Death

Reverend pseud putter is dead.

A cult classic called Johnny

Scarborough fair

"Scarborough fair' is an English folk song dating back to late medieval times, when the seaside resort of Scarborough was an important venue for tradesmen from all over England.

The following lyrics comprise most of the more well-known verses as they are commonly sung.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
For once she was a true love of mine.

The narrator of the song is a man who was jilted by his lover. Although dealing with the paradoxes he sees himself posed to in a very subtle and poetic manner, this was a folk song and not written by nobles. The courtly ideal of romantic love in the middle ages, practised by knights and noblemen, was loving a lady and adoring her from a distance, in a very detached manner. There was hardly a dream and sometimes not even a wish that such love could ever be answered.

The writer goes on to assign his true love impossible tasks, to try and explain to her that love sometimes requires doing things which seem downright impossible on the face of it. The singer is asking his love to do the impossible, and then come back to him and ask for his hand. This is a highly unusual suggestion, because in those days it was a grave faux-pas to people from all walks of life for a lady to ask for a man's hand. Yet it fits in well with the rest of the lyrics, as nothing seems to be impossible in the song.

The article is an excerpt picked up from here.

A version of the song by ' Simon and Garfunkel' is here.

Way to go Paapi !

On 'moments'

Scene 1 :Everyday to myself :

I want to get out college as quickly as possible.

Why?

Because if I go into the world outside, seems like I will have a better life.

Scene 2: Today, again to myself:

I am free. Got nothing to do. Have some work tomorrow. I am listening to U2 .

Wait,I don't really feel like running away from this place. This place isnt so bad.


Corollary - [:P]

Moments like the latter for me are few and far spaced. But I have come to realize these are the very few moments I live life , not spent in dream-designing it.

Yeah the future is all lit up and shiny , but you will have your share of blows wherever you go. Only that from a distance it all seems bright and attractive. In this frantic run towards that glowing dot in the dark somewhere far away called 'bright future' , the journey always seems painful, because it is keeping you away from that dream world.

Took me 20 years to know that the so called 'destiny' is an only an illusion and the closer we move the farther it seems to go. Ultimately living life boils down to the tedious journey through this forest called hope in search of this so called 'bright future'.

And today, amidst the usual ruckus in my mind, for a moment in this redundancy , I stopped, looked around and felt content. I thought , well I think things are okay as they are now. This I think is a moment to cherish. The moment. When the journey, not the destination, the journey itself seems worth cherishing.

Whatever bright future means, try having a bright present.

On why Arun is stud

Because he doesnt advertise his studness by writing blogs on the excuse of 'enlightening people'.

On why I like Dhoni

Because he doesnt care about you or me or this bullshit called blog. Precisely.

The Saarang that was

I was sitting by the side of the stage at the Open Air Theatre [OAT] with the audience swaying and Karthik on a roll. A security volunteer comes up to me and asks if could understand Hindi. I said yes. He asked me 'how come you are sitting still when Karthik is singing 'Baar baar dekho' just a few metres away, on 50,000 watt sound?' It was then that I realized I was too happy to move. But then what I was really thinking about was a guy named 'Infinity', a facilities volunteer, who desperately wanted to watch the show, but was sitting somewhere else, lonely and proud.

I really felt guilty about having to send him away and the moment I asked him to go stand guard for some equipment outside OAT, he obeyed with such military precision that it only doubled my guilt. So there I was sitting on the well near the stage thinking of all the guys like 'Infinity' who for the sake of the bigger cause were doing things which could have been avoided by proper planning of coordinators, who knew this fact, but still worked drawing enthusiasm from the thin Saarang air. Suddenly all the things we [coordinators] did, all the things we sacrificed looked very miniature in the light of this guy whose effort was so pure, unbiased and colossal in magnitude. I asked that particular security volunteer who was keeping guard at the VIP gate to join the crowd and that I would substitute him at the gate. He looked interested at the possibility but promptly said no and resumed duties.

People were ecstatic. Sounds were blaring. Coordinators had light in their eyes. Core members were hysteric. And I was too happy to move.

All through my IIT life, I always heard about people talking about something called 'The Spirit of Saarang' . On that particular day somewhere in the series of events I felt it. The spirit of Saarang. It was more deeply rooted and more strongly felt than anything I came across ever in my life.

Saarang, we salute you.

Jeremy Spoke in class today

Extract from Wiki article

"Jeremy" is the third single from Pearl Jam's debut album, Ten.The song especially gained notoriety by the way of its music video (directed by Mark Pellington and released in 1992), which was put into heavy rotation by MTV and became a huge hit. In 1993, the "Jeremy" video was awarded four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year.

The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle, born February 10, 1975, from Richardson, Texas who shot himself in front of his English class in Richardson High School on the morning of January 8, 1991 at about 9:45 am. Delle was described by schoolmates as "real quiet" and known for "acting sad." After coming in to class late that morning, Delle was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. He left the classroom, and returned with a .357 Magnum revolver. Delle walked to the front of the classroom, announced "Miss, I got what I really went for", put the barrel of the firearm in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before his teacher or classmates could react. A girl named Lisa Moore knew Jeremy from the in-school suspension program: "He and I would pass notes back and forth and he would talk about life and stuff," she said. "He signed all of his notes, 'Write back.' But on Monday he wrote, 'Later days.' I didn't know what to make of it. But I never thought this would happen."

When asked about the song, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder explained:

It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. Sixty-three degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That's the beginning of the video and that's the same thing is that in the end, it does nothing … nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back.

After "Jeremy", Pearl Jam backed away from making music videos. The band did not release another video until 1998's "Do the Evolution", which was entirely animated.

In 1996, a shooting occurred at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington that left 3 dead and a fourth injured. The shooter, Barry Loukaitis stated that he was influenced by the song.

The song has recurring

Jeremy Spoke in class today
Jeremy Spoke in class today

This soulful song from Pearl Jam remains one of my alltime favourites.
Bow to Pearl Jam

Colours of IITM

Oh yeah, after all that sickness and desperation of waiting for it, it is finally here. Ladies and gentleman we present Saarang '08, the annual cultural festival of IIT Madras.