I went a long time hoping no one in my part of this world would ever, ever discover this cover because it's so perfect but we'll have no more of that, thank you. Before this my favourite version used to be the Fran Healy cover on Storytellers, I remember watching it on TV and it turned me inside out right in the middle of the living room sofa, but that's nothing compared to the meltdown of this song. I unfailingly wake up once a month to these PMS Saturday mornings where I want to scream and scream like a baboon on stimulants but I turn one song on repeat instead, and this is it today.

When 4nombor ejected a mass of lurching human effluent out onto Jadavpur at eleven last night I was thinking of Jhini. I was wondering why they didn't play it. Doesn't matter. Right through the noise and the smoke from the last two stairs of the OAT, I heard you clear and true except where I couldn't. That, in retrospect, matters some more. No matter, a little late is never too late.

Best versions ever, one and two. I could pinpoint the exact moment when the goosebumps start, both cases. The original somewhere in the middle of 9 felt pretty good too but there's a good chance I was just very baked then and taken by surprise, I'm always floored by animated things in general at times like these. I lie, I'm floored by animated things in general all the bloody time.

What cost happiness? I really miss having a music player. It pierced me the deepest this morning sitting bang in the middle of a swank deserted street somewhere in Sector5 at five thirty, shivering with excitement at the fact that it finally felt like October right then, dry leaves and a tepid chilliness, the works. I had Soham's iPod on and found a lot of old early morning music, it made me weary of having to switch my computer on every morning and getting through startup. No more Walkmen, and my iPod might never be resurrected so maybe I should get myself a new one? This is a good thing, I think, to be able to watch things happen with a soundtrack that sticks because they pierce you deep, the songs (like all things you miss without validation), even if it's just a pack of dogs sniffing each others' bottoms down the road at this particular moment.

Here's a chronological list of what I heard twice over in the one hour spent waiting for the unit to arrive: CSNY - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Ben E.King - Stand By Me, Eddie Cochran - Summertime Blues, Otis Redding - Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay, Prince - Little Red Corvette, The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again. Alphabetically too, you can see I worked my way down a playlist. I think it was mostly stuff from that 500 greatest songs of all time list, I played the Redding one extra time not because I love him, even though I do, but because it felt curiously pleasantly painfully apt. Sitting in the morning sun, I'll be sitting when the evening comes. I'll beat the lot of you at being placid on mornings like this.

पसंदीदा आदमी है वह जो सूट पहन कर भी रॉकस्टार लगे।
(Oh wait)

My two favourite cassettes to play all day when I was a kid were Teesri Manzil and Caravan; I knew the lyrics to every song and had watched the movies at least twice, and Caravan in particular was the kind of world I always wanted to live in. Happy bubble orange yellow sequinned clothes, you know, and feathers in your hair and general mayhem rounded off with campfires and dancing, that kind of world.

So I had this starved visual wackiness mood going all evening and YouTubed all my favourite seventies Bollywood songs. I can tell some things are wrong (and even depraved, sirs) because I've been exposed to feminism and colour palettes and shit, but so much more is awesome.

- Like Rajesh Khanna growling. Growling.

- Or people dancing with featherdusters. Also this song with the line sunta hai re babua, tu hi mera nahua.

- Or harem pants plus roller skates. How farsighted is that.

- Helennn. (Again Caravan, but seriously, this movie's the shit.)

- (Inexplicable)

- And spiky disco balls.

- Plus two from the sixties. Giant paintbrushes and flamenco dancers versus that thing in Asha Parekh's hair.


These are the ones I remember. Of course bethlovesbollywood has a much crazier archive, I just wanted these at hand for later, later as in hah, you'll never know when I've been watching these later.

I'm spamming my own blog, haha. It's been years since I've heard it but my shuffle played Janis Joplin's cover of Summertime and I've been tripping on it for the past hour, waiting for every inflection, every slur, e-v-e-r-y slur. If I could ever be in love with purring it would be her kind. It's probably my favourite version of the song ever, so much more powerful than the Nina Simone version, or the soundtrackish version that Colin Meloy did some time back. More chilling than the Miles Davis version too, but then with him it's the entire album that does the trick more than the song. The thing about Joplin, I think, is how in spite of the beads and the crazy hair and the hammy smile she could make a song sound like many more variations of itself simultaneously, you feel rather than hear her voice break and it's suddenly so much more than just a song. Uncluttered, stripped down, painful. That's more than a gift. Explains a lot, but surprise surprise, I'm unthwartable today and the living's so darn easy I could turn into a leech and still be happy.

Had a perfect Pinch Me kind of day. Like in the song. On an evening such as this, it's hard to tell if I exist. Like that. Because it rained the sky went mellow and everything looked like it had a vintage filter added onto high contrast, it's tragic this is the only analogy I can come up with but it will have to do. Made one think, all the strange hazy yellowness. Mostly of words, because after all the vintageness the evening gave way to something best defined by darkling; I was reminded of watching an electric tower from my old terrace, on evenings like this I'd be up there dragging bricks around on the floor making rusty floor plans and maps and things. Then I went home and overdosed on nostalgia. There was crackly old music on, then my shuffle played Guilty and there was more crackling and this overwhelming feeling of being weighed down by things, a heavy head and all the oldness of having lived during times that had things like film cameras and water coolers and cassettes. I miss cassettes, I miss winding and unwinding them. Then I decided to clean a little and came upon this book I looked at a lot as a kid, this photography catalogue for some competition themed "What Is Knowledge?", and as sanctimonious as the title sounds, it has some of my favourite photographs ever, grainy nineties images of people with shiny skin and sun spots on landscapes and slight shakiness towards the edges, I miss the shakiness too.

