Bye Bye Begumpet...and Thanks...

Hello All…

Gloomy skies darkened up the mood last Sunday morning…I got up from bed and went to have a dekko at the visible world from my balcony… I felt listless…I am usually perked up on Sunday mornings, because after breakfast, I go out to buy my weekly quota of magazines and especially, The Sunday Express… The Hindu, The Times of India, and Deccan Chronicle are home-delivered by my regular newspaper-person on Sundays…I buy Outlook, India Today and The Week from the newsstand every week…

My keenness to go out was thwarted by a steady drizzle…I had to wait till the drizzling stopped…it was already nearing 11 AM…the drizzle god/goddess showed some mercy and decided to withdraw from the scene slightly after 11…I set out on my Sunday exercise also armed with a list of general things to be bought for the home…the only one shop in the area that stocks The Indian Express was closed… first disappointment…India Today hadn’t come to this corner of Hyderabad yet…I had devoured the other three newspapers already…Outlook, I went through it on Saturday itself…only The Week remained to be read…the black mood intensified…Sundays without The Sunday Express is like curd rice without pickles (!!!)…I compensated temporarily by indulging in some retail therapy to uplift my mood…bought all the items on the list and trudged flatwards…and to add to my increasingly blackening mood, the rains came back…irritating drizzles and then in heavier doses…I didn’t feel like stopping anywhere to let the rains cease and reached my flat upper-part-ially drenched…it was around 12 noon and something was missing…I sat down for lunch around 1.30 and then I heard this loud whirring outside…I looked at Shruti…she said, ‘It’s a helicopter not an aeroplane’… the penny dropped … yes, it was the sound of a helicopter…and what I was missing all along was the sounds of the aeroplanes over our apartment block…it was real…the airport had shifted…the previous midnight…

Shruti was to leave for England to present a paper at a conference of the British Dyslexia Association and she was to leave on the 26^th… we were apprehensive…the new airport would be operational by then… there was rumours of postponement of operations…we believed desperately in the rumours…Shruti and I, both wanted her to take the flight from Begumpet airport… the new airport was inaugurated a few days back and when we read in papers that it would take some more time for the new airport to be ready…we were silently elated…then, a couple of days later it was announced that the new airport would indeed start operations from the 22^nd midnight…our apprehensions returned…it would no longer be Begumpet airport…

I am not a frequent flyer (flier?), in fact, I dread travelling by aeroplanes…I have travelled three or four times and I discovered each time that I loved ‘terra firma’ better…the firmer it is, the lesser the terror (I read this pun somewhere) … my balcony in our new flat is placed in a straight line to Begumpet airport (quite a distance away though) and I have whiled away many minutes just watching aeroplanes take off and land…and in the nights, after dinner…there would be this constant procession of aeroplanes landing and taking off and some of the flight paths were just above our apartment building and the flying machines would roar overhead on their way… sometimes there would be three aeroplanes flying in the sky at the same time…one coming down to land…one that had taken off a couple of minutes ago…and another that had taken off quite some time ago, but still in the airspace in the distance winging its way to its destination…it was a fascinating sight…I miss the sights and sounds of these flying machines…I realised this suddenly last Sunday…and the sound of the helicopter brought home this reality that Begumpet will no longer play host to these aeroplanes anymore…the reality hit home slightly more powerfully when I saw a photo in the newspaper of the deserted façade of Begumpet airport and the entrance area being used to play cricket by the now jobless unskilled labour force…

Begumpet airport…we love you… Shamsabad is a long way off…

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Shakti - The Legendary Indian Classical - Jazz Fusion band - Part I

Hello World...

I have been a fan of Indian Classical Jazz fusion music for the last 15 years. This bug bit me when I was in CIEFL doing my research, and a friend of mine, we used to call him KP, introduced this genre to me. I had known about Shakti, the legendary group, earlier, but heard them seriously on tape only then. Since then, it has been a great musical journey, a journey of discovery and joy. The first thing I did was to read up whatever was available on this niche genre and started collecting cassettes. Some albums, I got easily, some I had to really struggle to acquire, like Karuna Supreme and Rainbow (Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, John Handy, Zakir Hussain, L. Subramaniam). Now, I can confidently claim that I have almost all the landmark albums in this genre, if not all.

