We are not dead (not yet), just recharging. and will be back soon.

Photo credit: recharging, originally uploaded by Don Solo.

I seem to write only about music when I write in this blog, which keeps me wondering if my co-blogger would mind. Nevertheless, I’m continuing, assuring myself that something is better than nothing…

“Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai” from the movie “Kaminey” is a beautiful song by Mohit Chauhan, who has been doing so well in present music scenario that a movie seems to be incomplete without a melodious number from Mohit (well, at least most music directors seem to think so ). This song starts with a lovely piano piece creating a strange aura, like the feeling one gets while entering a strange but familiar place.

Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai lets out an unknown and ecstatic sensation experienced by first timers in love. The song depicts the feeling of  new love when one gets swept over completely with a determination–strong enough to make one feel that the first love will be the ultimate one.

Maybe, this is for the first time that Mohit Chauhan has lent his voice for Vishal Bharadwaj-Gulzar music, but his voice is well-suited for this style. The usage of simple everyday depictions in lyrics by Gulzar–unthinkable to mass–imparts crude yet classy touch to the song, but that is Gulzar’s specialty, right.

“Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai, Aakhiri baar mohabbat ki hai” phrase has been used in another song from the same movie “Raat Ke Dhai Baje”, albeit in a very different style, which makes me wonder about the storyline of the movie.

Continue reading for the full lyrics..

Thode bheege bheege se thode nam hain hum
Kal se soye huwe bhi to kam hain hum
Dil ne kaise harkat ki hai
Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai
Aakhri baar mohabbat ki hai

Aankhein doobi doobi si surmayee madham
Jheelein paani paani hai, bas tum aur hum
Baat badi hairat ki hai
Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai
Aakhiri baar mohabbat ki hai

Khwaab ke bhoj se
Kap kapati huwi
Halki palke teri
yaad aata hai sab
tujhe gud gudana
satana
yunhin sotey huwe
gaal pey teepna..meechna..
bewajah besabab

Yaad hai
peepal ke jiske ghane saaye the
humnein gilhari ke jhhootey matar khaaye they
yeh barqat un hazrat ki hai

Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai
Aakhri baar mohabbat ki hai..

Listen to the song here

30th of September 2007, my favorite 4 ‘militant atheists’, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.

All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion – some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public’s reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face the world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.

Here goes the complete 2-hour discussion in 2 parts – enjoy!

Part 1

Part 2

This video is provided free online by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) and http://RichardDawkins.net .

We love to be told we’re smarter than we thought we were, but a surprise bestseller by an MIT professor has a less happy message: We’re consistently irrational much of the time. While there’s no cure, there’s hope – if we can learn to outsmart ourselves. Dan Ariely is an Israeli professor of behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is head of the eRationality research group at the MIT Media Lab.

Despite our best efforts, bad or inexplicable decisions are as inevitable as death and taxes and the grocery store running out of your favorite flavor of ice cream. They’re also just as predictable. Why, for instance, are we convinced that “sizing up” at our favorite burger joint is a good idea, even when we’re not that hungry? Why are our phone lists cluttered with numbers we never call? Dan Ariely, behavioral economist, has based his career on figuring out the answers to these questions, and in his bestselling book Predictably Irrational (re-released in expanded form in May 2009), he describes many unorthodox and often downright odd experiments used in the quest to answer this question.

In his 2009 TED talk Dan explains why do we cheat. The experiments he conducted are amazingly simple but elegant. Here goes the Video:

From the transcript:

So, like we usually do, I decided to do a simple experiment. And here’s how it went. If you were in the experiment, I would pass you a sheet of paper with 20 simple math problems that everybody could solve, but I wouldn’t give you enough time. When the five minutes were over, I would say, “Pass me the sheets of paper, and I’ll pay you a dollar per question.” People did this. I would pay people four dollars for their task — on average people would solve four problems. Other people I would tempt to cheat. I would pass their sheet of paper. When the five minutes were over, I would say, “Please shred the piece of paper. Put the little pieces in your pocket or in your backpack, and tell me how many questions you got correctly.” People now solved seven questions on average. Now, it wasn’t as if there was a few bad apples — a few people cheated a lot. Instead, what we saw is a lot of people who cheat a little bit.

