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Texas buys power from Mexico to overcome wintry shortfalls

A legend passes away

A nice obituary by rediff:

Classical singer Bhimsen Joshi passes away

Classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi passed away on Monday morning in Pune. The veteran classical singer was rushed to a hospital with age-related ailments.

Joshi, an exponent of the Kirana gharana, was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's [ Images ] highest civilian honour, in 2008.

The last of the titans of Hindustani classical music, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was a rare genius who could transcend the mundane and transport his audience to the sublime with his gifted voice that captured both anguish and ecstasy.

What made him arguably the most popular Hindustani music vocalist of the current times was his impassioned renditions with a powerful and penetrating voice that showcased the aesthetic majesty of the Kirana gharana of which he was the celebrated exponent, as also the eloquent expression of light classical, devotional and the popular variety.

It was an awe-inspiring fusion of intelligence and passion that perhaps separated Joshi from other classical vocalists who dogmatically stuck to their gharana culture with a rigidity that possibly inhibited creativity.

Born on February 4, 1922, at Gadag in Dharwad district of Karnataka [ Images ], his journey to stardom in the world of Hindustani music was just as dramatic as it was arduous for one who decided to run away from home at a tender age of 11, in the quest of finding a guru to learn music.

Even as a child, Joshi's craving for music was evident to his family as he managed to lay his hands on a tanpura used by his Kirtankar grandfather, which had been kept away from his gaze at home. Music had such a magnetic pull over him that a bhajan-singing procession or azaan from a nearby mosque was said to draw him out of house.

On his way back home after school hours, Joshi used to stand near a shop selling gramophone records and listen to the music played by the owner for prospective customers.

There he chanced to hear a record of Abdul Karim Khan and resolved to sing like the Ustad. The quest for a guru started at that point, as Joshi told a biographer.

A slight provocation at home spurred Joshi to give effect to what had been brewing in his mind as he made his way to Gadag railway station, clad in a rumpled shirt and half pants, and embarked on a ticket-less train journey that took him to Bijapur where he sang bhajans, thus earning a pittance to feed himself.

Unable to find the master who could teach him, the intrepid youngster then wanted to go to Gwalior on advice by a music loving person but a mix-up of trains landed him in Pune, the seat of Maharashtra [ Images ] culture.

Joshi was in for a disappointment in his pursuit of a guru once again when eminent vocalist Krishnarao Phulambrikar, whom he approached for tutelage, insisted on a monthly fee that was beyond the means of the boy, whose parents by then had lodged a complaint with Gadag police after his disappearance from home.

Disappointed but not demoralised, Joshi left Pune for Mumbai [ Images ] and journeyed from place to place to finally reach Gwalior, his original destination and an acknowledged centre of Hindustani music.

With the help of sarod maestro Hafiz Ali Khan, who was under the patronage of the maharaja of Gwalior, the young Joshi joined the Madhav Sangeet Vidyalaya, a leading music institution in those days. His basics in khayal, the singing form that originated in Gwalior, were learnt during this period as he grasped the technical aspects of the gayaki.

Not content with the lessons at the Vidyalaya, Joshi again met Hafiz Ali Khan and persuaded the Ustad to teach him subtler points of difference between ragas Marwa and Puriya, the two classical melodies that remained his forte and a rage with his audiences.

With his passion for learning finer nuances of music undying and on advice from one of the teachers at the Vidyalaya, Joshi left Gwalior for Bengal where he became a student of Bhishmadev Chatterjee who taught him raga Gandhar.

After a brief stint with Chatterjee, who could not find enough time to teach his pupil due to a busy schedule, Joshi went to Jalandhar [ Images ], another leading centre of Hindustani music and the venue of an annual jalsa, a music festival that offered a platform for artistes from all over the country and listened to their music plentifully.

In Jalandhar, Joshi took up another pursuit side by side, which was rigorous physical exercises and acquired a strong physique which held him in good stead for vigorous riyaz throughout his life.

A chance meeting with Vinayakrao Patwardhan, a scholar musician, at one of the jalsas, prompted Joshi to go back to his home town as he advised the young artiste to approach Sawai Gandharva -- eminent exponent of the Kirana gharana -- at Kundgol and seek his discipleship.

Sawai Gandharva -- a leading disciple of Abdul Karim Khan -- subjected Joshi to a gruelling regime to test his urge and determination to learn music.

A strict disciplinarian, the guru (Sawai Gandharva) is said to have hurled a nut-cracker at the shishya (Joshi) when he slipped rather badly on a note-pattern.

Sawai Gandharva taught Todi, Multani, and Puriya ragas to Joshi as it was his considered view that mastery over these ragas was not only basic to the cultivation of a steady and tuneful voice, but also helped significantly in improving its volume, depth and range.

