Remembering happier times in the Maldives

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Bijoy

When I visited the Maldives with my friends from Thermal And A Quarter in 2010, the island nation impressed me, besides its obvious natural beauty, as a land of a restless people. The death metal bands were loud, their cries of revolution insistent, and its youth possessed of an unexplained angst. Why, we wondered. After all, the Maldives had slipped out of a three-decade-long, near-dictatorial regime of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in 2008, when President Mohamed Nasheed, a long-time pro-democracy activist often hailed as the “Mandela of the Maldives”, was sworn in after a bitterly contested, hard-won democratic electoral process. Under Nasheed, the Maldives appeared to look ahead, confront the threat of climate change assertively (much of Maldives is only a few meters above sea level) and rebuild its life-blood, the tourism industry, which had been battered by Asian Tsunami of December 2004. Posses of podgy armed guards in fatigues roamed the streets, automatic firearms at the ready. They patrolled the small crowded streets in trucks, watching over peaceful but noisy processions of flag-bearing schoolchildren. We never quite understood why — our questions received shrugs for answers. We just got this by way of an answer: “The President must continuously watch out for himself.” With a little polite ferreting we learned that Gayoom, though not usually in the country, still controlled the big pieces on the board, an outcome of his longstanding influence.

Last week presented the sum of all fears. After days of rioting in which police joined protesters, Nasheed was overthrown in what he described afterwards as a coup d’état. His deputy Mohammed Waheed Hassan was sworn in as President. The situation is developing. There are alleged corruption charges against Nasheed, and his political foes have ganged up.

A friend in the Maldives told me on Facebook that he was “hoping that this would end as soon as possible. This is something I never wanted to see in my (life), especially in Maldives.”

Looking back at that lovely week in the Maldives, I posted a photo-essay on Yahoo! India Travel, which I edit.

Here it is:

A street in Male, capital of the Maldives. CLICK TO VIEW THE SLIDESHOW

More pictures and a photo-essay on Yahoo! India Travel

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Two 9/11 stories

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Bijoy

Journalists covering a tragic event are often swept with the flow of other people’s emotions, often mediated by an overdose of messages crafted to overwhelm. It’s often challenging, in such situations, to locate the true colour of your emotions, and to draw that elusive line in the shifting sand between what you feel and what you are expected to feel. Inevitably, though, a journalist may choose to play the story as he or she wants the reader to feel it. If that amounts to betrayal — of the subjects in the story, the true nature of emotion, and of the real truth thereof — the writer shall forever be haunted by it.

Nine years after I wrote the 9/11 stories I was assigned, I revisited them in my head. And here’s what I wrote on Yahoo! India (where I now work):

Even in death, Hemant Puttur gifted prosperity

Puttur, the town in southwestern Karnataka after which 9/11 victim Hemant Puttur took his name, now boasts a welcome arch, shopping mall and community hall in his name. He gave even in death.

MORE >>

9/11, 26/11… they are only stories

What 9/11? Barely three years since 26/11, we have forgotten Salaskar, Karkare, Kamte and Unnikrishnan. For us, terror attacks are only stories. In 2002, when I spoke to the father of 9/11 victim and Wipro employee Shreyas Ranganath, he reminded me of that chilling truth. I feel no different today.

MORE >>

Btw, if you scroll through the comments, you’ll see some gems from our most erudite readers. :)

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Here come the sons

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Bijoy

Whatever it took to step out of their fathers’ long shadows, the Beatles’ sons have now risen. But will they come together (right now) and repeat that great journey across the universe?

Julian Lennon (left) with stepmother Yoko Ono and father John Lennon (LIFE image archive)

During the Beatles’ epic breakup in 1969, Julian Lennon was caught in a different crossfire. John Lennon’s son from his marriage to Cynthia Powell and the eldest of the Beatles progeny, John Charles Julian Lennon was born in 1963 just as the Fab Four poised to leap across the universe. His parents, high-school sweethearts, had married unceremoniously after Cynthia became pregnant. Wary of jeopardising the Beatles’ boy band image, manager Brian Epstein forced Lennon to keep his marriage quiet.

