Oru raagam paadalOdu

Sri chakra raaja simhaaneswari sri lalithaambigayE, the song every new learner of classical (carnatic) music learns; a song that is sung in every other household kolu function during navarathri. Girls singing this song in unison is a treat to watch (ahem...yeah this sentence is kind of ripped from one of the drooling posts of 'Ferrari' Prabhu).

I heard that this song is in Simhendra madhyamam raaga (or a raagamalika in which one of the raaga is simhendra madhyamam).

Thinking of this raaga automatically associates my thought to IR's usage of this raaga. Simhendra madhyamam was ornated at various degree by him.

Do you want pure western-classical(WC) movements with simhendra madhyamam singing? You got it. Listen to aanandha raaagam from panneer pushpangaL. Uma Ramanan (UR) takes you suddenly to the 100th floor of the building right from the first vocal note after that splendid western classical strings prelude section. Raaja proves how deftly he can "manipulate" classical raaga to fit into the WC idiom.

Well, if you are more interested in semi-classical rendition then resort to chinna kuyil chitra's honey voiced kaaRROdu kuzhalin naadhamE from kOdai mazhai (or) alternatively, you can listen to superb rendition of nE pournami from oruvar vaazhum aalayam in mellifluous voice by K.J.Yesudaas (KJY).

If you are hardcore carnatic classical person, and doesn't want to compromise a kutchery feel, even your taste is not rejected by IR. You have non-other than Sudha Raghunathan singing the song enai enna seidhaai from IvaN in kutchery format. This song is predominantly set in Simhendra madhyamam but towards the end Sudha raghunathan, Lalgudi Ravi(?) et al go in for a full-fledged raagamaalika which is thwart by some verbal gimmicks by parthiban.

Oru raagam paadalOdu kaadhil kEttadhO; ManadhOdu oojal aadudhO

This stanza from yet another IR song summarizes this entire post.

Kudos raaja. Kudos to great singers Chitra, UR, Sudha Raghunathan and KJY.

By the way here is this simple mohana raaga duet oru raagam paadalOdu from aanandha raagam.

Once upon a season, re-discovered

During my busy office hours(yeah you got it right, it is indeed a metaphor for "I was browsing, blog-hopping"), I stumbled upon Vasu's site.

He had unearthed a splendid article about MS Subbulakshmi, which I read in The-Hindu long back. This made me to dig deep in chennai online to excavate a superb, perhaps a mix of reality and imagination, series on genius of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, during "those days", that i read then. Many a times I was trying to find out, and thanks to Vasu's blog, today I made a determined attempt to find the series (for, I forgot the series name itself).

The series is titled Once upon a season. It is a superb 'digiree kaapi', a rightly blended concoction of thamizh movement in classical music arena, freedom movement, and 'elitists' of those days.

I am not sure of its author. I vaguely remember someone telling me that the author is a well known carnatic singer. May be, may be not. Howerver it is definitely worth reading.

Here is the link:
Part 1        Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6        Part 7

Capital punishment and Celebrities

The Chief Justice of India(CJI) designate Justice Shri. Y.K.Sabharwal, in a recent interview to The Indian Express has said that in his personal opinion the death sentence should be abolished.

It is an interesting subject that too when a few former Supreme court justices and even the CJI designate too have aired their personal opinion against the capital punishment.

Why should it be abolished?

'Abolish death sentence' group have been saying "no legal killing....there is no right for even the government to take any life". But in my humble opinion they miss a point while telling so. What if the convict has become a cancer? Should one get rid of it to save oneself(society)? If you are very sure that the person who is convicted of commiting the crime which is of gravest of grave in nature and is seen as danger to the society then how can one get rid of that person?

One can argue that "give life sentence to that person and as emphasized by SC recently, life means life not any specific a few years, won't that be sufficient enough to keep that person out of society?"

Well, that is a good point but practically we all know how well our prison systems are. When there is not a single prison in the country which is out of crime/illegal activities how can one ensure that this cancer to the society could be kept away from the society?

To answer that one can say that, "then the problem is with the prison management and capital punishment is not for it".

