The world is a comedy for those who think; a tragedy for those who feel.

– Horace Walpole

Is it just me or are there really so many “aware” songs out there in the past few years… And so many good ones at that too.

From self-aware songs:

• Meant To Live by Switchfoot
• One Thing by Finger Eleven
• Welcome To My Life by Simple Plan
• Harder To Breathe by Maroon 5
• Float On by Modest Mouse

To world-aware songs:

• This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race by Fall Out Boy
• We Believe by Good Charlotte
• Heard The World by O.A.R.
• Waiting On The World To Change by John Mayer
• If Everyone Cared by Nickelback
• High School Never Ends by Bowling For Soup

And saving my newest favorite for last:

• In Mumbai, Waiting For A Miracle by Raghu Dixit

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music. — T.S. Eliot

It’s Ravana.

Watch the trailer if you don’t believe me.

Ashok Banker is on a roll:

… But their (Rohit Vaid and Abhimanyu Singh, of Contiloe Pictures) enthusiasm, love, and passion for the project hooked me. I signed on, despite myself. Surprising myself, my family, friends. And so Mahayoddha Rama was born, an animated film for viewers of all ages (it’s not just for kids, trust me) that aspired to match the quality of any international animated film, while aiming for a photo-realistic 3D animation style that hasn’t even been attempted yet here let alone achieved, and overall storytelling and production qualities that would make all of us proud–would make every Indian proud, in fact.

The script was gruelling. Yes, the film was based on the Ramayana of Valmiki. (Not on my Ramayana books–those are being adapted separately to live-action films by a Hollywood studio.)

… What we were trying was to reinvent the Ramayana for Indian filmgoing audiences, through the grammar of all-ages animation. Now that may seem simple at first, but it’s not. For one thing, there’s never been an Indian animation film that truly uses the grammar of animation. Sure, there have been the Hanumans and Bal Ganeshs, and the like, and they may even have done reasonably well, but they’ve essentially been compromises between low budgets and a dearth of creative courage.

Our attempt was much bolder: It was to create a film experience that wouldn’t simply retell Ramayana, but would reinvent it for a new generation.

Ashok Banker is a perfect example of how pure passion for a subject can show in amazing (literary) accomplishments and suddenly the world is a better place. At least, I am grateful to him for making Ramayana approachable, captivating and delightful to novel-readers like me. And now they’re bringing the Ramayana to audiences of this generation in a movie format. That is terrific news.

I hope I can stop being envious about Lord of The Rings. I hope we can claim that we too have our own amazing depictions of our traditional stories. And yes, the movie is in Hindi and is meant for an Indian audience.

After watching the trailer, I think it’s true that Indian animators can rock.

The movie is scheduled to be released nationwide in October-November 2008. Looking forward to it!

P.S. How can one resist such a movie if Gulshan Grover is the voice of Ravana and Sameera Reddy is the voice of Sita?

From Tina Seelig’s talk on “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20″:

… I also have the honour of participating in the new Stanford D-School, the design institute. Last quarter, I was invited to teach one week on entrepreneurship. So I figured out how do I distill this down, this concept of turning problems into opportunities, into one week.

I gave each of the 14 teams an envelope with seed funding. It contained, you’re not going to believe this, a total of 5 dollars. Every time had as much as they wanted from Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning to brainstorm and do whatever they wanted. But as soon as they opened the envelope, they had 2 hours to make as much money as possible.

This was about identifying opportunities and creating value.

On Sunday night, they had to give me one powerpoint slide to describe what they did and how much they made. And on Monday, they get to do a 3-minute pitch to the class on what they had done.

Think about it for a second and think what YOU might do? If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours. How much money do you think they could have made?

Well, the winning teams brought in well over 600 dollars. And the average amount that was brought in was 200.

The trick is that the teams that made the most money did not use those 5 dollars. These were ideas that they looked around and found these incredible opportunities lying on the floor.

So, the winning team that made 650 dollars, they challenged all the assumptions. They sold their 3-minute pitch time in class on Monday to a company that wanted to recruit the students in the class. But guess what? They were incredibly successful.

And there were more teams like this. For example, this other team…

The rest of the video is on the Stanford EdCorner.

