My Experiments with Bollywood Lullabies
(No kids were harmed in the making of this article or the experiments themselves!!)

This is inspired by something I do to get my son to sleep every night. A typical night begins with me taking my son from the arms of his dear mother amidst screams which if could be translated would probably a barrage of choiciest abuses. I still take him and turn off the lights and start singing softly some of the few bollywood ( yes..you heard it right...bollywood ) numbers for which I know the lyrics partially. And it is in such circumstances that I made some observations.

One does not have to be a purist or a connoisseur of music to be able to judge what is melodious soulful music and what is not.  Melody, by the way, is defined as ' A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds '.  That is what every song is. So what makes it soulful. What is soulful ?


Lets take a very obvious example. Try singing a Govinda/David dhawan number to get your kid to sleep.

                            What is mobile number ? What is your style number ?

Now try singing a good old OP Nayyar number

                            Aaiye Mehraban...Baithiye jaanejann shokh se leejiyegi Ishq ki Imtihaan

Frankly you don't need to even know the lyrics...just hum the tune and the difference will be very obvious. Of course in this example it is rather stark. Let us try something which is a little less different and closer in terms of composition timelines...let us take the year 1999

                   Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Ismail Darbar )-   Chaand Chipa Badal Mein...Sharmaake Meri   Jaana...Seene Se....

                   BaadShah ( Anu Malik ) - Baadshah O Baadshah...Baadshah O Baadshah

Lets us take the same year

                   Mast ( Sanjay Chautha ) - Aasman kehta hai rab se...tune chaand do kyon banaayee

                   Biwi No 1 ( Anu Malik ) - Any song

 If you have not listened to the song from mast, please do...it has very beautiful lyrics in simple hindi. No urdu. No complex metaphors..just simple ones. But just beautiful.

Let us take two songs from the same movie - Tere Mere Sapne ( 1999 - Viju Shah )

                  Tere Mere Sapne ( Title Song )

                  Kuch Mere Dil Ne kaha , Kuch Tere Dil ne Kaha

The second one beats the first one hollow in terms of soul. My point here is not that there should not exist different genre/styles of songs, or that melodious soulful music is only those which are considered 'soft numbers'......but the fact that there is a very simple manner in which you can differentiate the melodious ones from the rest. It is not the only way...but it is a great way and will work for folks with no music sense whatsoever.

To look at it from a hindu philosophical perspective....we are all supposed to be souls in a body and the souls themselves are closer to god. Babies are therefore much closer to god in they they have just acquired bodies and that probably is why this experiment seems to work...since if a baby finds peace in a certain kind of music...it is because it is touching the soul. To quote Fritjof Capra - ' The language is very limiting '. I really cannot explain it in detail..but if you have the opportunity to sing a lullaby to a small kid, try this experiment and you will know what I mean. Here are some more songs to compare and try to sing to your child.

                        Kaminey - Than Tan Dan

                        Kaminey - Title Song

                        Kaminey - Raat ke dhai Baje

You have to doff your hat off to Vishal Bharadwaj for his range and versatality. That said...do the lullaby experiment and you will almost be able to caliberate the songs in terms of its soulfullness. Please keep in mind though that this experiment works better when the kid is not totally dead tired and will sleep to anything. It is for those in between periods when he/she will refuse to sleep on their own and needs a catalyst. What was started as a catalyst by me landed up as my experiments with bollywood lullabies.

On a side note I am actually observing a pattern in terms of us as adults having the opportunity to use children to actually help us in making complex adult decisions. More on those experiments once I have some successful conclusions to draw from them.

Some more songs which I successfully use with my son

                       Chanda re ...Chanda Re  (Sapnay - Rehman )
                       E chand Teri chaandni Ki Kasam ( Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya  - Anu Malik)
                      Aao huzoor aao Sitaaron Mein Le chaloon ( Kismat - O P Nayyar )
                      Aa Dekhe Zara ( Lounge Version - Yes..there are subtle differences in this version which change the  feel of the song ..may not be suitable for beginners :)

Try it. It is a phenomenal feeling to perform this experiment successfully. It means you are assured of a good night's sleep :)

Growth through mediocrity

One of my braindroppings that came by in a conversation with a friend. Figured it was unique enough in my view to pen it down. Let me start this the ENTJ way ( those who have done the myers briggs test would know what I am talking about )...so let me start from the top.

