Age of Innocence

Sunidhi Chauhan....the name sounded vaguely familiar when I came across an article about her in the paper recently. Halfway through the first paragraph, realization dawned.
Meri Awaaz Suno......Annu Kapoor.....Lata Mangeshkar....and a small girl in a frock and a bob-cut - Sunidhi Chauhan.

'Meri Awaaz Suno' was one of the first ever 'talent shows' on Indian television, and one of the few I ever paid any attention to. And that was largely due to this one participant. There's something fascinating for a 14-year old boy to watch a girl younger than him making it big on TV, to hear her break into song and wonder how her voice sounded twice as mature as any of the other contestants, everyone of whom were more than twice her age. Her voice and her talent were captivating, but more so was her youth. I remember her ernest, slightly nervous demeanour as she would walk up to the dais to sing her number. I remember looking forward to see her break into a smile at the end of her performance and feeling elated when it happened. I remember thinking what a cute girl she was and what a pretty woman she would, someday, grow into.


Well, she is pretty, alright. But she's also been involved in an elopement, enstranged relations with her parents and a divorce. I guess that isn't surprising for a child prodigy thrown into the spotlight too soon, but the news did leave a bad taste in my mouth. I believe she is now known in the trade for her competence in singing 'item-songs' in Hindi films. Now I really don't know what kind of vocal expertise is required for that, but it definitely wasn't the future I thought she'd have when she recieved the 'Best Singer' award from Lata Mangeshkar all those years back.

Where is the uniqueness that was her defining characteristic earlier? Why is she just one among the crowd now? I guess her USP was her youth and now that she doesn't have it, she's lost among the hordes. Which is sad....the loss of innocence,....so fragile a quality that it's virtually impossible to be 'handled with care'. People grow up, people get hurt, people become wiser but permanently scarred in the process. Yep, even that one-in-a-thousand child genius can be reduced to a competitor running hard to stay in the same place.

I hear that Sunidhi Chauhan is coming up with her own music album soon, which is good news. But I can only hope that we get to hear a 11-year old girl singing in it, and not an 'item song' specialist.

CATting and Beyond

The soft drizzle outside and the gloomy skies perfectly complement my mood today.
The CAT is over and done with, and with it probably my best chance of charting out a new career course for myself.
It's frustrating, actually. After all the mocks throughout the season, you unconsciously tend to expect at least your average score on D-Day...you aren't prepared for one of your worst papers of the year.

Sometimes, it feels that eight-odd months of 'focussed preparations' is too extravagent an investment to make for as capricious a goal as 'cracking CAT'. How else do I explain a much better performance last time around, when the preparations were so much less?

Sometimes, I feel CAT rewards the instinctive, intuitive person more than the hard-worker who is grounded in his fundamentals. If so, why succumb to the pulls of these darn coaching institutes?

Sometimes, I feel you need to be damn lucky on THE day to succeed.

Sometimes, ...naa, most times, life just ain't fair.


It's tough getting back to office the next day and realising that what had been a secondary vocation for the past few months needs to be given primacy of position...and fast.
It's a horrid feeling to realise that all your dreams of a satisfying alternate career have just been dealt a severe blow.
Maybe this is where I start to lead a life of 'quiet desperation', yeah, like those housewives on TV do. But I've got to not give into that. I've got to not to, got to not to....

So Iam still hopeful. I do have a couple of strong points to take out of the CAT. Maybe, just maybe, it'll see me through. And I still have a couple of shots at top-colleges this year. Maybe that's my ticket to wherever I want to go.


As an aside, whenever you feel down and depressed, and if you're any kind of a loner, and if you live in a coastal place, check out the beach at night.
One place where you can rant to your heart's content with no reply other than the sea ranting back at you, where the never-ending roll of the waves lulls you into a strange sense of security, where the swirling wind in the pitch-black night gets you seeing your future better with a sudden clarity, a place which fills your senses and makes you realise that life really is beautiful after all, and that it's days like these that make it all the more so.

Art for Art's Sake!

Ever wondered about the artist?
Yeah, that bearded guy in kurta-pyjama who lives in a perenially leaking pigeon-hole at the top-floor of a crowded low income apartment, who can barely make ends meet but still remains an idealist and is happy as long as he has his paintings with him.I met a friend's friend recently who happens to be one of this kind and two things struck me during the experience. One, how his financial status seemed not to fit with his IQ level, and two, how less affected he seemed to be by that fact.