The group Remember Shakti had played in Hyderabad some years back and it was a dream that came true for me. I had heard all their albums, their various avatars over the years, read their interviews, etc., but nothing prepared me for their live performance. They had undergone a massive change…there was a drum kit next to Zakir Hussain and Shankar Mahadevan was singing with his full throated ease…What followed the next two hours was absolute bliss…Though I cannot explain in musical terms how it all went off, I was happy that I could see my favourite Indian classical Jazz fusion band perform live…

If not the first, Shakti is one of the earliest groups to experiment with Indian Classical and Jazz-fusion and make a huge success of it. The initial line-up consisted of John McLaughlin on the Guitar, L. Shankar on the Violin, Zakir Hussain on the Tabla and Vikku Vinayakram on the Ghatam (see above photo - the exuberant quartet). How the group itself came together is another story, worth a separate post. The eclecticism of this fusion ensemble can be seen in each artiste’s musical background and the instrument each plays – McLaughlin with his Jazz background on his specially modified scalloped Guitar; Shankar with his Carnatic Classical background on the Violin; Zakir Hussain with his Hindustani Classical background on the Tabla; and Vinayakram with his Carnatic Classical percussion background on the Ghatam (clay pot). This 2/2 melody and rhythm combination gave an almost perfect fusion effect and gave Shakti its characteristic sound. McLaughlin and Shankar played around each other, i.e., going back and forth to the foreground from the combined jamming, while Zakir Hussain and Vinayakram provided the contrasting rhythms. The first avatar of Shakti was known for its ‘fast furious fusion’, symbolised by Shankar’s sometimes alarming speed on the violin, McLaughlin’s snapping pace, Zakir Hussain’s and Vikku Vinayakram’s fingers almost a blur on the tabla and ghatam respectively. One can listen to this ‘triple-f’ effect and visualize the stalwarts on their instruments in all their three abums – Shakti with John McLaughlin (Sony-Colombia), Handful of Beauty (Sony-Colombia), and Natural Elements (Sony-Colombia).

This ensemble came forth with only three albums, but they were active throughout the seventies playing around the world. The members went their separate ways in 1978.

contd in next post...

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Shakti - the legendary Indian Classical-Jazz Fusion band - Part II

Hi World...

Shakti came together again briefly in 1997 (after two decades) in the 50^th year of India’s Independence when Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia joined the group. Pt. Chaurasia on the flute replaced Shankar in the melody segment, as Shankar was unavailable at that time. The concert and the subsequent two-volume album were christened Remember Shakti (Polygram), the new name by which the group would be known thenceforth. Their second avatar was in complete contrast to their first. Unlike Shakti’s dominant fast fusion sound bordering almost on the aggressive, Remember Shakti (with Pt Chaurasia) was unhurried and meditative with Pt Chaurasia holding forth with his marvellous bansuri on long raga explorations, with Mukti (with others contributing as well) unfolding for over an hour and Chandrakauns (name of a Hindustani Classical raga), a little over 30 minutes. In fact, flute is the most influential sound during this brief phase of the ensemble. McLaughlin and Pt. Chaurasia jam together for a musical piece called Zakir (composed by JML; presumably a tribute to Zakir Hussain) and the entire band comes together for Lotus Feet (which, I consider the group’s anthemic melody [composed by McLaughlin], which appears as a signature piece across their three incarnations and IMHO, gives continuity to the group’s musical journey).

Pt Chaurasia was not new to the members of Shakti. He had already jammed with McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain in another influential Indian classical-jazz fusion album called Making Music (ECM Records), where the aforementioned Zakir was one of the pieces rendered. Jan Garbarek joined them for this rendering in this album. Remember Shakti regrouped after two years in 1999 with a change in both the melody and rhythm segments. Vikku Vinayakram’s son Selva Ganesh came in the place of his father in the line-up, ensuring a continuity of Carnatic percussion rhythm and flavour. The strings came back with U. Shrinivas on the Mandolin replacing Pt. Chaurasia, thus reinstating the original 2 and 2 string and percussion blend (see photo above). This incarnation has come out with 1 exclusive album – Believer (Universal – Verve) and another ensemble (with Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma, Shankar Mahadevan, Sivamani, Debashish Bhattacharya, Bhavani Shankar, Taufiq Qureshi, and others) live concert album called Saturday Night in Bombay (Universal – Verve) (reminds people of another landmark concert and album of which McLaughlin was an integral part - Friday Night in San Francisco [John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, and Paco De Lucia])