TCS, WIPRO, INFOSYS - These names are often taken as organizations which are taking india to the world. Guess what - they are all based on mediocrity...in fact large volumes of mediocrity. Let me explain. The revenue model of these organizations are based on the volumes of billable resources - you know that your career is going nowhere the day your manager refers to you as a resource...and you know you are becoming a manger when you start referring to your team as a pool of resources !!! Anyways....The moment you talk of volumes in any context..you are talking about commoditization. The moment you talk about commoditization, you are talking about the smack center of the bell curve. And if you have a large enough center, it just means you have a large number of 'average grade' products...or resources in the context of the above firms. Given the extremely large number of people ( i am trying to be a different manager - i still refer to everyone as people and not resources ) these firms employ, it is safe to assume you have a large number of them who are essentially the average lot. Dont let anyone give you any crap about the fact that everyone is above average...that just means there is a new average...there is no such thing as a large above average crowd. As very delightfully said in movie ' The Incredibles ' - 'If everyone is special, it just means no one is'. So that is what we have with TCS, WIPRO etc...a large number of folks with average skills who contribute in making their respective firms multi billion dollar organizations.

Let us dig a little deeper into the nature of work these firms do. This is how I would think a Business Dev Manager and a Client conversation would be

BDM - Whats up ?

Client - not much. Just hangin in there.

BDM - Why ? what happened ? work pressure ?

Client - Yup. Late night support, was up all nite. And to top that, I had to document all the shit. To add to that, most of the stuff I do is so repetitive in nature that I could do it blindfolded....and guess what...sometimes I do it that way so that things get challenging in that I do not know where the keyboard is.

BDM - You got to to be kidding me.

Client - the worst part of it....I could not attend this friends bachelor party .

BDM - Dont you worry. We can take all that work off your back which will then leave you to focus on the real work that you need to do ( have fun with strippers !! )..... and we will do it for much cheaper rates too.

2 months down the line

BDM : Folks ...we have got a lot of challenging work being thrown at us by our new client and we need to make sure we do a phenomenal job at it.

ODC employee : What is the nature of work ?

BDM : The firm is a fortune 70000 company.

ODC employee : What is the nature of work ?

BDM : Infact they made it to the top 1000 best firms to work in alaska !!

ODC employee : What is the nature of work ?

BDM : They are rated the fastest growing company north of iceland given their geographical positioning on the planet

ODC employee : What is the nature of work ?

BDM : And best of all there is a good likelihood that many of you will get to go onsite !!!

ODC employee : When can we start ?

So my friends that is what the bulk of the work that is done out of these firms. And you do not need super smart folks to do this kind of work. An average joe like me can come out looking golden by doing this. And all the top IT service firms depend on this as their bread and butter and more. They excel in grabbing such mediocre quality work opportunities and get it done at a lower price with a reasonably high margin. So in essence their objective is to do volumes and volumes of mediocre work which will help then grow and generate more revenue. So they strive for growth through mediocrity. Hope I made my point.

A great weekend. A few of our friends had come over and we just talked and talked and talked till we dropped. But as usual, there were some pearls of wisdom that came out of it.

The best was from the usual suspect...Jeetu.

The Male mind is like an onion .......why ?.......Because, it has layers (Thank You Shrek )
The Female mind is also like an onion...why ? ...Because it makes men cry !!! (Thank you Jeetu!! )

There was a Eureka moment for me....

Why is the female mind more complex than the male mind ?
Well....which is easier to explain....emotion or logic ? And which sex is more emotional ? Well...now you know why women are more complex :) Simple...eh ?

This was a statement made by jeetu on allegations that he talks a lot when trying to impress a girl.....
Jeetu ( A Leo - Lion sign) : ' Abe....Sher tab garajta hai jab shikar ke liye nikalta hai'
Me : 'Par kabhi kabhi yeh sher itna garajta hai ke shikar pehle hi bhag jaata hai' ......That would explain JV's single status :)


A new definition that got coined -

S-mode : A mode that every male needs to be afraid of. A state of mind when the female expects commitment from you for the 'm-word' .....marriage !!


Cheers folks !!

God made us to do things that he could not!!!

