Givvup Only Are There

Samtaben’s post has led to a massive comment discssion about financial independence for women. Oddly enough, I had recently been reflecting on financial independence and financial awareness among the women characters of late 1700s to early 1900s literature (English, that is). They are personal finance ninjas!

These women couldn’t inherit much property, and they couldn’t work either. This lack of financial independence led to acute financial awareness. They know how much their net worth is (and also how much the net worth of an eligible bachelor is). In Pride and Prejudice, we’re told Bingley’s annual income a mere fourteen paragraphs into the book. By contrast, The Diary of Bridget Jones doesn’t mention income or net worth at all in hard figures – it’s only alluded to in descriptions of where Bridget’s parents live, Mark Darcy’s job, and so forth. And then the rest of Pride and Prejudice goes on to talk about various quirks of inheritance, the income of various men, and so on and so forth. (And yes, there will be a blogpost or column at some point about how the book is about Goldman Sachs). In Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp knows exactly how indebted she is and how long she can keep her creditors at bay.And so on up to Saki in the early twentieth century, where there are so many female characters who talk about the interest rates on various bonds.

Then the Edwardian era starts, and we get PG Wodehouse and people start marrying for love instead of money. Money problems are now resolved by unleashing entrepreneurship – health farms, onion soup bars, buying rubber estates in Malaya – with the seed capital arranged through stealing diamond necklaces, holding pigs to ransom or simple blackmail. But there’s a sudden crashing of financial awareness – none of the characters is bothered about how much something yields. There’s a blissful unconcern for the mechanics of finance. Then again, there’s blissful unconcern for pretty much everything in Wodehouse, so perhaps I should go and reread Somerset Maugham and make sure this is the case throughout the era.

The Gift of the Magi (to be fair, it’s American) is written in 1906 and is a sort of turning point of financial awareness. Della knows that she’s broke, but has no idea of how much her hair is worth until she goes to get it appraised. On the other hand, she’s sort of financially independent – she doesn’t work, but she does run the household accounts herself. (Incidentally, I can’t read that story without rolling my eyes at that couple and the poor communication in their relationship. Here is xkcd’s much funnier take on the story.)

The odd thing is that while the women in Victorian literature is hyper-aware of what investments yield, my own relatives are not quite as keyed in. My (alive) grandma is paranoid about her cashflow and how she handles her accounts, but is clueless about investments. My aunts are better off in that they know about investments, but stick to fixed deposits and (sigh!) property. Actually, I now recall that this is not strictly true. In my childhood, my bua would not give me presents for my birthday as she didn’t know what I wanted, and she didn’t give me cash as she was afraid I would blow it all on riotous living. So she gave me US-64 units, and the Unit Trust of India blew it all on riotous living. But that is a separate matter. She was aware of mutual funds, is the point. However, she was the exception – my mum and other aunts usually stay away from financial securities, and park their money in the nearest available fixed deposit. Any shares were bought by the menfolk on behalf of the ladies, with the ladies usually not even aware of what they owned or what they were getting.

I was discussing this with Nilanjana Roy back when I was in Delhi last month, and she said that the financial ninjitsu was pretty common in Real Life India as well, because women would come into a marriage with nothing but their dowry. (I was a couple of beers down at this point, and they were the first beers of 2010, so I may not be repeating her words with great accuracy.) So this is weird. Is my family atypical in not having women who monitor their net worth madly, or is this an artifact of being Arya Samajis and so not putting dowry?

