It is Saturday night and I am walking back home from the station. The city is full of people making the most of the weekend. The pubs are bustling with men and women relaxing with a glass of their favourite alcoholic beverage. I am not one for weekly escapades to the drinking establishments, I only go out around once in a month with friends. I am not that British. I am still indifferent to Marmite.
I don't normally mind people having fun in their own way. I am not a dictator yet, so for the time being, I prefer to let them do as they please. But the one thing that riles me like anything is the dressing sense of the slags who roam the streets every night. Some of them are just one or two clothing items away from total nudity, while the others have so much skin on display that you start to wonder whether they are wearing clothes or if their clothes are wearing skin.
I understand the need for women to look their aesthetic best. But why can't some women establish some limits? How the hell can you feel beautiful with your arse hanging out and breasts barely being kept under your transparent bra? Any self-respecting man would keep away from such monstrosities. I would be scared to even touch one of these slags, in case I contracted some kind of horrid skin infection. Yes, men can be worse and are lucky because all we need to cover is our lower pelvic area. But I have never seen a guy going out in his briefs only.
You can look sexy without looking like a filthy over-worked pornstar. You don't need to wear a skirt so high that we can see that you have not worn any knickers, What makes matters even worse is that very fat women also display this kind of debauchery. I am not saying fat people are not beautiful. After all, I am not George Clooney, but I can still pull a harem of Rohypnoled and drunk old-age pensioners. But if you have a mirror and a decent vision, you could notice that you are not thin enough to wear that backless, frontless, bottomless and sideless dress! Now, think fat AND old and streets and city centres on Saturday nights suddenly look like a scene out of the most horrifying film that could haunt your nightmares for several lifetimes.
Look, I am not asking for much. Look good. You could even look like a slut without dressing up as a prostitute. Wear that backless dress, the hynoptic powers of which you are planning to utilise on a lucky son of a bitch. But don't overdo it. You will only end up looking repulsive. No-one will tell you that though, because your girlfriends will always be supportive (due to the fact that they will now look much better next to your ugly body) and because guys will only look at you through alcohol-shot eyes and even then, they would rather lick the pavement after someone has just vomitted on it than chatting you up.
Rant over... I am a man of simple pleasures, so thanks for almost ruining my walk back home, slags.
Music has always been a huge part of my existence, so much so that I can easily associate certain periods of my existence to specific songs which were popular at the time. What I find really interesting is how much one's taste in music can grow and evolve through time. Just like personality undergoes a thorough metamorphosis, what one perceives as being good music can also change considerably.
I don't recall the first ever song, lullabies aside, to reach my ears, but I am pretty sure it was something by either Nadeem Shravan or Jatin-Lalit. Having had a typical South Asian upbringing, I was completely into Bollywood. The early Nineties were dominated by countless romantic comedies which had the typically one-dimensional Indian music of that era, characterised by the ubiquitous tabla and loud vocals of Kumar Sanu. ALL songs had the same blueprint. Don't get me wrong though, some of those were absolute classics, like the soundtracks of Saajaan, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Aashiqui amongst others. But at that time, I was only starting to get to grips with this new type of media.
Then, Dil Se came and everything changed! I already knew about Roja, Bombay and Rangeela, but when this good friend of mine lent me the music cd of Dil Se, I was blown away. I had started to be tired of the repetitive boring fare which was available in the mid-nineties, but listening to Allah Rakha Rahman's (A.R.Rahman) legendary soundtrack to the Bollywood film, Dil Se was an eye-opener (or an ear-opener??). The soundtrack was absolute gold! It redefined Bollywood music through its then unconventional fusion of Indian tunes with Western beats. Even after eleven years, the tracks still sounds very modern and avant-guardist. No other composer would leave such an imprint on my life. I have since then wolfed down anything created by the Mozart of Madras.
The Rahmania still persists to this day, but it became less intensive when I moved abroad for studies. It was quite strong in the first few months I was away from home. Listening to music has a bigger calming effect on my restless nerves than the purest weeds would have. It is the ultimate refuge, the supreme respite from everyday life. After a few months of trying hard to exhaust my inexhaustible A.R.Rahman collection, I set about discovering Western music. In Mauritius, I would never listen to an English rock song or a French pop song, purely because I was not into it at all. But I really started to give it a try at university. This phase reminded of my introduction to pre-1998 Indian music. It was chaotic. I got easily attracted to cheesy pop (which I now totally despise!!). Yet again though, a single album veered me right off the well-trodden track. That Grammy Award winning album was Green Day's American Idiot. Rock had entered my life and was there to stay. This new genre of music which blasted my ears for the next few years would come from artists like the Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, Kasabian, Coldplay, Marilyn Manson, Muse,...etc
I now had a more varied taste in music and kept on going as I broadened my tastes with the discovery of Nitin Sawhney and Pakistani bands like Junoon and Strings. I never forgot my first true love, that is, Indian music and I still find it incredibly silly when people refuse to listen to Indian music because for some reason they feel that listening to western music only makes it easier for them to be accepted in a westernised society, which is pure nonsense.
