Engayging Life

Shor Bazaar's own "Savita Bhabhi"

Shor Bazaar, my band, have just released a single based on the porn comic strip heroine "Savita Bhabhi." Personally, I believe Savita Bhabhi.com is a very genuine and creative concept - at least, from the point of view of our society. I see her as person who defied the stereotype of an Indian woman, always bound by restrictions and rules, suffocated of a right to express her feelings and desires.

It is unfortunate that our Government decided to ban the website. I feel that the echoes the discrimination towards sexual minorities. Hence, this song feels like a liberation - a tribute to freedom of expression, the freedom to be yourself.

Shor Bazaar's "Savita Bhabhi" is out for free download all over the internet. I'll list a few sites below. I request all of my fellow blogger friends to listen to the song and if possible, talk about it.. on blogs, forums, networking sites etc. If you do, please send me a link so that I can share it with the band and the rest of our fans.

- Shor Bazaar Blog: http://bazaarshor.blogspot.com

- GimmeSound.com: http://www.gimmesound.com/ShorBazaar/
- ReverbNation: http://www.reverbnation.com/shorbazaar/
- MySpace: http://myspace.com/bazaarshor/
- MyBand.co.in: http://www.myband.co.in/Shor_Bazaar/
- Chordvine: http://chordvine.com/
- SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=927184

Also, these are some links to Shor Bazaar on the internet. Again, please feel free to send these across to your friends and families. Promote free music. Promote freedom!

- Twitter

- MySpace

The cat's out - Noise Market single 'Savita Bhabhi'

Noise Market's new single titled "Savita Bhabhi" is just three days from being released. If you are wondering how, why, and where, please read this. Sunday DNA (26th July, 2009 - Mumbai edition) has an article on it which can be read here. The lyrics of the song are posted on the Noise Market blog.

Please support us by spreading the message and joining these social networking sites.

:-)

Noise Market links

MySpace
Twitter
FB fan page
FB group

Soliciting Help for Freedom of Expression

I have some great news. Noise Market is releasing our first single in a few days time. Although the song's still a secret, it is about freedom of expression! I am asking for your help for the same. I would give you the links to the pages where it can be downloaded for free. All I ask you is to spread the message around if you like it.

Do we have a deal?

'Now that we are legal, make it illegal to harass us'

This is an article that I wrote for DNA which got published on the Sunday DNA (Mumbai edition, Page 9). Read the text version here.

Here's a JPEG version.

(Thanks to Vinokur for all the help!)

I'm legal!

I'm trembling with excitement. It has happened! Section 377 is beind read down! I'm legal! I thank everyone who was part of this wonderful, remarkable journey! Get ready to see me in drag!

Unfinished conversations

So I've been thinking about how everyday we say 'Look, I would love to have carried on this conversation. We'll do it some other time. Eh?' So many people, so many relations, so little time. Try this. Go to your inbox and browse through the e-mail exchanges with friends, family, and acquaintances. Every conversation seems to have ended with an unanswered question with a few loose ends.

Some of such ends are trivial. 'Howz the weather in Mumbai?' etc. Some others are painfully sharp. Sharpness is relative. From a 'Would you like to meet me?' which went unanswered to 'What do you think about my work?' which got ignored under piles of things to do.

Foolishly, we add on things to your schedule. From dates to gigs, new stuff has to happen. Life doesn't seem credible otherwise. What will happen if people suddenly forget me? Yet, we forget that the more important people in your life, some of them who have gone through the endurance test of life with you, supporting you when you needed, are given the boot.

We are really mean people. Please pass on the meanness-extinguisher!

Photographical interlude

Last week, I was clicking like a madman. No particular reason why. I guess occasions for some nice photos presented themselves. The problem now is that I don't have time to edit them. Interested souls can check out the Peter Parker FB page.

Photography: The MySpace Secret Show

I'm getting a little too engrossed with photography I guess. I went to watch Black, Scribe, Motherjane at a MySpace secretshow the other day. This is what I did... umm well, apart from rocking my ass out!

What do you think?

If I promise, I deliver

People at work call me uncle--not just because I'm like decades older than most of my colleagues. I wear these old fashioned clothes, you see. Formal trousers, shirts, and a fedora. Yeah, that's true. Here's proof.

Pearl Jam - Present Tense

Rob inspired me to listen to Pearl Jam again. Not surprisingly, I stumbled on this song from 'No Code.' The lyrics are so very apt for my life.

Pearl Jam - Present Tense (from No Code)

Do you see the way that tree bends?
Does it inspire?
Leanin' out to catch the sun's ray
A lesson to be applied
Are you getting something out of this?
All encompassing trip

You can spend your time alone
Redigesting past regrets, Oh
Or you can, come to terms and realize
You're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, Oh
Makes much more sense to live in the present tense

Have you ideas on how this life ends?
Checked your hands and studied the lines?
Have you the belief that the road ahead
Ascends off into the light?

Seems that needlessly it's gettin' harder
To find an approach and a way to live
Are we gettin' something out of this
All encompassing trip

You can spend your time alone
Redigesting past regrets, Oh
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, Oh
Ah, makes much more sense to live in the present tense

Younger Than Jesus

Vinokur sent me this T-shirt which he picked up at the New Museum in NYC two weeks back. He had been to an exhibition titled "The Generational: Younger Than Jesus." All the artists featured in the exhibition are under 33 years of age (like Jesus H. Christ). I had received this T-shirt (which was the reason why I'm more or less fully out of the closet at work) and I wore it to a metal gig tonight. A friend of mine loved the T-shirt and took a picture of it.

Thank you Vinokur!