Beloved readers, put fundaes in the comments! What is your experience of financial awareness, and that of the women around you? Does it match Samtaben’s worries that women without financial independence have no financial awareness either? Does it match the Bronte sister’s characterisation of financially dependent women being acutely financially aware? Or are you in the happy position of being a financially aware and independent lady?

written by Aadisht \\ tags: bronte sisters, cashflow, edwardianism, financial awareness, financial independence, personal finance, pride and prejudice, rate of return, saki, victoriana, women

The Saga of Cormac the Skald, which I mentioned in my post on Icelandic awesomeness is notable for the badassery of its subjects, the beauty of its language, and many, many songs about ravens. Sample these:

The friend that I trusted has failed me
In the fight, and my hope is departed:
I speak what I know of; and note it,
Ye nobles, – I tell ye no leasing.
Lo, the raven is ready for carnage,
But rare are the friends who should succour.
Yet still let them scorn me and threaten,
I shrink not, I am not dismayed.

and

Of the reapers in harvest of Hilda
- Thou hast heard of it – four men and eight men
With the edges of Skrymir to aid me
I have urged to their flight from the battle.
Now the singer, the steward of Odin,
Hath smitten at last even Bersi
With the flame of the weapon that feedeth
The flocks of the carrion crows

and

I have smitten Toothgnasher and slain him,
And I smile at the pride of his boasting.
One more to my thirty I muster,
And, men! say ye this of the battle:
In the world not a lustier liveth
Among lords of the steed of the oar-bench;
Though by eld of my strength am I stinted
To stain the black wound-bird with blood.

The love songs are not spared:

I tell you, the goddess who glitters
With gold on the perch of the falcon,
The bride that I trusted, by beauty,
From the bield of my hand has been taken.
On the boat she makes glad in its gliding
She is gone from me, reft from me, ravished!
O shame, that we linger to save her,
Too sweet for the prey of the raven!

Nothing improves a love song like the presence of Corvidae.

Anyway, the presence of the ravens is only one instance of how hardcore the songs of the Icelandic sagas are. This led me to ask the obvious question – are there any Scandinavian metal bands which incorporate songs from the sagas into their lyrics. The natural person to ask was Rahul Raguram.

Rahul, being a cute guy, pointed me in the direction of Oakenshield and Amon Amarth. Oakenshield has in fact incorporated text from the Poetic Edda into their lyrics. At least, they claim to have done so. In their The Death of Baldr, I was hard pressed to make any lyrics out. Their name definitely takes its name from the Poetic Edda, specifically the Völuspá. And here’s a cool bit of triva – Tolkien took the name for the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield (the one who was King Under the Mountain) from the same source. Anyhow, here’s The Death of Baldr:

Googling also turned up this delightful webpage about Norse/ Asatru/ Heathen inspired music. There is chanting, folk, and of course metal. Such joy.

But can there be true joy without ravens? No. And therefore, here’s Oakenshield again, with Twa Corbies:

written by Aadisht \\ tags: asatru, baldr, baldur, carrion, cormac the skald, corvidae, crows, eyeballs, hugin, iceland, king under the mountain, low king, munin, norse, oakenshield, poetic edda, ragnarok, ravens, saga, the hobbit, viking metal

Last year, when Iceland’s Landsbanki collapsed, Great Britain invoked the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act to freeze all Icesave accounts opened by British depositors. Thus, while the British government was happy to bail out Northern Rock, it decided to give Iceland the shaft.

Perfidious Albion’s treachery was not to go unpunished for long! Six months later, Eyjafjallajokull erupted; and shut down European airspace. In what seems like divine justice, the United Kingdom was worst affected. British airports opened after six days of being shut down, well after continental Europe and Ireland.

If it is in fact divine justice, the divinity responsible is probably Surtr, the Norse fire-demon who is inspired by Icelandic volcanic activity. But even if you wish to stick with a rationalist view that does not rely on gods, demons or others, the English made a terrible mistake when they decided to screw Iceland, a country that is legendarily badass, as we can see in the old Icelandic sagas.

The Saga of Cormac the Skald, for instance, has this description of what Cormac did when someone showed insufficient politeness when offering him a black pudding:

Now, in the autumn, Narfi’s work it was to slaughter the sheep. Once, when Cormac came to Tunga, he saw Steingerd in the kitchen. Narfi stood by the kettle, and when they had finished the boiling, he took up a black-pudding and thrust it under Cormac’s nose, crying:

“Cormac, how would ye relish one?
Kettle-worms I call them.”

