Playback Time!!!

"I can't see a thing in the video! I can't hear a sound on the radio! In stereo, in the static age!!"

Green Day is blaring into my ears while I hear some other yells to. My mum's. She's threatening to sue me against criminal charges of room untidiness for the (n-1)th time.


"Abhi, I'm coming there... What the hell are you doing??"

*Comes inside*


"Oh...still listening to that jhaang jhaang, are we?"

Though my headphones aren't those Bose Noise Cancellation type, I pretend I can't hear anything else except Billie's guttural screaming amidst blaring guitars and high-decibel drums.



"Abhi!! Last time I'm saying this!"

Okay madam, you win.. I know my nth time has come...

"Amma, no jhaang jhaang bang bang. It has a name. Rock music"

"Nonsense is nonsense, whatever the name... Clean up the room in 15 minutes, there would be some guests"

Phooey... "Alright.."



Dhan-Te-Nan!!
Room cleaned up! I mean...all the garbage is hidden in very unlikely places. Very. So what do I do now? I contemplate telling my mum I have this ever-so-important work that wouldn't happen without my presence. But as with every mother in the universe (Ok, at least on earth. Dunno much about aliens' maternal traits), son playing a respecting, and respectable, host is one of the prime things in her household constitution (which, by the way, is to be treated with even more respect). My legs are tied! I can't go anywhere!!

Fuming loud enough for her to notice, I switch on my PC and start downloading random music. Yaah, I do download free (p..p..pirated, that is) music. If I had to buy all my collection, I'd have to rob the World Bank.

Now while those tracks get downloaded, I wanna talk to you guys about something. The current music scene. There's so much 100% concentrated bullcrap out there that finding some sensible stuff is close to finding fat in an FTV model's diet.

Let's begin with Hip Hop. I can remember a few modern rappers...Eminem, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Li'l Wayne, Akon, 50 Cent...yeah that's about it. For more names, ask any twelve year old in your neighborhood. He'd give you a disgusted look and say, "Yo dunn noe dem?? Dey er kewwl buddyyy!!!". Hip Hop actually originated as an anti-establishment genre in the late '70s and the early '80s,mainly by the black section in America's slums, who were looked down upon. They used it as a weapon to fight for their basic human rights in the white-dominated society. But is that the case now? All that the above mentioned rappers ever rap, or rather crap, about is "banging hoes and bitches". And that is "kewl" to most of the world's population. This makes these "homies" celebrities overnight, even though they have zilch talent...and their capitalistic record companies get bloody rich by producing shit. Wonderful, ain't it?

Next is the 'pink pop' trend. Don't get what I'm talking about? Watch Disney Channel everyday. You'll come across a bunch of teenagers calling themselves hip rockstars, though what they make hardly qualifies as music...leave alone rock. All their meaningless tracks sound awfully same. The Jonas Jokers, Banana Montana...you name them! What they're promoting is a fake culture that 'inspires' kids to be bland, shallow, artificial and to live fancy, starry starry lives. I had got so fed up with all this shit, and its effect on the music culture, that it felt really good when my favorite activist band Rage Against The Machine got UK Christmas No.1 last year, beating reality show X-Factor's winner Joe McElderry by a major difference. Poor Simon Cowell, the producer behind this X-Factor popstar manufacture, sulked like a five year old robbed of his prized lollipop when his 'product' lost the race. In Tom Morello's (the lead guitarist of RATM) words, "It's a victory over bland pop mediocrity". The track which brought them, and true music fans around the globe, this victory is a song that's as old as me now...'Killing in the Name', a brutal funk metal delight that talks about the ill-treatment meted out to soldiers in the U.S. Army. Now that's what you call REAL music.

By saying this, I don't mean Rock and Metal are superior genres or political and activist lyrics alone make meaningful stuff. Whatever the genre, the artists should be talented enough to reinvent themselves creatively, giving birth to innovative songs...and thoughtful enough to write about things that really matter and truly make a difference.
This, and this alone, qualifies as music. Nothing else does.

