Babe BHANGRA Pounde Ne by Gurdas Maan

Bhangra Bhangra Bhangra…tall surds in suits and long grey beards bust some moves…

shake it grandpa!

BHANGRA MAN! Goodness Gracious Me…

What’s that in the sky? It’s a bird, no, a plane, no. It’s Bhangra Man! Ooh Chakdeeeee Phateeee!!!

Bangra Man and the evil Morris Dancers…

Punjabi Truck Driver and his many lady friends- Diesel Add

a Sardarji Truck Driver teaches us the merits of being polylingual. “Ya Vas Lublu, Ya Vas Lublu”. Blame it on the diesel with more mileage – HP Turbojet:)

Trippy tunes the Beatles made during their India travels

image from veda

“Within You Without You” was written on a harmonium at the house of long-time Beatles friend, Klaus Voormann, while “there were lots of joints being smoked”. It was written by George Harrison and recorded with a group of Indian musicians, without any input from his fellow Beatles. It was the second of Harrison’s songs to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music, after “Love You To”. It was released in 1967 on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the last song to be completed for the album.Harrison wrote this as a 30-minute piece. He trimmed it down into a mini-version for the album. The laughter at the end was Harrison’s idea to lighten the mood and follow the theme of the album. Sped up to C#, an instrumental version at the original speed and key appears on the Anthology 2 album.

info from wiki

Harrison took his Hindu teachings most seriously, of all the Beatles. On the evening of 30 December 1999, Michael Abram broke into the Harrisons’ Friar Park home in Henley-on-Thames and stabbed George multiple times, ultimately puncturing his lung. Harrison and his wife, Olivia, fought the intruder and detained him for the police. Severely injured, it is said that George went out into his back garden and chanted “Hari Krishna.” till he received medical assistance.

image from vedicbooks

The song is basically about the Hindu and Buddhist idea of maya, the illusions which can prevent us from self actualizing, and of course the idea of love as an emotion to be cultivated and practiced as a spiritual path.

Within you Without you lyrics:

“We were talking – about the space between us all
And the people – who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth – then it’s far too late – when they pass away.”

“We were talking – about the love we all could share – when we find it
To try our best to hold it there – with our love.
With our love – We could save the world – if they only knew…
Try to realise it’s all within yourself, no one else can make you change.”

“And to see you’re really only very small
and life flows on within you and without you.”

“We were talking – about the love that’s gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul.
They don’t know. They can’t see. Are you one of them?
When you see beyond yourself then you may find,
peace of mind, is waiting there.”

“And the time will come when you see we’re all one,
and life flows on within you and without you.”

And this is a pretty trippy video to go along with the psychedelic rock

Across the Universe:

One night in 1967, the phrase “words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” came to Lennon, after hearing his then-wife Cynthia talking. Intrigued, he rushed to grab a paper and pencil. He began to write the rest of the lyrics, and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about them.

In the morning, Lennon found the paper on which he had written the lyrics and brought them down to his piano, where he began to play chords, and find pitches to match the words. The flavor of the song was heavily influenced by Lennon’s and The Beatles’ short-lived interest in Transcendental Meditation in late 1967–early 1968, when the song was composed. Based on this he added the mantra (Jai Guru Deva Om) to the piece, which served as a link between the bridge and verse.

The structure of the lyrics is straightforward: three repetitions of a unit consisting of a verse, the line “Jai Guru Deva Om”, and the line “Nothing’s gonna change my world” repeated four times. The lyrics are highly image-based, with abstract concepts reified with phrases like thoughts “meandering”, words “slithering”, and undying love “shining”. The title phrase “across the universe” appears at intervals to finish lines.In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Lennon referred to the song as perhaps the best, most poetic lyrics he ever wrote.

info from wiki

John and Cynthia:
image from bbc

Across the Universe lyrics:

Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears
exciting and inviting me Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Here’s the song with footage of the Beatles at the Rishikesh Ashram:

“Sexy Sadie” is a song about the Beatles getting disillusioned by the Maharishi who had been their guru at the ashram. “Sadie” is really “sadhu”…..and so it goes “sexy sadhu….what have you done?” It was written by written by John Lennon (and Paul McCartney) in India.Originally titled “Maharishi”, the Beatles changed the title to “Sexy Sadie” to avoid the potential for litigation as the song’s lyrics portray the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in a less than favorable light. Lennon became discouraged after the Maharishi had allegedly made a pass at one of the female members of their entourage. Lennon once said of the song: “That was inspired by Maharishi. I wrote it when we had our bags packed and were leaving. It was the last piece I wrote before I left India. I just called him, ‘Sexy Sadie,’ instead of (sings) ‘Maharishi what have you done, you made a fool…’ I was just using the situation to write a song, rather calculatingly but also to express what I felt. I was leaving the Maharishi with a bad taste. You know, it seems that my partings are always not as nice as I’d like them to be.”

info from wiki

The maharishi:

Sexy Sadie lyrics:

Sexy Sadie what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone.
Sexy Sadie ooh what have you done?

