“THE MISSION: to create a music video for MC SID in 24 hours.
LOCATIONS: temples, wrestling pits, clothing & vegetable markets of Chandigarh.
WEAPONS: PD170 camera and confused camera man, maggi sauce, black lipstick, red langot, family heirloom diamond necklace, several lunatics, one gunman (Sardool Singh Sanghpuria).
Shot over seven hours with no permission. Improvised in each location with whatever props and strange characters we found hanging around. Had to fight away cops and crowds.
CASUALTIES: Black eye, bruised ribs from the Akharda (wrestling pit). One dead body. (our leading lady was hungry).
CREDITS:
FREESTYLE RAP ARTIST- MC SID
SHOT & CUT by – Kabir Chowdhry
MONEYS – Doc SPH:NX (also making a guest appearance in wrestling pit)
STARRING – The Bloodthirsty Bhabhi
special thanks to Elvish groupie and prop mistress: SAACHI”
Well here it is again and I find myself scurrying around trying to find lost addresses and envelopes to send off my rakhis- (better late than never :)) My brother-in-law lazily received his this morning as he scratched his head and asked for cornflakes. I managed to nag him and my better half to send flowers to their sisters but (hint hint) no flowers for me- alas. I’ll content myself with his gift a few days ago- a portable plastic joint carrier- (shaped something like a capped test tube- now you can smoke half a joint and hide it in your purse for later on- very cool actually and after all, you can’t smoke flowers can you?
Anyway here’s a little history on the whole Rakhi thing-
A story is told of Alexander’s wife approaching his mighty Hindu adversary Porus and tying Raakhi on his hand, seeking assurance from him for saving the life of her husband on the battlefield. And the great Hindu king, in the true traditional Kshatriya (those who belonged to the brave warrior class) style, responded; and as the legend goes, when Porus raised his hand to deliver a mortal blow to Alexander, he saw the Raakhi on his own hand and restrained from striking.
More poignant instance is the story of the princess of a small Rajput (those who belong to the state of Rajasthan) clan. It glorified the spell that the Raakhi had cast even on people of alien faiths. The princess sent a Raakhi to the Moghul Emperor Humayun to save her honor from the onslaught of the Gujarat Sultan who seized her kingdom. The emperor, then engaged in an expedition against Bengal, turned back and hastened to the rescue of his Raakhi-sister. But, alas, to his utmost sorrow, he found that the kingdom had already been perished by the invador and the princess had committed ‘Jauhaar’, i.e., leaped into the burning flames to save her honor.
The Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore used the occasion of the Raksha Bandhan as a community festival to spread the nationalist spirit among people from different ethnic backgrounds.
Is it offensive? Is it cute? Uh? My lofty minded cultural theory teacher once told me “if its silly its not orientalism” well that certainly “cleared things up” for me by making them less comprehensible- uh I don’t know and I don’t really care- I think people decide to be offended if its convenient for them to do so- so they have something to bitch about instead of focusing on their pointless, culturally bereft, insignificant existences- so I mean- so if it pissed you off why dont you go and make your own fucking video- as for me- I thought the guy- Devendra (Natalie’s current boytoy) was kind of hairy- I thought the makeup was nice- I thought the chic playing the slutty version of Kali at the end was not nearly a hot as I imagine kali would be in person- I thought Natalie did a really stupid imitation of indian dance- I mean even the extras were better- but I thought the beastiality with the squid was very sexy after the whole Sita sati and added just that missing trope that would have made the original Ramayana that much better. So check it out. And can someone explain the lyrics if you know spanish- cuz I don’t exactly see the relationship between the video and the music. anyway…enjoy-
Invoking the cosmic wonder of his beard and Bollywood, Devendra Banhart’s latest music video is both a love story and a tongue-in-cheek nod to India’s maharajas of yore. In “Carmensita,” the newest single from his latest album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Devandra and his uber-hot (and unlikely girlfriend) Natalie Portman get down to psychedelic-indie, all while saving the Kindom of Carmensita from the clutches of Lord Rajan the Malevolent. When taunting the Prince (played by Devendra), Lord Rajan bellows, “You think you can defeat me with your rebellious beard?” Later on, Devendra kills Lord Rajan by shooting venomous snakes out of his forehead. This is arguably 2008’s most badass moment in music videos.
this song features RDB (Rhythm, Dhol, Bass), Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Akshay Kumar- it’s from the Motion Picture, Singh is King, starring Akshay Kumar. By the way the song is the best part of the film, which is otherwise a piece of excrement.
and an old soul stepped out of the desert lands…and he brought with him a small forked metal instrument that was the whole of the desert…and time got distracted by his playing and made the universe stand still for a moment…and it sounded something like this… (only obviously much much cooler in person)
Listen to this guy- it combines the high subtle notes of a frenetic sitar raga and the heavy riffs of a Jimmy Page guitar solo. He’s quite a trippy guy actually and appears to be a tantrik Kali devotee. Do check out his website.