Beatlemania blew the Lennons apart. While Cynthia tolerated her husband’s extramarital dalliances, there was one she could not stave away.

“She was persistent and she didn’t give up,” Cynthia said of Japanese avant-garde musician Yoko Ono. Returning from a sojourn she found an unapologetic Lennon with Ono, who had “borrowed” her bathrobe.

Caught in the midst of his parents’ divorce, Julian shuttled between homes. It was clearly a period of inexorable sadness for young Julian, and one that scarred him permanently. Paul McCartney, possessed of avuncular tenderness, comforted the boy by singing “Hey Jules.” Renamed, the song entered the Beatles’ catalogue and became one of their greatest hits. Many years later, Lennon lauded “Hey Jude” as one of McCartney’s finest compositions, though all the while he had imagined that it was written for him and Ono.

May Pang, John Lennon's companion during his "Lost Weekend"

Lennon and Ono married in 1969 and their relationship became a scratching post for modernists of all stripes. The fab couple moved to New York in 1971, cutting Julian out of the family album. In 1973, John separated briefly from Ono and fell into an eventful 18-month relationship with her production coordinator May Pang; Lennon later described it as his “Lost Weekend”. Pang, who subsequently wrote two memoirs about this period of her life, encouraged John to reconnect with his estranged son, who then lived in England.

Eleven-year-old Julian spent Christmas with his father. They made music: the credit “starring Julian Lennon on drums and Dad on piano and vocals” appeared on Walls and Bridges (1974), notable for the only No 1 hit of Lennon’s solo career.

Things fell apart when Lennon and Ono reunited abruptly. And fruitfully, it would seem, for in 1975, Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born. This time Lennon overcompensated as father and house-husband, enjoying a near-permanent hiatus from music to lavish attention on his newborn son.

After Lennon was murdered in 1980, Julian was effectively cast away from his dad’s estate. Sixteen years later he paid £55,000 at an auction for his father’s memorabilia, among which were the recording notes to “Hey Jude”.

Julian Lennon during the Valotte tour 1985

Julian Lennon 1985 tour (source: an0nym0n0us/ Flickr)

In 1984, Julian Lennon burst on the charts with Valotte. Nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 1985, the album produced two Top 10 hits and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide – the biggest success enjoyed by a next-generation Beatle. His next, The Secret Value of Daydreaming (1986), sold over 500,000 copies in the US.

Pressured to fill his father’s place in the world, Julian caved. When the next three albums sank he took to drugs and sought respite in sculpture, cooking and concert photography – the last starting with half-brother Sean’s 2007 tour.

Sean Lennon

Sean Lennon (source: ChristineRenee.net/ Flickr)

Sean Lennon, who was five when his father died, grew up under his mother’s wing and with both hands in her fathomless pockets. Through childhood, he appeared on Ono’s albums and formed the band IMA to back her on Rising (1995). He starred in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker video and co-wrote a song for Lenny Kravitz.

With Julian’s capricious career widen open before him as a “how not to” handbook, Sean ventured a careful choice of collaborations – first with the food-besotted pop band Cibo Matto, fronted by two Japanese women, and then with Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys, the punk band that owned the label Grand Royal Records. In 1998, the label released Sean’s Into the Sun. The album entered the US Top 200 but critics booed it out. He returned in 2006 with Friendly Fire which, a reviewer wrote, “fades away as it plays”.

Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, his current project with precocious fashion model and longtime girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, engendered the eclectic album Acoustic Sessions in October 2010. In a throwback to his father’s experience, National Public Radio commented that Sean had “found his own voice — and the perfect songwriting partner — to produce his best work yet.”

Arguably the brightest spark born of Beatle loins is Zak Starkey, son of drummer Ringo Starr (real name Richard Starkey) and his first wife Maureen Cox (Ringo’s younger son Jason had a low-key musical career and several problems with the law). At eight, Zak found a mentor in godfather Keith Moon, the explosive and charismatic drummer of The Who (Moon died of an accidental drug overdose in 1978). After stints with the Icicle Works and his father’s All Starr Band, Starkey joined The Who on their Quadrophenia tour in 1996. Critics and bandmates hailed him as Moon’s worthy successor.