Sexy Sadie you broke the rules
You layed it down for all to see
You layed it down for all to see
Sexy Sadie oooh you broke the rules.

One sunny day the world was waiting for a lover
She came along to turn on everyone
Sexy Sadie the greatest of them all.

Sexy Sadie how did you know
The world was waiting just for you
The world was waiting just for you
Sexy Sadie oooh how did you know.

Sexy Sadie you’ll get yours yet
However big you think you are
However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie oooh you’ll get yours yet.

We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table
Just a smile would lighten everything
Sexy Sadie she’s the latest and the greatest of them all.

She made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie.

However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie.

Here’s the songs with a slideshow of the Beatles at the ashram with the Sexy Sadhu:

Ancient Indian Geeks…their inventions and discoveries that changed da world

a little more trivia for you…which is only intended to clutter your head with noise…

Chess…was invented in India…The digit “zero” was invented in IndiaAlgebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies which originated in India.The’ place value system’ and the ‘decimal system’ were developed in 100 BC in India.The value of “pi” was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, which was long before the European mathematicians. The word “Algorithm” was actually supposed to be pronounced “Al-Khwarizmi”, which was the name of an eminent 9th century Arab scholar, who played important roles in importing knowledge on arithematic and algebra from India to the Arabs. In his work, De numero indorum (Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning), it was based presumably on an Arabic translation of Brahmagupta where he gave a full account of the Hindu numerals which was the first to expound the system with its digits 0,1,2,3,…,9 and decimal place value which was a fairly recent arrival from India.The new notation came to be known as that of al-Khwarizmi, or more carelessly, algorismi; ultimately the scheme of numeration making use of the Hindu numerals came to be called simply algorism or algorithm, a word that, originally derived from the name al-Khwarizmi, now means, more generally, any peculiar rule of procedure or operation. Sanskrit is considered as the mother of all higher languages. This is because it is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software. ( a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987 ).The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindh 6000 over years ago. The very word ‘Navigation’ is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Nou’.Legend has it that the South Indian martial arts form Kalaripattu…may be the original mother of all martial arts…Kung- fu, popularized by the monks of the Shoaling Temple traces its ancestry to Bodhi Dharma – an Indian Buddhist monk and Kalaripayattu master.Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The father of medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India medicine. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, embryology, digestion, metabolism, physiology, etiology, genetics and immunity is also found in many ancient Indian texts. Sushruta is regarded as the father of surgery. Over 2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones and also plastic surgery and brain surgeries.
The first Geek to discover that the Earth was moving around the sun- Aryabhata, it so happens, was apparently quite skeptical of the widely held doctrines about eclipses and also about the belief that the Sun goes round the Earth. He didn’t think that eclipses were caused by Rahu but by the Earth’s shadow over the Moon and the Moon obscuring the Sun. As early as the sixth century, he talked of the diurnal motion of the earth and the appearance of the Sun going round it. Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. His calculations was – Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: ( 5th century ) 365.258756484 days.Earliest known precise celestial calculations in astronomy.As argued by James Q. Jacobs, Aryabhata, an Indian Mathematician (c. 500AD) accurately calculated celestial constants like earth’s rotation per solar orbit, days per solar orbit, days per lunar orbit. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no source from prior to the 18th century had more accurate results on the values of these constants! Click here for details. Aryabhata’s 499 AD computation of pi as 3.1416 (real value 3.1415926…) and the length of a solar year as 365.358 days were also extremely accurate by the standards of the next thousand years.And Indians were the earliest people to imagine the future as a long long long way ahead…The notion of of time spans that are truly gigantic by modern standards are rarely found in ancient civilizations as the notion of large number is rare commodity. Apart from the peoples of the Mayan civilization, the ancient Hindus appear to be the only people who even thought beyond a few thousand years. In the famed book Cosmos, physicist-astronomer-teacher Carl Sagan writes “A millennium before Europeans were wiling to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions”

read more detailed accounts of Ancient Indian discoveries at indianchild.com and thisismyindia

