ChinmayC Blog

Just how many is too many? Well, a thought only. About ten years back, more relevantly for India, it was very difficult to get a credit card. The banks did not come to you then, you had to go to them—beg beg and convince. Getting one finally was considered an achievement. Now one is not enough. With banks calling you, emailing you, messaging you all the time and with most cards coming as lifetime free ones you just go merrily multiplying irrespective of your needs. Specially designed wallets are coming your way to accommodate your cardy crowd. It’s altogether a different matter how many of you are hooked into a never ending debt trap and how many are showing off without having the means to even come close to that kind of lifestyle. Just five years back, again more relevantly for India, many of us didn’t even know what a blog was. Forget how to create it. Now having one blog is not enough. You can go on creating just at the click of the mouse irrespective of whether you need it or not ...

‘Our ragas are based on time periods like the morning, afternoon, evening and late night hours. But the time slot now-a-days for concerts is 6pm to 10pm due to security reasons or whatever. If we exceed police will come and arrest the artists and the organizers. This means performances can be done only on a few limited ragas again and again. Morning and afternoon concerts are rare and late night concerts whether indoor or outdoor are impossible.’ Said santoor legend Pandit Shivkumar Sharma on 10th January, 2009 at a two-day seminar on ‘Reconsidering Fundamental Issues in Indian Art Music’ organized by ITC Sangeet Research Academy at NCPA, Mumbai. Panditji was speaking at the session on ‘Time Theory’. While making it clear that he was speaking neither for or against the time theory Pandit Shivkumar Sharma elaborated further, ‘In old days we were closer to nature and most concerts were organized outdoor with nature manifested in full glory. Now in air conditioned auditoriums time becom...

Today at the news room one newsreader was very angry at the state of things. On the top of continuing Indo-Pak tension following terror attacks we have petrol scarcity due to three day old strike of officers of Oil Public Sector Units who want a pay hike, prices of vegetables shooting up due to five day old strike by public transporters, frauds in Satyam (the word ‘ satyam ’ means ‘truth’) and all that. Fortunately the news reader was creative enough to do something constructive. She wrote out a poem on the dilemma of a common man and with our permission she visualized it in the form of a capsule story. We ran it in our evening bulletins. The poem narrates how a common man should react to everyday problems like bomb blasts, strikes, war worries, nature turnarounds and the like—all of which finally bog down upon the common man only. What we common folks should do? Fight on? Call for strikes? But against whom? We common folks; we common folks. Have mercy! Some common folks reacted very ...

Well, since I have got a third person report about it, a lot must have been missed in the observation process that a psycho-analyst needs for one's elementary analysis. The protagonist's age,gait, body-language and other non-verbal communication serve as vital inputs in the process of social/person perception. Anyways, but I still managed to analyse the following which ofcourse is not the last word over it: It seems that the elderly man is not health conscious and may be a compulsive chain smoker at a point of time in his life. He currently hails from a poor or lower socio-economic class. But it may not have been the case few years ago when he could afford to buy a cigarette on his own. MAY BE. Other possibility is that even if he can afford the drag of his own money today, he may be asking from strangers for seeking brief attention from non-judgmental people. Need for affiliation too is reflected to some extent. He and his wife may be looking after each other and his children ...