled people around into wondering what was so exciting about the park locker room! So yes, Disney parks do have fairly large lockers that many people don’t know about!

The next day we went to Epcot, the park we were looking forward to the most.  It’s marked by beautiful, immersive experiences, ranging from glimpses of eleven countries in the World Showcase section and a vision for tomorrow in the Future world section. It is not an adventure place, with all very gentle “experiential” rides and very creative showcases of technology. I loved Soarin’ , a ride simulating the experience of gliding through Californian skies, with all its lushness beneath in full glory! Very immersive and realistic! Almost felt like touching the waves that weren’t really there!

However, I have to admit that I liked Universal’s Islands of Adventure which we visited on the last day more than either of the Disney parks. Featuring five themed islands and a myriad adventure rides this park is addictive and transports you into a different world! The theming of Harry Potter World and Dr. Seuss islands were very awe-inspiring even to the uninitiated like me and the rides were splendid. The water rides at the Toon Lagoon were so hilariously addictive that we wanted to go back to them even with the short time we had. The Jurassic Park river adventure and the Spider Man adventure were engrossing and immersive experiences, Spiderman being a very creative use of virtual reality. I do regret missing the Forbidden Journey in the Harry Potter World though, due to sheer lack of information. We just didn’t know how awesome it is

Now for the roller coasters! Romika sort of pulled me into one of the most formidable rides there, the Dragon Challenge (Fire).  It was a huge leap given that I haven’t even been on many tamer coasters and the experience was well, like a first time. But somehow I do feel like trying more of them in the future and think I might like them some day!  In fact more than the ride itself it was seeing the Incredible Hulk Coaster and its sister (yes, that’s what we call The Rip Ride Rockit at the Universal studios, which we didn’t have access to) towering so formidably above everything else at Universal and so conspicuously attention grabbing everywhere in the park that intrigued me into getting to know more about them. Though we didn’t try the Hulk this time, it’s on our agenda for whenever we get there next! But what enticed me even more from a distance was its sister (well, who can remember its tongue twister like real name?) and its magnificent tall vertical lift! Looks pretty innovative; something other than just crazy movements, inversions and speed! Since then I have been reading about coasters voraciously, something I never thought I would be interested in!

Both of us came back from Orlando wanting to go there again, pretty soon! Glad I live so close to this exhilarating fun city! And yes, contrary to what I had heard from several people, Orlando does have a fairly good bus service covering all the important places!

However, Romika’s “moment of the trip” had nothing to do with Disney or Universal. It was when we entered into our hotel room!! Our hotel had run out of King Sized rooms and gave us a free upgrade to a Suite instead! Great! But really this exciting? From the moment we entered into the suite for about twenty minutes Romika was so exhilarated that all her screaming and my laughing got us an instant noise complaint. No, nothing in the parks could match that level of jubilation and thrill!
Now what exactly was THAT exciting about the suite? Putting it in Romika’s words, the “marvels” were:

a)      Two large screen TVs, one in the bed room and the other in the living area – She went gaga over them as though a room with a TV is the ultimate purpose of going on a trip!

b)      A shower cabinet

c)      And this is the most important – a dishwasher!! She went on and on about how she has never seen a hotel room with a dishwasher and how marvelous it is to have one (notwithstanding the fact that there was no utensil anywhere in the vicinity to make the dishwasher useful nor was cooking on our agenda for this super condensed trip)!!

Romika, when your friends and colleagues back in Madison ask you about your trip, please don’t go on and on ranting about our hotel room and its many wonders. In all likelihood that’s NOT what they are asking about!

Disney Hollywood Studio

The Incredible Hulk

Disney Hollywood Studios on Christmas Eve!

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

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Fifth night in a row of no inspiration. Of scores of scratch recordings deleted minutes after being created. Of tunes abandoned midway out of sheer despair and discontentment.  And a strange feeling of disconnect with her own creations. This prolonged, all pervasive creative block baffled Sowmya, for only a year back she was brimming with ideas for what was to be her dream concert, the grandest so far in her musical journey. More ideas than she could keep a track of. This was when she had started to collaborate with some very innovative musicians from different parts of the globe. In her quest to find out what the conglomeration of such varied musical styles could evolve into. She had envisioned this grand concert that would let her music interplay with that of some of her admired musicians, creating the kind of universal sound that only perfect blend of diversity could create. The concert, her first true cross national venture was finally about to happen in a matter of two months in LA.
Was this the time for such an unfathomable creative void to submerge her?