So plug in guys...it's playback time!!!

Dude, what's your New Year revelation?

New Year's was just a week away. Like always, a bunch of guys perched on a wall at the street corner after a volleyball game which ended in a messy fight with the local rivals.

  "Man, look...hottie!"
  "Yeah shes hot af... But hey listen, are you making any New Year resolutions?"
  "Not yet. But ya, I made one last year. Not to look at girls."
  "Cool. Kept it?"
  "Umm...tried to. You made any last year?"
  "Yup, not to waste time on goalless pursuits."
  "And kept it?"
The other guy stared at him blankly. Silence ensued.



The things that tag along with a new year are quite fascinating... Parties, greeting cards, gifts, top-ten lists that lifestyle magazines give out, heart-stopping mobile bills and of course, resolutions! Resolutions, in particular, are wonderful to think and talk about.... You ditch old ones, and make many more new ones. You know, like those malls which come up with crazy festive deals... Get your old jeans and take home a brand new pair!! (But duh, pay 1000 bucks extra. Didn't you notice that little asterisk in our ad?).

So that's the thing, resolutions come at a price. We have to lose something else in order to stick to them and generally we are so broke that we can't afford to do the same. Whether you wish to lose weight, hit the gym, shop less, spend less or try meditation (the keyword here is 'try', not 'turn to'), you gotta have a hell lotta conviction and patience. Personally, I don't have such kinda self-control. Calling me a guy with self-control would be like calling Metallica a mushy band...

On a more serious note, why do we make resolutions in the first place? We all want to be better people at the end of the day. We want change in our lives. The coming year should be better than the past one. Same old life sucks...variety maangtha hai yaar! In this search for that elusive 'variety', we keep planning everything in advance...and all those plans go kaput. So instead of planning things, why don't we just be spontaneous in our decisions and actions? That would save so much time!! And considering the fact that we have such a short life...all those moments can be LIVED, rather than being wasted on fruitless life-analysis.

The past, sticky, won't let me go... The future, slippery, won't let me hold... The present...is all that I know.

Yeah, this is my New Year revelation. What's yours?

Starry tantrums and Sanity clutches...

The other day, I was watching a bakwaas show on a stupid channel on the idiot box (Yeah, even then I was watching it. Don't ask why). It was a show on how movie stars party, how they step out in style, blah, blah, blah...

Suddenly, a VJ wearing 4-inch high stilettos popped out of nowhere and was trying very hard to put on a pout like that of Marilyn Monroe. I really appreciate her effort, but it was more like a duck's beak. Anyway, so this female kept blabbering about one particular "celebrity", who freaked out at her assistant for getting her a second-rate party clutch (Oops!!). Bechari celeb, she had to attend a high-profile party the next day clutching the wrong clutch!

Needless to say, the fashion police termed it a serious crime and debated on how people's fashion sense is going down these days. Now that was a major fault on the assistant's part,psst...

And so, the question(s) must be asked. Why is it that these so-called stars find it difficult to cope with the harsh reality (Not Reality TV, mind you) of life? Why can't they just behave the way normal people do?? Why? Why?? OK, too many questions lying unanswered there...

Moreover, our lady takes out time from her impossible schedule and gives an exclusive interview to another news channel who couldn't fill the evening slot with better news. After the obvious "We're just good friends" when asked about the seemingly close relationship with her latest co-star, she goes on to say about the party incident, "Oh goodness gracious!! THAAT was like a freakin' nightmare! You know,like...I am like err...a youth icon in this country and people try to emulate me (Yes, 'emulate' was the most complex word she could manage). So,umm...ya it was kinda embarassing."

I say, absolutely madamji...I envisage a whole nation of young girls carrying mismatching clutches to parties in the near future. Sad. And yes, it IS a mandatory thing for you oh-I'm-so-hot socialites to have designer vanity clutches. Gucci,Chanel,Armani...nothing less would do.
Or wait, should I call them 'sanity' clutches??