All I can say after listening to their music for over 15 years now (and will continue to listen…) is to reiterate the title of one of the compositions in their first album – What Need Have I For This – What Need Have I For That – I Am Dancing At The Feet Of My Lord – All Is Bliss – All Is Bliss…

Happy listening...

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Fountain Pens of Andhra Pradesh - Advocate Ebonite FPs by Deccan Pen Stores

Hi everyone...

I have to get this off my chest…I have been planning to write about Advocate fountain pens manufactured by Deccan Pen Stores, Hyderabad & Secunderabad, along with pictures…actually, I had only one advocate pen with me until recently – the black ebonite…the others are recent acquisitions…I waited till had an arsenal of advocates so that I could take photos like the above…I am describing the pens in the photo where they are uncapped...the six pens that you see in this photo is my collection of Advocate FPs…let me describe them…the four pens that are in the middle are all 6 inches in length…I hope you can see the colours…from left to right they are mottled brown, mottled green, mottled brown with steel cap, and absolute black…all these are ebonite pens and the name ‘advocate’ is engraved in cursive writing on the cap of each pen, including the one with the steel cap…the one on the extreme right is shorter and thinner than the ones that I described earlier…and it is called ‘Advocate Junior’… this is mottled green and also made of ebonite…these ebonite pens are all ‘eye droppers,’ what is normally understood as ‘ink barrel’ pens…all these pens, except the one with steel cap, have a ‘cap lip’…Hari, a fellow FPian, doesn’t like these cap lips and whenever he places orders, he asks the DPS people to make the pens without the cap lips…I don’t have any problems with cap lips, as I feel that the cap lip guards the cap against cracks and holds it together and makes it look good…all these 6 inch EDs are screw caps, and I must add that it takes a bit of a time to unscrew it…almost nine twists…so, definitely not for urgent situations where you have to note down something in a hurry…the Advocate Jr. is slightly better in terms of number of twists required to unscrew the cap…only 5…

Finally, the one in extreme left is not an ‘advocate’ per se, but it is made by the same people, i.e., Deccan Pens…it is a beautiful pen, also made of ebonite and black in colour…it has a brushed surface with a two toned nib…as you can see, the nib holder neck is encircled with a gold plated ‘lip’…and unlike its companions in the picture which are all EDs, this is a ‘cartridge’ pen and again unlike the Advocates, this pen has a snap cap… I have been using the black ebonite ED from the day I bought it and along with this, I am also using the brushed black, mottled green Advocate ED and mottled green Advocate Jr. ED…and as mentioned in an earlier post, all these pens write beautifully, without any dryness even as you pick them up and stat writing after a long lay off.

Except for the black ebonite Advocate, I purchased the other five pens recently…the steel cap and brushed black from Deccan Pen Stores at R. P. Road, Secunderabad; and mottled green, mottled brown, and mottled green Advocate Jr. from their main store in Abids, Hyderabad…as I was making my purchases, Mr. Wasim, who runs the Abids store and is usually present in the evenings, and who usually tempts me with gold nib pens whenever I have been there to purchase the humble ebonites with steel nibs…the last time I was there, he showed me two Brahmam gold nib pens…one made of ebonite and the other made of acrylic…this day he showed me a beautiful black ebonite pen with a 14 ct gold nib which is manufactured by them…this pen looks like a Mont Blanc meisterstuck and I just couldn’t get my eyes off it…the nib has the letter ‘D’ engraved on it… I just cannot afford it at the moment, but I asked Mr Wasim if they could get a couple of them made with steel nibs, so that people like me can have the joy of placing such a beautiful pen in their pockets and also writing with it…he said he’d think about it and I hope he does his thinking fast…