She stepped out into the patio of her California apartment that had been her home for the last few months leading to the concert, and stared into the stoic stillness of her backyard and the stretch beyond. Her mind wandered around all that had had gone by in the past one year. And before. Things were different a year back. Her music, that had been an extension of her mind, thoughts and all those sensations that could not be articulated in any other way, had struck a deep chord with followers of the art and had started to reach out to distant shores. Giving her a sense of connectedness, of belonging.
Ever since Sowmya had begun to take her singing lessons as a child, playing with tunes and rhythm was her favorite pastime. She would sing or play on the piano a piece she had just learned, tweak a few notes here and there, alter a few patterns, insert a few pauses between the notes and marvel at how dramatic the impact could be. It was as if the whole tune got a new identity altogether. She would often be so engrossed in this pursuit that she would have to be pulled away from her chair and dragged into the the real, mundane world for life to go on. When she started attending college, she found two friends who turned out to be the perfect companions for her to dwell further in her madness! Harini, a budding violinist and Karthik, an aspiring keyboardist and sound engineer.  They, along with some other transient members, formed their own troupe here. Giving Sowmya the platform to permute notes and patterns and churn out music to her heart’s content.

Her musical umbrella began to widen. When she worked with Karthik she realized what magic intricate layering of sound could create. The visual sound-forms on the computer screen intrigued her. A different kind of experimentation now caught her fancy. Of recording and superimposing musical tracks in different ways. Of placing  bits and pieces of music beneath layers and playing a hide-and-seek game with the listeners.

With Harini’s accompaniment her music gained a new dimension. Music that was hitherto a solitary endeavor now started to evolve into a dialogue between the voice and the violin, a  game of inter-spacing and juxtaposing.

It was during these days that Sowmya’s music  had started to take a definite form. A form that  got very intimately tied to her very essence, to the person that she was. It had a definite pattern, a definite sound that you could tell from afar. Her own training in Indian classical music lent it the complex interweaving of notes, the interplay of ragas that formed the backbone of most of her compositions. Her quest to experiment with varied sounds and instruments, added the richness and the aroma to it, lavish and yet subtle. Interleaved in a way that you wouldn’t notice the presence of so many layers unless you listened with keen attention. But if you took away any one of them like she tried to do much later for her improvised shows, they would feel incomplete. She loved to experiment, to imbibe other genres into her work, but without letting go of her own form and identity.

Soon their music began to resonate with people and they created a niche of their own. There were these little milestones on the way, each worth cherishing for its own reasons. It started with an audio blog that caught the attention of one of the nation’s prominent music producers. Enough to offer them their first album. There wasn’t much of looking back since then. More albums, concerts in various parts of India and the US, immense popularity, critical acclaim and some of the most coveted awards in the Indian fusion music category all happened in due course of time. Most importantly, Sowmya and her team were credited with bringing a fresh perspective to new age music, for being subtle yet bold, for laden intricacies beneath apparent simplicity. In the recent years, traces of their musical influence could be found in the compositions of younger musicians. A loop here, a beat there. As they say, there’s no form of flattery truer than that!

“We seem to have struck a formula.” One of her associates once said. “We know exactly the kind of music that would work with the audience”.

This seemed to worry Sowmya a little. The notion of coming to a standstill, of halting, of having discovered it all bothered her. To her, music was a constantly evolving journey. With no specific destination and with no predefined route.

It was this same month last year  when at a world music festival in San Jose, she met some very talented musicians from different continents. There was a percussionist from Central Africa, a New York Philharmonic composer and a flautist from India. At the end of a Friday night jamming session, they just decided to take this combined venture further. And that is how the idea of the LA concert was born. It was unlike anything Sowmya had been a part of her so far. In terms of scale, grandeur, sheer musical breadth and diversity. For weeks to come, this was all that she could think of, she had lost track of space and time thinking of one concept after another for a theme track that would tie the show together.

And then around this time, something happened that stirred her and her close associates from their blissful trance. It started with their most recent album, featuring some of their finest work,  fading into oblivion, completely overshadowed by the debut musical venture of a new artist who went by the name of GD. His more flamboyant and vivid style, with instantly catchy tunes soon became a rage. while most other successful musicians around that time bore at least tinges of semblance with what was by now known as the “Sowmya sound”, GD seemed to revolt against all of that!

And for all those who raised the age old “one album wonder” cry, his next album allayed all doubts. He went on to win most of the awards that year that had for the past few years been Sowmya and her team’s prerogative.

By herself Sowmya would not have been irked. She had never dreamed of monopolizing the Indian music world. In fact, being the person she was, she might have contemplated collaborating with GD as well, out of sheer curiosity as to what such seemingly opposing styles could merge into. What actually perplexed her were some elusive remarks from within her own camp.

“You don’t get it, you’re too naive Sowmya” said Harini. “What his popularity is causing is a permanent shift in people’s sensibilities.” “Once they get accustomed to a staple of such loud and on-your-face music, they will never have the patience to go treasure-hunting with our kind of stuff..or listen repeatedly to let them grow.”

“Really? People’s taste is as homogeneous as that?” was Sowmya’s spontaenous reaction.

“Well, I guess we will have to do some thinking….we might have to adapt ourselves to the  changing times.”