I wonder if all of these are actually part of some game plan:

• ndtv.com
• ndtvtravels.com
• ndtvgadgets.com
• ndtvshopping.com
• ndtvlumiere.com
• ndtvmovies.com
• ndtvmusic.com
• ndtvgoodtimes.com
• ndtvcooks.com
• ndtvprofit.com
• ndtvimagine.com
• doctorndtv.com
• cricketndtv.com
• etc.

It looks to me like they’re trying to mimic Network18’s portfolio:

• ibnlive.com
• tech20.com
• storeguru.com
• buzz18.com
• cricketnext.com
• indiwo.com
• moneycontrol.com
• jobstreet.com
• commoditiescontrol.com
• yatra.com
• bookmyshow.com
• compareindia.com
• etc.

The reason why I say that is because Network18 seems to be putting in effort to make each vertical the best-of-breed in the respective categories. For example, MoneyControl, Yatra, BookMyShow, Tech2.0 are popular.

But many of NDTV’s counterparts don’t seem to have any value-add. That’s the impression I get when comparing, say, ndtvgadgets.com and tech2.com.

It’s interesting how these offline media businesses are venturing online and how they’re faring.

I recently started using my own home page in Firefox as a start-point for all the important links that I should visit from time to time. It’s been a good boost for productivity since it keeps the main thing the main thing:

This was just a simple ‘idealet’ inspired by Opera’s Speed Dial feature.

The advantages to using this are:

1. Quick access to things you need to access like your website management page or your bank website, instead of hunting around in the bookmarks menu.
2. Avoids the need for a bookmarks toolbar. I feel a toolbar takes too much screen real-estate compared to its usefulness.
3. When you’re bored, you open your homepage and visit some of the vast websites where you can learn stuff, like the ones under the ‘Grey Matter’ section.
4. It jogs your memory to visit some of the websites that you should visit from time to time, like any forums that you want to be updated on (instead of letting them flood your inbox).
5. Having a simple local HTML page as the homepage is much faster than an online start-page.
6. Backing up/restoring/editing a HTML file is simpler than a bookmarks database.

The only thing missing is that when I open a new tab, it should automatically open with the home page instead of a blank page. This can be done using the Tabbrowser Preferences add-on.

Update: Or you can simply use the many Speed Dial addons to Firefox out there…

My latest “power song” is the flagship song of the Colourblind band. Who are these guys? I have no idea. From what I read on their website, they were/are a couple of rockers who got their album recorded with Sony Music India in 1999. Not sure how many copies they actually sold. They had got great reviews by newspapers but apparently still didn’t get support from their recording company:

We sold 10,000 copies in 2 weeks. Regardless of that Sony didn’t put out more copies in the market and published only 500 CDs.

Nine years later, we have the ubiquitous www giving opportunities for everyone to spread their music. For example Kal-Jug by Azad Zeeshan to some awesome fusion flute by Bapu Padmanabha on Muziboo and many more bands featured in the RadioVerve channels.

Unfortunately, you get to hear these songs only online inside a browser. Why is this a problem? Because I listen to most of my music on my iPod during commute, runs or walks.

This is why I really wish Muziboo/RadioVerve/etc. would consider producing an Indian “amateur” music album. A while back, Niara and myself were discussing that the potential is really big considering the online virality (do a couple of youtube videos or at least put some of the mp3s online) all the way to marketing at the national level in cahoots with a big production house. Imagine how many college bands would want to be featured.

Oh heck, you could even do a reality show on TV to select the bands whose songs get to be in the album! (well, okay, maybe this one is a stretch)

On the other hand, I sorely wish there was an indie iTunes store in India where I could purchase these songs. Or perhaps even a Sell-a-Band for an Indian audience.

For now, I’m waiting for MusicYogi.com to deliver my copy of The Raghu Dixit Project’s new album. Can’t wait to listen to ‘Mysore Se Aayi Re’ on my iPod.

1. Ignore all honking. Most of the honking is by nincompoops who want to save 30 seconds in travel but waste away their lives during the rest of the day.
   • Solution: We should ban all horns. It’s purpose has been lost. Reduce the noise pollution, please.
     1. Never drive in front of an auto, beside an auto or behind an auto. In other words, stay away. As far away as possible.
   • Solution: We should reduce the angle by which autos can swerve, at least by half. All hail the king of the road.