threw a tantrum / addicted to music shows / hooked to nusrat /finished 'sabbaths theater'

threw a tantrum yesterday at this coffee bar ‘ the gossip café’ on link road yesterday evening. they refused to serve us water asking us to buy it instead. i have no idea how they got permission to open a restaurant without having a water connection. and the sad thing is that most of the customers seem to accept this denial of a basic right in a restaurant as a given- demurely accepting it as part of the rules for the new globalised city.

can you imagine such a situation in a udupi or an irani? where the waiter says ‘no drinking water – only bisleri’. and when after asking many times for the manager when we finally do manage to talk to him- he reacts by shouting back. saying “do not create a scene in the restaurant”. as if the problem is not that they are patently illegal- the problem is that we are letting other people know what they have a right to. he says that he was just about to make arrangements ‘for us’- as if the basic rights of the other customers being violated was not an issue.

and when i think about it- this is not the first time this has happened but its one of the few times that i have reacted. unfortunately i think i have become inured to these daily violations of basic rights. i am glad that we created a scene there. after all today we pay money to access public space and shell out cash for water only because we prefer submitting silently than raising a ruckus. we help in smoothening the processes of that are increasingly diminishing public sphere.

addicted completely to music talent hunt show zee sa re ga ma pa. last nights mega show was a melodrama and music fest with daler mehndi belting out rang de basanti with the boys and this non-stop medley of bhangra hits with the girls with some bollywood thrown in for good measure. laloo was special guest for the folk song episode and though my personal favourite amanats smooth bhojpuri song or even maulis sexy ‘namak’ were good, the night belonged to mussarats soaring nusrat and aneeks easy bhojpuri folk.

am hooked completely on nusrat again becaue of the show. from maula ali and the qawwalis to the indipop. yesterday ranjit, sonal and me had a discussion on which version of ‘tere bin nahin lagta dil mera dholna’ we preferred. one is the tackily produces indipop version and the other the smoothened fusion version on ‘night song’. i love the former for the way in which his voice hits those high notes and sets them on fire and when low it feels like the note can barely control the latent power in his voice. it lies rumbling beneath waiting to explode. i find the fusion version pretty but in a overly decorated kind of way. the over production dulls the edge. i actually find that to be true of even kailash khers new song ‘saiyyan’. beautiful song but a little overcooked.

finished 'sabbaths theater' - philip roth. a story of a depraved ex puppeteer who loses all when he loses his mistress. to be with this horrific man through the book might have been excruciating of it was not for the humour and intelligence by which roth gets us to go from hating him, to sympathizing with him and end up identifying with him as he journeys half mad towards self destruction through his obsessions and fear of death.