Porcupine Tree's Sound of Muzak

This is the first song I heard of this band, and I keep coming back to it, for its drumming and strumming that mesmerizes me. The other fascinating thing about this song is its lyrics, which talks of music, and its industry. I won't go into trying to dissect it all, but would like you to have a listen:

Hear the sound of music
Drifting in the aisles
Elevator Prozac
Stretching on for miles

The music of the future
Will not entertain
It's only meant to repress
And neutralise your brain

Soul gets squeezed out
Edges get blunt
Demographic
Gives what you want

Now the sound of music
Comes in silver pills
Engineered to suit you
Building cheaper thrills

The music of rebellion
Makes you wanna rage
But it's made by millionaires
Who are nearly twice your age

And the chorus goes:

One of the wonders of the world is going down 

It's going down I know 

It's one of the blunders of the world that no one cares 

No one cares enough

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For the Masses, Cricket, Music & Dance!

Within the circles of my network, a debate on Facebook with a southward bound series of comments is ensuing regarding the quality of the ICC Trophy 2014's official theme song and video.

The spark: Why is the song so formulaic, so typically bollywood-ish, and so on; why couldn't we have created something more original?

Fire and smoke follow this surely,  inciting  arguments such as:

• What is art? 
• Being high-brow,  
• Reaches and pangs of commercialism, and demands of our corporate sponsors, 
• Where is creativity? Are we creative? 
• How many Bangladeshis does it take to change a lightbulb? 
• etc.

After finally having seen the video, I can see where its coming from. The 'pop' elites are visible, and the conscious effort to make a connection with the rest of the country, which are mostly villages and small towns and swayed more by bollywood than hollywood or dhaliwood (which is recently trying hard to emulate bolly); or any movie with sexually provocative posters.

I am beginning to see the point of view of the makers, whose arguments are similar to the makers of hit films like "Baba keno Chakor" (Why is Dad a Servant? Not a film with a  serious political narrative as you might think), or "Jiddi Mama"(Stubborn Uncle)* - to reach the masses. If we consider "Chorompotro", which was live on radio keeping up the spirits of the fighters during '71's war of independence, the language was not the pure form of Bangla, but a more 'rural' version of it if you will. That definitely made it more accessible to the masses. Is that to say, today's newspapers don't reach the masses if they're not using a similar tone?

* I love how specific we are with our movie titles!

Movie makers have used the common man scapegoat for years to justify their films which made 0 efforts to alleviate the art of storytelling, but stubbornly held their grounds of being artists, and producing art. Its quite an age old dilemma for societies such as ourselves and India where there is so much class divide, where each class' reality is unfathomable to the other. A similar trend is noticeable in the music industry, which is also partly competing with Bollywood (item number and all), and partly keeping time for the sentimental garbage that feeds the new middle class, who wants to listen to something 'romantic' and wear something 'gorgeous'.

Art has always needed its patrons, and there lies the tragic core of this issue, as corporations hungry to reach the masses take that place and with no forethought or afterthought than profit. Meanwhile, go watch that video. Dhak dhol (traditional drums) was always part of our rhetoric and culture, but we just had to learn how to glamorise it from our neighbours a little with a mix of Yo and us.

As there are 30 year old rockstars who can write anthems for 16 year olds, surely there can be those who pay at least 30,000 Taka just in rent who write music for those who earn 3,000 Taka a month. Cricket, like war, is the only event that can bring those two to the same level.

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Paris - Kolkata - Dhaka - India

This post contains an excerpt from the book Manob Sagor Teeray, by Shankar (মানব সাগর তীরে/শংকর) about france, the french and often about how different of similar they are to Bengalis, or the rest of the world. Insightful and funny accounts from 1990.

... এক কাগজে পড়েছিলাম, ঢাউস-ঢাউস শহর তৈরিতে ইউরোপীয় ও আমেরিকান সাহেবদের অরুচি ধরে গিয়েছে. দুনিয়ার বিশিষ্ট শহরগুলির তালিকা এখন তৈরী হয় লোকসংখ্যা অনুযায়ী নয়, লোকের ট্যাকে কত পয়সা আছে তার হিসেবে. ট্যাকের পয়সা এবং রুজি-রোজগারের হিসেব উঠলে আমরা কলকাত্তাইয়ারা অবশ্য গোহারান হেরে যাব, দুনিয়ার দুশ বিত্তবান শহরের তালিকাতেও আমাদের নাম থাকবে না. আসলে আমরা কেবল সংখ্যায় বেড়ে চলেছি, সামর্থ্যে নয়, সমৃদ্ধিতিতে  নয়. স্রেফ লোকগণনার জোরে টাউন থেকে সিটি, সিটি থেকে মেট্রোপলিটন, মেট্রোপলিটন থেকে মেগাপলিস-এর তালিকায় নাম লিখিয়ে কোনো লাভ নেই. 