One more thing…these photos were painstakingly taken with my laptop webcam…that’s why you notice the foreshortening…I really had to twist, turn, bend, etc., to get all these in one frame…

Till then…take care…

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Reading Namita Devidayal's 'The Music Room'

Hello everybody…

Early this week, I received two books that I had ordered from Indiaplaza. Actually, I had placed orders for three books…but the third one is out of stock and will take time to reach me… the two books that I received were not entirely new or recently released ones … The Music Room by Namita Devidayal (Random House, India) was released in 2007 to appreciative reviews in all major newspapers and magazines and was recommended by Pt Ravi Shankar as a must read for all musicians and music lovers … I wanted to buy the book as soon as it was released…and it took me almost 5 months to finally get it and read it…I love reading books on Indian classical music, especially the memoir and the socio-politico-cultural kind, and have a quite a good collection of them…I have this great ambition of doing some kind of research on Indian music, any genre…and this reading, I tell myself, will all go into this research…I don’t want to produce a tome or something like that…a couple of articles or research papers will make me happy… this reading has resulted in me buying and reading different kinds of books on Indian classical music…Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition by Janaki Bakhle (Permanent Black, ND); Ustad Alladiya Khan’s autobiography My Life (Thema, Calcutta); The Lost World of Hindustani Music (Penguin, India) by Kumar Prasad Mukherji; Pt Mallikarjun Mansur’s autobiography Rasa Yatra: My Journey in Music (Roli Books, New Delhi); Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Post Colonial Politics of Music in South India by Amanda Weidman (Duke University Press); Between Two Tanpuras (Popular Prakashan) by Vaman H. Deshpande; Indian Musical Traditions: An Aesthetic Study of the Gharanas in Hindustani Music (Popular Prakashan) by Vaman H. Deshpande … and many more…anyway… I enjoyed my encounters with these stalwart writers and gained many insights into this great art form… in more than one instance, the human beings behind the artistes and performers are revealed and we see them in turns as temperamental, egotistical, mischievous, funny, etc., like any one of us…Vaman Deshpande’s Indian Musical Traditions gave me a sound knowledge of the inner workings of the gharana system and his evaluation of Jaipur gharana as a complex amalgamation of the two pillars of Khyal music – swara and laya – got me hooked into taking a slightly deeper interest in the khyal gayaki of the Jaipur gharana … somewhere during this listening and reading, Thema of Calcutta released the autobiography of the founder of Jaipur Gharana, Ustad Alladiya Khan, My Times. In my humble opinion, this is a landmark book for those interested in the growth and development of Hindustani music…and so, when I heard that The Music Room was about the Jaipur gharana, I was intrigued … and I started reading it the day I received and finished it in two days…it is an intensely moving story of one of the unsung stalwarts of Jaipur gharana – Dhondutai Kulkarni. The book is mainly structured as the author’s musical journey, where she weaves in the stories of Dhondutai Kulkarni, her guru the irrepressible Kesarbai Kerkar, and Kesarbai’s guru, the great Ustad Alladiya Khan…and in spite of this impressive lineage and also having learnt music from Ustad Alladiya Khan’s second son Ustad Manji Khan … Dhondutai never becomes the concert star that her guru Kesarbai was famously was…the poignancy and the sense of being sidelined and the pride of belonging to this impressive lineage are all wonderfully narrated by Namita Devidayal, herself now a part of this grand lineage…Namita Devidayal never comes out with reasons for Dhondutai Kulkarni’s destiny as an unrecognised gem of the Jaipur gharana…but enough hints are interspersed throughout the narrative for readers to reach their conclusions…I wish many more readers for this wonderful book…and best wishes to Namita Devidayal on her music career…don’t stop singing…both of you…guru and shishyaa…

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Looking for Advocate fountain pens...and seeing Sheaffer and Lamy too

