Crybaby Love Songs

Have a listen to these two blues songs:

"The Thrill is Gone" by B B King: B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone ( 1969 ) HD (youtube.com)

"Still Got the Blues" by Gary Moore: Gary Moore - Still Got The Blues [HD] (youtube.com)

Both unbelievably beautiful guitar players that almost every guitar player I know tries to learn from!

Yet, the lyrics infuriate me!

You fall in love? Great! It doesn't work out? So what? She/He leaves you? So what? Let them go!

Why this crybaby attitude towards love and life? Wuuaaannn Wuuaaannn 😭 she left me, he left me 😭 Wuuaaannn Wuuaaannn 😭!

Have some self respect! Stand still on your two feet and know that you are fine as you are! So what if things didn't work out? At least you experienced what it is like to love! Be grateful for that! And move on...!

Never ever let go of your self respect! Never! Never Ever Ever!

(PS-1: You want to know what worked for me 😉? Maths and Science 😉! Linear Algebra...Aa ha ha...Partial Differential Equations...Aaa Ha Ha...Fluid Dynamics...Classical Mechanics and Hamiltonians...Organic Chemistry...Genetics... 🥰! Yummy 😋! Are you getting what I'm saying? The core of your life has to be spending time with your passions! And relationships, if and when they happen, add to your happiness, and if things don't work out you still have your passions and the happiness they give you! Get it?)

(PS-2: Love songs need to be about love, about longing, about missing folks you love when they aren't around, about the happiness they bring when they are, not this self respect eroding stuff 🤦!)

Note: All the above of course holds for all genres, not just the blues! It's just that I'm writing about what I'm more familiar with...

[I also invite you to read the following two posts: 1) Strike a Pause: Keep Your Emotional Self Intact! (strike-a-pause.blogspot.com), 2) Strike a Pause: A shortcoming with the blues... (strike-a-pause.blogspot.com)]

A shortcoming with the blues...

This post expresses what I consider to be a shortcoming with the genre of blues music as I'm familiar with this form of music. But the same arguments may well apply to other forms of music too. The intention here is certainly not to single out the blues for criticism.

Consider the following standard 12 bar blues chord progression:

Am (2) Am7 (2)

Dm (1) Dm7 (1) [First change: 1 to 4]

Am (1) Am7 (1) [Second change: 4 to 1]

Em7 (1) Dm7 (1) Am7 (1) Em7 (1) [Closing with a turnaround 5 to 4 to 1 to 5]

Now this 12 bar structure must have been an innovation at some point in time, and I compliment the blues community for making it, but a whole lot of blues musicians are still stuck at it (or minor variants of it)! Why? Write down all the chords that you can form from the notes of the blues scale, innovate further, write blues songs with more interesting chord progressions and closures!

Talking about the blues scale, another innovation was the discovery of the blue note. Again, I compliment the blues community for making this innovation. But it is crazy how they keep going "Oh the blues, oh the blues, there's no other music like the blues..."

Why? Haven't other parts of the world innovated? Why is the blues scale "more important" than scales in the middle east or eastern parts of the world? Consider the scale C D E G B C for example. Just play it for a while and you'll see that it's beautiful too, it has its own feel, its own ambience! Why would it be any less or more important than any other scale?

Cultish mindsets are best avoided! If we musicians won't be open and bring the world together through perhaps the only language that has the power to unite and heal today - the language of music - then who will?

And even for a #musician at an individual level, I'm unable to understand why you would devote your entire life to just one or two scales? Why would you want to "exclusively" be a blues, or country, or rock, or jazz, etc., musician? Why? Over 30-40 years of playing music, why wouldn't you diversify, why wouldn't you pick up interesting scales and sounds from all over the world and enrich yourself?

[Note: I'm of course talking within the context of the equal temperament system of western music in this post. That other temperaments exist and have their own place in music is in itself something worth elaborating upon, but I leave that for another post.]

