Confession time

It was one of those regular calls to the cable company. You know how they give you time-bound offers lowering the price, then they hike the price after the time period, at which point you call them again discussing with them your financial plans like dropping some features(to savethe price) or move to the rival brands and then they put you on some other offer and ... life's endless cycles.

I made that call. Except this time the permutation and combination ended up in such a way that I had to take a Hindi channel to get the best deal(dont ask, apparently that is consumer market). Chose the cheapest Channel. Star plus.

I have two friends addicted to the Serial thingy, so should have seen it coming. One watches the episodes missed on google video the very next day. The other refuses to step out of the house during the time inspite of a DVR. They work and live in Silicon valley.

At my own house, I can see the ghost nearing me. At first I couldnt believe the mind-numbing episodes reminding you once again of the moniker idiot box. But slowly i can see the convenience factor kicking in. You dont need to know the origins. cant really differentiate between preview and the actual episode. One night, I couldnt even notice that they had moved on to a different serial. The previous serial had this letter lying under a bed. I was listening to something on youtube so had muted the tv. When I watched it again, there was money lying under the bed but it apparently was a different serial. One can never tell.

I had alteast hoped for some film based programs. During the early days of cable TV, the print media wrote all sorts of articles about how the cable TV was filled with programs based on movie without any original products. Sometimes people dont count their blessings and are plain greedy, result, you get the atrocity that is mega-serial tv with exactly one movie per week.

If I probably go missing from blogosphere I am most likely watching the Star plus re-runs or catching up on the whole bank of episodes.Do inform the office of the same.

PSA: Say no to mega-serials.

Airtel Super singer again

I know you guys must think why the hell do I make a fuss about this show. But listen to the videos when you can. All fabulous singers.

Ajeesh with a unique and mellifluous voice. He was a discovery during the earlier Unplugged round when he sang thoda thoda malaranthu enna. Ravi has been consistently good. Very well versed in carnatic(for a playback singer aspirant). Though one does wish for a little more depth in the voice. If someone had told me earlier that I will be rooting for Ranjani and Ajeesh at the finals, I would have shot them down with one look. But Ranjani has improved and how. She always had a pitch perfect voice but the confidence, the clarity that you see now is amazing. She has experimented and proved across many genres now as well.

But, I doubt if any one of the three are going to win the title. That is most probably Prasanna. He did impress me with his off the stage behavior earlier. Humble, Humbility and humbleness personified.*(in reference to Om puri's dialogue in bollywood calling). So there was some leeway for this not so good singer. But his loud proclamation about this popular support during the wildcard recall round threw me off. That doesnt matter, he is a crowd favorite and this is a reality show which means he is going to win.

During these times, I want to be part of the crowd. It is so much easier if your preferences match with the rest of the crowd. This time mine isnt. That would be the case for anyone who is musically inclined. But as some one said life isnt fair get used to it. (btw now that I am following the mantra, will forbes publish my picture next year? you know, in their billionaire list. Atleast the person who said it is there)

Unnidam mayangiren - Ajeesh (another fabulous performance here)



Then sinthathey - Ravi


Antha sivagami - Ranjani


Engirendu - Renu

Airtel supersinger

I have been watching Airtel Super singer for a month now. It has become the one TV show I look forward to. Not the office, the hills or desperate housewives who by the way did a retelecast last Sunday. I mean can you believe it, the whole summer they go on vacation show some poochandi shows after that and then start repeating the episodes again, the nerve I tell you. Anyhow back to the Airtel super singer.

I like the show, something to look forward to. The quality of singing is quite good which is what made me sit up and notice the show in the first place I suppose. I have also learnt couple of pointers on singing.(I am not a singer, for that matter, please note, am not a writer, I am not a cooker(!), cleaner in short I am somebody who should not be credited with anything). For example, why I never comprehend shruti easily(it is inherently not there), why I have to sing 10 times before going to the next class and all that good stuff.

The compering is usually done by chinmayee. This week 's comperers were Yogendran, Malaysia Vasudevan's son and his wife making me realize that Chinmayee does a decent job.

Now Chinmayee, her fashion sense reminds you why chennai is never going to host the annual fashion week ever but she is usually in the background and is just a conductor of the show. Yogendran, on the other hand, ventures in with a mike every few minutes. I do not mean this as a rude remark but his singing wouldn't have gotten him through the first round of Airtel super singer.

He probably knows that which is why he grabs this opportunity to sing.

The show has had varied Judges from Mahati, Mathangi(who a famous blogger has a crush onand there by fell some 100 points below in my estimate) to Sriram Parthasarathy, who hugged two contestants, guys ..hugged them for singing well atleast that's what he claimed. I quite like Sriram's singing so I shall not talk about this further.

And then there was Deepan Chakravarthy, who my mom referred to as the stage show singer. During Illayaraja's period of reign, SPB and Chitra ruled the roost, I bet you guys know that. Illayaraja for whatever reason liked him but know he wasn't worth singing movie songs, so this guy got delegated to stage shows. Atleast that's what mom said. He was also a judge during the same hugging session and when Sriram Parthasarathy said that these guys had done a fab job and should definitely sing for movies, he was like, yeah only after correcting themselves and with lot more practice.. you know sour grapes sort of..

Now it is predominantly Srinivas, Sujata and Unnikrishnan. They should be given decent rating, though I refrain from giving Unnikrishnan any sort of rating after last year's Kutcheri debacle for me.

Srinivas, that is a singer who I love, so I will go easy on him. I like the way he says too much.

Sujata, god knows how she ends up singing up and that too does a good job of it because she seems quite out of breadth even while talking in the show. She also suffers from this I will talk Malayalam and since in my head it sounds like tamil, it is tamil. It is quite surprising since she has stayed for quite a fong time in tamil nadu.

Unnikrishnan starts of by commenting on the dress. In one of the episodes, he said I like the color(the contestant was wearing) and the contestant got stunned for a moment. This is his way of lightening up the contestant before passing the judgement, I suppose. It stumps the contestant(females have been the only recepients of this honour so far) more than the judgement itself.

None of the judges have had any startling moment so far. By far, Singer Shylaja,one of the judges last week, has been the only impressive onre. Proper feedbacks provided without much a frill, I liked her style.

On the design of the show itself, except the last week's unplugged round, there hasn't been much of variety but as I said the quality of the singing is quite good which glues you in.

The other aspect is I find old gems which either I had forgotten(ullathil nalla ullam from Karna) or wasn't even aware of (Pon ondru kanden). I didn't quite like the 70's or songs before that era much as a kid. But now I quite like them for their musical depth(? ... whatever that means).

And then there are viewers and then there are their thoughts, reminding you of the word democracy. Does democracy means detoriation of quality, of intelligence, intellectualism? why does a good term like democracy result in such massive detoriation of quality.

They have all been yelling in different forums about how the some of the singers should have never been eliminated. Sometimes, Indian female film songing, I feel is like some sort of olympics for pitch. There is some sort of high jump competition in terms of pitch that is going on. I am bored of this single tonal voices. People who have been eliminated will well fit into this category. I am glad Airtel super singer is not olympics for pitches and I am also glad it doesn't believe in democracy.

Yeah, there are other things one has to be thankful for. The camarderie between the contestants, the lack of drama like calling judges and other contestants names when one gets eliminated, overall, the show kind of tells me the ugly disease called reality drama involving bitching hasn't yet hit the shores of our Madras. So, all's well till then:)