And here’s a bizarre little song from the 80’s dedicated to Indian Geeks, ancient and New… “She Blinded me with Science”…by Thomas Dolby…

I hate Mondays

Gutting through the last of one of those annoying Mondays? I am, anyway. Working towards a deadline and suddenly am very tired and with the rest of the week’s tasks ahead the finish line seems even further away. The weekend just seemed to slip through my fingers this time around, and I’m tired and cranky but still doing what needs to be done. Looked up Monday hatred on the net and found out that there’s a study that suggests a way to improve your crappy Mondays is to NOT sleep in on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently it screws up your body clock. RIIIIGHHT. Isn’t that just perfect. So you can either improve Mondays by not staying up late on weekends and sleeping in and enjoying a nice long dreamy sleep…or you can have nice weekends and have an awful start to the week. I’m still taking the latter. Studies like these are conducted by boring people to convince their friends that being boring is cool. I’m sticking with sleep deprivation and Monday angst. Hey- at least I have the weekend to look forward to. Here’s a cheesy little number by the Bangles about Monday hatred. Enjoy:

Manic Monday:

here’s that Monday scientific study thingy…

Scientists have discovered a cure for the dreaded Monday morning blues – stop sleeping in on weekends.A new study has found that lazy Saturday and Sunday lie-ins can disturb your body clock, leaving you fatigued at the start of the week.Flinders University sleep expert Leon Lack said people often used the weekend to catch up on sleep lost during the week.But he told the Australasian Sleep Association Conference in Perth that while this might help pay off a “sleep debt”, it came at a cost.

“We’ve discovered that these sleep-ins are actually putting your body out of whack enough to change your Sunday night bedtime and set you up for Monday blues,” Professor Lack told AAP.

His research team tested the theory by tracking 16 people over a weekend, asking them to go to bed a little later than they would on a weeknight but sleeping-in an extra two hours.By comparing saliva samples and hormone tests he found participants’ body clocks had been delayed by 45 minutes.”That might not sound like a lot but it means that you’re not quite as sleepy on Sunday night at the normal bedtime and you’ll be much sleepier the next day,” Prof Lack said.Questionnaires completed on Monday and Tuesday showed much higher levels of self-reported fatigue and tiredness compared with pre sleep in days.This was because the subjects’ circadian rhythms – which determine patterns of alertness and tiredness – had been disturbed, creating an effect similar to jet lag.By mid-week most people manage to get back on track but then they start staying up later, getting into “debt” once again and perpetuating the cycle.

“These days, we’re pushing ourselves a lot, particularly during the week and the weekend is our only refuge,” Prof Lack said.The problem, he says, is that this comes at a price.”It’s a bit like paying off a mortgage – you take out a big one and you’ll have a lot to pay off later on.”

from the age

yeah. whatever. anyway…

Lucky Lips “hai rama rama”…NRI schoolgirls dancing in Moscow

Don’t know if you ever saw this film “Lucky no Time for Love” 2006, but it was probably the first of these “Lolita” inspired films to come out with the idea that jail-bait romances make for good box office success. This film did pretty well, and starred Salman Khan as this older guy who ends up looking after a nubile young NRI schoolgirl living in Moscow. They suddenly find themselves trapped alone during some sort of terrorist attack and fall in love, etc. But basically they never really kiss or actually do anything too controversial. The controversial bit was that the girl who plays Salman Khan’s love interest is an Aishwarya Rai clone and when this film came out there was all sorts of gossip flying about regarding how Salman Khan was making threatening phone calls to his ex girlfriend’s (Aishwarya) new boyfriend (then Vivek Oberoi). Anyway I just like this catchy tune from the film “Hai Rama Rama”. Recently I came across footage on my dv camera of me, my husband and a friend of ours getting slightly smashed on russian vodka and dancing to this song like maniacal bears pretending to be schoolgirls…so whenever I hear this tune it cracks me up…The video is basically four NRI schoolgirls flirting with the Russian navy and singing a song about having “lucky lips” that are going to be kissed someday. Its cute in a sort of slightly kinky schoolgirl tease kind of way.

Foot Fetishist’s have a Beauty Contest

uh…did you even know that there’s a global beauty pageant for beautiful feet? I guess there must be a lot of hot and sweaty foot fetishists attending those. Anyway, here’s the Indian contestant for Ms. Beautiful Feet World. This is the website for the competition.
I’m having trouble understanding why people would be getting together to stare at feet…for me this is just a clip of some girl walking around barefoot on the grass but I guess to a fetishist this would be like some kind of mind-blowing mystical experience where like angels come flying out of her toenails and start tearing off her clothes….hmmm….anyway…

Desi Dr. Doolittle Disco dancing

WTF?