All was going fine with me indulging in indie, alternative, acid and alkali rock and at the same time, satisfying my cultural thirst for Asian music. Then a cataclysmic event rocked (no pun intended) my world a few weeks ago. I was once again growing weary of all the rock bands out there. I had narrowed my repertoire to a few Indie bands. But then I thought I wanted to try out some old rock. I had already been enthralled by Blues and Jazz (I am a closet Amy Winehouse fan and a proud B.B.King fan too!) without getting obsessed about it in the way I did about Rahman and western rock music. I think I reached a certain age where I wanted to explore more and more genres to satisfy my urgings for new musical thrills. So, in this verve, a colleague and friend lent me a music cd (getting a sense of deja-vu? I have really good friends!) to explore something new. It was called Experience Hendrix : The Best of Jimi Hendrix. The first song I listened to was Voodoo Child. Now, I knew who Jimi Hendrix was, but I had never given him a try before. As that spellbinding intro kicked in, I was transferred into another world. The guitar strokes were hypnotic. The lyrics and the vocals were mind-blowing. I had never heard anything like that. I had listened to Chuck Berry a few times before and he sounded like the genius everyone knew he was. But Hendrix was taking it to another level in my mind. Hendrix is considered to be the most influential musician of all time, but I am normally sceptical of these unofficial titles, but Hendrix not only made me eat that scepticism with a slice of bread and cheese but has also given me a new obsession.
Hendrix is now ever-present on my playlist and I will endeavour to dig out every single track of his and enjoy them. I am also planning to intensify my search for decent Blues and Country (heard some good things about a certain guy called Johnny Cash) tunes. I also have to check out these two bands that people are saying were quite simply amazing, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin! Will a lifetime be enough to experience all the musical goodies available on Earth?
I apologise for such a lengthy post. It only goes to show how embedded music is in my ordinary life that once I get started, no-one can shut me up. Let me know about how you saw the spectrum of your musical tastes evolve over time, or how it hasn't changed at all!
I have always been a big fan of adverts, especially TV adverts. It takes a lot of talent to cram in meaningful messages into 30-second videos. Many advert directors have actually gone on to become big Hollywood film-makers, like Ridley Scott who was well-known for his rustic Hovis advert (which was named as one of the best ads ever made in the UK) and the advert made for the launch of the Apple Mac. A.R.Rahman, the Mozart of Madras used to compose ad jingles before taking Bollywood by storm (he still does for Airtel).
There are millions of funny TV ads all over the world. I have spent many hours watching them on TV and on video sharing websites. But the kinds of ads which always move me are usually the ones made for sensitisation campaigns. We all know the standard of ads on the channels of our dear national broadcaster, but since I have been in England, I have been fascinated by government ads. The shock element is used conspicuously, which I think, makes sense. If you want to convey a message about dangerous driving, shying away from shocking the audience will not help.
Here's a small selection of the ones which I have seen on TV and which are particularly impressive:
Get Real, Get A Prescription
This is a brand new ad by Pfizer and some other Pharmaceutical entities. It encourages people to buy real medecine instead of knock-off medecine off the internet. It is particularly disgusting and disturbing!!
It's 30 for a reason
This is an ad for respecting the 30 mph speed limit near schools. Please augment the volume of your speakers to the max to appreciate the sound of breaking bones better!
Think UK: Drink driving
Anti-drink driving ads are rampant on TV, but this one stands out for me for its brutality and its unpredictability.
Think UK: Kill your speed or live with it
This one is about speeding and really hammers the message home in a very creepy way!
Alcohol, Know Your Limits
There are 2 versions of this: the one above and the one with the boy, which is equally good. As the title suggests, they are about binge drinking and shows you the disgusting side of being utterly drunk (especially the one with the vomit in the hair).
There are loads more, especially the health awareness ones which do not feature often in this post. Let me know if I have missed any other excellent adverts made for sensitisation campaigns.
Oh and if you have not worked that out already, the poster at the top of this post sensitises people about how smoking can reduce your sperm count.
