Svaramed at Auroville

Svaram is a place in the midst of a bamboo forest, created to discover music instruments out of everything that would bring out the feel of music in everybody independent of knowledge and training. Located inside Auroville makes it even more special.

The first time I heard about Svaram was when I took a random trip to Auroville explored the shop at the Auroville visitors centre, but then I dint know they had a musical research place. 2 years later, during my second marathon at Auroville, me and my friends took a casual bike ride inside Auroville and heard some drum beats. Moving towards the music, led us to svaram. The feel of Svaram is fantastic, the place is truly spiritual.

The place manifests independence and encourages talent and ideas.  Being a person who can play the percussions and having owned some of the small drums of svaram, I started playing the djembe, the best djembe I have ever played was still half painted. After playing for around 15mins, I realized I was only in the showroom opposite to the research place, where the real research music happens out of everything possible.

The first thing that caught my eyes was a LPG cylinders modified and hung around the place, the first one I played was set to mohanam ragam. Admiring that for some time, I fell for a huge African styled base drum. Looking from a distance, art work on the drum was fascinating, the size was by itself a beauty. The heavenly feel when you play the drum in confluence to the sound coming from the bamboo forest, make you feel like "I AM GOD". After a few of minutes of playing the drum, Prakash from the Svaram team joined me and we had an absolutely brilliant jamming session.

The marathon was the next day and it was shut down time for Svaram. I had a quick walk inside the place and when I was about to leave, "THAMBE" it was Karthik, he asked me where I am staying and for how long, and asked me to play with them at the marathon tomorrow. People of Svaram team up at different places along the trail of the marathon, with the instruments to encourage runners, believe me it works awesome on your run, and when you are going to join the team playing with them,it works even better. I joined the Svaram team near the finish line, after I finished my run. Initially we performed as a group and the group welcomed a stranger drummer in me. Myself and Prakash continued our jamming sessions, joined by kids and lady dancers.

I would personally recommend everybody interested in music to visit Svaram, and when  you are going call me, 2hours was not enough . People can also work hand-in-hand with Svaram and help them in their research. Svaram also helps to research on one's music ideas.

One could see every musical instrument that Sivamani uses with his drum kits or probably even more at Svaram, but the feeling of playing them cannot be comprehended by just reading this. If you really are acumen about this idea, you need to be there.

Music must release oneself from the mundane thought and Svaram does it perfectly well.

written for http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloid/potpouri/music-and-innovation-swaram-028

when i speak at a graduation

After watching the famous Jobs graduation day speech at Stanford, I imagined myself going in front of my school's 12th pass outs  some day and say 'what follows' (assuming that the trend continuous that majority are still getting into a engineering college).

When u get to college, there are three things you are going to experience. New people, New ideologies and New you.

NEWPEOPLE:

The first day you go to college, things will be very different, different language, different style, different mentalities, different size, so different in size that you would probably end up getting ragged by your own class mate, and most importantly different outlook, so different that the girl whom you know for the past 4 years turns her face away 'heart break on the first day of college' get used to it, u will encounter more of this.

To girls: u ll be looked at as if u r a European tourist entering the rural India, with a WOW. Enjoy the respect, don't do too much, who knows u might not even be worth it and the realization might not be far away.

Dai boys: the lab, the mess hall, lab coat, daily color dress, bikes, girls, everything will look equally attractive, BEWARE. Labs, there are lots u ll have to learn outside these four walls and a few machines get out as early as possible. Mess hall, the pouch - the more you eat, the merrier, sleepier and bigger u get. Color dress, the maximum u can buy is 10 pairs of trousers and shirts and u definitely know the rest. Bikes, with all due respect, petrolku daily unga appa-na kaasu kuduppan. The girls, its scientifically proven that girls get prettier at college and the guys get stupid, they are still working on the relativity (for the first part of the research, it was a no girl team. A girl came in as an intern, and they are still working on the research).

Guys and girls getting into gender biased colleges, I have nothing to say them except "SMART MOVE", if u know what I mean.