Though the above was written in 1990, what the writer mulls over comparing his own city of Kolkata and the cities of Europe and USA, seems to hold true still for us in Bangladesh after all these years. Kolkata I hear, has really cleaned itself up on the other hand. Dhaka holds such an allure for so many, whoever comes here doesn't want to leave. One factor is that there are no other cities that come close to it in terms of being active and alive. Chittagong, where I grew up is an important city, and while there, we used to think we'd never leave - it was a blessing in the form of 'less crowded', 'scenic', and thus 'peaceful'. However since being a teenager in the 90s to now, I have only seen the degradation of the roads and the train services that connect Dhaka and Chittagong. Not to mention that Chittagong is the major port of Bangladesh and hence it affects businesses a lot to have to allocate one day for goods to transport in between where it should have taken two to three hours.

The writer is also touching on the subject of the wealth of a city. Dhaka has managed to create a caste system over the years in the struggle to accumulate. Whoever has to be put down, will be put down in an effort to get land, housing, a living. The poorest are the ones to suffer the most (failing even to get justice often when asking for it), and crime is on the rise. The appropriation of utilities of the city - power, gas (for cooking, cars, generators) and water - are under immense pressure.

Yet, the city is growing. Dhaka's allure is so powerful, that it is being grown sideways and upwards so people don't have to feel they are leaving it. Yet, we are not working hard enough in improving communication with, and building other major cities where other industries and commerce might flourish. The government has already given in to their friends from India (Sahara Matribhumi) to build a "New Dhaka" without having gone to the local developers or their association called REHAB. Brav-Oh!

My sense of things when I had the chance to visit Europe, USA, or even closer countries like Malaysia and Thailand, was that they as a nation knew, or was guided to what would be 'peace of mind' for the majority of the country. There are grievances in Malaysia about certain racial issues, but they are still fortunate to have well connected cities where industries exist and people can consider moving from one city to another professionally without a sense of losing out. They all seem to have plans to not burden one particular city with everyone. Our plan seem to be using all the projects that can be set up to get money into pockets where it doesn't belong, in the name of common good. How else do you explain rising taxes and a provision for Whitening Black Money?

Related:
GINI Index of Bangladesh
Sahara vs. Developers in Bangladesh
Critique of Sahara Group
Tax lawyers oppose legalising black money

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QUBEE: Internet for the Underserved

I heard of Qubee a little before they setup a widely* available service or a proper consumer website through a friend who had been hired by them, and another one whose sister was in charge of finding people for testing out the services they were just installing at the time.

That is when I first came across the motto, a grand statement on a temporary website of Augere Holdings, the investors behind QUBEE: 

' ... a mission to provide "broadband for all" and seeks to bring broadband Internet services to underserved communities worldwide' (Though that website doesn't exist anymore, it is available on the Wikipedia page for Qubee and Augere).

I have been a customer since 2009, and today, I happened to see that they were in the news - "Augere's Ahuja, 7 others sued"! Seems like their local shareholder (30%) Teleport Bangladesh is the accuser. I am sure that'll get sorted out, but what I would like to get sorted out for the benefit of my knowledge is their mission statement above.

Who do they mean, when they say "underserved communities"? According to Wikipedia, this is their reach in terms of where they are doing business:

Augere has so far launched broadband internet services in Pakistan in July 2009 and in Bangladesh in October 2009 under the brand name Qubee. Augere is also expecting to launch services in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and India in 2011 and is continuing to pursue spectrum across Africa, Asia and South East Asia.

So, am I the "underserved"? I think I could be if we put a spin on that phrase (which I see is usually used in relation to healthcare services). The spin is quite simple. Recently I had a run in with their support team (badly for the 1st time in 3 years to their credit) with what I perceived as something wrong with their tracking of my usage. It came to my notice since last February was the first time was the first time I was found in violation of their FUP or Fair Usage Policy ~ use till a 30GB limit, at which point they shut down the internet unless I pay them a month's worth of fees (do double payment for a single month). I tried to get their support team to register my concerns with their technical team, but was refused flatly on the logic that the traffic that was generated was from my MAC ID - so it could've only been from my house. I would even accept that point if I were to assume that their modems usually send over requests and receive responses even if my computer is turned off!

Khaotic however did manage to get a technical person to go to his house and witness such a phenomenon first-hand. With every kind of software turned off - like Windows Updates, anti-virus updates, other software updates, and keeping the processes and tasks in view, the tracker showed a download of 40MB.  The tech support person couldn't offer any explanation for that, but someone from the support team followed up the next day with some accusations first - "your windows was updating", and "your anti-virus was updating" and a few others, and then, secondly with a suggestion:"Re-install your operating system". It feels like the support team right there is having some fun with these complaints - rather than escalating the issue or getting to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, I have heard good things so far about the government run BCUBE** and it seems like they have better prices for their services too. If there were an 'underserved community', wouldn't they want to go with the more economic offerings?

* Qubee is in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet now, whereas their WiMax competitor Banglalion has also gone there and beyond to Rajshahi, Khulna, Rangpur, Barishal.

** The website is not good looking in compliance with the rest of the government websites, I guess.

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Oscar Wilde's Website

What an interesting world we live in! Or die in!

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Buy Nothing Day!

Just found out another 'day' is out there. It was started in Canada as a day to raise awareness about over consumption, or over-consumerism~

The Horse's Mouth

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Word of the day: Potboiler


potboiler \POT-boi-lur\, noun:
A usually inferior literary or artistic work, produced quickly
for the purpose of making money.

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