Leech Therapy…blood suckers who cure

Well I knew doctors used to use leeches to suck out diseased blood in the days of King Arthur but I didn’t know it was still the fashion…check out this fairly disgusting ayurvedic treatment. To each his own I guess…

The Mad Experiment takes Place Tomorrow: DJ Fadereu and his walking words

Dr Frankenstein is ready.

July 27, 2007

An event is happening in Mumbai tommorrow at Kala Ghoda. It is the unveiling of a mobile phone technology to track your own movement, and a game. Kindly see the event poster, visit the website, and call us for more information.

यह मेल आपको कल मुम्बई में होने वाले एक अनोखे खेल के बारे में सूचित्
करने के लिये भेजी गयी है! हमारा पोस्टर देखिये, वेबसाईट पर जायें, या फिर
अधिक जानकारी के लिये सम्पर्क करें!

Website: www.algomantra.com

For information in Hindi call—>>>DJ Fadereu(a.k.a Rohit Gupta) : 098214 24074
For information in English call—>>> Gabriel Greenberg : 09870181434
or email: algomantra@gmail.com

I leave you now with the mad laughter of maniacal mad scientists on the loose…

A Finnish Mad Scientist Laughing competition:

(Post script)

Cellphabet was featured on BBC Radio Five.

The Cellphabet project is
now part of the syllabus at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
It is being taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering
at the Beckman Institute. The relevant lecture notes by Tim Bretl
are available as a PDF.

Click to access bretl_ae498mpa_03.pdf

Aghori Sadhus…some Indian wizards…

image from link

Wizards don’t just exist in fairy tales…there are real ones…modern day Merlins who live among us as imperceptibly as the wizarding world lives among muggles in the Harry Potter Series. You may believe that what they do is magic or you may not. But from their perspective there are spirits, gods, and complex alchemical energies flowing through the world that only the trained mind can see. They are shamans that travel between the spirit worlds, using marijuana and alcohol as sacraments. Hindu wizards are known as sadhus, and among them possibly the most intriguing bunch that roam the earth these days are the Aghoris. They commune with the dead, living among them and practice rituals with corpses in order to make contact with the divine mother, Kali, to whom they pray. It all sounds very macabre till you read some of their philosophy. For them, nothing and everything is sacred. That is to say, excrement and corpses are as sacred as flowers. They see all things as a divine expression and the idea of matter as being impure, an illusion. There are some books, if you are interested in this subject,by Robert E. Svoboda, called The Aghora Trilogy. They are very readable and full of the tales of one Aghori sadhu, describing his many years of wizarding training, his many strange adventures and his visions of the terrifying and beautiful dark Goddess, Kali and her male counterpart, Shiva. By the way, I’ve always wondered why Shiva always seems to be depicted clean-shaved. He was a sadhu like the Aghoris, and would have had dreds and a beard.

I’m posting one punchy little National Geographic clip on Agori Sadhus and then a 6- part British documentary on a young Aghori sadhu in training, narrated by Art Malik. They are visually, very compelling and I enjoy watching these guys and imagining the lives they lead…living their lives in shadow, with one foot in dream and another in death. In part 4 a young Agori sadhu in training is initiated by his guru and he weeps ecstatically as he feels overwhelmed by the presence of the divine mother. You hear about this kind of spiritual ecstasy from the writings of countless mystics across the ages but here you can actually witness it. In part 5 you can witness an exorcism of evil spirits and in Part 6 he goes home to visit his family, which is forbidden to Aghori sadhus. Its really a documentary about a young man’s right of passage, as he begins upon an unusual path. Enjoy!