[I also invite you to read: Strike a Pause: Crybaby Love Songs (strike-a-pause.blogspot.com)]

Feminism and the Yin (Female) - Yang (Male) Balance

The Yin (female) and Yang (male) aspects of nature are present and need to stay in balance in every aspect of life, including personal, domestic and social lives.

The corresponding terms in Sanskrit in the context of personal, domestic and social lives are Streetva and Purushatva.

Go back about 40-50 years and we had excessive patriarchy: excessive purushatva and subdued streetva. Feminism stepped in as a correcting force and steadily brought in balance. However, over the last 15 years or so the objective and nature of feminism changed to bring about a female dominated society - which is just as wrong as a male dominated society - instead of a balanced society. Today, this imbalance is openly visible all around us if we just open our eyes and look. One of the strategies to bring about this imbalance has been highly biased anti-men laws that makes it near impossible for men to take any legal course against exploitation in relationships and marriages. I call this perverted avataar of feminism "feminazism".

I highly recommend following Deepika Bhardwaj's LinkedIn account: Deepika (Narayan) Bhardwaj | LinkedIn

Deepika is doing excellent work in addressing this imbalance and will be greatly helped if more people become aware of the cases she has been digging our and pursuing steadily over the years and the documentaries she has made.

Brilliant work!

Self Respect in the Global Village

This was in Summer 2006. I was on a one way ticket back from the USA to start my academic career in India. We had a paper accepted at a conference in Germany around the same time and my post doctoral supervisor suggested that I stop over at Munich to present it on the way.

Online applications for visas had just started around then and I started to fill out the required form for a Schengen Visa. Something was going wrong, the form kept getting stuck at some point repeatedly and I had to restart the form from scratch every time. I honestly did try but when I faced the same problem multiple times, I decided to fill the form offline, take a printout of the filled form, attach hard copies of all required documents, and try and resolve the issue at the embassy.

Rented a car, drove the five hours of driving to Chicago, waited my turn, and eventually got to the interview booth. The lady at the counter was super nice. She understood the difficulties I was facing, gave me a copy of a "help points sheet" and asked me to just come back after I had completed filling the online application. I asked her if there was any way to proceed with the hardcopy I had brought because that was fully filled and had all required attachments - and I had driven in five hours for the interview! She smiled, and again, very courteously explained to me that she wouldn't be able to process my application without the online formalities completed.

So far so good.

Then suddenly this man comes out from the office behind her and snaps at me very rudely (and unnecessarily because the lady had explained the situation already) about asking the questions I asked and making the request I made. I didn't like the way I was being spoken to but as a first instinct I just shrugged my shoulders, thanked the lady, and said I would come back with a fresh appointment in a few days.

But when I was downstairs and just about exiting the premises, I made a decision that I still respect myself for. I went back up, told the lady very politely that while I appreciated her interaction with me, the gentleman had left a very poor impression of her country in my mind and I would not be stopping over.

I flew straight home.

There's a lesson here. During one's education or when it's a matter of earning the family's bread and butter, one puts up with poor behavior occasionally because that's just how the world is. Some folks are sensible and some are idiots. But short of such "essential circumstances", I refuse to let anyone dent my self respect. No way!

I had done the research that was going to be presented at a conference they were hosting and I was going to spend my money in their country! They were in a position of complete gain! There was no "charity" involved on their part! And yet that man couldn't be polite about such a simple thing! And if that was the behavior I encountered before even setting foot in their country, why would I expect better behavior inside?

This is a lesson I gladly pass on to others as well! Unless something essential is on the line and you have no choice but to put up with a bit of nonsense, never ever ever let anyone put you down. Never. Be steady where you are, be firm about who you are, do your work, live a good life, love your loved ones deeply, be happy. This much is enough. Then if you are respectfully welcomed in other parts of the world, go by all means. Else, just forget about it. It's unnecessary.