This very seemingly reasonable idea seemed to startle Sowmya. “And how do you do that? Not that I have any resentment against any other style, but how do you compose the kind of music, that is just not you? That you cannot connect to?”

“Will you forever be so…so removed from the real world?”

Something inside Sowmya rebelled. Asking her to be something she was not never went down well with her. One part of her wanted to hold to her own and be more like herself, different from the rest of the world just to refuse to give in. The other part secretly feared that Harini and her other friends must just be right. Their music might just begin to lose touch with the audience if it did not evolve in some externally dictated ways.

One of their live performances soon to follow reinforced Sowmya’s silent fears. Perhaps it was a bit of a preconceived notion, but the disconnect with the audience was palpable! That’s the power of performing live, you cannot escape noticing how exactly people react to your music. The captivated silence, the near hypnotized atmosphere was missing. And she could tell that Karthik and Harini felt it too. You can just sense that sort of a thing when you have been performing as a team for years.

They did not talk about that show thereafter. But Sowmya could sense the passion for creation waning within her team. It had started to feel more like a task, a chore rather than a spontaneous act that it once used to be. Does art thrive only on appreciation? It did not feel so back those days when they spent days and nights in their studio jamming and creating pieces just for the fun of creation.

A journal article she caught glimpse of proclaimed  GD’s music as having “the same freshness as the Sowmya from three years back”. He just might turn out to be the new Sowmya in the world of Indian music, it claimed! Gosh, three years is pretty soon to be talked of like a has been! Then there were these plethora of comparative critiques, shredding apart elements of their styles and pitting them against each other to say which is better. Does it really matter so much? She wondered.

Something struck her as odd about herself. For someone who would keenly listen to all the new releases of her contemporaries with a childlike excitement, she had given both GD’s supremely successful albums a miss. It was a “That is not me, that is not MY kind of music, I don’t want to have anything to with it” kind of indifference. Was she subconsciously reacting this way to the repeated urges to change her style and to adopt some of GD-like broad strokes in her compositions?

She decided to keep aside the music journals and get her focus back on composing the theme track for her LA concert. She was who she was, and there was no reason for her to be moved by what others had been doing. What could be a better way to dispel these nagging thoughts than to create something honest and beautiful that resonated with her own being? She knew this one had to be extra special, an epitome of all that she was and all that her music stood for. She strove to perfect every note, every chord. Every pause in between. To fill each second of the piece with richness, with embellishments, with a wide gamut of moods and expressions. Something like a mega epic rolled into a ten minute track. But somehow it all fell short. It was like looking for something elusive- a mirage like experience! Five consecutive nights of emptiness worried her. She not being able to connect to her own music was a problem far more profound than the lukewarm audience response she had sensed a month back. And this was something she had never experienced before!

At the break of dawn, she decided to head out of her residence to a local coffee shop nearby. She ordered a Cappuccino and lounged on one of the couches facing the glass wall. Bleary eyed and with a numb mind. People began to trickle in soon after, beginning yet another day, yet another routine.  A constant humdrum began to fill the space that bore complete silence a while back.

How does it feel to be just like one of the many people around, she thought. To drift through each moment and each day with a blank canvas, to go with the tide and not have a parallel universe running constantly inside one’s mind? Now that she was at least temporarily bereft of her creative spark, a passive state of mind was not a bad thing to try.
And on the same line, what is it like to not choose the kind of music one listened to so consciously? Just sit back and let the radio play whatever it pleased like so many people do? For someone who had never thought she would want a break from composing, Sowmya was gradually getting into  what is commonly known as a vacation mode. She took out her phone, pulled up Pandora and created a very generic station. One song after another, some familiar, others not so much. She consciously tried not to get too engrossed, not to think too deeply of them but just bask in the moment. In the warm Californian morning sunshine, a cup of coffee and a laid-back morning. All the exhaustion from the relentless thinking and sleeplessness of the past few days now descended upon her and she caught a wink or two.

When she vaguely noticed GD as the artist name for the next song on her phone, it brought a smile to her face. At the irony of the whole situation. She listened on.

Surprisingly, there was something about the song that made her want to go back to it. Nothing particularly striking at first, just something about that refrain and the beat that seemed to lure her back. Even though she found the patterns to be predictable, there was something appealing about the simplicity. Could something that plain really be that enticing? She played it again. And then one more time. Without quite realizing what it was that drew her to it. She had often told herself that this was not her kind of music, what was this connection she felt with it then? The kind of connection that she been longing to feel with her own music of late! In terms of structure it was much simpler than her own music, but what addictive power that simplicity had! Was there really such a thing as “her kind of music” and “not her kind of music” then? Or was all good music universal in appeal? How strange was it that she should begin to identify with a kind of music that was considered to be antithetic to all that she represented?

It took a while for the moment to sink in. Here she was, sitting in a coffee shop, held captive by the work of someone who however indirectly was part of the reason for her current state of void. How could something so beautiful be the background cause for so much resentment and despair? And how could she have judged it without giving it a fair amount of her mental space?