…

And in the evening when Cormac made ready to go home he saw Narfi, and bethought him of those churlish words. “I think, Narfi,” said he, “I am more like to knock thee down, than thou to rule my coming and going.” And with that struck him an axe- hammer-blow…

That’s right, he hit Narfi with an axe-hammer-blow for dissing a sausage. When vengeance is involved, things get even worse, as we see in Egil’s Saga:

Kveldulf had in his hand a battle-axe; but when he got on board, he bade his men go along the outer way by the gunwale and cut the tent from its forks, while he himself rushed aft to the stern-castle. And it is said that he then had a fit of shape-strength, as had also several of his comrades. They slew all that came in their way, the same did Skallagrim where he boarded the ship; nor did father and son stay hands till the ship was cleared. When Kveldulf came aft to the stern-castle, he brandished high his battle-axe, and smote Hallvard right through helm and head, so that the axe sank in even to the shaft; then he snatched it back towards him so forcibly that he whirled Hallvard aloft, and slung him overboard. Skallagrim cleared the forecastle, slaying Sigtrygg. Many men plunged into the sea; but Skallagrim’s men took one of the boats, and rowed after and slew all that were swimming.

They didn’t kill everyone. They kept a couple of people alive to go back to the king with this song:

‘For a noble warrior slain
Vengeance now on king is ta’en:
Wolf and eagle tread as prey
Princes born to sovereign sway.
Hallvard’s body cloven through
Headlong in the billows flew;
Wounds of wight once swift to fare
Swooping vulture’s beak doth tear.’

You get the picture. The impression conveyed is that when the Bride told Sofie Fatale that she was allowing her to keep her wicked life, she was merely scratching the surface of threatening messages.

With heritage like this, volcanic eruptions are only the beginning. When the British treated the Icelanders like terrorists, perhaps they did not realise that this could become a self-fulfilling epithet. With their economy in shambles, the Icelanders may now turn to the way of their forefathers and return to setting out in longboats and go a-viking on the British coast. Taking the names of Thor and Tyr, their depredations shall make Brown and Darling pay. Lindisfarne!

written by Aadisht \\ tags: alistair darling, battle-axe, black pudding, cormac, cormac the skald, egil, Eyjafjallajokull, gordon brown, iceland, kettle worm, lindisfarne, narfi, perfidious albion, reaving, revenge, saga, sausage, skald, slaying, surtr, vengeance, viking, volcano, vulcanism

In its latest attempt to ensure that the Marathi Manoos is provided a fuckall low-skill low-wage job, the MNS is now demanding that Bollywood producers stop using foreigners as backup dancers (or, you know, just sitting around in a nightclub) in song shoots and instead only employ local junior artists. If the producers cave, we will probably see a return to the days of the 80s or early 90s. It will be glorious, as the video below shoes:

Of far more interest was Rakhi Sawant’s reaction. She said that white girls are like lollipops that last only two days.

The mind boggles. I’ve never had a lollipop last more than ten minutes. Even in the glamorous west, lollipops have never gone beyond all-day suckers (which, as William pointed out, did not actually last all day). Where on earth does Rakhi Sawant buy her confectionery?

