The Habit of Excellence

"It's not that I am more intelligent. I'm just infinitely more curious,

 and stick with a problem much longer"

-Albert Einstein

One of the more profound things I have realized over the past few years of existing on this planet, is that intelligence is a habit; that is consciously and painstakingly developed. So is excellence of any other form. Be it mastery over an Art form, a branch of science, a sport... Anything...

Lets talk about the quote this post opened with. Einstein is undisputedly one of the most brilliant minds this planet has seen in recorded history. Yet, I believe this statement of his. His intellectual prowess was a choice he consciously made, and not a "gift from God" or any such other similar cause. Lets now describe what exactly this choice is, and how to go about making it.

The first step is to actually realize that intelligence (or any skill) is a choice. Many fail to pass this preliminary stage itself. It is convenient to dismiss off higher order skills as individual greatness. When my gurus (The Gundecha Brothers... I am learning the Dhrupad form of Indian Classical from them at their gurukul in Bhopal ) sing, I naturally tend to fall into a state of wonder at their sheer brilliance and mastery, and  I switch into a sort of "worship" (for want of a better word) mode.. It is very convenient to think of them as superior beings, probably granted a boon by some astral being. This is fine to a certain extent, but it is very important for me to remember that they were not musically gifted. Rather, they were gifted with sincerity, a capacity to persevere and keep moving in face of complete lack of motivation too.These gifts, they translated into the amazing musical ability they possess today, over a period of many years of dedicated effort and hard work. And these gifts that they have are ones that we all have access to. The problem is not in a person not being talented. The problem is in the definition of "talent" and a failure to see that the basic ingredients are present in all of us.

At the darker end of the spectrum, this lack of understanding manifests as a self-assumption of mediocrity and lack of enthusiasm to begin acquiring something new, or giving up what has been begun. Lighter shades of this phenomenon manifest as frustration, a sense of stagnation, lack of stability and focus, loosing the mind to distractions and so on in varying magnitudes.

To achieve excellence in any field, one must spend immense amounts of time with the pursuit, understanding it, communicating with it, analyzing it, and internalizing its characteristics to the extent where he/she begins to feel it strongly as a heightened sense of intuition. Classical musicians use the term "Riyaaz" to mean exactly this. While doing Riyaaz, I go through all that mentioned in the previous paragraph. The mind wanders, I get frustrated attempting to understand a particular task. All the frustration is on failing to do a particular task. I have seen that when I take a pause for a few moments, remind myself that I simply have to choose to do what I am trying to do, and then push through with systematic and preconceived effort, I manage what I am trying to do. The challenge is to keep reminding myself of this. It is not an easy task. My mind wanders when I do not fully make the choice to concentrate.

I have now begun to understand that excellence is just a choice. The next challenge is to start making that choice. This statement may seem very silly. After all, who would "not choose" to excel at something he/she could? If only things were that simple. Many times, we don't even want to do what we are doing. Another tendency is to settle for less than the best. Now if 70% truly and sincerely pleases you, it is fine. In fact, we pick up certain pursuits with no intent of mastering them, just as a hobby or to satisfy a mild curiosity. Here it is absolutely fine to settle for mediocrity. But otherwise, it will just not do. We need to decide to settle for nothing less that 100% and keep pushing until we get there.

Many factors influence the ability to make this decision and cultivate this habit we are discussing. The more prominent ones are the company one keeps and the lifestyle one lives. Whatever little I have managed to do in my life, I owe entirely to the support of an amazing set of friends and mentors I have been blessed with. So too do others claim, who have achieved in life. Good company keeps the mind from sinking into the many many traps that lie lurking within, and help one choose to aspire for the highest. Lifestyle enables one to execute this decision. Lifestyle, to me, is just a matter of balancing priorities. Giving due importance to physical fitness (includes exercising, diet control etc..), assigning time wisely to the various tasks that the individual is committed to, taking just enough (both too much and too little are very dangerous :P ) time to relax and charge oneself, basically to chill, and time to meditate (much needed relaxation for the mind).

With my limited, but growing understanding of life, this is the recipe to excellence I have come up with. The dish is still in its initial stages of preparation. I hope the output comes out really tasty... :D

Differential Calculus, Archery and HDTV

What is artistic beauty? The perspective of an engineer cum full time student of Indian Classical Music...

