Thursday, December 10, 2009

MTV Rock On!

In a recently concluded series on MTV India, finally we got to see MTV giving us a show which was actually based on music. Well congratulation are in order! I hope the success of this series will prompt MTV to remove non sense like Roadies and other such programs and focus on producing more shows based on music.

A lot has been said about the contestants but this post is about the judges.

Well, to me, the guy who impressed the most was Ram Sampat. Before the show, I only knew Ram Sampat as some guy who sued the Roshan's for plagiarizing Sony Ericsson 'thump' soundtrack. I guess just like me there are many others who knew nothing more about him as well. During the course of this show I learned that Ram is famous in the ad. jingle circle and had released a rock album many years back, although it didn't gain much popularity. But this show has brought him out of ranks and established his career for sure. He now has several projects in pipeline that include directing music for bollywood movies and releasing another rock album. Well done Ram.

Kailash Kher, unfortunately for me, came out as a moron who doesn't really understand music. I found him picking up cues from Ram and Nikhil in order to make up his mind about a performance. I found his comments lacking in originality and I found him lacking in confidence and character. Later I checked out his old music videos (not just the hit ones and found a similar trait, I guess we all have overlooked this because of the fantastic voice he has). He is a great singer, no doubt, but I don't think he is a great judge. Also, he was there to judge the desipann quotient (I don't why he kept saying 'deshipann') of the contestants but I don't think he did that at all. Most of the time he was commenting only on the singers, that's just a proof of his limitations. I guess, if anybody has hurt himself in this show then it's Kailash Kher.

Nikhil Chinnapa was a delight to watch. He wasn't messing around with words. I don't think I have much to say about him except I think he lost his interest in the show towards the end, I mean the guy was absent in the last few episodes. But apart from that he was as pagal and as cool as he can be. Nothing more, nothing less.

One last thing, I must mention, is the website. For people like me who don't live in India the only way to watch this show was the internet. MTV India website is really bad. MTV Rock on's website was full of dead links, the videos were being uploaded way too late after the broadcast on TV (ITV's Britains Got Talent show was being uploaded the very next day) and the video quality was pathetic. It seems that MTV has outsourced the website maintenance to an incompetent company. For a media company like MTV, such poor maintenance of the website is unimaginable and unacceptable.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Autumn and Lily

The park near my home is telling me that autumn has completely set in. The orange, red, yellow of the leaves that had turned into brown is gone too. Thanks to the rain last Sunday, the leaves that were clinging on their branches couldn't hold on any longer and fell off. Leaving the tress behind to face the unforgiving winter alone. The park that was once brimming with life, color and excitement now lies barren, dark and lonely.

Just around the corner of this park is Hana kōnā, a small flower shop, owned by an old Japanese lady. Today, when I saw her setting up her shop for the evening, laying down the roses, tulips, lilies, daisies, orchids... Red, white, blue, pink, purple... sprinkling water over them and trimming the petals. I said to myself, "What! Spring? Now? Is this right? Surely, this isn't right. Why is she doing this? Why is she robbing me and everyone else the joy of waiting for the spring. When the buds will pop out of the branches and the trees will be full of beautiful flowers. Why can't we leave the somethings the way they are? Aren't we already we living artificial lives, manipulating our environment living in air conditioners and room heaters. Is there nothing called Seasons anymore?

I approached the shop, I read "Sale - only 198 yen per pc". The old lady saw me and gave me a little smile. I smiled back to her in response but more than that I was smiling over myself as I said to her, "One lily please!" and then said to myself, "Happy Birthday". :-)