Joshi's shagiridi (tutelage) lasted five years during which he also accompanied his guru on concert tours.

He soon began giving mini-concerts in Dharwad, Sangli, Miraj and Kurundwad and among the music lovers who attended them was Mallikarjun Mansur, who was to later emerge as one of the great vocalists in the country.

His horizons widened and his wanderlust grew as he started going places visiting musical centres and gave a public concert in Mumbai which was a great success.

But it was a concert in Pune in January 1946 on the occasion of the 60th birthday of his guru that gave Joshi a real break, catapulting him to fame as he cast a hypnotic spell on his listeners.

He never looked back after this concert and was flooded with invitations from leading musical institutions in prominent places from all over the country.

A classicist by training and temperament, Joshi soon evolved an approach that sought to achieve a balance between what may be termed as "traditional values and mass-culture tastes" as he went on to have supposedly the largest commercially recorded repertoire in Hindustani vocal music.

What distinguished him from the ordinary was his powerful voice, amazing breath control, fine musical sensibility and unwavering grasp of the fundamentals that made him the supreme Hindustani vocalist, representing a subtle fusion of intelligence and passion that imparted life and excitement to his music.

In the forays he made outside the classical fold, Joshi lent is voice as a dhrupad singer for a Bengali film based on the life of Tansen and later sang as a playback singer for Marathi film Gulacha Ganapati [ Images ], produced and directed by celebrated Marathi humorist Pu La Deshpande, in addition to Hindi movies Basant Bahar and Bhairavi.

But it was his Sant Vani recitals, which bore the flair of Marathi Bhakti Sangeet that added immensely to his popularity in both Maharashtra and Karnataka which have had a long succession of saint-poets.

The appeal of Joshi's classical music transcended Indian borders as M Louis, a Dutch film producer and director who happened to listen to his raga Todi at an international film festival in Vancouver, produced a film on his music in India and exhibited it to the West.

Canadian business tycoon James Beveridge, who was deeply interested in Indian classical music, came all the way to Pune to shoot a 20-minute documentary on him which was titled Raga Miyan Malhar. Back home, it was renowned director Gulzar [ Images ] who made a 45-minute documentary on the life and career of the maestro in 1993 which won the national award for the best documentary film.

A man of many tastes, car driving was a passion for Joshi, who was also an expert swimmer, a keen enthusiast of yoga and a football player in his younger days. He had acknowledged his weakness for alcohol but left it in 1979 after it started affecting his career.

Be it sobriety or inebriation, the popularity and magnetism of this genius never ever faded.

Honours and awards came his way -- the Padma Shri (1972), Sangeet Natak Akademi award for Hindustani vocal music (1975), Padma Bhushan (1985) and the Madhya Pradesh [ Images ] government's Tansen Samman in 1992. Joshi's part in the Doordarshan feature Mile sur mera tumhara sequenced to inspire and promote national integration, earned him tremendous acclaim, striking a chord with the whole nation.

A biographer once said of him, "Here indeed is a man who has loved and lived his life with all its romance and intensity with a complete identification with his music… In real life, he was simple, transparent, forthright, and unobtrusive."

Panditji's public performances had dwindled in the last few years owing to the age factor. But everybody was in for a pleasant surprise when during the 2007 Sawai Gandharva festival -- the annual event which he had started in memory of his guru -- the maestro appeared on the stage on a wheelchair with an irresistible urge to sing before an avid audience that treasured the moment, which subsequently turned out to be his last public engagement.

The Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award bestowed on him in 2008, was nothing but a tribute paid by a grateful nation to a genius called Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, whose melodious exploration of Hindustani classical music enriched the lives of a multitude of connoisseurs as well as the common man who doted upon the artistic grandeur of his colossal voice.

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Art on display at Milan

Team 2011

Squad:

MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin


Facepalm selection: Piyush Chawla the legspinner who last play one day cricket in his teens.

Key injuries: Sachin (right hamstring), Gambhir (left knee), Praveen Kumar (elbow), Sehwag (shoulder)

2011

Meet Superman

He blogs here.

Quoting Superman

a typical day is waking up at 6, getting to work at 7. Working until 5:30. Going to class from 6-9. Coming home and grinding from 9:30-1 or 2 a.m. Rinse and repeat.

chak de !

OFF

to india, be back in 3 weeks, everyone stay good

Spooky sundayaments everyone

Costume ideas:

For my future children

Ideas for the wife that were rejected :(

Txt received frm a friend: gonna walk the streets with an 8yo dressed as a vampire cat, demanding sweets with menaces.