In differential calculus, we look at any quantifiable entity that has a direct or indirect relation to other quantifiable entities. Given an overall picture of the trend of this entity, we attempt to glean more information about it by performing the operations that are made available to us with a functional knowledge of Calculus. In differential calculus, given the profile of the basic entity under study as a function of another quantifiable entity, we attempt to obtain the rate of change of the entity with respect to the other.
In a linearly varying situation, it is fairly straightforward. But life is seldom linear. The basis of differential calculus is in splitting the whole picture into much smaller ones, and approximating each to be a linear scenario. If the interval taken is infinitely small, then the end points become adjacent and a linear approximation leans very very close to the actual situation.

What now? This understanding opens up a whole new galaxy of possibilities. With knowledge of certain elements, we can begin to uncover and understand a whole set of new elements, which could (and has..) lead to path breaking innovations in various fields. The quality of the output of any application of this principle of differential calculus depends on one thing. The size of the interval under consideration. The smaller the interval, the closer one gets to reality, and obtains a truer understanding of life as it is.

If tomorrow, I decide on a momentary whim to learn archery as a hobby, after a couple of weeks of training, I would probably be able to hit a target placed at reasonable distance. Friends having no exposure to archery would probably applaud my skills as an archer. But then, I would be hitting the center of the target if at all by just a lucky chance, and not by a manifestation of skill. But someone of the likes of Jayanta Talukdar (Indian Olympic Team- Archery) would fire arrow after arrow into the center of the target by intention. Even a small displacement in final position, or a slight offset in the delivery would not go unobserved. So too, would he draw appreciation from his friends and peers only at the highest levels of perfection.

Some of my friends, who are huge movie buffs, watch exclusively HD or Blu-Ray prints. They just cannot tolerate a low video quality. The resolution of their cognition instruments has increased by continuously being exposed to infinitesimal perfection in quality, that the flaws that may not be so obvious to the general observer get magnified.

Now, is this heightened sense of perception always good? On the face of it, it would appear not so. The other side of the ability to understand finer aspects of any activity is that its flaws, if any, get magnified. A well trained classical singer would not be able to enjoy a beautiful but not wholly perfect melody the same way I or a not so experienced musician would. So is it then a curse to develop a heightened sense of perception? Again, no. This sense enables the connoisseur to access previously unknown realms of joy and the level of immersion in the field tremendously increases. That's why the role of a "rasika" is sometimes treated almost as important as that of the performer in the Indian tradition. The rasika too has the same level of cognition abilities, and achieves the same spiritual state as that of the artist. He/ she just has not spent time in honing the instruments used to deliver the same material, the same way the artist has.

This heightened sense of perception, when restricted to strictly its own domain, could come with its disadvantages. But once it reaches a level so high that it begins to seep into the entire character of the person, one gets the ability to see beauty in the perfections as well as the imperfections of life. My gurus teach horribly out of tune (i'm sure that's how we sound to them :P) singers like me day after day and never get fed up or tired. They still show excited signs of appreciations at those moments when we manage a good delivery during our time with them. I know of highly skilled movie makers with an amazing repertoire of skills still sit back and enjoy a presentation of poor external qualities if the content has great inherent beauty. I've seen great artists enjoy music delivered with feeling even when not perfectly in tune. Their perception, once matured enough to capture the niceties of emotional appeal, can observe from afar the musical imperfections, but still appreciate the beauty in delivery and lyrical content. Artists of one genre after a certain stage begin to enjoy and appreciate art of any form.

In the long run, obtaining this heightened sense of perception, increasing the resolution of the cognition instruments pays off amazingly well. I've heard PhD students in my college share experiences of an increased sense of focus and ability to delve deeper into the intricacies of their field after having actively studied classical music. This makes perfect sense to me as one who is beginning to dive into the deep ocean of Dhrupad himself. This is probably why having an artistic hobby is highly recommended by experts :D

Rock Climbing and Raag Sangeet...

This post draws on a personally observed analogy, and is not a scholarly study of two activities. It attempts to unravel the intricacies of classical music using that analogy and can help the uninitiated understand and appreciate classical music to some extent.

I'd spent a month in the Western Himalyan Mountain Ranges about 3 years back professionally learning mountaineering. Few of those days were spent in learning rock climbing in some depth. I was struck at the extent of the analogy that can be drawn between classical music, which I'm learning now and a completely unrelated adventure sport like rock climbing.