Maternity Leave in India

At present women get 6 months of maternity leave in India.

This is an insufficient period of time. A child needs tremendous maternal attention for the first year after which it can be steadily acclimatized to distributed attention from multiple people.

Maternity leave has to be at least one year long.

Arguments such as: "Well, how about 6 months maternity leave for the mother followed by 6 months paternity leave for the father? Work distribution needs to be "gender equal"" are meaningless in this context. Home is not "workplace" and there's a difference between wanting to bring a child into the world and raising it vs being co-workers at a company.

The child's wellbeing comes first. Period.

And a child literally yearns for its mother for the first year. If you've missed observing this fact, you're either not observant or not sincere enough about parenthood. The responsibility of changing this is all on you. Not on the child.

Addressing Suicides at IITs: My Viewpoint

There have been 40 suicides in IITs in the last 32 months (more than 1 every month).

I'm as concerned as anyone else but my diagnosis is probably different. Consider the following points:

1. Today there are a total of 17,740 seats in all IITs put together. While one exam (IIT-JEE) does not define anyone's long term potential (read that again), it does give feedback on one's level of preparation in Science and Mathematics at the end of 12th Grade. After having been a student at IIT Bombay and having taught at IITs Delhi, Kanpur, Varanasi, Goa and Dhanbad, I can assure you that ranks lesser than about 5000 indicate a level of preparation lower than what's required to grasp the level of rigor at IITs. We need to reduce seats in IITs and increase them by the same amount in NITs, IIITs and state government colleges. 5000 probably won't sell for politicians and their constituencies, but a reasonable cap does need to come in. I repeat: Reduce seats in IITs and increase them by the same amount in NITs, IIITs and state government colleges. And this whole cause will be helped if parents understand that "hamaare bacche ko IIT karana hai" is not a higher goal than their child's well being and happiness. Hardworking and committed students can, and do, succeed from anywhere. Being an "IITian" is not a prerequisite for a successful and happy life.

2. All students coming through affirmative action quotas (SC-ST-PD-OBC-Gender) will be served well if they go through the 1 Year Prep Course (facility already available but not used widely enough) before starting their degree programs. One extra year of investment in one's education is well worth it in the long run. The JEE cut-offs for affirmative action quotas are usually much lower than General Category, and minus the prep course preparation they tend to struggle.

3. Make a certain attendance percentage mandatory. Several IITs are still lax on this front. This results in students lounging around in hostels when classes and labs are on, many of these students drift into excessive video gaming, internet addiction, alcohol, drugs and porn addiction. Weeks slip by and when exams arrive many of them panic and rush to counselors. But it's often too late to help and many of them either end up failing or getting very low grades. This feeds back into their psyches, dents their confidence, and students who were perfectly good to start with start struggling with psychological issues and depression. A lot of this can be addressed by the simple requirement of insisting that students come to class.

4. The above 3 points focus on the undergraduate student population coming through the IIT-JEE. Implement similar strategies for Masters students coming through GATE and JAM.

5. Maintain rigor in PhD admissions instead of reducing the bar to take in and graduate more PhDs to climb rankings faster. As an example, I myself was part of a PhD interview panel for aerodynamics at IIT Kanpur in 2011 where many students coming in after having completed their Masters weren't even able to write down the governing (Navier-Stokes) equations of their subject on the blackboard. I maintained, and still do, that these students were not ready to start their PhDs and should have been asked to come back for a fresh interview after 6 months. But my colleagues resisted my stance fiercely because their promotions depend on "how many" PhD students they graduate. And this constraint has been brought in because university rankings in the western first world paradigm depend on "how many" PhD students the university graduates every year. But our third world realities are different and it is the students who suffer the most - both in coping up during their PhD programs and in the job marker after graduating.

Once the above five points are in place, counseling services and student support systems will definitely help. But unless we honestly confront and address core issues, every other strategy proves ineffective in the long run.