LOL stackaments

1000 bb stacks at the 50nl hu table versus a total spastic monkey

Hmmm

Marine Sergeant Ty Ziegel already had his life planned out, he would marry his girlfriend Renee Kline upon returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq.
But one fateful day a suicide bomber hit his truck, tearing apart his body and making him among the 20,000 soldiers that have been wounded in Iraq. He was blind in one eye, had a shattered skull, and most of his skin was burned off. Renee lived with Ty at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas for a year and a half, sharing Ty's every hope and fear. Their relationship became stronger than ever, and Ty and Renee moved back to their hometown in Illinois in July 2006, and got married in shortly.

So true love does exist??

Weirdest and funniest interview ever

Probably the greatest primetime news interview ever from a Senate candidate:

Rough Rough Rough

Messed up the sleep schedule and feeling totally fucked right now . Planning to put in some hands at the heads-up tables in a bit .

Cons of the airport full body scanner

1. TSA is hell bent on giving me cancer
2. The Americans know I have a small penis.

Ek doctor ki Maut

Test tube triumph & tragedy - Nobel for UK scientist stirs memory of a Bengal doctor

OUR BUREAU AND AP

Medicine Nobel winner Robert Edwards (left) attends the 30th anniversary of the world’s first test-tube baby Louise Joy Brown (right), holding her son Cameron in July 2008. At the centre is Louise’s mother Lesley Brown. (AP) Oct. 4: A British scientist has won the 2010 Medicine Nobel for research that led to the world’s first test-tube baby 32 years ago, while a Calcutta doctor who independently repeated the feat in India 10 weeks later was driven to suicide. The Nobel Foundation today announced the award for Robert Edwards, 85, for developing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques that have helped nearly 4 million infertile couples have babies. The award almost coincides with the anniversary of the announcement of the birth of Durga — India’s first and the world’s second test-tube baby — by reproductive scientist Subhas Mukerji on October 3, 1978. But Mukerji was called a fraud and faced bureaucratic vindictiveness in Bengal, and took his own life on July 19, 1981, according to scientific papers and historical notes. Edwards, a professor emeritus at Cambridge University, started working on IVF in the 1950s. He developed the technique — in which egg cells are removed from a woman, fertilised outside her body and then implanted into the womb — together with British gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988. Louise Brown, the first baby born through the procedure on July 25, 1978, in a Manchester clinic, said about the Nobel: “It’s fantastic news; me and mom are so glad. We hold Bob in great affection.” Brown has herself given birth naturally, as have many other IVF babies — a fact the Nobel committee described as “probably the best evidence for the safety and success of IVF therapy”. Mukerji made his own contributions to the technique. The Indian Council of Medical Research in 2005 credited him as the first in the world to use hormones to stimulate ovaries to make extra eggs, the first to harvest oocytes (eggs) through (a relatively easy) transvaginal route, and the first to freeze and thaw human embryos before transplanting them into a woman’s uterus. Yet Mukerji and his two colleagues “were ridiculed by the medical fraternity and victimised by bureaucracy” for months after their work, a senior Indian reproductive scientist, T.C. Anand Kumar, wrote in 1997 in Current Science, a journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Kumar, who played a key role in the birth of India’s first scientifically documented test-tube baby in Mumbai on August 6, 1986, had analysed Mukerji’s handwritten laboratory notes, scientific papers, and correspondence with the Bengal government. His analysis revealed the Bengal government had appointed a panel headed by a radiophysicist — with a gynaecologist, a neurophysiologist and a physiologist as members — to examine the claims by Mukerji, who was posted at Bankura Sammilani Medical College. None of the panel members “could have had background or insight into the modern science of reproductive technologies”, Kumar wrote, questioning the Bengal government’s rationale in appointing an expert from a “totally alien” field to head the panel. This was just over a year after the formation of the Left Front government, which is widely held to have targeted and destroyed the standards of excellence in Bengal academia, often with the weapon of political appointments. Since December 1978, the state authorities prevented Mukerji from presenting his work at scientific conferences and denied him permission to visit Kyoto University in Japan, which had invited him at its own expense. They transferred him in June 1981 to an institute of ophthalmology, an area where he had no expertise. Mukerji was only 50 when he hanged himself a month later. Mukerji used to travel from Bankura to Calcutta every weekend to carry out his research with colleagues Sunit Mukherjee and gynaecologist Saroj Kanti Bhattacharya, who were at Jadavpur University and Calcutta Medical College. “We were humiliated. There were people in the medical fraternity who wanted to crush him,” said Mukherjee, now 80. “It was Kumar’s in-depth analysis that revealed the facts.” Kumar himself died earlier this year. Steptoe and Edwards too faced resistance from Britain’s medical establishment, which stopped their research funds, and were able to continue only thanks to a private donor. Their work stirred an “ethical debate”, with the Vatican, other religious leaders and some scientists demanding the project be stopped. The Vatican opposed the separation of conception from the “conjugal act” and condemned the destruction of eggs that are taken from a woman’s body but not used. Medical experts have pointed out that Mukerji’s pursuit of IVF occurred in an era when there was little awareness in India about ethical aspects of research. In his 1997 report on Mukerji’s contributions, Kumar had mentioned how Edwards would get his proposals for human experiments approved by institutional ethics committees. Sunit Mukherjee said the embryo experiments in Calcutta did not have approval from any ethics committee. There was no culture of seeking approvals at the time, he said. Yet the Calcutta team froze an eight-cell embryo, stored it for 53 days, thawed it and implanted it into a 31-year-old woman’s uterus. Edwards and Steptoe did not freeze the embryo, and their technique of extracting eggs from ovaries was more difficult than the one used by the Calcutta researchers, one expert said. Edwards was not in good health when the Nobel committee tried to reach him today. “I spoke to his wife and she was delighted and she was sure he would be delighted too,” committee secretary Goran Hansson said. It wasn’t immediately clear why the Nobel committee took so long to honour Edwards, and some experts criticised Britain for not having awarded him a knighthood. But Edwards told a newspaper in 2003 he was “not terribly bothered” about not getting a knighthood. “I’m a very Left-wing socialist and I won’t shed a tear. But if you can organise a Nobel, please go ahead,” he joked.