In rock climbing, the first thing we do is study the rock and become one with it. Identify the path to be taken, locate holds, cracks, ledges and the like, most of which would be almost invisible to the untrained eye. A rock climber before climbing first builds his/ her finger/ toe strength with specialized exercises apart from those for general fitness and stamina. Then he/ she learns to identify different types of holds and supports to use for climbing, in the rock and also techniques to hold onto different types of holds and ways to support the weight on them. Also to be practiced are ways of moving efficiently and gracefully from one support to another.

The rock climber before climbing the rock does what is known as eye-climbing. Here, he/ she identifies a path to be taken and simulates the entire climb, identifying all supports and planning the techniques most suitable to be used on them, to avoid getting lost midway. There could be many paths to climb the same rock, each one with its own set of challenges. Paths could be easier and smoothly flowing in the beginning or at some other time, have a certain type of hold being more prominent and requiring extra command over and others being not so important for that particular chosen path, there could be various actions (in terms of choice of hold to catch onto, or approach to anchoring yourself onto a chosen hold) that could be taken on a chosen path to continue the ascent and so on... Its basically about making few big choices at the onset and then making many many small choices as you go on.

In Raag based music, the tanpura substitutes the rock as an independent and complete entity. Before synchronizing oneself with the tanpura and interpreting and presenting the melodic structures that a trained singer reads from it, one must first build the strength of the throat and vocal chords with some specialized techniques. In Dhrupad (the oldest surviving form of Indian Classical Music), the extent of emphasis on proper voice culture techniques is truly exhaustive to the point of being extraordinarily difficult and even at times painful; but once mastered, the voice is then able to deliver really beautiful and rich harmonics with the notes being sung, which in the layman's language translates to an extraordinarily rich sounding, resonant, powerful yet amazingly mellifluous voice. Once this is done, the reading of the tanpura begins. We start to learn to recognize the various notes and microtones (shrutis) that slowly uncover themselves from within the demure folds of the drone. Then we learn to anchor ourselves onto these 'holds' and play around with them, move from one to another, make long and short jumps and basically gain control over their delivery from within ourselves.

Then starts the raag itself. The raag is like the path chosen by the rock climber. It will have certain notes being more prominent than others, movements particular to its own realm, and moods associated with certain parts/ phrases and so on. This task becomes more daunting because most of the notes exist only as probabilities and not discretely. The skill and dexterity required to move in the right manner from one note to another while still maintaining an aesthetic appeal is incredibly high, and doing it successfully is a task that requires hours of 'riyaaz' or time spent dwelling on each note of each raag independently and then travelling along with them based on the structure of the raag aided of course by individual creativity and imagination. Here too, it is a game of making few big choices and many smaller ones at an instantaneous level. Spontaneity plays a major role in Raag based music as the possibilities are almost literally infinite and too much of planning and fixed structures could end up being redundant and irrelevant to the moment.

In rock climbing, if you do not anchor yourself properly, you plummet down to be jerked up by the safety rope tied (the absence of which could lead to a sticky end.. :P ). In classical music, though one does not literally plummet to his physical downfall, incorrect positioning of the note invites severe criticism from listeners and an abrupt severance of the deep spiritual connection that gets established in the course of the recital.

An experienced rock climber climbs so gracefully and seemingly very effortlessly navigates the subtlest and most complicated of paths with such ease, that it is a real pleasure to watch him/ her in action. In my opinion, it is an art form in its own right and can give great joy to those who dive into the depths of the stone...

The analogy being drawn here of course has its boundaries, and a complete parallel very obviously cannot be drawn between two completely different endeavors. However, the extent to which the analogy could be drawn seemed to satisfactorily explain some of the intricacies of classical music to a newcomer.

Hope it helped demystify to some extent the esoteric world of Indian Classical Music :D

The aura of a classical musician

I've always wondered why classical musicians carry that presence and have that aura that I've only seen in very few people, mostly those who have been meditating for many years. While always generally aware of the rigors and discipline involved in become a good classical singer, it didn't make sense why others who work just as hard in whatever they are involved in do not achieve the same spark in their eyes.

Living in a gurukul for Dhrupad, probably the toughest (widely considered so because of the rigorous voice training it involves and the near inhuman levels of perfection and understanding of "sur" or musical notes and 'shrutis" or microtones) and most puritan form of Indian Classical music still in existence today since the past two weeks, I am beginning to understand why.