The whole affair forms one of the bizarre circular connects that eventually lead up to APJ Abdul Kalam that Pune Quizzing is so fond of. That is;

• Rakhi Sawant was once assaulted by bhangrapop singer Mika…
• who shares his name with Freddy Mercury soundalike Mika…
• who has performed a song called Lollipop…
• which is something that Rakhi Sawant has compared foreign girls to…
• Foreign Girls are also cheerleaders in IPL Twenty20…
• 2020 is the date for APJ Abdul Kalam’s vision

The whole affair is bewildering, but on the plus side, it’s left me with Mika’s Lollipop stuck in my head. I might as well pass it on. Enjoy:

written by Aadisht \\ tags: 50 cent, apj abdul kalam, backup dancer, cheerleaders, disco dancer, fugly, iplt20, jimmy, lil wayne, lollipop, maharashtra navnirman sena, marathi manoos, mika, rakhi sawant, vision 2020

I am following in Aishwarya’s footsteps and keeping a month-by-month record of everything I’ve read. Unlike her, I’m including only stuff I’ve read for the first time.

The February list is quite limited. This is because February was tiny, and also filled with lots of work and travel; and I couldn’t read a whole lot. So I’m cheating, and including a book started in January and completed in February; and one started in February and completed on the first of March. Here we go.

Millennium by Tom Holland: was decent-ish; but not as fun to read as some of the other popular histories I’d read in the recent past. I think I like single topic histories best – John Keay’s book on the Spice Route was awesome, and there was another one I can’t remember now about the California Gold Rush and its consequences. Millennium is about Europe and the spread of Christianity and nationalism between 800 and 1100 AD to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, so the scope was too broad for my tastes. Also, I realised while reading it that I was far more interested in how Christianity took root in France and Germany (though that’s a subject for a different blogpost).

Ludmila’s Broken English by DBC Pierre: It’s a piss-and-vinegar story where DBC Pierre lays into his characters and yells ‘You are all bastards!’ at them all through, which is fun to read; but other books have done it much much better – A Crate of Exploding Mangoes (which I read in October), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which I read last January), and of course the gold standard – Vanity Fair.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: The problem with coming so late to a classic is that you already know the basic plot outline, and what’s going to happen. Even so, Ender’s Game was a mindfuck the way it lay the story out. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: I had a traumatic experience with Sense and Sensibility back in Class IX (or possibly Class X), and after reading fifteen pages gave up on Jane Austen. Finally I decided to give Pride and Prejudice a shot this year, thanks to the following reasons:

• Persuasion (heh heh, see what I did there?) by darling girlfriend to read it
• As a quizzer, it makes sense for me to go and read the original of something that has led to so much derivative work
• Spunky agreed to buy it for me to make up for not getting chocolates from Singapore duty free

Anyway, it was much easier getting through Pride and Prejudice this year than it was getting through Sense and Sensibility back in 1997. The only problem I faced was Jane Austen’s legendary subtle wit – unfortunately it was so subtle that I was never quite sure when sarcasm was intended. So it goes.

I have also concluded that the book is all about Goldman Sachs. However that is again a subject for a separate blogpost.

The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering by Ramesh Menon: It was recommended to me by Skimpy, who (I vaguely recall) said that Beatzo recommended it to him. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the recommendations. Ramesh Menon’s English was slightly overambitious in the first volume, and only the inherent awesomeness of the Mahabharata prevented me from giving up. Things got a little better in the second volume, where he switched the narrative to present tense, which was nicely suited to the grisly combat scenes. Tragically, I will now cherish the book not for the quality of Menon’s writing but for alerting me to the existence of KM Ganguli’s comprehensive translation (which is available online. Yay!)

written by Aadisht

Jet Airways has very few domestic planes equipped for inflight entertainment; but it’s inflight entertainment systems completely pwns Kingfisher’s inflight TV (which shows some shady Zee network channels, and horrors of horrors, Kambakht Ishq). You get touch screens, video and music on demand, the flight path interface is nicer; and quite a selection of movies and TV episodes. My dad, who travels Delhi-Chennai and back twice a month these days complains that they haven’t updated the selection in two months, but this was the first time I was traveling on a Jet flight with the entertainment system, so it was all new to me.