But again, it is practically impossible to make an ideal prison so we need to resort to this option. Because the danger to the society by that cancer is more bad than the "sin" in killing that cancer. And we dont have no man islands to dump them either.

The more compassionate argument putforth is "if you have taken out his life and some years down the line if you find that the conviction was wrong then how will you bring the life back?"

Well we have a lengthy procedure for capital punishment. Appeals, right from Magistrate court to uptill the Supreme Court (SC). In addition to that we have President's pardon procedure. These appeals, pardon procedure takes years to finish and if one's innocence is not found in that period then it is almost certain that it is not going to be found in future either. And, for argument sake if one asks "what if it is found after 40 years" then, by that time the convict mostly would have died in the prison by then and what is the use of finding that wrong conviction either? Even if the convict is not dead and releasing him at his ripe stage is as good as killing him because all his life is gone how can one bring his life back, in that case too?

In India the captial punishment is given after much much contemplation. The percentage of captial punishment given and the percentage of actual execution among them is one of the least in the world. Judges in India use it very sparingly and only if they are convinced 100%. If a lower court has missed it most of the time the higher or the highest court has done that. In some cases, beyond that the presidents have pardoned some too.

Besides, capital punishment is the only option for us, now, to get rid of real dangers to the society. So keeping capital punishment alive is the best option we have. As the CJI designate mentioned, its the law of land and we need to abide by that. Law of the land is created/maintained based on the society, wrong, rights, present situation in mind. The present situation definitely does not warrants for abolishion of capital punishment. If there comes a situation that we can indeed abolish that then it would be the day where we can even think of abolishing most of the Criminal procedural code (CPC) punishments, because many of us would have turned saints.

So let this weapon exist. Let us use it as sparingly as possible. Just because it is sparingly used or just because it is a dreaded weapon or just because it could be misused or just because it could be used wrongly lets not throw it into the ocean and lose the chance of using it at the needed moment.

Syed Shahabuddin MP or not?

Today, an interesting news item Shahbuddin's name deleted from voters' list in The-Hindu caught my attention (isn't it a smart way of putting things as though one is very busy?!).

It is about disenfranchisment of the honourable member of parliament from Bihar, Syed Sahabuddin of RJD. The reason for deletion is 'eight non-bailable arrest warrants were pending against him'.

Hmm...interesting. We have a MP against whom criminal cases are pending, and this representative of people is at large. The Representation of People (RPA) act, clause 8, cannot be invoked to disqualify him from Parliament membership. It is because he is not convicted by the court of law. Even if he is, then, as per the clause, the conviction should get him a sentence that is atleast 2 years imprisonment. If at all the case is allowed to hear, and if at all, finally, the Supreme Court (too) uphold any such sentence, which will disqualify him from contesting elections, just in case a lower court finds him guilty and it is appealed at the SC, only then RPA clause 8 can be enforced on him. So at this jucture RPA clause 8 is practically useless.

However, this "purposeful deletion with a reason" has created a unique scenario. He is a MP but not an elector. That is, he is a MP but cannot vote. Now that, one of the basic qualification for a person to be a people's representative (MLA or MP or councillor) is s/he should be an elector from any parliamentary constituency of India (there is an exception clause to sikkim MP seat). But Sahabuddin is not eligible to vote any more. Can't this be enough, valid, reason for the Election Commission of India to disqualify his Parliament membership?

The Constitution of India, Article 326 does not support my claim, explicitly. It only disqualifies a person to be an elected member on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice.

The Electoral Laws rules book says "CANDIDATE MUST BE AN ELECTOR" for qualification. However under disqualification section it does not mention whether a non-elector (i.e. whose name is removed from electorate) is disqualified or not. It only mentions about foreign citizenship as a disqualification criterion.

Request you, learned readers, to give your esteemed opinion about this, seems to be, valid question. Ofcourse, the ECI will not be doing this due to political considerations. But I don't want to get into the political angle. I am just wondering whether from judicial/academic/constitutional/executive (or whatever impractical-but-sounds-good adjective you want to use) point of view.

Bug Bites

Seven things - one could,
one wants, one says most,
attracted in opposite sex,
and seven celebrity crushes
are a must babble of any blogger
around the globe. It turned out
to be very infectious amongst
living-beings in the blogosphere.
Likewise is the 55 words writeup.
One is frowned upon if
a blog doesn't have these.