For one, we work really hard. My official schedule involves getting up at 4.15-4.30 am every day and developing the lower octaves of my voice and going to bed by 10- 10.30 pm after about 7-8 hours of direct vocal practice apart from which I have my class with my gurus (The Gundecha Brothers, Padmashri award winning artists, amongst the senior-most dhrupad singers today) for a couple of hours, spend another hour or so listening to dhrupad recordings of my gurus and other senior artists of today and yesterday, occasionally read about music and discuss music with the other musical aspirants of the gurukul. But then, all those I know in the corporate sector including many friends, my father and sister and other acquaintances also work really hard. My mother works really hard at home. A lot of people work really hard at what they're doing. What makes classical musicians different?

The nature of the art is extremely introspective. We spend hours listening to the tanpura and synchronizing our body, mind and soul with it, and in the process achieve unknown levels of insight into our own consciousness. When asked why dhrupad is so difficult, Ustad Fariduddin Dagar, my gurus' guru replied saying "Who says it is difficult? In dhrupad you have to be able to tell the truth; that's it". Its a way of life. The other day while trying to stabilize my voice while singing in tune, I went deep in and discovered deep rooted traces of impatience that was manifesting as an unstable voice. My voice stabilized to a significant extent after that. Each note of the octave has so much to reveal. Just yesterday our guru showed those present the difference in the shades of the "Re" or the major second note in two different raags and how the exact same notes in two different raags sound and are different. For those initiated, he sang Yaman and Bhupali. Yaman was sung omitting the Ma' and Ni to make the notes technically same as the ones in Bhupali. But the flavor and sound of each note was very different.

A senior classical musician is one whose level of awareness to such minute and minuscule changes in frequencies and tonal projections is just so far advanced that it naturally seeps into other aspects of his/ her life and brings them to a state of a generally heightened sense of being and hence they manage to command that presence that they do and have that aura around them at all times. Its amazing.

When I landed here, for the first few days, I couldn't understand the demand to increase/ decrease the pitch by my guru while teaching other students, let alone my own. After two weeks of intensive practice and listening, I am now able to identify the minute frequency differences that they point out so obviously. The next step is to identify these same flaws in my own singing and correct it, followed by a stage where these errors (however minute) do not occur at all. The entire process will easily take a few years at least, and I'm looking forward to all the learning and growth I know is in store...

Jumping into a well...

When I was standing at the edge, with nothing to do but take the plunge, it was scary. I knew more or less what the experience was going to be like. I knew it could be done safely(I saw a person jump in before me)... But I was still apprehensive. The second time was a piece of cake.

In my childhood, owing to the nature of my dad's job, we would shift cities every 2-3 years and I would have to join a new school each time. The first day was scary in the same way. I knew more or less what school would be like, having been in one before too :P But it would still take a few days to be at ease. Venturing into the unknown, while always generating feelings of apprehension and fear, also gives a sense of excitement and enthusiasm. It keeps one alive and helps one live in the moment. I've gone through many such experiences of stepping into a dark room with a torch, fumbling until I find the light switch, yet its amazing how each new room comes with its own fresh thrill of excitement and apprehension. A new school and new residence (new social group, new place etc...) every 2-3 years, my time in Vijayawada for my JEE preparation (one of the tougher ordeals I've been through), my admission into IIT, travels and experiences acquired while volunteering with the Art Of Living Foundation, social and cultural activities in and out of campus through my college life, internships and summer travels in various cities of the country ranging from Kanyakumari to Jammu, including 2 Himalayan summits in between and various other instances.

In all of this, I've always had amazing people helping me through various stages and also a fair share of sour grapes, making each journey more interesting, challenging and more memorable.

Recently, I shifted to Bhopal to study Classical Music at a gurukul in Bhopal. It being a completely new city (its more of a large town actually :P) to me, my initiation into the "Bhopali way of life" was made much easier by Rini (friend and co meditator from IIT) and her family. My life in Bhopal started amazingly with a superb Mrityunjaya Homa early in the morning at her home, followed by a short and sweet satsang. Then after a day of chilling, I visited my home for the next phase of my life, a small ashram-like setting seemingly in a different planet, far far away from the entropy of the city with almost no physical connectivity to the outer world. Though I was a bit apprehensive about the complete lack of external connectivity, I was looking forward to start my musical journey. After visiting a friend in Indore for a couple of days before my gurus could arrive, I returned to the Gurukul and it began...

Stranded in Jammu...