Zak Starkey drums for The Who

Zak Starkey (on drums) performs with The Who (source: Marian Izaguerri /Flickr)

In 2004, Starkey began working with Britpop heavyweights Oasis – his “most inspiring band”. After a four-year outing, which included work on studio albums Don’t Believe the Truth (2005) and Dig Out Your Soul (2007), Starkey returned to The Who and appeared with them as recently as 2010.

Now 45, Starkey has his tongue firmly in cheek whenever he comments on being a celebrity son. “I am not a rock‘n’roll star,” he once said. “I’m not famous… but I am a very successful musician.”

A measure of success also sought out Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison and his Mexican second wife Olivia Arias. Named for the sixth and seventh notes of the Indian music scale, Dhani was born in 1978 before his parents were married (Harrison’s first wife Pattie Boyd later married Eric Clapton). Endowed with his father’s brooding brow and piercing dark eyes, Dhani played his first show with Harrison in Tokyo before 50,000 people. He also played a major part in his father’s posthumous album Brainwashed (2002), produced by Jeff Lynne, Harrison’s bandmate in the Traveling Wilburys.

After his father died of cancer in 2001 Dhani spent seven years tethering loose ends. “I don’t want to spend my whole career dealing with his work,” he remarked in an interview. “I want to go out and make my own stuff.”

In 2006, he joined Bob Dylan’s son Jakob to record John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth” for a tribute album. He also performed on two Traveling Wilburys tracks (credited as Ayrton Wilbury). Later that year, he started an indie rock band Thenewno2, with whom he released a debut album You Are Here (2009). Though the band has not met with chart success, it struck a deal with American video-game manufacturer Harmonix to include two songs on the wildly popular game The Beatles: Rock Band and another on its sequel.

In 2010, Dhani teamed up with singer-songwriters Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur for a side project called Fistful of Mercy.

James McCartney

James McCartney (source: stevenjgarner/ Flickr)

While none of the Beatles’ biological daughters (McCartney has three and Ringo one) took to music, the last son to crack his musical eggshell was James McCartney. Though he appeared on two of his father’s solo albums and his mother’s posthumous album Wide Prairie (Linda McCartney died of cancer in 1998), his musical career began effectively in 2010 when he previewed material from his EP Available Light, which released in September. Included is a warm-hearted cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man”, in which the young McCartney sings: “Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were.”

Perhaps Julian Lennon should have heeded the wisdom in those lines. Or perhaps he has eventually, for Everything Changes, his first studio album since Photograph Smile (1998), is scheduled for release this year.

Whatever it took to step out of their fathers’ long shadows, the Beatle sons have now risen. But will they ever break our hearts by coming together and playing on the same stage?

The Beatles in the pool

The Beatles (from left): Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr

First published in M magazine, July 2011 with a different set of photographs

Images from the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google and Flickr

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Did she fake the Original Sin?

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Bijoy

While it’s not clear what pissed off the great G in the sky, something certainly did and caused Him to curse the human race to go forth, multiply and overburden the earth for millennia to come. Think of it, if it weren’t for that thunderclap of divine rage, the human race wouldn’t have engendered great game-changers. Like Sigmund Freud (who so complicated the notion of sin that some people argue if he was actually God). Or St Francis of Assisi (who, had he lived in our times, might have posed in the buff for a PETA calendar to atone for forbidden pet passions). Or Lawrence of Arabia (without whom we would never have had the Dubai Shopping Festival). Or Adolf Hitler (who obsessed about gassing the world). Or even Al Gore (who is obsessed with another gas)

Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

When Eve sank her incisors into the forbidden apple, was she guilty of lust or greed?

That little misdemeanour in Eden has been so fussed about that the jury is out on what really got Jehovah’s goat (though according to my scattered reading of Genesis the livestock came later with Abraham’s fondness for sacrifices). Maybe he – pardon me, He – had a migraine. Maybe His tax returns were overdue. Whatever the blessed reason, it was woman He cursed for making the first move. And for that, feminists have never forgiven Him.

