Friday, February 29, 2008

Tu

Back home in Pune when I was still "studying" engineering, there used to be an intercollegiate orchestra competition called "Kalyani". One of the items in the competition was that a couple of days before the actual competition, the organizers would give each college band that was participating a poem written by some random guy. This poem was in marathi. The band had to set this poem to music and play it on stage during the competition, along with every other song they had practiced.

During the second year (in a row) that my band won the Kalyani Cup for our college, the poem that they gave us was called "tu astas tar". It basically means "If you were here...". The poem outlines a series of environmental changes that would transpire, were the object of the poet's affection to suddenly appear in the immediate vicinity. For example, it goes on to say that he / she would immediately have converted the harsh sunlight into gentle starlight and silence into sweet song and so on and so forth. We Maharashtrians hate sunlight with a passion that is rivaled only by our hatred for silence. I don't know what we're gonna do if this global warming thing turns out to be true. Or if those Bose sound-canceling headphones actually turn out to work.

But getting back to the point, for the second year in a row, it was up to me to set this poem to music. And now, about ten years later, I have finally managed to reconstitute that sophomore effort on my home synthesizer and make it available to the music industry executives who frequent my blog. Now although the original musical performance included a drummer, a guitarist, a bass guitarist, a tabla player, two keyboardists and a dedicated sound mixer, unfortunately I did not have any of these in my apartment and so I had to play every instrument myself on the synth. Also, since I have a hideous voice, please imagine that the trumpety thing playing throughout the song is actually the voice of a marathi lass singing marathi lyrics.

So, here's the song :



(link)

9 comments:

Partho said...

I loved the way you quote unquote studying. "Studying" engineering like one studies a goose egg.
So this is what you'd been doing while you were down with cold?
Jai Maharastra!

Unknown said...

get well soon gawker.

heh heh heh :p

zambezi said...

either you are losing your mind or you missing your wife a lot. you ate a fucking kangaroo and now you are playing with your self. when is she coming back?

A Motley Tunic said...

Looks like you have a lot of time. I am very jealous.

gawker said...

partho : Yes, I was never sure during my time in engineering college if I was studying or playing music or raising farm animals. Hence the quotes.

TGFI : Yes, I will indeed harness the power of other people's laughter to get well soon.

zambezi : You seem to have a lot of bottled up anger against me. My wife is returning this weekend. Are we going biking soon? I found another trail close to my home. It runs next to a prison.

sowmya : Yes, you should try falling sick sometime. It gives you a lot of time to do useless stuff.

zambezi said...

after next weekend, i am all yours. let me know when and how lomg the trail is? is it too early to go kayaking? i am looking forward to using my kayak. why does it all have to be near your house and not near mine? what about the bear mountains?

gawker said...

It connects to our Schuylkill trail (35 miles one way). Or we could travel north along the Perkiomen trail (15 miles one way). It is too early to go kayaking. It has to be near my house and not yours because we have greenery and trees here. what the hell are the bear mountains?

zambezi said...

will there be beer at the destination? i was thinking about you last night while i was out with some people from work. i went to this place in north jersey called steve's steak house. you would have loved the t bone. it was bloody good.

gawker said...

There is beer everywhere man. And we will find it if it hides. We should go have a steak. There is a great steakhouse here called Texas Roadhouse. People eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. I'm just waiting for freaking biking season.