Zune and Machine Intelligence

Even folks at Microsoft will be shocked to hear someone admitting to still owning a Zune, leave alone praising it! Here you go – I own a Zune, and what’s more, I think it's quite smart. It has the uncanny ability to sense what’s going on around it and respond with the appropriate collection of songs. My wife bought me one years ago. On the first looks, it looked more like a paperweight than an MP3 player. Once I got over the surprise, it's been great - it has served me very well.

Ok. This is about its intelligence, though. I walk listening to my Zune. While I walk, I like to play a shuffle of tracks of a genre, usually Tamil film songs. Some days I feel like listening to an eclectic collection. On others, I have specific tastes. I’m fortunate to have grown up in the golden era of Tamil film music – in 70s and 80s when Ilaiyaraaja went from a nice change to an object of adoration. Typically, on my choosy days I press a dismissive finger to skip a few AR Rehman and Harris Jayaraj numbers. My zune gets the hint and gives me a string of Ilaiyaraja numbers, my favourite ones at that.

Today’s walk started with a sad song, not a particularly good one. I hit skip, thinking hard thoughts about the overuse of Sivaranjani and Shubha Panthuvarali for sad situations. My Zune responded with three consecutive picks of sad numbers, all brilliant, and in very different ragas.

Onna nenaiche paatu padichen

I love this for the restrained rendering of SPB. The deceptive ease with which he sings and the eloquent wailing of the violins.

Chinna thayaval

 

I used to dislike S Janaki for her falsetto nasal voice. As I reflect on some of the older songs, I can see why Ilaiyaraja picked her for difficult songs even after her voice had aged  - for compositions in vivadhi ragas, for example. Can you imagine a music director teaching  Sangeetame (Kovil Pura) to one of the recent, over hyped talents?

 

Nalladhor veenai seidhe

Ok, this is M S Viswanathan’s composition. SPB overshoots his improv abilities in this song, but the lyrics and the elegance of the tune still keep the song eminently listenable. And Subramanya Bharathi - what a poet! Does anyone else think the references  'nalam keda puzhudiyil erivandundo' and 'nasai arum manam ketten' are to his own addiction?

So these picks were flukes, you say? Here’s  another example - It gave me three songs on Janmashtami. Not consecutively, mind you, but in a short span of time.

Radha Radha nee enge

Remarkable song, for the way it’s sung and composed. The glides and bends are brilliant. The singers rarely touch a note directly and hold it. Try playing it on a piano – it won’t sound anything like the song.

Vaan pole vannam kondu

I still remember the first time I listened to this. In a bus from Cuddalore to Chidambaram. I was so taken in by the tune and the flute interludes that I hunted down the movie name, located the cinema that it was playing in and watched it. Almost 30 years later, the song is still fresh.

Kannan Oru Kai kuzhandai

The story goes that this song was recorded on the day of a Krishna Jayanthi as well.

I didn’t start with the Krishna sequence, as someone is bound to attribute all this to a miracle and divert the whole conversation. I prefer my other interpretation - My Zune can pick the songs on its own.

My Zune's a keeper. I'll hold on to it despite the patronizing stares of the iPod owners. I just need to be careful not to drop it on a toe and risk a break!

 

Ashoka, forgotten and rediscovered!

Book review – Ashoka – the Search for India’s Lost Emperor by Charles Allen

I remember reading in school that Ashoka was an emperor who lived before the time of Christ, was a ferocious campaigner, and ruled most of what is currently the Indian subcontinent. We were told that he built habitable cities, roads lined with trees, Buddhist monasteries and rest areas for travelers. That he had a change of heart after the war against Kalinga, suffered remorse for his ruthless actions and converted to Buddhism.

What I don’t remember being taught is that he was largely forgotten until the 19^th century. Indian Puranas had a nothing more than a grudging mention of this illustrious grandson of Chandragupta Maurya.  Ashoka was presumably condemned to the sidelines due to his religious affiliations. Buddha’s early disciples were from the Brahmin community. The Buddhist monks and evangelists were largely drawn from the Brahmin population well into Ashoka’s lifetime. Allen reckons that this didn't well with the worshippers of Shiva, Vishnu and other Indian deities (later to be collectively labeled Hindus), who authored and passed the puranas on by word of mouth.

It took the intellectual curiosity and the tenacity of a few bright Englishmen to connect the dots spread through India. These dots were in the form of rock edicts, pillars, stone carvings, statues and other archeological evidence. The writings in these edicts were assumed to be in Greek by the locals. Over a few generations, the European ‘orientalists’  summoned enough curiosity to connect the writings on a few rocks, work out the scripts, correlated the evidence to records from Greek, Chinese, and Sri Lankan sources and reconstructed the timeline of Chandragupta Maurya, Bindusara and Ashoka. 

I find this stunning.  A combination of religious power battles between various religions - Buddhists, Shaivites, Ajivikas and Jains, and successive invasions from various factions erased (or distorted) a significant part of India’s heritage. History written by one religious body invariably undersold the others. Invasions from Muhammed of Ghor and Mohammad Bhakthiyar did further damage by destroying Nalanda University, its library, and various archeological landmarks in eastern India.  

History is written by the victors. And is forgotten if the victors don’t stay victorious.  It took William Jones, James Princep and a whole succession of accidental archeologists to help India remember its history. 

The book does a great job of how observations, accidental discoveries and associations complete the picture of Ashoka. What starts of as a fascination over Firoz Shah’s column and over the similarity on the stone carvings of the an unidentified monarch gels into a complete picture of Ashoka. Ashoka, the first emperor who ruled most of India well over a millennium before the Moghals or the British managed to bring it under one rule; and the emperor who transformed what was seen was a minor dissenting faction of Hinduism to a major world religion.

The book reviews all that we know of Ashoka’s family, political life, appearance and dietary preferences. And then concludes with Ashoka’s effect on contemporary India. It’s full of interesting anecdotes and tidbits, reconstructed from various sources. For example, the Buddhist scriptures describe how Ashoka was born ugly with an unpleasant skin condition, as he had, in his previous birth, unwittingly offered some earth to Lord Bhuddha to eat. Another story is about how he had an inferior rebirth, because he died in anger. He was aware of his diminishing influence in his declining age. In the final hours, he wakes up to find the maid assigned to fan him had fallen asleep. In his mind, He contrasts the perceived indifference to his glory days, and dies with that resentment. There are also a few fascinating details of how Ashoka was partial to peacock meat, and how the Mauryas preferred trained warrior women to be the Emperor’s bodyguards. (Take that, Lara Croft!).

This is more than the story of how Ashoka was rediscovered. It’s a story of the Mauryas, a story of Buddhism, and the story of how religion has always influenced politics. And a story of positive contributions the Europeans made to waking a colony to its past.

A highly recommended read. This book has managed what my history teachers never achieved - arouse an interest in the history of India. It deepened my long standing gripe against my school teachers – how did they manage to teach history without making me realize how fascinating the subject was!  I already ordered John’ Keay’s book, India Discovered, as a related title. And it appears this is only one of several books that Charles Allen has authored. I can’t wait to read the rest!