But let’s give the political correctness a rest, grab a beer and rake up the muck.

Why did Eve do it? Was it horticultural curiosity for what she imagined was a strange fruit concealed beneath Adam’s quivering fig-leaf (wait, that would technically be greed, or lust in a cunning masquerade)? Or was it an innocuous salivary seizure evoked by a bright, varnished Washington apple that had mysteriously slithered into Eden’s biggest supermarket by way of China (where it had received a colour-refreshing lethal injection)? Now, does that qualify as greed or gluttony?

Interestingly, neither Genesis nor any book of the Bible (if you discount a tentative shy in the Book of Proverbs) explicitly nails the cardinal sin that got humankind’s First Family evicted from Eden. The ecclesiastical plot thickens – the list as we know it was in fact drafted by a Greek monk in the fourth century (think Greek and monk in the same synaptic burst and we are doubtless nodding in homophobic empathy). Clearly, our man didn’t have to look far for inspiration. From a gigantic inventory, he whittled the Capital Vices down to vanity, sloth, gluttony, greed, wrath, envy and lust – all of which, if Dan Brown can be believed, the clergy practised religiously (perhaps that’s why they are known as the cardinal sins?).

Closer home the medieval Vedic brigade, true to character, preferred a more convoluted, elitist interpretation of sin. Certain vices, they contended, originated when the Creator, Brahma, broke wind. They also declared that demons, the official vice-presidents of the vices, dripped off the private parts of the gods, effectively hinting that all evil was the dark sludge from the factories of virtue. Whoa, what were these dudes smoking?

Just as our ancient lawmakers deflected the blame on Brahma for engendering the four primary castes from various body parts, they untethered their imaginations to dream up neat schemes to hoodwink the system and redeem evil points for life-changing deals.

The great rishis prescribed surprisingly worldly solutions for celestially induced evils. To release your mortal coil of negative energy, cleanse yourself with fire, water, or even a tree, they urged. It was a suggestion that the Western world heeded whole-heartedly. Today, the West has converted us to the annoying habit of sanitising our butts with paper. To the end that a single diarrhoeic American can, in six or seven shittings, clean up hectares of prime forest (which Malaysia and Indonesia have kindly volunteered to supply). I wonder if Al Gore, heeding the alarming inconvenience of this truth, has switched to water…

But I digress. We still have the mystery of Eve’s banishment to crack.

Let us, for the sake of argument and convenience, draw up a short-list of cardinal sins. Since envy and wrath don’t qualify, our final five contenders are vanity, sloth, gluttony, greed and lust. Now, which of these was the original sin?

While it’s not clear what pissed off the great G in the sky, something certainly did and caused Him to curse the human race to go forth, multiply and overburden the earth for millennia to come. Think of it, if it weren’t for that thunderclap of divine rage, the human race wouldn’t have engendered great game-changers. Like Sigmund Freud (who so complicated the notion of sin that some people argue if he was actually God). Or St Francis of Assisi (who, had he lived in our times, might have posed in the buff for a PETA calendar to atone for forbidden pet passions). Or Lawrence of Arabia (without whom we would never have had the Dubai Shopping Festival). Or Adolf Hitler (who obsessed about gassing the world). Or even Al Gore (who is obsessed with another gas).

Back to poor Eve. I contend it was not greed, nor lust nor gluttony, that did her in. Spare a thought – how long can a woman stay cooped up in a honeymoon resort where the waiters are too polite, the unlimited buffets impossibly delicious, and the endless welcome drinks too refreshing? With a husband who, quite justifiably, imagined himself to be God’s gift to womankind. What’s a marriage made in heaven without something to whine about?

Ergo, it was ennui, the mother of all sins, that led Eve to look beyond Adam’s apple. And thus her tribe increased!

