The benefit of good music to men

Kartikey Sehgal

The benefit of listening to a good musician lies in the pleasure of not bothering to ‘change the number’. You are assured that none of his songs would be bad. They would adhere to standards, and the worst song would at least be of a standard that makes you call it ‘less-good’ than the others.

You don’t have to keep changing the music or go repeatedly towards the machine that is playing you the songs. For instance, J S Bach’s orchestral works [for the uninitiated, here is a very popular movement (youtube, audio only)] give you great delight as they hardly make you scamper and change any of the musical movements; there is no bad movement, there is no bad music.

You can, as an example of course, talk to a girl whilst Bach plays in the same room - I am assuming a closed space for romantic purposes. If the girl is of some wisdom, then she will not ask you to ‘change the music’ or ‘what shit is this’ - both statements implying that you are now permitted to ask the girl to leave the room or to dump her in the nearest water-body. For if she can’t appreciate or at least make peace with good music, then she can never live with you. She is not worth your time. And Bach is good music. I need not say that it would be a tragic phenomenon if you left Bach for the girl and had children with her. They would surely be crazy and grow up and kill you.

Slovakian way of treating girls who don't like
good music. 

Let me assure you that we don’t keep good music, especially good classical music, as the background to any event in life. We don’t consider it as an appendage to hotel lobbies and restaurants where music is played to often fill out the space; so that if the patrons are bored in conversations, they can catch a tune and sway to it, and thereby stay in the place and waste more of their time and money.

No. Music lovers, and real men, use music to relax - surely - and to immerse themselves in any circumstance that life doles out. Imagine. You are sweaty and bothered that your perspiration levels will cause people around you to shun you as an outcast. You are uncomfortable only till the time your well-trained ears catch a tune of Mr. Bach that some blessed soul has played - imagine it’s a lobby and you are appearing for an interview.

Now that good music has given you company, you care little for that pretty woman in tight braids who is constantly walking across the room, or any of those stern looking future colleagues of yours. You have immersed your self in the music. Music has reminded you that you have worth and imagination. That life is varied and ever-changing, that whether you win or lose today, it does not matter much. Great musicians die. Music lives. But it does not revive the musicians. You have more thoughts, all of which are superior to the fear of being sweaty.

Because of good music-listening habits, you will feel comfortable while waiting for an interview, while traveling in buses and trains and heat and sweat. You have served music and music has served you well. You are friends with an art form. You can live a good life.

This is the benefit good music has on your mind. You are assured of quality, and you become quality. Your mind has the ability to leave aside smaller thoughts.

I need not say that this requires training and practice. Or very good genes. For there are many-a-men that sway their heads to songs and music that are fit to be dumped in that water-body along with that girl you threw some time back, who now threatens to book you for assault. I say, carry Bach when you go to prison.

and show this portrait to the prisoners, who will shiver in fear.

For the love of the listener

 

Kartikey Sehgal

 

Information:

Franz Liszt was a composer-pianist (largely). He transcribed Beethoven's symphonies for piano. Beethoven was a composer. 

Wagner and Tchaikovsky were composers. Haydn was a composer and a teacher to Beethoven. Knowlede about Liszt's transcriptions here.

 

I see.

 

The idea of Franz Liszt to play Ludwig Van Beethoven on piano was to show that Beethoven had a soft touch in all the symphonies. Franz's piano played the part of bringing to notice the absolutely sublime part of the music; sublimity also defined as softness; that which does not hurt the ears; that which replaces the alleged harshness of trombones and trumpets.

 

Any music listener would need to imagine music and 'circumstance' to essentially be in touch with classical music. I define circumstance as supreme imagination. All are not lucky to possess this imagination.that

 

It is thus that Wagner, Tchaikovsky saw in Beethoven what others didn’t. Also, this circumstance of superior imagination may come now and then, making the task of the critic obsolete since there is no absolute to music except that which is easily seen as horrendously bad.

 

The listener, say, like Haydn, may one day, at an opportune moment accept that what he had previously considered as mediocre is essentially life-changing; like Haydn alluded to Beethoven’s music after listening to his Symphony no.3.

 

Is it not a pleasure to listen to an orchestra play Beethoven’s works, and then listen to Liszt play them on the piano? You realise that music has shades, a statement passed of as obvious by music lovers, but which assumes greater significance for the listener when faced with the actuality of listening to the soothing piano tones after the absolute power of the trumpets and the string section.

 

The listener, now, has to imagine the power displayed by the trumpet in the notes of the piano. A task that is of great love to the listener. A task that may define the mysterious emotion of 'love'. For love is this deeper imagination of music, and hence of life. 

