So I managed to get my ticket to the A.R.Rahman concert for this coming december. 3500 tickets on sale since yesterday and the sold out is already announced for tomorrow. Lucky me!
I can hardly contain my excitement. Like millions around the world, I have been listening to his music since the mid-nineties and to me Rahman is the musician of new departures. His ability and talent in bridging the gap between carnatic music, using traditional south indian instruments, and modern sounds is an absolute feast for the ears. No wonder universal validity has been bestowed upon him for such insight and musical ingenuity. Et puis, il y a l'homme lui-même, one has to admit that he is the epitome of humility and simplicity, of softness and authenticity. This quest for bettering his soul with clear-sighted earnestness through his raags and melodies simply illuminates his inner being and shows the character and depth of a person permeated with lofty idealism. If there is an elite in this world, A.R.Rahman is surely the maestro leading the parade.
I can't believe how blessed I am to get to watch him perform live with his 31 musicians. 2 hours of utter bliss. It is such a good life :)
Saturday 22 October 2016
My favorite passages from The Picture of Dorian Gray
It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow...
And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin.He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow...There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence.No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age so grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
'....I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.'
Lord Henry smiled."People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.It is what I call the depth of generosity.'
'Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.'
'Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior ones are absolutely fascinating.The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.'
And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin.He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow...There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence.No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age so grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
'....I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.'
Lord Henry smiled."People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.It is what I call the depth of generosity.'
'Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.'
'Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior ones are absolutely fascinating.The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.'
Monday 3 October 2016
One year later
03rd October 2015. I posted a few words about self-worth.
An appraisal exercise one year later reveals that things have evolved positively simply because they were meant to.
There is a saying which goes "mieux vaut allumer une chandelle que de maudire l'obscurité".
By trying to help Vimla go through a painful process of reconstruction, I figured out that I had supported myself too. Actually I don't know if I have succeeded in helping her out totally because she still refers to death now and then but I am trying my best and whatever the outcome, there cannot be any failure as from now on. I tend to think that what really attracts me in people are those things that they hate about themselves, their vulnerable side, their phobias, their weaknesses, their illusions.
Boris gave me a book today. He has no idea what this simple gesture has triggered in me, how it has moved me profoundly. Of course, it had to be "The picture of Dorian Gray", why this book, I will never be able to fathom but it HAD to be this one because I fucking dig Oscar Wilde. I always think that if the latter was to be cast in one of today's reality show, he would totally rock it. Boris is so 'entwined' in his own complexity that it makes him disarmingly charming and attractive. Despite all his intricacies, he is actually the most normal, sensible, balanced and positive person I have met these past years. I keep saying it all the time but truth be told that the guy has a tremendous positive influence on me. It is the first time after a very long period that I have come across someone whose issues are not really...issues yet. Simply put, to me Boris is the landmark that brings it all together, a gentle reminder that there are sane and emotionally intelligent persons in this world who make a difference in others' lives by not faking it, by being themselves.
Take a zest of Vimla's craziness, Boris's smartassness, Nasreen's freshness, Akash's meditativeness, put it all in a shaker and out of it comes a nectar which provides you with a daily spoon of lightheartedness.
It's amazing how Life just tastes a little bit sweeter in endearing company.
An appraisal exercise one year later reveals that things have evolved positively simply because they were meant to.
There is a saying which goes "mieux vaut allumer une chandelle que de maudire l'obscurité".
By trying to help Vimla go through a painful process of reconstruction, I figured out that I had supported myself too. Actually I don't know if I have succeeded in helping her out totally because she still refers to death now and then but I am trying my best and whatever the outcome, there cannot be any failure as from now on. I tend to think that what really attracts me in people are those things that they hate about themselves, their vulnerable side, their phobias, their weaknesses, their illusions.
Boris gave me a book today. He has no idea what this simple gesture has triggered in me, how it has moved me profoundly. Of course, it had to be "The picture of Dorian Gray", why this book, I will never be able to fathom but it HAD to be this one because I fucking dig Oscar Wilde. I always think that if the latter was to be cast in one of today's reality show, he would totally rock it. Boris is so 'entwined' in his own complexity that it makes him disarmingly charming and attractive. Despite all his intricacies, he is actually the most normal, sensible, balanced and positive person I have met these past years. I keep saying it all the time but truth be told that the guy has a tremendous positive influence on me. It is the first time after a very long period that I have come across someone whose issues are not really...issues yet. Simply put, to me Boris is the landmark that brings it all together, a gentle reminder that there are sane and emotionally intelligent persons in this world who make a difference in others' lives by not faking it, by being themselves.
Take a zest of Vimla's craziness, Boris's smartassness, Nasreen's freshness, Akash's meditativeness, put it all in a shaker and out of it comes a nectar which provides you with a daily spoon of lightheartedness.
It's amazing how Life just tastes a little bit sweeter in endearing company.
Sunday 2 October 2016
Saturday 1 October 2016
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