As she listened on, suddenly, like a moment of epiphany, it started to rouse her imagination. It gave her a whole new direction of thought for her new composition. For example, what if she toned down the embellishments in her new theme and tried simpler patterns instead? What if instead of altering the patterns so frequently, she repeated them in loops to give them a chance to grow on the listeners? Did she really need to pack so much into that one track? Maybe it could convey more with a lot less. She needn’t have the answers. As long as the had a new set of questions to explore, she knew it would be a wholesome experience getting back into her studio. She started to visualize the entire sound-scape in her mind. The kind of imagery that she could picture whenever she was one with her music!

When Sowmya finished the first draft of her concert theme, she knew she had rediscovered herself. The piece still carried her signature style and melodic qualities, but stood out significantly from anything she had done so far. It was more vibrant, more spontaneous and simpler in structure, and had more repeated patterns that made it instantly catching on.
One of those milestone moments, when you know your music has moved to a different phase!
True, inspirations do come when you least expect them. And there wouldn’t be much to art if not for these serendipitous discoveries. With a new-found tranquility and a  heart that felt light after a long time, she called up Harini and Karthik to come over and listen to her latest venture!

Does it indicate getting too caught up in what is typically known as “mundane existence” and not dwelling deeply enough on things that pass by? I suspect part of the blame goes to the always there and ever enticing “What’s on your mind” box that has made sharing so instant, so “one piece at a time” and not requiring post processing of any kind! With reaching out to a reasonably large audience having gotten so easy, where from does one get the drive to compose a post in its complete form, connect the seemingly unconnected dots, look beyond what is immediately apparent and post something that may or may not be read by anyone?

Micro-blogging of the Facebook/Twitter variety is doing something to our communication patterns that have long term implications. Consciously or otherwise I have started making an effort to communicate in a sentence or two, to limit my words, and – this is probably the most important – talk about only one thing at a time!

It’s only in the past few days that I realized that it has resulted in an unusually long dry spell for my blog. I am so used to my Facebook posts being responded to in real time that the idea of writing purely for the sake of it is daunting now!

Well, inspirations come when you least expect them and this time it happened when I chanced upon someone’s blog full of lyrical musings and thoughts about nothing in particular; during one of my random internet surfing spells. The kind of self-indulgent diary like writing that blogs were originally meant to be for. So if self-indulgent writing is what it takes to keep up with our notorious old habit of pondering over things for no reason, of spending time thinking of matters that bear no consequence and conjuring up hypotheses of all kinds, then so be it!

But of course, the beauty of it is that what we write just for ourselves often resonates with someone or the other every once in a while. If that happens, I would like to hear from you! That’s all for now, this was kind of a warm up post to tell myself that I need to get back to writing in its proper form.

The picturesque location of the Convention Center on the waterfront of downtown Vancouver added a whole new dimension to the experience of CHI 2011. Not to mention the delight of serendipitously bumping into old colleagues, classmates and professors and coming across some of the brightest people in the field of HCI!

Not surprisingly, social media and the underlying theme of interconnectedness formed the crux of CHI this year. Mining social data and trying to get an insight into user behavioral patterns marked the core of several sessions, presenting some very interesting insights on user behavior on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Location Sharing applications and Social Question Answering sites. One of the questions that emerged time and again is the tradeoff between the “social” aspects and the “content” based aspects of social media. Do people view, read and contribute because they find the content of a post interesting or because it pertains to their social circle? The most interesting impact was found to be on question answering forums where answers posted by “popular” users are rated high irrespective of the quality of content.

Facebook in particular has always intrigued me personally. There is a certain addictive quality to it which I believe has a lot to do with the “Saying things aloud to no-one in particular” paradigm of communication (well Twitter follows the same paradigm, it’s just that I haven’t gotten to using it much). What you say is out there for everyone to see, but does not demand anyone in particular to read or respond.  It’s less intrusive in a sense, even though the post is up there on everyone’s wall.

In this regard I particularly liked the presentation by Moira Burke, of HCI Institute of Carnegie Mellon presented an interesting study on Facebook usage and how the nature of interactions a person indulges in on Facebook impacts the creation of what the authors of the paper call  “social capital” (Burke, M., Kraut, R., and Marlow, C. (2011). Social capital on Facebook: Differentiating uses and users). In other words, they studied how what people do using Facebook contributes to their feeling of social well being and connectedness and on the perception of having a close social network that can be relied upon. All these factors sum up to form “social capital”.

It classifies interactions on Facebook into the following categories:

1)      Direct interpersonal communication – messaging, posting comments on someone’s post, posting on someone’s wall

2)      Passive consumption of content – reading, viewing photos and watching videos without participating in any conversation

3)      Broadcasting – Posting status, photos, links, etc

The study analyzes how each kind of interaction contributes to a feeling of social well-being, and interestingly shows that it is only the first kind that contributes significantly.