 

What people do at an auto-expo

Kartikey Sehgal

On being asked what 'what people do at an auto-expo', and not willing to speak, I wrote the following on some napkins: 

let us go to an auto expo
scratch our chins
and act informed.

like in a fashion show,
which is a gift to hypocrisy
where we watch the models
but ogle at the fabrics

let us discuss 
engines and powers - 
not of the model,
who sashays around the bonnet
moving hers in style, - 
but of the car

let us take photos of the machine
and once in a while tilt the camera,
and act in despair,
for the car's curves
have been lost
to the model's.

let us hate
the objectification of women
as we point out 
to the model
again
and again
while talking - 
'what have those creamy thighs
with a few minute moles on them
which are admittedly juicy
got to do 
with cars.
do aroused men buy more cars?'

a few lines about women issues
let us then walk...

let us then walk to the model
and ask - 
'excuse me, who can give me more information?'
staring at her face,
and as she points out the person,
stealing glances
here and there.

Then when a representative asks,
'may I help you'
you go to the washroom instead.

let us go to an auto expo
where you can't afford a single car

 

Source

Analysing Pakistan’s Commitment to Peace – Part 3

Ananth Venkatesh

In the final part of the Indo-Pak story, Ananth says that India ought to not believe in words of peace and make concessions or promises till the proven industry of terrorism is annihilated by Pakistan.

Any Indian government, which negotiates with Pakistan when no tangible action has been adopted by Pakistan to incarcerate the terrorist, Hafeez Saeed, is a dishonorable government.

Any Indian government or think tank or media house, which even contemplates negotiations with Pakistan for the ‘resolution’ of Siachen/Sir Creek/J&K disputes, is a hopelessly unrealistic and inexcusably idealistic entity. This vision of talking is unpardonably utopian as the terrorist industry in Pakistan has mushroomed in the last 15 years.

The dangerous battlefield [source]

There have been murders of prominent Pakistani politicians such as the Pakistani Punjab’s former Governor, Salman Taseer, and the former Pakistani Federal Minister, Shahbaaz Bhatti. The ISI and the Pakistani military have demonstrated no concrete sign to India and to the global community of their full breakaway from these macabre terrorist groups who carried out the killings. No convictions of the detained Pakistanis have occurred in Pakistan in order to provide justice to the casualties of the 26/11 barbarities in Mumbai. The ISI and the Pakistani military will be the final deciders of the Pakistani relationship with India, not the democratically chosen feeble Pakistani government.

There have been mammoth instances of Pakistan fomenting ghoulish terrorism in India, with some help from some indigenous Indians. Temporarily, the Indian government is outraged and appalled and desists from having conversations with Pakistan. But then, with the passage of time, everything is forgotten and India is conversing with Pakistan again and issuing homilies in support of Indo-Pak tranquility. Indian PM Manmohan Singh emits commendations of the ‘Pakistani intentions of peacefulness.’ But the terrorists are there on that country’s soil planning their next atrocity on India, the laboratory of Islamic terroristic experimentation.

Shahbaz Bhatti: A cardinal has called for the Church to consider declaring 
the murdered Pakistani politician a saint [source]

It should be an Indian governmental principle that India will not negotiate with a Pakistani government that doesn’t deliver an onslaught on terrorism. Sagacious and realistic diplomacy doesn’t mean that India should continue to have unfettered dialogue with the Pakistanis even if anti Indian Islamic dragons in Pakistan continue to envenom themselves untouched. Talking to this Pakistani government and even mulling over any ‘peace deal’ with them is an affront to the thousands of casualties in India. These Indian casualties, who have been exterminated in crowded trains, buses, marketplaces and outside temples, deserve an Indian government that doesn’t compromise with a Pakistani administration that doesn’t whip terror on its soil.

The bottom line is that Pakistan will continue to adhere to the policy of making India bleed gradually. This policy was embraced by the Pakistani State after the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh by India during the Indo-Pak battle of 1971.

This Pakistani policy is likely to continue at least till Pakistan attains its prime goal of annexing J&K. The question is, should India let that happen for the sake of ‘peace’ with Pakistan? For any kind of ‘durable’ peace and for a wholesome ‘resolution’ of Indo-Pak ‘disputes’, as stressed by Pakistan, India will have to make territorial and administrative concessions on Kashmir to Pakistan. India will have to make some territorial concession to Pakistan on the strategically important Siachen Glacier.

Then only, Pakistan will be satisfied and there may be ‘peace.’

[source] Still not solved. Not cared.