One of those

Perhaps one of the greatest rear-guard action of the millenia, once again from that man versus his fav opponents.

Chilling documentary

About Sweedish twin sisters who went mad in the most bizzare fashion.

No jinx

Just went through my database and discovered this for august on fulltilt




No losing days , only if this could last :(

Sigh

Jawan hunts for daughter’s abductors

RAMASHANKAR

Patna, Sept. 11: Deputed on the international border, havildar Rajiv Ranjan Pandey has stood guard, ready to fight any enemy who could harm his countrymen. Now, sitting at home for the past two months, he is clueless how to rescue his eight-year-old daughter from an enemy who is in the hiding. A havildar in the 2nd Bihar Regiment, Pandey alias Bhola Pandey was posted at Ranikhep on India-China border when he got the news about his daughter Shikha being abducted from the Company Sah locality of Sasaram town in Rohtas district. He left for home immediately, hoping his daughter would be rescued by the time he would reach his village. “It’s been two months since Shikha’s abduction. I have been running from pillar to post to secure her release but the police have failed to trace the kidnappers’ whereabouts,” said Pandey. Shikha, a Class III student of Vidya Sagar School at Sasaram, went missing from the Company Sah area on July 20. Initially a missing complaint was lodged at Modal police station. “Soon the missing complaint was converted to a kidnapping case after the kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs 6 lakh for the safe release of Sikha,” said Pandey. The harried father received some information about his daughter from witnesses who claimed they saw Shikha being kidnapped by some Maruti van-borne criminals from near her house. Station house officer of Modal police station Mohammad Akram said that the girl was picked up when she was practising how to ride a bicycle in a field adjacent to Rauja Road. With help of some local people, Pandey caught hold of one of the conspirators, Anil Pathak alias Chhotu, and handed over him to the police. In police custody, Pathak confessed to his crime and disclosed the name of another accused, Sipahi Sharma, who was taken into custody from his village Kharari Tola under Nokha police station. “By the time police reached Sharma’s house, the kidnappers had shifted Shikha somewhere else. Both Pathak and Sharma were later sent to jail,” said Pandey. The army jawan is peeved at the pace of investigation. “When the two accused have admitted their involvement in the crime, why the police have not taken them on remand for further interrogation?” he asked. Pandey is worried about the health of his wife Babita Devi. “One can well imagine the condition of a woman whose only daughter has been kidnapped and the police have failed to trace her even after 64 days,” he said. Pathak’s role in the kidnapping case was suspected after he sought information about the cellphone number of Shikha’s grandmother soon after the incident on July 20. “Within six hours, the alleged abductors demanded a ransom of Rs 6 lakh on the mobile phone of Shikha’s grandmother,” said a police officer investigating the case. “I had not expected such an indifferent attitude from police officers towards the case. I met many senior police officers, including the DIG and the SP, and sought their intervention. Still no step has been taken by them to recover my daughter,” Pandey said. Rohtas Superintendent of Police Vikas Vaibhav, when contacted, said efforts are on to recover the child. LONG WAIT Eight-year-old Shikha was abducted on July 20 from a field in Company Sah area. Abductors demanded Rs 6 lakh as ransom from havildar Rajiv Ranjan Pandey’s family. Two accused -- Anil Pathak alias Chhotu and Sipahi Sharma – have been arrested. Kidnappers still at large. Police have no information on the child’s safety.