Now that’s interesting, because no one needs Facebook for one-to-one communication. Mail and Instant Messaging applications have been serving that purpose since before Facebook became a vogue. What is different here is that a lot of the interpersonal communication on Facebook is triggered by a broadcast (comments on a post) and this (along with posting on someone’s wall) is presumably more popular than the other two more conventional kinds of inter-personal communication that Facebook supports viz. messaging and chat. That makes me wonder if the unsolicited nature of comments on a post has a special role to play. Surely there is a value attached to getting a response from people simply by broadcasting a message directed at no one, as the response is completely voluntary and does not stem from a sense of courtesy or social obligation. But then again the responders could be driven solely by the content of the post rather than any social affect (eg. commenting on a link posted by someone we are only weakly connected to, simply because the content is of interest). Does purely content centric interaction play a role in building social capital equally? Would be interesting to come across literature on this!

And of course, with the introduction of tagging people on posts the distinction between broadcasts and inter-personal communication itself seems blurred! It’s kind of like talking to someone with the primary intention of being overheard by everyone else! It’s a kind of communication that in the “real” world of socialization would be considered weird and inappropriate. Perhaps online social networking has indeed altered our notion of privacy and perception of communication in general. We might slowly start experiencing its influence in our real life social behavior as well!

The play, centered on the plot of a professor of Phonetics transforming a common flower girl into a elegant high society lady by transforming her speech, boasts of some of the most memorable lines of all time! Strongly recommended to all those who love a duel of words with a dash of sharp humor.

Now, what generally happens when great pieces of  literary work are adapted for the big screen? Novels, for one, are understandably extremely hard to adapt. So many times, there is just no visual metaphor for all that pages of words can describe. No wonder we so often hear people saying “It’s a great movie but the book was so much better”. And often it’s the limitation of the medium more than anything else.

A play however, is a lot easier. It’s already written for a visual presentation, though in a different setting. And when it’s got the kind of dialogues like Pygmalion, well, that’s half the battle won. And so it proved to be with My Fair Lady, the much acclaimed movie that I finally caught up with yesterday. It preserved the charm of the play, used the lines verbatim for most parts and added a whole new dimension with its musical presentation. And of course, some superb actors at their best, bringing Shaw’s well crafted characters vividly to life, just as you would have imagined them while reading the play. Utterly delightful so far.

What the big screen couldn’t adopt is the play’s ending (and I am not disclosing here what the two endings are). It somehow had to “fit into the mould”. Being a delightful movie it had to end in a way that conforms to the narrow definition of a “happy ending”. Never mind if that requires the very well etched protagonists to undergo sudden, inexplicable transformations and act very unlike themselves in the last five minutes of the film. Eliza’s heartwarming proclamation of her new found identity and independence, and Higgin’s consistently self sufficient personality -for whom his passion for phonetics is the entire world – are let go of in a jiffy.

Any narrative becomes what it is, largely by virtue of a certain coherence in the characters and their actions. And a certain spirit that it upholds. You take that away, and it loses its soul!

Unfortunately in this case, the disappointment was not due to any limitation of the cinematic medium or inability to adapt a great piece of literature, but a very intentional, conscious decision.

This is a much talked about issue and as always I would love to hear contrasting views from people who have read the book and/or watched the film. And for those who have not, if you want some delightful hours of an entertaining musical with some awesome performances, watch  the film. If you want something more gratifying and coherent besides being entertaining, read the play. Both would take about the same time!

My recent two-day visit to the IIT Guwahati campus after almost three years was one such experience, assuring me that a part of my nostalgic past still remains unaltered. Even with the new buildings spawning all over, the existing ones extended, unpaved “shortcut” routes concretized, a new artificial lake, trees a little taller and grasses a little better trimmed, this place still evokes vivid memories.

Here’s a short synopsis of what I experienced.

To start with, the Design Department looked uncharacteristically empty given the time of the year. Very little else has changed about the department, barring in progress building extensions to accommodate the Masters students, and some exhibitions of student work in the first floor halls. I had a good opportunity to interact with the current third and fourth years, thanks to Prof Yammiyavar, who invited me to his class and introduced me to the students and my “campus guides” Rohan, Shamik and Aditya. I was really surprised that many of the current students remember me. They came across as an assured, positive and confident lot, presumably riding the high waves of a phenomenal placement session that just concluded. I don’t have the exact statistics, but vaguely heard things like 40 companies for 20 students, almost every student with multiple offers and great packages. Irrespective of other problems that remain, the students of the department have indeed come a long way. Their queries remain the same of course, of the next steps, of jobs, HCI, Design, MS, PhD, MBA and so many other things which three years and a MS later, I myself am still trying to figure out. But exploring is the fun part!

