Our Funarena!

I did indeed have some regrets though as I couldn’t pay my homage to the legendary Santoor maestro Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma on time, and as an aftereffect failed to write about the Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds. Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma passed away in a Mumbai hospital on 10 th May 2022 after a prolonged period of kidney ailments and dialysis, at the age of 84. The glowing and flowing tributes paid to him from the music world, particularly the field of Indian Classical Music, and from all other fields which are still continuing show what a music stalwart he had been since the fifties. Panditji had introduced a folk string instrument called Santoor that used to be played in Kashmir and had Persian origins to Indian Classical Music and popularized it immensely with his learning, concerts and fusion all over the globe and through an invaluable collection of albums. At his very initiation to this instrument by his vocalist father Uma Dutt Sharma young Shiv Kumar observed the playing st

Russian President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has entered Day 14 leaving a trail of devastation and loss of lives across the country. We pointed out earlier that the war was totally unnecessary, and now it seems abundantly clear that it was in the interest of the West that Russia did invade Ukraine so that the latter’s strategic presence in Europe could be checked, if not eliminated. The surprising resistance by Ukraine is mainly thanks to the baits by the West in terms of entry into the European Union and a membership in NATO. Russia also made a mistake by not anticipating the support to be extended to Ukraine by the US, most European nations and other strategic allies to fight the war. The main objective of the Western allies seems to be the justification to impose the economic sanctions to isolate Russia in a bid to force it to submit. But unfortunately, they’ve decided to ignite a dormant volcano instead by ignoring its demands, also as strategic as theirs, and by abandoning the un

  The daily numbers of infections, Omicron or otherwise, have come down from the high of 350,000+ to around or less than 30,000 in the last few days in India. However, the daily fatalities still hover around 500, and just a few days back the figures crossed the 1000+ mark. Although most of the deaths are attributed to the state of Kerala the figures in many other states are still double-digit, and the spate of deaths of celebrities goes on unabated across the country. That the deaths continue to rise despite the experts or the Government assuring all that Omicron is a milder virus and can lead to only mild diseases, particularly in vaccinated people is an issue that needs to be examined. In an earlier post we explored this syndrome of deaths as ‘the expendables’, meaning the unvaccinated people or people with serious comorbidities and senior plus the super senior citizens with or without comorbidities. Obviously, no country can take the risk of national devastation by resorting to seve

A voice we grew up with. A voice unimaginably sweet and melodious, also trained in the Indian classical music tradition. A voice that transcends all the three octaves with consummate ease. A voice that became an integral part of an evolving Hindi film industry in the forties and has been one ever since. A voice that paired with almost all the great voices of the legendary Hindi playback singers ranging from the forties to the 2000s, from Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Manna Dey,  SP Balasubrahmanyam  and Bhupendra among others to Suresh Wadkar, Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam and many others. A voice that was worshipped by almost all of the music directors of the country during the same period of nearly seven decades, from Vasant Joglekar, Ghulam Haidar, Vasant Desai, C Ramachandran, Shankar-Jaikishan, Khayyam, SD Burman, Madan Mohan, Salil Chowdhury, Bhupen Hazarika, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji, RD Burman and others to Anand-Milind, Nadeem-Shravan, AR Rahman and so on. A play