I wasn't really stranded in Jammu. It just felt like such a catchy title... :P More about that incident in the post.
Let me start at the end. The end of my BTech from IITB. 4 amazing years... Made some really amazing friends, met some amazing people, went through some amazing times... Learnt a lot. Saw a lot. Felt a lot.

After I was done, I had around 2 months without any agenda before I had to leave for my education in music. So I decided to make use of these 2 months as best as I can. And I'm happy to say that I did do this. I climbed snow clad peaks in the Himalayas (escaped the Himalayan Tsunami by just a few days.. Thankfully), traveled with friends around Mumbai, Bangalore, Punjab, Delhi and even Jammu, worked with the Art Of Living rural empowerment team in an intensive training program in Maharashtra and even went on two mini pilgrimages with my parents and sister.

These last two months were very very active, with a lot of travel and I had great fun and again met some awesome people and saw some amazing things. Travel is an amazing thing to do. Especially if you are on a low budget and without any fixed plan and not afraid to rough it out. You get to see the country in a different light, understand how her people live and what they go through, see all the beauty she truly has to offer and fall in love with her, her people and her places. About the time in rural Maharashtra with the Art of Living team, I'd written a post before. If interested, do check out this.

A group of us from IIT had gone a 11 day trek to a place called SarPass in the Parvati Valley region of the Western Himalayas. Having done the Basic Mountaineering Course, I had spent a month in the Himalayas few years back and was already smitten by the beauty there. The life is terribly difficult in the mountains; more so than one can ever imagine or expect. But it still captivates and calls back those who have been there. You get closer to nature than anywhere else in all its beauty and glory and a newfound respect for nature is born in you. You also get glimpses of nature's fury and majesty and learn not to mess with her. If unlucky, you get more than a glimpse... We had a bit of trouble with the weather, though now we realize we got away with very very little hardships, compared to what we would've had to go through if we were even a few days late.
After this amazing tryst with the beautiful Himalayas, 3 of us went on to Chandigarh and Amritsar with a couple of other friends. Punjab is an amazing state. The people there live straight from the heart and make you feel at home right away. And the Golden Temple in Amritsar is a must visit for all. The energy and spiritual ambiance there is simply amazing, and I have had some of my deepest meditations sitting in the courtyard by the pond there.

Then 3 of us went on to the famous Vaishno Devi temple in the state of Jammu. Visiting the temple involves a 14 km trek up a mountain and back. The purpose is so that if you walk so much uphill, all the restlessness in the body and mind get finished and you become mentally and physically calm when you reach up. It is then much much easier to get into a meditative state near the shrine and experience the joy within. While climbing, it was very sunny. But when we reached the top, the skies were covered and we were caught in a really heavy downpour for a couple of hours. It was freezing cold and the really heavy winds made it even more tough to bear. But the rain eventually let away and we were able to resume with just a small experience of the fury of the mountain monsoons. One of my friends (Tau a.k.a. Sumit) whose dad is in the army got us in through the army line, and saved us almost 10-12 hours in all. Thanks to him, we could return the same night. I had to be back in Chandigarh to see off a close friend who was leaving the next day, and this wouldn't have been possible if not for "Tau"!

Now coming to the "title story". We reached Katra (the town at the base of the mountain of Vaishno Devi) at around 1 am and found that there were no buses to Chandigarh/ Delhi. At the bus stand, there were buses leaving to the town of Jammu, about an hour away and the conductor very convincingly assured us of buses to Chandigarh and trains to Delhi from there. On reaching jammu, Tau proceeded to the station to go to Delhi and I got down at the "bus stand", a stretch of road beside a bridge, with a few buses parked for the night. On asking around the few people who were loitering there, I realized I was not going to get any buses to Chandigarh until the next afternoon. A few private car owners offered to take me to some other place from where there were assured buses to Chd for a few hundred rupees, but they seemed to just be running their business. After interacting with few people at a shop that was still open and a police officer, and validating data from different sources, I boarded a Roadways (the government bus service. Not very comfortable, but very very reliable) bus to Jalandhar, got down at a place called Dassuan at around 4 am, and got onto a bus to Chandigarh from there at around 5 am. For the benefit of all those reading this, know that you will never be truly stranded in North India thanks to the amazing Roadways there. At about 1 Re per km, these buses connect the entire North India if not directly, atleast with a few changes, throughout the day and night! But just be aware and ask the right people for information.