Now, in economic theory, cheating is a very simple cost-benefit analysis. You say, what’s the probability of being caught? How much do I stand to gain from cheating? And how much punishment would I get if I get caught? And you weigh these options out — you do the simple cost-benefit analysis, and you decide whether it’s worthwhile to commit the crime or not. So, we try to test this. For some people. we varied how much money they could get away with — how much money they could steal. We paid them 10 cents per correct question, 50 cents, a dollar, five dollars, 10 dollars per correct question.

You would expect that as the amount of money on the table increases, people would cheat more, but in fact it wasn’t the case. We got a lot of people cheating by stealing by a little bit. What about the probability of being caught? Some people shredded half the sheet of paper, so there was some evidence left. Some people shredded the whole sheet of paper. Some people shredded everything, went out of the room, and paid themselves from the bowl of money that had over 100 dollars. You would expect that as the probability of being caught goes down, people would cheat more, but again, this was not the case. Again, a lot of people cheated by just by a little bit, and they were insensitive to these economic incentives.

So we said, “If people are not sensitive to the economic rational theory explanations, to these forces, what could be going on?” And we thought maybe what is happening is that there are two forces. At one hand, we all want to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, so we don’t want to cheat. On the other hand, we can cheat a little bit, and still feel good about ourselves. So, maybe what is happening is that there’s a level of cheating we can’t go over, but we can still benefit from cheating at a low degree, as long as it doesn’t change our impressions about ourselves. We call this like a personal fudge factor.

Now, how would you test a personal fudge factor? Initially we said, what can we do to shrink the fudge factor? So, we got people to the lab, and we said, “We have two tasks for you today.” First, we asked half the people to recall either 10 books they read in high school, or to recall The Ten Commandments, and then we tempted them with cheating. Turns out the people who tried to recall The Ten Commandments — and in our sample nobody could recall all of The Ten Commandments — but those people who tried to recall The Ten Commandments, given the opportunity to cheat, did not cheat at all. It wasn’t that the more religious people — the people who remembered more of the Commandments — cheated less, and the less religious people — the people who couldn’t remember almost any Commandments — cheated more. The moment people thought about trying to recall The Ten Commandments, they stopped cheating. In fact, even when we gave self-declared atheists the task of swearing on the Bible and we give them a chance to cheat, they didn’t cheat at all. Now, Ten Commandments is something that is hard to bring into the education system, so we said, “Why don’t we get people to sign the honor code?” So, we got people to sign, “I understand that this short survey falls under the MIT Honor Code.” Then they shredded it. No cheating whatsoever. And this is particularly interesting, because MIT doesn’t have an honor code.

So, all this was about decreasing the fudge factor. What about increasing the fudge factor? The first experiment — I walked around MIT and I distributed six-packs of Cokes in the refrigerators — these were common refrigerators for the undergrads. And I came back to measure what we technically call the half-lifetime of Coke — how long does it last in the refrigerators? As you can expect it doesn’t last very long. People take it. In contrast, I took a plate with six one-dollar bills, and I left those plates in the same refrigerators. No bill ever disappeared.

Now, this is not a good social science experiment, so to do it better I did the same experiment as I described to you before. A third of the people we passed the sheet, they gave it back to us. A third of the people we passed it to, they shredded it, they came to us and said, “Mr. Experimenter, I solved X problems. Give me X dollars.” A third of the people, when they finished shredding the piece of paper, they came to us and said, “Mr Experimenter, I solved X problems. Give me X tokens.” We did not pay them with dollars. We paid them with something else. And then they took the something else, they walked 12 feet to the side, and exchanged it for dollars.

Think about the following intuition. How bad would you feel about taking a pencil from work home, compared to how bad would you feel about taking 10 cents from a petty cash box? These things feel very differently. Would being a step removed from cash for a few seconds by being paid by token make a difference?

Over at EG, Entertainment Gathering Dan spoke about some other facets of predictable irrationality of human nature.

One more example of this. People believe that when we deal with physical attraction, we see somebody, and we know immediately whether we like them or not. Attracted or not. Which is why we have these four-minute dates. So I decided to do this experiment with people. I’ll show you graphic images of people — not real people. The experiment was with people. I showed some people a picture of Tom, and a picture of Jerry. I said “Who do you want to date? Tom or Jerry?” But for half the people I added an ugly version of Jerry. I took Photoshop and I made Jerry slightly less attractive. The other people, I added an ugly version of Tom. And the question was, will ugly Jerry and ugly Tom help their respective, more attractive brothers? The answer was absolutely yes. When ugly Jerry was around, Jerry was popular. When ugly Tom was around, Tom was popular.

