Pani Pani Re

I have resolved to consciously drink more water in a day, meaning I'll keep a count of how much water I have consumed in a day. Before I was not doing this counting stuff, so just could not realize how less water I was drinking. Recently for a week I did that and found out that on an average I just used to have 2.5 bottles of water a day, a tad lesser than 3 lt. :O

Which, I announce, before Maharashtra Government hears and assuming that I am not getting enough water, plans for some new kind of ban against Bangalore authorities, is entirely my fault, and I am trying hard to improve.

Now in case you are wondering that Maharashtra Government can really do something like this for you, I hear from the insiders that it can. Just that you need to be working against some dance bar for that privilege.

signing off,

Yesterday

My day so far is reminding me of the famous Beatles lyrics ... :-(

Yesterday

- The Beatles

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly

signing off,

Bloodshed of Two Different Kinds

Today has not been a good day. At least not for the Indian stock markets and for the Indian cricket team. Both have been slaughtered by enemies called Q4 results and Shahid Afridi.

Of course this is a time of Q4 results and people (read all tv business experts) were expecting this to be a little bearish period on markets. But no body did think it yesterday that it would hit it so hard. Sample this: Sensex down by some 220 points, Nifty down by 70 odd. Infosys itself is down by 145 points! Indeed quite harsh.

Speaking of harsh reality, Rahul Dravid would now realize it much better. He himself played well with Kaif and batting first we managed 250 on a wicket which has a record of low scores. At lunch he would have thought it was a fighting score. Unfortunately he did not account for Afridi. He blasted everyone on field without showing mercy. 100 of 46 balls usually means it is a piece of cake for rest of Pakistani team to achieve the target. And indeed it turned out to be child's play for them.

Now all I can do is to hope that the market and the team recover soon to come back strongly.

Amen!

signing off,

Dubbing

There have been movies made in India since eternity. And given so many languages we have, it comes as no surprise that no one wants to miss out on a opportunity to cash on a successful commercial movie made in some other language. Quite logical? It is.

Pardon me for such a boring start. But they say only way to get rid of bad mood is to spread it! :-)

Ok, back to the thing that has been bothering me for some time now. That is, why these people go ahead and "translate" even the songs from the original. Like the one I was hearing today from the movie Yuva. It was "Jana Gana Mana" from "Aayitha Ezhuthu" originally in Tamil, now sounding suspiciously like "Dhakka Lakka Bukka". Is this some kind of cryptic language, Mr. Mehboob? Or are they phoren language words? I may never know. Given that my Hindi or Urdu knowledge is quite poor, I even tried to look up these words in the dictionary. The dictionary hanged at my attempt.

There are some people specialized in this area it seems. This guy Mehmood leads the pack who has names like Bombay, Thakshak (Remember Jumbalaka?) and some more on his belt. There is one P K Mishra who had written the lyrics for Roja in Hindi. After that quite good effort, his subsequent works (like Hindustani) seemed that he was indeed writing them PK. I am tempted to divert to Srivastav PK after this, but first thing first.

In my opinion, one of the best dubbed lyrics have come in the movie Saathiya. Penned by the master Gulzar, one may never had found out that the songs were originally written in Tamil for Alai Payuthey unless he/she happened to know it. Writing lyrics for the music is never easy I hear. Gulzar saab has done it with panache. Just listen to the gem "Saathiya" sung by "Sonu Nigam"; music given by "A R Rahman". And you'd know what I mean. Some lyrics go like this:

kabhi neele aasmaan pe chalo ghumne chale hum
koi abhra mil gaya to jameen pe baras le hum
teri baali hil gayee hai
kabhi shab (=raat) chamak uthi hai
kabhi shaam khil gayee hai

tere baalon ki panah mein isi yaah raat gujare
teri kaali kaali aankhen koi ujli baat utare
teri ek haseen ke badle
meri yeh jameen le le
mera aasmaan le le

No wonder the combination got most of the accolades in music industry that year. Beautiful, beautiful song!

Now after writing this, I think, my Urdu and Hindi have definitely improved a bit :-)

signing off,