After spending a couple of days at Chandigarh, I went on to Delhi, spent a couple of days with friends there, visited the beautiful Akshhardham temple there (another must. Its amazing!). Stayed with a senior from IIT who quit a high-paying job in a top tech firm to prepare for IAS there. Then it was back to Bangalore; home after a long trip. Spent a lot of time with my seniors from IIT here and Art Of Living volunteers. We had a lot of fun here too. Early morning Yoga sessions, bike trips around the city and to the ashram to meet Guruji, organizing courses in the city and our own personal masti around the city.

Now I'm relaxing for a few days at home, still spending time with friends and volunteers in Bangalore, getting ready to go to Bhopal to learn music and begin the next phase of my life. All excited... :D

8 Days...

"YLTP is my heart; and Yuvacharyas are my heartbeats"  - Sri Sri

Today I know why... The Youth Leadership Training Program of the Art Of Living Foundation is an 8 day journey that focuses on uncovering the tremendous leadership potential and skills required to effect transformation in society in those already passionate about contributing to their nation. A special YLTP was organized for graduates between the age group of 20-40 with a very senior teacher (Jayantji Bhole.. More about him in the end.. I could write pages about him!) and focused on creating an intellectually equipped team of Yuvacharyas with a practical and wholesome understanding and experience of service in rural India; to give a technical lead to the YLTP.

These 8 days were the most empowering of my life. They gave me an in depth (theoretical and practical) understanding of leadership, responsibility, service, empowerment, presentation, communication, practicality in service, environment and spirituality like nothing or no one ever has. I've been involved in service projects and spirituality since the last 4 years. But compared to the energy, commitment to work and implementation of knowledge I saw here in the YLTP, the last 4 years feels like just a trailer. The workshop contained modules and sessions that very concisely and directly drilled into me, made me understand patterns in myself and more aware of my actions. 

The first couple of days were completely about empowering us to come out of our comfort zone and taking action. Coming out of one's comfort zone is not easy. It requires immense courage. But then, transforming the society is not for the weak. With a very clear sense of purpose to serve, all the knowledge and wisdom that I learnt and assimilated in the past 4 years came to the forefront and I understood it at a level I had not contemplated before.

The next few days contained more activities to take us further away from our comfort zone, field work with an elevated sense of awareness and enthusiasm (which active Yuvacharyas live in day in and day out) which led to an amazing revelation of the leadership potential within each one of us and also the ability to bring about change if we wished to. There were also more processes and activities to enable a deeper understanding of our mind, intellect and ego. To those who know what they are, YLTP includes processes and activities from Part I, Part II, DSN and even TTC apart from of course its own uniquely brilliant content.

We met some amazingly crazy people, people so passionate about service, that even with 300 armed gundas behind them threatening to take their lives, stayed on and took down one of the biggest real estate giants in the country with just a team of 12 odd people "ordinary" people. We met people who even on being discouraged by their own beneficiaries, converted villages rampant with political rivalry and substance addiction into a thriving empowered society free of alcohol, with numerous self help groups, means of financial sustenance, chemical free organic farming and lots more...

Finally, we had an opportunity to take up a massive undertaking as a group and effect transformation in hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. This project which our team took up involves empowerment of 14 villages and study followed by execution of an eco-friendly, organic solution to preservatives, insecticides, water body cleansing and many more applications. Since this is in progress, I will write more about it once we develop it and work on it further.

I learnt a lot these 8 days, grew as a person, a leader and a sadhak. I am extremely grateful to all those who made this happen.

Jayant Bhaiya: In the realm of the human, I have come to respect this man more than anyone else I know by a huge margin. In a way, the whole effort was worth just to spend some time with him; learn from him. He knows SO MUCH about SO MUCH. We would have special sessions with him where he would reveal amazing insights into topics ranging right from astrology and palmistry (where he brilliantly sorted out the scientific principles) to amazingly innovative techniques in agriculture, to cultural and political strategies that lead to social and economic degradation or enrichment of society as a whole. He literally has infinite energy. He would sleep after 3.30 am, be up by 5 am every day of the course, take all our sessions with the same energy and passion, lead projects (really big ones.. impacting thousands of lives) and give guidance in between, spend some time after the day's work on his own personal business and repeat the same thing the next day without a single sign of wear! While we had to run through a pretty rigorous schedule these 8 days, for him it is the same every single day of his life! He spearheaded the Vidarbha project, a region where one suicide occurred every 8 hours.. 518 villages were adopted and in 2 years, total transformation has occurred. For the past 8 years, not a single suicide has occurred in these 518 villages. They are self sustainable and empowered. This is but one of his undertakings. One can see him living every principle of spirituality and service to the fullest, every moment of his existence through every cell of his being. He drilled in us a holistic approach to service where we empower the beneficiary to help themselves long term, and maintain a practical and sensible mind while taking up new undertakings, yet not losing the sensitivity and awareness that makes us loving and caring humans. It was truly an honor doing a workshop with him, and he will continue to inspire me and lakhs more for ages to come. Any chance anyone reading this gets to interact with him in any way, grab it! You will relish the opportunity. 