This of course has two very clear implications for life in general. If you ever go bar hopping who do you want to take with you? You want a slightly uglier version of yourself. Similar. Similar … but slightly uglier. The second point, or course, is that if somebody else invites you, you know how they think about you.

A common Chinese proverb says that they can eat everything that has four legs, except tables; everything that flies, except for airplanes; and everything that is found on water, except boats! And that’s 100% true. Here goes few pictures, snapped by my colleague Santo, during his recent trip at Beijing, China. The place is called Wangfujing.

Wangfujing, Beijing, China

The Wangfujing Night Market has a selection of exotic Street food on the Snack Street. Deep fried insects, scorpions, and sea creatures can be found, along with other animals and animal parts not ordinarily consumed as food in the west. But while these exotic snacks can be found, other more common foods, such as Chuanr (meat kebabs, commonly made of lamb) and desserts, such as Tang hu lu, or candied fruits make up the majority of the food sold on the street.

Enjoy! Please don’t blame me if you loose your appetite viewing these pics.

Fried grasshoppers - anyone?

Scorpion-fry - looks yummy!

Fried Star Fish

Insect Kebabs

More Insect Kebabs

On idle sundays
Of hot summers
Whirling sound of fan
Newspaper flapping dully
Dog snoring gently by my feet
Your  refreshing presence
To save my day
From futility
Is all I want

On busy days
mindless chatters of people
mad rush of work
churning out of emails
Deadlines and dead souls
Calling it a day
In your comforting arms
Is all I want

I wish I can open my heart
But, I am tied by the void of time
As sterile as ashes,
I lay still
Is it the same heart
inflamed in love?
The facts grew stronger
The magic blotted out
Are you disappointed by this?
I sometimes try
To write a line
of my cheesy love poetry
To enkindle my belief
That you were not meant
To be snuffed out
So easily
Keep burning in my heart
Silently

I was sixteen when I first heard your song. It was, ironically in a CPIM’s meeting at Brigade Parade Ground. I have always been politically conscious, but never involved in active politics. The only reason me and my friend went to the Brigade, was to watch Utpal Dutt’s play (most probably ‘Tiner Taloar’). It was getting late, and as usual, the play was delayed. We decided to abandon the plan and go home. We had to pass through the front of the podium to go out. Then suddenly one guy with a guitar, started a song – ‘Haal cherona bondhu…” (don’t give up my friend…). We stopped…and keep on listening to your songs, one after another…for another hour.

I am still standing there.

Correction, I was still standing there, until recently, when you decided to run for the election as a Trinamul candidate!

I have all the songs sung by you. From ‘92 to 98, I went to at least 50 of your live performances. Anywhere you performed, from Kalamandir to Girish Mancha, I was there. In fact, one of the main reason I started this blog, bigbangbong, is to translate your songs for one of my non-bengali friends.

I never judged you by the context of your personal life, only formed your image in my mind by your songs. Turmoils in your personal life never touched me. Neither I was surprised when CPIM (and their nasty sidekicks) tried to run the dirty character assassination campaign against you. Given their track record, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I never met you personally either. There were many opportunities, I never wanted to. Near Asuthosh college, we were returning from tuition – I saw you at the sweet shop. All my friends rushed to get your autograph. I didn’t. Years later, you were waiting at Dumdum Airport, for a Biman Bangadesh flight to Dhaka, I was waiting there for my flight to Singapore. I felt like going in front of you and say ‘do you know that, whatever I am today, my sense, my soul, you have a huge contribution to that’. I couldn’t. I was scared, what if Suman in person change my perspective of of Suman the singer and one of the building blocks of my life?

And now, you are running for a political chair, as a Trinamul Congress candidate, shoulder to shoulder with Mamta Banerjee! With one statement, with one news – you just massacred one part of my identity. Your political viewpoint and actions are not a matter of your personal choice only, they are the foundations of your songs.

Don’t get me wrong here, I would’ve been same way disappointed, if you decided to run for CPIM. Also, I strongly believe that mass de-politicalization of youth is one big reason of the political downfall of India. But, Trinamul Congress? Why Sumon, why? ‘Enemy of my enemy is my friend’ – is such a medieval sentiment!

I am deleting all your songs from my music library. Thank goodness I don’t have the disks and cassettes here with me – I would’ve shattered them in thousand pieces by now. Thanks for destroying one huge portion of my identity. One thing at least I learned in my 33 years of lifeform – everything changes, still somehow having problems internalizing this!