• Should India make these concessions and thereby scorn the sacrifices of its military personnel in J&K, who have sacrificed their lives to continue J&K’s association with India?
• Should India make the Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh minorities in Kashmir additionally vulnerable by making concessions on Kashmir to Pakistan? What about the miserableness of the condition of the dispossessed Kashmiri Hindus, millions of whom are not in their Kashmiri hometowns and are, instead, in piteous refugee camps and in other parts of India?
• Should India lose the strategic advantage it has currently by demilitarizing Siachen in the absence of any foolproof guarantee from the Pakistani military that it will not try to reoccupy Siachen clandestinely?
• Can Pakistani ‘tranquil’ intentions be trusted by India in the presence of such terrorist sectarianism in Pakistan, in the presence of copious anti-Indian Islamic terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan (and in Pak-possessed Kashmir)?

Illogical sentimentality with Pakistan will make India appear to be a friend of foolhardiness and idiocy. Indian military potency and an indefatigable resolve to place terror in an unrecoverable comatose condition will be India’s savior, not comical emotionalism. A nation that indulges in comical emotionalism on security matters will be ridiculed by the world. India can start off by executing some of the convicted terrorists in India jails, who are with the death penalty.

Analysing Pakistan’s Commitment to Peace - Part 2

Ananth Venkatesh
Ananth does not trust the peace talks of Imran Khan and charts out the path he may be taking to oust India from Afghanistan, thereby creating worse conditions for India, the West and international peace. The real messengers of peace like Burhanuddin Rabbani are being murdered while the politicos are making pacts with the murderers. Part two of three in his story on India-Pakistan peace relations. (part one)
The infrastructural robustness and the ideological verve of these Pakistani terrorist groups are largely unstained and unbroken, notwithstanding the outlawing of some of them periodically by the Pakistani government. The outlawing is so passive and ineffective that these groups regroup and rename themselves and their aims to make themselves more palatable to the global community. They reincarnate themselves as outfits of philanthropy. Pakistan can then conveniently express its incapacity to crack and illegalize these ‘charitable outfits.’

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the humanitarian wing of the
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group (source)
Essentially, these ‘charitable outfits’ have the same demoniacal aspiration as their terrorist founders. One needs to look at the ‘transformation’ of the proscribed Laskhar-e-Toiba into a ‘philanthropic outfit’, which has meant that the Lashkar has circumvented the proscription on it by adorning the guise of a ‘charitable outfit’, which it may very well be, but its intentions and infrastructure, as well as finances for funding terror, still are healthy. Lashkar, LeJ and Harkat-ul Mujahideen al-Alami were involved in the many unsuccessful endeavors to bump off Musharraf, which led majorly to their toothless banning in the first place. Of course, these terrorist groups have indulged in bloodthirsty bellicosity against Western interests as well, such as the vehicular bombing in June 2002 near the American Consulate in Karachi. The LeJ is also accused of participation in the loathsome homicide of the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, in December 2007.
The menace of these extremist Pakistani outfits hasn’t faded away, with many of their members forging ultra-orthodox political alliances, whose mammoth congregations have been attended by the functionaries of Imran Khan’s emerging political party, Tehreek-e-Insaaf. Imran Khan has promoted himself as the bringer of a better future for the Pakistani populace. He is, apparently, a stainless candidate unlike Zardari and some of the other conventional Pakistani politicians, who have been encircled by allegations of subornment and nepotism. Imran Khan does represent a new political fragrance for the Pakistani electorate as he is untested administratively and, hence, bereft of the grubbiness of allegations of corruption. But his standpoints on Afghanistan, on the Taliban, on the Pakistani political ultraconservatives, on the Pakistani terrorist outfits, on the international military presence in Afghanistan, etc. are fundamentally worrisome for Indian interests and strategic wellbeing.

Imran Khan advocates a dialogue with the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban to procreate orderliness in Afghanistan. Talking to these terrorist outfits, which have not hesitated to murder prominent Afghan messengers of peace such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, is a catastrophic idea, which will eliminate whatever democracy and tolerance that exists in Afghanistan today under the presence of the ISAF. Talking to the Talibani outfit will mean compromising with them if success has to be accomplished during the talks. That means that the Talibani demand for political power in Kabul will have to be accommodated. The cultural, religious, sectarian and gender bigotry practiced by the Taliban will come to the fore more openly if the Taliban acquires political potency. The objective behind the justifiable liberation of Afghanistan by the ISAF in 2001 was the extermination of the poisonous infrastructure of the Taliban. To accord the Taliban political power in any form would be to infringe the core principles upon which the invasion of Afghanistan was implemented in October 2001 by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 carnage on American soil that was thickly assisted by the Al-Qaeda leadership safeguarded on Afghan earth by the then governing Taliban.