Long conversations with some of the professors (surprising again, didn’t think they would have so much to talk to me about) revealed tit bits about what is new on the academic front. I spoke to Prof. Yammiyavar of Design, Mokashi Ma’am of Humanities, Prof. PK Das (he didn’t remember me, but talked for about an hour nevertheless) and Prof Goswami (who strangely still remembers me from the Algorithms class) of Computer Science. IITG now has a major and minor system akin to the American universities, which means a student can now major in their own stream and minor in any other of their choice by taking some 5-6 classes from that department. No one needs to be confined to any single department anymore! Wish they had started this when we were still around.

It was heartening to know of some multi-disciplinary endeavors that have started at IITG. Particularly after going to CMU, I had felt that IITG could be so much less compartmentalized and make better use of having multiple departments under the same roof! Great to see things moving in that direction!

Mokashi Ma’am talked about a collaboration between a couple of new faculties of Linguistics in the Humanities department and the Speech Recognition wing of the Electronics department on a project in the field of language processing. PK Das mentioned a Robotics lab that has been set up in the CS department (I believe it’s new) and the challenges being faced, of efforts in speech training and the problems in gathering exhaustive training data for Indian Languages. The most exciting news of all was that the CS department now is floating electives on HCI and related topics, so finally our field gets the recognition it deserves beyond the Design Department!

But of course, the best part of this visit was the couple of hours spent at my sweet home of four years, my hostel Subansiri. This place feels like home the way no other place does! The happiness at seeing its little developments like a brand new juice center, a music room, and a well functioning PCO booth store (it barely had anything to sell in our times) is both inexplicable and unique! Each of these little things means so much…. when you consider that we once had to make 5 am trips to the Transit Complex music room prior to Manthan (the inter hostel competition) and make the most of our two hours slot, and venture to the faculty gate for any refreshment beyond the classic coffee and Maggie combination!

The hostel is extended on both sides in a weird shade of pink contrasting with the original pristine white and is much more populated now, but still feels pretty much the same. Thanks to my sweet juniors Trupti, Srishti, Sadhvi, Omna and a few others that I met on the way for making the experience feel like homecoming! And yes I am extremely proud of Subansiri’s consistently improving performance in Manthan.

And now, for the climax; back in our old lobby on the second floor, there was a striking thing to notice. Romika’s door; that was painstakingly adorned in our last semester to celebrate her stellar performance in the Pattern Recognition course (following all the hype and drama that surrounded her decision to take the elective) still remains unscathed! New habitants of the hostel with no context surrounding the art-work still considered it precious enough to preserve!
Few things stand the test of time, among which is Romika’s undisputed supremacy over Pattern Recognition!

But it’s not a critique of her literary style that I have set out for today, but something about her stories and its characters that struck me. It’s a persistent note of melancholy, a sense of disconnect and directionlessness in the characters.  It’s as though the people in her story drift along from one point of life to another, from one place to another, from one person to another with no anchorage! Is it being in a land so distant from their roots, growing up sandwiched between two conflicting cultures that give her characters such a perpetual sense of disconnect? Perhaps it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that she writes about Indians who immigrated to the US no later than sixties or seventies, when being far indeed meant being far; and one can only marvel at how much things have changed since then. For not only do I see Indians here who are perfectly at ease (at home?) with their surroundings, but it’s not even uncommon to hear of those who have discovered a deeper connection with their Indian roots, gained a new perspective towards their own culture being here, found their true calling of life so many miles away. With the world getting a little smaller, with India being a little more westernized and US a little Indianized, the cultural shift , to me, seems to be getting progressively seamless. This of course, is my own perspective and I would be happy to hear what others have to say based on their experiences.

It sure has a lot to do with the bulging Indian communities in most of the major American cities that creates the home away from home feel. In fact what is most interesting about this experience is that it feels like living in a mini conglomeration of the whole of India rather than a particular part of it. An experience that is very different from living in an Indian city with its distinct regional flavor. People, when they leave home to come here, tend to become a little more receptive towards cultures of other parts of their country, a little more appreciative of an unfamiliar art form in an unknown language from another part of India just due to the Indian connection!

And of course, it’s not limited to Indians alone. There are incidents like the experience I had on my first visit to Atlanta, when an African-American cab driver played Tamil songs all along the way from the Airport to the hotel, saying he loved the music! Little things that make this distant land feel ours.

The other factor of course is the ease of staying connected with folks back home, that internet and its many wonderful manifestations have afforded. I am not going to elaborate further on this much written about, favorite topic of mine! With so much of our lives being influenced by an all encompassing virtual sphere, we really needn’t lose connection with anything unless we consciously choose to! Perhaps then we are gradually moving towards homogeneity of space, where our geographic location has less and less effect on our experiences. Where we can be in one part of the world and simulate the way of life of another to the hilt.

“So what are we singing?” I asked.

“We’ll be doing a medley of Tamil and Hindi songs of AR Rahman”, came the reply. (It’s another matter that the song Aaj ki Raat somehow crept in).

