The Day The Music Died

'There's so much to hear' thus spake A.R. Rehman in the Worldspace ad on TV, with the lilting jingle playing in the background. Alas! the bad tidings that Santa brought the Worldspace subscribers the world over, this Christmas: there won't be anymore to hear!


On December 31st, 2009 midnight, as the world drowns in the crescendo of celebrations, the lights will & sounds will go off at several Radio stations, as also at numerous (5 Lakh & counting) receivers across the world. Music would've died in its latest avatar: the fee-based, ad-free, genre segregated, crystal clear radio service, that enthralled so many, for the past 10 years. What was that about them whom god loved, dying young. Rings so true for you, mi amigo!


My affair with Worldspace started more out of necessity than heart's call. Being in sales takes you to places where its hard to find your moorings. So you seek out influences that save you from going crazy. So in came the radio, with receiver, antenna and thick cable in tow, into my one room abode at Rajkot (Gujarat). My first memory of her is of watching a muted FIFA World Cup 2006 match on my TV, with Rabindra Sangeet playing on the Radio Sonar channel of Worldspace. What a cocktail of deft movements on the field, being choreographed for me on the balmy soul music of Bengal! 


I remember my pining for unrequited love, as I looked out of the window of my ninth floor perch in a high rise in Surat (Gujarat), in utter darkness, watching the cotton bale clouds waft across a moonlit sky, with the radio heightening my woe & yet nursing it, by playing Don Mclean's Crying Channel Amore, a station devoted only to love ballads! Boy, you should've heard the channel on valentines: a recourse availed by singles like me, stuck in thankless jobs in hapless small towns; they played almost all of the best love songs ever written.


And she taught me how to appreciate various other genres, by staying on a channel for sometime. So I had my first taste of Mozart & Chopin at Channel Maestro, lots of Jazz at Radio Riff, contemporary pop & rock at channels Voyager, Spin, and specially fusion at Radio Moksha, the first ever channel dedicated to well-being. Its here, while getting ready for work on countless days, I fell in love with Prem Joshua, Trilok Gurtu, and the ilk. It was here that I first heard the new age spiritual Guru, Vasudev Jaggi's discourses, and he shook me with his usage of the gen-x lingo. I discovered a modern day Osho & perhaps even better.


And how can I forgot how she brought me close to my Raaz, Pichhle Janam Ka, by making me a slave to Radio Upcountry, a channel for Country Music, straight out of Nashville, Tennessee. Having no previous initiation into the genre, I fell in love hook, line & sinker with the genre. Some days the country songs give me a strong feeling of a previous life spent in the grasp of country music. This is one cosmic connection I need to decipher; if it takes me going all the way to the place, so be it!


So much has she become a part of my daily existence, that when I know she's gonna fade away in the next few days, I feel like I'm losing a beloved, who's been diagnosed with an advanced stage of a fatal disease, and has only little time to live, and yet doesn't still know about it. So she goes about humming her manifold tunes through the days, and I just smile achingly back at her, holding back my pain, yet approving of & thanking her for another blessed day she's been with me through.


On second thoughts, I question her destiny of having to go away. Why can't some big industrialist buy out her sick parent company, and revive her. I'm sure her fans will be ready to shell out much more than now to keep her with them. 


But in my heart, I know this is not the end. She'll be born again, somewhere, in some other form, and I shall wait for her to come back, and sing to me again. So long, my friend. Here's to a misty eyed farewell.


R.I.P. Worldspace! Long live the music

An Ode To Phuntsukh Wangdoo

"Give me some sunshine, 

give me some rain,

give me another chance,

(I) wanna grow up once again..."

A dejected final year student, Joy Lobo strums the melody on his guitar, minutes after having his invention-in-the-works, the camera-coptor trashed, alongside the dream of making his dad proud of 'the first engineer to come out of their village'. A couple of scenes later, the gizmo does fly, capturing the hostel life in myriad moods, courtesy the three protagonists of the film, culminating a song, which ends in the horror of them finding the inventor hanging from his room fan, captured on the telly connected to the gizmo flying up the hostel storeys. You know Joy's fait accompli even as the song begins, but the spectre of the suicide stays with you, in your shudder. The scene is simply one of the most memorable seen this year!

'Its not a suicide, its murder' says Rancho (Aamir Khan), and you agree. Its a telling aftermath of the rat race that our education system has become. That poignant fact kept in mind, the movie doesn't fall into a dreary treatise on the subject: it sings, dances, revels in toilet humour (sans the vulgarity), gives you lump in the throat several times over, travels far with incredulity & clichés, but never goes off-track with its core philosophy: proud to be an IDIOT (I Do It On (My) Terms)!

You're still wondering who the hell is Phuntsukh Wangdoo, if you haven't yet caught the movie. Go, figure, but when you do, you'll agree of it being the first time a Tibetan has been incorporated into a mainstream Indian film, and you feel that the actor who plays him, actually looks the part! 

Its when you rise up from your seat, as the end credit rolls, you thank actors like Aamir (and even Abhay Deol) for making you eagerly await their next piece of work. Each moment spent before it & during it is well worth & some more! From Ram Shankar Nikumbh, to Sanjay Singhania, to Ranchhoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad (yes, that's what the moniker Rancho expands to) in a space of three Christmases, Aamir makes every other actor of his generation look like wanna-bes. Its the characters you watch for those 3 odd hours (including a successful suspension of disbelief here on a 44 year old playing an under-grad) and not the actor behind them, very unlike some 'superstars' who play a variation of themselves in all that they do.

Of course, you do cringe occasionally at howlers like final year students staying in a 3-seater room, but then again, the movie still is decently researched. And yes, its not completely '5 Point Someone', but different, and jolly good fun! In fact, the difference makes the movie a fresh experience, unread of, in the book which inspired it.

The music of the film appeared bland in comparison to some of Aamir's earlier ones before entering the theatre, but at least a couple of songs grow on you, and stay with you, most likely to be 'Sunshine' and 'Behti Hawa Sa'. Even the talismanic 'Aal Iz Well' turns out a bright spot in the scheme of things. Songs weave themselves into the narrative as fluidly as the roller-coaster of emotions written into the script, where you smile one second, go misty eyed the other.

And you also catch your guilt pangs of laughing at Raju's (Sherman Joshi) poor household, spinster sister, maudlin mother & a paralysed dad: where other movies make you go for the handkerchief, Raju Hirani & Abhijat Joshi's script makes you chuckle, yet not falling into a mock slapstick. And you wonder also at the comic Chatur Ramalingam (Omi), or Viru Sahasrabuddhe or Virus (Boman Irani) being worked out of typical bollywood definition of South Indians or professors, but you're ready to barter all that for a handful of good laughs these characters evoke.

The cinematography really should come in for some generous compliments for making the Shimla-Manali-Leh road look like American highways, as also capturing the beauty en-route dreamily. It has a convert in me, now wanting to master that route by bike sometime soon.

So, will the movie become a phenomenon? You bet, it will. It will sit pretty, in its own right, up there with the serious messages conveyed emphatically in RDB & TZP. Will I watch it again, paying 300 bucks? You bet again! In fact, quite feel like doing what Madhavan & Sherman do in a 'hats-off' scene for Aamir: pull down their pants, bow in salute, and say" Jahanpanaah, tussi great ho!"