NEW IDEOLOGIES:

 Everyday might seem like 'nothing big has happened', but the day before the exam believe me, IT IS GOING TO BE REALLY BIG. Even and odd semesters which will be synonyms for cultural semester and symposium semester. U ll have a lot of things to do but most importantly, do something new, do what u want.

It's ok if u don't focus, it's ok if u don't have clarity, it's ok if u are not going to get better grades, its ok if to hate somebody, it's ok to love more than 1, it's ok to raise a finger at your professor and say "can I go to toilet". Participate in competitions and department clashes, get face to face with a professor, talk to HOD and explain why u are better than him, get on your knees for a girl, get into a fight for your friend even when u know that he is wrong, celebrate that with a drink together, buy a phone for 15000 and get confused about whether to recharge it for 20 or 30, Go to new places, meet new people, treat them with arrogance, disagree with them with respect. Stand on top of the world and say to yourself " i have a lots left to experience in the bledy world and I am loving it".

NEW U:

GET OUT AND ENJOY. DON'T BOTHER ABOUT THE NEW YOU, HE CAN TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF.

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go. What follows you is always YOU".

P.S.: if any Teacher, Principal and Head of institutions is reading this, we can customize this, no problem at all. :-)

special CLASS ROOM

There was a place in the last row, where an 11th class boy used to sit. To his left it was the girls’ row, ok let’s not touch the nice part now, and let’s go to the other side. Everyone on his right seemed to be different. The guy who looks always sleepy, the guy who removes his shoes and sits folded legs, the guy to whom different things were interesting at different times, the guy who drives his own car to school, the guy who could wake up at 3AM to watch Ranji trophy, and many more.

But there was this point when all of them were scaled on the same parameters, MARKS. Marks were used to understand how good one would fair in his life. Probably then he dint realize that Marks is just made by some dumb heads, because they couldn’t see the brighter side of everybody and everybody were special, and what they do can’t be done by others.

The guys who scored better were considered bright, well to do in life. The guys who scored a little lesser where probably the hooligans, the people who have to attend special class during the evening to learn the morning lessons again, to do better in life.

Like many schools, his school didn’t understand, it’s not all about marks. The special classes they conducted were more de-motivating than the 3/100 he scored in biology. He probably escaped the illusion of marks, but there were a lot of his friends who got stuck with the illusion.

Though, Today he agrees to the fact that, even the little English he knows is because of the teachers who taught him ‘A for Apple’, it remains true that instead of asking him to read English newspaper daily so that he can get 8/10 instead of 6/10 in an essay, if she could have made it more interesting and shown the true value, he would probably be writing the same article in a better way for a newspaper and the same could have been read at the UNICEF. Even though he is coping to move on, he still feels sad about how many people are still feeling defeated because of being forced to play the game they didn't even want to.

Classrooms were fun, but the Special class-rooms were such a pain. All those whom he competed weren't there, left only to be satisfied with the increase in the probability of winning, making even probability less fun.

PASSION

Being online and for almost half of the day, sometimes doing nothing and the other times doing something, I have come across many inspiring speeches and examples on the passion but something that I saw recently, blew my mind of.

It was lazy weekday evening, where after a heavy dose of freshly cooked, steaming hot ven pongal, mixed with ginger and topped with cashews giving it a perfectly balanced taste of sweet, soar and hotness, and thenga chutney mixed with coriander leaves and pepper seeds, going as the best side-dish pongal can ever imagine for itself, I was sitting in front of the TV, watching MasterChef Australia.

This episode was like any other episode, a special guest walking in, people given some difficult task in a short span of time and cooking and the judges tasting them, it was the day of elimination and there were 4 on the hot seat, Until before the final judgment, Adam, a participant stood up and said “I don’t know whether I will be going home today, but I do know that all the other people who are here are here because cooking is their passion. I came here to do something out of routine. Being in this competition for closed to 10 weeks now has made me a better cook, has given me some great friends, and has also made me realize that, even though I love cooking, my passions is what I am currently doing, my diving business. So I don’t want to go back home (winning or losing) taking somebody’s dream, I am going back to my passion and all the best to the rest, do what your heart says”.

Even though people may claim that this is a reality show and all such dramas are bound to happen, this has re-written my definition for PASSION.

