aditya kumar's weblog

I have visited Chennai twice in the past 14 months (and all my life) without visiting the beach. The Marina beach, the famous coastline that extends a massive 12 kms. I have regretted, not walking on those sands but most people tell me that I have not missed much. Especially if you happen to be a west coast guy (which I am). And especially if you happen to be a Goa-westcoast guy (which, again, I invariably, am –you may say, such a spoiled child, I am)

I have travelled on the streets of Mumbai and a little in Chennai too. What I miss the most is the sea. Here you are, in cities that happen to be next to oceans but sadly and to my dismay, the sea does not makes its presence realise. You keep wandering around the city and no where does the sea come into picture. For all the roads I travelled, I could not even sense the feeling that I was near the ocean. Not even close to it. Yes, sweating could be a sign but then is that the kind of sign I am looking for?

So, for Mumbai it is the Marine Drive and for Chennai, I guess, it is the east coast road that shows you the sea. I could be wrong about Chennai since I have hardly spent time there. So I may have missed a big clue, maybe a long stretch that takes me along the sides of the water, within the vicinities of the city.

Why I look for these big clues is because I have spent so much time in Goa. Right from the moment I enter into the state, the ocean comes and goes, almost flirting with my sight. Seven years in Goa and I have been treated to exquisite beauty that no other place has had to offer.

Having dinner on the sand overlooking the sea, watching the boat’s lights in the night till it fades away while the lighthouse does its best, even when the navigation equipment nowadays ceases the need for a light tower — for me, it’s wonderful to even think about the place.

In Chennai for a day and I was missing the ongoing DLF Cup in Malaysia, as India took on Australia on a lazy saturday afternoon.

What Australia did to India and what India did to themselves became an altogether different matter though. The same rain gods that were blamed for denying India a victory two days back against the West Indies were thanked, for tonight they saved India the blushes.

Rahul Dravid should not open the innings. These (failed?) experiments have gone too far now. And we have heard so much about Raina and seen so little. Why can’t he be sent up the order? Not a chance worth taking? And why not?

Not taking the credit away from Johnson, Indians played some sloppy cricket. Dravid tried to start the onslaught a bit too early and paid the price. Irfan got out to a beauty that, it appeared, woke him from a sleep. Sehwag, what can be said (Sirjee, why do we get confused?). Yuvraj. He has been living on the edge so long now, he has started giving those to the slip squadron.

Meanwhile in Chennai, met up with Dilip and Kiruba, two people I have admired since long. It was fun to meet up, worth coming all the way from Bangalore.

The weather’s cool by the local standards but hot as ever, for a guy from Bangalore. Tell you what, Bangalores weather pampers you, spoils you.

Have you see the new advertisement of Shahrukh khan for DLF. Just hate it. Quite frankly, there is a bit (?) of overacting involved. Shahrukh with an overgrown beard and all. Just hate it.

On a break from blogging. Will be back soon.

…Abhishek Bachchan is a worried man these days. And why not, with a reason like this, anyone would be.

Ouch, that must have hurt, poor attention starved Abhishek.

In Vidarbha, on an average, 2 farmers commit suicide everyday.

Forget the Economic reforms, the growth rate and forget the FDI and the theories associated with it. I am sorry to say this, but India is not shining.

105 farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha in the month of August. These figures have more significance since they come to you just a month after the PM announced a relief package for the ill-fated region. It is clear how much this scheme has benefited the farmers. Or maybe it is not clear.

Don’t you see what is happening? You — the media, the administration. You — you and me? Not one CM went to the region in three years. The Minister for Food and Agriculture says, on prime time TV, that “Farmer suicide is a normal thing.”

P.Sainath, Dilip D’Souza, Sonia Faleiro, Jaideep Hardikar are a few names who have seen something wrong in all this. They have travelled to these regions, the 6 districts in the state of Maharashtra and they have their own stories to tell. One such story, by Sonia Faleiro is here.

Clearly, the media is not doing enough. Says P.Sainath, “You had India Fashion Week in Bombay, over 500 accredited journalists covered the Fashion Week. Less than 6 journalists from outside Vidarbha were in Vidarbha in that same week.”

Full Interview here. [Link via Sonia Faleiro]

I think I see a trend here. The media is targeting that segment of the population which is benefiting the most from the economic boom. The urban middle class. People like me, and in all probabilities, people like you. The fashion shows and the automobile exhibition stories are given precedence over something like the plight of the Indian farmer. Of what I have seen, I have lost my interest and maybe even faith, in the traditional channels of Indian journalism.

But to be fair to the media, even if the media machinery works to the optimum, one should not expect it to do what the babus and netas up there should.