Hope you get/ stay inspired to take responsibility to develop and empower society to the extent you can. All the best!

Jai Hind!

Longitudinal Vibrations and Probability Spaces...

No.. This is neither a physics nor mathematics related post... Its about sound and music :D

Disclaimer: This post contains ideas from my limited understanding of sound and music. I'm sure these ideas will evolve with time as I progress on my journey. Please forgive any factual errors and other gross misconceptions if any and do notify me of the same... Thanks :D

Its been few years since my last post and a LOT has happened since then. Those of you who have met me in the recent past know that I'm shifting my track altogether into the field of Indian Classical Music; and I thought it would be a good idea to rejoin the blogging world with a post about my understanding of the same. One of my professors makes a very interesting statement, "Music is nothing but sound designed". All the design principles we use for architecture, technology design, ambiance designing etc all apply here. In fact, sound design is one of the most primary design endeavors of the human mind.

Sound is basically longitudinal vibrations. On the face of it, all you need to describe any sound is frequency and amplitude. But the kind of information transmitted through sound is truly mind-boggling. A simple sentence spoken contains so much information that is being sent through just these vibrations. All the different sounds of the words, modulations generated by the speaker, the speaker's voice itself which varies greatly person to person and even time to time! The same note played on an acoustic guitar sounds very different from that played on a piano or a trombone. Its vary fascinating, how all this information is encoded in the form of longitudinal vibrations and transmitted through air. We still cannot exactly replicate the natural sounds of any instrument or the human voice electronically. Even in the best and most expensive synthesizers in top studios, there is always a slight deterioration in quality when compared to the original acoustic instrument/ voice.

Sound Design in very inherent in all of us. We all do voice modulations, play around with tones based on emotions being experienced/ conveyed, modulate volume etc... You can hear a person and say if he/she is happy, sad, angry, worried etc.. even if you do not know the person in any way, or even if you are unaware of the context. Atleast to a certain extent. This means there is some sound design ideology inherent in all of us. Music is just building up on this technology.

Music is basically patterning of sounds around a reference point, called the 'Shadaj' or 'Sa' in Indian music or the 'Tonic' or 'Key' in Western music. These patterns are then used for some purpose, typically to convey an emotion or message (either using the help of lyrics or without). We all know the 7 basic notes Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni.. Some of us know the 5 other notes that come in between. These 12 notes together comprise what is known as the chromatic scale.
The most interesting thing is that every genre of music in this entire world, be it Carnatic or Reggae, Jazz or Pop, Dhrupad or Blues; they all use the same 12 notes! The approach to patterning these 12 notes about the origin varies from genre to genre. The grouping of notes, harmonies, melodic concepts and approaches all are very different. But the basic ingredients are just these 12 notes.

Then comes the idea of time. Music has a past, present and future! A note sounds different each time depending on what was played before it. And many times, by hearing a note, you can predict what will follow after it. Its like a probability space... At various points of time, each of these 12 notes will have a certain probability distribution. Western Classical music typically discretizes notes and creates beauty through exploring harmonies. Indian music does not explore harmonies. It instead focuses on creating beautiful smooth melodic curves, and you will rarely hear discrete notes sung by an Indian. The probability curve will depend on the message being conveyed and in Indian Classical music, on the raag chosen. Changing this distribution even slightly creates a whole new feeling! There are many pairs of raags which differ by just one note, but sound completely different! One could be a very serious melancholic feeling while the other could be a peppy romantic feeling...

The world of music is truly endless, and one could lose himself/ herself completely in it for few lifetimes. Not unlike any other research endeavor, it has a lot of intellectual (and even spiritual!) challenges to offer and many dimensions to be explored and discovered. I am very excited to be starting this journey into the world of music and will share my experiences and learnings better once I dive into it...