Burhanuddin Rabbani was the former head of the High Peace Council before he was killed in September 2011 [Reuters] [source]
The Talibani penetration of political potency in Kabul, as a part of any ‘peace pact’ arranged by the Pakistanis and even by the reluctant Americans, would be devastating for the stabilizing Western influence in Afghanistan. The Talibani access to the Afghan governmental corridors would be a blow that incapacitates Indian influence in Afghanistan, which has been beneficial for Afghan infrastructural development since 2011. The Taliban entrance into the Afghan government would mean an increased likelihood of sanctuaries being provided in Afghanistan for Taliban terrorists, who are opposed to the West and to India (non-Islamic India/Hinduism). An Afghanistan without the ISAF, even under a national coalitional administration consisting of the Taliban, will be forced to depend on Pakistani tutelage. Pakistan can take advantage of its meaningful connections with segments of the Taliban (terrorist Haqqani network) to exert considerable pressure on Afghanistan after 2014, 2014 being the year of the intended disengagement of American troops from Afghan soil.
Pakistan will then block any Indian attempt to gain a toehold in Afghani matters such as Indian investment in the Afghani economy, Indian training for the Afghani military, etc. Pakistan will subdue Afghani strategic independence to such an extent that India will be regarded as a pariah in an Afghanistan that is devoid of the ISAF and that is, subsequently, under the coercive counseling of the Pakistani State (ISI, Pakistani military). An Afghanistan, which has a central coalitional government with the Taliban as one coalitional component, will be a nation fractured by political unsteadiness, administrative procrastination and obdurate inter-ministerial divergences. In the event of a coalitional government in collaboration with the Taliban, a few ministries will have to be handed over to the Talibani hands. Such a government will be forever under incapacitating political paralysis of different degrees.

Afghan National Police officers, seen training with mock guns during a session with ISAF soldiers from the German Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) at the German army camp in Fayzabad, northern Afghanistan, Monday, Sept. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
ISAF benefitted the Afghan police and civilian administration in training activities.
The Taliban, on acceding to the democratic political process in Afghanistan as part of a ‘serenity accord,’ may ensure the temporary deactivation of their armed cadres to gain international succor. However, after the ISAF withdrawal from Afghan soil in 2014, the Taliban, even if it is a part of the political process in Afghanistan then, can effortlessly reactivate the militariness of its cadres as there will be, at best, an inconsequential global military presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Reactivation of its armed cadres will not be difficult for the Talibani political wing then.
After the ISAF disengagement from Afghanistan in 2014, the whole geopolitical and geo-strategic scenario vis-à-vis Afghanistan will alter. Pakistan, through means such as its endorsement of the deadly Haqqani network, may become the major foreign player in Afghanistan and the weary West may relent. This means that anti-Indian Islamic terrorist factories could reopen in Afghanistan after 2014 and function more freely. Terrorists could be pushed from Afghanistan to Pakistan, their border being unmanageably unlawful and unruly. These terrorists could then infiltrate Indian Kashmir from Pakistani soil i.e. vintage cross-border terrorism. Anti Western terrorists could house themselves in Afghanistan after 2014 with the guarantee of receiving safe havens from the Afghan government, which has the political Taliban as its part. If the moderate pro-Indian Afghani parliamentarians protest against Talibani dictatorialness, then the Taliban could disengage from the Afghani political process and threaten to instill anarchical bloodshed on the streets.
Will the West intercede militarily then to terminate the Taliban threat?

A Taliban blast in Kabul (source)
Another full-fledged Western military intercession is highly improbable considering the Western tiredness on account of the current Afghan conflict. Pakistan will be the only country that will then trumpet to the world that it has the power to stabilize Afghanistan and kill the prospective anarchy there. This will mean, at least, that Pakistan will ‘arrange’ a very strong Talibani presence in the national Afghan government, which will represent the sidelining of other relatively broadminded Afghan political parties, with strategic conviviality towards India. Pakistan, in order to assert itself in Afghanistan, may desire and come up with a heavily Talibani Afghan government. This will typify the termination of the meaningfulness of the Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan as the Taliban will not aspire to do any business with India.
Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan and India doesn’t. India currently doesn’t have a military existence on Afghan soil. It will be difficult for India to penetrate Afghanistan militarily after 2014 if the Talibani virulence for India manifolds. India will be a tragic loser.