Fact is, the economy boom has not touched the Indian farmer. Fact is, the Indian economy’s boom has more to do with the market driven forces, the private sector than with the Indian Government. Fact is, The Government has done absolutely nothing to improve the status of the farmers affected in regions like Vidarbha.

And it is not just Vidarbha. It is Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and it is Kerala too.

It was said that the last Government at the center fell for its indifferent attitude towards the Indian farmer. Isn’t it ironical, the Government that follows does it in a more evident fashion?

It’s so strange, you listen to the latest song of a well-known rock band for the first time, you like the sound of the song so much that you start listening to their music to an extent that you fall in love with songs that the same band made 25 years ago, even before you were even born.

In 2000, when I listened to “Beautiful Day” by U2, I went through this experience of listening to almost all of their music of the last two decades in less than two years. You could say it was a crash course in U2. I have heard U2 so much now, Bono sounds like a friend.

No matter how much the fan following may claim to get, I dare say, ‘inspired’, by the lifestyle, attitude and the shine that a bunch of rockstars carry – it is the music that defines the popularity of a rockband. It is not the clothes, it not the quotes and it is certainly not their style of smoking a cigarette. It is the music.

If I were asked to describe what U2’s music is all about, what it has been all about since they started in the late 70s, I would just say it in one word — Reinvention. It has always been about chucking the music that delivered a top hit, trying something entirely different and coming up with another topper. The transition is so contrasting that it doesn’t seem like a transition at all. (Or maybe it’s just not one.)

When U2 won the Grammy for “Beautiful Day”, a photo of the band was published in The Economic Times. I didn’t have access to television those days and it took a business newspaper to inform me about the existence of one of the best rock bands.

All that you can’t leave behind (ATYCLB) had a sad feel to it. It was like the band didn’t approve of what was going on with the world and it was their way of insisting that what was going on was not right. “Peace on earth” and “When I look at the world” are songs like that. It also conveyed a sense of a strange kind of loneliness, something like laughing at one’s own bareness. Like many U2 songs, some in the album had their own biblical references, hidden meanings.

The Joshua Tree, of course, made U2 what they are. The album marked U2’s move from rock-and-roll to core rock. “Bullet the Blue Sky” slammed America. “With or Without You” was, it could be said, their first love song. “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I Still Haven’t Found” became classics. In 1987, we had a new U2. We had four guys from Ireland who didn’t do drugs and called themselves a rock band.

In 1992, Achtung Baby saw U2 dispose the core-rock music cloak. It was a strange album with a lot of experimentation. U2 behaved like a bunch of rockers with the lavish stages that they set for the Zooropa tour that followed the release of the album. The music sent out ideas in an explicit fashion. With songs like “The Fly”, “Zoo Station”, it was, kind of, experiencing a drugged state of mind. “So Cruel” and the classic “One” had sorrow.

In my personal opinion, Achtung Baby is U2’s best work. It showed the world how they shunned the idea of contemporary rock and were willing to try something entirely new and different. Bono said that Achtung Baby was the sound of four men chopping the Joshua tree. It carried a different personality, so different that one was not enough and Bono had to arrange for two more personas, ‘The Fly’ and ‘MacPhisto’. With The Fly, Bono could be explicit, rebellious. MacPhisto, on the other hand was more of a devil than anyone else. Achtung Baby was a reinvention of sorts and at a time when it was least required. It gave U2 a success typical of a brand new band with a debut album.

Zooropa was U2 with another new avtaar. I can’t think of any other rock band who experimented with electronica to an extent U2 did with Zooropa. It took U2 to another extreme, with “Numb” voiced by The Edge and heavy guitars. “Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car” was heavy on drums with lots of distortion. “Babyface” was Bono’s tribute to, of all things, satellite television and the fantasies of show business it brings along with it.

In their last album that was released in 2004, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2 seemed to get back to core rock. Something similar to what they did in Joshua Tree. “Vertigo”, time and again reminds me of the song “Elevation” (from ATYCLB). “Original of the Species” and “Crumbs from Your Table” are typical U2 classics. “Love and Peace…” has that “Bullet the Blue Sky” rebel in it.

U2 are swaggers. They have no style, as Bono mentioned in one of his interviews. You can’t label their music. If you do, it is a mistake.

There has to be something special in the bunch of guys who sustain themselves for three decades while making good music. I don’t think of U2 as a typical rock band. Instead, I like to think of them as four good guys who happen to be making rock music.

Meanwhile, Bono has confirmed that U2 will be releasing a brand new album sometime in 2007.

Article cross-posted at desicritics.org