This is one of those songs that’s been playing over and over in my head-just somehow crept inside… I looked up the lyrics and found the soul power hard rock orientalism rather cute- seems like when Stephen Tyler came to India he ate some vidaloo and then some New Age Desi chick shagged his bones off…naturally he turns this conquest into some kind of homage to the mystic East where he gets to “dance with his shadow” while he reminisces about his “sweet tantrik princess” and inserts a few lewd lyrics about what she smells and tastes like…hmm…anyway, in the video he sort of tries out what I think is meant to be sufi spinning and then he starts doing some kind of “I cast a spell on you” exotic “Indian” hand gestures……call me crazy but I find this kind of spiritual tourism kind of adorable…so what if he doesn’t get blasted with the ulginess of class dynamics, soul-crushing prudery and the threat of racial genocide always lurking around the corner…..he ate some vindaloo and he got laid. Wrote a nice song about it. Good for him.
Taste of India Lyrics:
God I love the sweet taste of India – Lingers on the tip of my tongue
Gotta love the sweet taste of India – Blame it on the beat of the drum
God I love the sweet taste of India – Lingers on the tip of my tongue
Gotta know that what’s gotten into ya – Any cat man do when it’s done
Oh yeah she’s got that kind of love incense That lives in her back room
And when it mixes with the funk my friend It turns into perfume
When you are born you’re afraid of the darkness And then you’re afraid of the light
But I’m not afraid when I dance with my shadow – This time I’m gonna get it right
To think of what I’ll get tonight Just lookin’ for a little taste, taste of India
She’ll steal the smile right off your face
Her yin and yang Is just the thing
She’s unpredictable my friend
God I love the sweet taste of India- Lingers on the tip of my tongue
Gotta know that what’s gotten into ya -Any cat man do when it’s done
It’s like your first taste love of vindaloo That sets your heart on fire
And if you let her stuff get into you It will be all that you desire
When you make love to the sweet tantric priestess You drink in the bliss of delight
But I’m not afraid when I dance with her shadow
This time I’m gonna get it right – She’s gonna whet my appetite
Just lookin’ for a little taste, taste of India
She’ll steal the smile right off your face
She a friend of mine
She a concubine
The sweetest wine
I gotta make her mine
image from ladygator.com
well as the last trickle of rains falls down in Bombay, we are enjoying the annoying house guests of the season; mosquitos. Some people are coming down with Dengue fever…or “Dengu” as our cook back home likes to call it. I guess too much of a good thing can get a bit pissing off. Having missed out on the Bombay rains for two years I was completely taken in with the sound of the tides of water falling off the window shutters in this lumbering old house of ours. I would sit back and play classical music and get all misty-eyed and write bad poetry. But rain is, I guess, a lot like a favorite house guest. When they first arrive you can’t get enough of them. But after a while their irritating habits start getting to you…with rain…I guess its that contrary to what water should bring to mind…it brings forth tides of filth. Instead of wiping things clean it makes the sewers overflow and when you’re walking in the street your toenails get filled with the grime of mud mixed together in all probability with spit and piss and what have you….In most homes in the city water becomes a scarcity, a rare commodity and a thing to bicker about. So most showers I’ve been taking have been under a very narrow trickle of luke warm water, which just about manages to saturate my hair for long enough so that it gets out the shampoo. In the unlucky parts of the city, it makes it impossible for people living in slums to get clean drinking water and everyone comes down with serious illnesses. The humidity makes people more prone to skin infections and mold grows on all leather and organic materials overnight. Generally everyone comes down with disgusting flu viruses and then passes them around so that every other person is shivering through fever sweats and developing whooping cough. But it should be over soon.
Looking back at the soul-scorching summer heat that inspired some of my former posts on welcome monsoons, I thought I’d put up one last “Rain Dance” song, if for no other reason than just to annoy myself, watching Aishwarya Rai pretend to be an innocent village belle, gyrating her hips on a rural rock and singing “rain rain clouds clouds” with her irritatingly adorable expressions. She kind of reminds me of the “world’s cutest kitten”, Nermal, that Garfield is always trying to do away with…maybe its her great big eyes…or maybe its her fluffy tail…or maybe its that, like Nermal, I’d like to chain her to a scratching post, rub her belly and feed her sewer rats…anyway…here’s “Barso Re” from “Guru”.
This subtle song about rain mixes perfectly with the backdrop of rain falling on my window shutters. These guys have amazing voices with a mix of Indian classical and the song really captures the original idea of seasonal ragas, and brings out the sound of what it feels like to get lost in one’s thoughts on a rainy day when you have no where particular to go and have the time to trace the raindrops:
Rāga (in Sanskrit “Raga” is literally “colour” or “mood”) and (rāgam Carnatic music) refers to melodic modes used in Indian classical music.[1] In Indian music, a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is founded. Raga may also denote a particular melody. In the Indian musical tradition, ragas are held to evoke particular “moods” and metaphorically “colour” the experience of the listener and are often performed to correspond and resonate with a season or time of day. Indian classical music is always set in raga. Non-classical music such as popular Indian film songs sometimes use ragas in their compositions.
“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.
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.
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.
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.”
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:
remains of the desi 