This is the reality that Imran Khan desires, despite knowing the thick connections between Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Pakistani Islamic terrorist groups. Negotiations with the Taliban represent a core strategy of Imran Khan to heighten the Pakistani influence in Afghanistan after 2014 and to decapitate Indian influence there after 2014.  [Photo:"By 2014 Afghans will be fully responsible for their security' [source]]
Imran Khan aspires to see the ouster of a constructive Indian presence in Afghanistan. His sugarcoated talks about Indo-Pak peace being one of his primary goals must not make India position blind trust in him.
His alliances with the Pakistani political ultraconservatives, who have zero respect for India, his advocacy of discussions with Pakistani extremist groups to create orderliness in Pakistan and in the lawless Waziristan, his disparagement of the stableness that the Western military presence and the Indian diplomatic presence have brought to Afghanistan, etc. embody his political personality, which is unpalatable and indigestible for the idea of peace in South Asia.
He has not spoken at length about the measures that he would take to dissect the Islamic terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. He probably never will speak at length on this matter since he doesn’t intend to do anything of this sort. India, at this stage, can derive no comfort from the electioneering and sloganeering of Imran Khan and his allies.

This is something that comes with Windows, and I am bookmarking it here just in case I forget it later.

I suppose people who designed this would be aghast to see the purpose to which I have put their application, but I am grateful nevertheless for the fun. Thanks a lot for the Math Input Panel : it generates complicated equations to go with pictures.

Paarotfish is one thing I can't do without. In fact, I dread the day Twitter changes stuff and Parrotfish gets irretrievable broken. Hope it is not soon. Without the embed.ly twitter extension, my timeline looks impoverished. Parrotfish is a must have on Twitter, I don't know why it isn't more popular.

Smoothdraw is a fine paint application to have in your desktop : Smoothdraw

One installs and removes so many programs, and uses and forgets so much, I am going to bookmark that sort of thing here for future reference.

Film has an immediacy that is not available to any other medium. The impact of what would have taken prolonged debate, and possibly breathtaking oratory that might not have been appreciated by the general public is today encapsulated in a single image, or a shot.

image credit : Mail Online

More from the Reviews.

"To depict a woman naked is to show her as Aphrodite, asserted St. Clement of Alexandria, the second century apologist; a good Christian should be horrified at the idea," writes Catharine Edwards in her review of "The Art of the Body". The human is not to be confused with the divine.

The ancient Greeks and we in much of our history, I think, would have been filled with awe at our first sight of the nude feminine body. Outside the sculptures of our temples, one wonders what we made of the encounter. But today, our conditioning is that of film, and the naked women might not evoke in us visions of the divine - our thoughts go to the dark films, the sensuous and suggestive forms and movements of our actresses, and the false throb of faked climaxes. We have gained much with photos and films, but the frozen sculptures with their limited means of production and privileged status as objects of worship held for us more wonder. The naked feminine body is no longer capable of invoking feelings of exaltation in us, there is something subterranean and sinister in our passions. Thanks to the subterfuge of enacted dramas compulsively and helplessly endured day in and day out.

The dissolution of the still form into transient images is a matter of regret, but the sculpture as a evocative and representative artifice is itself incomplete when compared with words, as in Odyssey:

Tyro began, whom great Salmoneus bred;
The royal partner of famed Cretheus' bed.
For fair Enipeus, as from fruitful urns
He pours his watery store, the virgin burns;
Smooth flows the gentle stream with wanton pride,
And in soft mazes rolls a silver tide.
As on his banks the maid enamour'd roves,
The monarch of the deep beholds and loves;
In her Enipeus' form and borrow'd charms
The amorous god descends into her arms:
Around, a spacious arch of waves he throws,
And high in air the liquid mountain rose;
Thus in surrounding floods conceal'd, he proves
The pleasing transport, and completes his loves.

A prose version of this:

"[Odysseus sees the ghosts of heroines in the underworld :] The first that I saw was high-born Tyro, daughter of great Salmoneos and wife of Kretheus son of Aiolos--such was her twofold boast. She fell in love with the river-god Enipeos, whose waters are the most beautiful of any that flow on earth; and she haunted his beguiling streams. But in place of Enipeos, and in his likeness, there came the god [Poseidon] who sustains and who shakes the earth. He lay with her at the mouth of the eddying river, and a surging wave, mountain-high, curled over them and concealed the god and the mortal girl."

Water is all movement, and a wave more so, but a surging wave arches high and conceals the divine and their human lovers in their embrace. With words anything is possible : because its form is ever in the making, it is in a constant state of renewal and this half comprehension of the incomprehensible is what is perfect about it.