So that settled the matter. Along with the 13 years old Vineet, another student of Deepa, I was to sing a medley on the 20th of November.  We had a few rehearsals last week and were good to go. Though it turned out that stage is a different experience altogether, at least for me. Voice struggled to hit notes that appear smooth and easy at home and I ended up feeling I could have done a lot better. Sharing the better part of our performance here anyway.

The event in general was a well strung ensemble of some brilliant artistic presentations, including pieces on  Violin,  Sitar and Tabla, a Bharatnatyam performance and some light music.

Here go some glimpses of our part ! Thanks to my room mate Nandita for the videos!

By now it’s common knowledge that I flew from Atlanta to San Jose for this concert, by far the craziest thing I have done till date! The weekend started with some unforgettable moments spent with some of the most amazing people I know of, on a road trip across the Bay Area. All along the journey we drowned ourselves in ARR’s music, which made the Californian streets all the more pretty! As we listened to each song, we kept speculating on the likelihood of them featuring in the concert the next day.

Some stimulating conversations and delicious South Indian food added color to it. I particularly enjoyed listening to a discussion on Tamizh lyrics and a debate on the poetic superiority of two legendary lyricists.  Thanks Kritika, Sindhuja and Karthik, for some of the most cherishable moments spent in a very long time! The sixteen hours of East-West flying was totally worth it!

The evening:

Frankly, we had been a little skeptical due to the absence of most of the usual big names associated with Rahman’s music (Hariharan was the only eminent figure besides Rahman himself). And also, though I am an ardent Rahman fan, I had never been a big fan of his live singing. The intricate layering that defines his music makes them almost impossible to recreate on stage.  But of course, the excitement of seeing him perform live was drive enough. Also, I was apathetic to the visual extravagance in a show that I felt should be centered on sound.  However, the stage décor did prove to augment the musical experience this time. Not too lavish and not overdone, it captured the mood of each song using a giant projection screen, stage properties and light effects.  The quality of sound, which was meant to be the focus of the show, on the other hand, was rather disappointing, with voices often being submerged beneath very loud instrumental sounds and mikes failing once in a while, snapping some very engrossing singing midway (one such awkward moment was during Hariharan’s performance in the classical session).  But there end the shortcomings, musically the concert was so close to perection that we often wondered if the performances were live at all! But some tweaks here and there, bits of improvisations and forgotten lyrics (oh yes, in one of the most charmingly hilarious moments of the show, Rahman forgot the lyrics of one entire stanza of Dil Se re and replaced it with some gibberish ) reinforced that the songs were not being lip synced (except for a handful, and some others were karaoke-ed).

The show started with a slightly improvised rendition of a couple of lines from Maa Tujhe Salaam, and then the Maestro made his appearance to some predefined steps, set to the beats of O Saya. Felt so different from the Rahman we have always known, reticent, self effacing and choosing to hide behind the giant keyboard. The showman-magician avatar was somehow a bit removed from him. He sure is far more at ease on stage these days and more eloquent too, but at the end of it, he still remains what he was, engrossed in his music, and untouched by the grandeur around. As if belonging to a remote world of his own, stoic, peaceful and unperturbed amidst all the fanfare. An effect, that was so pronounced as he immersed himself in the mystic realm of Khwaja Mere Khwaja.

The sequence of songs, from what I get from Youtube and reviews of other concerts of this series, remained pretty much the same. For that, I am glad I didn’t discuss it with people who had watched it at other venues before attending the show in person. He strung together bits and pieces of different songs to create very striking effects. Urvasi blended into Taxi Taxi, Theeyil Vizhunda merged into Luka Chhupi (interesting as both are mother-son songs) and Zikr paved way for Khwaja. A very serene combination of Ek Omkar, O Paalanhare, Zikr and Khwaja spoke of religious unity in a very subtle and non preachy way. Relatively new singers like Shewta Pandit, Neeti Mohan and Harshdeep Kaur were so brilliant that we didn’t for once feel the absence of the more established singers.

They performed most of the songs of Slumdog Millionaire, and a good mix of many others like Roja, Vande mataram, Zubeida, Dil Se (no ARR concert is ever complete without Chhayyia and Dil Se Re),  Taal, Rang de Basanti and the more recent  Dilli 6, Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya and Endhiran.  Would have liked to have more Tamizh songs though, specially the older ones. Raavanan, among the recent ones, was conspicuous by its absence! Happy to see him singing many of the songs himself and yes, his  live singing has improved by leaps and bounds! He added bits of improvisations to songs like Khwaja and Ishq Bina to make the live experience worthwhile.  As a tribute to the legendary Lata Mangeshkar, he performed Luka Chhupi with a recorded version of her singing, along with a giant projection of hers! And yes, I totally loved his cover of Michael Jackson’s Black or White! Superbly at ease and confident!