National Geographic clip:

Aghori Series Part 1:

Aghori Series Part 2:

Aghori Series Part 3:

Aghori Series Part 4:

Aghori Series Part 5:

Aghori Series Part 6:

Thespian lol Cats and the Natya Shashtra

Cats appeal to me, in part, because of their independent natures and swift and immediate capacity to be able to shift between emotional registers. They can be at one moment, coy and mysterious (I was once worshiped as a god in Egypt you insignificant human), the next a bold thief and brazen lier (how can I have stolen the steak from the fridge. I don’t have opposable thumbs!), suddenly affectionate (love me, pet me, feed me!), suddenly cheeky (your legs make a good scratching post), and especially histrionic (tera khoon pee jaoonga, chooha!). They make the best actors and as cats over the ages have inspired different poets mystics and artists, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that cats had some hand in inspiring the Natya Shatra…that is, the oldest existing theatrical text from India that is used as a manual today in the classical dance and theatre traditions alive today. So here’s a little Desi classical theatre history for ya presented with the assistance of some feline thespian lol cats…

The Natya Shastra of Bharata ( Nātyaśāstra ) (titled as Natyashastra नाट्य शास्त्र) is the principal work of dramatic theory in the Sanskrit drama of classical India. It was written by the sage Bharata Muni. It is a set of precepts on the writing and performance of dance, music and theatre. While the Natyasastra primarily deals with stagecraft, it has come to influence music, dance, and literature as well. Thus, an argument can be made that the Natyasastra is the foundation of the fine arts in India. This Natya Shastra was written by the sage Bharata Muni who, it is claimed, was directly inspired by the god Brahma. It is believed to have been written during the period between 400 BC and 200 AD.

Bharata sets out a detailed theory of drama comparable to the Poetics of Aristotle. He refers to bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform, and the rasas (emotional responses) that they inspire in the audience. He argues that there are eight principal rasas: love, pity, anger, disgust, heroism, awe, terror and comedy, and that plays should mix different rasas but be dominated by one.One of the most important concepts in the Natyasastra is the experience of rasa (translated sometimes as ’emotions,’ ‘sentiments’ or ‘flavor’). Rasa are the emotional states that the refined and educated Sanskrit Drama audience members experiences as they watch a play. Each rasa experienced by the audience is associated with a specific bhava portrayed on stage. For example, in order for the audience to experience srngara (the ‘erotic’ rasa), the playwright, actors and musician work together to portray the bhava called rati (love).

The Natyasastra identifies eight rasa and eight corresponding bhava:

Bhava(the performance of emotion)……… Rasa (the audience’s reaction to it)

Vismaya (Astonishment)…………………… Adbhuta (Marvelous)
Hasya (Mirth)……………………………….. Hasya (Comic)
Rati (Love)………………………………….. Srngara (Erotic)
Jugupsa (Disgust)………………………….. Bibhatsa (Odious)
Utsaha (Energy)……………………………. Vira (Heroic)
Soka (Sorrow)………………………………. Karuna (Pathetic)
Bhaya (Terror)………………………………. Bhayanaka (Terrible)
Krodha(Anger)………………………………. Raudra (Furious)

(A ninth rasa, called Shaanta (Peace), was later extrapolated from the eight identified in the Natyasastra. info from wiki

A Feline Demonstration of the Bhavas…

Vismaya (Astonishment)……………………

Hasya (Mirth)………………………………..

Rati (Love)…………………………………..

Jugupsa (Disgust)…………………………..

Utsaha (Energy)…………………………….

Soka (Sorrow)……………………………….

Bhaya (Terror)……………………………….

Krodha(Anger)……………………………….

images from roflcat

the performance continues:

Goa Gil, Monty Python, The Simpsons: some perspective on life, the universe, and everything…

Goa Gil is one of the original gang from the psychedelic revolution (friends with Timothy Leary) that started up in Height Ashbury, Sanfrancisco, and landed up in Goa, surrounded by the innovation of rave music and dance, theological experimentation and lots of drugs. Goa Gil became a DJ and sadhu who says that dancing at rave parties under the full moon is a modern form of Tantric practice and a contemporary way of becoming a community of techno shamans.

Here he shares “the secret” of life:

A trippy perspective from The Simpsons.. to see a world in a grain of sand…or in Homer’s skin cells…

And here is Monty Python’s Galaxy song, sung by the inimitable Eric Idle, who jumps out of Mrs. Brown’s refrigerator and cheers her up with a song about how insignificant the human race is:

Here are the lyrics to the Galaxy Song:

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

John Cleese checks out Laughing Yoga in Mumbai

The slogan goes “Fake it fake it till you make it.” Because apparently the health benefits of laughter are not limited to spontaneous giggles. Even fake laughter releases the endorphins that make the body relieve stress. John Cleese, one of the comedic geniuses of Monty Python checks it out and even goes to a Jail where inmates are encouraged to laugh. He says “laughter is a force for democracy”

But if you haven’t seen this already I dare you to click HERE and take the laughter yogi challenge. I dare you not to laugh while watching this clip.