At dinnertime my mum was watching Dil Toh Pagal Hai on some channel, it reminded me of the time I was freezing my ass off at Kedarnath, '97 or '98, and was asked to wipe some spilt tea on the bed with a newspaper, but I refused to because it had a picture from the movie in it. Not only did I refuse, I jumped up and down saying "AAMAR SHAH RUKH AAMAR SHAH RUKH". It's profusely embarrassing now that I've rewatched bits of the movie but not so much, all things go.

Yeah, so all sorts of funny things are happening all around, but a good kind of funny, a steady comforting kind of funny. Like in the song, I could leave but I'll just stay. Aami ekta joyant. I'll topple over and chuckle myself silly any second.

New post today! I will write about this thing, not ideas about the thing but the thing itself, everyone knows the deal. I will paint my nails purple and pretend I'm playing an instrument so that I can see my fingers curled. As the night progresses I will worry about not getting enough sleep and continue reading the internet as opposed to the book lying on my bed, I'm in one of my poetry moods. I will create a resume by two thirty if it kills me and send it off. I will wander through (through? It's five by six by my reckoning) the kitchen and look for biscuits. I will tie up the curtains and resist the temptation to paint my bedside lamp sunflower yellow. Now that I have nothing but the summer to look forward to, not ideas about the summer but the summer itself, I will write a new post everyday. Mostly because it'll turn out that there's very little I can not write about through a summer in the city, italicise in. In that respect I suppose a summer is like a prison term, or an Art of Living course maybe. If all else fails there are the gulmohars, but I just remembered, summer in the city means cleavage cleavage cleavage. First song this morning.

Flautists and harpists and potato-chip slicers do not go together. Neither do I picture you in the sun and Once I had a love and it was a gas. Or bhyaan bhyaan and hum kaale hain toh kya hua dilwale hain. Most things do not go together if you spare them a thought, consider tea and biscuits.

I am grateful today for my shuffle playing Mr. Blue Sky first and then moving onto Fly Me To The Moon. I am grateful for happy music and the things it does to you when you're sitting on the floor of your room staring out at the sun steal over the roadstrip, it's out properly now so the curtains have been pulled. I don't get to read much nowadays, I've been hanging onto English Passengers for so long it isn't funny, even though it's not a slow book and I'm not a slow reader. And so many new acquisitions, Wodehouse on Wodehouse, Fu-Manchu, Jonathan Strange, I want to sit down and read but I get tired very fast, there's more music around me nowadays. I sing more now, bleating into my pillowcase at night and screaming myself hoarse in the shower and lets not talk about the guitar coming out but there it is, I'm grateful today for the kind of nice morning that gets you sappy and singing at seven a.m. I love this city because it's yellow at heart. Maybe I'll run around screaming YOU MAKE MY HEART SING today. I don't know. I like not knowing almost as much as I like finding out :)

Apreel Fool Banaya?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
shutupandsleepwithmec'monwhydon'tyousleepwithmeshutupandsleepwithmecomeonuhhuhandsleepwithmeshutupandsleepwithmecomeonwhydon'tyousleepwithmeshutupandsleepwithmuhhuhwhydon'tyousleepwithmeeee

On a bad day it'd sound like Aqua, I think.

But there's always a neutraliser.

If I could do just one near-perfect thing I'd be happy, they'd write it on my grave or when they scattered my ashes. On second thoughts I'd rather hang around and be theeeere with my best friend if she wants me (paaon paaon paaon paaon)

Hahahahaha. Raichak on loop.

The Crane Wife by The Decemberists has one of my most favourite pieces of music ever. It's called The Island: Come and See/ The Landlord's Daughter/ You'll Not Feel The Drowning. I like everything about the song, the vocals and the arrangements but especially the last bit about the little ugly, in fact it's that bit that tips it for me mostly. I've owned a little ugly through different parts of my life, a stuffed green toy with goggly eyes, a lizard with a lumpy head, a really misshapen backpack, a velvet jungle-print teeshirt. I loved them beyond reason and logic and for the same reason that all little uglies are loved, so it makes me kind of sad. It's not like all little uglies have to go, there was a time I wanted to collect every one I could gather and keep them with me, be another Champion of Small Uglies, only in a different way. But things give out, now it's more of which of the uglies to keep and which to throw out because my world's no longer small enough to accommodate just a few. That's the melancholy bit. Otherwise, hey, I'm a little ugly too =)

I've been listening to a lot of slow jammy jazzy music lately. Tea Leaf Green, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Erik Truffaz, also Corinne Bailley Rae because her voice is one of the best things you can wake up to on a winter morning. For songs that are so mournful in general the music as a whole never fails at achieving all the non-paranoia and un-nerviness that I want, so there are quilts and blankets and there is the music and there is a happy little feverish blob somewhere in the middle trying to read Greek tragedy. Sometimes I'm inordinately proud of how nerdy I can be because it's all I have till the non-productivity kicks in. I'm fine this year, six days and I can tell I'm fine and that I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be so darn fine that there will be nothing but nauseating finery and fineness all around.

