Recent Obsessions

KVN and Soul-searching

When I was thirteen or a little less, I remember listening to MS singing "Akhilandeshwari" on a tape from a little cassette player in Thatha's house in Madras. That is possibly my earliest memory of listening to a song and being spellbound, not by technical wizardry or speed, but by its grace, soul and emotion of the rendition. It wasn't the first time I heard "Akhilandeshwari", nor the last, but I cant recall any other version as vividly as this one.

That is exactly what I feel of KVN's music. There is music that stimulates your brain, and then there's music that tugs at your heart. KVN's music isn't void of technical perfection or scholarship, but it does the latter so effectively that you almost don't notice the former. Recently, I came across a recording of Thaye Yashoda in Thodi (my obsessions with Thodi are fairly well documented on the internet and otherwise). Unlike my usual favourites - meditative aalapanas that go on for ever (like M.D.Ramanathan's Sahaana raagam), this one is just three-minutes long. Yet, it left me soul-searching for the rest of the day. There is something divine about his music, a divinity matched by few.

Harry Line
The Third Man is quickly becoming one of my favourite films of all time - the character of Harry Lime, and that scene on the Ferris Wheel contributing in no small measure to this. In no other movie, have I come across a character as exciting has Harry Lime - a dead black-marketeer, a killer, maybe, a mas murderer, who is the best friend of an alcoholic pulp Western writer, loved madly by a beautiful woman client. Above all, what makes him all the more enduring is the fact that you know so little about him. Different people say different things about who he was, and what he was like. At the end of an hour, when he appears, first his shoes, then his silhouette, and then the light revealing a handsome Orson Welles with that smirk on his face, you're completely bought over. He's on screen for hardly ten minutes, yet, the movie belongs to him, and him alone.

I mean, when a character says,

"Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays."

Or when he makes that speech [video],

"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."

You can't help but wish they wrote a part like that for you! Or, you listen to what the Brain (from Pinky and the Brain) has to say on the same issue (in an episode called The Third Mouse),

"In Italy under the Borgias they had 30 years of murder, bloodshed, warfare and produced indigestible pasta, boring operas, and the Fiat. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world, and Heidi."

So, if you haven't watched The Third Man, watch it. When 'The End' appears, stare at the screen in awe, and watch it again.