This piece appeared in M magazine, May 2011

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April Flu

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Bijoy

Thirty years ago, I discovered that chicken pox was not an April Fool prank that wears off in a hurry. When I was returned to the world pockmarked and dreadful as the friendly neighbourhood infected scab dispenser, the summer vacation had burned down to the wick. The nerds who passed for my friends had been banished indoors by their chaperoning mothers. Holiday homework. Would you believe that? Destination IIT, at age seven.

Every year thereon was a similar story. Before the season’s first squirrel-felled mango smacked upon my head the resigned enlightenment that (thanks to gravity) I’d never be Superman, April embraced me with fresh pathogens to stymie my vacation plans.

When I outgrew my share of explosive diarrhoeas, fabulous fevers and the mandatory M&Ms (measles and mumps), April took on a harder edge. Little did I know that Newton, a seemingly affable gent who whiled away the balmy English summer watching apples topple, had withheld from us his ugly alter-ego.

With every summer vacation, illness steeled my immune system for the roughest ride. I soon ran out of fevers but the heat was still on. April, as you might recall, is the month that cold-hearted educators chose to tame us into submission. Final Exams: Try saying that phrase slowly, imagining the angry heat rashes and searing sweat burns that the Indian summer inflicts (to top, imagine a global ban on Nycil – and we’re in business). Done? Now, dwell on the hopeless fatality of each word. Final. Exam. If you are sufficiently human you will shudder. Why, Roger Waters did. No dark sarcasm there.

I sat on a hard bench clenching my sphincter as I tried to comprehend the exquisitely bewildering calligraphy on the physics question paper (the roots of my haemorrhoids run deep). If April, as Eliot declared, was the cruellest month, this question paper was a shimmering work of bloodless cruelty. A poison-tipped dart from an embittered pedagogue’s scheming blowpipe. Designed to shock and awe, then numb and maim.

I felt a febrile longing for the cherished fevers and diarrhoeas of my childhood. What, I pondered, were the possibilities that I could summon up remembrances of maladies past? Could I contract a most malignant form of instantaneously devastating cancer by shredding and swallowing a copy of Clark’s Tables? What would it take now, this moment, to crumple to the ground in a sorry multiple-sclerotic mess of bloody, incontinent intestines? Would scraping my instep with a broken foot-ruler endow me with tetanus? Why was I too young to have a heart attack? Why did they eradicate smallpox before my time? Oh, what I’d do now for a few fluid-filled abscesses!

These fantasies, which I vocalised in public, inspired a classmate to successfully pulverise the fine bones of his writing wrist. Triumphant, his arm in a cast, he exercised his right to a scribe. I watched in jealous amazement as he smugly enlisted the services of a Class IX topper. Drat – my idea, and I couldn’t even sue him for copyright breach.

Reconciliation usually follows anguish. I’d look at the clock and wonder what time it was in Mexico – wait, let’s reserve that for the Geography paper. Back to the immediate physicality of Physics. Surely something wasn’t right. Why is half of this paper in Greek? Do I have the right to a translator? Come on, this has to be the wrong question paper, for the wrong exam, on the wrong day, at the wrong centre, on the wrong planet…

Three hours is an awfully long time to expend on a wish-fulfilling reverie, so I’d eventually lower myself to earth (Gravity, you see, had not yet left the building). Specifically, to the here and the now (Time was fast running out). And what of Space? Well, a great empty example of the aforesaid quantity was mushroom-clouding inside my head.

Comforted by my serendipitous grasp of concepts, I attempted to make whatever sense was possible of those cryptic symbols on the question paper. A queasy I-want-to-go-home-ness whirling in the pit of my stomach made them appear all the more alien. Ergs. Joules. Ohms. Lumens. How totally George Lucasian!

Funnily enough, the force stayed with me. I light-sabred my way through high school even as my classmate’s scribe, exercising integrity over brotherhood, led him to an ignominious fall. Ah well, Newton and his bad apples.

Swiftly flew the years. Delivered into adulthood in certifiably sane condition, I imagined that my demons now belonged in the past. My childhood friends, having aced their ways through the temples of modern India (they now swear by Chetan Bhagat, no less), now sat hunched before diminutive laptops crunching numbers for Fortune-1000 body-shops.