Hi world…

Yess…I went pen hunting yesterday…but did not go where I thought I should go…Hari had put up some great photographs of Advocate fountain pens on FPN and I was tempted…I already had a black ebonite Advocate FP…actually, my first FP after this FP bug bit me…I bought it the moment I saw it…this was at the Secunderabad branch of Deccan Pen Stores…In fact, Deccan Pen Stores are the manufacturers of Advocate Pens…I must say that this is one of the best pens in terms of utility…as Hari says 100% utility value…the amazing fact is you can keep it away for a week and pick it up and start writing right away…no pen shaking…no ink drying…just how an FP should be… and not to say, it holds so much ink that it is like one of those early Hero Honda ads…fill it…shut it…forget it… so…yeah…the photos put up by Hari tempted me to check out if the Sec’bad branch of Deccan Pen Stores had the other Advocates…I had called them earlier to avoid being disappointed and also to avoid the risk of buying some pen which I don’t want just to keep the disappointment away temporarily…they said they had them and I went there yesterday evening and they had two Advocates…the black ebonite body with steel cap and mottled brown ebonite body with steel cap…I bought the mottled brown ebonite one with steel cap…and another FP which they said is manufactured by them as well…which has a black ebonite body, but the surface is slightly different…not shiny like ebonite…has a slip cap I think…(I am slowly learning the FP jargon!!)… not an Eye Dropper like the other Advocate pens…but a cartridge-wala FP ( I will post the photos of all the Advocate pens I have very soon!!)…I kept these two aside and generally chewed the air for some time with the person there… I forgot to ask his name…very genial and helpful…tempted me with many more pens…a good looking old fashioned Sheaffer FP with the trademark white dot on the clip, which he said the company had stopped manufacturing…a funny looking Lamy FP…and a Pilot FP, which I thought was too expensive for its looks…I was tempted by the Sheaffer…but I had to keep a watch on the wallet…and stored it away in my ‘wish list’… and so I came away with two FPs yesterday…I have started using the ‘other’ pen and it writes beautifully… something else came in the mail yesterday… but will write about that tomorrow…hopefully…

Till then…take care…

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Meeting Mont Blanc & some books

Hi world…

One thing I must stop trying to do is to make every post into an article…I have one coming up on Rahman’s sufi compositions…but that is for later…so, what have I been doing…well, for starters, I have just about recovered from my usual bronchial allergy which affects me two to three times every year…I have made it to my college today…the college timings have changed that means we leave early…I think I must hunt for pens today…haven’t bought one for ages…have some plans in mind…I think I will go to the Reynolds showroom Write Site in Prasad’s IMAX…I had earlier bought a very good looking Reynolds fountain pen, which also writes well…well… Shruti liked and I gave it to her…I have to replenish my collection now… they have some very good imported fountain pens, which don’t cost a bomb…which is a big relief…lets see what happens today evening…

Last week I had this opportunity to see and experience a real Mont Blanc fountain pen…this pen belongs to a friend of mine…Chayan…I have known him for around 6-7 years now and I didn’t know that he had a penchant for collecting fountain pens…anyway, we had been to his place and somehow the conversation veered towards pens and Shruti said how I had started a fund to finance my Mont Blanc…and Chayan’s wife said that Chayan too had this thing for pens and he has a Mont Blanc and a Waterman and all that…wow…I had to see this and Chayan showed this Mont Blanc…I noticed that the brand was ‘noblesse oblige’…I was so happy…I held it in my hands…saw the nib…14 karat gold…I was one stop closer to nirvana…ha ha ha…that is how much I am obsessed with Mont Blanc…but Chayan said, he wants to own a Meisterstuck, and that is the model that I want too…I have succeeded in collecting a good sum, but need some more to make it there…and...this is the second time I had seen/heard about someone who was gifted a Mont Blanc...the first was Vinod Ekbote...and Chayan is the second...how lucky can you get...!!!

In the meanwhile, I finished reading The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber…one of most fascinating books that I had read in recent times…I must see what else Gruber has written and if they are as good as this one…I also read, in the meantime, Hannibal by Thomas Harris…I had watched the film when it was released and had wanted to read it…actually, I had wanted to read Silence of the Lambs, but maybe due to some gap in reason picked up Hannibal instead at my usual second hand book store – Al Classic – near Sangeet cinema in Secunderabad…I had run out of books to read while travelling to college and this came in handy…a good read…film is better, I feel…

I have placed orders for 3 books at Indiaplaza.in and hope to receive them during this week…will tell more about them at leisure…

Till then...stay healthy...

Jayasrinivasa Rao