There…now that must have got your attention. Well…what follows is a result of my discussions about god with a dear friend of ours – Jeetu. It’s more or less a theory of what could be. And what made it an interesting theory to me is the fact that, it is a somewhat radical notion that there are things that we do that god cannot. Think of it….doesn’t it turn the whole perception of god upside down. No. That’s not what we think of God as. The common perception is that God created us and so the logic follows, if he created us, he obviously can do everything that we can do and more.

Now let me talk about the thing that inspired us to come up with such a theory. Funnily enough, while not in any way surprising – it all is inspired by math. And to be more specific…by 2 numbers – even more specific – 1s and 0s. Yup. That’s it. That is what inspired us. That and a little bit of matrix, a little bit of Douglas Adams and a whole lot of boozeJ. Just kidding. Actually it was just the booze. Kidding again. Actually there is no booze involved...it just makes the writing interesting. So coming back to Douglas Adams. In his book ‘The salmon of doubt’, he talks about why there is no god and then goes on to say….why there is a god. No typo there. That is exactly what he does. Read the book if you want to understand that. But this is one of things that he states that the assumption of a creator as the reason for our existence leads us to believe that the creator is a superior being to us and unexplainable. But if you consider evolution as a basis of creation, it is much easier to explain at least our physical presence.

Evolution is nothing but the process of starting off as a single-cell organism (there is the ‘1’ again) and gradually multiplying to form a more complex organism. But evolution again is something, which the few Darwins of the world understand and so is not an easy concept to grasp. But now is the age of the ubiquitous computer. And that helps understand evolution in a way nothing has ever come close to. And it makes it available to the common man.

So how does a computer explain evolution? Forget the Internet browser…and Google. You are not going to get any answers there. Think of how the computer evolved and you will understand human evolution too. Or at least a part of it. Think of a programmer. A programmer essentially breaks down the most complex tasks to multiple (if possible repetitive) simple and basic tasks. A computer works in turn breaks it down even further into the most basic of tasks such as addition, subtraction and it does all this in the least complex language of all ‘1s and 0s’. Now…if you think of this exactly in the opposite manner t o what I described…there...you have evolution. ‘1s and 0s’ form some pattern to form a slightly more complex ‘creature’ (a byte) and then that in turns combines with more such ‘bytes’ and forms an even more complex ‘creature’ so on and so forth. And thus it evolves. And at the highest level we have supercomputers etc. That is nothing but evolution. The only difference being that, we as programmers are guiding the evolution to evolve it into something ‘useful’. And biological evolution – we would like to believe was guided by …….’God’.


Don’t worry…..I haven’t lost focus. I am still on the topic. So now, we are at that point where I was before jumping into the discussion. Now, think of the computer. What we are doing with a computer is nothing short of creating life. Of course we still have a long way to go. But it seems to more a matter of time. What do we use the computers for? Most of the things we get the computer are things that we can do…but what would otherwise take a lot more time to do. And we also use it to do things that we otherwise cannot do. Say…..talking on cell phones, moving in cars, flying to places, incredibly large computations etc. If you consider these carefully, none of these are things that humans cannot do. We can shout at the top of our voice for people at a distance to hear. We can always walk or swim to reach a particular place. We can always whip out a paper and pen to do large computations. But shouting at the top of our voice will not enable us to communicate with some one a few blocks away, forget the other coast. Our legs will give way before we reach San Francisco from New York, if we were to walk it up. Large computations…don’t even think about it. But computers can do it. Artificial intelligence is inevitable if not 100 years from now…then in 200. But it’s surely going to be there. We will have computers doing tasks that, we cannot think of right now. In short we are will into the process of creating ‘life’ which can do things, which we cannot. Aah…..do you see where this is going!!!

Continuing…..what will happen the day, we create a fully functional artificial intelligence which can do everything that we can? We would have created life!! Albeit not in our form…but in a different one, all the same. Wouldn’t that make us ‘GOD’ to the life form which we created? And now if that life form can do, not just everything we can, but a lot more ….then doesn’t that mean we have created something to do things which we otherwise cannot? And as I mentioned, to those creations, we are the equivalent of ‘GOD’. So as far as they are concerned, their ‘GOD’ created them to do things which their ‘GOD’ themselves could not!!! Therein comes the conclusion – if such a thing as explained above is plausible, then it is very much possible that in our world too, our ‘GOD’ created us to do things that he/she could not!!