I wasn’t interested in either the Hindi or English movies they had, so I went through the TV section. They had an episode of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, which I liked, but somehow Ravikiran‘s raving about it had led me to expect more. Perhaps it was one of the weaker episodes, or perhaps the humour only comes through with multiple episodes. Anyhow. Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai was good, but what was really brilliant was that this flight got me on to Disney Channel shows - notably Sonny With A Chance. I loved Sonny With A Chance. It sent up soap operas, has a nerd-girl who builds catapults, and despite being a kid’s show, the writers sneaked in enough innuendo for a couple of That’s What She Said moments (“Stop blowing. Start talking.”). And they also did something I’m very fond of – setting up a joke in one segment, and then delivering the punchline much later¹ (the setup involves the catapult mentioned earlier). Oh, and this is for Rahul Raguram – according to Wikipedia, Demi Lovato is a fan of symphonic black metal band Dimmu Borgir. All in all, brilliant stuff, and I think I shall thulp the whole season soon.

I also saw The Suite Life on Deck, which was funny in parts (London Tipton! Bwahahhahah!), but not extraordinary; and Hannah Montana, which brings us to the second part of this post.

So… Hannah Montana. In case you don’t already know this, in Hannah Montana Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter Miley Cyrus play the country singer Robbie Ray Stewart and his daughter Miley Stewart. And Miley Stewart’s secret identity is Hannah Montana, teen pop-star. And frankly, the whole layers and layers of self-reference (or as the darling girlfriend puts it, “self-referencing her ass like yeah“) are a pain to sort out. The only thing worse is reading the Wikipedia entries of professional wrestlers, where trying to work out what the wrestler did as part of kayfabe, what the wrestler did as a side project, and what the wrestler got up to by accident, and what the wrestler does while he (or she) is at home leaves you dizzy.

But of course, Miley Stewart self-referencing Miley Cyrus and then the whole thing becoming a recursive joke through Hannah Montana is no more self-referential than all of Bollywood, especially the Bachchan family and Shah Rukh Khan. Shah Rukh Khan plays Shah Rukh Khan in Billu and Om Shanti Om, all the My Name is Khan promos try to be cute by having them man say that his name is Khan, and so on and so forth. And the father-son in-jokes every time Abhishek and Amitabh Bachchan are in the same movie got tiresome about five minutes after they started. (Here’s an old Jabberwock post on the subject.)

Which actually makes Miley Cyrus not as bad as Bollywood. In her case, one can at least blame the self-referencing on her faceless² corporate handlers at Disney. In Bollywood, there are no such corporate handlers, and the blame is all on the stars and the writers themselves.

The only thing that comes close is how almost every Colin Firth movie contains a reference to his Pride and Prejudice role, and even then, they’re only one off jokes and Colin Firth does not actually play Colin Firth. Except in Bridget Jones’ Diary, but every dog is allowed one bite.

Summing up: Referencing is sexy. Self-referencing is intellectual masturbation. In Bollywood’s case, though, it’s not even intellectual³.

¹: Terry Pratchett is the master of this. In Thief of Time, he sets up the joke by describing the abbot of a monastery having re-incarnated as a fully sentient baby; and then about eighty pages later delivers a punchline about him being in touch with his inner child. And though it’s implausible that he planned it that way, you could argue that he sets up a joke in The Light Fantastic by magically transforming the Librarian into an orang-utan; and then eight books later, in Moving Pictures, he delivers the punchline of having a screaming ape being carried up a tower by a giant woman being pure cinema. Eight books between setup and punchline is hardcore wait-for-it.
²:OK, not actually faceless in the metaphorical sense since Disney has an active brand (many active brands, in fact); and not faceless in the literal sense since it’s very unlikely that people working at Disney don’t have faces. Though the thought of Disney employing an army of featureless golems to manage Miley Cyrus’s career is sort of awesome.
³: Similar to how Professor Ramnath Narayanswamy once told my batch “The majority of you have indulged in creative bullshitting, most of it not even creative.”