[count the words if you want ;) ].

It dropeth from heaven

"Vijay this weekend I'll be relatively free from my work. Lets go to Niagara this weekend". I assured my roomie who has been pestering me. But alas, when these little jhonnies want to play columbus-day-rain has played its part. Heavy rains (about 4 inches per day forecast) started lashing from Friday cancelled the party. Last opportunity its lost opportunity. Yet another of my US visit leaves the item Niagara unchecked. Hopefully next time.

After the 'blame the rain' game got over I slowly started looking through the windows. Incessant, steady flowery showers gave a beautiful treat to my eyes. Wow! what a treat. To enjoy it further, I picked my umbrella walked to my office. From its 9th floor wide glass window I was getting an uninterupped view of VA267, Elden St., IAD runway. The rain the uninteruppted view this entire scene suddenly urged me to fetch a mug of coffee and listen to yet another situational song of IR, sung by S.Janaki's(SJ). Wow! a neo-treat in Gowrimanohari Pon Vaanam paNNeer thoovudhu innEram from InRu nee naaLai naan.

Then the rain slowly started to become heavy. Is it going to be torrential? I started worrying. ha..forget it and enjoy the act of nature was the immediate order from my inner voice. Naturally my urge to get more caffine increased as the rain intensity increased. To match the nature's mood this time splendid sridevi's bird voice singing of kaRRil endhan geedham from Johnny in the deserted dias during the torrenial rainy day became my natural choice. Oh! yeah, keeravaNi means bird's voice isn't it, what an apt choice of raaga for this song.

Slowly the rain was stopping, may be kind of taking rest for its nighty mighty downpour, oh those beautiful gentle big twinkling ting-ting drops....ah yet another song of situation oh..ho megam vandhadhO from mouna raagam.

A rainy day gave IR's brainy hearty treat brought to me by SJ.

Nut wears India

We have seen consistent performers, consistent non-performers, may be consistent bad-performers, here we have a consistent wrong-perfomer. The irony is he is a part of cabinet ministry of PM Manmohan Singh (MMS). Nutwar singh esquire, is the celebrity whom I am talking about. One cannot comprehend where he is planning India to head. But one can easily make out under his 'able external affairs' India is heading on to solid rock deep under. At the times when even remote villager of India is dreaming about a powerful, assertive India we have a great cook who cooks-up things that makes India a desert.

The day he became India's external affairs minister has become the starting day for MMS for busy firefighting. For, MMS seems to have resigned himself to a handful of vital areas wherein he wants to propel India ahead towards making it a global power. Economy, Foreign relations, Defence are top among them. It is increasingly evident that the PMO has the last say in whatever to happen as India's position. But with his consistency on wrong-performance Nutwar has made MMS life worse than miserable.

Starting from unilateral proposal of the tri-national (indo-china-pak) nuclear 'doctrine' pushed forward by nutwar without even checking with PMO or Pak or china's stand, suddenly from thin air, show-caused how chaotic and idiotic is the proposal and how bad would be India's stand in international arena. China and Pak were quick enough to tell this "doctrine" as crap.

Then it was followed by difference of opinion with the then NSA and PMO Secy. J.N.Dixit (JND). The pressure of fighting with Nutwar kept building on the already-heart patient JND which climaxed at the poor, reasonable JND's life.

Then it was a "demarche" issued to all other ministries when equally dangerous Mani Shankar Ayyar accepted the dinner invitation by some other country's energy minister without consulting External ministry office. This turned out very ugly and exposed the lack of synergy in MMS ministry.

His famous Nepal debacle has no words to explain. That is a class "nutwar" act. When Indian army, defence ministry, PMO was all-ready to help Royal Nepal Army(RNA) despite India's dislike on Gynanendra's parliament dissolution, our beloved foreign affairs minister's dharmendra like stunt brought in worst Nepali's anger towards India. MMS had to pitch-in at the last moment sensing the danger when China and Pakistan were ready to support RNA. From that point, Nutwar is booted out from Nepal affairs.

