Chatting – More than a hobby :)

It all started probably when I was in class 9. There was a website called Orange Pie where in myself and my friend enrolled. It was the first of the social networking sites I was into. Of course, needless to say that with Orkut and Facebook, Orange Pie died, but it was definitely one of the pioneers. We got pen pals on Orange pie and one girl, Veena from Baltimore was so sweet that she wrote out to me. None of us owned mobile phones those days, but email communication was very much in use. But despite this, she opted for the conventional form of communication and that really moved me. She had sent a pic attached to the neatly typed inland letter. We used to chat over Orangepie, almost everyday, sharing experiences from each others life. We don’t talk on an everyday basis these days,but we are still in touch on facebook.  She was even kind enough to invite me to her wedding.

What started as a time pass on Orange Pie, continued through orkut as well. It wasn’t until college that I started chatting. Early years of college, it was the Yahoo IM craze. The buzzes, smileys and funny environments kept the chats alive. In fact, I started to talking to a lot of my college guys  on chat first, before actually talking to them. The first casual chat actually made it easy to break the  hesitation and strengthened our bonding over the years. All those who know me and who’ve seen me work, know for a fact that I type really fast.I definitely did not start at lightning speed. In fact, during my school days, I used to type pretty slowly. I completely attribute my typing speed to the long chat conversations with my friends.The course I underwent can be called, “Free Typing Training @ Institute of Kadalai”.My chatting continued through Orange Pie, Hi-Fi,Yahoo and still continues predominantly through google, although I use a variety of open source chat clients (Pidgin,Gwibber, Empathy etc) on and off.

I guess it was during my second year college, that my dearest mate Swa told me about her very geeky friend Ragesh and I told her about my very geeky friend Bharathan. Seeing how similar both of them were, we were seriously planning to get both of them to meet. Not knowing Ragesh before, it casually started on a chat on google. As Ragesh says, “Ragesh ka dokha dena mushkil hi nahi, naamunkein hain”. It was very easy to befriend him. Until date, we chat on an everyday basis on google.  Be it Java or Jayalalitha or jewellery, our chat conversations span a minimum of 1000 lines. We are professional chatters now.And, not to forget Ragesh and Bharathan, the two geeks haven’t met yet, but we got them to talk over the phone

Chatting is not just a time pass when you are jobless but has a lot of potential benefits. Its a mutual learning process. When we talk about different things, we get to understand and appreciate each others’ opinions.We get to learn new things and expand our knowledge base.I chat to get over my irritation and frustration. It feels like am actually talking about my frustration to someone, and it really doesn’t matter if the person at the other end is paying attention to your problem.Just chatting it out helps.When you chat, you are at the listening end as well, so your listening skills improve.In the long run, your confidence and communication skills also improve.As already mentioned before, your typing speed will increase by leaps and bounds. It helps you stay in touch with long lost friends and bridges distances. And, last but not the least, chatting is fun and it  will keep you happy.

At this point, I’d like to specially thank all my chat friends (The list is too huge to mention) from the bottom of my heart and I hope our chatting continues as long as we live.

So, for all of you who don’t chat and who want to chat, its not too late. Install google talk or Pidgin (Its free ) and start chatting now. HAPPY CHATTING!

Music Music Everywhere!

Its that time of the year again, when it might not rain snow or rain at all in the Chennai MaaNagaram, but we do get perennial musical showers throughout the city for a whole month. I have a gut feeling that this is a delayed post, as we are mid-way through the grand festival, Better Late than Never nonetheless. For those who are wondering, what I’m talking about and for the uninitiated, this rant is about the Grand Music and Dance Festival that is held in Chennai during the month of  December and January.

The history of this Music Season dates back to the 1920′s. It all started when Chennai, the then Madras started to emerge as the center of trade and commerce. People started migrating to Chennai from the smallest of villages for their living.The Music Academy was started in 1927 during the month of December and the first music season was held to commemorate the establishment of the Music Academy.Following the establishment of a body to propagate Carnatic Music culture in Madras, musicians started migrating to Chennai and thus Madras became the base for the  Carnatic Music fraternity.To add, the then lawyers and advocates in Chennai patronised the art and contributed generously to its growth.

The next question, Why was December chosen? December in general is the only month when the otherwise dry-sultry Chennai is slightly cool and pleasant. Also, its the holiday time, heralding the new year.Thus December became the most ideal month for the Chennai vaasi’s to travel around the city, and the NRI’s from around the world to  come down to Chennai to listen to the top notch musicians and dancers perform live. I am not kidding, a lot of them do come indeed! I still remember, one of our family get – togethers’ when my Uncle’s friend who stays in the US was talking passionately about the Music Festival and how he makes it a point to never miss the festival Live.

I generally attend concerts throughout the year, but the music season is still special. Though, I am open about music in general, I have been sticking to attending only Unnikrishnan’s concerts until this year.In addition to my all time favorite Unni, I have fallen in love with Abhishek’s bani and style of rendition. As of today, I have attended about 5 to 6 concerts of both Unnikrishnan and Abhishek Raghuram. Each concert was a treat and for a professional, each concert is a learning. I’m just a little more than a layman when it comes to Carnatic Music; but its sheer joy to keep guessing the ragas as the artist sings. In fact, its a competition between myself, my mom and sis to see who interprets the raga first.Its like using grep and egrep, each prayogam playing the role of a pattern. I quickly execute a grep on my head,with a number of prayogams and we try guessing the raga.

Each artist has their distinct style and this part of the year is like their end semester examination.Criticisms do definitely play a part in shaping the career of these artists and I strongly believe that criticism is very important to anybody if at all they are looking to improve. However, sometimes the critics become unwelcome guests and one bad review can change the climate and spoil the artist’s image for the season. Specially, criticisms these days are becoming biased, thereby making it pointless. Not all critics or review writers are prejudiced, but I did notice a lot of criticisms on the internet are indeed not just prejudiced, but disrespectful. Mockery shouldn’t feature as part of criticisms.The influence of the internet is extremely strong and laymen tend to go by what the internet says. So, here goes my kind request to those of you who review music, please put yourself in the artist’s shoes before pointing a finger at them. Lets all make this season a memorable one for all the rasikas worldwide without any bias,prejudice and malevolent elements.