I could do with a copy of On The Road to call my own but I need to watch fussday fussshow Sherlock Holmes this Friday, hence I am a tangle of wool. Come next week I shall jobhunt to the point of slobbering over not nice people, three times over I swear it.

foolcool.

My current favourite most-awesome thing-to-do is wordsearch my media library to see what kind of music turns up. Typing in the word "fool" gives me this beautiful playlist. Sinatra's My Foolish Heart, and Queen's You Don't Fool Me, and Fool in the Rain and (tada tada) Won't Get Fooled Again and Fool to Cry, and Fool's Paradise by Don Mclean and Young and Foolish by Corinne Bailey Rae.

And Fool on the Hill, always Fool on the Hill, multiple versions.

Some surprises also, like Lovefools, which I hated earlier but now has grown on me, and Get Balsamic Vinegar and Michael Buble's Kissing a Fool, and just when I thought things like these don't happen, Jamiroquai's Love Foolosophy. There are others, it's almost two hours long. The longest wordsearch playlists I get, incidentally, are 'love', 'life', 'death' and 'dream'. But fool's more surprising, like the first song this morning.

=)

Oh man. I hate Regina Spektor's new album so much it hurts. Mainly because I loved her earlier work so much it hurt. I hate it that the simplicity's gone and everything's now arranged and synthesized and very obviously melodic (melodious?), and there are no fun parts and no fun lyrics and she doesn't suddenly slam her fingers down on the piano in the middle of a song anymore. I used to like that discordant feel. And now there's nothing quirky, nothing startling. I'm not really a pop music hater but it's sad when everything starts becoming popsical. Music heartbreaks always hurt that way.

I've realised that much of my mood throughout the day depends on the kind of tea I brew in the morning plus the strength of the song my shuffle chooses to play first. It's my daily dose of humility, the way something inside my computer seems to know what to do. Today I chucked some ginger in my tea and mulled over some Plans and had almost decided to take a bath but then I heard an opening I know well. Paint a Vulgar Picture. Haha. Haha. Bully for you, Morrissey. And for you, Higher Power hiding in my software.

Operation PPR starts NOW. Nalayak, vardi utaarke phenk de. Bas. Updates to follow.

There is this house on the way to Arindam's place. It looks like a rath, no kidding. There is bright new yellow paint and purple borders and extra detailing on the latticework till it beams down on everyone walking along the road like a large eggyolk moulded into a cuboid. The colour is what does the trick, but so is the fact that every other building on the street has peeling paint and rusty bolts on it trying to look like it's not secretly appalled. All this ostentation.

Passersby stare at the building a lot, naturally, but what they don't know is that it comes alive at night, moves neatly out of the space it occupies like a book flying off a shelf, and goes up and down the street, imagine that. Maybe it acts like a video game, moves through the streets like in a maze it has to navigate. I want to communicate to the world how exactly a building going up and down a sleeping street at night is scary, like Pacman on a larger scale, but it's beyond me now so I'll talk about love, everyone does that so it must be safe.

The deal is, there's a reason Frank Sinatra's the patron saint of unrequited love, I forget who called him that first. With others I get the feeling like they've known love and lost it, and so they write a sad song because they've a right to it, who doesn't. A Leonard Cohen or a Billy Joel works that way and it's allright, but this guy, I get the feeling that he's never had the chance because he's always been a little too fond of being alone. I don't know why. There's a reason a Sinatra song goes I Get a Kick Out of You and sounds like the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. You don't get that all the time. You especially don't get it if he's thinking of making things go right, it's like he doesn't care except that at that point of time it's better than nothing to do. Even New York, New York, it's the happiest song in the world but there has to be a reason he's leaving. I don't know why this gets me all weepy but it does, just the fact that I can still want to philosophise about Something Stupid, bloody Something Stupid, which goes back a good seven years, hmm. I really need to find cooler things to talk about.

On a completely different note, behold my eloquence.

Five epiphanies off my shuffle this morning:

1. Free Ride: Nick Drake
2. The Trapeze Swinger: Iron and Wine
3. We Will Become Silhouettes: The Postal Service
4. Hard to Concentrate: The Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Tourist: Athlete

Why this is important is because it's today and it's raining and I'm going to spend another half an hour sitting on the floor with the curtains drawn. There is a very good chance I will get up and dance around in striped socks, give it another seven minutes. Sometimes I think I shall die of this euphoria but there is always solemnity around when you don't want it to be, like a black hole at the end of a tunnel all lit up. Another seven minutes and I shall be goofy as I want to before I get down to crossing streets and watching where I walk in case I'm stepping on a pool of spit again. And in case I didn't mention it, tralala.