Morning Raga

Rāga (Sanskrit, lit. “colour” or “mood”; or rāgam in Carnatic music) refers to melodic modes used in Indian classical music. It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Morning ragas are usually sung to wake the Gods. Some of the morning rāgas include Bhupala, Bauli, Desakshi, Bilahari and Dhanyasi.

Till last few months, these rāgas were the ones that donned the morning hours of many households in South India. But over the past few months, there are a few new rāgas that have made into the top list of rāgas that are to being heard in the morning hours. The rāgas in the order of popularity are listed below.

1. Pink Slips / Lay offs
2. Cost Cutting
3. Recession
4. Satyam scam
5. Inflation

There are also some channels that serve these rāgas to us all through the day and some even act as a lullaby to us.

Recently there have been a set of new rock bands that have broken into the top 10 singles countdown. These include

• “When will my salary be paid …” – Rock Bench
• “Is my job safe …” – Management Mantra
• “We are hiring …” – HR Park
• “We are mobilizing funds … ” – Satyam screamers
• “Rate Cuts and Rate Cuts …” – Reserve Ban(k)gers

Pain(t)ball

Its been a while since I played cricket or even any outdoor sport. To be precise almost 3.5 years. Finally after a year long effort the product I am working on hit Beta and there was no reason why we shouldn’t celebrate.  Also there were couple of more teams that achieved respectable milestones. 

So we decided to take a day off and enjoy ourselves. The place – Confidant cascade. Agenda  - have fun. 

After a good meal, we headed to the cricket field. I was given the option to open the batting for my team. It reminded me of days when I used to be volunteered to open against teams that had a very good bowling attack so that I can get the beating. This was no difference. After 1 over we were 2 runs on the board and after 2 we were 5. Enter Bharath hegde, who made my day. one over and 26 runs from it. 3 6′s and 2 4′s. I was having fun. 

In the end we were 52 at the end of 8 overs and it took the opposition 6 overs to wrap it up. 

After which we headed out to play Paintball. It is a typical capture the flag match, where every team has to guard their flag and attempt to capture that of others. Each team member is given a Gun that is Co2 propelled and 10 paintball bullets. We had amazing fun. Jumping, diving, strategizing. I think it is an amazing team building event. Put the folks who have the worst ego on the same team and you might be surprised to see them gel well. 

On the whole it was an amazing day of fun filled activities.

fun @ amoeba

Have no idea how I missed this one.

Finally it was time to celebrate and have fun. We had been wanting to go out for sometime now and finally we had a strong reason for why we shouldn’t. It was to celebrate for the prototype that we had built and it was making headlines across geographies.

Jeetu, Brijesh, Sudhir, Deb and I reached 20 feet high (a restaurant in MG Road) only to find out workers dusting and painting the place. So we ended up dining @ 3 quarter Chinese. The food was good. I liked the chinese part of it as I always end up eating north Indian food whenever I go out.

After a sumptuous meal, it was time for some action. Bowling. I had already become a big fan of this sport even though I had played only once. It was supposed to be a competition between two team but it ended up with all of us bowling on the same lane.

With Sudhir spinning the ball accurately , Brijesh with his funny bowling actions (imitating a spin bowler on a cricket field), 3 strikes from my side, it was fun all the way. There was also a point when Brijesh had to bowl at an empty lane for the last pin had fallen after the score was recoreded. He didnt lose his enthusiasm and didnt change his action. I ended up with 132 points followed by sudhir with 129.

On the whole it was a great day out.