Definition!?!?!?!?!

The world is so similar yet so different because of two reasons, one definition of things and number two because of people definition of definition itself.
Webster says definition is “Defining or being defined” now let me try to compete with Mr.Webster.

Definition to conservative person is… before that, conservative to one means being cautious, to the other it means being calculative and the rest it means what it means to them. So eventually a conservative person would probably mean definition as ‘how he defines’.

Definition to a environmentalist is… but ya first definition of environmentalist,(1) a person who does green business, (2) a person who fights for the conservation of environment or to put it better conservative environmentalist (for the definition on conservative, go back a few lines) and (3)by the rest he may be defined as a person who is gonna make big money in 5years. Anyways an environmetalist would define definiton with “green” as prefix or post fix to everything.

Definition to a musician is… but asusual, music is some means peace, to some means fun and loud, to others it means something done by musicians, to others it means the songs that come in MTV. Definition may be defined as “adding music to meanings” by musicians.

To Intellects, but lets first define intelligence, for people like many it is something that’s there is others and they look at it WOW!!! For a very few, its is something that’s like their twin living in the samebody, sharing the soul. Obviously intellects define definition like what I have defined.

Comparing the various above conclusions with Webster, he was right, very right. Definition means Definition. So the competition, I had with webster can be defined in two ways, I lost it or I made him win it better.

ALONE...

Feelings are sometimes best expressed though words. Oops.. what do I do when I don’t find the right words… what if words get jumbled, what if I silence is preferred, what if there are lot of other things to do than sit and put down the words, what if I don’t get a pen, what if ….. if… if… I GET STUCK LIKE THIS.

I don’t know, I seriously don’t know, at these times, I prefer silence, having the hope that the same thought ll come down again someday, I go somewhere and spend some time alone.

Being alone is awesome. Remember alone is not solitude.

Alone is a time when u share your best version with yourself.

I have travelled alone; met new people did some of the craziest things. I have spent time alone on my house terrace and jus thinking what to think. I have spent time alone in a new place, just listening to people talk. I have spent time alone, when I was all laughing and making fun. I have spent time alone sitting in front seat of a car, when my close friends were sitting in the rear side. I have spent time alone, when I was angry... I have spent time alone, when I was sad and happy… I have spent time alone thinking, I have spent time alone, playing my instrument, I have spent time alone, doing nothing and everything.

When I was alone, I realized what I wanted in Life, when I was alone, I have understood a few things about things I did and dint understand previously, when I am alone I understand people and the times I miss.

I have been alone, when I was least alone!!! Loving been alone, I have been falling in love with the person I am alone with.

I have answered all the “what if” questions being alone, I don’t know why I am writing this, but what if I was alone, writing this time.

ASSUME

Assume that assumption will be something quite cool, until u read this.
Assumption makes things easy, for example people initially people thought (oops sorry), assumed earth was flat. It was easy enough to understand how we don’t fall.

Assume: Girls run behind guys’ wall posts and photo on facebook. First few days will be like “awesome, look at my number of notification”, but then after a few days u suddenly, find that all your photos and wall posts are commented by people whom u don’t even know, your notification list touches 3digits, if u are out of facebook for 2 days.

Assume: the girl u proposed to, immediately accepts. WOW. But when u go out, she stares at other guys as if the one sitting in front of her is a donkey.

Assume: u go to a movie and the heroine’s father accepts her love with his maid’s son, who is studying in the same college. Your movie ll be over even before the popcorn.

Assume: your best friend stays as close to you even after he has fallen for a girl, finished end of girl friend story.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept. Assume that I said this.

Assume everybody were the same, assume U topped the class in 12th, assume U dint join the college U joined, assume u dint meet the people u met, assume u dint fall in love with your girl, assume mom does nt wake up every day, assume u never fought with your sibling, is like saying assume U WERE NOT U & NOTHING U KNOW IS TRUE.

Assumption makes a issue look perfect but they don’t give solutions, assumption made things look more beautiful but u did miss the real beauty, assumptions make u and me a BEEP…

maybe that’s why it sounds like A**-U-ME…