The majority of artists, be it painters, dancers, writers, sculptors, even photographers, live a hard life financially. Now this seems so unfair, given that they do something they really like and you would expect them to be rewarded for that. But thinking deeper, I realise that that's the best way for things to be. The sole reason for a person to choose art as a profession is because he wants to. There are no two ways about that. His reward for what he does is in the process itself. Money is only secondary. Sure, he would like to have his daily bread and butter, but that's not the reason why he's an artist. So lack of monetary reward isn't a deterrant for the true artist. On the other hand, the absence of the green dough keeps a lot of the "pretenders" out of the game. So what we get as art out of the system tends to be 'the real stuff' at best and 'sincere' at worst. There are no phonies around to bring the standard down.

Case in point are the Indian film industry and the Western popular music industry. Two areas of great artistic potential, but also, unfortunately, two areas rolling in cash. As a result, we see actors who can't act, singers who can't sing, acceptable standards of performance going down to such drastic levels that it's easy to forget that these are actually art forms, and we have even more people queuing up to join in, all in search of that magical nirvana-money.
Contrast this with the Bharathnatyam scene in the city. When I was in school, almost half the girls in my class went for some classical dance tution or the other, and they enjoyed it too. But today, they are all either IT professionals or married. Not a single Bharatnatyam exponent. The explanation is quite simple-no future, no money in Bharatnatyam, you see. The inference is thus, quite predictable. The people who do end up as Bharatnatyam experts are those with the passion for it, and it's usually such people who do a good job of it too.
So long may the tribe of artists prosper, the world will be unimaginable without them, but also, may they prosper in poverty!

To take the argument further, wouldn't it be great if the same logic could be applied to other spheres of employment too? Consider a CEO who is paid peanuts for his efforts but still doesn't mind. Why? Because he has a true passion for his job. If all the posts in an organization were filled this way, it would not only result in a tremendous increase in efficiency, but also seriously undermine the value of money!
This concept of 'take the money away, and only the passionate will remain' could actually revolutionise the world, but for one big obstacle - the vast, vast majority of people who don't have a passion in the first place, who don't have a goal they'd die for, who are happy existing and not living. For them, it's money that carries them forward and not some stupid, half-baked, hot-blooded emotion. Hence, status quo. And hence, I will be happy to see just art working on this system, giving us new insights and experiences which truly come from the heart.

A Cracker of a Tie-Up!

They say in the advertising game, it's one of the more crucial things to find the right medium to focus on your target group. But sometimes, things work out so naturally that you think the product and the medium were meant for each other.

'Ilaya Thazhapathi' Vijay's latest blockbuster (yeah, it was certified a blockbuster even before release) opened for Diwali and is aptly titled 'Sivakasi'. Standard Fireworks of the 'real' Sivakasi fame smelt a golden opportunity in this and a major sponsorship tie-up happened. As a result, images like this one now form an irritatingly recurring theme in Chennai's landscape, be it on hoardings, wall posters, firework-stalls, the works. It's such a ubiquitous sight that even the actual purpose behind the campaign is blurring. It's hard to make out if Vijay is a brand ambassador for Standard Fireworks now or if it's still only the movie which is being promoted. Which should work out just fine for both the film producers and especially the fireworks company, what with the anti-fireworks campaign gaining momentum nowadays.

A sure sign of a winning marketing strategy is when you have copy-cats jumping into the fray. No surprise then, that Anil Fireworks seems to have teamed up with the producers to help promote their movie, 'Sandakozhi'. But like most copy-cat moves, I cant see this one working. For one, this is a nondescript movie at best, as compared to Vijay's numero uno status, and more importantly, there isn't any common Diwali link connecting the product and the movie. Which is why I see Standard Fireworks' 'Sivakasi' working even better than Tata Indicom's 'Chandramukhi' or Reliance's 'Sachein' did.

A bit off-track, but as an ardent anti-Vijay fan, I would love to see this movie flop, my sympathies to Standard. I refuse to accept that the Tamil audience do not have a better taste in films than to cheer on a pretender doing for the zillion+1 th time what he's done for a zillion times already. But I guess the chances of my wish coming true are comparable to India beating Sri Lanka 7-0!...hmm, but I wonder what the odds are on that one now?

Best Wishes to all for a Happy Diwali!!