Madras, Music and Musings

Madras, Music and Musings

I was wondering after reading the success stories of a lot of bloggers "can I blog too?". As a guy beat up in science I can relate to the word "slog" easily, but the concept of the "blog" was cool to me and after a couple of months of reading good and a lot of pathetic blogs, I thought I can venture and try to do the same.

So I started to write up this blog. It has been about 15 minutes and I have chewed halfway through my pencil and my hair seems more unkempt than before. Maybe it was all that scratching I did trying to figure out what to write. How about if I start with music?

I am basically South-Indian (yeah thats right that country with more than a billion people). I guess my familial roots are a bit tangled. It had to dig its way through state borders. My grandad was born in Kerala but migrated to Tamil Nadu, to Madras to be precise (what? why am I not calling it Chennai). It's because Chennai sucks. I still fondly remember it as Madras and would never cease to call it that. I am glad some smart aleck did not change the airport codes from MAA to CHA. I guess a lot of bags with NRI goods would have strangely landed somewhere in Chatanooga, TN (CHA).

Damn, I seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. I said I would write about music but I strayed on to my roots and passion for the city I was born in. Lets get back to music. I dont know I have to be ashamed about this but when I stretch back my memory to check for my passion for music it seems only to date back to my high school days. Before that I guess any kind of music was good enough for me. Frankly I could not distinguish M.S. Subbalakshmi from Michael Jackson. That brings me to this amusing episode that one of my friends told me when I was in College. He was one of those rich kids with this dream of coming to the "land of the free". India seemed to choke him endlessly and he just wanted to break free (apologies to Freddie Mercury). He even had a chauffeur to drive him around the city and the one thing that he had in common with his driver was that they listened to music when they toured the city or when he was driven to college everyday. One day he noticed that Mr. Driver was listening to a audio tape (Yeah. it was the pre CD and DVD era) some classic hard rock songs. My friend was amazed at this and asked him how he he knew about Steppenwolf, Queen and even Pink Floyd if I was not mistaken. The reply was " Athellam onnum illa sir. Nan music kadaiku poi nalla "dish dishennu" sound ulla english music ketpen, andha allum athei record panni kudupar"