Sunday, March 15, 2009

Venus Earth Mars Part 1

There are some things that most guys (including me) will never get. Let me demonstrate.

Case 1:We cannot distinguish colors between purple,mulberry, orchid, lilac, lavender and so on. Purple is just one color for us and beyond that it can either be light or dark. Same goes for colors like beige, mauve, etc etc.

Case 2: I fail to understand how accessories are so important to an outfit. For any guy it will be one watch and maybe a set of shades. But most females will pay just as much attention to the extras like handbag, earrings, necklace, shoes, etc etc. as the pay for the outfit.

Case 3: Women will always have problems buying shoes. If there is an online store eg. finishline.com then the female will first search by color/design etc. before coming to the size aspect. The guy will first filter it out by size and then depending on brand/design/color and so on. Thus this will invariably lead to females buying up shoes which definitely will look great and may not be the most comfortable to wear (since they filtered out the size aspect at the end)

Case 4: If a guy gets a giftcard as his birthday gift he will be happy that someone did think about him enough to get him something. But if that same giftcard is given to a female then rest assured you will never hear from her again for the rest of your life.

Case 5: Hairstyle for a guy is either long,short and same goes for hair color, black or not and quantity too, you either have hair or you don't. But now for a female this becomes the litmus test whether you think about her enough or not. If you do not notice even a slight tweak in the hair settings then you will never hear from her again.

Enough for now but expect more cases in the future.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Modern day OST

Loved Amit Trivedi's Dev D and now after listening to a few from Gulaal hats off to Piyush Mishra as well. While Dev D was more about the all these different types and tastes of music i.e. Folksy / Rock / Wedding/ Psychedelic, Gulaal is more about the lyrics and poetry. (Of course I had to shamelessly download both these albums.)

It starts off with 'Ranaji' a regular mujra/item number (this song has been picturised on Paro (Mahie Gill btw)). Pay close attention here to the lyrics with references to 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan Invasions, and Coke/Pepsi. This witty number is followed by 'Yaara Maula' sung by Rahul Ram and Aushim (members of Indian Ocean.) For some reason this reminds me of Linkin Park's Session with thought provoking lyrics though. "Tum hi kal ke ho Shivaji, tum hi kal ke ho Sikandar".

Then theres 'Aarambh' an out an out war song with the drums and tutari giving us a nice effect. This is the perfect example of heroic poetry and one of the showpieces in the trailers. Shudh Hindi is the norm over here. Next is 'Aisi Sazaa' a very melancholy number sung by Shilpa Rao. Heavy lyrics again over here.

Next up is 'Sheher'. This one has a nu-age feel to it with 'Shudh' Hindi again. There are subtle references to this being the title track with references to Gulaal as 'Jis raat sheher mein khoon ki baarish aayi re' . Rekha Bharadwaj again makes another vocal apperance with 'Beedo'. However the previous item number was much better though. This one appears similar to Omkara's 'Namak Ishq Kaa'.

'Duniya' is next and another very dark track inspired from the Pyaasa song by Gurudutt 'Yeh duniya agar mill bhi jaaye toh kyaa hai'. In the words of Dhake, genius over here. The album finally closes down with 'Raat ke Musafir' which is almost devoid of an instrument alltogether. This track has to be listened in perfect silence its almost like meditation of sorts. The echoing lyrics give it a different touch alltogether almost surreal.

My friends often complain that ARR is not that great because more often than not the lyrics are sacrificed for some good music. Piyush Mishra gives us just that, lyrics in some good music. It would be interesting to see how Amit Trivedi, Piyush Mishra shape up. Remember that Vishal Bharadwaj had scored the music for Maachis and Satya and later gave us the superb Maqbool and Omkara.

Go and listen to Gulaal now and you won't regret it. Good lyrics are genius.
FYI Piyush Mishra is the same guy who gave us Dil Dance Maare - Tashan

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Opinions

Most of my friends have this thing about individualism. "I have my opinions and everyone else can go to hell." This is fine except when a heated debate/discussion is going on about certain sexist topics.

I usually try and stay out of discussions like these as I really am not that smart to think about 'hard issues' and also because I have better things to do/eat when something like this is in the air. Like last night there was this whole thing about women not being good in the field of computing/engineering etc. etc. so on and so forth. (Ok. There were two issues over here 1. the topic mentioned previously and 2.some delicious paav bhaaji n kanda.) As most people will guess I would anytime have gone with the latter choice.(As I did)

Getting back though I will say that today it would boil down to the monetary concerns in the end. Whoever can do their job faster/cheaper will win. (Take note that faster/cheaper does NOT imply that the outcome of the job was mediocre) Irrespective of any other conditions etc. etc. This is America, a hardcore capitalist state, the American business principle is ' We pay for brains.' So if a male can do a particular task in x number of days with y number of resources and the same days/resources are taken by a (similar) female then all other assumptions/outcomes are irrelevant.

Coming down to basics lets say we need 10 boxes each weighing 10 lbs to be moved from Point A to Point B in 10 mins. Now a male will/may be able to do this effortlessly. However the chances of a female ending up with a torn ligament/minor ache/cramps at the end of it are much higher than that of the male's. This is often confused with the notion of inferiority. Consider another scenario where child rearing etc. are concerned. It goes without saying that the female is by far the superior over here. (PLZ do not consider exceptions in the above cases like the world's best female weightlifter and the best male nurse.)

IMHO discussions like these are just a waste of time and energy as far as am concerned there are more worthwhile things to think about especially with the state of the economy as is. I would rather just laze and eat some good food rather than get involved in crap like this.