Then came his "Iran love". His 'no matter whatever it is India will stand by Iran' kind of statement embarrased, or rather harrassed India. Fortunately some last minute events in international arena made PMO's decision easy and India voted against Iran in IAEA. This made Nutwar to shut his verbal diorreah.

Now comes the Siachein debacle. This tops the list. He, without checking with defence ministry or PM or defence chiefs, most likely unilaterally, annouced that India and Pakistan will reduce/withdraw troops from Jan 2006, only to be ridiculed by Musharraf and strong private dissent by India army personnel. Now that he had to issue clarification like no date specific. I will not be astonished to hear from him, sometimes later, about the rollback of his words on siachien withdrawl itself.

Enough of the damages to India. Let Nutwar singh as a congress party person think himself as a great visionary and ruin his utopian country we won't have any problem, but as external affairs ministry he is wearing out the possiblity of India becoming even a regional power.

Yeah! it is Nut wears India and not Nutwar's India as he is dreaming.

I am getting nightmares when I read news that Prakash Karat thinks Nutwar is not performing upto his expectation and he wants to take over external affairs ministry. Should that happen then that is a classic example of 'jumping into the fire escaping from the hot pan'. A devil in the place of demon?! Oh! God give us a break.

H"Iran"ian

"Oh! its doomed. India should not have voted against Iran in IAEA. How can India go against a 'long standing friend'?", thus boils the blood of our beloved intellectual bretheren. "India has fallen prey to the dictation of the US", a secret revealed by them.

I have big doubts on both claims. First of all it is incorrect to say Iran is/was a 'long standing friend' of India. The stand of our 'beloved friend' on kashmir is simply anti-India and pro-pakistan. Is that how a friend behaves? If at all we had a friend in the Gulf area who steady-fast supported India's stand on Kashmir was Saddam Hussein and India not joining the US and UK on Iraq war had this being a partial reason (the other reason, in my humble opinion, is, simply Iraq war is not India's war why should India poke its nose in a wrong place at a wrong time for an unjustified reason?).


Iran is a signatory of NPT (Nuclear non proliferation treaty which bans any nuclear weaponisation programme) whereas India was and is not. When India did Pokhran II, Iran was vociferous against India's nuclear weaponisation programme and "strongly urged" India to sign NPT. Whereas when Pakistan followed suit it was US, UK which condemened that too in equal terms (atleast to the world) whereas Iran was not as vocifereous as it was a few days back, against India.

Such is the longstanding friendship gesture of our beloved friend (since caveman days).

"Oh! what will happen to Natural Gas if Iran had not gracefully & magnanimously said that 'even after India's vote against us(Iran) the Natural Gas project is still alive; friends are not judged based on single act'. Such is Iran's friendship and what India did is backstabbing", babbles our bretherens.

oh, yeah. India has no other source to get Natural Gas apart from Iran, isn't it? But that is not correct. A few South East Asian countries, Bangladesh (techincally speaking; coz now its more hostile to India than Pakistan so it is better not to go to bangladesh) are ready to supply same amount of Natural Gas to India. So India a potential buyer has more than one supplier. Now coming to Iran, the supplier's case. None in Europe/Americas is willing to buy Iranian natural gas when they can get from nearer sources like Arabia. So naturally it is Russia, China and India who have potential to buy and who are in need are Iran's customer. But Russia and China who have more stake in Iran's clandestine nuclear weaponisation programme dont want to buy 'Iran gas' for various other reasons. So, for Iran only India is the option. Wheras for India, Iran is not the only supplier. So I leave it to you to judge who is in need of who.

So the "Indi-Irani bhai bhai" stuff is just a heap of crappy story spun very well by our intellectuals.

Then do I want India to fight Iran if US, UK and probably this time france wage a war against Iran?

My opinion is, why should, again it is not our war. Our voting against Iran's nuclear weaponisation programme does not necessarily mean that we have to wage a war against Iran. Our psyche does not work in that way.

Infact, after the Iraq debacle US is keen to get UN to send troupes to Iran, should there be a war. And hold your breath, China and Russia despite their proximity to Iran have a greater chance to give atleast 'moral support' for this war than the "confused/ambivalent/bootlicker" India.