A few rare numbers, not so expected in a concert setting, made it so much more special. Azaadi, Only You, Zikr and of course, the defining moment of the concert when, with the Maestro on the piano, Neeti Mohan sang the vintage Hello Mr. Edhirkachi from Iruvar! It’s the kind of surprise that lingers on in your mind.  While we were ecstatic to hear this least anticipated favorite of ours, Kritika pointed out how unusually quiet rest of the stadium was! Not many people seemed to be familiar with the song! That does make you feel exclusive! Never knew this song is so rare!

The song Irumbile Oru Idhayam saw Rahman mysteriously appear towards the rear end of the enclosure, where the sound mixing was being done. That was a few feet from where we were seated.  Mobbed by the frenzied crowd in no time, he remained his usual unaffected self…as if in a different world. Something very inexplicably spiritual about his very presence, that gets all the more prominent when you see him live.

For what was a show of two hours and fifteen minutes duration, it seemed to be over too soon. One of those evenings that you wish would never end! Could possibly have never had enough of it!

Ironically, this unforgettable day marked with blissful music also saw the very untimely demise of one of our most loved singers, Swarnalatha. Our day began with this very tragic news. I had often wondered how she carried off the most serene and the peppiest songs with equal ease and expressiveness! In the concert, rahman dedicated the song Hai Rama to this lady whose singing had made it the masterpiece that it is! Will miss the mesmerizing voice behind Evano Oruvan, Porale Ponnuthayi, Muqabla , Kuchi Kuchi Rakama and so many other immortal songs! Rest in peace.

Vintage Classical Session

Last Friday was marked by a happy ending to our team’s seven months spanning design project for MobileHCI 2010. As widely publicized on Facebook by now, we got the second position in the Design Competition at this conference. Given that this entry of ours had seen some strong criticism in its earlier stages, been marked by several introspective moments of  “Do we really want to go ahead and have this published by our names?” and doubting the jury’s intent behind selecting it in the first place, we have indeed come a long way! Makes me think of a line heard I at our Commencement at CMU; “None of us is as smart as all of us”. Teams, if they gel well, can indeed be powerful!

Collaborating with people in diverse geographic locations has almost become a habit. I just realized I have been a part of three such ventures by now. This time we scaled up even higher to include US (both the coasts!) India and Europe! That’s some diversity to work with, not to forget the four widely separated time zones!

It all started one idle Friday evening, when for the lack of anything better to do, I was looking online for an event I could get involved in. This competition, with its first deadline barely three weeks away, happened to catch my attention. Soon, we formed a team of four, comprising three friends Namrata, Priyanka, Mukul, and myself. At that point, I believe, to all of us it just meant something stimulating to keep us occupied with a series of fun brainstorming and design argument sessions over Skype. And getting to work with some people we haven’t even met!

Our fun venture happened to get selected to be presented at the conference (albeit, with a not so encouraging review). And it was then that we realized that none of us was really in a position to go to Portugal to present it! The absence of a presenter would automatically disqualify us from the competition! That set the stage for the entry of Iryna, one of our friends from CMU, currently in Portugal. Luckily, she agreed to join our team and be our presenter at the conference.

It was around the same time that we were in the process of revising our entry and had our “I don’t believe we submitted something like this!” moments.  And the consequent dilemma over whether we wanted to go ahead with it any further. Some constructive criticism from a domain expert and spells of self evaluation got us to simplify our design and get it closer to practicality. And one fine moment we decided to go ahead and submit it anyway!

Later we got to know we were among the top five entries selected for this entire competition. And as we all know, that does something to your morale. In fact, one of our members got psyched up enough to Google all our rivals and research their credentials . Turned out, they all had way more domain experience than we collectively did. But so what?

With this boosted enthusiasm level, our team began to gear up for the final poster and presentation sessions (though meeting online was getting increasingly difficult with hardly any time slot that worked across the globe!).  Stunning visualization and a story well told have a great impact on the perceived value of any design. That’s what the last stage of our project went on to prove yet again.

Thanks to this sustained collective effort, we were doing well on time too, but were in for a bit of unforeseen excitement in the last week! When one fine evening, Iryna made us realize that our poster session was the very next day and not three days later as we believed. And what a cherishable evening it was! In no time we split into smaller cliques touching up the diagrams and going over possible questions that the audience might ask; making the best of our suddenly reduced available time.  From a set of people including strangers and online acquaintances, we had indeed evolved into a coherent team! Mukul, you may not agree, but I’ll tell you again that you slept through some of the best hours of this journey!

The rest is known to most by now. Iryna pulled off both the poster session and the presentation two days later with élan and the second position in this highly renowned international conference is ours! And yes, perhaps on a lighter note, we have already started to plan the next steps (going by Namrata’s last mail )! Looking forward to see if it goes further, but so far it’s been an immensely enjoyable pursuit with an awesomely enthusiastic and creative group of people!