Madari - Coke Studio

Madari is one of the tracks from the Coke Studio episode produced by Clinton Cerejo. The song has been sung by Vishal (from Vishal-Shekhar duo) and Sonu Kakkar. Most of you would remember the song ‘Babuji jara dheere chalo’, which was a superhit around a decade back. Well, Sonu Kakkar sung that! But trust me, the Sonu Kakkar you will see in this song is totally different from that one.

If one were to ask me what is so great about this song, I would just say that this song will make you dance, laugh and cry in a span of 8 minutes. How many songs you know will have a similar effect on you? This song is powerful, magical and mind you, you will get addicted!

I would suggest that you watch the video too to appreciate this song and the artistes fully.

The song starts off with haunting keyboard notes and gradually acoustic guitar and mandolin start to make their presence felt. At 0:26, the mandolin comes in full flow. The Mandolin piece, played effortlessly by Mr. Chandrakant Lakshapati is a very important part of this song, you will realise why I am saying this as you listen to the rest of the song. The song picks pace at 0:58 with some great work on acoustic guitar by Clinton Cerejo himself. I love the way how the song starts, the sequence till now perfectly builds the platform on which Vishal and Sonu Kakkar do absolute wonders!

Vishal’s husky voice is perfectly suited to this song. He compliments the lyrics with the depth that naturally comes with his voice. Notice that the vocals at the start are at a pretty low note and Vishal does full justice to them. Mind you, this is the same singer who sings high notes with supreme ease! What a versatile singer!

The section from 1:08 to 3:10, which Vishal sings, is full of energy. It makes you dance with joy. The mandolin meanwhile keeps weaving its magic! Between 2:46 and2:57, you will see Mr. Chadrakant just sitting and playing the mandolin as if it’s very easy and anybody can do it! Look at the sheer effortlessness with which he is playing it, beautiful isn’t it?

And now comes the most beautiful part of this song. Sonu Kakkar, who till now, has just been standing there gets into action and how! How many times have you seen a singer take the limelight away from Vishal? Well, here, Sonu does exactly that.

The first ten seconds of her singing (from 3:03 to 3:11) are more than enough to tell you that this singer is something else! Your ears are now glued to the song wondering what she will do next. Trust me, her singing only gets better. Now just sit back, close your eyes and concentrate on the music. Let Sonu Kakkar’s vocals engulf you and make you experience what true happiness is. At 4:21, notice the smile of appreciation on Vishal’s face. He like us is wondering how on the earth can she sound so beautiful?! The words which Sonu is singing are by none other than Bulleh Shah, the famous and revered Sufi poet from 17^th century. Do not miss the bass guitar in background when Sonu is singing. Also, at 4:30, you will see the peculiar way in which the percussion instrument is being played. This is what Coke Studio is known for – innovation!

Vishal joins Sonu at 4:54 – try to understand the note at which Vishal is singing here. It is unbelievably high! Only Vishal can sing in that high note and his voice doesn’t break at all. Mandolin kicks in again at 5:28 to belt out a beautiful tune.

The next part of the song sung by Vishal starts at 5:46. This part makes me very emotional and makes my eyes well up every time I listen to it. The lyrics talk about the greatness of God and how he alone is behind everything that happens in this world. I am reminded of how powerful and at the same time how loving God is. I am also reminded of my lack of gratitude towards him. I have many times thought that I am independent, I can do anything I want and God doesn’t deserve any credit for my life. But no, I realise that though I am just a tiny drop in the scheme of God’s things, he loves me and will always there for me. I am moved to tears because I realise that I should be more thankful to God for the blessings he has showered on me!

Do not miss the small harkats by Vishal in this part; also notice how his hand movements follow his singing. Beautiful! It shows how involved he is with the song.

This song shows what can be done when you have an excellent team. Every person who is in this music video has done his best and the result is a very sincere and beautiful song which enthrals us. Thank you Clinton Cerejo and team, we are indebted. 

P.S.: I wrote this post for www.musicreprise.com (link: http://musicreprise.com/madari-cokestudio.php).

Music Reprise is a music website started by my brother Gaurav and his friend Vishal. 

Seth Godin, as usual, makes mighty lot of sense in this post - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/01/bill-james-and-you.html

Your past work is the most reliable indicator to your future performance. Not everybody is good at gauging your inner potential.

Yet Another Scam and No Justice in Sight

Adarsh Housing scam is disturbing at many levels. Not because of its scale, the money involved is indeed very small compared to biggies like CWG! What is disturbing is the collusion between politicians and defense personnel. Over last few years, credibility of armed forces has been on decline. Fake encounter killings in J&K (civilians were killed and shown as terrorists for bravery medals), land grabs by senior army officers and now 'Adarsh' scam, in which former high-ranked defense officers occupied flats which were meant for Kargil widows. Widows of soldiers like Saurabh Kalia, whose body was inhumanly mutilated by Pakistan Army.

This presents a frightening picture of this country's future. No public institution is now free from corruption. The celebrated 'common man' is left with absolutely no support. Congress government continues to turn blind eye to such scams and BJP is still busy in misguiding people by using religion. Other smaller parties are content with caste politics.