Attending a PTA meeting at my daughter’s kindergarten class, I slipped into conversation with her classmate’s parents – he from IIT, she from IIM.

“Freelance writer, is it?” she asked when I handed her my card. “Interesting.”

The subtext of that really meant: “Wait till she starts studying Physics, you hippy dork.”

A chill washed over me – perhaps it’s another April Flu!

First published (without the accompanying cartoon) in M magazine, April 2011

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Norah Jones sang that?

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Bijoy

At 31, Norah Jones is no-questions-asked sublime. Ten Grammys (and seven nominations) make her a formidable presence commercially. Also critically – even that curmudgeon Robert Christgau acquiesced: “What’s not to like?” Her versatility makes her a coveted collaborator to artists, genre no bar. And so, as we listened to album after album that Jones has served up since her not-quite-jazz-but-getting-there-in-a-hurry début Come Away With Me, which swept eight Grammys in 2003, we may have overlooked her off-road excursions.

…Featuring fixes that jig-saw bit back in place. This immaculately conceived compilation presents a goulash of collaborations – some famous, others obscure – that Jones has enjoyed with musical creatures great and small. Since this album comes to us from Blue Note, there are the obligatory high-fives with heavy-hitters in blues and jazz (and the uncertain territory in between), among them Herbie Hancock (the Joni Mitchell cover “Court & Spark”), Willie Nelson (a sterile take on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” that was nominated for a Grammy in 2010) and the dear departed Ray Charles (who was unlatching death’s door when he sang “Here We Go Again” with Jones).

There is a nostalgic footnote for one of Jones’ earliest (and admittedly favourite) bands, The Little Willies – a cover of Elvis’ “Love Me”. There’s “The Best Part” from her off-moments with her goof-rock outfit El Madmo. There’s also a pick-me-up for her touring accompanist, singer-songwriter Sasha Dobson, in “Bull Rider”. There are forays into old-school country with Dolly Parton (“Creepin’ In”) that may leave Taylor Swift gasping. And a slippery go at “Blue Bayou” with singer-songwriter M Ward that will trouble the ghost of Roy Orbison. “Dear John” with country singer Ryan Adams (from his 2005 album Jacksonville City Nights) is about a widow’s lament to her dead husband and is poignant in a quirky way. There are nods to indie inventiveness in her work with Glaswegian art-pop group Belle and Sebastian (“Little Lou, Prophet Jack, Ugly John”).

But the 18-track list also forays into areas where we least expect Jones to go – and still come away redeemed. With critically acclaimed hip-hop artist Q-tip she performs “Life is Better”, an unexpectedly gorgeous duet in which she sounds barefoot and ebullient. There is the lifting “Take Off Your Cool” with Outkast, arguably America’s most innovative hip-hop act. She complements cheerfully the wheezy huskiness of MC Talib Qweli on “Soon the New Day”.

…Featuring is a cleverly arranged compilation with the singalong country bits at the top of the list, the hip-hop tracks scattered in the middle, and tapers out to more jazz, soul and country at the end. It’s a sizeable playlist, with the odd crushingly unwholesome track thrown in. Willie Nelson is disappointingly sterile on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and doesn’t hold a dead wick to the raunchiness that Ray Charles personified in his unforgettable 1961 recording with Betty Carter.

That said, Norah Jones shines bright through most of it, with a voice that makes duets droolable.

Norah Jones

…Featuring

Blue Note Records, 2010

Price: Rs.350

This review first appeared in M magazine, April 2011

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City Zen – Phantom trees and hungry buffaloes

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Bijoy

What do you do when buffaloes mysteriously eat away your green cover? Hunt down the real thick-skinned creatures that wallow in public funds!

Now and then, a news report can leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry. Take the case of the enterprising forest department official who took it upon himself to restore our depleted green cover. What a noble initiative, one imagined, when he declared that he had planted 200 saplings in his constituency. Until the curious truth germinated…

Read the full column at iJanaagraha.org

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Before it was called grunge

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Bijoy

Going to college in the nineties, I was awestruck to learn that the guitarist for one of the most influential grunge bands of the time traced his roots to Kerala. As Mallus do, I established instant kinship with Kim Thayil, whom Rolling Stone magazine named the 100th greatest guitarist of all time.

