Shyam's Blog

I am working on a project on Muttuswamy Dikshitar - a project which will be on display during my concert on Sept 20 on the occasion of Navaraatri. I am requested to sing Devi krithis composed by Dikshitar. After reading articles about the compositions made by Dikshitar and the life he led, it is a very divine experience to sing his compositions without even elaborating the raaga or kalpana-swara. Some of the snippets I found out which were interesting to me: 1) Dikshitar composed more than 85% of the songs using M1 (shuddha-madyama). 2) Maximum krithis are composed in Shankarabharana and its derivatives. 3) All his krithis are in Sanskrit except 2 - 1 in Telugu and 1 in Manipravalam (combination of Sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil). 4) Shiva has been the main theme of Dikshitar songs with nearly 130 krithis. There are lots of things which was new to me including the 'shri-chakra' and its importance. More info at the concert!

Just because the ship is grand and big, it doesn't mean latching to it even though it is sinking. It is wise to take a rescue boat and reach the shores. I think, that was the story of Titanic too!

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi Thought of decorating for Ganesh Chaturthi by arranging all Ganesha idols at home next to the main area of pooja. These Ganesha-s are very special to our family. One Ganesha (right of black big one) is carved out of sandal wood. Even for today, sandal wood fragrance is fresh. Lambodara, which is the one looking like bronze and shining is not made of metal. It was the one given by my classmates after my Bachelor's degree. Lambodara has traveled from Bangalore to Dubai to US and back to Bangalore. Right in front is the Sangeethapriya playing the Mridangam. On both sides of him are two Ganesha-s enjoying music. Leftmost one is Vinayaka gifted by our friend for our wedding. He sits on a lamp which can burn for hours. Few more in the picture - Sumukha playing flute and NAtyaganesha (won by dad in All-India Music Competition).

It was 11 am and I was suggested by my manager at office to go home as I was not feeling well due to cold/cough. Other than office cab, auto-rickshaw was the transport. This time, I wanted to try the local air-conditioned Vajra buses. Within 2 minutes, I got the bus and for Rs 33, I got to reach home in an hour's time. These buses are confortable and convenient. Even though they run empty in non-peak hours, I was told by the conductor that it runs overcrowded during office hours. Office-goers prefer this and don't mind standing inside for 40-45 minutes. Features I noticed in this bus: 1) There is facility for wheel chair passengers. 2) Driver rear view is shown in a monitor near the steering wheel. A camera sends input to this screen! 3) These buses have auto-transmission gears. 4) Tickets are electronically printed and issued. 5) A/c is good! We can also travel enjoying some radio station without getting disturbed by outside noise.

Are donkeys becoming extinct? This was today's cab-topic.

Recession bites! This is the view of our fruit basket in office now-a-days. Once upon a time, this basket was filled with apples (each apple Rs. 45) and bananas every day. Now, they are replaced by guava which are 70% cheaper than apples.

I am in Jayanagar and I want to know if my friend 'A' is nearby so that I can meet him. It is a calm Sunday evening and my friend is passing by in my locality. He wants to say 'hi' to me since it has been a long time. He doesn't want to call me to check if I am in. He wants to locate me on his cell phone to check if I am around. With a quick SMS, he will drop by. I will accept only certain people into this 'track me' feature in my cell phone. That way, I can maintain my privacy. Question: Can we recommend this to our cell phone companies in India? What does it cost cell phone companies? Nothing. They track users via 'cell'. So, it is easy. Does it come with added cost? May be 10-15 rupees extra per bill is OK. On the business front, is this feature elastic? Yes. If friends meet in a shopping area, they might drop by somewhere for a coffee/dinner/etc. If a visitor drops by at home, there might plan for a dinner-n-movie, etc.

Our son is 8 months old and for the first time fell sick with fever, cold and cough. His mom and granny were nightmare for him as they used to give him syrups which had awful taste. After they did it for 5-6 times in the span of 48 hours, he never sat on their lap. If they took him, he assumed that they will give medicines. Even regular food like cerelac was thought to be medicine :(. Whenever he saw me, he used to jump for me to take him away from them. Now that he is feeling better, his mom and granny can relax a bit.

Mom and I visited Ace Iyengar Home Products stores in Jayanagar today. Got a bunch of snacks from there including 'gasagase paayasa' which matched dad's formula ;). All the snacks are delicious and matches home taste! After checking the history and background of Ace, it is interesting to note the owner of this company - Vikram Seshadri . He is on LinkedIn! Idea is neat and one should say, it is not unique though. Only unique thing is the way they have branded their products. They also market themselves in their own way. Watch a small clipping of this place here - Video here . Am sure this place has a bright future ahead. Something big is really cooking!

