Jazz and the Ramayan

My grandparents and parents have always been avid readers and have so kindly passed the habit down to my sister and I. As a family, we often joke about how anti-social our Sundays are. After eating a huge “handsome breakfast”, we all saunter to our rooms, choose an appropriate Sunday book and congregate in the living room. We then sit in our usual places and proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon in silence, absorbed by stories of other people’s lives.

One story that has always been on my list of things to read is the Ramayan. Of course I know part of the story, it’s not the worst possible scenario, but definitely close. When KBC (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) used to air in India, I knew almost none of the answers to the questions pertaining to the Indian epics. Fail.

I have often found, in my experience with books, that there is sometimes a specific time that you are meant to read something. There are a number of brilliant books that I am yet to read. It’s not that I’m not interested in reading them, I just happened to have not as yet. The only Salman Rashdie novel I have ever read completely, for example, is Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I’ve never read Moby Dick, though I know the story and I only just recently read The Picture of Dorian Grey.

These “specific times” are sometimes spurred by travelling or a conversation you had, a picture you took or just because you saw it in the bookshelf and finally picked it up. I have been meaning to read the Indian epics for a long time now. I think the time is finally here. Or it will be when I go back home and have access to a copy.

Why the sudden talk about the Ramayan? Well, I recently watched an animated film named Sita Sings the Blues, which is based on the Ramayan, but focussed mainly on, quite obviously, Sita. The creator of this amazing film, Nina Paley, combines the story of Ram and Sita with Annette Hanshaw’s jazz songs. It was surprising how two things so glaringly different fit so well together. Of course it is modern and funny and well, has a jazz score, so it’s definitely different from Valmiki’s original work but it is just as fascinating.

Of course the creator had problems after the films release. There were copyright problems with Annette Hanshaw’s songs and of course right wing Hindus had a problem with the way Sita was portrayed. But in my opinion, that’s a non-topic and not even worth discussing.

Here is the link to the movie- http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html

You aren’t doing anything illegal by watching it here don’t worry.

Sincerity.

Hypotheticals

Half of my class is made up of doctors. For our unit on Medicine we were split up into two groups of doctors and non-doctors. The task was for the doctors to come up with questions that they would most likely ask patients and vice versa.

Ten minutes later each group had a set of questions. Obviously my group of non-doctors had been extremely filmy about the whole task. Our first and obviously most important question was how much longer we had to live. We of course, expected only just a friendly smile from our doctors but got disapproving sighs instead.

“No one can tell you how long you have to live. Even if you have a terrible disease and have a short time to live, a doctor will not be able to tell you exactly how long you have to live. This question just can’t be answered. It’s impossible…” Insert lots of shaking of heads and nods of agreement towards the man who is talking from the others.

Now insert a table made up of students, an engineer, a man doing his PhD in Philosophy, an economist and a Chef all looking at each other in utter confusion and disbelief. We then all started talking at once, trying to explain that we were not actually being serious and that it was just a harmless question.

“Nevertheless, it’s something we can’t answer,” one of the doctors who is always more serious and dull than the others said.

This is one situation I have never fully understood. We had just finished explaining that this was in fact not a serious question and his answer seemed to suggest that we were in some way trying to justify the correctness of the question. I mean, just look in a dictionary and you are sure to find the definition of the word “nevertheless”.

Despite the really gripping conversation that was taking place, my teacher, Anja directed us to the other questions. Low and behold, we soon got to another question that fetched us even more looks of disapproval. The question was whether or not we could drink alcohol.

There were more protests and refusals to answer these fake questions. Before we were able to launch into yet another discussion, Anja intervened.

“You will be faced with many such questions when you begin your work as doctors here in Germany. You need to understand that these questions are considered quite normal here in Germany and irrespective of where you may come from, you must recognize that you are currently not in that place. And please, whatever you do, do not lecture your patients about your culture. They will not be interested.”

BEST.

Stuff I Say

"I don't want to go, running around the country, manically taking pictures of random-ass shit."

Sometimes

I do things in an obsessive compulsive manner.