Dekhte dekhte shaab palte jai

A non-hindi speaking friend of mine had asked me the meaning of “Rehna tu” song from Delhi-6. Since I love translating songs, I couldn’t stop myself from translating it instantly. Prasoon Joshi’s great as ever. Without much frill, posting the translation. I am not much clear about the deeper meaning of the last stanza. Any suggestion people?

Rehna tu, Hai jaisa tu
Stay as you are
Thoda sa dard tu, Thoda Sukun
A little pain, a little relief
Rehna Tu, Hai Jaisa Tu
Stay as you are
Dheema Dheema jhonka, Ya phir junoon
A gentle breeze, a strong gust of wind
Thoda sa resham, Tu hamdam
A little silky, you are my love
Thoda sa khurdura
A little rough
Kabhi tu adh jaaye, Ya ladh jaaye
Sometimes you are stubborn, Sometimes you end up fighting
Ya khushboo se bhara
Sometimes (you are) full of fragrance (sweetness)
Tujhe badalna na chahoon
Don’t want to change you
Rati bhar bhi sanam
Not even a bit
Bina sajawat milawat
Undecorated, Unaltered
Na zyaada na hi kam
Neither more nor less
Tuhje chaahon, jaisa hai tu
I like you, just the way you are
Mujhe teree barish mein beegna hai ghuljana hai
I want to drench myself in rain (of your love).. I seek union with you

Tujhe chaahon, jaisa hai tu
I like you, just the way you are
Mujhe tere lapat mein jalna rakh ho jana hai
I want to get burnt in your tresses…burn away to ashes
Tu zakham de agar
If you torment me,
Marham bhi aakar tu lagaaye
You soothe me too
Zakham mein bhi mujhko pyaar aaye
Even in pain, I find you adorable

Dariya oooo dariya
Doobne de mujhe dariya
Doobne de mujhe dariya
Let me sink in your love (river-like)
Rehna Tu, Hai Jaisa Tu
Stay as you are

Thoda sa dard tu, Thoda Sukun
A little pain, a little relief
Rehna Tu, Hai Jaisa Tu
Dheema Dheema jhonka, Ya phir junoon
A gentle light breeze or a strong gust of wind

Haath thaam chalna ho
If we hold hands and walk
To dono ke daye haath sang kaise
Then how our right hands will be intertwined
Haath thaam chalna ho
If we hold our hands
To dono ke daye haath sang kaise
Then how our right hands will be intertwined
Ek daaya hoga, ek baaiya hoga
Only the left and right hands can join
Tham le, haath yeh thaam le
Hold my hands…hold my hands dear
Chalna hai sang thaam le
Hold my hands…in the journey (of life)

Got a mail forward from my sis Anu. Enjoy!

In spite of what you have been told by everyone, the truth is that Valentine’s Day originated hundreds of years ago, in India, and to top it all, in Gujarat!!

It is a well known fact that Gujarati men, specially the Patels, continually mistreat and disrespect their wives (Patelianis) . One fine day, it happened to be the 14th day of February, one brave Pateliani, having had enough “torture” by her husband, finally chose to rebel by beating him up with a Velan (rolling pin).

Yes…the same Velan which she used daily, to make chapattis for him….only this time, instead of the dough, it was the husband who was flattened.

This was a momentous occasion for all Gujarati women and a revolt soon spread, like wild fire, with thousands of housewives beating up their husbands with the Velan.

There was an outburst of moaning “chapatti-ed” husbands all over Anand and Ahmadabad. The Patel men-folk quickly learned their lesson and started to behave more respectfully with their Patelianis.

Thereafter, on 14th February, every year, the womenfolk of Gujarat would beat up their husbands, to commemorate that eventful day.The wives having the satisfaction of beating up their husbands with the Velan and the men having the supreme joy of submitting to the will of the women they loved.
Soon The Gujju men realised that in order to avoid this ordeal they need to present gifts to their wives….they brought flowers and sweetmeats.
Hence the tradition began.

As Gujarat fell under the influence of Western culture, that day was called ‘Velan time‘ day.

The ritual soon spread to Britain and many other Western countries, specifically, the catch words ‘Velan time!’. Of course in their foreign tongues, it was first anglosised to ‘Velantime’ and then to ‘Valentine’. And thereafter, 14th of February, came to be known as Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentines day everyone!