(Photo: Courtesy gizmodo.com.au) I was watching TV last night and saw an aeroplane in a residential area. Not just that, I saw a pilot, air-hostess, introductory safety instructions being given, snacks being served, etc. This is Bahadur Chand Gupta's plane parked in his backyard for people to enjoy the experience of a real aeroplane. Watch the video below! Video of the Backyard Airline Experience in India More details of that flight here . Shared via AddThis

My I-day was spent by watching documentaries from 2-6pm on Fox History Channel. Some of the points I want to gather here: 1) Britain ruled 1/3rd of the world in the early 20th century - from Great Britain to India, from Singapore to Australia, from Africa to Canada. Their imperial rule has a history of about 250 years. 2) In 1942, India was promised independence when she agreed to support Britain in World War II. 2-million Indian troops fought the war with a serious question in their minds, "Why are we fighting FOR British when we are actually fighting for independence?" 3) Lord Mountbatten was made the Viceroy in March 1947. Within few weeks, he had numerous talks with representatives from Indian Congress and the Muslim League. With no end to debates on freeing up India as ONE, it was decided to be split as two countries. 4) 100,000 or so White population which ruled India for more than 2 centuries had to leave India in few weeks! It must have been a very dramatic event in W...

Experienced Cooliris today! It is a small plug-in to Mozilla Firefox browser. I loved it's look and feel. In Firefox, Go to "Tools --> Add-ons" and search for Cooliris to add it to your browser. Enjoy!

Religious means really religious! My cab-mate and I today discussed about how we could be religious at work and it was indeed interesting. Some of the rules are mentioned below: 1) We will start our day with an 'aachamanam' and by looking into the 'panchaangam' for details of the day. We don't want to work on 'yEkaadhashi' because we will be fasting! 2) Whatever we do, we devote our work to 'nArAyaNa' - करोमि यद यद सकलं परस्मै श्रीमद नारायण इति समर्पयामि. 3) End of the day, we conclude our work by saying - मध्ये मंत्र तंत्र लोप दोष प्रायश्चित्तार्थं.... That way, we can say sorry to whatever mistakes we might have done in the course of the day. 4) We release our software only on auspicious days and at specific time of the day avoiding 'raahu-kaala'. There is no week-end holiday for us as we don't go by English calendar.

August is when festival season starts in India. Gokulashtami, Ganesha festival, Dasara, and Diwali being the main string of festivals. Coming to business angle of these festivals - What is the cost involved in these festivals? I will say, nearly half a billion USD! Ganesha festival is round the corner and we can see stalls put in every corner of the street. Let us calculate an approximate turnover of selling Ganesha idols. NOTE: This money is purely unaccountable and Govt. cannot track this business. No receipts given to show proof of purchase! Calculations below: Total Indian Population - 1,000,000,000 (1.17 billion to be exact). % Hindu Population = 80% (82.4% to be precise) => 800,000,000 Hindus in India Lets assume only 10% celebrate/participate in Ganesh festival. Rest either don't celebrate or are below poverty lane => 80,000,000 celebrate Ganesha festival. Assuming average family size of 4 => 20,000,000 families buy idols. Each idol will cost on an average Rs.100. T...

How does recession look from inside?

Yellowstone National Park, Summer 2005

Bid farewell to BIL who headed to CMU for his starting his Graduate program. This reminded me of my first flight to US. I didn't have blogging habit then. Let me see how I would have blogged that event.. Taking back the story to Jan 2003. It was Jan 13 when I had to board my flight from Bangalore to Chennai first. In Chennai, my friend who was working there came to meet me. He got me a masala dosa in a hotel near the airport. After Chennai, my hops included Singapore, Tokyo, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Nothing was in my mind when I started from Bangalore. It was a relief to get my visa which got delayed for many reasons. School had already started a week ago. When I sat in the flight, all I had was to reach my destination and start studying next hour. International travel was not new to me as I was working in Dubai after my bachelor's in Bangalore. That made lot of things simpler in case of getting the logistics right in the airports. Singapore transit was fruitful with an ar...

Watched the movie "ಆ ದಿನಗಳು" (those days) today. It is a very well made movie which is based on real story of underworld in mid 80's. End of the movie, they narrate the status of each character now which really shows how movies can turn in to real life stories! Story is about rivalry of Kothwal Ramachandra and Jayaraj along with Oil Kumar. All three were eventually murdered between 1986 and 2005. Acting is good with not much of melodrama. Only couple of songs are placed in between the storyline. Music by Ilayaraja is clearly a plus point of this movie. He himself has sung a very popular song - 'sihi gaaLi..' online-here . Other song is sung by Vijay Yesudas; his voice clearly resembles his dad.