written by Aadisht \\ tags: abhishek, amitabh, autofellatio, bachchan, billu, bollywood, catapult, circle jerk, colin firth, creative bullshitting, darcy, demi lovato, disney channel, genre, hai la, ham, hannah montana, helen fielding, inflight entertainment, Jet Airways, JetScreen, librarian, luck by chance, middle class, miley cyrus, om shanti om, pride and prejudice, sarabhai vs sarabhai, soap opera, sonny with a chance, terry pratchett, that's what she said, the suite life, twss, video on demand, wankery, zora

The Padma Purana contains the following story about the amla fruit:

Once upon a time, a chandala went into the forest for hunting. He hunted many deer and birds. Feeling hungry, he saw an amla tree and climbed up the tree. This way he satiated his hunger by eating sweet amla fruits. Unfortunately while he was climbing down the tree, he fell down and died. When the attendants of Yamaraj arrived to take back his soul, they could not do so even after repeated attempts. The attendants of Yamaraj became very surprised and went to the sages for clarification. The sages revealed to the attendants that they could not go near the chandala’s dead body, because he had eaten amla just before his death.

Such is the glory of amla!

I don’t know if this is a problem in the original text itself, or only in the English translation, but one crucial question remains unanswered – what happened to the dead guy afterwards? As far as I can see, the glory of amla is that it’s a Yamdoot repellent. What did it do for the unfortunate hunter?

Yamraj and his flunkies can’t take away the soul, so now the poor chap is stuck with a dead body and a soul that can’t move on. What happens next? Does he become a ghost that can’t move on? Does he wait for the effect of the amla to wear off so that Yamraj can collect his soul? Is that even possible, given the glory of amla?

Or – and this is the coolest alternative – does his soul re-animate the corpse and does he become a Puranic zombie hungering for braaaaaaiiiiiiins? Like Pride and Prejudice, Adi Shankaracharya’s debates with the members of the other sects would only become more awesome if they were attacked by zombies. (Pssst). (Also, pssst, this one via Kunal),

It is tragic that the Padma Purana (or perhaps its translators) did not inform us more. If dying while eating amla has adverse consequences, we would be able to take the appropriate precautions.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: adi shankaracharya, amla, braaaaiiiins, death, death and jai, death is a cutie, ghost, haunting, padma purana, pride and prejudice and zombies, vaikunth ekadashi, yama, yamdoot, yamraj, zombies

I mean, what tops Le Royale? Le Imperiale?

Wikipedia to the rescue. The Angus Third Pounder is not sold outside America and Canada (where it is called an Angus Deluxe in Ontario). No clarification, however, on whether this is because the rest of the world has the metric system, and wouldn’t know what the fuck a third pounder is.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: Angus Third Pounder, check out the big brain on brett, le big mac, le royale, McDonalds, quarter pounder with cheese, they got the metric system there

In F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, the main characters are an American couple called the Divers who are Page 3 People in the 1920s. They live on a hillside Villa over the French Riviera, where they throw parties for American tourists and expats. Unfortunately up to the 1920s Riviera hotels were open only in the winters and there would be no tourists in the summer. So they convince one particular hotel owner to keep his hotel open in the summer as well, so that the stream of guests for their parties never dries up. Eventually the hotel starts getting so many guests that the owner doesn’t even need the support of the Divers to make the summer season profitable.

When I read this, I was reminded of what the Adanis have done while constructing the Mundra port. The Adani steel plant isn’t viable without the port, so the steel company has become a part investor in the port project and is financing the rail link between the port and the existing Indian Railways network. Once the rail link is completed, Adani steel will benefit of course, but so will everyone else who wants to use the port (and of course so does the port).