I recommend you all to read the Batting for Iran article in Indiareacts.com for further information.

Thanks to my friend Seeni, some of my points above are based on the information he provided.

Boot awe, Buta

Buta Singh, the honourable governor of Bihar, had earlier dissolved the suspended Bihar assemble. A dramatic overnight dissolution it was. Reason? He sensed "horse trade" with frustrated LJP MLAs in front of their stable by NDAs to sworn in Nitish Kumar as CM. Now the matter is in the Supreme Court (SC). Does he have evidence that can stand in a court of law for this "horse trade" (or) is it the job of governor to determine whether horse trade should be allowed or not. Let us not get into these questions and it would turn out to be more political.

However lets see something else here.

The central government said two things 1) Buta did the correct 2) Buta, as a governor, has immunity(from the court) for his deeds. The SC, in an interim observation/order, has quashed the centre's claim on the second count. It indeed mentioned that a governor has not got immunity for these kind of acts if his act is proved wrong.

Assuming, in its final verdict, if SC finds the governor's act as incorrect then the following issues arise.

1) What will the SC do? Will it ask Nitish kumar to demonstrate support he has? But Kumar had not officially claimed any support. He was in a process of getting it ;-)

2) What if "yeah! Buta's act of dissolving the assembly was wrong" kind of verdict will buy for? Will the Election Commission (EC) be ordered to scrap the election announcement and preparation? Or by the time the verdict comes and the loooong drawn election has some how got over and results were announced then what will happen to that?

3) How SC will view the act by Buta who dissolved the assembly, which in first place was not officially functioning (MLAs were not sworned in, to remind you)?

4) Does SC have the power to install a government? Isn't it the prerogative of President and his representative Governor? If so what would be the tangible benefit to the Bihar assembly if the SC finds the act of governor was wrong.

Remember the SC verdict on S.R.Bommai case, what purpose it served apart from the academic interest because he was not reinstated as CM of Karnataka based on that verdict.

Whether the SC finds fault in the dissolving of assembly or not the status quo would not change. I guess this has what given the guts to the centre to boldly defend its agent's incorrect acts.

But Soli Sorabjee, the former attorney general and the counsel appearing against the government has asked the SC to give a verdict that has tangible relief to the affected parties. This he mentioned when the SC has specifically asked him for.

So there is a ray of hope even when I strongly doubt nothing fruitful would come out of SC verdict.

Lets keep our fingers crossed and wait.

Fractured Fraction

There is a fraction that is more famous among Indians now than any other fraction. It is "one third". Yes you guessed it correct, its the magic number mumbled for reservation in parliamentary seats for women. Ceremoniously this is brought in for "discussion" just before that session of parliament to be adjourned sine-die.

Neither the proponents nor the opponents have guts to put forward their case, discuss about this issue in the parliament. Oh! forget it, when Budgets are passed during oppositions boycotts, when a most needed law struck down without any thought just because it found place in a piece of paper called common minimum p(r)ogram, one cannot expect any thought process amongst our lawmakers to discuss on the merits and demerits of reservation for women.

Personally, I am happy that this "law" is only in the "under discussion" state and not "passed".

People's representatives should be chosen by the people. Narrowing down to saying that you should choose only this sect or that sex or that religious or that caste person as your representative, defeats the very purpose of democracy. I can understand the need for SC/ST reservation for parliament. This quota is for representation of downtrodden people who are majority in a consitituency but still are not getting their voices heard at proper place. But where is such a pressing need for women to be consider in the same plate? If women are as oppressed as SC/STs then I wonder how people have conveniently chose to believe that 2/3 of the Indian constituency do not oppress women?

I do not understand why should there be reservation for every thing that needs upliftment. I wonder what kind of reservation helped women to uplift themselves to compete, be at par, surpass men in newer fields like IT. It is the competitive mentality amongst the women that did it. Surely the reservation jingoism will undo it.

We have seen almost negligible result in positive direction due to this reservation scheme for social justice.

This one-third mantra is simply yet another catchy slogan like "gareebi hatao", "adaindhaal dravida naadu", "varga pOr", "raamar koyil kattiyE theruvOm" kind.

I sincerly pray that this kind of stale thoughts should never get to see light.