One can't help but be very cynical about future of 'Bharat' (or 'The Other Hindustan' as PM-in-waiting' calls it) and its poor disowned inhabitants.

Still confused between Blogger and Wordpress! :|

I started blogging on blogger back in 2005. Then I saw some blogs on wordpress and simply fell in love with their templates. So, I shifted to wordpress, but was disillusioned in no time. I found posting (especially uploading images in a post) pretty confusing and returned to blogger. Again, after some months, I shifted to wordpress and now, at this moment, I feel like coming back AGAIN to blogger!

The reasons this time are,
1. Archiving
In blogger, archive is shown in a tree format, where you can click on each month and view the posts immediately. In Wordpress, when you click on the month, you are taken to a new page which lists all the corresponding posts. And those are in 'summary' format, you have to click on 'View Full Post' to read complete post. This is too much clicking for a reader. In blogger, it takes much less clicks and you are not navigated to a new page unless you wish to read the post.

2. Blogroll
Blogger's blogroll displays the latest post on that blog while Wordpress has a basic simple blogroll.

3. Commenting on other's blogs
When commenting, it's easier to do it through blogger id, because it's linked to the gmail id and most of the times, I am already logged-on on Google. So, no need to login again. Also, using blogger id gives you an option to receive follow-up comments on your e-mail.

4. Templates
Blogger seems to have added some new templates and I quite like my current one!

The only minus point with blogger is, if you need to import posts from another blog of yours, you need a .xml file while in wordpress, you just need to enter the url and login details, wordpress takes care of the rest.

So, I have decided to maintain both blogs. Every new post will come up on both blogger and wordpress while archives before 2007 are available only on wordpress (www.sanketaradhye.wordpress.com)

Diwali!

This post was originally posted on my wordpress blog on Oct. 17, 2009.

Diwali – one of the biggest festivals in India. Diwali means light, happiness, new clothes, crackers, great food. I am typing this sitting in my hostel in Bangalore, while my family is 800 Kms away. Almost everybody from my mother’s side of family is there, celebrating Diwali together. There is something about festivals, doesn’t matter if you are away from family for rest of the year. Festivals have less to do with God or religion, they are really about whole family meeting at one place and catching up on each other’s lives.

For me, this is not first Diwali away from home. In four years of engineering, Diwali always came in submission days, the busiest days in any engineering student’s schedule. I had my share of fun here in Bangalore. Yesterday, I had gone to my uncle’s place whom I hadn’t seen in last ten years! I couldn’t find the house by myself, so he was coming to pick me up. We didn’t need any help to identify each other. It works like magic, something inside you tells that this person is from your own family. Contrary to what I had feared, there was no awkwardness at all. My uncle’s mother, was as affectionate as I have always remembered her. Ages ago, I had gone to their house in Harihar. I was 10 years old then!

There were two parallel conversations. I was talking to my uncle (my mother’s cousin) in English and to his mother in Marathi. You see, my family is a marriage of Maharashtra and Karnataka. My father is a Maharashtrian while my mother is a Kannadiga, though she was born and brought up in Maharashtra. So, only Marathi was spoken in my home. I used to hear Kannada only when mom’s side of relatives visited. Though I can understand Kannada a bit, I can’t speak it. And my uncle can’t speak Marathi!

That brings me to a promise I have made to myself umpteen number of times but never took enough efforts to fulfill it – to learn Kannada. Literally speaking, it is my mother-tongue. And now when I am in the capital of Karnataka, the centre of Kannada culture, its high time I work towards it.

When coming back to hostel, the atmosphere in the city was beautiful. Lamps in front of each and every house, colourful lighting everywhere, and the smell of crackers..aah! Diwali was finally here. More surprises were waiting for me in the hostel. Some enthusiastic friends of mine had done Lakshmi-Puja. And then, it was time for crackers! What a joy! Diwali just doesn’t feel like Diwali without crackers. Thanks to my dear friends, Jayaram especially for arranging everything.

Not a bad Diwali, right?!

Shifted to Wordpress

I have shifted my blog to sanketaradhye.wordpress.com

See you there! :)

Jab Kisi Ki Taraf....

So, I was going through my music collection today and came upon this song. Wow, I haven't listened to this in years!

This is a piece of great work by Jatin-Lalit and Sameer.

What prompted me to write this post is a line of dialogue Ajay Devgan says just before the song starts. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video on youtube which covers that part.

It goes like this,

Kajol: Tumne us ladki ko bataya kyon nahi?

Ajay: Yeh pyaar bhi ajeeb cheez hai. Jab iqraar ki puri ummeed ho to bhi dil kehne se darta hai. Aur mujhe to inqaar ka pura yakeen hai. Voh kisi aur ko chahati hai.

We all have been there! You like this girl/guy but at the same time you know that nothing can happen because she/he is already committed to somebody else. And you don't really want to break their relationship. You are just content at getting to spend time with that person, with no expectations. Of course, its not simple, but gradually you do accept the reality.

Disclaimer: This has NOTHING to do with my personal life!