Project finance epiphanies aside, Tender is the Night is one of the most disturbing books about adultery and breaking down marriages I’ve ever read. Now if only it wasn’t so indulgent of its main characters.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: adani, consumer surplus, customer, dick diver, infrastructure finance, mundra, nicole diver, page 3 people, ppp, project finance, public private partnership, railway, riviera, tender is the night

Something which has worried me since 2004 is Euphoria’s Maaeri. Is it actually an all-time great song, or do I just think so because it was lucky with its timing and came out just when me (and my batch) were in the grip of teenage angst and susceptible to any decent song about pain, lost love, and fickle/ missing/ unattainable women. When you’re in an engineering college where the education sucks, the extra-curricular scene is a wasteland, and there isn’t a single woman worth talking to (and not that many men either); hearing other people sing about being crushingly alone or having lost the love of their life provides the schadenfreude necessary to keep you going through those four years. And after four years of exploiting your angst, the song sticks with you and gives ou goosebumps even when you’re in a college full of strong junta, or have a job you enjoy, or have a darling girlfriend.

So as I was saying the question of whether Maaeri was actually a great song or just a lucky song that exploited our generation’s collective teenage angst when we actually had teenage angst plagued me. Finding an objective answer to this question was of vital importance, otherwise any Best Songs of All Times list we prepared could never be accurate. At one time, I seriously considered having a son just so I could shield him from Maaeri through his formative years and make him listen to it only once he had gotten over his teenage angst. In this way I would have a controlled environment in which to test the emotional appeal of the song. Eventually I realised that this would be child abuse, and besides, I could do it to anybody else’s son instead. If he too would respond to it by becoming senti, getting down on his knees and singing along loudly, we would have proof that Maaeri was actually a great song for all times and not just for our generation.

But this week, over a long conversation with my parents, aunt and cousin-in-law (the one who my cousin eloped with, thus bringing honour to the family), I think I’ve settled the question once and for all and so raising my own children or kidnapping other peoples’ won’t be necessary. Maaeri is in fact an all-time great song.

I realised this when I compared Maaeri to another song from the same time that also played heavily on teenage angst – Chaandni Raatein (youtube link, embedding is disabled). That had angstmax lines like दुखिया आँखें ढूँढ रही हैं कहीं प्यार की बातें (these miserable eyes are trying to find something about love anywhere). But the song didn’t even need that – the chorus was enough.

चांदनी रातें, चांदनी रातें / सब जग सोये हम जागें / तारों से करें बातें

(On moonlit nights, while the whole world sleeps, I stay awake and talk to the stars).

It just lays on the angst and pathos. It’s the senti engineer’s kryptonite. And if said senti engineers weren’t cynical enough to lay on the booze and weed, but not despo enough to pile on to women from Bhatinda (pronounced Bathinda), they pretty much had to spend their nights sitting around in the lawns loudly and tunelessly yowling Chaandni Raatein.

So back in the innocent days of the early 2000s – before global financial crises, before extraordinary rendition, before DJ Aqeel even – Chaandni Raatein had teenage angst well in its grip and was applying the olive press treatement too. But where is it today? Nobody remembers it. When I did remember it, I realised that it no longer affected me the way it used to.

But Maaeri is still going strong. The song (with or without the video) still gives me goosebumps. If only the fresh batch at IIMB weren’t such maggus who never came to L-Squares, we could do further tests and see if they dropped to their knees and started singing whenever it was played. I bet they would, despite all the magguness.

And now, the video:

You know, the video leads to another insight. It is very cliched, but the genius of Pradeep Sarkar is that he deploys familar tropes so effectively that an entire story can be told in a six minute video. You can see that in the Piya Basanti video too, and the Aana Meri Gully video (which even without the storytelling is awesome just by virtue of having young cute Sandhya Mridul in it):

Also, a couple of related links: Deepak Shenoy’s comment on my old Maaeri post, and the NITK Numbskulls on the all time best Indipop.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: all time greatest, chaandni raatein, child abuse, classic, euphoria, instrumental view of childrearing, maaeri, Quarterlife Crisis, senti, teenage angst, varun thakur bhaiyya, wangst