Named after a sculpture in a Seattle park, Soundgarden pioneered grunge – angsty alternative rock later made famous by Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Neither band (nor the genre) existed when Thayil, bassist Hiro Yamamoto and vocalist Chris Cornell grouped in 1984. Two years later they inducted drummer Matt Cameron. Jason Everman, former bass player for Nirvana, briefly replaced Yamamoto after the band’s first two albums before Ben Shepherd filled his place permanently.

The first album, Ultramega OK (1988) appeared on the indie label SST after two EPs Screaming Life (1987) and Fopp (1988) were released by Sub Pop (which later signed Nirvana). Louder Than Love (1989) tipped a hat to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and leaned closer to progressive hard rock. Its release by major label A&M Records registered a mainstream first for grunge. The considerably heavier Badmotorfinger (1991), sans Yamamoto, was twice certified platinum and nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy.

In 1994 came Superunknown, a 70-minute, 16-track beefcake that some consider the finest in the grunge catalogue. Cornell’s unfettered vocal range and Thayil’s sublime guitar work rendered a varied yet cohesive listening experience.

Dank and brooding, the album opens with the heavy “Let Me Drown”. The Zeppelinesque guitar intro to “My Wave” is instantly recognisable. “Fell on Black Days”, a morose paean to consuming depression, is engineered to haunt. On the eponymous title track, which shimmers with intricate guitar arrangements, Cornell’s thespian articulation of the lyrics sounds profound – “Get yourself afraid/ get yourself alone/ get yourself contained/ get yourself control” is only as deep as they get. On the wandering, psychedelic “Head Down”, Thayil’s bittersweet, pensive intro is steeped in Cornell’s rent, stricken voice. Cameron’s exquisite, rollicking drum solo is the coup de grâce.

The triple-platinum Superunknown won two Grammys in 1994 – for Best Hard Rock Performance (“Black Hole Sun”) and Best Metal Performance (“Spoonman”). Those two tracks, along with “My Wave”, “The Day I Tried to Live” and “Fell on Black Days”, gate-crashed the US Top 20 and camped there for weeks. An avalanche of accolades followed, including a Best Metal/Hard Rock MTV Video Music Award for “Black Hole Sun” and an anointment by Rolling Stone magazine in 1995 as Best Metal Band.

Soundgarden’s next (and last) studio album Down on the Upside (1996) sold handsomely but was nowhere near a phenomenon as its predecessor. In April 1997, the group disbanded. Reunion rumours ran rife for thirteen years until the release of Telephantasm: A Retrospective, a double-CD of collected hits, in September. In January, Soundgarden announced the March release of their first live album Live on I5, a reheated repast.

SOUNDGARDEN

SUPERUNKNOWN

A&M RECORDS, 1994

This review appeared in the February issue of M magazine

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City Zen – Does our city need plastic surgery?

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Bijoy

Until the mid-eighties, our groceries came bagged in old newspapers. We brought home rice and sugar in packages emblazoned with last week’s headlines. Fish and meat were first wrapped in banana leaves and then with brown paper. Beer bottles were surreptitiously swathed in double-rolls of weekend editions. Steel tumblers clanged at the nearby restaurant, then not yet suffixed with Darshini. Weddings were messy affairs even then but stray dogs industriously polished off discarded meals while cows champed on leaf plates.

Recycling waste used to be a tradition, until we turned a new leaf.

Read the entire column at iJanaagraha

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City Zen – For a safer city, withdraw VIP security cover

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Bijoy

Some old-timers fondly recall that much-reviled historic event, the Emergency, for a dictatorial government’s efficacy at enforcing law and order. “Trains ran on time, even criminals were shot at sight,” they reminisce with wistful pride. Sure, but why does a democratic society need a schoolmaster to rap its errant knuckles?

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