Travails of a guitar learner

First things first, a big happy birthday goes to Inder aka Bandar (although I never call him that) aka Hathamuri, my close comrade and buddy for the last few eons and a self confessed philosopher and thinker and the weirdest dude I know. I hope that things churn out the way for him exactly the way he wants them to be. This is also a reminder to him for the treat which is pending. -:)

Devbagh provide the much needed relief and succour to the gang last weekend. The 2 photographs pretty much sum up the spirit of the entire trip.


















Now to the title of the blog. You would think that learning to play a song is the toughest thing to do on a guitar. But you are wrong. Tuning the damn thing would be the most challenging task on this instrument. My instructor tells me that it would take me a few years to learn to tune the guitar just by strumming it. So he hands me over a certain strange looking device and informs me that it would aid me in my efforts to tune the guitar. The device which goes by the name of a pitch pipe is a strange looking thing with six locations one can blow into. One blows into this thing and strums the guitar until one hears a resonance. RESONANCE?? Why the hell do they have to bring science into everything? Seems easy enough. Nope.

So I start blowing into the thing and hoping that the thing resonates. After 5 minutes of unsuccessful strumming, I get Chilli into the picture asking him to blow it. Neither of us hears this so called resonance. But somehow my instructor, who’s standing a couple of miles away, hears this resonance and signals to me that the guitar is now tuned. Happy at my first successful attempt in tuning, I head home and loosen all the screws of the guitar and start all over again. As expected, I did not hear the RESONANCE again. So I keep tightening the screws assuming that I still haven’t reached the point of tuning. Then suddenly, I hear a loud twang of the G-string (excuse the usage, cant be helped) and I see a part of the string flying across the room and the other part hanging on dearly to the screw. Turns out I tightened the screws too much and the string just broke.

5 days later, I have a set of spare strings, an untuned guitar and a pitch pipe which deserves to be buried at least 100 feet below the earth. Well, what can I say?? These are just temporary setbacks on my way to greatness.

Ponnuswamy and his Valentine…..

I was walking in the office corridor today and suddenly saw this poster in office that said in bold letters “Ponnuswamy is celebrating Valentine’s day”. Needless to say, I was puzzled by this rather strange poster and had a closer look at it. And you won’t believe this. Turns out Ponnuswamy is a caterer who will be serving us hot and spicy Chettinad food in the office on 14th Feb in wake of Valentines day and this was the his way of advertising it. The whole Valentines day thing is so overhyped that now caterers are also trying to cash in on it.

Of course, we have to put up with the side effects of this Valentines Day. Go to a gift shop searching for a birthday card and you are politely told that no birthday cards are being sold that week. Switch on the radio or the music channel and you are forced to hear “Nothings gonna change my love for you” or “Everything I do, I do it for you” for at least a 100 times in a day. Turn over to a movie channel and most likely its going to be “Pretty Woman” or “Autumn in New York” playing. We have movie channels dedicating the whole day to romantic tearkjerkers on the 14th.

A message to chilli and inder, get the guns ready. We are going to need them this week. On a different note as usual, this weekend has excitement and fun written all over it. Beaches, here I come.

Now the weird roads and the Indian Hockey……

After a description of the weird flyovers of Bangalore in my previous blog, its time for the weird roads of Bangalore. Cunningham Road and St.Marks Road are one ways in both the direction. The uninformed reader who has never been to Bangalore would think I am crazy. You actually got to see this to believe it. At least, Cunnigham Road is a relatively uncomplicated road. But with the new one way from both sides system coming into effect on St.Marks road it’s almost impossible to get out of this road once you enter it. Bangalore has its own black hole just swallowing up people trying to enter this path.

Happened to watch the Premier Hockey League finals between my home team Bangalore Lions and the Chandigarh Dynamos. I was very happy to see a packed stadium in a sport other than cricket for a change. The league is very well organised, stylish in its approach and relatively good prize money. I am really hoping this will encourage more people to take up hockey and restore it to its original glory. I have been a regular follower of hockey since my school days and. I am still hoping that Indians will win the Champions Trophy or make it to at least the semi-finals of the world cup someday again. The biggest culprit for the way Indian hockey is today is due to the circus that is the Indian Hockey Federation and its dictatorial head Mr. KPS Gill and his court jester Mr. Jothikumaran. When India finally managed to get an amazing German coach like Gerhard Rach (Alex Ferguson of hockey), the court jester caused him to quit him in disgust within a few months.The IHF was back at its usual weird behaviour today by axing Gagan Ajit Singh and Viren Rasquinha for the Pak tour, whom I think are the better players India have. Anyway after seeing the PHL, I felt there is hope yet. Lets wait n watch

On a different note, I hate hospitals.